ETC Blog

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona. This is the dividing line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us.

Yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence. Our host is dr. James white director of Alpha Omega ministries and an elder at the Phoenix reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation.

If you'd like to talk with dr White call now at six. Oh two nine, seven three four six zero two or toll-free across the United States. It's one eight seven seven seven five three three three four one and now with today's topic.

Here is James white.

And good afternoon, welcome to the dividing line on Thursday afternoon, what is they the 19th, I believe something like that. It's all I know is 2009 is flying by even faster than 2008 did let's get right to it a couple comments real quick on the the fact that I have Single-handedly made the evangelical textual criticism blog an interesting place for a couple days.

It rarely is but I'm afraid that That brief comment that I made that dr. Tommy Wasserman responded to Has I think exposed some things in fact, I just happened to look and Maurice Robinson has posted on the blog.

He is one of the Contributors. He's not a very regular contributor. I mean he does comment, but he doesn't write a whole lot of blogs himself and so I was thankful that despite the fact dr. Robinson I don't share the same viewpoint and textual criticism as far as he promotes the Byzantine majority Text platform and things like that.

I have done everything in my power to be fair in my representation of his position. I really appreciate the the impetus I think that exists for dr. Robinson's position. I understand what he's saying I don't.

I don't find it a compelling argument personally, but I am very. No one has ever found me going after somebody who Embraces that perspective and I appreciate the comment that he put on the initial Wasserman article going after me.

Where he just basically said y 'all missed the point you didn't get it. And they still don't want to get it and it's a little bit scary. I'll be perfectly honest with you reading some of the comments of some of the people there.

It's a little bit scary to me because There just seems to be some some really some some attitudes that do not bode well for the textual critical communities. Connection to a wider scope of study in a white wider fields and especially the use the term evangelical in evangelical textual criticism blog and That's basically I think what dr. Robinson is saying here.

This was just posted today, and I just saw it just for we went on the air. So I want to read it for you, and then I've got two completely different topics To go to after this so it will be a very eclectic dividing line today pun fully intended.

I Was about to post the following within the soon-to-disappear comment from Greenleaf thread that I initiated. But in view of all the vitriol that seems to have affected the ETC blog recently it perhaps is best to post this more prominently now let me just mention I Mentioned the last dividing line, and I post the video of this.

That I had I was offended. I guess I'm just gonna have start using the terminology of our day. It seems that you know When I tried to offer a possibility as to why dr. Wasserman completely missed my point I Raised the issue of the language problem.

He's Swedish. I'm not there's differences between our languages. Maybe the syntax is different. It is truly offensive to me just absolutely offensive to me that there are people on the evangelical text criticism blog.

Who called that mockery? Folks if I'm gonna mock somebody I'm gonna do it very clearly you're not gonna have to worry about. Whether you're figuring this out or not. It's gonna be very very clear. Okay, I was not did not ever have the intention of and am offended anyone would think that I would Mock dr. Wasserman if I'm gonna mock somebody will be Steve Ray.

It's just it's amazing that the basically if you're a conservative believer Anyone can attribute anything to you, and that's fair game. But then if you try to respond even kindly even with respect even try to get the subject back on the on the on the track.

Everything can be said about you and of course there are those people out there that just really have personal issues with me I guess for whatever reasons that have you know go run had gone running over to that blog.

And they're just gonna have to change their their Policy and not allow allow anonymous posters. Because there are people attacking me personally, and you know how there are people out there. They don't they don't have the guts to call this program.

They would never face me in public. They would never debate that you know, but they're very brave behind keyboards there's a whole bunch of them like that and They're sad little people and so they go running over there and spew their venom toward toward me and so on service.

But you know if it's anonymous. It's anonymous. You know it should be given exactly as much weight as. Well anything anonymous is given so anyway I mentioned on Tuesday that I had Greenlee's new book coming that had sort of prompted a lot of this and It did arrive the text of New Testament.

It's a small little book of course the other two its predecessors Scribes scroll in scripture, and and then there was there was another green one that was quite old from back in the may have been originally in 60s.

