Continuing Licona/Martin Debate

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is the Dividing Line.

The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

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United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

James White. And good afternoon, welcome to the Dividing Line on this November 8, 2012.

I have made all the comments that I think I need to make concerning the events of the 6th on the video that I posted on the blog, so I am not going to continue that post -mortem activity.

I'm going to press on with the debate that we began reviewing on the 6th, which was between Mike Lycona and Dr.

Martin, Dale Martin of Yale University. And we're going to get into some of the really good stuff today.

I will mention one more time that I am playing it back a little bit faster than it was recorded.

That allows us to get through things a little bit more quickly and makes people sound so much smarter.

And so we are going to be looking at, remember, Dr. Martin is a post -modernist

New Testament scholar, and boy are we seeing how that impacts things.

But I think in the next section and as we get into the question and answer period, I think it's so important for all of you who are interested in apologetics, who want to be able to analyze the argumentation of the world against our faith, you've got to be able to hear the arguments and weigh them as you're hearing them and see the presuppositional errors, the foundational errors that are being made.

This is extremely important. It is the very thing that most people are not trained to do in public education today.

To think logically, to analyze arguments, to see it on the fly, and to be able to identify what the issues are.

And I think it's vitally important, and I hope this is useful to you. So we're going to dive right back into it where we left off.

This is Dale Martin's opening statement, and we're just going to dive right back in.

It would help if I was in the right window, and click and go. And the orthodox scribes in the second century took out the today

I have begotten you because they thought this makes it sound like Jesus was adopted by God. He wasn't always

God. He was adopted by God at his baptism. Now what we have here, if you weren't with us last time, the argument here is here is someone who is relying upon Bart Ehrman's theories in regards to the, well, there's always been a recognition that scribes were human beings, and that scribes could be influenced by theology.

The problem is we've also always recognized that we don't know who the scribes were. So there could be orthodox scribes, there could be unorthodox scribes, there could be scribes who were really up on current debates, and scribes that were clueless about current debates.

And we don't know. And one of the things that just drives me insane about much of the modern leading material on this subject is that it's assumed, well, scribes were concerned about adoptionist heresies and therefore any variation, even if there are other really logical explanations.

But any variation, such as when Psalm 2 is quoted, you are my son, today

I have begotten you. Well, if today I have begotten you could be misused by someone, not if it couldn't be properly interpreted in an orthodox way, but if it could just possibly be misused, then scribes are going to take it out, or they're going to do something with it.

Sounds like someone's trying to get in the back windows here at the radio ranch here.

Actually, some kids I think may have just broken a leg or something, I don't know. But anyhow, I don't know what's going on outside the window.

We all just sort of said, oh, that's an interesting sound. Anyways, there are canons of textual criticism, and in essence there has been a rather major change in those canons over the past 20 or 30 years that involves reading the minds of scribes.

And that's what you've got going on here, is Dale Martin is presenting the idea that there have been these textual variants, and the overriding assumption is that all the scribes are orthodox.

And that just simply is something we do not know. Note also that the same kind of saying happens at the transfiguration in Luke 9 .35.

Our passage says, this is my son, this is my beloved, my chosen, in that passage.

So the word my chosen is used at the transfiguration. And some scribes apparently change that to my beloved.

Now why would they do that? Maybe because that's the version of it they had memorized from the

Old Testament? I mean, there are other reasons than that they have this particular controversy in mind.

Now why would people change my chosen to my beloved? Well, if you're an orthodox scribe and you believe

Jesus wasn't chosen to be God's son at the transfiguration, he always was God's son, then you might want to change that text of Scripture to not leave adoptionist

Christians, who you consider heretics, any ammo in the Bible. In Romans 1 .4,

Paul says that Jesus was designated or appointed as son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead.

Now your translation might have that as declared to be son of God, but I don't think that's a correct interpretation of the

Greek word. Horizo is a word that you use for designating something as something. Okay, the term itself,

Horizontos, in Romans 1 .4, I think is being stretched here just slightly.

Just a little bit. If he wants to say this means that, well, both the

NASV and ESV have declared, and was declared to be the son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead,

Jesus Christ our Lord. And your basic meaning is to determine, to declare, and the idea that is being read into the text here,

I think read into the text by Dr. Martin, is that what you really have going on here is some kind of a insertion of a meaning that would not have been original.

Now let me just read to you here. Let me see, where did, oh, there it is.

Let's go down to BDAG, which is the, sorry, that is the

Bauer, Dunker, Arndt, and Gingrich. To make a determination about an entity, determine a point, fix, set.

That is the basic meaning, to separate entities and so establish a boundary.

And the idea of persons, to appoint, designate, declare. These are all meanings that are assigned within the range of the meaning of the particular term that is under discussion here.

The problem is that Dr. Martin doesn't need to worry about interpreting

Paul in light of Paul. And that's what's going to drive us all nuts by the time we get into the conversation, is he can atomize the text.

When I say atomize, cut it into small little pieces and interpret one against another, even within the same author.

Now I really wonder if he would appreciate if we did that to his books. Would he appreciate if we did that to his books?

Take his use of one word in one chapter and then redefine it in another chapter to make him say contradictory things.

Now as a postmodernist, I don't know if he would have any, would he have any basis for complaining about that? I really don't think that he would.

But that's what he does to Paul. And it truly is an insight into the modern methodologies that are used.

