The Gospel According to Judas? Then Calls

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

Our host is Dr. James White, Director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an Elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341.

And now with today's topic, here is James White.

The Gospel According to Judas and the Today Show Interview

He is one of the most vilified figures in history, the man Christians believe betrayed Jesus. But what if that's not true and what if Jesus didn't really perform all the miracles credited to him after all?

It's the premise of a new fictional work by best-selling author Jeffrey Archer and biblical scholar Frank Maloney. It's called The Gospel According to Judas and it's sure to make some true believers a little bit mad.

Mr. Archer, Professor Maloney, good to have you both here. Thank you for having me. How do you describe this? Pure fiction or do you want people to take this with a little bit more than a grain of salt?

Oh, a little bit more, yes.

We take it seriously. We all know because we were brought up on Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And so we see that view of Jesus of Nazareth. I wanted to write a book that saw the whole story from Capernaum to the crucifixion through the eyes of Judas and perhaps see if there was another point of view.

Well, talk to me, before we talk about specifics in the book, talk to me about this collaboration. You turn to perhaps the greatest living authority on the New Testament, expert on the four Gospels. Is this a way to add credibility, to shut up the critics before they even open their mouth?

I don't deny that. I went to Rome and saw Cardinal Martini and he advised me to go to Frank Maloney, who he said was the greatest leading authority on the New Testament. And I said to him, when I write this book, I want people to take it very seriously.

And then he made some very stringent rules.

You said to our producers you were very eager to rein in this prolific author. What did you mean by that?

Geoffrey has a very fertile imagination. And if you let him loose on the New Testament, anything could happen, right? So I said to Geoffrey, right from the start, there are two principles. The first thing is, it's got to be possible.

As opposed to probable. Exactly. I'm allowed, I allow probable, even things that may not be probable. But it's got to be possible in the first century.

So professor, by saying that some of these things I'm about to list in a laundry list are possible, have you been disinvited from a lot of parties? It debunks the belief that Jesus walked on water. It debunks the idea that Jesus turned water into wine.

It debunks the idea that Judas betrayed Jesus for money and that Judas committed suicide.

It's important to say that the gospel has all the other miracles in it. But when I worked with the professor...

Let me just stop our replay of the Today Show for just a moment and welcome you to The Dividing Line. You're listening to Matt Lauer interviewing Archer and Frank Maloney, who we just heard described as the greatest expert on the New Testament.

I would beg to differ just a tad bit on that one. I did not know this was going to air this morning. I just happened to flip on the little four-inch black and white television set sitting on top of our microwave in our kitchen while making my breakfast burrito this morning.

And lo and behold, this was the first story that Matt Lauer was doing, was on the gospel according to Judas. This is not the Gnostic gospel. This is a fictional gospel written by Archer in reference to viewing the ministry of Jesus through Judas's eyes.

Isn't that just a wonderful project to be doing? I just... Hey, you know, as long as... It's two weeks before Easter, so let's let all the loonies out of the bins and let them make their money twisting and contorting the gospel.

Can you imagine if someone tried to do this with Muhammad two weeks before Ramadan in Saudi Arabia? Hello? It doesn't happen, and there's reason for that. Obviously, offending Christians, attacking the Christian faith, mocking the Christian faith, that's okay.

You can do that and make lots of money on it, and you'll be invited to all the best Hollywood parties. But what amazed me is Frank Maloney is sitting there, and he's sitting there in his priestly garb.

He looks just like Mitch Pacwa in the debate that I was recording, the closing statements from the 1999 Sola Scriptura debate to put on GodTube, YouTube, whichever one decides it wants to process it faster, and looks just like him.

He's a friend of Martini, Carlo Martini, one of the leading Roman Catholic New Testament scholars. Here's a guy who's way up in the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and he actually is involved with a book like this.

He is going to take, in essence, the same type of humanistic, secularistic perspective. He's going to dismiss, for example, John's recording of the paying of the silver because it was prophesied. And we all know prophecy can't exist, I mean, come on.

