Consistency and Fairness Once Again; Then More on the Comma and Textual Criticism

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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to say. Got some medical things going on and you just got to do what you got to do.

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So we'll see, especially next week, just basically how I'm feeling and we'll go from there.

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So had the opportunity this afternoon, thought we'd sneak one in. And if any of you have seen the weather forecast for Phoenix, the other reason that we decided to sneak one in is because there may not be much left.

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Basically, after the weekend, I saw, yeah, we've been below average this week.

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It's been nice. It really has been really nice. I mean, for us, was there a day recently it was only 99 for the high?

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I mean, for June, that's seven degrees below normal. So no reason for complaining, but it's just been storing it up.

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It's just, you know, just getting ready to do its thing. And so tomorrow, 106,

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Saturday, 112, Sunday and Monday, very consistently now for days, 119 degrees in the shade.

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Tuesday, 113, then it goes up to 115, 116 after that. So I posted, someone put up a

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Alderon weather forecast. It was like 72, 74, 15

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K and then blank and blank. And someone actually insulted me. I mean, insulted me on Twitter this morning.

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And even though I had reposted it, someone asked if I really got it because I'm a

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Star Trek guy. That was a low blow.

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It really, I almost blocked the guy. I mean, I saw

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Star Wars 11 times in the theater when it came out in 1977.

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That's the record. That's the record. I normally don't see movies multiple times, but I was 14 and that was uber cool.

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And yeah, so we sort of need to get some dividing lines in because there may not be, scorched earth, scorched earth after the weekend, may not be anything here.

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Just remember, remember Corey McCloskey when the computer messed up and had 2 ,476 degrees at Cave Creek and stuff like that.

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That was classic. He just rolled with it and it was awesome. He says, no reason even for, what was it?

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Not vandalizing. What happens when people come in and steal stuff after disaster? Looting.

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No reason to even loot up there because it's nothing left. I think lead melts long before then.

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And people are like, how do you people survive in that?

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It's called air conditioning. Of course, last night, electricity goes out right after it wakes me up.

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I've been asleep five minutes. That's the worst time to be woken up because you're never going to get back to sleep after that. AC goes out and it's sort of like,

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I hope this doesn't happen over the weekend because that's when the house warms up real fast when you got temperatures like that.

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So anyways, that's an explanation as to why in the world we're doing what we're doing. Was there something? No. Why are you wearing a headset like that?

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But you normally don't wear headsets. Oh, okay.

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Once we get it set up and it works, why? I don't understand that.

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It just works. Do you remember how we used to do this program? Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

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We're all fine here now. Thank you, Carla. How are you? I just silenced my phone, even though if I say that one word, my phone will start talking to me.

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Anyway, a couple of things today on the program. Which one do

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I do first? Let's go ahead and just sort of put this one to bed and move on to something rather interesting.

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Well, I thought this isn't interesting. It's just we've talked about the last three days. There was,

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I posted, I think it was this morning, I posted a little article on Facebook.

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Someone had written, you know, are we going to expect to hear

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James White saying that Islam is a religion of peace soon? It's more of this,

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I just want to be all chummy chummy with the Muslims thing and I'm compromising and, you know, all again, because I'm doing what we have done.

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Well, I just showed Rich something. I was, I saw this box sitting over next to the wall and I recognized it as an old, old, old box of stuff that I had.

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And I found this letter, this sealed envelope in it, my handwriting sent to me from 1985.

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So I'm like, I open it up and I had sent this to me. It was a way of,

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I included these early, early tracks we had written. I mean, this was, these were done on a, that NCR, was that NCR?

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Was that the name of the company back then? It was a 24, I think it was a 24 pin.

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No, no, no. 18. Was it 18? It was 18. I know it was more than nine. One of the dots, one of the pins was busted.

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Oh. Remember that? Okay. Anyway, it was a dot matrix printer, which they still use constantly in airports.

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I don't know if you've noticed that, but every gate and someone's still making lots of dot matrix printers. And there were these early tracks that we had written and it was sort of a way of copywriting them because I sent this letter to myself saying,

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I've written these things. I guess somebody had suggested this was a way to do it. I don't know. From 1985 and I started thinking back, there were a number of times,

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I forget when, I don't know what year the Godmakers came out, but I remember we showed the

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Godmakers at the very large Southern Baptist Church that I was a member of at the time. And then when

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Godmakers 2 came out, we started sort of backing away from some of the people that were involved, especially

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Ed Decker and some of those groups, because even before I turned 30 years of age as a young man,

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I already had a strong commitment to accurately representing the

