“Francis and Evolution” stuff coming out of Rome

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:34

And welcome to The Dividing Line, a Wednesday edition due to travel this weekend, heading to New Jersey and New York.

00:43

Let me just mention a couple things about the not -so -big papal news, if you have been following the news at all.

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There are lots of interesting things that Pope Francis has to say, and I think if he was allowed to say everything he would actually like to say, we'd have lots of interesting discussions.

01:08

And of course, everyone's going to remind us that not everything the

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Pope says is infallible. He has to be speaking ex cathedra on matters of faith and morals and all that kind of stuff, which basically means that, hey, if he comes up with a different perspective on something, we have a way around it.

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Anyways, I mean, honestly, papal infallibility is next to impossible to disprove because it has no meaning.

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The way it's been, I mean, if Honorius was infallible doing what he was doing, then it's a meaningless thing other than the sort of aura that it gives.

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But anyway, Francis, we've known for a long, long time that when it comes to the issue of evolution,

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Rome has totally compromised on that subject. And someone on Twitter sends an entire presentation.

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What do you think about this presentation? Yeah, I don't do anything all day. I've got time just to watch hour -long presentations all the time.

02:18

It happens every day in Twitter. I'd like to hear what you have to say about this. You need to talk about this. And it's like, yeah,

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OK, whatever. You know, I suppose one out of 20 of them, it's something that's actually relevant to what

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I do, and then it might be useful. But folks on Twitter, do you think

02:37

I maybe work? You know, I have things to do. You may have time to read and watch all that stuff.

02:44

I don't have time to do that. I was this morning on my ride reading Jason Lyle's book,

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Finally. And in fact, for the first time ever, I think. I was so bummed

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I had left my iTunes drive here at the office, because that's external and it's too big to carry around on anything.

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And I really wanted to finally get around to reading

03:10

Jason Lyle's book, Ultimate Proof of God's Existence, I think is the name.

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iTunes drive was here. I couldn't find it on the computer anywhere. I said, you know what? I'm going to for the first time carry my

03:25

Kindle in my jersey, and I'm just going to listen to it direct. I'm going to record it.

03:30

I'm just going to listen to it direct. And I don't like to do that because if I ever do come off that bike, which

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I haven't since I haven't really come off. Well, OK, when Kelly and I ran into each other in the middle in the dark last summer when the sprinklers got us a lot next to a high school on the trail, yeah, that about 230 in the morning, yeah,

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OK. But at least when I'm alone anyways, I haven't gone down. Well, I wasn't alone.

03:58

I went down that time. Anyway. Anyway, it's been a while since I've crashed. But if you've got a Kindle in your back, back your jersey when you go down, probably not going to survive that real well.

04:10

And and but I've stuck it in there this morning and got about halfway through Jason Lyle's book.

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And it is wonderful. You know, when I had heard him doing that fractal presentation,

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I said, this guy knows Bonson. Well, yeah, he quotes Bonson all through this. This book is great.

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So really enjoy it. And I've I'm in contact with him. I'm going to ask him to be on the program because I think it'd be great to expand our horizons a little bit and talk with with Jason Lyle.

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But anyway, he he talks a lot about this evolutionary issue and has some interesting things to say in regards to where Rome has gone on these particular these particular topics.

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And really, the the issue yesterday wasn't anything new.

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Like I said, Rome's taken this position for a long time. It doesn't surprise me in light of its view of Scripture, which is significantly below biblical norms, shall we say.

05:19

And but then something has come up, which I don't think is a big deal. I'll be perfectly honest with you. In one of his statements is

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God is not a divine being or a magician, but the creator who brought everything to life. And God is not a divine being is a translation of term

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Demiurge. And if you're familiar with Gnostic writings and church history, then you know what he's talking about is one of these, you know, and the very next phrase is or a magician.

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So he's he's trying to basically say that God isn't like the creators of pagan religions and things like that, giving them the benefit of the doubt.

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I mean, Francis may have some very interesting perspectives. He's no it is it is plain to anybody with an honest bone in their body.

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He does not believe the same things that popes did only 100 years ago on very important and basic issues.

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But he's certainly an atheist and he's certainly not saying that that God's a exalted man or something like that.

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You know, I obviously don't believe that theistic evolution makes a lick of sense, but that's where they are, that's where they have been for quite some time.

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And he certainly made I'm I'm I'm waiting to see what the result of this.

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It's not really a council, conclave conference, whatever is meeting of bishops in Rome really is synod.

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That's that should be interesting. That should be interesting. If what comes out of that is really muted and really doesn't say much, then

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I don't know that we're going to see a whole lot from this pope that is overly interesting. But we'll see.

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We'll see. I mean, he keeps making statements. But remember, all this stuff, stuff like this. From from a dogmatic perspective, from Rome's perspective, means nothing.

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Because it's it's not it's not it's not dogmatic.

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It's not the pope functioning as the successor of Peter, sitting in the chair of Peter, defining faith and morals for the entire church, et cetera, et cetera.

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And the reality is you can never tell when that's really happening, because even when it's happened in a way that would seem to fit all the parameters, there's a way around it.

07:55

There's a way around it. You know, just go back and listen to two debates I did with Tim Staples and Bobs and Janice and same topics, very different answers.

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And I'm sure if I debated Jimmy Akin or somebody else, I'd give us a third. And and, of course, can't debate

08:14

Jerry Mattox on that aim anymore. The former poster boy of Catholic answers. Yes, he he was used to be the poster boy for Catholic answers in San Diego, California.

