June 24, 2024 Show with Dr. Joe Boot & Dr. James R. White on “Racism: What It Really Is & Who Is Really Guilty of It” PLUS “A Review of Chris Arnzen’s Interview w/ Robert Sungenis”

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Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer

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George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend

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Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

00:23

Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have a view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 24th day of June 2024, and I'm thrilled to have two returning guests on the program.

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to discuss a very important issue. We have joining us today

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Dr. Joe Boot, founder and president of the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

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He's a Christian thinker, cultural apologist, author, and conference speaker. And we also have joining us my dear friend going back to the 1990s,

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Dr. James R. White, co -founder and director of Alpha Omega Ministries, a

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New Testament Greek scholar, Christian apologist, highly seasoned public debater, author, and conference speaker.

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And today we are going to be addressing the theme racism. What is it really and who is really guilty of it?

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And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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First of all, Dr. Joe Boot. Greetings, brother. It's great to be back.

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Good to see you. And thanks for having me again on the show. Oh, my pleasure. And Dr. White, great to have you back on the show as well.

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I appreciate it, Chris. The only thing that I've got to complain about is you have me on with a

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British guy. And when you're on with a British guy and you've just got a plain old dry American accent, you sound dumb and slow.

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The only advantage I have over Joe is I can speak a lot faster than he can because Brits sort of struggle with that a little bit.

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But anyways, it's good to be back with you.

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Well, Dr. Boot, if you could provide for us a working definition of racism, that may seem like a no -brainer.

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But it's obvious that in the 21st century that word is thrown around every single day.

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If you are on the Internet or watching television or listening to the radio, you hear that phrase racism all day long.

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And it's being very often, if in fact most often, slanderously used and erroneously used.

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In fact, if you criticize someone who's a homosexual, you're a racist. And for the life of me,

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I can't figure that out. But why don't you tell us where you're coming from with a working definition? Well, you've surveyed the landscape there rather interestingly of the topic.

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But from a Christian standpoint, actually, I would say that the term racism has become next to useless.

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I think it should be abandoned for expressions like ethnic prejudice. But what is generally meant by it is that external biological markers with human beings should be used to arrange and structure society in some measure or in some way.

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So that we give opportunity and produce outcomes in society based on external biological markers.

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And so that tends to be what racism is.

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Actually, it's to take somebody's external appearance and treat them differently because of their appearance.

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That's what it historically has concerned. Its meaning, as you said, has morphed somewhat.

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But that is that that is fundamentally what we most ordinary people mean or think they understand by racism is to treat people differently based on external biological markers and characteristics.

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And Dr. White, you want to add anything to that? Well, no,

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I think from a Christian perspective, this requires us to go back and talk about man creating the image of God, the origination of various ethnic groups, the difference between ethnic group and race.

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The sad thing is we live in a day where Darwin has so eviscerated

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Western culture of any meaningful anthropology or really any basis for developing an anthropology that the ridiculous use of the term that is just now constant in our society.

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It can't be refuted if you're standing on their worldview. And it's another one of those situations where we see the necessity of thinking presuppositionally, arguing presuppositionally and getting down to the foundational levels that it's becoming harder and harder to do simply because so many of the people in our society have been crippled in having any type of worldview thought whatsoever by the public indoctrination system.

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I don't call an education system that never really was, and it certainly isn't anymore. So all these issues are extremely important to us as we engage our culture and seek to be a prophetic word, a prophetic voice to warn about the the judgment that is to come.

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And Dr. Boot, I'm assuming that some of what you were were referring to in the fact that it is in some ways an illegitimate term to begin with, is the very fact that we have one race.

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It's the human race, Adam's race. And we actually those of us who are

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Christians, at least those of us who have delved a little bit more deeply than the average person, perhaps into the even the term, the term itself comes out of bigotry because those of nonwhite complexion, those with more melanin content, those with different facial features.

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And hair textures and so on were deemed to be of another race. So this is something

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I'm assuming this is one of the reasons why we should eventually try to put an end to the use of this precisely.

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I mean, James indicated that that really we have to reframe the whole conversation around racism, which is why

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I much prefer the term ethnic prejudice, because from a biblical standpoint, there is only one race in Adam.

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And Paul is explicit about that in Romans in Acts chapter 17, actually, at the

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Areopagus on Mars Hill, that all men are of one blood. And so a race consciousness really began to emerge sort of 16th, 17th century onward when as nations that had been relatively geographically isolated in the

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West, the West began exploring and discovering various parts of the world again.

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Sometimes parts of the world being discovered by the West for the first time. And as these discoveries of people groups were being made, oftentimes peoples who'd been untouched by Christianity, but only did a kind of race consciousness begin to emerge.

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But a sort of hierarchical view of people groups or races with that.

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And that wasn't just the sort of white, black, yellow idea. There was actually the dividing up of the different European peoples into Alpine, Mediterranean and Nordic and so on.

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And these were seen as races. And as James mentioned, Darwinism sort of put this on steroids.

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So it took a sort of primordial view of race and then put it on steroids with an inherently racist.

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I mean, the descent of man by Charles Darwin is an inherently racist doctrine because it basically says that human beings have multiple progenitors.

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I mean, that's the basic idea that the different people groups are closer to pre pre hominid, so -called pre hominid ancestors than others.

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And so, for example, from very early on, aboriginals were considered closer to the apes, for example, in Australia and were treated shamefully as a result.

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So you had a kind of a philosophy that was developing there in Enlightenment Europe.

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And then Darwinism, with its racial ideology and its false view of man, its false anthropology, put racial prejudice, ethnic prejudice on steroids.

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Now, what was the primary factor that compelled you to want to address this specific topic today?

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Well, I'm working on a new book at the moment called Think Christianly, which comes out in the new year.

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And one of my major topics in that book is Christianity and racism for the very reason that you've talked about on the show, which is the word is so bandied around today.

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And almost any sort of effort to defend Western civilization or talk about Christendom or justify the history of Europe or even talk about Western values gets you labeled a racist.

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I mean, even teaching traditional mathematics is apparently racist in some context now.

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So, you know, it's a worldview issue, as James said, and it's become so ubiquitous in our society and in our culture.

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Everybody's sort of talking about it and it's thrown around. People are terrified of being labeled racist. I felt it was a really important topic to address in in this new book, which is which is why when you asked me about the show,

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I thought, well, this would be an interesting topic to chat about a little bit. And James, I know that you have been the victim of slander by people who have publicly called you a racist.

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In fact, of course, I don't have an audience nearly as large as yours, but I was publicly called a racist in social media when a female minister discovered that I only invite men to my biannual

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Iron Trip and Zion Radio pastors lunches. Somehow that equated racism.

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And when this woman made a point of posting a picture of my flyer with a red circle around men only, all of these feminists started to come out of the woodwork and and some of them were calling me a racist and so on.

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But this is really a tool, is it not, Dr. White, that shuts down conversation.

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It's like intended to it's intended by the accuser, the one slandering to rob their opponent of any worth of having something to say that's of value.

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Am I making sense there? You are. I just it only works, though, with people who.

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Emote rather than think, and that that is a large portion of the younger generation, unfortunately.

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And that's what they've been taught to do is to when they hear a term that creates a specific emotion, then that emotion stops any other any other thought.

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You don't listen to what someone's saying. You don't analyze the factuality of their presentation along those lines.

