Can anyone ANSWER Dennis Prager's question?! | Pastor Reacts

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In the beginning was the word. I've never fully understood that, especially if it harkens back to Genesis.

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What is the most effective answer to someone like Prager? We have an informed and trained

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Jew asking a legitimate question about the word of God. Someone at this table should recognize the moment for what it is.

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This is an opportunity to show a Jew how Jesus fulfills the Jewish understanding of Tanakh.

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I wonder what Prager was thinking in this moment. How many Christians does it take to answer Dennis Prager's question?

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Haha, apparently more than three. Dennis Prager asks a very important question, but can these

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Christians and intellectuals see the moment for what it really is? Or are they going to get lost in their own musings and miss a very clear opportunity?

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We're about to find out. By the way, let's keep praying for Dennis Prager and his family. You know, he recently fell. He's seriously injured.

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We wish no harm to anyone but hope that God's grace and favor would be on him as he seeks to recover. So remember him in your prayers, okay?

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If you're new here, welcome. My name is Nate, and this is Wise Disciple, where I'm helping you become the effective Christian that Jesus wants you to be.

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Now, some people think I'm actually calling myself wise. I'm not. You are to be the wise disciple, if you take seriously the injunction of Matthew 10, 16.

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Make sure to like, sub, and share this one around, but only if it blesses you. All right, let's get right into it. Can somebody explain to me, because I admit

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I wrestled with this as long as I've studied Christianity. In the beginning was the word. I've never fully understood that, especially if it harkens back to Genesis.

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I don't have an issue with it. Please understand, this is truly a question from ignorance. Is the word when

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God said, let there be light, is that the word that's being referred to? To some extent, yes. Okay, real quick, let me frame this for us, because this is why

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I wanted to do the video, okay? Here is a Jew who knows Tanakh, as far as I can tell, and is genuinely asking a question about the word of God.

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Now, we have to understand as Christians, this isn't just, you know, some old person off the street who is entirely unchurched and has no concept for any of these things.

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This is someone who has already been taught a number of things about the very concept that he's now raising with Christians at the table.

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Notice, he's already tipped his hat a bit here. You know, he's already pointing to Genesis 1. That means that he has a context for the word of God.

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He has his own definition for it. What he doesn't understand is how Christians define it, how

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Christians connect this back to the Old Testament, the very text that he takes as a source of authority.

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This immediately should dictate how Christians respond to this type of person. And we'll get more into that a little bit later, but let's just, let's see how these

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Christians actually respond. The idea is to say, I think this is ultimately the Christian understanding, is to say that the

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God speaking is not created. When God speaks, it's not something else than him.

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It is in some ways separate from him, but also God. This is coming to love that Bishop Barron was going to talk about, that God speaking is his own being that is speaking into the world.

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So I'm detecting notes, like a fine wine, you know.

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I'm detecting notes of the uncreated creator, right? That particular element to the word in John 1.

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And that's right there in the text. I'm trying to leave up the text for us as we talk about this for your reference, okay? But look with me here real quick.

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John 1 .1, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God.

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All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.

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It's that last verse right there that Paggio seems to be highlighting now. The word is not some created thing.

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He is the uncreated God. It's a great point to make. It's thoroughly accurate to the teaching of the

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Bible and the church. But let's be very careful here. Is it helpful and effective in answering the question that Prager asked?

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Okay, not trying to knock anybody here. Everyone at this table is absolutely brilliant. They're a wonderful thinker and intellectual.

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The point of the exercise for this video is incredibly simple. What is the most effective answer to someone like Prager?

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Is it to highlight verse three, or maybe go somewhere else with this entirely?

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And you would understand this in the Genesis context is that there's an insistence on something like the primacy of the process that extracts the order that's good out of potential and chaos.

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And that's the word. And the Christian insistence is that Christ embodies the pattern of loving sacrifice that characterizes that word.

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And so that idea is something like the foundation of existence itself is the spirit of loving sacrifice.

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And that's equivalent. It's the same thing as the word that extracts the order that's good out of potential at the beginning of time.

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So one of the things that some people criticize me for when

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I do stuff like this, it's, you know, the criticism is, hey, you're pushing back on Peterson.

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You're pushing back on answers like this as if to dismiss all of it, right?

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I want to make sure that I say this. You can hear me saying this. I think there is value in assessing

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Christianity the way that Peterson does. I guess where, you know, the difference is if I were to prioritize the levels of understanding of the scripture and try to fit it into some kind of a hierarchy, you know, so now

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I sound exactly like Peterson, right? If I were to do that, I would probably place

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Peterson's analysis of the Bible several tiers or layers below the exegetical and specifically expository exercise of analyzing the scripture.

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That would be at the top. I would even put Peterson's analysis below the function of systematizing theology and doctrine from the text of scripture.

