Mark 1:41 and Hebrews 2:9

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

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The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll -free across the

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United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

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James White. And good afternoon, welcome to The Dividing Line, 877 -753 -3341.

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In the world of Greek scholarship and New Testament scholarship, there has been a lot of discussion recently about the release.

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Yes, and Dividing .Line via Skype. We do not want Rich out there who has worked so diligently and so hard to set up his laptop so that he can take your

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Skype calls to feel unloved and unappreciated for that.

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So Dividing .Line. Are you ever going to shave again? No? You're just going to, you're going for the

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Callahan look? Is that what's... No, no, you, you, no, no,

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I'm not used to it. Is that the new biker look?

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I guess so. I don't know. I don't know if I can see it in a full face helmet, but we'll get you one of those military helmet type things, you know, with the little thing sticking out the top and then your big old beard.

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That'd be great. That'd be great. Okay. Anyway, see, you really distracted me there. I was, I had a great opening going on and, and what happens, man,

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I'll tell you. Anyway, I don't know, about two weeks ago or so, somewhere around there,

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I think it was before I went to Peru, there was a release of a new Greek New Testament.

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Now it's, it's the S -B -L -G -N -T and every time

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I've posted that in channel, the odd people in my channel, and they're very, very odd people in the channel.

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And by the way, if you've been trying to get into the chat channel today and can't, it's because Starlink's DNS servers are down.

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You join by typing slash server space 63 dot 77 dot 93 dot 33 and you will be in.

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Anyway, the weird people in the channel started trying to come up with acronyms for S -B -L -G -N -T and some of the stuff they came up with was really very imaginative.

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Most of it was just really weird. S -B -L -G -N -T is the Society for Biblical Literature, Greek New Testament.

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Now as soon as I hear S -B -L, I start chuckling because, yeah, there are some, some good folks who go to S -B -L for, for chuckles mainly.

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But the reality of the fact is the vast majority of stuff at S -B -L is so far removed from Biblical Christianity that it's not even funny.

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And so, I mean, I would imagine all of the Jesus Seminar scholars attend

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S -B -L as well. So you'll find, you know, feminist, gay, deconstructionist seminars on Ruth and that kind of stuff at S -B -L.

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It's just, it's pretty weird. No matter which direction you go. And so, but the editor is

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Michael Holmes, who's done a lot of work in, for example, his Apostolic Fathers set is widely used and things like that.

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And so, ironically, it was being made available for free if you have

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Logos 4. And so as soon as it became available, that first day

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I downloaded it. I mean, I collect Greek New Testaments, why not? I have a 1550 Stephanus, hey, so I downloaded it and I haven't spent much time with it, but I've been seeing a lot of discussion on it on the textual criticism boards.

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Someone immediately went through and collated all the differences. It's not a new critical edition in the sense of having a critical apparatus where you can look at manuscripts and things like that.

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It is, it's critical apparatus is limited to a comparison of former printed

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Greek New Testaments, primarily Westcott and Hort and Trigellus and things like that.

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And so it is a, it's really a compilation based upon printed Greek New Testaments rather than upon manuscripts.

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It wasn't a like fresh collation or something like that. I was taken aback and concerned and it really brought out concerns that I have about what's going on in New Testament scholarship today to note that in two places it has adopted as its textual reading, a reading that simply does not have anywhere near sufficient external evidence to be considered original.

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But this is illustrative of what is going on in modern

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New Testament scholarship, especially in the area of textual criticism and the study of the

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New Testament and really the abandonment of the search for the original readings of the

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Greek New Testament. We know that Bart Ehrman gave that up a long time ago. He both feels that we're just tinkering now as well as that tinkering really isn't overly relevant anymore, that more can be learned now by studying the scribal habits of scribes.

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And in essence, as I see it, trying to climb into the minds of the scribes themselves and figure out what their world was like and what we can learn from the textual variants that they introduced as if we can know that they're the ones that introduced them or that they had a purpose in it or anything else.

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You cannot go back into the mindset of people from 1500 years ago.

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You'd like to pretend that you can, and you can write lots of papers pretending that you can. But the reality is someone might have a purpose in a textual variant.

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They might very well, there might be a reason, even a theological reason.

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Why someone copies a text the way they do, or it could be completely random.

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I mean, just think for a moment, how many times you have been sitting there and you have been writing something.

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Let's say, see, right now I need to be writing some articles for the

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Reformed Baptist Theological Review. I love RBTR. It's a great resource. I've written for him before, and Richard Baselas needs some articles.

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And I've got so many things I want to be writing on, but I'm doing so many things all the same time. It's hard to shut other areas down and just focus on that.

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But I just need to be disciplined and do that. And so, I love my office.

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I love my library. And my desk is such that I have one of those corner units, and then

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I have units sitting next to it. So, it's a whole corner of a room, and I'm sort of facing right into the very corner itself.

