Demonstrating & Defending Sola Scriptura

Revealed Apologetics

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Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala and I am back again with a revisiting guest.

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Is that how you say it? A guest who's been on before, not that long ago, and we're gonna be talking about a very important topic.

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It's not so much relating to presuppositionalism per se, although there is there is some relationship there, but that's not what we're gonna be talking about today.

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We're gonna be talking about Sola Scriptura and a defense of Sola Scriptura, positive and negative.

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So my guest is going to present a positive case for Sola Scriptura and he's going to be walking through some objections against the doctrine.

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So this is kind of, you know, just to summarize it from a helicopter overhead view perspective, this is kind of an overview defense of the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, which is a very, very important doctrine.

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And so I'm looking forward to my guest coming on.

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I really enjoyed having him last time, so definitely please check out the other Paul, his YouTube channel.

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I would highly recommend that you go and subscribe. He's funny, he's informed, and I learn a lot watching his videos and his shorts too.

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Not his shorts, his shorts, the YouTube shorts. He's got some great, you know, information and really a good thing going on in his channel.

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So I highly recommend that you guys go over there and subscribe. Before we jump in, just real quick, I've been reminding folks of the

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Epic Online Calvinism Conference, where we'll be having myself, Dr. James White, Dr. Guillaume Bignon, Scott Christensen, and Saiten Bruggenkate going to be covering various aspects of Calvinism.

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Folks can sign up and RSVP for that event. It's coming January 21st, so it's coming soon.

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And it's going to be from 1030 in the morning to 430 in the afternoon, so it's epic, literally epic.

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It's going to be going on for quite some time, and there'll be opportunities to interact with the speakers and things like that.

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And we're not going to be covering TULIP, which is traditionally, you know, the topic of most of these

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Calvinism conferences. We're going to be covering some specific, you know, applications of Calvinistic theology.

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Dr. White's going to be covering certain key passages, biblical texts. Guillaume is going to talk about the correct use of analogies, and he's going to actually critique analogies that are used to criticize

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Calvinism. So that's going to be super interesting. Scott Christensen is going to be defending the compatibilistic view of freedom, and Saiten Bruggenkate is going to be sharing with us how to defend

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Calvinism within the context of kind of just the everyday conversation, you know, kind of a Calvinism of the streets, so to speak.

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And my topic, I am still brainstorming. I have a bunch of topics that I'm thinking about doing, but I haven't decided on one just yet, but I'll keep you guys updated on that.

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So that's January 21st. You can go to revealedapologetics .com, click on the pre -sup you drop -down menu, and you could

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RSVP for the Epic Online Calvinism Conference. All right, well, got that out of the way.

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Again, we are also going to be opening the chat for some questions, so I do see that we have a crowd already.

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Thank you so much. If you have a question on Sola Scriptura, preface your question with question or the letter

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Q, or your question will be lost, okay? There are only a few comments in the chat now, but once they start going,

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I scroll through and I don't know what happens unless you, you know, you preface your question with question.

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Also, if you find it in your heart, you know, even though total depravity is true and we struggle with sin, if you find it in your heart to send a super chat as a way of supporting

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Revealed Apologetics, that'd be greatly appreciated as well, and your question will be kind of shot all the way to the top, and we'll make sure we ask your question first.

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All right, well, with all of those things out of the way, let's introduce or reintroduce my friend, the other

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Paul. How are you doing, brother? Gone excellent, Eli. I hope you're gone fine this evening where you are,

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I believe. It is now 9 .05 p .m. Eastern where I am. What time is it over in the wonderful land of Australia?

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It's just gone past 1 p .m. and the heat is really starting to hit. We only just turned on the aircon in our house.

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Thank God for ducted air conditioning because I woke up today, at least the second night in a row, woke up in absolute, absolute muggy heat, so the summer's in full force here.

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Wow, well, so if folks are seeing, if you see Paul sweat, it is not because he's nervous about your questions concerning Sola Scriptura.

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It is because he lives in Australia. Don't worry, I won't be sweating, period. The aircon's on and it is nice in here.

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Okay, very good. Well, why don't you tell folks a little bit about yourself, where they can find you, and what you're up to in terms of your

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YouTube channel, and then we'll just jump right into our topic. Yeah, 100%. So I am the other

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Paul or real name, Paul Facey. I am a Sydney -based Anglican, so out here in Australia.

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I haven't been Anglican for a super long time and I really only did because I was just desperately trying to find a good and faithful church after leaving

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Hillsong, funnily enough. That's where I actually went for quite a long time. Not that I thought like, oh, it was an evil cult or whatever, but primarily because I believe their form of worship is not, shall we say, up to par, even though there's many genuine people within it.

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So I became an Anglican just to find a faithful church, and so it was really backwards for me. I didn't investigate the different Protestant traditions, find the best one to go with.

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It was more the opposite. I just wanted to find a good church with, if you will, the good marks of the church, where the sacraments properly administered,

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Gospels preached. Found this Anglican church and I thought, you know what, I'm here now, so I may as well see what I got myself into, and by a good happenstance,

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I happen to really, really like the Anglican tradition. So thank God for that. That's where I am now. On my channel and blog,

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I basically cover any and all topics regarding Scripture, history, and theology, which

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I find to be needing some good content, which interests me and will help others. In particular, in this season,

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I'm interacting a lot with other Christian traditions such as Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, simply because they really fire on all cylinders of various topics and presuppositions of Scripture, history, and theology, and so they really are among the most important things to be interacting with.

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But otherwise, I have made and continue to make other content on various other topics in those areas, which

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I find to see of good need. So I do want to start, for example, some new content specifically just on the historical method.

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How do you do history properly? Because that's like a very foundational thing, which so many people don't get, and it leads to a lot of really crappy claims, even from the seemingly best of apologists on both sides of many issues.

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So yeah, that, many other issues, including like the issue of sexuality in the Bible, what's the relations of men and women, what's the nature of marriage, so on and so forth.

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Those are the big topics that I've been really, really big into. So yeah, that's me. That's my channel. That's what

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I do. Yeah, and guys, I really do highly recommend you subscribe to his channel. I'm not just saying this because I have him on the show right now.

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I find his content really helpful, and I think this is kind of a big gap amongst a lot of Christians today, at least here in the

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United States, where a lot of churches are just not very much informed on issues of like church history and what it means to be a

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Protestant. And so I think Paul is doing a good job filling that gap. I know there are many others who are doing it as well, but I think he brings his unique flavor and humor to the things that he does, and I think it's an excellent way to inform yourself as to church history and how to understand and defend

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Protestant theology. So super, super, super, super important. So definitely subscribe to the other

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Paul YouTube channel. Now let's jump right in, Paul. Here in the

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United States, in kind of modern evangelicalism, and I know that term is very difficult to define.

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It's an ambiguous term. It can involve a wide range of perspectives, but and in Australia as well, do you see a moving away from or an ignorance of the

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Protestant understanding of the doctrine of Sola Scriptura? How is that from your experience? Man, oh man, oh man, that is a very hard thing to judge, just because like really the big vogue issues across the

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West really, but including in Australia, is not really like Protestant versus Catholic, even though it might have been especially in the especially older times, say 19th or 20th century, how the

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Anglican Church would have interacted with the Catholic Church when they were first coming in. But today it's more just faith versus no faith.

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That's really the big thing. That's the thing that's much more easier discerned, like very, very big trends, both of people coming out saying they're not

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Christian. A lot of people like to say that, oh it's a convergence, like more people becoming non -religious, but really a big factor is that for a very long time, a lot of people would have called themselves

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Christian, even though they never really were. And so really a big factor would just be that they're being more honest. But otherwise, with respect to your knowledge of Protestant distinctives,

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I would have to say, even though it's not as big of an issue compared to like an outright apostasy here in Australia, I'd say that, yeah,

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I'd say so, that there is a lot of ignorance on the foundations of Reformation belief, and well, foundations of Reformation belief, especially because easily the most populous and fastest growing churches in Australia, really across the

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West, would be those of the more evangelical persuasion, who do have certain Protestant foundations, but not all of them, including, well, not all the good ones, well they're all good because they're

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Protestant of course, but they otherwise don't share all the necessary Protestant foundations, and they miss out on a lot.

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And so there's a very, very truncated reflection of Protestant distinctives in the various evangelical churches and traditions, whereas even the more classical traditions, such as the

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Anglican Church, for example, even they have a more evangelical trending these days, and so you'll see a lot more of low church worship, and I'm not dogging that at all, even though I do believe that good liturgy is the better form.

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That, and then also even in their preaching and teaching, they won't have anywhere near as much emphasis on learning from the wisdom of former major giants of the faith, whether it's church fathers or even foundational

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Anglican figures. And so, yeah, I would say that across the board, and I'd say the same for Roman Catholicism as well, but then again, at the same time, there's also little enclaves, whether it's

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Roman Catholic or in this case Anglicanism and other traditional branches, there's little enclaves where people really do know their stuff and they really try to practice them.

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Otherwise, generally, yes, there is a widespread ignorance of good Protestant thought in Australia.

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Hmm, and how important do you think Sola Scriptura is? I mean, I know a lot of people who consider themselves quote -unquote

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Protestant, but yeah, you know, Sola Scriptura, yeah, I kind of understand it seems pretty important, but I can see how people can,

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I mean, is this kind of a really like a dividing line, super important issue that people really need to, you know, kind of wake up and say, hey, we need to be defending this, we need to be living this out.

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What are your thoughts there in terms of its importance for Protestant theology? Yeah, sure, so I want to,

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I'll definitely make a distinction between a dividing line qua Christianity versus a dividing line qua

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Protestantism. So what I would first say, and this is something very important to note because this is actually going to be a key refutation of a certain objection to Sola Scriptura, which we'll address later,

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Sola Scriptura is not an article of faith, it's not a doctrine that we believe is delivered by the Apostles itself.

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It is rather, it's what we would say is a necessary, good and necessary consequence of the facts of Scripture and history taken together and thus epistemically speaking, it is necessary and true.

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And so if you don't hold it, you're on very dangerous ground, but that doesn't mean you're believing like heresy or whatever. So that's a very, very important distinction and we'll see later why that's necessary.

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So Paul, you can be, so you're saying that you can reject Sola Scriptura and still be a Christian, you'd be saved, but it's a very dangerous ground to walk on.

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That's right. Yeah. Okay. That's right. Yeah. Because the rejection of Sola Scriptura can, or does make you much more susceptible to accepting things which are heresy.

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Otherwise though, with respect to being a Protestant, so qua Protestant, if you question or reject

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Sola Scriptura, you're not a Protestant. I just simply say that, like just historically speaking, like however fluid the term can be in history, which it has been, nonetheless, one of the common core claims amongst all definitions of Sola Scriptura I've seen, both good and bad, is the belief in Sola Scriptura.