Hmm, well that's interesting. I just clicked on something.

Ever clicked on something in a program that you're somewhat new to and the entire screen changes?

Don't do that. I think it's misleading. I think the Greek should be read, and this is not Paul's Christology, I think what

Paul is doing is quoting some kind of line that he's heard before him. But that line would sound like that God made

Jesus, son of God, only at his resurrection. Well we didn't see the word made given as a definition in any of the things

I just read there. That's not what it's referring to. Okay, let me see if I can figure this out.

So Paul's heard this from somebody else. It's not his Christology, but he doesn't actually recognize that it's going to be teaching something that he doesn't actually agree with?

Is that what he's saying? And that's what some adoptionist Christians pointed to to back up their own case.

For example, Queen Elizabeth was not queen until she was made queen at her coronation. And I think that's the best way to read that Greek.

If that's true, then someone before Paul, because he's quoting it I think, had an adoptionist

Christology by which they believed Jesus wasn't God, or son of God, until his resurrection. In Acts 2 .38,

this is a quotation, God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.

Again, made him Lord and Messiah. Now, back up the track here just a second.

So, he thinks that Paul is quoting from somebody else in Romans 1, even though, hmm, he doesn't say he's doing that.

So you create a theory that Paul got this from somebody else, because Paul couldn't have ever made anything like this up himself.

I mean, ever read the Carmen Christi? But he got this from somebody else, and that somebody else was an adoptionist.

And so that, I don't know, this is what people are being taught at Yale University. And you wonder why people go to Yale and get confused.

It would be confusing to me too. In Acts 13 .33, God fulfilled his promise by raising

Jesus, as also it is written in the second psalm, you are my son, today I have begotten you.

The raising of Jesus is when Jesus became Messiah. Now, again,

I understand that people, by cutting texts apart from their context, can make them say many things.

But this is what, just, I again, I listened to this debate again on my ride today, so that I could be fresh for it.

I'm glad I did, because I needed to look some other stuff up, that I'd forgotten I needed to look up, to be prepared to adequately address the issues that were being presented here.

And it is just amazing to me, how many times Dr. Martin adopts the perspective, that, well, you know what, it doesn't,

I believe that Paul has such and such a view. However, I can interpret this text over here, contrary to his views, even within his own writings.

So, I can, in an overarching way, for example, he'll say, well, you know, Mark believed that Jesus was the

Messiah. And so, things in his letters that say Jesus wasn't the

Messiah, are more valuable than things that say he was the Messiah. Well, how do you know Mark believed that Jesus was the

Messiah, other than there being an overarching testimony of his words? I mean, it just, when you start taking it apart, the only reason that these people get anywhere, is because people are cowered by their degrees.

There's a simple lack of common sense, in much of what they're saying.

And you can't let that cause you to not respond, and to demonstrate that there are serious, serious problems, in what's being said.

The different, and in other words, I'm saying, this is not orthodox Christology. It just shows that there were messy ideas, about whether Jesus was divine.

If so, what kind of divine was he? Was he kind of low -level divine, or really high -level divine? And when did he become divine?

Now, remember, he's going to be saying, he's going to be quoting people like E .P. Sanders, who are going to say, remember his theory was,

Jesus was the illiterate peasant. So you want to have, Second Temple Judaism is your context, but now you've got all different kinds of levels of divine, and all the rest of this kind of stuff.

And the whole idea is, you cannot allow any one author to be harmonious with himself, and you cannot allow for any harmonization of the views, so that Jesus is more complex than your simplistic view, and your simplistic theory of it.

This is high -end, modern -day scholarship. And these things, it takes the full second century, and a good bit of the third century, for these to get straightened out, to become what became orthodox

Christologies. I think the different Christologies we find in the New Testament, or hinted about in the New Testament, suggest that beliefs in his divinity arose only after his death.

Otherwise, we would expect more commonality, or uniformity among his later followers. Now, listen to this argument.

Listen to... Give yourself a test here, okay?

Give yourself a test. You just heard the first part of the argument. Here, he's going to expand on it.

Listen to this, and before I respond to it, ask yourself the question, what is the fundamental presuppositional error in the argument being presented?

This is the kind of thing you must learn to do on your own, so that you can have confidence to engage this kind of stuff.

The students of these people, you know, on the train, on the plane, in the automobile, in the taxi, at the bus stop, wherever.

Listen to what he says. This is very similar to E .P. Sanders' argument that the historical Jesus must not have taught something that was absolutely clear about the

Mosaic Torah as it related to his followers and to later Gentiles. For example, if the historical Jesus had said, you know, you as followers of me won't have to keep the

Mosaic Law anymore. It's passed away. Or if he had said the opposite, you will have to keep the Mosaic Law, and you have to keep it strictly.

Or if he had said, when you make disciples of Gentiles, you should circumcise them and make them keep the

Torah. Or if he said, when you have Gentiles who come into your group, they don't have to keep

Torah, although you have to keep Torah. If Jesus had taught any of these things very clearly, you wouldn't have all the confusion and fighting about what to do about the law that happened after his death among his followers.

If he had said something clear. That was E .P. Sanders' argument of the law. I'm making a very similar one about claims to Jesus' divinity.

If he had taught that he was divine in any kind of clear sense, then I do not expect that you have all the various ways of conceiving him to be divine or not in the earliest

Christianity. Now, what is the fundamental clear assumption that must be challenged in that argument?