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So it has a limited audience. And one thing that we should be doing within the church is making sure that that our people are.

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I guess we'd have to put it that we are, in a sense, trying to undo the damage.

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That the world does regularly with those who are coming into the place of worship and reestablish a meaningful way of thought.

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So I wasn't aware of Joe's upcoming book. He's he's still a young man.

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I'm so much older than he is. And so he still has the has the energy to be writing these things.

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I've I've got one little book that that I've had. I've been tinkering with for a while.

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And I tell you, when you're you know, I ended up preaching Sunday because Jeff Durbin, my fellow pastor, he adopted these creamy girls.

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These two creamy girls that were going to be aborted. But instead, they adopted them.

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And one of them has just been diagnosed with cerebral palsy because of various problems she had.

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And he spent three days in children's hospitals. So best thing I can do for him is

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I take Sunday and preach. And so when you when you've got that kind of stuff going on and then doing the dividing line and the debates and things like that, getting books written really takes a lot of more effort and a lot more energy than I have these days.

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It's it's sad, but bad as it may. I love the title Thinking Christianly, which which said with the

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British accent sounds so much better than we say, though. I've got to admit,

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Joe, I'm sorry you spent a little bit too much time in Canada. It's sort of are you getting some of the good

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British element of it back? Because, you know, that Canadian part just sort of I don't know, the

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Canadian British combination, just I'm not sure that really does you as much good.

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And for those of our listeners who don't know, Dr. Boot moved back to the United Kingdom. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

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Well, I should mention at least I think I'm still one of the fellows of Ezra Institute.

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Maybe I'll get a little a little note about that ending that.

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But I feel like I can sort of pick on him because he's sort of the boss man. And so he has to he has to put up with us little minions doing our thing.

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But seriously, going going back to the topic, it really is an issue of how we think.

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This topic is is an illustration of the fact that. One of the greatest challenges that most believers have who want to be salt and light, they want to they want to be out there speaking the truth is that secularism, it literally rots the brain.

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It rots the way we think we were meant to think. After the thoughts of our creator and once you are absolutely convinced, you know, you don't have a creator and your thoughts are no different from your emotions.

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Wow. It is really, really hard to communicate categorical thinking, logic, rules of logic, all these things that are necessary for a society to continue and to prosper.

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And so this is just a part of the attack upon language that we are seeing and we need to be teaching our children the value of language and the value of thinking

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God's thoughts after. Dr. Booth, do you intend in your upcoming book to include this bizarre phenomenon where liberalism has really morphed into leftism and you have people who came out of the the liberal political and even religious movements?

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Who their parents and perhaps even they themselves when they were younger would promote the idea and this would really unite in many ways conservative and liberal

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Christians, especially if they were genuinely regenerate conservative Christians, that we are to be colorblind.

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And this notion has in and of itself become racist in the minds of the leftist.

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How dare you say there should be no consideration of the distinction and the difference and the separateness of skin color, hair texture, music that one enjoys and foods that one enjoys eating and all this kind of thing that's wrapped up into the allegedly different races.

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If you want to comment on that. Well, of course, the the idea behind the expression to be to be colorblind is not to say that we eviscerate the unique cultural contributions of different people groups.

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It's to say that we are equal in the eyes of God where as we come to the

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Lord's table, we are equal as we confront God's law.

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We are equally under the law and the judgment of God's law.

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And as we come to Christ, we're equally recipients of the gospel and in need of the gospel and of salvation.

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So that has to do with, you know, it's like Lady Justice blindfolded famously is to say, you know, she's not going to regard anything other than truth and justice.

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That is what that's the benchmark. And whether you're rich or poor, black or white, tall or short, et cetera, et cetera.

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Justice needs to be done. There cannot be partiality. So that's what's behind that expression. There's a good motive behind that.

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Of course, the what what James has just talked about, which

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I think is is very important, is that even when you use expressions like that, which are clearly meant to convey that we should be we shouldn't be showing partiality on the basis of these external biological factors.

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The basis of a common discourse now in our society is gone. And when the basis for a common discourse disappears, people don't debate and discuss.

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They scream at each other. They don't listen. They just it's a mob. It's a crowd. It's different mobs and groups.

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So the shouting and screaming at each other because the basis of a common discourse has eroded.

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And the the reason that what you've just said, Chris, doesn't go over with people or isn't or is not accepted and is called racist itself is because we haven't mentioned this yet.

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And I know on radio we don't want to get too technical and highbrow, but some critical race theory, which is basically a branch of it's emerged from cultural

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Marxist thinkers who came out of the Frankfurt School, basically. But it's a critical theory.

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Critical theories take a variety of forms. And there is critical race theory and critical race theory basically says that the the the the white man so -called biological marker, of course, ironically, is a structural oppressor.

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And the structure of white society is inherently and irredeemably racist.

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That's the that's the basic idea of it. And therefore, it doesn't matter what somebody like me or you or James says, or even when we take the part of those who are struggling against ethnic prejudice, because there's another technical term standpoint epistemology, because we're only knowledge is basically purely rooted in your particular standpoint.

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And so -called white people only get involved in helping members of the

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BIPOC community, that's black indigenous people of color, if it suits some purpose that they have.

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And so, you know, they can the only people who can be racist on this particular worldview are white people.

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So everything else is overlooked. And the structure of our society is said to be inherently and irredeemably racist.

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So it doesn't matter that there's equality before the law or equality of opportunity or the whole idea of being colorblind.

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That's irrelevant. That's all part of the broader structural oppression and racial justice is always on the horizon.

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It can never be actually achieved. So you must always be in constant revolution against the structural oppressor by making the structural oppressor the oppressed.

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So you try and turn tables now very, very quickly. Obviously, it's absurd to make this about the white man, because white society or the whole idea of white society historically was utterly barbarous.

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I mean, the Vikings were practiced human sacrifice before the Christian faith.

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We were total pagans. So a sort of white identity as sort of embedded in whiteness as such is as absurd as saying there's an

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Asiatic soul or or or an African soul, because it will totally depend on the religious commitment of that people group and the culture that's been built out around it.

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So the real target of the critical theorists of critical race theory is not actually whiteness as such.

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It is the culture. It's the Christian culture that's been represented by Western Europe and North America for about 1500 years until there was a shift to the global south.

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So the attack is on all of the institutions, structures, way of life of so -called white society, which was

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Christian society. The goal of the attack, which all critical theories are designed to liberate.

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So they're not actually truly critical theories unless they are designed to liberate people from some kind of structural oppression.

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And so the idea is with with this critical race theory is that you must liberate by the

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BIPOC community, black indigenous people of color from the oppression of whiteness and and white supremacy or white privilege.

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These terms that people hear all of the time. And so you there is nothing that you and I or James can do to atone.

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No, no amount of penance, no amount of obeisance, no amount of falling down.

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And that's why the people who apologize most when they say when they're accused of racism end up the worse off, because there is no amount of of penance that you can do.

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No amount of sadistic burden bearing masochistic burden bearing that you can do to be released from the punishment for the crime of whiteness, which is actually really to do with the

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Christian worldview that shaped the Western world. That's the issue you're up against. And interestingly enough, you mentioned earlier that only in the left's paradigm, only white people can be racist.

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But that also, like most other things in their worldview, has morphed.

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And that's why you can be a racist if you're black, but only if you are a conservative, heterosexual

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Christian. And even then they will call you a white supremacist no matter what your skin color is.

