The Nature of Scripture with Jeremiah Nortier!!

The Apologetic Dog

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04:40

Hello, hello, hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Faith Unaltered. I'm your host,

04:46

David Russell, and I'm here with my co -host from Real Seekers Ministry, Dale the

04:52

Man Glover, with his glasses. Hey, David, how's it going? Glasses and baby milk, and yeah, how's it going?

05:00

Thanks for— It's good, man. It's good, brother. How you been? Yeah, pretty good.

05:05

I spent—so, again, fans of The Shroud, I just posted up a three -and -a -half -hour episode on The Shroud of Turin, the textile evidence, so that's all up and ready for fans of that.

05:18

One thing I'll just say for fans of The Shroud, because there's a bit of news, the

05:23

STIRP scientist, Larry Schwalbe, unfortunately passed away last night, so, you know, just condolences to the family and that sort of thing.

05:32

Right on. Right on. Well, we will be joined by Tyler Fowler. He got kicked right before the show happened, so he's having some technical difficulties, but we will have

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Tyler on. He will be here in a few minutes. But until then, let's introduce our guest.

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His name is Jeremiah Nortier, and he is the apologetic dog. What's up, brother?

05:54

It's good to have you here. Hi, thanks for inviting me on. I've looked at some of y 'all's stuff recently, and I just thought, man, y 'all have wonderful content, so it's an honor to be able to be on y 'all's channel this evening.

06:07

Well, man, I appreciate it, man. So why don't you tell us a little bit about the apologetic dog, what you're trying to do.

06:12

Tell us about your ministry, a little bit about who you are, brother. Well, thank you so much. For a number of years, real similar to y 'all,

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I have a heart for apologetics, and so I serve as a pastor elder at my church here in Jonesboro, Arkansas, northeast

06:28

Arkansas, at a church plant called Twelve Five Church. And so we're about two, two and a half years old now.

06:35

Love what God is doing here at our church. And so I have a heart for teaching the people and preaching, and so that goes in tandem with apologetics, especially when you show people how to evangelize and share the faith.

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There's a defensive nature to it, right? And we know that apologetics is both defensive and offensive.

06:56

And so I started watching channels on YouTube like The Gospel Truth with Marlon Wilson.

07:02

We're really good friends. And I remember I sent in a suggestion to him saying, hey, this would be a really good debate idea,

07:09

I think. Let me know what you think. And he goes, oh, that's really good. Would you like to debate a Mormon, by the way?

07:15

I said, sure. I wasn't looking for that. And so people can go look on the archives. I did my first debate about over two, two or three years ago now.

07:23

And so if you've ever been in a debate, you get hooked. You get that constant itch for that.

07:29

And so I started dipping into the debate realm, and I loved it. And I loved all the other opportunities that I started to have with apologetics and the networking.

07:37

And so I thought, man, I need to have a place where some people can go. And so the pastor

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I served with was like, hey, pray about a name, kind of like a ministry that you want to start pushing. And so I remember this,

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David. My wife and I, we were talking about this. We were praying about it, and we wanted to find something unique.

07:56

And I'm Reformed, and so I was thinking about the acronym Doctrines of Grace, DOG.

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And I was like, hey, maybe there's something there. And we had a eureka moment. We're like the apologetic dog.

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And I thought, well, I like it, but I don't want it to be solely about Reformed theology. I want it to be broad in its scope.

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And so I liked the name, the apologetic dog. And so I started thinking about a guard dog mentality.

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And so I was like, Lord, what verse can I anchor the ministry in? And I was looking at a bunch of different verses.

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I didn't want to do the typical 1 Peter 3, 15, even though that's wonderful, to give a defense for the hope that lies within us.

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But I landed somewhere, 1 Timothy 6 .20. So if anybody looks up my logo, they'll see kind of 1

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Timothy 6 .20 around this dog with a Reformed beard. And so let me share that verse with you real quick, because this is everything my ministry is grounded in.

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Paul says, Oh, Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge.

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So at the apologetic dog, we are to guard the gospel of grace. That is what Paul is telling

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Timothy here. And we do it by avoiding worldly philosophy, pagan philosophy, anything that rivals the knowledge of God.

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We war against, we tear it down. And we expose those internal contradictions of these faulty worldviews.

