Mega Edition of the Dividing Line: Andy Stanley, 3 Mormons, and a Bit More

Well greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line on a Friday. It actually ended up being providential that we had to move things around to Friday because that will allow us to respond rather fully to a webcast, podcast, whatever you want to call it, that was posted I believe yesterday morning, Jonathan Merritt's program featuring as his guest Andy Stanley.

Right before I left for Colorado, Michael Brown had interviewed Andy Stanley. I listened to that on the drive up to Colorado, right at the beginning as I recall. I didn't get to do much about it because we didn't get to do many programs early on during that particular trip, but I just felt like Michael's always nice to everybody and I would have pushed a little harder obviously than Michael normally does in that situation.

But still, because of Michael's background and because of his abilities in Hebrew and Old Testament studies and things like that, I just got the feeling that Stanley was sort of playing the field. You know, you sort of know what context you're in.

Everybody has to do that on one level or another, I suppose. It's always wise to know what context you're in. But obviously the situation was different in this webcast with Jonathan Merritt, who obviously is not the most conservative of individuals.

As a result, it just seemed to me that Stanley was a little less guarded in what he was saying. As a result, I think you can hear where some of the seriously dangerous material really comes out. Now again, as we have mentioned in the past, Andy Stanley is the result of an interesting confluence of a number of different influences come together in his theology.

One that I think needs to be kept in mind is Norman Geisler. We've always said theology matters, and one of the things we're going to hear from Andy Stanley is the amazing statement in his mind of what the relationship between the Church and Scripture is.

And he completely denies the Reformed emphasis upon the Theotokos word of God bringing forth and becoming the very voice of God to the Church. He sees the Scriptures coming from the Church, just as Rome does.

And of course, Norman Geisler, long history of compromised influence by Rome. There's just no question about it. I mean, he got his PhD from a Jesuit institution, and you look at his soteriology, that was deeply influenced by, you know, we've gone over that many times in the years past.

I realize we have new listeners all the time, and you may be going, huh? The archives are all there. Lots of archives. Yeah, yeah, put Geisler into AOMN .org and you'll get a lot of stuff on various subjects, but primarily one subject.

Anyway, but you also have the anti-lordship perspective from Dallas Seminary that was very much a part of things, and now you've got this left-leaning. And what's weird is he fancies himself an apologist, and we've certainly recognized that apologetics is primarily practiced by conservatives who have a very high and consistent, necessarily so, view of truth.

The farther you drift to the left, the less relevant apologetics becomes to you, because you're not holding forth an objective message any longer anyways. So why worry yourself along those lines? And so it was a fascinating conversation.

We're going to play some segments of it. Now, if you, like me, it's August, so the briefing's back. And if that's a part of your Monday through Friday regular life, you will be a little surprised, I think, to listen this morning to the briefing, because that may be one of the longest single segments.

Now, when Dr. Mohler addressed Matthew Vines, I think it took up the entire program, so there's been some. But generally, Dr. Mohler does not invest, it sounded like over half the program, to a single thing like that.

So obviously, he believes it's very important to address this. And he went all out and started talking about Marchionne. And he was careful. He said, I'm not saying he goes all the way to what Marchionne did, but he identified the influences that we need to be able to see.

And this is one of the problems, is that in the modern era, especially in theological education, there is so little emphasis upon a functional church history education for seminary students, that the left keeps bringing up old, dead stuff that all of a sudden looks really cool.

And so you realize, we did that only 100 years ago. We did that 1800 years ago. We did that 1000 years ago. It's just repeating the same thing over and over again. It's the old, those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it line, which is very, very, very true.

Now, of course, you always put some new clothes on and make the old look somewhat new. But the better you know, church history, the more you're gonna be going, oh, that again, oh, that again over there.

Yep. And that's really what we see going on there. So anyway, let me see if this is, yeah, it is sort of working. It's always got that delay, but it's not too bad. So let's listen. I have the advantage.