No, you have not lost the stream. The file was not corrupted. I'm just giving you a second to think about it.

The fundamental assumption is that all these differing views,

Orthodox Christology, Adoptionist Christology, they're all equal with one another, and everybody is standing on the same level.

Everyone is trying their best to be honest with the information, and it's just that the information just isn't clear enough to be able to answer the questions, and so this is all you've got, is you've got this unclear revelation.

Well, it's not really a revelation, but you've got these unclear sources, and everyone is just honestly dealing with it.

What's the assumption there? The assumption is the exact opposite of what is taught in Scripture concerning the nature of man.

Man is not taught, is not presented as being some honest, forthright, no such thing as false teachers.

Jesus himself said there'd be many false prophets. They would come after you, claim to speak in my name.

No, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. You Orthodox folks, you're always complaining everybody else is the bad...

It's right there in the source documents themselves. The assumption is that there is no divine revelation.

There is no true position. We can't know anything about Jesus, and everyone was just doing the best they could do.

I mean, everybody just always does the best they can do, and that is a view of man that is utterly contrary to what the

Scriptures themselves teach about man and the presentation to make of the early church and the conflicts through the church and everything else, which, of course, they would then explain as just the proto -Orthodox spinning things at a later point.

But it all goes back to, well, we have our theory about who Jesus was, and we're not going to accept any evidence that goes against that.

That's the way they think. Next. If people believe that Jesus is divine in the

New Testament, they often have what we call a subordinationist notion of divinity, not that he's equal to God the

Father. Our earlier source, Paul, has some rather suspicious statements in his letters that suggest that though he believed

Jesus was divine in some sense, he did not equate Jesus with God, he did not believe Jesus was equal to God the

Father, he may have entertained some kind of adoptionist Christology, at least at some time, and that he was, it seems, thoroughly a subordinationist.

So he was thoroughly a subordinationist, even though there were some texts that might have indicated he was divine on some level, but actually then when he quotes the

Romans 1, 4 text, he's actually quoting somebody else, and that's not his Christology. It is so massively confusing.

Once you start playing this game of, well, you know, and remember, he's not going to allow you to look at Titus 2, 13 and its testimony to the deity of Christ.

He's not going to let you look at anything in 1st, 2nd Timothy. He's not going to let you look at Ephesians or Colossians. He's going to have a minimalist canon of Paul.

He's only got seven Pauline letters. All those others are non -Pauline, so that doesn't matter anyways. See, so you cut all those out, so you've got a minimized group, and then you start picking and choosing what is subordinationist, and the one thing you can't do is you cannot in any way, shape, or form harmonize them.

You can't do it. This is simply the idea that Christ is a divine figure, but subordinate to God the

Father. Certainly Paul accepted a form of early Christianity that already worshipped Jesus as Lord, but again, that did not necessarily mean they thought of him as fully

God. The word Lord just doesn't mean that in Greek. Now, I'm sorry, but you can find uses of kurios that do not mean the highest revelation of God's being.

No question about that. But that is a simplistic and ridiculous response to the use of kurios by Paul and the other

New Testament writers when they clearly are using it to refer to Yahweh himself. He's going to ask

Michael Iaconi, do you really think that these texts are saying Jesus is Yahweh?

I mean, he's just shocked. Just, oh, it's impossible. But it's clearly due to the fact that, well,

I have my theory about who Jesus was, and all other data is simply going to be interpreted in some other perspective.

And it almost certainly in the beginning did not mean they thought of him as equal to God. 1 Corinthians 11 .3 says

God is the head of Christ as man is the head of woman. And Paul certainly believed that females were inferior to males.

He therefore must have believed that Christ was inferior to God the Father. Wow, now here is

Yale University scholarship at its finest. Do not allow for any discussion of categories, of functions, of Christ being

Messiah, and therefore sent to do so. Oh, no, no, no, no. And just assume that Paul felt that females were inferior to males.

I mean, just buy the whole bucketload of stuff and just pour it all in there because, hey, you don't have to harmonize anything at all.

All one in Christ Jesus, no male or female, all redeemed equal. Oh, no, no, no, no. Don't worry about that.

That's another text. It may not even be Pauline. Who knows? 1 Corinthians 15 .38.

When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under him so that God may be all in all.

Again, Jesus as the coming Messiah has the battles, subjects the entire universe to himself, Jesus.

Then he subjects everything to the one whom he also is subjected to, God the Father. Well, again, evidently showing distinctions between father and son, seeing different roles between father and son, doesn't...

And the amazing thing is, remember, this is the guy who says I'm a Trinitarian. This is the guy who confesses the

Nicene faith, but that's in a different part of his brain. That's a different part of his worldview.

So he already has the categories for interpreting these things, but no, no, no, no, we can't do that. Can't, no, no, no, no, no.

That's just all retrofitting and anachronistic and what we believe is orthodox cannot be anything relevant in our interpretation of the original writings.

All of those cases seem to me to say that although you do have the Gospel of John, which makes Jesus equal to God the

Father in divinity, that's one situation in the New Testament. You have many examples of subordinist

Christology in the New Testament also, not to mention post -New Testament writings. Now, the irony is he's actually arguing that John does not have any subordinationism.