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And so that's a little bit of how the apologetic dog came to be. And so a pit bull was the dog we landed with.

09:25

He looked the best with a beard. Right on, man. Yeah, that's such a unique story, man.

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For those that don't know, not everybody enters apologetics by 1

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Peter 3, 15. Mine was Titus 1, 9. It was you must hold firm to the trustworthy word is taught so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctored and also to rebuke those who contradict it.

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You know, so mine was was all about that. You know, I mean, it just it clicked.

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And I was like, dude, God wants us out there to, you know, come against the falsity that is out there.

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You know, the misinformation and everything, you know. And then all, you know, awesome.

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C .S. Lewis also had this quote where he was talking about, you know, good floss or good philosophy exists only to counter bad philosophy.

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You know, so I was like, you know, that's really that's really, you know, why I got into it.

10:23

And I started up with my first co -host. And then David Paulman took over from Titus to David Paulman.

10:30

And then me and Tyler were like, hey, let's debate some tour observers. Because we were getting sick of it on TikTok.

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And like, yeah, next thing you know, we're like entrenched in like a two month study on the deity of Christ, you know.

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And I'm pulling out old notes because, you know, I'm going for my master's in apologetics and philosophy.

10:51

So, yeah. So, like, yeah, that's kind of how it all began here, man. But, yeah, it's an awesome story, man.

10:56

I loved it. I love the logo you made, you know. And I saw you on The Gospel Truth.

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That's how I got a hold of you. And I was like, this dude smiles throughout the entire debate, even when someone's trying to prove him wrong.

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And that's the type of guy we need on Faith Unaltered to discuss scripture. So thank you. Some people misinterpret that for me being like kind of mean.

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I'm like, I'm trying to have a good time. That's all that that's meant to be. Yeah. And, you know, you kind of sound like David Crowder.

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So, I mean, I got to give you props for that, you know, for being from Arkansas and stuff. That's true.

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That's true. Yeah. You'll hear the twang probably. I'm really trying to work on that. Like, I listen to myself sometimes speak.

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I'm like, why? Don't you dare work on that, sir. Work on it to get better at it.

11:40

Yeah. Right. One other thing I'd like to just inform the audience is

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I was recently on the podcast Cultish. I don't know if any of y 'all are familiar with Jeremiah Roberts and Andrew.

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I was on there with a really good friend of mine, Trey Fisher, to talk about the church of Christ. And so that aired earlier this week.

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And I just want to encourage anybody, if they're interested in that realm of apologetics, is evangelizing the church of Christ.

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That's a really big emphasis in my ministry because in Jonesboro, Arkansas, there's a lot of church of Christ churches.

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And so they use all the same terminology that we use when we say we're saved by grace through faith in Christ alone.

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But they mean something totally different when we start talking about sanctification and justification. They believe you have to be water baptized.

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That's necessary in order to be made right with God and be born again. And so that's a big emphasis in my ministry.

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And I don't want people to get that confused, that zeal with a love for those people.

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And so people can find me at Cultish in their last episode that they did. Nice. That's apologetic.

12:48

Yeah. Yeah. We know derbs. And we had Dr. White come speak at 12 -5 Church just a couple months ago.

12:54

So we're tight with those guys. Right on. I notice you're close enough to have that pretty easily.

13:00

Yeah. I'm working on that beard. Actually, my wife really wanted me to trim it back.

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It was about five inches longer. So you'll see some old stuff and be like, man, what happened to that wizard beard? Right on, right on.

13:13

Well, we got Tyler Fowler back. What's going on, brother? Tell us all about yourself.

13:19

I'm sorry about that, guys. I'm good. I'm good. So as I was telling you, David, off of air, I've been really trying to develop my prayer a lot better.

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So I got to the point where I was falling asleep during prayers. And so I have incorporated a new method that's actually really interesting.

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And I know and don't get me wrong, guys. Like, I love this passage that whenever we don't know what to talk about, whenever Paul talks about Romans, the

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Holy Spirit groans with words that you just can't access. Right. And I believe that there is obviously

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I believe there's something to that. Right. Like, if we don't know what to pray for, the Holy Spirit's interceding for us. Jesus is interceding for us.