Dr. Moeller only has 20 some odd minutes, and I have as long as I want to go. Rich says we've got all day. So the problem is I got up at 2 .30 this morning, did a 54 mile bike ride in the dark. And so it's like two o 'clock in the afternoon for me.

I know it is on the East Coast, but I'm still in Arizona. And so my body is going, boy, a nap would be really nice right now. So I happen to push it just a little bit right now. But we will get through it.

Oh, I need to put this back. I'm going to play this just a little bit fast. 1 .2 isn't enough to make people sound like Mickey Mouse or anything, but it allows us to get through a little bit more. So I wanted to start actually with some observations about the interviewer.

Jonathan Merritt has a rather intriguing position in broader evangelicalism. I wouldn't identify him really as historically an evangelical any longer, given the influences that he has. But for example, listen to the list of authors that he whips off right here.

In fact, you'll notice, if you're much of a reader, that there's been a slew of new books on this topic from big name authors, people like Rob Bell and Rachel Held Evans, Pete Enns, Adam Hamilton, all of them wrestling with this question in their own way.

I think that Adam.

Hamilton is the Church Christ guy that I played a couple programs ago, collapsing on the issue of gay marriage and his view of scripture there, claiming to have a high view of scripture, but going into that.

Rachel Held Evans, Rob Bell, Enns. Yeah, okay, there you go. That gives you a really good idea of the spectrum that is influencing at least the formation of the.

Questions. And then just a little bit later... I talk about in my new book something that Walter Brueggemann, the Bible scholar, says that if you follow God long enough, you go through these movements of orientation, disorientation.

Walter Brueggemann, as soon as I heard that,.

My mind went back to this. It's strange. The older you get, your memory is not as good as it used to be. And it's strange the things that you remember from the past very, very clearly. And one of the things that I remember from my theological education were my textbooks, books that I was, I guess, forced to read.

Especially in this one class, I've shown you the commentary on Deuteronomy from Gerhard von Rott that we had to read. And the assignment was to read the commentary and then write a pro-con review of it.

And again, this was at Fuller Seminary long, long ago, and I got good grades. Back in the 80s, you could still disagree with stuff. But everybody that had to read von Rott and Deuteronomy, Brueggemann, Genesis.

You can look through here, and you will find all sorts of markings on the pages where I was very carefully reading what he was saying. I just saw something here. Ah, there's a ha at the top of the page.

And these became the things that I used in my response and what I wrote. And back then, you could tear things apart and still get a decent grade. I don't think that would be the case any longer. But here on page 84, but all those who regard such events as punishment for sin have failed to understand the change in God.

And the margin I've written, Psalm 90, verse 2. And then because of a revolution in the heart of God, that relation is now based in unqualified grace. And I've got that marked out. The point is this, that Brueggemann is a brilliant, brilliant scholar.

Really is. Doesn't change the fact that he's so far off to the left that if he was a plane, he'd have two left wings. So the thing to keep in mind and to remember is theological accuracy is not a function of IQ.

There are brilliant people, and then not so brilliant people, just on both sides of the divide. And the divide, it's now not a divide anymore. It's much more of just a wild spectrum. But the point is Brueggemann ends.

We are not talking here about anything that would even be slightly conservative. And so what you're hearing here are two people talking about their journey away from what might be called fundamentalism.

In a sense, maybe not in the strict, independent fundamentalist type mindset that you might automatically think of, but certainly a very conservative evangelicalism. And both these men, who have very famous fathers, have moved a long ways away from where they were raised.

And that, likewise, I think, needs to be something you keep in mind as you listen to the questions and the possible applications of the responses. This wasn't just another opportunity for Andy Stanley to talk about unhooking the Church from the Old Testament.

He's obviously very, very embarrassed by the content of the Old Testament, historically speaking, worldview speaking, ethically and morally, so on and so forth. But all of this ends up having to have application.