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Precisely. That's why a man is distinguished and as brilliant as Thomas Sowell, because he's a critic of Marxism, is called an

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Uncle Tom and a white supremacist, even though he's black, because it isn't actually ultimately about your skin color.

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It's about your worldview. And if you're coming from a worldview that is influenced by Christianity, that's seen as, you know, essentially

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European, which in and of itself is ridiculous, because, of course, Christianity comes out of the Middle East and through North Africa, in China and India before it's even in the

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West. Nonetheless, none of that matters. History doesn't matter. Because the goal is this

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Marxist liberation from the oppressive structures of the Christian faith.

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We have to go to our first commercial break. And if you have a question for either of our guests, send it to Chris Arnsen at Gmail dot com.

27:48

Give us your first name, at least city and state and country of residence. Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages. We here at Iron Sharpens Iron Radio praise

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So go to royaldiadem .com and mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and purchase some jewelry today.

30:16

And we are now back with my guests, Dr. Joe Boot of the Ezra Institute and Dr.

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James White of Alpha Omega Ministries. And before I continue with our theme on racism,

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I just want to make sure our audience knows that Dr. Joe Boot is my next keynote speaker for my next biannual free

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Pastors Luncheon, which will be held Thursday, June the 10th, 11 a .m.

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to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania. And not only is admission free and your lunch free, but everybody who attends will receive a very heavy sack of free brand new books personally selected by me and donated by generous

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Christian publishers all over the United States and United Kingdom. If you'd like to register for this free event, if you're a man in ministry leadership, send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com

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and put Pastors Luncheon in the subject line. Also, the Future of Christendom conferences is featuring

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Dr. Boot as one of their primary speakers. The two days following, that would be

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Friday, June 11th and Saturday, June 12th in the Lancaster, Pennsylvania area.

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And then on Sunday, he will be speaking at St. John's Reform Church, also in the

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Lancaster area. For more details on that conference and also that Sunday speaking engagement, go to futureofchristendom .org.

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futureofchristendom .org. That is for the two -day conference. And for Dr.

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Boot's speaking engagement at St. John's Reform Church in the Lancaster area, go to allofchrist .org,

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allofchrist .org. And Dr. Boot, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for agreeing to be our keynote speaker for the next free

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Pastors Luncheon for the very first time. It's a real pleasure,

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Chris. I'm looking forward to it, and I appreciate the invitation to be with you. And Dr.

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White, do you have any questions for Dr. Boot on this issue before I ask any of my own? Oh, no.

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I thought we were actually working fairly well together, Chris. Would you like me to come up with another perspective here?

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I don't know. Actually, I was a little distracted there for a second. I should mention the

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New York Times did an interview with my fellow pastor, Jeff Durbin. He actually did a fairly decent job, which in and of itself should be major news in actually representing it.

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But evidently the Biden -Harris people have picked up on it. And now

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Jeff Durbin is a Trump surrogate and all the rest of this kind of stuff. I just saw this hit.

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So I was like, oh, this is interesting. Jeff had to leave early yesterday from while I was preaching because his little daughter,

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Piper, her blood sugar was spiking and he had to take her to the hospital and stuff. And so he's probably still at the hospital.

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And meanwhile, they're going after him big time for comments he's made on the subject of abortion over the years.

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Well, it's amazing. Go ahead. No, it's just amazing what social media does.

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And I was looking at some of the comments and it really feeds back into what I was saying earlier. The comments aren't about the substance of what

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Jeff was saying. It's about the emotional response to what Jeff was saying. And that's.

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That's just it's very hard for me to deal with with people like that.

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I don't know how they drive cars with you, but they're extremely, extremely incoherent and inconsistent.

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Well, we do have a listener question who chooses to remain anonymous. Dr. Boot, I have friends who are woke and have adopted the same unbiblical and even heretical ideology that you have described.

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And yet they remain in all other ways, or at least most other ways, conservative and theologically reformed.

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What is the best way, in your opinion and counsel, to break the ice with them to realize to make them realize that they need to repent of this?

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Yeah. Well, there are all all kinds of issues that can be wedge issues.

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And I know that Dr. White is an expert in addressing all of these challenges and issues that are coming.

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Oh, Dr. Booth. I should add that very kind to me. Am I still with you?

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Yes, but you are getting me. You are. Yes. Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you.

35:27

OK, you were just getting a little choppy. I'm going to turn my camera off in the event that that's too much bandwidth.

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But go ahead. I was saying that James is very, very kind to me.

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But actually, he's the he's the one who's longer in the tooth with with more experience.

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And the somebody whose ministry I've looked up to for a long time. And it's a pleasure and a privilege to have him as a fellow of the

35:55

Ezra Institute. So I'm sure he'll have something to say on this subject. But I think that we have to show people that when you.

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Oftentimes, people don't realize that when you let a foot in the door like this, it's like pulling on the thread that one thread of a sweater.

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Eventually, if you keep pulling on that, the whole sweater will unravel. And because there's a lack of coherent and consistent worldview, biblical worldview in the life of the

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Christian church today. Very often, people think that they can adopt or import or baptize, actually philosophical perspectives that fall outside of the biblical paradigm, the biblical worldview and think there won't be any damage.

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And it's usually where people begin to cave is is on these cultural pressure points.

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So they they start to cave or give ground on the sexuality issue or they start to cave or give ground on the identity issue or the the race issue.

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And they start to adopt an essentially racist view of the world. As I've said,

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Christianity is inherently inherently anti racist because there is only one race. And that old division, even of Jew and Gentile, Paul tells us in Ephesians two that where there was an ethno national divide has been broken down.

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Even there, of course, we can perhaps talk about this a bit later. Israel was not an ethnic people as such, but a covenant people.

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Their unity was based around religious commitment, not not ethnic heritage, because when they left

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Egypt, the Bible is very clear that they left a mixed multitude. Egyptians left with them.

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Moses's father, Jethro, is not a Hebrew. Joseph marries an

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Egyptian. So Rehab, the prostitute, is in the line of Christ.

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So, you know, these all of these things are known to us. So even Israel was not an ethnic people, but a covenant people.

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And those things are very important to reiterate. So in Christ, these these prejudices have been broken down.

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Their Pentecost is the great undoing in many respects of the curse of Babel. Babel was that moment when

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God confused the language of an idolatrous people that were refusing to obey his commands to multiply, fulfill the earth and glorify

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God, turning creation into a God glorifying culture. They refused to do that. And instead, they were building themselves a tower to the heavens, which wasn't a skyscraper.

38:45

It was a form of idolatrous worship, probably astral symbolism, worshiping demonic powers.

38:53

And it ended with God confusing the language. Well, Pentecost, the nations of the known world who were in Jerusalem for worship, they were

39:03

Jewish proselytes, heard the gospel in their own language. And so that's what the gospel is about.

39:10

And we need and people need to remember that in the Christian church. If we're getting pressure to adopt these neo -Marxist ideologies and think we can import them into Christianity, we need to help people to say, look, look where this leads, look where this goes.

39:25

If you follow the logic of this, it will actually destroy and pull apart the gospel itself.

39:33

Well, we have Barton in East Quag, Long Island, New York, who asks,

39:39

Isn't it dangerous when we realize that we are becoming far more comfortable with people, even if they are outside of Christ, just because of the color of their skin rather than their faith?

