Today on the Dividing Line / Scott Hahn Book Reviews

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The.

Dividing Line.

The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence. Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now, with today's topic, here is James White.

Thank you, Maury. Welcome to The Dividing Line on a Tuesday morning, a little toasty one here in Phoenix, but hey, you know, it's, can you believe we're already this far into August? Oh my goodness, what has happened to 2006?

It's already 100 degrees outside and it was 65 degree dew point this morning. I was struggling up the mountain and I was going, oh man, what happened to those nice 90s or something? It disappeared pretty quickly, but hey, what can I say?

The cooler weather is around the corner, I just keep that in mind. Unfortunately, that means that the next summer is coming too. As you get older, that next one, it's right behind it, there's not much you can do about.

It.

So anyway, lots to do today on The Dividing Line. Some of you have noted, I'm sure, a little series I put up there fairly quickly responding to a fellow over on the Envoy Magazine web board. I provided a three-part response to a little post that he put up that I'm sure took him a whole lot less time to write it than it did for me to respond to it.

But I just wanted to provide an example of how you can give a response. Of course, his nick is Jerry Jet. He has not really responded to what I've said. Unfortunately, the only responses I've seen on the Envoy Magazine web board have been somewhat along the lines of, you're a servant of Satan, who would want to talk to you anyway?

So you can't force anybody to deal with what you're saying and to listen to what you're saying and to recognize the circularity of their own arguments. So you do the best you can and you put it out there and you hope other folks hear that and learn how to give a response themselves.

There are times when the spirit blesses and a person actually hears, and then there are those times when you encounter that kind of response and you just go, well, you keep doing what you need to do. I was asked by someone, and we're going to get back to Martignone, we're going to get back to Spong and your phone calls and so on and so forth, but I was sent a link, and I've sent these links all the time, and I'm pretty certain I've discussed elements of all of this on The Dividing Line in the many, many, many years that have passed.

And there is a fellow out there by the name of Malcolm L. Lavender, Dr. Lavender, who shortly after my book, The Potter's Freedom, came out, started putting together a book, an internet book, something in response to it.

And whenever anybody Googles maybe The Potter's Freedom or my name or something, I'll get people, hey, have you ever heard of Malcolm Lavender? He looks really smart, and it's because he utilizes lots of lexical sources and he can discuss Greek.

He makes a lot of mistakes about it, but he can discuss it and throw it out there. So I'm pretty certain that I have at one point or another put various things up on the blog in regards to Malcolm Lavender, and I know that one of our volunteers has written emails to folks in response to things that Malcolm Lavender has said, and we've documented stuff, and there may be even an article in the Reformed Theology section.

I'm not really certain.

I didn't look.

Anyway, I was sent a URL, and I printed it out, and just, you know, I did not go into a whole lot of depth here, but I have noticed that even amongst those who can exercise discernment in broad theological categories, when there is still a need on my part to encourage non-specialists.

Who's a non-specialist? Well, someone who maybe hasn't had the opportunity of taking the biblical languages or certainly teaching the biblical languages, things like that. There is on the part of most people, and some of it's good, some of it's bad, but there is a need to emphasize a phrase I've used many times, and that is to demythologize scholarship.

We have in Western society the tendency that once you hear doctor and so on and so forth, that, well, automatically, that person just must be given the right to say whatever they want to say, and for some reason, our critical thinking capacity, we sort of turn it off because, well, you know, if he says this, then it must be true, and this must follow from that, and the fact of the matter is, while you may not be able to follow the technical argumentation about, well, for example, Acts 1340, that's what this one's about.

I was sent a URL, his comments in Acts 1340, called Jerome Sets the Course of Error, from the potter's freedom to love the world, nothing like, you know, stealing somebody else's title and then just, you know, trying to play with it, and we've talked about Acts 1348 many times before.