And one of the key, key issues where the consistency of the moral and ethical system of the Old Covenant comes directly into the New Covenant, and it becomes the unbreakable link between Old and New Covenant, and the fact that when you hear people saying, Jesus never mentioned homosexuality, that is either a completely ignorant person speaking, which is the majority of the time, or it's the result of this unhooking that Andy Stanley himself and many others are busily engaged in attempting to do.

The problem is, if you have a solid understanding of the relationship between Old and New Testament, if you recognize, for example, that when Paul upbraids the Corinthians about a man who has his father's wife, an incestuous relationship, and upbraids the Corinthians, you should know this is wrong.

How should they know it's wrong? Because it's in the law. 1 Corinthians chapter 5 is assuming the continuing validity of the moral law that Andy Stanley and others are trying to disconnect this from. And so the strongest, most consistent response to the Revoice Conference push toward homosexual inclusion as an accepted lifestyle in the Church is a recognition of the continuing abiding validity of God's law in Old and New Testament scriptures.

And so the foundation of a meaningful interpretation of Romans chapter 1, 1 Corinthians chapter 6, 1 Timothy chapter 1, or any of the other relevant texts in the New Testament is to see that consistency.

They form an unbreakable chain unless you say, ah, actually we're just starting all over again in the New Testament. All that stuff that God spent all that time talking about abomination, ah, it's just for Israel, doesn't have anything to do with us.

Okay, well, that's pretty much going to take everything apart and put us back in the Stone Ages, morally and ethically. Or it's going to allow you to embrace, without much difficulty, the flow of the current cultural whatever it is you're doing.

So let's keep that in mind when we think about what is behind some of the terminology that we will hear as we listen to this particular interview. For the first time, I felt like I had a framework.

For understanding the storyline of the entire Bible. And it was eye-opening for me. Then the other big moment for me was I took a class in seminary with Dr. Norman Geisler on classical apologetics. And that, again, created a major shift for me as an adult in terms of how I—.

Okay, so just, again, influences. As I said, taking a class on classical apologetics from Norman Geisler, who is going to be very opposed in his epistemology to the Reformation, to reform things, that's going to end up having a major influence upon Andy Stanley.

There was no the Bible until the fourth century. When we think about the Bible, we think about.

A book that contains—. Now, I may have missed it. I'm sorry. I thought I had marked it. Maybe I didn't go back. But prior to that statement that I just played a moment ago, he had mentioned hearing a sermon on the nature of the covenants.

And he said, this is something we never talked about. Okay, maybe in Baptist churches, that's true. In Reformed Baptist churches, that's not the case. I don't know where that's coming from. Oh, yes, I do.

I'm not sure what to do about that. Preferences. Where is the sounds? Play all. None. There we go. That should fix that. Anyway, in a Reformed Baptist church, that wouldn't have been the case. But in the Southern Baptist churches, by and large, by and large, there are exceptions, obviously, especially Founders-style Southern Baptist churches.

But the issue of covenants would be addressed. But they basically agreed, yeah, whoever talked about covenants. Well, the problem is what he's now adopted is a radical, radical discontinuity perspective in the sense that you can just take your sword and just right between Matthew and Malachi and just chop it in half and all will be well.

In fact, he'll say later on, all he really needs, he actually said this, would be two Gospels and First Corinthians. And I just go, that's not really a healthy, holistic view of why the Holy Spirit has given us all that he's given us, is it?

No, it's not. So we go back to when I started playing and stopped.

There was no the Bible until the fourth century. When we think about the Bible, we think about a book that contains the Jewish scripture and the Christian writings. And such a thing did not exist until after Christianity became illegal and scholars could come out of the shadows and actually put such a thing together.

So the early church, no one ever said in the early church, the Bible says the Bible teaches, the Bible says the Bible teaches, because there was no the Bible. But to the point of your question, there was….

There was….

Scripture. Scripture. Yes. And that's why this is a distinction with no difference. Okay. Technically, as far as manuscripts are concerned, binding it all together in one big hunk and volume, sure, that's irrelevant.

