ATM Preacher, the Christian Shema, and Open Phones

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Started off looking at a “converted” ATM that is now being used to “preach” in a church in Germany, leading to some discussion of egalitarianism and related concepts. Then we commented a bit on the Christian/Muslim debate from last evening, leading to a discussion of 1 Corinthians 8:5-6 and Paul’s “Christian Shema.” Then we took calls on a variety of topics. Just over an hour today. Visit the store at https://doctrineandlife.co/

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00:39
Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. It is a Thursday. I've got a couple little things to get to at the start, and then we'll probably open up the phones at 877 -753 -3341 and allow you to sort of drive the direction that we are going.
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This morning, it's one of the few reasons I keep Twitter. Someone directed me to the
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German language article from yesterday, and this picture is classic.
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It's funny, they put some type of a head or a human face on it. But Hamburg has the first digital service via tablet with a blessing robot.
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I guess that's what Sagan's Roboter would be, a blessings robot.
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And the picture, this thing is a converted automatic bank telling machine.
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With sort of a little head on top. Well here, I'll let you figure out how to show it.
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But there he is. Called BlessU2.
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BlessU2, sorry. There he is. He? She? It? I'm sure
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I haven't asked his preferred pronouns. It has not self -identified yet, yeah.
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Though the face looks like it's a refugee from a
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Halloween thing, to be honest with you. But it's literally a converted bank automaton, an
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ATM. And 400 people attended this digital service, and another 400 online.
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By smartphone or tablet. And the speaker was
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BlessU2. BlessU2. And so that's where you're getting your sermon.
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From a converted bank teller machine. Obviously, especially when you see it here, with some of the stuff in the background, and the candles and stuff like that.
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You just go, you know, once the essence of the faith is removed, nature abhors a vacuum.
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And so something's gonna get sucked in there. And if you don't have any message anymore, because you don't have an authoritative word from God anymore, something's gotta come in.
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And so much of, especially European, externalized, especially state -based, quote -unquote churchianity,
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Christianity, has become, as it's described, deistic moral therapy, therapeutism, or whatever they call it.
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You know, it's just pious platitudes. You know, I'm sitting here looking at this, realizing, you know what it looks more like?
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Is a gas pump. It looks like a gas pump to me.
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Because I feel like I could walk up, get the things on the side, stick it in my car, fill it up. It might do that too.
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I mean, that would be another blessing. Somebody in the chat channel just said, at least it was a converted bank machine.
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It'd be terrible if it was non -converted. So it's a convert. It could have been a
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Muslim, or a Buddhist, or... What if it was an atheist bank teller machine?
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That would really be bad. Anyway, yeah, that was sent to me this morning, and I was just like...
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Look, obviously, theologically, it does at least give me a moment to sort of say something about the current egalitarian, complementarian debate that's going on, that clearly, especially in the
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Southern Baptist circles, is reaching epic proportions. When you talk about...
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What if this particular Sagan's Roboter...
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What if you programmed it? What if one of us snuck in there and programmed it with a
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Spurgeon sermon? I mean, a spot -on, solid sermon.
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Wouldn't that... I mean, what if you didn't have anybody that could even deliver something like that?
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Why not? I mean, now you've got good stuff there. Is that any different than listening?
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I mean, you can listen to Spurgeon sermons online. They're not even computerized voices. They're people who have read
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Spurgeon in sort of a British accent, because they're probably British, and they're online.
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And so, what's wrong with that? Well, it's the context.
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There's nothing wrong with that. I've listened to Spurgeon sermons while riding my bike and stuff like that, and there's everything fine in listening to Spurgeon sermons, and you could probably get a blessing out of listening to Spurgeon sermons, but the issue is the location and what's supposed to be going on.
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And why does this relate to the egalitarian, complementarian controversy, and if you're not familiar with those terms, the two ends of the spectrum in regards to the role of gender, and of course
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I'm using that term in the gender binary, men and women, in the eldership, and in the function of preaching, and then you have to ask questions, preaching where?
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On a street corner? Behind a pulpit? On a
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Sunday morning with the ordinances being practiced? Lord's Supper?
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And obviously there are all sorts of different takes and understandings today of what's right and wrong in that context.
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Now, I do recognize the giftedness of women as thinkers and teachers and speakers and all of those things, but I'm a complementarian, not an egalitarian.
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Partly because I believe in the sufficiency of Scripture, and therefore if Scripture wished us to have offices and individuals in offices, or even classes of people in offices,
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Scripture is going to give us what we need to be able to do that. And clearly, in both the pastoral epistles that address this, from Paul, the requirements and qualifications are very clear as to who they are about.
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And so how do you hold those two things together? I know lots of folks who will recognize that the qualifications that are given in Scripture are for men.
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There are others who will dismiss that as having been solely culturally relevant. Which ends up leading to looking at what the
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Scriptures say about sexuality and marriage and everything else as being totally culturally relevant, either.
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But here's what, for me, is sort of the missing—well, it's not the missing factor, people do mention it, but it's not central to what a lot of people say on this particular subject.
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I believe that there is an exercise of God -given authority in the proclamation of the
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Scriptures in the gathered body of the New Testament Church.