And I did look up the context of one of the statements that even I agreed didn't make much sense and as I Sort of had a hunch there is a context to it. On page 117 I'm gonna go back to Robinson in a second, but I wanted to cover this.

Page 117 was the citation. One of the things that Elliot went after Greenlee on was this. But here's the context. The list could be extended for longer than anyone would care to read. I presented for a specific reason.

There are those who insist that some of the manuscripts most scholars consider reliable have in fact been intentionally corrupted To or omit or weaken important doctrines of the Christian faith. He's responding to a specific allegation.

That's probably coming from the King James only camp. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people say well Vaticanus and Sinaiticus and the papyri etc. So they've all been changed by the Alexandrian cultists who are running around in history.

Blah blah blah. I Offer three points rebuttal to this claim. One as we have just noted by far the most variants have no theological significance at all furthermore. And here's the statement the vast majority the most theologically significant passages in New Testament have no significant textual variations.

Among the few variants that do have theological significance scribes have sometimes apparently attempted to move the text in an orthodox Rather than a heretical direction. So he's talking about specific Manuscripts and the specific charge that there have been heretics who have been trying to change them now.

I still would read I would restate the the statement itself. But by isolating it the way that Elliot did he really did make Greenlee say something that Greenlee wasn't saying and that's the one where He was saying that he's testing the gullibility of his readers.

Elliot's review stunk. That's all there is to it. Let's let's just be honest. It was biased. Prejudiced and was nasty. Let's just what what is what is wrong in saying? Hey, look at this stuff when you call Bengals statement pablum you talk about placating Fundamentalists and stuff your biases are showing.

But it seems to me that for many in academia today the only people have biases are evangelicals Conservatives everybody else is just simply a scholar and a real one at that that seems to be the attitude and it's.

Well, it's bad attitude so I continue on with Maurice Robinson on the Greenlee blog comments one Brian asked isn't the problem modern text critics have with Greenlee's book is that it is interpreted and presented in light of biblical theism and inspiration.

Question mark. Indeed, that was my original point in referencing Elliot's severe review apart from that issue and one JCB also had commented. Virtually everything otherwise appearing in Greenlee's book is no different than what was asserted by Wescott Hort Tregellas or most other textual critics of the past generations.

Please note that because the essence today is and this is one of the reasons I mentioned Erman's statement about the past 15 years being the watershed the The busiest time period and that's because of a fundamental paradigm shift.

I've even been criticized because the comments I made and in the King James only controversy, which was written in late 1994 represented my training my seminary training in 1980s and people still thought the original text was relevant back then and so on and so forth and so there has been a major paradigm shift and if I've helped to Let people outside the you know small sphere Understand that know that recognize that and go hey.

Why is this happening and is there really a reason for this or is this just a hijacking of the field? Well great wonderful, but that's what he's saying Westcott and Hort Tregellas these others, you know, we saw it in the Erman debate.

The way that he could just so well, I'm sorry arrogantly dismiss Curt Allen the way he did. And not even not even provide a meaningful argument against his his defense of tenacity. But just simply dismiss him.

Well, no one believes that anymore. What do you mean? No one? Well, no one that I consider relevant. That's that's the kind of argumentation that you're getting from from the Academy today, and that's that's not overly Overly useful there has been a change we continue on from an evangelical standpoint.

There should be no problem with the theological assertions of a respected evangelical text critical scholar. Which Greenlee most certainly is in relation to the revelation inspiration or even providential preservation of the bulk of the New Testament text.

So long as that scholar does not use his theological beliefs to force a particular choice of text in those places where significant variance occur. I agree wholeheartedly. I Would simply add to that the fact that and I think dr. Robinson would agree with me on this that you cannot ignore the Theological worldview that people bring to their scholarship in their study of any field especially that of the New Testament.

Bart Ehrman has a theological worldview. It may be one of Antichristianity and it is all you've got to do is look at his new book and you will see that. But the fact of the matter is he has a worldview.