We have discussed Dave Hunt's many wild attempts to get around Acts 1348. We've gone through the text and all these things, and I understand that, you know, in Acts 1348, we have a periphrastic construction, and there's different ways that periphrastic constructions can be understood, and you've got the issue, for example, of putting together tetagmenoi with a particular form of aimi, and this comes out with a particular meaning, the pluperfect tense meaning of the periphrastic, and normally, once you get to that point, most folks, especially if you're talking about grammar and syntax, just turn off, you know, the mind turns off, and I'll tune back in once he starts speaking my language again.

The problem is that when you have that kind of material, all right, you might not be able to evaluate what a person is saying about a perfect passive participle or about a periphrastic construction or whatever, but even when scholars are writing, they eventually have to come down out of the clouds and make a conclusion, okay?

They need to tell you what they're saying and what this particular construction actually means, and they need to provide a basis for it, and so even in that context, you can read something like this and go, okay, now here's the assertion.

He's making this assertion that this has nothing to do with the decree of God. All right, now how does he get there? Does he provide me? Can he at least demonstrate that he can communicate with me and give me an understanding of why he's saying what he's saying?

And that's really where so much of this literature completely falls apart because you can, especially if you do know the languages, you can read along and go, okay, well, that's true, but sort of irrelevant, and okay, that's all right, da-da-da-da-da, and then all of a sudden, here comes this massive conclusion in the middle of all this stuff, and you know, I know, reading it, there's been no basis laid for that.

There's been no foundation laid for that whatsoever, and so we need to be, you know, I need to encourage folks regularly to demythologize scholarship. Just because someone puts some, you know, degrees behind their name, or I went to Princeton, well, you know what?

There ain't a whole lot of good theology coming out of Princeton these days. You know, that's actually a strike against you from an orthodox perspective anymore. Just because someone says, well, I've done this, I think, okay, the greatest proof of scholarship is that you can take what you've learned and you can actually communicate to other people.

If you can't do that, I'm really, you know, I suppose there's still some areas where people who can't communicate well can be great scholars as long as they can communicate to other people, but you know, there's not that big a role, I think, for those folks.

And I really think within the Christian church, especially within the leadership of the Christian church, if you can't edify the people of God with it, if you can't explain what in the world you're talking about, it might indicate there's a bit of a problem.

All right. So anyway, looking at the Acts 13 for you, I just wanted to read some of these sections. I know it's not all that easy to follow a discussion like this when I'm reading from something, but I'll do my best to try to communicate it to you.

We already have one line taken up and we'll take your calls at 877 -753 -3341. But just to give you a sense of the shape of anti-reformed literature that's out there on the web, the title is Acts 13, 48, Jerome Sets the Course of Error.

Jerome, Jerome sets the course of error. And he quotes from R .C. H. Lenski, who, of course, if you are familiar with him, a Lutheran writer opposed to reformed theology in the sense of Calvinistic theology, obviously would not want to use that term reformed theology in that way.

There's an article where I interact with his, I think, grossly acontextual way around Romans, chapter nine. But he makes a reference to Jerome and his rendering of Acts 13, 48. And then Lavender makes this comment.

It is enlightening to learn that Jerome gave ground to set the church on the awful predestinarian course with the Latin Vulgate. Also, that he was Roman Catholic and advocated predestination and the sinning Christian discussed below.

And immediately you go, what? Whoa, back up the truck here. He wouldn't have even understood the term Roman Catholic. It's an oxymoron in and of itself. But aside from all of that, this is not exactly, I mean, Augustine's name is considerably more connected with the concept of predestination.

But the whole idea that translating one phrase in one place in the Vulgate could have that massive an impact is just silly. I mean, let's just be perfectly honest, it's silly to think that he gave ground to set the church on the awful predestinarian course, as if Rome itself is, you know, emphasizes predestination and election.

I can't tell you how many Roman Catholics I've had who said, that's the way God is. I'd never worship him. And so you read this and you go, what is he is he trying to do sort of the is he trying to do this sort of the poison the well thing?