The church has always been a text-based community. There has always been the documents of the covenants that have been given to us. I think this would be…. I would challenge Andy Stanley to read Michael Kruger's books on canon.

I think he'd start getting the balance that would help him to see where he's jumped off the cliff here. But again, you read the early church fathers and they are always from the earliest point, from the didache, quoting from, as a final authority, the scriptures that are available to them at that point in time.

Now, was there a canon process of the New Testament, just like with the Old Testament? Yes, there was. Does that somehow mean that the scriptures then are secondary to the church, come forth from the church?

I mean, I couldn't believe what he said. That would allow the scholars to come out from the shadows and to do such a thing. You think that's where the Bible came from, with the scholars coming out of the shadows?

It really makes me wonder what Stanley's bibliology is as to the actual origination of Scripture, what its relationship to the church really is. I mean, we're seeing some serious issues here that, from my perspective, would leave him wide open to Roman Catholic refutation and Roman Catholic proselytization, to be honest with you.

Again, the origins that he is deriving his theology from have been impacted along those.

Lines as well. When we see the word Scripture in our New Testaments, it means something very, very, very, very different than it does to us, because when we hear the word Scripture, we think the Bible.

So when I say the word Scripture, I think anything that was God-breathed, anything that was inspired and is true because of the source, not necessarily because of who wrote it down or when. But that distinction between Scripture and the Bible, I don't think it used to be that important.

But because of the generation we live in and because of our culture, I think it's extremely important that people understand what the Bible is and the differentiation between that and what people thought, especially in the first century when they saw or heard the term Scripture or Scripture.

So I don't know if that's what you're asking.

But there continues to be real confusion in Andy Stanley's mind at this point. Is there really functionally, relevantly, some massive difference between saying the Scriptures say? When Luke refers to Paul's writings in the same category as Scripture, when possibly Paul refers to Luke's gospel and quotes from it as Scripture, when Peter refers to Paul's writings, again, in the context of Scripture, why do we have to go to the canon process and its final formalization in the fourth century and have a Bible for those references to Scripture to be relevant?

I don't understand it. I don't see how in this generation or any other generation, that's somehow some big, major, important thing that is supposed to keep people from losing their faith, which is what he says he's most concerned about here.

Different frames of reference, again,.

Going back to what I said about God's covenant with Israel, which set the context for really everything between the end of Genesis and Malachi. It's a very different worldview, and in some ways it's a very different value system than what Jesus introduced.

Now, we've got to stop right there.

That is right on, that's sticking your toes over the line of heresy. It really is. I mean, that's just false. That's as false as you can get. You have Jesus introducing something that is a... Okay, let's remember something.

Jesus is the God of the Old Testament, okay? That is Jesus speaking. And so now Jesus has all of a sudden changed his tune. It's one thing to recognize the supremacy and superiority of the new covenant, the inclusion of the Gentiles, the world mission, all that's wonderful.

But don't you dare tell me that the worldview of the old covenant is different, fundamentally different, than that of the new. What are you talking about? How can the same God have a different worldview?

I mean, the presupposition of the New Testament writers is the holiness of God's law that brought about the crucifixion. Those same texts that contained the prophecies of the resurrection are the same texts that have this worldview.

Does he not see a sound, solid, well-read opponent of Christianity would absolutely tear this stuff to shreds? It is... Wow. When I heard that, I'm like, what are you talking about? And he's going to go on and say worse, so I guess we can hold our wrath till then.

And so Christians have a tendency to mix and match, dip into the old and the new, blend it all together, and come up with a very interesting form of Christianity. So part of my point was, hey, it's time that we grow up and let the old covenant be what the old covenant is,.

But focus our attention on the new. Now notice, in his thinking, that's a maturity thing. You know, when people who grew up ignorant of church history discover some heresy from the past and try to revive it, they always say, this is what happens when you grow up.

This is how you become mature. Yeah. And so if you actually... You know, I just thought of a sermon that I did in the Hebrews series a few years ago, where it was a Sunday morning, I remember, because it was very bright in the sanctuary, where I went through, what was it?