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Now, once you embrace the idea that—and
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I remember very clearly years ago I was at a particular church, and one of the elders said,
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I'm so glad we've gotten past thinking there's anything special about the pulpit. And I thought to myself, hmm.
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See, I don't agree with that. I think there is something special about the gathering of believers together in the purposeful uniting together to be in the presence of God and to hear
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His words spoken. And that's united together with the ordinances of the
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Church, which I also believe are meant to be performed by the
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Church. I mean, you can't have Church discipline. You can't exclude somebody from the Lord's Supper if you don't have
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Church membership, if you don't know who's supposed to be there and who's not supposed to be there. And it is a
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Church ordinance. It is not for you and your buddies to break out the grape juice and crackers in the backyard.
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You may think you've got where two or three are gathered. That's not what Jesus was saying. That's a good way to rip
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Scripture right out of its context and abuse it, but it gets done all the time. This issue of authority, to me, is the primary issue in trying to draw lines in regards to what is simply teaching.
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That is communication of data and the authoritative proclamation of gospel truth that requires obedience on the part of those listening.
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That, to me, is the difference. Are you in a context where there is a necessary concept of obedience to what is being said?
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Is God's Word being set forth to God's people? That, to me, is where the dividing line is.
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And since so few churches even have the idea any longer of an authoritative proclamation of God's truth, then it's easy to see why that line is becoming completely blurred everywhere.
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And a lot of people are just going, Ah, you know, that was just for back then, and we're going to go a different way.
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And so, that, to me, is the key issue, is the issue of authority.
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The issue of authority, that's central to me. So, a converted, even a
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Christian converted, bank teller machine spewing a
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Charles Spurgeon sermon can communicate truth to you.
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God might even use that to convert somebody, but it's not the God -ordained mechanism whereby
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His Word is to be ministered in the church, authoritatively requiring obedience on the part of those hearing.
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That's where the difference lies for me. And if that helps you, great.
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If it doesn't, well, it cost you a lot to spend that few minutes as I thought about that.
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One other thing before I get to a little bit of teaching thing, then we'll look at the calls. Had a disturbing conversation with a
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Christian brother yesterday. Not all of it was public. Years ago, we had
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Voddie Balkamon, and we discussed what he called at that time, ethnic
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Gnosticism. The idea that there are certain people who don't get to address particular perspectives because their ethnicity does not give them the experiential knowledge to be able to do so properly.
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In other words, you've got to have walked in my shoes. You've got to be one of us to be able to address these issues.
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And Voddie talked about how dangerous this is, how it leads to division, and can be an open door for error and heresy and false teaching and groupthink and everything else.
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And it struck me yesterday as I was looking at a statement by a...
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Confused me there. You did it so fast that the poor little computer got confused.
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But I was looking at a statement by an African American brother that basically said,
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I'm not going to interact with anybody who isn't black on this subject because they just don't have the basis to even talk about it.
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Now, part of that was that I have been known to point out that one particular brother on Twitter does not seem to want to consistently utilize the standard rules of logic in his argumentation.
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And what's really frightening is when I start encountering people who seem to think that there's Chinese logic, and there's
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Korean logic, and there's Indian logic, and there's African logic, and there's
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European logic. I mean, we realize there are people who are teaching this.
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There are... What? I think was it New Mexico or California? They're both way out there.
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California. I just think California should start rowing itself over to North Korea because they've got the same people in charge.
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But I figure if everybody got on the beach and started paddling, it might work. Might just pull it right off there, right along the
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San Andreas. Got a lot of paddling to do, but they'll get there eventually. Put some boats out there, anchor them good, and then start pulling and just pull the whole thing across the
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Pacific. Anyway, there are those people in some universities who are literally saying that science and logic and mathematics are white colonialism, that we need to get rid of these things because it's a function of white colonialism.
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And you just go... And you're saying this on a computer that was designed by this science that you consider to be white colonialism.
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It was probably not built by very many white people at all at that point, but how do you even talk to someone like that?
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And so I had pointed out to this particular individual, there's no such thing as black logic versus white logic.
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The excluded middle is the excluded middle. Non -contradiction is non -contradiction. The only way that any human being can interact with this world is to recognize these laws of logic that originate in the creator himself, and he doesn't give different kinds of logic dependent upon your ethnic background or traditions or the color of your skin.
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It's just irrational, and I'd use the term irrational. And what
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I get back is this... You all can't address this because you're just the wrong color.
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And all of a sudden it struck me, because as soon as I saw that, I'm like, oh, ethnic
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Gnosticism. That goes back a few years. And then I go, wait a minute. Oh my goodness, you know what ethnic
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Gnosticism is? It's a now dated term for the new word.
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Intersectionality. Intersectionality. See, I can't speak to these things because intersectionally
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I don't intersect. I am the worst of the worst. I am the least...
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I have the least authority intersectionally speaking because I am a white, cisgendered male,
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English speaking, Anglo, the whole nine yards.
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I mean, anything that is bad and evil, that's me. I'm just bad and evil from the left's perspective there.
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And I just realized Vodi had beaten the intersectionality folks to the punch.
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It's the same thing. It's this idea that it is my experiences and this, this, and this.