Well, yeah, he is many, many times poisoning the well. Later on, he quotes from BDAG and he says, the meanings of this lexicon cannot be reasonably assigned to a predestinarian sense. And that's just simply untrue.

He again, Lavender either doesn't understand or is unwilling to understand or accurately represent Reformed theology. We'll see a number of red herrings, straw men, bold statements that can't be made to fit because they reject because Lavender rejects.

And those who write like him reject Reformed theology's own definitions. So if God, for example, classes someone among if he ordains, if he sets someone up, well, the idea of ordaining ends and means he just rejects that.

It just can't possibly be. And so he just rejects it and makes many statements along those lines. Page two was really interesting because here my name came up. And he's he's talking about the New American Standard Bible updated edition and the rendering of the text is and as many as had been appointed to eternal life believe.

And then we read this. And why would this Bible not be suitable for the five point Calvinist? Dr. James R. White, a five point Calvinist who does not believe that Jesus died for all Adam's fallen race, is a critical consultant for the Lachman Foundation on the New American Standard Bible update.

And then he gives a reference to it. So I guess that's saying that I was responsible for this. And again, I just I just it's hard not to laugh at some of this stuff. It really, really is, because this hasn't changed since the 1977 edition.

In 1977, I was an eighth grader. And so, you know, in eighth grade, I was already in there, you know, twisting and turning the translation of the Bible. Just I don't know. I just I have to.

Man, it.

He then he goes on with the Geneva Bible in 1599. Am I to be blamed for that as well?

I don't know.

It's it's hard not to laugh at these things. You can tell exactly where he's coming from from this paragraph. And so the tradition after the manner of Jerome continues, thus the ambassadors of damnation have poisoned the well with their teaching of predestination and reprobation, both irresistibly coming upon the human race like the nightfall.

You know, we should have some music behind that.

When you're reading something like that, we need to get that stuff from. What was it? The Wizard of Oz, you know, the Wicked Witch of the West, you know, I don't honestly.

Remember that. I'm sorry. I was much too young back then. Oh, I just told you I was only in eighth grade in 1978. Oh, wait a minute. No, no, I wasn't.

Wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

No, no, no. I was wrong there. I need to correct this because I'm sure Malcolm Lavender would would probably document this. No, I started high school in the fall of 77 because I graduated in 81. So, yeah, that would that would make sense.

OK, so actually I had graduated eighth grade and was now a freshman at that time. So, yeah. All right. So need to get that one year in there or I will be accused of being a desperate liar by someone. Anyway, he he then quotes me.

And he at least admits that the vast majority of translations render it this way, but he just blames Jerome for all of that, I guess. Jerome is the one behind all this. And he quotes from me and he quotes and he actually said I got something right.

And so that's so rare that I like to read it because, you know, most of the time I couldn't get anything right if I tried.

So, yeah, that's what he's saying.

White goes on to note that Aeson Tetogmenoi is a paraphrased construction forming a pluperfect or completed action in past time, which is correct. That's our studio audience, which we have to pay big bucks for to have a studio audience once in a while.

Yay, I got something right. Now, he's not really going to end up, I think, thinking about what that means as far as Act 13 goes, but that's that's OK. Then he has an entire page where basically what he's trying to argue, even though he's going to come down to its final conclusion, he's going to he's going to say he does take this Tetogmenoi as a passive in Act 1348, but he spends an entire page trying to.

Argue it could be a middle.

And then he says, but whether it is middle or passive with respect to the divine decree is of no essence, a translation either way has nothing whatsoever to do with a decision predetermined by God from eternity.

So the whole thing he's got to try to do is whatever happened when Paul preached the gospel in Acts 1348. And and he says, we are turning the Gentiles. We are proclaiming God's mercy to the Gentiles. What non-reformed folks have got to emphasize is that when those Gentiles rejoiced, when those Gentiles believed that that had nothing to do with God, it's all of man.