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And so, I've got a big 23 -inch screen, and I put my MacBook and hook that up, and that becomes a secondary monitor.

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And so, I've got a lot of space to work with there. And so, I can put books over to the right and to the left and copy out of those books and things like that.

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If I'm using paper books, I mean, anymore, half the time you're using your electronic books. But that's how

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I do it. So, let's say you're sitting there, and you're writing. There are so many times

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I will be copying out of a book, and I will look back at what

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I've typed, and I'll start chuckling. I'll start laughing at the mistake that I made.

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If I've been interrupted, the resultant textual variant that was introduced by my being interrupted at a certain point.

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And I suppose 1 ,500 years from now, someone could analyze my books and find an error in a citation and try to climb into my mind and figure out what was really going on.

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But the reality was, I got a cell phone call. And when I looked back at what I was copying,

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I picked up the wrong point or duplicated something or whatever.

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And that's really all that it was about. And I just feel that so much of the effort today is going into doing something other than really establishing the original text of the

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New Testament. Now, when it comes to standard copyist errors, that's one thing. I mean, we know the types of errors that human beings make.

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We all make them. We all look back at something, and we skip a line inadvertently.

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We go down to Homo Eteleuton, similar endings. Dittography, repeating something because we're not paying attention.

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There's all sorts of things we continue to do to this day that the ancient scribes did.

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That's not mind reading. That's just recognizing the human being and how we work and how we write and how we see and how we hear.

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Some of the scribal errors were due to the fact that people were listening as the text was being read to them.

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And we know exactly how that works. Well, I took shorthand in high school. Do they even have shorthand anymore?

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I doubt they do. I suppose somebody has to. But with computers today and with voice technologies, they probably don't even do it.

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But I took shorthand in high school. And you had to listen and write.

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And it was interesting, some of the mistakes you would make, not only in trying to read your own writing, but just the things you heard or thought you heard.

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I mentioned that I'm using this new Livescribe pen when

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I do debates, which is this really cool thing. I need to do a blog article or a video about it or something because it's just incredible.

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And it was fascinating to go back over the notes that I was writing while I was listening to Robert Syngenta speaking in our

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Purgatory debate, because that was the first debate I used the Livescribe pen, and to be listening to what the pen was recording, because it records what's being said at the time you're writing something.

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So you can just go back and tap on what you wrote, and it'll play back what was being said at that time. You can do the same thing on your computer screen.

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It's amazing. It uses the MP3 recording of what was going on as the time index for the notes that you're writing.

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It's really something. Anyway, I was listening to a portion of that, and I listened to what

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Syngentas was saying, and then I watched. You can watch on your screen as your notes will appear in your own handwriting. And I saw that I replaced what

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Syngentas had said with a synonym. I used a synonym for what he had actually said. Now, when someone else is speaking, especially if you're sitting behind them, and sometimes the sound isn't all that good back there, and you're writing, and you're not only writing what they're saying, but you're also making a comment about what you want to say about that in the rebuttal period, etc.,

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etc., etc., it's really easy to see how you could, in essence, paraphrase what the person was saying, even though you're trying to use his exact words.

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And so I understand how all of that works. And that's not climbing into a scribe's mind.

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That's not doing what Ehrman and others are doing today in pushing for, in essence, the exegesis of the scribes rather than of the text, thinking that the textual variants themselves, everyone is significant.

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That's a fundamental change in outlook from what we have had for years and years and years.

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And what I mean by that is the vast majority of scholarship up until the last 20 or 30 years would view, first and foremost, the reason for textual variation was simply due to a scribal error, an error of hearing, sight, etc.,

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etc. Now, everybody's always looking for the theological reason or the cultural reason or this reason or that reason why a scribe would make this kind of change.

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Now, some of that, they'll still say, was inadvertent, that because this person had such and such of a kind of upbringing or something like that, then they would have heard the text in this way or whatever.

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But the point is that there has been this massive swing away from, in scholarly study, the actual manuscripts.

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Now, my majority text or Byzantine priority platform friends, like Maurice Robinson, will say, yeah, and you're just getting what you deserve because you abandoned the text a long time ago.

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Well, okay, I hear that. But this is more than that.

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There was a, I think Maurice Robinson would recognize that there is a way of doing textual criticism that still takes seriously, you need to have a wide enough witness in the manuscript tradition for a reading to be considered as having any possibility of being original.

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And when you run across readings that have such a narrow, narrow witness in the manuscripts, that has to be a huge, huge mark.

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And you'd have to come up with some massively compelling argumentation to overcome that.

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Well, that standard has dropped a great deal. And in the new SBL -GNT, two of Bart Ehrman's favorite texts have now been placed into the main text of this

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Greek New Testament. I refer specifically to Mark 141 and Hebrews 2 .9.