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In other words, once a person understands what the Bible meant to the original audience and how that applies uniquely to their lives today, which again brings in all of this important and foundational doctrine and theology, then

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I think we can start talking about the, what? The psychological benefits and even some of the potential symbolic depth to the principles that underlie passages of scripture.

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But that's where it seems Peterson and someone like me differs, you know,

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Peterson treats what I think should be third or fourth tier as if it were top tier.

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Why? Well, because he always leads with this kind of conversation without fail.

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And again, I mean, let me just point this out. We have an informed and trained Jew asking a legitimate question about the word of God, which means that someone at this table should recognize the moment for what it is.

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This is an opportunity to show a Jew how Jesus fulfills the Jewish understanding of Tanakh.

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Will that happen? Let's find out. And one way of understanding that more prosaically,

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I would say is that imagine the order that you establish in your family. If that little microcosm of the walled garden, your family, to the degree that you embody the spirit of loving sacrifice as a father, then you'll create out of the potential that's your family relationships, the order that's good.

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And it's sacrifice because, well, that's what you do on behalf of your children, right? You put them first, not you.

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You certainly put them first before your whims. You put what's best for them before their whims too.

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And so there's an upward aim in that. And all that upward aim is sacrificial. And then, well, then we get to the issue of what constitutes the ultimate sacrifice, which is partly what's explored in the gospel accounts.

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It's obviously explored in Abraham because Abraham is called upon to make an ultimate sacrifice. But this is an extension in a different direction.

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Great, I'm sure there's lots of benefit from pondering this kind of stuff, okay? However, these two gentlemen are not sufficiently answering

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Prager's question, in my opinion, you know? And hopefully somebody else at that table will.

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So in response to your question, is the Logos being talked about here is the interior word of the father. So the word of creation is more of a word that goes out.

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But within the Godhead itself, there's an interior word. The father has an imago of himself that we call the son. The father and son fall in love with each other.

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The mutual love is the Holy Spirit. So we would see from the beginning, this very text, there's a Trinitarian overtone. But it's the word that in a way precedes the word of creation.

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It's interior to God himself. So the word was God, as it says. May I just add? Well, okay, you know, that's a start, right?

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But before this other person jumps in, you know, before we move on and add another thread to the discussion, I think we need to stay on this for a moment longer.

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You know, Bishop Barron said that there's always been an element of Trinitarian relationship between God and the scriptures, right?

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The son is the image of the father. That is absolutely the case. And Jews see this, whether they acknowledge it or truly understand it is a different story.

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But it's there. Look at this. This is Psalm 147, verse 15. This is what it says. He, God, sends out his command to the earth.

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Now here it is. His word runs swiftly. Look at verse 18.

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He sends out his word and melts them. What melts them? His word.

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So here we find, this is really fascinating. We find the word of God performing action, being spoken of in a manner that is personified.

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The word is running. You know, we have a word that is melting things.

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Now you can explain this away as poetry because obviously we're in the Psalms. Okay, sure. But wait a second.

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What about this in 1 Samuel 3? Look at this, verse 21. And the Lord appeared again at Shiloh for the

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Lord revealed himself to Samuel at Shiloh by the word of the Lord. Okay.

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Look closer at what's being communicated right here. The Lord, it says, appeared to Samuel physically.

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How do I know that? Well, look at verse 10. It says, and the Lord came and stood, calling as at other times.

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Okay. So the Lord is standing and appearing before Samuel's eyes.

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And yet what is appearing? Again, verse 21. It's the word of the

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Lord. The word of the Lord is doing the appearing before Samuel. Now, is that poetry?

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It doesn't read like it does it. And this isn't the only place.

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Where the word of the Lord appears and is personified to the people in the

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Old Testament. This also happens in Jeremiah. All right. In Jeremiah 1, it says that the word of the

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Lord came to Jeremiah and touched his mouth. It's that same word of the

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Lord that John wants Jews to think about when they think about Jesus. And like I said, somebody should be unpacking this for Prager.

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Add to that in terms of the text, there were two words here that are very difficult to translate into English.

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And one of course is logos, which can mean obviously word, proposition, meaning, story.

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The resonance of that word is very rich. But also the word that's translated as beginning, the ache, because in the

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Greek philosophical tradition, that word is used for God. So, and there are reasons why this should be the case.

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But the ache is a term which has a very powerful theological meaning within the

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Greek philosophical tradition. It's the first principle. It's the source of all reality. So one way of looking at this is to say, well, in the source, there was the word.

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I, to say the Trinitarian reading, although that sounds like an absurd Christian interjection of a much later period, you could see that as making perfect sense with just these initial words.

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John. I wonder what Prager was thinking in this moment. You know what I mean? So clearly he sets the stage, right?

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Asks a question and then lets everybody go. And I'm sure he's being gracious. And clearly these men, they have a specific purpose.

