Archbishop of Canterbury Can't Answer Direct Questions, More on the I Am Sayings of Jesus

Welcome to The Dividing Line, and I am doing the James Earl Jones version of The Dividing Line today. I wish I could keep the nice, deep tone of voice without having to have the sinus stuff that goes along with it, but hey, 106 ,000 miles in a plane so far this year, and first time I've really...

And I'm going through it quick, it's not debilitating me. I did a metric century yesterday morning, and the only reason I didn't do a big ride today is we are babysitting the grandkids, so I'm rushing in here while the wife has the grandkids at the aquarium place.

I guess there's an aquarium place here in Phoenix someplace, supposed to be really nice that they're going to see fishies. So I've got enough time to sneak a program in today, and that'll give us, I think, three.

For the week.

So I can't complain too much there. Couple things here. Let me start off with an amazing thing, and then I actually want to go back to the subject from yesterday and sort of continue on with it a bit, because while I talked about it from a perspective that was primarily interacting with a Muslim use of the issue of the I Am Sayings of Jesus, I didn't really get into the I Am Sayings themselves and some of the things that Mike Licona was saying.

So I'd like to get into that. And before we do that, I want to make sure you're aware of what's going on starting next weekend on Facebook. And for some reason, I don't know why, but Facebook is not playing kindly with me today.

But oh, you're having the same issue?

Yeah.

What? I've been having trouble too here.

Well, it just popped up.

The feed isn't feeding well today.

Yeah.

I just saw pictures from last night, actually, really cute pictures of my grandkids.

Yes. And she's got a lot of friends. Look at all those people. Just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

I know.

Well, that was a Facebook event. There weren't any invitations. It was all Facebook. And that isn't the way the world has gone. It's all Facebook now. But anyway, I'm going to be heading to Texas, and I'm trying to let me see here.

Pull up. I think we have. Yeah, I think we're pretty certain we have it on here. Wow, we really need to fix the August announcements on the website. Yeah, probably need to need to fix that. Power of God, Evangelical Summit, Dallas, Texas, October 13th to the 15th.

Myself, the amazingly tall Todd Friel, Phil Johnson, Emilia Ramos, and Jason Lyle. No reflection upon the other four of us, but Jason's IQ is higher than the four of us put together. Jason is is freakishly.

Todd Friel is freakishly tall and Jason Lyle is freakishly smart. So there you go. Anyway, you can still get in if you go to our website, aomin .org. Look up the go past the banner ads from two months ago and get to the Power of God Evangelical Summit, Dallas, Texas, October 13th to the 15th.

And then if you can't get to Dallas, but you're in the general area on Monday, October 16th at 630 p .m. in Lindale, Texas, First Baptist Church Worship Center. We're going to be talking about what else the Reformation and I've got lots of pictures now, really good pictures.

I don't know how much of that I'm going to do, but I probably will throw some of them in just for the fun of it. So we probably need to make sure we've got the overhead fired up for that because obviously we just got back.

And I appreciate the graphic that is that I'm looking at right now that has the Luther Rose. In fact, you want to do something real quick? I hadn't planned on this, but and I don't have the desktop presenter up, but I'll do it here.

I'll just use the color LCD thing again and get that out of the way. One of the interesting things in the monastery in Erfurt. As you know, Luther, if you've seen the 2003 Luther movie, and when I looked up the date on that, man, I thought that was not that long ago.

It was 2003. It was 14 years ago.

And I was thinking like, oh, it's about four or five years ago. But overhead, you're a dinosaur. Overhead as in digital projector. Come on, you know what I'm talking about. I'm talking with the troublemaker from Texas on the thing here.

Anyway, if you've seen the 2003 Luther movie, and you see, you don't necessarily grasp what it is. But it's a part of Luther's ordination to the priesthood. And you see him laying in cruciform form. So his arms are out, face down, in front of the high altar of a church.

And they don't really explain it to you. But they shot it. And this is where it was. This is where they shot it. And this is right in front of the high altar. This is actually a tombstone in the floor.

And our guide said that they would actually lay on top of it. In the movie, Luther was down here. The actor, Charles Fiennes, or however you say his name, Fiennes, or whatever. But this is at the Augustinian monastery, the church there.

And here are the windows at the front of that church. And in the bottom left corner, So maybe if Luther turned his head or anything like that, obviously he would have seen these windows many times. But in the bottom left corner, we have this.