Was it 17? I think it was like 17, 18, 16 points that John Owen gave on the identity of who is sanctified in Hebrews 10 .29. And it was all based upon covenantal theology and, you know, all that kind of stuff.

So those of us who have actually been, you know, reading stuff like that and maybe wrestling with stuff like that, okay, so Andy Stanley wasn't doing any of that stuff, but we're just sort of irrelevant.

You can ignore all that stuff. To grow up is to take... I mean, let's just be honest, it's the easy way to deal with covenant issues, to just simply go and cut the book in half. And there you go. We just solved that.

We're the adults in the room. No, you know, there's... You can think that you can disconnect these things, unhook these things, unhitch these things. But thankfully, God made those connections out of something you can't break.

You can think you can't, but you can't break them. So yeah, I don't buy that one for a second, that you're the one that is giving the mature view here. You know, in the first century, of course,.

The apostles dipped into the Old Testament or the Old Covenant to make their point about Jesus to.

Our modern culture. Now, to make their point about Jesus to Jews, Jesus, the first thing he does at the resurrection is to open their minds to the scriptures, upbraid them for their unbelief, and point out the fact that from Moses through all of the prophets, they testify of him.

It's not, oh, well, we need to make a point to the Jews here. So do you think we had to use those old covenant scriptures maybe? Well, that's all we got. So I guess we'll, you know, the Jews will listen to it because it's their scriptures.

So until we get something better. Oh my. No, there's got to have been a fundamental, I mean, what you see in here is the fruit of that deuterocanonical view I've talked about before, where people are canonically challenged, where functionally they may say they have 66 books, but let's be honest, they really don't.

The Old Testament canon exists on a lower level functionally in their mind. I mean, a lot of people have multiple levels. I mean, if it's read, it has the highest level of authority. And then if it's in the New Testament, but not read, it's the second level.

And unless you're in Revelation, that has a special high level for some people. And then you get to the Old Testament and, you know, certain books have higher levels than others. And Second Chronicles or Zephaniah, I mean, it's about the lowest canonical level you can get for some folks.

This is what's behind a lot of this type of stuff. Because if you really believe that all scripture is theodostos and all scripture is profitable, you'd have a hard time making these kinds of distinctions that are being made here.

So, yeah, no, this was painful to listen to.

To make their point about Jesus to Jews. In our modern culture, I'm convinced, and, you know, I'm sure there's other people who would argue with this. I'm convinced that we actually make a better case for Jesus if we leave the Old Testament or the Old Covenant out of the argument.

So let's not do what the apostles did, because we have a different context. And so we cannot rely upon apostolic example. Well, okay, the apostles did go out into all the world and, you know, Rome and Corinth and stuff like that.

But they first went in the synagogues, but, you know, we don't get a lot of information about exactly how they approached, you know, I suppose got Acts 17 and that's about it there. And so maybe that's how we should do it is we should assume that because Paul didn't start in the same way in Acts 17 as he did in any of the synagogues, say in Acts 13, that we can just unhook stuff.

And the reality is we have to make up our own way of doing it, because there really isn't. I mean, it's the modern generation is just so different that we just sort of have to have to hoof it. And rather than taking biblical parameters and trusting that it's the application of the Word of God by the Spirit of God, that Word and Spirit thing, that's that Reformation stuff again.

And that Reformation stuff, I'll be honest with you, a lot of these folks, I think Gandy Stanley in an honest moment would say, hey, Reformation stuff was great for the Reformation, but we don't live in that age anymore.

And of course, we don't live in that age anymore. I brought that up in my sermon in the Schlosskirche in Wittenberg last year. I mean, part of the whole point of my sermon there was things have changed.

They've degraded. You actually had more of a foundation to talk to the lost in Luther's day than we have now because of secularism, so on and so forth. So I'm not, for a second, downplaying the reality of secularism.

However, what I would say is the worldview of the secularist does not change the fact that that secularist is made in the image of God. And the question we have to have is, what is the power of God even in our day?