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It gives me this Gnostic knowledge that you can't have. You can't even speak to these things.
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I don't even have to defend my statements logically and rationally to you. I don't have to provide facts.
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I do not have to reason in a logical fashion. I do not have to avoid contradiction or the excluded middle.
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I don't have to do any of those things. The more intersectionality points I have, the less
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I have to worry about any of those things. And as I was sitting there, I was just staring at it going, that's what it is.
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I can't, I, wow. Vodi was, Vodi was ahead of all of us on that particular, that particular one.
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Hmm, interesting. Oh, some type of a fire going on. I was going, why would
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James Woods be telling people to get out of someplace? But it was a, I guess there was a fire thing going on somewhere. Anyway, so that was, that was something
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I wanted to mention about, about Vodi as he was ahead of, ahead of all of us. All right, let's switch gears one more time before we go to the calls.
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I suppose we have calls lined up. Just one? Okay. Well, this will take a few minutes, so hopefully they'll hold on.
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I'm sorry? Oh, say the number. The number. Yeah.
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877 -753 -3341. 877 -753 -3341. I was listening, well,
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I didn't listen to all of it. I only listened to the opening presentations and then the first rebuttals last evening of the debate,
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Muhammad Hijab with David Wood. I want to hear,
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I want to hear all of it eventually, to hear what the rest of it was, was like. I haven't had a chance to yet.
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And the reason that I did that is
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I had been informed while the debate was actually going on that my name was being invoked and that this might result in nastiness coming my direction in the future.
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And I was like, why? What did I do? And so I started listening and discovered eventually what it was all about and what had happened.
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Did I just? Oh, I see what I did. There we go. What had happened was that at one point the
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Muslim debater had used my name in reference to the stance that I took earlier this year,
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I think. Against the Islamicize Me videos. And I had said at the time,
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I had said at the time, if you're going to go this direction, you can't really expect that in the future you're going to be able to engage much in the way of meaningful
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Muslim opposition because they're just going to use this over and over and over and over again.
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Well, that's basically what happened. So the thought has crossed my mind,
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I've downloaded the video of maybe working through the Muslim speaker's, Mohammad Hijab's, opening statement and the challenges that he gave in regards to the doctrine of the
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Trinity because it was pretty much what you would get from Buzzard and other
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Unitarians. It was using a lot of the same source material. Buzzard may have been part of his source material in regards to singular pronouns in the
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Old Testament and a lot of the stuff that isn't overly relevant but sounds good to a
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Unitarian if you're already starting at the point of Unitarianism. But in light of his challenges, what
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I wanted to do is I wanted to go over with folks one more time, just in a few minutes, what
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I call the Christian Shema. Now, I think you should know the
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Shema, I think you should know what Shema means in Hebrew. Shema is the imperatival form to hear and so it is in reference to the prayer that Orthodox Jewish people, in Jesus' day and to today as well, the prayer that Jewish people pray each day that marks them as Jewish people, as followers of Yahweh.
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Now, obviously in talking to Jewish people, you don't ever say Yahweh. You say
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Adonai or Hashem. So they would say, Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad.
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But that's not what Deuteronomy 6 .4 says. You'll notice
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I have on the screen here, I guess that's readable even down there,
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I guess depending upon the resolution of the viewer's screen, I suppose.
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Should we ask our studio audience to read the Hebrew and maybe parse the Greek? Did you tell them that was a requirement for getting to come in to the program?
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They don't just get participation trophies. They actually have to read the Hebrew on the air live and then parse any verbs found in the
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Greek Septuagint. So they're looking a little bit scared behind you. I'm not really sure they could get right.
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Okay. But you have here both the
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Hebrew, which of course goes right to left, Shema Yisrael Eloheinu Eloheinu Echad.
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And then you have very, very importantly for Christians, the
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Greek, Akui Yisrael, Kurios Hathaios Haimon, Kurios Hais Esten.
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Here Israel, Kurios Hathaios, Lord is our God, Kurios Hais Esten, Lord is one.
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So what you see is the relationships of the terms here.
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I used the red, and I'm not sure, I think this demonstrates that I'm on a different size screen than I originally used this on.
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Some of the arrows aren't exactly the way I'd like them to be. But you'll notice that Kurios, this
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Kurios is in reference to Yahweh. This is the Tetragrammaton, Yod, He, Wau, He, Yahweh.
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And there's Kurios. And then here's a second Kurios, and that's in reference to this
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Yahweh. I'm not sure why that isn't colored, but that's it right there, Yod, He, Wau, He. Hathaios, the
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Os, God, is going right here to Eloheinu, our, it's really Hathaios Haimon, our
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God becomes Eloheinu. The Nu is ours, it's normally Elohim, our
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God. And then the other word that I have noted is the word
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Hais. Hais, which is the Hebrew term Echad. And that is directly related to Wahad, making one
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Tawhid, relevant in Islam and the
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Arabic phraseology for the oneness of God. The point is for you to recognize the
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Greek translation. It's important to remember that we have to have a balance.