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And so if you don't affirm Sola Scriptura, you can't call yourself a Protestant, simple as that. You're something else. Okay. Just because you're not a

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Protestant, sorry, just because you reject Sola Scriptura, that won't make you a Roman Catholic or an Eastern Orthodox. You might just be something else entirely, but you're definitely not a

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Protestant. You're definitely more susceptible to adopting those other perspectives. Oh, certainly, certainly. Yeah. Or, or the other way, because I know people who, um, there are more liberal

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Christians, quote unquote, who will openly reject Sola Scriptura because like they reject certain key things of the authority of scripture.

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Um, but they'll raise them like Baptist churches in that, and it doesn't make them more susceptible to Roman the East, but more to liberalizing tendencies.

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So it can go either way. It's just when you reject the ultimate authority of scripture, you can go any which way.

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And that's a very, that's a very, very important thing for Sola Scriptura. Um, but yeah, that's what I'd say about that. Excellent.

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So perhaps we should do something that we should have done a few moments ago. Um, and this is, this is vitally important because there are huge misunderstandings as to what

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Sola Scriptura is and what Protestants believe about it. Um, can you define for us Sola Scriptura?

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Tell us what it is. And if you can also tell us what it is not, and maybe perhaps have in mind the kind of the caricatures that maybe

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Catholics and Orthodox folks tend to project on, on Protestants. Yeah, a lot.

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So, um, really there's, there's, there's kind of two ways you can, you can give the definition of Sola Scriptura, although they're functionally saying the same thing, just highlighting different aspects.

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So the much more common one you'll hear today, and which is well faithful to the, um, to the historic understanding of Sola Scriptura is that scripture is the sole infallible, um, authority, sorry, is the sole infallible authority with respect to faith and morals.

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Although I like to personally slightly modify that, um, to recognize the distinction between infallible authority versus inherent binding authority.

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So I'd like to say Sola Scriptura, scripture is the sole infallible and inherently authoritative slash binding source of doctrine to, to recognize the distinction between infallibility and inherent authority, which is a very important one.

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I believe that as we'll get onto later, um, the, another definition, which is simpler, but functionally says the same thing, and which you can find more common among, uh, classical

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Protestant writers, for example, and also today is that scripture is the, and by implication of saying the, it's the only

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Supreme judge in matters of faith. Um, and so entailed from those definitions, there's a constitutive parts of, well, for one, the divine authority of scripture, which everybody

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Protestant and non -Protestant grants, um, the formal sufficiency of scripture. And so if scripture is the sole infallible and inherently binding source of doctrine, if it is the

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Supreme authority on matters of faith, then it must be by nature sufficient. Um, then it is also uniquely unerring, um, versus other authorities.

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So scripture, unlike these other authorities cannot, uh, um, and yeah, those, those are the basic constitutive parts of it.

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Now, logically prior to this claim of sola scriptura, that scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith is first before that the claim that the words of God and, and through, through the prophets, through, uh, the apostles through Christ and so on, uh, they, their authority is infallible and inherently binding.

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And it's important to recognize that because, uh, in some objections that Roman Catholics and Orthodox will bring up, um, mainly on the pop level, cause it's just utterly silly, um, is that they will say,

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Oh, a text doesn't have authority. A text doesn't speak for itself. Only an agent, a person has authority and speaks for itself.

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Uh, and therefore you need the church, blah, blah, blah. Um, of course this is a ridiculous category error, um, because sola scriptura is itself based on the prior claim that Christ and the apostles, for example, are as agents inherently binding and could speak with infallibility.

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Uh, and so to say that, to say that we just believe in a text and that, and that's it, it's utterly stupid, uh, because sola scriptura is based on the idea that no, we're actually basing ourselves on the authority of persons, but how we access them, the only certain access we have to them is through their written records.

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And so there's a key distinction there. Um, everybody accesses their infallible authorities through written records. You access the historic

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Roman Catholics and Orthodox, they access the historic testimony of the church, of their ecumenical councils via written documents.

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Um, so this is, this is something that everybody, it's ridiculous to pit texts versus agents because there is no difference between us on this issue.

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Interesting. Now, I, I like how you emphasize that it is the sole infallible authority, which is to say that we do not reject other authorities, but we are affirming that scripture is the, as a certain kind of authority, namely an infallible one.

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So, um, so that's connected to an objection that I want to bring up later on. Um, but, uh, okay.

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So thank you for, um, defining that for us. Um, what is sola scriptura not in other words, what is it not so that we can kind of, uh, explode some common characters of the doctrine.

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I'm really glad you brought that up, even though we didn't discuss it because I have a specific bit in my notes that says exactly that.

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So full scriptura is not one, as we mentioned before, an article of faith directly given in the apostolic deposit once for all delivered again, critical, especially to certain objections as we'll address later.

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Uh, second, uh, sola scriptura is not the claim that scripture is sufficient for all beliefs, including epistemically necessary knowledge.

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That's not the claim for sola scriptura. Um, people, unfortunately, a number of apologists like to claim that like, Oh, if, if sola scriptura true,

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Oh, then what, then why learn English language? You can just look at it and just get zapped into and like legit.

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Someone actually gave that objection to me and they said, Oh, can you understand this? And he posted some random Chinese and like, Oh, therefore you need other authority.

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It's just, it's just stupid. Like basic answer charity. You will know that the reformers do not mean looking at a piece of paper that has scripture on it will zap with you all epistemically prior necessary knowledge.

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Rather, they are assuming that once you achieve the, uh, the necessary prior knowledge for understanding texts, just as with all other texts, then you can understand

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Holy scripture as it is just as you do another text. That's the key thing. The context of the reformation, it wasn't that, uh, they want, it wasn't the reformer saying you can understand scripture without any prior knowledge, period.

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This is the Catholic saying, no, you need some presupposition. That wasn't it. The issue was, can you understand scripture as you do other texts versus requiring the authority of the church?

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That was a key issue. And the Protestants would say that you can, right? Yes. And I think we can.

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Yeah. And to be charitable as well. Many well -learned Roman Catholics and Orthodox will also affirm that yes, you can understand the scriptures.

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Um, even on, uh, on, on vast majority of the time, uh, by normal means of study.

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And that's, that's a very important thing to recognize. Um, uh, I've very recently, for example, had a stream with a

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Roman Catholic friend, uh, Christian Wagner, also known as Scholastic answers. Uh, unfortunately his wife accidentally deleted the stream, but it should be re -uploaded very soon.

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Yeah. Yeah. Funny story with that. But, um, nonetheless, we'll be back up. And we both actually, uh, attacked an argument by a

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Roman Catholic who more or less tries to forward the argument, um, that the

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Roman Catholics are on like an epistemically higher plane than Protestants. But we both said, no, we all involve private interpretation.

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And he would further adamantly affirmed that scriptures can be understood via normal means of hermeneutics.

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Many well -learned Roman Catholics will affirm this. Um, unfortunately there's also many, um, both not so well -learned and also well -learned

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Roman Catholics and Orthodox who will try to throw epistemic doubt at being able to properly interpret and apply the scriptures.

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Um, very common, including in the counter -reformation. That's a very important thing. And I do intend to make some content on that soon, um, to kind of flip the script when

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Roman Catholics like to say, Oh, the Protestant started the enlightenment when actually it may actually be the other way around because of the skepticism that the counter -reform was but anyway, um, that's not what soul scriptura claims.

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Doesn't claim that scripture gives you all necessary prior knowledge. And finally, uh, I don't know if you may think of other ones that you may want me to address, but finally, um, soul scriptura does not claim that we do not rely on tradition or as I prefer to call it historical testimony, just because the word tradition is so mad with, uh, with loaded assumptions.

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So I like to say it, even though in reference to the same thing, I like to call it historical testimony, in particular, historical testimony of prior

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Christians. Um, it's soul scriptura does not claim. We don't rely on that on things like, for example, the

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Canon of scripture. And for that, I would love to cite Martin Chemnitz and his examination of the council of Trent in book two, where he's has an entire section where it goes over seven different definitions of tradition, uh, as historically defined throughout the period of the church.

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And he gives examples from the church fathers and basically says, Hey, we Protestants, we accept the vast majority of these. We're fine. Including he says that the

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Canon of scripture is a tradition reverently receive reverently received by unbroken succession from the church.

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And so soul scriptura does not reject that claim. In fact, it's the opposite. The Protestant reformers recognize against part of that epistemically prior, uh, knowledge issue.

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Um, the necessity of tradition for establishing certain foundational things, but once it's all fully formed,

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Holy scripture is there as that shining jewel, as that final judge for everything, all other authorities are subordinate to it.

22:51

So those are the things that soul scriptura is not. Right. So, so in essence, so solo scriptura is not solo scriptura.

22:59

So we make a distinction and that is bad Latin, but it is nonetheless a common, common designator.

23:04

I think it might be a deliberate thing. Cause like it's bad Latin, um, but it designates something that is a caricature.

23:10

So I guess that's kind of appropriate. New descriptor would be more accurate.

23:15

Like if you want to do good, like new descriptor, um, yeah, that's, it's, it's not that that's not historic

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Protestant doctrine. Even, even I'll add a well -learned, uh, evangelicals, even well -learned evangelicals don't do those caricatures.

23:30

Right. Right. So we're not saying me and my Bible under the tree sort of thing. And that's not, that's not what we're saying. Okay. No.

23:36

Yeah. I do want to touch on the issue later on. Um, because I hear this all the time from only Catholics and Eastern Orthodox is that when a

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Protestant is called to defend, um, look at Yolo script.

23:52

Money. That was good. That's a good one, man. Thanks for that. Yeah. Made me lose my spot.

23:57

Oh, here we go. I almost forgot as it made me laugh. I'm not good at multitasking. Um, I want to touch on this issue, uh, that when

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Protestants are called to defend solo scriptura, we, uh, you know, foul is cried. It's good. People cry foul when we appeal to anything outside of scripture to defend scripture.

24:15

So they say, Oh, look there, you have to rely on the tradition now and see, look, you're inconsistent. I want to talk about that later, but you just made me think about that.

24:22

So, um, all right. So we know what the soul scripture is. We know what scripture is not.

24:28

Um, now let's jump into a defense of solo scriptura. Um, let's first start with a positive defense.

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How do you positively defend solo scriptura? Say let's pretend I'm a

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Roman Catholic and I don't know if a Roman Catholic would ever say this, but I would say, Hey, Paul, if you can convince me right now that solo scriptura is true,

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I'll become a Protestant right now. And I really mean it because this is a sticking point for me, Paul, you have no idea

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I've grappled with this. I've watched all the James white debates and I still am undecided. You know,

25:00

I've heard you process right now. Can you convince me of solo scriptura? And, um, the world is watching.

