That Weird Pointy Hat Procession, then, Stephen Wolfe's Smarter Worldview

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. We're in the big studio today. We've got some big things to talk about, but I wanted to start off, before we get into the longer topic, it's going to take a while to talk about Christian worldview and things like that, which wasn't a controversial thing not very long ago, but now all of a sudden is, and if you're, you only use

Christian worldview language if you're dumb. So, you know,

Kuyper, Duyverd, Van Til, Bonson, you know, Francis Schaeffer, and all their students, just dumb.

But we just needed a political philosopher to tell us these things. Anyways, we will get into that in just a few moments, but over the course of the weekend, a video surfaced.

Actually, I've seen a couple versions of this. This is yet another of the many

Roman Catholic penitential, what would you call it, activities that developed over the centuries, primarily in Europe.

Here you have individuals dressed very interestingly with incense.

You have a crucifix and all sorts of attendant things that are being taken along there.

Got some chanting going on, which I don't have any problems with chanting, but, and, you know, this was posted and the reactions of people, let's take a look at it actually, just, it's 47 seconds, it's not really much of anything.

But here's the video as it was posted on, put this down here a little bit, on Twitter.

You really cannot have any problems with incense to be a part of that. I imagine sneezing while wearing one of those things would be very, it could be dangerous, the person in front of you, stab him right in the back.

Now, from what I've read, I didn't spend a whole time looking into it, but from what

I've read, this has something to do with praying for souls in purgatory.

Purgatory, of course, does not exist. It's interesting that here in the United States, Roman Catholic apologists are adopting a very westernized view of this particular topic, so that, you know, purgatory can be instantaneous.

I'm not sure why you'd be praying for souls in purgatory if it's instantaneous, but anyway, it is plainly not a biblical teaching as we have demonstrated over and over again in debate and in various other ways.

So you're doing something that it's unbiblical, but I just want you to look at this, and when

I talked about this, one fellow said, this looks, how do you put it, amazingly

Christian. This looks amazingly Christian to people all around the world. Okay, and what

I had said was, you cannot look at this video and then look me in the eye and say, this is what the apostles taught us to do.

And this demonstrates the real issue with the concept of apostolic tradition, because it has, for apostolic tradition to have any meaning, it actually has to, oh, come from the apostles.

And the reality is, apostolic tradition in Roman Catholicism and in modern

Eastern Orthodoxy has nothing to do with the apostles. It is an overarching term for the ultimate authority invested in the allegedly infallible church.

And so it's apostolic in the sense that people today claim to be the successors of the apostles, but most of us outside of Rome or Eastern Orthodoxy, when you hear someone claiming apostolic tradition, the rather obvious assumption you come to is, oh, the apostles taught this?

Well, how would we know the apostles taught this? And once you start talking to folks about things like this, they'll admit, well, okay, it's not like it's specifically presented in the

New Testament. But what they'll do is they'll find a verse over here, and a verse over there, and a verse over there, and not worrying about the context, not worrying whether they're just manhandling scripture.

As long as there's a word where you can make a connection between that over there, that over there, that over there, that over there, not doing exegesis, not interpreting the words of the apostles the way you'd want your words to be interpreted, as if they were actually trying to communicate something.

But what you're doing is you have another ultimate authority outside of scripture, but you're trying to make it look like what that ultimate authority has taught you to believe could at least be made somewhat amenable to scripture.

Well, they weren't necessarily saying that, but they might have.

It's possible. I mean, if we look at that there, that there, and put it all together, and maybe.

And it's interesting to me, Newman's development hypothesis, the whole reason for that was he recognized that to claim that modern

Roman Catholic beliefs and practices actually come from the apostles is just simply impossible historically.

You have to abuse the early church fathers to come up with that. And so what you do is you come up with a theory of development, and that way you can abandon the historical field of battle, and you can just talk about development over time.

And that allows you to believe anything, really. You don't have to have any kind of serious exegetical foundation for anything in the pages of scripture.

And that's what allows you to come to something like this. The reality is this developed over many centuries.

The doctrines that give it its form in regards to prayers to the dead, purgatory, indulgences, all this, it developed over centuries.

And it didn't develop evenly over those centuries. It might run ahead in one place, be running behind in another place, so you'll have differences in practice very plainly in the history of the church.

But then what happens is you get to a certain point in the development of this tradition.

This is not taking anything from the apostles. This is allowing external sources to create based on the

Marian dogmas. You start with the protevangelium of James, and we're going to be looking at some of that fairly soon.

We want to review some of that stuff in regards to all the stuff that's been going on about Mary. You'll find a source like that that's not apostolic.

It says all sorts of really strange and fantastic things, but it becomes popular over time.

And as the centuries pass, especially within the context of monasticism, the monastic movement has been the gateway through which almost every non -apostolic tradition or belief has entered into mainstream

Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox belief. Iconography, iconodilia, plainly pushed strongly by the monastic orders.

That was something that they were big on. Same thing here. So you have external sources that at least initially, well, you know, the first written source we have that makes reference to the bodily assumption of Mary was considered heretical the time that it was written.

But a thousand years later, actually more like about 1500 years later, it becomes dogma.

1400 years. So this is how it works, and this is why solo scriptura is so important.

This is why there are only a certain number of denominations that even know what solo scriptura is, let alone seek to practice it.

It's funny how many Roman Catholics will say, oh, you know, look at all these groups, solo scriptura.

We talked about the last time there was that graphic where they had John MacArthur and Kenneth Copeland, Joel Osteen, and some rainbow -frocked priestess chick.

And I'm like, there's only one person in this that would even know how to pronounce solo scriptura, let alone actually is concerned about it and would seek to practice it.

But the argument is out there, and we need to recognize that when denominations actually understand solo scriptura and why we must hold to it, what the result is, you're looking at the result of it, of denying it, of rejecting it.

There's no way to look at this and go, well, this is wrong, because you don't have an objective revelation from God that tells you what

Christian worship is supposed to look like. I mean, talk about regulative principle of worship, okay. Yeah, we forgot about the pointy -head robed people with the incense and all the idols and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

And of course, you know, at least, it's sad when you have to go, at least

I don't see Mary anywhere. It's sort of like, hey, they're sending in the right direction.

