Two And A Half Hours? What?

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:31

Greetings and welcome to the Dividing Line on a Monday. So many things to get to this week that we decided we needed to get an early start and even it was,

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I came in today, had all this stuff to get to, was going to do it in the big studio, the thing's not on, and I lost my mind because I'm still having to deal with Windows over there.

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And I said, forget it, I'm going back to my Mac and we'll work on making that stuff act as much like a

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Mac as possible in the future, we'll just do what we have to do. The city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, y 'all remember about 21 years ago,

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I think it was right around 2000, it was Massachusetts that led the way toward the destruction of the family in homosexual mirage and that eventually led, of necessity, to the

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Obergefell decision in 2015. And so it is the city of Cambridge that has now become the second, sort of a suburb

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I guess, nearby there had done something last year, but the first municipality to specifically legalize polyamory and this, what do you call it, this relationship, the only parameters to it basically are that you can't be in more than one at a time, not sure why, but you can't be in more than one at a time and I guess you can't be related,

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I'm not sure how closely related, but you don't even have to live in the same place.

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So you could have three guys and two gals that live 10 blocks apart and this is a family now.

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And I guess that we all get to catch up with all the new lingo.

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The new movement is the chosen family movement, chosen family.

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And so you get to choose what your family unit's going to be.

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If you read Obergefell, and I know that I specifically have said this,

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I don't know how many times before, but I strongly, strongly encourage you to take the time to sit down.

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It's not that long. I mean, I listened to it in MP3 format driving back from Utah back in 2015 when it first happened.

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Read the Obergefell decision so that you can learn for yourself how the highest levels of the judiciary are thoroughly corrupted in their worldview and literally are making arguments that in my youth would have resulted in people laughing at you for being so immature.

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But that is now the foundation of law in our land. And so now you have polyamory and the dissenters,

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Scalia specifically, to the Obergefell decision said this is the necessary result of this.

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It won't happen immediately, but this will be the necessary result. Polygamy, polyamory, absolutely necessary.

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And while there are a few barriers, societal barriers, to work through, the current rise in the academy of the promotion of the idea that intergenerational love is as much an appropriate, it's something that people experience.

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And now if you experience it, the very fact of experience is validation, right?

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That's how homosexuality came to overcome its barriers, is that you presented to the society the idea that the experience of these desires means these desires are appropriate because they're experienced by mankind naturally.

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Now there's all sorts of worldview stuff there, but the point is to experience those desires and that lifestyle is to validate it and make it something that we must necessarily make room for within our society.

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Because if not, then we're not being inclusive, we're being exclusive, you see. So here we have this coming at us, and of necessity, the next step is the lowering of the age of consent, and then eventually the redefinition of what consent is, and then you've got pederasty, and already we have speciesism in the academy, we don't want to be speciesists.

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And so if a person really is in love with their horse, why not allow them to be married?

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Because we've redefined what marriage is in 2015 by judicial fiat, and people accepted it because we've accepted this idea that there is no objective revelation outside of ourselves, there is no objective standard outside of ourselves that determines ethics and morality, and there can't be in a secular world, because man has become the center of that secular world.

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So I'm looking for, there was one other thing, and all the stuff that I got queued up and ready to go, and I thought

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I was all ready to go, and Rich and I were just sitting here yammering, and there was one other thing that I wanted to have queued up and ready to go, and I'm not sure

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I'm going to be able to find it, because I now realize I have produced a lot of keynote presentations over the years, and you start trying to scroll through them, and it's just like, what did

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I call that? I don't have any earthly idea what I called it. I remember I debated

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Dan Barker, but that was a long, long, long, long, long, long, long time ago.

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What year was that? Was it 2014 that we debated at, yeah, I think it was 2014 at the

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University of Illinois, if I recall correctly. And I'm attempting to find, and I've actually exported these slides to try to explain this.

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I was going to do it on the big screen, and I changed my, no, there's

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Barker Myth, let's not even talk about that one. That was fun.

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There we go. Let's see if this even opens. I mean, ever try to open some of your old presentations, it goes,

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I'm sorry, we don't support that format any longer. It's like, what? Come on, be nice to me. Yeah, eight movies couldn't be converted.

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Well, I know eight movies couldn't be converted. All right, so let's remind ourselves of what we're looking at here, and I'm going to make this as big as I can, and that's the best

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I can do, because I haven't turned off the thing where it automatically goes into two things, two screens.

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Here's where we are today. With man at the center of the worldview, man has to directly interact with and define everything else in our experience.

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So morality, science, love, history, government, God, law, others around us, we are in the center, we are autonomous, and we have to be sufficient enough of ourselves to define all of these things.

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And this, of course, leads to catastrophe and chaos.

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It leads to catastrophe and chaos because of the fact that man is insufficient to do these things.

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Man was never created to do these things, and so this leads to despair.

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It leads to man concluding that there can be no objective truth because we can't know any of these things exhaustively, and so there can be no objective truth.

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There's no true history anymore. You can rewrite history. We can't know what love is. We can only know parts of science.

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Morality is all up to us. Law, again, all up to us. There can't be any continuing reality of law that goes from generation to generation, and you know that the answer for this is found in Christianity.

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And here's the Christian worldview. Here's me, and you notice the two -way arrow. I relate to my creator, the

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Triune God, and I said the Triune God, not the merely monotheistic

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Unitarian God of some other systems, but the Triune God who is personal, who has revealed himself in history, in the

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Son, Jesus Christ. The Triune God created all the rest of this, and the Triune God has perfect and full knowledge of all these other things, and therefore, as I relate to the

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Triune God, I can have accurate, appropriate levels of knowledge and certainty of all these areas, as he is sufficient to be the center of all of these things because he created all of these things.

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So if I want to truly know history, I need to truly know history in and through the creator of history himself, the

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Triune God. If I want to know the proper role of government, well, this has become more important in our day, then

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I do not have a straight line back and forth here. I relate to the

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Triune God who reveals to me what government is to be. And so, same with law, others around me, morality, science itself, because science is the study of what?

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Of God's creation. That is what gave order to the study of science.

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That is why meaningful, in -depth scientific research and the concept of experimentation, things like that, came from Christianity.

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It was Christianity in the West that gave that kind of order to what has become known as science, which, of course, once you divorce science from God, becomes a

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God unto itself, because it becomes the creation. I mean, this is Romans 1. They worshipped and served the creation rather than the creator.

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That's what scientism is all about. But here is what we offer to the world, not in the sense of one amongst many, but the only option.

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Because what we're saying is all these other things were created by the Triune God. He is the only one that can define these things.

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The only way that you can keep these things from resulting in absolute, utter chaos is if you read the owner's manual.

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Now, I know a lot of you younger folks don't know what an owner's manual is. I'm old enough to remember.

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Remember that first, remember the laser master and we got it? Remember the owner's manual?

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It was that thick. I don't think they call it velo binding, but it was that wire type, binding type thing.

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And of course, it's all done in PDF now, which is much more convenient, I will confess, but you do have to have the internet.

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But you used to have owner's manuals that would come with your computers and everything that you'd buy.

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There would be a big old honking manual that came along with it. Well, God has given us an owner's manual, and the world laughs and mocks and derides and then makes a mess out of everything because they won't read the manual, which involves submission to the

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Triune God who created all things. So, in Cambridge, you have this, and you have a bunch of humans who have decided they can define morality and they can define love and they can define law and they can define government, and they can simply decide that God doesn't have anything to do with any of this.

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Remember, what's that House of Representatives? Nadler. Jerry Nadler.

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When a Christian in the House of Representatives dared to call the

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House to listen to what God says on the subject of the

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Equality Act, Nadler's response is, uh, God's will has nothing to do with this

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Congress. That's the little human being standing up on his rear legs saying to the potter, um,

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I will not submit to you. And that has never gone well in the history of mankind, and it won't go well for us either, or for Jerry Nadler either.

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But this is what we have in, um, this is what we have in Cambridge, and it is the next step in the utter dissolution of the human family.

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The first structured organization that God established in creation, husband, wife, children.

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The Marxists of the 19th century hated the family and sought to destroy the family in every way they could.

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That has not changed. The neo -Marxism we face today, which is now in full power in all

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Western governments, uh, is doing everything it can to destroy the family.

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And eventually the state will demand that, eventually the state will either use artificial means, um, or will demand that upon birth children be immediately given to the state, uh, for the good of, for the good of all, for the equal, for the equity of all.

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You see, because if, if you're, if you, if you're given to the state at the beginning, then there can never be any inequality.

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You hear the power of that argument? Given the assumption that you're supposed to have equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity?

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You see how damnable neo -Marxism is, the whole social justice movement is?

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How anti -Christian, how anti -human? Because that's its inevitable outcome.

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If you're going to have a kid, first of all, the state should determine whether you should or shouldn't, right?

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And who you get to have that kid with. Uh, but then when you have the kid, give up the state, the family has to be destroyed.

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It's just a necessary perspective. Now that, does that, can that possibly work for any length, lengthy period of time?

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Depends on how you define lengthy period of time. Uh, I would say in God's world, no.

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And God will not, He will bring judgment, but it may be incredibly severe. And like I said, one of the options

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I'm mulling over is God lets this stuff go to the nth degree so that mankind never, ever, ever, ever again allows itself to get this stupid.

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It's a possibility. It's a possibility. So keep that in mind.

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I think it's, um, uh, I need to, I probably have this graphic sitting on my drive someplace, but you know, back when you had 650 megabyte hard drives, you could still find stuff.

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But now when you've got these terabyte things, it's like, where in the world that come from? I don't know. Um, so there you go.

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Um, that, yes, I was going to chime in there real quick. The other thing that a lot of people

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I don't see, by the way, John Cooper texted me and he said, when did

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Rich get a microphone? And I said, we've actually, we've actually allowed him to have one for quite some time.

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Well, I don't remember that. And I said, no, believe me, I do. The additional factor here and what you just went through is that there has to be a caste system in order for the government to manage this.

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You have to take entire sections of society and make them more worthy of procreation.

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Well, the elites have to, yeah, somebody has to have the power to determine all this stuff. Yeah. And all the rest just have to serve them.

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Yeah. There has to be worker ants and all the other stuff. And that's the part these people are not realizing.

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Until it's too late. Yeah. Until it's too late. They have no idea how they're going to fall on that food chain.

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Time will tell. Time will tell. Trust me, it will. Okay.

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Um, now that was actually supposed to be real short and I did 20 minutes. This is not a good, this is, this is bad.

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This is very, very bad. All right. I broke the internet over the weekend. My apologies once again, broke the internet, uh, with a single tweet.

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Uh, I have written, I'm not going to go back over everything. I don't think there's a need to,

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I have written an article and that article is on our website, on the theology matters micro blog.

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I'm not sure why we call it that it's, it's a, it, you know, is it really smaller than the other one or something?

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I, I don't know, but it's, it's what we call it. And, um, you can look it up.

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It was, I retitled it, uh, or titled it the sin of empathy. And let, let me on, it's called on the sin of empathy.

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If you go to a theology matters and I had here, here's, here's the whole tweet.

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Here's the whole tweet. When you start with man as image bearing creature of God, you can understand why sympathy is good, but empathy is sinful.

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Do not surrender our mind to the sinful emotional responses of others. Actually, I think we do not surrender your mind.

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I think I mistyped the tweet. I need to fix that. Oh, you know what? I did fix it.

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And, and I didn't save the fix. So I'll let you fix that if you would like, if I didn't see it at the tweet on the, on the, uh, on the article, it says, do not surrender our mind to the sinful emotional response of it.

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It should be your mind. So if you could throw a Y in there, I tried to fix it once. I forgot to save the draft.

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Um, anyway, that's what I said. And articles have now been written videos produced all over a couple of days because of what

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I said, even though I will argue that I provided more than sufficient context, especially for my friends.

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Cause I had friends that were all upset about it too. And I'm like, what? I understand that my enemies will twist anything

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I say. There's nothing I can do about that. Um, you just rejoice and leave them to the

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Lord and you move on. You do what's right before God.

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You have an audience of one to please you seek to please him. And there's times when he drags you through a knot hole backwards just to teach you some, some more stuff in the process, but you just keep on going.

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Um, and so I provided all the context that was needed.

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First of all, when you start with man as image bearing creature of God. Okay. So we're, I'm talking

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Christian worldview. I'm talking creation. I'm talking man as the image bearing creature of God.

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So you got to start there. So you're not starting with neo -Marxism. You're not starting with intersectionality.

