Theology, Apologetics, Inerrancy, and a Brief Statement from the Pope

Okay, it has been an absolute day of insanity, in my opinion, online and everywhere else. I was just sitting at my desk working, trying, trying to get some work done on a book and had just made note of a shot taken my direction by Joel McDermott in American Vision.

And Rich is sitting in here, he goes, so are you going to be joining me? I look at the clock and it's 2 .59. Ah, great, wonderful. I don't know where all that time went, but it disappeared very, very, very quickly.

Apologetic Methodology Must Flow from Theology

So many things. A, just in response to Joel, Joel, if you can listen to 25 sermons that I did on the Holiness Code and think I didn't make application to all of life, you ain't listening. No, you're not listening.

Or you've got filters on that are so thick that you ain't listening. That's just like, okay. So in other words, if you don't make the applications American Vision demands you make, then you're not making any application at all.

Got it. Got it. We're okay. Secondly, Andy Stanley. Yeah, I'm blaming the agitator from Texas for this one because he posted it. But the agitator from Texas posted a brief clip, about two and a half minute clip.

I can see it right now, bothering me on my Twitter feed. And it's Andy Stanley explaining why you need to have mega churches. Why you need to build big churches. Because you see, you need to have big churches so that you have enough young people to separate the middle schoolers from the high schoolers.

That's why you need to have mega churches. And if you go to a small church, you're selfish, and you hate your kids. He said it. I'm just like, okay, all right. I'm starting to buy into the comm trails thing.

Okay, you know, I'm starting to think that's one of the only explanations. I mean, seriously. And I'm not even getting into political stuff today. But oh, please. It's just enough to, I mean, I've been blocking people left and right today, unfollowing others.

Because I just, you can only be exposed to so much utter insanity, you know, to where you just, it's just like, okay, forget it, forget it, forget it. I forgot, I was so far behind here. The DL is live right now.

AOMin .org. There we go. I need to do that. Let people know, we do get some folks to, of course, we're up against Shepard's Conference now. And the funny thing is, my feed normally is just choked with pictures from the Shepard's Conference.

Not really seeing a lot. They've been sort of, you know, pushed out of the way by other stuff, for some strange reason. Anyway, I do have a few things to get to today that I think hopefully will help me just not be thinking about all the other looniness that is out there.

Michael Licona, Bart Ehrman, and the Problem of Evil

I was directed about a week ago, a little more maybe, to an interview. And once again, people are going to assume that, you know, if I do something like this, this means I'm always looking for some kind of controversy or, you know, something like that.

And that's really, oh, it's next week? Oh, someone said next week. Well, that's maybe why. No, then what? I saw somebody, maybe it's a pre-conference thing then, because I saw somebody saying that they had just about gotten run over by someone coming into Shepard's Conference.

They were trying to get the best seats. What was the line? Nothing says elder ready more than running somebody over trying to get the best seats at Shepard's Conference. So last year at this time, I was over there for the pre-conference thing.

So maybe that's what it is. I don't know. Anyway, that's not here. Some people assume that because I'm going to look at some comments from another apologist that I'm just always trying to start a fight or something.

There are some, you know, I think a lot of believers, they listen to various apologists. And certainly in our audience, there is a constant emphasis on my part on consistency, consistency in apologetic methodology.

I emphasize very strongly your apologetic methodology flows from your theology, not the other way around. You don't find an argument that works and then create a theology that will back it up. All that kind of stuff is just completely foreign, I think, to an apostolic approach, a biblical approach to the subject of apologetics.

And so because of that, I assume that people in the audience sense when there is a strong difference in how I would answer a question, approach an issue, and how my fellow Reformed apologists, whether you call us presuppositionalists or covenantal apologetics or whatever terminology you end up using, when we utilize that form of apologetics that begins with the theological reality that God is our creator, man is in rebellion, therefore you cannot make your apologetic methodology depend upon man to make unbiased decisions because man's not going to do that.

And you cannot say to the creature, you have the right to judge the existence of your creator. When I answer questions from that perspective, that's going to be different than some of the biggest names out there who theologically are not Reformed and theologically therefore have what I would consider to be some major inconsistencies when it comes to engaging certain worldview issues especially.