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There's a series that they're seeking to flesh out here. And they're all operating within the parameters of the series here.

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They're essentially mining for intellectual and theological treasure, right? But at some point,

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Prager's just gotta be thinking to himself, well, okay. Christians are off on their own, right?

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They're enjoying themselves as they investigate their own religion. But what do

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I do here? What do I do with this polytheistic idolatry? Right? Because that's what a lot of Jews see

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Christians as. Because they only recognize Yahweh as the one true

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God. They don't understand the Trinity and they don't see the connection to the Old Testament. By the way, a great book to read along these lines is

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The Two Powers in Heaven by Alan Segal. I think I've mentioned this in previous videos. Segal's not a

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Christian, but he is a rabbinical scholar. And he points out that the ancient Israelites believed that there were two essential

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Yahwehs. The Israelites were still monotheists. Just like Christians are.

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But they believed that there were two Yahwehs. One invisible and one visible. The visible one took on the form or the manifestation of a human.

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And then right here we go again with the passages of the scripture that we were just talking about a moment ago where the word of God is personified, right?

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Another great book along these lines is The Unseen Realm by Michael Heiser. Heiser also talks about the two powers in his book.

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Any of this kind of information would thoroughly bless someone like Prager, who again at this point is probably thoroughly dismissive of Christianity.

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Yeah, I want to pick up on the fact that there's actually, like I call them the four

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L's about God. There's love, agape. There's logos. There's light and life. And these are all the identity claims that are somehow circling.

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And I'd like to propose we slow down a little bit because the familiarity of those terms to us, I think is masking something more profound going on here.

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And if we think about all of these, they're pointing, well, to me, they're pointing to something very radical here.

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They're asking us to get out of a normal way in which we think about reality in terms of stable, substantial, independently existing objects.

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All of these - There's gotta be some joke in here related to how many Christians does it take to screw in a light bulb?

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Right? You know? How many Christians does it take to answer Dennis Prager's question?

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Apparently more than three. These are inherently relational realities. And think about how profound that is to say that ultimate reality is inherently, ultimately relational.

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And that therefore a relationship to it has to be primordially a relational. And this is very, very hard for our way of thinking because we have got into the mode.

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And for all kinds of historical reasons, we don't need thinking of, you know, that what there really is are individual things.

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There's no relationality. This is, of course, normalism. All of that's in our head. And then that gives us a dualism because the mind has the patterns.

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The world - By the way, I don't want to suggest that I'm being dismissive of these other perspectives, okay?

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Or that these other perspectives have no connection to the biblical text at all. It's not what I'm saying, you know?

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I just wish somebody at that table would answer Prager's question and help him see as a

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Jew that the word of God in John 1, 1 -3 is the same word of God found in Tanakh.

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Is the same personification of wisdom that was also with God in the creation that we find described in the

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Proverbs, right? All of this is Jesus Christ, ladies and gentlemen. That's what the

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Bible is testifying to. You know, here's something else to consider. The word of God is

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Torah. Look at this. Psalm 119, verse 89 says, forever, O Lord, your word, there it is, is firmly fixed in the heavens.

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But notice how God's word is used synonymously in these other verses. Verse 92, if your law had not been my delight,

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I would have perished. I will never forget your precepts. Verse 93, for by them you have given me life.

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Verse 96, but your commandment is exceedingly broad. The entire

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Psalm here is about the law of God or Torah, but it's also used synonymously with the word, the word of God.

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But wait a second, watch this. At the end of Luke, right? Jesus meets the two travelers.

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You remember this? And he shows them how Tanakh testifies about him. Luke 24, verse 27, and beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures, the things concerning himself.

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Do you realize the Old Testament teaches so many concepts that align to Christ that find their fulfillment in Jesus?

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The Old Testament teaches that the word of God is the creator. Did you know that? That's Psalm 33.

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The word of God is teacher. I mean, that's the purpose of Torah, right?

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Torah is also the basis of the covenant that God had with his people. It's the word of God, right?

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The word of God is the manifestation of God's presence. And again, we just touched on this. This was Psalm 147 and 1

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Samuel 3, right? The word of God is healer. Did you know that?

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Psalm 107. So he, God, sent out his word and what? Healed them.

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And also look at that. The word of God is savior and deliverer. Look at this verse, the rest of the verse, and delivered them from their destruction.

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This is the word of God. All of this is fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

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Jesus is the creator. He is the teacher. He is the manifestation of God's presence.

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God with us. Amen? Jesus is healer and savior and deliverer and so much more.

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That's what John was getting at in John 1 by linking Jesus to the word of God, a concept that has strong foundations in Tanakh.

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And like I said, I don't bemoan any of these intellectuals from extrapolating the points that they are, but someone can add to this discussion the actual answer to Prager's specific question, right?

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I don't know. I got another minute. Let's see if it happens. Think about what we're saying here. Imagine going into a room of physicists and saying ultimate reality is love, light, logos, life, right?