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You're not starting with critical race theory. You're not starting with any critical blank theory, gender theory, anything.

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Uh, the Frankfurt school's gone. Neo -Marxism is gone. Foucault is gone. Derrida is gone. Um, I'm not even, not even going there, but that's at the background of this.

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What I'm saying is those guys, they do have something that they're saying here and it's wrong.

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When you don't start where they start, you can understand why sympathy, which is commanded in scripture is good.

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But empathy, empathy is sinful. Why? Do not surrender your mind to the sinful emotional responses of others.

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Now, like I said, a couple of things on, on background here.

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Uh, most people are aware that, uh, in the first season of Man Rampant, Doug Wilson had a conversation with Joe Rigney from, uh,

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Bethlehem Baptist. And they talked about this issue of empathy, primarily emphasizing the pastoral aspect of it.

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And what were they talking about? They were talking about the fact that, um, if you accept the demand to enter into sinful emotional responses to sinful situations, thus validating the reality of those lived experiences.

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And if you've, if you're familiar with any type of, of writing of people who've been deeply influenced now by the woke movement, social justice movement,

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CRT, whatever language you want to use of it, this is what's coming out.

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My daughter was showing me a book that, uh, TGC is promoting, just dripping with it.

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Um, uh, this is all that language. It's that idea of validation on a pastoral level.

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The problem with that is what the pastor is supposed to be doing is staying firmly rooted in the

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Christian worldview, coming alongside hearing and understanding, but not validating responses that arise out of sin.

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You have to, years ago, I was riding along the Arizona canal.

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I've, I've ridden, I don't know how many thousands and thousands of miles along the Arizona canal. I've written 141 ,000 miles now.

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So probably 40 ,000 miles that minimally has been along the

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Arizona canal, maybe more than that. So I've seen a lot of weird stuff floating down the canal, some strange things.

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Um, but I remember very clearly one day I'm riding along and all of a sudden I hear, help!

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And, um, and that was back when I would use in -ear earphones.

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So I couldn't hear real well. I don't, I use the bone conduction now. It's much safer. And I remember looking around and, and then

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I look over and right at a bridge, I think it was on 59th

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Avenue. There's a guy in the water holding onto the side. You cannot get out of there.

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No. Um, so I ride around where he is and stupid me,

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I'm thinking I can get him out of there. No way. You cannot do it.

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No one's strong enough. Well, it, the whole point is there's no place to get firm to, to grab.

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And he's soaking wet. So he's weighing a whole lot more than he would be normally. And the water's pulling on him. You don't have a foundation.

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And I realized that quickly, if I kept trying this, I was going to be in the water with him. And then we were going to be in a real, real problem.

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So I said, stay there. And I got on my bike and I, I got to 59th

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Avenue. It was just a few feet away. And right then, thank you. Cop car is driving by and he pulls over.

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There's a guy down here, the fire trucks end up and man, they're, they're using the fire trucks and their ropes and the whole nine yards to get this guy out of there.

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And they did. Oh, I bet there's, yeah.

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Especially if the canal is really flowing, there's some real, there's some real currents in there. Point is you have to have the proper foundation and the proper foundation is not found in the sinful emotional experiences of other people.

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But what our society is telling us is that there is no, there is no ground next to the canal.

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You've got to jump in to be loving. You've got to jump in and experience the flow yourself to truly be loving.

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And the Christian says that's wrong because there is a moral ground to stand on that judges all of us.

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And the reason you're down there about to die is because you've rebelled against God.

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And it may have been, you know, it may have taken a long time to get to that point, but that's why you're down there.

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So if I jump in, I'm not doing you any good. But this whole movement, which is fundamentally antitheistic, it's humanistic, it denies that there is any ability or propriety in being able to judge the validity of anyone's lived experience, which by the way, is why

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Cambridge just happened. You see the connection? The Obergefell decision in 2015, one of the primary arguments was, well, what about children of same -sex unions who don't feel, who feel unhappy because they're not like other children?

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So anyone's emotional state, even if it's due to sin in other people, must be validated.

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And if you don't validate someone else's emotional state, you're unloving, hateful, and we might need to throw you in jail.

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That's what's coming. So this flows out of intersectionality, and intersectionality, remember, is the result of critical theory breaking all the bonds that are naturally there in the fact that we're all made by God and placed in the same world.

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The good things that used to bring us together, the good things that would allow us to live in peace and harmony with one another, that's all to be destroyed.

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That's all to be wiped out. That's what intersectionality does. And one of the key ways it does it is to emotionalize thought.

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We now live in a culture of constant infancy. Constant infancy.

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You are to be offended by everything. Every microaggression that you experience is to offend you.

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It is to ruin your day. You are to dwell on it and let it fester and grow, which is the opposite of what

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Christianity says, where you forgive, where you realize that you need forgiveness, and you're thankful for God's grace, and so you just water off the duck's back, is how my mom used to put it long ago.

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Let it be water off a duck's back. Ever seen water fall on a duck's back? Because the oil, it just beads up and falls off.

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No big deal. But no, not today. Now the good thing is, grab those offenses and those microaggressions and let them seethe and grow and eat you alive.

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That's now considered good in our society. Yeah. Your life needs to be one long temper tantrum.

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Woe is me. I am so abused. That's our society now.

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We're seeing the result of that destruction, and it's just going to come faster and faster and faster and faster.

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And I don't know where it stops. Where's the bottom? We're approaching it fast, very, very fast.

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And we need, there needs to be Christians who've thought this through, who aren't emotionalized, but are biblicized.

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We are called, the term is Sophronismos, discipline of thought.

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We are to be disciplined. In fact, once Paul says, act like men, andridzes thei.

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He says that to women too. Act like men. Stop with this constant whining.

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I've just been so pressed and abused. Grow up.

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No one will ever be happy living that way. Grow up. Say, well, you're just so mean.

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No, I'm not. I'm telling you the truth. My mama told me this a long time ago.

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Grow up. Stop it. Stop your whining. Because it's all you're questioning

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God's providence in your life. That's what you're doing. Well, I don't have what he has.

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So what? God didn't give it to you. Quit complaining. Oh, wow. There's heresy for you, isn't it?

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Yeah. And until we get back to that, we're going to have what we're experiencing now.

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And what we're moving toward, what people have been deceived into, is what we need to have equity, which means we all get to have nothing together.

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Brilliant. Brilliant. Grow up. Man up. Man up.

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So this whole empathy, and empathy is a 20th -century word. It's a fairly modern derivation, and it has been co -opted by the social justice movement, by the promotion of intersectionality and critical theory.

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It has been co -opted, and it becomes the idea that you need to enter into someone else's lived experience, which flows out of rebellion against God's created order, and validate it to be loving to them.

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And that is a sin for a Christian, and I will not back down from that, because there's nobody who has one of these in their hands that can dare to defeat that argument.

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You can do all your emotions. You can redefine terms. You can go over here and say, well, we need to be sympathetic.

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I didn't say we didn't need to be sympathetic. We're to weep with those who weep. But you don't weep with the thief that didn't get to steal somebody's stuff.

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The reason you weep with someone is because they've actually experienced sorrow, not because of their own sin.

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Think, people. Think. It's so obvious. And yet it is the end of meaningful

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Christian theology to embrace the idea that emotion trumps reason.

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God made us reasoning individuals. So I had been following this real liberal guy on Twitter, because it's good to be reminded, you know, that Joe Lumen chick and stuff.

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It's good to be reminded once in a while what's really out there. I finally just gave up. I couldn't anymore, because he even responded to what

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I said, this Thomas Horrocks guy. He even responded to what I said with, oh,

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God made us as thinking and feeling individuals. Duh.

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But the Bible says, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

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There's an ordering principle. You can obey that command. And if it's all about emotion, that there are days you just don't feel like it.

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So you just don't do it that day because your emotions overrule it? No. God created mankind to control his emotions.

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That's what makes us different than an animal. That's what makes us different than an animal.

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And I won't abandon it. And I will not apologize for telling people that we need to be well aware of the fact that our society is telling us to act in a way that is fundamentally contradictory to any meaningful

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Christian practice or belief. There. Sorry, but good grief.

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You would think there would be some things that would just be so straightforward. But anyway, anyway, anyway, anyway, just looked over here.

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Tommy Alderman. Early numbers. 2021 Grammy's ratings sink to record low.

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Viewers drop over 50%. That's actually a good thing.

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It's true. Look at that. From 18 .7 million viewers in 2020 to 7 .9.

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It's still sad there's 7 .9 million, but yeah, it's been going down, down, down.

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Yeah, there's a reason for that. And it's an appropriate reason. Okay. Now, it's been a long time since, well, there's a couple topics that we have not,

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I mean, you look back over the history of this ministry, and there's a few topics that used to take up all of our time that we just don't hit as often as we once did.

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Not because those things have become unimportant, but other things have come up.

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And most people know that, especially during the decade of the late 80s through the 90s, for all of you who were around back then.

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Actually, most of you don't have any idea what we were doing back then, because I think the archives go back to only 98, 98, somewhere like that.

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And then we didn't start doing video until 2006, 7, 8, something like that. But Dividing Line has been around since 84, 85, 86, somewhere around in that area.

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As a radio program, it wasn't on continuously. And then in the 90s, and then it's been consistent since then.

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But obviously, for example, we would have spent much more time talking about Mormonism, especially last year in April with the

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First Vision issue and stuff like that. COVID came along, General Conference was canceled, all the stuff we were going to be doing.

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And now it's like Mormonism is self -canceling. You know, no more, almost no more public anything as far as pageants and stuff like that.

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I drove by the temple out there, and man, they're doing a lot, but it's just sort of weird to see it all fenced in.

39:34

I don't know. But anyhow, in the 90s, we were doing a lot of work on the subject of Roman Catholicism, doing a lot of debates, starting in August of 1990, our first moderated public debate,

39:51

August of 90, August 16th of 1990, I think, with Jerry Matitix on, hey, look at that,

39:57

Sola Scriptura. And so did a lot of stuff.

40:03

And that continued well into the 2000s. And we've done debates, we did a debate with Trent Horne at G3 and stuff like that.

40:12

And so, I don't know, about two weeks or so ago now, we did a long program where we responded to one particular point in a presentation done by Trent Horne on the distortion of the early fathers by Protestants.

40:30

And of course, what we demonstrated was the distortion is going the other direction. It's Rome that distorts the early fathers, not quote -unquote

40:37

Protestants that are doing so, though there are plenty of Protestants that do. I mean, one of the things that must be very frustrating for Roman Catholic apologists is that at least here on the dividing line, we say very clearly that the early church fathers were the early church fathers.

40:57

They were not Reformed Baptists. They were not Roman Catholics. They were not Eastern Orthodox. They were not

41:02

Presbyterians. They were not Anglicans. They were not assemblies of God.

41:09

They weren't Methodists. They were what they were. And there were a number of different perspectives amongst them within a broad area.

41:20

And there were certain aspects of Christian theology that did not become examined and really written upon for centuries.

41:34

And the first full -length treatise on the atonement is toward the end of the fourth century.

41:42

Okay? So even once you get your first full -length treatise, that doesn't mean it's necessarily going to be accurate, because just think how useful it is today.

41:55

If you think you've come up with something, you need to put it out there and then let other people examine it and other eyes take a look at it and other minds consider it.

42:06

And that's a good thing. And of course, we can do that much more quickly today than they could in the past.

42:14

So anyway, when it comes to church history, that's one of our subjects.

42:22

And I can think of a few active apologists who have some professional experience teaching church history, but not many.

42:39

I was first class I taught at Grand Canyon University, Scholar -in -Residence there. I've taught it a number of times since then on the graduate level,

42:49

Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, when it was called Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary back in the day. And continue to teach it to this day.

42:59

I'm really enjoying teaching church history for my German brothers in Germany during this difficult time period.

43:07

It's a great time of fellowship with them, and we're going really slowly.

43:15

I keep telling them, we're going to speed up, because I know you've been doing this for months and months and months, and we're only up to the

43:22

Magnesian letter in Ignatius, and that's not very far down the road, I can assure you. But anyway, so when it comes to church history, as I said when we responded to Trenton Horne, the

43:37

Roman Catholics are told, and I read to you from Satus Cognitum and Vatican I, and they are told this is the ancient faith of the church.

43:48

And by the way, when something positive happens, we need to acknowledge it, even when it illustrates something dangerous.