Now, I have often criticized the William Lane Craig group. I have often criticized William Lane Craig directly. But there is a whole group that circles around the methodology, sort of the mere Christianity minimizing what defines Christianity and then the appeal to the natural man, you know, the preponderance of the evidence points to the greater probability of the existence of a God.

Memorize that line from William Lane Craig in his debate with Zindler back a long, long time ago. And so, that perspective is going to create very different answers to key apologetic questions. And I'm not going to mention the fellow to the north of me somewhere who directed me is because I don't want to get him in trouble either unless he wants to say he's not directing me to it.

But there was a interview at thebestschools .org with Mike Lycona. And we have played some of Dr. Lycona's debates especially with Bart Ehrman. And our focus was primarily on Bart Ehrman in those debates.

But we did have reason to note how we would have responded differently to Ehrman than Lycona does because of the differences in theology. And in that interview, Dr. Lycona said some interesting things that I'm going to briefly respond to.

I'm not going to go into a whole lot of depth, but just simply to try to throw some light on why it is that we have the differing perspectives that we do. At one point, here's what we say. The best schools asked Lycona, as one who has debated atheists, you have investigated the arguments for atheism.

What were the strongest arguments you found for atheism? What counter arguments did you discover that persuade you atheism is false? Dr. Lycona responds, most would agree the best argument atheism has to offer is the problem of evil pain and suffering in the world.

And it's a powerful card to hold in one's hand. But it's not at all conclusive. The highly esteemed Christian philosopher Alvin Plantica has demonstrated the unlikelihood of a race of beings with free will who all choose to do the right things all the time.

Thus, in a world of free beings, there is going to be evil pain and suffering that result. Now I just stop immediately. I do not believe that this is the atheist's strongest argument. I really don't because as a presuppositionalist, I recognize that the very essence of the argument requires certain presuppositions that the atheists cannot found within their worldview to begin with.

They have no basis for arguing that there's something wrong with pain or evil or things like this, simply because from their worldview cannot give any meaningful account as to why those things are bad or evil or anything else.

It's just the way things are, doggone it. It's just how things happened. I was about to say, well, it's just how the molecules banged into each other. But I know too much about that stuff to even use that argument because I know that doesn't work.

To come up with meaningful biological proteins and things like that, I know that there aren't enough molecules, there aren't enough atoms in the known universe for this kind of accident that happens. I can't even go there, but that's what most people would end up saying.

They sort of think that that would work. But notice that, again, when I teach apologetics, I always start off contrasting the William Lane Craig argument, likelihoods, probabilities. It's all putting everything in your hands.

You are invited to take the position of judge. Go ahead and go up there on the throne or take the position of the judge in the courtroom. And you get to determine likelihoods, probabilities, possibilities.

And Christianity is just the most likely probable thing. And I've just often said, I don't remember any apostle ever preaching like that. Now, if you want to say, yeah, that's why you shouldn't believe in the sufficiency of scripture, because they didn't face what we face today.

So we've got to go beyond scriptural norms. You're making my case for me when you go there. And I get it. I fully understand. But there's one of the major, major differences. But just the very terminology of philosophically grounded apologetics, not theologically grounded philosophy that informs apologetics.

Those are two different things. Those are two different things. You have to ask the question, which one is more foundational? Which one rules? Which one defines the terms? So anyway, it goes on. I continue.

What the atheist must demonstrate is that there are possible worlds of free beings. Now, we're talking Molinism here, okay? That there are possible worlds of free beings in which there is on balance a greater amount of good and lesser amount of evil than we experience in this world.

This burden cannot be met. The late agnostic philosopher William Rowe countered Plantinga by noting there appears to be gratuitous evil pain and suffering in the world, that is, evil pain and suffering for which there could be no positive resulting benefit.

And immediately I stop right there and go, okay, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Again, I contrast this with the apostolic example of preaching and the apostolic example of encounter with unbelieving worldviews.

And obviously, I have serious issues with Molinism. It is not a biblically derived philosophy. And that's what it is. It's a philosophy. You can't call that biblical theology. It's not derived from the text of Scripture.

