Theology Precedes and Determines Apologetics

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona. This is the dividing line

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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

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Our host is dr. James White director of Alpha Omega ministries and an elder at the Phoenix reformed

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Baptist Church This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with dr.

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White call now 602 nine seven three four six zero two or toll -free across the

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United States. It's one eight seven seven seven five three Three three four one and now with today's topic.

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Here is James White And good morning. Welcome to the dividing line on a

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Thursday morning. We often beat the drum around here of the need for Consistency and I think one of the reasons that we remain a small ministry is

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Because we haven't learned to stop beating that drum and specifically

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There has been many times when with a fair amount of righteous indignation. I have been able to Respond to someone and say look we have for a long long time

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Pointed out the inconsistencies in those that we were critiquing we have

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Pointed out the inconsistencies of those who oppose the Christian faith those who pervert the Christian faith those who present a sub -biblical view of the

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Christian faith and In so doing we have likewise criticized those on what might be called our side of the fence

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We have criticized evangelicals we have done so by name and That's why

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We'll never be up there with the big boys because to do that to be the big boys you have to sort of Become politically correct.

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You have to stop naming names You have to avoid issues like that and that's why that's probably never gonna happen to us.

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So we don't do that and this is gonna shock a few people, but I Don't criticize people because I like arguments and I like Controversy, I really that's not why

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I really hope that the primary reason that I would respond to someone or even criticize a fellow believer person

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I believe as a Christian disagree with their methodology disagree with their presentation Is for the betterment of the people of God and especially because I'm concerned that on an apologetic level in some way the truth is either being compromised or If not being compromised the methodology of the proclamation of the truth is obscuring the truth and there are different levels at which this takes place, obviously and so one of the things we've done over the years is we have contrasted the approach of a

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Consistently reformed apologetic with that which is consistently non reformed Obviously as a person who embraces the reformed faith despite the fact that there are some people who say

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I shouldn't even use that term myself given the fact that I believe in the absolute sovereignty of God his self -glorification in Redeeming a particular people in and through Jesus Christ in him alone

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The fact that those beliefs have an impact on all of life That the way we think the way we act the way we worship

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Should all be informed by this central affirmation that God is

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Glorifying himself all things will to be to the praise of his glorious grace The fact that I am reformed in my soteriology in my worldview

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Impacts my apologetics it has to I have said many times that Apologetics flows from your theology not the other way around Too many times for those who wander into the field of apologetics

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They learn certain forms of arguments and then when pressed for consistency

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Create a theology to fit their arguments. That's absolutely backwards When you tell a great general to defend he's going to first ask you defend what?

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You have to know what you're defending before you can then devise a plan for defending it and In the same way we have to know what we believe before we can consistently develop a methodology for defending that belief

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So I have emphasized this many many times along with the idea that and again this puts us in a very small minority, but along with the idea that Inconsistency is not glorifying to God Muddled thinking is not glorifying to God We are called to love the

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Lord our God with our heart soul mind and strength that is a that is a way of describing the entirety of Our created being is to be involved in our love of God, and I do not believe that leaving a part of that out and being through Sloth through apathy being inconsistent in Our views of God in our understanding of his word is glorifying to him.

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So putting all that together Over the years I have rather clearly differentiated myself from the apologetic methodologies of others and The dividing line has normally been on this issue of whether you have a

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God -centered theology Obviously, I believe Reform theology is God -centered. It is theocentric.

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I believe Arminianism is man -centered. It's anthropocentric and As you are a more or less consistent

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Arminian you will have a more or less man -centered or God -centered theology and So when that comes to the issue of apologetics then

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We have clearly differentiated ourselves from those who would for example make as the key element of their theological presentation and their apologetic presentation and appeal to an autonomous man to an autonomous human will

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Because we don't believe an autonomous human will exists the autonomous will that exists as God's Man's is a created will and a fallen will and an enslaved will the will of man exists but as Jesus said he who commits sin is the slave of sin so to appeal to the enemy of God as If the enemy of God has the right to the power and the ability

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To sit in judgment over the existence of his creator to grant to the pots the right to weigh in the balance the existence of the potter is from a consistently biblical presentation and position utterly absurd

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You do not grant to that which is created The right to determine whether he or she is created the

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Bible tells us. We know we are created We know the God who exists, but what does mankind do he suppresses that knowledge katakana tone the active act of holding down the knowledge of God As I have taught the

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Subject of apologetics especially on the seminary level the methodology

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I Developed over the years was to in teaching a class called

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Christian philosophy religion as I would play Not all of the second debate, but I play all the first debate.

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I would compare and contrast the classic debate between Greg Bonson and Gordon Stein With a debate that I think

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I was just given actually by a student at Golden Gate when I was up there teaching one summer and It's available on YouTube.

