Church of Christ (Revisited) #baptism #justification #apologetics

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I'm your host, Eli Ayala, and I am here with the apologist with perhaps the coolest apologetics ministry name, the apologetic dog.

Just makes me picture me walking my dog and an atheist comes up, and before I open my mouth, my dog starts spitting arguments at him, and that's pretty intense, bro, the apologetic dog.

That is awesome. Well, I am happy to have my good friend, Jeremiah, now

I say my good friend, I better pronounce his last name right, Nortier. Got it.

Nortier. You like the French version. Is it Nort -heel, Nort -heel? I can't. Nortier. In the

South, Eli always say Nortier. Nortier. With a little twang. I've had

Jeremy on a number of times, and the particular episode that I think people found really useful was when we were talking about the

Church of Christ, and we had a lot of negative comments about that episode, but we also had some very positive ones, and I've actually had people personally reach out to me to express how helpful that episode was.

So we know this going into these sorts of discussions that not everyone's gonna agree, but we do our best,

Jeremy does his best to just share things from his perspective as he understands things and tries to explain and give the truth from the

Word of God as best as he can, and we just pray that God, through his grace, allows those seeds to take root and grow.

And so here we are to continue to do that. But before we do that, I wanna talk about his recent debate on baptism.

This man is a debating dog. He's a beast. I think he does such a great job, and he does it with such kindness, but with biblical precision.

I really do appreciate listening to him teach and speak. So we're gonna jump right into that in just a few moments.

But I wanna read something that someone sent me. That was an encouragement. Now, I hear this all the time.

You guys know that on this channel, we do some precept, man. I'm a presuppositionalist, right?

People come to this channel, they know they're gonna get presuppositional apologetic methodology, and you have kind of the mixed reaction of the people who take the various camps of apologetic methods, you know?

There's always those people. You know, apologetics, precept sounds interesting.

The problem with it is it doesn't work. Right, okay. Now, I have a problem when people say something doesn't work, okay?

Apologetics is not simply a pragmatic thing, right? We don't do precept because it works or doesn't work.

We primarily do it because we think that it's biblical. We think it's a biblical approach to apologetics.

That's the first and foremost reason why we do it. And if it's biblical, then it will work insofar as it accomplishes what the scriptures say apologetics is supposed to accomplish, and we leave room for the work of the spirit and things like that.

However, to satisfy those people who say that it doesn't work, okay?

I'd like to read something. I was sent, I can't mention any names. I don't wanna mention any names and drag anyone into this and details, but someone had reached out to me and texted me this.

So he says, so I just talked to a Christian who got saved because of presuppositional apologetics.

So here's an encouragement. Keep doing what you're doing. He also said that nowadays, he listens to your stuff almost daily.

Thank you very much. And then he said, yes, he was a hard atheist and tag, the transcendental argument for God's existence just stuck with him.

Today, he is three years saved and active in church, okay? There you go, right?

Does it work? Yes. Is that the reason why we do it? Not necessarily, but God does use it.

And so when someone says, well, where are the results? Well, I mean, this is a wonderful example of the results of using such a method in form of argumentation.

And I can attest, and I'm sure Jeremiah could attest to your personal interactions. I have seen God use presuppositional apologetics quite powerfully.

That said, to not rattle any cages unnecessarily, I've also seen God use classical apologetics, right?

As we famously say, God can strike a blow with a broken stick. And in reality, while I think

I have the right apologetic method, we are all broken sticks. And so God uses us nonetheless.

So there you go, right? I'm not gonna throw any red meat to the tribe, right? You know, the camp, but I don't know who told me this, but they said that I like how

I do apologetics better than how you don't do apologetics. So I'm a presupper.

I hope more people use presupp because I think it's biblical, but if you're using classical or evidential, hey, that's not my cup of tea.

I've got my issues, but I think God can still use it. And so keep talking about Christ, keep thinking rationally and biblically.

And in the end, when we go to be with Christ in glory, we'll all be presuppers then.

So anyway, I just wanted to get that little bit out. Let's jump right in.

We're five minutes in, got some people listening in. Thank you so much. And I'm looking forward to talking about this.

So Jeremiah, you have been making your rounds. I'm a little, not gonna lie, I'm a little jelly, a little jealous doing all these cool debates.

Let me make sure I get on. Let me see this gentleman's name. You just recently debated a gentleman by the name of Gavin James, am

I correct? Is that the - Yes, you're right. Yes, Gavin James on the topic of baptism.

It was the baptism debate proposition. Is water baptism necessary for our justification before God?

Baptism, super important topic. We obviously will not hold to the position that baptism is necessary for justification, but that is not to undermine the great importance of baptism.

So how did that debate come about? What gets you, I mean, you walk up to someone on the street and be like, yo, we debating right now on justification of baptism.

What is the context for this interaction you had with Gavin? Good question.

A few months ago, I was on the Cultish podcast with our friends, Andrew and the other

Jeremiah. And you have a brother named Jeremiah, right? I do, yes. All right, we're the

Jeremiah crew. That's right. Me and my friend, the fishbone,

Trey Fisher, this was his second time on Cultish on examining the church of Christ.

And we see them outside of the fold, unfortunately. And we say this with love and care. We do not think they believe in the right gospel that they veered away from orthodoxy.

They've added works into the gospel of grace and added it with faith. And so that's what we talked about on Cultish.

And Eli, we've had a ton of feedback, both good and bad. And so Gavin messaged me on Facebook and he told me that he really likes the

Cultish podcast. And then to his dismay, he found that there was two episodes on the church of Christ being a cult.

And so he was telling me or asking me to reconsider basically. And I just invited him.

I said, hey, you know, I'm sure you're very passionate about your position. I'm passionate about holding to faith alone, looking in the perfect savior alone.

That's how we're made right before God. I was like, how about we have just a public discussion, debate on this?

And one thing led to another. And so we were able to make that happen. And so real quick, before we continue on with that,

I just wanna encourage people go to the Cultish podcast. Go check out those episodes. I love the work that Jeremiah Roberts and Andrew are doing out there at Apologia, which you're no stranger to Apologia yourself.

Yes, I had the opportunity to go up there and record six, I don't wanna call them lectures, but I guess they're lectures, six teachings,

I suppose, on presuppositional apologetics. And it's gonna be available on their Apologia Studios Academy in the near future.

So I had an opportunity to meet Jeff and have Dr. James White buy me dinner.

I mean, that was cool, man. I'm a little jelly now. I was like, I was driving with him in his car and I'm like, look,

I'm like, I'm in James White's truck. Like, this is weird and awesome at the same time. On the back of his truck, did it say

Christ or chaos? Kind of like - I don't know. Let me tell you something. I don't remember the color, but when you see

James White in a debate, he's all dressed up in his suit and he's being James White. When I see him in his natural habitat, he comes in and picks me up in this bright,

I think it was his bright orange jacket with these like ultimate warrior shades. And I was like, wow, this guy is cool.

He has such a unique style about him. It was awesome. And we had such a good time too. He's such a different, very different person from the debate stage.

And then when you're kind of just hanging with him casually, it was really cool to kind of hang with him in that context.

But yeah, that was recently. And I'm looking forward to maybe doing something again in the future.

So we're actually having the cultish podcast host on this show where we are going to do an episode called the pre -supping the cults, pre -supping the cults.

So we'll be talking about various cults and maybe issues of the occult and kind of dig into how we could approach those topics from a presuppositional approach.

So I'm looking forward to that. That's in early April, I think April 8th. I have to double check, but I think that's it.

That's just around the corner. Just around the corner, yeah. So looking forward to that. Those are great guys there and they're doing some great work, but let's get back to what you're doing, man.

That's awesome that people should definitely check out your interviews there. And I highly recommend if you haven't already, the

Apologetic Dog YouTube channel. I highly recommend, and I'm not just saying this because Jeremiah is a great guy and he's doing awesome things.

He's got some really good content. I mean, if you kind of put this on pause and kind of just like subscribe to his channel and like just do him a solid, he's almost at, let me see, you are currently at.

900, 900 subs. I'm actually on a race with a few other YouTube channels to 1K.

Help me, people. Yeah. Yeah, and I'm dead serious. We do need to support people who are doing good ministry, right?