44:03

I saw word today that the Vatican, in some form,

44:08

I didn't have a chance because of all that stuff I was doing to get this from the sources

44:15

I'd like to get it from, but it seems that the Vatican made a statement yesterday, or today, depending on how you count, they're well ahead of us hours -wise, that Roman Catholic priests cannot bless same -sex unions because the church cannot bless sin.

44:36

Now, I hope that's the language that was used. Vatican II, I think, specifically used the term disordered desires, disordered activities in regards to homosexuality.

44:52

That's good. And my concern, of course, is this.

44:59

From our perspective, we can't ever say anything different because these words will never change.

45:08

Governments may try to change them. Revisionists may try to revise them and make them say something other.

45:15

All those things are quite true. No two ways about it. But when it comes to Roman Catholicism, Francis has packed out the

45:28

College of Cardinals with less than conservative individuals, and none of us know all the ins and outs of what happens during a papal conclave and white smoke and black smoke and all the rest of that stuff.

45:47

But while Francis may not change the understanding of the church's teaching, one of them, that's the real problem when you deny sola scriptura and you embrace sola ecclesia.

46:16

Now, what that leads me to is I do want to do some further response to Trenthorne, but first, but first,

46:30

I don't know how long this program is going to go. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

46:36

You didn't have to go anywhere today, I hope. Okay. All right.

46:41

Yeah. Rich says, you got dominoes on speed dial over there. I'm sure no one would care. I mean,

46:47

Walter Martin used to do the Bible answer, man, with his feet up on the table and munching on some stuff and things like that.

46:52

So we had to try that sometime. We had to try like a five -hour program or something like that, have a few little songs in between, you know, little restroom breaks.

47:05

Dividing Line Marathon. Yeah. What we could do is get people to donate to stop. If you want the program to stop, here's the number to call with your donation.

47:18

We could actually do really well that way. Anyway, what were we talking about?

47:23

Yes. So before we get back to a little bit more of Trenthorne, because I want to respond to his entire presentation, because it is all respondable.

47:34

From a Protestant perspective, from a church history perspective, there wasn't anything he said that is not respondable meaningfully in a documented fashion in regards to your church fathers.

47:53

But he raised an issue, and a fellow by the name of Lofton, he is

47:59

Michael Lofton, likewise raised an issue in a debate he did with Chris Dates.

48:12

Let me see if... When did this happen?

48:22

I think it was only about two weeks ago Chris Dates debated him? Maybe three.

48:31

I thought the date might be on here, but I don't see it, and I don't see it in my notes.

48:40

So I apologize. I should have had that here. But Chris Dates debated, I think it's

48:48

Michael Lofton. It's not on the video for some reason. March 4th.

48:54

That wasn't too long ago. So it was 11 days ago. That's within the past two weeks. And is it Michael Lofton? Okay.

49:02

Chris Dates, right. And the subject was Sola Scriptura, the sufficiency of scripture.

49:10

And of course, that has to be defined in regards to... I'm not sure if you just saw, but Chris Honholtz just said,

49:24

I'll donate all my new unwanted elf paraphernalia to Dr.

49:30

Oakley 1689 for giveaway items if he does a dividing line marathon episode. Have you been following any of that?

49:38

A little bit? Yes. Yeah. But no,

49:44

I think we need to keep blessing Chris and help him build up a beautiful elf paraphernalia collection.

49:55

Because like I said, I think he should dedicate a room in his home to elf and have the movie running.

50:04

And once it starts snowing up there in Reno, then he can invite the little kids through.

50:12

Hey, you can go get something to eat if you want. That's all right. Just the joy that Chris would be able to bring to all the neighborhood children.

50:21

I think we need to help him with that. So I think his partner should put together a

50:29

Amazon elf list that just automatically goes to Chris. And then that way we can just get it all taken care of that way.

50:37

I think that'd be... We'll have to work on that. Anyway, Chris hasn't figured out the idea.

50:44

You don't tweet to me while I'm doing the dividing line because I can do the most damage while I'm live.

50:52

I can't do nearly as much when I'm not on the program. Chris, dude, haven't you figured this out yet?

51:01

Chris had to give blood today. He was telling everybody he had to get his checkup today. So he had to give blood today.

51:07

So we'll just chalk it up to that. Anyway, Michael Lofton gives a 10 -minute presentation.

51:20

A lot of these debates going on these days on the web, 10 -minute opening statements, then 20 minutes of unstructured back and forth, and then just a free -for -all.

51:31

Normally ends up being a food fight after that, which is not what happened here. I've commented on other debates where that's exactly what did happen.

51:42

And the only advantage to that, 10 minutes is not long enough to really say much, but at least it's easier to review than 20 minutes or 30 or 40 or something like that.

51:53

I get it. So I want us to listen. I am so confident of our position that I don't have any problem presenting to you what a

52:09

Roman Catholic apologist is saying on this subject.

52:16

But what I want you to do is I want you to listen. Now, I'm going to be struggling to not stop and make commentary, and I'm actually not going to promise not to do that because it's sometimes hard to remember what you want to go back and discuss when about three or four more points have come up since then.

52:40

But I want you to hear this is not, let me just tell you ahead of time, this is not the kind of presentation that Jerry Matitix ever gave on Sola Scriptura in the 1980s.

52:57

You see, it was listening to Jerry Matitix, Karl Keating, Patrick Madrid, and then after that,

53:05

Jimmy Akin that got me into dealing with the field of Roman Catholicism.

53:12

And listening to Scott Hahn and Jerry Matitix, who were best buds back then.

53:18

They were in seminary too. Not any longer, but they were then. Just steamrolling

53:25

Calvary Chapel pastors who by their very beliefs had no connection to the early church, no knowledge of the early church, couldn't challenge any of these assertions.

53:40

This is very, very important in causing me to move in this particular direction.

53:49

So I want you, I want you pastors,

53:55

I want you homeschool leaders to listen carefully to this presentation, but remember that what you are hearing today is very different.

54:16

In fact, go back. I'm sure you can track them down someplace. Go back. There was a debate that Jerry Matitix did with either a or a couple,

54:27

I think it was a Calvary Chapel pastor. And my recollection is it was for some reason it was in Hawaii. It could have been

54:33

California, Hawaii. I think it was Hawaii. And listen to the presentation or just go back and listen to the presentations he made against me as recently as 1993 or somewhere between 93 and 95, when we did the solo scriptura debate on Long Island that Chris Arnzen organized.

55:03

Listen to his presentation. It's not this. It's not this.

55:09

And remember that at the Council of Trent in 1546, the first draft of the document on divine revelation and scripture that came out in April of 1546, off the top of my head.

55:28

So I may be wrong, but I think it's April of 1546. The first draft used the language partum partum.

55:39

The God's revelation comes to us partum written scripture, partum oral tradition.

55:46

Partly in this way, partly in that way. That was not in the final draft. But that means that a large number of people at the

55:56

Council of Trent, that's not what you're going to hear here.

56:03

Ask yourself the question why. But then, I shouldn't do this, but I will.

56:11

Listen to the last one minute, 90 seconds to one minute. Don't tune out because it's key.

56:22

Absolutely key. Ready? All right. I've been trying to get the thing to move over to the other screen, so it's not in the way, but we'll live with it.

56:33

And let's go. You're thinking that I just quoted something from Martin Luther, one of the magisterial reformers.

56:40

But in fact, that was a 16th century Catholic bishop, Bishop Nacchianti, at the

56:46

Council of Trent. And I affirm every word that he says there. Let me give you another one. The 4th century bishop

56:52

Saint Cyril of Jerusalem states this. For concerning the divine and holy mysteries of the faith, not even a casual statement must be delivered without the

57:01

Holy Scripture. For this salvation which we believe depends not on ingenious reasoning, but on demonstration of the

57:09

Holy Scriptures. Last one. Another 4th century bishop, Bishop Saint Ambrose of Milan.

57:17

He says this. For how can we adopt those things which we do not find in the

57:23

Holy Scriptures? I affirm all of these things. I don't have a problem with anything that these bishops have said, and I could have also presented many, many others who are

57:36

Catholic saints from the 2nd century all the way to the present. Now, having said that, given the fact that these things are true,

57:48

I would argue that it is useless for my opponent to argue that Scripture is sufficient as an infallible rule of faith, as he did on January 25th in a video called

58:02

Sola Scriptura, a Primer. He effectively argues that Scripture is a sufficient rule of faith.

58:08

I think that that's a useless argument. It doesn't touch on my position at all, because we both agree

58:15

Scripture is a sufficient infallible rule of faith. The problem is, what do we mean by sufficiency?

58:22

What kind of sufficiency are we talking about? That's really where the difference is going to be. So what kind of sufficiency can a

58:29

Catholic maintain when it comes to Scripture as an infallible rule of faith? It's called material sufficiency.

58:36

This is the idea that everything that has been handed down in Revelation from Christ and the

58:43

Apostles, all of the content of the deposit of faith, of Revelation, of that which has been revealed and God -breathed, all of that is in sacred

58:53

Scripture. It has been inscribed in Scripture, and it's there either explicitly or implicitly.

59:01

I can affirm that as a Catholic. So I would say every dogma of the Catholic Church, from the

59:07

Trinity to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, can be defended and is in Scripture either explicitly or at the very least implicitly.

59:17

So again, I affirm Scripture is sufficient, so I think it's irrelevant to talk about Scripture being sufficient, and I think it's also irrelevant to talk about tradition as if it is separate from Scripture, as if there's some kind of tradition that is so distinct from Scripture that it's not in Scripture in any kind of way.

59:40

Okay, just real quick, make sure you're getting material and formal sufficiency.

59:47

This was, I forget when it first appeared in the

59:54

Catholic Answers realm of presentation, but it wasn't early.

01:00:00

It came along at a later point in time. But then the relationship of traditions, remember what

01:00:07

I said at the beginning, partum partum. In Roman Catholic theology, you have sacred tradition, capital

01:00:14

S, capital T, and that is made up of written tradition,

01:00:20

Scripture, and oral tradition, which, well,

01:00:27

Yves Congar has an entire book on this, and there's all sorts of different takes. That's the problem. You can't define oral tradition.

01:00:35

Most would define it by reading from early church fathers, but when

01:00:40

I read from early church fathers who contradict modern Roman Catholic teachings, then that's not oral tradition. But if the same father says something that is

01:00:48

Roman Catholic teaching, then that is tradition. And the question always is, who gets to decide?

01:00:56

And the problem is, in this presentation, what this gentleman does is because he's simply denying the thesis, then he doesn't want to commit himself to the actual ultimate authority of the

01:01:13

Bishop of Rome as the final authority of all these things, sola ecclesia, but that's the whole point. The whole point is that is his position, and that's been coming about recently when we've had some discussions online about, okay, we're sort of to the point where we could be scheduling some debates now.

01:01:31

Jimmy Akin has said he'd be willing to debate what? Sola Scriptura. And I said, you have one of the most problematic

01:01:39

Bishops of Rome ever right now. Don't you think that's a more important thing? We've done

01:01:45

Sola Scriptura. I've debated Catholic answers. I've debated Patrick Madrid. I've debated

01:01:50

Jerry Matatix. I've debated Mitch Pacwa. I think I think

01:01:55

St. Janice and I did that at some point. I'm not 100 % certain, but we might have. We've done

01:02:02

Sola Scriptura a number of times. When do you guys step up to bat?

01:02:09

Because defending Sola Scriptura, that's our side. You have a positive claim of authority, but they don't want to defend it.

01:02:18

That's one thing. Give Bob St. Janice props for it, is that he's the only

01:02:24

Catholic apologist who ever came forward to defend the bodily assumption of Mary.

01:02:31

The others just wouldn't do it, because they know the only foundation by the assumption of Mary is the ultimate authority of the Roman Catholic Church, and so if you haven't established that, you're not going to be able to establish that concept, and at least

01:02:41

St. Janice tried. I'll leave it up to you to listen to it, whether that was successful, but the point is he was at least willing to do so.

01:02:52

This is the issue, and what you're going to hear is you're going to hear him saying,

01:02:59

I don't have to defend a particular position here. Well, that's what makes these conversations pretty much irrelevant, because there is a position here.

01:03:09

It's a positive position, and it's a position that makes a wild claim that this one individual living in Rome is the infallible

01:03:25

Vicar of Christ. He bears Trinitarian names.

01:03:30

He's called the Holy Father. He's called the Vicar of Christ. Vicarius means the one that takes place of.

01:03:36

Who is that? The Holy Spirit, and as a priest, he's called an alter Christus, another Christ, Father, Son, Spirit.