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You can go watch the whole thing yourself you wish to I don't know that it's overly edifying to do so But you can a debate that took place at Willow Creek between William Lane Craig and Frank Zindler now

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I remember corresponding briefly with Zindler back in the 80s at some point Many many moons ago.

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It was not a very good debate not because of Anything wrong with William Lane Craig at that point

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Frank Zindler is just not a good speaker and his arguments are really really poor

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So no matter what you do you're stuck with a situation like that when you engage that kind of of a debate, but anyway what

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I do is I compare and contrast The two positions that are presented and the methodologies because the approach used by William Lane Craig Who is a mullinist?

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his theology I would identify as sub -biblical With some very serious problems, and I I really detest mullinism on a theological level.

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I think it's just a you know given where it came from is little more than a

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Philosophical attempt to get around the plain teaching of the scriptures concerning the sovereignty of God and his freedom and as such to see

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Protestants since it came out of Roman Catholicism to see Protestants promoting it today is extremely troubling to me and and Just indicative of again why theology matters and how theology is determinative to one's apologetic methodology

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William Lane Craig cannot argue as I argue. I cannot argue as William Lane Craig argues and those who follow

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Craig's perspective likewise there is going to be a fundamental difference in the way that we approach the

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Highest level of Christian revelation and purpose and therefore epistemology as well, so what

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I do is I play at least William Lane Craig's opening statement, and I'm just gonna play a portion of that very opening statement

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I pulled it off of YouTube this morning It's it's so neat now. I've got I can convert anything now.

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I've got about 25 converters on my computer now but one of them just catches whatever you bring up on the screen, and it has a

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Extract mp3 so just there's mp3 saved it to this here is I want you to hear

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The the claim this is this is the target see what we need What I'm gonna get to here is we're gonna be listening to the

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Mike Licona Bart Ehrman debate not all of it but a portion of it and That's relevant because I'm gonna be debating

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Bart Ehrman in in January on not on the exact same issue but they're all related to one another and The issue is the target that you set up one of the perspectives is you you basically make your target as small as possible so that the other side has trouble hitting the target and You make it as low as possible so you can actually in the confines of a debate accomplish what you're trying to accomplish in that period of time in essence and so I want you to hear what

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William Lane Craig says here and Listen to the the definition that he uses and we will then compare that with the

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Bonson Stein debate Now the question before us tonight is when you weigh the evidence for atheism

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Against the evidence for Christianity which way on balance does the evidence point

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There now did you hear that when you compare the evidence for atheism against the evidence for Christianity which direction on balance does the information does the data point and later on he's gonna basically say the preponderance of the evidence the

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Majority of the evidence how much the majority we don't know but the majority of the evidence points to the greater

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Probability of the existence of a God Okay so that's the kind of argumentation most people use and it's sort of incrementalist in its thinking if we can get folks the idea of and Of course all along you want to make sure they think they're making these decisions in of themselves

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So they you don't you know challenge that free will thing But if you can get them to agree with your argument so that well, you know there's about a 55 % chance that God exists and Then you go, okay now that there's a 55 % chance that God exists

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What about this next step and then what about this next step? now the problem is if you really step back from that if there's a 55 % chance that God exists and Then there's another 55 % chance that he's revealed himself in Jesus.

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What's 55 % times 55 %? It's less than 50 % You see the total

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Probability keeps going down as you only play the probability game But I just step back from all this and say is this how the

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Apostles preached now? So I might say oh they weren't debating they were preaching Not quite true

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When Paul preaches in Ephesus for three years, what's he doing during that time he is disputing publicly

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He is demonstrating the scriptures of Jesus the Christ. He is engaging in disputation

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He clearly does know what the philosophers believe and he understands how

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Christianity interfaces with that I don't see the Apostle saying there is a really good probability that God exists and within that probability

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There's a really good probability. He's revealed himself in Jesus and within that there's a really really good probability that Jesus rose from the dead

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That's not the Apostolic Proclamation Go to Acts chapter 17 where Paul's right there amongst the pagans and he doesn't say it is highly probable

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If I had the time to develop my arguments You would see that there's a 55 % chance that I'm right here and there's only a 45 % chance that you are

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No, he proclaimed the absolute certainty that God would judge all men

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By his gospel the gospel that proclaims that Jesus Christ is The one who died and who rose from the dead they did not proclaim the resurrection as the end product of a lengthy presentation of probabilities

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They presented the resurrection as a reality upon which all men themselves would eventually be judged and so in light of that I then played the

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Bonson Stein debate and the Bonson Stein debate took place 1985 quality is not real good.

