The Work After Dobbs, Lots of Church History, Nicea, and More

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Started off, sort of necessarily, looking at the Dobbs decision and the fall out, looking back on my own work in that area since 1989. Then moved to the vicious circularity of the Confessional Bibliology position, and moved from there into a lengthy discussion of the Council of Nicea, and then to an attempt to define the Great Tradition. Over 90 minutes today!

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Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White. It is a big day here in the United States and really globally.
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I think that probably people all over the world are paying very close attention to what has taken place here in the
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United States. And obviously we're gonna be paying attention to what happens tonight and over the coming weekend.
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There have, of course, been threats of large amounts of violence, nights of rage, which demons do that.
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You know, the culture of death. That's sort of what you would expect from such people.
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But I was thinking back to the weekend of my daughter's birth in 1989.
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I don't think she's old enough yet to be upset that I would mention the year of her birth. But anyway,
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I mean, tomorrow's my 40th wedding anniversary, so you know, you don't even think about stuff like that.
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Once you get to my age, you just sort of, you don't worry about stuff like that anymore. You just go ahead and say things and it's okay.
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You're old now. Anyways, I remember that weekend. It was an incredible weekend.
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I was arrested outside an abortion clinic that weekend. We shut down Brian Finkel.
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Was it Brian Finkel? I think so, yeah. It's a long time ago now. He eventually ended up in prison, if I recall correctly.
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In fact, I'm not even sure he's still around anymore. I'm not 100 % certain about that. But anyway, he was a late -term, just the stuff that you would hear, the stuff that I heard him saying as we were outside his clinic to people was purely demonic, absolutely demonic.
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And that was the same weekend that Summer was born.
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And I think the day before that, I was on KFYI Radio here in Phoenix as the media representative for Operation Rescue.
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Now, I eventually had to end my association with Operation Rescue because they made it very clear that the work
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I was doing, because that was 89 and the fatal flaw, I think, came out in 90. So, there was a lack of clarity as to the centrality of the gospel at that point in time.
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But I had the opportunity of taking on representatives of the other side.
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And I've done that a number of times, taking on especially religious defenders of abortion.
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And in those situations, I have absolutely positively not a shred of mercy.
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The position is so self -evidently contradictory, absurd, unbiblical, un -Christian, that it's quite easy to take apart.
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And that is no place for—what's the term that's being used right now?
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It was being used a lot today about being attractive, whatever.
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No, that's not the time for that. You take those folks apart. I don't think we have a recording of the radio debate that I did.
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I could be wrong. And I—OK, yeah, all right. Yeah, Brian Finkel.
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Is he still alive? See if you can find out about that if you got a chance. And also listen to what
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I'm saying right now. I did a radio debate with a United Methodist minister somewhere around that time period, maybe early 90s.
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And it was knock -down, drag -out. I mean, OK, it was—he couldn't defend himself.
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It was just all emotion as normal. But I don't think we have a recording of that. I'm not sure if we ever listed it anywhere or anything like that.
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Someday when someone writes the history of Alphabetic Ministries, maybe they'll find that. But anyway, watching the
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Twitter feed and listening to the simple insanity of the left—it is insanity.
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That is the incapacity to observe categories, to recognize the centrality of the unborn child, their genetic uniqueness, their human nature.
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The fact that every single one of us, that's how we got here, too. And that everything that makes you you on a unique genetic basis, you received at conception, not when you took your first breath or anything else like that.
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To see the mind -numbed zombie man called Joe Biden standing in front of cameras, just repeating mindless drivel, that of course he's contradicting the past, the most dishonest man
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I think I've ever seen in history. I mean, we know that he—I remember back when he was running for president years and years and years ago, and he kept getting knocked out because people would just come up with video of him lying about his education and lying about what he did.
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The man wouldn't know how to tell the truth if his life depended upon it. And now he just doesn't even know he's doing it because he's completely senile.
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It is just disgusting to see this regime using this senile old man as their teleprompter reader.
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It's elder abuse. It's just disgusting how we have fallen in so many ways.
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Anyway, the argumentation that is being used is hopefully all of you in the audience are ready to absolutely take it apart.
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And it hasn't changed. Well, okay, it's gotten worse in the sense that now it is completely dependent upon new terminology that they didn't have back when
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I was doing stuff in 1989. Women's health care?
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Reproductive rights? People would have laughed at that terminology back then because it's just so self -evidently absurd.
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But not today. Not today. It's enough to make you just sit here and just want to turn it all off, even on a day of rejoicing.
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I mean, I said this morning on Twitter, look, I'm Scottish. We are realists.
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And we know what's coming over this weekend. And we can see the leaders on the left saying, let's just tear this government apart.
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Let's just tear it down. Let's burn it down. Let's burn this nation down. Talk about citing insurrection.
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They're all over the place. They don't care because they know that's the whole thing with the left. They can do whatever they want and nothing will be said or done about it for the obvious reason that they're in charge.
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And that's what tyranny is all about. Once you lose the rule of law and become a nation of men, that's what you're going to get.
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And history is filled with it. That's why I don't teach history in schools anymore. Then you might understand why it was so good that we once had a strong dedication to being a nation of law rather than a nation of men.
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But how many people honestly, especially in the younger generations, do you know that have ever even heard the phrase, let alone have any idea what it means?
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Not many. Not many at all. Not many at all. I did want to mention, since we're all thinking about it, there was...
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I just retweeted a picture of the Supreme Court. He's serving a 35 -year sentence.
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Yes. Okay, good. Believe you me, it's going to be a lot longer in the future. 35 years will seem like a twinkling of an eye in comparison to eternity for Brian Finkel.
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But it started in 2004. Like I said,
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I had to endure being near him that day when the movie closed him down. It was like being with the
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Gadarian demoniac. It really was. Just a man's demonic. No question. But in the decision, like I said,
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I tweeted a picture of the Supreme Court. It had the three liberals in the face.
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And it had the five with the Thug Life sunglasses on.
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And then Justice Thomas's eyes are glowing. Okay.
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But speaking of Justice Thomas, most people have made reference to the fact that there is a section in his...
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part of the decision that he wrote or opinion that he wrote. This is what it says.
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Because any substantive due process decision is demonstrably erroneous, we have a duty to correct the error established in those precedents.
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After overruling these demonstrably erroneous decisions, the question would remain whether other constitutional provisions guarantee the myriad rights that our substantive due process cases have generated.
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For example, we could consider whether any of the rights announced in this court's substantive due process cases are privileges or immunities of citizens of the
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United States protected by the 14th Amendment. So he went ahead and said what needs to be said.
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And it would take a miracle of grace.
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But I believe that God can do it. I don't know whether he will. But it would take an outpouring of grace for there to be sufficient worldview change in this land for us to finally recognize how absolutely insane, childish, absurd
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Obergefell was. And I say that as one who's read the decision. On any level, it is worse than Roe in its forms of argumentation.
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And that's saying a lot given how bad Roe was. Obergefell was written in crayon.
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And the man who wrote it should be ashamed of himself and will be in eternity. I can assure you of that.
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But he went ahead and said it. Now Alito, I think specifically in the opinion itself, said otherwise.
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But Thomas said it. And we need about six more Thomases if we're going to get anywhere.
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And just in passing, I had already clipped this yesterday. But there was a major case yesterday, as you know.
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Well, you might know regarding Concealed Carry in New York.