39:54

This seems to be something that is applauded as being completely fine by some voices.

40:01

And I emphasize the word some within the Christian nationalist movement, unless I am misunderstanding them.

40:09

Do you have any comments on this? Yeah, again,

40:14

I'd be interested to hear James's thoughts on that. But I'm actually very glad that that question has been raised because that is an extremely important point.

40:23

There is actually a ditch on both sides of the road here. What James and I have been discussing primarily so far is what we would call, you know, this whole critical race theory is a constructionist view of race fundamentally, that your your race is basically a social construct that sort of culturally built.

40:48

And the primary emphasis is, even though the strangely they talk about whiteness, which is a biological marker, they're essentially constructivist.

40:59

The left in their view of race, that it's that it's white culture and structural oppression.

41:05

And the institutions of Western society that are the problem. Now, what's happened is there has been a reaction to that.

41:15

And it was inevitable, wasn't it, in many respects, Chris, that, you know, if you if you allow that kind of a worldview to penetrate so deep into Western society and you tell young people and you tell them, as James said earlier, through the education system that they're guilty, that their ancestors are all criminals and imperialists and colonial abusers and slave traders and so on.

41:40

And you and you basically lay a guilt complex for all the world's ills onto one ethnic group.

41:49

Eventually, that ethnic group is going to react or at least some members of it are.

41:55

And unfortunately, the other view that we can take, which is the ditch on the other side of the road, right down the middle of the road is the biblical view of the kingdom of God.

42:03

On one side, you've got the leftist constructionist view. On the other side, you have an ethnic nationalist view, what

42:10

I would call a primordial nationalist view, which basically says that people and place are in a kind of symbiosis, that they are that they're at the core of your makeup as an individual.

42:28

The origin of this is a focus on particularity of peoples and it comes from 19th century romanticism.

42:36

And of course, this is where the Nazi doctrine came from, you know, blood and soil, people and place.

42:44

And in that symbiosis, a kind of right, a sort of inalienable right exists for that particular ethnic group to possess and insist on the possession of that space of land without any factoring in God at all.

43:04

I mean, when you look at the Bible, God says, well, no, the Canaanites don't have any right to that piece of land. I've been patient with them 400 years.

43:10

I'm driving them out. And he said to Israel, it's a promised land. But if you do the things that the

43:16

Canaanites did, the land is going to spew you out as well. So the Bible doesn't know of any kind of inalienable right of one people, one ethnic people to possess a given area outside of the sovereign providence and justice and judgment of God.

43:32

So the primordial nationalistic view is dangerous.

43:38

It goes beyond patriotism and speaking of the importance of Christian nations, because a

43:45

Christian nation can consist of people of many ethnicities, but who worship

43:51

Christ. And that's where the unity comes from. You can have unity in diversity. If the unity is built around the

43:59

Lord Jesus Christ, that's exactly what Paul is teaching about the life of the church. There is neither slave nor free, barbarian or Scythian, male or female.

44:09

We are one in Christ. You can have diversity. Yes. When there is a unity in Christ.

44:16

So we should be able to. And America, of course, is a wonderful example of a nation that welcomes Christian people from around the world to come to America, to a city on a hill and build a new

44:29

Christian society. Canada was similar. And since World War Two, Britain has become that became quickly a place with the wind rush.

44:38

The British Commonwealth, people from various parts of the world, many of them Christians. Now, that isn't the problem in a society because you can maintain unity of Christian faith in the midst of that diversity.

44:50

The problems come when you introduce radically different religious worldviews into that society that are at war with each other.

44:57

Once you introduce that war warfare principle at the worldview religious level, then you have the problem.

45:05

What nationalism says, though, is it's not the religious cultural issue that is paramount.

45:13

It's your your ethnicity. It's your blood. It's blood and it's blood and soil.

45:20

And you know, and allegedly there you've got much more in common with the atheist or the

45:25

Marxist who's white living down the road than you have with the Christian African who's your neighbor.

45:33

Now, from a biblical standpoint, that's absolute nonsense. Look at the story of Ruth and Naomi.

45:40

You know, your God will be my God. Your people will be my people. I'm going where you go. I will go where you stay.

45:46

I will stay. It's not about blood. It's about covenant.

45:53

And the Bible requires everywhere that we take the side of God and his lawward and his covenant over blood.

46:00

If we take the side of blood, we're nothing but a mafia as a society. And so it's not that we can't we do that.

46:09

There are there's no such thing as people group particularity. We want the diversity. But the unity is religious.

46:15

It's not ethnic. And if you look at actually the conflict that I want to hear James on this, I should shut up.

46:21

But if you look at the conflict in America today, the fundamental conflict is not between black and white or Asian and black or whatever.

46:30

It's between religious worldviews. It's actually that it's white society in Europe and North America that is driving and is driven.

46:41

This Marxist neo -Marxist worldview of critical race theory.

46:48

And when you look at the polarization in America, it's not polarization around ethnicity. It's polarization around worldview.

46:56

And Dr. White, you have any comments? Well, I think you have to go to a break fairly quickly, don't you?

47:03

Four minutes. Four minutes. OK. Some people might be aware of the fact that a number of years ago,

47:12

I think I think it was in 2018 or 2019. I created a little meme.

47:18

I'm not a big meme guy, but I did in this instance. And it was a meme that was speaking about the

47:26

Lord's Supper. And it said the Lord's Supper is how they put it.

47:34

Basically, what it said was is the Lord's Supper. We are focusing upon Christ and his work only.

47:42

Any attempt to turn the Lord's Supper into a time of ethnic identity and issues like this is a is a complete distraction from what the supper is supposed to be.

47:56

Because my argument from 2018 onward, when this whole thing started with the Martin Luther King 50th anniversary stuff, was that what really unifies

48:05

Christians as a body is the fact that we all stand before God on the exact same basis.

48:12

We stand before God in light of the imputed righteousness of Christ. That's what makes me right before God.

48:18

That's what makes anyone right before God. That is our common heritage in the sense of what binds us together, the spirit of God living within us, that righteousness has been imputed to us.

48:29

And a well -known well, Eric Mason, author of Woke Church, who identifies as a reformed

48:37

Baptist. Yeah, well, anyway, he he he said in social media immediately after I posted that and then put it in his book that he called, believe it or not, he called for an ecumenical council.

48:56

Now, if anyone knows what ecumenic we're talking worldwide council of the entire church, which

49:04

Protestants don't believe have happened really in some ways ever, but for a long, long, long, long, long time, simply to have my views and the view

49:15

I expressed when I said that declared to be heretical. I think he wanted to meet in Philadelphia.

49:23

So I believe me when I when I made that little meme, that was that never crossed my mind that that was not something

49:32

I was giving any thought to whatsoever. I was making a theological point, and that is that our unity is found outside of ourselves in that alien righteousness has been imputed to us, that personal

49:47

Holy Spirit who indwells us, who binds us together. And once you lose that, then it's not just two ditches.

49:55

There's two ditches. There's a cliff behind a cliff in front. There's a lot of different places to go flying off into all sorts of excess.

50:04

That's incredibly dangerous. And I've aside from having an incredibly unfortunate name to be engaged in any of this aside from that,

50:18

I explained back in twenty eighteen the first time I really did start to address this.

50:24

I explained at the time I was raised in a situation where my my first best friend, the first best friend

50:31

I can remember was Brown. His dad was the biggest, blackest man I'd ever seen.