And support sometimes just means subscribing, right? That means something. So if you guys can, if you haven't already, go to the

Apologetics Dog YouTube channel and support your local apologist.

Sounds like an infomercial, right? Hey, that's right. If you go right now to the Apologetic Dog's channel and subscribe, you will receive a small vial of oil from the

Holy, no, I'm just kidding. Who knows, you'll get some Pentecostals going over there real quick. So this debate, let's go.

I'm a little saucy today, so I do apologize for that. I'm ready to go. I've got my Bonson coffee mug and drink good coffee.

I'm ready to talk about this important topic. So the context of the debate is, as you explained it, why was the proposition framed in the way that it was?

It says here, is water baptism necessary for our justification before God?

Why not the generic, is baptism necessary for salvation? What's the reason for that wording?

So me being in apologetics and in the debate realm, these are the types of categories I'm constantly contending for.

Like when we say, is it necessary for salvation? Well, which part of our salvation? Are we talking about justification?

Are we talking about sanctification? Are we talking about what Jesus accomplished, Calvary? Are we talking about glorification? And I'm not gonna lie,

Eli, as he was knocking on my door saying, hey, reconsider these things. I was like, hey, let's debate.

And it was pretty soon where he said, okay, I'm interested in this. He goes, I don't have a YouTube account. I said, all you need is a camera.

He said, okay. And as we were talking. Yeah, all you need is a phone. And he asked me if I had any suggestions and I suggested this topic, thinking maybe he'd wanna word it a little bit differently.

But he said, no, I like it. And I just thought, well, water baptism. That way, when we go to certain texts that I think is more a baptism of the spirit,

I don't wanna get lost on that, even though that's relevant and he would have been totally within the confines of the debate to ask me about what baptism of the spirit looks like.

We talked about the word necessary, but more so in the sense of when we have forgiveness of sins.

Now, the Church of Christ, they think at baptism, your past sins are washed away. And the way that we view justification getting into this next term, we believe it's the whole enchilada as Greg Bonson would have said, right?

The whole enchilada. All of our sins are forgiven and put on Calvary. In exchange, we receive that righteousness of Christ.

And so that's why I wanted to say necessary for our justification, because when we just say salvation in a broad sense, we have to do some more heavy lifting to get at that term.

Sure. To say that's what we're contending for here, not sanctification in the broad sense. And so I wanna just go ahead and put that out there.

Now, we understand justification as being forensic or judicial, and that's so necessary.

This is what really sets us apart from Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox. But what I tell people is if justification is judicial, then it's necessarily before God as judge.

And so this is the language that Romans uses. And so what's on the backside of that is what is

James 2 talking about? What kind of justification is that before? Because you and I have talked about this before. This is in a context before men, a vindication before man.

Horizontal justification versus vertical justification. And this is an important point in terms of just biblical interpretation.

When you see the term justification, it doesn't always mean what you think it means. The context determines.

And so you have Paul utilizing justification in a very different way than James is using justification.

That's a very important point because as you know, James 2 is always brought up. Look, it's clear, bro. The only place in scripture, right, you've heard this before, right?

The only place in scripture where it says faith alone is preceded by not by faith alone, as though you've never read that before.

That is always brought up. So it's important to know the context there, but go ahead. And I'm so quick to say, read the whole verse.

It says, you see, carrying this person to person interaction. And what kind of faith is he talking about?

Oh, a said faith. He's not talking about pistis, firm trust in the perfect savior. So yeah, we just developed that context.

Well, that's excellent. I like that wording and it really highlights really the center of the gospel and this idea that what makes us right before God?

Is it this declaration that God makes upon us by faith, which itself is a gift of God, or is it something we do?

I think that's so important. Now, can you kind of, I think people from the other perspective might perceive a person like yourself and people like myself, people in general, who hold to this kind of justification by faith alone, that we don't really take seriously the issue of baptism.

What is the proper understanding that a justification by faith alone as a Christian believer, what's the proper context that we should understand the importance of baptism?

If it's not for salvation, then is it really all that important? How should we frame that in our own thinking as Christians?

Yeah, something that I contended heavy for in the debate, if some of our viewers go over there, is you'll see me begin to articulate how our baptism is something we participate in in a work.

And it's a wonderful, God -glorifying, sanctifying work that we do and participate in.

And so we just gotta have the proper categories. Scripture, I would say from Genesis to Revelation, makes the case that it's based on our faith in the perfect Savior.

That's how we're justified. That's how we're saved. But now we're on this wonderful journey of walking in the light, walking with Christ in sanctification.

And so all of our works, Ephesians 2 .10 talks about how we're

His workmanship created for good works. All the commands given to us that we should delight to obey belongs in our sanctification.

That's what we're created unto after we've been declared right before God. So works are not bad, as long as we understand the proper category.

Our works belong in our sanctification. And so when we obey Christ's command to be baptized, we are showing the watching world what true disciples of Christ look like.

We are set apart by the things that we do and how we identify with Christ. So that's huge.

In this debate, I really made the distinction between justification and sanctification in faith and works.

And I say, and guess what? Our baptism, which is a ceremonial right by definition, belongs in our sanctification, and it's a work that we do.

All right, that's awesome. Now I'm kind of gonna break my normal way of doing things. I usually take questions at the end, but if some questions start coming in,

I will kind of just shoot them up right away so that people don't have to wait too long. This is a good question here too by Shane.

So if you have any questions, you're listening in. Shane Fisher. Shane Fisher, that's right. If you have any questions, shoot them in the comments and we'll try to shoot them up and kind of get to them.

So Shane, thank you so much for your question. Shane asks, how is it justification before men when

Abraham and Isaac were the only ones on the Mount? And according to Genesis 22, how were they justified before men?

How would you interact with that? Excellent question. I've been asked this a ton. And before I answer, I have a question for Shane.

Are you related to Trey Fisher? I wanna know that. I think y 'all are distant cousins.

So Genesis 22 is super important because we see that James 2 tells us that Abraham is being obedient to God.

Was not Abraham justified by his works when he offered up his son, Isaac? And so how do we say that this is a vindication before men?

I would say, Shane, you need to go read all of Genesis 22. Because when you do that, you do see more people with Abraham.

There was two travelers with him and his son. And he says something remarkable to the two travelers because Abraham knows

God told him to go sacrifice his son. And he says to the two travelers, basically, y 'all stay here and we will come back to you, okay?

Now, Hebrews 11 says that he had faith in God even to resurrect Isaac from the dead, essentially.

And so he's putting his faith on display to them regardless of what they know is gonna happen.

All they see is Abraham's faith saying he knows with certainty, full assurance that him and Isaac are going to come back.

So those are two witnesses, I would say. And then the third witness is Isaac himself.

This is an experience Isaac would never forget, right? And so it keeps going, Eli. And -

Hey, Isaac, remember that time we went fishing? Yeah, dad. Remember that time you like almost sacrificed me?

Oh yeah, I remember that. Hey, actually, I'm reminded as the way you answered. I know that,

I think it was Paul. I don't remember where, but he is making reference to the Exodus and the wanderings in the wilderness and the disobedience of the people of Israel.

And he says to his current audience, these things were written for you so that in a very broad sense, we are witnesses to the genuineness of Abraham's faith.

Yes. You jumped ahead of me. I was - Oh, I'm so sorry. I was building these layers. Oh, I stole your thunder.

No, no, no, no, you're good. I still got some more spice to add in there. Oh, you gotta have this. You got the salt, the salt vein.

The justification vein. Yes. I'm so sorry. No, no, no, you're good. So what we're seeing set up with the three witnesses is a picture of how truth is established by three or more witnesses that would come later in the law.

So we have that, but we're not done. Because we also have a theophany where the angel of the

Lord speaks from on high, but to man's level and says this amazing statement, now

I know that you fear God. So when in this conversation, I also entertain the church of Christ asking me this question a lot of times is, do you think

God was learning Abraham's faith in this moment that he truly feared man? Or was he speaking on the human level, which is what we're talking about?

That's what James two is talking about, right? And so John Calvin brings us out in his commentaries, how

God is speaking on man's level. God is witness that true living faith will manifest itself out to the world.