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Then again, the governor of New York, the unelected governor of New York who became governor when the other guy had to head for the hills, she's worse than he was.
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She's just a mindless zealot. IQ of a wet shoelace. It's just incredible.
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But they're just going nuts. We can't protect people. And what they're really doing is we don't want people to protect themselves.
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We want them to be completely dependent upon us. And we're not going to defend them anyways. But we want all the power.
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We're totalitarians, and that's how we are. I think it was Thomas again in that opinion that wrote this.
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A short prologue is in order. Even before the Civil War commenced in 1861, this court indirectly affirmed the importance of the right to keep and bear arms in public.
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Writing for the court in Dred Scott v. Sanford, Chief Justice Taney offered what he thought was a parade of horribles that would result from recognizing that free blacks were citizens of the
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United States. If blacks were citizens, Taney fretted, they would be entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens, including the right to keep and carry arms wherever they went.
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Thus, even Chief Justice Taney recognized, albeit unenthusiastically in the case of blacks, that public carry was a component of the right to keep and bear arms, a right free blacks were often denied in antebellum
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America. Yep. You have the right to protect yourself, and the left does not want any of that taking place.
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So we pray for God's restraint upon evil with the coming darkness.
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And I mean nighttime. And we pray for the protection of churches, crisis pregnancy centers, pro -life organizations.
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My own church is the home base of End Abortion Now.
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And I know on Sunday we are going to be well aware of what day it is.
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Many churches need to be aware of what day it is, I think. But we pray for God's hand of restraint, though I'll be honest with you.
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I look around our nation, and I see very little evidence of that hand of restraint, because that's an act of grace.
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That's a gift. We can beg for it, but it's not that we don't deserve it.
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All of us need patience, because what we're hearing from the leaders, from senators, representatives, oh, good grief, from the
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Injustice Department, because that's what we need to start calling it. Justice isn't their thing.
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Joe Biden's personal police force does his thing. What we're hearing from all these people is such a blather of insane, childish rhetoric that it can truly cause us to lose our minds as far as recognizing just how foolish these people are and the deception that they live in.
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We have a lot of work cut out for us. It's funny, a lot of people are like, okay, now we have to be really careful how we respond to this, because we need to keep getting people on our side.
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No, you need to have changed hearts. You need to have changed hearts. That's the only hope this nation has.
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And I am very, very encouraged to see that there are, I think, two states already that have said that's it, no more abortions in this state,
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Missouri and, was it Alabama or Arkansas? I think it was Alabama. It started with an
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A. It was in the South. Abortion had been illegal here in Arizona until the pro -life folks fixed that last year.
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So we've got sort of a heartbeat type thing, but we don't have, as far as I know, any type of real trigger thing.
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It's now a battle locally and state to state. And please make note of the large companies that the real insertion of corporatism into our society in a very negative fashion, you know,
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Dick's Sporting Goods put out, you know, we will provide up to $4 ,000 for our employees to go out of state to kill their babies.
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And someone else, their company, $5 ,000 for baby killing.
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And mark them out. See who they are. And if you can, let them know,
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I'm not going to give you my money anymore. Sometimes there's nothing you can do about it. But when you can, great.
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But what really needs to change is the worldview of the people around us. And that only changes with hearts.
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And if you think that you change hearts not by the ministry of the gospel, that's been the big downfall of the pro -life movement is once they kick the gospel out.
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And like I said, I experienced that in 1989. Once you kick the gospel out, you kicked out the only thing that can actually change hearts, change hearts and minds.
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And that's an issue. But there you go. What an amazing day.
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I was certainly praying about it because when it was leaked, and isn't it amazing that we don't know who leaked that yet?
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You don't think they don't know? Of course they know. Of course they know.
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But anyway, with people showing up on your front lawn with knives and guns and threatening your family and everything else, the possibility really existed that somebody would say, no,
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I'm going to go the other direction. I'm going to make a change. Because until they come out with the order and all the rest of it, there's a specific process and everything, they could have changed it.
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And it's technically 6 -3, but it's sort of 5 .5, 3 .5.
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Roberts is sort of there, sort of not there, but technically it's 6 -3.
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But again, unless we have free elections, all that can change.
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Because the left is saying, we need to codify Roe and Casey.
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Really, they're codifying Casey, but we need to put all this into law so it's no longer up to the
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Supreme Court. And they will do that by hook or by crook.
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The regime has no concern for constitutionality, has no concern about being treasonous to the
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United States. None. Don't care at all. They're out there screaming in cameras that they want to end the
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Supreme Court, they want to end the Constitution. They're doing it right now. There are people saying things right now that when
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I got married 40 years ago tomorrow, I can guarantee you those people would not have been in office a week after they said them.
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But it's a different world today. Very, very, very, very, very different world today.
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No two ways about it. Okay, cancel that. Okay, a couple other things.
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You might actually want to think about something other than Roe v.
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Wade. That seems to be sort of hard to do right now. I confess, I admit. But if you would like to spend a few moments thinking about some other things, then we will be talking about some other things now.
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I was sent a screenshot from the
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Confessional Bibliology Facebook group, which I am not a part of.
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But it will sort of, I think, help to bring us into the historical discussion that we need to have in light of what happened really over the past couple of days in regards to the
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Council of Nicaea. A fellow by the name of Josh Dills wrote the following.
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I've wrestled with textual issues to the point of exhaustion, and I honestly wish
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I'd never heard of textual criticism. It makes me wonder if the CT, which
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I assume he's using it to mean critical text, advocates don't realize all they've done is bring confusion and division to the body of Christ, or do they just not care?
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And a fellow by the name of Scott Teran, T -A -R -A -N, responded, they've been duped by worldliness.
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It's like the people who profess the Christian faith and then say they believe in evolution. Now, I want you to hear the mindset.
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Confessional bibliology, TR -only -ism, the Texas Receptus, and the current movement with Dr.
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Riddle and some folks in the OPC as well as the primary proponents, it's a very small group, does not represent, to my knowledge, any influential schools, scholarship, doing translational work, or anything else.
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It just doesn't. It's a very small idiosyncratic group. But unfortunately, they're in my group, if I have a group anymore.
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I guess we sort of define our own these days, but this is the group that is basically saying if you're going to truly be confessional, then you have to use the same
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Greek text that existed when your confession was written. You know, I just thought of something.
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I wonder if we could come up with a great tradition textual theory and say, because the big thing these days is
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Nicaea. This is Ayer's book. I've noticed a bunch of people going, oh,
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I've got to read this book. I had this book in my library for years. I have a lot of books on Nicaea.
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Nicaea has been something I've worked on for many, many, many years. This one's 18 years old.
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What if we, since Nicaea is the big topic right now, how about we do confessional bibliology where you use the text that is clearly predominant in the 4th century?
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That would be fun because the only way you could reconstruct that as far as manuscripts would be the papyri.
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Well, not all the papyri, but the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th century papyri and the great unseals, primarily
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Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. If you wanted to... No, you really couldn't throw
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Alexandrinus in there. That's just outside the bounds. Anyway, maybe we could squish all that stuff together and say to be truly confessional, you have to use these guys.
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That's not the chron. Remember these? Put my back out.
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This is from CSNTM. It's a two -volume set.
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I like the... These are the reproductions of P45, P46, and P47.
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They're in white and black. That's the background color for the photographs.
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I don't know why. I have just always found the black to look so much better.
