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 I had just made note of a shot taken my direction by Joel McDermott in American Vision and Rich is sitting in here and he goes, so are you going to be joining me?

I look at the clock and it's 2 .59, it's like ah, great, wonderful. I don't know where all that time went, but it disappeared very, very, very quickly.

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 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, 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. And 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, so.

And the funny thing is, my feed normally is just choked with pictures from the Shepard's Conference.

I'm 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.

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 another here and there.

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, you know, 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 at a long, long time ago.

And so. That perspective is going to create very different answers to key apologetic questions.

And a 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 directed me to it.

But there was a interview in at the best schools dot 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, not 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 here's what we say, the best schools asked

Lycona, as one who is debate atheist, 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. And 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 atheist 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. We're just it's just how things happen. You know, it you know,

I was about to say, well, you know, it's just 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 to come up with meaningful biological proteins and things like that.

I know that there aren't enough molecules, aren't enough atoms in the known universe for this kind of accident that happens.

I can't even go there, but that's that's what most people would end up saying. They sort of think that that that work.

But notice that, again, when I 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 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, OK? 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, OK, 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. 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.

Licona's embracing of that methodology that is being utilized there.

Now, most of you know that Dr. Licona 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.

And here's what Licona said. 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 snowstorm hit as he died.

Ice cracked on the volcanic Cheon Lake near his reported birthplace at Mount Paektu.

When the snowstorm 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. Laikona was saying. And though I think

Dr. Geisler's attitude in dealing with Dr. Laikona 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 to 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, Laikona 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

Protestant 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 T .D.

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. Um, 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.

Um, 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 for 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. Um, the gospel because you 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 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, you know, 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, you know, 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.

Must be something else to be done. Don't get it. So 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 Gene 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 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 the 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 here. I got I got a Kleenex. We surrender.

We surrender. We give up. Wow. I put that down.

So 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 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? But really? It goes on, 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 of you in the biblical text must take these factors in consideration. In my opinion, definition found was on covenant sufficiently vague as to allow a high view of scripture while avoiding the need to over overdefine inerrancy.

I'm I'm I'm sorry, Dr. I've I've done a lot more debates than you've done.

I really have. I've made a lot of 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.

OK, 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, they were inerrant, but we don't have them.

So, you know, we don't want to overdefine 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 really don't.

You don't believe in inerrancy, 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.

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 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 guys are saying is that you can. And look, this is nothing new.

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.

Yeah, we 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. 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' 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' 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. They 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 of the

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. No 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 rises again according.

Oh, man. The apostles had scriptures. Yeah. The Old Testament scripture.

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's 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 it in Evernote 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.

Um, 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, a 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 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. 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 talk about it. But there are some interesting things in there. 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 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. So that that'll be interesting.

But what I wanted very quickly. Huh? I don't have my thing in, so I'm not hearing you anyways, but.

Came out 29th leap year leap day. But this one actually looks like it's real.

In fact, I wondered. When I first saw it, I was like, is this real? Pope says having a personal relationship with Jesus is dangerous and harmful.

Now, you can guarantee that the title was not chosen by the

Vatican. But it does look like the pope actually said this. All right.

So, but here's what he said. And this is one of those places where on the one side.

You have. Anti pope mania, anything the pope says will be interpreted no matter what his context is.

On the other side, there's a real error here. The problem is when you don't listen to what he actually said or overreact to it, you miss what the real error is and you miss the opportunity to provide a balanced response, which is what we try to provide here.

There is no do it yourself in the church, no freelancers. How many times do we hear

Pope Benedict describe the church as a we church? Sometimes you may hear someone say,

I believe in God and Jesus, but the church, I don't care. How many times have we heard this? This is wrong.

There are those who believe you can have a personal, direct, and immediate relationship with Jesus Christ outside the communion and mediation of the church.

These temptations are dangerous and harmful. They are in the words, the great, great

Pope Paul, the sixth absurd dichotomies. It's true that journeying together is challenging and sometimes it can be tiring, but it may be that some brother or sister in the church makes us face a problem or scandalizes us.

But the Lord entrusted his message to salvation of salvation to humans, all of us as witnesses and our brothers and sisters with their gifts and limits who come to us and make themselves known.

This means belonging to the church. Now, on the one hand, let's start with the positive and then the negative.

On the one hand, what he's talking about is extra ecclesia nulla salus.

Outside the church, there is no salvation. And just with the term theotokos,

God bearer, which became mother of God, there is an orthodox understanding of that because it's a

Christological title, specifically that Jesus was truly the God -man at his birth, wasn't adopted later on, so on and so forth.

And then an imbalanced unorthodox use of that, mother of God being exalted the way she's been exalted in Roman Catholicism and so on and so forth.

In the same way, extra ecclesia nulla salus is true and false. It is true biblically because very plainly the

Bible teaches that everyone that the Spirit of God regenerates is placed into the body of Christ, that there are no freelancers, that it's

God's intention to form one body. There's no question about that.

So there is an orthodox understanding of extra ecclesia nulla salus. The problem is when you misdefine ecclesia, and that, of course, is what

Rome has done. Once Rome decides that she is the ecclesia, this has resulted in something

I've lamented over and over again, what you hear on EWTN, you know, the

Coming Home Network and all the rest of the stuff, where what you hear is rejoicing about conversion to the church rather than conversion to Christ.

Conversion to Christ is a much lesser issue than conversion to the church. There are entire books about conversion to the church, the church, church, church.

So once you end up with an unbiblical doctrine of the church, unbiblical view of the church, as you have in Rome and as you have in this

Pope, that's where you get the problem. So there are those who believe you can have a personal, direct, and immediate relationship with Jesus Christ outside the communion and mediation of the church.

These temptations are dangerous and harmful. Well, what

Rome likes to present is that we believe that you've got one of two choices. Either you have the church and the magisterium and the

Pope, and the only other thing is over here, and it's me and my Bible under a tree, and there's nothing in between.

Well, the biblical church is in between. The biblical church is not you and your

Bible under a tree. And there is a very weak and unbiblical emphasis upon the primacy of me amongst many people, no question about it.

But that's not to say that then you get to go over here to what he's saying, because the communion and mediation of the church within the

Roman Catholic context, there is the issue. The work of the

Spirit of God in saving God's elect is what creates the church, not the other way around.

And Rome, having abandoned the gospel, having a false gospel, has no finished work of Christ, you end up with a ecclesia, a church that is no longer the church, and what binds the church together around the world is that commitment to that one gospel, which is where we sort of come back around to what we were talking about beforehand.

Whenever you have a definition of the faith that does not include, as central to its definition, the gospel, you're going to end up with major problems, and most of the time with major heresy.

And that's what you have with the Pope. So it wasn't that the Pope was wrong in everything he said, it's that the system he is in creates the real issue.

And that is you have a church that not only denies the existence of anything outside of its own communion as being a true church, and of course,

I understand, Orthodox, blah, blah, blah, blah, I understand what they believe about that. Um, but because the gospel has been compromised, you end up with an unbiblical doctrine of the church, and this then becomes the dangerous thing that it is.

It's just a shame that, unfortunately, most people don't see it in the balanced way that it needs to be responded to in that way.

Well, hopefully that was useful to folks. Sorry we didn't get to the Ligonier statement, but we'll certainly keep that on the list because I think it would be very, very useful.

Thanks for listening to Dividing Line today. Lord willing, we'll be back again next week. God bless.