Who was it that said that recently? Oh, never mind. Let's not get confused with all that stuff.

So yeah, that was an amazing thing to see the conversations coming from people and the defenses that were offered to all of that.

All right, close that down there. And as soon as I point out these texts, some of you, bang, he says he pushes his knee into something down here.

Some of you are going, oh, not again. We've covered all this before. Well, don't worry.

We're not going to get quite as in -depth into the text, but I do want,

I do think we have to start. I'm a simple man, and as Stephen Wolfe likes to say,

I'm dumb, stupid, moronic. My time has passed, according to Eric Kahn, you know, all these things.

So I just, you know, I do the best I can. And so as an irrelevant, dumb, stupid, moronic person,

I sort of start with the text of scripture. And we've been doing that for, well, what's the dividing line?

The dividing line, that term really initially, in my mind, as I came up with it, had to do with what is the dividing line between those who believe

God has spoken his word and those who do not. And we're on, we have been on the scriptural sufficiency, solo scriptura, the

Bible's God's word side, you know, yeah, longer than many of our critics have been alive.

That's true. That's where we've been, and that makes us irrelevant, and stupid, and moronic, and things like that. But that's where we're standing, and thankfully a lot of you folks recognize the importance of being there too.

And so I've said many times, 1 Corinthians chapter 1 should be a text that any

Christian scholar reviews prayerfully at least every six months or so.

And I think every Christian these days should, to be perfectly honest with you, but especially

Christian scholars should do so. So just reviewing once again, for the word of the cross is indeed to those who are perishing foolishness, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.

For it has been written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise ones and the understanding of the understanding ones

I will set aside. Where is the wise one, the sophos?

Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer or debater of this age?

Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? So normally we talk about a number of things, but our conversation today is in regards to the subject of Christian worldview.

And the assertion that was made, gotta slide this up here now, it's a different thing, it's a little bit different than our old one, but we make it work.

The assertion that was made, we're going to be looking at it very carefully. It wasn't an article, but it was a lengthy tweet that Dr.

Stephen Wolfe posted. I've got it in my presentation software,

I'll bring it up here once we're done with this. Basically concluding that we should stop talking about Christian worldview, the

Christian worldview is simplistic, it makes us look dumb, and things like that.

So I want to start biblically before we then listen to what

Dr. Wolfe had to say on this particular subject. So generally what is...

If I were to address much of what takes place in Christian scholarship and Christian academia, once again

I have to remind everyone, if you believe that what we are looking here especially in the original languages, is theanustos, it is

God -breathed, that God intended for us to have these words, that God intended to preserve these words for us, and that they're not just simply a light to our path, a light to our feet, guidance and things like that, but they are specifically intended to function in the church so that the man of God may be equipped for every good work.

That's what Paul said to Timothy. He directed him to the God -breathed scriptures, and he said, if you want to be prepared for every good work,

Timothy, and this is in 2nd Timothy, so there's not going to be any more epistles coming from Paul.

No more visits. Timothy, you need to go to that which is theanustos, that which is God -breathed.

And so if you believe that, you're in the minority. In the majority of Christian seminaries and Bible colleges in the

West, the New Testament especially, well the entire Bible, is looked at as being the product of human analysis, thought, tradition, so that what

Paul writes in 1st Corinthians may contradict what Paul writes in Galatians. And you go to most places, you're going to be told that Paul didn't write

Ephesians or Colossians. And certainly Paul's going to be different than James, as Paul's going to be different than Peter, and so on and so forth.

And so you look at scripture as if it is this mess of contradictory stuff that you get to put together in whatever way you want to put it together, in essence.

So if you happen to believe that one of the most important things that we have to do is allow these words, because they are

God's words, to interpret themselves, so we have to do the work of exegesis, we have to allow the text to speak you are in the minority, and you are with us, and I'm only speaking for those of us who stand on that foundation.

And used to be whenever we'd get together 10 -15 years ago amongst people who call themselves

Reformed, all that was a given. It wasn't even something we had to argue about, but things change over time.

And so as we look at these words, the question that comes across is when you see the word or the message of the cross, and you see a cross, okay, so we're talking soteriology here, we're talking about salvation here, right?

That's all we're talking about. Because it's to those who are perishing, it is foolishness,

Maria. And to those who are being saved, that's where soteriology comes from, it is the power of God.

So this is just about salvation, right? I mean, it is very very common in the vast majority of modern -day academics to limit the realm and the scope of Scripture's authority and sufficiency to salvation, just salvation topics.

It is not sufficient for anything else. So let's see if that works here.

Let's see if what Paul is saying is, when he says, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise ones, and he's going to talk about the sophos.

These are the philosophers. You've heard of sophistry, that's normally used in a negative sense.

But these are, this is this is Sophia. This is wisdom. And are we only talking about wisdom in the context of the

Christian doctrine of soteriology? Well, that certainly would not be the case in Corinth.

And in fact, if Paul were limiting himself in this way, he wouldn't be doing the

Corinthians much good. Because the Corinthians are living in a context where they are having to daily give reason for the hope that's within them, daily encounter the paganism that is just rife in a city filled with pagan temples.

Many of them, their family members are involved in the same type of stuff. And so, if this

Sophia is only in regards to soteriology, then how useful is this?

But it doesn't, Paul doesn't allow that to stand because he asks in verse 20, where is the sophos, the wise one?

Where is the scribe, the learned one, the one who can read and engage with written texts?

Where is the disputer? That also can be debater.

The debater, what? To ionos tutu, of this age.

Of this age. So not just salvation, we're talking here, one who would represent the very, well, what's the next phrase?

Has not God, amoranon. Yes, that's where you get moron, made foolish.

What? Tein sophion tu cosum, the wisdom of the world. The wisdom of the world.

So he is presenting to us here a true contrast.

He is saying to us, for since in the wisdom of God, the world, through its wisdom, did not come to know

God. He's saying worldly wisdom will not bring you to the knowledge of God.

Instead, God was well -pleased through the foolishness of the preached message, the kerygma, to save the ones believing.