He's not clear in what he means by that. I mean, there's a historical use of the term subordinationism. But he seems to conflate any text where the son is distinguished from the father in his role and mission.

John clearly, without question, presents Jesus as the one who is sent, not the sender.

There's no confusion of the father and the son in John. And Jesus says he does nothing of himself, he does only what he sees the father doing.

I cannot even begin to understand the interpretations offered in this type of a context.

The last piece of evidence, I think, that Jesus did not consider himself divine is one saying in the Gospel of Mark that I believe if any saying of Jesus has a claim to be historical, it's this one.

If there's any statement in the Gospel of Mark, if there's any statement in the

Gospels that Jesus actually ever said, it's this one. Now there's a real confident historical perspective, isn't there?

This is what it is right here. ...earliest gospel, and it tells the story in which Jesus is asked by a young man, what should

I do to enter eternal life? Good teacher. It's Mark 10, 17 -18, and this is the

NRSV version. Jesus answers, as the first part, why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.

I think you can interpret that in lots of different ways, but it seems to be the most natural interpretation is

Jesus is basically saying, I'm not God. That is absurd.

It's absurd when Paul Belal -Williams says it, and it's absurd when a liberal scholar from Yale says it.

It's absurd simply in a contextual context, first of all. I mean, are you really going to sit there and say, yeah, what

Mark's telling us is that Jesus is not good? Really? That's what

Mark wants to say, Jesus is not good. Honestly? What is the issue here?

Jesus is not saying, I am not God. What Jesus is doing is challenging the man's understanding of what is good because he's about to show that this man...

I mean, read it in context. This man is going to say, I've kept all these things from the time I was a child onward.

And what does Jesus do? With one command, demonstrates an idolater. He thinks he's good, but he's not good.

So he's challenging his understanding of what goodness is. I mean, that's the only way to read it in context, but these guys don't have to worry about context.

They don't have to worry about the next few sentences. Maybe somebody else wrote that. Or that's in a different discourse, different dialogue, different story.

When you're a postmodernist, I don't need to worry about the second half of a sentence. We don't need to worry about objective truth, consistency, things like that.

Those are the hobgoblins of smaller minds. We have transcended above these things. Why do you call me good?

No one is good but God alone. Of all sayings that have any possible divinity of Jesus in the synoptics, this one has, in my opinion, the greatest claim to historicity, and it seems to be a denial on Jesus' part of divine status for himself.

Now, compared to the discussion about the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus that we had last night, the question of his possible divine self -consciousness is much more murky.

I would say that no reputable historian would call the flesh and blood resurrection of Jesus a historical fact. But I could see even non -Christian professional historians being willing at least to entertain the possibility that Jesus may have thought of himself as divine in some sense, though certainly not,

I believe, in the orthodox Trinitarian sense. So, whatever it could be, it can't be that.

That seems to be the mantra of liberalism.

Whatever it is, whatever interpretation you want to put on it is absolutely fine, as long as it's not the orthodox one.

Because that's the one we will not allow you to even discuss. It's just not going to happen.

That last sense, I think, would be wildly anachronistic and unhistorical, retrojected back into Jesus' own historical lifetime.

Wildly anachronistic. Wildly anachronistic. There you go. What does it matter for my faith?

Not at all. I believe Jesus is divine, and I believe the Christologies that develop later in the

Church. The good thing about Anglicans and Roman Catholics is we don't have to base all of our theology purely on a literal and historical reading of the

Bible. There you go, folks. There you go. I mean, there's a summary statement for you right there.

We don't have to worry about that Bible stuff. Come on.

You know, us Roman Catholics and Anglicans, and my Anglican friends in Sydney are tearing their hair out and getting ready to go on an

Anglican jihad right now. I'm not sure what that would look like. It would be sort of odd looking and sound strange too.

It would be a little bit like Monty Python. But anyways, there's the statement.

You know, we really don't have to worry about this Bible stuff. We don't have to sweat it because we have this, in essence, another source of revelation.

Remember somebody else who said something very similar to this? Some of you may have listened to the debate that I did with Barry Lynn.

Remember Barry Lynn? Wildly liberal, angry Barry Lynn, during which he actually claimed to receive revelation on the same level as the

Apostle Paul. Yeah, there you go. We can say the

Holy Spirit has guided the church even after the period of the New Testament. And when we confess the Apostles' Creed and the

Nicene Creed, we believe the church, under the leadership of the Holy Spirit, came to interpret the

Bible to teach these truths about Jesus. And that's what we accept as orthodox. So I can speak as a historian about this, and it doesn't affect my faith at all to believe that I can't say the historical

Jesus thought himself to be divine. In fact, I think rather that the best historical solution is that the historical Jesus did not think he was divine.

Thank you. So, there you go. So my orthodoxy is just that.

It just exists. And that's why, as he's going to be asked fairly early on in the questions,

I don't defend my faith. I don't defend my faith. I don't apologize in the sense of getting engaged in apologetics.

How can he? This kind of quote -unquote Christianity is purely subjective and has no message for the world at all.

It's just a, this is my personal feelings and this is just how I like to do things and la la la la.

So, we continue on. Well, this is my favorite part of the night.

This is where both scholars get to ask each other questions about their presentations, about their thoughts, and we get to hear from them as though we're, imagine you're at the library pub, as I said, and you get to hear these guys go back and forth.