25:07

How do you give a robust defense of solo scriptura? If I were to ask you something along those lines? Yeah, a hundred percent.

25:14

So I would say that solo scriptura, again, not a doctrine, but something that is necessitated by good and necessary consequence, both from the principles of divide that are given to us by divine revelation, which we both accept, uh, as well as the circumstances of history.

25:28

So to start with a very basic foundation, if we look at one of our common sources, so the old

25:34

Testament scriptures. And at this point, as soon as I say that some people, I think if I remember as well, correctly,

25:40

I think even Jimmy Akin in our debate, trying to do that. Um, when I appealed to the old Testament, he said, Oh, you're already presupposing solo scriptura.

25:46

And I'm saying, and I'd simply say, no, I'm not. I'm presupposing sources we both accept. And, and further for the old covenant period, we both only accept the scriptures.

25:54

So functionally functionally for Roman Catholics and Ethan Eastern Orthodox, uh, they are solo scriptura with respect to the old

26:01

Testament. So we can at least ask you a question. Can I ask you a question? I'll be completely different, but you, you say things that make me think like,

26:10

Oh, I wonder, uh, are you a presuppositional list or a presuppositional ish kind of person?

26:16

Cause I know that Presuppositional ish. I haven't fully studied the nature of the methodology, but I'm very, very friendly to it in certain respects, just because like as someone who like my whole thing is like historical method, for example, like going really deep studying this stuff.

26:33

Like I've got this old obscure 1940s textbook written by a Jesuit priest, a guide to historical method, which is basically a full fledged rundown of historical method with insane detail.

26:43

And the first, once you go through studying historical method, the first thing you realize is like, look, this stuff is all theory laden.

26:50

It's all presuppositionally it's all presuppositional. So that's really necessary stuff. Like, you know, I had to jump on that for the fact that I get,

26:58

I get this question a lot. How do I use presuppositional apologetics against a Roman Catholic? Now, even if you're not a full blown presuppositional list,

27:06

I want people who are interested in that question to pay attention to not simply what Paul is saying, but look at how he answers the questions, how he examines and acknowledges, uh, he, you are what calls, uh, epistemologically self -conscious.

27:24

You are aware of the epistemological issues that go into these sorts of discussions. So whether you are one or not,

27:31

I encourage folks who are interested in that sort of question to pay attention to how

27:36

Paul is thinking, not just what he's saying, but go ahead. You can continue giving our positive case there. I just wanted to make that application.

27:42

No, for real. Thank you so much for that. I'm glad you, I do want to be very self -conscious with my epistemic premises on everything.

27:48

It really opens up a whole world, but anyway, so both Roman Catholic Orthodox, we accept the old

27:53

Testament. It is a, it is a common authority, so we can work from there. What does the old Testament say, um, about let's say

28:00

God's words? Um, you will hear, for example, Deuteronomy eight, uh, eight chapter three, where it says man shall live not by bread alone, uh, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

28:11

And so you have there in that statement, you have something that there is a pristine, perfect nature to God's words.

28:17

God's words cannot, uh, there is no error within them. And throughout the entirety of the old Testament, um, you never hear, it is never stated that any other ultimate source of words or statements has that protection from all error that is never guaranteed for everybody else.

28:34

It is presumed in the old Testament that everybody, or any, even explicitly stated at points where the words of men, they can fail, but the words of God, it's perfect.

28:42

It's a perfect foundation. Now I make the careful distinction, ultimate source of words, because obviously

28:47

God's revelation, the vast majority of the time was not given by him appearing out of the sky and shouting to people, but through means like prophets, for example.

28:56

And so while it's technically, for example, the book of Isaiah is technically the words of Isaiah, it is also ultimately the words of God because the words of God coming through Isaiah through a means.

29:07

And so no other ultimate source, no other ultimate originator of thoughts and words and all that has, uh, this protection from all error, like the words of God does.

29:18

That's a key assumption. And that really, if you grant that assumption, I believe that, that necessitates, that necessitates sola scriptura after a bit of a chain, but you basically have to affirm sola scriptura because, um, that assumption is not changed in New Covenant period.

29:34

Now that would be probably the hot thing that, uh, Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox will try to challenge.

29:39

Like for example, I spoke, uh, I did a debate review after Aiken finally enough with my Roman Catholic friends,

29:44

Scholastic Answers, Christian Wagner, because he's actually sympathetic with my side. He didn't think, uh, Aiken, uh, properly grasped the nature of the

29:51

Protestant classical Protestant idea. Um, so he was, he himself is very epistemically, uh, self -conscious as well.

29:57

And he himself said that that would be the key area to challenge that only revelatory words from God are infallible.

30:05

He would argue that, uh, in the New Testament period, there was a charism of perfect protection given to certain officers, like with the collective church, for example.

30:13

So that'd be the key thing to challenge. But I would simply press, um, just in giving a positive case that no other source, um, no other non revelatory source is ever given this protection from all error, like the words of God.

30:27

Now there are statements about the Holy Spirit, about the Holy Spirit's guidance, about the church being the pillar in the ground of the truth.

30:33

And yet when we look at these various other sources, including the authority of various non revelatory sources, and yet when we're consistent, um, let's say for example, in Acts, where it's prophesied, your old men shall dream dreams and your young, your young children or your young people shall prophesy and all that stuff.

30:49

So, Hey, they, they, even they're prophesying, even God's guiding them. Okay. But we all recognize that people can, uh, okay.

30:56

That's a real thing. And so that brings yet another very distinction. I'm so sorry.

31:01

I have to make so many distinctions, but it's really necessary. That's fine. God can, in an instance, inspire an individual to say something, even prophesize something.

31:09

I'm a, I'm a charismatic that way. I genuinely believe that that stuff can happen today. So God can, in an instance, inspire someone to speak prophecy.

31:16

And in that specific instance, granting that God is speaking through them, that person cannot, uh, in that instance.

31:24

Now that's the difference. Uh, the difference between, um, the difference between that and say an inspired prophet and Holy scripture and the words of is that, um, this protection is not guaranteed for everything a person says.

31:37

It is not granted that every time a person claims to be acting in their office as like a prophet or whatever today that they will speak without error.

31:45

Okay. That's, that's no, no Ecclesial office has that right today. God may, but it's not guaranteed.

31:50

Whereas with the words of God and that, which we grant is the words of God. It is ipso facto acknowledge that it cannot be without error, full stop.

31:59

Whereas the words of another person claiming to be a prophet or a teacher or whatever they can and must be scrutinized because it is not a given that they cannot be without error.

32:08

That's the key distinction. So given that the revelatory words of God are also in the new

32:15

Testament period, the only thing that cannot, uh, in themselves. Now here's where the issue comes after the apostolic period.

32:24

Uh, once the, uh, there wasn't, there was a time when, well, the apostles in the apostolic period were already preaching.

32:31

And so in those periods of inspired prophets walking and talking, then both their written words and their oral words have the same authority, the same divine authority that is absolutely granted.

32:42

Okay. In those periods, soul scriptura is not operative after those periods.

32:48

However, once those prophets have died, once their oral words are no longer being preserved purely in oral form, once they start to naturally fade away, uh, with the sea of other ideas, only that eventually very often, um, there may be exceptions in certain oral cultures that may preserve verbatim words.

33:08

Although this does not happen in church history. There's no one who claims to preserve exact words of apostles or Christ.

33:14

Um, for us in church history, eventually all the oral words of Christ and the apostles that have not ever been preserved in writing have been lost.

33:23

Not necessarily the ideas, but they become subsumed in a sea of other ideas that now need to be discerned.

33:28

They can't act as an authority on their own. Um, all that remains now of the very inspired words of God today are in writing.

33:36

And then with that, given the premise that no other authority has been granted an infallible divine protection, therefore you have soul scriptura by necessary consequence of principles given to us in prior revelation versus, uh, combined with the circumstances of history.

33:55

So I hope I made sense there. If there's anything you want me to clarify, I can gladly do that. No, that's good.

34:00

I think it's interesting. It's important to recognize to the amount of qualifications you had to make there.

34:05

Um, necessarily because it's not a simple, you know, a simple issue, right? A lot of people, Oh, you know, demonstrate, you know, soul scriptura is true.

34:13

It's like in like a quote or like a text, you know, if you're like going back and forth to people on Facebook, I mean, it's a very in -depth and, you know, uh, deep topic that can't, that shouldn't be treated in any cavalier fashion.

34:26

So I'm glad those qualifications, um, because again, not just with respect to the content, but the way you're answering the question,

34:33

I think hopefully, uh, people will benefit from kind of, if this makes sense, seeing how you think in terms of how you answer that question.

34:40

So, um, hopefully that will be useful for people. Um, all right. So that's our positive case.

34:46

Now, uh, let's kind of go through some objections to soul scriptura. Okay. And we'll kind of throw some softballs first, and then maybe we can jump into some more, um, you know, difficult, uh, objections.

34:59

Um, and who knows, maybe, maybe some Catholics will watch this and they'll make a response video. And then maybe we can do a commentary on, on if someone happens to respond.

35:10

That'd be a lot of fun. Yeah. I I'm gonna, I'm going to as long as I can. Oh yeah. I do.

35:16

I do like that about your channel. You do response videos and response streams and that, that that's really cool. I especially love like listening in the background whilst

35:23

I'm playing like, I don't know, Skyrim or metal gear solid five. I'll listen to your stuff on like, I don't know, responding to Tim Stratton or what have you.

35:31

Well, that's, that's very flattering. Hey, I'm your background podcast while you're playing. It is an honor.

35:37

So, so, but I'm just joking, but, but seriously, I, I, I would love to have you on more and more because this is not just an important topic in general, but it is, is a topic that I'm interested in and I, I really liked the way you explain things.

35:48

So but let's, let's jump right into this. So one objection that I hear is that solo scriptura was invented at the reformation.

35:58

In other words, you know, nobody believed this stuff and here, here comes along Luther and Calvin and Zwingli and all these other guys and Protestants responding to the

36:06

Catholic church. Solo scriptura is just a made up doctrine. And so, you know,

36:14

Protestants have nothing to stand on. How would you interact with, with that? My response,

36:19

I'd normally give the full spiel of like, oh no, here's the evidence. Here's why he is that. But, and this is the presupposition was kind of coming out again in me.

36:28

As soon as you start responding to that kind of a criticism with a defense that no, it wasn't invented in the reformation.

36:36

You've almost, if not actually, at least rhetorically granted that the, that that person's position is the default.

36:43

That unless you can prove otherwise, it was invented at the reformation. But more recently I've learned to just simply say, citation needed.

36:52

Can I, okay, so I'm, I'm going to try to think this through because this, again, I'm not, I'm not the best at this. Could we say, and kind of just a dumbed down version, well, wait a second,

37:00

Mr. Roman Catholic, you're begging the question as though your position is the default position.