Well, you're back to, you're back to salvation. So that means this has nothing to do with anything else. No. What it does mean is that God's ultimate purpose is the salvation of his people.

That's how, that's why Christ comes. They are united with him. His death becomes their death.

His resurrection, their resurrection. It is in that union with Christ and that salvation of the believing ones that you see the very glory of God.

That's what it's all about. And God was pleased through the foolishness of what is preached to save those who believe.

I have to do that to be able to scroll back up to the rest of it because it sort of takes over at that point.

So he says, for indeed the Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom, but we proclaim

Christ crucified to the Jews a scandal, a scandalon, to the

Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are called, tois kleitos, both

Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. So the question really becomes in a sense, when it says right here,

Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Now, is that only in reference to the narrow stream of disputes about justification or predestination, election, whatever else it might be?

No, because when he makes application, he says, consider your calling brothers.

There were not many wise according to flesh, not many mighty, not many noble. And it's interesting, noble is eugenics, from which we get eugenics.

Instead, God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the things which are mighty, so on and so forth, is what he says.

So here's the point. God's not going with what the world says is wisdom.

Whoa, Rich is playing fast and loose back there with the cameras and just about knocked me right over.

Hey, he hasn't done this in a long time, so we've got to try to be very gentle and not point to when he messes up.

So anyways, this is not just about the subject of salvation.

This is talking about the massive contrast between the wisdom of the world, by which

God in his purposes, it's not by worldly wisdom that you come to know him.

God was pleased that that is not the way that you come to know him. It's not through worldly wisdom.

It's not through human philosophy. It is through the foolishness of the preached message.

And that's where the problem is, because men who are wise according to flesh want to be accepted by the world.

We want to place the table. We want to be respected by the wise men of the world.

We want them to see how wise we are as well. And that is why Paul has to start off here and warn us.

You're never going to have a place at that table. You're never going to have a place at that table. And there are a lot of Christians sitting at that table today, and the price of sitting at that table is the abandonment of the lordship of Christ over all areas of human knowledge.

Now, before I make application to that, let's look at another text here that I think is rather important.

And of course, it's from Colossians 1. So, in writing to the

Colossians, and again, I just mention in passing, you go buy yourself a commentary on these things, and you find out, oh, well, the real good scholars know that Paul didn't write

Colossians and Ephesians and blah, blah, blah, blah. And they never bother to tell you exactly what the reasons for that are, other than, well, he uses different vocabulary and things like that.

And of course, he's addressing different topics, and he addresses the same topics in both letters, so it really doesn't make any difference.

But anyways, he's writing to the Colossians, and he, speaking of God the

Father, said, who rescued us from the authority of darkness and transferred, translated us into the kingdom of the son of his love, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

And then once he mentions Christ, we then have this incredible poetic section about the firstborn of all creation, the prototokos posses

Tissaos, who is the image of the invisible God, the prototokos of all creation, the firstborn, one of the preeminence over all of creation, because in him, all things, not all other things, despite what

Jehovah's Witnesses do, but in him, by him, en auto, was created, ta panta, all things.

And now we're going to have a description of what ta panta is, the things in the heavens and upon the earth.

The horata and the aorata, visible and invisible, thrones, lordships, rulers, authorities, ta panta, so the same ta panta here, goes up here, ta panta de auto, all things through him, so de auto, ca eis auton, and unto him were created.

So notice he's using a number of different prepositions to basically exhaust the

Greek language to explain to us, he's talking about all things, visible, invisible, thrones, lordships, rulers, authorities, all things are through him and for him, and he is pra panton, so we've got dia, we've got eis, now we have pra, he is before all things, and then verse 17, ca e ta panta en auto sunestecan, and the ta panta, all things in him hold together, sunestecan, that's what

I want you to see, is this term right here, sunestecan, instead of playing with the board,

I'll just do this little number right here, so it's at least somewhat, oh, just leave it there, sunestecan.

So, unite together, hold together, all things in him, so in him, before him, by him, et cetera, it just exhausts the language as far as prepositions are concerned, but the ta panta holds together in him.

Now, if ta panta is as extensive as this is, heavens and earth, visible, invisible, clearly the apostle is attempting to make sure we understand this is universal.

If it exists, Christ made it. If it exists, it holds together in him.

Now, what does it mean to hold together? You know,

I remember in college, we had a, we had a, did you ever have a professor who knew his field so well he couldn't explain it to anybody else?

You know, I mean, yeah, I had a, I had a chemistry professor like that, and you could just tell he knew it, and if you dared to ask a question, the look you got was, how could you be that stupid?

And, and I was in the advanced group, so we were sort of the best students he had, and, and yet we all struggled, and so they, they actually brought a different professor in for the second semester, and, and I, I remember we were talking about the nature of, you know, protons, neutrons, electrons, the function of the, the atom, and things like that, and shells, and, and how atoms join with, with others, and how they, you know, the electrons work to do all that kind of stuff, and someone just said, you know, in the, in the nucleus, if, if you've got what we know is in the nucleus, why, why, why does it stay together?

Because some of these things repel each other, and I remember him sort of smiling and going, well, we call it nuclear glue.

We're all like, nuclear glue? What is that? And he's, they say, well, we're still learning about a lot of these forces, and things like that, and I, you know,

I was double major Bible and biology. I couldn't help but sitting there going, and then him, all things hold together.

Now, immediately, someone goes, nope, can't do that. Nope, can't, no, these are, this, the guy writing this stuff, the guy, the guy who dictated this to some guy, who then took a quill, and, and wrote this down on papyrus 2 ,000 years ago, and it was sent to a city that was only going to exist for about another 30 years or so, before it's wiped out by an earthquake, had no idea about, about nuclear forces, and weak forces, and strong forces, and all, oh, come on, you can't do that.

The idea, from the start, there is, these are just human words, and they only had a meaning at the time, and they're not actually connected to everything else in the rest of the

New Testament, the rest of the Old Testament, the entirety of, you can't really, you know, even though it's saying that Christ created all things, that was, you know, we just can't go there.