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Mormon religion. Now, I've said more than once, and I'll back it up. Islam is closer to biblical

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Christianity than Mormonism ever could be, ever could be, for the simple reason, and I'll be dialoguing with Alma Allred about this up in Salt Lake City, but the most fundamental element of a religious belief is whether you are a monotheist who believes there is one true and eternal

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God who is the creator of all things or whether you don't believe that. I mean, that really is the most,

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I guess the only more fundamental dividing line is whether you're a theist or an atheist. And on that level,

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Mormonism is the most polytheistic religion that I know. And there's an unlimited, infinite number of gods, at least in classical, historic

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LDS theology. Mormonism is changing radically, so who knows which group we'll eventually be talking about because I see splits coming big time.

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Anyway, then there was, what was the name of that letter?

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Was it the Martin Harris letter? Was that what it was called? Remember the Forger? The Salamander letter.

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Yeah, the Salamander letter. And everybody was jumping all over the Salamander letter, and Gerald and Sandra Tanner weren't.

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They had some issues. They were wise, and we likewise just stayed away from it.

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They were just something, it didn't smell right. Something just didn't look right.

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But oh man, a lot of other people, especially again sort of the ex -Mormon groups, were jumping all over the

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Salamander letter and using it to demonstrate this about Mormonism and that about Mormonism.

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For a long, long time, we have, and it's not like, you know,

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I didn't do an apprenticeship with some apologetics ministry. I didn't. I am so thankful.

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I've always been a churchman. I've always been involved in teaching the

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Christian faith, not just dealing with apologetics. I've always had a high reverence for the church and the primacy of those things, and that definitely puts me in a small group amongst apologists, because a lot of apologists go from church to church, church, church, church.

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And I can think of one apologist who, you know, basically

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I don't think has been in the same church more than two years without splitting it, and that says lots of things.

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Anyway, because of that, I wasn't taught to do this.

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I didn't read a book somewhere that said, these are the standards you should have as a Christian apologist and so on and so forth.

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But I've just always been absolutely convicted that I can't utilize an argument against a group that could then be turned around and properly used against me.

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For example, a lot of the older anti -Mormon literature would attack the

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Book of Mormon, and I'd read this stuff and I'd go, but when we deal, because one of the good things was

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I didn't just deal with Mormonism. At first, that was the first thing, but I very quickly ran into atheists and Jehovah's Witnesses, and I realized, man,

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I can't use these arguments because I know the atheists over here argue that in the

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Old Testament there is a problem with this and a problem with that, and we have to explain this this way.

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And I look at this statement about the Book of Mormon, and I would have to be using different standards here.

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I could see a way where fairly, the Mormon could say, you're being unfair here.

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So, for example, when I wrote Letters to a Mormon Elder, and I don't have the old edition here, unfortunately.

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I was going to tell you the story about that. But when I wrote Letters to a Mormon Elder, if you look at the section on the false prophecies of Joseph Smith, I only list a few.

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A lot of the information back then would have this long, long list, and I had learned long ago, you focus in upon the ones you can really nail down and prove.

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Because once you start trying to expand just the number of arguments and start giving weaker examples, what will happen is somebody will focus in on the weak example and give a probable explanation of the weak one and then dismiss everything else on the basis of that one weak one.

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So, you don't do that. You give the best ones that you can absolutely nail down, and you stick with that.

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And that's what I did in Letters to a Mormon Elder. And especially in dealing with false prophecy stuff, I have to deal with allegations of false prophecies in the

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Bible all the time. And so, I can't use one standard in defending the Bible and another in attacking the

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Book of Mormon. And even back then, there were people going, but they're Mormons. Yeah, so?

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Well, they follow a false god. Yeah, so? Well, then why should you worry about that?

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Because I followed Jesus, and He's the way, the truth, and the life.

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And so, I have to be truthful even when talking to people who are in error.

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And it just always has seemed to me so basic and so foundational. And yet, for a lot of Christians, the fact that the person you're talking to is in error somehow almost dehumanizes them.

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And that's why I really liked about the section I read from the

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Institutes yesterday on the program was here you've got Calvin.

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And Calvin could go after somebody, man. I read some of the books. He could go after you.

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Of course, back then, you know, we read Luther and Erasmus and go, wow, you know, intemperate language.

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And there was. But it was a different day on a number of levels. And people had, people grew up back then.

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And they didn't wear their feelings on their shoulders. And people could go at each other fork and tongue and then shake hands and go eat dinner at the pub.