Well, you get to do that right from these seats. So, what we're going to do is we're going to start with Dale. You might want to prioritize which questions you're going to ask each other because you've got about 25, 30 minutes max, so you can only ask so many questions.

So, ask the most important ones that you think you can come up with. So, Dale, would you like to start and ask Mike a question and get the dialogue started?

Can I ask two questions that are probably not very long to answer. One of them is, how would you interpret that last

Mark in passage? And so, I'm sure you must have a different interpretation that Jesus is not denying divine status to himself, but I also want to ask, if you make

Jesus equal to Yahweh, even in Jesus' own teachings, how do you explain all that subordination, subordinationism that we find in the

New Testament and later Christian literature? Okay, great question. Is this a little out for you guys? No?

In terms of the question about Mark, chapter 10, verses 17 and 18, why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.

I agree with you that's ambiguous. It could be interpreted as Jesus saying, hey, why do you call me good?

I'm not good. Only God is good, and that's not me. Or it could be saying, why do you call me good?

Only God is good. In other words, do you know what you're saying? You know what you just said? You called me good and only God is good.

Well done. So, it could be in either way. So, when we come to a text which is ambiguous and could be interpreted one way or the other,

I think the best thing to do, the responsible hermeneutics, would be to interpret that text in light of other texts, at least by the same author, or what

Jesus would say elsewhere in Mark. And as I contended in my opening statement,

I think Mark is quite clear that Jesus regards himself as being God in some sense. So, that's how I would interpret that, and therefore

I think... Now, Laicona, obviously, as a

Christian, has to say, well, you interpret what Mark is saying in the context that Mark himself provides.

And this is common sense. It's not postmodern common sense, but it's common sense that when you interpret a book, you interpret it in light of the author's intentions.

If there's a preface to a book that lays out the author's intentions, then you don't interpret what he says later on contrary to what he's laid out in the preface, right?

No. That's not how it works in postmodernism. That's not how it works in modern scholarship.

And that's why a lot of times, Christians will listen to these folks and they'll go, where did they get that?

And so often, they go, well, I guess if I just went to seminary. Yeah, I suppose if you did and they sucked the common sense out of your mind, then you'd understand.

But so often, these folks just get so isolated in their ivory towers that things that are completely lacking in common sense end up being presented as if they are the very essence of scholarship.

And this is a good example of that. And so what Lycona is saying is, you need to interpret this text in light of Mark's intention.

Now, I'm going to have some words of criticism for Mike Lycona, because again, every time we listen to either Mike or William Lane Craig doing debates,

I don't answer the same way they do. And I think it's useful, helpful to the listening audience to know why.

I'm not going to be one of those people. It would get me a lot more invitations. There'd be a lot more doors open to me if I just swept these things with a rug and people said,

I just don't like how you talk about it. Look, people need to know why we answer in different ways.

If I don't talk about it, then there's not going to be any increase in understanding. And you are the one, you, the listener, lose out.

You don't get to have the opportunity of really understanding what the differences are and why they are, and making the decision for yourself as to what kind of apologetics is consistent for the biblical

Christian. And so that's why we do what we do on The Dividing Line. The interpretation that I just gave to it would be a more plausible or likely interpretation than the one that you provided.

But I admit that it is ambiguous and taken alone, you could go either way. But in the context of how Jesus presents himself in Mark, or maybe

I should say how Mark in his biography presents Jesus, I think my interpretation would be more likely.

Mark even opens up the gospel with quoting Isaiah 43 about John the

Baptist in relation to Jesus, a voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight the paths of our

God. And that's applying to Yahweh in Isaiah 40, verse 3, and yet here Mark is applying that to John the

Baptist preparing the way for Jesus. So I think the whole of the biography of Jesus, as presented by Mark, is

Jesus is Yahweh amongst us. Then why doesn't he say it? Now, I agree with Mike that you have to allow

Mark to be Mark. Why doesn't he say it? Well, that's a good question.

I guess what he's saying is why doesn't Mark say Jesus is Yahweh? And Laicona's response is going to be somewhat along the lines of the

Messianic secret, but I think there does have to be an allowance for, and here's where I'm going to completely part company with Martin, because I just don't think he could even have categories for this, but obviously the gospels have to be a story that can be presented in summary fashion.

That is the essence of the message that is preached. And the depth into which each of the gospels goes differs from one another, their audience differs, etc.,

etc., and the mechanism by which the exalted nature of Jesus is presented to the audience is going to differ as well. But there would be an understanding that there is going to be a further development in the rest of the

New Testament. Now, see, that doesn't fit into Martin's worldview, because from his perspective, from a naturalistic perspective, none of these guys had any idea what the

New Testament was going to look like, and even though they're writing after Paul, they're going to have questions about how much they knew of Paul's theology and all the rest of this kind of stuff.

But the real issue is what is being demanded. This is a

Westerner going, well, I would appreciate a summary creedal statement, please, which is not how the

Old Testament worked. The greatest revelations of God's nature in the

Old Testament come out of apologetics and conflict, not out of creedal statements. I mean, about the closest you get to a creedal statement is going to be the

Shema, but the depth of material that you get in Isaiah and Jeremiah comes in what context?

In the context of defeating the arguments of those that were opposing the

Jewish faith and calling people to idolatry. So what he's looking for isn't necessarily even how the

Gospels themselves exist. Well, because in a biography you're trying to do the character, and I think that, you know, if Jesus comes right out and says, guess what,

I'm Yahweh, you know, yeah, it's going to be kind of problematic for a lot of people, and like you said, he'd be charged with blasphemy.

