A Few Pope Francis Stories, A Bit on Ken Wilson and Augustine, and Open Phones

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. I have a program on my phone called Word of the Day, and it just did its... and maybe it's at 11 o 'clock in the morning, that's when it does it. But this one's this one's one that you and I should know, Rich.

It's Xeric. Xeric. Having dry or desert-like conditions containing little moisture. So this is a word very appropriate for Arizonans. All Arizonans, before they can become Arizonans, should know the word Xeric.

X-E-R-I-C.

So we're all very Xeric today.

We are generally Xeric.

Xeric.

Until the second week of July.

We're all dry here now. How are you?

Yeah, that's true. Well, we're having fun here at the start.

We're all Xeric here now.

We're all Xeric here now. How are you? So this fella, Taylor Locke, right? Is that the name? Soon as I saw this this morning, I started writing a tweet that said, this one wins the internet or Twitterverse for all of 2020.

We need to give this man... and then I said, wait, stop. Um, yeah, okay, yeah, there. Give him that. Give him the... that reflects badly. Yeah, yeah, there you go. Give him the CDs of the audiobook. There you go.

Of The Forgotten Trinity. And so he saw it and has already called, right? Already called. That's the... that's in the pipe. So we're gonna get to him. But there's so much nastiness out there on Twitter and in social media that once in a while something happens.

Pauline Theology and Making Righteousness Great Again

So here is Donald Trump after a single day in seminary. Here's Donald Trump.

Speaking of the Apostle Paul, we're hearing many great things about the Apostle Paul from Rome. And he's doing a great job for our movement. But I understand a lot more about Pauline theology, quite frankly, than some of these ivory tower types.

The whole F .C. Bauer school and the Hegelian philosophies. Albert Schweitzer always going on and on about the eschaton. He can't get over the eschaton. And we're being very firm with him there. The new perspective on Paul.

Anti-right, right? Anti-wrong, more like it. Always talking about covenantal gnomism. Stole it from Sanders.

He did.

But I understand a lot more about Sanders and really all the new perspective. We've got to get justification back because they're taking it from us quickly. It's a federal transaction, OK? Righteousness has got to be credited to our accounts.

And we're going to get we're going to get righteousness back. We're going to make righteousness great again.

We're going to make righteousness great again. This is this is what happens when you're a seminary student and you've got, yeah. Well, no, no, no. You get too much time. You don't have enough time to do everything.

And, you know, when I was in seminary, see, Josh and Summer was born my my last year in seminary. And so I had like advanced Hebrew and, you know, couldn't sleep at night. And, you know, yeah. So you sit in your car and you do impersonations of Donald Trump having attended his first day of seminary.

Coming out of nomism, stolen from Sanders. That was good. That was just let's make righteous. Yeah, sure. Let's make justification great again that I can get. I get behind that one. I get behind. Let's make justification great again.

Yeah, that'd be that'd be good.

Yeah.

Super Tuesday, Democratic Politics, and the Ernesto Cardenal Obituary

So anyway, a couple of things. Then we'll be opening the phones. So I noticed the well, this morning, if you listened to the briefing with Dr. Moeller, the last story I don't want to have because there is so much politics is there's a lot of stuff going on today.

Today is Super Tuesday, and I'm not going to get into it. You can turn on any channel you want right now, and there will be an extensive discussion of what's going on and the fixes in. And I'll just say, if this goes the way it could go, I mean, it's real obvious to me when three people drop out just a few days for Super Tuesday.

I mean, why not just your name's already on the ballot. I mean, it's not going to cost anything. Just go through Super Tuesday. See how it goes. Well, no. So, you know, there were massive backroom deals and promises of either future runs for the presidency or cabinet positions.

And if you think this is the last you've seen of Pete Buttigieg, this was just Act one. Same with Klobuchar, Beto O 'Rourke. This whole socialist crew is going to be back four years from now, no matter what happens.

But it's just really obvious that the Democrats are just, well, and you can't blame them. Bernie's not a Democrat. I mean, when you think about it, he ain't a Democrat. He's an independent. He's actually a commie.