Why does his get a pass but conservative Christians? Well, you you can't do that. That's pablum. That's a placating the fundamentalist blah blah blah blah blah blah. That's anyway. Go back to Robinson here.

Greenlee as an evangelical textual critical scholar clearly favors the NA UBS critical text as an evangelical text critical scholar. I differ widely from that perspective. Yet Greenlee and I both hold similar theological positions relative the overall nation the New Testament Greek text including all the above-mentioned factors.

One would think that a proper interrelation of theological belief and New Testament textual criticism position Would be heartily embraced and endorsed by at least evangelical scholars. Rather than criticized so severely in what supposedly is a house filled with friends end quote.

Well, I almost feel badly Doing this dr. Robinson, but amen that is my agreement probably isn't something that anybody wants these days, but exactly. We both see the exact same thing. We don't have to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in our in our viewpoint of how you do textual criticism and the results you get to recognize that there has been a fundamental shift in the paradigm here and Evangelicals had better wake up because when Bart Ehrman stands before an audience and in essence mocks the work of Dan Wallace in the Center for the study of New Testament manuscripts and accuses them of Dishonesty in raising funds to photograph manuscripts when he then this is Ehrman's Consistent and constant misrepresentation of us when we say the variants don't matter.

And of course, we've never said that none of us would study the subject if we thought they were irrelevant. The issue is obviously Ehrman keeps changing the meaning of Don't matter to makes it impossible to know the original.

That's where the difference lies. And I think most people are starting to see that anyway. And maybe someday he'll actually be forced to defend that position rather than just using mockery as his as his argumentation.

But anyway, if he can stand up there and Make that kind of comment if he can stand up if Elliot can identify as pablum the fundamental beliefs of all Evangelical at least used to be 15 years ago evangelical textual critical scholars.

If Ehrman can put out books like he's putting out Jesus interrupted which are which are Magazine level at the grocery store level attacks on the Christian faith and yet just given a pass. That doesn't affect his textual critical activities.

It doesn't. Don't be naive. Of course, it does if you're making your money off of attacking Christianity. Maybe someone might want to raise their hand go. You know that might have something to do with what he's doing in helping to push textual criticism away from the restoration of the text of the New Testament, I Mean, I hope that there's not going to be any further editions of Metzger's book with Ehrman's name on it.

I hope there's not a fifth edition where Ehrman basically takes over and just you know wipes it out. But if he does if he does that then I I would like to suggest something. The only honest thing Bart Ehrman could do would be to take the word Restoration out of the subtitle the book because it doesn't believe in it.

He doesn't believe you can restore the text of New Testament. It's just corrupted period can't know that's it. That's it. So that's that's where he goes from there. So Like I said, at least I've gotten the the discussions going on the blog.

And I noticed that the moderators had to take a few off again from these these anonymous people the we know who they are. Not not necessarily identity wise but the kind of people that are out there they're the people who you know, follow me around wherever I post a comment and then they just you know, Start doing the the ad hominem stuff and other people who listen to this program and I you're here.

You're listening to me right now on the podcast whatever else, you know who you are and you don't have the guts to ever face me. You don't have the guts to pick up a phone. Because you just you just you just don't you know that and so we you know, I'm sorry those folks are out there.

But that's that's the way it is. All right, so there's the textual critical subject. Let's put the clutch in real deep here and shift gears big time. Because I would like to spend a few moments Discussing what I discussed last evening.

I did not bring my little faithful Casio with me to church last night and I had the Wednesday evening service at the church and I really Enjoyed going through just a short section of the 119th Psalm and I wanted to repeat some of the comments I made them and then we're gonna put the clutch in real deep again and completely shift topics after that.

Again to make it the most eclectic program we possibly can. That way we can try to pull in the big audiences by talking about textual criticism the 119th Psalm and then Islam later on. Oh, yeah, there you go.

That's how you That's how you build your Your castles in your kingdom. Yes indeed. Well, not quite Psalm 119. For those of you who don't know this. Now I don't have to do this when I fill in on Wednesday nights but it is our tradition at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church to go through the Psalter on Wednesday evenings and That takes a certain period of time it doesn't you might go well that would take exactly three years.