50:37

He was a Minnesota cop and his mom was albino white. So the first family that I knew of outside of my own family had a black husband and a very, very white wife and their son,

50:52

Kevin, was my best friend. And so I just I could never understand why people got all upset about these things because of my experience.

51:04

Well, I was called a racist for being colorblind because I used to turn colorblind to say, hey, this was how

51:13

I was raised. This was my first experience. He was just my best friend. So I can't buy into all this stuff.

51:18

I just don't see that. And I was attacked vociferously, primarily by African -Americans, actually, for daring to say the things that I said in that in that context.

51:33

So, yeah, theologically, Christians really have to be aware of the fact that, yeah, there are lots of dangers of going in excess one direction or another.

51:45

If we stay theologically rooted, then we will be able to avoid those those excesses.

51:51

Well, if you still have to leave early, Dr. Boot, I'd like you to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today before you leave.

52:06

Well, I think that probably the most important thing in this discussion is to remember that the

52:15

Lord Jesus Christ was incarnate as a man, as a human being, and he is the head of a new race.

52:25

And this is the only sense in which I would employ the term race going forward from a

52:34

Christian standpoint. We talk about the human race and now there is a new race in the

52:41

Lord Jesus Christ, a new people. And they are the they consist of that fundamental of people from that fundamental old division,

52:53

Jew and Gentile. Remember, if you weren't a Jew, then you were Gentile, you were one of the

52:59

Gentile peoples. And we have been made one in and through the

53:06

Lord Jesus Christ, who has made us a kingdom of priests unto God and that kingdom of priests.

53:12

And this is why I think, you know, the church has a very important role to play in modeling.

53:19

This is every tribe. Revelation says every tribe, tongue, people and nation and has made them a kingdom of priests unto our

53:32

God. And so what's fascinating about that is that we are all in Christ.

53:38

We are one race in the Lord Jesus Christ. And yet that doesn't destroy the beautiful diversity of tribe, tongue, people, nation, the beauty, the wonder of the

53:53

Christian gospel and the Christian message. The message of the kingdom of God is that the only the only totalizing principle, the only ultimate organizing principle for humanity is not race.

54:05

It's not ethno or primordial nationalism. It's not a critical race.

54:11

There is not Marxism, Marxist globalism. The only truly totalitarian principle is the kingdom of God under the lordship of Jesus Christ that gives us unity in the midst of our diversity.

54:26

It doesn't destroy the beauty of diversity. It gives us unity in the midst of it.

54:31

And that's the incredible message that the world needs to hear in a culture, in a context that's polarized, where people are at war with one another, where ethnic hatred and prejudice is proliferates and is often encouraged by these worldviews that want to divide the world up into oppressor and oppressed class.

54:57

We need to be we need to advance the message of the kingdom of God and the new humanity in Jesus Christ.

55:05

Amen. Well, if anybody wants to find out more about the Ezra Institute, that fine organization founded by my guest,

55:14

Dr. Joe Boot, go to Ezra Institute dot com, Ezra Institute dot com.

55:19

Thank you so much for carving an hour out of your very busy schedule to be with us today,

55:24

Dr. Boot, and I look forward to seeing you in June at my pastor's luncheon and at the two day conference that Future of Christendom dot org is hosting and also to the

55:36

St. John's Reformed Church in Lancaster, where you'll be preaching. Thank you so much, brother.

55:42

Thank you very much, Chris. It's been a real blessing and great to see you again, James. Talk soon.

55:49

See you. All right. We're going to we're going to our midway break, folks. Please be patient. Don't go away.

55:54

We'll be right back. Greetings.

56:08

This is Brian McLaughlin, president of the Secure Comm Group and supporter of Chris Armson's Iron Shopping Zion radio program.

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and give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. Well, Dr. White, let's have your thoughts on my recent interview with Dr.

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Robertson Genesis. Oh, well, well, well, Chris, I first of all,

01:11:06

I will applaud you for having the bravery to break out of the standard evangelical shell there.

01:11:16

Of course, you've never been in any shell at all. And and call

01:11:24

Bob your friend and have dinner and do all that wonderful squishy ecumenical stuff.

01:11:35

But no, I mean, most people don't realize that, you know, Bob participated in the great debate series back there on Long Island.

01:11:45

And and for some reason, which I forget what

01:11:50

I forget what that was. But the the the stage was set up in such a way that when you look at the video, it's really dark.

01:12:00

We both look a little bit evil. And it looked it looked like the roof was right above our heads.

01:12:07

It was really strange. I think it was two different places. I think I think the one in 1999 was still at the

01:12:12

Coral House, I think. And I think the one in 2000 was at the Huntington townhouse. Well, it was yeah, it was it was it was strange.

01:12:21

But anyway, so we've had interaction with Bob and I've debated Bob in other places on other topics.

01:12:28

We had to do a self -moderated debate in Tampa that that I was very thankful that Bob worked with me on because the pastor of the church had told us, oh,

01:12:42

I know all about debates and I'll moderate the debate. And and what happened was he got up there and he said, we're going to have a nice discussion.

01:12:50

We're not going to have a big old fight or anything this evening. And he sort of introduced a few things and they said,

01:12:56

OK, guys, go for it. And he left. And, you know, St. Janice and I are looking at each other like, what on earth?

01:13:04

And I had to not only debate, but I also had to keep the time and stuff like and, you know, let people know we were going to do next.

01:13:12

It was a very strange evening and somehow we managed to get through it. So and I I've I mentioned on on the dividing line before you did the interview that, you know, you've got to give

01:13:26

Bob his his credit where credit's due. As he mentioned a number of times to you and as you brought up, there was a time when he was sort of in the group.

01:13:38

You know, he was on EWTN. He was one he was with Patrick Madrid and this other guy whose name escapes me.

01:13:47

I never really heard much more about him when they did the debate against the white horse in guys,

01:13:53

Michael Horton and stuff like that in Los Angeles. I was there in the audience, but I wasn't a part of the debate itself.

01:14:00

And so for a while there, he was, you know, doing the Scott Hahn type, you know, former

01:14:07

Presbyterian convert type thing. And then he then he sort of disappeared for a little while.

01:14:14

In essence, I mean, he put out those big books, not by Scripture alone, not by faith alone and not by bread alone.

01:14:22

Sorry, not by bread alone and not by faith alone. And all of a sudden, you know, started talking about geocentrism and issues regarding Israel and stuff that was being promoted by the papacy.

01:14:38

And and some people were wondering and he mentioned that Jerry Maddix and another guy sort of jumped on him one night to try to get him to to really join up with SETI Vacantism and.

01:14:52

And go that way, but he didn't go that way, but he he certainly, you know, the last

01:15:00

I think I think the last time he and I debated was in Albuquerque.

01:15:06

Santa Fe, Santa Fe was in New Mexico and it was on the bodily assumption of Mary.

01:15:13

And he's the only, you know, Maddix did the bodily assumption as one of a bunch of other topics.

01:15:20

But, you know, he was willing to go, you know, just on that one particular topic. And very few of the

01:15:27

Catholic apologists are have the temerity to try to do that. You won't get any of the popular guys, the

01:15:33

Catholic answers to to defend the bodily assumption of Mary. There's they'll they'll just simply say that is a dogma defined on the basis of the authority of the

01:15:42

Roman Catholic Church. And so we'd have to debate that before we would have any any reason to debate anything else.