And so they're sitting there going, do you realize what this will do to all the downline, all the House and Senate races and everything else to have him at the top of the ticket? I mean, they're in certain places.

You're dead. It's just, well, we're not even gonna waste the money to run if this is what happens. So, but I'm sitting here and you listen to Joe Biden. And the declaration thing was the, that thing you all know.

You just know that the entire press is just sitting there waiting, you know, like everybody waits for Trump's tweets, but he just does that because he's out of control, not because he's just not there.

Joe just ain't there anymore. But did you see the video I posted from like 30 years ago, where he's just lying through his teeth about his education and the whole nine yards and when it, where he graduated in his class.

And it's just like, I guess if you do that for enough decades, it just, you know, becomes natural. But then when the, when the mind goes, then it's just all over the place. This could be a really interesting summer and fall.

But the point is, if Sanders doesn't get the nomination, if Biden pulls it out because the Democrats have so plainly circled the wagons, it could get rid of him. Sanders's supporters are not going to support Biden.

They're just not going to do it. And it's just like, it's going to be Dukakis all over again, which I was alive during Dukakis. Remember him in the tank? That would be Bloomberg in the tank. Because yeah, yeah, yeah.

I wonder who is shorter, Dukakis or Bloomberg. That's pretty tight. That's a pretty tight competition there. Some of you have no idea who Dukakis is. Is he even alive? I haven't heard that he died. But then again, would anyone mention it is the question.

I have no idea. Anyhow, I said I wasn't going to talk about it. Yeah, yeah, it was neither endorsement, denial or anything else. It's just, this is going to be really interesting. I actually have a lot of very serious thoughts about 2020, but we'll get to it eventually in other contexts.

But back to the briefing. The last story on the briefing today, I think a lot of people may have missed, about Ernesto Cardinal, Nicaraguan priest and proponent of liberation theology. Dies at 95. Dr. Moeller really does a lot with obituaries, because they are fascinating.

Sobering. It's wise to look at obituaries, because someday someone's going to write yours. And it does make you go, I wonder what's going to be in that. And I wonder if I'll finish well. That's the big, you know, once you get past 50, you start wondering, will I finish well, is the question.

Anyway, Ernesto Cardinal was a Marxist. He said God led him to Marxism. All the gospels are Marxist. He was a communist. He's a commie from beginning to end. And he joined the Nicaraguan government the communist Nicaraguan government.

And as such, John Paul and Benedict, so the non-pope who was pope, who's still alive, and the guy who had been pope for a long, long time before that, basically defrocked him. Now, in Roman Catholicism, sacramentally, when you are ordained as a priest, your soul is marked.

You always have the capacity and power to work the miracle of transubstantiation, even if you're kicked out of the church. That's a weird, very strange. And that one really strikes me as odd in light of the ex-opera operato, ex-opera operante controversy.

But anyway, we digress. But basically, John Paul and Benedict said, you're out of here. Guess who allowed him to go back into clerical functions? Francis. Francis. So here is a full-blown Marxist. I mean, no questions asked, nothing.

And what does Francis do? He restores him when he becomes pope. And that, to me, I think says everything that needs to be said as far as Francis is concerned. The guy is as far left Marxist as you can possibly come up with.

And that's where the Roman Catholic Church is today. And if you are a Roman Catholic and you're not a Marxist, well, how's that working for you? And speaking of that, speaking about Rome, you may have seen the article about Father James Martin.

Now, Martin, again, ultra-leftist Jesuit. All the Jesuits are ultra-leftists anymore, except Mitch Packway. He's the only one left. But ultra-leftist, and he says Pope Francis supports LGBT and wants to move on from abortion.

Now, obviously, the conservative defenders of Roman Catholicism are going to say, this isn't a reliable source. Every, you get all sorts of stuff of people who are said that they've been talking with Francis, and you can't necessarily prove that one way or the other.

Okay.