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They're gonna look at you and they'll either, well, that's very nice. It's a platitude and they don't really believe it, right?

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They should get it though. But that's the point I wanna make. But these things are not, they're not out there metaphors.

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You can't do science without these principles of intelligibility, right?

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And so I'm trying to wake us back up to, John's not making a scientific claim.

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I'm not saying that. That's ridiculous. But he's not saying something that's irrelevant to the scientific world. He's making a meta -scientific claim.

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Yes, right. Thanks, James. That's exactly, and also this can be. You know what just dawned on me?

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What would the apostle John say about his own writing if he were sitting at this table?

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Think about that, you know? I think that John would complain that these men have reduced his own writing down too much.

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See, I actually think that John's genius is ridiculously underappreciated.

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Because it's true that, you know, I mean, these men they're picking up on Greek influence. They're picking up on philosophy, right?

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They're picking up on worldview implications, meta -scientific claims, all of that stuff. From the things that John specifically says in one, one to three here.

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But on top of all of that, John has also thoroughly interwoven the fulfillment of Jewish thought with regard to the word of God.

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And that's John's genius. It's bigger than any of us have given him credit for.

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Even if you're to think of this, like in the Aramaic, which I haven't touched on at all, you know, but the

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Aramaic also has this concept of the word of God. And even that touches on what

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John is describing in John one, right? So in the Aramaic, the word was Memra. And you'll see the same kinds of ideas with the personification of God within that concept in the

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Aramaic. The Jews understood all of these things during John's day, during the day of Jesus.

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I just think that we've largely forgotten it. So, I don't know.

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Okay, let's wrap up here, all right? I think this was a missed opportunity. I understand the premise of the series and what these men were seeking to accomplish.

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And I'm sure it's a great discussion. I'm gonna leave a link for it. You guys should go check out the full thing. I'm sure it's great in many other aspects, but they made a communication error, in my opinion.

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Because instead of speaking like Christians to other Christians, what should have happened is they should have spoken to Prager like a

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Jew. Guess what? Jesus Christ is Prager's Messiah, ladies and gentlemen.

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Yeshua is the long -awaited anointed one that folks like Prager and Ben Shapiro and others have been waiting for this whole entire time.

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And this can be proven from the very text that they hold as an authority over their lives, the Tanakh.

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And somebody should have pointed this out. Look, why did I do this? Again, I don't like watchdog ministries, and so I'm trying not to just come down on people for no reason.

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The way that I constantly think about these things is what happens when you're face -to -face with someone like Prager and they ask you the same kind of question.

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The lesson here is, step number one, you need to know who you're talking to. Because who you're talking to should guide how you communicate.

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What are you talking about, Nate? Are you making this up? No, this actually is biblical, okay?

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Paul said in 1 Corinthians that he became like those who were under the law, for those who are under the law, just as much as he became like those outside of the law for those who are outside of the law, all so that he could win some.

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That's why he goes on to say in Colossians 4, right? Season your words with salt. Why? So that you may know how you ought to answer each person.

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That means that each person perhaps deserves a slightly different approach. Same fundamental gospel message, different approaches, you know?

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That's why Paul points to the statue of the unknown God in Acts chapter 17. It's why he also quotes or alludes to Epimenides and Eratus in his appeal to the

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Athenians. It's also why Philip teaches the Ethiopian eunuch, who by the way, is a pagan who probably should have zero background in the prophets, right?

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And he goes, Philip goes directly to the scroll of Isaiah with this person. It's because the approach changes based on the individuals that you are engaging.

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And in this case, we have a Jew asking about a biblical concept that has biblical definitions in key places in the

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Old Testament. And it's precisely from the Old Testament that somebody should have appealed. That's what

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I think, all right? But that's enough out of me, okay? Now it's your turn. What do you think? Was this a missed opportunity by these

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Christians? Or did they answer sufficiently? Let me know in the comments below. Hey, let's keep praying for Prager and his family.

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For a solid recovery. And for his eyes to be opened to the truth about Jesus Christ, amen?

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Dennis is such a powerhouse intellect, you know? I'd love to see him using that intellect on behalf of our

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Lord and Savior, all right? Well, if you made it this far, you gotta come over and check out the

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Patreon community right now. There's lots of features for you. I run monthly trainings and live streams. You can meet up with me one -on -one.

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We're studying the Bible together, trying to make those connections to the Old Testament in meaningful ways, amen?

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Go check it out. The link for the Patreon is below. Also, if you're interested at all in learning the original biblical languages, you gotta check out the

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Biblingo app. It's got very cool games, exercises, all kinds of things so that you can develop your understanding of the original biblical languages.

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Click on the Biblingo link below and use WiseDisciple10 at checkout. I'm gonna return soon with more videos, but in the meantime,