01:15:48

So he's he's been willing to really radically limit.

01:15:55

The amount of support and range of contact that CIA could have to hold to the positions that he holds to.

01:16:07

But what's interesting and I'll get into details this, but but, you know, the whole time I was listening to it,

01:16:13

I'm like, OK, look. A hundred years ago, outside of the geocentrism stuff and things like that,

01:16:21

I think it would have had a really good case of being in the majority as to his views on all sorts of stuff.

01:16:29

But the fact of the matter is, you know, it was it was Bobs and Janice that I remember sitting in the chair

01:16:36

I'm sitting in right now in the dividing line studio in our offices. So this had to have been sometime after 2006.

01:16:42

It's probably about 2009. John Paul II had put out an encyclical and I had contrasted what he was saying now with what a previous pope had said because they were in contradiction to one another.

01:16:56

And Bob had written to me and he had basically said, well, look, you're you're really not in a position to comment on what the church meant back then, because only the church can interpret the statements of the church.

01:17:19

And so, in other words, you can't you you can't hold the church today responsible or accountable to be consistent with what it said in the past.

01:17:32

And I was like, wow, you know, there's there's an illustration of sola ecclesia that, you know, the church is the final authority and the church can say, well, that's not what we meant back then.

01:17:42

Well, everybody else back then believe that's what you meant back then. So why why can't we hold you accountable to what everybody at the time would have understood you to be saying?

01:17:55

And so it's interesting, in essence, you know, with all due respect,

01:18:01

Bob is a Protestant Catholic because because the system, you know, he he may have been right 100 years ago, but the system doesn't allow that to be the issue.

01:18:13

The system has a pope, and as he said, you know, we're stuck with him. But the problem is he's believing in this, you know, papal infallibility.

01:18:23

He'll keep him from fundamentally teaching error to the church. But he already has taught error to the church.

01:18:30

He already has taught he already has changed the church's teaching on the subject of capital punishment.

01:18:40

The historical view of the Roman Catholic Church on that subject is very easy to follow.

01:18:46

He has closed the door, not just when he changed the universal Catholic catechism on that subject.

01:18:52

A lot of the people were saying, yeah, well, but, you know, that doesn't mean it was necessarily wrong back then.

01:18:58

But then the language he's used and the caster of the faith has used recently is to say it is always sin, which would mean it had to have been sinful in the past as well.

01:19:11

So he has changed teaching. Fiducia supplicans is a change in teaching the people he has lecturing the bishops in the in the synod of synodality about the need to be inclusive and accepting and open is a change in teaching.

01:19:31

Everyone he's put in the papal biblical commission is promoting a view of Scripture that is completely different than what would have been held 200 years ago within those contexts.

01:19:43

So it's not just it seems like from from Bob's perspective, as long as he doesn't say

01:19:50

I pronounce, define and proclaim the following teaching and that it's directly in contradiction with what was proclaimed 200 years earlier.

01:20:02

His idea is, as long as it's not that it's not a change in teaching, but anybody who's sort of watching what's going on realizes there is a change in teaching going on.

01:20:15

The next pope's going to continue it. All the people he's put into place in positions of authority are already promoting this type of stuff.

01:20:26

The head of the Dicastery for the Faith, Tucho Fernandez, has said he's much to the left of Francis in his views, and that's impacting the teaching of the church.

01:20:38

And so, you know, anybody who who looks at what the church believed in 1924 and now looks at what the church teaches and believes in 2024 knows there's a difference, knows there's been a change.

01:20:55

How do you explain that? How does that even work? And what what Bob had said to me, you know,

01:21:02

I don't know, was 10 years ago or however long ago it was was, hey, it's not up. You don't get to decide these things.

01:21:08

The church gets to determine what the church is teaching. And so I find that highly inconsistent on on his part.

01:21:17

There are lots of Roman Catholics that are in a position of having to be inconsistent right now. It's called pope's blaming.

01:21:24

Others are just realizing this just doesn't work. And are looking for other alternatives.

01:21:31

But it's just an illustration of the inherent problem that Francis highlights for a system that says the bishop of Rome is the infallible vicar of Christ on earth and he is the final authority in all things.

01:21:48

That's that's a real, real issue. Now, there's lots of other things that that I found fascinating that he said.

01:21:55

But just from a sort of a bird's eye overview. I it's easier to debate a

01:22:03

Bobson Janice than it is a Jimmy Akin. Right. Let's say a couple other things. Bobson Janice never showed up at a debate with slides or is opening his rebuttals and disclosing.

01:22:18

And I would like to thank him for not having done that. I found that incredibly disrespectful to me and to the audience, especially when you're talking about especially when you're talking about the rebuttals.

01:22:31

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, what he did in both debates, because we had two debates in Livingston, Louisiana.

01:22:39

Brian Gunter had had put put a lot of we struggled to get that done.

01:22:45

We had started in November of last year to try to get Jimmy Akin there.

01:22:51

And we were just dangled on a string till April, I think, before we finally got confirmation.

01:22:58

In fact, the only reason we got confirmation is we had given up. We had we had figured we only had like a month left and we had given up.

01:23:06

And so we contacted and said, well, looks like it's not going to work. We're sorry that this didn't work out.

01:23:12

And they got back to us. Oh, well, Jimmy just said he's ready to go.

01:23:18

And so it's like, oh, good grief. I almost said no. At that point, I almost said, no, we have been jerked around like anything up to this point.

01:23:26

We're just no, we're not going to do it. But we went ahead and did it anyways. And Jimmy Akin shows up with slides for everything.

01:23:36

And so what he did is he has his presentation and he just has to stop once while I let the other guy talk.

01:23:44

And instead of interacting with what he says, he's going to say he's arguing about words. So I'm going to ignore that and just go on.

01:23:50

That's incredibly disrespectful, condescending. I don't think I would ever waste my time doing that again.

01:23:57

And I don't know how anybody ever defends something like that. But there you go. And Bob never did that.

01:24:03

When you debate Bob St. Janis, he's going to respond to what you're saying at the time.

01:24:10

And I really appreciate that. And that's useful and much more helpful. So you're basically saying

01:24:15

Jimmy Akin pulled a Harold Camping. I did. In that he was really in his rebuttals, especially since he had them already created before you said anything.

01:24:27

He wasn't even paying attention, really, in his rebuttal to anything that you said. No, he didn't need to.

01:24:34

That's him saying, I know everything they have to say. It's no big deal. You know,

01:24:39

I'm just going to go on and do my thing. And it was actually worse than Camping.

01:24:45

Because as you recall, at least the first day, for the first half of the debate, he did try to respond to what

01:24:54

I was saying. And it went so badly for him that his own people, I'm sure, told him, you can't go toe -to -toe with this guy.

01:25:05

You've just got to ignore him and just keep making your presentation. That's what he did the second day. In fact, our listeners can hear that debate archived at irontriponsireradio .com,

01:25:14

the one that James White had with Harold Camping. I just thought I'd let them know that. The only debate anyone ever heard.

01:25:21

Right. That is true. That's true. It's true. Yeah. I mean, how long did he even live after that?

01:25:29

It was only a few years. And I'm not taking credit for that. I don't want anyone to misunderstand what

01:25:36

I'm saying. But because we had that debate just,

01:25:41

I don't know, was it about 18 months before his big prediction? Something around that time?