The world will mock us. We can't believe that, except the whole point of Paul's writing the epistle, and this was, this was, you know, he's going to say a couple chapters later, read the epistles coming from Laodicea, well, that was probably

Ephesians, and, and these epistles were clearly passed around amongst the churches in the Lycans River Valley, and so, he is intending other people to read these things, and there are already all sorts of people talking about wisdom, worldly wisdom, things like that, there's already, there's already been the golden age of Greek philosophy has already happened, and Paul's not ignorant of these things, but the, the whole idea that you could actually have divine revelation, and that it can actually make a claim like this,

I can understand why people who, for example, are a part of Biologos would go, yeah, no, no, we're not gonna, that's, that's too much.

We need to limit the extent of the claims of Scripture to what's manageable for us, you see, and what, what will allow us to continue to have the seat at the table, and so, you know, why, why do the, why is

Biologos promote theistic evolutionary theory? Why does it mock, you know, brilliant brothers like Jason Lyle and their defense of, of biblical creationism and things like that?

Why do they do that kind of thing? I will, I will say it directly, they want a seat at the table.

They are ashamed of the lordship of Christ, and they are ashamed to say

Jesus Christ is Lord over all of human knowledge.

All of it. Jesus is Lord in the church, and Jesus is

Lord in the nuclear reactor. Jesus is Lord in the operating room.

Jesus is Lord in outer space. When you're, when you're, you know, when we send spacecraft to other planets, there are tremendously complex calculations.

I know computers do much, most of it now. They couldn't back in the day, and yet people with slide rules, everything else, we're figuring out, okay, right now

Mars is over here, because, you know, we have satellites. Do you know we have satellites circling Mars? We do.

And they, they're taking pictures and mapping it, and all the rest of that kind of stuff. And, and how to get there?

Well, there has to be something called the regularity of nature. And there has to be certain laws of physics.

And you have to be able to, you know, we've, we've sent the Voyager probes, VJR, for those of you who are

Star Trek people. We sent, we've got VJR out there. It hasn't become self aware yet, but it'll come back eventually, a couple hundred years from now.

Anyway, how did it get out there? Well, we used gravitational slingshot to do it.

So we, we figured out where the planets were going to be, and okay, we can send this one here, and we can have it do flyby, and send us pictures, and we can use its gravitation to sling it out there, and we'll eventually get it out past Saturn, and out to Uranus, and, and Plato, Plato, Plato, yeah,

Plato, who is the 10th planet. Pluto, which, you know, is it a planet?

Is it not a planet? We're not going to have that argument today. But we understood, we, we can, we can, there's, there's a regularity to nature.

We can understand gravity. We can understand all the mathematics. And here's the question.

Here's the question. And this is where, this is where the lines get drawn.

They, they really do. Do we understand all of this stuff because we're just really, really smart?

Or is the reason we understand this stuff is that we're made in the image of God, and we live in God's world, and we function on the foundation that not only has

God revealed himself, but he has revealed himself to be a God of order, and he's told us to take dominion over this earth, this creation, and so we can study it, we can learn it.

You know that the early scientists in Europe functioned on a

Christian worldview. They believed that God created the heavens and the earth. And really, everybody believed that until Darwin gave them an excuse.

Not everyone, everyone functioning as a Christian worldview. There are lots of, you know, paganism for a long, long time had said the exact opposite.

Paganism never gave a solid foundation for science because they didn't have a basis of the regularity of nature.

Nature's laws come from nature's God. If all things hold together in him, we have a foundation for a

Christian worldview, for the lordship of Christ over all of knowledge. Now, let's get this out of the way before I turn to Dr.

Wolfe's comments. I remember, it's strange the things that you remember and the things that you don't remember anymore, which is anything short -term, but I remember sitting in the

Bible study room, really sort of a multi -purpose room at Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church many, many, many, many, many years ago.

And Jim Callahan was teaching, and Callahan had taught philosophy at Phoenix College for many, many years, and met and studied under Van Til.

And he was talking about Christian worldview issues and the importance of having a

Christian worldview. And he used as his example a

Borg -Warner automatic transmission. Now, I've never encountered one. I have an

Allison automatic transmission. I'm going to go ahead and sit down, if you don't mind. And if you can drop it another degree or so, that would be nice, because I'm preaching over here, and I'm wearing a jacket.

And I don't know about all the rest of you out there, but it's going to hit 85 at my house yesterday.

And I'm like, this is too early. Stop. It's going to get hot enough here in Phoenix.

Could we please cool it back down for a while? Anyways, he used a

Borg -Warner automatic transmission as his example. And he said, now look, when we're talking about the sufficiency of Scripture, and we're talking about the nature of Scripture, and we're talking about a

Christian worldview, the normal accusation against us is that we are saying that the

Bible can tell you how to rebuild a

Borg -Warner automatic transmission. He says, it can't. He said,

I've done stuff like that before, and the manuals are big and thick and complicated.

And I'm not trying to make that the 28th book of the New Testament. That's probably a good thing. Wouldn't sell well,

I can assure you of that. So he said, the issue is not that the

Bible is an exhaustive companion of all of human knowledge. He says, the issue is, if what the

Bible teaches is true, if Jesus Christ really is the creator of all things, if he truly is the

Son of God made flesh, if the incarnation is true, if the death, birth, and resurrection of Christ is true, if there is an empty tomb in Jerusalem, then certain things inevitably flow from that.

It's funny, I've encountered atheists who could figure this out too.

They recognize, man, if what you're saying about Jesus Christ is true, then yikes, he is, in fact, basically what they would say is, why are you

Christians so hesitant to make much of him and to say he is all these things?

He is really the one in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Colossians uses that phraseology too. Again, liberals, leftists will try to limit that and say, well, it's just soteriological knowledge.

It's not actually, even though Christ created the atom, the knowledge of those things are not in him.

And many of the other leftists would say, well, Christ obviously didn't create all those things. Well, there you go, there's where the dividing line is.

And so, Mr. Callahan's assertion was, the

Bible is sufficient because it gives you all of the, it tells us about a world in which the

Borg -Warner automatic transmission will always work because the laws of thermodynamics, the laws of pressures and hydraulics and all the rest of that stuff, they are laws.