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Balance is always what we strive for, and it's the hardest thing to maintain. On the one hand, there is an element of truth to the movement today to recognize the
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Jewish roots of the faith, the fact that Jesus was a
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Jewish rabbi, that his teaching would have been heard by Jewish ears first, and yet, it's also important to recognize that it didn't stay that way, and it wasn't
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God's intention for it to stay that way, and that the gospel birthed in the land of the
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Jews is intended to go out to the whole world. And that included, at that point in time, the whole world that was speaking the
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Greek language. The Greek language had been spread all across the Mediterranean by Alexander the Great 300 years before Christ, and it was still the lingua franca, even under the
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Romans. Koine Greek was the universal tongue.
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And so it's the Greek septuagint, the LXX noted right there, the
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Greek septuagint is a vitally important translation of the
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Bible, of the Old Testament, we would call it the Old Testament, the Tanakh. And its language determines the word choices made by the
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New Testament writers. So, keeping that in mind, when we go into the
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New Testament, we encounter this text from 1 Corinthians 8.
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Paul writes to the Corinthians and he says, But for us there is one God, the
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Father, from whom are all things, and we for him. And one Lord, Jesus the
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Messiah, through whom are all things, and we through him. Now, this is in the context of people who do not eat meat sacrificed to idols.
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Paul has just said, now, we know there's only one God, and the idol is nothing in this world, even though there are many things that are called gods, but for us, there is one
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God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we for him. And one Lord, Jesus the Christ, the Messiah, through whom are all things, and we through him.
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Now, in Greek, here is what Paul wrote, In this case, there is one
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God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we through him. And one
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Lord, Jesus the Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him.
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Now, I'm doing this, by the way, in response to one of the challenges of the Muslim debater in the debate with David Wood last night, to demonstrate how deeply entrenched
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Trinitarian thought is within the New Testament documents themselves, just to illustrate that here.
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Now, here is what Paul writes to the Corinthians. Now, Paul, obviously, knows the
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Shema in Hebrew, and guess what other language he knows it in? He knows it in Greek as well.
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And so, it is highly significant when we look at the terminology. What he says to the
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Corinthians, he says, hais theos, and he says, hais kurios.
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Now, where have we seen those words before? Well, we've seen those words in the
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Greek version of the Shema from Deuteronomy 6 .4. And so, the kurios, who is
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Yahweh, the tetragrammaton in Hebrew, is ascribed to Jesus.
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Theos, the normal term that Paul uses of God the Father, is applied to the
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Father, and that echad, hais, is used both times.
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There's hais kurios and hais theos. So, as many scholars have recognized, if you have a
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Jewish scholar like the Apostle Paul writing in Greek and defining the faith of Christians, and by the way, you'll notice
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Paul's not saying, hey guys, I've got something new for you here. I know you've never heard this before, but I'm going to introduce something really cool for you.
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No. As is the case in so many instances, the depth of the theological teaching is seen in the fact that it was already the common possession of the people, and it only comes out in the epistle to reaffirm something or to illustrate an application.
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That's what you've got here. Why shouldn't we worry about meat sacrifice to idols? Because there are no idols, because we know there's only one true
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God, and then when he defines what Christians believe, he takes the shema and he
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Christianizes it. And what does that mean? He has taken the language and he has filled it out in light of the
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Incarnation. In light of the Incarnation. What have I said over and over again over the years?
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The revelation of the doctrine of the Trinity takes place between the end of Malachi and the beginning of Matthew.
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It takes place in the Incarnation and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit of God. That's where the revelation is.
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So, the New Testament becomes the record of that faith, not the place where that faith is revealed.
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That's why Trinitarian passages have the form that they do. They are in passing, rather than the subject of, hey,
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I got something new for you here. No, it's not new, because all the New Testament writers are writing after that revelation has been made.
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That's already the common property that they possess as believers. And so, you can take the shema, which everyone would have known,
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Kuei Yisrael, Kureas Hafeas, Hemon, Kureas Haise Esten, and expand it out and even mention, you know, the
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Father, from whom are all things, and we for Him, Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through Him.
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And sort of give what's called economic indicators of the function of the divine persons and how they differ from one another.
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But it's still the same shema, and it's still the same language that is being utilized in this text here.
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And so, the point here is that what we find in the
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New Testament, this is just one of a number of places where we find texts that make no sense unless we recognize the already established and understood perspectives of the early church.
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And I think that answers to one of the, at least part of the challenge that Muhammad Hijab made to David Wood, and this is something
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I would have focused specifically upon in giving my response.
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Now, I'm not sure where Muhammad Hijab is from in the UK. It sounds like he's from the
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UK, but I'm going to be over in the UK a number of times this coming year, and I have one particular location that maybe we could work out a debate at, but I would want it to be a little bit more of a narrow focus, and I'll be honest with you,
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I found Muhammad's, especially his attitude in regards to his knowledge of the
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Arabic language, to really put me off. You know,
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I would invite him to maybe talk to some of his own brothers in his faith and say, so what do you think?
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You think maybe dial that back just a little bit? You think that's a good thing, bad thing? Might be of assistance one way or the other on that.
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Hopefully that's useful to you. A lot of folks like when we work through various texts like that and point stuff out, because a lot of folks just say, well, you shouldn't do that.