And I like to sort of bring that out so you can really think about what these people are really saying, because the only other way to read Acts 1348 is to be a Pelagian. It's to be a Pelagian, as many as were inclined, they were better, they were more spiritual, they had they had chosen for themselves, whatever it is, they're better than the people who didn't believe.

And you really start seeing the man centeredness, the Pelagian, the anti-grace, anti-God attitude that really lurks behind this. We've got to have free will. It's got to be me, not God. Well, anyway, that's behind all these things.

I continue on when he when he exegetes Acts 1348, he goes back, everybody else goes back to verse 46. Since you reject it and you judge yourselves not worthy of eternal life, behold, we turn to the Gentiles.

See, they judged themselves to be unworthy of eternal life. And so that means that when the Gentiles believed that they had done that for themselves. And see, really, the fundamental question you have to ask yourself about Acts 1348 is what you believe about man.

If you are a Pelagian, if you believe that man has the ability in and of himself to do good and that you haven't read Jeremiah in a long, long, long, long time and you don't like Romans 3 and that's about somebody else and that stuff in 1 Corinthians 2 about the natural man not receiving the things, the spirit of God that really bums you out.

And you're just basically a latent humanist. Then you're going to look at Acts 13, you go, well, you know, I think man has the ability to incline himself to eternal life. And since it's a pluperfect intense, these people had already by their their good and righteous attitude prepared themselves to believe for eternal life.

And you're going to be a nice, good, humanistic something, a religious person. But you have to ask yourself the question, is that what Luke believed? Is that what Paul believed about the nature of man, that man inclines himself to believe that man, that man outside of grace could ever do anything but be the enemy of God?

That's the question you have to ask yourself. So he says, accordingly, God did not reprobate them. They reject, they judge themselves unworthy of eternal life. So the eternal decree had nothing to do with the outcome here.

Neither are the circumstances, verse 48, contingent upon the eternal decree. The decree, as the Calvinist tells it, exists in concept, but not in fact. Now, that's not really attached very well to what's come before.

He doesn't demonstrate that, well, because the Jews judged themselves to be unworthy of eternal life, that means the Gentiles judged themselves to be worthy of eternal life. He doesn't make that connection.

He doesn't recognize that since the bent of man is always towards sin and is always as an enemy of God, that it makes perfect sense that they would judge themselves to be unworthy of eternal life and they would reject the message.

The amazing part is that those who were appointed to eternal life believed. You see, it's very similar to when people get all hung up with with Esau, I hated, but Jacob, I love Jacob, I love Esau, I hate it.

Oh, poor Esau. The amazing statement there is Jacob, I loved, not Esau, I hated. If you just understood the sovereignty of God, the holiness of God, the reprehensible nature of man's fallen sick, all that would make perfect sense.

But, you know, we are dealing fundamentally when we deal with with Arminianism, and this is he is much more of a true Arminian, we're dealing with Arminianism, we are dealing with a humanistic form of Christianity and they don't work well together.

They really, really don't. Then I'm almost done here, then we'll get to our phone calls and and jump into stuff here. Then he talks about the the things the Gentiles did, the Gentiles hearing these things were rejoicing, glorifying the word Lord.

And as many as believed, as many as been appointed, he says, had as had been inclined. Doesn't really provide a good, strong basis that but had been inclined to eternal life believed. And he says, rejoicing, glorifying, believed.

Note that the verbs rejoicing, glorifying, believed are all in the active voice. The subjects are acting. Well, duh, that's that's called a complete irrelevancy. No one would say otherwise. This cannot be brought into harmony with the eternal decree and its irresistibility.

Why? I mean, this shows just a complete ignorance on Lavender's part of the function of the decree. And it seems to mean that he assumes that if there is a divine decree, then there can be no secondary causes and there can be no secondary reactions to the decree.