What we see old and new Testament is the just shall live by faith, right?

But we keep going, baby, because this was in the Pentateuch, right? So millions of Jews would be seeing

Abraham's living faith put on display in the story. And that is the application

James two is also making to Christians. What do you think about that, Eli? I think that's good stuff, but Shane continues.

I'm not sure if your answer did it for Shane, but -

It won't. He, I don't know if he's a professor, if he teaches at church of Christ college, but I've invited him to debate me on Marlon's channel or Donnie's channel.

I taught him anything he wants. Let's do it. He told me he'll - Or we can do it on this channel. I don't think I've ever had a baptism debate before on this channel.

Yeah, I don't mind. Okay, so here Shane asks again. So he has, first of all, he says, no, he's not related to the

Shane that you referred to. So thank you for that clarification, Shane. So Shane continues, in your debate,

Jeremiah, you admitted that there are different categories of works. Could you please elaborate more on that?

Shane, you got ahead of us, man. Cause I definitely wanted to bring this up, but now's the best time as ever. Cause Eli, I figured out a few things with the lingo, scaling the language barrier with the church of Christ.

So I think it's interesting that they think it's profound that we do have categories for work.

So I just want to tell people clearly what I'm talking about. For one, we have the works of God, which it's no surprise,

I'm a monergist. And I would go to Ephesians 1 .11 to say, look, monergistically,

God is working out all things together after the counsel of his will. I just preach a sermon on this, by the way.

I would encourage people if they want to hear that develop. I get a little rowdy in the pulpit too. So some people like that.

So that's number one. You've got the works of God, the things that God is doing. That's going to be important because they will use the term, the work of God differently than what we mean.

I mean, it's literally what God is doing. God is working by sustaining the creation by the word of his power.

And so then we have another category of human works, human effort, accomplishments that we participate in and do.

So that's a category. So I want to continue to look under the category of human effort, human achievement, human works.

We are not saved by anything that we do, anything that we can accomplish by our hands, get up and walk and do using our feet.

And then after we're saved, after we're declared right before God by faith, which is firm trust from the heart in the perfect savior, then we're created unto good works.

We're not going to just do anything under the sun that would be sinful, because that's still under the domain of works.

We're called to good works, commandments that Christ has given us to do and participate in as we're walking with him in sanctification.

And so, yeah, in the debate, Gavin, I think he was wanting me to say, no, works is the same every time without qualification.

And I just said, yeah, there's a huge difference between Ephesians 2, 9 and 10. And it's the difference of being saved.

We've been called out of darkness and now we can do things that are pleasing to God, like the commandments that he's given us.

Excellent, very good. Yeah, works is an interesting thing. I was talking about this with my students just recently, whereas we're not saved by our works, but our works are rewarded, aren't they?

Bible speaks about being rewarded for our work. So they do play a function. We're not minimizing works. We just want to understand them in the proper context.

So, all right, Shane has one more question. And then we'll continue back to the specifics of the debate.

But - Can I ask Shane another question too? Can we do a debate maybe in the near future?

Okay, well, he can, she could, I don't mind. Jeremiah's trying to debate everybody. Look at this.

You see, you're like a James, you're not James White, but you're James Brown, because you got a brown beard. James -

James Brown. I just caught myself there. First, before I get into this one, Shane, not

Shane, sorry. This is a words of truth from scripture. Jeremiah and Jordan talks, quick question, how hard was it not to laugh when unarmed

Gavin looked like a deer in headlights? So apparently I did not catch this part, but apparently there was a moment where you made a point that had awkward silence.

Maybe it was kind of a, not a cheap shot moment, but you had like a gotcha moment, I presume.

Well, there are multiple. Okay. But I want to tell this individual, I have enjoyed our talks.

He's somebody that's reached out to me in light of some of my works. I will say, me and this person have vast disagreements, but we can actually laugh and be cordial with one another.

And so I appreciate that so much. I thought, Jeremiah, you were going to challenge this person to a debate. So there's going to be three people versus -

I would, I would, but he has told me clearly, he's done podcasts, this individual, and he thinks debates are sinful.

And so we had a not debate on if debates were sinful or not in our phone conversations, but it was good.

Like, I really appreciate it. And I'm talking, we, for two hours, we had a dialogue and I want to tell him something real fast.

So as the pauses were coming up, as I was asking challenging questions, my heart is to evangelize.

So not to belittle or make fun of somebody. And that's one of the biggest feedback, Eli, I've gotten from people is they could feel my love towards Gavin.

And so that, that was the goal. So - And sometimes being caught in, is it like a deer in headlights is necessary to expose a false position, right?

Right. As long as we don't use that as opportunities to act sinfully towards people, right? So very good.

Excellent. All right. Well, here we go back to Shane's question about - Shane had a question here.

How was Rahab hiding the spies justification before men? So kind of similar principles earlier.

For one, the spies themselves are seeing Rahab's faith put on display.

But we see the better application come out in James chapter two's point of what true living faith looks like.

So we are the beneficiaries of seeing Rahab's faith. Because if you go back in the old Testament to Joshua two,

I may be totally wrong on that. I think it's in Joshua two. But if you look at the whole narrative, she was a sinner acting like a sinner and God showed her grace in spite of her sinfulness.

So I won't preach the sermon, but it's awesome. But there's a sermon there. So yeah, excellent. All right.

So let's talk about the, I mean, people can go and watch the opening statements and the rebuttals and things like that.

But I wanna talk a little bit about where most people think the juice is, and that's the cross -examination. So if you guys are familiar with the

Wise Disciple YouTube channel, Nate Sala, he's been on my show before,

I've been on his. He's got an excellent series on his channel called The Debate Teacher Reacts. And he talks about how debate's supposed to happen.

And so I agree with him. He says where all the action happens is in the cross -examination, because in the cross -examination is where what debaters call clash comes out, where you see really the distinct and unique differences of both the sides on full display, pressing up against each other, where you can see the strength or lack thereof of a person's position.

So what was the nature of your, in other words, when you were in cross -examination, what kind of questions did you wanna ask or did you ask so as to bring out clash, so as to show the strength of your position and the weakness of his with respect to the debate proposition?

So in answering this, I wanna tell you the two big things that I've learned from Nate Sala. Love his channel.

Watch everything that pumps out there. And I always want to frame the conversation well, whether I'm doing an opening, whether I'm engaging in a rebuttal,

I wanna remind the audience what we just heard and how it's either wrong and how I'm approaching it.

So framing the conversation, he had a wonderful interview with William Lane Craig and they spent a lot of time talking about framing the debate.

And so that's been invaluable, Eli. I'll tell you, Dr. Craig is excellent at that.

Oh, he's the best. I will remind you the three arguments I said at the beginning. Argument one, whatever begins there.

And he sounds like a robot, but that constant reminder, you're right, kind of says that framework and allows the audience to follow along.

And of course he does it in his own - Framing the discussion. Yes. That's what glows in my mind.

Each debate I'm thinking, okay, remember to bring the audience along where I'm going and explain it, right?

The other thing that Nate has talked about is in CrossX is setting a garden path, right?

And we're agreeing, we're just walking, looking at the garden together and then bam, you pin them up against the wall.

And so this is my debate tactic is I wanna know my opponent's position well enough where I could argue for it beforehand.

So this goes back to even what William Lane Craig has talked about is you can't over -prepare for a debate, right?

You're always just pumping in that time. And you and I have talked about this, how important that is to just put the necessary preparation into the debate, right?

And so what I wanna do is know their position well enough to be like, okay, what are the things that we can agree with along the way, but then

I'm going to try to expose a massive inconsistency. So my thinking is very presuppositional.

I want to ask them questions how they account for certain things that I think is either impossible or very, very difficult, if that makes sense.

Sure, excellent. So the nature of your questions is to really bring out what must be true in order for what you're saying over here to be true.

100%, yeah, let's set the garden path together. Let's agree. And then I'm about to ask you a question of consistency.

So this goes back to apologetics in general. We're gonna scale the language barriers. We're gonna define terms.

We're gonna look at proof text in context. And if people go back to the debate, not only every question he asked did

I just develop the context every time and remind him of certain definitions of words, but then

I press for consistency, right? And honestly, there's nothing magical. Like those three steps, defining words, looking at context and being consistent, that's my goal everywhere.

