Apologetics and Debate: Hermeneutics part 2

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We continue the subject of hermeneutics in the class on apologetics and debates.

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Well, welcome back to Passing the Torch. I'm your host, Randy Adkins, and today, as he has been, your teacher is
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Andrew Rappaport for Striving for Eternity, and he will continue to teach us apologetics and debate.
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How are you, brother? Well, better than I deserve. Looking forward to another class. This is class number four out of eight, so after this, we're halfway done with the class, and I will state that, folks, you should have, those who are taking this class for credit, if you have not gotten in your quiz by now, congratulations on your zero.
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You achieved your first zero for the class. The others who actually did, now there's one person who gave the dog ate my homework routine, you know, could not get into the
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Google form that we have for it. And so, yep, well, dog ate your homework, you get a zero.
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Maybe I'll make an exception, we'll see, but everyone else got at least a 90 or above, so congratulations to those who have done that.
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So obviously, Randy's raised his hands, he was signoring, claiming he's one of them.
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So I did, I did take the test. You did you, did you get your grade? Oh, no, I didn't release them.
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I did not. Let me release the grades now. That was on my part,
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I have to actually physically release the scores. So there we go. Scores are being released to all.
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All right, right there. So you guys got your grades with some comments.
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I will say, I was shocked that we had a multiple choice.
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And I think everyone managed to get that, or no. Some got that right, but no one got a perfect 100.
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Even those who got the more, what I thought was going to be the filling, not the multiple choice questions, but paragraphs where you give explanation.
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Those that got it, all those still managed to miss something on the quiz. So with that, why don't we just,
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I'm going to go over the quiz and sort of some of the answers quickly. And that's why, well, now if you're, it's too late to take it, because I'm going to give you the answers.
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So number one was the question, what does the word apologetics mean?
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A variety of answers that were all pretty much acceptable was, you know, reasoned defense.
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That is, you know, a defense of the faith to give a reasoned defense or answer.
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Things like this was the right type of thing we're looking for. The multiple choice question was, what's the purpose of apologetics?
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I gave you four possibilities. And so as we look at those, the questions were, and what is the purpose of apologetics?
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One, convince someone that Christianity is right. Number two, share the gospel.
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Number three, shut the mouth of the ignorant. Number four, show how
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Christianity has the answers to life. Number five, defend the
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Christian faith. And number six, to win a debate. Now with these,
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I was glad that 0 % of the people said win a debate. And so I was glad for that.
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But some of these I put in there to sound like they were right.
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But convince someone that Christianity is right. Now, this was a trick question because we talked about the difference of presuppositional apologetics and evidential apologetics.
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And therefore, I would argue that Christianity is not to convince someone that Christianity is right.
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That's something God does. And therefore, the people who mark that, that's why that was a wrong answer.
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We let God do that. We provide the reason to defense, but we don't try to convince someone into the kingdom, right?
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Now, some people would have pushed back on that and say, ah, but, you know, we are convincing them that Christianity is right compared to other religions.
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And so I still say it's a wrong answer because we do it based off of what we taught in class. So, share the gospel.
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That was correct. And everyone got that one right. Shut the mouth of the ignorant, which
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I thought might be a little tricky, but people paid attention in class. A hundred percent of the people got that one right.
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So, very good. Show how Christianity has the answers to life. That was a trick one.
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The answer was no. That's not what we do apologetics for. And so, that would be wrong.
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The next right one was defend the Christian faith. And that is the purpose of apologetics.
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So, when we look at these, just going through them, the right answers for that are share the gospel, shut the mouth of the ignorant, defend the
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Christian faith. Those would be the correct answers. All right? Now, when we look at the next question that we had here, the next one is name some of the characteristics of a person that does
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Christian apologetics and why are they important. So, if you think about what we talked about with characteristics, we talked about, and this was an essay, so you got to put different things, but what we're looking for here specifically is going to be the characteristic of humility.
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Some people mentioned humility, teachability, the idea of looking to help someone understand versus trying to debate and prove that you're right.
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So, basically, we're looking for there is characteristics of someone who is gentle, respectful, humble, ones that would be weeping.
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We mentioned that in Philippians 3 .18, weeping for those who are lost. So, those would have been right answers for that.
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The last question was why, what is important, and the importance of those things, well,
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I think they're self -evident, but we talked about those in class, right? It's not to be arrogant, not to show you know it all, but to show that you're just trying to help them to know the truth.
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What is, well, and to shut their mouth when they say ignorant things. What is important to look for in an argument?
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Now, this was one that I was surprised how many people got wrong, and it just showed that people were, even though I mentioned this in two classes, some people gave really good answers, but it wasn't the answer
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I was looking for. The answer I was looking for, and someone got it very briefly when they just said a false premise, and that's what we're looking for.
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What's important to look for, and I'm going to go over this because so many people missed this one, is people talk about evidence, proof, look for self -refuting arguments, look for underlying presuppositions.
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All of those sort of things were really good, but the answer to this one was you're looking for the premise.
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You want to examine the premise of their argument because that is going to tell you how, well, it's going to tell you if they have a false premise, you address that right away, right?
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And so for an example, I will give an example from our
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Passing the Torch, one of our students. I'm not going to name the individual, but anyone that's in the
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Passing the Torch chat, you'll know who gets blamed for this. Well, actually, I already told him this would make it to the show, and I'm sure he's joking, but he says, apparently, hermeneutics are satanic because it comes from the pagan god
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Hermes. Therefore, Christians who are interested in hermeneutics are actually doing witchcraft.
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Then he just said, yeah, you people are dumb. So I said that will make it to the class, and therefore, it just did.
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So that student knows who he is, and the rest of us know, too. But so if you're not one of the students at Passing the
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Torch, you don't know. So if you want to be a student on Facebook, get out to the group
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Passing the Torch. Go search for that. Join that group. Join the chat. Then you'll know that Daniel said,
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I mean, sorry, that someone, someone. But yeah, so what's wrong with that argument?