And look at that window right there. If you're familiar with the Luther Rose, the inside of those two windows there looks suspiciously like the inside of the Luther Rose. And so a lot of people speculated that that was the background from which Luther derived his graphic of the Luther Rose.

And so I just thought I'd share that with you there.

So there you go.

So I snapped some pictures of that. So we will be there on Monday, October 16th, 6 .30pm. Trying to cram all the Reformation into one evening is going to be fun. But we'll focus on what we need to focus on.

And try to... It's not going to be... You know, I'm hearing a lot of stuff. I heard a guy on Michael Medved yesterday. He just had a book come out on Luther. And I was just sort of sitting there going, yeah, well, our folks on the tour got a whole lot more than that.

And they did.

There's just another... There just really is another level. And I'm going to try, once I get back from Texas, we've got to try to schedule, before I go back to Texas, doing a couple programs specifically on the Reformation.

Can't just let that go by, the 500th anniversary, without doing some special programs on that. And discussing, you know, as I did when I got back, the tension that exists. Putting the Reformation in its real context.

And I think that really helps people out. And there you go. So, that's Monday, October 16th, out in Lyndale, Texas. I'm really hoping that they can avoid any tornadoes, as I've dodged a few times going out there in the past.

So, that's what's coming up. In the news, real quickly, I wanted to cover this, and then we'll get back to the biblical issue. Justin Welby unable to give a straight answer on whether gay sex is sinful.

Unbelievable.

Asked...

Alistair Campbell for GQ Magazine was talking to Justin Welby, who is the Archbishop of Canterbury. He is the head of the Anglican community. Okay? Let's be clear here. Until the past 40, 50 years, I cannot imagine an Archbishop of Canterbury who would not have been able to answer this question clearly.

But he was asked by this reporter if gay sex was sinful. And notice, he didn't ask orientation, attraction. He was talking about the actual act. Of homosexual intercourse. Welby said, You know very well that is a question I can't give a straight answer to.

Sorry, badly phrased there. I should have thought that one through. Well, okay. So, the term straight.

Alright.

Didn't think that one through. Preston, why he could not answer. The Archbishop said, Because I don't do blanket condemnation and I haven't got a good answer to the question. I'll be really honest about that.

I know I haven't got a good answer to the question. Inherently within myself, the things that seem to me to be absolutely central are around faithfulness, stability of relationships, and loving relationships.

In response to Campbell's assertion that those could be characteristics of same-sex relationships, Welby said, I am also aware of you deeply held by tradition since long before Christianity within the Jewish tradition that marriage is understood invariably as being between a man and a woman, or in various times a man and several women, if you go back to the Old Testament.

I know the church around the world is deeply divided on this in some places, including the Anglicans and other churches, not just us, and we are, the vast majority of the church, is deeply against gay sex.

He added,.

I am faithful to the tradition, faithful to the scripture, to understand what the call and will of God is in the 21st century, and to respond appropriately with an answer for all people, not condemning them whether I agree with them or not, that covers both sides of the argument.

And I haven't got a good answer, and I am not doing that bit of work as well as I would like. Asked if he was trying to reconcile Anglican church leaders in places such as Uganda and more liberal churches, principally in the UK and North America, is it irreconcilable?

It's irreconcilable.

Well,.

There is no question that it is irreconcilable in the sense that there needs to be an answer given. And the answer,.

It's,.

There isn't any question. If you're going to be faithful to the tradition and to the scriptures, they both say the exact same thing. There isn't any question about it. There's a reason why the revisionists will not debate.

And when they do, it doesn't go well for them. Because the scriptural teaching is plain,.

Clear,.

Compelling,.

Easily laid out. The revisionists struggle.

To,.

To present their perspective in the same time frame as we do. Because they have to redefine so much of what the scripture states. And they have to atomize the text. They have to disconnect it from, from its own unifying principles.

And the tradition, there is a cough button over there, sorry about that. And the tradition is plainly clear as well. Didn't get a chance to work out this morning. Honestly, if I'd worked out this morning, I would sound much better.

Blow all that stuff out the first thing in the morning. The tradition is unquestionable. The scriptures are unquestionable. What he's, the horns of the dilemma were created when Anglicanism was first started.

It's the via media. It's the middle way. And the middle way between truth and error is still erroneous. And that's what you're dealing with here.

That's what you're dealing with here.

You can spin it. You can try to make it.

Clear.