John's obviously just trying to make some other point, it's all parable dummy. I thought Croston was outside the realm of Roman Catholic scholarship, he's a lot closer than I actually imagined. It was really a tremendous illustration of the frustration that must exist amongst conservative Roman Catholics, especially the conservative Roman Catholics who engage in apologetics.

Because the fact is, their scholars are not behind them. We have scholarship in conservative Christianity. We may be in the minority, but we have sound, consistent scholarship that teaches what we believe and defends what we believe.

But the fact of the matter is, the Roman Catholic hierarchy, its leading scholars are not conservative. Look at their institutions of higher learning. Look at the massive change that has taken place in the past 60 years in the expressions of the Roman Catholic leadership due to their basic, complete collapse to higher criticism and things along those lines.

They cannot make the assertions that the popes made in the 1800s because they no longer have any supernatural basis upon which to do so. I don't know how you are one of these Roman Catholic scholars and claim to be a Roman Catholic when you don't really believe in the immaculate conception, you don't really believe in the bodily assumption.

You have to come up with new ways of even defying the word believe to make it appear that you believe these things. It's truly amazing. So, here I am, making one of my patented, wonderful, very tasty breakfast burritos for myself, and here comes this program, this five-minute interview, and that's what we're listening to here.

And of course, then you have the statements about debunking. This is the work of fiction, for crying out loud. The utter, total, 100 lack of discernment that is to be found in modern media on these issues is absolutely just unbelievable.

It just leaves you gasping for breath at the willingness of the modern media to put anything on the air, no matter how utterly without merit it is, no matter how twisted it is. It's going to get time, but you're not going to hear, you're not going to get the people who can actually say something.

You know, John MacArthur will get 30 seconds on Larry King. That's about all that there's going to be. And so, that's what we're listening to, is this was this morning on Today. I saw this, what, about two hours ago, actually, and thankfully, they posted it fairly quickly, and I was able to pull it down and record it for you.

If you'd like to watch it, it is on the today .msnbc .com website right now. Just click on the Tuesday link, and you can watch the video for yourself, but let's continue on with it here. It's only, we're almost halfway through it already.

And began to write about some of these things, particularly the 30 pieces of silver, which I suspect both of us were brought up on. To my surprise, the professor said, it never happened.

So you think that all these things are possible?

You're comfortable with all these things? What I'm saying here, Matt, is that, and I came to this as a New Testament scholar.

I came to this as a New Testament scholar. What is a New Testament scholar? What is a scholar? What is scholarship? You know, people are always attacking me, because I went to Columbia Evangelical Seminary, and you know, they will defend people who have just graduated from a school, that have never published anything, they've never taught anything, they've never demonstrated their ability to do anything, to teach, to deal with exegesis, to do research, nothing.

Evidently, in our society, scholarship is something you buy. It's something you purchase. It's like buying a Costco card. Well, you're now a Costco, because you bought a Costco card. Well, you're a scholar because you bought a diploma.

If you put out the right amount of money, it doesn't matter if you can teach, doesn't matter if you can communicate, doesn't matter if you can research, it's irrelevant. All that has become irrelevant.

You know, there was a day, you know, back in the 1800s, you know, the 1700s, you had to actually prove that you could do something, that you could utilize your knowledge, you could do meaningful research, you could communicate in such a fashion as to demonstrate and prove your ability, and the fact that you understood what you're talking about.

But today, the term scholarship is thrown around, we're gonna be listening to a debate that Shabir Ali did with Mike Licona on, and he will throw the term scholars say this out, just, just, just like that.

Well, what scholars? What are their backgrounds? You know, when he said, for example, that the Gospel of Thomas is earlier than Mark, well, scholars say this, folks, I've been saying this for a long, long time, we need to learn to demythologize scholarship.