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And it didn't mean that what they were arguing about was any less important to them. It's just, I don't know,

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I could theorize that it's because they saw so much death and were focused upon eternal things that it created a level of maturity that most of us don't have even to this day in our day.

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I could expand upon that some other time. But anyway, but, you know,

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Calvin could go at somebody and yet just such strong pastoral insights in that text from the

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Institutes about recognizing the image of God in others. And so it was really important that I began to get to know

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Mormons. And I realized we could never be buds.

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We could never, you know, hang around and go hunting and fishing and do stuff like that together as if we're just slightly different, have just slightly different perspectives or something.

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But to get to know them and discover, you know, that there are many intelligent

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Mormons and, you know, really was extremely important to me.

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And I think becoming even a better apologist to Mormons, and not doing what's happened with Millet and Mao and Johnson and all those folks where they've just, you know, collapsed into this pile of quivering goo, that type of thing.

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No. But having meaningful interaction and having to be accurate, that's not something new for me.

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I'm seeing these people on Facebook going, there's been a real change. No, there's not. No, there has not.

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Not the slightest change. Now, you may have come across me assuming, given your background and your views of Islam, that I was just one of the boys as far as, you know, they're all a bunch of, every single one of them's a jihadi.

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Well, you know what? On one level, every one of them is a jihadi. I just recognize they define jihad differently. That's all.

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But anyway, maybe you just made a bad assumption, but I haven't changed.

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Everything I just told you comes from more than 20 years ago. So if I was applying these standards 20 years ago in dealing with Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, I've always been focused upon central issues.

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And so in dealing with Mormons, you need to get to the big three. Ask anyone who ever went out with us, up to Salt Lake City or out to Mace, Arizona, what did

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I preach? The big three. You want to get to who God is, who

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Christ is, and what the gospel is, no matter what tract you're passing out. You could be passing out the

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First Vision tract, which was, I think, one of our best tracts ever. You could be passing that out.

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But what I challenged people to do was to think through how they would move from the subject of that tract directly into the gospel, because that's what the tract does, too.

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So want to build bridges to being able to talk about who Jesus is, being able to build bridges to who you want, presenting the fact there's only one true

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God, the heir of the First Vision and Joseph Smith's various versions of it, and the evolution of the story over time.

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We've been doing that from the beginning. And so the fact that I think in dealing with Islam that we need to stay focused upon the real issues, the central issues, and that we need to listen.

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I mean, I taught, again, ask the people who went with us up to Salt Lake City. I taught them to listen to the responses given them by the

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Mormons and recognize there are Mormons who have different understandings of things, different levels of knowledge.

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And you've got to try to meet that Mormon where they are. You may have to do some education.

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I mean, especially sometimes you meet more missionaries. It's even worse today that just don't even know what historic classical

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Mormon theology was all about and what it still is for that matter. So I haven't changed.

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I just have not changed. And so for everybody sitting around going, ah, you know, you're just going soft on the

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Muslims. The primary, you know,

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I see that Mormon as an image bearer of God, worshiping a false

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God. And my heart breaks them. I want them to know the true God.

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And when I look at the Muslim, I see the exact same thing. There are so many connections that we have.

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I mean, I and the Muslim have a connection that I and the Mormon do not. A commitment to one creator

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God. That makes a huge epistemological difference. We both believe in divine revelation.

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We both believe that God has spoken. And as such, we can start with a certain foundation.

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But the problem is, obviously, Islam comes afterward.

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And so what's been one of my primary arguments that you hear me making over repeatedly? I argue that if the

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Quran is divine revelation, that it should therefore accurately represent what

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Christians believe. Because if it comes from God and it's revealed 600 years after the time of Christ, 500 years after the writing of the last book of the

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New Testament, more than that, then it should be accurate in its understanding of the content of what's in the

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New Testament. It's not. The author shows no understanding of the actual content and message, the central message of the

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Christian faith. And this to me is extremely important in light of the claims of the

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Quran itself. And so I focus upon seeking to raise issues with the

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Muslim that would open the opportunity of my introducing them to the

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Jesus that they've never known. The Jesus of the Quran is an argument, not a person.

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When I hear Muslims saying, I love Jesus, and I know they're talking about the

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Quranic Jesus, I don't know how you could. He's not a person. There's no personality there.

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He only speaks from one identifiable geographical location, his cradle. Even that's borrowed from a uninspired, ahistorical source.

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And so I want to interact with them in such a way that I can really communicate to them that God is the only creator and God is the one who has made us.

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And I'm listening to Rich having a debate on the other side of the window at the same time

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I'm trying to talk to you. This is called multitasking. It's very distracting. And I want to especially communicate to them that the

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Jesus that I'm presenting to them is so much bigger than anything they have ever imagined before.