I mean, it's, again, just this surface level type of stuff. But these Gentiles are in harmony with God, rejoicing, not rejecting. And in this atmosphere of God's presence, they believed thus they were inclined to that eternal life with respect to which the Jews judge themselves unworthy.

There you have your your humanistic interpretation of salvation. So you can't have the spirit in there. No, I can't have an eternal decree. No, I'm not sure why we're glorifying God for what they for what the Gentiles freely in of themselves did outside of his decree.

Why don't we glorify them since they did better than the Jews? Right. They were more righteous. Right. Yeah. Well, there you go. The Calvinists handle this statement to mean that because of an appointment to eternal life beforehand, these persons believed.

But as we have shown, one believes in order to be saved and not because he is saved. Now, where have we heard that mess before? Where have we heard that imprecise use of language, assuming that saved means regenerate, regenerate means saved?

No, no, no ability to discern between them. Yeah, Dave Hunt, you got it. And so they believed as many as had been inclined. Thus, the absolute decree is not the result of eternal life, but believing results in having eternal life.

So believing not the eternal decree results in eternal life. Talk about a complete red, red, red herring and straw man. The eternal decree decree results in believing which results in eternal life. But see for him, you cannot have the idea of ordaining the ends and the means just can't happen.

Every reformed work you could possibly look at. We'll discuss that. But no, they won't allow us to in any way, shape or form define our own our own viewpoint there. Real quickly, this is the last page.

He says it would be interesting to inquire what influence these renderings in a Vulgate version had on the minds of some like Augustine and his followers in the Western Church intriguing the great questions of free will, election, reprobate, reprobation and final perseverance.

Well, given that the Western Church. Within 400 years would be beating and imprisoning Gottschalk for holding Augustine's viewpoint on this and that the vast majority of those coming afterwards would have to struggle to get around Augustine's influence.

And given the nature of the Reformation and the differences between reformed theology and Roman Catholic theology, again, one rendering one place. It's not like this is the key text. I mean, if we go to Romans nine, Ephesians one, something like that.

OK, maybe, but one passing text, I hardly I hardly think so. Jerome's contribution to apostasy then was the deception that ensnared those who trusted in the Latin scriptures in Acts 1348 and to oppose those who taught righteousness of life in the now.

In these matters, Calvinists have followed Jerome, a Roman Catholic, not the scriptures. And again, the anachronism of that terminology being used that period of time. Then, interestingly enough, just so you know how far off Lavender is and how far outside of Orthodoxy is, Calvinism is a major apostate theological system teaching the world that Christ did not die for all men.

The rest of the points of Calvinism are based on the false atonement theory known as penal satisfaction. So he does not even believe in in the idea that Christ's atonement is a penal atonement for sin, which, of course, again, if that leads you to the concept of substitutionary atonement is not something that Armenians would believe in.

So just to mention that as as we pass by, just as another example of just how far off these folks could actually be. And let's go ahead and get to our patient caller, Bill, before we take our break. Hi, Bill.

How you doing? Hey, how's it going?

Great. It's an honor to be able to talk to you finally after listening to you all these.

Years. Yes, sir.

What can I do for you? Oh, actually, I was just. I was actually calling in one. We'd still like to see you on Puritan board occasionally. I'm the one that emailed you about two weeks ago. That's the I'm a student at Dallas Seminary of Dan Wallace's.

Anyway, and so we would like to see there some. But also you made a comment. I listened a couple of years ago to an old. It actually is probably about five or six years now. They interviewed Theodore Liedis on Larry Spargemino, I believe it was interviewed him.

And I recall you making a comment. And I've heard this other places that Liedis did not hold to an errancy at all.

Yeah, that actually now, you know, that Liedis is dead. He was in a car accident, I believe, last year. I responded point by point to the Southwest radio broadcast programs on the dividing line. I know this was quite some time ago because that was when we were still on KPXQ.