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Well, evaluating an argument like that, look at what's the premise. The premise is assuming that hermeneutics is based off of a
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Greek god named Hermes, and therefore, that must be teaching paganism, right?
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That's the assumption of the underlying argument. Is that true? No, it has nothing to do with that, right?
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It's just that is the, yes, there's a god named Hermes. Okay. Is hermeneutics tied to that?
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Actually, I don't know if that's the origin of hermeneutics. It is a Greek word that has the meaning of the, of, you know, interpreting things.
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So it has to do with the art and science of interpretation. I believe Hermes, if I'm not mistaken, is the god of messages, the one that goes super fast.
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You know, I believe, I forget what he is in the Roman names, but I think it's
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Mercury or the one that Mercury is named after or whatever. But the fact that the
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Greek word would have the meaning based off of, if I'm right in that, that the idea of a message, sounds like it just has to do with that word.
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But does that, does hermeneutics teach paganism? No, it has nothing to do with that.
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And so what you're looking for is the underlying premise. So in that example, the underlying premise is that just because you use a
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Greek word that's based off of a name of a Greek god, you must be teaching paganism.
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And I'm sure that he is just joking with this. But to look at the argument, because some people may make arguments like this.
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And so you look at the underlying premise and go, wait a minute, does every word absolutely have to do with the names?
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Because if they are, then every day of the week, when you mention every day of the week, you're mentioning a guy.
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I mean, what is Thursday? Thor's day. Oops.
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But do you worship Thor every Thursday? I mean, most of the days are named after, you know,
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Roman gods. Same with months and planets and things like this.
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So what we end up seeing is the underlying argument doesn't match because just because its name is synonymous with it or similar to it or an offshoot of it doesn't mean that everything is related back to teaching paganism.
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Right. So that's a good reason why. And I really strongly emphasize this, because when we get into the debate, you can hear me mention this over and over.
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But this is something that is crucial in debate. And the reason it's crucial is because you can get into a discussion, do apologetics, get into a debate and completely lose it in the debate.
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Not necessarily lose it, like lose your character, your behavior, but lose the argument in the sense because you make the mistake of thinking that you're both talking about the same things and people will get you into trying to defend something that you have no reason to defend.
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In fact, I posted a meme once the guilty verdict came out with Trump of, you know, someone that had put a meme of Lady Justice being held down and in one sleeve of the person holding her down had the
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Democrat logo and the other had the social media logos. And so the picture of it is that, you know, what happened with Trump being found guilty is that Lady Justice is being held down by the
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Democrats and social media so that they can get their way. And so that was the idea of it.
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And so I posted that someone's response. Well, Republicans do that, too. OK, so what do
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Republicans do to now, the context was so and I asked him to defend was,
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OK, show me where a Republican president used the justice system to attack this political opponent.
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Because that's the context and the person was like, well, I'm saddened, Andrew, that you would, you know, take such attack like, you know, you should do better than this.
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You know, you know, OK, like what? I mean, this is the context. Right.
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I said, give me the example where Republicans I mean, because even Biden said this is a first in history.
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So where have Republicans used the justice system? So his argument was, well,
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Republicans have created a 50 year thing of allowing abortions and and not, you know, not talking about allowing the
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Roe versus Wade to happen and and just saying, well, we have to deal with it. And then they go after guns and say, well, we're not going to obey those laws.
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But then, you know, Roe is overturned and they just go, well, we got to find ways to to work with this. Now, notice nothing in that.
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And you can go see it on Facebook. Nothing in there is he actually giving where Republicans use the justice system against Democrats.
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So it's like so the underlying premise was never answered. So what do I do?
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I just keep getting to the premise. So I said, OK, this is the premise. The premise was we have a sitting president who used the justice system against his political opponent.
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If you can't show that one, fine, show where the Republicans use the media because his he circled the
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Democrat logo on the one sleeve. Well, the other sleeve has more social media. So show me where the Republicans use the justice system.
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And then with the force of social media and the Republican Party prevented Democrats from getting away because abortion is actually a oh, right, a
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Democrat issue. So so what this is, is someone who's giving a pass to what
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Democrats do to say, well, Republicans do it, too, but then can't support where the
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Republicans do the same exact thing. So what do I do? I focus on the premise because this premise is flawed.
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Right. It's not that Republican. Do are there Republicans at local levels that use the justice system against their political?
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Oh, I'm sure that is. But there's a difference there because what you have is a local level at the federal level.
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Like if they do something wrong at the local level, you could appeal to the federal. But at the federal level, you can't appeal to anyone.
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OK, so that is some examples of with that. So where we are now, we talked about the character where you started talking about hermeneutics last week.
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The over overarching number one issue when it comes to hermeneutics, which is the art and science of interpretation, is we're going to give
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Randy and Hermes a pop quiz here. Last week, we talked about the one thing that was most important, and it was what?
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The gospel. OK, you get an F. Context.
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Context. Thank you. Someone was paying attention last week. I think
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I completely missed your question just now. Yeah, you were you were responding to what's the most important thing in debate?
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Well, you know, right. Well, last week we talked about the most important thing in in hermeneutics, which is context.
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Yes, sir. So context is is key. OK, when we when we're going to discuss this.
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And so the number one thing is why we spent one class period on context.
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OK, this week we're going to focus on two issues and then we'll have two more for next week.
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So this week, what we want to talk about when it comes to hermeneutics is two other principles. And by the way,
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I should mention, if you go out to YouTube and go to the Striving for Eternity YouTube channel, you will see a playlist called
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Interpretation Tips. And in there, there's one 20 minute video, which is kind of a just focusing on on one area of comparing scripture with scripture.
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But after that, the next several lessons, there's five lessons that are five minutes long.