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I don't know why it is. The contrast just... This is, of course, P46. Because that's
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Hebrews. But here's... From the
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Chester Beaty Library, my... Well, look familiar? That's what's in the background there.
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P45 in John chapter 10. And very, very, very readable. But the point is, you would have to...
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If you're going to be truly confessional with the Nicene Creed, use this.
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You don't want to use that. Because that wouldn't have the
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Comma Iohannium, and it wouldn't have the Prick of Pay Delta A, and probably wouldn't have the
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Long Riding of Moroc. So those are the big deals.
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And so why not go that direction? Put all that back together again when
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I'm done here. Knowing me, I'll trip over that. Short -term memory, it goes after a while.
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But anyway, I'm sorry. We sort of wandered off there and started playing. Let's show all our cool stuff here.
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I'm noticing, Rich, that I'm really getting a lot of sound coming back from the studio, the other side there.
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I'm not sure if that's something you have control over, or if I just need to say, hold on a second, folks. I need to close the door. That may be the only way
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I can fix things. Otherwise, I have to talk very quietly, but I can still hear myself rather clearly coming from the other way.
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Rich is MIA. He's at home doing this, and we appreciate that.
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And that's the only way we can do things right now. We can run a commercial. No, this is how you do it.
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Watch this. Da -da -da -da -da -da. De -de -de -de -de -de.
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De -de -de -de -de -de -de. And if anybody cares that we had a moment, that just doesn't mean diddly.
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Now, back to what we were saying. The statements from Josh Dills and Scott Teran, especially
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Josh Dills, give us an insight into the mindset of this.
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It's not a form of textual criticism. They do not do textual criticism. They could not produce their own text.
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They are not producing arguments about manuscripts or text. No.
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They already have their text. They have their text right here. Okay, this is it right here.
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Trinitarian Bible Society. And any argument that substantiates this is a good argument, even if they're all contradictory arguments.
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So they're not doing text criticism. They're not concerned about any new manuscripts that would be found.
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They're not concerned about CBGM. None of these things. They already have their text, and that's the end of that.
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It's a very tight circular argument. And so it's not a form of textual criticism, but this gives you an insight into the mindset of these folks.
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I've wrestled with textual issues to the point of exhaustion. What does that mean? Which ones?
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And I honestly wish I'd never heard of textual criticism. You do realize that we have the first references to textual variation in the second century.
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I'd probably say Justin Martyr and his responses to the accusation that Christians had changed things in the
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Greek Septuagint and things like that. But it starts early on, second century.
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And every single century after that, you have Christians Christians talking about variations in manuscripts because until the printing press made printed books quite common, which wasn't with Gutenberg.
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It took a good 150 years, 200 years before they became quite common. You had handwritten manuscripts, and there would be errors, and there would be things that were difficult to read, and there'd be smudged pages.
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And that was how humanity moved along in life.
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And so here's somebody in 2022 who is to the point of exhaustion who has more information readily at hand concerning the manuscripts of the
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New Testament than any generation before them, but he's exhausted. So we're going to stop talking about it?
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Because you're exhausted? It makes me wonder if the critical text advocates don't realize all they've done all they've done all those people down through the years and you got to realize
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Erasmus was a critical text advocate in the sense that he did textual criticism.
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He analyzed manuscripts. Now, he analyzed very few of them. He didn't have nearly what we have today, but he did.
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Stephanos did that. Beza did that. The people who created your text did the things that you now say exhaust you.
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And so the self -contradiction of this position, I just don't understand how these guys can't see it.
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It makes me wonder if the critical text advocates don't realize all they've done is bring confusion and division to the body of Christ or do they just not care?
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So here's a guy. And so he grabs this. This is created by doing critical analysis of manuscripts.
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But once it's in print, then we just forget about that. Dehistoricize it, rip it out of history and go, oh, finally, we don't have to worry about any of that stuff anymore.
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It's what it is. It's what it is. You guys can't get out of it. You can't get away from it. Those are the facts.
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That's just what it is. Wow. It will eventually just flop in upon itself.
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It will. Okay, let's talk a little bit about what happened over the past couple of days before Nicaea, before the
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Roe decision came down this morning. And we knew it was going to come today. But anyway, I've got a bunch of quotes here.
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Not sure exactly. Let me start with this one because I wanted to make a comment about this.
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And it has come up from some other folks. And so let me read you a few words from Augustine.
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Okay, Augustine is writing less than a century to all the way out to a century after Nicaea.
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So still fairly close in time. Augustine said in his epistle on Epistle on Johannes Tractus 2, if you want to look it up, you ought to notice particularly and store in your memory that God wanted to lay a firm foundation in the
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Scriptures against treacherous errors. A foundation against which no one dares to speak who would in any way be considered a
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Christian. Haven't been to too many of our seminaries these days. For when he offered himself to them to touch, this did not suffice him unless he also confirmed the heart of the believers from the
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Scriptures. For he foresaw that the time would come when we would not have anything to touch, but have something to read.
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Augustine De Bono Viduitatis 2, what more shall I teach you than what we read in the
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Apostle? For Holy Scripture fixes the rule for our doctrine.
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I think, I think another translation is canon.
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Now, of course, he'd be writing in Latin anyways, but lest we dare to be wiser than we ought.
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Therefore, I should not teach you anything, anything else except to expound to you the words of the teacher.
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Now, did Augustine always do what he himself said?
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Well, no. There are times when
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Augustine will depend upon traditions or some of his interpretations of Scripture will leave you going, what did you say?
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But I really appreciate the sentiment for Holy Scripture fixes the rule for our doctrine.
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He said in De Unitate Ecclesiae, The Unity of the
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Church, 3, let us not hear this I say, this you say, but thus says the
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Lord. Surely it is the books of the Lord on whose authority we both agree and which we both believe.
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Therefore, there, there, I'm sorry, there let us seek the church, there let us discuss our case.
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Sadly, if, and it didn't really cross my mind to do it, but I could have,
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I could have used a number of these quotations in Twitter, Facebook, whatever, and not given attribution to Augustine and use them as my own words.
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And you know what, you know what the response of many would have been from the, let's call it the dominant perspective.
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The great tradition Baptists or the Christian Platonists or whatever terminology you want to use.
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You know what the response would have been? You know what I would have been accused of if I had said these things? You're a Biblicist. Because now that's a bad word.
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It's a bad word. And it will never be a bad word for me.
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Because no matter how much you strawman it, no matter how much you redefine it, turn it into the same terminology as solo scriptura or nuda scriptura, that's not what it means.
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There is something about scripture that makes it absolutely unique and therefore invests in it an authority that precludes your submitting it to a higher authority, requiring an external authority for its interpretation or an addition of an authority to it.
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Because there's nothing else that is theanustos. Okay, it's an on, I guess I've always given an ontological foundation for solo scriptura that ends up having epistemological ramifications.
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If you want to use big terms. The form of reformed
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Biblicism that I documented in Calvin in his response to Saddletto.
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It's interesting. I spend hours making these presentations, doing reading, putting the material together, and I get zip nada in response.
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There is one exception. Oh, drat. And I don't think
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I can bring that up. Let me see if I can get it from Rich.
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Let's see if Rich can send it to me and signal because I can't find it in Element on this computer.
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It just won't work and something I forgot to grab. Let's see if I can find it. When I went to the second
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Nicaea, one person, I'm going to try to get around to that, one person tried to sort of respond.
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Again, never going to the original sources. Nobody went to Calvin's response to Saddletto and said, no, you're wrong about that.