37:06

Because if sola scriptura is something that I could derive from scripture, scripture predates the establishment of the

37:13

Roman Catholic church. And therefore let's go to the scriptures and see what happens. Can I, can we take that route?

37:18

Have I got it right? Somewhat. I mean, I'll qualify again. It depends.

37:24

Like sometimes I'll just give that as a criticism and not, they're not consciously thinking that their position is the default, but very often that does end up being the case that unless you can prove sola scriptura, then boom,

37:34

Roman Catholicism vindicated. You should become one of us because this is very often that is the case. Not always, but very often.

37:41

But so either way, whether that person is a case or not, I like to make sure if they give that criticism and I'll simply say, prove it.

37:49

Do right now, give to me right now, your own comprehensive analysis of the historical data, including the, including, and most importantly, the patristic period that goes through the attitudes of the authority of scripture, the authority of tradition, church councils, what have you.

38:04

And thus demonstrates in context with those sources that at least the aggregate that there was no, not one proponent of the principles of sola scriptura.

38:15

You've got to do that. That's why I like to say to them, like, if you're going to prove that colossal claim, give me a historical survey of all the sources.

38:26

I do know Roman Catholics who will quote a certain church fathers. Now at this point, is it the case that now we have cherry picking going on?

38:35

Because you can pick, you can bring certain people within the early church, early church fathers that seem to, to not really hold to a view that scripture and scriptural law is the only infallible rule of faith.

38:49

Is this where us Protestants need to be a little bit more educated as to what the church, the early church was saying?

38:56

Do you see cherry picking going on here when a Catholic actually bites the bullet and says, Oh, you want me to present it here?

39:01

Consider this person, this person, this person said this, that, and the other thing. Yep. Now he's the, he's the issue that has happened.

39:09

And I do say that happened quite a bit. Well, I'll say, Hey, prove that there wasn't soul script Torah. And they'll do exactly that.

39:15

Problem is if they are to do that, they're actually not answering the question. The question is not the, the, they, they, their criticism was not, um, sorry, no, no.

39:24

Our response was not that, um, no one in the early church affirmed a non -Protestant view of authority.

39:30

That wasn't the question. The question was please prove to me that nobody in the early church approved a authority.

39:37

And so to simply cite church fathers to the contrary, even granting they're being cited in context, which they're very often not.

39:43

And we will get to that. Um, that doesn't answer the question. Your task as I asked in that is to comprehensively survey all the sources and demonstrate that none of them give a

39:55

Protestant view. So them giving any number of cherry picked proof texts will not do that.

40:02

I'm asking for them to go through all the sources to prove that because that's the claim that they make that if it's, if it's invented at the reformation, that is a huge claim, but much bigger than people realize you were saying, if it's invented at the reformation, not one person before the reformation held to the

40:18

Supreme authority of the scriptures above all other authorities and by which they can all be corrected.

40:25

That's what you're claiming. So if you're going to claim that, as soon as you make a claim of not one person believed

40:31

X or, um, which is a necessary consequence of this was invented at this time, you have just placed the mother of all burden of proves on yourself.

40:41

So that's what I'd say to that. All right. Very good. So, so what if someone says, well, wait a minute, man, if you could find someone that looks like they support soul scriptura, those are schismatics.

40:50

This was not held by the majority of the church and yada, yada, yada, yada. How would you respond to something like that?

40:55

So they qualify it now. Maybe you can find someone in a context where it sounds like they're affirming soul scriptura, but in reality, this is kind of fringe.

41:05

Um, you know, how would you interact with that? Well, now I'd say with that is I'd simply say, Oh, well, one, how convenient to, this is where they are again, uh, really strongly begging the question, because this is a something

41:17

I haven't really received that specific objection on soul scriptura or someone affirmed that they're schismatic.

41:22

You will, however, hear it a lot on the issue of say icon, iconography and iconed or the veneration of images.

41:30

Um, cause very often people will very rightly cite the witness of say to Italian and Oregon. And almost every time when you're arguing with an

41:38

Orthodox or a Catholic, they'll say, Oh, they're not church father. Oh, they're a heretic. They don't matter. Um, problem is though, that's begging the font.

41:45

One that's begging the question for your own side to, um, that is utterly irrelevant when we consider that these guys were at least for a time because the

41:53

Italian did eventually go off to his own thing with the montanist, but with Oregon the whole time he was within the institutional church and to Italian was within the institutional church for a while.

42:02

And more importantly, both of those figures were highly revered by a lot of people who are church fathers in the

42:08

Orthodox and Roman Catholic system. And so they did have a very big influence on the other church.

42:13

Therefore their opinion matters. If we're going to talk about the historical attitude of ancient

42:18

Christians. So they cannot simply say they're schismatic. They're a heretic boohoo cry harder, please deal with them.

42:26

Okay. All right. Okay. Now I w we've all heard this one before.

42:31

So sola scriptura causes anarchy, right? This is where, this is the reason why you have all of the denominations.

42:40

You know, I think it's right now it's a 92 .7 billion denominations.

42:46

So I can just exaggerate the, uh, the number there. And this is all due to, uh, and the rejection of the infallible church to guide us, uh, you know, to anything along those lines.

42:58

So how would you interact with that? That's all scriptura really is caused for division and anarchy.

43:04

And, uh, yeah, that's right. My answer would pretty much be the same, prove it historically and not just draw rough, plausible historical connections.

43:15

Like, Oh, look, this place had sola scriptura. Oh, and it also did this bad thing.

43:22

Therefore sola scriptura. And that's something that's very popular today. Um, for example, one Roman Catholic author by the name of Don Johnson, he's basically written very recently and published recently a whole book, um, on how sola scriptura basically was behind and at least sustained for a while, uh, awful practices like the slave trade, for example, among other things.

43:41

Um, and that Mohican church was the good guy that saved everything. Uh, even though Protestant England was the one to, to start the ball rolling on emancipation, but let's, let's ignore that.

43:51

Um, nonetheless, he'll, he'll try to argue that, Hey, look, uh, in America, you had, it was all sola scriptura, it was all

43:57

Protestants, Presbyterians, whoop -dee -doo. And Oh, look, you had these guys arguing from Holy scripture that slavery is a good thing.

44:05

Therefore, sola scriptura caused that and caused all that stuff. And there's also other Protestants who tried to argue against that, but there was no authority to mediate between them.

44:14

Therefore, Oh no, it's all anarchy. Now, uh, the problem with this is that the shoe can very easily be put on the other foot.

44:21

Oh no, there is a massive debate in the, uh, in the, say the end of the first millennium church on issues of papal authority, um, unleavened bread and the filioque issues, which us

44:33

Protestants today would consider very minor and which we would not likely split over. At least, uh, the majority of us, maybe certain

44:40

Anglo Catholics, uh, would to an extent, um, but otherwise the vast majority of us, we wouldn't split over those issues.

44:45

Okay. Except the papal issue that one. Yes, definitely. But the other two ones, uh, we wouldn't. Um, and yet with those issues, um, was the authority of the so -called one

44:55

Holy Catholic apostolic church able to stop that? No, it didn't. In fact, there was a big, uh, a mutual anathematization by the bishops of Rome and the

45:03

Bishop of Constantinople. They both anathematize each other. Both claim to be, Hey, look, we're, we're the true church here.

45:08

You are out. No, you are out. Um, and so the claim of having a single infallible institutional church, uh, that it stops anarchy.

45:18

No, it doesn't. At best. If you want to claim that it establishes an in theory foundation for belief, even if people may practically disobey it, that's fine.

45:30

But so does so Holy scripture for us Protestants, we Protestants can claim the exact same thing that we have in theory on paper agreement.

45:39

Cause we submit to the same source. Um, even if there's practical disagreements among us, um, and he'll say,

45:45

Oh, but, but, but there was the, you didn't have an authority to, to mediate between, uh, this controversy. And now you guys are splitting on that controversy.

45:52

Okay. And we can say the exact same thing for every single of the countless historic church controversies that happened.

45:59

Did everybody submit just like, Hey, look, this is the one will, the one church let's submit to Chalcedon. Did that happen?

46:05

No. You have the Oriental Orthodox church. How about, um, uh, how about with the issues of, uh, what's mine's gone blank for a second.

46:15

How about the issues of, uh, the two of the, of the two persons of Christ or the hypostatic union? What happened there?

46:21

Um, it did everyone just like, Oh no, we're going to submit to them. Um, no, you've got the Assyrian church of the

46:26

East who are still alive and kicking to this day. And so the Oriental Orthodox, and then how about the will of the

46:32

Bishop of Rome, for example, and the fact that the Bishop of Rome is the objective centerpiece of the, of, of the church around which everybody must have communion with him.

46:40

Otherwise you're not in the church. Did that stop the great schism? Nah, it didn't because the

46:45

Eastern bishops didn't grant that premise. They disagreed and thus practically had a split. And so at best, um, at best having a single infallible institutional church can have a, some level of gin, add some level of generic clarity.

47:00

I don't want to deny that it can't do anything at all. I having a single authority normally in normal situations, I think is a big benefit.

47:07

And guess what? We have that. And I'll get to that soon. Um, it can be helpful. Like if, if your church, if the

47:13

Pope or whoever, a council issues, a definitive statement on a issue in a generic sense, yeah, it can be helpful.

47:20

It can make things clear for, for people. Um, that does not stop the perennial practical problem of people disagreeing with that council or authority or, uh, interpreting it differently and thus still creating division, which still happens.

47:35

And so, uh, no, the one true church does not solve the perennial problem of division. Sola Scriptura does not cause anarchy.

47:41

It is the sinfulness of man. If you want to, if people who genuinely want to say that, I want to, I want to go even further with that.

47:46

Anyone who does believe that relying on scripture alone, not as any, not as the only authority you have period, but as the sole final judge above all authorities, including authorities, which you do submit to.

47:58

If you want to say that leads to anarchy, then you are accusing the word of God as a cause of anarchy. I want to say that.

48:04

And that's why very recently, if you've seen some of my channel stuff, um, I've been going much harder at people who make those kinds of arguments.

48:11

Not, not just like, Oh, historically, Sola Scriptura is not true. Or like, Oh, it's incoherent or if they, if they want to make those kinds of arguments, even if I think they're wrong,

48:19

I can respect them. But those who make these kinds of arguments that are scripture alone, that causes anarchy or like,

48:25

Oh no scripture alone. You can't understand it without this authority. I like to call that blasphemy because it is. And that's how seriously

48:30

I take it. All right. Very good. Thank you for that. Um, all right, here's another one that I often hear in order to defend

48:37

Sola Scriptura, you need to, Oh, I, I, I skipped one. I apologize. Sola Scriptura.