01:25:49

And he only lived a few years after. Right. Yeah. So anyway, that was a totally different context.

01:25:58

So it was fascinating to hear his views on Catholic Answers.

01:26:09

He and I both have about the same number of years of experience in dealing with Catholic Answers.

01:26:16

I always from the position of an opponent and, you know, others, he having worked with them for a period of time.

01:26:27

Not I don't think he ever worked for Catholic Answers, but at least in a cooperative way with Catholic Answers.

01:26:33

He is exactly right that the changes we've seen in Catholic Answers as an organization have been due to,

01:26:46

I think, two primary factors. First of all, they've just gotten so big that they've got costs involved.

01:26:58

And you have to be really careful. That's one thing that, you know, and I see that it doesn't matter whether you're

01:27:03

Roman Catholic or Mormon or evangelical or whatever. Once you put yourself in the situation of having, you know, the big buildings and the big budgets and the big paychecks and stuff like that,

01:27:19

I've said I have confessed on air over and over and over again. I am not smart enough to head up a large ministry where I would have to be running these filters through my mind all the time.

01:27:33

If I say this, that group's going to be offended. If I say this, that group's going to be offended.

01:27:39

And if we're going to make our budget this month, I can't have those two groups offended with me. So I can't do that. I can't go there.

01:27:45

I can't do that. I have to have the freedom to be as dumb as I am and to just speak my mind.

01:27:54

And that's why Alpha Omega Ministries has two employees, me and Rich. And that's what allows me to do what

01:28:01

I do and to say the things I say. And that's why we continue to have a global audience and stuff like that.

01:28:09

So I think back in the day when I was taking on Catholic Answers First, which would have been

01:28:16

August of 1990, they weren't nearly as big as they are now.

01:28:22

It was Carl Keating, Patrick Madrid, Mark Brumley, and Jerry Matitix. That was pretty much the group at that time.

01:28:31

And Jimmy Akin came along after that. And so it does seem to me that they have become significantly more politically correct and that financially that's demanded of them.

01:28:45

The other thing is I would not want to be a Catholic apologist today for nothing because they have to get up every morning in a cold sweat wondering what

01:28:56

Francis said overnight that they're going to have to spend to explain it this time around.

01:29:06

And so they want to be able to do their conferences. They want to be able to draw people. They want to be able to get out there and do that kind of stuff.

01:29:13

But there's such a wide variety of Roman Catholics, and they just have to be extremely careful about what they say and how they say it.

01:29:24

If they were going to be consistent, they would have to say a lot more than they are willing to say about things today.

01:29:30

And you'll notice if you go back over time, a lot of the people that used to be very much a part of Catholic Answers have sort of moved on their own ways.

01:29:41

They've gone their own directions. They've maybe started their own little ministries and moved away from the big grandpappy organization.

01:29:52

And I think part of the reason is I know of at least one person that used to be one of their regular on -air people that has self -described himself as having been red -pilled by Francis.

01:30:05

And then others have gone other directions with other Catholic organizations that allow them a little more freedom and latitude and stuff like that.

01:30:16

So things have changed. They've changed a great deal for Catholic Answers and how they're handling things.

01:30:27

But for all of Catholic apologetics, because you didn't hear Bob St.

01:30:32

Genes defending Francis outside of saying, well, he's the pope. You know, we have what we have.

01:30:41

Some stink. Some don't. Remember back in I think it was 1990 or 2000.

01:30:48

I think they were there within a year of each other. I think it was 2000. I did two debates on papal infallibility, one with Bob St.

01:30:55

Genes in Tampa, Florida, and the other with Tim Staples in Fullerton, California.

01:31:01

I think they were within six months of each other, if I recall correctly. And it's fascinating to go back and listen to them because you discover that the mechanism by which they sought to defend papal infallibility is actually contradictory to the other guy's mechanism.

01:31:23

And it's not just, well, it's a different way. If one would be right, the other would be wrong. They can't put the two of them together.

01:31:30

So Tim Staples tried to defend Honorius, the famous bishop of Rome who was, for 400 years before you could become pope, you had to anathematize

01:31:42

Honorius as a heretic. It was part of your papal oath. So I can guarantee you those popes did not believe in papal infallibility.

01:31:50

And so Staples tried to defend Honorius, and Bob St. Genes was like, yeah, there have been lots of heretical popes.

01:31:57

They just won't teach it as dogma to the church. And so I even asked him, I said, so are you saying that you can have popes who are not actually believers?

01:32:10

They're not actually regenerated and dwelt by the Holy Spirit of God? Oh, yeah, sure. So very, very different approaches, very, very different ways of understanding these things.

01:32:21

And you get what you get with St. Genes. Catholic Answers is big enough that they have to sort of be careful about how they say things, not only because of their audience, but because of the variety of opinions represented by their own staff apologists.

01:32:39

They have the younger guys like Trent Horn. They've got the older guys like Jimmy Akin and Tim Staples. And in reality, they don't necessarily approach things and talk about things in the exact same ways.

01:32:53

And so you have to be careful how you handle things.

01:32:58

So I think it was fascinating to hear an honest

01:33:04

Catholic recognition on Bob's part that Catholic Answers is juggling a lot of balls at the same time.

01:33:16

And as a result, they don't necessarily do things the way that would be consistent with Catholic theology.

01:33:25

But the point being, who gets to determine what Catholic theology is? That's the issue.

01:33:31

All right. We have to go to our final break. Don't go away. We'll be right back. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

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Dr. White, we have Cornell in Bryant, Arkansas, and Cornell says,

01:46:53

The way that Jimmy Akin seemed to Protestantize justification by faith as a part of Catholic teaching, was it enough, in your opinion, if he really believes that, to have a faith that saves?

01:47:14

No, because the object of that faith has to be the finished work of Christ, not a perpetuatory sacrifice of the

01:47:23

Mass and all the other things that are associated with that. So you can't just cut those things out and leave them out of the way.

01:47:32

So, no, I wouldn't say that, and I didn't go back prior to the debates with Akin to listen to our previous encounters, including the three hours on the

01:47:43

Bible Answer Man broadcast, but I have a feeling, because that was in the 90s, the late, late 90s, I have a feeling that Akin probably would have taken a little bit of a different position at that particular point in time.

01:47:56

But no, I don't think his dependence upon the 1999 Lutherans -Catholic dialogue, which is not a dogmatic statement anyways, doesn't really get to the heart of the matter.

01:48:11

It doesn't get to the real issues, and I think his reading of the canons of the

01:48:16

Council of Trent is not representative of what the people who were at Trent said they were communicating.

01:48:23

The problem was, you know, if we were doing a debate on what did the

01:48:28

Council of Trent say, then we could have gotten into that. We were trying—I was supposed to be doing a debate on how a person has peace with God, and so you really couldn't get into some of the areas that would have helped to flesh a lot of that particular stuff out.

01:48:45

Now, what I was saying to Bob St. Genes during my interview with him, it seems painfully obvious that the majority of Catholic apologetics today, at least that which is most popular, is taking an approach, rather than saying like they used to, we're the one true church, you guys are wrong, and here's why.

01:49:14

They're saying, hey guys, you're really closer to us than you may think, and in fact, it's interesting that Catholic apologists very rarely today want to defend, in a public moderated debate, their unique and peculiar dogmas and teachings, especially those that involve

01:49:43

Mary, because they are more frightening to evangelicals.