08:26

Same group. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He doesn't believe in that that stuff anymore, at least not this pope.

08:33

I mean, what's their perspective? Was it nineteen? Fifty six. I think

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I think it was like no valid priesthoods, no valid ordination since like nineteen fifty six or something like that's a long time ago now, a long time ago now.

08:49

Then you get into all the setting vacant this stuff and it gets really weird. I'm not sure what Jerry's up to these days.

08:54

Last time, last last we had a radar fix on Jerry. He was traveling around the

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United States talking to half a dozen people at holiday ends and his credit cards are still maxed out.

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I think he had thirty seven kids. I would say I'd I'd be safe in venturing a guess that he's probably moving somewhere.

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He's only had a coke in the last 48 hours and he hasn't slept in two days and all his books are still in boxes.

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Yeah. I think that's pretty much pretty much Jerry's life. Yeah, at least used to be.

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I, you know, the ultimate proof of creation,

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Simon says, yes, OK, I'm getting a lot of stuff in Twitter that's making me frustrated and made my patience levels a little bit low.

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But I put articles up on the on the blog, on Facebook, comment on Twitter about.

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My conversation with Matthew Vines, his conversation with Robert Gagnon yesterday about Michael Brown's article, you know,

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I've got all this stuff up there and yet people are like, you know, a day later, hey, did you hear about this? It's like you obviously are reading other folks, but not reading me since I've been talking about that.

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And it's like, I guess the communication only goes one direction, they're not not listening to my end of these things.

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Anyways, I will comment on on that. I guess Justin Lee and Matthew Vines and a bunch of folks showed up at the at the

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ERLC conference, the Southern Baptist Conference. Everybody's making fun of me. Look.

10:50

I don't think he says it says Coral. He says Carl. That's all there is to it.

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If you don't get that, don't worry about it. You don't need to know about it. It's just. It just looked like a typo to me, but, you know,

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I don't spend my life in the interwebs looking for memes. That's just not I don't have time to do that.

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Wonder a little bit about those people to do. Anyway, what was I saying? Oh, yeah. I posted on the website, on my blog, and I posted on Facebook, I think it did.

11:28

The exchange that Matthew Vines and I had were where basically I was told

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I don't have enough gay friends to to debate

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Matthew Vines. Put in another way, unless I affirm and validate the fundamental position that he's representing to start with, then we're not going to get to have a debate with Matthew Vines, which seems a little backwards, because if I did that, then why would we be debating again?

12:03

But anyway, you know, I I worked through his objections and I think anybody can can tell the the primary reason that Matthew Vines does not want to debate me is because he knows that I am not going to in any way, shape or form back off of doing the cross -examination that he knows he cannot handle.

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Even yesterday, when he tried to interact with Gagnon, what was it? What was it?

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Those of you who looked at it, it was. Direct citations from Brownson's book now,

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Brownson has been challenged by Gagnon, by Michael Brown, we've all been trying to get Brownson to come out, he won't do it.

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And Matthew Vines is is a secondary source, he's just quoting Brownson, that's why

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I think the closest we're going to get to a meaningful debate on this subject is to do what

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I need to be doing, and that is on this program going through Brownson's book.

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And it's and it's like I need I need to be focused on that and finally getting around to doing the.

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The airman response to, you know, that's that's a lot of work.

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But I think it's the closest we're going to get, because, you know, Matthew Vines does not have the scholarly background to be able to do any kind of meaningful research on his own.

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And he knows that and he knows that he would be being asked to defend

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Brownson's conclusions because that's the guts of his book, which is interesting if you notice something that was not the guts of his presentation.

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And what was a twenty twelve. Twenty twelve, twenty eleven, whenever his video went viral, that he still starts off his his

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CV with, you know, viral video, eight hundred and fifty thousand views or whatever on on YouTube.

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That was Brownson came out after that and his entire form of argumentation shifted with Brownson.

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So I just think he realizes he can't defend Brownson. Brownson seemingly won't defend himself, at least not in the context where he could be cross -examined and you'd have to go face to face.

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And so it was interesting yesterday when Gagnon and he are going back and forth. Well, just like mine, did you notice that when you get into a conversation with Matthew Vines via either

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Facebook or Twitter, it's going to be about four or five to one. Matthew just doesn't say all that much.

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And if you compare the amount of text, you know, Gagnon sort of dumped on him there at the end as far as scholarly citations from historical sources went.

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But still, in all that conversation, how very different Matthew Vines was with Gagnon than he was with me.

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With me, it was, well, you know, I don't think you have enough. You don't want to listen to our side. He never said anything like that to Gagnon.

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It was all Brownson. It was all it was a completely different topic. It wasn't.

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I don't think you have enough LGBT Christian friends to do a debate with you. In fact, it really wasn't do a debate with me at all.

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It was, well, I'm going to be talking with James Brownson and I'll ask him what he thinks, et cetera, et cetera.

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So it was very interesting. Very interesting indeed. And so we'll see if anything comes of it.

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I personally doubt anything will because my experience is that side does not really want much in the way of dialogue and debate.

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They want to they know they've already got the monologue that they want. The media is on their side.

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Why bother? Why bother? That's why so many big names will not engage in debate is because they've already got their book sales.

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They've already got the position they want. Why risk it? Why risk it? And so I don't know that we're going to see anything coming out of that, but we definitely do need to see a much more in -depth critique of Brownson's position.

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And especially, and what am I referring to? Well, especially when he argues that a number of the terms used in Romans one, first Corinthians six should only be understood in the sense of excess.