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No one's going to understand what we're talking about. No, actually, I find most people to be quite interested in that kind of thing, actually, and to find it very, very useful.
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All right. 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number.
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I am logging into things here, and look at that. We've got phone lines galore.
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So might have enough time to run through these four. We'll see how it works out. All right.
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Let's talk with Brian in Chicago. Hi, Brian. Hello, Brian.
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Hi, Dr. White. Yes, sir. Hello. Yes, sir. Oh, hi.
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Thanks for taking my call. I had a question on the perspicuity of Scripture.
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So I was listening to a lecture where the person said the idea that we need the
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New Testament to interpret the Old, that the New Testament sheds light on the Old Testament, contradicts the perspicuity of Scripture, because that would mean that the
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Old Testament by itself to a Jewish person did not possess clarity.
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Do you have any response to that? Well, there is everything correct to say that the first level of interpretation of the
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Tanakh, the Torah, the Nevim and Ketuvim, the Old Testament Scriptures, the
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Jewish Scriptures, the Hebrew Scriptures, however you want to call them, there's everything right to say that the first level of interpretation should be, as it is with anything else, what the words initially meant to the initial people to whom they were addressed.
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And so, for example, when interpreting Messianic prophecy, on the banks of the
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Jordan River a few weeks ago, while a bunch of Eastern Orthodox folks behind us were getting baptized in that really green water, there were a lot, believe me, the headwaters of the
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Jordan were a lot prettier than down there. It looked like not only had everybody already been baptized, they had done their laundry too by the time it got down there.
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It was really ugly. But anyways, right on the banks of the Jordan, I did a
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Bible study that no one expected me to do, but it was on Messianic prophecies.
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And one of the things I pointed out is that when you look at Isaiah 714, when you look at Isaiah 9 -6, when you look at Isaiah 11 -1, there was a historical, real fulfillment at that time, and you need to recognize that.
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But you are taking something away from the body of that literature. You are reducing that literature to nothing more than a collection of human writings if you don't recognize that that's not far enough, and that even the way that Isaiah is constructed, you have this theme starting in Isaiah 6 all the way through Isaiah 11 that all the
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New Testament writers pick up on. Peter and Paul, and they're all quoting from stuff in here, which
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I think can only be explained by the post -resurrection teaching ministry of Jesus in opening their minds to the scriptures.
40:23
But you have this phrase, Emmanuel, God with us. We see that in Isaiah 7, but it's also before and after, and then you have the son that's given to us, and the child that's born to us, and the branch, and you have all this stuff going on.
40:42
When you see it as a whole, then you see it at a higher level than just simply the individual texts themselves.
40:52
And so, I would not say that it denies in any way the perspicuity or clarity of scripture.
41:00
It just simply is a recognition of what is called progressive revelation, and that is that the
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Holy Spirit was speaking, as all the New Testament writers affirm, the Holy Spirit was speaking plainly in the
41:13
Hebrew scriptures, but not... He was speaking prior to the great redemptive event and the great revelation of the nature of God in the incarnation, the outpouring of the
41:24
Holy Spirit. And so, what we then have in the New Testament, especially when it's providing us with, in essence, apostolic -inspired interpretations of the old, is a light that was not available before.
41:40
And how else could it be? So, if you define perspicuity of scripture as merely whatever the words say now is all they possibly can say, and there's nothing that's going to happen in the future that is going to shed more light upon this once prophecy is fulfilled, well, then you're just basically begging the question and saying there can't be any prophecy or there can't be any future fulfillment or anything like that.
42:06
So, I would say it's a category error to actually make that kind of a statement. I don't think that's really what's going on there.
42:16
So, my answer is no, I don't believe that...
42:21
Now, I'm not one of those folks that basically says the Old Testament is a closed book unless you read it through New Testament eyes.
42:29
What I'm saying is that there are patterns that only come into their full expression once what they were prophesying about happens, and we have further revelation that further explicates things.
42:41
So, you just have to take it all as a whole, and it's when you won't allow scripture to be a whole that you end up missing,
42:51
I think, these very important points. Okay?
42:57
Okay, thank you. That makes a lot of sense. Okay, thanks, Brian. All right, God bless. Bye -bye. All right, let's just...
43:05
Well, we'll see. I can fill at the end. It just seems like four would be a good one.
43:11
It looks like they're pretty much straight in order here. So, let's talk with Nikki in Canada.
43:20
Hi, Dr. White. Thank you for taking my call. So, you are in Canada. So, they're actually allowing your voice to go out of Canada without taxing it.
43:27
I guess so. I don't know. We'll see what the bill is after this. Yeah, see, I'm trying to send something to somebody in Canada, and I sent it
43:36
UPS, and the Canadian border control people called me on my phone, and they said, what is this?
43:47
And so, I told them, and they said, why is it marked for repair? And I said, it's...
43:54
Well, someone's probably listening who I'm sending it to. It's a garment. I said, it's a gift.
44:00
It's not... Oh, someone marked the wrong box. Oh, okay. So, we'll deliver it now.
44:06
Okay. Hopefully. Thank you. Bye. You know, go Maple Leafs or whatever.
44:12
I don't know. Just do something to make them happy up there. So, anyhow, it has nothing to do with your question.