Okay, I can't think of almost any human phrase that could be created, any thought that could be put out that you could not find a quote unquote scholar to substantiate it, no matter how stupid it is, no matter how completely outside the realm of, of, of rational thought it might be, you can find somebody who will substantiate it, you will find someone who talks about, I'm a scholar, and I believe this.

Scholars are supposed to have access to a body of information from which if they honor the term scholarship, they derive meaningful conclusions. But Christians, especially, should not be subject to this secular and worldly view of what a scholar is, because we know what Romans 1 says, do we not, professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, sin impacts the mind.

And scholars who are in rebellion against Jesus Christ as their creator, will twist the truth so as to continue in that rebellion, there is no neutrality in reference to the claims of Christ. And those who even claim to follow Christ, but are involved in false religions will likewise twist the information and the conclusions they come to.

And so, it just drives me crazy when I hear people going, well, you know, credentialed scholars say, credentialed scholars say everything. There is nothing credentialed scholars don't say, that, that, that is a meaningless statement.

And we're going to hear, probably not today, but there's a point during the debate between Mike Lycona and, and Shabir Ali, where Lycona makes a very good point, he's, he's talking about the methods of crucifixion that were used, he's, he's talking about the, the sources that we can go to, the historical sources that demonstrate that, that the victims were nailed to crosses, and that the ropes, the only historical reference we have to the use of binding or tying is from Egypt, not from the Romans doing that.

And so he's challenging Shabir Ali, who has, has questioned this, and, you know, Shabir is trying to say, well, I don't, I don't, I don't think that Jesus necessarily would have died by what happened to him on the cross, see.

And he's trying to say, well, he could have been bound, and Pilate was even shocked that he was already dead, and blah, blah, blah, and there's all sorts of things to that. But the point is, Lycona presented 14 references, and he's talking about Tacitus, he's talking about Josephus, he's going to original sources.

And Shabir responds by reference to a secondary source, and Lycona challenges him, says, hey, wait a minute, this is supposed to be a scholarly interchange, supposed to be a scholarly debate, you can't go to secondary sources, you need to go to primary sources.

And Shabir just, just, oh, no, no, no, no, no, you're, you're attacking these scholars. No, that's not doing scholarship. Secondary sources, all you can do when you refer to secondary sources is say, this person says this.

A scholarly debate is supposed to go beyond that to the original sources, and say, okay, if Frank Maloney says that it's possible, if Frank Maloney, for example, says that, that there was no exchange of money to Judas for the betrayal of Jesus, then we go to Frank Maloney's sources.

Frank Maloney is not a source in and of himself, you go to the sources he's utilizing. He's speaking of the New Testament, he's speaking of a historical document. So you go to his sources, and you find out, are you handling these correctly?

Are you, are you engaging in double standards? What are the, what are the, what's the worldview you bring to this? What's the, the presuppositions and assumptions that you bring to your examination of these things?

That's what you're supposed to be doing, but in our society today, well, if Frank Maloney says it, and Frank Maloney is a credentialed scholar, then his viewpoint deserves this exact same amount of respect as, say, an Orthodox Christian's view.

Well, I say to you, that's not true. And we need to get away from that, we need to stop thinking that way, and we need to do it openly. We need to be talking about this more and more often, because as I've said many times, the doors, the walls, and the windows of the church will not keep worldly thinking out of the church.

We need to be addressing these things on a regular basis. So anyway, that sermon was free, we continue on.

Nature Miracles, Biblical Scholarship, and the Limits of Historical Criticism

Now what I am saying is that these are what we call nature miracles. These are where, where Jesus controls nature in a way that is typical of the God of the Old Testament.

Is there something wrong with that? Something tells me that from this perspective, the God of the Old Testament never did anything with nature miracles either, or maybe it's just, well, if the God of the Old Testament was supposed to have done these things, then Jesus is supposed to do these things, and that makes the connection between the two, and therefore we must know that it could not have possibly happened.