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No one went to second Nicaea and said, no, you're wrong about that. It is a little frustrating.
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You just get all this dismissive stuff out there, and it's troubling.
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But if I had said these things that Augustus said, but here's the quote. I'm trying to get around to this.
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After the Council of Nicaea, people today tend to think that when the
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Council of Nicaea met, it was recognized as an ecumenical council and therefore it had this authority, all the rest of this.
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You need to realize that is a completely anachronistic perspective.
42:09
It's us looking back in time, and we have invested in Nicaea the title of the first ecumenical council.
42:17
Ecumenical, worldwide. It wasn't really worldwide. It was mainly the Eastern churches, but that's what we call it.
42:27
And what 99 .5 % of Christians in the world don't know is that after Nicaea, it had to struggle to survive and not be overthrown.
42:42
It was called the period of the Aryan resurgence. Jerome in the next century, terminology he used off the top of my head was, the world awoke and was astonished to find itself
42:54
Aryan. And for decades, the Aryans had political and ecclesiastical power.
43:06
Athanasius became bishop, I think in 326. I think Alexander died and he became bishop of Alexandria in 326.
43:15
Again, off the top of my head. Right after the council of Nicaea. He was not one of the bishops at Nicaea.
43:21
He was at Nicaea, but he was an assistant to Alexander. Anyways, Athanasius is driven out of his church.
43:28
Thank you. Athanasius is driven out of his church five times by the, not the ecclesiastical authorities, but five times by Roman authorities, political authorities over the course of the next number of years.
43:54
Five times. Hence the phrase Athanasius Contra Mundum.
43:59
So Nicaea only gained the kind of doctrinal authority that it possesses today over time.
44:13
The people that were even there had no dream that because by tradition, a little over 300, 318 bishops met with the emperor, that that somehow gave them some kind of special insight into scripture or anything along those lines.
44:39
That's something that develops much, much, much later. And so Augustine, writing years later, is writing to an
44:52
Arian named Maximin.
45:00
And in writing to Maximin the Arian, Augustine says these words, I must not press the authority of Nicaea against you, nor you that of Ariminum against me.
45:15
I do not acknowledge the one as you do not the other, but let us come to ground that is common to both the testimony of the holy scriptures.
45:29
Now, I would say that 99 .988 % of all
45:36
Christians have never heard of Ariminum. Don't even know where it is. Northern Italy.
45:46
359 September. Again, I don't have my church history notes in front of me, but I have, in fact, what's really funny, some of you long time folks, you know what
46:01
I was reading it from? My IRC scripts. Yeah, my old
46:07
Merck IRC scripts. Remember how I would, I'd be able to post this stuff, just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Had these
46:12
IRC scripts probably from the early 2000s, maybe even the late 90s.
46:18
I don't remember now. But probably the early 2000s, I put these together and used them in the IRC chat channel.
46:23
That's what I've got up here. I don't have that program anymore, but the IRC scripts are still very valuable.
46:29
So anyway, Ariminum, I'm thinking September 359.
46:39
So this is 29, 24 years, 24 years.
46:46
No, 359. It's after. 25, 39, 34 years after Nicaea.
46:59
And too many numbers going on here. And it sought to, it was an
47:09
Arianized creed. So it was an attempt to subvert
47:16
Nicaea. And so Augustin is writing to an Arian who quotes a council that was probably more recent, was more recent by a number of years than Nicaea.
47:33
And Augustin says, I cannot press the authority of Nicaea against you.
47:45
There's so many people in Twitter and Facebook over the past couple of days, that if you didn't tell him who said this, they would be going.
47:57
But he says, I must not press the authority of Nicaea against you. Why? Because he knew, nor you that of Ariminum against me.
48:08
We both have contradictory councils. Huh. I wonder if that's where Luther got some of his idea.
48:14
Remember what he said? Councils have erred and, oh, contradicted each other.
48:21
Which is, which eventually led to him saying, Ah, here stay, Isis, Kanye, Andres, God help him here.
48:28
Remember that? Yeah. That was back when we were still Protestants. Anyway, I do not acknowledge the one,
48:38
Ariminum, as you not the other, Nicaea. But let us come to ground that is common to both the testimony of the
48:46
Holy Scriptures. But aren't we hearing some people today saying,
48:52
And quoting Ayers' foundation, That you need to have
48:57
Nicaea. You need to have Christian Platonism to be able to prove the
49:06
Trinity. To be able to back that up. Guston didn't seem to think so. He seemed to believe the testimony of the
49:15
Holy Scriptures was sufficient. And let me tell you something. As someone who's been defending the deity of Christ for many decades now,
49:20
They are sufficient. I have never, Not once, Had to look at Jehovah's Witness in the eye and say,
49:28
Let me introduce you to Plato. Not once. Not a single time.
49:36
And if you ever do that, I'm telling you right now, You missed the boat. And you're not helping that person.
49:43
At all. So, Is Augustine's, Is this quotation,
49:53
To be, Understood, As saying that,
49:58
Well, Nicaea is irrelevant? Do I, Accept, The authority of the
50:08
Council of Nicaea? I accept,
50:15
That the statements of the Creed, Regarding the person of Jesus Christ being homoousius with the
50:23
Father, Is perfectly and accurately representative,
50:30
Of what Scripture teaches, On that subject, And therefore it has authority.
50:36
Because it is biblical. Because it accurately represents the whole
50:41
Council of God, In Scripture. Nicaea is not Theanostas. And of course we have to define
50:48
Nicaea, Don't we? There's been a lot of confusion about this. There's a lot of people just, Haven't done much reading.
50:55
And don't understand, That councils didn't just produce symbols or creeds,
51:02
They also produced canons. And today, It is very common to see people going,
51:09
Well, We don't have to worry about the canons. See, Up until recently,
51:18
It was a, I thought it was a given. I had always functioned, And functioned just fine in Reformed Baptist circles,
51:25
As a professor, As a teacher, As a fellow, In various organizations,
51:34
And scholastic organizations, As an author, The whole nine yards. I had functioned just fine,
51:43
Assuming everybody else was on the same page. And that is that when we talked about, For example, The first seven ecumenical councils,
51:52
Leo Donald Davis's book, He's a, Roman Catholic. And people are like,
52:00
Well, you don't want to have Roman Catholic books in your library. My library is filled with them. I just recognize what that means,
52:10
And recognize the, Prejudices that are, That may be present,
52:16
When it comes to Roman Catholic scholarship today. To be honest with you, You can't necessarily even assume theism,
52:23
For some of them. Boston College? Anyway, Jesuits? It can get pretty crazy.
52:32
Anyway, When you, When you look at those councils,
52:39
I would say that, When you look at Chalcedon, Which comes 125, 126 years,
52:50
After Nicaea, You're now dealing with Christological issues. And, Once again,
52:59
The validity of the formulations, Must be determined not by,
53:06
The authority of a council, But by the accuracy, Of its argumentation.
53:12
That's why I can look at Nicaea and Chalcedon, And say, Look, Here's where we're dealing with what the scripture says.