To your society with all the illustrations you want. But the fact of the matter is you have to be clear and open in answering this question. And Al Mohler has been saying for a couple of years now, there's going to be no place to hide.

There's just not going to be any place to hide. And there isn't. And he's trying to hide, but he can't. And as he himself says, I'm not doing a very good job. Well, you can't. You can't do a very good job at it.

If you're going to be,.

You know,.

The categories he set up were not God's categories. They're not the categories of scripture. They're all focused upon.

Mankind.

Rather than God's transcendent purpose for mankind.

And so.

When you have a situation where scriptural authority has been so fundamentally compromised that it's no longer the ultimate authority,.

Well,.

That was big news. Unfortunately, it's not. It's not something that that we can it's something we're seeing happening all across the spectrum. I've been talking about the tsunami of apostasy. And here's just one wave of the tsunami of of apostasy.

The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Authority of Scripture

On the last program,.

We.

Started to address and I sort of finished that topic in the sense that I addressed the issue of inspiration. Remember, we talked about Ipsissima Verba, Ipsissima Vox, and Ipsissima Intendibunt. And the difference between these and the fact that using Ipsissima Vox, which means hearing the voice of Christ without the specific words, Ipsissima Verba, the very words of Christ, like an mp3 recorder.

I think those are far too limiting categories to adequately deal with the nature of well, just the synoptics alone,.

Let alone.

The Gospel of John as well. And so we talked about the nature of inspiration, the sovereignty of God in inspiration and related issues. But we didn't really get down to a direct answer to the question.

And that is when Bart Ehrman asked Craig Evans, did you think Jesus ever gave the I am statements? Evans was basically saying, no, I agree with John's theological reflection, but this is John inserting words into Jesus's mouth, in essence.

And,.

You know,.

Lycona and others in that perspective will say now our more conservative brethren will find this troubling. Well, yeah. Those of us who have gone through seminary are well aware of the fact that there are many people who will say, well, what you have in the New Testament is, you know, and it's not just John.

It's not just John that's making stuff up. It's Matthew, Mark and Luke. They all are. Jesus didn't really say any of this stuff. He was just a, you know, if you approach, if you approach the text of Scripture with the assumption.

That.

Jesus was a eschatological preacher who inadvertently ran afoul.

Of.

The Jewish leadership and the Romans, just bad timing. As far as his, you know, he got himself crucified and then his followers experienced a spiritual awakening in light of the value of his life which they called the resurrection.

You know, if that's your fundamental view,.

Then.

You don't really believe most of what is found in the Gospels to actually be anything more than just simply stories meant to create some type of a community around this issue of the Messiah that was rejected by the Jewish people.

And so,.

What you hear when you go to seminary in many places is exactly that, that the reason there are differences between Matthew, Mark and Luke is because Matthew and Luke are editing Mark and they're taking things out that embarrass them and adding things that have become important in their time period.

That's why you have,.

You know,.

Fairly, well,.

It's never,.

It can't be ever really long periods of time,.

But.

You have to at least.

Introduce.

A decade or so between each one of them so you can sort of have a really short period of development,.

But.

I've never found any of this argumentation overly compelling, to be honest with you.

But.

It all becomes just,.

You know,.

Each scholar is able to come up with their own books based upon.

Their theories.

And their spinning of the evidence this way, that way,.

The other way.

And.

So if you were paying attention in almost any seminary and even in the conservative seminaries you're still exposed to this even if it's not the perspective of the professor that you're studying under.

Yeah,.

There's really nothing new to any of this stuff.

But.

People say, well then why isn't it the substance of the preaching?

Well,.

Because it doesn't preach.

I mean,.

It's destroyed preaching in liberal denominations.

You know,.

That's why you have a 12-minute homily of feel-good.

Mush.

In most seminaries where the people coming out of those. In most churches where the people coming out of that kind of seminary that's all they can do. There can't be an authoritative preaching if you don't believe there is a word from God.

You don't expect 45-minute long sermons drawing from the whole counsel of God when you don't believe there is a counsel from God. The only thing you have to offer the people is the counsel of your own mind.

And that frequently doesn't take a whole lot of time to actually express.

So,.

Anyway,.

We're looking at Mike Licona's response to a. This is what he wrote on Facebook.

About.

People who are basically saying,.

Well,.

You know,.

We got a clean house, there's problems in Christian scholarship. It's not a matter of cleaning house, it's a matter of recognizing fundamental presuppositional issues and just identifying,.

Okay,.