The problem is that Martin comes from the same genre, the same worldview as Francis. And was it within the first year? I'm thinking it was within the first year of Francis's pontificate that on the plane, he said to that reporter about a homosexual, who am I to judge?

It's very, very obvious when you look at who the man is, where he came from, that that's his thing. That's where he is. And so if he's, I guess the theory would be on the part of some people that since he is the infallible vicar of Christ, he may believe these things, but he will never teach these things infallibly.

That's the idea. The problem is in this life, you can never know what infallible teaching is. You can only know till long after the person's dead. So it's irrelevant. But the point is that there is plainly, on the part of many, an encouragement of people like James Martin, who would view what I would see as historic, tridentine Roman Catholics as fundamentalists.

And this, once again, demonstrates the range of expression within Roman Catholicism is just as wise within Protestantism. If you don't see that, it's just because you're not watching. So much for the idea of solo scriptura being the blueprint for anarchy.

I suppose I should show you this. Some of you saw the pictures on Facebook, but this is my newest installment in the Jeffrey Rice saga. It is my... Notice, this is non-foil. See the stamping there? Non-foil stamping.

So there's no gold or silver, whatever other color you use. So on the spine, you have the solas, and they're just stamped into the leather rather than having a foil on it. And it's got solo scriptura on the front with the Cairo, the Alpha and Omega on the sides.

This is a 1977 NASB giant print. And it's a brand new Bible. It's brand new. AMG Publishers. I had never heard of them. Literally, what I did is I went on eBay looking for a 1977 NASB. And because I'd had...

The last one that I had Jeffrey do was a 1977 NASB, which I've had for years and years and years. So it's an old Bible. And I just loved the layout, the size of the font. This isn't a big Bible. It's not, you know, like this and this and this and this, like some giant prints are.

It's thick. That's pretty thick text there. And lo and behold, I run into AMG Publishers and they are printing 1977 NASBs. Now you go, what's... Well, it would be based on... Was it 26th or 25th? 26th, I think.

Might have been even earlier than that, but it's based on the Nessie Island Greek text. So there's been some... There are some differences between that and the 95. And then now the 2020 is coming out.

But the main thing is that the NASB in the Psalter uses the old English these and thous. And I think... Is it only in regards to deity? I'd have to look at the specifics. But the 77 NASB is... Once I moved from the King James, that's what I was using as an English translation.

And I really like it. I really enjoy it. And for my older eyes, this is an even nicer printing font-wise than the one I had before. And so now to have it in this... And so I asked for the solo scriptura on the front because Jeffrey had made one for G3 that had solo scriptura on the front.

I thought, you know, it'd be awesome to do a debate on solo scriptura with that Bible, you know? And just even if you never held it up like that, just having your solo scriptura PTL rebind there would be great.

So yeah, there you go. This advertisement was free. Next thing, we can go ahead and... I won't take too long on these things, I don't think. So we can line up the calls if you want at 877 -753 -3341. We're only going to the top of the hour.

So 877 -753 -3341. On Saturday, I read through most of this book. Didn't get through all of it on my ride, but I got through enough of it to get a real clear idea of where it's going. And lo and behold, I come in today and someone had been kind of sending me one.

I started seeing this from the Provisionist Camp, formerly the Traditional Southern Baptist Camp, whatever they call themselves. They're the folks that... Well, I didn't mark it. Well, I just got this one, so I couldn't have marked it.

And I just realized there's really no index in this. But there is a quotation here, and I could probably remember which chapter it was in, but it basically said, we're really not sure what Pelagius actually believed.

And he probably wasn't nearly as bad as la la la la. Um, this is Ken Wilson's The Foundation of Augustinian Calvinism. And so he's written this dissertation from Oxford, and this is his distillation of it, basically.

And it's being promoted by those who are opposed to Calvinism as just beyond and all of all things. And so I wanted to... I had heard some things from it and sort of gone. And a couple weeks ago, maybe last week, the week before last, I talked a little bit about Augustine and about Augustine's change of perspectives.

The fact that he's contradictory in his theology because of what happened in his life with the two major controversies. It's not those were the only controversies he engaged in, obviously. But definitionally, there were two major controversies.