44:19
No, that's okay. I just have a question actually related to Matthew 19.
44:26
Verse 9 says, and I say to you, this is the NASD, and I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality and marries another woman, commits adultery.
44:36
And could you please tell me about the word immorality there and what it means exactly in that context?
44:43
Yeah. This is called the exception clause, maepipornia, and you obviously recognize that term in Greek, pornia, because it has a fairly recognizable form.
45:02
It's come over into English in pornography and things like that. But pornia is a broad range of sexual sin, and as you probably are aware, in the days of Jesus, there was a very fierce debate going on within rabbinic
45:26
Judaism regarding the nature of the marriage covenant. And you had the school of Shammai and the school of Hillel.
45:37
And one had a very conservative, limited definition of what was grounds for divorce, which would include fornication.
45:49
One had a very, very, very, very, very wide definition. So basically, if your wife burned the toast, you could send her away.
45:58
And what's interesting is I had never thought of this before.
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Someone pointed out to me about 15 years ago or so now.
46:10
But when you think about the Old Testament and the subject of divorce, if your spouse was dead, you were free to remarry.
46:23
What most people don't think about is, were there not sins that a person in Israel could commit that would result in their execution?
46:34
And what would therefore happen to their spouse? So if, well, you think of one of those really, really, really tough texts,
46:45
I think it's in Deuteronomy, where you're basically told that even if the wife of your bosom, the wife of your youth who you love, if she secretly says to you, let us go after other gods and worship other gods, you are to report her to the elders and be the first one to cast the stone.
47:07
Now you think about something like that, that's tough enough just on its own, but the point is, what that would mean is, idolatry under the theocratic structure of Israel would have resulted in a de facto valid divorce.
47:27
In other words, the Jewish person who fulfilled the law, spouse dies, executed for trying to bring heresy into Israel, that person's free to remarry.
47:41
And so the question then becomes, in light of that, for example, to use one that's even more relevant to us today, both
47:54
Leviticus, especially Leviticus 20, if your spouse was found, if you're a woman and you discover that your husband is engaging in homosexual behavior, once again, the result would be the cutting of that person off from the people.
48:13
It would be state -sponsored execution of that person, and what does that mean regards you?
48:20
That means that you would be free to remarry. And so what that means is, there were a wider number of things that could result in the proper ending of the covenantal marriage relationship, but they were all sin issues.
48:39
And so is pornaya as broad as all of those, well, not all, it's not like there were 47 ,000 different things that would cause you to be executed in Israel, but is pornaya as broad as idolatry?
48:58
I think without question, most people would recognize, yeah, homosexuality would definitely do it. That would definitely be grounds.
49:07
But idolatry, some of the other things that would cause you to be cut off, that's really where the debate comes in, because most people would naturally limit that range in light of our
49:23
English use of pornography or related sexual sins, but that's where the debate is.
49:32
So that's something to keep in mind when looking at the exception clause and exactly what it is referring to, but it's hard to not recognize that there is a class of activities that would qualify in Matthew chapter 19, verse 9.
49:57
Now, I'll tell you as well, there are people who will argue against the originality of that phrase on a textual basis.
50:08
There is a textual variant, well, there are a few textual variants at that point, and so there are some who just simply go, get rid of all of it, and there is no exception.
50:25
Even pornaya is not a grounds for the dissolution of the marriage ceremony.
50:32
I think that's an extreme position, but there are people who take it, so you will encounter it in various books and commentaries and stuff like that that you'll run into, because it's a really complicated variant in verse 9.
50:48
So keep that in mind as well. You might run into that if you're looking things up in things here, there, and everywhere.
50:57
So there you go. Unfortunately, you'll find entire books written just on that phrase, but that's the best information
51:06
I can give you. Wow, that's very helpful. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Now, everything
51:12
I said may be politically incorrect in Canada, so I just need to warn about that.
51:21
I'm almost scared to go up there at times. I'm going to run into one of those human rights commissions or something, and I'm going to get in a bunch of trouble.
51:27
So how much further behind are you guys, do you think, in the progressivism of Canada?
51:32
We've got people that are trying to outrun you, but it's just that we still have so many of us crusty curmudgeons that we are acting as a little bit of a boat anchor, and so we're not catching up to you.
51:47
But there's some folks that are rowing pretty hard to try to catch up. No toys about it. Well, if you wear a coogee,
51:52
I don't think you're a curmudgeon. I think that puts you in a different category. Yes, a crazy curmudgeon may be, but definitely.
51:59
Well, you know what? To be honest with you, there is a coogee. Do you know who the knockoff brand of coogee is?
52:07
I do not. Tundra, which is Canadian. And so go find yourself a
52:13
Tundra from Canada, and they are sometimes even nicer than the coogee originals.
52:19
They're really, really pretty. So I was wearing a Tundra yesterday, actually. So yeah, look them up.
52:25
Rich is about to cut me off from talking more about that on the air. So, well, thank you for your call.
52:31
Thank you very much, Dr. Wake. All right, bye -bye. Yeah, poor Rich. He's just, you know, when you've got coogee derangement syndrome, it's hard to lose it.