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And I again, I'm just playing little portions of this This is right at the end of Greg Bonson's opening statement

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He made this statement over and over again, but I just wanted to play this I'll expand it out so we can get the whole thing But here is what

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Greg Bonson said at the end of his opening statement against Gordon Stein in the 1985

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When we go to look at the different worldviews that atheists and theists have I Suggest that we can prove the existence of God from the impossibility of the contrary

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The transcendental proof for God's existence is that without him it is impossible to prove anything the atheist world view is

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Irrational and cannot consistently provide the preconditions of intelligible experience science logic or morality

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The atheist world you cannot allow for laws of logic the uniformity of nature

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The ability for the mind to understand the world and moral absolutes and in that sense the atheist world

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You cannot account for our debate tonight Thank you, dr. Bonson Now he had already said that he was only going to defend the existence of the

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Christian God that he finds no other view of God to be consistent

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Internally consistent with itself and so he when he says what he says here

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He has already laid the foundation of saying I am saying that without the Christian God we cannot even give a rational reason for our encounter in our debate this evening and So his claim throughout this debate was that without the

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Christian God? There can be no knowledge. There can be no rationality. There can be no reasoning there can be no argumentation

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And that in point of fact without the Christian God you can prove nothing now two very different approaches one says without the

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Christian God you got nothing you have to have the Christian God the Christian God of Necessity exists as the

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Christian God the other side says well The preponderance of the evidence taken in balance points toward the greater

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Probability of the existence of a God much much lower level of proof much much lower claim and Who in essence are you appealing to in both these methodologies?

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You are in essence appealing to an autonomous creature and While God can do wonderful things with less than consistently biblical presentations

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The fact the matter is at some point in time you got to fix these problems you got it You know maybe you say well, it's better to do it as part of sanctification well again

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What is what what methodology do we think actually brings people to conversion to Christ and?

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Should not our ultimate desire and our ultimate goal always be since the Holy Spirit is a spirit of truth

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To be absolutely truthful and absolutely consistent are any of us absolutely consistent no am

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I absolutely consistent no Have I made mistakes yes? I had a Muslim right in today, and he finally just got around to what

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I mentioned on the dividing line The first dividing line after the debate was Shabir Ali. I misread us a reference

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I was quickly trying to find a reference to a particular statement had HTML file sitting on my screen that wasn't converted

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There's tags everywhere, and I read the wrong footnote. Oh, I made an error there was the proper footnote, and there's the information's there

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But oh I made an error as any of us perfectly consistent to any of us make mistakes obviously we all do but our goal our desire should be to be as consistent as we possibly can and especially when that comes to the application of a

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Christian worldview to apologetics and So here you have a major difference between these two perspectives, and I hope you hear

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Where that that difference is because it comes out in the debate between Mike Laicona and Bart Ehrman that took place recently at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary now let me start off by saying

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Mike Laicona has done lots of great work I'm sure someday we're going to meet in May in almost almost everything we would say would would be very very similar to one another but Mike Laicona clearly follows the

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William Lane Craig perspective, and I as reformed theologians simply can't do that and having listened to William Lane Craig's debates with people like Shabir Ali and Mike Laicona's the

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Shabir Ali and And also having listened to William Lane Craig's debate with Bart Ehrman and now

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Mike Laicona's one thing that is fascinating is That Bart Ehrman's presentation didn't change one with in fact

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I think he just got out the same notes and repeated everything once again and He's not gonna be able to have the debate in January for the simple reason that I've never heard him debate this subject that we're

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Doing in January, so that's good and bad depending on how you're looking at it, but Presentation you know where he's coming from You know exactly what he's gonna say and pretty much exactly how he's going to say it and how he's gonna present things poor

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Mike Didn't have a voice it is so it was painful to listen to Mike Laicona you can

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You just know I don't have a video of it, but you just know he's sitting over there while Bart Ehrman speaking swimming in chloroceptic

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You know gallons of it going down just trying to find some voice in there and a couple times

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It just goes away, and it's almost the point of literally whispering Which which could not have been easy for him

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I've been there done that got the t -shirt never had a voice that bad But I remember with one of the debates with Mitch Pacquiao.

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I was I was really feeling horrible. I was coughing my head off I was eating Cough drops right and left and I was sick as a dog for the

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Stafford debate, too I mean it was just coming out at that point But I was getting really sick at that point got even sicker on the cruise

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I remember speaking once on the cruise And and it looked like I had run into the room and then run back out of the room once I got done

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I was so soaked with sweat even while speaking it was it was not a not a pretty thing, but anyway

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So you got to give props to Michael Icona for even surviving this particular thing but the

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I Really think that this encounter with Bart Ehrman illustrates why

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Theology matters to apologetics and People gonna say well, how dare you criticize someone look we criticize the

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Muslims for silencing Debate and dialogue. I believe that we should be open to hearing what somebody else has to say and Unfortunately, I'm Not alone, but I'm in a minority

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Amongst Christian apologists in that I say your theology must absolutely must it must determine your apologetic methodology and That's where you've got to go.

