Fake Memes, Monetization, Thomas and Dionysius

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. We've got a lot to get to today. We might do another

Zoom show. Those are always so good. You can't prepare for a

Zoom show. I mean, I suppose you could announce a topic or something as if people would actually listen to you.

That normally doesn't work. But we'll do one before I head out again.

I'm doing a pretty short little run to West Texas and New Mexico in just a matter of weeks.

In fact, I didn't bring the calendar up. I think it's less than two weeks. Yeah. Less than two weeks from now.

It feels like it's farther away because we don't have our unit back. We're doing that one.

Yeah. Less than two weeks. I need to pick it up on the 9th.

So yeah. Going to be in Lubbock and then in Las Cruces.

So just getting to be in some churches there that again normally wouldn't get to be in places like that.

Did you know the church exists outside of major metropolitan areas? Yeah. It is there.

It's sort of neat to get a chance to go there. In fact, I just briefly had an exchange with a pastor today.

I wanted to stop by the church during the summer. I'd been there before and had a great time with the folks.

He was like, we've got a lot going on. I'm like, hey, I just want to be of assistance.

If I can help the church. It was one of those situations where we don't ask an honorarium.

I mean, most churches give us something, but we don't ask it. There are lots of times when that's necessary to be there.

That's very helpful for them. When you support this ministry, you're allowing us to do that.

I mean, it's the fact that the lights are still on and the air conditioning is running. It's because there are just lots of regular folks.

We have very, very few large donors at all. That's how we can go to smaller churches and minister in that context.

A lot of people say, you're wasting the best years of your life. I'm like, no, no, I'm not.

I have a feeling if they were honest about it, some of the quote -unquote big boys, the

A -listers. I've never been an A -lister and I don't want to be an A -lister. I think some of them are a little jealous, to be honest with you, because I seem to be having too much fun, first of all.

I think a bunch of them, the 13 ,000th time they get into an elevator with their little rolling bag to go to the same kind of hotel room again, they go, it'd be nice to have my own bed and my own pillow and my own food and my own shower.

Yeah, that would be nice. That's what I've got. It just happens to roll down the road with me, which means we've got to repair it, because certain states that will remain somewhat unnamed, like New Mexico, Louisiana, Michigan, just don't repair their roads.

I do the best I can to avoid those craters and canyons on their interstates, but sometimes there's nothing you can do about it.

When you got a big old truck over here, you got no place to go.

You see it coming. It's like, hold on, everybody. Here we go. Kaboom. It's just, yeah, it's just how it works.

Anyway, hey, I want to start off with this. Someone, I think, posted this in our channel.

Stephen Boyce was on this program a number of years ago, shortly after we built the large studio that we haven't used for a while.

We talked, as I recall, about, if I remember, it was about Clement of Rome, which is super ironic, because that epistle is so obviously an argument against Roman Catholicism.

That is not the papacy functioning. That is a church without a monarchical bishop, writing to another church without a monarchical bishop.

Monarchical bishop. During the course of church history, early on, the

New Testament pattern, which is plainly a plurality of elders, plainly without a pope, there is no papacy in the

New Testament. I mean, the exegetical, eisegetical handstands you have to do to come up with that stuff is legendary.

And the only people who can do it are the people who have already accepted Rome's claims of authority. But the

New Testament pattern is, bishops and elders are the same thing.

Early on, that started to change, and the episkopos started moving away from the presbyteros, even though Paul uses the terms interchangeably.

And many Roman Catholic exegetes will admit that that's the case. And eventually, the presbyteroi, who are the equals of the episkopoi, the bishops, became hieroi, priests.

A completely non -apostolic development, which causes all sorts of problems for Roman Catholicism.

In Roman Catholicism, Jesus literally ordained the apostles as priests at the

Last Supper, when he said, do this in remembrance of me. A lot of people aren't aware of that. But since he used the imperatival form, do this, as command, and therefore the only way to do that is to work the miracle of transubstantiation, and therefore he had to be ordaining them as priests, because we know only priests can do that.

And it is just... Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy are both studies in massive historical anachronism.

How to read modern developments backward into history. I mean, that is the essence.

And that's why a lot of my work right now...

I'll talk about this book in just a moment. This is Thomas Aquinas' An Exposition of Divine Names, the

Book of Blessed Dionysius. A lot of my work right now is in the area of Eastern Orthodoxy, and specifically the

Pseudo -Dionysian Corpus, the claims of Craig Trulia regarding that subject, and how that's relevant to the veneration of icons, as defined by the

Second Nicene Council. You know the debate coming up October 17th on that particular issue, which has direct relevance to both

Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, because both accept the Seventh Ecumenical Council as an ecumenical council, hence infallible.

Both interpret it very differently and make application of it very differently. Anybody that looks at the liturgical forms of those two faiths sees the connections, but also sees the differences, and especially in iconography, the function of icons.

And this is where, again, most evangelicals are like, come on, we don't know anything about Eastern Orthodoxy.

We're hearing more about it now. You know, I have a friend that converted, and it's a three -hour -long service, standing, and stuff like this.

But most evangelicals are like, that's just popeless

Catholicism. Well, I can see how looking at it from the outside, sure, there's all sorts of liturgical parallels, and to a

Protestant that doesn't come from a liturgical background, yeah,

I can see how it would appear that way, sure. But there are actually some fascinating differences, functional differences, and that does impact the dialogues that we have together, and conversations we have together, and things like that.

So anyways, um, so that's where a lot of my thinking right now is, is preparation for that debate, and I've got an article that I need to get written in a matter of weeks.