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Excessive desire, excessive. That's one of the primary issues. I think that really needs to be examined because it's fundamental to the, yeah, well, that doesn't have anything to do with committed monogamous relationships.

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Now folks, once this stuff is normalized, the monogamous stuff's going to disappear because the plurality stuff's already there.

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So you gotta understand the committed monogamous part is only for now because there's nothing within their system that can actually demand that.

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In fact, the one thing that they would refer to that would be a substantiation of the monogamous part is the two -ness of marriage in the

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Bible. And why is there a two -ness of marriage in the Bible? There's only one reason.

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There is only one reason that you don't have threeness. You're all waters polygamy.

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And look at what polygamy created. Jesus said from the beginning, it was not so. It's male and female.

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It is. And today it's like, well, we don't want to be limited to just two choices.

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We don't want that duality thing. Well, that's how we were made.

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So once they've accomplished the destruction of marriage in our society, and basically they're pretty much there, that monogamous part is just going to disappear because there's no foundation for it.

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There's no basis for it. And so anyways, just topics that we do need to get to eventually as best we can.

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But like I said, this will be the last dividing line for this week. I don't even know what we're doing next week. I might be able to do some

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Skyping next week during the day. I'm not sure if you've talked to John or not, but I might be able to.

18:57

Yeah, go ahead and look. Now it's, is the Shabbat applicable for Christians?

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I think you've started something. Everybody's now going, oh, let's see. Yeah, let's see what a wild question.

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Just for fun. Completely off topic questions we can throw out. I used to keep it up because there was, you know, sometimes there'd be something useful there, but no, no thanks.

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Anyways. All right. Let's get back into what I said we were going to be getting into.

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And that is, I've sort of reversed my previous decision to skip over the

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Calvinism debate, old debate, new day debate, and go straight to the Michael Brown, Brian Zahn.

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We'll get back to that, but I guess it would be best to go in chronological order. And so we, we had finished up listening to the

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Austin Fisher presentation, and now we're going to listen to the Brian Zahn presentation.

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And again, we'll be playing it a little bit fast, just, just a little bit to better utilize our time.

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But this was prior to what, three weeks, a month, somewhere around there, about a month prior to the encounter between Michael Brown and Brian Zahn on the atonement.

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And it is interesting in light of Brian Zahn's, Brian Zahn's tweet of last, what, two days ago, three days ago, going after John Piper.

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Again, the whole idea, God of wrath, God having wrath,

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God being even deeper in his character than his creatures.

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It's not there, it's not there. So let's listen to, let's listen to what

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Brian Zahn had to say, and obviously we will interact. Yes, I will.

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I appreciate the impulse of what we might call the neo -Calvinists to find a more robust theology than the shallow and cheap non -theology of American pop

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Christianity. I share that impulse, I celebrate that, but I, just as a rejoinder here before I really get going,

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I want to say, I think there are better options than Calvinism. At least let's be aware of our best biblical scholars.

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If we're going to read Old Testament, let's do so with Walter Brueggemann. Now, immediately, my hair stands on end, because these are all the names from my seminary education, and they are all flying in airplanes with two left wings.

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Okay, we're not, Brueggemann, I had to read his commentary on Genesis.

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Wow. Christopher Wright, as we study our New Testament, please, let's pay attention to N. T. Wright and Scott McKnight.

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Lots of differences between them, but again, you're not talking your most conservative people. But we know what influences, and in fact, if you, you know, we went over the conversation that Zahn and I had on Twitter, and these are his sources.

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This is where he thinks he's getting stuff. He doesn't really go to the text. He's getting it from these other people.

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When I challenged him, remember, I was talking about the Tanakh, and he comes back going, what's Tanakh? The Torah, Nevi 'im, and Ketuvim, the

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Hebrew Scriptures? Oh, oh. At the same time, he's writing introductory notes for a study

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Bible for somebody. He doesn't know what the Tanakh is. We really have really secondary stuff here.

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If we're going to be doing theology today, let's consider men like Stanley Harwass, David Bentley Hart.

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To ignore them is an egregious mistake. And if we feel compelled, though, to do theology within the

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Reformed tradition, I highly recommend that we begin to explore seriously the works of Karl Barth. Now, in talking about unconditional election, let's be clear what is meant within Calvin's system.

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It is that some are elect for salvation while others are elect for damnation. It is not more complex than that.

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It is. Of course it is. You know, I understand Zahn wants to keep the target simple, but notice that for all of these synergists, they start man -centered because their theology is man -centered, so it makes sense that they would be more comfortable creating a man -centered version of Calvinism.

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But no honest, serious person can create such a straw man because what is really offensive is that we don't start with man.

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We don't say the gospel is about man. It's about what God has done, His purposes,

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His glory. It's focused upon the revelation of the character of God through the incarnation, the outpouring of the

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Holy Spirit, the demonstration of the Trinity, the relationships of the divine persons, the full explication of the character of God, His holiness,

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His justice, His wrath, His loving kindness, His mercy, His grace. It's all there, but it's all focused on Him.

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It's not focused on us. And of course, the definition just given was all what? All focused on man. And they complain, well, you always say you're misrepresenting.

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We're misrepresenting you. Yeah, because you are. Because you are. It's all you've got. And you say, well, we'll never decide that.

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Why is it only one side wants to engage in meaningful cross -examination debate and the other side doesn't?