These folks are over there. This is what their views are. They're different and therefore,.

You know,.

We can't follow that apologetic line. The problem is there's a lot of people that want to follow the apologetic line, they just don't want to buy into the presuppositions that are actually underneath all of that stuff.

So,.

Here's a continuation.

Of what.

Licona had said. We had gotten to the point where he had written number two, the way Jesus sounds in John's gospel sounds very much like how John sounds in 1 John.

That is,.

The grammar, vocabulary, and overall style of writing.

In both.

Are strikingly similar. Yes and no. 1. John is simpler than the Gospel of John.

I'm not sure.

That I would necessarily agree with that,.

But,.

Anyway,.

Same author, that's a given,.

But,.

Well,.

It's not even a given for some people. We press on. Number two could be because John adjusted his style to be similar to his master after spending much time with him. This would be similar to how some married couples adopt their laughs and expressions to one another over time.

The other option.

And the one.

Believed by most scholars is that John paraphrased Jesus using his own style.

The reason.

Scholars go with this latter view is because Jesus sounds so differently in John than in the synoptics.

Now,.

If we were just to stop right there, we've already suggested a number of very plausible, not silly, or surface-level reasons why that would be. The material included by John is different.

Than.

The comparative material in the synoptic Gospels. The vast majority of the conversation in the synoptic Gospels.

Is.

Either Jesus.

Preaching to crowds, so general teaching material.

That would have been.

Repeated a number of times and hence is liable and subject to.

Summary.

Statement.

So,.

Summarizing something.

You know, yeah,.

You know,.

Jesus did the nature of repentance sermon today, or Jesus did some parables today that have to do with finding the Word of God or discipleship or whatever. He didn't do that just once. He did that many times.

So,.

In light of that, it would be easy to summarize those general messages that were delivered multiple times.

Whereas,.

What you have in John is always unique. How many conversations with Nicodemus.

Were there?

How many times did Jesus talk with Samaritan woman at a well who was an outcast societally? How many times did Jesus heal a blind man who then had interaction with the Jewish leaders? How many times is there a discussion of Jesus' unbelieving brethren?

How many times did Jews pick up stones to stone Jesus? When you think.

About.

What you have in John, there might be just leaps out at you that, wow, this is. What John's doing here is he's giving us the very kind of conflict that Jesus had with the Jewish leaders.

That.

If the synoptic gospels that emphasize these pre-fall.

Of Jerusalem.

That would have had.

Huge implications.

So,.

Actually it sort of.

Makes sense that it's only after the fall of Jerusalem that this undercurrent.

Of.

Sharp theological encounter between Jesus.

And the Jewish.

Leaders.

On the identity.

On the issue.

Of who he is in light of the messianic secret stuff in the synoptic gospels. Doesn't it make sense to wait to a later point in time to reveal this going back and forth that was taking place? And that's where all the I Am sayings are, by the way.

That kind of possibility don't even get to talk about. Don't even get to discuss it. Don't even get to address the possibility in much of modern scholarship today.

Again,.

The primary reason for that is not because there are not good reasons for believing it, but because.

The overarching.

Principle is in modern academic context,.

If it's.

Substantiating or if it's supportive of the historical understanding of Christian theology, that's not going to get you anywhere. That's not going to accomplish anything. That's not the cutting edge. The cutting edge is,.

You know,.

There was a famous book back in the 70s or 80s Unity and Diversity in the New Testament. Well, the emphasis is not on the unity. It's on the diversity. And so, when it says the reason scholars go with this latter view is that John's just paraphrasing Jesus is because Jesus sounds so differently in John than in the synoptics.

Well, as I pointed out last time, you can technically make the argument he sounds differently in especially Matthew, Mark versus Luke as well.

So,.

How far do you really want to take that argument is the question. But then Laicona continues and he says, By no means does this mean John is historically unreliable. It means that John is often communicating Jesus' teachings in a manner closer to a modern paraphrase than a literal translation.

I think this is where people get the feeling that, hey, I think you're you're trying to have your cake and eat it,.

Too, here.

And.

If you don't have the categories that I mentioned in the last program, ipsissima intendibond, if you don't have that.

Overarching,.

Yes,.

Supernatural purpose of God.

In.

Giving us.

The scripture.

In the form in which the scriptures exist, it does really take on the character of special pleading. It does take on somewhat of a,.

Well,.

OK, so that didn't really happen, but it's still historically.

Reliable.