I'm going to be writing it on the road, I know. Still got a lot of work to do on that.

Fascinating stuff. I'll be sharing a lot of it with you over the next number of months, and I know there are a number of you who do want that.

I know there are a number of you who are like, yeah, my family, and I can't find anything. By the way,

Samuel Farag, his book in response to Eastern Orthodoxy should be out soon,

I think. I haven't gotten my copy from Grace Bible Theological Seminary's publishing house, printing press thing.

And then I got this one called Who's Orthodoxy, Evangelical or Eastern, Todd Jameson, James Wright.

Those are pseudonyms because these brothers work in challenging contexts, shall we say, overseas.

And I have not looked, um, I am assuming this is available on Amazon?

Who's Orthodoxy, Evangelical or Eastern? But there are some books coming out.

It has been the reality that when people are looking for information on Eastern Orthodoxy, there's been some scholarly stuff out there that's as exciting as chewing on aluminum foil, as passion -filled as chewing on aluminum foil.

Not much else. We've had Jason Wallace's stuff from ancientpaths .tv

on YouTube, excellent videos, you know, Simon Licaris, and great stuff there.

But now we're seeing some other stuff come out. Yes, sir? So that's available not only on Amazon, it's available for free on Kindle as well as an audiobook.

Really? Yeah. For free? $11 .99 for the paperback. Well, that's because you've got to print it.

Yeah. But free on Kindle. That's what it's got here. Interesting. Kindle Unlimited.

Okay, good. So a little advertisement for the guys here. Todd Jamieson, James Wright, who's

Orthodoxy, Evangelical or Eastern? So I need to clarify, you have to have a Kindle Unlimited membership.

Oh. That's where it's free. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you click on the

Kindle, then what is it? Well, I don't have that. Well, let's see what happens. It normally brings up a price.

Join now. Oh. You can't click on the Kindle listing?

Okay, $5 .99 to buy. You're right. You're right. Okay, now we're getting somewhere. Okay. That's what I figured. Yeah, it's normally not much.

So yeah, it's good that there's stuff showing up, and we're going to try to add to that, at least in some substantial fashion.

So anyway, that's a long ways, 15 minutes in to get back to this finally.

But Stephen Boyce, you know, we saw over the years since he was on the program, saw him moving.

It became pretty obvious where he was headed, that he was going to be swooned in cyber before long. And of course, no conversations with people like me.

That never happens. They know what they're going to hear, and they know I'm going to stare, look at them right in the eye and go, okay, you're telling me that you once said that the imputed righteousness of Christ was your sole ground of peace with God, that that was the foundation that you would have when you wake up in the morning, knowing my own heart, why do

I have peace with God? Why do I not fear the wrath of God? Because Christ's perfect righteousness has been imputed to me.

I'm the blessed man of Romans 4a. How anybody can preach that and teach that, and then turn around and deny it, trade that away for the endless cycle, the treadmill of penances of Romanism?

Yeah, I wouldn't want to have to answer those questions either. So that's why they convert and then take shots after converting.

So anyways, I see this graphic, and it was posted on Facebook. I hate Facebook. Um, but I went and tracked it down on Facebook first, and then eventually found his account on X as well.

But he said he had some, I think his colleague made some glib comment about, had a little extra time, so I thought I'd have a little fun.

Some of you may not know what this is about, so let me just very briefly, since we have spent an absurd number of hours, what was that?

A little over a year ago? I think it's a little over a year ago. That's, I think I was in Jonesboro, February of 25.

That sounds about right. Um, we could look it up. Uh, you could look up the date on the, uh,

Heshmire, uh, debate, and that would tell me when it was. Anyway, at the end, the very last question in cross -examination in the

Heshmire debate, which was on, it's supposed to be on the subject of, um, the supper as a sacrifice, so it's supposed to be soteriological, uh,

Heshmire asked about the Ignatius quote, which we've dealt with. I mean, I have, good grief,

I have an eight -part video series. This was back, you know how long ago this was?

Each section is less than 10 minutes long, because that's the longest you could post on YouTube back then.

Um, and so this was when we first started doing YouTube.

I had this lengthy thing where we walk through the various texts in Ignatius and that are used to try to, again, anachronistically read modern

Roman Catholic theology back into the patristic era, which they have to do. I mean, Rome demands they do it.

It's funny, they wouldn't have to anymore, thanks to the elevation of Newman and Newman's development hypothesis, but Roman Catholic apologists are schizophrenic.

On the one hand, they'll say, we're the church of 2 ,000 years, because that sounds so good, it grabs folks.

But then when you press them on it, then they slap some Newman on it, and it just becomes development. So it's an abandonment of the historical field of battle, it really is.

Um, George Sandman was exactly right in his response to Newman, um, long ago.

So anyway, right in the final question, I made a mistake.

And the mistake was I tried to say too much in a short period of time. And he asked about Ignatius.

I had been reading this stuff about the various recensions of Ignatius's writings in the weeks preceding this, um, and had seen some stuff

I had not seen before, and seen some folks pressing some issues I had seen before. So I was fresh on my mind, and I tried to cram too much in.

I tried to make a comment to provide some context. Shouldn't have done it. And then something happened with Heschmeyer's light?

Something on his desk? Did the light go out? Did the light fell over? I forget what it was. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it fell on the floor, and he's, he's, and so it was a mess.

And he misunderstood what I said. I mentioned that Ignatius's, the, the epistles of Ignatius, there are seven that are considered genuine, but it depends on which recension you're looking at.