01:49:48

They want to stick to things that brings us closer together, and in fact,

01:49:55

I think that there is also a tactic where they're trying to especially reach out to Arminian evangelicals and say, hey, you guys are really more like us than the

01:50:06

Calvinists. I think that's what Trent Horn did at the G3 conference. I think that it was clear he was doing that, and it was interesting that even in his more recent debate, the one that was at First Lutheran in Houston, Trent Horn was citing a lot of Protestants to prove his point, which made no sense to me, but if you could.

01:50:27

Yeah, it is interesting that they would do it, and when it comes to issues of grace and the nature of faith, they do.

01:50:37

They are, quote unquote, Arminian synergists, are on the opposite side of the debate that took place between Luther and Erasmus.

01:50:48

I've said that for years and years and years, and they're not aware of that. They're inconsistent at that point, but they are on Rome's side on many, many issues.

01:50:56

The provisionists, Layton Flowers, they're on Rome's side on many things, and these guys are trying to use that to their advantage, sure, but yeah,

01:51:07

I don't think that that's what I would have heard from Jerry Matitix, Patrick Madrid, Mark Brumley, in 1992 or something along those lines, so yeah, there's been an evolution.

01:51:19

They're trying to use various methodologies, and the nice thing is being who

01:51:27

I am in the ministry that I run here, we don't have to do all that stuff. We don't have to play those games.

01:51:32

We don't have to try to keep those people happy. We can just speak the truth, and I think that's a really valuable thing, so I appreciate your interview with Bob.

01:51:42

I thought it was fascinating insight, and I would just invite

01:51:47

Bob to consider that maybe all that stuff was wrong to start with. Go back to the

01:51:52

Scriptures, and you don't have to worry about that Francis guy at all. He's got nothing worth talking about.

01:52:00

We have Claudio in Bernalillo, New Mexico, and Claudio asks,

01:52:10

Is there any Catholic apologist that you have not yet debated that you really want to debate or even one that you already have and want to debate again?

01:52:21

We have challenged Scott Hahn to debate for decades. Oh yeah, so have I. Yeah, and he won't.

01:52:35

So Tucho Fernandez would be great. That would be awesome.

01:52:41

But as far as someone in the United States, no. In fact, I think probably the best guy

01:52:49

I've debated was over in on the Unbelievable on the radio broadcast there in Ireland because he would actually listen to what

01:52:57

I was saying. But other than that, no, I can't think of anyone that I would want to put on a list saying,

01:53:04

Hey, I haven't had that opportunity. Let's try to do it. But outside of Scott Hahn, probably.

01:53:11

Well, as far as Bob's critiques, Bob's and Genesis critiques of Jimmy Akin in the interview that I did, is there anything that either he missed or that time wouldn't allow us to address?

01:53:30

Or what else would you contribute to the critique of Jimmy Akin's performance when he debated you just recently?

01:53:39

Well, well, for me, the thing to notice here is that both

01:53:45

Jimmy Akin and Bob's and Genesis Smart guys, they both know the Catholic sources real well, but they they come to very different conclusions on key and vital issues.

01:53:56

And when I debated Mitch Pacwa and I would I would love to debate Mitch again if he was interested in it.

01:54:02

And I met some of his friends in Louisiana after those debates, actually. And they said they talked to him about it.

01:54:08

Great. You know, because you know how great Mitch was. Yes. Probably the nicest guy we worked with over the course of that time.

01:54:16

He was just a gem. But when he and I debated

01:54:21

Sola Scriptura out in San Diego in 1999, I concluded the debate by getting out of.

01:54:30

A box of books, all these Roman Catholic dogmatic sources and commentaries and all the rest of the stuff, piled them up on a desk next to the podium.

01:54:42

And I said, so what this debate is about is the claim that if you have all these books, you will have a clear understanding of what

01:54:52

Paul said in Romans 5, 1. Therefore, I haven't been justified by faith. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

01:54:59

And I submit to you, these books do not clarify Romans 5, 1. They muddy and muddle and confuse

01:55:06

Romans 5, 1. And what you see when you have Jimmy Akin and Bobson Janice coming to such completely different conclusions, is that the traditions of Rome do not clarify

01:55:17

Scripture. They muddy Scripture. They deny Scripture. They override

01:55:23

Scripture, which is what would allow people to believe in such things as the bodily assumption of Mary or the immaculate conception or perpetual virginity.

01:55:31

All these things that are utterly unknown to the apostolic witness of Scripture but are the dogmas of the

01:55:38

Roman Catholic Church. And so, that's what I felt was most useful about having this type of a conversation.

01:55:47

I also think that's why probably you'll never see the big names debating

01:55:53

Bobson Janice or Jerry Matitovich on these issues because of what it illustrates and what it actually says.

01:56:01

All that extra tradition does not clarify anything. It muddies everything.

01:56:07

And isn't it interesting, as I brought up during the interview with Bobson Janice, that it was

01:56:13

Jimmy Akin who had Bob fill in for him at the

01:56:19

Long Island debate on justification by faith, the long. When he pulled out of the debate, which he insists he never did, just because he set it up with me and not you personally.

01:56:32

That was a great excuse. I don't know how he could be overly critical of Bobson Janice critiquing him when

01:56:47

Jimmy Akin knew full well it was in his book against the

01:56:53

Protestant teaching of justification by faith alone because it came out years before the 2000 debate.

01:57:02

My gut feeling, I'm not going to get into how they handle each other, but my gut feeling would be, it seems to me anyways, that it was sometime around that time period, maybe a little bit afterwards, that I started hearing some

01:57:20

Janice talking about stuff that is what got him into trouble with EWTN. It was something about the

01:57:28

Jews and the covenants, and certainly Rome's views on all that stuff are completely unbiblical, but it seems to me that they would probably say, well, up until that time we could agree with what

01:57:42

Bobson Janice was saying and there was a consistency, and then after that he changed his views and therefore we had to stop recommending him and using him and doing stuff like that.

01:57:51

That would be my guess. I don't know. I don't have a secret microphone. Those issues have nothing to do with justification, though.

01:58:02

Well, they might very well say that they do, especially if you're talking about what the relationship to the

01:58:10

Jews is and to Muslims and all sorts of stuff like that. That does start getting into the nature of grace and what it means to actually be part of the church, and it's all interrelated.

01:58:20

So I'm just simply saying they'd probably say that that was what eventually led to the division.

01:58:28

But certainly the stuff that Jimmy Akin was presenting was not the stuff that you heard from Catholic Answers in the 1980s, 1990s, into the early 2000s.

01:58:40

There most definitely has been a major shift. Well, if anybody wants more information on Alpha Omega Ministries, the ministry co -founded by my guest,

01:58:50

Dr. James R. White, go to AOMIN .org, AOMIN .org.

01:58:57

And if you're a man in ministry leadership and want to register for my next Iron Trump and Zion Radio Free Pastor's Luncheon featuring

01:59:03

Dr. Joe Boot as our keynote speaker on Thursday, June 10th in Perry County, Pennsylvania, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com

01:59:12

and put Pastor's Luncheon in the subject line. It's always a blast, Dr. White, having you on the show.

01:59:18

I look forward to your return very soon. Thanks, man. It's been great to be with you.

01:59:23

All right. Well, God bless. And I want everybody to always remember for the rest of your lives, Jesus Christ is a far greater