It's derived from other considerations. And you try to take something here and say, well, you know, it sort of fits over here. And it sort of sounds like this is saying that and so on and so forth. But this point of gratuitous evil pain and suffering, let's just be honest, that's a theological issue.

Because the only way to answer the term, is it gratuitous? Is there a purpose of God? And I have gone to the mat over and over again, debating Michael Brown, debating other people. No such thing as gratuitous evil.

There's no such thing as. But to say that, you have to then affirm that God has a sovereign decree. What other theological system is going to help you, going to cause you to avoid that? There isn't one.

There isn't one. Very, very important. Theology really matters. A little bit later on. Moreover, when one considers about 100 cases of well-evidenced near-death experiences, apparitions of the dead in which percipients received accurate information from the apparition they could not have otherwise known, extreme answered prayer, and the historical case for Jesus' resurrection, the evidence for a supernatural component to reality is so strong that atheism becomes untenable.

The evidence strongly suggests the world in which we live is far more compatible with theism than atheism. You've never heard me making reference to near-death experiences and you won't. Apparitions of the dead or anything like it.

And why? Because I don't need to. Because the last line says it all. The evidence strongly suggests that the world in which we live is far more compatible with theism than atheism. Is that not the preponderance the evidence points to the greater probability of the existence of a god?

See, I don't think theism, just plain old vanilla theism, has any meaning. And I understand the frustration of the atheists trying to deal with this. Because as Hitchens properly pointed out in one of his debates, you people jump from bare theism to Christian theism as if there is not a very large chasm that you need to jump over there and fill in.

And that's why Bonson was right. I will not defend simple theism because simple theism is not a defensible concept. I agree. And yet, here's where, you know, again, for those that listen to how different apologists respond to issues and go, I'm sensing different camps here.

I'm just helping you understand those different camps arise from fundamental theological commitments or massive holes in the theology that underlies certain apologetic approaches. No question about it.

Um, I continue on. Let me see here. Yeah, this gives you some insight as to the relationship here. I think it was sometime in the mid -1990s that I purchased some audio cassette tapes of William Lane Craig debating Frank Zindler and John Dominic Crossan.

The Craig Zindler debates, the very one that I use as my example. I was very impressed when I heard Dr. Craig pick apart their arguments in an intellectually sound manner. So, you know, we understand this is the background for Dr. Lycona's embracing of that methodology that is being utilized there.

Now, most of you know that Dr. Lycona got into a lot of trouble a few years ago in regards to the issue of the resurrection of saints at the time of the resurrection of Christ. It's recorded in Matthew 27, 51 through 53.

I'm not going to go back over that. We've gone over a number of times before. I've posted articles on my understanding of what's going on there. Um, and here's what Lycona says. So for a number of reasons in his major book, I posited that Matthew's raised saints may have been a poetic element of Matthew's account of Jesus' death.

The addition of special effects, you might say. It's much like we might say at the events of 9 -11 were earth shaking or that it rained cats and dogs. When North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il died in December of 2011, it was reported that a snow storm hit as he died.

Ice cracked on the volcanic Cheon Lake near his reported birthplace at Mount Paektu. When the snow storm ended at dawn, a message carved in rock glowed brightly until sunset saying, Mount Paektu, holy mountain of revolution, Kim Jong Il.

Finally, on the day after his death, a Manchurian crane also adopted a posture of grief at a statue of the dictator's father in the city of Hamheung. So the same sort of rhetoric occurs even today. Okay.

That's the genre into which you want to put Matthew 27, 51 through 53 is what North Korean media reports in seeking to promote the cult of Kim Jong Il. I don't even know how to respond to that, but it certainly doesn't do anything to ameliorate the concerns that many people expressed at what Dr. Lykona was saying.

And though I think Dr. Geisler's attitude in dealing with Dr. Lykona was pretty much similar to the attitude he's had toward me. And I well know that Dr. Geisler rewards those who are faithful to him and is merciless toward those who would dare disagree with him.

And he's not going to appreciate this. On the issue of whether that kind of thinking fits into the concept of inerrancy, Geisler was right. It doesn't. That I mean, really? That was wild. That was an amazing statement there.