These are true at the level of truth insofar as they proclaim that what God did, Jesus did.

Now, catch that. These are true on the level of truth that insofar these are things that God did, Jesus did. Now, isn't that a wonderful way of absolutely eviscerating the text, ripping it to shreds? I mean, this is the thought.

The thought is, oh, well, see, there's a connection here, and you see the authors are trying to communicate to us the fact that Jesus did what God did, and so there's a connection, there's authority, and that means these things never happen.

If you can find any meaning in the text that will allow you to get around these things actually happening, then we can say they're true, but really they're not, see? This is the state of much of what's called New Testament scholarship in Western culture today.

Is it any wonder the Muslims generally don't have any respect for it?

But in terms of the facts of Jesus walking on water, et cetera, that's another story. They proclaim the truth of the divinity of Jesus.

I just love this. They proclaim the truth of the divinity of Jesus, but not by placing his actions in a discernible history. They do so through parable and fiction, and this then becomes the basis upon which we are supposed to believe in the deity of Christ, is because anonymous authors, multiple authors created a redacted work over time where they connected Jesus with myths from the Old Testament, and that's why you're supposed to believe in the deity of Christ.

And you wonder why Roman Catholic apologists can sometimes get a little frustrated with their own church? Yeah, at least I have the ability to look at the liberals on my side. I can go debate them too.

You don't find too many of these Catholic apologists doing that. Maybe Robert St. Genes would. I think he'd debate anybody these days, but hopefully you saw the blog article on that and know why I said that.

But can you imagine taking that kind of argument up against Greg Stafford? Can you imagine the result, the massacre that would take place in that context? Believers, the faithful, as they read this book and they walk away from reading this book, do you think that some of their beliefs will be shattered?

Not at all.

No, I was worried about that, of course, because as a layman, not a scholar, I had been brought up on the 30 pieces of silver. The high priests gave Judas 30 pieces of silver to betray our Lord. But the professor said he certainly betrayed him, no doubt about that.

But there is no 30 pieces of silver, and the reason he gave is that in Matthew, the only gospel that mentions the 30 pieces of silver, there's a reason, and the professor went on to explain it.

Now, let me just stop right here, because I said John earlier, I apologize, it was Matthew. To remember, two years ago, I spent a lot of time, both in my Bible study class and here on The Dividing Line, preparing folks for the debate with John Dominic Crossan.

We played stuff, and some of you were starting to get glassy looks in your eyes, because it's like, oh, please, not him again. And I do appreciate the patience, especially the folks at the Phoenix Forum Baptist Church who have to put up with whatever project it is I'm working on.

I try not to be completely out of balance there, but it's a whole lot easier for me to speak on things I'm studying and I'm passionate about at the time than it is stuff that I'm not. So, that's just sort of a natural human thing.

But anyway, as we were studying Crossan, the issue came forward, since he's not a classical theist, he doesn't really believe in a personal God that certainly has a decree, or certainly has knowledge of future events and issues like that, that's, how do you deal with prophecy?

And that Crossan's perspective is, look, all the New Testament writers are doing is they are ransacking the Old Testament, and they are looking for text to apply to Jesus, and then they create the events in Jesus' life to fit those parameters.

So these things never happen. They're all meant to be parables created fictionally by the writers. Now, of course, that assumes that the individuals who read these works would then read it in that way, that they would not take these as serious historical works.

So at some point, we just got really stupid and started taking these seriously, as if you could ever demonstrate that at any point in time, the regular reading of the text was, oh no, this never happened, and no, we've always been good naturalistic materialists from the start.

Yeah, right. That's the historical worldview of not only the authors, but the early church and down the centuries as well. Not quite. But anyways, that was what was being asserted, is that there is no prophecy.

There is no means of knowing what's going to take place in the future, because the future is completely open. There is no God in control of all these things, a personal God, et cetera, et cetera. Well, here you have the exact same thing going on.