So I imagine it was early 2000, 2001, somewhere around there. I don't remember. Late 90s, I recall now. But I responded to each one. And so there would be a discussion of all of that point by point in in the archives.

But yeah, Liedis's thesis was that Warfield, in essence, popularized the concept of an errancy and that it is a it is a modernistic false concept that that the actual concept needs to be that the that the lack of error in scripture is rooted in in the ecclesiastical manuscript tradition and not in any theoretical original that we don't have any longer.

That was his his perspective. And if you want to see him defining and defending that, though, in a somewhat disagreeable fashion, the very lengthy article on our website, which he asked me to remove a number of years ago, where he initially engages Greg Bonson on the subject and then I engaged him as well, is still on our on our website.

I don't remember the link is, but it should be in the general apologetics or maybe the King James only is in section one of those two. You'll see a very lengthy discussion. I don't know how many pages it is, but it prints out to a lot of them.

And you'll that starts off with the discussion of his view of the subject of inerrancy. And you will see that he he basically really attacks the concept of even using the term in any way. So I would I would go to that for his own his own words documenting that.

But if I was trying, I guess, to get clarification on a little bit. But my first first time I'd actually heard of this was our church a number of years ago as music director. Mississippi played the Pensacola Christian College series that he was on and had some, well, not necessarily constructive things to say about yourself.

Oh, believe me, I know. But I was one of his favorite targets, not not overly accurately. I mean, he he he actually made the made the amazing statement that the King James only controversy is nothing but a point by point response to Gail Ripplinger.

And anyone anyone who's who's read the book, either one of the books knows that's just a bald faced lie, you know. So, you know, when you make when you can make that kind of a statement, you destroy your own credibility.

You really do. So anyway, yes. So, yeah, he was his association with Pensacola was really weird, though. If you knew his own theology, I was always of the opinion that they did not know his theology and they did not really fully understand where he was coming from because his view of the ecclesiastical text was in no way, shape or form consistent with Pensacola's perspectives in regards to the King James.

So I I thought I personally found that really odd. And, you know, if I was interested in such things would have pursued a long time ago trying to figure out exactly how that happened.

But go ahead. Well, did you see they actually released that? It wasn't quite as big because there was one that PCC released that Bob Jones University actually responded to the videotapes. Yes. Well, they actually released two more a couple of years after that.

They didn't quite get the the hullabaloo about it. But on the original one, Litas had stated, and I think I'm quoting, but I don't have it in front of me, that you were that you, Mr. White, were ignorant.

Something about Bart Ehrman's book, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, because it wasn't in your bibliography or something. Right. And I found it amusing. I got the later video series and they actually, when trying to explain their position without Litas there, took a moment to disavow, oh, well, we don't believe this.

I honestly only looked at a small portion of what he had to say, especially due to the fact that he didn't seem to get the the time frames quite right as to what sources would be available when I was writing my book and and things like that.

But, yeah, he you know, when I first wrote the book and had contact with Litas, he was very nice to me and was supportive because he opposed King James Onlyism. You got to understand his his the perspective of the ecclesiastical text is not King James Onlyism.

It speaks to a an ecclesiastical text, specifically a Byzantine textual platform. But it's he himself wrote a little book, not a very easy read, and it was very poorly put together. It fell apart after one reading and I had it.

But he wrote a little book and and he took on various the King James Only folks because what people don't realize is he tried to get in with D .A. Waite. He tried to get into the into the Burgon, the Dean Burgon Society.

And when they found out this theology was outside of their parameters, there was a there was a split between them. And that that impacted the direction that he went. And so he he went all over the place.

He was a difficult fellow to sort of nail down. And I always found if you read that article, do you know what article referring to on my website? Yes.

As a matter of fact, I've downloaded. I've had it for a number of years.

It's huge. And his comments about Baptists in general, he was extremely embarrassed by them. One of the reasons he asked me to take it down was because he was now getting all his speaking engagements in those contexts.