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I want them, I'm so concerned that so many of them have been given this, the

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Jesus of the pictures, you know, it's almost, you know, the carrying the little lamb and knocking on the noblest door at the same time thing, you know, the long haired,

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I'm sorry, but sisified Jesus. That's what they've heard so much of. That is not the

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Jesus of the New Testament. He is Lord. He is King.

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He rules over the nations with a rod of iron. He is the creator of all things.

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He made every single Muslim heart and mind. He formed and fashioned it.

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Every gift that they have comes from his hand. He is their Lord and they need to know him.

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And once they know how powerful and how awesome he is, then they have the background to be able to understand his tremendous condescension, his tremendous love demonstrated upon the cross of Calvary.

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And only then can they really understand that. And I want them to understand that.

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I want to communicate that to them. And I don't want to get anything in the way of communicating that message to them.

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I want to serve them, not simply defeat them in some kind of internet debate.

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And you've just got to ask yourself, I've just got to ask some of you, look into your heart.

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What are your motivations? What are your motivations? When I, are there times when

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I don't have the proper motivation? I am an unprofitable servant. But I can honestly, honestly say that the desire of my heart is to be used to serve others that they might come to know my

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Lord. And I don't want to get in the way of that. And that means there are certain arguments

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I'm not going to use because I don't believe that my Lord is honored by double standards and inconsistency.

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I can't look at the Muslim in the eye and say, Jesus Christ is the truth. And then

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I act untruthfully. That doesn't mean that they're not going to say, well, I think you're wrong about this, or I think you're wrong.

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I get that. But this whole issue about, well, you shouldn't, you know, you should buy into this idea that there's only one true

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Islam and it's basically Wahhabi Islam. Well, you know what? If I'm talking to a

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Wahhabi, I will reason with the Wahhabi on the basis of the Wahhabi presuppositions.

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And I'm going to talk to them about shirk and I'm going to talk to them about the things that they believe. But you know what?

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I happen to know that there are non -Wahhabi Muslims and I want to introduce them to Jesus too.

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They need him just as much as the Wahhabis do. And if I have to sit there and go, well, you're not really a

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Muslim, so I can sort of force them into my, it's a little bit like the people use the four spiritual laws and just try to cram everybody into that one little, you know, this is my mechanism and my interest.

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And there were people who did this to Mormons too. You know, you've got your system and if they don't fit into the system, then you've got to try to push them into the mold.

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There's no reason to do that. There's no reason to do that. And so,

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I can't hear, I cannot make people hear my heart on this. I can just simply tell you with all sincere honesty that there is zero evidence whatsoever.

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And you know, the sad thing is I can't even ask Muslims to testify to this because that'll just only prove your point, right?

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Well, say, but you know, the Muslims that I have respect for, who do listen and do hear, they will tell you,

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James White hasn't gone soft on us. He firmly, he's making criticisms of the

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Quran and criticisms of our theology that are telling and weighty criticisms.

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He just happens to want to do so in such a way that he doesn't unnecessarily offend us in the process.

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I'm thankful for you Muslims who recognize that. I really do. In fact,

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I've got to be honest here. I'm not going to name names because I don't want to cause a problem. But one

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Muslim, he and I have, there are a couple of Muslims that I can be perfectly honest.

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We've almost never exchanged civil exchanges.

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There are people like that. And honestly, some of it's my fault because, you know, there are certain

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Roman Catholics I can get along with easier than others. There are certain Mormons, Muslims, you know, we're all made differently.

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And I'm thankful that the Lord has other people reaching out to Muslims because they can reach out and touch people that I cannot just because of who

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I am. I'm not that easy to like. I'm not the most likable person on the planet. I'm Scottish.

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And we just sort of take pride in that. But one particular

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Muslim with whom I have exchanged some pretty warm fire actually complimented me on the program from the beginning of the week and said, you need to listen to that.

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People need to listen to this because he got it right. He actually accurately represented the historical

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Islamic perspective on jihad and violence. Well, you know what?

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I am very thankful that he said that. Thank you to you, sir. I'll be honest with you.

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I wish that the next time I'm in London without anybody knowing it, that you and I could get together without anybody around and just talk.

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I really do. Because we never have done that. I think we started with,

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I think I represent to you everything you rejected in Christianity and didn't like.

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I think that's in your mind. And I don't know if we could, I honestly don't know if we could get back past the barriers and actually get to the point of talking about our faiths in a meaningful fashion.