48:43

And this is, we hear this one all the time. The problem with Sola Scriptura is that it is not taught in scripture.

48:51

Defend biblically the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. And don't give me some wishy -washy stuff,

48:58

Paul. Be as specific. Give me scripture properly interpreted that teaches clearly

49:06

Sola Scriptura. Go for it. Okay. So Mr. Roman Catholic.

49:11

What's my impression of a Catholic? Catholics don't look, they don't do that. I've just got the nice high and lofty nature of it. So I do give you that, but I'll ask you,

49:19

Mr. Catholic. So you want me to prove Sola Scriptura from scripture? Yes, sir. Okay. No, no.

49:26

What do you mean? What do you mean? I don't have to do that. Why do I have to do that? Well, if you think that scripture is the only infallible rule of faith, that should be something based upon the

49:38

Bible. If you can't derive it from the Bible, then in what sense is it a biblical teaching? Why? Well, I mean, we're having a conversation,

49:47

Paul. I hope that you care if I become a Protestant because I am in the

49:53

Catholic church. I mean, don't you care? I do care greatly. I wanted to tease out your presuppositions under that question, and you gave it right there when you claimed that I believe it's a biblical teaching.

50:02

So, Mr. Roman Catholic. I like you, bro. That's good to hear. Thank you.

50:08

Mr. Roman Catholic, you believe Sola Scriptura is a biblical teaching. You would say that we Protestants believe it's a doctrine?

50:16

Well, I would like to ask you what you believe about it. From my experience, Paul, I know that Protestants hold to Sola Scriptura as a

50:26

Catholic. I do not think that that is a correct teaching. It's not a correct belief. Whatever you want to call it,

50:31

I don't think it's a correct principle. I think that we need Scripture and the guidance of the church that's being guided by the

50:38

Holy Spirit. So, if you're going to claim Sola Scriptura is true, give me a biblical reason for it.

50:44

Yeah, and I'll simply say you're jumping the gun because what in the definition of Sola Scriptura means that I must prove

50:50

Sola Scriptura from Scripture, Scripture alone. But if you're going to hold to a doctrine that is brilliant.

50:56

How about that? Doctrine. You said it's a doctrine. No, it's not. Okay. The clincher right there.

51:04

Okay. We do not. Here's the thing. You have, you, Mr. Roman Catholic have unwittingly conflated two distinct wedded together, but distinct ideas of Sola Scriptura and the formal sufficiency of Scripture.

51:17

Now, the formal sufficiency of Scripture is something that is very much integral to Sola Scriptura, but it's not the same thing.

51:23

What you're trying to say, I will steel man for you. You are trying to say that for Protestants, we, uh, we affirm that not just that Scripture is the

51:31

Supreme and the Supreme judge over all other authorities, the sole and fallible authority inherently binding, but also that Scripture is sufficient for all belief for holy, for Christians, for all doctrines that Christians must affirm.

51:43

That's what you believe. Now that's what you, that's what we believe rather. Now here's the problem. We do not claim that Sola Scriptura is a doctrine or an article of faith that Christians must believe as deposited as to as taken from the apostolic deposit in whole, rather classical

52:02

Protestants have always affirmed that Scripture is a necessary epistemic premise from which, which is prior to the question of what must

52:11

Christians believe before you can even answer the question, what must I believe as a Christian, you have to answer, where do we get these beliefs from?

52:18

This is a logically prior question. And even in your own tradition in Roman Catholicism, there is something, there's a whole field called fundamental theology, which deals with the question of discerning the sources or the loci to use the fancy Latin of doctrine and belief and how you acquire and achieve those sources is not going to be the same as how you discern doctrine, uh, in, even in the

52:40

Roman Catholic church to discern true and right doctrine, the Roman Catholic church, you discern Scripture, you discern it from Scripture in consult with the witness of the

52:47

Catholic church, uh, the magisterium, if you will, and the tradition of the church all through the witness of the magisterium.

52:53

Now, how you discern those sources as authoritative is a different question.

52:59

You're not going to discern from the magisterium that the magisterium is true. Now, obviously it does a test to that for itself, but epistemically to, to arrive at that fundamental theology is going to require you to answer deeper questions from different sources, sources, such as natural or general revelation, for example, um, uh, historical testimony of the actions and deeds of Christ.

53:19

And so this is not the same question. It is not a doctrine. Solar scriptura is not claiming to be something that Christians must believe on pain of anathema, um, or something that is an article of faith delivered by the apostles, but rather that it is a necessary epistemic premise, uh, upon which all doctrine must come from.

53:38

So it's not a doctrine premise. Would I also be correct in saying it is a principle

53:45

Yes. Okay. So would you say that the principle of solar scriptura is taught in scripture?

53:53

I would say the principles that there are the prior principles that necessitate solar scriptura as we look at history are in scripture.

54:02

I would not say that the principle simplistically labeled of solar scriptura is wholesale in Holy scripture.

54:08

No, it's not. But the further principles behind solar scriptura are there. And once applied to history, it necessitates solar scriptura because solar scriptura is a time bound, uh, it is a time bound epistemic premise.

54:22

So would you, so, so would you quote the great philosopher, um, uh, Admiral Akbar from return of the

54:29

Jedi? It's a trap when a Catholic asks, give me your biblical proof for solar scriptura.

54:35

Do you think it's a trap for Protestants to just try to jump in and start quoting scripture? We should, we should be very careful about, yeah, it's a big trap.

54:43

It's a big trap. Don't even engage it. Um, do what I did before and ask him what, uh, and just say, no,

54:48

I don't need to. And then get them to like, Oh, you do need to prove it. And then, and then get them to, and then just simply ask him, why do

54:53

I need to prove solar scriptura from the Bible? That that doesn't, that doesn't follow you. If I believe scripture is the only infallible rule of God, how do you get from that?

55:01

Therefore you must approve solar scriptura from the Bible. That doesn't make sense. Um, and it's, and it happens because as I mentioned with that, they very often conflate solar scriptura with formal sufficiency that don't make that clear.

55:11

And so that opportunity, you can make it clear for them that they're trying to argue that when you hold solar scriptura with the principle of formal sufficiency, that there's a contradiction at which point you can then say there isn't a contradiction because you're misunderstanding how we categorize solar scriptura, not as a doctrine, but as an epistemic premise.

55:29

Okay. I learned something. That's good stuff, man. Uh, I see, I have to go back and listen to stuff because I can't write any of this stuff down while you're saying it, but there's a lot of stuff.

55:38

Um, all right. Okay. Very good. So, uh, my next objection is, um, in order to defend solar scriptura, you need to appeal to tradition.

55:52

Okay. How would you, and again, and it's, it's the Protestant scripture alone. It's like, nope, you need tradition as well.

55:59

But the very moment you try to defend solar scriptura, you're appealing to the, to the tradition. And so that's a no, no. If you want to alter your solar scriptura,

56:06

Mr. Mr. Protestant, how would you, uh, how would you engage that? Yeah. And I basically say the same thing as I said here and what

56:12

I said earlier. Um, no, that's not true. Um, we appeal to tradition or again, historical testimony for everything.

56:19

Um, it's solar scriptura again, solar scriptura and the formal sufficiency of scripture do not say that scripture is the only thing you use, it says that scripture is the final judge on all matters of controversy regarding the faith.

56:32

To give an analogy, we can say, um, pretty much virtually a one -to -one analogy almost, um, in the

56:38

Supreme, the Supreme court of the United States, the Supreme courts of the United States is the, uh, sole final, um, not legislative, um, juridical, uh, what's the, what's the, what's the term?

56:49

Um, what's the term for justice? It's not, uh, there's the executive branch. There's the legislative branch and there's judicial.

56:57

That's it. Um, the Supreme court of the United States is the sole Supreme judicial authority, um, over legal controversies in the

57:06

United States. All other authorities are subsumed under it. Um, now, um, here's the thing to discern what the

57:13

Supreme court is and how it functions. Do you have to do some prior legwork with other sources, if you will, traditions such as the legal tradition of the

57:22

United States? Yes, you do. You have to do that. That does not mitigate the claim. Therefore that the

57:28

Supreme court is the Supreme judicial authority in the land, because we're recognizing these as two distinct questions.

57:34

One rests upon the other. They are not answered the same way. They're not answered with the same authorities. And so to say that the

57:41

Supreme court, sorry to, to, to appeal to the legal tradition and just general history of the

57:47

United States in order to demonstrate the existence of the Supreme court of the United States, um, especially on legal grounds that it is a real authority that does not therefore say that does not therefore conflict the claim that the

58:00

Supreme court is the final Supreme judicial judge in the United States. These are not the same question at all.

58:06

And I like to appeal to unrelated, um, examples like that in order to really show to people that actually, no, these are things you already accept in your daily life as a given.

58:16

Um, so why are you now arbitrarily applying, applying this issue? And so I'd say the exact same thing for soul scripture, um, the establishment of, uh, we, yes, we do appeal to holy, uh, to tradition as, uh, evidence and the foundations for us to discern the nature of scripture itself, the

58:34

Canada scripture, and then the fact that it is the sole final judge over all matters of faith, including above the church.

58:40

Um, we do derive these from historical testimony from the various traditions of the church. So what that doesn't mean anything because that is not denied by the premise that scripture for us today is the final judge on all matters of faith.

58:54

It's very simple. Yeah. All right. Excellent. Uh, once again, guys, I am speaking with the other

58:59

Paul, who, uh, his real name is not the other Paul. It's Paul Facey. I have, I got it. Facey.

59:05

I like the other Paul though as well. All right. Other Paul. Yeah. And, uh, if you like what is being said, um, and even if you don't like it, if you disagree, but you find it interesting and he makes some good points, uh, do him a solid and go over to his

59:17

YouTube channel and subscribe. He's got some, I'm telling you, he's got some really good stuff, very informative stuff. And I think folks will find what he has to say, uh, very useful.

59:25

So please, um, go over there to the other Paul YouTube channel and, uh, subscribe. Um, all right.

59:31

Well, I want to ask you one more question and then I want to jump right into some of the questions from the comments, because I don't want to go too long and then possibly not have time for the comments and questions like that.

59:44

So in your opinion, I know the kind of the objections that I raised are kind of like softball questions, but they're popular.

59:50

And I think that you gave helpful answers there. Um, to you, what are the most important and perhaps the most difficult objections that you have faced?

59:59

If, if there are any, um, maybe you think all the objections are pretty lame. Um, what do you think are the most, you know, difficult objective to deal with in this whole debate over sola scriptura?

01:00:12

Yeah, it would. I mean, we can speak in difficulty in absolute terms versus relative terms in absolute terms.

01:00:21

I don't know any really difficult objections to sola scriptura. I don't.