52:44
Let's talk with Joshua. Hello. Hey, Dr.
52:49
Wake. How are you doing, brother? Doing good. Good. I wanted to ask a question on...
52:58
I wrote it down. Basically, a proper balance between work flowing out of a changed heart and not in asceticism or just thinking that if we mortify, you know, if you take, like,
53:14
Colossians 3, verse 5, you know, and the list that Paul gives or whatever, what's that proper balance between the indicatives and the imperatives in the
53:25
Gospel or in Pauline letters? Well, that's a big area.
53:33
I mean, you quoted the one text, "...therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead, immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry."
53:43
I mean, that's pretty much parallel to the really strong statement from John in 1
53:52
John 2, if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. I mean, that's about as strong as you're going to get, especially when you consider what we could possibly identify as love of the world.
54:07
There's a lot of that amongst many of us, and so you really wonder exactly how far you're supposed to take that.
54:13
Obviously, the history of the Church is a lengthy history of seeking to find balance in that way, and you not only look at the various monastic movements and asceticism and things like that, but even when you get into, say, the
54:35
Puritans after the Reformation, where you at least have a solid doctrine of salvation and justification, you don't have the suspicions and silly stuff that you've got in Roman Catholicism from the
54:49
Middle Ages, you've got a re -establishment of a meaningful Pauline exegesis, but even still then, it's well known that certain of the
54:57
Puritans, because of their very strong emphasis upon personal holiness, at times may have wandered a little bit back into some of the legalism and things like that.
55:15
Finding that balance is not an easy thing, and you can't just simply say, well, it's up to each individual.
55:26
It does tend to go with the Church as a whole over a period of time.
55:33
And so it would definitely seem that, for example, in the United States, I think there's a great indolence,
55:41
I think there's a great apathy, I think there's a love of the world and love of our stuff and our things that we justify very, very much and work on justifying.
55:53
But normally, what ends up happening is even when we correct that, maybe through persecution or something like that, the human tendency, what's that Keith Green line from that song?
56:10
And even when I'm doing well, help me to never seek a crown, for my desire is always to be pleasing to you.
56:16
The whole idea being, you know, well, another line in the Martin Luther Heretic movie was
56:25
Luther was saying to someone, and even if I do what's pleasing to God, do
56:31
I not have ego about that? Am I not proud of that? Does not God smell my fear? So everything is always tainted and the human tendency is to move toward pride and toward using religion as power over others.
56:50
And you see that historically, almost every Reformation movement, especially when it's focused upon piety, ends up going that direction.
57:02
It ends up resulting in basically Christian Pharisaism. Just as, hey, the
57:08
Pharisees started out great. Pharisees started out with Nehemiah and those guys weren't doing so well later on, but it took time for that evolution to take place.
57:18
So yeah, those are the two, you know, if you've seen some of those, people keep sending me these videos of people who ride bikes in incredibly dangerous places on tops of high mountains, along these teeny tiny little trails that are like, you know, two inches wide or something like that.
57:36
But that's sort of what we're facing, is you've got the cliff on both sides.
57:42
Falling off either side of the horse. Falling off either side, yeah, that's what happens, definitely. I appreciate that,
57:50
Asher. I appreciate you. Okay, thanks a lot, man. God bless. Have a good one. All right, we timed these really, really well, actually.
57:58
Let's talk with Cedric. Hi, Cedric. Hey, Dr. White, how are you?
58:03
Doing good. Good. Question for you about a passage I was working on recently, 1
58:10
John chapter 4, verses 1 through 6. And John is, this is about sort of the authority of the
58:20
Church, what authority does the Church have as a theological criterion, if you will.
58:27
Because in John, in 1 John chapter 4, verses 1 through 6, John basically appears to give us two tests for discerning the spirit of truth versus the spirit of falsehood.
58:38
The first test he gives us is verse 2, every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge
58:47
Jesus is not from God. But then he goes down in verse 5 and gives us another test, or verse 6, excuse me, we are from God, and whoever knows
58:59
God listens to us, but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. And so I was working with that and thinking through that, and it does seem that John is sort of holding up the, how do you want to put it, the spirit -infused
59:18
Church as a kind of theological criterion by which these
59:24
Christians are going to be able to discern the spirit of truth from the spirit of falsehood. And I was thinking...
59:30
Well, in his particular context, which is a fairly narrow context, because I mean, you have to keep this in balance with Paul in Galatians 1 and 2.
59:43
So you have two different kinds of what we would call heresy being involved here.
59:50
And you can tell this from looking at verse 2, by this you know the spirit of God, every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.
59:59
I accept the Judaizers in Galatia also believe that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.
01:00:05
That means they're from God, right? No, it doesn't mean they're from God. They had one element of truth, but they denied another element someplace over here.
01:00:17
And so what I'm saying is, sometimes what we do is we take a text of scripture that had a particular context in the early
01:00:26
Church, 1 John has a specific context in regards to proto -Gnosticism, the early
01:00:31
Desetics, the specific heretics that John is dealing with, are not the
01:00:37
Judaizers in Galatia. And so sometimes we'll take that and attempt to build a large interpretive base off of that and make large conclusions, when the reality is we need to get general conclusions.