Well, there wasn't any. This is because Matthew lists this directly from the Old Testament text. It couldn't have happened because there is a fulfillment of prophecy. That means if we're good naturalists, and there are many in the New Testament field who are functionally naturalists, they're naturalistic materialists in their worldview, even if on Sundays they sing songs and act like they're supernaturalists.

If your worldview is not consistent Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, then you are not only a hypocrite, but you are what the majority of that time is. If you proclaim yourself a supernaturalist, if you proclaim yourself a believer that God has created this world and He's active in this world, things like that, but you don't live in accordance with that, you are inconsistent and as such need to be rejected.

Well, it's lifted entirely out of one of the prophets, Zechariah, 30 pieces of silver throwing the coins in the treasury, et cetera. Word for word out of Zechariah, but what's Matthew trying to do? Matthew's trying to say that in the life of Jesus and even in the life of Judas, the promise of God is fulfilled.

A couple of things here. So since the promise of God is fulfilled, this didn't happen. The only thing we need to find, as long as we can find a parabolic meaning in the words, then the history is irrelevant.

Doesn't matter if the text says it happened, doesn't matter if the text says it happened in such a fashion that it provides names and contexts and everything else. But we just know that prophecy can't happen because look, this Matthew guy, whoever he was, whatever this community was, it created this book called Matthew in whatever form it originally appeared.

They knew of Zechariah and therefore they just used this and they created this incident and that's why we can now say it never happened. Those of you who are in seminary know that there's nothing new here, but the thing is most people sitting in the pew assume that seminary is filled with faithful people who actually believe what the word of God says and the number of seminaries that are like that has diminished to a very, very, very, very small minority in Western culture today.

That's why so many go in believing one thing and come out very, very different than when they went in. There's a reason we're talking about this book on this show. This is a big subject. You bring Jesus up in a book, it's a hot button subject.

You professor have said that there's a worldwide attempt to render traditional religions irrelevant. So do you think that perhaps you in some way contributed to that attempt? On the contrary.

The major reason for my participation with Jeffrey Archer in writing this book is because I as a professional theologian and biblical scholar am not prepared to sit back and allow the Dan Browns and the Richard Dawkins of this world to both trivialize and ridicule Christianity.

Well, wait a minute. What are you doing now, man?

I mean, come on. That's a wonderful sentiment. That's a wonderful sentiment, and I think I've been quite active in not allowing the Dan Browns of the world to do that. We spent a lot of time taking the Da Vinci Code apart, but we didn't have to abandon a Christian worldview to do it.

That must be. What drives some people nuts is I know that there are Roman Catholics who listen to this program, and they agree with so much of what I have to say in this area, and they can't find their own people doing it.

It bugs them to no end to get decent information, in-depth information, strong information on Mormonism or Jehovah's Witnesses or response to tomb story. They can't go to their own church. They've got to borrow from the very folks they're then going to debate Sola Scriptura with to get their responses, because here's one of your leading Roman Catholic scholars,.

And what's he doing? I'm going to tell them from the point of view of a well-trained, committed scholar that there's more to this story than they're being led to believe.

There's more to this story. Now, how many times has he called himself a well-trained, committed scholar so far? He's just really reminding us of that wonderful fact. But what in the world is he doing saying that it's possible that Judas, that these events didn't take place, and that Judas was, you know, he's throwing Matthew, Mark, Luke, he's throwing the canonical Gospels under the bus, as is done in large portion of the Testament scholarship as a whole, of course, but this somehow is supposed to be a response to Dan Brown, a response to this type of atheistic attack?

How does that follow? Should we expect down the road some sort of formal endorsement of this book from the Pope? Vatican Radio has talked about it. You know the Pope for 16 years. Is he going to come out and endorse this?

Definitely not. The Holy Father only endorses his own encyclicals and Bible documents.

What was exciting was when we were in Rome, we were treated so well, which was as close as we could get to it. And then I asked Archbishop Tutu if he would do the audio CD, and he sent a note back, not when he'd read it, saying, I found it riveting and plausible.