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Mark 141 and Hebrews 2 .9. And those of you who were at the debate with Bart Ehrman back in 2009 know that in the afternoon prior to the debate, actually

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I think it was the morning prior to the debate, I gave a presentation on these very texts.

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And the night before I had invited Bart Ehrman to attend, he did not, mainly because I really could tell from his perspective, he did not think that I would have anything meaningful to say about either text.

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Anyway, Mark 1, let's give the context here.

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I think that this is important. Mark 1, starting verse 40, a leper came to him, begging him and kneeling.

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He said to him, if you choose, you can make me clean. Moved with pity, this is the standard translation, that's the key term there.

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Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, I do choose, be made clean.

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Immediately the leprosy left him and he was made clean. After sternly warning him, he sent him away at once, saying to him, see that you say nothing to anyone, but go show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what

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Moses commanded as a testimony to them. But he went out and began to proclaim it freely and to spread the word so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country.

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And people came to him from every quarter. Now, there's a couple things to note immediately about the text.

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The textual variant is right at the beginning of verse 41. It is the second word in the

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Greek language, the very first phrase in the English translation. Moved with pity is the reading of the vast majority of manuscripts and the vast majority of manuscript families.

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That's an important statement for me to make, but I'll try to explain more of it later as we look at this.

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The variant reading, which is now the primary reading of the

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SBL edition of the Greek New Testament, instead of splanchnis theis, which means moved with compassion, we now have orgis theis, which means moved with anger.

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And being angered, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, I do choose, be made clean.

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Now, you're probably aware, if you have listened to the program in the past, especially when I was preparing for the

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Ehrman debate, that Bart Ehrman makes a great deal of this. In fact,

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I imagine he might actually not be overly happy that they've done this, because part of the weight that his arguments have had has been that no one, hardly anybody knew about these variants, and now if they are a part of this text, then his arguments may not be as interesting to people.

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But he says, well, is Jesus an angry Jesus or a compassionate Jesus? It depends on which manuscript you read.

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Now, the reality is that there are other texts in the Gospel of Mark where Jesus is moved with anger.

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And so Mark 3, 5, for example, after looking around them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, he said to them, said to the man, stretch out your hand, and he stretched out and his hand was restored.

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So Jesus acted in anger elsewhere in the Gospel of Mark. So the main argument is, well, we can understand why a scribe would want to change the idea that Jesus was angry to the idea that he was compassionate.

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And yet there are no scribal variations at the other places in the

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Gospel of Mark where Jesus is angry. So the real issue is, is there—I mean, you can argue either direction on the basis of the text, but people like Bart Ehrman are saying, look, there's no reason why it would have gone from pity to anger, even though the two words look similar, and therefore it had to go that direction.

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Well, that's not true, because notice that in the rest of the story, in verse 43, after sternly warning him, he sent him away at once.

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That's verse 43. It's literally, he cast him out. He threw him out. And he sternly warned him.

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Now, where is that coming from? Well, we know that the guy goes out in verse 45 and begins to proclaim it freely, even though Jesus said, don't do this.

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It seems he didn't go to the priest. So maybe Jesus was aware of what this man was all about.

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I mean, you can speculate on stuff like this all you want, and did a scribe, reading this strong language in verse 43, and what goes on afterwards, and the result being

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Jesus can't even go into the cities anymore. His ministry has been impacted by this man's disobedience.

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Could it be that someone thought it looked wrong for Jesus to have basically been suckered by this guy?

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That Jesus was compassionate to him, and he shouldn't have been?

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He should have known this was coming, and so they changed it to orgesthize, to angry? I mean, so you can argue either direction once you want to start doing this mind game type thing.

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The question is, what do the manuscripts say?

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And the vast majority of manuscripts, and the vast majority of manuscript families, so the

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Alexandrian, the Byzantine, these manuscript families, and the term vast majority when you talk about families, given how few there are, is sort of silly, but this is a

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Western reading, and even at that, it's a minority Western reading. And so you have a reading that comes late, and its first appearance is in Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis, Codex D.

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Now, why is that relevant? Well, it's very relevant, because Codex D, well, it's not overly reliable.

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When Theodore Bezae gave the manuscript, it's called Bezae Cantabrigiensis because Theodore Bezae, Calvin's successor at Geneva, was the one who donated it.

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It had been given to him, donated it to the University of Cambridge. And when he did so, he wrote a letter that accompanied the manuscript, which is dated 18th of May, 1582.

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And in the letter, according to Scrivener, Bezae, recognizing the widely divergent text it contains on the whole, suggested that the manuscript was more fit to be stored up than to be published.

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So Bezae did not find it to be an overly helpful manuscript.