The Donatist controversy at the beginning of his life, and then the Pelagian controversy at the end of his life. And that's why Augustine could be quoted by both Roman Catholics and Protestants during the period of the Reformation is because there were differences.

It's just the way it is. So I was under the impression this was a work of scholarship in the sense of being focused upon... See, when I say a work of scholarship, what you're doing is you're looking at...

If you're looking at Augustine, then you're going to interpret Augustine within Augustine's context. You're not going to be importing into Augustine later doctrinal terminology and formulations. And you're also not going to be doing the history of religions type thing that a lot of people do.

That, well, if Augustine believed this, then that's why Calvin believed this. Calvin never saw one of these, and he never read one of these. Or when he did, he was just so dull that all he did was, oh, I don't understand.

What did Augustine say? I can't read Greek. I can't read Hebrew. Well, actually, Calvin could read both, and Augustine could read neither. Well, a little bit of Greek, but not much. So I've been around long enough that I have seen so many people from so many different perspectives do the Dave Hunt connect Augustine to this, to this, to this, and totally ignore the vast, huge differences in context and language and historical setting and meaning and everything else that makes the connection extremely tenuous.

There is no question that all of Western theology has been deeply influenced by Augustine and by Augustine's writings. No question about that. But especially once you get into Calvin, Calvin showed himself more than willing to critically interact with the opinions of those who've gone before him.

And so he will accept what previous writers have said and reject what they say on other things, all based on what? On the consistency with biblical exegesis. And when you look at his commentaries, um, the man dove deep into the text of scripture, as deep as you could, given the amount of information he had in the middle of the 16th century.

Anyway, so I started reading this book and I'm immediately struck by what he says just in the introduction that is basically saying this is not, he may call this a work of scholarship in history, this is a polemic this is an anti-Calvinist polemic.

And from a historical perspective, make a long story short, when he says that basically if you're reformed and you believe in the sovereign decree of God, well, that came to you through Calvin, through Augustine, through Manichaeanism and Gnosticism.

And I just go, timeout, both Manichaean and Gnosticism have such a fundamentally different worldview and different theological foundation that how can you make that, I mean, to make that connection would require a massive, it would require the demonstration that every exegetical insight, every grammatical insight offered, by Reformed theologians from Calvin onward was a brainless, simplistic, I have to say this because I believe Augustine.

And the vast majority of us today became Reformed before we read Calvin and before we had heard of Augustine. Well, I've not necessarily heard of Augustine, ever read any of Augustine. And we did so on the basis of exegesis.

We did so walking through John 6. We did so walking through Romans 8 and 9. We did so walking through Ephesians 1. And I think their response would be, yes, but the people who were telling you to read these texts, they were the ones that they were influenced, and all this stuff.

And of course, especially when you do the Gnostics believed in specific divine predestination and decrees, I know I've read enough Gnosticism to know that to try to parallel that with what we're talking about is absurd on a level that's...

It's hard not to chuckle. It's hard not to laugh. But yeah, there it is. So lots and lots of people try to do the connect stuff together.

So,.

Well, let me see. So, for example, okay, although it may appear to be an impressively constructed building, a systematic theology is only as good as its foundation. Protestant reform theology in the 16th century was built on Augustine's foundation through Martin Luther and Calvin.

All right, stop right there. How many differences could we meaningfully trace between Calvin and Luther? Both highly indebted to Augustine, but not coming to the same conclusions, did they? No, not even close.

So you immediately go, okay, influenced by, yeah, foundation of? The prestige of Augustine as a theological philosopher may be unsurpassed in Western Christianity, yet Eastern Christianity does not revere him.

That's true. He is not a father of the Eastern Orthodox Church, as he is in the Roman Catholic Church. That's true. Nor does Eastern Christianity quote him as an important authority as occurs in Protestant writings.

That's true, too. And what that says to me, in light of the imbalances of Eastern anthropology, especially, says a lot. Because it was Augustine's emphasis upon the deadness of man's sin. And where are the provisionists going?

