Thoughts on Liberalism

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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 Baptist Church.
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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the
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United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. And good morning, welcome to the Dividing Line, a post -debate
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Dividing Line. Just last Thursday evening I had the opportunity of engaging Imam Shabir Ali in a debate on did
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Jesus claim deity at a mosque in Toronto.
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I was very thankful for the North American Muslim Foundation opening their facility for us.
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We had a very good crowd, had to put out extra chairs and a very respectful crowd and a very good debate.
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And I was busy after that debate doing a conference and spent all day yesterday traveling.
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And as a result, have not been able to sort of keep up with some of the things that have been going on.
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I have noticed that, in fact, Imam Shabir has put up a discussion of the entirety of the debate.
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And so yesterday, as I was coming home,
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I had a very long trip because of the way that the flight was routed and the connections and all.
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I flew from Toronto to Charlotte and Charlotte home. So it was a six hour trip instead of what would normally be about a three and a half hour direct flight.
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I get lots of miles that way, but spend lots of time in the air. Well, my my dear
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MacBook Pro battery lasted the whole trip for me. And so I sat there and I thought
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I'd eventually fall asleep. I didn't. I just kept typing and typing. And the result was a fairly long blog article that I posted last evening.
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Part two has already been started as well. And what it has given me the opportunity of doing is addressing the topic of, well, why
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I am not in in the mainstream of what much of Christian theology or Christian scholarship not
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Christian theology or Christian scholarship would say today concerning the history of the biblical text and why
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I am in the mainstream of of the historic views of Christians. But stand outside of that mainstream today as as we must,
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I think, to be faithful in many ways. I started addressing some of these things in the blog article that I posted last evening.
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But I wanted to say a few things in the first half hour of the program today, and then we will take your calls if you were maybe at the debate or have some relevant questions in regards to certain things relating to the
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Bible, its history and why we can trust it so on and so forth. Eight seven seven seven five three three three four one is the phone number on that.
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But we won't be getting to that till the bottom of the hour now during the course of our debate over and over again,
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Shabir Ali and I discussed issues relating to Shabir's constant reliance upon modern form critical methodologies.
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And let's face it, most folks sitting in the pew don't know what form criticism is, redaction criticism is or what textual criticism is or what the difference between them are.
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And there are major differences. I engage in textual criticism, and yet you'll find a lot of fundamentalists.
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Well, for example, we saw in the video that Sam Gipp posted. He talked about someone being a textual critic, and that should tell you something that's wrong right away.
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Well, no, it shouldn't. If you know the difference between a textual critic and a form critic or redaction critic and what all those things are.
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And a lot of folks just throw their hands up in the air and say, I just I'm just not interested or I can't learn all this stuff, which, of course, you actually can.
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It's not that difficult to do. But the reality is that what you hear in classrooms across America and across the
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Western world today and what you hear from pulpits in liberal churches is very different than what you hear from the pulpits in most conservative churches.
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And the argument of the world is conservatives are just holding on to something that's been thoroughly disproven. You just need to get with the you just need to get with the program and recognize the
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Bible isn't what you Christians always thought that it was. That's the message that is being pronounced with with strength and clarity in on NPR and by Bart Ehrman and by all of Bart Ehrman's followers in philosophy, religion classes all across the
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Western world. And I am pretty I don't
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I don't sit around just reading this stuff all the time. I don't really have an interest in that. But I am pretty well aware of the stream and the spectrum of argumentation that is utilized from those way to my left in regards to where the
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Bible came from and from their perspective, why it cannot be trusted in the way
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I trust it. Now, they may come up with they may be religious people. They may come up with ways of saying, well, you know what, despite the fact that I think
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Paul contradicted Paul and Paul contradicted James and Peter is out and doing his own thing and Luke's over there, there is no singular message.
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And the Old Testament is actually a compilation of all sorts of disparate documents. And it doesn't have there are no themes that flow through all of it, or it's all just up to me to determine what those are.
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So I don't buy into any and all of that stuff. But I am familiar, very, very familiar with the scholars who promote these things.
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Why? Because I'm a graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary and a graduate with honors, by the way.
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And that was, well, coming up on on 30 years ago now.
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Wow, that's a frightening thing to think about. But, yeah, you know, well, actually,
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I graduated in college in 1985. So we'll be coming up on 30 years before long.
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It'll be here before we know it. And things have changed. And Fuller has changed a lot in the 25 or so years since I was there.
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But the reality is that the large majority of the reading that I had to do at Fuller Theological Seminary introduced me to a wide range of theological perspectives.
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At the time, I didn't know why that was. And at the time, it was somewhat frustrating. I'll be honest.
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But now, in hindsight, it's one of those situations where you wonder about God's providence at the time, and then you give it 20 years, 25 years, you start figuring out what
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God's providence was up to. And so I had to read, for example, I've used the illustration many times, but it's applicable here.
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I took a class in the Pentateuch and my professor, a professor I liked a lot, by the way, and learned much from.
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You see, I learned how to appreciate the solid information and get rid of the fluff and the rest of the stuff that was inconsistent with what
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I see as a consistent Christian worldview and a consistent supernatural worldview.
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And I learned to learn from people who do not walk my line.
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That's one of the differences between me and a King James -only fundamentalist Baptist, is that a King James -only fundamentalist
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Baptist does not believe you can learn anything from anybody who holds a view other than your own, and that you shouldn't have anything to do with them, and you should run away, walk, run, however, get away from that person, and so on and so forth.