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OK, so everything I'm doing in this class, I have summarized briefer in just five minute classes, five minutes per each topic that we're going to cover.
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OK, so you can go and watch that so that you have a good, a better understanding of these or something that you can always go back to.
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So what we have that we're going to look at this week, we looked already last week at context. This week, we're going to talk about the differentiation between descriptive and prescriptive texts.
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We're going to talk about those to find those. Next, we're going to talk about today is interpreting the difficult passages by the easy passages.
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That's going to be a second we're going to talk about today. Next week, we're going to cover being willing to question your presuppositions.
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We're going to talk about the importance of that and then how to interpret scripture with scripture, because what most people do when they say they're interpreting scripture with scripture is what's called proof texting.
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We dealt with that last week in ways not to interpret where you just grab a verse from here, grab a verse from here, slam them together and go, well, this is what the
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Bible says because they're both. Hey, I use this Bible verse in this Bible verse. But if you take those out of their context, you're not actually saying what
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God says. You're saying what man says, because it's out of context. It's no longer God's word.
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It's man's word. So that is where the importance of this.
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So what we want to deal with first is the idea of differentiating between two terminologies, descriptive and prescriptive.
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So let me define those for us so that we know what they are and then look at some examples. Descriptive is a passage that is or a genre that is and genre just means a style of literature, a genre that is describing what happens.
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And so in that case, what you're doing is describing what did happen, not necessarily what should or should not happen.
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These are going to be mostly your historical narratives. I mentioned this before, but when you when you study the cults, what
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I have discovered over many years with the cults is that they often. Focus on historical narratives and they take those as prescriptive, so what's prescriptive, prescriptive is instruction, when you go to the doctor, he gives you medicine with a prescription.
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What is the prescription? It's instructions for you to follow. So now that's different because that is something that we're now going to apply.
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We're going to practice. We're going to look at it and say, these are things we do. OK, versus a descriptive, which says this is what happened.
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So let's look at some examples to help us understand. David had multiple wives, therefore, we should have multiple wives.
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I hear that one often. I do. I've I've hear that from some folks, especially from Mormons who do believe or did used to practice.
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They sort of still practice just secretly now multiple wives. Right. I am waiting.
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I thought when when Obama decided to say, well, we're going to redefine marriage and we could define it as people of the same sex.
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There were Mormons that were suddenly trying to push to allow it to say, well, if we could define it as same sex, why can't we define it as one man with multiple wives or one wife with multiple husbands?
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You see, they open all of that up. And so but in the eighteen hundreds,
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Mormons did practice polygamy. And they would make and I had a
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Mormon that made this argument to me. He said the law of the land prevents it, but there's nothing in the
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Bible that should prevent it. And I said, really, in Genesis one, two and three.
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Do we have instructions there that seem to lead that he made one man for one woman?
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And I had one Mormon that said, well, that's just describing what did happen.
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OK, good. I'm glad you realize that, because what is Genesis one, two and three? Descriptive.
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What is it with with David? Descriptive. Now, the reason
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I ask that is this reason. I wanted them to be able to see that the argument they're making on David is the same argument that I'm going to argue is the same argument from Genesis.
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They're going to argue that David is prescriptive, but Genesis is descriptive. But now that I can address that,
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I can say, well, see, both of those are descriptive. But when Jesus is instructing on divorce and remarriage, he goes back to Genesis and uses it prescriptively.
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He's giving instruction based on God creating one man for one woman.
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Oops. Right. So now you see that even though it may not be condemned outwardly when when
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David had multiple wives, it doesn't mean we should do that. It just means that David had multiple wives.
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Solomon had even more. Right. That caused him trouble. So we have to note the difference.
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Let me give an example that I've heard. Well, now this is going back maybe 10 years.
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Someone had written a book on whether women should be doing open air evangelism.
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And one of the arguments of the book was that the woman at the well was, and this was an argument people were making against the book, that the woman at the well was doing open air evangelism.
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She was going around the town and she was preaching. OK, so in in John chapter four, what do we have?
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We have a woman who is at a well. She meets Jesus. She turns to Jesus.
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She finds out, you know, this is the Samaritan woman. She runs to her, to the town after meeting with Jesus.
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And what does she do? It says that, you know, she goes and tells everybody, hey, look at look at this man that told me all the things that I did.
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Was she and the word for preaching is to proclaim in the open air from what we could tell the text.
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Was she doing that? Yes, it seems from the text that she was doing that.
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OK, she went into the city. This is John four thirty nine from the city.
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Many of the Samaritans believed in him, believed in him because of the word of the woman who testified.
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He told me all the things I have done. So was she proclaiming things that they ended up end up believing?
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Yes, that verse says so. So when we look at it, what did she say? Well, we saw this earlier in the passage in verse twenty eight.
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She says, so the woman left her water pot and went to the city and said to the men, come and see a man who told me all the things that I have done.
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Is this not the Christ? And they went out of the city and were coming to him.
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So did she speak to the men openly in public? Yes. That's what she actually did.
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This is a prescriptive text. It's historical narrative. Does anywhere in this text say that what she did was right or wrong?
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No. That's the issue when we get to descriptive passages like historical narratives, we have to be aware that we cannot try to make it say more than it says and we cannot try to use it to say, well, therefore, we must if this is what it says, we practice this.
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No, we have to see that this is what did happen, not necessarily what should happen. And so did she do that?
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Yes. Should women teach men or preach to men? I would say no.
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Now, should they do it within a church context or outside the church context? That brings up a different issue with us, right?
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Maybe what she did was just fine. If you believe that the passage in first Timothy is speaking about the church and she's in the public square.
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Right. So there's things to wrestle with that. But people that use the argument,
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I argued against them to say, look, your argument, just looking at the way we interpret is not valid because you're using a descriptive passage for prescriptive.