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We that's that's just just absolutely necessary that we start there because if we don't we have all sorts of problems, so I want to play portions of this debate and I want to interact and I Want to do so with the greatest respect for Mike like Kona But also show greater respect for God's truth by disagreeing with some of the answers that he gives to the things that Bart Ehrman says and obviously, it's very consistent to be reviewing

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Bart Ehrman because How many John Dominic Crossan? Discussions, did you hear before my debate with John Dominic Crossan and how many times

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I play John Shelby's spong before the debate was spong You can always tell who

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I'm some of the people I'm gonna be debating next at least the big major debates because you're gonna be hearing things on the dividing line and All you gotta do is look at my iPod list and you'll know exactly

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Exactly where we're going there, so I would like to start with Let's see.

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Let's let's start with something Bart Ehrman says here, but I think it's it's it's very important This is actually in his opening statement.

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Let's let's start listening. This is that historians would rely upon for historical information. I Would argue that in fact, these are not the kinds of sources that can be relied upon by historians

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Now he's talking about the Gospels and I would like to take the time a little bit later on to refute

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Every single one of and I've actually we did this in the dividing line once at least we went through some of them

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But I'd like to go through it's it's his favorite list. He uses it all the time He goes through the crucifixion story and the resurrection story and he tries to put the the

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Gospels Crosswise with one another and he only has one of these arguments is even semi solid

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You have to do a semi decent amount of research to figure out The rest of them. I'm sorry just are really not good arguments at all

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But I I've got some research to do on on a recent historical event to illustrate this it take me a little while to do that Aside from you know, the fact that the second edition for the

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King James only controversy is doing less than a month and I and stuff like that and I've got the

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Cottonwood thing. I'm going to Alaska at Anchorage, etc, etc So I don't know if I'm you know, you know let done but it's always good not to be bored

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Anyway, he's talking about the Gospels. He's saying these are not the kind of resources historians want to depend upon Well, I disagree with that, but we'll see why in a moment now, let me emphasize something

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Because I do want to get out of here alive I am

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NOT This might sound weird to you. I I actually am NOT disputing the theological value of the

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Gospels I'm asking about their historical merit Here is the fundamental problem and Michael Icona does touch on a little bit but again

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I think it's one of the areas where because of the the epistemological approach He can't he can't hit it the way that a reformed theologian or apologist can

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And that is in essence Bart Ehrman Presuppositionally Draws a a line builds a wall that cannot be crossed between the historical and the theological

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So he can affirm the theological value of the Gospels as long as you don't say it actually happened see

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So what you're doing here is very common in liberal theology and in agnosticism and atheism is to say

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Oh, you can you can say all the theology you want. There's one big problem the

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Christian faith Does not allow you to make that distinction because God has acted in history

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That's why you have an Old Testament for crying out loud That's why you have all that stuff that people find so boring about this king did this and in the third year of this person's reign and when this person marched upon this city and this city

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Is south of this city? This isn't a bunch of theological mumbo -jumbo where people are making it up as they're going along Christianity says that God has acted in history and Bart Ehrman's presuppositional assumption is history can say nothing about God acting

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God doesn't act in history and So you run smack up against a presuppositional

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Presuppositional Assumption on the part of airmen that you can have something that's historically false, but theologically true and Christianity says no

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And Christianity says God has acted in history. In fact, he's guided all of history and Ehrman's whole point is history is atheistic

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History cannot allow for the existence of God or the Activity of God and if you want to say

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God exists fine But don't say he's acted in history and any evidence that he has must be viewed atheistically, it must be presuppositionally rejected and taken off the table and that is of course clearly a

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Presuppositional assumption as part that must be challenged just as I challenged John John Dominic Crossan on the exact same thing when the first question that I asked him is

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How do you explain You know, could you be given any data any evidence that would convince you that a miracle took place in the first century?

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well, of course not he says of course not and then we expand upon that to demonstrate the

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Presuppositional nature of that kind of assertion. That's what we did then. That's what we'd have to do here

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Let's listen a little bit more of airmen There's a difference between having a book that is theologically useful and a book that is historically accurate

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Theology and history are not the same thing and what I'm going to be maintaining in this debate is that claims about Jesus Resurrection are theological claims.

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They are not historical claims. So the resurrection takes place in history

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It takes place in an identifiable place and identifiable time with identifiable witnesses identifiable parties that that are that have

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Something to do with it Jews and Romans and the disciples and the women and so on so forth so while all of that is historical from his presuppositional perspective

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That has to be dismissed because theology has to be atheist. I'm sorry history has to be atheistic

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You just have to dismiss that you cannot allow the Christian claim of history to exist on the table

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That's what has to be challenged, but it has to be challenged presupposition That's where you've got to go with it

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And the Gospels are theological documents They're not historically accurate document.