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It was more fit to be stored than to be published. Scrivener says,

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Or in company with a very few others. And that's exactly what we have with this reading, because Codex D is the only

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Greek manuscript we have that contains Orgestheus. The others are

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Latin manuscripts, which may well, remember, Codex D is a bilingual manuscript, it is Greek and Latin. And these other manuscripts may have been impacted, either by D or by its prototype.

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And so notice, Scrivener notes, This is very common for this particular manuscript to have these unusual readings.

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With most critics, it may be feared that the obvious faults and palpable glosses so especially conspicuous in this one book have engendered a natural but not very reasonable habit of unduly disparaging our venerable document as a whole.

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Scrivener later speaks of the excessive freedom of the Greek text of Codex Bezae Cantabrogensis.

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Bruce Metzger said, Textually, no known New Testament manuscript contains so many distinctive readings, chiefly the free addition and occasional omission of words, sentences, and even incidents.

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So you see, the writer of Codex D would be the exact kind of person that would interpret the text, see the strong words of Jesus as casting this man out, strongly warning him it would be very like the scribe of Codex D to interpret that and change, move with pity or compassion, to move with anger.

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Kurt and Barbara Allen said, When D supports the early tradition, the manuscript has a genuine significance, but it, as well as its precursors and followers, should be examined most carefully when it opposes the early tradition.

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Remember, this is the first reading, this is the earliest reading we have of this. So the

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Allens would be opposed to that. And even D .C. Parker, who wrote an entire book on this manuscript, said,

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The fact is that the longer I have studied it, the more I've become convinced that its many unique readings only rarely deserve serious consideration if one is trying to establish the best available text.

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Well, that's the problem, folks. A lot of people have given up on trying to establish the best available text.

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And so here we have this insertion of this reading, and it has been presented now in the

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SBLGNT, and when you look at the apparatus for it, it simply has

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It says Holmes and W .H. Margin.

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So in other words, the editor of this text and the margin of the Westcott and Hort text.

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That's what it gives. Over against SBLGNT, which it lists the

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Westcott and Hort text as the sources for that. The other, since we already have two calls and want to get to it fairly quickly here,

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Hebrews 2 .9. Hebrews 2 .9,

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if you want to go there. Once again, this is one of Bart Ehrman's favorite texts, and I again addressed it at the very end of my presentation prior to the debate with him.

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And this one is not based on Codex D. The text says,

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And the term there is codity by grace over against kores, which means apart from.

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That's the variant reading. And so that has been what has been now put into.

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So it says, So apart from God, he has tasted death for everyone.

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And on this one, kores in the apparatus of the

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SBLGNT only has Holmes's name after it. Everything is listed against it. So in other words, all of the preceding printed texts that he is drawing from disagree with the choice here.

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It's one of the reasons, to be honest with you, I prefer committee done texts, whether it's translation or textual choices, because when you got pretty much just one guy, you might do a great job on many things.

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But there is the tendency of being unduly influenced by things.

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Now, once again, in this situation, you do have origin making reference to this, and in fact, seemingly indicating that possibly many manuscripts in his day, or at least some manuscripts in his day.

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I think Ehrman has overstated the case. I've looked at the origin quote, and it can be understood in various ways.

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But at least we can trace it back that far, which is earlier than Codex D for the Mark 141 reading.

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And so it's two best sources are some manuscripts of origin make reference to it.

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And then you have manuscript 1739, which is a 10th century manuscript. But it is a 10th century manuscript that we can pretty much tell was copied from probably a 3rd century manuscript.

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So it is a first generation copy from a very ancient manuscript. So it has some weight to it.

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But the problem is, and I can't illustrate this for you, unfortunately, over the air or over the net, but if you look at what

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Koristeiu and Karatiteiu would look like in unsealed text, remembering that unsealed text, the original text of the

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New Testament, all capital letters, no spaces between words, no punctuation. You can see how the change could have been made.

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I don't think, unlike Bart Ehrman and others, that it's some kind of massive, huge theological issue.

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Because if it's by the grace of God, it's simply saying that the entire crucifixion is a part of God's gracious work of salvation.

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If it says Koristeiu, then you'd have an interesting concept of the aloneness of the

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Son in bearing the sins of Christ's people. But again, my concern here is that what you've got are almost celebrity readings now.

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Rather than saying, you know, let's go ahead and put this in the margin, let's let people know that there are some manuscripts that say this.

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But there are later manuscripts, these are the manuscripts that do it. But the vast majority, I mean Hebrews is a really clean book textually.

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The vast majority of manuscripts and families, etc., etc., say otherwise. It concerns me that we're sort of losing touch with the manuscript tradition itself.

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So those are the two readings. I'll have a couple other comments. Let's go ahead and take our break. I'll have one more comment on Hebrews 2 .9,

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then we'll get to our phone calls. Duane and Gerard? I've got Gerard from Australia! We'll talk to you in just a few minutes.