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I don't hold that perspective, and my professors at Fuller will tell you that I was respectful, even when
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I had to express my disagreement. And so I had a class in the Pentateuch, and I had an excellent professor, and I actually had this professor for,
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I think, six classes, as I recall, which is a fair number. That's a lot. And he held up a commentary on Deuteronomy by Gerhard von
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Rath. Now, one of the things that, obviously, I had to learn a lot about, and since I was already involved in apologetics,
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I really focused upon, was the, especially in the
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Old Testament, even more so than new, the rather radical theories that had become predominant.
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I mean, I've said many times, conservatives gave up the Old Testament to the liberals a long time ago.
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You can hardly buy today a commentary on the Old Testament that goes into any depth at all.
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In other words, it would discuss textual relationships between Hebrew and Aramaic and Greek and would provide you information concerning Ugaritic parallels and brings in information from the ancient
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Near Eastern texts from Pritchard and things like that. You can hardly buy a commentary like that anymore that is actually written from a perspective of belief that this is, in fact, a divine text.
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That this is, well, how Jesus described it, as being God speaking. You can't hardly buy it.
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You can't hardly find scholars like that. There's still some left. But they will admit, I mean, if you go to SBL and you attend any of the
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Old Testament stuff, you're just going to be hearing just the wildest and craziest stuff out there from the way, way out to the left.
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And that's where most everybody is. And he held up that commentary from Von Rott, said, this is the best commentary on Deuteronomy in the
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English language. And we had to write a review of it. And if you read
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Von Rott, it's thoroughly based upon, well, you have this source over here and this source over there. And you've got the
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Deuteronomist source, you've got the Priestly source, you've got the Yahweh source, you've got stuff coming in here from the
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Ugaritic, and you've got this coming up. And it's all just cobbled together and not really edited well.
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And it's just this evolutionary process that puts this together. And even once you get the final form of Deuteronomy, which you don't even have till well after the days of David and Solomon and so on and so forth, almost into the intertestamental period before you even have the final form of Deuteronomy, it's going to be different than what you have in Leviticus.
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It's going to be different than what you have in Exodus. You've got all this, you know, there's no way to even begin to come to the conclusion that any of this stuff actually is overly relevant, because it's just this cobbled together stuff.
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And I guess really for a lot of people, the only real relevance from their perspective is that since people have used this stuff in religious contexts for many, many centuries, that's what its relevance is.
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That's all there is to it. And I had to write a review of it. And when
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I wrote the review of it, you had to mention your positives and negatives. And the only positive thing
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I could say about Gerhard von Raad's commentary on Deuteronomy was that it had a very nice binding. And then
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I started into the negatives. And I still have that in my library. I haven't gotten rid of it.
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I haven't. They didn't burn it. And I read it. You can go in there today.
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There'll be things underlined and marked. I entered into the mindset of that perspective so that I can understand it.
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And so I'm not unfamiliar with these things. Like I said, I don't sit around all day long reading that stuff.
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But I am familiar with where it's coming from. In the debate with Shabir Ali, I once again had to raise the issue of the fact that he upon scholarship, that in its fundamental presuppositions, if it were applied to his own faith, would refute his own faith.
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But he won't do that. He will not make the same application.
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And he seems to be very confused by this because he mentioned some names to me.
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Specifically mentioned two names, Dr. Richard Balcom and FF Bruce. And he gave me
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FF Bruce's book on New Testament history, which I used as a textbook in seminary and have used when teaching relevant subjects to that myself.
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So I certainly had read that work many, many years ago. But I appreciate him giving me a copy.
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I also gave him a copy of some books as well. But we normally do that when we debate. Anyway, he raised these two scholars.
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Now, FF Bruce and Richard Balcom would come out at very different points, would come out differently on different points.
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I would say Bruce would be more conservative in general than Balcom. However, Richard Balcom has shown a willingness to buck the trends.
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He's obviously a tremendous scholar. And I really appreciated
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Jesus and the eyewitnesses. I've really appreciated other works he's written. He goes against the grain in many ways.
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The problem was when Shabir turns around and says, what do you think of Richard Balcom? Well, he's doing his opening statement.
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How can you even give a meaningful response to a question like that? There are just so many issues that would have to be addressed as to where we would have presuppositionally different starting points and concluding points.
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And so, I mean, I'm like, ah, you know, because I have some areas where we would have disagreement, other areas where I've learned a lot from him, other areas where, well, for example, he presents in Jesus and the
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Eyewitnesses the idea that the John of the Gospel of John is the disciple John, not the apostle John.
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OK, you know, that's a theory from the early church. He makes that argument. OK, I would consider that adiaphora, something that's not, you know, you know, you can debate it.
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The Bible doesn't say one way or the other. So you can debate those things. And I was concerned that in light of how short the debate was, that some of my comments might be misconstrued in leading someone astray as to, well, you just, you know, unless somebody agrees with you, you just disagree with everybody.
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This is not true. I mean, I brought up Baucom later and pointed out that his work in Jesus and the
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Eyewitnesses goes directly against the rather simplistic redaction perspective that Shabir Ali utilizes when he quotes from Raymond Brown and people like that.
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And he doesn't always just go to the assumption that as soon as you see a text that it's secondary, it's the result of editing, it's the result of redaction.