01:03:43

I mean, wow, and so when I first started debating

01:03:48

Roman Catholics, this was during John Paul II's tenure, and the whole thing was we have a bishop in Rome that can answer our questions.

01:04:00

We don't have to all the confusion of sola scriptura. We can go to the bishop.

01:04:06

Of course, the bishop of Rome almost never, even John Paul II, almost never gave a quote -unquote infallible interpretation of scripture, but we could if we had to.

01:04:17

That was the idea. It's not so much with Francis because, well,

01:04:22

Francis is Francis, but you won't find

01:04:27

Roman Catholics, the leaders, the lead apologists, who will go, oh, yeah,

01:04:36

I'd be happy to defend Francis, and what they'll say is, well, you know, he said so many things that weren't really official, and the problem is nobody knows until he's dead what's really official.

01:04:48

That's how the system works. That's how Honorius could be a heretic and anathematized by every person who became the bishop of Rome for 400 years, and you still think that the bishop of Rome is infallible.

01:05:01

That's how you make, because the system doesn't really mean anything, and they know it. They know it's not really defensible, so they just want to stay on the attack, attack sola scriptura, never defend the fact that their attacks are based upon a positive position, which is sola ecclesia.

01:05:20

The church defines what scripture is, what scripture says, what tradition is, what tradition says.

01:05:26

That makes the epistemologically, the ecclesia is prior to everything else, not temporarily, but epistemologically, and the more they try to struggle to get away from it, the more they actually prove the point.

01:05:43

So, just want to make sure you're catching that. We go back to the presentation. Known as the partum, partum view, taken from a

01:05:51

Latin word that just means part in part, part of revelation is in scripture, part of revelation is in tradition.

01:05:57

I reject that view. Now, okay, he rejects that view. I'm going to try to let it go, but that's what

01:06:04

I was talking about beforehand. He rejects that view, but what that means is he rejects what was at least a large minority view at Trent, because that was the original draft in history of, so if the vote had gone the other way and there weren't all that many people at Trent, there really wasn't much in the way, there weren't really major leaders and things like that.

01:06:32

What if it had gone the other way? He couldn't reject it. What if that was in the statement? Then he couldn't reject it.

01:06:39

Just because scripture is sufficient, however, does not mean it is the only infallible rule of faith.

01:06:46

This is where I believe my opponent makes a leap. It does not logically follow, because there could be other rules that are also infallible, and these rules could actually be even subservient to scripture, and yet it doesn't mean that there couldn't be other infallible rules.

01:07:07

But it's my opponent's position that scripture is the sole infallible rule, and he has to show that all other rules of faith, even infallible rules, are excluded.

01:07:20

Now, the first possible rule of faith that I would propose, even though I don't necessarily have to defend anything here,

01:07:26

I'm taking the negative position, I just have to deny, but I want to offer a couple examples, and he's going to have to demonstrate that these are excluded as infallible rules.

01:07:36

The first possible rule of faith that I would suggest that is extra -biblical, loosely speaking, is tradition, sacred tradition.

01:07:45

The sufficiency of scripture does not exclude that there may be an infallible rule that provides the proper interpretation of scripture, and this is what we call tradition.

01:07:54

I'm not saying content that is separate from scripture. Again, I already affirmed the content is materially there in scripture.

01:08:02

I'm talking about a tradition that is necessary in order to correctly interpret, in some cases that may not be clear, scripture.

01:08:12

Okay, Nick, you hear that? So tradition, this tradition he's suggesting but doesn't have to defend, see?

01:08:22

That's what makes these conversations, you know, if both sides had to actually defend their positive statement, then, you know, things would be a little bit different.

01:08:30

But when you can say that you affirm material sufficiency, what you're saying is all of revelation is in scripture.

01:08:41

So infallibility of the Pope is in scripture, bodily assumption of Mary is in scripture, Immaculate Conception is in scripture.

01:08:47

Why do I keep emphasizing them? Because they're the last three dogmas that have been defined on the basis of tradition by Roman Catholicism.

01:08:57

So they're the ones that you go with what they themselves are saying, you accurately reflect their teaching, and since the middle of the 19th century, these are the three dogmas that have been defined dogmatically, and a dogma is something you have to believe.

01:09:15

It's part of the gospel. It's De Fide, by faith. So you have to believe in the

01:09:22

Immaculate Conception. You have to believe in the bodily assumption of Mary. You have to believe in the infallibility of the

01:09:28

Pope. These are defined dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church, and they've been defined on the basis of tradition.

01:09:37

Now, it is obvious beyond question that none of the apostles believed any of these things.

01:09:46

It is obvious beyond question that the early church didn't believe these things.

01:09:52

It is obvious beyond question that there were individuals who were bishops of Rome who taught against some of these things, and yet it's dogma.

01:10:06

Why? Because, as we'll see when we look at Trent Horne, because you had a man in the late 19th century by the name of John Henry Cardinal Newman.

01:10:21

He was a convert to Roman Catholicism from Anglicanism, one of the most famous defections ever, and he's the one who said to go deep into history is to cease to be

01:10:31

Protestant. Brilliant man, but he also opposed the definition of the infallibility of the bishop of Rome because he knew better, but once that definition was given, then he collapsed and gave into it, and one of his greatest legacies is what's called the development hypothesis that says that dogma can develop over time, and so all you really have in material sufficiency is the idea of a germ, a seed, an acorn growing into an oak tree.

01:11:12

So what that allows Rome to do is to take scattered passages about Mary and build a huge non -apostolic theology, but call it material sufficiency.

01:11:31

Mary's mentioned in scripture, and that means that she was bodily assumed into heaven on her death.

01:11:40

No, it doesn't. None of the apostles believed it. None of them taught it. The early church didn't believe it.

01:11:47

Pope Glacius specifically anathematized books, the first books that actually even made reference to it, nearly half a millennium after the birth of Christ, but hey, let's not worry about any of that.

01:11:58

We have sola ecclesia, and the church has said that this is dogma.

01:12:06

You believe it. That's sola ecclesia. It also points out how empty the profession of material sufficiency is.

01:12:16

That's not material sufficiency. What makes scripture sufficient is that it's

01:12:23

Theanustos. It's God breathed. A scholar friend of mine sent me a link to a book that just came out.

01:12:36

Was it a book or article? I think it was a book. Yeah, a book. Where a really interesting, odd fellow is arguing that Theanustos does not mean

01:12:45

God breathed, that it has something to do with God loving, and at least it tried to interact with B .B.

01:12:56

Warfield and stuff like that. We'll probably have some comments to make about that in the future, but the fact that it makes the key text in 2

01:13:05

Timothy non -meaningful is its major problem, but the point is this is different than anything else.

01:13:15

It is unique in its character, and whatever you do with Theanustos in Paul, you have to remember that Jesus in Matthew chapter 22 said, have you not read what was spoken to you by God saying?

01:13:32

There's the exact same thing. That's Theanustos in Jesus' own words. So play around with that if you want.

01:13:40

That's Jesus' statement. This is unique. The church has nothing else like it.

01:13:46

So to say that the canon of this text and the meaning of this text is unknown outside of something outside of the text is to deny any concept of sufficiency in and of itself.

01:14:11

You can call it whatever you want. Material, formal, make all the distinctions you want. What you're saying is you can't know what scripture is apart from our tradition.

01:14:21

You can't know what it says apart from our tradition. In other words, sola ecclesia. Sola ecclesia.

01:14:29

It's clear. It's plain. It's right there in front of us, but keep listening.

01:14:35

Say in some cases, you don't need tradition to interpret scripture. You can open up the

01:14:41

New Testament and come away with a proposition that Jesus is the Messiah promised in the

01:14:46

Old Testament. You don't need to consult sacred tradition to know that. Good.

01:14:52

So I'm sure that he will then join with me in rebuking all of those

01:14:59

Roman Catholic apologists that I could name by name who are still active, who have said for years that you could never defend the personality of the

01:15:09

Holy Spirit and the doctrine of the Trinity from scripture alone. I'm sure that he will join with us because I have.

01:15:16

I've written a book on the subject. Other people have obviously far smarter than me, but that is so which is more central to the

01:15:25

Christian faith, the Trinity or the demonstration of Jesus Messiah? They're very related, but he's saying, well, you could know that from scripture that Jesus is the

01:15:35

Messiah. Good. Can you know the other key elements of the faith?

01:15:41

That's an important question. But there are some things that might not be as clear in scripture, and that is where we do need other rules of faith to correctly interpret this ultimate rule of faith, which we call scripture.

01:15:55

So I could say with Father Emanuel D 'Aranzo, one of the last manualists writing right after the

01:16:02

Second Vatican Council in the 70s, a Catholic priest and theologian, I can say with him that scripture has priority over sacred tradition.

01:16:11

I don't have a problem saying that. But I would say this tradition is infallible, and it's to be venerated equally with scripture, as the

01:16:19

Council of Trent says. Both scripture and tradition are to be venerated equally. That doesn't—

01:16:24

Now, I just have to point out, venerated equally. The only reason that scripture is to be venerated is because it's theionistos.

01:16:33

So if you venerate equally, then that means tradition is what? Pardon, pardon. Pardon, pardon.

01:16:41

There it is. You may not want to go there, but if you're saying it's to be venerated equally, there's no reason why you wouldn't go there, which was what was in the original draft anyway.

01:16:53

I mean, the scripture doesn't have priority. So, you know, all this talk about scripture has this kind of priority as a norm of norms, irrelevant to me.

01:17:02

Absolutely irrelevant. This tradition of which I speak is not a separate tradition from scripture.

01:17:07

Again, it's a tradition that is what we would call inherent tradition and declarative tradition.

01:17:13

Just really quickly, what that means is when we talk about sacred tradition, we're talking about those things that are either explicit in scripture or implicit in scripture.

01:17:27

Now, I also want to say that tradition is the lens by which we read scripture.

01:17:37

I think that is an infallible rule of faith necessary to interpret, in some cases, scripture.

01:17:44

And it's kind of like, you know, if you have really, really bad vision and you were to just open up the

01:17:49

Bible without any glasses, it would be very, very hard to discern what's there in some cases.

01:17:56

Okay, so think about what that's saying. So, not only do you have a mixture of categories here, you now have an infallible rule of faith that is needed to understand an infallible rule of faith.

01:18:09

Okay? Well, if that's the case, then could we argue that we need another infallible rule of faith to interpret the infallible rule of faith?

01:18:17

Because there have been many disagreements amongst Roman Catholics, even to this day, as to what tradition actually is.

01:18:26

So, you go to Boston College today, and you will get a very different understanding of tradition.

01:18:33

In fact, I would say you go to Boston College, I don't think you'll find anyone teaching at Boston College that believes in the bodily assumption of Mary the way that the

01:18:43

Pope who defined the bodily assumption of Mary believed in the bodily assumption of Mary. Okay? So, some of you may remember, in 1999,

01:18:55

I debated Fr. Mitchell Pacwa in San Diego at the OPC Church there in San Diego.

01:19:02

And for my closing statement, and I've still got the silver book bag in the other room,

01:19:10

I brought this big book bag out. And I opened it up and I started getting a couple of them,

01:19:20

I think are back here. Oh, maybe not. Anyway, I started getting books out.

01:19:26

And I got out the documents of Vatican II and the compendium of documents cited by Vatican II.

01:19:32

And I got a canon's decrees of Council Trent. And I started canon laws and end up with a stack about yay big of official dogmatic teachings of the

01:19:49

Roman Catholic Church, piled it up yay big. And I said, what the debate tonight is about is that one side says that Romans 5 .1,

01:19:59

therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace to God through our Lord Jesus Christ, is understandable in and of itself in its own context.

01:20:06

The other side says you need this to understand it. And I say to you, this has not clarified

01:20:13

Romans 5 .1. It has muddied Romans 5 .1. So what you're getting here is you need this lens, see.

01:20:20

But the lens itself has to be interpreted. And then the interpretation has to be interpreted.

01:20:28

And then that interpretation has to be interpreted. Keep that in mind. If you put on the appropriate glasses, it will make sense.

01:20:35

You're not adding to Scripture by adding the glasses. You're just seeing them through the lens.

01:20:41

And that is the way in which we understand tradition. The 5th century Saint Vincent of Lorenz puts it this way, but here someone perhaps will ask, since the canon of Scripture is complete and sufficient in and of itself for everything, more than sufficient, what need is there to join it with the authority of the

01:21:00

Church's interpretation? He's saying Scripture is sufficient. The canon is sufficient. It's complete.