53:20
And there is accuracy in the definition that is given. But I can look at 2nd
53:25
Nicaea, And go, Really? Um, There's nothing magical about 7,
53:35
Other than, Well, it's when the East and West are still united, Before 1054. Which is what,
53:43
Which is what made the call, By one particular individual a few years ago, For an ecumenical council to excommunicate me,
53:50
Um, And, Just sort of hard not to chuckle about, Because it's, It just doesn't show a real deep knowledge of history,
53:59
But, Anyway, I function on the foundation, That, We were all,
54:07
In the same boat, Recognizing that the, Ultimate authority,
54:15
By which you would say, A creed is correct, Is its fidelity to scripture,
54:22
And, That we all recognized, That there was a historical context,
54:29
To, These, Councils, Where they were dealing with other issues,
54:38
That we, As reformed, Biblicists, Would say, no,
54:45
Um, most of the canons, We would not accept, They, They represent an ecclesiology,
54:52
That we do not believe in, And why don't we believe in it, Because it's not biblical, It represented a traditional development,
55:02
On, Biblical teaching, If you want to see how that works out, Go listen to my debate with Mitch Pacwa, It was a really good debate,
55:11
On the priesthood, And you'll see what happens, When you press, And the guy reads 12 languages,
55:18
A, Roman Catholic scholar, On the issue of where the priesthood comes from,
55:25
And he has to admit, It's a matter of development, And that's the whole issue, isn't it?
55:32
Isn't the whole issue of what we're dealing with here, The, The concept of development, The idea that,
55:40
That, There is a, Appropriate, Development, Of theology,
55:48
And tradition, And how do you draw the lines on these things? I've been trying to point this out,
55:58
For a long time, but, Again, Maybe it's helping other folks, Along those lines, so what is
56:05
Nicaea? When we say, the council of Nicaea, Do we include everything the council did? Well, There's another problem,
56:16
The problem is the ice cube got caught, In the air hole, And when that happens, you don't get anything,
56:25
That time it didn't, And I almost drowned, Um, Here's the problem,
56:34
Which Nicene Creed? Oh, what do you mean, Which Nicene Creed?
56:41
Uh, The Nicene Creed that you may have memorized,
56:47
When you were a kid, Which would mean you were a Baptist, Uh, Is not,
56:54
What was promulgated, At Nicene 325, The standardized,
57:00
Nicene Creed in the west, Today, The section on the Holy Spirit, Has been expanded,
57:08
Probably, you know, right around the time of, Constantinople in 381, Um, and,
57:16
The, Filioque clause, Has been added, In regards to,
57:22
The Holy Spirit proceeding for the Father and the Son, In the east, They don't have that, and it wasn't a part of the original,
57:28
Now, some people argue about these types of things, Because that's how they get published, And keep their jobs,
57:34
But, that's, Pretty much what everybody, Has come to the conclusion of, So which version?
57:42
Which version? Um, And should you take the whole council,
57:47
But say it has to have been 325, Or, Can you take the modified later version,
57:54
Of the creed, And just ignore all of the, Uh, canons,
58:01
And would, And since we're, Since we're sitting around these days now,
58:08
Uh, Dividing from each other, Over, Exegeting our confession,
58:17
We're exegeting our confession, We're, We're trying to dig up,
58:23
Every scrap of paper, That any of the framers of the London Bapst Confession, Ever wrote,
58:29
A recipe on, And now we're exegeting that, Gotta exegete that,
58:35
To be able to exegete this, And, you know,
58:41
People dealt with Westminster, And, Are we supposed to exegete
58:46
Nicaea? That's a mess, That's a mess, Because, Look what
58:53
Eusebius did, And there's more than one Eusebius, Eusebius in Nicomedia, Eusebius in Caesarea, It gets really confusing,
59:04
Um, but, Man, there's a lot of stuff that Eusebius said, That Constantine did,
59:10
That a lot of modern scholarship goes, Probably not, But older scholarship said,
59:17
Yeah, And we don't know, So, So there's a lot of,
59:24
Confusion, And if you need to have, That, Resourcement, It can only take you so far,
59:32
And it just kept getting more, And more, and more, and more complex, And that's why, again,
59:40
I keep reminding folks, What I did with Mitch Pacwa, At the end of our Sola Scriptura debate,
59:46
You know, I got out all those books, And said, so you're telling me, That I need this stack of books, To understand what
59:52
Romans 5 -1 says, right? Isn't it obvious, That all this stuff here, Has confused
59:59
Romans 5 -1, Not clarified Romans 5 -1? Aren't we going in the same direction?
01:00:08
So, I had just, Blissfully, Uh, bopped through,
01:00:16
My life, until December of last year, Basically, Uh, going, Well, yeah,
01:00:23
Nicaea's authority, Is due to its, Um, consistency,
01:00:31
In representing, Biblical teaching, And I knew, That, The Roman Catholic says no,
01:00:39
Because Roman Catholic apologists have said over and over, You could never prove the Trinity, Without the church's authority,
01:00:46
Without the church's tradition, And I have always, Been very angered by that, It's so blasphemous to me,
01:00:54
Um, But now I'm literally hearing, Of Reformed Baptists, Who are suggesting,
01:01:01
That you could not actually prove the doctrine of the Trinity, Without the great tradition, Or without,
01:01:07
Um, Christian Platonism, And I go, wow, that happened fast,
01:01:17
That really happened fast, So, Olin Strand was,
01:01:23
Lobbing hand grenades, In, uh, Twitter, A couple days ago, I think two days ago,
01:01:29
And everybody was, Going crazy and nuts, And as I was reading what he was saying,
01:01:38
What he was saying was, What I had said, And that is,
01:01:44
The authority of anything, That is not Theanustos, Is derivative, It's secondary,
01:01:53
And if you elevate, So, Let's do it this way,
01:01:58
Okay, here's what's Theanustos, Right? And if you say,
01:02:04
Here's the first seven ecumenical councils, Not all of them, but, Not all their documents, but it's a book about it,
01:02:11
Just run with the idea here, And if you say, That, This, Creates confusion,
01:02:23
Nothing in between me, And the text, this, this, Creates confusion, Um, But then saying,
01:02:33
This, Clarifies, Then you have to answer,
01:02:39
Then what is the, Ontological nature of this, What's it's origin,
01:02:45
And what's it's epistemological authority, If this, If this is the necessary,
01:02:52
Lens, Then, How do you deal with it being,
01:02:59
Non -Theanustos, And this is Theanustos, I'll tell you how some people have dealt with it,
01:03:07
Um, Some people have dealt with it, By saying, This teaches,
01:03:13
See here's how complex it gets, This teaches a church, That is invested with,
01:03:20
A non -Theanustos, Interpretive capacity, That's infallible, It's not that it's gotta breathe,
01:03:26
But because of the spirits it is infallible, And that creates, Traditional lens,
01:03:33
That then gives you what you need, That is not, What we believed,
01:03:43
I hope it's not what we believe today, But I'm wondering how some people, Would avoid it,
01:03:48
With the things that they're saying, With the things that they're saying,
01:03:55
Um, regarding Nicaea, And so, I was literally seeing
01:04:03
Protestants, Saying, Well, we can't just start over again, And no one's saying you start over again,
01:04:10
That's the other thing, There's been this tremendous amount of straw manning, Going on,
01:04:16
And it's, There's so much you can't even keep up with it, You're saying that your private,
01:04:24
Interpretation, Can overthrow Nicaea, that's not what I'm saying, Well, then, if you're saying,
01:04:30
Your private interpretation can't, Then that's what we're saying, That it has an authority in and of itself, When you think these issues through,
01:04:43
And then, Seek to make application, For example in dealing with, Roman Catholicism, issues like that,
01:04:52
You have to, Recognize, That the difficulty,
01:04:59
That every generation faces, That every generation must wrestle with, And here's what happens,
01:05:06
When you, When you have a generation or two that skips it,
01:05:13
The next generation, Is going to really struggle, When it's generation before yours,
01:05:19
That really dealt with it, You've got something to fall back on, And I'm afraid what has happened very often is that,
01:05:26
For example, Dealing with Roman Catholicism, Um, That was such a live,
01:05:34
Life and death issue, In the Reformation, In the next number of generations,