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And I'm going to say, when you start out doing hermeneutics, when you're going to do it in the beginning, you're going to practice how to interpret scripture.
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And I will say that we have a whole course. You could go to strivingforeternity .org, go to our academy.
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We have a class on hermeneutics, biblical hermeneutics, to help get you trained up with that.
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We have playlists within our YouTube channel, Striving for Eternity.
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You can go there and see the playlists on how to interpret the Bible. I already mentioned one on the tips of interpretation tips.
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So we have stuff out there that you'd be able to look at to help you with this. But one of the mistakes so many people make is not looking at the text that they're trying to interpret.
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And first starting with, is it descriptive or prescriptive? And the thing I always say, if you're going to start out with trying to do interpretation, start out with prescriptive passages of scripture.
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Well, what are they? They're going to be mostly your epistles. Now, are all the epistles prescriptive?
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No. Just like all of the gospels, which are mostly historical narrative, are not all historical narrative.
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We have Jesus doing teaching. We have his sermons. Well, those are prescriptive because he's teaching what we should do.
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Okay. So whenever you come to a passage, you have to ask the question, is this descriptive, is this prescriptive?
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If it's prescriptive, it's clearly giving me instructions on how to live life. If it's descriptive, it's telling me what did happen, not necessarily what should or should not have happened.
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But we have to keep in mind with that just because it's prescriptive. Another thing we have to do from last week's class is look at context.
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So if it's, if it's prescriptive, you have to ask the question, was this for Israel or is this for the church?
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And I know some people will say, but Israel and the church are one. Okay. Do you keep kosher?
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No. So certain rules and instructions were for the nation of Israel that are not for the church.
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So I, you know, so even if you are in believing in covenant theology versus dispensational theology, that's okay.
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You still know that there is a separation because you don't keep kosher. And if you do, you're probably, uh, you know, a tourist, uh, term created by a friend of mine,
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Robert Sahlberg. But Torahism is his book. Go get that. If you are believing that you have to keep the commandments, keep kosher.
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If you believe that go get the book, Torahism by RL Sahlberg, so that you could realize how wrong you are.
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Um, but yeah, so, but the reality is covenant theologians, dispensational theologians, we both see that there are prescriptive instructions for Israel that we do not have for the church.
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Such as keeping the Passover forever. We don't do that as the church.
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Right. Because that wasn't for us. So, um, so when we come to it, you want to ask that question.
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Is this descriptive? Is this prescriptive? Let me give you a fun one. Randy. Uh, there's lots of people that debate this, a fun discussion.
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Uh, the apostle Paul, is he the 12th or 13th apostle?
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What say you? So he brought up a good point.
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Uh, at some point I always had the, uh, inclination that he was the 13th apostle as one born out of time.
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Right. But in revelation, there's only 12 foundations, which are the 12 apostles.
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So that gives me pause as far as that, uh, inclination, I was never really settled on, uh, what way to actually interpret that, but you also brought up a point about Matthias, right?
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Was it Matthias? So correct. The, the, what people say is the 12th apostle, right?
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So this is out of Acts. Right. Okay. And so some people will make the argument.
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And so I'm, here's, here's me. I'm going to be upfront with everyone in class. I am a cessationist and I'm going to give an argument that against cessationism, not really against cessationism, but against what
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I think is a bad argument that some cessationists make. Some cessationists will say they define certain gifts as apostolic gifts.
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Now, I will argue that I don't know anywhere in scripture that those gifts are called apostolic gifts.
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And so I think as someone doing debate, if I was to be debating on the side of continuation of gifts,
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I would challenge someone to show me where these gifts are tied to the app, the apostles or the apostolic age.
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And, and they, people do some arguments to try to make that the case. I wouldn't argue that way.
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I argue that it has to do with the Canon and that is Hebrews two or three,
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I think it's two, says that the, the miracles and gifts were to vindicate the writing of scripture.
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So I would see that scripture supports that. But when people argue for an apostolic age, what do they do?
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They say, well, here's how we define the apostles. And they go to Acts and look at Matthias and say, well, here's what an apostle is.
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He had to have lived in the time of Christ. And they go, that doesn't happen anymore. But by that definition that they have,
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Paul, the apostle who God calls as an apostle would not match.
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Um, I think this was, let's see, I think it's, it's, I gotta go look because I'm, I forget exactly where in Acts.
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So I'll look this up. This is me just scrolling through my Bible really quickly, which is what we do now.
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We, we used to have a time that we, we scroll, we had, the Bible was in scrolls and then we went to paper and, and now we, we scroll again.
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Um, and, uh, yeah. So if anyone remembers the exact passage where that is, would be wonderful.
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Cause I'm trying to scroll quickly. We've been good. This was one of the examples
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I thought of off the cuff. So I wasn't prepped for it. Um, and I'm not one of these guys that's great with, uh, just memorizing things.
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So, or I, like I memorized the, the, I don't remember, I don't memorize where passages are.
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I'm not just bad with that, but I know it's early. Was it, uh, Rome, uh, uh, Acts chapter nine?
40:29
Is it, I wouldn't think it's all the way at nine that they chose Matthias. Oh no, no, no.
40:35
That was earlier. Yeah. I think it was Acts chapter. Oh, here it is. Here it is. So it's like chapter two, verse 37.
40:45
Um, right. Is this it? What should we, to pierce to heart? What should we do now? If I knew how to spell
40:52
Matthias, I would, I would type that into my search and be fine. Oh, it's in chapter one, sir.
41:03
Ah, that's why. Cause I went too far. Okay. I think it's verse 12. I jumped to chapter two thinking it was further.
41:11
So there we go. Thank you. All right. So let's see. All right.
41:18
So here you have, uh, chapter, uh, Acts chapter one, starting verse 12 and they returned to Jerusalem and, uh, from the
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Mount called Olivet and they were, which was near Jerusalem on the Sabbath day's journey away, uh, when they had entered the city, they went up to the upper room where they were staying.