01:00:26

Um, I guess the most difficult one would then the most difficult ones would be like, I don't know, maybe the arguments of liberals and all that who claim scripture isn't even infallible, but that's like a perennial problem for all of us.

01:00:37

Um, even then though I don't think those are mad difficult just because they presume very Western analytic ways of reading texts.

01:00:45

Um, but otherwise with this question, I don't know any objections. Like at some point

01:00:50

I might've found some objections, like a new objection and it was difficult at the time, but then I worked through it. I'm like, Oh no, it's actually not that bad.

01:00:57

Um, so as I know now, I don't know in the absolute sense, any truly difficult objections.

01:01:02

I think they're all pretty well disposed of, but in terms of relative sense, the most difficult out of all the existing ones, even if they're not absolutely difficult,

01:01:12

I'd say among the most difficult would probably have to be like the claims of like the early church and their, um, their praising of the authority of extra biblical tradition and all that.

01:01:23

Um, again, not because the actual claim is difficult because as I demonstrated before it rests, it's when it's given, when the argument is given, it's very often presumed it's not actually demonstrated by an apologist, by an anti -Protestant apologist.

01:01:34

Um, and second from my own study of the issue, it's not only more complicated, but you can actually see how many, many, many, arguably most of the earliest church fathers were much closer, if not right there with Protestant principles in looking at the various authorities, scripture versus the church and all that, then

01:01:50

Roman Catholics. Um, even though there may be some differences even in worldview in there. Um, but nonetheless, with all that stuff, the objection is pretty easy to me, but it is still the most difficult,

01:02:01

I believe out of all of them, because it requires so much nitty gritty historical work that the vast majority of people aren't even acquainted to doing on a small level.

01:02:09

Um, so I'd say that one's the most difficult just because of the scale of the objection. Right. Okay. And that's difficult because the average

01:02:16

Christian isn't in touch with church history. So when they, they're kind of a deer in headlights.

01:02:22

Now I used to work for a ministry called the historical Bible society. And the guy that I worked for, he owned a bunch of, uh, ancient biblical manuscripts, some into the medieval period.

01:02:32

Uh, he had a page of the original Gutenberg Bible. And so he would do, um, presentations, um, in different churches.

01:02:39

And I remember he spoke at a Coptic church and before he spoke, people were looking at all of the manuscripts and old

01:02:50

Bible that he had. And there was a little kid had to be like 12 years old. And this kid who went to this

01:02:55

Coptic church was very informed about the manuscript history of the

01:03:02

Bible and church history. And he could name drop. And that was like, I wonder if the ignorance of church history is a feature of American evangelicalism, but folks who come from the more, you know,

01:03:16

Eastern Orthodox Roman Catholic Coptic traditions, they seem to be more in touch with their history in a way that at least

01:03:23

Christians here in the United States. And in my experience, they're just not, has that been your experience? I'd say there's a good deal of truth to that.

01:03:30

There is, um, but rightly qualified because I would say, I'm glad you put that there in touch with their history.

01:03:37

I would say that like very often Coptics Orthodox Roman Catholics will be very well informed, at least on the gist of their own communion's history.

01:03:47

Um, and so in that respect, they'll, they'll, they'll know quite a bit again, at least in the gist, maybe not on the many details on the academic level, but otherwise when it comes to simply the church, the issue of early church history, patristics considered in itself, not as part of a certain communion, but in itself,

01:04:04

I'd say the problem is the same with them as well. And I, and we can see that with their, both with many of their apologists, many, not all.

01:04:11

Um, and also, uh, many of the laymen who try to do apologetic stuff when they'll give claims of, Oh, you

01:04:16

Protestant, you're wrong. Here's why. And nine times out of 10, they can't properly use historical sources to save their life.

01:04:24

Um, and my vast majority of the time, they, they won't even know many of the relevant sources on an issue. And it just leaves them very susceptible to, uh, have you considered this?

01:04:32

And they're like, uh, uh, uh, uh. So I I'd say on their own, on the history of their own tradition,

01:04:38

I'd say they, they do actually tend to be better than most Protestants, even Anglicans, unfortunately. Uh, but in terms of church history considered on its own, not quite at best, maybe on average, slightly better because their communions do heavily involve the history of the early church, uh, in their life.

01:04:55

But otherwise on the whole, you know, in a way that matters, not really. No. Okay. Excellent. Thank you for that.

01:05:01

All right. Well, let's jump into some of the questions in the comments here and, um, we can kind of do a shotgun approach unless something requires, uh, some more explanation.

01:05:11

Um, and we'll kind of just go through these one by one as best we can, and then we'll, we'll wrap things up. How does that sound?

01:05:16

Yep. 100%. All right. Before, before I, I do this stuff, I want to remind people, if you haven't already, it's okay to click away from this video for two seconds, go over to Paul's YouTube channel and subscribe again.

01:05:30

I highly, highly recommend it. And I'm honest, I'm not saying this to be nice to Paul. He has some really helpful content there.

01:05:37

So please, please, please do that. Or if you're not going to click away, do it after this live stream. Um, you won't regret it anyway.

01:05:44

All right. So let's go to our next, our first question from, let me see if I got this ready and you can correct me.

01:05:55

Good. Okay. Very good. My Latin. That's all I got. Uh, so, uh, asks, do we need an external infallible authority to determine which texts are wholly writ and how to interpret them properly?

01:06:11

No, we don't know at all. Um, because the Holy scriptures, while they're divine in origin, they are very human in material.

01:06:18

They were written by people for people, including for ordinary people to read and understand, just like with any other texts.

01:06:26

And even if you may need to do issues of background study or language study to properly understand a text, even if people can disagree about texts, everybody grants that you can, uh, that there is definite meaning within the text and that you can reliably discern that.

01:06:41

Um, and the exact same is with Holy scripture and even a Roman Catholic and Orthodox is required to believe that, uh, because the

01:06:47

Holy scriptures were affirmed and interpreted and applied by Christians, by church fathers before there was ever even the first, uh, papal, uh, ex cathedra statement or the first ecumenical council that was all done before then, um, they relied, um, on, they relied on their own appraisal of the sources, their own appraisal of history in order to make these determinations themselves.

01:07:13

And that was okay because they all presumed that texts could be understood that the canon of scripture could be discerned, um, from history.

01:07:21

So there's no problem at all. Excellent. Thank you. Um, Athanasius asks, uh, how do

01:07:27

Protestants properly deal with the schism question? Let us grant that the Roman Catholic church and the Eastern Orthodox churches are indeed in error with their canonical pronouncements.

01:07:36

Does this justify schism? Yeah, I mean, you know,

01:07:41

I'd ideally ask for a bit more precision on that question, but I think I can take it on as it is. So, um, the,

01:07:47

I've seen any other church in error with economical pronouncements. Does this justify schism that wouldn't justify schism though? And I say in lockstep with them and with traditional

01:07:55

Protestants that the splitting of churches is a tragic thing and someone is at fault and they have committed a grave sin when they do that.

01:08:02

Um, nonetheless, there is the issue of alleged schism between Protestant denominations today.

01:08:08

And I think that actually relies on a very particular, and in my opinion, erroneous assumption of what schism means by Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, um, where they define schism specifically as the split from the one true institutional church, quote, unquote, uh, which

01:08:25

I believe is a, is a premise that's not even granted to begin with the idea of one single church under one administrative body.

01:08:30

That's a key, that's a key assumption. Uh, and so even if, let's say, uh, let's say for example, there was a

01:08:37

Protestant denom, uh, they split over doctrinal issue and there was one side that was clearly in the wrong.

01:08:44

And because they were the ones who were bringing the doctrinal error, they are the ones at fault for schism, which is an important principle. Um, but then later on down the line, uh, that one, that other denom ends up solving that issue.

01:08:54

Like let's say years or decades later, they solve that issue and they, they reconcile, uh, in terms of friendship and in a sense, communion with the original denom, but they don't reenter into formal, uh, into like the same formal administrative structure again.

01:09:09

And yet they recognize each other as brothers in fire, brothers in Christ in good standing. That's okay.

01:09:14

That's all that matters. There isn't schism, even if they're, um, even if they're separate administrative bodies did originate in schism, because as it is written, what man intends the evil

01:09:23

God, what you intended for evil, God intended for good. It can use a bad situations like that to nonetheless maintain something good.

01:09:29

Um, and so yeah, that, and I don't grant the premise and we shouldn't grant the premise that Christ instituted a single administrative body other than a single church that is his mystical body that unites people across the whole world, wherever they are, whatever institution they're under, whatever country they're in, they're all united to his mystical body by faith.

01:09:50

Excellent. Thank you for that. Um, Matt Bell, Eli has got his holiday beard going. How did you know

01:09:56

Matt? I, I am on my, my teacher's break. I, I teach middle school, um, middle school and we're on two week break.

01:10:04

So yes, I have not shaved in a very long time. Thank you for noticing.

01:10:09

Do you ever plug your channel to your students? What was that? Do you ever plug your channel to your students? Um, sometimes

01:10:16

I don't, uh, I'm about to fix this here. Let me see if I remove this.

01:10:21

I'm sorry. I'm having, uh, some technical difficulties here. No problem. Oh, there we go.

01:10:27

Oh my goodness. All right. Anyway, um, sometimes I try not to, uh, cause

01:10:32

I don't want to, you know, but, but I go to, I do teach, I do teach the Bible. Everyone at my job knows I do apologetics.

01:10:38

So there are a lot of people at my job who subscribe to the channel and, you know, say, Hey, you know, that was a great live stream.

01:10:44

Yada, yada, yada. Um, but, uh, only when it's relevant to something we're talking about. That's good.

01:10:50

Yeah. Yeah. So at any rate, but, uh, thank you Matthew for noticing my holiday beard says if the message of scripture is what it's, is what it's infallible.

01:11:03

Sorry. I'm just reading it the way it is. Could we say that this same message is still equally authoritative and trustworthy when passed on orally without any written text available?

01:11:14

Uh, authoritative? Yes, it is. When a, when a preacher preaches that you must submit to Christ as Lord and, um, believe in that he died and rose again from the dead.

01:11:24

If he, if a preacher is saying that from the pulpit or in the street, that is authoritative in the sense that that message is true and has already been authoritatively promulgated, uh, definitively by the prior sources of Holy Scripture.

01:11:38

And that's the key distinction there because there is an authority in the church and the churches in Protestant ecclesiology.

01:11:44

That is a real thing. Um, that authority is derivative in that, uh, we speak and act authoritative authoritatively in so far as we are in accord with divine revelation.