Well, not quite because we Break the 119 Psalm up into its constituent parts. And so it's actually a little bit longer than the 150 would would give you but it's about it Does figure out to about three years or so is how it ends up working.

So There are a few interruptions around the holidays and things like that. But that's about how it works and we've as long as I've been there. I got there in 1989. So I've been there for my goodness as of this July.

It'll be 20 years and for 20 years, we've done the exact same thing and when you get down with Psalm 150, you go back to Psalm 1 and Pastor Frye interestingly enough. Does not keep his notes. In fact, he doesn't use notes any longer when he turned 60.

He decided he needed a new challenge. And so he stopped using notes and figured that would be even tougher than the way he was doing it before because now I had to memorize all of his cross references and things like that, but he felt that he needed that kind of a Of a challenge and so he doesn't keep his notes and so each time he hits a Psalm, you know He doesn't have what he did before now.

He might remember but I don't know too many folks who remember real clearly what they did three three and a half four years ago in preaching through a text and If you've preached that text five six times before it's gonna be even harder to remember exactly how you handled it.

So you can sort of come at it with With some some consistency there. And some freshness, so anyway, I decided to look at Psalm 119 and Begin at section 73 there were some I thought Extremely important statements that are relevant to some of the things I've been thinking about to these days.

And so I wanted to share those with you here on the dividing line today. Psalm 119 73 your hands made me and fashioned me. Give me understanding that I may learn your commandments. I Pointed out that That is a statement.

That is a spirit born statement. What do I mean by that? Well consider the very nature of idolatry itself it involves Fundamentally a denial that I am God's creature that I have been made and fashioned by God and It truly takes the work of the Spirit of God within us to cause us to say these words.

Your hands have made and fashioned me. This is a recognition a recognition of our creatureliness. It is a recognition that we are not what our society says today the random result of chance mutation over time.

Purposeless creatures who live and struggle for but a little while and then die. Instead we are creatures who have been made by a sovereign God and when you look at the Hebrew text It makes reference to two actions on the part of God here.

You made me it's a standard word for to make a saw. You made me but then it's a it's a different word when it talks about Fashioning to Establish it's more. It's more directed toward purpose and form and So God has made us he's our creator, but he has also determined who we are.

What? Skills and gifts we have where we're going to fit in his plan and We sometimes rebel at that we want to change who we are we are dissatisfied with the physical body that we have been given with the circumstances with the The role in life that has been given to us by God.

But the psalmist recognizes that the Creator is all wise and has knowledge of things far beyond what we have and so Excuse me in light of that in light of his recognition of His created nature and the existence of the Creator himself.

The psalmist can then say give me understanding that I may learn your commandments. Give me understanding that I may learn your commandments. Here is one who recognizes that God's commandments are supernatural in nature that is He does not stand as so many in our society do today as arrogant creatures denying their Creator approaching the revelation of God with hubris.

With the idea that I am Able without the assistance of God without the assistance of his spirit to have true knowledge of God's commandments of God's law of God's words. That is an attitude. That is very much prevalent in our society today, of course and in the Academy.

But it is not a Christian attitude. Here the psalmist says give me understanding. I need you to open my eyes to observe wonderful things out of your law, I Recognize my need of the ministry of the Spirit if I am going to truly understand your word your Commandments are spiritual.

Your commandments require that you give me understanding. This is as I said an attitude that clearly Demonstrates that the psalmist is being led by the Spirit and recognizes his true nature. The next verse.

May those who fear you see me and be glad. Because I wait for your word. Here is a desire on the part of the psalmist that those who fear God. There's a there's throughout the Psalms. I was listening this morning as I was writing I put the 119th and then the next about 10 Psalms or so on my iPod as I was listening and there is this theme.

About those who fear you and those who do not fear you let those who fear you come near to me. That those who do not fear you do not keep your commandments. Stay away from me there. This is that this is a fellowship concept.