He then sent me an email saying, and we know which one of us is riveting, and we know which one of us is plausible.

Geoffrey Archer, Professor Maloney, good to see you both. Thank you very much, Matt. All right. Well, there you go. That's what you had on, wow, what on earth just happened there? Now, you just shocked the microphone there.

My headphones are now five times louder than they were just a moment ago. I sound like I am in a... Could you please turn my headset down, please? I'm just going to have to take them off. They're distorting really badly.

That's and now I've only got them in one. You just destroyed something in there. I'm going to have to take these off. Rich goes and walks away, comes back, touches something. You've got to get rid of those metal desks, man.

They need to be grounded right now. It's a bad thing. Anyway, there you go. That's what appeared this morning on the Today Show. Hopefully, during the break, we'll be able to get things fixed so that I can hear the rest of it because we just fried something in the other room and, oh, well, that's sort of how it goes.

That's what appeared this morning, and I didn't see it coming. Hadn't seen anything ahead of time like I had in regards to the tomb story. This is irrelevant in comparison to the tomb story. There's no question about it.

I mean, this is a work of fiction. It's just... It's another, let's put this out within a couple weeks of Easter, make some money and go into paperback for a long and then be forgotten. But it is highly illustrative, highly illustrative of the decrepit nature of Roman Catholic scholarship today in reference to its willingness to embrace the most worldly perspectives.

And it is, I'm sure that the folks on the conservative side of the of the Tiber bemoan that fact on a regular basis. 877 -753 -3341 is a phone number that has been called by a couple folks already. We'll go ahead and take their phone calls from Roger and Jeff after we take our break and then move on to the Shabir-Ali debate.

And let's hope the computer didn't freeze in the same shocking incident as everybody else. And hopefully we'll be able to take our break. We'll be right back.

Justification by Faith and the Church's Public Witness

The church today often ignores or misunderstands this foundational doctrine. In his book, The God Who Justifies, theologian James White calls believers to a fresh appreciation of, understanding of, and dedication to the great doctrine of justification and then provides an exegesis of the key scripture texts on this theme.

Justification is the heart of the gospel. In today's culture where tolerance is the new absolute, James White proclaims with passion the truth and centrality of the doctrine of justification by faith.

Dr. J. Adams says, I lost sleep over this book. I simply couldn't put it down. James White writes the way an exegetically and theologically oriented pastor appreciates. This is no book for casual reading.

There is solid meat throughout, an outstanding contribution in every sense of the words. The God Who Justifies by Dr. James White. Get your copy today at AOMN .org. Pulpit crimes. The criminal mishandling of God's word may be James White's most provocative book yet.

White sets out to examine numerous crimes being committed in pulpits throughout our land every week as he seeks to leave no stone unturned. Based firmly upon the bedrock of scripture, one crime after another is laid bare for all to see.

The pulpit is to be a place where God speaks from his word. What has happened to this sacred duty in our day? The charges are as follows. Prostitution using the gospel for financial gain, pandering to pluralism, cowardice under fire, felonious eisegesis, entertainment without a license, and cross-dressing, ignoring God's ordinance regarding the roles of men and women.

Is a pulpit crime occurring in your town? Get pulpit crimes in the bookstore at AOMN .org. This portion of the dividing line has been made possible by the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. The Apostle Paul spoke of the importance of solemnly testifying of the gospel of the grace of God.

The proclamation of God's truth is the most important element of his worship in his church. The elders and people of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church invite you to worship with them this coming Lord's Day.

The morning Bible study begins at 9 .30 a .m. and the worship service is at 10 .45. Evening services are at 6 .30 p .m. on Sunday and the Wednesday night prayer meeting is at 7. The Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church is located at 3805 North 12th Street in Phoenix.