If this was a random universe with no purpose or direction, then you could build an automatic transmission that worked today and it won't work tomorrow because the laws, hydraulics and so on and so forth might change, right?

It could be different tomorrow. But his whole point was the foundation for being able to do the kind of complex things, brain surgery.

You might say, are you literally saying that the resurrection of Christ is relevant to brain surgery?

Yes, I am. Why am I? Because Jesus Christ is the creator of all things.

His resurrection proves that, proves God's providence in this world, and proves that God is working his decree in this world.

And therefore, we have confidence that what scripture says, that we're fearfully and wonderfully made, we can examine the human body, we need to do so within the context of God's purposes.

And man, that's really important today. In fact, if you don't believe all these things, I don't even know how you're addressing issues like genetic manipulation and mRNA vaccines and playing with the genome and all the rest of that stuff.

This should be stuff that is absolutely basic for us today. But for many people, it's not.

And when you disconnect the biblical teaching that this world is

God's world, and he has set up the parameters in which it is to function, when you get rid of that and grant to mankind his autonomy, and grant to mankind that, well, look, you just need your experts in this area and your experts in that area, and they don't have to worry about being under the lordship of Christ.

They can have absolutely true knowledge in their fields. Don't get me wrong, I don't have any reason to believe that the surgeon,

I could be wrong about this, I hope I am, but I don't have any reason to believe that the surgeon that did my cardiac ablation 14, yeah, right at 14 years, yeah, it was, yeah, it was 14 years ago, is a

Christian. And yet I trusted him to do cardiac ablation. And I didn't necessarily ask the surgeons that I had all the surgeries last week, though I had one of them to stop and pray with me, so I was like, oh, that's cool.

But you can have knowledge in a field, you can have great knowledge in the field.

The issue is, can you properly relate the great knowledge you have in the field you are studying with all the rest of God's creation?

The only way to do that is through Christ. I was going to, and I forgot, and I apologize, I was going to put up the graphics

I designed for the debate that I did with the atheist, University of Illinois years ago, where you have all the fields of human knowledge, and the secular viewpoint has man in the center, so it's up to us to have knowledge of all of these things, and the fact of the matter is, we can't do it.

We are insufficient, we can't be in the middle of that. When you put law and ethics and history and science and all these different areas of human knowledge, not human knowledge, just knowledge itself, whether we know it or not, fractals existed in the days of Jesus.

Nobody knew it because you didn't have a computer to chart it, but they were part of the number system that God created, so we didn't know about it at the time, but it was still a reality, it was knowledge that man didn't have, but has now.

The only way to have true knowledge is the next graphic I have, God's in the center, man's down here, and as I have relationship to the triune

God, then through him I can have true relationship to all these fields of knowledge. I don't have to know those things infallibly, he does, and then he reveals to me what

I need to know to serve him and to understand his universe as I relate to him.

Again, Christian worldview studies have been vitally important over the past 100 years, primarily because as we came out of the period called the

Enlightenment, and I agree, that's prejudicial language, it's not necessarily accurate language, and I saw someone recently, wet the whistle here real quick, cold water, wonderful stuff, of course there's some people you might wonder what's in that, but that's actually cold water with a little bit of,

I think it's strawberry, fizzy flavoring in it, good stuff. Anyway, what were we talking about?

Moses was in the bulrushes, and someone was saying, you know, the dark ages weren't the dark ages, the dark ages were actually the golden ages, and the

Enlightenment turned all the lights off. Well, if you can look at a period of time where people lived, you know, 45 to 50 years, normal lifespan, never went more than seven miles any one direction from where they were born, for the vast majority of humanity, were illiterate, and suffered from anachronism, they thought everything had always been the way it was now, that's why when they did draw pictures of Davids, you know, wearing armor and living in a castle, because everyone's always worn armor and lived in a castle.

If you call that the golden age, okay, I understand what they're saying, and that is that there was a generalized, if not biblically deep,

Christian worldview. God's creator, if there's a flood, God did it, if there is a famine,

God did it, if there's a plague, God did it. Yeah, and the problem is, once the

Enlightenment takes place, once man starts learning some of the mechanisms by which these things happen, oh, plate tectonics, oh, the earth moves, this is an earthquake, pressure builds up, okay, here's what a plague is, and this is how you can actually stop a plague, and things like that, all of a sudden, and this is what the atheists say, now we don't need

God anymore. That's what happened with the Enlightenment, a confusion of understanding, well, we understand the mechanisms, okay, where'd the mechanisms come from?

Well, we don't know that, but hey, and so I get why people would say what they say, but need to realize there were some serious drawbacks in the medieval period as well.

Once we get into the modern period, where secularism begins to manifest itself in its denial of everything that is good and proper about the

Christian faith, once Darwin especially kicks in, now we are facing all of these challenges, and our ancestors, especially in Europe, had lived within the context of a sacral society, where you are baptized as a child, and that makes you a citizen of the state, and a member of the church at the same time, and Luther recognized early on, he eventually changed his mind because he needed to have the support of the princes, but Luther recognized early on, man, the only way, really, to have a pure and holy church would be to have it separated from the state, and to separate that connection between baptism and membership in the state itself.

Like I said, he changed his view on that, but he recognized it, and I think Zwingli understood it for a while, and then ran for the hills again to have the support of the princes.

Anyway, so Christian worldview language, the term worldview isn't the most important thing.

It comes from German, it was, you know, has connections with Kant, but the issue is that in the

Reformed world, people like Kuyper, Duyverd, popularized by Van Til, then

Bonson, Frame, all the disciples have come down from that direction, and of course,

Francis Schaeffer studies under Van Til as well, and his students that have written on worldview issues,

Nancy Piercy, written on Christian worldview issues for many, many years now. Vitally important, still grossly misunderstood in most churches.

Most Christians still don't see why and how this is so important, and still do not invest much in a way of time in constructing a truly biblical worldview, but it is necessary now because we are in the minority in a secular world today.

Now, I know there are certain places you could go to Africa where secularization is way behind the curve.

Of course, you end up with animism and things like that in its place, but the challenges to the

Christian faith that are presented today require a consistent understanding of God's purposes in creation, so we might respond in a meaningful fashion.