And that should be everybody's goal, right? And laying the garden path to pin your opponent is not a disingenuous thing within the context of a debate.

I mean, that's the whole purpose of a cross -examination. The opponent is welcome to do the same as well, right?

We want him to lay his garden path so that when he thinks he's got us, we have an opportunity to explain, right?

So that's a good technique. Maybe people can, hopefully they'll keep that in mind. That's important. Okay, we have one more, well, not one more.

I have another question here. Thomas Kank, I apologize if I mispronounced that.

I don't like this one. How do you guys make sense of someone leaving the faith like Tyler Vela, who seemed to be a strong precept guy?

Thanks. I'll be perfectly honest. I would make sense out of it in the same way Tyler would say we should make sense out of it in light of Calvinism.

Tyler is convinced the Bible teaches Calvinism even if he is no longer a quote unquote believer. And so he would have to grant our explanation that there were those who are with us, but they left us because they were never of us, right?

Notice what the question is asking, who seemed to be a strong precept guy? There is a difference with what seems to be the case and what is actually the case.

Someone can seem very confident, very strong, but in their personal life, they can have various issues, spiritual issues, moral issues, or whatever the case may be.

And of course, a tree is known by its fruit. And eventually a fruit can look nice and eventually you bite into it only to find that it wasn't as healthy as it seemed.

So I would describe Tyler's quote unquote deconversion, in the same way

Tyler would allow me as a Calvinist to explain it theologically, right? So if Calvinism is true and this idea that those who claim to be saved walk away, they're not really saved, that would be the account that I would give regardless of how strong he seemed to be.

Yeah, so that's my take on it. So the way that I processed it,

I was shocked, not happy. But it was good on this side for my sanctification because I remember being in prayer, still pray for Tyler, because I see content popping up on YouTube.

He's being interviewed by atheists and things like that. But it's a good reminder that I don't need to put my trust in any human apologist, you know what

I mean? It's a reminder that I need to keep my gaze on Christ and Him. And so that's not to disparage, looking up to guys like Eli or Dr.

Wied and Durbin and a lot of those guys, but I need to make sure to keep the main thing the main thing. And I remember listening to Tyler in the past,

I think you might've been talking with him. The way that he described his apologetic methodology was cousins to presuppositionalism because he was more in favor of arguing abductively, inference to the best explanation.

So he had a different bent, which this is just observations like that I made over time.

And I listened to all of his debates. Love it. He's an excellent debater. He's a very smart guy.

However, after he kind of made his deconversion public, he kind of said some stuff about Jesus that was really like, even if I wasn't a

Christian, I'm like, well, that's really sloppy. It was very interesting to see him have some sloppy reasoning when I'm so used to seeing him very sharp.

And I would say that even if I wasn't a Christian, I'd be like, where'd you get that one from?

But nevertheless, we don't wanna get into details about that. Yes, we need to pray for Tyler. It's still feels weird when

I think about it, but God is in control either way. He's not our savior. Bonson's not our savior.

James White is not our savior. William Lane Craig, keep your eyes on Christ and keep your focus on him.

That's all I can say. Yes. So did you wanna say something? Yeah, I was gonna say one other observation, cause

I mean, I'm analyzing everything. And cause I would fall in that determinist camp, understanding

God's sovereignty. And so I learned a lot from him, but I did not like how he articulated.

And I could be wrong with how I was perceiving this, but the way he described God's eternal decree seemed to be active active, rather than what

I would say historically is active passive. Cause that's crucial on how we would distinguish equal ultimacy and how

God is the primary cause and uses secondary means. So there were just things that I thought I might would explain that a little bit differently.

Okay. Thank you for that question. That's fair game. We do open up the chat and then people could ask whatever they'd like.

So those are our thoughts on that. So I continue to pray for Tyler. Still consider him a great guy.

I haven't talked to him in a while. I have been busy myself, but I do follow along when

I see a post or a video, you know, check in and see what's going on. But that's all

I could say about that. So, all right, well, let's get back into this debate now. You said towards the beginning that the church of Christ would say that your sins are washed away.

What? At the moment of baptism. Have I got that right? Eli, your past sins, man.

Your past sins. Okay. So thank you. See, and I was drinking my coffee and it's still,

I'm kind of brain dead now. So your past sins are forgiven at the moment of baptism.

Have I got that right? When you come into the watery graves of baptism, that's how you receive the blood.

And when you come out, that's the moment your past sins are washed away. Okay. So now

I can't help but to think that when they use that language, they think that that language is strong because it reflects language of scripture.

What kind of scriptures do they use to support that particular understanding? Because I know they word it that way on purpose, which is fine.

If you think of positions biblical and you want to use biblical terminology, what scriptures do they use, the strongest scriptural support that you can think of in your experience that they use to support their particular understanding?

So there's about three and I can't recall them off the top of my head specifically. I know one's in Ephesians 1.

I know another one's in Acts 20 and they like to go to the one in Revelation 1. And all these references are the blood of Jesus, right?

And I notice almost every time, like I've not seen this yet, they don't quote the one that I think would actually be better, but I think

I've discovered why in Romans 3 .25. What's the

Revelation reference? It might be around verse seven off the top of my head. All right, let me try.

It's not verse seven, but the one in Revelation, we may have to do a quick search on it, but it just mentions about the blood of Jesus, essentially washing away sin.

Oh, it's verse five. And from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness and the firstborn of the dead and the ruler of kings on earth to him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood.

Okay, one second here. I tried to get the scripture up there, but now my screen has exploded and there's a giant...

See what happens when you try to be all technologically savvy and then it backfires. Let's remove that. Sorry, I was trying to get that.

I'll figure that out. I should figure that out before I... Here, Shane says Romans 6, 3 and 4,

Acts 22, 16, 1 Peter 3, 20 through 21. Okay, this is a great example.

They leave out, to me, the one that's even more precise than this. Now, in Shane's defense, he's quoting a lot of verses that do bring in baptism.

But when we're talking about coming in contact with the blood, Shane, I would recommend y 'all include

Romans 3, 25. Let me read it real quick, Eli. Sure.

And I'll even back up a little bit. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And we are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom

God put forward as a propitiation. Pay careful attention to this. By his blood to be received by faith.

Now, in their mind, they got their five -step formula. You gotta hear the word, you gotta believe the word, you gotta repent, and you gotta confess, and you gotta be baptized.

So in their mind, they have a five -step formula to be saved. But what they don't tell you, hidden step number six, is it has to be in the church of Christ.

And then another hidden step is you gotta continue to live a holy life to stay saved. So I've discovered some of those hidden steps going on.

I like how you visually gave us, like, here's the five, but there's this secret one.

That was very visually powerful. Thank you. My mind's a scary place. It's all good.

All right, so what were some of the scriptures that your opponent used? Were these some of these very ones?

What was, what do you think? So if I could ask you in this way, in interacting with your opponent,

Gavin, what was the strongest biblical point that he made? Did his points simply,

I mean, and this is fine if you say, yeah, to what I'm about to ask you, but did his points just simply roll off you, like, oh, silly

Gavin, right? You know, you're so misguided. Or were there points that you could admit, yeah, you know what?

I think you're wrong, but that's a great point. Let's unpack that. What was the strongest point of your opponent?

There's two points that I wanna address, and I'm the first to say, and even in the debate, if you go listen,

I will tell Gavin, I think that's a good point. Like, I don't have any shame to tell someone, I think this is the direction that you should go.

You know what I mean? And so now we'll see. On my end, I think God has just prepared my heart by his grace to just love these things.

So Gavin has a TikTok, and I went and listened to all of his TikToks because he's a little bit of an apologist himself for the church of Christ.

I listened to all of them and enjoyed them. Does he do like, are they snippets from like talks or does he like, does he like respond to like the crazy

TikTok people? He responds to questions sent in, and they're usually like selfie mode, and he just breaks it down.

All right, cool. I liked him, you know what I mean? But they did help me a lot for the debate. So when he started making arguments,

I was kind of like, oh, I know where he's going with this. And that's one thing I love about debates is you don't always know how it's gonna go down.