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So this is a debate? Sort of. You know, I mentioned when we started this,

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I don't know how many months ago now, this is the very essence of the problem that I have with what people are willing to accept as debate today.

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And there's no interaction. There's no serious interaction. There's no back and forth.

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There's no cross -examination. It's just their presentation versus my presentation and you, the autonomous judge, get to decide.

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It's the questions and answers. It's cross -examination. That's what determines the strength of the arguments.

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And this format did not allow that to really happen. Is that simple? That some are elect for eternal salvation, some are elect for eternal damnation, from eternity for eternity.

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So when Calvinism speak, be more accurately described as unconditional predestinations, either election or damnation, or perhaps not.

25:55

What do you mean or perhaps not? Did you write this? Did you write this presentation and decide while you're making it?

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Oh, I think I was wrong about that. But I'm going to say it anyway. Um, no. Uh, the reason that predestination is singular is because it represents the singular decree of God to his own glory, which will then have a tremendous number of applications within time.

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Um, but that's, that's, that's singular again, only by taking the focus off of God on demand.

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Do you then come up with this? And, you know, Brian's on thinks he can, he can do that.

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Um, double predestination really is a redundant statement.

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It would, it's, um, in Calvin's system to not be of the elect is to be damned from eternity.

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Let that sink in. If you're not part of the elect, you are damned from eternity before you were born and there's nothing you can do about it.

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And if Calvinist are somewhat embarrassed by that, I can't, I cannot offer any solace.

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Yeah. Well, uh, it would help again, Brian, if you would bother to tell the whole story, which

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I know, I know your arguments would collapse if you did. I understand, you know, I, I get it.

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Um, but you know, we, we got to point these things out. Uh, when we're talking about from all eternity, we, we actually happen to believe something that you don't.

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Uh, and that is that God has, uh, God's the creator of all things and that he has a purpose in creating and that he not only knows the future, but the future exists because he created it.

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And, uh, therefore anybody who's not open theist actually has to answer these questions.

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Because if, if you believe that when God created, he knew what the end result was going to be, you have to answer the exact same questions, which is why you seem to be really wishy -washy and, and fluffy wishy on things like that, because it, you don't want to be held the same standards you're holding other people to.

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And when you say no matter what we do, you seem to be assuming that there are non elect people who want to do something, that there are hearts of stone that by nature want to be hearts of flesh.

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That's evidently what you're, what you're asserting. What else could that mean? I don't know how else to interpret that.

28:28

Um, and evidently you're, you've got a real problem with federalism and, and since I'm sure you would have a problem with federalism because you have a problem with substitutionary atonement and you have a problem with the need of the imputed righteousness of Christ.

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And basically you just got a real problem with Christian theology. So I, I understand where that's, where that's coming from, but, uh, it, just be straight up front about it.

28:52

I, when I first heard this, I could tell just by the list of your scholarly sources, um, that there were going to be problems, but it wasn't until I heard the debate with Michael Brown that I realized how incredibly, uh, complicated those problems are and how, uh, systemic, that's the term

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I'm looking for, how systemic those, uh, those problems really are. I cannot offer any solace. I'm sorry, that's, you'll just have to be embarrassed by that.

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Unless you, unless you think that I am misrepresenting, uh, the great 16th century theologian himself, we'll let

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John Calvin speak for himself. Uh, from the Institutes, those whom God passes over for election, he condemns.

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And this he does for no other reason than he wills, that's a popular word with him, wills, he wills to exclude them.

29:43

Again, from the Institutes, God has ordained from all of eternity, those whom he wills to embrace in love and those upon whom he wills to vent his wrath.

29:53

Lovely. Yes, actually it is. I mean, for, for Christians who read the Bible, it is.

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I don't think that's your source, but, um, and of course it's lovely because of all the stuff you skipped over to get to book three, um, uh, after the section on prayer, longest section in the

30:11

Institutes before he finally gets to this, at least in the 1559 Latin edition. Um, you, you skipped over all the stuff about the clarity of God's revelation, the centrality of his purposes, uh, sovereign decree, uh, revelation of the, of his triune

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Godhead. And I, and I know you've only got a few minutes, right?

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You know, I, that's always an excuse is you can just say, oh, well, hey, you know, I'm going to call your

30:39

God a monster and I'm going to cherry pick a couple of quotes here. And, um, then, uh,

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I'm going to throw them out. Uh, that's what you did. That's what you did.

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And your, your detest station for Calvin is very thinly veiled, very, very thinly veiled.

30:59

Um, but, uh, yes, actually, uh, God's sovereign decree. In fact, it's interesting.

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Edwards expressed that. I've mentioned this a number of times, uh, in, in explaining how we can tell a true work of grace is that the truly regenerate heart will love those aspects of God's character and his attributes that the natural man detests most.

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And what frightens me, Brian, is that you seem to detest the very aspects of God's character that the natural man detests.

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That's, um, frightening thing. That's something you might want to, I want to think about.

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And then one more, uh, the reprobate, by which we mean those down from before birth are raised up that through them,

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God's glory may be revealed. Okay. The reprobate damned from before birth are raised up that through them,

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God's glory may be revealed. Now let me stop just a second. Uh, again, unless you're an open theist, which you may be,

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I mean, I'm not assuming any level of orthodoxy, uh, when it comes to, to Brian's on, unless you're an open theist, um, how do you avoid dealing with the reality that when

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God creates, he knows what the results could be. Unless you're a universalist too. I mean, I suppose that's a possibility.