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And really, that's the whole issue here is that Shabir and many of his compatriots on the
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Islamic side of things who actually start studying these things are far too quick to embrace writers and authors who begin with one simple assumption, and that is whatever this text is about, it can't be, it cannot be what the
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Christian church has always thought it was about. It must be. We must look for, well, you know,
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James D .G. Dunn wrote Unity and Diversity in the New Testament. And the problem is the unity got lost in all the diversity.
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And of course, that was a big term back when I was in seminary, diversity. That's a nice way of saying contradiction, teaching and saying different things.
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There is no unity. There is no commonality. And there's lots of scholars out there who will not even give consideration to anyone who would say, well, let's start by asking, would
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Paul and James actually be saying the same thing? No, you're not even allowed to go there.
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That doesn't even come up in the class discussion. That's what Christians used to believe. We've gotten past that.
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And if you want to get anywhere in the theological realm, you've just got to stop thinking about that.
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Don't even go there. That's artificial. That's where the Christians were a long time ago.
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We're past that. You just simply have to accept as a given fact that this diversity is, well, completely human in origin.
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That we are not examining divine documents here, and therefore we should not be looking for any divine consistency.
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We should look at these as solely human productions, and hence there's going to be human foibles and human errors, and there's going to be contradiction, and we need to plumb the contradictions.
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This has become so much a part of the thinking of the vast majority of critical scholarship in New Testament circles.
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And I'm speaking of the broad range of things. I mean, Raymond Brown. I mean, you're really getting way out of a conservative zone when you get to someone like Raymond Brown.
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But you read these folks, and the discussions that took place in Calvin or someone like that don't even appear here.
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It's just not even relevant anymore. Other than to maybe quote it just to sort of laugh at it and say, can you believe that people actually took time to try to harmonize these things and to try to see how possibly you might want to give the benefit of the doubt to the author that maybe we don't know everything about what was going on in that context?
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That kind of stuff, it's just not even allowed. It is not allowed in the vast majority of schoolrooms.
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What's happened is you get certain perspectives that become popular, and they just start to propagate themselves.
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One person quotes it, and another person quotes him quoting that. And eventually it has the look as if, well, everybody recognizes this.
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I mean, all the big names believe this. And it creates a foundation that really isn't there.
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Because when you start probing and you say, well, why do you come to that conclusion? You discover that it really goes back to certain presuppositions that you bring to the text itself.
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And of course, we live in a very secular age. And that secular age has deeply influenced the practice of scholarship, even in what is called
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Christianity. And as a result, you have a large number of individuals who hold advanced degrees, and yet they are approaching a text that was written by men with a supernatural worldview, but they approach it as philosophical and theological naturalists.
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And the result is what you see in the wide variety of teachings available out there on both the
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Old and the New Testament. So, for example, Richard Balcombe, I've listened to—he's not a scintillating teacher,
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I will give you that as far as his speaking style goes—but
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I listened to a lecture, it sounded like he was reading it, a lecture that he gave, and someone brought up the text in Mark 2.
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And what I really appreciated was he just sort of said, it just seems so obvious what is going on in Mark 2, in that what's happening here does display the deity of Christ.
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And then he was talking about the rich young ruler, and saying to Jesus, you know,
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Jesus saying, why do you call me good? And even he took the interpretation of that that I have, and that is the young man needed to know who he was dealing with.
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Jesus wasn't denying his own goodness, that he was attempting to get the young man to recognize what the nature of real goodness is.
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And so there are a lot of places where we would be in perfect agreement on things.
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But when it comes to the consistency of the text as a whole, and how it came to have the form that it had,
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I simply see no reason to assume the things that many scholars today do assume.
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Obviously, F .F. Bruce, I would think, would be likewise very, very conservative. I have utilized F .F. Bruce's commentary in Hebrews, in my preaching through Hebrews a number of times, and found it very, very useful.
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Do I always agree with everything F .F. Bruce says? No, I don't. There's no one that I can say I always agree with everything.
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And it bothers me that Shabir keeps saying, well, you've put these people on a list of recommended reading.
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And, you know, why would you put them on a list of recommended reading if you don't?
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Well, conservatives actually read the other side. We read people we don't necessarily agree with.
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So putting him on a list, and he's brought this up twice now, and I've corrected it every single time, putting him on a list has absolutely nothing to do with that being an endorsement of everything that that person says or the perspectives that they take on everything.
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That's just simply not the case. And I think that needs to be kept in mind.
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Now, all of this comes back to the real issue of how we approach the text of Scripture itself and why
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I take a fundamentally different perspective than many other people do. Part of it is because when
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I was in seminary, when I would start to challenge what was being said, it became very clear to me.
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Again, I was already involved in apologetics. This was something that I was already thinking about. This was something I was already having to deal with. I discovered that many of my professors had imbibed their perspectives in a rather, shall we say, non -critical way.
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And so just because a perspective becomes popular, just because, well, so -and -so says it and so -and -so over there says it, so you just have to follow along.
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Well, you know, I know enough about church history to know there have been times in the not -too -distant past when the assured results of scholarship have collapsed in the dating of Mark and things like that.
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And so I don't just follow along in that way. And in the same way, you have to learn how to appreciate what a scholar says in one area and recognize where you might have differences in another.
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One of the confusions that Shabir seemed to have was, well, look at all these people who believe
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Mark was written first. Well, look, as N .T. Wright said, we don't know when the Gospels were written.