01:11:56

Um, and so in that sense, all tests, all testimony that is true is authoritative. However, that's more the ontological question, the more epistemic, the more epistemic side to this question, which

01:12:06

I suspect is more what you're thinking of. Um, whether a teaching passed down, uh, passed down orally without a written text available,

01:12:13

I'd say because sola scriptura regards an epistemic principle, I'd say that if it was just passed down in oral form, um, and presumably without preserving a verbatim statement from the apostles or Christ, I'd say, no, it's not.

01:12:27

Uh, it could be true. It could be probabilistically. Um, there could even be some degree of certainty to its, to its truth, but it's not on the same level as scripture, which is the very words of the apostles.

01:12:38

And ipso facto is true. Whereas if there's an oral testimony, um, as Christians, if we receive an oral testimony, like,

01:12:47

Hey, Christ, the apostle said this, this is something that is to be judged. It's not taken for granted.

01:12:52

Like holy scripture is holy scripture and what it teaches is definitional to Christianity. Whereas what is claimed to be passed on orally from nonprofits, from non apostles, from people who are not

01:13:02

God or Christ, that's the important thing. Church fathers as authoritative as it may be, they're men like you and me, they didn't get these charisms from Christ.

01:13:09

Uh, like the apostles did, um, that what they say is liable to be judged as well. And Augustine himself goes on about this in many of his writings, many key statements from Augustine, where he will say that the, the, the letters of bishops, what bishops say, including me, whether it's individual bishops, groups of bishops, even entire councils, uh, it must be subject to holy scripture.

01:13:30

And if, and if it's not in consort, if you find that it's not in console, holy scripture, you do not accept it.

01:13:35

There's many such quotes out there from Augustine and many other church fathers. Um, and so no, the testimony of church fathers orally claiming what the apostle said is nowhere near on the same level as the very inspired words of God himself.

01:13:50

Good. Uh, here's a comment here. Uh, debate Jay Dyer. Do you, do you know who

01:13:57

Jay Dyer is? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Probably not. No, not interested.

01:14:02

Okay. All right. Not so much, not so much. Cause someone would say, Oh, Paul's chickening out. Like, no, not really.

01:14:08

Um, it's more so how he debates and how he does things. Um, it's weird. Sometimes he'll switch between, uh, how do

01:14:17

I say it nicely being a bit of a jerk, uh, versus not being so much of a jerk. But even when he's not a jerk, he will do really bizarre, like basically a lot of gish gallop.

01:14:26

And I don't think that's conducive to a good debate. Okay. All right. Thank you for that. As smart as he is very intelligent guy.

01:14:31

Yes, I agree. I've listened to a lot of his, uh, debates and I think he does just as from a debater, a debater's perspective when, when he's behaving.

01:14:40

Right. Because I do notice those things as well. Um, I think he does an excellent, excellent job. I wouldn't fault the man for his intelligence.

01:14:46

Very sharp. Yeah. So, all right. Uh, let's see here. Did, did it to do, there was a question.

01:14:53

Oh yeah, here. So this is maybe I will one day though, if I'm up to it, maybe one day I would like to one day, but it might be in the distant future when

01:14:59

I more feel like it, you know? Okay. Um, all right.

01:15:05

So this is continued from a previous question. Maybe you can just by reading it, know which question it's part of.

01:15:11

Uh, but Athanasius says, how do we interact with fifth, sixth century bishops and saints, which speak of the validity of schismatic sacraments, but that such sacraments are invalid outside the bounds of the church?

01:15:23

Yeah, that's an issue about having studied really, well, let's be real, really at all that, that very specific issue historically.

01:15:30

So because I haven't studied it at all, let alone not even like with super great depth.

01:15:36

Um, I probably won't really comment on that. So, um, but I guess we're looking at the generic claim itself.

01:15:43

I think such claims of like, oh, your sacraments valid. Um, uh, sorry.

01:15:48

It's a validity of schismatic sacraments, uh, schismatic sacraments, but that such sacraments are invalid outside the bounds of the church.

01:15:56

Um, I'd say that if it's, as you say, that may rely on a more institutional view, uh, the very more institutionalized view of the church, which

01:16:05

I don't think is for granted. Although I would say, um, if we're thinking of schismatic in a sense that these guys are in sin, they're causing splits in Christ's body, even without a view of any set institution.

01:16:16

If we just think that, Hey, look, these guys, they're splitting Christ's body. They're committing a grave sin that way. Then I'd say, yeah, they're whatever, whatever view of sacraments you have,

01:16:23

God's not pleased by it. He wouldn't be pleased by their sacraments. All right. Thank you. Uh, justice, uh, it says, why wouldn't solace

01:16:31

Torah be operative in the first century given there was the old Testament scriptures. So what is the relationship between old

01:16:38

Testament, new Testament? And so, yeah, well, I guess before the ministry of Christ, it would have been,

01:16:44

I guess. Yeah. I take that for granted during the ministry of Christ though. And after that, in the immediate post

01:16:50

Christ period with the apostles, it wouldn't have been because as I said, uh, the authoritative words of God are equally authoritative, whether written or oral.

01:16:57

And because there were oral teachings of God's word, there were living apostles, for example, uh, they would have been as authoritative as their written writings.

01:17:05

Therefore solace would not have been active in the first century, at least post Christ before Christ. I'd say that, yes, it would have been active, uh, because there wasn't any profit for centuries at that point.

01:17:16

Um, and this is even implicitly acknowledged by Christ himself in, and this is a very common passage brought up as a defensive soul script

01:17:25

Torah, um, Mark chapter seven and the equivalent passage, Matthew chapter 15, where Christ contrasts the tradition of the elders with the

01:17:34

Holy scriptures. And I think that does, if properly qualified, it doesn't argue that Jesus himself or the apostles of them, solo script

01:17:41

Torah, because once they started speaking divine revelation, it wouldn't have true. But I think it does show those passages that at least prior to the coming of Christ and his ministry, that there wasn't a some that Jesus did believe soul script

01:17:55

Torah would have been the norm. So, yeah. All right. Thank you. Uh, Tron Coop says, is it proper to say that Catholics must presuppose scripture if they don't, how could they foundationally established tradition or a magisterium to determine the

01:18:08

Canon? I'd say that's a good question when properly, properly formulated out because they'll say,

01:18:14

Oh, some of them, again, some of them, not all will say that, Oh, it's the church that determines, um, it's the church that determines what is scripture and what isn't.

01:18:23

Um, when even their own authoritative sources, uh, to an extent actually disagree, I think in the, is it the first Vatican council thing where it says that it very explicitly says that scripture was not made scripture by the church, but it already objectively existed that way.

01:18:36

And the church simply recognized it, um, which is basically yay for us, um, and many popular

01:18:42

Catholic apologetics, it totally violates that idea. They like to act as if something wasn't scripture unless the church said so, which

01:18:48

I, again, I'd also say it's blasphemous. It basically says that God's word is of no effect until men recognize it, which is absolutely silly.

01:18:56

Um, but so I would say that to an extent for those ones, for the ones who don't take that pop view, it's not a big issue, not, not really.

01:19:05

But for those who do take that pop view, it would be because everything that they learn, um, about the, like how their magisterium was established is originally from Holy scripture.

01:19:17

Um, and so maybe at best they can try to argue that, oh, well, I don't have to presuppose a scripture.

01:19:22

I can just presuppose that it's a reliable historical document. Um, at which case we can, we can just say as us

01:19:28

Protestants, well, okay, then we can do the exact same thing with our premises as Protestants in establishing what the canon is in establishing the nature of scripture.

01:19:36

So what's the problem? That's what I'd say. Excellent. Very good. Uh, pick a door says, uh, pick

01:19:43

God says I've get that pronunciation, right? Second Thessalonians two 15 implies that there are some apostolic teachings that are not necessarily registered in scripture that we keep.

01:19:54

I guess it's a question that we must keep. Yep. That's it. So the, uh, so the passage itself says to, um, to, uh, to the

01:20:02

Thessalonians to hold fast to the traditions that we delivered to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter. Now here's the problem.

01:20:09

Uh, here's the problem I'd say for pick a door. Who is we, who's the way in the passage?

01:20:14

Is it us today in the 21st century West, or is it the Thessalonians who had personal contact with Paul and other apostles and those who knew those apostles?

01:20:26

It's the latter. And that's the key issue. This was the Paul is presuming that these guys actually know that they received teachings from Paul himself and those with him.

01:20:38

So there is an epistemic assumption. They're totally valid at the time when Paul is literally writing letters to you.

01:20:45

And when you personally met him at some point, what about us today? And when, uh, if a

01:20:50

Roman Catholic and Orthodox brings up that passage, I always love to say to them, okay, we know what Paul said to the

01:20:57

Thessalonians by letter. Okay. We have two letters to the Thessalonians. That's awesome. Great. Can you quote to me any words or at minimum historically verify a teaching that Paul said to the

01:21:09

Thessalonians without using those letters? Can you name one? And they can't, they never can. The, the, the cope that sometimes

01:21:16

I receive will be something like, oh, well, I preached on the whole deposit of the, of the apostolic faith.

01:21:22

And to which I just simply say what specifically, what claims did he give specifically to the

01:21:27

Thessalonians that, uh, that you cannot discern from the letter or at least without using the letter itself or the letters you can't everything we know about specific things, not in general.

01:21:41

Yes. We grant Paul, we know historically Paul taught the apostolic faith to the Thessalonians, but specifically in terms of what claims, what teachings that Paul gave to the

01:21:50

Thessalonians, everything we know is from the letters. There's no oral teaching preserved today. That's it. That's what

01:21:56

I'd say. All right. Excellent. Matt Peach says, so the argument here is solo scriptura isn't a doctrine that you have to follow or defend in the

01:22:03

Bible, but you can derive it from a fallible tradition of the apostles. Yeah.

01:22:08

The latter statement, I think is a little bit confusingly worded. So the first, the first bit, yes, it's true.

01:22:14

I'd say that you don't have to fully defend in scripture. There are obviously principles within scripture, um, that you can derive, which then applied to things outside of scripture, like history, then in necessitate solo scriptura.

01:22:26

So yes, for the first part, the second part though, fallible tradition of the apostles. I think that's very, very odd and confused.

01:22:34

Cause if, if something is, if there is a, if there is something that is established as a tradition of the apostles, like if we can verify an oral statement from the apostles, it would by nature be infallible and inherently binding.

01:22:46

Um, so I guess the more charitably worded, um, you can, you can derive, you can derive, uh, the name, what solo scriptura is.

01:22:56

Yeah. Yeah. Even this second part, I don't think really, no offense. I don't think it makes a whole ton of sense because solo scriptura is more so a negative claim that we have these things from the apostles and there's nothing else besides them.

01:23:10

Therefore, and only these things have the highest level of authority, uh, over us.

01:23:16

Um, I guess to more charitably frame it, you could say that it's something that is derived fallibly from, uh, the investigation of history and of the sacred episodic writings and all that.