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There's such thing as an open theist evolution, a universalist. No, because how could

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God know? I don't know. I suppose he could just simply suspend his basis of judgment,

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I suppose. Anyway. Uh, you know, I'm just trying to think of all the different ways you can mishmash heresy together.

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There's, there's lots, you know, when you think about it, uh, there's lots of ways to, to squish it all together.

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Uh, but unless you go there, which you might, I don't know. Um, then you have to answer the same questions.

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Maybe that's how you get around them is, is you don't know. From birth to the glory of God.

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That's what I want to challenge. And I could go about it several ways. I could talk about it philosophically that in Calvin's system, the devil is redundant, that God is the secret architect of evil, that the

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God of Calvin and Calvinism is heaven and hell war and peace, life and death. And thus

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Calvin beginning with philosophical, uh, theism instead of the God of the Bible ends up with a

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God where creation is nothing more than a big movie playing in his head. Huh?

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Nothing more than a big movie playing in his head and the devil's redundant. So means are irrelevant.

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Um, and if God decrees whatsoever comes to pass, he can't have any purposes in the revelation of his character to his creation and the vindication of his great condescension in the incarnation.

33:56

That's not a possibility. So, so again, the only way that this would work, I would guess, um, is to assert that I see,

34:09

I'm, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna minimize Twitter because, because when I look over toward that direction, it's too easy to see it.

34:18

Um, and you know, so Fred Butler again, who changed his, his, uh, his pick as a result of my discussion about the coffee cup thing, um, says seeing

34:33

DL live online for first time, audio is one second behind video, like watching a Kung Fu movie, like watching a

34:41

Kung Fu movie. You think he was doing that specifically to try to throw me off? I think it's a possibility.

34:48

I think so. Well, knowing, knowing Fred Butler, I think it's possible. They could probably call YouTube and complain. You know, why don't we do that?

34:55

Yeah. No, we're not going to do that. They could. No, no, no. I'm saying, why don't we suggest that they, they, they call YouTube and complain.

35:01

I was, I was telling people in the chat channel earlier, I was waiting for somebody to come up and ask for your opinion on, on marriage, uh, seat up or seat down.

35:09

Have you ever debated this? Uh, thanks.

35:17

Appreciate that. And then Robert Warren says, this guy ripped off his rant style from Ymir Kanner. I can guarantee you he's never heard of Ymir Kanner.

35:24

Never heard of Ymir Kanner. You're talking, you're talking completely different planets.

35:31

Uh, the circles that Brian Zahn runs in and Ymir Kanner. No, not even close.

35:38

And Charles, as I said earlier, um, don't have a clue, brother. Uh, never been there.

35:44

Don't know anything about it. Sorry. Can't help you. I just, uh, note to world.

35:53

I'm not a Southern Baptist. Okay. I'm a Reformed Baptist and, uh, no, don't, don't have a, don't have a clue.

36:02

So Josh tells us the audio is one second ahead in his feed. So I think he should call. Uh, we should get to him together and maybe you can start doing that surfboard thing.

36:14

You really freak him out. Well, maybe Fred, maybe Fred could call Josh and put his, his phone up against the speakers.

36:21

And yeah, that'll, that'll fix the whole thing. That's great. Well, for, for what it's worth, folks, uh, it's all fine here.

36:28

Now we're all fine. How are you? Are you doing? Okay. Boring conversation.

36:33

Anyway, back to the topic. What was the topic? Oh, look at that. There's a,

36:39

Oh, we're talking about Brian's on. That's good. That was, you know, it was sort of the bottom of the hour. I think just mentally,

36:45

I still take the commercial break. Uh, whether we have the commercials or not, you know, and I think one of the main reasons we don't do the commercials anymore is that they're so old that like, if we run the

36:56

Roman Catholic controversy one, everybody in channel goes, who's that? And we're just tired of answering these questions.

37:04

You know, it's, it's, I guess that's how it works. I don't know. Uh, anyway, to see

37:15

Josh's response, I feel like a good Armenian. I can't control what you say, but I know what you will say before you do.

37:26

That's only a mirage. Cause actually I be done saying it long before you saw it, uh, actually, but, uh, anyhow, all right, back to it.

37:35

It was just, I think it was just good to take a break there for a moment. Uh, just a little mental break. Cause I'll have to admit

37:40

Brian Zahn's there's something about Brian Zahn's, um, attitude.

37:51

Uh, it came out more with Michael Brown. It's just so is the term smarmy, smarmy, uh, maybe it is a little bit like Carl.

38:06

Carl, Carl. Uh, okay. Let's let's, let's press on here. Sovereignty does not require determinism.

38:14

Divine sovereignty gives God the freedom not to control everything. Authentic being necessitating limited freedom is a sovereign gift from a sovereign

38:24

God. Now that sounds wonderful. What does all that mean? Uh, that's, that's a, that's a nice fast, fancy way of saying that I refuse to deny sovereignty.

38:39

I just choose to assert that God's sovereignly chooses not to be sovereign. What? Uh, you know, if you want to make an argument that God has the capacity to suspend sovereignty with all that comes with that, which would include, um, knowledge of future events.

39:03

That's why, again, what's the, what's the only consistent synergism at that point? Open theism.

39:09

Most people don't go there cause it's so clearly unbiblical, but, uh, it touches upon that.

39:17

It's certainly touches upon prophecy. You know, the question is, is the God described there in the

39:24

God of the Bible or not? And, uh, but it's, it, unfortunately in these days, as long as you have some nice little phrases, you know,

39:38

God sovereignly chooses not to be sovereign. And people are like, wow, that's deep.