So I know some people are - That's what you love about debates, that's what petrifies people about debates. I was gonna tell you, you wanna know what my favorite part of the debate is?

Is being asked questions. So the second favorite is when

I get to ask questions. And so people are like, that's weird, Jim. I'm like, I don't. Yeah, oh, that's interesting, cool.

So we talked about Ephesians 2, 8, 9, and 10. I really appreciate that dialogue.

I think he was really surprised with how I was saying, of course, there's different categories of works. I think they were just like, no, you're supposed to say works is works.

And because a big part of my case is trying to show that baptism is a work that we do, that we participate in.

And I encourage people to approach it this way. Yes, have a definition of works. Go study the semantic domain of ergon, or in its verb form, ergods of mind.

And what you're gonna find, especially if you go to BDAG, or if you go to Thayer's lexicon, which is a little bit more outdated lexicon, is it's anything that you do in hand or deed and accomplishment that you can display, that others can see.

It's a deed of any kind, anything that you do. And also remind people that ergon is the word that the

English word is derived from of energy. And so that just even more so says any energy that you can exert and show people as you're doing tasks, that's works.

Now, and this is where the dance begins is when we start talking about works of God and works of man.

Now, it's interesting what they mean by that, because this is, I'm gonna bring out a few different points here, but they view the works of God, meaning the works that you do in obedience to his commands.

They cloak that under, well, that's a work of God. That's not a work of man when you're being obedient to God. And I'm over here like, okay, works of God are things that God does.

And we can show that in many ways. When God sustains his creation, well, that's by the power of God, what he does.

Ephesians 1 .11 even uses ergon in that sense. Colossians 2 talks about the powerful working of God.

And a lot of times the context is in regeneration, when he's taken out that heart of stone and giving us a new heart.

Now that has a profound desire to glorify God and to search after Christ. So that's the work of God.

Now for them, that's code for when you do works of obedience. Thing is,

I know that. So I get to go to passages where I'm gonna lay a garden path.

So if you want, remind me, I'll tell you the garden path later in Romans four, that I think is really hard for them to be consistent.

But talking about points that Gavin brought up that I think are good. Number one, I think a church of Christ needs to try to make the case that baptism is not a work.

And you can say this in many different ways, but when you just say, well, nowhere do we read, baptism is not a work or baptism is a work.

Well, that's not how we do exegesis and that's not how we get theology. But I get when you have to push your point, they're gonna a lot of times say baptism, nowhere in the

Bible does it say baptism is a work. And then my always pushback is, but define works for me. Well, you got works of merit, you got works of flesh, you got works of law.

And I'm like, yeah, yeah. I get how you're talking about a lot of different kinds of works, but what is the definition that you're already using to make those particular points, right?

What's that universal? Don't give me the particulars yet, right, Eli? That's my precept hat on.

So really contending for the definition of Ergon, that's on our side for those of us that are resting in God's grace by faith alone.

Push for the definition of works. And so that's gonna help Church Christ even understand how we're interpreting

Ephesians 2, 8, 9, and 10. Yes, because what Gavin was saying is, well, belief is a work of God, correct?

John 6, which I do wanna talk about here in a little bit. And I'd say, yes, it's a work of that God does in the heart.

And he's like, but that work is excluded in your mind in Ephesians 2, 8. And I'm like, no, it's a gift.

He grants us to believe in him, Paul says elsewhere. And so the word -

He grants us by faith alone, right? Yes. Okay, well, there's a zinger here.

I don't know, I have to interrupt you because Think Gossiper says, if repentance is needed for salvation, then salvation isn't really by faith alone, now is it?

That's funny. And Thank Ophelot, he's been on my channel a lot. I know he's a fan to the

Apologetic Dog, so I appreciate the question. So what I - Sorry to throw you off. I just thought that was a good question.

I love it. I like being asked questions. And by the way, Eli, the church I serve at with Pastor Nathan, we're a plurality of elders.

We do a sermon Q &A after every service, so. Oh, wow, okay. That's a little different. People are like, wow, we can actually talk to people.

Oh, we love it, we love it. So faith alone in the historic sense is faith apart from works, especially with Martin Luther, apart from the sacramental works of Rome.

And so that's the sense. But there's more ways to describe the faith alone that justifies this, is it's a repentant faith.

It's a loving faith. It's a faith of humility, one that doesn't look to oneself. We're a beggar, but we're looking to the one that gives us the bread of life.

And so I think it's a bad argument, and I mean this in charity. I think it's a bad argument to say, oh, y 'all believe in five solas, five alones?

Well, that's contradictory. Well, there are alones in different senses. And so this is another one is, oh, faith alone?

Well, that must be devoid of repentance. And I'm saying, no, repentance is also a category of the heart. If it's in a salvific context, because it means to change the mind, but not just intellectual ascent only, it's engaging the heart.

And so - But that's a result of a changed nature. So repentance is a gift that is granted by God, 2

Timothy 2 .24, I believe in 25. And you have repentance, which is a fruit of regeneration, which allows you to then exercise faith.

And that's why we say faith is a gift. Repentance is a gift that is granted. Yep, 100%.

So it's interesting that repentance is articulated in the same way that faith is as a gift, that it's granted to believe.

Ephesians 2 here, we see that faith is a gift. Even repentance is from the gracious hand of God working in us.

And I also try to tell people, there's a difference. This came out in the debate a little bit. There's a difference between repentance and the fruit of repentance, because the fruit of repentance is works, right?

That we do. But repentance is in the category of the heart, because when

Paul starts talking about how we're justified by faith and not by works of law or any other accomplishments that we can do, he's contrasting faith from works.

Faith is inward and of the heart. It's immaterial that God sees, and you know in your heart.

And works are everything external. It's the things that we do. So those are the - Jeremiah, you're missing something, bro.

It's clear in scripture, bro. Oh, Clint Little. Man, Clint came late.

We totally, I totally guessed that, right? You know why I don't like when people use that one? Okay, it's fine.

And I don't think, I'm not saying Clint does this, but you honestly think that when a person who believes by faith alone, that we haven't read

James 2, 24. And like, this says it, like, see, just close it. You see now, it's not, it's like, we've never read that before.

Clearly, you know how a Protestant is gonna understand it. Hopefully, you know, right? And we've addressed this already towards the beginning, but -

I wanna say something positive towards Clint, though, because he roasts me to no end on my channel. I like you got a little

King James translation going on. Yee -see. Yes, yes, that's right. But I do agree with him here.

Jesus commanded baptism. Okay, so whether it's a work or not, it's commanded. And I think an obedient Christian will be baptized.

100%. And I think that's an important point. But go ahead, I'm sorry. No, you're good. Well, me and Clint, I mean, he's asked me all these questions.

And so I think it's a little funny that he just wants to ask me when we're going live. I love it, you know?

Yes, you heard correctly, Shane. Regeneration precedes repentance, not necessarily chronologically, but logically.

There's different sentences in which something can proceed. None of this business that you're regenerated, but then there is a time between your regeneration and your faith and repentance.

And so there's this limbo point where you're regenerated, but not saved, right? We make a distinction between chronological procession and a proceeding and logical proceeding.

But yes, you did hear me correctly. I do believe regeneration precedes repentance in the proper understanding of what that means.

And I wanna say something about like Shane and the Church of Christ. I think, and I don't think they would take offense to this, but they're true

Pelagians. They really believe that man is born perfect and it's their environment that corrupts them, not that they're born sinners.

So when they start hearing us talk about regeneration precedes all this logically,

I'm telling you, like, I see the lights get real big, like they're not tracking. And that doesn't mean every single one, but I'm like, cause

I guarantee you, Shane's thinking about Titus 3 .5. And I wanna talk a little bit about 1 Corinthians 6 .11,

which came up in the debate. So when we start talking about regeneration, we say that has to be true because we're dead in our sins and trespasses.

We're children of wrath. We're not privy to the things of God. We don't understand these things.

We're at enmity with God, we're at war with God, and we spit at God. So some type of heart change needs to take place. And so Eli, I've had the wonderful privilege of a lot of people by the grace of God explaining that.

And man, you can just see they're connecting the dots, like, whoa, because that speaks to their testimony. They realized that they weren't seeking after God.