01:23:27

Um, to which I'd say, yes, that is, that is true. All of us. And it's no different than anybody. All of us, all of our, um, beliefs, all the epistemic foundations fundamentally rests on our private rationality.

01:23:39

Everything is processed to you by you and your brain. There is not some, uh, and I'm not saying you're saying this,

01:23:46

Matt, but there is not some, um, magical mechanism whereby the, whereby the church can just zap something into your brain without passing through your rationality.

01:23:57

And you just know it with absolute perfection and no confusion. That's not how it works. Everything you learn, every authority you accept, you pass through your rationality.

01:24:05

You personally analyze it. Um, and so, uh, and, and everything further, everything we know, even from infallible sources come by a fallible means.

01:24:14

So for example, Holy scripture, we have the words of the apostles, but they're preserved fallibly by various scribes.

01:24:20

For example, uh, exact same with the allegedly infallible statements of ecumenical councils.

01:24:25

Well, for one, we don't even have the, the, well, the acts of the first council of the first council of Nicaea.

01:24:31

We do have its canons of course, but even they, there's a really weird textual history with them. Like with new cannons being added later, for example.

01:24:38

Um, and yet for none of them, we don't deny the premise that we can reliably, even if fallibly, but reliably discern what the, uh, what the sources say.

01:24:47

Um, so that's what I, I would say to that, that yes, everything is done by fallible means and fallible sources. Uh, and the reason why this person keeps coming up,

01:24:56

I'm going in order down. So, yeah, that's fair. Um, question here is what, what's exactly the justification to hold to solar scripture as a necessary epistemic principle.

01:25:06

And he goes on to say, I mean, why do I need to start from that assumption? I, well, that's kind of what

01:25:14

I did in the, in the show already. That's when I gave that defense, uh, just wind back the tape, uh, look at my defense of soul scripture, why granting the premise that only the words of God are in themselves without error, then following the logic, uh, as you apply that to later history that necessitates soul scripture.

01:25:33

That's, so that's my answer. Basically the stream. That's right. Okay. Awesome. Um, the other Phillip, uh, there's another

01:25:39

Phillip, other Paul, other Phillip. Oh yeah. The other presupposition was all right.

01:25:46

The other side of this debate is that the unwritten traditions are also the word of God. But if that's true, then why are they not included as scripture when they end up written down like at Trent?

01:25:58

Yeah, I'd say that's a, um, well, I'd say that the Roman Roman Catholicism, they're conscious about the question they distinguish between scripture, which is positively infallible.

01:26:09

It gives positive new revelation from God. Whereas with the, um, with the councils, with the church councils like Trent or an ex cathedral statement from the

01:26:17

Pope, they're not claiming to be delivering new revelation, but that they're simply guarded by God to not say anything, uh, anything erroneous.

01:26:28

But then in that case, the problem is they do definitionally give some level of new information, even if it is, even if we grant that it's claim to be placed on prior revelation.

01:26:37

Um, even scripture itself says that a lot, many assertions it gives are just something that flows from prior scriptures.

01:26:43

So that doesn't mean it's not revelation. Um, at that point I start to say, well, that, how do you, that, that level of distinction?

01:26:50

I question its validity. I'm not totally certain, but I do question the validity of that level of distinction when an infallible council can give new information that is claimed to be infallibly protected by God and how that's not also revelation.

01:27:05

I don't, I don't, at that point, I don't think a distinction really exists. And I think it's, it's not really coherent for Roman Catholics to say, as is their official teaching and, and Eastern Orthodox as well.

01:27:15

Um, that, uh, that revelation stopped with the apostles. I don't, I don't think that's true at all.

01:27:21

If they're claiming to have these councils that are infallibly guarded by God, how is that not revelation?

01:27:27

I mean, yeah. Well, excellent. Well, that was the last question. At least the last question that I, that I saw here,

01:27:33

I think you did an excellent job. Folks. If you've been joining this, enjoying this conversation, uh, do me a solid and click the like button here.

01:27:40

That's super helpful. You have no idea if you know nothing about YouTube likes actually are very helpful for channel.

01:27:46

So I would highly, uh, um, I would kindly ask if you, if you have been enjoying this conversation, definitely give the video, like, uh, give it a share.

01:27:54

If you think someone else would find it useful. Um, Paul, you've done an excellent job. You are just a wealth of information.

01:28:00

And so again, I'm going to repeat myself. Folks should go over to YouTube channel and subscribe. Um, and what, what are you currently working on right now that folks can be, um, looking forward to?

01:28:10

Yeah. Yeah. A number of things. So I've got a number of video ideas in the works. I'm doing a lot of personal study.

01:28:15

I've, I'm setting up a new, um, note taking and note categorizing system for myself. So I like to handwrite my personal study notes cause there's just, it's just much better in many ways.

01:28:25

But then I like to transcribe them into a note taking system that I just downloaded called obsidian and kind of categorize that so that I can basically build my own like complete library of study and knowledge and all that.

01:28:37

So that if I revisit a topic that I've done a lot already, just go to the notes straight up, pull it up like that.

01:28:43

Um, otherwise when I'm working in terms of content, um, my next, I have a video coming up next on the question of whether we need a church magisterium as Rome or the

01:28:52

East defines it in order to settle disputes. So that's something, it's going to be a, uh, not a super long video, but longer than my normal short videos, because I'm going to go very deeply into the details on these, on these issues.

01:29:04

Um, I've got some other streams coming up. So just looking right now, I've got in a few days from now, a bit under a week from now,

01:29:11

I've got a tutorial with father James or barely Protestant on YouTube. I felt he's an Anglican priest and he's going to basically give us a tutorial on how to pray the daily office in the 1662 book of common prayer.

01:29:22

So that's going to be super exciting. I then have a stream after that with Craig Truvia, Orthodox Christian theology, my favorite

01:29:30

Orthodox YouTuber, blogger, academic hands down. And we do a lot of, we do a lot of stuff together.

01:29:35

We're good friends. And he's going to come on the channel to discuss, uh, a ninth century

01:29:40

Roman, um, Roman librarian called Anastasios the librarian. And basically he's going to give his theory on how

01:29:48

Anastasios the librarian more or less invented the papacy as we know it today. So it's going to be a very, very, very spicy stream.

01:29:54

Um, what else have I got working up? Um, more blog content in the works as well.

01:30:01

Um, you say you write, you handwrite all your notes. Is that because is that help you just remember it more or you just, yeah, it's good that way.

01:30:08

And it's also improved. It also improves my handwriting cause it sucks really bad right now. Um, so I do that as well.

01:30:14

And I do eventually want to, I very quickly working on establishing like tutoring courses that I want to be able to put up as like another source of income and also another way people can learn.

01:30:24

So my content, I want to put all the meat I can on my free content, but then also I want to put up tutoring courses where there's like, look, you're basically paying for one -on -one interaction with me to learn on issues.

01:30:35

That's a great, I don't think people realize this. I mean, it's very easy to go on YouTube and listen to someone do what you just did here for people to listen to what

01:30:45

I do. This doesn't just come out of your pores. This takes a lot of work and a lot of prep.

01:30:52

And so I highly recommend whether, you know, whatever channel or whatever resource folks use to educate themselves, you know, do what you can, if possible to support them.

01:31:01

I think it's very important. And trust me, I know it's a lot of work. I'm a teacher, so I have to prep for my lessons and things like that.

01:31:09

This is, I do this extra and it requires me to do some reading and things like that. I actually, I actually briefly doubled in teaching for a bit, so I know exactly what you're saying.

01:31:17

Yeah. Oh yeah. So you understand. So it's easy to kind of consume, but you know, every now and then it's very much appreciated if you support anybody, anyone you find a useful resource that you've learned a lot from, you know, support them even, even if it's through your prayers, support them.

01:31:34

So I do already have a support, a support angle on a subscribe star page, which is basically a

01:31:40

Patreon alternative. So people can support me there if they want to, if they want to, you can find it in the links in my videos, but yeah.

01:31:46

Right. And if you call the number on the bottom of the screen right now, we'll send you a special anointing oil that you can anoint the four corners of your house.

01:31:55

Oh no, no, no. What would you do if you just found out you were caught on one of those weird, like the numbers starts scrolling across the bottom of the screen.

01:32:03

And in reality, I'm just a prosperity preacher. I'm just kidding. Oh no. I would fly over to the

01:32:09

States and slap you myself. Welcome to the

01:32:14

United States. What is your purpose here? Well, I'm going to smack someone in the face and then I'm coming back home. Yeah, that's right.

01:32:20

That's right. And then you can, once you, once you get back home and once you're, uh, you got the ice on the little thing, you can join one of my courses.

01:32:28

Once I have them up, whether it's on various scriptural topics, hermeneutics, church history, historical method,

01:32:33

I want to have a bunch, big slew of different topics to teach. Yeah. Well, folks, if folks who watch the channel, remember

01:32:38

I had an epic precept round table where I had a bunch of people talking about presuppositional apologetics on the screen here.

01:32:45

Maybe we can do an epic Protestant round table and we can just talk about Protestant theology and interact with all sorts of, uh, you know, counter arguments and things like that.

01:32:54

Maybe getting a bunch of people on the screen, sharing their thoughts. I think that'd be a lot of fun. Yeah, a hundred percent, a hundred percent

01:33:01

Kane. Awesome. Well, uh, folks, just one more reminder, January 21st, we have the

01:33:07

Epic Online Calvinism Conference. You can sign up for that at the revealedapologetics .com website.

01:33:12

Uh, click the precept you drop down button and RSVP your spot there, January 21st from 10 30 in the morning to 4 30

01:33:21

PM in the afternoon. I'm very excited for that. And it's a great way to support the channel as well.

01:33:26

Paul, I would like to thank you so much, man. This is your second time on the show and hopefully it is not your last.

01:33:32

Um, you've been doing an excellent job. You're doing great work. And, um, I'm going to continue to let people know that they need to go over and check your stuff, uh, check your stuff out, man.

01:33:41

Thanks so much. You're way too kind with me and I'm really happy to be on here. I love, I love what you do on your channel as well. Well, thank you so much.

01:33:47

I appreciate that. Well, ladies and gentlemen, that is all for this live stream guys. Uh, until next time,

01:33:53

I think I'll be going live on Saturday morning. So folks who are interested in the presuppositional stuff, we're going to be jumping right back into that on Saturday.

01:34:01

I'm just waiting for a little bit of details, uh, from the person I'm going to be having on and then

01:34:07

I'll share it on my social media. And then I believe next Wednesday we'll be going live, um, again as well.

01:34:13

So just stay tuned for, uh, for that. I like this. Look at this, the revealed prosperity channel.

01:34:19

Look at that. What about prosperity apologetics? That has not spring to it.