There's the long, there's the middle, there's shorter, there's language issues, and different language exemplars, and there's, there's more issue, there are more issues with Ignatius's actual writings than with almost anybody else in that period.

Now, of course, he would be very early, 107 to 111, maybe. That's the standard dating.

But here, here's the reason I was interested in it, and it didn't have anything to do with the debate.

If you're going to use the Ignatian material, and I have, in response to Unitarians, Jehovah's Witnesses, Muslims, the, the problem that a lot of Protestant apologetics has is they don't necessarily know the historical context of some of the sources they'd be using.

And so, in this situation, if you're going to be honest with working with Ignatius, then you need to probably expand the date window, and you need to, if you're going to use a quote, is, is it found only in one of the recensions?

Is it found both in the longer, in the middle? There are issues that probably need to be looked at if you don't want to get completely tripped up by a really sharp person on the other side.

That's just being honest. That's just dealing with the facts, which evidently is something that Catholic converts aren't overly concerned about.

So, what happened was, um, I eventually gave a quick answer.

That's not what he was talking about. He's talking about the Protonostics, and he's talking about their denial of the, of the, uh, physical body of Christ.

You're reading something back into this if you're trying to have, make it have something to do with, with, uh, transubstantiation, or the mass, or a sacrifice, or all the rest of that kind of stuff.

Well, in his closing statement, he, he takes what I said. This has, the textual issues have convinced some to even question his existence, as if I was.

I'm not questioning Ignatius's existence. I was simply stating the reality that there are serious problems with the various versions of Ignatius's letters, whether identifying which letters are genuine, which letters are not.

There's a, there's a fairly substantial pseudo -Ignatian body of letters, too.

Some were written much later, but dating this stuff is extremely challenging.

That's all I did. I mean, anybody who knows the scholarship was like, yeah, nothing controversial there.

But, uh, Heschmeyer ran with it in his closing statement, and I told him afterwards, I said,

I don't, I don't question Ignatius's existence. Well, within a day or two, uh,

Boyce and these other guys are out there just beating the drum, having a grand old time, completely ignoring what the debate was actually supposed to be about, and the most ungracious, unfair, ridiculous reading of what

I said. I mean, if, if they had an honest bone in their body, they would have gone, well, he could have been saying this, and that's what he's saying now, he was saying, and so it just wouldn't have been a big deal, but that doesn't fit the narrative.

So, just like the leftist media, they, they did what that is, and to this day,

I encounter people online, well, you don't even believe Ignatius existed. It's just a lie. So, I mean, within a day or two, was when

I was traveling back from Jonesboro, I was in Texas, did like an hour and a half, hour, 45 minute, um, program from my hotel room during a massive windstorm in Amarillo.

I remember where it was. Um, I was such a massive windstorm, it literally tore the tonneau cover, um, on, on the truck.

Um, it was, it was doing 70 miles per hour easy. If I had had the RV, I would have been in, in a world of hurt.

Anyway, um, so I, I did the whole program, corrected all of this.

Anybody that says anything about my denying Ignatius existed after that is just a bold faced liar. That, that's all there is to it.

Um, just, just, just lying through their teeth. I mean, why? Well, because it fits their narrative.

They can't deal with the reality of what we're arguing, so you have to create this false narrative. And then, what, about a week or so later, um, we did another program once I got back, and, uh, this time brought on a guest to talk about it.

And we talked about a lot of the background issues and things like that. So we've got like at least three, three and a half hours,

I think, of stuff that I can just link to. Any fair -minded person, that's enough.

That, that, that'd be it. But they continue on. And so here, here's Boyce, uh,

Ignatius, no bishop, no church, John Calvin, fake news, don't even know what that has to do with anything, and me.

You don't even exist. Okay, so that's a lie. Now, why would

Stephen Boyce be lying, making memes, graphics, that are just lies?

I don't know. He's a convert to Roman Catholicism. And I've seen this happen over and over again.

What you do when you convert is you've got to prove your faithfulness to your new, your new cadre, your new, your new team, see?

And you do that by attacking the people you used to work with. And you can do that by lying through your teeth about them, and no one's going to call you on it.

There's not going to be a single Roman Catholic that's going to contact, uh, Boyce and say, dude, he's explained all this.

This is, this is really not how to make these kind of arguments. This is making us look bad to anybody who actually examines the fact.

No one's going to do that. No one's going to call him out on it. He'll, he'll get away with it. Um, but this is the convert syndrome.

This is, I've seen this happen over and over again, over the years. Um, someone who never would have done that before their conversion, this helps,

I think it helps with the conscience. Uh, I, I think this is, this is what people do when they know that they can't defend what they did.

And it helps to soothe that over, really does. So this is a lie, just so you know, uh,

Stephen Boyce, B -O -Y -C -E, posted it. So if you'd like to comment and tell him, you're lying.

Now, what happens is he's like, well, you, do you want to debate Ignatius? I'm like, debate what?

Debate what about Ignatius? I don't deny he exists. And he's like, well, you, you say he doesn't mention the

Bishop of Rome. Well, he doesn't. Well, Jesus is a Bishop of Rome. Seriously? This is that, that's, that, that's, that's intended to be an actual argument on your part?

And at one point he's even like, well, debate me on the subject and you'll find out how he did identify the, oh, we have to wait for the debate before you do that?

That's how you handle Christian history? Oh, hold on. You just wait to the debate and what

I'll throw out there. That's not, that, you, what?