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We don't know what order they were written in. Yes, Mark in priority is the popular theory today.
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It hasn't always been. And in fact, if you look at the history of the church, it would be a very small minority of the time period where Mark has been considered to be the first primary gospel and that it was just simply being used in an editorial fashion by Matthew and Luke.
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The early church thought Matthew was written first. That's probably why it's first in the canon. Do we know?
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Do we have any way of finding out? I don't think we do. There are many people who are absolutely convinced today, well, but you see, if you start with Mark and then you theorize something called
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Q and then we can put this together. And of course, John's out in the woods someplace. We don't even have to worry about him.
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And so we can come up with this theory and it seems to work pretty well. But you have to assume so many things.
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One of the assumptions that is assumed that doesn't make any sense whatsoever to me is that Matthew, let's say
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Matthew's sitting there and somehow he's gotten a hold of Mark. Now, how do you get a hold of him? How do you even know about Mark?
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There seems to be this assumption in the back of people's minds that, well, you know, because they were all involved in Christian leadership, you know, they had each other's cell phone numbers or something like that.
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But people don't realize how slowly information moved in those ages. And, you know, you had to get on ships and cross seas and get into storms and wreck on islands and that or walk for months on end.
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And things didn't just happen overnight. And so if Matthew actually got hold of a written copy of Mark in those early decades, and I do believe that these were written prior to 80 -70, it just makes no sense unless you're a theological naturalist and then you can't have prophecy.
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But it just makes no sense that even if they were written after 80 -70, you'd talk about 80 -70 in the way that the
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Gospels do. It makes no sense. And I'm not the only person, even liberals have recognized that.
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That's not something I made up. But let's say he gets hold of a copy of Mark somehow.
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Where did he get it from? He got it from the community. He got it from the
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Christian community. And that Christian community would already be aware of what was in the
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Gospel of Mark, wouldn't they? They certainly would. They certainly would.
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They certainly would be aware of that. And so if Matthew's sitting there and he's already got
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Mark, he already knows Mark is well -known in the community, and he's sitting there, is he going to be changing
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Mark and in fact contradicting Mark? And then if he's doing that, who's he going to send his book out to?
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Isn't it going to be the same community that's already reading Mark? So do you really think
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Matthew's sitting there and he already knows that the community he got this book from already has it and he's actually going to write something that's contradictory to it?
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I mean, wouldn't it just be a given that at least you'd have to start just on a logical basis, everything else aside, on a logical basis, if you're assuming literary dependence of Matthew upon Mark, wouldn't
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Matthew be trying to be consistent with Mark? Maybe shouldn't you possibly give consideration to maybe the idea that Matthew isn't trying to contradict
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Mark, but he's just using Mark and he wants to communicate to a different group, and so he's not trying to contradict
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Mark, so he's actually saying the same things, but just in different words to different people? I mean, just on a naturalistic basis, doesn't that make sense?
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And yet if it could in any way, shape, or form tend toward Christian orthodoxy, no, can't go there.
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You're not going to get published if you write something like that. No, no, no, no, no. You got to go a different direction. So there's just so many issues that come up, and it became very clear to me that basically those types of questions were not really the questions that we were looking for.
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In the seminary classes, that wasn't really what they were looking for.
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And so this is a complicated area. This is an area that we need to do a lot of thought in.
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I recognize that. I know one of the only concerns
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I had after the debate was that someone would think that I had in a simplistic fashion dismissed things.
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But what concerned me was that Shabir seemingly had the idea that, well, if somebody had the idea of Markham Priority, then you disagree with them and I agree with them.
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No, I don't know of almost anybody. Well, I don't know of anybody who takes the conclusions that Shabir comes to.
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I don't know of anybody even in the redaction criticism community where that is just the be -all and end -all of all things that have come to the same conclusions he has.
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Not so much just in the general, well, there's this development over time stuff, this snowball thing, but in regards to Muhammad and John 14 and 16, even
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Raymond Brown, who he relies upon there, doesn't come to that conclusion. And just because someone believes in Markham Priority doesn't mean they necessarily believe in literary dependence.
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Even if they believe in literary dependence, it doesn't necessarily mean that they then have a theory that John developed over a period of time.
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But let me say, and I'm running out of time here, and we want to get to our phone calls and stuff like that once they come back, because someone's having a problem with their
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Magic Jack. I see it. I know, I know. He's got problems with Magic Jack right now.
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But anyways, we'll get to our calls in a moment. Look, I was thinking of this this morning, and I think it is something we need to address.
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There are a number of texts in the Old Testament, for example, in the
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Pentateuch, in the writings of Moses. One of them, just off the top of my head, makes the statement that this was before any kings had ruled over the people of Israel.
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Now, think about that. I mean, that's even more obvious than someone putting up a monument that is there to this day, or writing about Moses' death.
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Okay? There isn't any problem in recognizing that the writings of Moses were compiled by someone after Moses died.
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That's not an issue. I mean, I know that in my upbringing, there were people like, Oh, no, it had to be all prophetic, and Moses saw his death, and he had to—
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Where does that come from? Because clearly, Jesus believed that Moses wrote these things.
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That doesn't mean that Moses wrote the introduction, or the conclusion, or a transitional statement, or anything like that, but that these writings give to us what was given to Moses.
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Now, what happens is, Shabir Ali will say, Well, you know, there were these stages in the writing of Mark, and there were these stages in the writing of John.