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But I'd like to try. I'd like to try. And I'm getting pretty good at getting around London. I was pretty proud of myself last time.

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Love London. That is just an incredible city. Anyways, think about it. Maybe we could do that sometime.

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I do want to get back there and not to do this in the future. Anyway, so just on this subject, those are my thoughts.

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Evidently, I get the feeling that Rich just had a similar debate in the other room. You have any idea how hard it was for me to survive that?

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That is not a soundproof wall. I just want you to know that is not a soundproof wall. So was that the same subject

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I was just discussing? I don't know. I was under a subject all over. Totally different conversation.

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You have no idea what I've been talking about. I have no idea. I was talking about Scientology. You were arguing with Scientology. No, no, no, no, not at all.

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No, no, no. Was that on the subject of my views on Islam? Yeah, it was.

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It was. It was. Okay. All right. But we'll leave it at that. We'll leave it at that.

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All right. That's fine. Okay. Anyhow, let's shift topics here.

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TurretinFan has been having an interesting conversation on his

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Facebook wall with some representatives of, well, this is one of my problems.

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If you do not, if you cannot differentiate between what's called the

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Byzantine text platform and the quote -unquote ecclesiastical text or the

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TR, you know, then you got a problem. And now

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TurretinFan in many ways is a nicer fellow than I am. And TurretinFan in the past has expressed, he's been much less excited about, dedicated to a critical text theory than, of course,

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I am. But he's found quite interesting the arguments that people are raising in defense of the

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Kama Yohanium. And I'll be perfectly honest with you, there is such a strong cohort of Kama Yohaniusts in the

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Reformed Pub that part of me, honestly, I don't even want to post in there anymore, because anything

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I say, no matter what topic, eventually the comm boxes will turn to that.

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It's just, and as I've said, I find the defense of the

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TR, the Textus Receptus, as the ecclesiastical text or as the final form, whatever argument it is,

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I really find it to be extremely troubling, especially when it's done by Reformed men.

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And the reason for that is I wasn't raised in the

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Reformed tradition. Now, I've said many times, in fact,

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I, yeah, I do have. Here's my father's systematic, it's always opposite, there you go, systematic theology text from Moody Bible Institute, Christian Theology by P .B.

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Fitzwater. I sent this to Ace Bookbinding and they totally restored it. They did such a tremendous job, but you can see the pages are, wow, that looks weird.

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You can even see the other camera in that one. That's, oh, you lifted it way up high.

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It was down, when did you do that? This morning, or actually yesterday morning.

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Anyway, I thought it was cool. I thought it was a really cool shot, you know. I don't know how we could do it, but.

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At least I don't have shots of you with like half your face in the shot and the other half out and, you know, big dark.

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You need to put on all those things, you can make it swing back and forth, slide across.

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Like over the football field, and let's follow the action as we're going down. Anyway, so here's, there we go.

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See, Christian Theology by P .B. Fitzwater. This is what they used in the early 1950s at Moody Bible Institute, and Fitzwater was a

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Presbyterian. And so I was never, well, certainly the church that we went to here in Phoenix, again, was mixed.

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I was one of the things that eventually drove me out of that church, but not quickly over years, was, man, one

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Sunday you'd get a, I remember this one sermon on Isaiah chapter six.

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It's just absolutely incredible. Holiness of God, and oh. And then two weeks later, you'd have a really

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Arminian style. Sermon, and so there wasn't a lot of consistency there.

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But I was never raised with some kind of antipathy toward the term

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Calvinism or Reformed Theology or anything like that. Just wasn't raised with that terminology at all. And so I embraced

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Reformed Theology after a very strong period of really, you know, reading multiple books and struggling with things and working through things and, you know, that period of time where you're going, man,

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I never even thought about this. And, you know, I've never even really considered whether I was consistent about this, consistent about that, and things like that.

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And of course, I was already involved in apologetics. And I started going, wow, this just explains every difficulty that I've been having in dealing with grace and faith and needing to have a meaningful biblical anthropology.

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Because that was probably the one thing that I didn't have was a really, and some of the early Mormon missionaries I had talked to had sort of identified that, had sort of pressed on that very issue.

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And I had thought about it, and this was all in the mid -1980s. And so I don't come to Reformed Theology as one that just grew up with it.

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I think I am much more firmly convinced of it because I came to it,

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I was forced to it by the weight of Scripture and examination. Well, as a result,

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I figure if you call yourself Reformed, then the very same kind of dedication to consistency of argumentation.

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And I had to identify the traditions that stood in the way of my believing what the Bible said about God's sovereign grace.