01:05:41
That, They were well aware of where they had to draw the line, Because they knew,
01:05:47
That right across that line is Rome, Right across that line is the Tiber, Right across that line, In those days,
01:05:53
Remember, Geneva sent, Missionary after missionary after missionary,
01:05:59
Into Italy, and they all died, Just a line of martyrs, It was much more,
01:06:05
Than a Twitter battle back then, And so you knew where to draw the line, And you didn't play around with this stuff,
01:06:11
You didn't make jokes about Sola Scriptura, You know, when, When you were a teacher,
01:06:17
And the last five of your students, Had burned to death, In Roman Catholic territories,
01:06:23
You didn't joke about this stuff, Now we joke about it, Well, I don't, but some people do, So, The normal,
01:06:35
Uh, Bifurcation, binary,
01:06:42
To use the term we're using these days, That I'm seeing today is, Either, it's you and your
01:06:48
Bible, Starting all over again, And learn nothing from these things, Or, it's, you've got the great tradition,
01:06:55
And it has this, um, This authority to it, That, Cannot be questioned,
01:07:04
Probably just can't define it, but, I am going to try to, Respond to that in just a moment, And we'll close the program when
01:07:10
I respond to that, Even though, to be honest with you, Unless I get that thing,
01:07:17
That font, Bigger, Uh, I'm not going to be able to read anything,
01:07:25
Format, Font, Bigger, It's in that horrible,
01:07:32
Font, that, uh, You get, Naturally on computers, And it just, it's, it's ugly,
01:07:38
Oh, anyway, Rich woke up, um, After I put him to sleep,
01:07:46
So, those, those are the two, Sides, that you're given, Is, it's,
01:07:52
You get to start over again, And if you learn anything from Nicaea, Ah, that gives
01:07:58
Nicaea, A binding authority, In the middle is where I've always been,
01:08:05
And I thought all the rest of us were, And that is, I recognize,
01:08:12
And I am not embarrassed to say, That I recognize Semper Reformanda, I, Will continue to defend,
01:08:21
Semper Reformanda, I'm sorry, That there are many of my reformed brethren, Who will not defend that with me any longer,
01:08:28
But, I have always, Tried to be consistent, If you don't believe in Semper Reformanda, Don't, Go and try to convince,
01:08:39
People, Who claim to be Christians, But who may have a false gospel, To abandon their traditions, Because you've got nothing to say to them,
01:08:48
Because you've got your own, That can't be reformed, So, I believe in Semper Reformanda, That does not mean that you reinvent the wheel,
01:08:57
Ah, it does not mean that you start over again, It does not mean you become an emergent church guy,
01:09:04
And, Put everything on the table, From the Trinity to the Resurrection, The Atonement, and start all over again,
01:09:09
All the rest of that kind of silliness, None of those things are necessary, But it is absolutely necessary,
01:09:17
To, Recognize that, There has been, A development in doctrine,
01:09:24
That does not mean new doctrine, Has been developed, What it means is, The doctrine is there in scripture,
01:09:33
But then, The doctrine has had to go out, Into all the world, And answer questions, From all sorts of different perspectives,
01:09:39
It's funny, Almost all this conversation is in the west, Rarely do we talk about east,
01:09:47
Even in East Orthodoxy, And even less rarely, Do we talk about east, east, east,
01:09:55
The church went into places like China, And that's up, The questions,
01:10:01
That are asked in that culture, Are very very different, And most of what we're arguing about,
01:10:09
Is what people in the west have argued about, And the questions have been asked, And the role of Greek philosophy, And Greek philosophy asks questions of Christianity, So Christianity starts using
01:10:17
Greek philosophical terminology, And that was necessary, But where, Where is the
01:10:22
Jerusalem Athens line, Where is the line,
01:10:29
Where you step over, From answering questions, That need to be answered,
01:10:34
From a Greek philosophical perspective, Because you're in, A world influenced by that,
01:10:41
Where do you step over the line, And people will disagree on this, But where do you step over the line, From using the language to explain,
01:10:49
A biblical perspective, To where the language now determines, What the biblical perspective is,
01:10:57
And it is, Self evident to me, That there were,
01:11:02
Many in the early church, That, Didn't just step over that line,
01:11:08
They fell over it completely, And then kept running, Past it,
01:11:16
And so, Anybody who cannot see, That there have been imbalances,
01:11:23
Where Greek philosophy, Has become, Not the handmaiden, But the driving source,
01:11:30
I don't, Do you read church history? Really?
01:11:36
It just seems so obvious, And we all, I thought, Once agreed, On all that stuff,
01:11:43
And so in the middle, You appreciate what God has done, You enjoy reading the early church fathers,
01:11:50
You are, Challenged by them, By their godly lives, Some, obviously,
01:11:58
You learn from their failures, You learn from their successes, You read their biblical exegesis, and sometimes you go,
01:12:05
Oh man, that is, Oh that's good, then, You turn the page and go, What?
01:12:13
And we have that today, We have that today, You know people,
01:12:20
That you can listen to today, And go, Wow, that is, Yeah, that,
01:12:26
And then you listen to the next term, and it's like, Where did that come from?
01:12:32
Is this the same guy? Did I bring up the wrong file? That happens today,
01:12:38
It happened back then, And it probably Happened more back then,
01:12:43
Because there wasn't quite as much, Ability to,
01:12:49
Hear what other people were saying, And have the kind of, Iron sharpening iron, Type thing that we have today,
01:12:58
So, You can read church history,
01:13:04
Learn from church history, You can, Read greek philosophy, And learn from greek philosophy,
01:13:11
But none of it is theanostasis, And once, You have something external,
01:13:17
That defines how far, That which is theanostasis can go, Now you've got your problem, Once you start telling people,
01:13:23
You'll never fully understand what's in scripture, Unless you have this external, There's the problem,
01:13:29
There's the issue, That's vitally important, Now, I've, I literally again had the stuff queued up,
01:13:39
To respond to the accusations of heresy, I really did, But someone tried,
01:13:48
To answer, One of my questions, That I've asked in this program, So I'm gonna go ahead, And I'm gonna deal with this,
01:13:54
And we'll wrap up, And I hope that's, Unless, The grand poobah in charge remotely,
01:14:02
Texts me and says, No I need to wrap up now, And then this would be a good time to do so, And then
01:14:07
I could go, Keep going, Alright, So, I've asked the question more than once,
01:14:16
What is, The great tradition? So Josh Summer decided,
01:14:22
Man, I cannot, This font really is horrible, Josh Summer decided to answer,
01:14:29
So let's see what the answer is, This isn't difficult, That's not a good way to start,
01:14:37
Christopher Hall, So we've got one individual, So we have one individual, Rather than the great tradition,
01:14:44
Isn't that interesting? We don't want to be individuals, But we will use a single individual to define it, Christopher Hall defined the great tradition,
01:14:51
As to its form, In this article from 2020, As the Holy Spirit's gracious work in the church,
01:14:57
On behalf of the church, Which is a biblical definition, Ephesians 4, 11 -16,
01:15:05
Well that's about as nebulous as you can get, Okay, The Spirit's gracious work in the church,
01:15:10
On behalf of the church, Let's just point out that, For someone like Thomas Aquinas, The key element,
01:15:21
If you're going to use that definition, Would be, The Mass, Read his devotional stuff,
01:15:30
Remember shortly before his death, When he just stopped writing, He had had an ecstatic experience,
01:15:38
At the Mass, And everything I've written, Is nothing in comparison to what I've now seen, And he died shortly thereafter,
01:15:45
Okay, He is a Eucharistic saint, Alright, In direct opposition to the book of Hebrews, But that's the reality,
01:15:59
As to the matter of the great tradition, That question has been answered, In an apparently too obvious way,
01:16:06
For some time, In the creeds and confessions, Oh, And the creeds and confessions,
01:16:14
Are about the summary recapitulation, Of the whole counsel of God, The source of which is scripture, Which creeds and confessions?