Just a level of absurdity that's really difficult to, to understand. Go ahead and take that down. Um, so I actually threw back at him.

I said, you want to debate? Okay. After we do the, uh, the Trulia debate, uh,

I'm willing to, it was March 1st of 25. Yeah. I was, I thought it was February. Yeah. Um, after the

Trulia debate, October 17th, uh, I'll probably do another trip in November somewhere.

Um, somewhere warmer. Uh, well, November shouldn't be too bad.

I mean, the way things are going this year, what's it going to matter? I, it'll still be 120 degrees. Um, I know of a certain church in Houston that loves to have debates and this might be a topic.

So I, I'm like, Hey, you're a freshly minted Romanist historian. How about we debate something real, something with value.

And so I threw a bunch of stuff out and, um, yeah.

And he called it bait and switch. And it wasn't anywhere near bait and switch.

Um, here's, here's what I said. Um, I said, you want to debate?

Let's debate the role of forged documents in the creation of the Roman papacy. Let's debate what the early church actually believed about the key passages

Rome has used to forge its pretended supremacy. Let's debate whether papal infallibility even has a definable meaning, let alone whether Honorius' successors could anathematize him as a heretic for 400 years as a part of their accession to the papal throne, while still believing him infallible.

Maybe you would like to defend the actual claims of, and this is the main thing right here. Maybe you would like to defend the actual claims of ineffabilis deus and munificentissimus deus.

Those are the documents defining, in 1854, the

Immaculate Conception. In 1950, the Bodily Assumption of Mary. Okay? Um, not the watered -down

Numanian modernistic view, but what they actually meant when they were promulgated.

You know neither dogma is apostolic in any way, shape, or form. Want to demonstrate your chops with the early church?

Because he really likes to talk about that. Okay, let's debate those two dogmas. Did the early church believe, proclaim, and practice these dogmas?

Or are AI -generated memes about things that never happened more to your liking? Pretty straightforward.

But there's your challenge. Stephen Boyce, Dr. Stephen Boyce, will you defend the

Immaculate Conception, the Bodily Assumption of Mary, as they are claimed by the

Roman Catholic Church in those documents? Now, the Bodily Assumption, they're much more careful.

Because you know, Stephen, you can't even get close to defending that as consistent with New Testament teaching, apostolic practice, first centuries of the church.

You know that. You know you have to accept Roman claims of authority to even start down that road.

You know that's true. But you willing to back it up? You want to do it?

I'll contact the folks in Houston, see if they're interested. We'll make it happen.

If you're going to put this stuff out, I haven't said anything about you forever. I don't pay attention to you.

Okay? I'm not following you around. I don't follow you. Not interested. Sorry to have seen you go.

Saw it happening. You had so little respect for me. You didn't even ask questions. Fine.

Whatever. But you want to take shots like this? You want to play these games? Then stand up like a man.

Be counted. Okay? Just that simple. Rich is looking at me like, really? Okay.

Fine. Yeah. There you go. There you go. Hey, if you're going to have fun, think about the next time before you have fun, what the result might be.

Okay. Good old Anthony at Catholicism 1 did it again.

Look, when you see folks post, this is what he wrote. The thief on the cross was saved by the prayers of Mary.

Everyone knows this. Now this is a repetition of what he did, what about 18 months ago or so, that Calvin Robinson called

Mary -pilled and agreed with and all this. The only thing that's been added is, everyone knows this.

As if everyone knows this. Nobody knows this, actually. You just got to understand something.

This guy is about nothing but clicks. I don't know how this works because we have not monetized my account.

I have, what? A hundred and, let me see here.

What have I got right now? Where'd it go? Oh, 177 .5

thousand followers. Okay. That's not huge. People have millions, but that ain't small.

And I guess you can actually get paid for posting on X.

And it has something to do with retweets, interactions, quotes, responses.

And I guess the more followers somebody has that responds to you, the more money you get.

I don't know. I've never even looked into it. And it's not because I think there's necessarily something wrong with it, but I've already seen the really negative impact it has had upon dialogue and discussion in X.

You've got all these people, and sometimes good people, and it's so obvious that every day what they're posting is simply meant to get you to click.

They'll post these polls. Where would you rather live? A, B, C, or D.

And after the 47th one of them, you get the idea.

Oh, this is today's thing to get their clicks for their checks for the month.

Okay. All right. Well, okay. Whatever. That's all this guy is.

When you see people make just wild, outlandish, absurd statements like this, just as much as your heart wants to say, this is so foolish, if you're going to respond to it, screenshot it and post it on your own thread so they don't make any money off of it.

That's the only thing I would say. Because if you quote it, I think they get something out of that too.

Yeah. Yeah. Just keep pulling that one -armed bandit type thing. Yeah.

But just realize this is the nature of social media.

Monetize social media. Monetized social media encourages the most absurd theological statements that could possibly be made.

And most of them aren't even serious. Or if they are, that just tells you something about who's out there.

It's pretty wild. I had mentioned this book. We're going to have to do a program at some point where we run through a quick introduction to what's called pseudo -Dionysius.

I've mentioned this before, but Dionysius...

Oh, by the way, before I jump into this, one of the things that I've wanted to do for about three months now,

I think I mentioned it once before, is I've been really disappointed with the fact that the

Heshmeyer debate... I've never seen any meaningful discussion of the actual substance.

All I've seen has been discussion about Ignatius. It's got to have been...

It couldn't have been much of a victory for the Roman Catholic side, like they claim that it is, if the entire substance of victory is a single cross -sex question and the issue isn't even the topic of the debate.