And he's got a ministry ahead of him, so my speculation would be is just like you have the messianic secret in Mark, you have this, in the same way, the apocalyptic son of man,

Jesus uses that as a title for himself because it's sufficiently ambiguous because it can have different meanings to it.

And so he can say this, but in private he can say it in a way that suggests the apocalyptic son of man, and people can get things confused, and he's not really stating it until his time has come.

And then when he's in front of the high priest, he knows his hour has come, and so he just lets it fly. Boom. Hey, let me put this in a very straight, clear, unambiguous, and precise manner.

Yes, I'm the Messiah. Yes, I'm the son of God. And that son of man who's going to be worshipped and judge the world, yep, that's me.

I'm going to be coming back riding the clouds, and I'm going to be sitting right next to my daddy on the throne. It's that clear.

If Mark makes it that clear. Now, listen to this. I'm going to back it up here. Listen to this question.

You've got to hear this because I'm going to answer this question very differently than Mike Licona does.

And if Mark makes it that clear, why is it that most scholars don't see it? Okay. Catch it?

Given that Rich is giving me a blank look. And if Mark makes it that clear, why is it that most scholars don't see it?

Okay. Why is it that most scholars don't see it? My first response would be, well, that depends on what most scholars you're talking about.

If you're talking about most believing scholars, scholars who actually take seriously the worldview of Scripture, take seriously the consistency of Scripture and the coherence of Scripture, I would say that the vast majority of those scholars do see it and do believe it.

And that there has been a consistency there. But you're using this term of scholars and you're expanding the category of scholars out to include many like yourself who absolutely reject the worldview of the

Apostles. And they go, what do you mean? You don't hold the worldview of the Apostles. Yes, I do. They thought the sun rose.

Well, I still use that terminology too. You are confusing the difference between believing there's such thing as divine revelation and believing in the realm of the supernatural and believing in absolute truth and believing that God is the

Creator and He's accomplishing His purposes in the world. You're confusing that category with the category of the level of technological knowledge

I have or scientific knowledge I have. And those are not worldview categories. I can have the same worldview that the

Apostles had and fit much more scientific knowledge into it without abandoning the belief in objective truth.

But you are including in the category of scholars here people who have worldview commitments that absolutely preclude the conclusions of biblical orthodoxy.

Just preclude it. Now, you embrace it by simply shattering worldviews and holding multiple contradictory worldviews at the same time, which is, of course, irrational and incoherent.

But I cannot do that and you cannot do that. You claim to do that, but you don't live that way.

You may claim to be a postmodernist and you may claim to hold contradictory truths, but you do not live that way.

You do not drive your car that way. You do not balance your checkbook that way. You do not take medicine that way. Okay?

So you are a walking contradiction, but you are not a consistent walking contradiction because you can't be that way.

You're creating the image of God. You just can't do that. So my response would be to challenge the categories of quote -unquote scholarship.

I don't think that the William Lane Craig and Mike Licona group can really go that direction because of the form of their argumentation.

I don't know. Most scholars don't believe that Mark is portraying Jesus as Yahweh, or in fact, most scholars don't believe

Mark is portraying Jesus as God in almost any sense.

No, I would agree. I think most scholars would say that Mark is not doing it, but I've provided arguments why, and so it's not a matter of what scholars...

I mean, I respect scholars on that, but I've given a number of arguments why I think Mark is presenting

Jesus as God, and those need to be addressed. That wasn't an answer. All he said was, well,

I've presented arguments, and it's because... I mean, what is the essence of this apologetic that they present?

Well, the majority of scholars believe this about the resurrection and these basic facts, and the majority of scholars recognize this kind of probabilities, and the greater probability of this points to the greater possibility of...

That's their apologetic. It's not a, that's the wisdom of the world, and we reject the wisdom of the world.

And you don't even live in accordance with the wisdom of the world yourself. They can't go there, because they do not approach this presuppositionally.

This is not, I'm sorry, this is not how the apostles argued. The apostles did not say, well, you know, we respect the wisdom of the world.

We just feel that the wisdom of the world needs to have a little tweaking and a little more light.

No, they rejected it. They said, by God's wisdom, man will not, by the wisdom of the world, come to know him.

They rejected those categories. Didn't try to get the world to go, oh, we like you.

You guys, you're actually pretty good. We might invite you to come speak at one of our conferences sometime.

They didn't do that. And yet, this is a fundamental apologetic difference.

It's a fundamental apologetic approach difference. And so, while we're on Mark, if I might ask you, you said...

Oh, yeah, go ahead. What was the second question again? How do you explain the subordinationist

Christologies in different parts, well, in Revelation, in Paul, in different parts of the...

In fact, I would say you have subordinationist Christologies everywhere, but maybe John, Gospel of John, Hebrews, and maybe

Colossians. Well, that's a fine question. Yes, there's a subordinationist Christology in Revelation, but in Revelation, you still have

Jesus and the Father are both referred to as the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end, within Paul and all these others.

I think that what we're looking at here is the subordination within a divine relationship. You say that John doesn't have a subordinationist relationship, but I think that he does.