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And so what I've done is actually I purchased. Well, not purchased. It's free on the

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Play Store. But a prayer book, common prayer book that I've been reading prayers out of and just and the first week of it, y 'all, like, has enhanced my prayer life.

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Like, I look forward to praying now. And it's just it was it almost felt like a chore before.

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And now it's you know, there's a freshness to it, given that there's different vocabulary that I'm not used to in there.

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And it's just it's wild. So I would encourage anybody, if you're like struggling with prayer, think about getting a prayer book.

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I don't think there's anything wrong with that. And I really think it enhances one's prayer life as you grow closer to God through prayer and through meditation of his word.

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And so that's really the new thing that's been popping off in my life. David, as you know, I'm still I'm trucking through Greek.

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I'm about halfway done with it now. So I'll be turning that into Trinity really, really soon, hopefully within the next month.

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I think I'm going to have it, which is interesting because I'm going to finish the course before I finish my payment. And so hopefully they're like, oh, yeah, he got it done.

15:00

Like, well, we'll just cut off that extra couple hundred bucks. But now I doubt it. But Braxton, if you're watching.

15:05

But yeah, so that's that's really what I've been up to working, going through Greek and then praying to God.

15:12

So three good things, I think. Right on. Well, guys, if you hadn't seen, you know, we've got

15:18

Jeremiah here. Please subscribe to his channel and also subscribe to Faith Unaltered. If you like the content and you like what we produce, please just hit that like and share and subscribe, you know.

15:31

So, yeah, we're so close to a thousand. So that's going to like, by the way, thank you, sir.

15:38

It's going to launch us into different avenues. You know, so I'm really excited about that. And I think

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Real Seekers just hit about 800, right? Dale? Yeah, it's over 800.

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Like, I don't I don't track it as much as you guys do, but it's I think over 800 YouTube. And then

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I got some on Rumble and Audacity. Oh, yeah. Go ahead, Jeremy. I just hit 700 like a couple of days ago.

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So we're all on a similar stratosphere. Nice. Right on, man. Right on. So we'll have to network more, you know?

16:11

Yeah, absolutely. We'll all hit this thousand mark together. How about that? I'm actually in a race with a

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Mormon to see who can get a thousand subscribers first. And we have something we have a we have a small wager going on where we're going to do something together.

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And it'll be pretty good. So I'm trying to beat him there. Well, Faith Unaltered, subscribe. Real Seekers, Faith Unaltered, subscribe to Jeremy's thing.

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Help him hit that. Yeah. Help us too. Help Dale. We all got to get – we all want this ministry to – these ministries to go far so we can reach more people and tell them about the truth and the love of Jesus Christ.

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So with that, guys, we're going to be talking about the nature of Scripture. Tyler's laughing over there.

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What's going on there? I'm sorry.

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That is hilarious. I sent y 'all the short that he's alluding to. This man has been listening to that.

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He's probably the one – the reason why I have 400 views on that thing that I made. I love it.

17:11

Sorry, David. I didn't mean to. Guys, we're going to be talking about the nature of Scripture, and that's why we got

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Jeremiah on because he did do – like I said, he did a debate. And he was talking about Sola Scriptura.

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And that's kind of like – it's so funny how our topics get woven. We plan for things, and then other things get brought into the mix that we're not even – we don't even realize, and then they just become a series.

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So we're continuing on this kick for Sola Scriptura. So with that, Jeremiah, what is the nature of the

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Scripture? The nature of Scripture is being God -breathed. And so, yeah, that debate that you watched me do on Marlon's channel is almost a year old.

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So it's funny. When you reached out to me, I was like, man, I'm going to have to crack open the notes and see what I said. But, yeah, so the nature of Scripture is

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God, his God -breathed revelation. And so where I've kind of come from is, as I say, that is the ultimate chord of appeal because this is not just ink on a page.

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This claims to be living and breathing and sharper than any two -edged sword. In fact,

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Jesus said the Scripture cannot be broken. And so when God speaks, it's always of the highest authority because of its nature, like you're asking.

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Right on. I actually got a question speaking about the nature of Scripture, theanoustos,

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God -breathed, right? Scripture is God -breathed. That's one of the qualities of Scripture, right, is that it's theanoustos.

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Another quality that Paul talks about in 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17, right, is that another thing that Scripture is, is it's something that helps equip the man of God for every good work.