I really felt that Heshmeyer's presentation... Now, he's a good speaker. He's a nice guy. Good speaker. But I found his presentation horrifically simplistic and extremely shallow.

It's so shallow that I felt I took it apart in the rebuttal, and that's rare.

Think about it. A rebuttal, you have normally less than half the amount of time that the other person had to make their case.

So, in a rebuttal, you're generally just going, what are the main points that I can respond to in the amount of time

I have, and what can we get into in cross -examination? But especially the biblical texts that he used.

Now, they're the standard texts. It's not his fault. Rome has glommed onto a lot of texts in the

Bible, especially in the Old Testament, that have nothing whatsoever to do with priesthoods and sacrifices and stuff like that, and have pressed them into service.

And so, what's he supposed to do? If he's going to make a biblical argument, he's going to have to engage in the same eisegesis and anachronism that that Rome has for a long time.

And so, one of the things I want to do, I've wanted to do for a long time, and AI is getting rather helpful.

I mean, I have an AI -driven transcript program now that it would be very easy to, it listens, it can, for example, it can listen to debates, and it separates out speakers.

So, I think I've seen this, it's called MacWhisper. And so, it'll listen to a debate, and it'll say,

Speaker 1 said this, Speaker 2 said this, then Speaker 1 said this again. So, it matches the voices up. So, it knows who the moderator is.

So, you can go in and easily identify, you know, that's the moderator's voice, this is debater number one, his name is that, his name is that, and now you have a really nice transcript that is really easy to work with.

You throw that at Claude, you throw that at Grok, you throw that at ChadGBT, whatever one you're using, and you can just go, hey,

I want Joe Heschmeier's opening statement outline. What was he reading? And you'll pretty much get it.

You'll do the same thing with all my stuff, too. I figure all my opponents are doing that. They may even have a group of people helping them to do that.

All I've got is, I've got the AO think tank, and we do have a, we do have one particular ultra geek in the

AO think tank when it comes to AI. I mean, I'm not 100 % certain he isn't AI.

I mean, I did meet him once, so he's probably not AI. But, you know, it could have been a holographic projection, you know, an experiment, you know,

I don't know. And he may be listening, or he'll listen later. And I'll get AI -generated images of our first meeting and all the rest of that stuff.

You know, that's just, that's how it's going to happen. Anyway, so I do have some, like, he's the one who told me about MacWhisperer.

I had a other, an older program that he had actually recommended to me a year earlier. But man, stuff develops in a year, uh, big time.

Anyway, I'll get his outline, and I want to walk through all the scripture passages.

And I just want to demonstrate that if you just use standard biblical hermeneutics, in fact, if you just follow the standard hermeneutical practice suggested by the majority of the people on the papal biblical commission, you won't come up with his conclusions.

That's what's fascinating. The papal biblical commission, you know, these people are way on the left, but they're sincerely on the left.

And they will admit that Rome has used, I mean, you look,

I don't have it in here right now, but I have the current Jerome, um, New Testament commentary.

I think it's the New Testament, maybe the Bible commentary, I think it's the New Testament commentary, with the forward written by Pope Francis. Everybody who wrote for this thing, he put on that papal biblical commission.

They're papal appointees. And you look up 1

Corinthians 3. Well, it's supposed to be a purgatory. Eh, no. It's not.

They admit it. That's not really what it's about. You look up almost any text, and they're going to be going, yeah, actually, historically, it had to do with this, and didn't really have to do with all the rest of that stuff.

It's sort of like, um, I was told, what was the context of this?

This was, oh, yeah. I was told, sorry,

I'm wandering about here. Um, I haven't seen this yet.

I need to watch it, because once I get done with this, we're going to be talking about, um, Jacob Hansen with Ali Bestaki.

Um, and I guess Hansen and Trent Horn did an interview.

And evidently, Hansen just loves Trent Horn's arguments against Sola Scriptura. Shocking. Uh, you know, um,

I mean, the enemy of my enemy, right? Even though they come to completely different conclusions on things.

But the thing that was fascinating is, I was told, and I'll have to confirm this,

I was told that one of the things that Jacob Hansen liked the most was Trent Horn's talking about, well, how do you know

Matthew wrote Matthew? And I'm like, they're still doing that?

I thought Catholic answers had matured. Because I've told you, how many times have

I told you, when I was debating Gerry Matitick's in Denver in 93, um, one of those two nights,

I think it was the first night, when I was at Denver Seminary, or that was the second night

I was at a Presbyterian church, uh, we did two nights, seven, seven hours of debate on the papacy with Gerry Matitick.

Carl Keating and Patrick Madrid debated two fundamentalists on the subject of Sola Scriptura, and just wiped them out.

Just destroyed them. It was painful to listen to. And of course, it bothered me, because I had challenged them to debate initially,

Keating and Madrid, and they said, well, we're not, we don't feel it's a proper time to be debating while the

Holy Father is visiting. And then as soon as it's announced that I'm debating

Matitick's, they set up this debate with these folks that they know cannot challenge them, to a tenth of the degree that I could.

I will never forget walking up to them on the street that day, and you're going, hey, what happened?

Yeah. You, you, what happened to this being so holy and all that? And now you're doing

Nemec and Jackson. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Ron Nemec and Bill Jackson.

That's right. Those names are floating around the back of my head. Yeah, we did run into them. And I did.

I'm like, I know what you did, guys. I know you dodged me to get them. And yeah, they wiped them out.