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That is, uh, Peter, John, and James, Andrew, Philip, and Thomas Bartholomew, Matthew, James, son of Alphaeus and Simon, the zealot and Judas, the son of James.
41:47
Okay. So this is descriptive is telling you what they did. They were all of one mind were continually devoting themselves to prayer along with the women, uh, and Mary, the mother of Jesus and the, and his brothers at this time,
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Peter stood up in the midst of, uh, the brethren. Um, a gathering, about 120 persons were there and said, brethren, the, uh, brethren, the scripture had to be fulfilled, which the
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Holy spirit for told by the mouth of David, according to Judas, who became a guide to those who arrested
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Jesus for he counted among us was received his share in this mystery.
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Now this man acquired a field. Uh, well, that's describing the scriptures.
42:31
So what they said in prophecy. So verse 21, therefore, it is necessary that, that the men who have, uh, accompanied us from the time of the
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Lord, Jesus Christ went in and out among us beginning with the baptism of John until the day he was taken up with us.
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One of these must be a witness with us of his resurrection. So you see they're, they're laying out the criteria of choosing
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Matthias, Matthias, right? There's only two men. Joseph called
43:03
Barabbas. Um, also who's also called justice and Matthias. Now out of these two men, they're going to draw straws, which out of two men, one of the two, if there's only two straws is going to get the short straw, right?
43:16
Um, maybe they should have had three straws and. The, neither of them would have chosen this short straw and they would realize,
43:22
Oh, maybe someone else. But one thing you don't see in this passage is God saying that this is the definition of an apostle.
43:30
So what's the definition that they accompanied all of us from the time that Christ went out among us, that they were with them from the baptism of John.
43:41
Okay. Uh, and was taken up from us. So three elements, they had to have been with the disciples going out with them from the beginning.
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They had to be with them from the time of the baptism of John. They had to have been there as a witness of the resurrection.
43:57
Okay. Now that does not define Paul. And yet Paul is called an apostle of God.
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So therefore you're, you're, you're, you have to face either these men in a descriptive passage.
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This is describing, they, they didn't, they, they did what they thought. Okay. They were not, we don't see anywhere where it says
44:23
God said to do this. They are quoting scripture earlier where they're seeing that there must be a foot, a replacement for Judas, but they chose
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Matthias. Did God choose Paul? My argument would be based on this principle that I'm going to look at acts and say, that is descriptive.
44:45
That is not telling us what they should have done. It is telling us what they did do.
44:53
Therefore, looking as Randy, you mentioned, and we had this discussion in our group chat at passing the torch, we had this discussion.
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And so what did we see? We saw that in revelation, it refers to 12, that there's going to be 12 of them.
45:09
Therefore I look at that and say, well, if that's the case, that there's only going to be 12 that Paul, who we know is an apostle was the apostle because that we have in prescriptive text.
45:20
This is describing what the apostles did do, but not necessarily what they should have done.
45:27
Okay. So, so that is the difference of differentiating between descriptive and prescriptive.
45:34
The next thing I want to talk to you about is interpreting the difficult texts by the easier text.
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And this is something a lot of people make a mistake of. Let me go to some difficult passages.
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Let me start with Hebrews chapter six, Hebrews chapter six is one that people teach.
45:53
This is teaching that you can lose your salvation. And they argue that from, uh, from here, from chapter six of Hebrews, chapter 10 of Hebrews.
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And so it says here in verse four, for in the case of those who have been, who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the
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Holy spirit and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come and then fallen away, it is a possible to renew them again to repentance.
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Now, when we read this, it sure looks like that saying that someone could take, could be a
46:35
Christian have partaken in Christianity, walked away and lost their salvation.
46:42
Okay. So taking the step back now. Hebrews is one of the more difficult, difficult books of the new
46:51
Testament to interpret. The only one that is more difficult would be revelation.
46:59
Hebrew Hebrews, sorry, is based in a knowledge of Leviticus, which also is a difficult passage for many to understand.
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If you don't have a good understanding of the book of Leviticus, you're going to have a hard time understanding some of Hebrews.
47:16
Hebrews is written to, I know this is really hard. I know Randy, this is going to blow your mind.
47:22
I get it. But Hebrews were written to Hebrews. I know that's who it's written to.
47:34
So it's people who have a Hebrew mindset. It is not written to a general audience.
47:43
It's not written to Greeks. Or Romans. It's written to people who have a clear understanding of a
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Hebrew mindset. Right. In other words, they not only understand the book of Leviticus, they live the book of Leviticus.
47:58
Okay. And so right off the bat, we recognize this is a difficult passage to understand.
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But a passage like Romans 8 is not. Where Romans 8 is going to say very clearly that we cannot.
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And did I get that right? Is Romans 8? I thought it was 8 -1, but where nothing can separate you from the love of God.
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So let's just do a quick search for Romans 8 -1. Therefore, there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.
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I thought it was I thought I started at 8 -1, but maybe I. Oh, there it is. Okay. So, yes, so it's
48:46
Romans 8 -1 is therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus for the law of the spirit in Jesus has set you free.
48:56
What the law could not do. So this is speaking of the law of God in the Old Testament. Right.
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Could not could not save someone. And so what
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I want to get to is. The my search is not working for me, hold on, what we're looking for, love of God.
49:22
But I have to spell that right. All right. So it's Romans 8 -39. That's what
49:27
I was looking for. All right. So as we get to that, so he says here in this whole discussion of that, we're no longer under condemnation, the law can't save us.
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Christ saves us. Okay. He gets into this question, who can separate us from the love of Christ?
49:46
Well, that's the question of whether you can lose your salvation. So he says, well, tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword.