Toward Augustine's greatest enemy, Pelagius. Oh, okay. All right, I get it. This book explores Augustine's conversion. Now, listen to this. Conversion from the traditional Christian view of free choice in salvation, battling Stoic and Gnostic determinism, major differences even between those two, back to his prior Manichaean view of divine, unilateral determinism of eternal destinies, heaven or hell.

There's a lot packed in there. And there's a lot of assumptions packed in there. And there's a lot of assumptions that I don't know of almost any serious historian who's going to want to carry that freight.

Within Christianity, theological truth is not primarily measured by its antiquity, but by its conformity to scripture, logic, and then with a consideration of tradition. That's an interesting... Scripture, logic, and then tradition.

Interesting methodology of interpretation there. The 500-year-old theology of John Calvin was directly derived from Augustine. He agreed with Augustine on everything, right? Well, except on justification and...

Anyway.

Who strayed from the foundation of traditional patristic theology over a thousand years prior to Calvin. So, immediately, I'm like, well, wait a minute. Wait a minute.

Okay.

Let's remember that there is a... primary focus of the attention of the early church, and it's not on soteriology. It's on theology proper, Christology, Trinity, fighting modalism, subordinationism, et cetera, et cetera.

You don't even have a full treatise on the Doctrine of the Atonement until the middle of the fourth century. Until only 50 years before Augustine. So, the very... And then, given the fragmentary nature of what we have, to assume a absolutely universal perspective on this, I think is wildly out of there.

But we need to explore the novel foundation which Augustine laid his later Christian theology. In other words, once he began battling Pelagius. This will expose the fact that Augustinian Calvinism's impressively logical skyscraper has been built upon an unstable foundation of pagan syncretism sand.

Pagan syncretistic, parentheses, mixing pagan and Christian ideas, parentheses, sand. So, this is an anti-Tulip book masquerading as a work of history. Lots and lots of quotes, but it has a goal in mind.

And so what it does, it takes the later controversies, takes their terminology, and reads it's massively anachronistic, horribly anachronistic, in trying to draw parallels and connections that just simply aren't there.

And so, I was going to use the Kindle version when I came in. This was here, so I wanted to read that portion. I'm going to be spending some time on that in the future. I mentioned that I was going to be listening to it, but I was really disappointed to find out that it's a polemic.

It was being misrepresented. It's a, oh, here's a novel polemic against Calvinism. That's not what was represented to me. It was, here's this scholarly work that demonstrates that Calvin did this, that, and the other thing.

Well, okay, so Calvin, or that Augustine did this, that, and the other thing. And so, this is about Augustine and his changes in theology and dealing with Pelagius. Yeah, I've been talking about that for a couple of decades, and so has everybody else I know.

I mean, Warfield, nothing new there, but okay, fine, whatever. So, there you go. One last thing, we'll go to our calls. Just got this too, and I picked this up from a Muslim friend that I follow online.

This is Bridges' translation of the 10 Kiraat of the Noble Quran. And what's really neat, and I just started looking at it, is in dealing with Quran,.

What?

Oh, in dealing with Quran, we obviously have parallels to dealing with the New Testament as far as it's a work written in the past, and it has a certain manuscript history up until the time of printing.

It's a much shorter manuscript history than the New Testament, much, much shorter than the Old Testament. So, there are parallels, but there are also differences, because you don't have a free transmission, you have a controlled transmission of the Quran.

So, there's governmental, there's an established version. So, when you look at the Quran, we do have textual variations between Mus 'haf, between the manuscripts. We do not yet have a critical edition of the Quran on that level that will give us the variant readings in the manuscripts, which manuscripts read what, and then an attempted critical text, just doesn't exist yet.

Will there be someday? Yeah, probably be produced by non-Muslims, but yeah. But then you have the various printings of the Quran that have different qiraat, different readings. Now, these go back, evidently, to textual variants, but they are found in the foundational versions of the Arabic that are popular in different parts of the world.