39:45

No, it isn't. It's not, you know, sometimes

39:50

I see things on Twitter, um, and you're like, wow, that, that took some thought.

39:59

And then sometimes it's really painfully obvious. They put a lot of thought into it, but it didn't go very deep.

40:07

It just happens to fit into 140 characters. And as a result, it's like, oh, that's good.

40:13

No, no, not, not really. Not, not particularly. Uh, some of my tweets have been that way too, by the way, tried to come up with something cool, but sovereignty is never impinged upon, or I could challenge it theologically that quite simply

40:26

Calvinism confuses the election of Israel for a vocation with the election of an individual for salvation.

40:34

Well, good luck. Uh, take your shot. Um, if, if you want to make that as the search, a lot of people do.

40:44

The only problem is it collapses. You know, what, what did Paul mean when he says I endure all things for the sake of the elect?

40:51

What does that mean in his context? Did you really think that election was the election of the nation of Israel to service in his context in his day?

41:03

Um, no, don't, don't think so. But again, lots and lots of assertions, not much in the way of substance, a terrible mistake.

41:14

What is elected by God is Christ and his church. And we are called to be baptized into Christ and his church.

41:20

Ah, there you go. Little, a little class election assertion there. Sounds great.

41:25

In fact, I had some guy from Texas Baptist university. He seems to want to get into some kind of a spinning match with me on, on Twitter.

41:35

Uh, so Terry ology one -on -one, you know, had that conversation with him Sunday morning and Sunday evening.

41:42

Um, and you know, now he's sending me URLs to, um, uh, webcast.

41:51

He's done well, I, well, I refute everything you said here and as if I've got time to listen to all that kind of stuff, but it's just standard, standard, basic synergism, nothing, nothing new to it.

42:03

Uh, but, uh, that's, that's basically, you know, all they've got.

42:11

We could begin to refute it scripturally, but then I know how that degenerates into, we can all throw our Bible verses at one another.

42:16

And that's the problem with the biblicist approach is the problem of pervasive interpretive pluralism.

42:23

Really? There's, there's where, there's the whole issue right there.

42:28

Cause for Brian's on the Bible is just not clear enough to answer this question. Well, if it was wise, there's all this disagreement.

42:36

Ah, well reminds me of Patrick Madrid and his argument that a solo scriptura is the blueprint for anarchy.

42:49

Look at all the different interpretations of the Bible. What is the fundamental assertion being made? That's why I really appreciate about Jason Lyle's book is that he, he really does emphasize the need to think with clarity and to think deeply and to think logically.

43:04

In fact, a bunch of the book is all about logical fallacies and things like that. Um, but you, you've got to understand, you got to hear what the underlying argument is there that so many people end up accepting.

43:18

And that is, well, and, and I've, I experienced this every time

43:23

I try to get into these conversations with somebody or they try to get me into the conversation. I turned to scriptures.

43:29

It's like, well, but you know, good men have disagreed and there's this interpretation over there and there's that.

43:36

And so we really can't go there. Well, if we really can't go there, then there's really no reason for us to be talking.

43:44

There really isn't. I mean, um, if, if you really have come to the conclusion that the

43:50

Bible is insufficient to answer this question, then why are we yapping our jaws?

43:57

Why are we burning, uh, adenosine triphosphate to, uh, even consider it because it's just matter of opinion.

44:06

Anyways, there's no way of knowing because we have no sure word from God. Now, of course, what follows from that is we have no sure word from God as to what the gospel is and what our eternal hope is and who

44:20

God is and who Christ is and what true worship is or anything else. But that's the fundamental argument is, well, the

44:28

Biblicist approach. Yeah. We don't want to go to the Bibble. Uh, the Bible ain't going to tell us that we don't want a

44:34

Biblicist. And then of course got the other side where, you know, people won't explain what they actually believe because, well,

44:41

I just believe the Bible. Uh, I'm not a Calvinist. I'm not an Armenian.

44:46

I'm just a Biblicist. That's a nice way of getting around it as well. Um, I just don't see that as Jesus's view.

44:56

You know, I mean, he's real into the, give me Jesus as the lens of everything.

45:02

Let's see. How did, um, how did Jesus approach these things? Don't go telling me when he said to the

45:10

Jews, the scriptures cannot be broken. What he meant by that was, well, actually there are lots of different ways of understanding this.

45:18

You know, if, if, if people took this perspective, Jesus's dialogue with the Jews would be a whole lot different than it was, you know, in John chapter 10, um, it would have been more along the lines of, um, you know, quote from Psalm 82.

45:37

And then the response to the Jews is, yeah, but you know, rabbi

45:42

Jesus that, so there's a lot of different ways of understanding that there's a, there's interpretive pluralism.

45:51

I remember that in the new Testament, all the interpretive pluralism texts, but I cannot resist reminding you that Peter tells us that God is not willing that any should perish.

46:00

And Paul tells us that God desires all people to be saved, but how I really want to. That's two of the three.

46:07

That's two of the three. You know, you would think you would think that given how rather fully these texts have been addressed, um, that these folks would at least blush a little bit by their a contextual, just throw out the citation, assume all sorts of stuff in the process.

46:32

They, they, they blush a little bit, but they don't, they don't blush. Um, because what those texts actually mean, a consistent interpretation that doesn't matter.

46:43

This just doesn't matter. To respond is Christologically. And I make this axiom, this statement,

46:50

God is like Jesus. God has always been like Jesus. There's never been a time when

46:56

God was not like Jesus. We haven't always known this, but now we do. Jesus is the only perfect theology.