But in that debate, you can go back and listen to it. I'm sure they have it online someplace. You can go back and listen to it.

There they are, asking, they asked Nemec and Jackson, how do you know Matthew about Matthew?

Now, their answer was, because my Bible says the gospel according to Matthew. And if you know anything about the manuscripts, that's not in the early manuscripts, that's editorial, that's not apostolic in the sense of having manuscript evidence behind it and stuff like that.

And the thing that I thought would keep them from making this kind of statement any longer is that I've pointed out,

I do not believe, if I challenged Carl Keating, Patrick Madrid, if I challenged

Trent Horn, identify any person on the papal biblical commission that will look you in the eye and say, well, of course,

Matthew wrote Matthew, and here's why. I don't think there's one. If you read the authorial introductions in the

Jerome Bible Commentary, it's pretty obvious, well, this is the

Matthean community, it's not the apostle Matthew, but it comes later, and this is your standard progressivist take, both inside Rome and outside Rome.

Okay? I mean, there's, you go to Boston College, ask their New Testament people, okay?

They're Jesuits, for crying out loud, all right? If you know anything about Jesuits. So, I sort of thought they had stopped doing that, but according to what

I've been told, Trent Horn did that with Jacob Hansen, and I'm like, okay, all right.

All right, back to this. Is it quarter to three?

My goodness. How did that happen? I know, I've been wandering around all day. My mind is in this stuff, and it keeps sneaking in when

I'm talking about other stuff. Pseudo -Dionysius.

Pseudo -Dionysius. Most of the scholarly stuff, and just so you know, if you want to know some of the stuff that your money goes toward,

I now have pretty much all the current top -end scholarly material on the

Dionysian Corpus, DC, the Dionysian Corpus, either in hardback, which isn't the way

I'd like it. I prefer electronic because I can get summaries, I can listen to it while working out, doing stuff like that.

But this just came out. This is the first time that Thomas Aquinas' commentary on one of the major works in the

Pseudo -Dionysian Corpus, the Divine Names, there are ten epistles and then a few books in this corpus of works.

And it's the first time with Latin on one page and English on the other that Aquinas' commentary has been available in English.

So we got it. And why should you care about Pseudo -Dionysius?

I don't have anything in front of me. This is all completely off the top of my head. But I'm just giving you an idea of what we may be talking about in the not -too -distant future.

Why am I concerned about this? Why is this relevant?

Because the immediate reason is that Craig Trulia, my debate opponent in October, has written, co -authored,

I don't know if you'd call it one article in two parts or two different articles, but published by an

Eastern Orthodox scholarly press, scholarly journal I guess would be the way to put it, seeking to defend the idea that the

DC, the Dionysian Corpus, is actually, well, they leave a door open.

When I first started hearing about this, yeah we're not going to get to Ali Bastaki today, but I will tell you what we'll be doing with that in the future.

When I first started hearing about this, people were sending me YouTube videos of primarily

Trulia's co -author making the claim that the

DC, the Dionysian Corpus, these writings were actually written by the

Dionysius that is mentioned in Acts chapter 17 as one of the converts to Paul after he preached at the

Areopagus. Now, that would make these writings first century.

There are almost no Christian writings that are credibly placed in the first century.

You can argue that Clement's epistle, which never claims to be by Clement, but that the epistle from the

Church of Rome, the Church of Corinth, might have been in the 90s. Some people put the

Didache in the first century. Some people have put a few fragments in the first century.

The epistle to Diognetus, probably like 120, but it could be the 90s.

It's not like there's a timestamp on these things. You've got to have a date range to be fair and to be accurate historically.

So, this is a substantial body of literature. It's very similar in length, word count -wise.

Not identical, but similar to Justin Martyr's works, which, of course, are well known in church history, were being quoted very quickly after his death by name.

And so, if this is first century, this would be literally in the 70s and 80s.

I mean, if Dionysius, if Paul's doing this in the 50s, and Dionysius claims in the

DC to have seen the darkness at the crucifixion of Christ and to have been physically present at the

Dormition of Mary with Paul, okay?

So, this would be, without a doubt, the most important foundational body of extra

New Testament literature to exist in the history of the

Christian Church. No question about it. This would be a convert of the Apostle Paul, and this is talking about the ecclesiastical hierarchies, the divine names, the celestial hierarchies, the ranks and orders of angels, and how the bishop and that the church is organized, and the priests.

This would be the earliest evidence that priest is an apostolic office.

This would be huge, massive. Why have you never heard of it before? Because it's called pseudo -Dionysius.

That's why. 99 .99 % of all scholarship,

Roman Catholic, I think most Eastern Orthodox, Protestant of every kind, believing and unbelieving, secular, just plain straight -up historians that don't care one way or the other, atheist,

Buddhist, you know, if they study ancient history, 99 .99

% believe that the Dionysian Corpus, the DC, was written no earlier than the year 500, and probably more like 525, probably around 510, 520, maybe 490, but they just simply point to a rather startling reality.

No one seems to have ever known about this stuff, or ever quotes from it directly, clearly, until about 530.

So half a millennium after the death, burial, and resurrection. 500 years.

Not only that, but when you read it, one of the things that I've been having to do is muddle through Neoplatonic thought, because this is

Neoplatonism. The hierarchies, the terminology, this is Neoplatonism.

And Neoplatonism developed hundreds of years after the founding of the

Christian Church. Now, did it have roots in Platonism? Well, Neo normally does have a root in the archeo,

I guess. So Neo -Mormonism, which we're seeing develop right now with Jacob Hansen, Neo -Mormonism has clear connections to Mormonism, even though it's got a fundamentally different doctrine of God.