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Just as it is written for your sake, we are being put to death all day long. We are considered sheep to the slaughter, but in all things we are overwhelmingly conquered through him who loves us.
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For I'm convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our
50:26
Lord. Now, so what can separate us from the love of God? According to that, nothing.
50:32
Now, I know that those who believe you could lose your salvation will turn and say, but we can lose ourselves.
50:38
There's nothing that can do it, but we could do something so that, well, then Romans 11,
50:44
God talks about the gift of God being irrevocable is in the ESV. But the idea of if God saves us, can we lose that?
50:54
Well, people debate this because they say, well, see, we can lose it ourselves. Well, I have one simple question.
51:00
If you, if you are human being can lose your salvation by your own actions, are you a created thing?
51:10
Just a simple question. If you're a created thing, then doesn't that fit into the definition of nor any other created thing will be able to separate you from the love of God?
51:24
I actually know the response that they would give to that. Go for it. Right. So what they would normally say is that, well, it says every, any other created thing so that not you.
51:36
Right. So that, that would be their response. Just so, yeah. So, okay.
51:43
Thank you for asking that. So are you in the present age? Are you present? Right. Yes. Or are you, is this something future to you?
51:53
Because it says nor things present nor things to come nor things. So one of the things, when we look at this, what is
52:00
Paul doing here? It is a way of arguing by giving every example to say, there's nothing right.
52:09
It's to emphasize. There's absolutely nothing by listing a whole bunch of things. So, you know, the literary style, what
52:16
Paul's doing, the rhetorical argument that he's making here, you know, what he's trying to say is there is nothing, and now we look at this and this one says very clearly, you cannot lose your salvation, but then what do we do with Hebrews?
52:33
Well, okay. Hebrews is speaking to people who believe they have the truth because they're
52:40
Jewish, because of that, that what their practice of the law. And so to them, did they have the word of God?
52:49
Yes. Did they taste of the truth? Yes, but not in the church, in the synagogue.
52:57
You see, that's a difference. He's speaking to people who are raised in a synagogue, not in a church.
53:06
And so you have to go back to who Paul is preaching to in Hebrews. Oops, did
53:11
I just give that away? I'm sorry. I believe it is a sermon by Paul, probably written down by someone else.
53:17
Okay. Like Luke, Barnabas, a lot of people, different arguments, but, but yeah,
53:23
I think, I think it's a sermon is what I believe this was. And so, and just for the record, read through Hebrews, see how long it'll take you and realize that, you know, people gave longer sermons back then, then, you know, half an hour.
53:39
So, so what, what I think it is, I think this is, is the writer of Hebrews is making an argument here to people who partook in other words, as Hebrews.
53:51
So these are people who I would, when you look at the context of Hebrews, I think what you're dealing with is people who claim a salvation that they don't actually possess.
54:04
And this sounds familiar to another passage of scripture that I'd like to use as an example of interpreting the easy by the hard, we can look to Romans.
54:13
Romans is very easy to understand. And in Romans it's seen, it's very clear that we are saved by faith and not works throughout all the
54:22
Romans, but you can look at Ephesians two, eight, nine, you can look at Titus three, five, both of those passages very clearly teach that we're saved by grace, not of works.
54:34
So people make a distinction of what Paul says we're saved by faith. James says we're saved by works.
54:41
There's a difference here. And a lot of what you end up seeing with Hebrews is similar to the same problem people have with James.
54:50
Yeah. So I'm not going to answer the Hebrews one yet, by the way, if you want, I have a whole paper that details
54:55
Hebrews chapter six at striving for attorney .org. You can go there, read the article on Hebrews chapter six to see what all the more detail than I have in, in the time we have in class tonight, but in, in James, people use this to say that you, that you must be saved by works.
55:16
Okay. So where do they get this? Well, you know, maybe they're looking at James two, 17, where there it says, even so if, if it has no works, it is dead being by itself.
55:32
Hmm. And so, you know, verse 18, if someone says, well, uh, you have faith and I have works, show me your faith without your works and I'll show you my faith by my works, they say, see, you have to have works with your faith.
55:49
Ah, well, I mean, it must be true. Verse 26, it says for just as the body is without the spirit.
55:56
So also faith without works is dead. And so people will look at this and say, well, you have to have faith with your works.
56:05
Okay. What did we learn last week? Randy, you get a second shot to redeem yourself here. Context. Thank you.
56:11
Context. So let's start in verse 14, verse 14 says, now let's back up.
56:17
The whole book of James is a series of tests so you can know whether you have a genuine faith.
56:23
That's the purpose of the book. What does genuine faith look like? So everything of this book is talking about genuine faith, but verse 14, he tells us what specifically type, what specific type of faith he's talking about, what uses it?
56:38
My brethren, if someone now knows difference, brethren, someone, what uses it?
56:45
My brethren, those who agree with us, those who are saved. If someone else, well, that right there would say, if there's someone, they're not the brethren.
56:55
So this is not brethren right off the bat, but someone says he has faith, but he does not have works.
57:05
Can that faith save him? What kind of faith can a faith that does not have work save him?
57:12
So what is he saying? He's talking not about regeneration because he's talking about the whole book is about someone that already has regeneration.
57:23
This book is about sanctification. How do you know that your regeneration is true is genuine by your sanctification.
57:34
So in sanctification are works necessary. Yes. Works go along with our sanctification.
57:42
And what is the evidence that someone is saved? Not that they do works to get regenerated, but they do works after regeneration.
57:52
And that's the case that James is making. So this is the difference between someone that professes
57:58
Christ, but does not possess Christ, right? As somebody else that we both know says, uh, it's, it's a difference between a dead faith and a living faith, which is the language he's going to use throughout here.
58:13
Right. Right. And so the idea here is the same as Hebrews. You have people who profess
58:19
Christ who do not know Christ. Does that happen all the time?