Truly. But this was the actual statement. This was all precursor to the actual statement that caught my attention and had been sent to me by one of my dear friends, again, to the North. This was not the troublemaker from Texas.

No, this is a troublemaker from someplace else. And he knows who he is. Here's the statement. Because of what happened with the Matthew 27 thing, Lykona says, I remain persona non grata with some SBC entities.

And that's unfortunate because remember when this hit, he was working for the Home Mission Board. But they have a right not to want me at their events. And I'm comfortable with that. I spoke at the request of several denominations prior to coming to North American Mission Board, such as PCUSA, PCA, Episcopal Church, United Methodist Church, Calvary Chapel, non-denominational churches and charismatic churches.

And obviously a lot of those lines blur a bit. And even after joining NAMB, North American Mission Board, I didn't limit myself to speaking for SBC entities, nor do I now. I've never regarded Southern Baptists as the only true evangelical Christians.

Well, good. Yeah. I'm not sure what evangelical means anymore, but that's another issue. And I'm comfortable speaking outside evangelical circles. Well, I'm trying to think if I have ever spoken out of what would be.

See, again, what does evangelical mean anymore? As I said in the article that I posted a few days ago on Monday, in fact, if Joyce Meyer and TD Jakes and Joel Osteen are leaders in the evangelical movement, I'm not.

I'm gone. I'm out. I don't want to associate with that term at all if that's going to communicate to others that that's where I'm coming from. I don't want to. No, no. Don't want to do that. I'm not evangelical if that's an evangelical.

Now, obviously, you on Gillian is a Greek term, which means gospel. And it had to do with a focus upon the biblical gospel and the entirety of the biblical gospel. And if if any of that could be recovered, great, fine, wonderful.

But that's not what you're getting anymore to define the term evangelical. So he says, I'm comfortable speaking outside evangelical circles. I'm not sure what that would mean for me. I mean, if I were invited to an Episcopalian church that is gay affirming, well, I'd go there to speak on the subject of what the Bible teaches on that subject.

But I can't see me going there for anything else. And I know I could obviously I'll debate anywhere. I mean, I've debated mosques, so it's not like, you know, the context there is the issue. But here we're talking about, well, I'll let him define what we're talking about.

While I'm an evangelical by choice, by the way, I'm reformed by conviction, not by choice. I recognize one does not need to be an evangelical to be a Christian. If one embraces the essentials of the Christian faith, I'm happy to call that person my brother or sister and work alongside them in ministry, whether they are Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, or whatever.

Now, there you have the issue for me there. There you have there's there's what we need to look at, whether they are Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, or whatever. They are my brother and sister. So what this affirms is what I call basic, least common denominator, mere Christianity.

Not just the C .S. Lewis book, but mere Christianity as in you boil it down to the absolute bare bones, absolute bare bones. And what do you get? Well, monotheism, trinity. You certainly get death, burial, and resurrection.

You have some vague affirmation of supernaturalism. But what you don't, what you do not include in here is the gospel. It's the gospel. The gospel, because you cannot say Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, or whatever, that we all have the same gospel because we don't.

We don't. Even when you talk about the crucifixion, you can't talk about what the crucifixion means, what the crucifixion accomplishes, why the crucifixion took place, any of those things. Because there is a massive divide, even sadly amongst many who call themselves Protestants today.

So the mere Christianity movement and perspective is expressed really well there. If one embraces the essentials of Christian faith, which does not include the gospel, they're still my brother or sister.

Well, I think that's the end of meaningful apologetics. I really do. Because why do apologetics if you are not doing it to promote and proclaim the gospel? If I were to work together with a brother Catholic, I'm putting air quotes around that for those who listen only to the audio.

Well, remember the Tim Staples Bible Answer Man stuff long, long, long, long ago in late 1990s? And there were some great calls that came in that specifically asked, well, what's the fundamental difference between you guys?

If you're standing outside abortion clinic together and somebody walks up to you and says, what must I do to be saved? Are you going to answer that question differently? And the answer is, yes. So what we're, unless you think that apologetics, unless you think you've succeeded by causing an atheist to become a vague theist of some kind, which I don't think is apostolically defined as a success, then your goal is the glorification of the triune God, the proclamation of what he's done in Jesus Christ, and a person's bowing the knee and confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Anything short of that? Why are you bothering? Why are you bothering? I don't understand the role of apologetics if it's not for the promotion of the gospel. So if the gospel isn't definitional of the Christian faith, what are we doing?