You can call for further information at 602 -26-GRACE. If you're unable to attend, you can still participate with your computer and real audio at prbc .org, where the ministry extends around the world through the archives of sermons and Bible study lessons available 24 hours a day.

Romans 11, Warning Passages, and Perseverance of the Saints

And welcome back to the Dividing Line. I still sound like what I sound like before, unfortunately. It's a little bit better, but hopefully we'll be able to hear the callers and things like that, and then we're probably going to have a public execution of our soundboard after the program is over.

But let's hope we can even get the callers on the air, because we're going to be using Line 1, which hasn't really been working overly well for us of late. So let's try talking with Roger. Hi, Roger. Hi.

How are you doing?

Is this Dr. White? Yes, it is. Hi, Dr. White. First of all, I just wanted to thank you for your work. I've actually just come across you recently. I was actually a big Dave Hunt fan in the beginning of my college years.

I spent some time up at Utah State and read The Godmakers, but I soon came to find out how he bashes the doctrines of grace, and I was just really disappointed with the way he defended his position, and I just wanted to thank you for what you've done.

Well, thank you, sir. But anyways, I wanted to ask you about the Greg Stafford-Bob Morey debate. Actually, I heard it on your website. And Greg Stafford refers to Genesis 2, where God is basically seeing what Adam would name the animals, the creation.

And I know you talk about anthropomorphic language, basically tying human attributes to God. Can you expand on that a little bit? And just, I don't know, I mean, I don't know exactly.

Well, it's a well-known fact that God utilizes examples and similes to illustrate certain aspects of his being. He, at the same time, warns us that we should never liken him to anything in the creation.

That's what idolatry is all about. But if there is no use of language to accommodate our creatureliness, then we could know nothing about God. So he talks about the breath of his nostrils, and he talks about his feathers and hiding us under his wings, and he talks about himself as a blast furnace and riding on the wings of the wind and all sorts of things like this, which obviously are meant to evoke images that communicate a particular aspect of God's being, but they are never to be taken in such a way that you create an idol of a blast furnace or create a big chicken to be representative of God because it has wings under which you can hide.

And so the fact that the scripture uses anthropomorphic language should be at least a given to anyone who is seriously studying the Word of God or seriously studying the kinds of literature that you find in the Bible that God utilizes to communicate to us.

What Greg Stafford is missing is a simple, basic element of biblical exegesis, and that is you go to those portions of the Word of God that in a didactic teaching method lay out the truths on a certain issue.

You do not go to areas that are not addressing a topic, bring out conclusions from those particular areas, create a theology, and then use that to override the clear areas of scripture. I've illustrated this many times.

For example, in the debate over justification, Protestants go to what the Bible teaches in those plain sections where the Apostle Paul is laying out what is justification. Go to Romans 3 and 4, 3, 4, and 5.

You go to Galatians 2 and 3. You go to those texts where the terms are being used, and they're being explained, and they're being illustrated, and they're being laid out, and you have direct teaching.

And so you derive your foundations from those. And then if those terms are found elsewhere, maybe in passing, you might be able to gain some insight from those passing references. But you don't go to the passing references and make them normative and then override the clear didactic passages that are specifically teaching you the truth about these issues.

And so one of the things I've said for a long time, Art Sippo, the Roman Catholic quote-unquote apologist back in 1991, I just noticed this morning, he actually sells to the Catholic Legate site a CD of the partial debate that was recorded that we did in 1991.

We have it available too, but I think we just made it available for free on the Straightgate site for a while. I'm not sure if it's even up anymore. It's still up there. But anyways, in that debate, he goes to these passing references.

He goes to the Gospels, and wisdom is justified by her children. And so you take the term justified, and you build some theology out of that, and then you completely distort the clear didactic passages that are talking about justification the basis of a passing reference elsewhere.

Well, this is what Stafford is doing. Instead of going to the clear text where in, for example, the prophecy of Isaiah, God is specifically laying out how you can recognize the true God, Jehovah, over against false gods.