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And so when I find folks in the Reformed tradition that then become dedicated to tradition, rather than really sola scriptura, it just bugs me.

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And sometimes, yeah, it makes you very uncharitable. Okay, I think what it means is

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I hold you to a higher standard. And when you don't live up to that standard, I'm very disappointed. Anyway, this issue,

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Turretin Fan's having a conversation, mainly with Colin Pearson, but also some others on his

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Facebook page. And it hasn't gotten too far yet.

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It's interesting to look at. I think a lot of people are lost as to why

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I'm talking about this, and I apologize for that. But I noticed, again, in the pub, various people posting things about how ignorant

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I am, and how I've been refuted for years and years and years. And one that I saw,

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I think, day before yesterday, was talking about how Dijon and Rommel and all these others had proven me wrong long ago, but I'm too ignorant to know it, and blah, blah, blah, blah.

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And I was looking at the section on the comma in my book, and the lengthy footnotes on Dijon and Rommel, talking about the very things

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I'm accused of being ignorant of, that actually I was talking about a long time ago.

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But there was a link provided. And let me just...

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This isn't story time with Uncle Jimmy, but I do want to read a little something from the book here.

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I sort of feel like... Oh, I must keep... Okay, when are you going to buy the little red lights for me?

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Huh? Does your cool little software have little red light control stuff?

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You mean you can't come up with a way to do that? Because sometimes when they're right next to each other,

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I'm sort of like... See, I set this up so that the other one has this big effect, and you're looking at the main camera.

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The big effect. And it's cool. What you see in the big effect is...

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You get to see the straw man's little legs down there. Uh -huh, yeah. You get to see the camera lens from the close -up thing.

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Uh -huh, yeah. And you... And two triples. Yeah. I'm still bummed about...

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You also get the lava lamp, and you get the Borg regeneration light.

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You know what's supposed to be right here. It's got a little bit of the Batman Joker's lair kind of effect. What's supposed to be right there is that Borg cube refrigerator.

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Yeah, never showed up, yeah. Yeah, I think the... It's one of the disappointments of my life, is that Borg cube would look so cool with the

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Enterprise -D on top of it. Yeah, that would be cool. That would be really neat. That would be way cool. And then we could really freak people out by having the

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Death Star or something. Because then you just throw it all together and... Anyway, let me just make sure everybody's up to speed on this.

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Um, what is it? Really long... That's interesting. Really long footnote on this page talking about Erasmus's recognition of harmonization.

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I never see those folks talking about that stuff. Anyway, okay. The single most famous incident related to Desiderius Erasmus's work in the

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New Testament revolves around the words of 1 John 5, 7 is found in the King James Version. For there are three that bear record in heaven.

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The Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost. And these three are one. Most KJV -only preachers and believers make acceptance of this passage the test of orthodoxy.

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If your Bible does not have it, you are in deep trouble. And I've had people look me right in the face, by the way, and tell me

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I was going to hell. Because my Bible didn't have the Kamiah on it. In fact, um, what was that guy's name?

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Uh, what's the guy with Jack... Alberto Rivera. Alberto Rivera.

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The alleged former Roman Catholic priest that was Jack Chick's source of all this wild, crazy stuff about Romanism.

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I met him once at a Oneness church. It was really weird. He was speaking at a Oneness church. Um, and because of the comma,

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New American Standard Bible, I was... Look me... He was a little short guy. Look me right in the eye if I'm going to hell. Anyway, the story of how 1

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John 5, 7 ended up in the King James Version is instructive. When Erasmus' first edition came out in 1516, this phrase, dubbed today the

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Kamiohonium or in Latin... I'm sorry, the Johonian comma or in Latin the Kamiohonium, was not in the text for a very simple reason.

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Not one Greek manuscript of 1 John that Erasmus examined contained it. He found it only in the Latin Vulgate.

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Now, can we agree that's true? Yes, it is true. Erasmus rightly did not include it in his first or second edition.

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The note in his annotation said, quote, in the Greek Codex, I find only this about the threefold testimony because there are three witnesses, spirit, water, and blood, end quote.

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But his reliance upon the Greek manuscripts rather than the Vulgate caused quite a stir. Remember, what he's producing is a...

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a diglot. And his emphasis in the first edition is on the Latin. But so it's...

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there's a conflict in the manuscripts that he has between the Greek and Latin. Both Edward Lee and Diego Lopez Zuniga attacked him for not including this passage and hence encouraging

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Arianism. The same charge King James Only advocates make today. Erasmus protested he was simply following the

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Greek text. In responding to Lee, Erasmus challenged him to produce a Greek manuscript that has what is missing in my edition.