And so, interestingly enough, you have hadith, I think they're late hadith, that basically say all of these are inspired, which is interesting. When you think about it, when you think through, but what this does is it places in different, well, it's not a different colored font, but a grayed out font.

So I'm here in Surah 5. Oh, this is interesting. This is, I hadn't chosen to check that particular section. I just happened, you saw me just turn to it. But, for example, there's a phrase in Ayah 69, indeed, those who have attained faith and those who have Judaized and the Sabians and the Christians, whoever has attained faith in the law in the last day and has acted righteously, then, and then insertion, no fear shall be, insertion close, upon them, nor shall they grieve.

So you've got different, then down at the bottom, you've got the different Kiraat as to how they read these particular passages. And so it's not, and like here, I'm noticing there's one, two, two of the different things.

And then you have some smaller font stuff and really interesting. Uh, let not the hatred of any people provoke you to be unjust. Just the hatred of any is in a different, a different font. And then you've got down at the bottom, all except for Nafi ibn Amr, Hafs, al-Kassai and Yaqub, read it as wash your faces and your hands up to the elbows and wipe your hands and your, different font color, feet to the ankles.

Uh, so it's giving the variant readings from the Kiraat, uh, all in one volume. At the very, very least, this is something you, that if you are doing any type of Quran, say, I would have loved to have had that when I was writing my book.

Um, that's, that's gonna be something you want in your library if you're gonna be doing studies on, on Islam. So take a look at that. It's, uh, Fidel Saliman, um, Bridges translation of the 10 Kiraat of the Noble Quran.

So we got that on, we got that on Amazon, didn't we? Yeah, I think we got it on Amazon.

Huh?

No, no, no, not this. This. Yeah, that, that was, that was something I asked you to get. Uh, yeah, that's, I think it's available on Amazon. So just look up Bridges translation of the 10 Kiraat of the Noble Quran.

All right.

Okay. Before you jump into the calls.

No.

I cheated and, uh, did something that I've, I don't know that I've ever actually done before. And I invited folks on Twitter. If you can ask a question in one tweet, I might read it. And, uh, so I have a number of questions here.

And the one that I am.

Well, mine, why, why isn't mine working that way?

I don't know. It's, it's, you know.

Twitter is just, just drives me insane.

It's got us both shadow blocked against each other, I guess.

I think so.

But, uh, so this one I I'm torn between two at the moment, but this is the one I'm going to pick. Why is the Trail of Blood fake church history? That is the first question.

Okay.

Yeah.

Well, see, I could have gone and grabbed my copy. Uh, I have it somewhere. Um, because it, anything is fake church history that is attempting to create a narrative. Um, and hence we'll quote facts of church history, but then we'll not quote contexts and counterfacts to the narrative you're attempting to create.

So the whole idea of the Trail of Blood is that there is this pure stream of basically fundamentalist Baptists, um, all the way back to the first Baptist, John the Baptist, um, and that they were never, you know, it was never part of the Church of Rome, and it almost always grants to Rome a much earlier origination than Rome actually had.

As far as the Church of Rome, yeah, historically, very, very early. Uh, Paul was very much, you know, that he was writing to the Church of Rome. We know it's early. Uh, but the idea of Roman Catholicism and the associated doctrines, uh, fundamentalist Baptists figure that you, you basically had a Pope just like today, uh, by, you know, 200 or something like that, which just simply isn't true.

Um, so you, you, you end up bringing together the Waldensians and all these other people, and you sort of ignore some of the problems they had theologically, and you, you put together a bunch of groups, groups that never would have gotten together historically because of their beliefs were very different from one another, and they weren't really good at being, getting along with other people very well anyways, and you come up with this, this idea.

It's not that there is not fascinating information about, uh, the Albigensians and Waldensians and things like that, and it's also quite true that most of their history was written by other people, and hence, it's not fair.

So I think there's, it is appropriate to read, uh, good books by good scholars like Leonard Verdine and recognize that there are gonna be some people that are gonna want to nuance some of the things he said, other people just gonna disagree, read widely, don't just stick with necessarily what the lectures were in your church history class, but the, the Trail of Blood is just, isn't scholarly on that level.