Why? Let's just turn out the lights, go do something else. There's, there's must be something else to be done. Don't get it. So that, that, that was what caught me and made me go, wow. And then just a little bit later on, he says, I also listened to the book, A Tale of Three Kings by Jean Edwards at the recommendation of a friend who once had an experience somewhat similar to mine.

That book was quite instructive. Most theological matters outside of the essentials of the Christian faith, and remember the essentials of the Christian faith have already been defined up above as not including the gospel.

Don't interest me. So I also didn't want to spend my time splitting hairs over an interpretation that, in my opinion, doesn't have any bearing on the essentials. That's leaving a huge amount of vitally important gospel message out of the apologetic task, out of the apologetic task.

And I have been falsely accused by some of not bringing the gospel into my debates. They evidently actually didn't listen to my debates. But I think that's vitally important. A little later on, I continue to be a biblical inerrantist, and I'm content to define inerrancy as found in Lausanne Covenant.

Almost all inerrantists affirm that inerrancy applies only to autographs, but we don't have any of them. So that allows for an errant text in our hands. Wow. Wow. That, with all due respect, Dr. Lycona, is abject capitulation.

It's, don't shoot. It's, it's, it's, it's, don't shoot. I give up. Yeah. Yeah. I don't have. No. Well, here. Here. No, no, no. I, I, here. I got, I got a Kleenex. We surrender. We surrender. We give up.

Wow. I put that down sort of getting close to the camera there. The presupposition here. And by the way, if that's inerrancy, I don't know what inerrancy is. Because yes, inerrancy does refer to the autographs themselves.

And every meaningful definition of inerrancy recognizes the existence of scribal errors in manuscripts. No question about any of that. But there is a huge leap here, a huge leap into, and we cannot know what the originals said.

I mean, there is a, there is a capitulation here on the, the veracity of the manuscript evidence that, that I just go, why? I mean, we've never had more information than we have now. We have the most ancient, most widely best attested text of antiquity and the quote, unquote errors, errant text in our hands.

There has nothing to do with textual criticism. It has nothing to do with variations or variants. What people don't like about inerrancy is what we know the New Testament actually says, not what we think has been somehow corrupted in transmission, which has nothing really to do with these things.

I was, I was like, what, what, really? It goes on and says, so if inerrancy applies only to the autographs that we no longer have, and since there are errors in our present biblical text, there is a sense in which the doctrine applies to a text we do not possess.

Stop talking about inerrancy. You don't believe it. Just, just, just be honest and check it because you don't believe it. Any view of the biblical text must take these factors in consideration. In my opinion, the definition found in the Lausanne Covenant is sufficiently vague as to allow a high view of scripture while avoiding the need to over, over-define inerrancy.

I'm, I'm, I'm sorry, Dr. Laicona. I've, I've done a lot more debates than you've done. I really have. And I've debated a lot of the same people you have. But I've done a lot more of them. And I know, I can detect when someone really doesn't believe something.

But because of various reasons, they continue to try to say that they do. Okay, I've debated a bunch of people on the subject of homosexuality, and they want to try to say they continue to believe in the overarching and the over, overriding authority of scripture.

No, they don't. And let's be honest, it wouldn't take me four minutes of meaningful cross-examination with you to demonstrate you don't really believe in inerrancy. You may have a, what you want to call a high view of scripture, but these are not the words of someone who actually really believes in the doctrine of inerrancy.

Because if you have to put it off to a, well, you know, the autographs say they, they, they were inerrant, but we don't have them. So, no, we don't want to over-define this thing, you know. Um, that's not someone who actually believes in inerrancy.

Um, whatever else you might say on this issue, I'm afraid Geisler was right. You, you really don't. You don't believe in inerrancy. You really don't. Um, you know, he says, I think the Chicago Statement has a fairly good, though imperfect, definition of what biblical inerrancy is and is not.