01:21:06

Why do we need then the Church's interpretation? For this reason, because owing to the depth of Holy Scripture, all do not accept it in one and the same sense.

01:21:14

But one understands it, its words in one way and another in another, so that it seems to be capable of as many interpretations as there are interpreters.

01:21:23

For Novatian expounds it one way, Sibelius another, Donatus another, Arius, Eunomius, Macedonius, lastly

01:21:29

Nestorius another. Therefore it is very necessary, on account of so great intricacies of various error, that the rule for the right understanding of the prophets and apostles should be framed in accordance with the standard of ecclesiastical and Catholic interpretation.

01:21:45

Now, immediately, the rule in the early centuries was in essence what we have today as the

01:21:53

Apostolic Creed, which specifically is sub -biblical. That is, it's derived from Scripture.

01:22:00

The rule, because you talk about these, a lot of the people that were just mentioned there, Valentinus or Marcion or whatever, that had to do with Gnosticism.

01:22:08

That had to do with the fact there's only one true God. But the rule that the early fathers mentioned is itself derived from Scripture.

01:22:16

It has nothing to do with the dogmas that Rome has developed since that time.

01:22:21

Nothing at all. In fact, if you're going to use that type of example, then you would have to reject the doctrines that have been developed since that time, because they're not a part of any primitive rule of the church at all.

01:22:36

That's just a fact. You just have to stand on your head to try to go, well, you know, somebody wrote a poem once that said something like this about Mary, and that must mean everybody believed this.

01:22:51

It is amazing how far people will go to try to substantiate stuff.

01:22:58

Affirming material sufficiency. He's affirming Scripture is sufficient, and then he goes on to say there's another standard, another standard, another rule of faith, and that is the church's interpretation, and he asserts...

01:23:11

And by the way, and the way to refute these people is through the consistent exegesis of Scripture.

01:23:18

That is, once you have all of Scripture, then you start demonstrating the consistency of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation.

01:23:26

That's its greatest power, without question. Infallible. Also, the 4th century saint and translator of the

01:23:33

Bible into Latin, Saint Jerome, puts it this way, Yeah, you don't want to do that, but it is interesting that Jerome also did not accept the deuterocanonical books that Rome has now defined as inspired.

01:24:05

But we won't tarry too long on that. He's saying clearly that we have to have some kind of authority necessary to interpret certain passages of Scripture.

01:24:16

The second possible rule of faith that I wanted to offer really quickly in the last minute that I have is the magisterium, the teaching authority of the church.

01:24:24

Okay, here's where you get solo ecclesia. All right? So, just listen in. Here you go.

01:24:30

The sufficiency of Scripture does not exclude the infallible rule of a teaching authority that determines what constitutes

01:24:35

Scripture. I would argue there is a rule distinct from Scripture that establishes the canon of Scripture that is necessary to establish before we could even propose the sufficiency of Scripture.

01:24:45

In other words, we have to have this magisterium in order to tell us what the canon is before we can even talk about Scripture.

01:24:53

I'm not saying that we necessarily have to establish the canon infallibly, but we still need some kind of rule to determine what the canon is.

01:25:02

So to reiterate, I can affirm Scripture as priority over inherent and declarative tradition, and Scripture is higher in authority over the magisterium, even.

01:25:10

But I maintain that all these rules are infallible, and it's up to my opponent to demonstrate that these other rules of faith that are infallible are excluded by Scripture itself.

01:25:23

Okay, so nowhere do you even have an attempt to say that these rules of faith are theadnostos.

01:25:34

They're not God -breathed. So on an epistemological level, on an ontological level, there is automatically the impossibility of joining, venerating equally, to use part of the terminology that was used, something that is non -theadnostos to something that is.

01:25:55

That was the whole point of Jesus rebuking the Jews with their traditions and so on and so forth, is that's exactly what they were doing.

01:26:03

They were saying that certain things were were divine tradition that were not, and they were equating them with Scripture and making them equal to Scripture, and Jesus rebuked them for so doing, just as he would rebuke

01:26:17

Roman Catholics today for doing the exact same thing with their traditions, no question about it.

01:26:23

But catch the sola ecclesia. You have to have the magisterium to tell you the canon and the interpretation.

01:26:34

So if you have the three -legged stool theory of tradition, magisterium, and Scripture, but one of those three legs defines what

01:26:49

Scripture is and what Scripture says. Now, he didn't get into this, but who defines what tradition is?

01:26:55

The magisterium. Who defines what tradition means? The magisterium. So if the magisterium and who's the head of the magisterium?

01:27:04

Bishop or Pope. If the magisterium defines the canon of Scripture, which there's all sorts of questions about that, and didn't do so until 1546, etc.,

01:27:18

etc., and then contradicted what came before, that's a whole other issue, but defines the extent of Scripture, claims that the only true meaning of Scripture is to be found in the magisterium's interpretation, which you just heard.

01:27:35

He didn't say this, but the same is true of tradition. Then that is your ultimate authority.

01:27:43

Sola ecclesia. Sola ecclesia. The magisterium being the magisterium of the

01:27:49

Roman Catholic Church. There you go. Do you have dominoes on speed dial? Get ready to go.

01:27:56

You got the app. So do I. It's just sort of hard to order while speaking. You called the wife and let her know it's going to be a long one, honey.

01:28:08

I'm not sure when I'm getting home. No, I'm actually going to make a change because right now, unless things change,

01:28:21

I can't make a promise, but we could do four programs this week. So there's really no reason for me to just go, go, go, go, go.

01:28:31

I've got plenty of hours. I've got a bunch of other stuff. So what

01:28:38

I want to do is I don't want to leave Warren McGrew sitting out there going,

01:28:44

I didn't need a discussion of empathy or sola ecclesia.

01:28:53

What? Well, maybe he did. Maybe he's there going, man, that was so good.

01:29:00

Maybe I've just been wrong all along. Maybe that's the case.

01:29:06

We'll see. We'll find out. So I'm going to hold off on Trent Harn till tomorrow.

01:29:17

We'll start with Trent. Okay. Trent, if you've got your folks sitting there recording or whatever, we'll press on tomorrow.

01:29:28

How's that sound? Because that might work in the other studio too, because I do like to be able to put stuff up and if I can breathe and work my way through having to go from a real computer to windows, it's tough, man.

01:29:55

First world problems. First world problems. IOS problems.

01:30:00

That's what we're dealing with here. We will go from there. So some of you will recall that last week

01:30:11

I talked about on Twitter, there's been some going back and forth and I had listened to an interview that Warren McGrew had with this

01:30:26

Chris Fisher guy on Open Theism and Warren was very, very open and seemed to agree with much of what he was saying.

01:30:34

He said, well, you know, I might not agree with everything, but he never pushed back on anything and said, nah, dude, you're just completely wrong about that.

01:30:42

And, you know, Chris Fisher was talking about Calvinists as cultists and all the rest of this stuff. And Warren McGrew didn't say anything.

01:30:49

And since then has been talking about, just this morning tweeted about how Calvinism is anti -gospel and it's cultic and all the rest of this stuff.

01:30:55

So, you know, you got an idea where he's coming from with all that stuff.

01:31:00

And we had had an attempted conversation about the issue of prophecy in scripture.

01:31:13

And you may recall that what I did is I had asked the question, could

01:31:20

Judas have not fulfilled the role of the betrayer?

01:31:27

Well, first I asked about Pilate. Could Pilate have done the right thing? And he said, yeah. And God could have found a million other ways to have accomplished his purposes.

01:31:36

So he's still going to get his purpose accomplished. But the problem is Warren is not a theologian.

01:31:42

He has no training in theology whatsoever. And he's proud of that. And the problem then is those of us who've actually, you know, like debated people like John Sanders, read their books, engaged them in moderated scholarly public debate at Reformed Theological Seminary, you're reading what the original,

01:32:11

Pinnock and all these people, you're reading their arguments that were vital in forming the various open theories and identifying what was important.

01:32:27

And if you're going, what are you talking about? Open theory is the idea that the future is at least partially open to God.

01:32:36

That things could be other than, there is no divine decree that fixes the shape of the future.

01:32:47

It's fluid. And there's different levels of control.

01:32:55

You even go as far as Molinism, where you have

01:33:00

God's ability to envision every possible future world and to determine who he's even going to allow to exist, who he's going to bring into existence, dependent upon whatever his goals are.

01:33:17

And nobody really knows what his goals are, but if it's maximal number of people saved with minimum amount of evil or something in between there, then that's going to determine how long the world's going to exist and who's going to be able to be born and when they're going to be born and all based on middle knowledge, which

01:33:38

God does not derive from God's creative decree, all this kind of stuff where then

01:33:45

God micromanages everything just so that you can put people in situations where God knows what they're going to do.

01:33:54

So do what he wants them to do freely because he has manipulated them to do what he knows they will do, which is why most open theists look at Molinism and go, oh, that's almost worse than Calvinism.

01:34:10

Because it's just so obvious that you're just trying to, you're doing lip service to libertarian freedom.

01:34:18

But the big thing that the open theist wants is interaction with God that changes

01:34:24

God. That's the big thing. That's open theism. That's what they want, is they will be satisfied when

01:34:34

God changes and literally God gets better. You know,

01:34:39

I mean, you remember, I think it was the same program. We talked about Brandon Robertson and, you know, the woman, the

01:34:46

Syrophoenician woman who faced Jesus with his racism and made Jesus a better person. That's really a part of open theism.

01:34:54

They're really big on emphasizing the interactivity of God and, of course, that leans toward process theology and the idea of God absorbing good and sloughing off evil and becoming better in and of himself.

01:35:10

Yes, there are people who do teach that. And I remember very clearly my systematic theology professor at Fuller was really into that.

01:35:21

Not that he believed it, but he loved reading about it. And when he explained it to us, I mean, he gave us all this detail.

01:35:28

And most of the people in the class were just going, what is this guy talking about? I found it interesting. But then he was doing the positive, negative thing.

01:35:37

And when he got to the negative thing, he says, well, the primary negative thing about process theology is that the

01:35:43

God of process theology bears absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to the God of the Bible. That was one of the more blunt things that he said in that particular class.

01:35:55

But it's true. The God of the Bible and the God of process theology don't look alike at all.

01:36:04

So the issue with open theism, like I said last week, is that God, if it's going to be a coherent system,

01:36:13

God did not know you would ever exist because you are the result of all these free choices.

01:36:19

And if you go, well, God knew all the probabilities, the possibilities, probabilities and possibilities.

01:36:29

It seems to me that what Warren McGrew is doing is he's picking and choosing because he hasn't landed anywhere yet that I know of.

01:36:38

And that's one of the situations here is it's frustrating to try to deal with someone who's still in process themselves of coming to final conclusions and things like that.

01:36:49

And so, you know, they get to redefine terms. These young guys, they don't think they need the wisdom of those who've come before them so as to even use the language in a consistent fashion.

01:37:04

So they get to change meanings and do stuff just on the fly. And it's just sort of how it works.

01:37:10

And it's frustrating, but it also limits how much time you're going to invest in responding to that kind of stuff.

01:37:16

Anyway, this idea that he's trying to put out there,

01:37:24

I wanted some specifics about it because I know what John Sanders' position is. I took the time to read his stuff and understand it and interact with him on these things.

01:37:34

And from Sanders' perspective, he specifically said, God did not know you would exist. I would imagine

01:37:42

McGrew would say, but he knew it was possible because if this person and that person and that person did these free choices and you it's sort of like, you know, one of the best chess programs right now is called

01:37:57

Stockfish. And all of the chess programs now, remember

01:38:02

Big Blue and it finally beat Kasparov or something like that? When computers finally beat man.

01:38:08

Now, the greatest in the world, mentally, man is nowhere near what a chess computer can be because now you've got, you know, quantum stuff and things like that.

01:38:20

And they can see millions and millions and millions of moves down the road along millions and millions of different options.

01:38:28

And so that's what God is. But remember when the chess computer is thinking millions and millions and millions moves down millions and millions and millions of variations, those are all determined by the rules of chess.

01:38:45

And so in Molinism and related concepts, all this still is structured, not by God's divine decree, not by God's will, not by God, how

01:38:57

God made creation, but by something outside of God, middle knowledge. And I haven't heard really that coming up from what

01:39:09

McGrew is talking about. My point was to go to Judas because you have prophecy about Judas, at least according to according to Jesus, Jesus interpreted the prophecy as having to do with Judas that was given centuries before Judas came into existence.