It just doesn't deal with, um, all the history that would, um, in any way, militate against the narrative that you have this very clear, uh, group that just never was a part of quote-unquote Rome. Um, that's the primary thing they're going for.

Oh, that's it? Yeah, but there weren't any other questions on Twitter? Well, I, okay, so, so I'll take, we'll, we'll, we'll grab a call here, and then you come up with another one. I think the first one was Joseph in Michigan.

Hi, Joseph.

All right.

How you doing?

Um, good. How are you? Um, been listening to you for a while. I love your work. Um, I was looking to introduce various youth in my area to, um, in my church to Christian apologetics, but I'm not really sure, like, what subjects would be central, like something to just start with, um, and then kind of take it from there.

Or kind of to phrase it another way, if you had a chance, um, youth that didn't really know what apologetics were, but were Christians, what subjects would you focus on?

Well, what you want to do in a situation like that is probably utilize, uh, whatever is the biggest challenge in your area as a stepping stone to do the first thing you have to do. Apologetics is determined by your theology, and unfortunately, a lot of our young people do not have a sound theology.

And so if you live in Utah, then you use the fact that all of your kids' friends are Mormon, um, to give you the excuse to go deep into the doctrine of God, um, as the first step to being able to then contrast that with the LDS perspective.

You don't just start with the LDS perspective. If you know that your kids are already well-grounded, which is, unfortunately, a sad rarity, but if they are, um, then obviously you can delve into important issues of worldview subjects.

Are these kids expecting to be going to a major state university, um, issues like that? You can be dealing with the worldview issues that they're going to be encountering in that type of a context. If you're a block down from the Jehovah's Witness headquarters in New York, then you know what you need to be focusing upon there.

But the real thing that any teacher needs to do is to honestly evaluate where their kids are and spend 80 of your time grounding them in truth, and 20 of your time talking about what the error might be.

In fact, use the error as the springboard. Use the error as the light, um, to get that opportunity to ground them. Because that's, in my opinion, that's what the vast majority of apologetics is. The reason that people struggle there is because we don't know our faith.

We don't know the truth, and hence end up being forced into a defense of untruth over and over and over again because we don't recognize the errors in the type of argumentation that is being presented to us.

So wherever you are, you said Michigan, so you've got a lot of atheism and secularism up there and stuff like that. You use those challenges and the questions that are being thrown at them as a way of getting to the foundations and grounding them in that.

Spend much more time in the truth than you do in the error. Unless this just happens to be a weird church where they've been exposed to this their entire lives and hence already have a deep foundation, then you can spend more time on the error.

But that's not where a lot of churches are.

Okay?

Yeah, thank you for that. I have to apologize to Rich, but is it possible I can ask a quick second question?

As long as it's okay to give a really quick response, because we've got three other people we still need to get to, and I need to get out of here at the top of the hour, so make it quick.

Oh, yeah. I met recently with two Mormon elders just trying to figure out where they are. It's really hard seeing where different faiths are at these days just by reading their literature, just because people aren't people of the book anymore.

But a lot of what came through during the conversation, when it went to the history of things and how pieces of Mormon history has been disproven, they always appeal to faith as, oh, pray about it, and kind of just disregard the evidence if the Spirit has any way to bridge between faith and truth.

Well, that's a really big question, and not gonna be able to give a brief answer to it. The fact is the vast majority of Mormons today don't know a lot about their history, and we are living in a period of time where the historical teachings of the LDS Church are being downplayed.

There's always been an element of that within Mormonism because the fact you have Latter-day Revelation, but at least in decades past, there was some concept of a necessity of some type of consistency between what was taught in one generation was taught in the next generation.

That's breaking down all over the place. So I think the best that you can do is recognize that a lot of Mormons today will take a very subjective approach to the study of their religion and say, well, basically there's a conflict between claiming to be the one true church on Earth and then turning around and saying, but there's truth everywhere.