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There you go. Theological documents not historically accurate documents. They're both And like I said, he's gone through this list.

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It's a I feel it's a very poor shallow list of accusations But the

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Christian claim has always been and he certainly must know this that the Gospels are

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Both Theological and historical from his perspective they can't be both they have to be one or the other

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That of course is the primary thing that has to be challenged here. So here's Ahriman's error

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Ahriman's error. It's a presupposition. It's a presuppositional in nature And it dismisses from the start any evidence of God's activity in history so presuppositional at the start

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If God has ever acted in history, there can be no evidence of it.

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That's Ahriman's error right at the beginning Now the problem is that I don't think that gets challenged

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Let's let's go to this next clip. This is from Mike like on explain why

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I Did not build my case for the resurrection this evening on biblical inerrancy

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I didn't build it on the trustworthiness of the Gospels a particular dating of them or who wrote them

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One of the things I did in my investigation to minimize my own bias Was to go with the facts and only those facts that were virtually in dispute of my historians

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That's what I built my case on and professor Ahriman agrees with these facts So for example fact number one

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Jesus death by crucifixion He says one of the most certain facts of history is that Jesus was crucified on orders of the

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Roman prefect of Judea Pontius Pilate Fact number two the appearances to the disciples

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It is a historical fact that some of Jesus followers came to believe that he had been raised from the dead soon after his execution

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We know some of these believers by name. He goes on explains Paul and he also says these others

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Also claim to have seen him alive afterward fact number three the appearance to Paul There is no doubt that Paul believed that he saw

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Jesus real but glorified body raised from the dead Paul taught that resurrection met the total transformation of his body

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So we can see that professor Ahriman agrees with these three facts and rightly so virtually every scholar in the world who studied the subject

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Agrees on these including skeptical ones so What I'm saying is the case that I've built for the resurrection despite Bart's hesitancies about the

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Gospels there's my case has been built upon three facts that are virtually indisputable and just as Survivors of the

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Titanic Contradicted one another and whether the ship broke in two prior to sinking or whether she went down intact

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No one therefore concluded that the Titanic didn't sink They just said that there were peripheral details that we just don't know the answer to And I would

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I would love to discuss some of these in the Q &A period I just don't think that they're pertinent for tonight's debate and so what professor

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Herman's going to have to do is attack my The Method that I've applied my approach to these three facts rather than the sources

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Themselves because he still thinks that they're reliable enough to get these three facts So there in essence is the presentation and that is exactly what

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Craig did in his debate with Bart Ahriman as well Pretty much on the same subject is hey, look, I'm not going to address these peripheral issues

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I'm not going to address this inerrancy stuff. I'm not going to address these allegations of Problems in the accounts of how many angels there were or What timing and and who saw

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Jesus first? I'm not going to get into all that because hey, you know, what a Titanic split in half or not doesn't change the fact

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Titanic sank Minimalist approach, you know, I'm not sure you know, what what then happens, you know, do you end up like an

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Anthony flu? God doesn't exist. Well, okay, maybe there might be some kind of a god

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And everybody starts getting all excited It I mean honestly there are people who think that's how you do apologetics there are major major major schools that follow this incrementalist approach and I say

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I don't see it in the New Testament. That's not proclaiming the gospel You don't call people to repent of a part of their idolatry.

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You call them to repent of their idolatry You don't say well worship a little bit less hideous of a false

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God you say worship the true God You don't do it in increments

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I see no evidence that the Apostles ever did it that way and if you'd like to try to prove it fine You know,

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I'll ask you to explain Paul's words and Galatians But that's that's another issue.

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So that's where we've got to go with that. So you have the minimalist approach here and I just the whole idea is that what you're trying to do is you're trying to demonstrate a

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Supernatural event an event that that from the biblical perspective is the

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Means by which God says this is my son. I have vindicated him by raising him from the dead

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But you're going to do that without raising issues of inspiration without raising issues of of the preservation of Scripture anything along those lines

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Does your found is your foundation big enough and strong enough to?

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substantiate The claims you're making Now here's another really really problematic section here for me and I disagree

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I think and That's really not quite To go with evidently

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I let's just do it this way Hypothesis not historical and I disagree.

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I think that what he's doing is he's confusing a historical conclusion with his theological implications

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So I think he's doing history backwards I think what he's saying is listen if Jesus rose from the dead we can do all kinds of logic chopping

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But I think we all realize that God is the best candidate for the for the task and he's saying well

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But historians can't get the God at least as historians and so that eliminates and makes his whole

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Practice of analyzing the resurrection as illegitimate now. What should the criticism be there?

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It should be to attack the presuppositional nature of airmen statement that historians by nature have to dismiss any evidence of God's activity in history because the

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Christian God By definition is active in history all of history is a part of his divine decree to reveal himself

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And it's all gonna end up to the result the praise of his glorious grace but a there seems to be on the part of many and unwillingness to openly present a

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Christian view of history over against an Atheistic view of history as if somehow well, that's just not as acceptable.