But there's lots of connections. And so Neo -Platonism has all sorts of connections to Platonism, even though it too has a fundamentally different view of the world, and any type of deity, things like that.

Transcendence, theurgy, all this kind of stuff. Anyway, so the

DC, the Dionysian Corpus, if it was first century, means everything that we've ever been taught about Church history.

Development, Newman, out the window. Everything is thrown on its head.

It is a radical, radical, radical, radical theory that, to my knowledge, has not found any particular following amongst scholarship.

So my debate opponent takes that view, and so I have to be prepared for it, and I'm writing an article in response to this, that's due next month, and I'm nowhere near being able to submit that yet.

And so what does all this have to do with this book?

So for 500 years, the DC has no impact whatsoever on anybody.

What Trulia and his co -author are arguing is that there are two places, they claim, where writers in the late 4th century actually quote from the

DC, which would be an overthrow of scholarly consensus.

But like I said, they sort of leave open a backdoor to where they'll say, well, this could be like a 3rd century compilation.

Okay, so we're back to pseudo -Dionysius, and the videos that I've seen, which is what attracted my attention initially, that's not what they're saying.

They're saying there is no pseudo -Dionysius, this is Dionysius. You gotta understand, Eastern Orthodoxy canonized

Dionysius. The historical Dionysius, the convert of Paul, is a saint, and there is a long history of Eastern Orthodox believing that the

DC, the Dionysian canon, came from the 1st century. And so that could be very relevant on October 17th, even though Craig had said that's not his primary argument in regards to Nicaea II, because Nicaea II is well aware by 787 of the

DC, and that's relevant to their argumentation in regards to icons. So it does have, it will come up, in how deeply,

I don't know. Here's the whole reason I want to mention this, and spent the rest of this time telling you things that, where else are you going to hear stuff like this?

And you may be sitting there going, I don't want to hear stuff like this. You may have already, if you don't want to hear stuff like this, you've already tuned out anyways, so it doesn't really matter.

But those of you who have been starving, literally starving, for some in -depth discussion of the real issues with Eastern Orthodoxy, not they're just hopeless

Catholics and smells and bells and blah blah blah, that's not the issue.

I mean there can be applications of the Energia and the liturgical worship of the church.

I'm not saying that's not relevant, it's just not the primary thing. Thomas Aquinas, we, only a few years ago, remember

Matthew Barrett? You know, who's now Anglican Matthew Barrett, we'll see how long that lasts.

Playing footsie with Rome, and he's in a position right now at this,

I think, Dominican scholarship group or something. He's a scholar -in -residence, and the last scholar -in -residence, the scholar -in -residence is a

Protestant, so the last scholar -in -residence converted to Roman Catholicism within like a month after leaving that position, and that's where Matthew Barrett is now.

There's all this stuff going on in Kansas City right now, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas for everybody,

I think, I forget which publisher is doing like five books introducing

Thomas to Protestants and all the rest of that stuff. Guess who quotes from the

Dionysian canon, the corpus, Dionysian corpus, 1 ,700 times in his published work,

Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas firmly believed that what he was reading in the

DC came from one of Paul's converts. Let me give you an illustration, don't have it in here, but in Mormonism, we have something called the

Journal of Discourses. The Journal of Discourses is a 26 -volume set of the collected sermons of the earliest leaders of Mormonism once they got to Utah, many of whom were compatriots of Joseph Smith, and it's obvious that those journals provide an incredible insight to anyone who wants to early

Mormonism and its development and its developing theology. So what if you had a couple of books and 10 letters from one of Paul's converts taught by the apostle?

I mean, that's heavy -duty stuff. That's what Thomas Aquinas thought.

Now, he wasn't alone in this. Aquinas lived at an age where all sorts of wild stuff were believed.

I was going to take some time today. I'll try to remember to do it again. I was going to go through that litany of Loretto.

I was going to talk to you about the house at Loretto. Did you know there's a house in Italy?

They built an entire church around it that Rome teaches was carried there by angels from the

Holy Land. That's the house where the Annunciation took place. Mary, Joseph, and Jesus lived in that house.

And in 1291, as the Crusader states were collapsing, to save those holy relics, the angels picked the house up and transported it from Nazareth to Italy.

Did you know that litany of Loretto I read to you where it's 85 % about Mary and then the

Trinity at the first member? I've read that a few weeks ago. That's become intimately associated with the house at Loretto.

And Rich is looking at me very strangely from the other room. Haven't heard about that one before, huh? Yeah, I'd say him.

No, see, what can I say? We were, yeah, we were going to be...

It's the same time frame as Aquinas. There is, at this time period, transitioning out of the medieval into, you know, universities are being founded and stuff's changing, but there is an incredulity at this point in time to believe all sorts of really strange stuff.

And so it would probably never cross Thomas's mind to go, I wonder why nobody quoted from this for the first 500 years of the church?

Huh, that's strange. He believes that this is from an apostle.

Do you have any idea how that impacted his exegesis of scripture? If you believe that Neoplatonic thought, the hierarchies, the divine names from a

Neoplatonic viewpoint was actually what the apostles were teaching to their converts, do you have any idea how that would impact your interpretation of the apostles' words themselves?

And so we've got all these folks running around, even in Reformed Baptist circles, going, oh Thomas, yeah!

And it's like, do you have any idea what his background was? I'll bet

I'm probably the first Reformed Baptist to own this book. Okay, ministry, it's not mine, ministry about it.