They were going the opposite direction and God providentially came into their life and saved them like the

Damascus Road experience that Paul had, you know? So -

Sorry, bro. I can't help. Go ahead. This is, I mean, okay, think

Gossiper, I apologize. I don't know how much you are aware of Reformed theology or Protestant theology.

I'm not gonna answer this, but you do need to read some of the basic stuff. This is, so you have to be saved before you can believe.

You need to know the difference between the different ways we understand precedes, right?

No Reformed person believes that you're saved before you believe.

It's not a chronological thing. You believe because your nature has changed. Some would even argue it simultaneously, it occurs.

But there is a logical priority, not necessarily a chronological priority. So again, these are really not good points.

Which basic books? You can, oh, well, you can read some of R .C. Sproul's work. He's got some good introductory material.

What is Reformed theology? Talks about this, you know, role of regeneration and repentance and faith and all those sorts of things.

You could even read a good old Reformed systematic theology. Pick up a Wayne Grudem and read the section on justification and regeneration.

Explains it quite easily and simply. So would I debate

Leighton Flowers? I have debated Leighton Flowers. Yeah, that's right. Well, we had an informal discussion.

I've been on his channel before. You can check that out. Can I speak to that a little bit? Yeah, go for it. So we're trying to get a debate with me and Leighton Flowers on Marlon's channel, where we're still trying to figure out a proposition for Leighton to defend.

Okay. Marlon wants him in the hot seat. I'm just like. Well, Leighton's a nice guy. Leighton's a nice guy.

When I was on his show, it was more of a discussion. We didn't debate, but I suppose we were disagreeing. So it was kind of a debate discussion sort of thing.

But he's a nice guy. And I think as much as I disagree with him, he does bring up questions that I think are important to address.

So I'd like to see that happen. It's not my cup of tea. I don't like to do it as much as Leighton does.

That's kind of his wheelhouse. But yeah, that'd be cool to see you interact with Leighton. I like to call provisionists the flower patch kids.

Yeah, Leighton's a nice guy. I know that other people have beef with him, but my interaction with him had been nothing but respectful and he's been cordial and nice.

And so I appreciate him for that, even though we disagree. So - If I debate Leighton, my goal would be for him to like me a lot at the end of it.

That won't be very difficult. He's a, he likes, he's very, well, he's very nice.

He's just firm on his position. You know, it's - Respect. Yeah, it's all good. So, all right.

Let's see here. I had a question for you and I forgot. So, I know you were - Whenever you're ready,

I'll pick up on some of the good points that Gavin brought up. Yeah, go ahead. Because I've been interrupted when I see some of the comments. I'm just like, oh, come on, man.

You guys got to read up a little bit on what Protestants believe. Yeah, so. And I like this here.

So Shane says, I'm honestly trying not to misrepresent your view. And I'm sure Jeremiah appreciates that.

I appreciate that as well. And this is why you're asking a lot of questions. That's cool. You don't have to apologize at all.

That's the way - I have respect for Shane. That's why I'm like, dude, me and you to debate will be profitable for a lot of people.

Yeah. I respect everyone here in the chat. Even someone who I'm kind of just like, oh, come on, man. That's a question you should -

I don't mean that in a bad way. It's just sometimes it's easy to get frustrated. Like that's kind of like the basic stuff if you're going to understand the other side.

That's why I don't speak much about the Church of Christ myself, because I don't know enough about it to properly represent it.

But I have no problem having someone like yourself on or something like that to explain it. People liked your

Church of Christ impersonation last time we did this. You know,

I try to keep the, you know, I always have to exaggerate the opponent. I don't mean it in any bad way.

If I, you know, I have impressions of all sorts of denominations or positions.

So let's see here. Okay. All right. There's some more questions coming in, but then we'll save them until you're done making the point you're making, because I'm just rudely interrupting you.

So I love it. So we talked about Ephesians 2. I just think

Gavin was kind of shocked with some of my answers there, but it's like, hey, this is what we've always believed.

You know what I mean? So one of the questions I thought was really good is when he took me to 1 Corinthians 6, 11.

I'll read it. And we'll talk a little bit about the context and his specific question. And such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the

Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our God. His question about this initially was, well, we see sanctified comes before justification.

So Jeremiah, how can you have justification first and then sanctification?

Now, the first time I've ever thought about this was watching Dr. James Wyatt debate a Roman Catholic with the same point.

And so my first point is, well, sanctify, it depends on the context because it literally just means to be set apart.

And so the moment we're regenerated, tipping my hat to what I think washed means there, we are set apart from the world because we're justified by what

Christ did all in the context of the Holy Spirit being at work. Now tell people, if you look earlier in 1

Corinthians 1, verse two, talks about calling upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both

Lord, and earlier says to the church of God that is in Corinth, those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus.

So Paul's already using the argument that sanctified is in a positional sense, being set apart from the world before God and he qualifies it with our justification.

And so I just let people know, it's okay that we see sanctified in different contexts, not the full breadth of what sanctification, walking with the

Lord as we do works to glorify God. So that's the first point. And then his bigger point,

I think, was okay, Jeremiah, you believe washed is regeneration and not water baptism.

I'm like, you got me, you know? And he said, well, you were washed is in the middle voice.

And so his point there is, that means that you're not merely passive, but you are participating to some degree, which is funny, because I'm like, well, for one, if you have that definition, then it sounds like a work, right?

Because you're participating in this. And I'm saying, oh, now I get to speak to the category of monergism, because that's his big point is, if it's in the middle voice, if you're participating, it can't be monergistic.

And so my big point number one always is, nothing magical in the Greek. A lot of these verb tenses are just having to do with sentence structure.

Doesn't mean we shouldn't study it. This is a historic faith. We need to study the original languages.

So I'm just, I wanna say like, to let them know that this is great that you're bringing this out. And this is why Gavin's a little bit distinguished from the

Church of Christ at large, is because they want the Bible and the Bible only, is what they tell me. Don't give me that Greek.

And so the fact that he's willing to look at these things, I'm saying props to you, Gavin, right? But I'm saying the middle voice isn't going to overturn the context that Paul has already been laying out.

He's talking about idolaters. He's talking about people that are living in a lifestyle of sin, right?

Who will not inherit the kingdom of God. And now he's talking about Christians after their conversion.

This was the reality that you once experienced. And so I told Gavin, I said, this were some of you, but you were washed.

You were regenerated. And he's like, how can this be in the middle of voice if in regeneration you're passive?

I said, because we have a personal experience, right? The light bulbs come on, the dead heart now is beating and we see life differently.

And I tell him, that's what is qualified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of God.

So I told him, I don't think Paul's going for an order of salute us here. But if we do push for that, we see that washed comes first, right?

Being regenerated comes first. And obviously I have Titus 3, 5 in my mind as well, talking about the renewal and regeneration of the

Holy Spirit not by works that we've done, but God has saved us by his grace and his mercy. So anyway, props to Gavin just for looking at the

Greek and asking about the middle voice. He thinks that's a defeater for monergism. And it's like, no, we are to work out our salvation with fear and trembling.

So we have a perspective, right? When people say, I chose Christ, I wanna say, of course you did.

But because you chose him because he first chose you. Like once we get deeper into who God is, there's a reason why you had that experience.

So this washing is just a transform of the heart by the Spirit, a cleansing of the

Spirit. This is Ezekiel 36 language. This is John chapter three language,

Titus three language. It's a work of God that we share an experience of what that's like.

So that was a good point. And then if you're okay with this, Eli, I wanna talk about another passage that didn't get brought out in debate, but it was just an assumption given in Gavin's mind in most

Church of Christ. And this took me a while to figure out the lingo. Now, I told you earlier, when they see the word work of God, that's code for works of obedience that you do, okay?

And so this kind of stems from John chapter six, cause we see that phrase.

And what's my pattern? We're gonna define terms. We're gonna look at context and we're gonna be consistent. Tell people that's what we're gonna do every time.

It'd be no different here. Like they really think this is like a big defeater. And I'm gonna say, let's just look at context.

So you have this crowd that experienced the miracles of Jesus taking the fish, taking the bread, and man, it was an incredible experience.