Even in our day, what is the power of God? Is it not the word of God and the spirit of God? Word and spirit. Has that changed? Has there ever been a time in history where word and spirit is not what the church possesses as its primary, as the only thing that has been given to us?

And is it not enough? That's an important question.

Because our apologetic for Christianity and for Jesus really stands on three feet, if you can think of it like a stool. Number one, the resurrection. You don't need ancient props when somebody rises from the dead after predicting it.

Number two...

Resurrection outside of an explanation is just a freaky historical event. Okay? There has to be an explanation of who died, why did he die, and why has he been raised up? And what provides that context?

God's special revelation called scripture, and specifically the prophetic word. Because that's what Jesus immediately started teaching the disciples as soon as he rose from the dead, which means that's probably pretty important.

So, first leg, not so much. We continue. After predicting it, number two, the destruction of.

The temple, because Jesus predicted that, and you can go visit the destroyed temple today.

I had not heard that one before. I don't think Jesus was the only one who in the decades prior to the destruction of Jerusalem had foreseen problems between the Jewish people and the Romans, but he did give very specific prophecy concerning the destruction of the temple.

So would that be a general way of saying fulfilled prophecy? And yet, I don't remember the apostles identifying that as the second leg of the apologetic for the church. Can't think of a single one. So I guess we're breaking new ground.

Number three, the church. So my...

So the church. What do you mean by that? The local church, universal church, survival of the agent? What do you mean the church is the third leg? There's obviously a whole lot more behind that somewhere that is not explained.

I have no idea how you align those three in some way that it'd be a three-legged stool or something. I don't get it.

The point I was making, and have made on multiple occasions to our local church, is that in terms of defending our faith, or in terms of what does our faith rest on, we really don't need the Old Covenant or the Old Testament to prop it up.

Prop it up. How about explain it? How about be the foundation? How about being not only the prophetic word, and the apostles did emphasize that over and over and over and over and over again. I guess it was just because they were talking to Jews.

But how about foundation out of which it grows so that it can be made sense of, it can be explained? How about that? What do you mean we don't need it? All of a sudden, you can just cut the foundation out from underneath it and all will be well?

It just becomes a contextless event that you then have to fill with meaning. What I don't think Andy Stanley realizes is there is no way for him to maintain a belief in solo scriptura logically with what he's doing here.

There has to be external sources of authority that he can bring in, because he's not using what God has given to us. He's chopped that up out of embarrassment. That comes from a lack of trust in the Spirit of God to redeem his own people.

If you've got to convince people to just tip that hat toward God, that's what makes you a Christian. There's no trust in the Spirit of God working the miracle of regeneration sovereignly here. Once again, it's all connected, folks.

We've tried to emphasize that for many decades now. It's all connected. Christian truth is a beautiful whole. Once you start warping one part of it, it's going to have an impact on something else. My grandkids are coming over this evening.

My wife got this brilliant idea. She was out shopping, and she found this shade thing that you can put up in your backyard. It gives you shade in a certain area. She's like, we could put this in the backyard, because she's going to cook some chicken on the grill.

Thankfully, it's not going to be 114 degrees today. It sort of cooled off a little bit. It was actually nice on my ride this morning. I got down to 71, I think, out toward Vistanzia this morning. Of course, it was four o 'clock in the morning.

It takes two people. It's sort of one of these frame things, and you have to pull on both sides. The problem was, she's not as tall as I am. I could get the legs on one side, but then I had to go over and have her hold that side.

If we hadn't done that, it would have been warped, because for all the stuff to fit, everything's got to be snapped into place. If you leave some stuff unsnapped, it ends up looking a little funky, and probably would eventually fall over and stuff like that.

Now, that's a strange illustration of the fact that once you start, you know, we don't get one leg right, it warps things. So the cover ends up moving, and it ends up impacting all sorts of other things in that little gazebo thingy that we've got going in the backyard right now.