31:15

Hello everyone, this is Rich Pierce. In a day and age where the gospel is being twisted into a man -centered self -help program, the need for a no -nonsense presentation of the gospel has never been greater.

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33:56

And welcome back to The Dividing Line. Just one further comment before we go to our calls.

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It would seem to me that as the information of the manuscripts, you know, when

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I was in Peru, I happened to stumble across a link on one of the lists I was on that had the entirety of the major, pretty much all the papyri, digital images of all of them.

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I spent all one morning in Peru, in my little teeny hostel room, downloading all these images to my hard drive because I had always wanted to find them.

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As that kind of information becomes more and more available, and I've said for a long time, it's not going to be long until you can just whip out your handheld computing device and bring up any one of these manuscripts and examine it for yourself.

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As that becomes more and more available, and as more and more laypeople become involved in that,

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I think there needs to be more discussion about what a believing, consistently biblical approach to textual criticism is going to look like.

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And the leaders in that field these days are going farther and farther away from the

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Church and from faith in how they handle things. It would seem to me that taking into consideration the primary reading of each of the families and giving the

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Byzantine reading more of a hearing than is normally the case, but still looking at how early and ancient a reading is first and foremost, but making sure it's a part of the manuscript tradition, not just simply of one manuscript over here.

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I mean, the Orgesteis reading based on Codex D, there is not enough external evidence for that.

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And so I think we need to be trying to provide somewhat of a corrective to a ship that has gone way over to one side.

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And that's not unusual, and I'm hoping that some other folks will be publishing some works on that type of stuff in the not -too -distant future.

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877 -753 -3341, dividing .line on Skype. And David in Missouri has been very patiently waiting.

36:40

Well, I don't know if he's been patient or not, I can't tell. But we'll find out. So let's talk with David. Hi, David. Dwayne, I'm sorry,

36:46

Dwayne. Yeah, it's fine. I've been very patient, no problem. Quick question, John 15, verse 2.

36:54

This is kind of a question about the security of the believer, where Jesus is saying, every branch that's in him, if it's not bearing fruit, is cut off, and I think the reference is burned.

37:05

What's your take on that? Well, there's a whole paper on John 15 on our website.

37:14

Okay, how do I find it? That's okay. If you go to Alpha Omega Ministries, you click on Articles, and then click on Old Version, since that's the only thing we've got, unfortunately.

37:27

And I believe, yep, there it is. If you click on, believe it or not,

37:33

Jehovah's Witnesses, it's an odd place for it, Discussion with a Jehovah's Witness on John 15 is the very first title at the top there.

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And that's just simply vintage .aomin .org slash john15 .html.

37:48

And there's a lengthy discussion there. But fundamentally, the thing to remember about John chapter 15 is

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Jesus' own interpretation that he provides a little bit later on when he says that it is

38:05

God's purpose that the, verse 8, By this my fathers glorified that you bear much fruit, and so proved to be my disciples.

38:14

If you don't bear fruit, you're not one of Jesus' disciples. So people misunderstand the analogy by going, well, there's these leaves, they've got to be in him, which means they've got to be

38:25

Christians, but Jesus' own interpretation is that it is only by bearing fruit that you prove that you're his disciples in the first place.

38:33

There's all sorts of false faith. There's all sorts of, you know, the sower and the parable, not of the sower, but of the soils, is a similar example to this, where you have people that show growth, there's a springing up of something, but it doesn't last.

38:51

And the fundamental biblical teaching, remember, by the same author, some people would dispute that, but most people would say by the same author that wrote

39:00

John 15, and also is the one who wrote in 1 John 2, they went out from us, so it might be demonstrated they're not of us, because if they had been of us, they would have remained with us.

39:13

I understand that part, but the part that's still kind of puzzling to me, whereas Jesus says, the branch is in me, so he's acknowledging that they are in Christ, not a false branch.

39:25

It's actually a, nobody taped it on there, it's actually there. But remember, what is the sign of spiritual life?

39:34

You say he's in Christ, and you're using that, that's a very loaded theological phrase.

39:41

He's using a parable here, and he's talking about branches in the true vine.

39:47

And so, what is it that indicates the presence of spiritual life? Is it the mere existence of a branch, or is it the bearing of fruit?

39:57

That's the question, and I think if you walk through it all the way through, as I do in that article, were you able to pull that up?

40:06

No, but I will after we hang up. The other question is, is there any reference in Revelation to being in the

40:12

Book of Life and then having your name blotted out? I believe so.

40:22

And if so, how can that be? Well, I'd somewhat have to pull up the text, because I'd want to look at it.

40:32

Because I'd want to make sure that, when I say I'm pretty certain of that, there is a text at the end of the

40:39

Book of Revelation that is disputed, and I want to make sure I'm not talking about that. So, if you had a specific reference, then

40:47

I could look at it, but off the top of my head... I'll come back with it. Okay. All right.