And so a lot happens. And then starting in verse 28, this crowd of people said to Jesus, what must we do to be doing the works of God?

Jesus answered them, this is the work of God that you believe in him, whom he has sent, okay?

And they say, see, believing is a work that you do. And it's a work of God. And I'm like, time out.

Cause there's a lot of given assumptions on their side. Number one, I think the biggest assumption is that these people are sincerely seeking after Christ, wanting to know who he is and sincerely asking what do they need to do in order to be made right with God?

I actually push against that. I would say, I don't think these people are sincerely seeking after Christ.

Why do I think that? Literally the verse before says, Jesus says to them, do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the son of man will give to you.

And before that, he says, truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.

So thereafter, Jesus being the miracle worker, man, he fed us last time.

We want some more of that. And so here's the point that I would have brought out to Gavin in the back. I had a strategy. I wanted him to go to all of his baptismal verses.

Cause it's like, I'll explain the context. So I was ready to talk about John six. But when it was my time,

I wanted to emphasize on the justification part because I've already made the case that water baptism is a work.

So anyway, what I would have done here is to say, look, these people are not sincerely seeking after him. And they earlier saw the works of God in Jesus by performing miracles.

That's crucial to the context. The works of God are the miracles that God does. And we saw that in Jesus.

And they are not sincerely asking Jesus these questions. They are saying, okay, they said, what must we do?

And I pause and say, look, they are thinking in earthly categories, things that they can get up and accomplish.

And they do, they want to do miracles like Jesus. What do we need to do in order to be doing these works of God?

I tell people, look, we know already in the immediate context that they're not being sincere based on what Jesus rebuking them for wanting after the miracles.

But if Nicodemus earlier in John, the ruler of Israel, if he wasn't understanding it, why do you think these people are going to get it and understand it?

You need to even drive the wedge even deeper. These are the people when Jesus started talking about doctrine, right?

Looking to him in faith alone later, talking about believing in him and how he gives true bread from heaven.

And then he starts talking about drink my blood and eat my body. Verse 66 says, they walked with him no more, right?

So point is, you can't put these people in a positive light. And so when they ask, what are the works that we're doing?

They're thinking earthly. They're thinking about the things that they can do and accomplish in order to perform these works of God, these miracles, okay?

And then what Jesus says, this is the work of God. This isn't code for just do commands in obedience and then you'll be doing the works of God.

No, the work of God, the miracle that must occur is believe in me.

And so this is a beautiful passage or so that a miracle, the works of God need to happen in your heart to look upon Jesus in faith.

And so it's like, whatever in the context you wanna talk about there, that's the position we're gonna land in consistently.

Now, there was a question about a scripture that lost me, but it was, I think it was in the book of Acts.

And I accidentally - Oh no, not that book. I accidentally X out the...

They're gonna accuse you for running away from that verse. I know. By the way, anyone who's

Church of Christ and listening, I so appreciate you guys asking questions and interacting. I really do. So I might be a little saucy and sarcastic at times, but that's because it's late.

I apologize if I come off of it a certain way. But well, we are at the top of the hour,

Jeremiah, and I do have to wake up early tomorrow. So perhaps we can kind of take a couple more questions here and then

I can have you back on. We can do a part three. I don't mind at all. You know, I would love it. That'd be awesome.

Yeah, seriously, I would really love to do it. If we do it again, we'll talk more about the garden path that was said, while Romans four is kind of this central passage that I always try to drive back to.

We gotta have proper category of faith, proper category of works, look at Paul's argument and how he grounds it with Abraham.

Awesome, very good. All right, let's see here. A couple of questions here or comments that I wanted to cover.

Let's see here. A piece of the dog. Let's see. Oh man, it was right there.

Hold up. I was a precept, but I guess we could take a precept question here. While we talk about this one,

I'll find the one I was looking for. So if you wanna take a stab at that, and maybe I'll share my thoughts afterwards and then

I'll search for the other question. I may have to phone a friend on this one. Do presuppositional, does pre, that's the proper grammar.

Does presuppositionalism and divine conceptualism go hand in hand?

Are you familiar with divine conceptualism? I would just be taking a guess at what divine conceptualism is.

Okay. All right. Are you sure of what he's asking or getting at? Yeah, I'm familiar with divine conceptualism.

So divine conceptualism is this idea that propositions have an ontology.

They actually exist, like universals actually exist. And divine conceptualism will take these propositions, these truths, these perfections as being ideas in the mind of God.

So that they are couched within the context of God's mind. They are not, say for example, platonic ideals floating out there independent of a mind, right?

So if there is such a thing as ideals, like Plato mentioned, the perfect idea of say, a duck.

There is no such thing as the perfect idea of a duck floating out there independent of a mind thinking them.

And so Christians would say, if there is a perfect idea of a duck or a universal category, they are ideas in the mind of God, which makes sense ontologically that a perfect idea would be a reflection of a perfect mind.

And it would not destroy the doctrine of divine aseity, which is the idea that God has self -existence and there is nothing external to himself that exists independent of him.

So Platonism poses a threat to Christian theism because it posits ontological propositions and universals that exist independent of God thinking them, so to speak.

They are just as eternal as he is, but they do not spring forth or are grounded from him. So presuppositionalism and divine conceptualism go hand in hand.

I would say probably yes. I'm not an expert in this area, but if we're thinking in terms of universal categories and logical truths being a reflection of God's thinking, then yes,

I would say that is an essential feature of presuppositionalism. And I would even go so far as to say that is a biblical concept of God.

It's like you study these things. Like it's the background music of your - Yeah, this kind of stuff.

Yes, so I, yes. I'm still, I still can't find that question, bro.

I'm like trying to - Oh, they're gonna get you. Oh, I found it, okay. All right. Let's see here.

Can't take guess, X238, X2216. One of them, one of them was it, but that wasn't the one

I was remembering. I want to make sure I get this one. I hope my presuppositionalism question answered it.

I think it goes hand in hand, unless there are, because here's the thing. There are different models, theological models and philosophical models that are within the bounds of divine scripture that a presuppositionalist could hold to.

Like we hold to say like a revelational epistemology, but there's some variation in there that is open to a presuppositionalist that, you know, not all presuppositionalists might agree on.

So there's some flexibility within that. But divine's conceptualism, as I understand it, I think is a very important aspect of how we understand

God and how he grounds truths and propositions and things like that. So I hope that's a little helpful.

All right, so the words of truth from scripture says, Jeremiah, are you surprised

Gavin never used Romans 6, 7 in context of verses three through six to show justification the

Greek word there is dikaio, same as in Romans 5, 1. I'll be honest,

I wasn't surprised because I've watched his TikToks. And so he never went this route. Now in our conversation, me and words of truth from the scriptures, me and him talked about it.

And so I think Romans 6 is an interesting chapter because I think we're starting to see a shift of Paul talking about justification by faith that leads to sanctification later on in the chapter.

So, you know, anytime that these words are being talked about to be set free from,

I usually agree that it's still in the judicial categories that Paul already established earlier in Romans 5, 1.

So to me, there's no inconsistencies there. I think the real debate in verses three and four is how we understand the word baptized.

Now, some people get mad at me. I'm like, I don't think this is a wet immersion. Because when you look at the context, we have been baptized in Christ into his death.

And I'm like, this is a spiritual reality. And I think that grounds the context that these people who have been water baptized that are listening or reading

Paul's didactic letter, they're getting theological truths that point to the spiritual reality.

They would understand that's what my ceremonial cleansing, my ceremonial baptism was pointing to that reality.

Like when I have tons of people say, show me a verse where it says baptism is a ceremony.

I'm like, go look at the meaning of the word itself, rich history of how this ties back to John the

Baptist and his baptism and mikvahs that originate in the Old Testament, how they were totally bathed in water.

And all these are in a context that pointed to spiritual realities. And it's a ceremony by like definition.

It is, and it's okay, and it's okay. And so I've had other people say, so you're just assuming that they're gonna make that connection in their mind.

This is where Dr. White, I'm indebted to his teaching because for one, we see 1 Corinthians starting out with that because I've had people say, so you don't think anywhere in Paul's epistles, he's ever talking about water baptism.