01:00:58
Here is a key issue in this context, this apostle at this time said this to this group, and therefore we can make that application, but that needs to be put side by side with what this apostle over here said the
01:01:10
Judaizers, and what Peter said over here in regards to this group over here, like in 2 Peter, and that gives us a much more balanced and full view than if we just focus upon just one.
01:01:24
You see what I'm saying? So when you say spirit -infused Church, well, yeah, except that the content of verse two is a theological content that is explicated in other books other than 1
01:01:38
John. There's an assumption that there is a body of revelation and truth that is already embraced by the people, and that the
01:01:50
Gnostics, because of their denial of who Christ is, though they claim to speak with authority, are in point of fact contradicting fundamental elements of that.
01:02:01
It does lead you to the the issue of interpretation, because you're at a later point in time here, and you've probably, with John, only got one apostle left at this particular point in time.
01:02:16
But every attempted solution to the necessity of interpretation in the presence of heresy that has attempted to erect a structure outside of scripture has led to more heresy itself.
01:02:35
And so when the early Church, in fighting the Gnostics, would go beyond what
01:02:43
God had given to the Church to prosecute that argument, they ended up actually laying the foundation for later heresies that they could not have imagined.
01:02:52
And so we have to learn from that. I mean, if we can't look back, if we can't notice what's going on in Rome today and go, hey, you know, building up a whole tradition like that, that eventually has you dogmatizing things like the bodily assumption of Mary that not a single apostle of Jesus Christ ever even thought of or taught as part of the gospel is now part of the gospel, might be a dangerous thing to do.
01:03:17
The Roman Catholic apologist gets away with sort of ignoring that rather glaring historical reality, but it started small.
01:03:25
You know, bodily assumption of Mary didn't just, you know, drop out of heaven someplace.
01:03:30
There was a process whereby this whole organization came into being that can allow that kind of thing to be added to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
01:03:40
So looking at all the scripture and balancing that out, I think, is the way to do it. Okay. I know there's a lot more to be said there, but we went three minutes past just for you anyways.
01:03:54
Oh, thank you. All right, man. Thanks for your call. Yep. All right. You can always tell when someone's going, yeah, but what?
01:04:05
And especially that one, believe me, especially with someone who wants to, you can go on forever and ever and ever and ever in talking about things like that.
01:04:16
So anyways, so was there anything I was supposed to mention?
01:04:21
I guess not. I do need to mention, it does look like next year is going to be,
01:04:28
I don't need to be listening to myself. You do, but I don't. It does look like next year is going to be a big, big travel year with a lot of trips, especially overseas trips.
01:04:43
And so just a reminder that there is a support us link on the website and there's a travel thing there.
01:04:51
Because a lot of the places where we go, we just want to be able to get there and not put the people we're going to see under a tremendous amount of strain, if you know what
01:05:03
I mean. So it's always extremely helpful. And if you enjoy what you see when we get to go places and do things like that, then if you can help us out in that way, that would be great.
01:05:15
We would appreciate it. I did not say a single word about the midterm elections today.
01:05:22
Wow. I didn't say anything about the horrific shooting in California either.
01:05:29
And by the way, that doesn't mean those things aren't important. Let me just make this application before the music starts.
01:05:40
The truth of how the doctrine of the Trinity was related to the early
01:05:47
Christian believers in the New Testament scriptures that we discussed in looking at the
01:05:53
Christian Shema in 1 Corinthians 8, in response to the debate, is foundational to almost everything else we said.
01:06:04
And you need to see how it is. And one of the greatest dangers we face as Christian thinkers today in a challenging world is when we don't see how those things are related to one another.
01:06:15
And so this demand that we all be running around virtue signaling every few minutes, tweeting about whatever in the world is going on,
01:06:24
I reject it and I won't do it. And I reject the illogical assertion that if, you know,
01:06:31
I haven't tweeted anything about that horrific shooting. If you think that means something, that I haven't been doing much tweeting today, then
01:06:41
I would say that you are really not functioning on a fair, honest way of thinking.
01:06:49
Really, really don't. Now, if someone is a constant tweeter who's commenting about everything under the sun and they don't mention the one elephant in the room, okay, but that's not what we're talking about.
01:07:01
So that's not what we're talking about. Anyway. All right. We, Lord willing, we'll be back.
01:07:07
Oh, yeah. I don't know when we'll be back. Literally might be able to sneak, you know, we tried a
01:07:19
Skype one. Did not work well. You know, there's another, that service that I used for Unbelievable was a lot better.
01:07:29
We should try it. We should see if that might, it was solid. And Justin said he's had really, really, really good success with that.
01:07:38
So that might be what we need to look into. That might be the way. So we'll see if we can work something out, but I am gone overseas next week.
01:07:48
And for those friends of mine, we already tweeted and Facebook some of it, but if you're in the
01:07:55
Frankfurt area, I, of course, I tweeted it in German. So everybody's like, but I figure if you're in the
01:08:00
Frankfurt area, that's what you needed. We'll be speaking two nights next week in Frankfurt, one night on the
01:08:08
Trinity and one night on New Testament sexual criticism. And so if you can join us, great.