Vitally important. So, on February 1st, so just a few days ago,

Dr. Stephen Wolfe, the Dr. Stephen Wolfe author, is a political philosopher. By his own, he says he's not exegete, he says he's not theologian.

Those are his own words in his own book, but he has taken a leadership role in the development of a form of Christian nationalism that many of us find to be very troubling, and I have said before that when his book first came out, and Doug Wilson and I discussed the book on some sweater vest dialogues, two of them, my consistent concern was the same, sacralism, the blurring of the lines between individual, family, church, and state, which we already saw under Christendom 1 .0,

the Roman Catholic Church in Europe, from, it depends, people would put different dates as to when it really begins.

You can't really put a date on it because, again, things didn't happen on just one day. Because of communication, things could develop very slowly in one area and very quickly in another area, things like that.

But over the centuries after Nicaea, after the fall of the Western Empire, after Justinian especially, you get the establishment of a sacral system that's going to last through the

Reformation because the Reformers are sacralist themselves. That's the political relationship of church and state that they inherited from the medieval period, even though the

Reformation then laid the foundation for the destruction of that system, and people will then blame the

Reformation for the rise of secularism. So here's, you know,

Dr. Wolfe comes out and he's talking about Christian princes, and he's presenting what seemed to me from the start, and now very, very plainly in time since then, is a sacral understanding.

And when I say that, you can go online right now and you can find memes that have been made and videos, stuff like that, of kids who don't have a clue what they're talking.

They don't have any idea what they're talking about, but they'll be mocking me for saying sacralism.

How many times will James White say sacralism today? Drink, or something like that. Well, I think most of them are doing just that. They are drinking, and this is the result that comes from it.

But, you know, kids who have no idea what they're talking about, but they'll mock it because that puts them in the in crowd.

And right now, Stephen Wolfe is the in crowd. So anyways, he posted this, and as soon as I saw it,

I responded on Twitter and said, I'm very thankful for this. Rich is trying to keep me awake by moving things around.

Actually, it's three o 'clock, and so maybe you're just moving the camera angle because you want to make sure people can see it.

Okay, all right, all right. So anyway, got it, got it, got it.

Keep me and Rich on our toes because we're getting old and we move slow now. Anyway, I said on Twitter, I'm really thankful for this because this will help us to understand where the dividing lines are, and it will.

The funny thing is, as I think of a number of the people who will be speaking at the

Trash World Conference in April, everything I said about Christian worldview up to this point, two years ago, they would have completely agreed with.

Completely. Those said, oh yeah, that was great, that was wonderful. Now we're relevant and passing away, and this is all the result of the post -war consensus and all the rest of the stuff.

And once again, who changed? It wasn't us. Anyway, so here's what he had to say.

I think there are four or five slides here. Worldview is a reactionary word.

Evangelicals found themselves embattled with innumerable well -accepted ideas in complex fields requiring specialization that seem to oppose conservative

Christianity. The average person lacks the expertise in these fields to challenge them on their own terms and by their own methodology, yet they need to be challenged because modern life strongly imposes them on everyone.

Now, this is not overly well written. Could have used an editor. It's Twitter, and so it's sort of like, well, maybe this is a throwaway thing that he put out there.

But he normally doesn't post lengthy stuff like this because he's mocked me for posting things of similar length that people don't have the attention span to read them.

Anyway, it's a little bit strange. Worldview is not a reactionary word. It doesn't have to be a reactionary word, and it came into existence, especially in German, before you would have what would be understood today as the modern evangelical movement.

So maybe what he's trying to say is that worldview, as used by evangelicals over the past 50 years, have found themselves embattled with innumerable well -accepted ideas in complex fields.

Such as? I'm really interested now. Is Stephen Wolfe a biologos guy?

Is he into theistic evolution? What does he believe about creation?

I'd really be interested in knowing because it seems to be in the background here in what is being said.

I'm really not sure. But well -accepted ideas in complex fields requiring specialization that seem to oppose conservative

Christianity. It's hard to come up with stuff outside of neo -Darwinian micro -mutational evolutionary theory, age the earth stuff, maybe some things in medical fields.

I don't know. Maybe something along the lines of, you know, homosexuality appears in nature and therefore blah blah blah.

I don't know. The average person lacks the expertise in these fields, as anybody would.

I don't think Dr. Wolfe claims to have expertise in all these fields. I'm sure I've studied far more in genetics, for example, than he has.

Probably in astronomy as well. To challenge them on their own terms and by their own methodology.

Ah, wait, we immediately have to stop and go, and where did they get this methodology?

So much of a proper Christian response is to demonstrate that those utilizing supposed scientific argumentations against the

Christian faith have developed a methodology that's incoherent in and of itself. Where'd they get this from?

You're borrowing from God's world to prop up your world. That's part of what presuppositional apologetics is all about.

And we know that Dr. Wolfe despises presuppositional apologetics.

He is a Thomist, by his own confession. Yet, they need to be challenged.

I would assume that they is well accepted complex ideas that oppose conservative

Christianity. I guess that's what it is. Not well written. Yet they need to be challenged because modern life strongly imposes them on everyone.

Okay, so you live in a secular society, you have to respond to secular argumentation against faith.

Okay, that's true. Worldview was introduced to neutralize these ideas for the average person.

No, I don't. I could be completely wrong. As we're going to see in,

I think, the next one, I just don't get the feeling that Kuyper, or Duyverd, or Van Til, or Bonson, or Schaefer, Nancy Peercy, any of these folks were a part of the doctoral program in political philosophy that Dr.

Wolfe did. Because worldview is not reactionary. It can be used in a reactionary way, but there's nothing in the study of Christian worldview that in and of itself is reactionary.

It has direct relevance to the defense of the faith, obviously. But it doesn't mean it's reactionary.

And he seems to know why the term was introduced.

By whom? When? Was introduced to neutralize these ideas for the average person.

Neutralize them? What do you mean? Well, not by analyzing data, refuting propositions, showing invalidity, criticizing methodology, knowing the actual facts on the ground, etc.

But by blaming them on presuppositions. Now, anyone who has spent significant time working through this kind of stuff, let alone someone like myself who has brought presuppositional methodology into a debate in numerous contexts, on all sorts of different topics, whether religious or non -religious, atheist, whatever else it might be.