I'm like, oh sure. 1 Corinthians even talks about, I'm not sure if I baptized any one of you in the household of Stephanas.

And I'm like, that sounds like the language of Acts, which are clearly water baptisms. And I'm like, that's what you got there.

1 Corinthians 10, you have the baptism into Moses. And I'm like, obviously water was around, but they weren't immersed in it.

The water literally split for them to walk through it. So they're being immersed into Moses's authority.

And then later in 1 Corinthians 15, you got baptism of the dead. All these contexts inform us of how

Paul is using this word. And so I do point people to 1

Peter 3, 21, where I do think there is a touching point of the word baptism, that he's talking about being baptized into Christ.

That's the baptism that saves us. And then he even just says, almost like he's correcting his audience misunderstanding.

It's not the removal of dirt, which would be a ceremonial bath. That would literally do that. And he's saying, that's not the thing that saves you.

It's being immersed into Christ by faith. Well, okay, this is gonna be my last point. The last thing

I'm gonna do, and then we'll wrap things up. I do apologize. I wish I can do it longer. I wake up at 4 .30

in the morning. Oh, that's brutal. Yeah, so I do apologize. I'd have to eventually go nappy nap.

But I think this would be a fun one in light of what you just said to end on. Thinkosopher says, things the

Bible says we're saved by, Christ's blood, Romans 5, 9. Baptism, 1 Peter 3, 21.

Confession, Romans 10, 9. Repentance, 2 Corinthians 7, 10. Preaching, 1

Corinthians 1, 21. What is being assumed in this list and why do you think he is off?

Yep, yep, yep. A couple of things are being assumed and people get mad when I say this, but what's being done that it's our job to point out is there is a conflation of justification and sanctification in these verses.

There's a conflation of faith and works. And so I could do this quickly. Romans 5, 9 does talk about the objective reality of salvation that Jesus's works accomplished perfectly.

Right, to tell us that it is finished. And what's at stake, and I'm getting ahead of myself, is when you start adding your works, you're adding works to the already finished works of Jesus.

And so 1 Peter 3, 21, baptism there is for one, they say, and they use the

King James to do this too, right? They were saved by water. And I'm like, yeah, but they were brought safely through water.

When we understand the narrative of Noah and what many other translations easily point out, but it was the ark.

That's the antitype of what he's about to talk about in the next verse. And Jesus is the ark of our salvation.

If we're in him by faith, having a clear conscience earlier in 1 Peter 3, it talks about sanctifying the

Lord in your heart in our favorite apologetics verse. That's a reference to faith. And so that's what he means there.

Romans 10, nine, confession. I would encourage, I have a short video on this, but if you look up the

Greek word for confess or confession, which is synonymous with calling, we talked about this last time, this is referring to a transformed heart of worship.

And so when we see that if we confess with the mouth, right, that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead, then you'll be saved.

That's talking about a transformed heart that trust in Jesus. And that's what the verses go on to say. And yes, that's going to express itself, not only in words, but as a transformed life.

And then repentance is a heart category. And then of course, preaching, preaching forth the word brings about salvation.

But I will tell people, preaching the gospel, that's different than how do we receive the gospel?

So I tell people the big thing that's at hand here is how do we receive the good news?

Because Church of Christ, a lot of times, we'll talk about how water baptism is the gospel, or it's a part of the gospel.

I'm like, you're conflating other categories. You shouldn't even be doing this. Because we differ on - Well, but that makes me think,

Joshua. I do apologize. I'm Joshua, Jeremiah. I was talking to my friend Joshua the other night. Apologize. Jeremiah, Paul says that I did not come to baptize, but to preach the gospel.

And he makes a clear distinction between the gospel and baptism. He's not minimizing the importance of baptism, but he definitely doesn't wrap it up in the gospel, which he clearly says that is what he came to preach, not to baptize.

So - So what we're doing here is we're doing exactly what we said earlier. We're defining terms. We are looking at proof text in context.

I mean, all these, I can almost see those verses, what they say in my mind, and we know what comes before it and after it.

Sure. And we're gonna be consistent. So that's what apologists, that's what Christians need to be equipped to do.

Right. Well, excellent, man. This is excellent stuff. I definitely wanna have you on. Apparently, there's a lot of people who are interested in this.

At the school I work at, there's a teacher who used to be in Church of Christ. He's no longer, and he really - He's reached out to me.

We've had some good back - Awesome. Yeah, he's a great guy, man. But these past episodes have really been a blessing to a lot of people.

So I don't mind keeping them up because I don't know if there are other people doing it as much. Maybe there is,

I'm not aware of them. So I think you're doing an excellent job there. There's not a lot of people that show how to do apologetics against, and I'm gonna say this out of love, but the cult of the

Church of Christ. Cult in the sense that they've deviated from the faith. They believe a wrong gospel. So when I say cult, I'm just thinking of Galatians 1.

I'm thinking of they're under false teaching and we love them so much that we would actually share with them the truth, but always in love.

And so I just wanna encourage our audience, look up me, obviously, with Trey Fisher because that's a big emphasis in our apologetics ministry.

And we have a Facebook group called the Church of Christ Exiles, where we have over a hundred people since we've done, we announced it on Cultish, joining, sharing testimonies, asking good questions.

And Eli, you may be interested in this, but we're doing interviews with people that wanna share their testimony of what they experienced and how

God in his grace saved them out of it. And there's a ton of interest in this area. That's awesome, man.

Well, I'd like to, first, I'd like to thank you for coming on. I always enjoy when you come on.

I think you're an awesome guy. You're sharp. I learn as I'm listening and you're just fun to interact with. And I thank everyone who's been listening, whether you are

Church of Christ and you completely and utterly disagree with everything that was said, thank you for being here.

That's part of the conversations that we're supposed to have, right? We disagree, we talk about it.

You know, we love you and hopefully you love us and hopefully that mutual love and respect can be things that lead to a greater conversation.

So the way I wanna end this episode is, Jeremiah, I'd like you to take a few moments to just present the gospel, the biblical gospel.

And as you conclude and give our listeners something to think about, we'll wrap it up there. And so I think that'd be a good idea.

So why don't you take it away there and then we'll wrap it up, brother. Absolutely, the gospel is the good news that Jesus Christ saves.

And so to understand good news, you have to first understand the bad news that we are not good people.

We actually have broken God's law. We've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And so we need

God to save us and he has. So Jesus stepped down from his throne of glory, took on flesh, lived a perfect sinless life, something that we could not do.

We don't desire to do, but he did it on our behalf. And so on Calvary, God the

Father poured out all of his wrath satisfying his wrath completely for the penalty of sin. And so Jesus didn't stay dead.

He actually resurrected three days later, proving that death has nothing on him. He defeated death, he defeated

Satan. And so if we look to the perfect savior, Jesus Christ, in faith, and this is the type of faith that I'm talking about, a faith that does not trust in yourself, does not trust in any of your accomplishments, any of the works that you could do, but looks to the one who did everything perfectly.

If you put your faith in Jesus, then all of your sin, not just your past sin, but present tense and future will be paid for in full because all that gets put on the

Calvary, and I want our audience to hear this, you get the perfect righteousness of God credited covering your account.

That's why even covers your future sins. And we don't abuse that grace, but if you've tasted and seen that the

Lord is gracious, then now you desire to live your life to give God glory. And I just wanna encourage people that if that resonates with you, if you want to follow

Christ in faith and be obedient to the life that he's called us to, then please look for a healthy church to be discipled.

And so if you live anywhere in Northeast Arkansas, specifically Jonesboro, come look us up at 125

Church where I serve as a pastor and elder. We'd love to get to know you and help you out any way that we can.

That's awesome. Well, thank you so much, Jeremiah, for that. And that hopefully will give some folks some food for thought.

Until next time, we're gonna try to cover more of this topic throughout the months. I'm definitely interested in it.

I wanna learn more about it myself, and maybe we'll cover another specific topic or maybe cover another debate.

I know you've done a bunch of them. So I wanna encourage you, man, keep up the great work. And folks, thank you so much for listening in.

I really do appreciate it whether you agree or disagree. I appreciate the respectful dialogue in the comments and things like that.

That means a lot to me. So until next time, guys, take care and God bless.