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He also wrote, quote, if a single manuscript had come into my hands in which stood what we read in the

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Latin Vulgate, then I would certainly have used it to fill in what was missing in the other manuscripts I had.

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Because that did not happen, I have taken the only course which was permissible, that is, I have indicated, that is, in the annotations, what was missing from the

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Greek manuscripts. Erasmus rebutted Zuniga by pointing out that while he was constantly referring

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Erasmus to one particular Greek manuscript, in this case Zuniga, had not brought this text forward, correctly assuming that even this manuscript agreed with Erasmus' reading.

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Erasmus also said the whole passage is so obscure that it cannot be very valuable in refuting the

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Arian heresies. Now, let me stop right there. Erasmus was right. Remember last week,

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I think it was last week, yeah, last week, I pointed out that when

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Cyprian interprets this text as referring to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, he's not quoting the comma.

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That's probably the source of the eventual interpretation that becomes the text of the comma in the Latin manuscripts.

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But just simply on an exegetical basis, the water, the blood, and the spirit, how do you turn that into Father, Son, and Spirit?

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The water and the blood is probably in reference to what comes out, the sword thrust.

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So, I mean, exegetically, this text isn't about the

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Trinity. So, even the interpretation is highly questionable. All right, anyway, yet Erasmus didn't include the comma in his 1522 or the third edition.

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Why? Possibly, there was an inherent promise. Now, listen here. Possibly, there was an inherent promise to do so in his response to Lee that should a single manuscript be found containing the phrase, he would include it.

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Or perhaps, he did this simply to face one less obstacle in gaining acceptance for his Latin translation.

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In any case, an Irish manuscript, Codex Monfortianus, that contained the disputed phrase, now at Trinity College, Dublin, was found.

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Now, I wrote this before I ever got to examine Codex Monfortianus, which I did a few years ago there at Trinity College in Dublin.

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Which, if you ever get to Dublin, you must go to Trinity College, and you must see the reading room there.

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Oh, my goodness. One of the highlights of my life. This manuscript is highly suspect, most probably having been created in the house of the

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Greyfriars, whose provincial, Henry Standish, was an old enemy of Erasmus and whose intention was simply to refute him.

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The text note in the annotations grew tremendously for Erasmus asserted many of the arguments and citations he had used in replying to Lee and Zuniga.

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He remarked, I have restored the text so as not to give anyone an occasion for slander. He included the note with, but to return to the business of the reading, from our remarks, it is clear that the

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Greek and Latin manuscripts vary, and in my opinion, there is no danger in accepting either reading.

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The communion is extremely important. Here we have a phrase that everyone will admit is manifestly orthodox. What it says is obviously true.

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At the same time, we are in no way dependent upon the phrase for our knowledge of the Trinity or the unity of the three persons, Father, Son, and Spirit.

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Trinitarian doctrine does not stand or fall upon the inclusion of the comma. And I would like to point out, there's more here that's interesting because I get into Burgon and so on and so forth.

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And I would like to point out that the text had no role whatsoever in the defense of the doctrine of the

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Trinity to Christ and the early church. If it was as primitive as people say that it was, then it would have been absolutely central to Athanasius' defense of the

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Council of Nicaea. It's not. But having read that and having quickly looked at the clock,

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I was fascinated to see someone, again, in the

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Reform pub, citing a book from Google Books. And so I took a look at it.

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And it's a very interesting source. I'm glad to have seen it. But it's a defense of the comma.

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And it alleges, for example, and again, this was all couched in an attack upon me saying,

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I'm ignorant of this. I don't know about that. You know, just honestly to me, the pub's become a very unfriendly place.

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These people are always, he's just so mean. He's just so nasty. Do you all read your own stuff? Don't seem to.

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Anyway, the allegation of this particular individual was that because there is a difference between the reading of the comma that Erasmus ends up inserting and what's found in Montfortianus, it couldn't have been

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Montfortianus that he was referring to. Instead, they say he, well, he called it

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Codex Britannicus. And so it wasn't

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Montfortianus. And this means there was another manuscript. And the whole argument is there are all sorts of other manuscripts that support the comma at this time.

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Problem being that even when this was written, they couldn't say where Codex Britannicus is.

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If it's not Montfortianus, and these names come later on, obviously. If it's not

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Montfortianus, then what is it? Well, it's disappeared. It's gone. So one of the things that marks later additions to the

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Greek New Testament is variation within it. Look at the variance within the

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Prick of Adultery, within the Long Reading of Mark. There are all sorts of variants.