The controversy involving me revealed that even those who penned the statement, as well as those who signed it, and those who ascribe to it today, don't always agree on how it's to be properly interpreted, and many of them do not interpret it as Dr. Geisler does.

The doctrine of biblical inerrancy is not an essential doctrine of the Christian faith. I'm reading him, in case anyone is just listening. I want to make sure you understand. I am quoting, quote, the doctrine of biblical inerrancy is not an essential Christian, an essential doctrine of the Christian faith.

In fact, William Lane Craig describes it as a tertiary doctrine. There is so much in the Bible historians can verify, such as Jesus' personal claims to being God's divine son, that he performed deeds both he and his followers regard as divine miracles and exorcisms, that he died by crucifixion and, I would add, his bodily resurrection shortly thereafter.

An inerrant Bible is not the foundation of the Christian faith. Jesus is. If Jesus rose, Christianity is true, even if it were to turn out the Bible is not accurate in every detail. I'm continuing the quotation.

I'll state it differently. If Jesus rose from the dead, Christianity is true and remained true prior to any of the literature of the New Testament being written, which began 15 to 20 years later. So how could an error in any of the New Testament literature negate the truth of Christianity when Christianity was true prior to any of the New Testament literature being written?

It could not. So biblical inerrancy is not a fundamental doctrine. End quote. I want you to think about what I just read. Here is the absolute fundamental difference between the Molinist, mere Christianity, all probabilities form of apologetics, which is really what you end up being forced to.

It's what evidentialism will eventually boil down to. And a full-throated, covenantal, presuppositional, the God has spoken form of apologetics. This presupposes having already pretty much capitulated on whether we even continue to possess the original readings of the New Testament, which we do.

I don't know why he takes a position that. But anyway, here's here's here's a fun little problem. What these maybe you haven't listened to the program before, so maybe it's new to you, but it's really nothing new.

We've we've reviewed a number of Dr. Craig's debates in the past and said, this is where it falls apart. This is where he loses the debate. This is where he departs from a meaningful biblical position.

This is what we've said over and over again. Nothing new here. So don't go, oh, you're taking on everybody anymore. No, yeah, we, I suppose we do, but we've been consistent on this point for a long, long time.

When you say that you can simply approach the New Testament documents as errant human documents, they just have some level of historical veracity. How on earth does the existence of contradictory, because once you've given up on inerrancy and everything else, you've got to admit.

Contradictions, so on and so forth. Contradictory documents written decades after the event that are not at all supernatural, that that is your basis for coming to the conclusion that Jesus is the divine son of God.

Well, he says here, such as Jesus's personal claims to being God's divine son. Well, whoopity doopity doo, there's all sorts of people in the past in uninspired, merely historical, self-contradictory documents that claim to be all sorts of things.

So stinking what? What does that have to do with anything? See, the foundation has to be sufficient to provide evidence of the claim. If God hasn't spoken, you got no basis for coming up with any of this stuff.

So Jesus's personal claims to being God's divine son, errant human documents are not sufficient to demonstrate that. That he performed deeds both he and his followers regard as divine miracles and exorcisms.

So did a bunch of other people. Apollonius of Tyana, who cares? That he died by crucifixion. Well, yeah, a lot of people did, but he prophesied he was going to do that. That would require a supernatural record, wouldn't it?

Because, I mean, again, if you buy into the ermine naturalism, they're just going to look at this and go, come on, guys, really? Seriously? You want to be taken seriously amongst us? I know I'm never going to be taken seriously amongst them because I bow the knee first to Christ.

Lordship of Christ overall, they're in rebellion against that. They're never going to accept what I have to say. Okay, that doesn't mean I'm not going to challenge them and demonstrate the consistency with the whole world around us, Christian worldview.

But I'm not going to, once I've abandoned the statement that God has spoken, there's nothing left. There's nothing left. The died by crucifixion, I would add his bodily resurrection shortly after. Do you really think that simple, historical, errant, contradictory documents is a sufficient basis for asserting?