I Want to be amongst the people of God and and those who fear you I want to be an example to them. I want to gladden the hearts encourage the hearts of others. Because I wait for your word. I Wait for your word even in affliction as we're gonna see in the next verse.

The psalmist is experiencing affliction. But the psalmist has waited for or hoped in God's Word and so by by patiently enduring by clinging to the promises of the scriptures the psalmist wants to be an Encouragement to the people of God now again, I think sometimes we struggle with this in In our society because we are so individualistic we have such a weak almost at times non-existent view of The Christian community.

But I know in in my experience and and I should tell people this more often, but I know in my church. I Look at some of the people that were there before I was who've been there for decades upon decades and I am encouraged when I see them.

I'm encouraged when I see them. They By their steadfastness by the fact I know they've gone through difficulties and trials and tribulations and Yet they remain faithful are an encouragement to me. I think of that Steve Green song from back when I was younger and back in the 1980s that talks about We want to leave a witness for those who will become becoming behind us May we be faithful so that they will be encouraged.

That's an awesome Attitude to have it recognizes our role within the people of God within the fellowship of the Saints. And so When we hope in the Word of God, it's not just an individualistic thing. We are Encouraging others as well and then I'll just do one more verse and then we'll we'll take our break verse 75.

I Know that's the first word in the Hebrew as well. I know yada. I know Yahweh That your judgments are righteous and that in faithfulness you have afflicted me now again. These are spirit-borne words.

The the psalmist knows He isn't just hoping he knows something about the character and the nature of Yahweh that Yahweh's judgments are Righteous they are Zedek Zedekah righteousness. He knows That they are righteous because God himself is righteous that is righteousness is the very foundation of his throne.

Everything he does is Straight it is right. It is righteous there is no unrighteousness in him and When you are convinced of the nature of your God That then can become the foundation for being able to say that last phrase in Faithfulness you have afflicted me now.

This probably isn't the favorite text the folks over on the channel between 20 and 22 here in the Phoenix area because They don't believe that God ever afflicts any believer. They do not believe that that what happens in their lives Is in any way shape or form relevant to the Sovereignty of God the purpose of God they want to insulate God from all of this.

But the psalmist won't have that. Because the psalmist recognizes if you separate God out from what happens in my life, then you have likewise removed the very purposes of God you have taken from me Romans 8 that God is working all things for my good.

That there is reason for my affliction. There is reason for my suffering and I could start preaching on this, but I will try to avoid doing so in Faithfulness you have afflicted me what God brings into our lives.

Whether it be discipline and There are so many times we need that or the affliction that will cause us to grow in our Christ likeness Become more like Christ. God does it in faithfulness to his promises and I Know that there are people listening who have gone through some awfully difficult things and There might be someone would say well, it's real easy to say but unless you've been there.

Well, I've been there I've been with the people who've been there. I I know and It is such an encouragement to see believers who walk through the fiery trials and Yet they recognize the faithfulness of their God in having walked through those fiery trials with them.

These words come from the Spirit of God and They represent a soul a heart that knows God's truth beautiful stuff. The the the Bible's filled with it. We so frequently go flying right past it there is this idea of in the Bible strange that might be of meditating upon the Word of God of Actually turning off all the sounds and the distractions and meditating upon the Word of God and considering these things I would encourage you to do so eight seven seven seven five three three three four one.

We're gonna shift gears Right after this break. We'll be right back.

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Thank you.

And welcome back to the dividing line.

Sort of hard to have a lot of energy during that rejoin music just sort of like so how you doing today sipping some lemonade. You sort of want to sing along. But we can't do that because we have Important things to do shifting gears like I said putting putting the clutch all the way down and going from fifth gear into reverse.

It's a big change big shift, but hey, it's okay. It's a little bit. This is what if you want to know what it's like to be me. What you probably don't want to know what it's like to be me, but if you want to know what it's like to be me I've always thought if if if I ever get run over by a truck or something.