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Because when something is entered into the tradition at a later point, there are going to be variations.

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And there are in the comma. And I've noted in my presentations, especially when

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I examined Montfortianus, I transcribed it. And then within,

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I think it was like two months after I saw it, they published a full PDF of Montfortianus.

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So you can get it online now. But obviously,

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Montfortianus wasn't sent to Erasmus in Basel. A transcript of it would have been provided.

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And we don't know who provided that transcript. We don't know what level of information. We can't even know whether he was just simply told that it actually is contained there.

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And so he had to derive the Greek of it from another source. It's irrelevant. But what caught my attention was, so I read through the section that allegedly proves how stupid

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I am. And then I went back and I was reading all the stuff.

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And I was going, this seems to be really out of date.

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The language it's using seems to have, you know, when was this written?

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And so I went back and I went back. And this was from the preface by a translator.

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And finally, I get back here and go past the dedication.

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And I finally get to the title page. This was originally delivered in German by Francis Antony Nittel.

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It was a lecture translated by William Alain Evanson.

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New Criticisms on the Celebrated Text, 1 John 5, 7. Published in Brunswick in 1785.

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1785. And now why is that relevant? Because, hey, we like all sorts of stuff from 1785 when it comes to theology, right?

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Well, here's the problem. And this is where I think some of my, especially, you know, obviously the

53:56

TR only guys aren't going to like this very much. But material on the subject of the textual criticism of the

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New Testament. Published prior to about 1950.

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May be helpful to us in understanding the development of textual critical thinking over time.

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But when it comes to the actual discussion of manuscripts and materials is next to irrelevant.

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Why? Well, again, the TR only guys seem to chafe at this.

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But the vast majority of believing Christian scholars recognize the seismic shift that took place with the publication of the papyri.

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When you move the earliest extant witnesses to any ancient text back so much closer to their original writing, like the publication of the papyri did, starting in the 1930s.

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That's a primary focus of when these came to life. It has the same, you know, had the same kind of effect as Vaticanus and Sinaiticus had in moving from 900 to 300.

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And then you move back in some places into the second century. That's huge.

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That's a massive thing. And even and that's even true when you don't have papyri evidence for a particular book.

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When you can demonstrate that the text type, which we had in the unseals in the fourth and fifth century, is the same text type found in the papyri in the second and third century.

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This tremendously increases the confidence we have of the transmission of the text in the early centuries.

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And so the reality is that when you look at the arguments that people are using to promote the comma johannium.

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Well, there was a manuscript that had it, but we've lost it. Isn't it painfully obvious that these individuals should not even be wasting their time talking about manuscripts?

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Because the manuscripts don't matter. What matters is we have a text.

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And this is what we will defend. And any data from any source, no matter how dated, no matter how inaccurate, even when it's arguments from silence.

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Well, we know there was once a manuscript and it must have had this. That's not doing textual criticism.

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That's doing tradition substantiation. So it's no wonder that we end up completely missing each other because we're not doing the same thing.

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The problem is I'm afraid sometimes you pretend like you are doing it and you're not.

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I'm just calling upon you to be honest. You have a theological presupposition.

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Now, I completely and totally disagree with your formulation of it. I do not believe for a second that it is even slightly fair or slightly defensible to take the words, the

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Westminster Confession or the 16A line London Confession and say that means we have to embrace this stuff.

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I don't don't believe it for a second. But let's leaving that aside. That's what you've done.

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That's where you've gone. And the reason you believe these texts is because that's what's there and the lengths to which you will go to defend that one text.

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As I point out last week, you could do the exact same thing for numerous other readings in the

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Latin tradition. You could, but you don't because Erasmus didn't.

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You know who the greatest critic of you would be? Desiderius Erasmus.

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The man whose textual critical work gave you the text you have in light of what we have today would write the most acerbic satire filled criticism of your traditionalism of anyone ever if he had the same data that we have today.

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Do you not find an irony in that? I think it's fascinating. But anyway, all right.

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Well, as I said, don't know what next week will bring.

59:46

It could bring Uncle Rich back to the dividing line. Maybe we might give

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John Sampson a call or I could be here. Just don't know. Just have no way of knowing.

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But we'll we'll find out. And something tells me we'll probably have more to talk about because just sitting here looking at Facebook, I noticed my little notification things going up and all this stuff.

01:00:12

Ding, ding, ding, ding. Yeah, you terrible, nasty, terrible person. Yeah, that's the way it works.

01:00:17

So anyways, thanks for listening to the dividing line today. Hope it was helpful to you. We'll see you next time.