47:04

I want that to sink in. Here is where you, you take a truth out of its context and use it as a, as a means of twisting the rest of scriptural revelation.

47:25

Jesus is the perfect revelation of the father, not the other way around. It almost sounded like he had it backwards.

47:31

It's Jesus who reveals the father to us. It's not the father who somehow stays in line with who Jesus is.

47:39

The perfect unity of father and son, vitally important, biblically true.

47:47

I would argue that if Zond thought about it seriously, he'd realize that the exegesis that he uses to arrive at the view of Christ that he has in the sense of Trinitarian theology, he just undercut his entire ability to do that with his comments about the previous topic.

48:12

We don't want to be a biblicist. Then where are you getting this Trinity stuff from? Where are you getting this Jesus is the perfect revelation of the father stuff?

48:19

Where do you get that from? Well, the hermeneutic, the interpretive methodology you have to use to get that, um, you just cut your knees off and being able to use that.

48:32

And what you said previously, you just, you just shot yourself.

48:38

But again, this desire for consistency, we saw what happened when I pressed him on that.

48:45

And this kind of emergent perspective, consistency, you small minded person.

48:52

Jesus is the only perfect. I'm sorry.

49:01

Interrupted again. Uh, I'm just having a bad day with this stuff.

49:07

I don't know. Mom, I, I guess I think I didn't get enough sleep last night. I'm a little tired.

49:12

My patient's level's a little low. I apologize. I am, I am a frail man, but somebody on Twitter earlier today sent me this link to that fraud that, that it's, it's been debunked for years.

49:30

Uh, we've talked about it. It, I mean, it, it's, it's just, it's just a matter of Google, you know, doing a little bit of a search about this.

49:42

What do you think of the 1500 year old Bible found in Turkey? It's not 1500 years old. There's no scholar that has ever substantiated that.

49:49

It's a fraud. It's a fraud. It's a fraud. It's a fraud. I am so concerned about how gullible people are.

49:57

And I'm going to go on a rant here. I've had to unfollow a number of people on Facebook because the stuff that was flowing across my screen was just,

50:11

Oh, unbelievable. I mean, yesterday, uh, someone posts the stuff about the

50:18

Muslim teenagers tossing bottles and rocks at Reuben Israel, uh, two and a half years ago in Dearborn.

50:28

And they, they, they put it as urgent, urgent Christians being stoned by Muslims in the

50:34

United States. And I'm just like, Oh, and, and here it is on Facebook again, as if it's some new thing.

50:43

And here's this thing. I don't know this, this came out years ago.

50:50

Now it's a fraudulent story. The thing ain't 1500 years old. The gospel of Barnabas is a, is a fraud from around 1500, maybe 1400, the earliest, uh, no scholars, none.

51:05

And yet people, people will, as long as it says, well, scholars says,

51:11

Oh, well, scholars who, who, what, where are they teach? What, what, what are their publications?

51:16

What, what are they done? Well, a scholar said it look, we put stuff on the web.

51:25

So you might say, this is absolutely hypocritical of me, but the vast majority of stuff you read on the web is garbage.

51:33

Don't even don't even start to believe it. It's just, there's so much.

51:39

And you know what the wackos on the left do it, but you know what? There's a lot of wackos on the right to do it too.

51:47

I mean, I could not tell you, I was getting so tired of seeing my Facebook feed here. It'd be this,

51:53

Oh, great thing. And then the first thing that Facebook would list below it was a Snopes .com article debunking it.

52:00

And frequently it would be months old. And yet someone's just gotten it. Oh, I got to share it with all my friends.

52:06

Oh, and it's just like discernment books, discernment, do some looking around, do some looking around.

52:14

Don't be so quick to get a jump on stuff. There is no 1500 year old

52:21

Bible with the gospel of Barnabas in it. It's a joke. It's a fraud.

52:26

It was made up. It was like the stuff about that went around last year about an alleged council in Rome where they decided that Jesus wasn't the only way of salvation, all the rest of that stuff.

52:40

It was, it was from an onion type thing. But if it doesn't say the onion on it, people are like, well, it said the examiner, that sounds pretty.

52:49

And you're just like, no, please. Oh, uh, so I, yeah, you have to be patient and discerning, be, be patient, be, be, do not be gullible folks.

53:07

Do not be gullible. So anyways, this divine line is like a

53:18

Steven Furtick message all over the place. Well, I'll admit I've never even listened to all of a

53:23

Steven Furtick message, by the way, since we're doing that, um, was

53:33

I right? Cause I bet you I'm gonna get a response within channel or within Twitter within one minute here.

53:39

So I, and this would be, this is one place where I will use social media. What was it?

53:44

Wasn't this last weekend was a weekend before that Mark Driscoll showed up at a conference the week after he resigned and the pastor had him come up and speak.

53:57

And then when he went back and sat down, was I right? Or did I, was

54:02

I misunderstanding this? And since I don't necessarily just, I mean, I think I know what Steven Furtick looks like, but I just don't spend a lot of time on this.

54:10

Was Steven Furtick the speaker? And it seemed to me that when Driscoll sat down, the guy he was sitting next to was

54:17

Steven Furtick. If that's the case, I find that very, very, very interesting.

54:23

Very, very interesting indeed. Uh, Dort GA sends me a link.

54:30

How am I supposed to get a link while I'm doing the dividing link? I don't get it.