And here's where it is. You see, you and I, the audience that we have, we assert the absolute reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This position is not asserting the absolute reality, but the probability of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And that's where I go, you know, Paul, Acts, Mars Hill, Areopagus. God will judge by the one he raised from the dead. Not maybe, not probably, not in, you know, if we take all this, no, this is what happened.

Here's the proclamation. Oh, you mean then we have to trust the Holy Spirit to bring conviction and all the rest of that stuff? Yep. Yeah, that's, there you go. Gospel is the power of God into salvation.

That, oh, but the gospel isn't definitional to Christian faith. We already got rid of that part too. See where there's a big difference, big, big, big, big difference. Yeah. Yeah. Now, did you also note the other problem here?

The other problem is, well, Christianity is true and remained true prior to any of the literature in the New Testament being written. If you read the literature in the New Testament, do you think the authors of the New Testament would have bought this argument?

Because there was something written before the New Testament that was in fact, the very scriptures to which they referred. In fact, if I recall correctly, this very group of apologists, they love to mention that we have a very primitive element of the tradition of the church that goes all the way back to within literally weeks of the crucifixion, right?

1 Corinthians chapter 15. We do. I agree that we do. But what does 1 Corinthians chapter 15 say? I delivered to you what I also received. Yep. That's language of tradition. Yep. Don't question about it.

But what? That Christ died according to the scriptures. Wow. Right there in the middle of it. Right there in the middle of it. According to scriptures, rise again according. Oh man. The apostles had scriptures.

Yeah. The Old Testament scriptures. So they never had the idea that the truthfulness of their proclamation was just this thing to be determined by autonomous sinful man and rebellion against God who, and it has nothing to do with the fact that God had spoken.

I just look at this and go, wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. That's amazing. That is amazing. So if you're going to make inerrancy a tertiary issue, it is going to fundamentally change. Fundamentally change your entire message.

And certainly you're apologetic. Certainly you're apologetic. So by the way, this was at thebestschools .org. I don't have the, it's just the only link I've got. I've got a never note here and that's what's the topic.

You want to go read it for yourself? I don't think I've taken anything out of context. Take a look at it and you might find interesting. I'm obviously not going to get the Ligonier statement today. I've got it queued up and read some critical reviews of it.

It is interesting that, you know, one of the things I do want to address is, as a number of people point out, it's really interesting. I mean, we have a statement of faith, but I cannot ever imagine the Alpha and Omega Ministries statement on Christology.

Um, you know, if a, if a, if a church wanted to do something like that, you know, denomination. Okay. But that was one of the things that I hadn't really fleshed that out. But then some of the reviews I've been reading, you know, a lot of folks have been sort of like, now I'm really appreciative of it.

It says a lot of good things. And the only reason I mentioned it before, and as I said, last time was I wanted to use it as a teaching moment, go through it. This is why it's saying this, this is why it's saying that, so on and so forth.

But a lot of people have raised the issue. What's the authority behind this? That, that gets into ecclesiology and all sorts of stuff. So maybe we'll have a talk about that, but I only have enough time in the program today.

The Gospel, Mere Christianity, and the Limits of Apologetics

Um, and I did, by the way, I, I did, I'm 75 or so the way through Ehrman's most recent book. And it is nowhere near as interesting, nowhere near as interesting as a lot of his previous books. I mean, he's just sort of filling out the, how to be a completely radical skeptic thing.

And we'll, we'll, we'll talk about it. But, um, there were some interesting things in there and, and, you know, I get all sorts of ideas and I don't have time to do a lot of the ideas that I get, but you know, it'd be really, really, really useful to do.

Man, I shouldn't even mention it. I should not mention it because everybody's going to want to do it. But I think one of the most useful things we could do on this program would be to do a series where we work through, not reading all, but we work through background, dating, primary emphasis of a material in the Gnostic Gospels.

Because it, the Gnostic Gospels are the baseball bat being used by almost every professor in a university anywhere. And, and even if we don't do a whole series, minimally, minimally, I, I should, and I will try to do at least a program on the Protevangelium of James, the, the, the book that had the most influence upon the development of early Marian dogma that has now become dogma within Roman Catholicism.

We've got to know about these books. Once we know what they actually said, they lose their, they lose their power. The only reason they have power over a lot of people is because we're ignorant of what's in them.