The person writing these words does not know what he's talking about. If I look at analyzing data, then

I immediately think of my dear friend Jason Lyle, who is a presuppositionalist, by the way, smartest man

I've ever met. I look at a Jason Lyle and he has discovered planets by analyzing data.

And he's analyzing the same data that the secular atheist has.

And so it's not a matter that we can't analyze data, it is what methodology of analyzing the data are you going to use?

If you're going to start with certain presuppositions, you're going to analyze the data in a different way.

Let me give you a real glaring example that we can all agree on. I guess there's a

TV show, I don't see the vast majority of TV shows. I guess it's a TV show with some autistic, brilliant kid who's a doctor.

Since he's autistic, he'll say whatever he says. And they had this transgender dude pretending to be a woman, and he wouldn't buy it.

He says, no, this is your genetics, you're a male. And everybody's like, no, no, no, no, no.

And then he eventually finds out what's wrong with this person is they have testicular cancer.

Okay, well, you know, the assumptions, the presuppositions brought to the analysis of the data sort of important.

And if you bring the presupposition that you can change your gender because you feel that way that day, yeah, poor guy is going to die of testicular cancer.

Facts don't care about feelings has been said more than once. So analyzing data is not against presuppositional apologetics.

It's not against Christian worldview. The whole point of the worldview writings that have been produced over the past century or so is we need to recognize that the methods of analyzing data have to be concurrent, consistent with God's world, because the data comes from God's world.

If you force analyzing data on God's world, and you're saying that there is no objective truth, there is no regularity of nature, then your analysis of the data is going to be completely wrong.

You may get away with it for a while, but it's gonna be wrong. It's gonna lead to disaster. Refuting propositions, same thing.

How do you refute them? On what basis? How do you refute any proposition in a random world that has no regularity of nature, and you can't explain the regularity of nature?

Showing invalidity, how do you show that an argument is valid? You have to have the laws of logic. Where do they come from? That's a presupposition.

Criticizing methodology, same thing as analyzing data. Knowing the actual facts on the ground. Again, knowing facts.

There are certain presuppositions behind how you can know facts.

So it's not all that. The only way you can do it consistently is by recognizing presuppositions, but by blaming them on presuppositions.

Okay, this demonstrates, once again, Dr. Wolff is not a careful scholar. He's not analyzing.

I'd love to hear him attempt to interact with Bonson's debate with Stein.

That would be fascinating. It really would be. Who would he end up agreeing with more often?

Interesting question. And worldview explains social phenomena with exclusively

Christian explanations. Okay, that's not even a sentence. So not exactly what it's supposed to say, but evidently it's the idea that all you do from a

Christian worldview thing is you use the term, you blame presuppositions, you promote your presuppositions, and you're done.

And so you give exclusively Christian explanations. No, you give explanations that are consistent with the world in which

God has placed us. Because that's the only world we live in. And that's how you deal with mankind who is what?

Made in the image of God. It really shouldn't be all that difficult.

He continues, these explanations are typically simplistic and don't explain much.

Again, not someone who's read Kuyper, Duybert, Van Til, Bonson, Schaefer, Frame, who are significantly deeper than anything he has ever written in any field.

Further, in effect, no evangelical sees the need to know anything about these fields.

That is just insanity. How does... was he laughing when he typed these words?

Let me use him again as an example. He's a dear brother. Jason Lyle has an

IQ off the charts. Stephen Wolfe has never done anything close to what

Jason Lyle has done in so many different fields. And Jason Lyle is a presuppositionalist.

He understands this. So you're telling me that when

Jason Lyle writes a book on Einstein and the concept of time, which

I cannot begin to understand, and I don't think Stephen Wolfe can either, that this is simplistic and doesn't explain much?

Wow, when I read this, I was just like, oh, and he hit return and sent this? Oh no.

Further, in effect, no evangelical sees the need to know anything about these fields. They only need to know a universal method of worldview analysis, which is a phrase that Al Mohler uses all the time.

I'm starting to wonder if Stephen Wolfe doesn't like Al Mohler either. It's a general skill for everything, no specialization required.

Now, there is a germ of truth here. There is a germ of truth here. Because since we all live in God's world, since we all live in God's world, then the scientist does too.

And since we're all made in the image of God, then yes, a simple believing

Christian can give an answer to these specialized scientists by appealing to the reality that we both live in the same world.

That scientist is stealing from my worldview to make his work. And he's made in the image of God and he knows it.

And he's suppressing that knowledge. And so yes, a simple believing Christian can be used of God to give testimony to the most brilliant, specialized scientists out there.

That doesn't mean there's not room for brilliant, specialized scientists like a Jason Lyle, because there is.

And God bless him for doing it. But it does mean that apologetics can be done by, well, isn't it strange that one text that says that we're always to be ready is addressed to everybody, not just the specialists, not just the political philosophers, but to everybody.

If you know God and you know his world, it's amazing what you can tell people in that world and that God will use that.

Fascinating. It's a general skill for everything, no specialization required.

This is why I think some evangelicals convert out of Protestantism. Well, Dr. Wolfe wanders into another field that I have no reason to believe that he has a whole lot of expertise in himself.

Why? They find that their conservative professors, who actually know the field of study well, are often

Roman Catholics or maybe Anglicans. And they find among them an intellectual ecosystem that favors inquiry and critical thought without importing these worldview lenses to explain things away.

I want you to hear that. Because, I don't remember what the gentleman's name was,

I remember, I think he was a young man that I had taught Greek.

Yeah, I had taught him Greek, maybe did a systematic theology class for him, something, at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary.

And he was going off to do further postgraduate study somewhere that wasn't nearly as conservative as Golden Gate was.

And I remember looking him in the eye, I think we had lunch or something like that, I remember looking him in the eye and said, look, because we had developed a nice relationship.

And I looked at him and I said, look, you need to be reading 1

Corinthians 1 regularly while you're in school. And if you buy into liberalism,

I will hunt you down. Basically something along those lines. And I warned him, because there's an element of truth here.