58:29
These are called false converts or another word for it that the Bible would have hypocrites, people who claim to know
58:40
Christ that do not know Christ. And so the whole context that you have here in James two is the idea of someone who professes a faith, but does not have the works or the fruit of the
58:56
Christian life. Now, let me bring this to another clear passage of scripture.
59:02
First John one, nine, very clear, but we'll verse 10 is, uh, sorry.
59:10
Uh, sorry. I want to two 19. Um, so this is a very clear passage of scripture.
59:17
Okay. First John two 19, they went out from among us, but they were not really of us or had they been with us, they would have remained with us, but they went out so that it would be shown they were not of us.
59:34
This is a very clear passage of scripture. So if we use this passage to now explain all the other passages, we looked at, we look at Hebrews, we look at James.
59:45
This is showing us that there's people who come into the church. They, they, they come in with us, but they don't remain with us.
59:53
They leave the church, go what we would call apostate. But what they're doing is exposing. They were never of us.
01:00:00
Mm hmm. And so what do we have in Hebrews, false converts, people who claim to know
01:00:07
Christ, but don't actually know him. They went out from among us because they were never of us. What do you have in James talking about people who make the same claim?
01:00:15
What would you do with someone who was in the church and they say, well, I'm a saved, I'm saved. Yeah. I got regenerated, but yet there's no fruit of the spirit.
01:00:25
Well, when they leave that church and start claiming that they reject God, you go to first John two and say, well, it's really clear.
01:00:33
They were never of us. So what do we do? We take the clear passages to interpret those more difficult passages.
01:00:40
So we first have to recognize there are difficult passages. So I'm not going to start. This is a mistake.
01:00:45
So many people make, and this is the bad thing. When people focus a little bit too much on their eschatology, their, their theology of end times, because what
01:00:54
I've seen people do is they start with their end times view and then start interpreting the
01:01:00
Bible from their view of revelation. Or Daniel Ezekiel, whichever passage.
01:01:08
So you have this, this mistake is done by everyone. You have all mills, premills, postman. They all can make this mistake.
01:01:15
But what you do is they take harder to understand passages. Why is it harder?
01:01:20
Because that prophecy has not been fulfilled yet. It is much easier for us to interpret the old
01:01:28
Testament prophecies of the first coming than the second coming. Why? Because the first coming was fulfilled.
01:01:36
Now for those that were pre Christ, it wasn't as easy. There's things they got wrong, but now that those first coming prophecies are fulfilled, we can look at it and go, ah, yep.
01:01:46
There it is. Ah, I see how that was done. But some of those were not as clear as people would think, because in the old
01:01:56
Testament in Micah, when he says, you know, you know, out of Egypt, I will call my son, that's speaking of the nation of Israel.
01:02:04
And yet God had a dual meaning. We see, because in Matthew says that was referring to Christ. How would you know that, right?
01:02:13
You wouldn't have known that until we have God revealing that. And so that would have been a difficult passage to understand in light of the new
01:02:23
Testament, giving us further revelation. When you go to your end times view, you go to revelation and you're going to try to interpret things of Romans or Ephesians or Peter based on your end times view, starting in there, that's a mistake.
01:02:39
You would, you would interpret first the easier passages to then apply that to those more difficult ones.
01:02:45
And that's how we have to do this. We have to look and see and recognize that certain passages of scripture are difficult to understand.
01:02:55
If you don't allow for that, you're going to have problems. So a lot of these struggles that people have in debating, well,
01:03:04
Paul has a different gospel than James is based upon the fact that they're, they start with a harder to understand passage and then look to have to use that to interpret the easier.
01:03:14
So the reason they do that is because, well, James teaches what they want to teach. They want to teach a works righteousness, but I actually don't need to go to in James.
01:03:24
I could just look at the context because the context he's giving is all about the fruit that there's certain fruit of someone that possesses
01:03:33
Christ. So the context would answer it, but I could go to many other passages of scriptures that are clear to understand to say that it's very clear that salvation is by grace alone and not of works.
01:03:46
So when we have two passages that seem to contradict each other, what do
01:03:51
I do? Well, I look at both of those and I first start by saying, which is the easier to understand passage between these two?
01:04:01
Well, there's very few people that challenge or have differing views of Ephesians 2, 8, 9 or Titus 3, 5.
01:04:08
It's quite clear. But there is lots of debate in Christendom, and I'm using that in a broad sense, including
01:04:16
Catholics, Mormons, everyone else on James 2. Therefore, as we look at James 2 and we look at the way it's worded, that's the harder to understand one.
01:04:26
So I'm going to interpret the clear to the easier to understand. I'm going to use that first, understand that meaning, apply it to the more difficult to understand.
01:04:35
So to summarize, most important, we look at context.
01:04:41
Second, as we described today, you use the descriptive passages. You must differentiate between those and the prescriptive.
01:04:48
Prescriptive is instructional. Descriptive is describing things. So descriptive is not necessarily what we should or should not do unless scripture tells us don't do this, even though someone does.
01:05:00
OK, then we want to take passages and start with the easy to understand passages to better understand the more difficult to understand.
01:05:09
All right. So that is what we cover this week. Next week, we're going to cover the question of being willing to question your own presuppositions.
01:05:17
We're going to talk about why that's important. We're going to talk about how we interpret scripture with scripture.
01:05:23
And then after that is going to be our midterm. So we will have our first test.
01:05:31
And so if you're planning to take this for credit, you have to take the test. If you're planning to take this for credit and you didn't take the quiz, congratulations on your first zero, you missed the date.
01:05:44
Let that be a warning for the test. By the way, I didn't really say this, but the way that I plan on grading this is the quiz that you took or missed is is going to be
01:05:58
I figure that'll be about 15 percent of the grade. OK, what
01:06:04
I'm going to do with the remainder is we're going to look at the 85 percent that's left.