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Well, of course, it's not as acceptable It's a scandal the cross that's that's the way it is, but you can't de -scandalize the cross just to make the world like you

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I don't think so. I think what historians can do is analyze the data Way high now listen listen at this point.

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I Was like no you're not saying this but this is your what you're hearing is exactly what

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I think consistently Mike Laicona has to say and Here in a prophecies and come up with a historical conclusion

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If the resurrection hypothesis is the one that has the greatest explanatory scope power and less ad hoc

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Then it should be the best explanation the most probable explanation and the one that we can be confident is what occurred in the past But that leads then we say well then but if Jesus rose that means

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God raised him Well, that is a theological implication and we can divorce the historical conclusion with the theological implication

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So we could conclude as historians that Jesus rose from the dead Without going on to the second question and saying

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God raised Jesus from the dead. He didn't say we can't divorce He said we can divorce the historical conclusion from the theological ramifications we can say

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Yep, Jesus rose from the dead Don't know how Don't know who is involved it just weird things happen and remember

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I remember Greg Bonson Talking about someone in Southern, California. It was USC UCLA forget where it was a professor there who had come to conclusion

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You know what? I think Jesus rose from the dead But I'm still an atheist because strange things happen weird things happen

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And you just go Whoa, wait a minute How you know, this is a complete capitulation to airmen's atheistic history

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Because that it's not being approached Presuppositionally, you're not challenging the presupposition that airmen is bringing that history can be viewed apart from the

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Christian God And I know it's radical to be a Christian I know it's radical to believe that Jesus Christ created all things and that there is no fact

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That is not a God fact and every fact that is a fact is a fact because God made it to be that fact I know that's radical and I know that's scandalous to the world, but that's what the

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New Testament teaches and You can't get people to believe that by well, let's take a little baby steps, you know

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And and you know and you're autonomous and all this how do you get them to the point of abandoning their autonomy and Embracing the autonomy of God and seeing that all things have been done by God when you're constantly pandering to their humanistic tendencies

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I You can't do it that way. Here's where theology matters It determines the very approach you're gonna take to answering questions like this again

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I think we could all admit that God's probably the best candidate, but we're not going to get there as a historian

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We can get that Jesus rose from the dead without saying God raised him from the dead And you know historians do similar things like this like in the case of Charlemagne in the 8th century

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Charlemagne and his brother co -ruled the Roman Empire And they hated each other and three years into Charlemagne's and his brother's reign his brother died historians conclude

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That Charlemagne's brother died in 717 But they don't have to conclude because it's indeterminate whether he died of natural causes or Charlemagne had him killed

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So in the same way again, I'd say we can conclude that Jesus rose from the dead While leaving a question mark of who raised him all right if the evidence points to that Okay How do you define what evidence is how can you how can you produce any kind of meaningful?

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theory of history How can a Christian take this kind see this is what happens again?

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What is the point of contact? with the non -believer

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This is again this goes back to your apologetic methodology

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The point of contact with the unbeliever is not for you to abandon The radical epistemology that says in him are all are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge

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You don't abandon the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge You don't abandon

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Jesus Christ created all things Therefore he must be my central epistemological focal point

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You don't abandon all that and this hope you can come back to it step off of the solid ground of Christian epistemology

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Onto some alleged neutral ground there is no neutral ground That is the message of the

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New Testament. There is no neutral ground. There is no fact of History or science or theology or anything else that exists?

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Outside of God having created it to be that way That's the radical nature of a

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Christian epistemology is that The the laws of logic the facts of science are what they are because God is the creator so there is no moral or Epistemological neutral ground to step on to once you step on to Some neutral ground what you've done is you have compromised the

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Christian faith you have denied the Jesus the creator of all things you've denied something you are you are handing to the unbeliever a

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Compromise the faith that you want to call them back to and then you wonder why that doesn't really work very well

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There is no neutral ground. So is there a contact point? Of course, there's a contact point The contact point is that every man every woman every child is created in the image of God and That person is suppressing the knowledge of God That's the contact point you have an individual you have a creature you have a pot

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That is in rebellion against the potter and that pot has made by the potter right there stamped on it

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But they're covering it up and all you got it. What you got to do is you got to pry the fingers off point to it

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They're holding down the geyser of the knowledge of God you pry their fingers off.

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Do they like that? No, they do not like that Do they make you a distinguished member of their philosophical societies for doing that?

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No, they do not But that's the scandal of the cross that's the scandal of the

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Christian faith and When we compromise that are we honoring

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God? Are we glorifying God? I argued that we are not and Are we really getting anybody any closer to the truth that way?