40:54

Yeah, send it in or something, we'll take a look at it. Fair enough. All righty. Thanks, Dr. White. Okay, thanks a lot.

41:00

Bye -bye. All right. Ready to go to Australia? All righty.

41:07

Hello, Gerard. Hi, Dr. White. How are you? I'm doing just fine. How are you? Very well, thank you.

41:13

It's been a while. It has. Yes, we've missed you down here. Hopefully you'll get back down here soon. Well, I've been talking with a clan member,

41:21

David Old, about it. Oh, great. I just told him that next time we can skip the

41:30

Sydney Atheist within 12 hours of my landing. That would be good. We're all crowding you out.

41:37

Someone on the channel just said I sound like the gecko on the Geico commercials, so thanks a lot,

41:43

I appreciate that. Anyway, he didn't say you sounded like the gecko, he said I sound like the gecko.

41:50

I could try speaking more American like you do, Australian, but I just don't think it would work too well.

41:56

Anyways, what's up? So we had a baby eight months ago. I think I told you that Briar was pregnant at the time.

42:03

I like how you are so close to your wife that you would use the personal pronouns like that.

42:09

That's sweet. Here in the United States, that sounds a little bit weird, though, because most people are going,

42:14

Gerard, isn't he a guy? We had a little girl, so that's very exciting.

42:20

I've been, I suppose, just delaying the whole question over whether to baptize her or whether not to baptize her.

42:28

I thought I'd chat to you about it. One thing, I did listen to your debate with Pastor Bill Shishko.

42:35

It was a couple of years ago, but I thought it was a really good debate. I thought you made a really good case for credo baptism from Acts.

42:42

I wanted to just put forward an argument that actually one of my old ministers talked about for baptizing infants.

42:51

I just wanted to see how you'd respond to that. So the argument's like this.

42:57

We're going to be teaching our little girl about God and calling her to trust in Jesus from a very young age, pretty much as soon as she can understand what we're saying.

43:06

I think it's pretty certain that she'll trust us as her parents and that she'll confess faith in Christ.

43:15

I suppose if you were to think, if the tragic thing happened and she was to die at the age of four,

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I reckon confessing that simple faith in Christ, I'd be quite confident that she would be saved.

43:29

Maybe if she was to live to 25, that confession of faith might be proved false, but it could also be proved true through her life.

43:38

We can't know for sure if she has been granted true persevering faith. We don't know exactly what point true regeneration takes place for her.

43:48

Maybe even now at eight months old, she's already experienced true regeneration. We'll still be calling her to place her trust in Christ as she grows up, confessing her faith in Christ.

43:59

So I just wanted to ask you why you would say we shouldn't baptize her on the basis that we presume that true regeneration has already taken place.

44:09

Well, presumptive regeneration I find to be very, very dangerous. We don't have any example of ever presuming anyone to be regenerate.

44:19

We always call our children to repentance and faith and continue to do that. And while I cannot look into their hearts and their minds, when

44:30

I had these discussions with my children, yes, we were well aware of the fact that at a certain age, young children want to do anything that they know will please their parents.

44:44

And we have seen in the Church over the years so many situations where someone at a very young age engages in religious profession, and yet all of a sudden when the hormones kick in, within a very short period of time, they are bringing great blasphemy on the name of Christ by their life and by their detestation of the

45:10

Christian faith and everything else. So it is, I think, a scary thing to read some of the things

45:19

I've read about covenant children and about how, in essence, they are different than children outside of the covenant, almost to the point of where they're not totally depraved, they're not enemies of God, they have some type of special ability that plain old non -covenant children don't have, etc.,

45:39

etc. It's almost like there's a third type of humanity here, which I just don't see any Biblical evidence for at all. But the primary response

45:48

I would give to that is that baptism, New Covenant baptism, is always eschatological.

45:57

It is always looking back upon what has been accomplished in Christ. It is never given in hopes of a future fulfillment.

46:06

And so that's what you're talking about doing, is, well, you know, we can baptize the child now and hope that either she's already been regenerated, or if she hasn't, hope that sometime in the future she will be.

46:23

I've always found it rather interesting that the Westminster Confession's description of baptism is a sign of our union with Christ.

46:32

Well, it's not a sign of a hoped -for union, it's really a sign of our union with Christ.

46:38

I think it pictures our death, burial, and resurrection with Jesus Christ. It's a Gospel image.

46:45

And in the New Covenant, I never see that Gospel image being given to someone who doesn't understand and embrace the

46:52

Gospel. I see it in the same way, and this came out in the debate with Pastor Shishko, I see it the same way as the

47:00

Lord's Supper. I would not give the Lord's Supper to a young person in hopes that they've either already been regenerated, or in hopes that someday they will be regenerated, because I see it as a

47:16

Gospel ordinance that, again, has meaning only within a person's relationship to Jesus Christ through acceptance of that Gospel.