I'm sorry. If there was not a continued tension between the Jews and Jesus over his identity, what do you mean John's historically reliable? That's almost like saying the living Bible is a reliable translation of the New Testament.

Well, it's not. It's a paraphrase.

And.

Yeah,.

It's going back to an original text, but sometimes it's really.

Hard to figure out.

Exactly how on what basis.

And so I know what, you know,.

We need to be straightforward.

They are,.

This group is trying.

To say.

That, yes, we want to affirm the historical reliability of John. We just want to do it in such a way that we don't have to defend that what was actually said in John was actually said historically.

That,.

In essence, what they're saying is it's implicitly found in Jesus' words, but not explicitly stated by him.

And so.

That's really what comes out. Stated differently, John will often recast Jesus saying something explicitly. The synoptics have him saying implicitly. For example, one does not observe Jesus making his I Am statements in the synoptics that are so prominent in John, such as before Abraham was.

I Am.

That's a pretty clear claim to deity. Now, let me stop there for a moment.

Our,.

Our Unitarian friends have sort of been left out in the cold on this conversation.

Because.

They've been arguing.

For a long,.

Long time that the I Am statements have nothing to do with the deity of Christ.

And.

I think.

Our.

Muslim friends need to be a little consistent here.

Because.

They have.

Shared.

Those.

Unitarian arguments more than once to try to get around the weight of the I Am sayings.

Well,.

Which is it going to be?

Um,.

You can't quote the Unitarians.

Saying,.

Oh, no, no, no, no, that's not Jesus claiming the I Am statements. And then turn around and say, oh, well, John made up the I Am statements to try to present the deity of Christ, which wasn't present in the preceding synoptic Gospels.

Well,.

They either do or do not present the deity of Christ. If they don't present the deity of Christ, there's no reason for John to have made them up.

So,.

You gotta pick your Unitarian attacks here. You can't use both of them. It's one of the two. Which is it going to be? I would agree.

That.

Not only John 858,.

But 824,.

1319, 185 -6, there is a very clear.

Johannine.

Testimony to the use of the I Am statements.

But,.

In what context? In both 824 and 858, they are in the context of public, but specifically, interaction with the Jewish leaders.

That's,.

That's just what you've got there in 8. In 13, it's with the disciples in prophetic fulfillment. And in 18, it is in the garden.

And,.

No one, at that time, picks up the significance of it.

So,.

You have only one incident recorded by John using the I Am statements in a widely public setting. And that's John 8.

And,.

How does that finish? John 8 -9, they pick up stone-stone.

So,.

It doesn't really, the I Am sayings, as presented by John, do not fit into the standard synoptic context of Jesus' teaching. They have a special nature of their own.

And,.

So, is this an admission? If you quote this stuff, are you admitting? As Ehrman seems to recognize that in John, these I Am statements are a plain testimony to the deity of Christ.

Because, you can have a, what,.

I think, what our Muslim friends need to recognize is, this is a, no matter how you slice it, the Gospel of John is a first-century document. The manuscript evidence makes that pretty clear. I mean, you really have to start engaging in a, in hyper-skepticism.

To come up with the idea that John is not a first-century document. And so, if you accept this argumentation, that even Ehrman recognizes, yeah, the deity of Christ is plain in the Gospel of John, I Am sayings, why would he even ask Craig Evans, if Jesus said the I Am sayings, if he doesn't recognize that the I Am sayings are a high claim to deity?

So, if you accept that, then you have the first-century followers of Jesus believing in the deity of Christ. It's not some later corruption. It's not something at the Council of Nicaea or something like that.

It is a first-century belief. Do you accept that? Are you going to have to try to push the, somehow, the banishing of the true followers of Jesus, as the Quran would put it? You have to put that off someplace to,.

Well, when?

I mean, it has to be within.

Literally years.

Or you're stuck. Again, pushing for that consistent position. So, it's interesting that what we're having here is an argument that leaves the Unitarians out who have always argued there's nothing in the I Am sayings.

Go back to that, I think it was 2011, I did that, what was it? Four or five-part mini-debate on another webcast with a Unitarian whose name slips in my mind. And one of the topics that we covered, I know we covered the Carmen Christi, we covered Colossians 1, I looked it up on the blog recently and it was pretty in-depth stuff.

And one of the topics we covered was the I Am statements. And so, this whole thing here, well, Jesus never said it, sort of, puts the lie to the common Unitarian argument that being,.