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I I don't think that we are and again If you disagree then take me to the scriptures

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Take me to scriptures. Show me where this isn't true because all I'm talking about here is basic Fundamental categories of whether God's the creator of all things.

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He has a sovereign decree or Whether God just tossed the cosmic dice and it just happened to roll his directions like we hog glorify me if God had a purpose when he created

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Then what was that purpose and does not that? Central biblical affirmation determine how we are to defend the faith

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I think that it most assuredly does we continue so let me just conclude this first rebuttal

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By just saying in terms of historians analyzing miracle claims Amit the only one who's saying that historians can do this in the 2016 issue of history and theory it focused on religion in history and numerous historians

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Acknowledged that we are now at a turning point That the interaction between religion and history is not where most historians have thought and that we need to reassess our attitudes

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Toward religious phenomena and either revise or defend our methods Well, I would at least agree with that but let's let's skip to airmen's response because I think this will help us to Sort of see where it goes dead on the basis of what they said were appearances to them.

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I Skipped a little bit too far got a lot of stuff on my screen today. And so it's a little bit hard to see Well, so I've got a tall task

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Mike wants to insist that there are three undisputed facts that prove that Jesus was raised from the dead

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Historically, the facts are that Jesus died by crucifixion number one

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Number two that his disciples afterwards came to believe that he had been raised from the dead on the basis of what they said were appearances to them

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Number two and then number three that the Apostle Paul converted by the way, I I don't know why this

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Was not more clearly presented but even in presenting this kind of minimalist argumentation there were a couple points that somehow got left out and One of the points was and an airman took full advantage of it.

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He really did One of the points is that it's not merely the existence of visions of dead people in fact

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Ironically Mike like Kona's gonna say yeah, I was talking to a guy in Atlanta just recently a brother in Christ who saw someone who was dead and he starts talking about people seeing visions of dead people and Hello, I have no idea what in the world that all was

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And I'm like but but but What where in the world did that come from?

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What's going on here? The point is In all of this that it wasn't just people having visions of dead people.

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Not only it's what Jesus did Demonstrating the physicality of his resurrection, but these people were in groups

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It wasn't just one person or people in my I was dreaming and I saw Jesus We're talking about multiple people seeing

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Jesus saying and doing the same things He's speaking he's teaching

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This is the vast difference Between the idea of one person seeing you know, you know a widow sees her her

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Her husband who just died they've been married for 55 years Well, yeah, that's pretty common when someone's been a part of your life every day or 55 years

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You're your brains gonna keep seeing them for a while Yeah, that's not uncommon, but that's not the nature of Jesus resurrection appearances for crying out loud

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That somehow didn't get presented. And of course the other thing is The reason

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Jesus's crucifixion is relevant here is because it places it in time and history

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It's not Jesus just disapp. You know, he didn't just run off to India someplace And his disciples didn't know where he went they came up with the resurrection story and airmen

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I I was a little disappointed and he goes on on on about well, there's all these people got crucified

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That's hardly relevant to resurrection now the point is you have to have a series of arguments here and the crucifixion means he was really really dead and Therefore if he's really really alive

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Just a little while later. That's what a resurrection is So I didn't think that really got emphasized the way that it needs it first Let me point out that I don't see that.

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He actually has three rock -solid facts that point to the resurrection Take back number one that Jesus was crucified.

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How exactly does the crucifixion of Jesus? Provide evidence that he was raised from the dead.

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Yeah at this point. I really come on Bart knows exactly how it's relevant He has to know

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I did this this came up with in in the in the debate William and Craig like Craig He knows why this is relevant.

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And so I'm just gonna skip past You know his discussion of when they took over drew so much like that and by the way, he's then gonna he's then gonna argue in essence that well

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Paul and The disciples they're not two different things the point is that Paul became convinced the resurrection of Jesus as the enemy of Jesus Not as the friend of Jesus not as one of the disciples

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He was a he was persecuting Christians and yet came to that conclusion and as a result that converted rather than being a converted then becomes

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Convinced of it and that seems really obvious to me. But for some reason Bart Ehrman didn't really address them and Paul was converted now

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By my reasoning those two are actually one Because Paul is one of the people who claimed that he saw

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Jesus alive afterwards and was converted on the basis of that appearance Now true some of the people who converted were allegedly were probably

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Jesus followers and Paul was not a follower But it's the same phenomenon. We're looking at no, it's not the same phenomenon we're looking at the point is that if that that the argument is made that if you want

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Jesus to have risen from the dead if you're one of his disciples and You have a desire to see him having risen from the dead then that Minimizes the value of your testimony.

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Jesus or Paul isn't one of those people He doesn't want Jesus to have risen from the dead. He thinks he was a false teacher thinks he's a false prophet

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He thinks he's bad for Judaism. He's persecuting. He thinks he's doing what's right and It's in that context fully opposed to the resurrection

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Preaching that he comes to be convinced that he was resurrected from the dead through that encounter with Christ.