47:25

And that becomes an argument amongst Presbyterians, those who hold to paedo -communion, those who do not, as to how they figure that part out.

47:34

But the reality is, if you see both of those ordinances given by Christ to the

47:40

Church in the same way, I think the Reformed Baptist is being extremely consistent. We protect the table.

47:49

We ask that someone have a profession of faith in Jesus Christ, have been baptized on profession of that faith, and not be under Church discipline of another

48:05

Church of like faith and order before we will give them the Lord's Supper. Because if we didn't do that, then, you know, if someone's excommunicated in another

48:13

Reformed Baptist Church in the valley here, they can just come bopping across to our Church and partake in the

48:20

Lord's Supper. And so we try to honor the discipline of another

48:26

Church by asking those questions of someone who partakes. Well, I think the same questions have to be asked of someone who desires to partake of the other ordinance, and that is baptism and its profession of faith in Jesus Christ.

48:40

And that's one of the primary reasons that just as we see discernment, both on the part of the person partaking of the

48:47

Lord's Supper and of the Church in giving it, so too, I believe, we see discernment on the part of the person receiving baptism and in the

48:57

Church giving that baptism in New Covenant baptism. And now, of course, we can get into all sorts of discussions.

49:03

Is circumcision the connection to baptism, or is that regeneration, Colossians chapter 2?

49:08

I mean, these are all the things we got into in that discussion. But my response to the minister's argument that you just summarized for me would be, that's a completely different view of baptism as I understand it, because it is making baptism something that looks forward to a hope for fulfillment, and I do not see that as being a

49:30

New Testament definition of baptism itself. I'm not sure if it is looking forward.

49:36

Maybe it's more looking back and saying, we presume this child has been regenerated because when she does start speaking, she will confess faith in Christ.

49:50

And just like you don't know for sure if it's true confession of faith at the age of 25, you don't know for sure if it's true confession of faith at the age of 3.

50:00

But I think there's a major difference there, Gerard, between 25 and 3. I think it's a huge difference between the two, because I think you do have a far better— so you're saying we don't know infallibly.

50:17

Well, we don't know anything infallibly outside of what Scripture teaches us. And when it comes to someone else's state of grace or something else, we don't know any of that type of thing infallibly.

50:26

But I have a significantly greater confidence in the profession of faith of the men who are in leadership in my church than I do a three -year -old, because I've observed their life.

50:44

I've watched them walk through the dark valley. I've seen the evidence of the Spirit of God in their life.

50:50

So I think there's a huge difference between those two. And so that's why I think that idea of presumption of regeneration based upon a young child's wanting to say what is right for mommy and daddy,

51:08

I find that to be a very dangerous perspective. I've seen what that leads to.

51:14

I've had people specifically tell me, you are questioning God's promises if you evangelize your children, because they are children of the covenant.

51:23

And you are questioning God's promises. I don't think I'd go quite that far.

51:29

You still want to be calling them to repent. But why? And the other question would be, are you also going to give them the

51:35

Lord's Supper? Yeah, that's another one to think through afterwards, isn't it? Or maybe before.

51:40

Well, because the argument you just gave me, I can't see a logical reason why you wouldn't do that.

51:49

Yeah, that's true. Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

51:55

You're going to have to go back and listen to that debate all over again. I think I might. I really appreciate all your ministry,

52:04

James. Honestly, I'm really, really, really hoping to get back down there. Of course, after this phone call,

52:10

I may never get back down there because David Old might go,

52:15

Ah, I'm an Anglican, get out of here. But no, seriously, I really enjoyed my time down there.

52:21

I'd love to get a chance to... In fact, I was telling David, I need a new Moore College shirt.

52:28

Oh, really? Are you too thin? Do you remember what size it was? It was an XL. It's a tent on me, dude.

52:35

I need a medium now. It's great. And I'll fit into the seat. If they have the

52:41

Airbuses flying again, I'll fit into the seat a whole lot easier now, too. So it'll be great.

52:47

I'll see if I can fix one up for you. What are you, a medium now? I'm a medium, yes. I told David that, so he may have already started working on it.

52:54

But you ought to pop into our chat channel sometime. We'll talk again. Hey, thanks a lot, George. See you later.

53:01

God bless. Bye -bye. Let me just mention, again, I try to handle that conversation as carefully as possible because I love my

53:12

Presbyterian brethren. We obviously disagree. And I hope they hear that I'm a covenant theologian.

53:19

I'm approaching this from a covenant perspective. I'm not rejecting the covenant of grace. We just have a very different understanding of the signs and the fulfillments.

53:28

And if you have not heard the debate between myself and Bill Shishko, or if you're more on the federal vision side of things, we did a debate with Greg Strawbridge right here on The Dividing Line.