01:39:34

The John Sanders form of open theism would say that's not possible because God can't know those free choices.

01:39:42

And for us to be truly interactive with God, for our free choices to be really free, it can't be this

01:39:49

Molinist, well, I've got middle knowledge and I know that this person given their character will only do these possible things.

01:39:58

Hey, sometimes people do stuff that is just wild that no one saw coming.

01:40:06

Sometimes that happens. And if you leave that possibility open for God, then God could prophesy something 400 years ahead of time and then whoops.

01:40:14

And that's what open theism says. Open theism emphasizes the reality that there has to be false prophecy in scripture and it's a good thing and a proper thing.

01:40:24

They hold that view. And that came out in his interview and he did not argue with that.

01:40:33

He actually seemed to agree. Yep. There's false prophecies. There's stuff that God missed.

01:40:41

And if he knows all the possibilities and all the probabilities, how could he miss anything?

01:40:47

I don't know. So I asked, he refused to answer on Twitter.

01:40:54

And so I went through John chapter 13 and then he started quiet and then he comes back and he posts this video refuting the refuters and demands a retraction from me.

01:41:08

Now, let me just comment about the nature of the video. Um, I cannot compete with people who have sufficient time to be producing videos with floating faces, um, happy days, clips,

01:41:26

Simpsons clips, uh, sound effects, and all the graphic stuff that today is considered to be so cutting edge and cool amongst the young people of our day.

01:41:41

I also think that it's laughable that anyone would think they should be taken seriously as a theologian who will seek to distract from their utter incapacity to engage in exegesis through the utilization of such things.

01:41:58

I also find it utterly absurd that someone would actually ask me to retract my statements when they offer such a childish retort.

01:42:08

I don't get it. But we are obviously from very different generations.

01:42:16

Um, he's about the age of my child. And so there you go.

01:42:22

Things have changed a lot. But, uh, Mr. McGrew, I have nothing to retract. Your, your response was filled with straw men itself, as we will see here in a moment.

01:42:33

I'm not going to bother to respond to all of it. Like I said, go ahead and take time to look at it if you want.

01:42:39

Um, Layton Flowers posted it and said, ouch, uh, which

01:42:44

I guess was his way of saying, oh, that was great. To which I pointed out, excuse me, but his position is directly opposite to the

01:42:53

Baptist faith and message. And isn't your paycheck still, don't the people who sign your paycheck for Southern Baptist in Texas, um, aren't they still

01:43:02

Southern Baptist? So, um, I quoted from the Baptist faith and message on the doctrine of God, that God has exhaustive divine foreknowledge and it's not based upon the free actions of creatures.

01:43:16

It's a direct, it was purposely put in there. Everybody knows back in the day to say

01:43:23

Southern Baptist will not accept open theism. I've said more than once Layton Flowers will leave the

01:43:30

Southern Baptist convention so he can be a consistent provisionist. Um, or he's gonna keep playing around with this stuff, um, until the

01:43:39

Southern Baptist wake up. But let's just be honest. Southern Baptist have other problems right now.

01:43:46

And if Southern Baptist are mourning the departure of someone like Beth Moore, then they don't give a hoot about open theism.

01:43:59

Sorry. So I think Layton knows he can get away with whatever he wants as far as this goes.

01:44:07

So Layton, you just might want to just go, I don't care what the Baptist faith and message says. I like this open theism stuff.

01:44:14

This is cool. Cause you know, you like it. So let's, let's give some examples here.

01:44:20

And, but what's the key issue? What's the key issue? The only thing that would have made for a meaningful response from Mr.

01:44:34

McGrew would have been a sound exegesis of John chapter 13.

01:44:43

Did we get that? The answer of course is no, we did not.

01:44:48

So let's, let's listen to a little bit. Accomplish what he wants if men possess free will.

01:44:55

Could Pilate have done anything other than what he did?

01:45:01

Could he have done the right thing? I asked this specifically of the idol killer. And his answer was this.

01:45:10

Yes. Pilate could have chosen to do the right thing. Had he, had he, there are a million other ways

01:45:16

God could have accomplished his purpose. Jesus is the anointed one, not Pilate, the Gentiles or the Jews, Acts 4.

01:45:22

Could Pilate have done the right thing? That's the question Dr. White is asking. So do you see how in Dr.

01:45:30

White's question, he is asserting what he previously tried to deny. What he gets upset at Leighton and other provisionists and non -Calvinists at for, for pointing out.

01:45:42

That he believes that God created Pilate sinful and evil and capable of doing good as this was the only means by which

01:45:51

God could accomplish his purpose. Now, of course, at this point, this man claims to be a former

01:45:59

Calvinist. And just like with Leighton Flowers, any serious person who's read

01:46:05

Sharnach or Calvin or any of these people sits back and goes, what? So if, if I did what he did,

01:46:12

I would have a cartoon clip. I I'd flash up there, straw man.

01:46:19

And I have little, little things that explode on the screen because he did that in the video. And I guess that's how you win debates is, is you do that.

01:46:29

Instead, I'll simply point out, this is absurd. God is dependent upon evil, unable to accomplish his purposes.

01:46:38

Otherwise, what are we talking about here? What should we be talking about here?

01:46:44

If this man was a true teacher, what would we be talking about here? We'd be talking about the text of Acts chapter four, verses 27 and 28.

01:46:56

We'd be looking at the original language. We'd be looking at the early church, which said specifically that Herod and Pontius Pilate did what

01:47:14

God's hand predestined to occur. That's what we'd be looking at.

01:47:21

But what you get is not exegesis because this is a system that is not derived from the text of scripture.

01:47:29

It's created philosophically out here and then pressed onto certain passages of scripture resulting in a mishmash of incoherent interpretation.

01:47:46

That's what you would, you would have Acts four being dealt with because that's what I was asking about.

01:47:51

That's what the issue was. The idea of God being dependent upon evil, let's demonstrate the utter fallaciousness of this false accusation.

01:48:05

Okay. If you want retractations, retractionis, we want to use the

01:48:10

Latin form. If you want something that needs to be retracted, here's what needs to be retracted by Mr.

01:48:16

McGrew. Let's think about what's being said here. The early church taught that they did what

01:48:27

God's hand predestined to occur. He turns that into saying that God is dependent upon evil.

01:48:39

So what would that mean? That would mean that when Yahweh utilized the evil of the brothers of Joseph, that he was dependent upon evil to accomplish his purposes.

01:49:00

So when God sovereignly uses man's evil to save life, these guys blame

01:49:09

God and say he's dependent upon evil. Isn't that enough to dismiss these men immediately?

01:49:15

I mean, shouldn't that be enough? It should be. We could walk all the way through Isaiah 10 and turn

01:49:23

Isaiah on his head doing the exact same thing. But can you see, it's right on the screen, God is dependent upon evil.

01:49:30

God uses evil to accomplish the greatest good in all of history, redemption itself.

01:49:37

And these men who will not submit to God's sovereignty, the pots refusing to realize the potter is unlike themselves say, oh, you're saying

01:49:50

God's dependent upon evil. No one ever said anything about it. And any person who had ever been a Calvinist, whoever says it is a liar or never understood what they believed.

01:49:59

One of the two, it's one of the two. Which is it going to be? It's obvious to me, these men were never truly reformed, never had a heartfelt commitment to these things.

01:50:11

Never. Not once. Ever. Well, what are you doing?

01:50:19

What am I saying? Oh, yeah. Yes. Okay. Sorry.

01:50:26

I'm sure Summer is going to have some interesting comments after today's program. Okay. So, straw man, misrepresentation, retract, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

01:50:35

But we're never going to get this done if we don't keep going. So, I started asking you some questions, and the issue had come up about, you know, predestination and stuff.

01:50:46

And so, I pointed out, again, the early church's faith in Acts chapter four, verse 27 and 28, where you specifically have the assertion that God foreordained.

01:51:01

Some statements have been made about God never foreordains or predestines sin or something like that.

01:51:08

And so, I just... I said that the crucifixion was not decreed in eternity past, and neither was

01:51:16

Adam's sin. So, I think it's important to catch this. So, it was not decreed in eternity past.

01:51:25

The question is, was it known in eternity past? Or is this where this dynamic omniscience comes in as, well, it's possible.

01:51:33

Possible based upon what? Because, you see, any possibility in creation is dependent upon the initial parameters established by God in the creation itself, right?

01:51:45

He determines what gravity is. He determines how human beings are going to... He determines how long they're going to live, how much they can know, how fast they can learn.

01:51:52

It's all determined by God, even if you just then say,

01:51:58

He just made the initial conditions and then went on vacation to Hades, right? So, it's still dependent upon God.

01:52:06

Did He know? And so, it isn't... I think people do need to recognize that Mr.

01:52:14

McGrew's position is that there is no divine decree, including the fall of Adam, nor the incarnation and the crucifixion of Christ, which, of course, for most of us, is the very central aspect of why

01:52:32

God created in the first place. So, you cannot have creation being the demonstration of the attributes of God in redemption, in the incarnation.

01:52:43

That's gone. That is not a part of this man's faith. Can't be, because that's not the central issue.

01:52:48

You can say, well, but just he came up with a great plan afterwards. It's not the same thing. That's not the same thing.

01:52:56

That's a very different concept. That's a very different idea. That Genesis 315 makes it quite clear, as do other passages, that the

01:53:04

Messiah's death and resurrection were God's response to Adam's sin, not the cause of Adam's sin.

01:53:13

Okay, that's pure confusion. It's not a matter of the cause of Adam's sin. These men, again, very man -centered, reasoning from man upward to God, cannot recognize that God can have an overarching eternal purpose that then results in the interface with time.

01:53:31

God can't do that. Their God is not big enough to do that. He cannot have the eternity and then interact in time.

01:53:38

He cannot talk. The whole thing with Chris Fisher about discursive stuff, God can't talk to man, because if he does, then that means he's in time and open theism is true.

01:53:47

By definition, it's done. That is not a compelling form of argument for anybody who really wants to think it through.

01:53:57

Not many people want to think it through, but it's not a compelling form of argument. But notice he's got, because you have done this, because you have done this,

01:54:06

I now need to come up with a plan, because I created all this, but I didn't see this coming, or did he?

01:54:12

We don't know. We're not told. We're not told. I don't know. I have to answer that question, because I say he did.

01:54:20

It was part of his purpose. But where's he coming from? I don't know. I don't have any books from him.

01:54:27

I don't have any debates from him that establish all this stuff. He's making it up on the fly. Revelation 13, 8, for example, refers to Genesis 3, 15, the proto evangelum, and it says that the lamb was slain from the foundation of the world.

01:54:44

That word translated as from is apo, and it proves that the lamb was not promised to be slain in eternity past, or even before sin had entered the world.

01:54:56

What? It's a paw. It's a preposition.

01:55:02

It doesn't have any meaning in and of itself. What are you talking about?

01:55:10

No one who reads the language has any idea what you just said. Really doesn't.

01:55:15

And if you understood the language, if you took the time, I'm sorry, I just have to put it that way.

01:55:22

If you took the time to respect the subject, then what you would do is you would find out how to do exegesis.

01:55:35

And what you're missing is, see, you're looking at a paw right there.

01:55:44

But the issue is the interpretation of Revelation 13, 8 is not about a paw at all.

01:55:57

From the foundation of the world. The question is, here, a paw is used as the genitive.

01:56:08

So you have the genitival phrase, and what verb do you attach it to?

01:56:16

What verb do you attach it to? Do you attach it to the verbal concept found in esfragmenu, to be crucified, slain?

01:56:29

Or do you attach it to gegrepti, a finite verb?

01:56:39

And there are a number of people who would argue that it is better to attach it to the finite verb and see the lamb slain here as a separate portion.

01:57:01

And hence, they translate it as names that were written from the foundation of the world in the book of life, of the lamb that was slain.

01:57:13

And then others would say, no, the natural, and of course, word order, especially in Revelation, is extremely challenging.

01:57:25

But it can be extremely challenging in the Ohanian epistolary literature as well. So the natural reading, so you have, who has not been written his name in the book of life of the lamb who was slain apah katabeles kosmu, from the foundation of the world.

01:57:49

So for a lot of people, English speaking people, the natural phraseology is that it's the lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

01:58:02

So the only real issue has nothing to do at all with what you said.

01:58:08

No one who can read the language would say that it is. And there's nothing in apah that means anything that you just said.

01:58:18

Where are you getting this stuff? I don't know.