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That's Why it's relevant the phenomenon is that Jesus allegedly appeared to people after his death

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So let's take on that as a Piece of evidence that is the only piece of evidence that Mike has marshaled

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Namely that people claim to see Jesus alive after his death. So we have one fact that I agree with There were people who claimed they saw

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Jesus alive after his death Now here comes the real problem for this kind of approach

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And that is if you're going to grant to man his human autonomy

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You're going to grant The idea that history is what history is.

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It's not under the Lordship of Christ it's not the history is not the the the

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Recording of what God has done in this world the outworking of his purposes Remember the challenge in Isaiah 41 to the false gods not only tell us what's going to happen the future

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But tell us what has happened in the past and why? You see the true God can give you true history and true history is not just what happened

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But why and if you don't have a God who has a decree and he's working on purpose Then you can't have any of that and it sounds like that's already been given up here and that's the real real problem

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Okay So but once you grant once you fail to challenge airmen's atheistic historical presuppositions

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Guess what now you've left the barn door open to all the other alleged people who've risen from the dead

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The question is can a historian on the basis of that fact? Establish that Jesus was probably raised from the dead

53:27

I'd like to look at several Considerations first I'm a little puzzled that Mike hasn't looked at parallel phenomenon in the ancient world

53:39

As It turns out there are numerous instances of ancient people who were dead dead as doornails

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Who allegedly appeared to their close companions and followers after their death?

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Where all of these people raised from the dead? Let me give you one example.

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You see you got to hear the weight of this argumentation It's the same way the argumentation that the atheist uses when he says look

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You reject 99 out of 100 gods, I just reject one more than you do

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Okay here the argumentation is you reject the vast majority of claims of Messiahs or gods who rose from the dead he's could give an example in just a moment and I just go one farther

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Are you being consistent? To Believe that Jesus rose from the dead when these when you reject these others now

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I as a Christian with a Christian view of history who doesn't

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Abandon the inspiration of my sources can say yes and do so consistently

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But can the other person approaching as is being approached here be?

54:54

consistent in Rejecting those claims. That is the question. We have to consider a

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Famous holy man in the first century a pagan holy man was named Apollonius.

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He was from the city of Tiana We know about Apollonius and the life of Apollonius because one of his later followers wrote down an account of his life

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Apollonius had a life that was very interesting indeed before he was born an

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Angelic visitor came to his would -be mother and told her that she was going to bear a special son

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Her son would not be a mere mortal her son would be the Son of God He was born supernaturally

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After his birth as a young boy. He Impressed the teachers of his people with his religious knowledge.

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That was superior in every way When he became an adult he left his home and went from one village in town to the other

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Preaching his message that people shouldn't be concerned about material things in this world

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People should be concerned with the spiritual things in life He gathered a group of followers around him who were convinced that he was the

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Son of God And he confirmed their belief by doing miracles. He could cast out demons

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He could heal the sick and he could raise the dead at the end of Apollonius his life

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He got in trouble with the Roman authorities Who ended up putting him on trial but he ascended to heaven and Afterwards he appeared alive to his followers and his followers talked about it

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Some of them wrote books One of the books has survived Now if the rock -solid evidence of Jesus resurrection is that somebody claimed they saw him alive afterwards

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Then I think we have rock -solid evidence that Apollonius of Tiana was raised from the dead

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How is it any different? Now it's fascinating and I you know again

56:55

You hate to have to admit when someone makes point But airmen won this point because when we'll we'll play it next time but when

57:05

Michael Icona gets up the only way his methodology allows him to approach this is To attack the historical foundations of the

57:13

Apollonius story and so basically what he'll say as well You know, there's some who feel that this is actually story was made up it was to mimic

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Christ and was to mimic the Christian message and We question the sources we question that where it's coming from and airmen gets up and says wait a minute

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Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You said earlier That the sources and the alleged contradictions and all the rest that stuff was irrelevant to your argument

57:40

But now when you respond Apollonius you use the exact same criteria

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I used against you point taken That parts over. I'm sorry.

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It is that's just that that's just all there is to it That methodology cannot deal with that kind of argumentation.

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That's that's all there is to it And so there you go, but we will continue with that On Thursday afternoon this somewhat extended lesson in the

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Ness again Theology matters and theology determines apologetic

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Methodology it does matter. We're seeing where the rubber meets the road in Examining these things please hear what

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I said at the beginning Thank God for Mike Licona bless him for what he's does but I also hope that he would be the first one to say

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I want to be challenged from someone coming from a Biblical perspective and be the first one to admit that we all want to be able to say that that's we're doing here on the

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Dividing line. Thanks for listening today. We'll see on Thursday. God bless The dividing line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega ministries

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