54:35

Um, that's, that's, I, I don't understand that. Um, so, okay.

54:41

Now Dort is saying, yes, Driscoll and Furtick sitting beside each other and Dale Valente is flooding the channel.

54:48

So I can't see anything anyways, with huge long posts that I don't know that anybody can read.

54:53

Anyways, Furtick was the speaker. Okay. I'm glad that, that colloquy outlined stuff.

55:01

Well, that's interesting. That is, uh, that is, that is definitely interesting that Driscoll would be there at a

55:08

Furtick session. Anyway, um, then

55:14

Brian Matheson now throws something out about David Gushy and his switch.

55:19

I was going to mention that, but I decided not to. We may get to it a little bit later on at some other point. Uh, but, um,

55:27

I had never heard of David Gushy. And so to find, to discover that he was one of the leading evangelical, uh, ethicists left me going, really?

55:35

He's at Mercer. He's a liberal. What are you talking about? There's nothing surprising about this. But once again, a lot of Christians like, oh, look, there's someone, there's someone else that's gone that direction.

55:46

And I'm looking at it going, I'm really shocked that he hadn't gone that direction before this. Um, need to avoid all the hand wringing that's going on.

55:56

Let's press on. And I'll, I'll just try to avoid looking over that direction. Well, I got a few minutes left anyways.

56:01

The Bible is the inspired witness to the word of God, who is Jesus Christ.

56:07

Now there's, there's Bart for you. There's the influence of Bart. Notice the Bible isn't inspired word of God. It is an inspired testimony to the word of God.

56:15

That's why he can get away with ignoring what the old Testament says about God. You know, it's authoritative, uh, record of what the

56:22

Hebrews thought about God. You know, that way you just don't have to worry about fitting it all together.

56:28

You can, you can pick this, pick this, pick this, doesn't fit over there. That's that's modern theology.

56:35

That's nothing new. What the Bible does infallibly is bear witness to the word of God, who is

56:41

Jesus Christ. Jesus is the word of God made flesh. Jesus is what

56:47

God has to say. You could never substantiate that as being true historically and meaningfully using the view of scripture and hermeneutics that he uses.

56:58

You can never do it. I agree with the overarching statement, not with the application where he's, he's using this to lessen the necessity of a consistent interpretation of the

57:13

Bible. But, uh, how do you know the Jesus Christ, the word made flesh that requires a pretty high view of John 1, 14 and all the hermeneutics to go into the interpretation of it.

57:28

But he's already cut that out. Now, the great theme of John's gospel is that the word became flesh in Christ and that in Jesus, we see what

57:37

God is like. John never departs from that theme. And it's in John that we hear Jesus say, anyone who has seen me has seen the father.

57:45

So what if God really is like Jesus? Now, the funny thing is

57:50

Walter Brueggemann would never think that Jesus ever said those words. I'm not sure it's

57:57

Scott McKnight could ever affirm that Jesus said those words. I'm not sure it N .T. Wright could affirm that Jesus actually said those words.

58:03

In fact, I don't think he would. And so there's a, there's a bunch of stuff going on here.

58:09

And that's, that's one of the places where this debate, there was, there was a big unspoken chasm between the two sides and it all went back to Bibliology.

58:20

What if when we look at Jesus, we are perceiving the personality of God? Would this be good news?

58:26

Well, this is the good news that God is like Jesus, but Calvin's caste system looks nothing like the radical hospitality of Jesus.

58:34

How is it good news to say Calvin's radical caste system?

58:42

I think what he means is a recognition of the biblical teaching that, for example,

58:48

God chose the Israelites and not the Egyptians. That creates a quote unquote caste system. But again, this, this is the radical isolation of Jesus away from the context that the

59:02

Bible itself provides to Jesus. And that is the fundamental problem with, with Zahn's, the entirety of Zahn's theology.

59:12

It really is. We almost got all the way through it. That's not too bad. We've only actually probably got one minute left of Zahn's opening statement, but we've got other stuff to get to.

59:23

So we will, we will press on. As I said, I think,

59:29

I have a feeling we might be able to work something out for at least one program next week because I don't have much during the day.

59:41

And I should be in places where the internet connection should be enough to at least do audio, if not video.

59:51

We'll see. You know how hotels are. But some of the churches might have more reliable internet that I can get to.

59:58

So we'll, we'll see if we can figure something out next week. The we, I think

01:00:04

Micah fixed the calendar. I don't know. You didn't see it this morning?

01:00:12

Because I know, I know he knows it's not there. Well, there is an article anyways on the blog.

01:00:21

Yeah. I moved that up to, to yesterday. It was a post on the 15th. I just simply moved it forward to New York, New Jersey.

01:00:28

Yeah. The, the, the, the, the calendar is still be busted. Yeah. But October 28th is the

01:00:37

New York, New Jersey schedule. It should be New Jersey and New York, but that's okay. And the biggest thing as far as, you know, there's only one debate during this trip, and that will be a week from Saturday, New Hyde Park Baptist Church, Shadid Lewis.

01:00:52

I haven't heard back from Shadid since I sent that video. So we'll see. Um, but, uh, starting

01:00:58

Saturday evening at Trinity Fellowship Church in Tom's River.

01:01:04

And, uh, so that's going to be kicking it all off. And so hope to see you all there. Thanks for watching

01:01:10

Divine Line today. We will see you. Hopefully if we can actually see you, uh, sometime next week.

01:01:17

Otherwise who knows? Maybe, maybe John Simpson will be here. I don't know.