01:06:11
I will give you have a midterm and a final and those will each be 25 percent of the grade.
01:06:21
That gives us a total of 65 percent, which means the remainder part of the grade will be how you do in your debate.
01:06:34
And so you know, the debate doesn't have to be public. If you are scared, embarrassed or not, it could just be the two people debating and myself and and we will go through that.
01:06:45
And it really was that one. That one's going to be a lot more because you're going to have a lot more.
01:06:51
You can there's lots of points you can get on that because it's not just it's going to be more subjective. And we're going to give the points for that because that's going to be applying everything you learned.
01:07:02
So that will be the a lot more. That'll be 35 percent of the grade. So if you miss this test, you could still get a good grade by the rest.
01:07:11
So don't skip the tests and you better prepared for debate. And Haps has picked a topic he wants to debate.
01:07:19
Haps wants to debate me, but he called it he challenged.
01:07:25
So, hey, that's fine. He wants to debate me on mental health. Now, he hasn't given the specific topic as the dean of the school.
01:07:35
We both agreed he has mental health issues. And so I don't know if that's what he wanted to debate, whether he has them or not, because I think we both agree he has them.
01:07:43
Therefore, we both win. Right. There's there's there's one thing
01:07:49
I wanted to kind of point out, and it's this comment here. There was a moment when you were talking that sounded
01:07:58
I know what you meant. It sounded like you were talking about the prophets in the
01:08:03
Old Testament that got things wrong. That's not what you were saying. Yeah.
01:08:08
Scripture doesn't hear the question from him or statement from Humble Clay says scripture does not and cannot contradict scripture.
01:08:16
Correct. There are passages that people end up putting in where they put a where they put scripture like Ephesians 2, 8, 9 against James 2 and say there's a contradiction there.
01:08:30
People try to make a contradiction. And that's the whole reason we we look at the when we're comparing scripture with scripture, which we'll look at next week.
01:08:38
One of the things we're going to look at and why we deal with this first, we look at descriptive versus prescriptive and we look at easy to understand versus hard to understand so that we look at the style of genre.
01:08:50
Is it easier or is it harder? And that is the way we're going to go about these apparent contradictions.
01:08:59
Right. They're not actual contradictions. They seem like it because people do a simple reading of both as if they're both prescriptive and they're both easy to understand.
01:09:13
And they often will ignore the context of them, right? Like so James 2, what did
01:09:19
I do? Just backed up to verse 14. When anyone who argues that James is teaching works, they always start in verse 15.
01:09:27
I've never that I can recall ever had anyone start in verse 14. Why?
01:09:33
Because verse 14 tells you the question being answered by 15 and following.
01:09:39
And if you know that he's talking about the fact that, OK, here is someone that professes
01:09:46
Christ, but but doesn't have Christ, then you know exactly what he's saying.
01:09:52
And so as Humble Clay saying in the questions, I know a paradox. So Humble Clay is also asking, when will this class come around again?
01:10:02
Well, it's it is on it will be on two different channels on YouTube, Passing the
01:10:08
Torch and Striving for Eternity. So Humble Clay, this class comes around when you decide to watch it from the beginning.
01:10:16
There you go. And there is a playlist called Apologetics and Debate. So this is a short eight week class.
01:10:24
I am debating. Yep. Use that word, pun intended. I am debating turning this into a full length
01:10:33
Striving for Eternity Academy class, which would be about 20 weeks, which means I got to put a syllabus together for it.
01:10:40
So I am thinking about trying to see if I can scratch out some time to do that. All right, so any other comments that you saw that we needed to address?
01:10:49
None that I noticed, no. OK, I know there were some questions and someone asked whether they can ask questions of the guys from, you know,
01:11:00
Passing the Torch. You can do that while we're doing these classes. You could post a question and we can bring it back to them in.
01:11:08
But you can always go to Apologetics Live on Thursday nights and ask there. Just go to Apologetics Live dot com. That's that's a better place.
01:11:16
That's not me lecturing. So that's where I can answer questions that you might have. All right.
01:11:22
And so with that, I'll hand it back over to you, Randy, or any any instructions you have for for the class.
01:11:30
All right. Yeah. Anybody who wants to join the Passing the Torch, get a hold of me or even well, probably me.
01:11:41
How do they get a hold of you? They they send me a message.
01:11:47
And how do they do that? You're saying that. Well, here's the thing.
01:11:53
You're saying get a hold of me. People who are watching. You don't have your name up there like I have my name right here.
01:12:00
If I say look me up on Facebook, they know who to search for. There's the name right there. Andrew Rappaport.
01:12:06
I was intentionally making it difficult for them. No, send me a message. Randy Adkins. Send it to Passing the
01:12:13
Torch on Facebook or. I want to mention him without him, just send me a message,
01:12:22
Randy Adkins on Facebook. Which Randy Adkins? I mean, I'm just saying there's we now know that there might be multiple because a different Randy Adkins asked to be a guest on my podcast.
01:12:34
And I almost said, yes, I said I was going to say yes right away. And then realize, wait a minute.
01:12:40
The Randy Adkins I know did not write a book on it. Forget what the book was on. But it wasn't one that I thought you would have written.
01:12:46
And so I was like, let me go look. And I looked at the picture and said, oh, that's a different Randy Adkins. Right. So passing the torch might be a better place on Facebook to go.
01:12:54
How can they get ahold of you, Randy, if they're not on Facebook, though? That's a good question.
01:13:01
I have no idea. So there you go. So I will put it this way. You get in touch with me at info at striving for eternity dot com info at striving for eternity dot com.
01:13:15
And I will get you in touch with Randy if he doesn't know how to get in touch with himself.
01:13:22
That's right. All right.
01:13:30
Well, I love it. All right. That is a class. Be back on Monday, 8 p .m.
01:13:38
Eastern Standard Time for next week. And with that, God bless.