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Now, he can't tell us anything about these stages, but I don't care if there were stages, because you know what? What I have done on the
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Muslim book right now is not in any order. I'm not done with the introduction, but I'm done with the chapter later.
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And as I think about my books, I can sort of—I think there are a couple of my books that I wrote the introduction, and then
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I wrote chapter one, and then I wrote chapter two, and then I wrote all the way through to the end. I think there are a couple that I wrote like that.
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But I know there are a bunch of them that that is not how it worked, that they were written in stages.
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The fatal flaw. The fatal flaw initially had an appendix on it the size of a house, which is why we knocked it off and turned it into Answers to Catholic Claims.
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Okay? But originally, Answers to Catholic Claims was a part of the fatal flaw. And so, you know, people look at John 21 and go,
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Well, clearly this is not John. And the point is that the claim of inspiration, the claim of supernatural authority, is invested in what is written.
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It's not invested in the person, and it's not invested in the process. Whether Paul wrote
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Romans in one long night of dictation or over a week or over a month does not change its inspired status.
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And you can theorize all you want about, Well, you know, I think in this particular letter that Paul wrote these chapters first, and then he thought,
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You know, I need to insert this. And so he inserts something later on. Okay, interesting, interesting theory.
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But what does it actually mean? Does it actually end up impacting what it was that the
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Apostle Paul sent to the church at Corinth? Because that's the issue. And so many people will assume that because there are these issues that can be raised, that that means that you approach this solely from a naturalistic perspective.
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And the only answers you can come up with are answers that are based upon a naturalistic assumption that,
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Well, you know, this author, because of his ignorance of this or because of his ignorance of that, this resultant text comes from natural sources.
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That's the difference between approaching these texts from a supernatural perspective and from a naturalistic perspective.
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Is a supernaturalist doesn't have to do what the King James Only Fundamentalist does and say,
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I won't even I won't even think about the possibility that that there were stages in the writing of a gospel.
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Folks, think about how long it would take to handwrite something. There had to be stages. I don't think Mark sat down and just kept writing till his hand cramped up.
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That's why it was only 16 chapters. There had to be something like that. But what they're theorizing is, is that because there are these chapters, then what you actually have is the opportunity for major changing to be done.
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And that introduces contradiction. And it's not one author. It's many authors. And so you're introducing contradiction between the authors and all the rest of stuff.
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And that's where I go, No, I don't think so. You don't have to have that.
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And so just the illustration from my own experience, my own writing of books,
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I think helps to illustrate that we need to be careful. We need to be careful. We don't have a knee -jerk reaction to everything that we hear that's somewhat different than the way we've ever thought about it before.
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Because you know what? We I see that all the time when I explain to folks how the New Testament came into existence.
37:32
You mean it didn't always look like it looks right now. And in fact, there was a time when books in the
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New Testament were just letters that were carried in a leather pouch by somebody that didn't have deodorant and rode on a donkey or maybe just walked through the dusty streets of these cities.
37:57
Yeah, that's right. That's how the letters got there. You mean they weren't in a leather binding with gold edges and thumb indexing?
38:06
Yeah. And since they've never thought about that, they're all freaked out. Like I'm challenging the reality of the
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Bible and I'm not. And so we need to be careful. I think sometimes we conservatives can have a knee -jerk reaction to something that's different.
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And so we're not willing to listen. But that's a completely different world than, well, we all know there can't be prophecy.
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And so that means the Gospels had to be written after A .D. 70. And you just have to assume that Paul contradicts
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Paul and Paul contradicts James. And you can't even allow people who actually see a deep harmony between these writings to even have a place at the table.
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And that, unfortunately, is what's going on. And so in the rest of the article that I've yet to finish writing and put up, what
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I'm going to point out is that, once again, that's not how Shabir Ali approaches the
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Quran. Now, to be honest with you, he did say something in the debate that I did find very interesting.
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And I hope there's going to be some follow -up on. And you know where I hope the follow -up comes from? I hope it comes from Muslims, not from us.
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But Tony Costa asked a very good question because he had made a statement in his, I think it was the rebuttal period.
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I'd have to go back and look at the video to be exactly certain about that.
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But I had raised the issue of the Quran's utilization of pre -existing written materials.
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And it does. There's stuff from the Mishnah, there is Abraham being thrown in the fire, and the stuff about the
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Queen of Sheba coming. And certainly, Jesus speaking from the cradle comes in the
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Arabic infancy gospel, and the little birds comes from the infancy gospel of Thomas, and all of these in the period between the completion of the
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New Testament and the writing of the Quran, that 500 -year period. It's borrowing from other stuff.
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But the Quran says, no, there's nothing that we've borrowed. It's all been sent down by Allah.
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Well, you know, Shabir said some interesting things. He seemed to admit that there was a utilization on the part of the author of the
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Quran of pre -existing material. But he explained it as being all under the sovereignty of God.
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Well, okay, then how come we can't look at the synoptic gospels in that way?
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How come we can't look at the differences that exist between Matthew, Mark, and Luke as means of enriching our understanding of these situations rather than just blatant, deceptive editing?