01:16:22
Because if it's the great tradition, Then it's pre -reformational, And so,
01:16:28
Which creeds and confessions are we talking about? Are we, Sorry, Talking about this?
01:16:43
Or, All this? So, you know, I read from,
01:16:49
Second, Nicaea, Last show, remember? So, This is,
01:16:58
This is part of the great tradition then, Alright, So we need to recognize that,
01:17:05
It is the gracious, Work of the spirit, In the church, on behalf of the church, To teach us that you can venerate images,
01:17:13
Including the Theotokos, The God -bearer, Mary, Right?
01:17:21
If not, why not? Because so far I haven't been given any, Parameters, To where I can go,
01:17:28
That's, That's great tradition that is biblical, And that's great tradition that isn't biblical,
01:17:37
Or isn't the gracious work of the spirit, I keep using biblical, I'm sorry, It's just,
01:17:43
I'm old, And that's how we did things, I can predict, The following question is,
01:17:48
Which creator confessions do we choose? In terms of defining the great tradition, This question,
01:17:55
Is beside the point, Since it presents a dilemma,
01:18:00
Each individual Christian is constantly faced with, For example,
01:18:07
How do we choose churches? How do we choose interpretive decisions? How do we choose lexicons, commentaries, etc.?
01:18:13
If the great tradition is ambiguous, To the simple reason this question is difficult to answer, Then literally everything is ambiguous,
01:18:20
Okay, Josh, Has serious categorical issues,
01:18:26
He always has, I've pointed out to him many many times, He won't listen to me, And evidently the people in his life,
01:18:32
That are my age, or close to my age, Won't help him with it, Choosing a lexicon,
01:18:39
And defining the great tradition, Are two, Different categories of actions,
01:18:46
Okay, So it sounds like, What's being admitted here, Is, We don't know,
01:18:54
But you gotta make a decision, Which destroys the whole point,
01:19:00
Of the great tradition to begin with, Because now you have, An individual, Decision, As to what elements of the great tradition,
01:19:10
Are going to be accepted, If you can even identify, The real answer,
01:19:16
To how we choose, Must be faith and humility, So you can have faithful,
01:19:24
Humble people, Who come to completely different answers, And yet the great tradition,
01:19:30
Is necessary for us to understand, The deep things of God, And have a true,
01:19:37
Understanding of scripture, But in case, These aren't, Scientific enough,
01:19:43
If scripture informs us, Creeds and confessions, Secure what scripture has taught us,
01:19:50
And we take those principal commitments, Back to our reading of scripture, Which creeds and confessions again?
01:20:01
We weren't told, We were told that's ambiguous, So it sounds like,
01:20:07
I can take this, Okay, I can take the Pope's letter,
01:20:12
That was read out, The second Nicene council, And so,
01:20:18
Scripture informs us, So I, I read scripture,
01:20:24
Scripture informs us, Creeds and confessions, Secure what scripture has taught us,
01:20:32
And we take those principal commitments, Back to our reading of scripture, How does this work?
01:20:41
Let's take the canon, The canon? The canon is,
01:20:47
A tradition? You see where this is going? Those of you who have listened,
01:20:55
To, The G3 presentation, I did with Dr. Michael Kruger, On canon know exactly where this is going,
01:21:06
How does this work? Let's take the canon, I buy an NASB, I have no idea how canon work, Nor how the
01:21:11
NASB came to be, But because it resembles other bibles, I've come into contact with them in the past, I assume it's a pretty standard deal,
01:21:18
The second London Baptist confession, 1 .2, Affirms the same, As I read through the NASB, I come to song of songs,
01:21:24
I can't understand how it fits the canon, It seems strange, if not downright improper, The temptation to question its canonicity looms,
01:21:31
But because I've already committed to an orthodoxy, I think it was probably orthodox, Understanding of the protestant canon,
01:21:37
I do not flinch, By faith in Christ's promise to build his church, And the humility that allows me to be instructed by voices from the past,
01:21:44
I receive song of songs, As an inspired part of the canon of holy scripture, Creeds and confessions help us to keep Principle theological commitments in view,
01:21:51
So that we do our further exegesis, We do not check our doctrine of scripture, Doctrine of God, doctrine of Christ, Etc.
01:21:57
at the door of an exegetical rationalism, The great tradition is a spirit given ministerially helpful,
01:22:04
Though not infallible means, By which we check our own individual theologizing, We cannot become our own popes,
01:22:10
But must appeal to our brethren, past and present, As we interpret our bibles, The charge that the great tradition has not been defined,
01:22:15
Or the straw man that the great tradition entails a Wholesale acceptance of everything that's been written in church history, Or that it's a compromise of souls,
01:22:21
Are not valid charges by reason of the above, The above was one of the worst arguments I've ever seen, It could never be charted logically,
01:22:30
And it fails at every point, Let's look, This is something you should do,
01:22:35
If you study logic, Oh, I don't think
01:22:41
I have, Oh, no, I don't, I've got a bunch of logic text out here, But I don't think that I have,
01:22:48
It's great, there's, Canon Press provides a number of great, Homeschool things, Homeschool resources,
01:22:55
And there's one particular one, I have it in the other room, on logic, Be very, very good,
01:23:01
Let's very quickly take this apart, Let's go back to the canon,
01:23:07
He didn't actually come to any conclusion, He just said, well, I accept the song of songs,
01:23:12
Because, Of people before me, Which would mean, that if you were raised,
01:23:20
Within the Roman Catholic tradition, Then you read 2nd Maccabees, And you read it, and you accept it, Because of the people before you,
01:23:27
So we shouldn't have any debates on the issue of the canon, Because, There is an element,
01:23:34
Of the great tradition that accepts, The apocryphal books, There's an element of the great tradition that doesn't, If we're talking about the great tradition,
01:23:41
It's simply being church history, So, there's 2 streams, In regards to the apocryphal books,
01:23:48
And, they're clearly seen, All the way up to the time of the reformation, So, Jerome and Leo Sardis, Um, They recognize the
01:23:57
Jews never accepted those books, And therefore they, Do not accept them either, And that goes all the way up to Cardinal Cayetan in the days of Luther, Um, And then there's
01:24:10
Augustine, Primarily under the influence of the Greek Septuagint, That accept the apocryphal books,
01:24:16
And, The great tradition cannot answer that question, It can't, Um, So he raises an issue,
01:24:27
That the great tradition actually doesn't, Can't, can't answer, And then uses that as an example,
01:24:33
I'm not sure if he's aware of that, But I'm assuming he is, Somehow, Um, So, by faith,
01:24:43
In Christ's promise to build his church, And a humility, That allows me to be
01:24:49
Instructed by voices of the past, I receive song of songs as an inspired part of the canon of scripture, Any person,
01:24:55
Following Cardinal Sadaletto, Could have used the exact argumentation, To reject the reformation,
01:25:01
And the reformed gospel, These are the words of a man who has
01:25:10
Never engaged, Never engaged, Rome's claims, And I'm deeply concerned that if he ever does,
01:25:20
He will see he's already accepted, Much of their foundational argumentation, That's what's dangerous about this stuff folks,
01:25:28
That's what's dangerous about this stuff, Um, So then we just go,
01:25:36
We go from the example, We don't actually come to a conclusion from the example that's meaningful,
01:25:41
And now we go to the generalities, Creeds and confessions, Help us to keep principal theological commitments in view,
01:25:50
So that as we do our further exegesis, Further than what? We do not check,
01:25:58
Our doctrine of scripture, Doctrine of God, Doctrine of Christ, etc, At the door of an exegetical rationalism,
01:26:05
I have no idea what exegetical rationalism is, What does that mean? Give us an example,
01:26:12
I mean, This guy wants to talk about partitive exegesis all the time, So that's not exegetical rationalism?