53:37

What was that about? Three or four months after the Shishko debate, I think. Is that in the shopping cart, the

53:43

Strawbridge one? You just probably search for Strawbridge, and it'll come up,

53:48

I imagine. But every debate we've done on baptism, we were responding to the challenge to do it.

53:57

We never initiated it. So keep that in mind. The Shishko debate is number 501 in the bookstore.

54:04

For those of you who would like to take a look at that. All right. Oh, boy, here we go.

54:11

Here will be one of those questions that requires me to have spent three hours in the library before coming into The Dividing Line.

54:18

But we'll give a shot at it anyways. Let's talk with Johnny. Hi, Johnny. Hey, brother. How are you? Doing pretty good.

54:24

Are you going to be asking me to parse some Arabic verb now or something? Or, you know...

54:30

Maybe. Yeah. Surah 237, I was actually watching a video on YouTube regarding a

54:38

Muslim that was responding to you. And you mentioned that because the Muslims have been inconsistent in saying that the

54:46

Bible can't be right because it says that God repents. And then you mentioned Surah 237.

54:51

And this particular Muslim, I don't remember what his channel is or anything like that, but he said that that is actually a lie.

54:57

Obviously, he's being a bit, you know... They always do that. Yeah, but he's saying that...

55:02

So I actually don't have an actual Quran in my hands. I downloaded a PDF, and in Surah 237, the translation

55:09

I have says, Then Adam received from his Lord words, and his

55:14

Lord pardoned him, which means accepted his repentance. Verily, he is the one who forgives, accepts repentance the most merciful.

55:21

He is oft -returning. And his Lord turned towards him, for he is oft -returning most merciful.

55:29

All you have to do is look up the Arabic words that are used of change of mind, repentance, etc.,

55:35

etc., and it is described of Allah numerous times. And all what these guys have done, and this came up...

55:41

What this came up was during the cross -examination or rebuttal periods,

55:48

I forget which one it was, in the debate with Sheikh Awal, the one he showed up at before he bagged out on the second one.

55:55

He had raised this issue out of Genesis 6. And so I just simply pointed out that the...

56:02

And if I recall correctly, and I'd have to go back and look, I had made some comment about the need to interpret each text within its context.

56:12

And so when you see Genesis 6, and it repented God, nakham, that he had created man, you need to take that in its full context.

56:20

And I gave these as examples. And the funny thing is, the Muslims have just been proving me right without even...

56:28

Some of them do. I need to be careful here. Some of my... There are good Muslims out there that listen to what you're saying, but the vast majority, the hotheads like this guy, and I know who you're talking about, they don't listen to what you're saying.

56:39

And so what they do is they interpret these texts. Now see, the Arabic term here has the very same meaning as nakham does.

56:48

And so here it's applied to Allah. He is oft -returning. His Lord turned towards him.

56:54

He's oft -returning. And they say, oh, but see, we can interpret this to mean this, so you're a liar.

57:00

So all I would have had to have said to Sheikha Wal was, well, I can interpret nakham to mean this, and you're a liar?

57:07

No, my point was, you have to interpret anything in its context. Just as you do with the

57:12

Quran, just as you do... They will not apply the same standards. And Sheikha Wal didn't get that, and the hotheads in the audience didn't get that, and they've produced their videos and demonstrated it again.

57:24

One of the reasons I ignore most of them is, if you can't hear what the argument is, if you're not even willing to listen to what the argument is, and if you don't have the first bit of concern about consistency,

57:32

I don't have the first bit of concern about responding to you because I can't take you seriously. But that's all

57:38

I was pointing out, is that there are plenty of terms that are used in the Quran that could be understood as Allah changing his mind, repenting, changing action, whatever else it might be, and they may have their ways of interpreting that to get around the idea that their objection to God in Genesis 6 is still valid, but the reality is they have to use the exact same type of interpretive methodology that they will not allow us to have.

58:09

That's what I was pointing out, and they have just simply demonstrated that for me. And is there a diversity of interpretation among Muslims on this particular passage?

58:21

I'd have to look that up, but I sort of doubt it. I mean, certainly you're going to have all sorts of interpretations of almost any

58:29

Quranic passage, and given the lack of context, Quranic passages often allow for that.

58:35

But I'm not aware of what Ibn Kathir said versus somebody else in this particular one.

58:41

All righty, Matt, we're out of time. Thank you very much. Okay, thanks for calling. God bless. Bye -bye. We'll see you on Wednesday.

58:47

Wednesday is going to be the next Dividing Line, Wednesday at the normal Tuesday time. We'll see you then. Phoenix, Arizona, 85069.

59:44

You can also find us on the World Wide Web at aomin .org, that's A -O -M -I -N dot O -R -G, where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.