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Because that, in essence, is what Shabir is saying, is that these writers were editing the view of Jesus to make
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Jesus something he wasn't. Well, that's deceptive. That's wrong. And Muslims have often said, we're defending the real
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Jesus, and we're defending his honor, and all the rest of that stuff. Really? If you can do that with the
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Quran, why can't you see that possibility with the synoptic gospels or in how you're dealing with the
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New Testament? I think that's important. Anyway, 877 -753 -3341, dividing .line
41:24
via Skype is the number. And let's finally get to the man who completely wiped my brain clean because he was having so many connection problems.
41:35
But let's talk to Rology in Oklahoma. Hi, Rology. Hey, how you doing,
41:41
Dr. White? Well, better now. Good. We took a nice long break, and I sat there thinking and thinking and thinking, and then it finally came back to me.
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Sometimes you think about something so long, you'll never remember. It's like trying to remember a dream. Ever try to remember a dream? The harder you try to remember it, the worse the farther it gets.
41:57
You look something like Winnie the Pooh, going, think, think, think, think, think, think. I haven't seen Winnie for a long time, so I don't remember that, but that probably was what
42:04
I was doing. Anyways, what can we do for you, sir? Well, it's along the lines of Islam. I have set up a public dialogue with the imam of the...
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There's a mosque in Oklahoma City. I guess it's the principal mosque for the Oklahoma City area. It's not huge, but it's fairly sizable, and he's fairly well known in this area.
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So we're going to have a public dialogue, not a debate. He didn't want a debate, but rather a dialogue in which we will each answer five questions from our own perspective.
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And one of them, for example, one of them is going to be, who is Jesus? Another one, how can a man have eternal life?
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Another one is going to be, who is Muhammad? And so since this is not a debate, I didn't really want to go in there and say, you know, my full perspective, which is
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Muhammad was a demon -controlled false prophet who is responsible for sending probably more people to hell than anybody else in history.
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I didn't really want to say that, and I didn't think he would take it too well. And I'm looking at this as an opportunity to share the gospel with a whole bunch of people numerous times.
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And so I wanted to get maybe your perspective on what you would say in a situation like that, what you think some important points might be.
43:13
If you had, I'll probably have six or seven minutes to answer that question. Well, you know, it is an issue of methodology as to how you handle the topic of Muhammad, especially because it doesn't seem that Muslims recognize the offensiveness of their inherent assertion that Paul was a liar and a deceiver and really an antichrist, and that the disciples were wimps who collapsed and did not defend the truth about Jesus Christ after the resurrection, even though they're indwelt by the
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Holy Spirit. And they don't seem to realize that. And so when it comes to addressing
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Muhammad, especially in a Muslim context, you know that there is a massive emotional and religious time bomb just ticking there.
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And so I have very clearly in my debate said that Muhammad did not understand
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Christianity. He misrepresented Christianity, that he was not a prophet of Allah. He could not have been a prophet of Allah because a prophet of Allah would not lead us to deny the revelation that God had already made himself in Jesus Christ and the outpouring of the
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Holy Spirit and all the rest of that stuff. I did all of that and I would repeat all of that.
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I think we need to be careful here in the same way that I have for many, many years counseled
45:00
Christians to be very careful in what they say about Joseph Smith. It's easy to just blast away at Joseph Smith and to mock
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Joseph Smith and to do all these things. But you need to realize that if you get upset when people pick and choose only the worst about Paul or only the worst about some other biblical writer, we tend to do the same thing in reverse.
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And I've listened to enough Muslim scholarship to know that there are defenses that can be offered.
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I may not agree with them, but there are defenses that can be offered in regards to some of the more regularly used attacks upon Muhammad.
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And someone like a Hamza Yusuf can put Muhammad in such a context as to challenge the majority of arguments that are used.
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And so I, unlike many folks, am somewhat hesitant to utilize some of the standard arguments that, for example,
46:24
I was listening to a, well, it wasn't a debate. It was a radio program that Nader Ahmed appeared on recently with this secularist guy who's come out and realized that Islam's a bad thing for human rights.
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And so they were supposed to be debating whether Islam is an inherently violent religion.
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And while Nader Ahmed just did what Nader Ahmed always does, the guy that was opposing him went to the other extreme and was just throwing out all the stuff that is normally thrown out about beheading people and Aisha and all the rest of this stuff.
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And nothing was accomplished in that. And I don't think that just with Joseph Smith, the best approach is to throw out everything, including every possible false prophecy.
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I think it's far better to limit your criticism to that which is absolutely airtight, which there's just no way around it.
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There's no way to say, well, the culture was different than or anything else. Stick with what is absolutely beyond question and let the other stuff come over time if the
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Lord blesses and that person's brought to a meaningful knowledge. So what
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I would say to you is I would demonstrate that I know what
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Muslims believe about Muhammad, but I would use a question like that as an opportunity to say, well, knowing what you believe about Muhammad, knowing that you believe that he took the night flight to Jerusalem and that he went up into heaven and he saw things that no one has ever seen and that he is the best of all mankind and he is closer to Allah than anyone else, including
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Jesus the Messiah, knowing what you believe about those things, let me explain to you why
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I don't believe that Muhammad was a prophet of Allah and that is because Allah revealed himself in this fashion and if you believe that at least
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Muhammad was the human instrumentality by which the Qur 'an came into existence, then the
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Qur 'an does not represent accurately the truth of this matter and that matter and I would use it as an opportunity to lay a foundation and say,
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I don't believe in the prophethood of Muhammad because Muhammad was fundamentally ignorant of what my scriptures teach and here's where he was ignorant and here's where he misrepresented it and that allows the conversation then to take place on the basis of what you yourself want to communicate rather than necessarily trying to diffuse the time bomb of the emotional commitment to Muhammad and so if I was just honestly asked what do you think about Muhammad as far as his behavior was concerned,
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I would say, well, he behaved pretty much like you would expect a member of the
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Quraishi clan in Mecca, the Quraish to behave. He clearly imbibed the culture of his day but he did not clearly understand the revelations that he claimed were consistent with his own teaching and here's the reasons why.