01:58:24

I don't know. Some of us have translated this and dealt with this and know what the different translations are.

01:58:30

I don't even know where you're getting it. I don't know.

01:58:36

So we continue on. The problem that Augustinians make is that they look at where we are today, and they believe that God had to make things this way, including the fall of Adam and all evil in the world, that if such things had not occurred, then

01:58:55

God wouldn't be God, or he would be lessened and have less honor and glory. Baloney.

01:59:02

Best I can do. Sorry. God had to make Adam sin. Okay. So the idea here, and again, if they've ever been reformed, you should have known this, but the idea that Adam is this, this positively perfect being that has no desire to sin whatsoever.

01:59:24

And God just puts a big old gun to his head and says, you're going to sin. You're going to do this.

01:59:29

I'm going to make you sin is starting with man, ignoring the eternal purpose and the final conclusion and how all of that works out in time to the glory of God.

01:59:45

The idea is, well, God could have actually accomplished the self -revelation of all of his attributes, his love, his mercy, his grace, his justice, his holiness, without any of this.

02:00:04

This was plan B. The cross was plan B. The incarnation was plan B. Not a single person who wrote a page of scripture ever thought those words, never had that idea.

02:00:16

It is a foreign religion to philosophize it in this way.

02:00:22

It really is. But it's also ridiculously straw manning, something he accuses me of over and over.

02:00:31

We're just documenting who's doing the straw manning here. Okay. However, there were two trees in Eden for a reason.

02:00:39

Had Adam obeyed, man would have been in Christ by way of obedience rather than redemption following rebellion.

02:00:48

But again, what would Christ have been? What would

02:00:53

Christ have been? How is it that anyone is in Christ now?

02:01:01

Ephesians chapter one tells us by God's election. So, all mankind, what would be the role of the mediator?

02:01:10

What would be the role of the Savior? Why would there need to be a union with the second person of the

02:01:17

Trinity? Would there need, why would there need to be an incarnation? Because there doesn't need to be a perfect life given.

02:01:23

We're talking about completely different methodology of the demonstration of the attributes of God.

02:01:29

Because we have, again, completely different purposes here. Very, very different purposes. In the mind of the

02:01:35

Augustinian, if Adam actually obeyed God, then God would receive less honor and glory.

02:01:42

So, God had to cause them. See the man -centeredness again? So, it's all what man does, and God's glory is dependent upon that.

02:01:50

Biblically, God is, God knows exactly how to accomplish his greatest glory through the work of Christ, joining of an undeserving people to Christ, so on and so forth, in eternity, works it out in time.

02:02:03

You're going to get completely different religions. You start with man, try to reason up to God. You can't get there.

02:02:09

You're going to have something so much less than what you would have otherwise. All, and all subsequent sin and evil in the world so that he could murder

02:02:19

Jesus. So that he could murder Jesus. Okay, remember, this man's asking me to retract what

02:02:29

I said, so that he could murder Jesus?

02:02:36

That's what the Muslims say. That's what the atheists say.

02:02:42

What? Did you just throw something? No, I did not. I am reminded of a guy in Salt Lake City who walked up to me when

02:02:52

I was passing out tracts to the Mormons, and he was an ex -Mormon, and he looked at me, and he said, oh, do you know that God is the author of child abuse?

02:03:03

I was flat -footed. I was like, what? He said, yeah, he murdered his own son, and he just kept walking.

02:03:09

Right. That's what that man just said. Yeah. Oh, no question about it. Yeah, that was stunning.

02:03:16

Especially because, I mean, not only is this what atheists do, and here's the problem.

02:03:22

He's going to accuse me later on. Because I made reference in passing to other things, I wasn't even attaching them to me.

02:03:28

He accuses me of calling him a Unitarian and all the rest of the stuff. I mean, everything is about him.

02:03:34

It's amazing how he interpreted all that. But here is a situation where atheists make this kind of argument, and we have to correct them and say, excuse me, but the son voluntarily gave, this is something

02:03:54

I have to explain to Muslims over and over again, and I have done so, that the son gives himself voluntarily.

02:04:05

Look, Warren, you keep going down this road. In no longer than 15 years, you will not be claiming any kind of Christian faith at all.

02:04:16

You won't. I've seen this. I've seen it too many times. I've seen it absolutely too many times.

02:04:25

You will not claim Christian faith in any period of time at all. And we're not ever going to get home for dinner if I do not, because I got to get to the

02:04:37

Judah stuff. So there's just so much stuff that's said here. But also, you haven't gotten to see all the cartoon graphics yet.

02:04:45

But again, scripture makes it clear. The crucifixion was a response by God to man's sin, not its cause.

02:04:55

And if Pilate had done something else, then God would have had to go to plan B. And now think about how many free choices.

02:05:03

What if the Roman soldiers wouldn't drive the nails? What if the Jews decided not to turn

02:05:09

Jesus in? What if Herod got in the way and had Jesus put on a chariot and driven out into the desert?

02:05:16

The whole point is, the timing at this time, in this place, not possible.

02:05:22

Because you have the free will actions of not dozens of people, not hundreds of people, thousands of people involved in that one situation.

02:05:36

And they're all allegedly autonomous free agents. There is no divine decree.

02:05:43

Okay, so the idea of God being able to accomplish the cross.

02:05:51

Okay, the all or nothing fallacy was based upon the fact that I actually know what Opantheus have published and written about on a scholarly level, and he doesn't.

02:05:59

And so I get the all or nothing buzzer because I was debating people on this when he was like eight.

02:06:07

At that time, on that day, in that way, totally dependent upon the cooperation of free human beings.

02:06:15

Yes. What if all those people in that crowd had not called for Barabbas to be released?

02:06:22

You're right. I mean, it's just a myriad of... People look back at history and they don't realize the complexity.

02:06:35

Isaiah naming Cyrus, which is why scholars call it

02:06:40

Deutero -Isaiah, because they don't believe there can be prophecy. God can't know. They're naturalists.

02:06:47

But just think of all of the free actions of free creatures that would go into a baby boy being born at the right place at the right time named

02:07:03

Cyrus. It just doesn't work.

02:07:10

You can play, you can jump on, you can stand on your head and spin in circles all you want.

02:07:16

It just doesn't work. It doesn't work. So yes, Pilate could have chosen to do the right thing. Had he, there are a million other ways

02:07:24

God could have accomplished his purposes. A million other ways. Well, we just listened to Dr.

02:07:29

White make two key mistakes culminating in one serious error.

02:07:35

One, Dr. White is arguing against a position that I don't hold. This is what's known as a straw man.

02:07:42

That somehow my view is that God wasn't involved in working these things together.

02:07:48

He clearly was. He accomplished his purposes. Two, Dr. White believes

02:07:55

God simply couldn't accomplish his purposes if men were truly free and self -determinative, because in his view,

02:08:04

God lacks either the intelligence or the power to accomplish his will in such a complex world.

02:08:12

So again, the open theist is going to disagree with him. Really, any open system is going to disagree.

02:08:21

And I'm not the only one. Some other people responded to him and said, hey, you're flirting with Molinism.

02:08:28

And that's what's going to come up here in a moment when he shows this map, which again, is going to prove my point. But we don't yet know where he's coming down on this.

02:08:39

When he did the same with Chris Fisher, he's saying, well, you know, I'm thinking about this and I'm working on that.

02:08:45

And when I put something together, maybe I'll send you the link and I'll let you critique it. And maybe I can learn some more stuff.

02:08:50

And so you've got someone who's putting together their theology of God. And then if you go, hey, wait a minute, what you're saying doesn't make any sense, then they get all upset with you and you're strawmanning them and all the rest of that stuff.

02:09:03

Well, it's impossible not to strawman someone who has not given a coherent understanding of their position as yet.

02:09:10

But despite that is willing to make statements and do stuff like this anyways. And yet,

02:09:16

Dr. White will be claiming that I am the one who has too low of a view of God.

02:09:24

Well, essentially, Dr. White's argument is like this. He sees a map of our national highways.

02:09:29

And he concludes that the number of roads, their various paths and intersections, the diverse terrain that they cross over, he looks at all this and he concludes that for this to be accomplished, our president had to have absolute and total control of all

02:09:45

US citizens that given the number of the workers and the millions upon millions of variables that had to be accounted for.

02:09:53

The only way we could end up where we are is if the president had absolute and total control over our minds and wills.

02:10:03

I mean, how could anyone predetermine that the road will leave New York and arrive in California unless they are causing all things?

02:10:13

Okay, does anyone think that that example is even on the same continent as something that would be meaningful?

02:10:21

Because I hope you don't. I hope you realize all he's trying to do is, hey, this looks really complicated.

02:10:28

And so if a person go from New York to California, then the president must have been controlling everyone's hearts, souls, and minds and stuff like that.

02:10:36

Again, this just shows abject ignorance of the driving force of the open theistic denial that God can know the free actions of free creatures, because if he can, then they're not free creatures and they're not free actions.

02:10:55

They have to be completely free for love to exist. That's the open theist argument. You can find it in all sorts of different things.

02:11:03

But the open theist argument is for love to exist, there has to be this level of freedom.

02:11:10

And so if God can know, then they're not truly free.

02:11:16

And the point is for people to make the choices down the road that brings about a certain situation, which is the conception of an individual who is going to be born at a certain place and do certain things and has to be at a certain place at a certain time to do certain things.

02:11:36

That's not Rhodes. That's far more complex than that.

02:11:42

And the fact of the matter is God has to have knowledge of the events of time for prophecy to actually exist.

02:11:53

If you wanted to try to make a connection here, the Rhodes would have to be able to be self -determining, which obviously

02:12:00

Rhodes are not, which is what made this a really bad example. And yet I saw at least two or three people going, wow, great job there.

02:12:11

And I'm just like, okay, well, all right. I mean, I keep going because we've gone over two hours now and Rich is looking antsy in the other room.

02:12:23

Now, Dr. White made another key mistake. Recall how Jesus had to speak in parables so that the

02:12:30

Jews wouldn't understand him and usher in the kingdom prematurely? Catching this?

02:12:37

So the idea from their perspective is that Jesus had to speak in parables because there was this real possibility that the

02:12:49

Jews would all repent, you see, and they'd bring in the kingdom before Jesus could die as the

02:12:55

Messiah. So this is a real possibility. And so he comes up this way to keep them from doing it.

02:13:02

This is literally what they're promoting, is that you could even have the incarnation and it still gets messed up because man's free.

02:13:18

Jesus knew this possibility existed and thus he took action to prevent it from occurring.

02:13:26

Yet Dr. White's view of foreknowledge denies the entire category of the possible.

02:13:33

In his view, there is only the certain and everything is decreed good and evil.

02:13:40

God knows the difference between possibilities and what he is actually going to accomplish for his own glory that will actually demonstrate the full range of his attributes.

02:13:51

He knows the difference between those two. So do the writers of the Bible. If you deal with Jehovah's Witnesses and things like that, okay, now catch this.

02:14:01

What was I doing? When we went into John 13,

02:14:06

I started talking about other stuff. I started talking about how to demonstrate, for example, the error of open theism.

02:14:17

One way is to go to John 13. What about Judas? So as an illustration,

02:14:23

I'm like, so for example, you can take the Unitarians, John 20, and they're always going to come up with wild and wacky explanations for that.

02:14:31

So I'm doing categories and saying, see, here's a key thing that demonstrates that. Here's a key thing that demonstrates that.

02:14:37

What does Warren McGrew think? That I'm actually talking about him and I'm saying he's like Jehovah's Witnesses other people.

02:14:44

And I'm accusing him of that. I mean, that is an incapacity to follow what's being said and commit category errors.

02:14:53

It's stunning. But I think most people sit back and go, but that's not what he wasn't.

02:15:00

He wasn't saying you were Jehovah's Witness. He was saying there are ways of demonstrating that certain positions just fail from a scriptural perspective.

02:15:10

He wasn't saying that you're one of those groups, dude. What are you doing? What are you thinking? I don't know.

02:15:15

Now, if you ever want to just find out if a Unitarian. I'm speechless.

02:15:23

Speechless. I have no speech. The free will of man is God. No, no, no,

02:15:28

I did not. I did not say that. All right. This is Jesus speaking. So if you're going to call yourself a

02:15:34

Christian, it's another religion. See how hard it is to respond to this.

02:15:40

I mean, it's just childish. I mean, you could say, oh, he's just having fun. Really? No, he's he's saying

02:15:47

I'm accusing him of all these things. I don't even know how you begin to respond to it other than just completely.