He says, I can do... I do all that the Father has commanded me. Now, again, subordinationist relationship simply means a recognition that the

Son does different things than the Father, that the Son is sent by the

Father, and the Father and the Son send the Spirit, and things like this. Not subordinationist as in Jehovah's Witnesses.

He says the Father is greater than I, so that sounds pretty subordinate, and yet this is in John who flat out calls

Jesus God. So, if you can have this and you have Paul, I think it's pretty clear in Philippians 2 and Romans 9, and with the coming of the

Lord, I think he's flat out talking about Jesus as God, and yet he can talk about Him in a subordinate sense.

So, if you have Paul do this, if you have John, again, who says Jesus is God. Now, again, what's he saying here?

All these people are both affirming the full deity of Christ, as well as the distinction from the

Father. I wish that had been brought out with more clarity. It could have been so easy and so quickly said that, see, these distinctions, this is what gave rise to the creedal statements that you have completely disconnected from the sources from which they were derived.

And the early church fathers make that plain. The argumentation they presented make that plain. No question.

You can talk about Jesus in a subordinate sense. I think that, for me, I look at that and say they're talking about the divine relationship where, you know, if God has a divine

DNA, Jesus has it, but there is a subordination within the relationship. But I think you're misinterpreting those passages in John to say even someone who believes fully in the

Trinity and a non -subordinate Christology can still, will still necessarily confess that Jesus is begotten of the

Father. God the Father is the only one of the Trinity who is completely unbegotten. But we don't take that to mean

Jesus is subordinate to the Father, nor do we take it to say that God the Father commands

Jesus to do something. That's just, Athanasius is the most heavy duty of the fathers, the patristic fathers, to insist on a non -subordination as Christology, and yet Athanasius would not take those passages in John as implying subordination precisely because in John you've got

Jesus saying before Abraham was I am, which seems to equate him to Gawai. Pre -existent, right. And I'm giving it to you for John.

And I think that that means that to read these other passages as subordinationist is probably then not right.

I'm just saying that... Again, the complete lack of precision in the use of subordinationist here is maddening and confusing.

I hope you're catching that. We've got very clear equality statements in some parts of the Bible. I just don't see them in the synoptic

Gospels. So, we've got clear equality statements, but the last thing you can do is believe that Scripture interprets

Scripture. Can't do it. Nope. Kick that out. That's not allowed in my classroom. Well, in the synoptic

Gospels you said that the synoptics do not present

Jesus as pre -existent. I mean, I would take issue with that. But I think that they do. You have what are the sent passages where Jesus says,

I have come. It's talked about by Simon Gathercole. These are in Mark and it's in Q where Jesus makes these statements.

I have come. Prophets in the Hebrew Bible say, I have come and I was sent all the time.

I would suggest you look at Simon Gathercole's work on that. Oh, it's got a picture of Jesus in the front.

Reconstructing. I think it's reconstructing the synoptic Christology. Something I've got the book, actually, two copies of the book in my library.

I would recommend it to you. It's not easy reading but it's good to look at. They're not claiming pre -existent reality for themselves.

I agree with you. It wouldn't be required but it certainly would be compatible with these things for them to say,

I have come. For Jesus to say, I have come. Like the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.

I think it's just beyond question that Jesus' use of I have come in light of the overall

New Testament context is completely different than the prophetic use of that on the part of any prophet. And Mark, that could certainly be referring to a pre -existence there.

I agree it wouldn't be required but it could certainly be doing it. You can't rule it out and say, well the synoptics don't do it. I mean,

Paul, who writes before any of the synoptics, talks about a pre -existent

Jesus. I'm not saying Paul doesn't believe it. It's just that it's very frustrating when the main way you talk about ex -Jesus is one could read this this way.

But that's what you're doing. That's exactly right. That's exactly what he's doing. What an amazing thing. And I, if you cannot create an overall context, even just within one book, let alone one author, that's all you can do is say it might be this, it might be that.

It is maddening to me to hear a man who is cutting the scriptures to ribbons making that kind of an argument.

And people clap, by the way. Thank you, Brian, 1 -1 -1 and Channel. The Pre -Existent Son, Recovering the Christology of Matthew, Mark and Luke by Simon J.

Gatherkill. Very good. That's the name. And it's, like I said, got this odd picture of a,

I think a face of Jesus from a crucifix or something. I don't know. But, Gatherkill is a good scholar.

No, I'm actually saying there are more likely historical readings and less likely historical readings. Okay, so you've got

Paul who believes in a pre -existent Jesus, right? Now, let me comment on more likely historical readings and less likely historical readings.

What that means for him is historical readings cannot seek, cannot allow for consistency and harmony and anything supernatural.

It's just not allowed. You can't bring that in. Which, of course, has been the very staple of Orthodoxy.

And you would say he certainly believes in a pre -existent Jesus. And he's the earliest writer. And then you have

John, perhaps the latest, who believes in the pre -existence of Jesus. Now this is a good argument. He's bookending him.

If you've gotten Paul, and he's the earliest, you've gotten John, he's the latest, on what basis do you think the guys in the middle took a vacation?

So you can't say that this evolves along the way because it's there from the very beginning. No, no, no. In fact, even in the mid -second century you have debates about this.

It's not a linear development where you start from confusion and end up, you know, with unity. You start from confusion and end up with confusion.

Now, did you catch that? There's his view of church history. You start with confusion and end with confusion.