Which is a possibility when I'm riding my bike bicycle that is. Which I did this morning. I did 42 and 1 3rd miles and that gives me a fair amount of time to be listening. Hey, is that as our studio audience out there?

We have a studio audience because I don't recognize that person. Who is that? That would be the vice president of alphanumeric administer vice president we have one. I think we do I think it looks like he's picking up some decent stuff there.

Yeah, he's got you know. He's got the airmen debate on CD and he just saw the diagloss. No. No, I showed him the diagloss. That's exactly right. Well you get that diagloss there man. All right way to go.

We're gonna be able to have coffee tomorrow. That's great. So Not that I actually drink it. But Anyway, sorry about that digression there, you know, this is a live program and so you have to put up with things like that.

Anyhow, if I were ever and Sean's a rider like I am. He's not getting very many miles in right now. But hey, that's okay but If I were to get run over by a truck and the police were to find my my iPod shuffle.

They would find the weirdest Selection of stuff this morning. Here's what I listened to this morning. It started off with Psalms 119 through 129 a Transition to the book of Hebrews and then that transitioned to Sheikh Yasser Qadhi and the fourth CD in his series on Tawheed.

On the previous ride I had listened to the Frank Turek Christopher Hitchens debate and also some more of Yasser Qadhi at that particular time and I think some Arabic vocabulary. Can you imagine? The folks at CSI, for example listening through something like that.

Wondering what in the world I was I was up to listening to stuff like that. But that's that's what it's like to be me, which is to be weird. You would think I'd be listening to up-tempo music to help me get up those hills and stuff like that.

Generally lectures are not overly helpful in in getting up the steep inclines. But I've gotten used to it over time. So that's what I was listening to and today I Was listening to Sheikh Yasser Qadhi.

I have mentioned him before I Have actually played some sections in years past from some of the things. Some of the lectures that I was listening to and I've had some contact now with with Yasser Qadhi and it has been very pleasant Interaction and I'm very thankful for that.

I have honestly told him that I have learned a tremendous amount from his lectures not just the fact that he has tremendously excellent Arabic pronunciation. That I would along with my Arabic tutor seek to emulate when I use the language but likewise I have found him to Be have a lot of the same concerns that I have in in his community that I have in my own that is he expresses a fair amount of Discomfort with Muslims who do not take their faith seriously and with a lot of other things that I go, you know.

He and I would have good conversations and hopefully in the future we'll have more of them. Anyway, I was listening to Sheikh Yasser Qadhi and he was Explaining something. I've heard him explain it in other contexts, but this was the about the fullest explanation that I had heard.

It honestly is something that I would say 99 .99 8 of Christians in the world just don't know anything about so I thought you know what? We try to educate folks on things on the dividing line give them an understanding it might help them in In the their testimony and giving their own presentation of the gospel to know where people are coming from.

And it just helps I think to to understand the differences between Islam and and well enunciated Islam. Not necessarily the type of Islam that you get from a lot of folks, but well enunciated Islam and And Christianity and it's it goes to two terms.

The first term to understand you're going to learn a little Arabic today. Is Mithak? Mithak is a covenant aberith in in Hebrew and the fitra the fitra now the fitra is a little bit harder to to define.

It has to do with with how God has made us from the Islamic perspective it has to do with our conscience and It is a. It's important to understand this because it explains how it is that Muslims view.

The idea that we are all created as Muslims in essence when we are born our our fitra is Consistent with Islam we believe in one God. But then as we grow older our parents pervert our our understanding and they introduce traditions and we become Jews or Christians, that's the Islamic understanding and in fact, there is a statement by in the hadith by Muhammad basically stating that very thing and.

And so here's here's the story now, I'm gonna give you the story as it's found in Al-Tabari. When Sheikh Asar Qadhi gave this story, he brought a number of different sources in. But this is in the first volume of the history of Al-Tabari pages 304 and 305.

And I think you'll find this to be interesting. Let me see here, let's just I'm gonna start with 304 it says then God rubbed Adam's back at Naman of Arafah and brought forth his Progeny he scattered them in front of him like tiny ants.