If you do not want a consistent, coherent worldview that is rooted in the supremacy of Scripture, and that requires you to function in whatever field you are going into under the

Lordship of Christ, which will close many a door to you, then yes, you can find lots of places to go where you'll find lots of Roman Catholics, you'll find lots of super liturgical groups.

Whenever I see Anglican, I just, I can't have the automatic recoil that a lot of people have, because I know good, solid -believing

Anglicans. Yes, they're the minority. I don't know how they stay in the Communion, to be honest with you.

I would have bailed long ago, but I know them. And so I always struggle a little bit at that point.

Know them, still love them. Anyway, you will find that Roman Catholicism in the

West, go to Boston College. You will find specialists at Boston College.

They don't believe a word the Magisterium says. Not in the sense in which the Magisterium has spoken, and in the context of the

Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church. They don't believe in all that supernatural gibberish, but they're teaching at a

Roman Catholic school. And so yeah, you'll find all sorts of that kind of stuff.

No problem finding that at all. But an intellectual ecosystem that favors inquiry and critical thought.

Stephen Wolfe thinks that having a Christian worldview is opposed to an intellectual ecosystem that favors inquiry and critical thought.

You know why? Because he's a Thomist, and Thomas not only had errors about God, thanks to Aristotle, but he had errors, most importantly, in the doctrine of man.

Because the traditions of the Roman Catholic Church had already developed to that point. And that's why

Thomistic theology results in human autonomy. That's what you've got here. They've got the human autonomy to do inquiry and critical thought without importing these worldview lenses.

They have worldview lenses! They just don't have to worry about it. They're not going to be challenged about it.

That's why you get all these wildly divergent quote -unquote scholarly positions.

It's because you have human autonomy. There is no ultimate authority that says, this is the objective truth, that's the objective truth, and that's objective error.

Can't have it. So that's why you can have scholars that will come up with any interpretation of any set of data.

You can. Believe me, you really can. And so it's not a matter of explaining things away.

Then he says, I'd also add that evangelical academics tend to be political squishes and center -left, at least in disposition.

Well, certainly not in the places that I'm a part of, but he probably doesn't have much respect for the places I'm a part of and places

I teach anyways. There is nothing about Protestantism or Roman Catholicism in themselves that explains this.

That only shows how little he knows about Roman Catholicism. Yes, there is.

Most definitely. Protestant intellectuals dominated intellectual thought in Europe for centuries. Depends on which part of Europe you're talking about.

I mean, obviously, you've drawn a line sort of halfway north and south, and you're talking about the northern part.

Okay. And those Protestant intellectuals who did produce tremendous work did so because they were functioning in Christian worldview.

I don't know how you can read. Sure. Okay. Well, where is the specific term? I don't know how you can read the first few chapters of the

Institutes and not go Christian worldview. It just slaps you upside the head.

It's entirely, and this is just a typo, it's entirely due to historical dynamics, reaction, and democratization of apologetics.

I have no idea what the democratization of apologetics means. I don't know how he's using it. I'm not even gonna bother with that because there's insufficient context to be able to analyze it.

So he concludes, and then the second paragraph here is a response tweet that he wrote to himself.

We would become much smarter, much smarter if we dropped worldview entirely.

Okay. Well, I'm gonna be very happy to be dumber because Dr.

Wolf thinks I am anyways. He's said so more than once. It's a vitally important term.

It's vitally important in our day. The scriptures equip us to create a

Christian worldview. And I am going to continue to be dumb and to tell everybody who will listen, teach your children to develop a

Christian worldview based upon the radical revelation, the Jesus Christ, the creator of all things. And then he says,

I'd also add that Protestants tend to look to pastors, theologians, and please notice the scare quotes, apologists, to answer every question.

So in the end, you get a lot of worldview and simplistic incomplete answers. Well, I'm not sure what you get a lot of worldview.

What does that even mean? That is so poorly written. But pastors, theologians, and apologists.

So where do you want us to look? Oh, to political philosophers, of course.

So you have the autonomous humans in each of their fields where they have in -depth knowledge.

You know who I want to look to if I have to look to somebody? I want to look to people who, let's say

I'm looking to someone who has great knowledge in a particular field. I want to know that they are practicing their scholarship under the

Lordship of Christ. And I want to know, is he a churchman?

Is he obeying Christ's commands in that realm? Is he willing to learn from others?

Oh, so many in the scholastic realm and academia, they know it all. Instead of recognizing that the way we do academics today doesn't produce the

Renaissance men of old, it produces the people who have such a narrow focus that they have no idea how their field of study relates to the field right next door, let alone to the broad spectrum of human knowledge.

That's who I'm going to look to. But actually looking to pastors, theologians, and maybe those of us who have actually taken the gospel out into the realm where we've defended it.

Has Stephen Wolfe ever done that? I've never seen any of his debates. I've not seen him debating

Muslims or Roman Catholics or atheists or Mormons or anybody like that. So I'd like to see that.

I'd like to see what that looks like. How is it done differently since us dumb people do it wrong? How is it done differently?

I'd like to know. It'd be interesting to see. It really would. So I thought this was a very useful section, a very useful tweet.

As soon as I saw it, I'm like, we're going to the big studio and we're going to cover this.

And we did. And we did it in almost an hour and a half. And that'll be the reason that people will say

T -L -D -R. I had to look that up. T -L -D -R.

Too long, didn't read. I had some guy, I wrote like a three paragraph, 800 words on something and he said,

T -L -D -R. I'm like, I couldn't help but think of that time when Doug Wilson was at that university.

And this crazy purple haired nutball in the audience wouldn't let him get more than a sentence out of the time.

And finally he just interrupted us, excuse me, but I'd like to finish what I'm saying because I frequently have thoughts that require more than one sentence to express them.

She had no idea that a huge rock from heaven came down completely squished her at that point.

She had no idea that she had just been turned into, I don't think they had memes back then, but if they had, that would have been very, very meme -able at that particular point in time.

So yeah, we sometimes have to address things and it's worth going in depth.

It really, really is. It's worth going in depth. All right. So thanks for watching the program today.

Don't know if we'll be back in here or where we'll be later in the week, but we'll be back.