There's no divine revelation. The apostles, they had no clue They had no idea what was going on.

That's your starting point. And that's the methodology you then enforce upon your exegesis.

It's Christology. And what to think about Jesus' divine status is being argued about all through late antiquity.

Even the Nicene Council doesn't settle it. Even the Council of Constantinople doesn't settle it. Even the Council of Chalcedon doesn't settle it.

Right. No, Mike, not right. Sorry. At this point, I just go,

Mike, you're supposed to be going, no, that's not true. I mean, he's talking about controversies of Christology and the level of adoptionism versus the deity of Christ.

Chalcedon isn't clear on these issues. Of course, it's very clear on these issues. I don't get that part of it.

I just don't see how you can read the New Testament to have such a unified view. I just don't see how you can read the

New Testament to have such a unified view. Because I start with certain assumptions, and my worldview is completely different than that of the writers of the

New Testament, and therefore, it's a mishmash of contradiction. You can't harmonize it.

Not allowed. Not even on the board. Can't do it. When there are so many indications to me that it's not unified, and it takes so many centuries for it to get unified.

Well, as I said in my opening statement, I think it's more probable than not. So, you know, this is,

I don't think the evidence... Yeah, see the difference? You're never going to hear me going, well, it's more probable than not.

I'm going to be attacking this presuppositionally. I'm not going to be sitting here going, well, yeah, it's... And I think you can see a major difference in that approach.

...as strong as it is, or that we can come with such a firm conclusion as we can say, as I contended last night, for Jesus's resurrection.

Now, that almost sounds to me like he just said there. In fact, I'm going to go back.

Let me see if you hear the same thing I hear. You know, this is, I don't think the evidence is as strong as it is, or that we can come with such a firm conclusion as we can say, as I contended last night, for Jesus's resurrection.

Is he saying that the argumentation for the resurrection is stronger than for the argumentation that Jesus was aware of his own divine nature?

I think that's what he just said. Try to flesh that one out. I don't get it.

I'm just presenting a case of why I think Jesus, you know, regarded himself as being God in some sense.

In some sense. Does that kind of clarify where I'm going? See, for me, I would never even use the term in some sense.

Because for me, the only meaningful way to make that statement is in the context of Second Temple Judaism in which

Jesus lived. And the idea that Jesus would have viewed himself as some demigod or something like that makes absolutely zero sense.

Where I'm coming from on that? But I guess the point I'm making is, if you've got Paul, the earliest writer, who says that Jesus is preexistent, and do you think

Paul regards Jesus as God? Yeah, yeah, I've said that like three times. I believe that. I don't believe you can use

Paul and John to cover all of the first century. I mean, sorry, to cover all of the first century. I agree with you on that. So you've got

Paul and John. Certainly, Paul's connected with the apostles. I think, you know, there's eyewitness testimony from an apostle in John's Gospel as well.

Let's talk about, you said it wasn't a unified view, and that brings me to, I think, which is maybe a major point in this discussion, and that would be the adoptionist view that you talked about.

And so you cited a bunch of verses from Luke, Acts, and one from Paul. So I have two questions for you.

Do you know of any first century literature outside of the New Testament that presents

Jesus, or an adoptionist view of Jesus? I don't know of any first century

Christian literature outside of the New Testament for certain. That's okay. Except maybe some of the apostolic fathers.

I take all the apostolic fathers to be either at the beginning of the second century or maybe the very, very end of the first century. The only non -canonical

Christian document I would say I might be willing to put back into the first century would be the Gospel of Thomas. Wow.

Okay. And would Thomas possibly present an adoptionist view of Jesus in your opinion? No. Okay. It's Valentinian.

He's gone the other direction. Okay. Now, I at least appreciate this. Because he's straightforward in identifying the

Christology of the Gospel of Thomas as Valentinian. Except that Christology didn't develop until the middle of the second century.

So how could that... Oh, never mind. He probably believes that Jesus never was maybe fully human.

Okay. So, in your opinion, I would agree. I'm not aware of... You're not aware of any first century literature outside the

New Testament that presents an adoptionist view of Jesus. My second question. Wait a minute. Can we clarify this?

Sure. How can you make that point when we don't have any literature outside the New Testament of the first century? It's not like we're saying...

It's not like that makes a point that, therefore, adoptionism isn't around all over the place. I agree. I agree with you. I'm just asking that question.

Okay. Second, do you think Paul or Luke were adoptionists? No. Okay. So, here's my point.

You're saying that there are these different Christologies that we have in early Christianity. Now, we know

Paul, who is an apostle, certainly regards Jesus as God. I'm afraid we have run out of time.

And all the stuff that I ran in here to do is in the next section. So, there's still some really, really important stuff to get to.

I hope that you're finding this to be useful because you've got to understand this is the kind of stuff that is being presented as scholarship in our world today.

And it's vitally important that we demythologize it, that we understand it, that we'd be able to interact with it.

Vitally important. Just got to do it. Got to do it. So, we're going to pick up next

Tuesday. We will be doing the program at the afternoon time, the time we're doing it right now.

I have something in the morning, so just got to do it that way. So, next Tuesday at the normal Thursday time, four o 'clock, we will continue on Unless Something Changes and I have to blog it and I'll let you know.

But right now, that is the plan. Thanks for listening to The Voting Line today. We'll see you next week. God bless.

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