50:01
But I don't know that I would want to get into a discussion of marriage ages in the 7th century in Arabia in regards to Aisha, not only because of the conflicting sources but also simply because of the fact that it's sort of like debating polygamy with Mormons.
50:22
I don't know that it ever gets you anywhere. Yeah, absolutely. I think that'll be very helpful.
50:28
This guy is very much into political correctness and kind of squishy talks with more liberal pastors and this may be the first time that he's been in public with somebody who's sort of conservative.
50:42
You do realize he will probably hear this before the conversation takes place. Oh, I'm sure he will.
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I'm sure he listens to you very faithfully. Well, I don't know if that's the case but we have lots of Muslims who do and since you identified the location,
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I'm sure that he'll be hearing this. So I don't know who you're referring to.
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I don't know what his perspective is. There are liberal Muslims out there but I've never met anybody who's a
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Muslim that did not have a deep sense of commitment to the final prophethood of Muhammad.
51:15
You can't say the Shahada every day and not have at least some type of connection there.
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And so I would think that the focus would be best to be kept on those subjects that I raised rather than, well, how could
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Muhammad not have known not to eat that leg of lamb that the Jewish woman gave him that was poisoned and somebody else died
51:38
I mean, there's so many places you can go. I'm just not sure how valuable a lot of them are.
51:46
Right. And I think really my main goal is to keep it centered on the gospel at all times as much as possible since you can never really tell how many
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Muslims in a given audience have actually heard the real gospel. Right. Right. Most definitely. I think that'll be very helpful.
52:01
Thank you very much for your time. Thank you very much, sir. Bye -bye. All right. We're going to try to sneak some others here in really quick.
52:08
Let's run off to Denmark and talk to Rasmus. Hi. Hi, Rasmus. Oh, we're transferring.
52:15
Okay. We're going to 10 minutes after because we're going to have to fix this mess anyways because I demonstrated that I am not actually fully functional after traveling as much as I did yesterday.
52:31
Rasmus in Denmark. Hello. Hello, Rasmus. Going once for Rasmus. Going twice for Rasmus.
52:40
All right. I don't hear any Rasmus. So then let's try talking to Rick in Tucson.
52:50
Hi, Rick. Hello. How are you? I'm good. I'm sorry this deviation from the topic at hand.
52:57
Is that okay? I guess so. Okay. I just want to let you know
53:03
I also got your book, Potter's Freedom, finally. I'm really enjoying that. Well, good. I have really two questions.
53:12
I'll try to be brief. I'll just take the answers off the air. That's fine. My first question is about John chapter 6, specifically verse 29.
53:22
I've been wondering about this for a long time. It seems to me when
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Jesus says, you know, this is the work of God that you believe in him whom he has sent, it seems to me that he's saying that that's something that God does in the believer.
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Or is he actually saying that this is something that you need to do in order to do the work of God so you must believe and then that you are doing the work?
53:47
I don't really know how to take that one. I've heard it kind of go both ways.
53:53
I'd just like to get your opinion on that one. And then my other question is, again, even off topic compared to that,
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I just wanted to know on your website, your article, there's a 100 -verse memory scripture for Mormons.
54:07
Do you have anything like that for Jehovah's Witnesses? Because there is a Jehovah's Witness in my neighborhood that would like to talk, and I'm probably never going to do it just because I don't really feel confident enough.
54:20
I don't really feel prepared enough. But I would like to be more prepared in that regard.
54:28
And I'll throw one third question in there just for good measure. Are any of my questions worth getting a free book?
54:35
Just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'll take the other two answers off the air.
54:42
Thank you. Okay, all right. Thanks, Rick. In answer to the second question, no, I don't have a 100 -verse memorization system for Jehovah's Witnesses.
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100 verses might actually be a little bit short for the JWs, unfortunately. They're even much more challenging,
54:59
I think, than the Mormons are on that level. Though I think you could come up with a decent list out of the
55:07
Forgotten Trinity book. But in regards to the first question, I think the answer, as far as the interpretation is concerned, is found in verse 28.
55:18
Well, actually, verse 27. Jesus is identifying these men as unbelievers, and he says, "'Truly, truly,
55:27
I say to you, you seek me not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. Do not work," there's the term, "'Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the
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Son of Man will give to you, for on him the Father, God, has set his seal.'" And so you are, this idea of working for the food which endures is verse 27.
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So verse 28, "'Therefore they said to him, what shall we do so that we may work the works of God?'
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Ta ergan tu teu." And so there's, I'm sorry, ta ergan tu teu, the works of God.
56:06
And Jesus responds by utilizing the exact same language in verse 29, when he says,
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Jesus then says to them, "'This is ta ergan tu teu, the singular, the work of God,' rather than the works of God in verse 28, "'that you believe in him whom he has sent.'"