02:15:55

It's nothing that any of the biblical authors have dreamed of, obviously. Dreaming only about you.

02:16:02

In discussing my supposed views, Dr. White includes me with such groups as the

02:16:08

Jehovah's Witness, Unitarians and Mormons. Now, I don't know any from those groups that affirm dynamic omniscience, but if there are, can we can we all do we all understand that I wasn't even that no one could even begin to interpret that I was saying that it was wow.

02:16:30

Amazing. The fact that they would affirm it doesn't disprove it.

02:16:35

This is known as the guilt by association fallacy. It's just so dumb.

02:16:41

You don't even know what to say to this kind of stuff. After discussing pilot, Dr. White asked me about Judas.

02:16:48

Here we go. If Judas was free also, and I affirmed he was now,

02:16:53

Dr. White then makes all sorts of assumptions, drawing wild inferences from these assumptions and then proceeds to argue.

02:17:03

OK, now, folks, I know it's I know we've gone late. I'm sorry. Some of you who are truck drivers in long haul, you don't mind at all.

02:17:10

But here's the this is this is what we've been working toward. I wanted to do this stuff so I could demonstrate how many straw men and bad argumentation and all the rest of that stuff there but here's the issue.

02:17:21

I went to John chapter 13. I walked through it. I demonstrated how the prophetic reality was necessary for Jesus' self -revelation to his disciples.

02:17:34

You're going to need an in -depth exegetical response.

02:17:40

Let's see what we get from Warren McGrew, who against something of his own making, the one eating my bread has lifted up his heel against me.

02:17:56

Dr. White needs to read that passage again. It doesn't say I will make the one who eats my bread lift up his heel against me.

02:18:04

No. OK, absolutely, positively irrelevant. That's not an argument.

02:18:11

I wasn't saying that. Jesus interpreted the passage as having fulfillment in Judas and then said,

02:18:23

I'm telling you before it comes to pass that when it comes to pass, you may know that ego I am.

02:18:29

It is purely fallacious. It is not an argument. It is embarrassing to say, well, he needs to read that again.

02:18:39

I was translating it actually, and it doesn't have to say I will make.

02:18:45

Mr. McGrew, none of the prophetic passages Jesus quoted of himself as the

02:18:52

Messiah had that kind of language. Your false teaching turns the

02:18:59

Bible on its head. You cannot do exegesis, sir.

02:19:05

I'm not saying you lack the ability, which you seem to, but you can't do it because you are forcing a system onto the text.

02:19:16

He said in a tweet, hey, if you want to see how I deal with Judas, then listen to the video.

02:19:22

Well, we're listening, but we never heard you deal with Judas. It says the one who eats my bread has lifted up his heel against me.

02:19:31

Now, Jesus is telling his apostles this prophetically. He knew Judas was going to betray him.

02:19:37

This is a point I've never even argued, but Dr. White would have us believe that Jesus knew this because he was making

02:19:44

Judas betray him. He was making Judas betray him. See, once again, you start down here with man, you can't have any eternal decree.

02:19:54

It can't have any impact in time. And so there can't be a decree. So if there's a prophecy, and what was my question to him?

02:20:02

Could Judas have done other? He just said Judas knew he was going to, which means what?

02:20:09

Judas could not have done other. Because if Jesus knows that Judas is going to do that, and then

02:20:16

Judas doesn't do it, then Jesus's knowledge has been falsified. Maybe he wouldn't have a problem with that.

02:20:22

Maybe he wouldn't have any issue at all with that. But isn't it obvious that the whole point is if Jesus tells his disciples, this is the fulfillment of scripture, and this is how you know

02:20:35

I am, and then Judas doesn't do it, then Jesus doesn't have a demonstration.

02:20:40

He's the I am, right? And he has misled his disciples. Is that not obvious to everyone?

02:20:47

Is that not plain and clear? Compellingly so? So why don't we get a meaningful response?

02:20:55

Well, let's see what it is. Well, let's listen to some more. However, Judas was like any man.

02:21:02

He was created by God in his mother's womb, innocent and upright, ignorant and lacking.

02:21:08

Catch that? This man denies original sin. He is not even in the conversation between Rome and the

02:21:17

Protestants, the Reformation. He's on the other side, okay? This is not someone who comes from the

02:21:23

Reformation. This is not someone who comes from Roman Catholicism, on the other side.

02:21:30

So Judas is a new Adam, all right? ...knowledge, yet in complete reliance upon the

02:21:37

Lord. And from here, Judas grew, and he faced temptation, he was deceived, he became rebellious, and he began making choices that produced a wicked character.

02:21:49

Now, at any point in time, when Judas was faced with temptation, there was an escape for him, yet he developed a character that desired no such escape.

02:22:00

And God knew his heart and determined to use his wickedness for his own purpose. Now remember, the prophetic word existed long before Judas did any of this, which means if God had knowledge of this long before Judas came into existence, then his actions are a part of God's knowledge.

02:22:21

This is what open theism denies. And even some type of dynamic idea that would say it's only a possibility would be insufficient for the specificity of the prophetic word, which is why every open system will attack the idea of fulfilled prophecy in scripture.

02:22:42

It must, it has to. Pete To redeem mankind. And thus,

02:22:49

God included Judas among the twelve. Now, we read in 1

02:22:54

John 3, 7 and 8, little children, let no one deceive you.

02:23:00

Now, let me say this again. Let me just mention something. We won't be going back to John 13.

02:23:07

In fact, we had one reference to it, nothing about the I am nothing about the exegesis offered.

02:23:15

This was a complete failure on his part to even try to provide an exegetical response because his system isn't exegetically drive.

02:23:28

This is philosophical. God knew his character and therefore he used him.

02:23:35

Except he could have been other. So Judas might have been other. So there's just no way to explain the prophetic word.

02:23:43

None. You can't do it. Let no one deceive you.

02:23:50

Scripture goes on to say, whoever practices righteousness is righteous as he is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil for the devil has been sinning from the beginning.

02:24:01

The reason the son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. We see this same principle at work in the life of Pharaoh, where God declares,

02:24:12

OK, remember, I was told that he dealt with Judas. We are now off to Pharaoh.

02:24:19

OK, we ain't dealing with Judas. We're off to all we're on the other side of the planet now.

02:24:27

He knows the condition of Pharaoh's heart and character and that he will, in an act of judicial hardening, give

02:24:34

Pharaoh over to his own schemes as God knew this would happen.

02:24:39

And Pharaoh hardened his own heart repeatedly. And finally, as God said, in an act of judicial hardening,

02:24:48

God handed him over to reap what he had sown. However, Dr.

02:24:53

White would rather ignore all of this and instead accuse God of creating

02:24:58

Judas evil and making him betray Christ, which, of course, if this were true, then

02:25:05

Judas surely is to be pitied for he was a victim rather than a willful rebel.

02:25:11

Now, you see what's going on? For these folks,

02:25:20

Genesis 50, ignore it. Isaiah 10, ignore it. Acts 4, ignore it. Ignore any of those passages of Scripture where God's sovereign purpose and man's responsibility go hand in hand.

02:25:33

There can be no compatibilism. You cannot have Judas being

02:25:38

Judas if God has decreed. Because the whole idea from their perspective, they have this flattened down idea, just flatten it all out and you've got poor

02:25:50

Judas and God's forcing him. He's making him, I don't want to do that. You're going to do that.

02:25:55

I don't want to do that. You're going to do that. That's not the case at all. And instead of God actually restraining the evil of man and then using that which he does to bring about his purposes, you have this,

02:26:09

Dr. White says that God created Judas evil and made him do bad things. And maybe he doesn't know that that is just absurdly shallow and simplistic.

02:26:20

And maybe he doesn't know that. There could be people raised in ostensibly reformed churches that just never paid attention,

02:26:28

I suppose. I suppose. I don't know. But it's a straw man.

02:26:35

It is easily refutable from the text of Scripture as we've demonstrated them.

02:26:41

I'm not going to spend time going through Pharaoh right now, the fact that God said he was going to do that before Pharaoh hardened his heart the very first time.

02:26:48

I'm not going to go through the fact that it was God's intention to demonstrate his sovereignty over the gods of Egypt. And if you make it to that, that Pharaoh could have done something other than you're saying that, you know, again,

02:26:59

God's purposes have been very, very plain, very, very clear. But we haven't gotten any answer for Judas, have we?

02:27:06

Let's just finish a few more minutes before we wrap up a two and a half hour episode of The Dividing Line.

02:27:13

Thing worth mentioning here is how sweet and tragic this story is.

02:27:20

And I know this is supposed to be a response video, but I wanted to stop here for just a second and point this out briefly.

02:27:26

Jesus had just finished washing his disciples' feet. A nasty, nasty chore.

02:27:33

And he asks them if they understand what he did for them. And he tells them this is an example that they should do likewise.

02:27:41

Judas was included here. Scripture is very clear in this regard. Jesus washed the feet and encouraged his future betrayer to instead take on the role of a servant, all while knowing he was going to betray him.

02:27:58

Now, this completely flies in the face of the assertions made by Dr. White. Doesn't fly in the face of anything

02:28:05

I've said whatsoever. Anything. You bet he did. But the question has not been answered.

02:28:14

There is a prophecy. The prophecy had to be fulfilled. You're saying

02:28:20

Jesus knew passively? Was that a mere knowledge of possibility or reality?

02:28:28

Because you're playing with this possibilities. You're doing this dynamic stuff, and you're not using standard terminology because you're making stuff up as you're going along.

02:28:36

I get it. That gives you an out on everything and things like that. I get all that stuff. But you say that Jesus knew that Judas was going to betray him.

02:28:45

And the simple question I had asked you from the beginning is, could Judas have done otherwise? And you said yes.

02:28:52

So which is it going to be? Did Jesus know a factual reality upon which he could say, this is the fulfillment of Scripture?

02:29:01

Or a mere probability that could have been disproven by free will act of the creature?

02:29:07

Which is it? Which is it? Playing semantic games is boring.

02:29:19

Don't give me a response video with the Simpsons in it. Answer the actual question.

02:29:30

Please. Otherwise, there's just absolutely no reason whatsoever for even trying to continue.

02:29:40

So what he wants to do is, but you need to debate me on total depravity. Never going to happen until you take a stand on the nature of God.

02:29:49

Because I will not start with the creature. The whole doctrine of total depravity is based upon God's accomplishing of his eternal purpose in the creature man in and through the incarnation.

02:30:04

I start up there. If you don't have a God up there in control, there is no reason for you to believe in these things.

02:30:12

You don't have a foundation for it, but that means you don't have a foundation for most of Scripture. So figure out where you're going, man.

02:30:22

Figure out where you're going. Answer the question. And answer it without all the, 1

02:30:31

John 3 has nothing to do with this. Go to John chapter 13, exegete the text and answer the question or just move on.

02:30:42

Just move on. And we will too. I think it's useful to demonstrate these things once in a while, but the usefulness only goes so far.

02:30:51

There's other important things to be dealing with. Okay. All right. I'm not even sure if YouTube accepts something this long.

02:31:00

Four hours. Okay. We're good. Remember when it was 10 minutes? I remember it was 10 minutes. I remember well when it was 10 minutes.

02:31:07

You know, in all this discussion, I just keep thinking about 30 pieces of silver and a particular field.

02:31:15

And I just keep wondering, gee, you know, that was bought way back when. And, ooh, more prophecy, you know?

02:31:23

Yeah. That prophecy thing. Well, you know what? I can guarantee what the response that's going to be.

02:31:30

They're going to go with Bart Ehrman's argument that the recording in one of the synoptic gospels and in Acts is contradictory.

02:31:43

Because they don't have any problem. They have to fundamentally end up undercutting the inspiration of scripture because it's a philosophical system.

02:31:53

It's not a biblical system. We've seen that in all kinds of circles before. There you go. Next thing you know, we attack the scriptures.

02:31:59

Anyway. All right, folks. Sorry. Two and a half hours. I apologize.

02:32:08

Can you imagine if I tried to do that and did Trenthorne at the same time? Yeah, we would be ordering

02:32:15

Domino's and playing some long music. Because we're both a little bit on the older side.

02:32:25

So this is about as long a program as we can do. So right now, my plan is to go again tomorrow.

02:32:34

And maybe we'll be in the other studio. All depends on whether I can gain sufficient patience to deal with Windows.

02:32:43

That really is what it's all about. So we will see. Thanks for watching.