01:26:18
What is exegetical rationalism? And how is it, Um, Avoided, By accepting,
01:26:28
An external authority tradition, That is not derived, From that which is theodemus,
01:26:33
I don't know, Maybe we'll be told, The great tradition is a spirit,
01:26:39
Spirit given, Spirit given, By the spirit of God, Huh, Ministerially helpful,
01:26:48
Though not infallible, It's given by the spirit, But it's not infallible,
01:26:57
So is it a means of grace? A fallible means of grace? Would that be, I don't know,
01:27:06
It's a, Spirit given, ministerially helpful, Though not infallible means,
01:27:12
By which we check, Our own individual theologizing, I thought that was,
01:27:20
The elders in the church, And the ministry of the word in the church, And, Letting all of this speak,
01:27:29
So evidently, This isn't enough, You gotta have something else, Because the spirit has given it to us, It's spirit given,
01:27:35
It's ministerially helpful, Now if all he's saying is, It's helpful to be able to read,
01:27:43
People who came before us, That has nothing to do with, The great tradition, So I, I love reading the institutes,
01:27:55
I've learned so much, It's great, It's awesome, It's wonderful, And comparing the institutes,
01:28:02
My institutes had this,
01:28:08
This is not the full institutes, This is the first three books, Put the fourth one in there,
01:28:14
And the binding will never survive, But this is really great, This one lays nice and flat,
01:28:20
This is the one I used for, We did an institute study for a while, Evidently I used different colored markers,
01:28:28
But, I love, Reading this stuff,
01:28:34
Calvin was a blessing, Got the summa over there, Dry as the
01:28:40
Sahara desert, Other people disagree, Okay, But, Are these both the great tradition,
01:28:52
Equally so, I thought the great tradition, Was up to the reformation, See we haven't been told,
01:28:59
What the great tradition is, We're getting this nebulous, Spirit given,
01:29:05
Woo woo stuff, But somehow, It is a means,
01:29:11
By which we check our own, Individual theologizing, Whatever theologizing is,
01:29:17
I, I thought this was enough to do that, Because if I'm going to say,
01:29:23
Thus saith the lord, Then I need to actually have it grounded, In this right, So I thought,
01:29:32
We cannot become our own popes, That's a straw man, That really needs to stop being lit up,
01:29:39
Really does, I'm sick of it, It's offensive, it's absurd, Everybody uses it,
01:29:45
It's just destroying your own credibility, Every single one of you, Including professors, No one is talking about becoming our own popes,
01:29:54
Nobody, That's the straw man, Solo scriptura,
01:29:59
Under the tree, Everybody with the bible, Garbage, You've already said, Yeah that's dumb,
01:30:06
But that's not the same thing, As going as far as what you're doing, In telling us about something you refuse to define,
01:30:12
With any kind of reproducible specificity, Is necessary as a control,
01:30:20
Upon our theologizing, We cannot become our own popes,
01:30:26
But must appeal to our brethren, Past and present, As we interpret our bibles, We must appeal,
01:30:36
To our brothers, Past and present, As we interpret our bibles, So you have to appeal to Cyril of Alexandria, Read much of Cyril of Alexandria, I can assure you one thing,
01:30:53
You, Will not in any way shape or form, Improve, Your, Clarity of presentation of the gospel of Jesus Christ, By reading a word of Cyril of Alexandria, Not a word,
01:31:06
Did you say some true things? But, Do you have to have access to him?
01:31:17
You don't actually have to have access to Calvin, But I'm often glad to do, Am I contradicting myself by reading
01:31:24
Calvin? No, and if you think I am, you haven't been listening to a word I had to say, The charge of the great tradition,
01:31:32
Has not been defined, It hasn't, It hasn't, I've given you examples,
01:31:40
Until you guys get into the original resources, Stop it, Okay, Until you get into this, stop it,
01:31:50
Has not been defined, Or the straw man of the great tradition, Entails a wholesale acceptance of everything,
01:31:56
That's been written in church history, How do you decide?
01:32:06
What's the filter? What's, By what standard,
01:32:12
Do I read church history? I've heard that phrase before, Or that it's a compromise,
01:32:21
Of solo scriptura, Of solo scripture, It's misspelled here, But it does not have to be,
01:32:32
Unless you say, It's spirit given, And is therefore necessary,
01:32:38
To have, A true doctrine of the trinity, Then you're violating solo scriptura,
01:32:44
Definitely, The definition of great tradition, Exegesis provided by Dr.
01:32:50
Carter, Is, The death knell of solo scriptura, There's no question about that, And I would challenge all of you reformed baptists,
01:32:57
Every single one of you, Who is in a reformed baptist church, You need to look,
01:33:03
At what Craig Carter says, You promote his book, You're having your students read it, You read his definition of great tradition,
01:33:11
Exegesis, And if you don't stand up and say, That is not what we believe, You are not,
01:33:16
Anywhere near confessional, In regards to your view of scripture, Anywhere near,
01:33:25
I went over that a month ago, I have not heard a word from anybody, Saying, Yeah okay,
01:33:31
Carter's great tradition exegesis stuff, Really gets out there, Haven't heard a word,
01:33:37
Why not guys, Are not valid charges by reason of the above,
01:33:43
Well the above has been, Refuted, Okay, Wow, I'm sure
01:33:55
I have missed, A lot of wild and crazy stuff, In social media, Over the past hour and a half,
01:34:02
But I bet you there's at least one person, Out there that's going, Oh I have to go back to that now, That was interesting thinking about other things,
01:34:08
For a while, And maybe you're the only person, We did the program for today, I don't know, Maybe you're the only person listening,
01:34:15
Maybe only Rich needed to hear all this, I don't know, But there you go, Hopefully that is helpful to you all,
01:34:22
Thank you for your patience, It was Monday from the last program, But we have to take care of things,
01:34:29
And we did, And we appreciate your patience, And Lord willing,
01:34:35
We'll be back again next week, Because something tells me, This is going to be a really interesting week,