Probably the first one. And I'm saying to you right now, that impacted how the man looked at scripture, and hence his theology.

And if they don't address that in all these books they're going to be cranking out, trying to turn Baptists and Presbyterians into Thomas, hence

Dominicans, and swim the Tiber and become Roman Catholics because that's what it's all about, well that only tells you what's really going on there.

So real quickly, the primary thing I'm responding to in the article

I'm going to be writing in response to the Trulia co -authored article, are those, they say there are two places where the

DC is quoted by Jerome and Gregory. I don't believe that they're doing that,

I believe it creates just incomprehensible anachronism to push it that far back.

So that's what I'm working on. And that was the key element of the

YouTube videos that were being presented. And some of you out there, one or two of you, sent those in and asked me to comment on those things.

I didn't expect to be commenting at this level, but you have to go to this level to respond in a meaningful fashion.

Because there has been almost no response to this so far. The established scholarship,

Paul Rorum's works for example, this was long before they came up with this theory, that without citation, without mentioning a name, which is the weird, which is the super weird part, when someone like Jerome would quote from Justin Martyr, he's going to mention

Justin Martyr. He's going to mention Irenaeus. He's going to give a name. The most famous convert of Paul, who writes this big work, and nobody knows about it until 530.

And Jerome cites him in some vague fashion? Really? Is that really believable?

No, it's not. But somebody has to put that in writing and go, here's the problems.

Here's how Jerome did cite people. Here's how he's not citing him now. The terminology may be similar, but there's lots of other people that use similar terminology as well.

This is not an established citation at all. And given the nature of this work, it creates such massive anachronism that this should be abandoned immediately.

That's the thesis that I need to get whipped into final shape, basically.

So, hey, sorry we didn't get to Ali Beth Stuckey. I'll just say this, we will try to do that the next program.

I even had it all queued up, Rich can tell you. I found a way to make it play at 1 .25 so that we can get through it a little bit faster.

Not gonna play all of it. I appreciated Ali Beth Stuckey having him on to try to have this discussion.

I don't know why she didn't have an expert on Mormonism on, because she is not an expert on Mormonism. He got away with murder.

He got away with saying stuff that, again, the first time that Jacob Hansen has been held to a standard was when we did that debate last month.

That was the first time I sat there and said, oh no, no, you're not getting away with that. I know

Mormonism. I've been talking to Mormons for as long as you've been alive, and what you're presenting as the

Mormon doctrine of God is not what Joseph Smith taught. It's not what Brigham Young taught. You may like your

BYU professors, but I know Mormonism, and I held his feet to the fire, and you saw it frustrated him to no end.

But very few people know Mormonism well enough to do that, and so he got away with murder.

He really did. He did at least admit the stuff about the priesthood, and so let me wrap up with this because we're going a little long here.

I commented when someone posted that video. They said, hey, he finally talked about the priesthood.

I said, you know, I really would love to come back to Utah and debate a meaningful

LDS representative on the concept of the priesthood. I don't believe,

I personally cannot remember a debate on that subject with anybody, ever. The LDS doctrine of the priesthood is indefensible biblically, and it is indefensible historically.

David Whitmer tears a hole in it. The changes in the Book of Commandments from 1833

Book of Commandments to 1835 Doctrine and Covenants totally refutes it. It is really not a question at all.

On April 6, 1830, the day of the founding of the LDS Church, which by the way, some early

Mormons also believed was the day Jesus was born. That's the real Christmas. The LDS concept of the priesthood, and specifically the

Melchizedek priesthood, did not exist in the Mormon Church at that time. Joseph Smith did not claim to have it.

Allegedly, John the Baptist had come back and re -established the Aaronic priesthood, and then the

Melchizedek priesthood, Peter, James, and John, and all the rest of this stuff. Didn't happen.

The gaping holes in history. And this isn't ancient history. 1829 is not ancient history.

I would love to arrange a debate in Salt Lake, Provo, up there along the

Wasatch Front, to delve into this.

Really would. And yes, I would debate Hanson. I would rather debate someone who actually holds the

LDS doctrine of God, because I wouldn't want actual

Orthodox Mormons to not listen to the debate, because, well, he's not really a Mormon. So, maybe somebody else.

But I would debate him, despite what happened last time, because he couldn't do the same thing.

I mean, he might try to change the topic of the debate, like he did with Heshmeyer, but if he's learned anything by now, that ain't happening when

I'm sitting on the other side of the podium. You're gonna debate the priesthood, and it's gonna be pretty ugly for you if you try not to.

So, I'd really like to arrange that. Really would. So, either up there in Utah, or, you know, that could be another debate there in Houston, I suppose, if that was where it needed to take place.

But it would seem to be more natural up there in Utah. Yeah, I'd definitely like to pursue something like that.

I think that would be extremely useful. So, anyways, sorry we didn't get to it, but we will get there.

Obviously, dealing with the Dionysian Corpus is not going to be a slow, not going to be a fast thing.

I've got to explain a lot of stuff, because you can be a seminary graduate.

You may have even focused on church history. This is not the main stuff you're looking at.

Neoplatonism and the DC eventually, the impact that it has,

I mean, that material was vital in the development of mysticism. It really was.

It had an impact on a lot of stuff. So, hopefully this stuff will be useful to enough of you to make it worthwhile for folks.

But I just remind you, we spent years on Islam, and there are a lot of folks like, uh, you know, it stood the test of time.

And so, here we go with this. So, anyways, thanks for watching the program. We'll see you again,