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And so the fundamental reason for his saying that is that he is deflecting them from the idea that there are works that they might work, that same verb, ergodso there, that therefore the idea is that they want to do something that would be pleasing or right before God, but Jesus directs them away from that and says, this is the work of God, because they were asking about what could we do that we might do the works of God.
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This is the work of God. And he points them directly back to himself, away from themselves to himself. And that's going to be the whole theme of John 6, is that he is the sole source of spiritual nourishment.
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It all comes back to him. He is the one that you must look to. You can't look to anybody else.
57:19
You shouldn't be looking to yourself. And so that's why he says what he says. This is the work of God, that you believe in him and he has said.
57:25
So until you've done that, you can't do anything else. That's just all there is to it. You're not doing any of the works of God.
57:32
Looking out through the window here, I don't know if we should try to do this or not. Okay, let's try to talk to Rasmus in Denmark again.
57:42
We'll give it one more shot. Rasmus? Hello, my friend. Yes, sir. I'm doing all right.
57:47
That's nice. My question basically is, I'm trying to make this really short because I know you don't have a lot of time left, but is it possible, talking about presuppositionalism versus evidentialism, is it possible to have a meaningful conversation at all with someone who rejects the evidence that the
58:08
Christian would put forth and continues to reject it on the basis of the questioner or the one who requires the evidence on the basis of his presuppositions?
58:21
Well, I mean, that's where you start with— the whole reason that you have to approach the presuppositions is that the worldview that the unbeliever brings to it will allow him to dismiss any evidence and to act as judge as if he has the right to judge the existence of God.
58:38
And so that's the whole reason that the point of connection, the point of commonality that you have with the unbeliever is the fact that he's made in the image of God.
58:51
And so this person who will not accept any evidence as the existence of God, the more and more he talks, the more and more he will give evidence that he is not being consistent with the presuppositions that he himself is bringing to the table.
59:06
So I've told the story many times of the atheist I was talking to, and I just let him talk until he finally said something that demonstrated he was borrowing from my worldview, and I immediately jumped in at that point and then made my presentation.
59:21
And that's really how I, you know, when you say, is there any benefit or any use in talking with someone who presuppositionally will not allow for any of the existence, any existence of evidences for Christianity?
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They can't talk for very long until they contradict themselves at that point because they can't live consistently with those types of presuppositions that would dismiss any sort of evidence for the existence of God.
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They don't live in that world, and so they cannot continue to pretend to exist in that world.
59:54
And ironically enough, the unbeliever of any sort of faith or atheistic position or whatever is often the one
01:00:04
I've experienced going away saying, well, you haven't given me enough evidence, therefore you're foolish. Right.
01:00:09
Oh, yeah. Well, you can't... Look, the concept of projection is very, very common.
01:00:15
I get it all the time. I can't tell you how many times, you know, years ago when I was dealing primarily with Mormons, you know,
01:00:22
I'd have a conversation and I would just, you know, the truth would dominate the conversation. They'd have almost nothing to say.
01:00:28
And the missionaries are actually taught to do this, is that when they're challenged and if things have not gone well for them, what they're supposed to do at the end is reaffirm their testimony and say, and in fact,
01:00:41
I believe more firmly now than ever. You've made me believe in Joseph Smith even more.
01:00:47
Now, you know that's not true, that you know that they're just trying to prop themselves up and you can't let that bother you.
01:00:55
You've got to realize that much of your ministry is going to take place in that person's life when they're in the quietness of their bed that evening or, you know, in those moments of daydreaming in the days to come when they're thinking about the fact,
01:01:14
I could not answer anything that guy was saying. And they're not going to admit that in front of you. You don't have to have that.
01:01:20
You know, as long as your approval comes from God, you don't have to have them saying, well, man, you really rocked my world, you know?
01:01:29
I mean, sure, some people will say that, but that's pretty unusual. Most folks will put up a smoke screen and will fire off a few salvos at you as they're retreating into the darkness, but you can't worry about that.
01:01:42
Well, thank you very much, and thank you so much from the bottom of my heart for your ministry and for all you're doing for the
01:01:48
Lord, you know, in the thing where you're always ready to give a defense and stuff.
01:01:54
It's so wonderful to have the resources that you bring out on YouTube and on The Dividing Line.
01:02:01
It's wonderful to hear, sir. Well, thank you very much, Rasmussen. You keep faithful to the Lord there in a rather secular society in Denmark.
01:02:09
It is rather secular. It's getting more secular as we speak. Yes, I don't know how much farther it could go, but you stay faithful there.
01:02:16
Thank you, brother. Thank you so much. God bless you, brother. All right, thank you. And thanks for putting up with me, folks today.
01:02:22
I could not believe I just got completely befuddled because I knew there was an example
01:02:28
I wanted to use. I knew it was important. I planned on using it, and it just went bye -bye.
01:02:36
Maybe those many hours in the airplane, maybe it's not a good idea to do a program the very next day.
01:02:42
Maybe I should just go for long bike rides in those days and move it back. I don't know. But anyway, all right.
01:02:48
We'll be back, Lord willing, on Thursday here on the program. Get back to Adnan Rashid and Bart Ehrman.
01:02:54
And who knows? Maybe Bart Ehrman has a new book out, just got it. Maybe I'll have some comments on that. Who knows?
01:03:00
We'll see you then. God bless. Mission day
01:03:52
The dividing line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries. If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O.
01:04:00
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01:04:06
World Wide Web at AOMIN .org, that's A -O -M -I -N dot O -R -G, where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.