Christian truth? Yeah, you know, especially when you're working on the foundational stuff. It's one thing to have differences up toward the top, you know, because there were velcro straps you had to do up at the top.

That didn't really impact much if you didn't get all the velcro exactly right, because that's sort of up at the top, and it just sort of moves around anyways. But down at the bottom, the foundational stuff, you have one problem down there, and nothing else is going to fit.

It ends up creating a systemic warping, and that's why a person's view of what scripture is is so vitally important, and can end up having such a huge impact on major things like how the church views homosexuality.

I mean, in case you haven't noticed, if you don't have the highest view of scripture, you are not going to stand very long against the current social pressure to give in on that subject. And that's why we see so many people giving in on that subject all over the place.

First century Jews did when they were trying to defend their faith to first century Jews who were, you know, not embracing the way or the Jesus movement. So I do feel like if we're going to survive the internet, and if we're going to survive the misinformation age, and Jonathan, you know this, and this is worth repeating as many times as we can, think about it.

A person can discover everything that's in the Bible without actually owning a Bible, or ever picking up a Bible, or ever reading a Bible. And when you and I grew up, that wasn't the case. To get misinformation about the Bible, you had to go to college or to a library.

But now in our world, it's not just what the Bible says, it's what else the Bible says that undermines people's faith. So I am convinced, for the sake of this generation and the next...

In fact, I'm going to go to normal speed. Just one.

It's not just what the Bible says, it's what else the Bible says that undermines people's faith.

Does that make any sense? Third time.

It's not just what the Bible says, it's what else the Bible says that undermines people's faith.

I think what he's saying is there's parts of the Bible that he finds defensible, and there's parts of the Bible he doesn't find defensible. And we don't want people to lose their faith, whatever that is.

And if you don't trust that faith is actually the work of the Spirit of God, using the Word of God, then you're going to be very worried about this kind of thing. Because you can't really trust God to save anybody, because God can't save anybody.

It's up to us to save ourselves. And it's all that anti-lordship stuff. But it still doesn't make any sense. But I think the idea is, there's stuff that we should just leave out. As long as you get the tip of the hat, as long as you get that person, quote unquote, becoming a Christian, you know, acknowledging Jesus, you don't have to worry about regeneration, you don't have to worry about sanctification, you don't have to worry about the application of the Word of God, those types of things.

That's the anti-lordship stuff. I hope you see, whoa, I hope you see where that goes. I hope you see how this is relevant to homosexuality, gay marriage, and other issues in the Church. Because it is.

That leaves the door wide open. But I'm not 100 certain exactly.

What he meant by that, to be honest with you. I am convinced, for the sake of this generation and the next generation, we have to rethink our apologetic as Christians. And the less we depend on the Old Testament to prop up our New Testament faith, the better, because of where we are in culture.

And again, I could go on and on about that, but that's what I was alluding to.

So apologetics should be determined by what culture you're in, to the point of abandonment of apostolic example, apostolic principle. And it is a thoroughly, you know, if it works, that's great. That's the standard.

If we see it working, how are you judging that? You know, utilitarianism, something along those lines, how do you judge that it's quote-unquote working? That is a, I think, major question that needs to be asked.

I was a little confused, to be honest, by some of the controversy. I mean, unless you're a Seventh-day Adventist or you're part of the Messianic Jewish tradition, and most of your critics are not, then chances are your Christian faith is already at least partially unhitched from the Old Testament, if you're honest.

You're not practicing early Temple Judaism and your understanding of key ideas like the afterlife and righteousness and justice are largely derived from the New Testament understanding. So am I missing something here?

No, that was my point.

Again, I suppose if what Jonathan Merritt is trying to say here is that he was given an exceptionally shallow perspective on God's law, the relationship, the Old Testament, the New Testament, what is the distinction between ceremonial law and moral law?

Is there a law specifically for the people of Israel that does not carry a specific kind of moral commandment for all people? I mean, it's not like Christians have not been discussing the kinds of law and the proper application for literally over a thousand years.