So so it was pretty embarrassing to have one out there where he's demonstrating his real feelings that Baptists just don't really have any meaningful ecclesiology and any any meaningful biblical basis for this, what they say about this, that and the other thing.

And it was very dismissive and things like that. So it was he was an interesting fellow and very irascible. I did my best to respond without getting overly personal about things. But obviously, he didn't have any qualms about being personal right up right from the beginning.

But anyway, that's that's the background of that. And I don't understand why he'd be at Pensacola either. I never figured that out. Maybe you can find out someday. Maybe there was somebody he knew who knew somebody else.

I don't know. I it always seemed a very odd combination to me.

It's it's very hard. I've tried to do my own investigating on that. And they're real tight lipped down there about things anyway. Yeah. At PCC, in fact, they weren't even always King James only. Right.

In my understanding, what I've been able to piece together of that whole thing is that. It had something to do with Jack Hiles or something had somebody pulled out of there because supposedly somebody corrected the King James or something at the school, something along those lines, and they originally endorsed Gil Ripplinger.

Yes, I know. Yeah, well, in fact, Gail's if my if my understanding is correct, Gail's honorary doctorate came from Hiles's school. And I believe that that's the same school that gave John R. Rice's horse a Ph .D.

And I'm absolutely serious about that. I am not making that up. They gave an honorary Ph .D. to John R. Rice's horse and they gave one to to Gil Ripplinger, too. So what can you what can you say about things like that?

The King James only movement creates very, very odd bedfellows. And, of course, from my perspective, the issue today is not so much King James only movement, which has which has been, I think, severely damaged since the appearance of my book and some others, D .A. Carson's and and just the continuing ongoing education of people in regards to simple factual matters.

But I see this kind of idea coming into more more what I would call intellectual circles and not because it has anything new to offer, but just because the whole field of textual critical studies is is not well known to people.

And that that concerns me a lot because the BART airmen that are out there and the materials that they're producing, that's that's a that's a grave danger. I've been trying to sound that alarm for a long, long time.

We see we see Islamic apologists utilizing that kind of material. And and the King James only is is certainly something that just destroys any type of apologetic defense of of of the faith. It just can't stand up to any kind of critique.

It's quite circular and very damaging to the cause. So anyway. All righty, sir.

All right. Yes, sir. One of one of the point I'll go, I actually have to go into work.

Oh, well, good. But working is a good thing. It's good to have a job. Yes.

I found I was going to say with with the latest in the discussion, I found it interesting on Pensacola thing and also on Dr. Spartamino's show that he said that that he declared Bart airmen to be the leading authority on textual criticism.

And I thought it was kind of ironic that the people that use the theological a priority argumentation. Yeah. As leaders does would declare a man whose theology is agnostic to be the leading authority on text criticism.

Yeah, it doesn't seem to follow, you know, unless he was saying, see, we've given up the field to the to the to the critics. But I don't think that that is what he was saying. I don't know what his knowledge of of airmen was or what his contact with airmen was or anything along those lines.

But it does seem awful strange. The man who would decry the secularization of the study of the text of scripture would then point to Bart airmen as the as the leader in that field who himself is not even a Christian.

He's a he's a happy agnostic to describe himself in that way today. So that is rather fascinating. All right, sir. Thank you for your call.

Thank you. All right.

God bless. Bye bye. Have a good day at work. Bye bye. All right. Let's continue on and talk with Bill. Hi, Bill. How are you doing? Hi, Dr. White. How's it going?

That's going all right. I got a question for you about the different people, I guess, different to define it. Sometimes they don't even define it. It's just kind of it seems that, you know, a lot of the contention between Protestant and Catholic is over what the rule of faith is, you know, what is it saying that the scripture more recently, the shape, the soul of scripture, he does a lot of interaction seems to define it rather than saying that it is the Bible.