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And so my question, Jeremy, is I didn't have this on the notes. It kind of just came to mind last second, so apologies.

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But do you think that theanoustos and able to equip the man of God, are those two synonymous things?

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Are these maybe two different categories that maybe not everything that helps equip the man of God is theanoustos?

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Or do you think the two go together hand in hand? So I don't think they're identical. I don't think that was what you were saying, but they definitely go hand in hand.

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But what's going to inform our experience, right? Because there are many other things that Scripture doesn't explicitly state that help us out.

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But many of those good principles are found in Scripture. And so I'm trying to think of a good example.

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So like in James chapter 1, it talks about how God uses trials to make us complete, to make our faith full, essentially.

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And so I was thinking about that because I've listened to almost all of Dr. James White's debates with Roman Catholics on these very issues.

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They'll bring up James 1 about, well, don't you need to go through trials so your faith may be complete?

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And I've always thought about that. I'm like, okay, that's a different word than the Greek word complete here.

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That's what's being talked about. And Dr. White brings that up. But yes, God is going to sanctify his people,

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John 17, 17. The Father sanctified them in the truth. And then he goes on and says, your word is truth.

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So God's going to sanctify his people through the word and through actual time and space and history. And so how do we know we're being sanctified in our sufferings, in our trials, and even through temptation?

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Because the word of God tells us. And so Sola Scriptura always says that which is God -bred, that is what ought to be informing our experience.

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What do you think, Tyler? I mean, I really do because, and I like what you said about the two go hand in hand.

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Whenever you suffer, whenever you go through those trials, right,

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I've always found that turning to the word of God really helps you. Even if you haven't looked at it in a while, it really helps you to cope through those things, right?

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And granted, like the Holy Spirit, God, he gets us through those things, right? I believe in our path, those obstacles in our path in order to build our character, in order to make us more like Christ, right?

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And it's so nice to have God's word right there with you during those times to help encourage you and help you move through those things.

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David, what do you think? Yeah, you know, this kind of reminds me of the idea of sufficiency, right?

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So how you guys were talking about differences and stuff like that, I really think that Scripture is that rule.

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It is that sufficient thing that gets us to where we're going. And like you said, there's other things that can help us in our experience.

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Like I was reading Plato's Republic the other day, and there's a lot of good stuff in there. You know what

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I mean? There's a lot of good stuff in several of different philosophy books, some that even help you understand the problem of evil.

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You would probably disagree, but I like Alvin Plantinga on the free will defense, but there's a lot to it.

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I don't want to blanket that, but there's a lot there, and you learn a lot.

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And where the Scripture may be silent on some things, it's still sufficient for me.

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And I think that's what I was going to ask you next, is what does sola in sola Scriptura connote?

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It's not new to Scripture, is it? Is Scripture meant to be alone? So these are really good questions that I think this is why we have an ongoing debate with Roman Catholics, is because when we say sola

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Scriptura, we're not saying my Bible and me under a tree, no creed but Christ.

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Far be it. I mean, Christ has been building his church for 2 ,000 years, so we would glean so much from reading the saints of old.

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I'm more of a Vantillian, and I love Bonson and the Reform crowd. And so that's why

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I'm repping tonight. This is the boys. But we have a historic faith.

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We have a historic faith. And so sola Scriptura doesn't mean that it's just me and my

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Bible only. What sola Scriptura says is that the Scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith and practice for the life of a

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Christian. The keyword, in my opinion, is infallible. Because the five solas of the

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Reformation are being distinguished from what Roman Catholics teach. And Roman Catholics, specifically, they teach that the

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Scripture is primary. I've even heard of the term prima Scriptura, but it's first amongst equals to tradition and the magisterium.

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And so the Reformers came back and said, no, Scripture, that which is God breathed, is ultimate because of its very nature.

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And so that's what we're getting at with sola Scriptura, is that's the only infallible rule that we look to.

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Right on. Dale? Yeah, I'm sort of curious to follow up and to learn a little bit about the mechanics.

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How does something actually become Scripture? Can you maybe explain the processes of how it comes through transmission, reception, and then in Scripturalization?

24:21

Great question. So in my preparation for the debate last year, my debate partner,

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Merrick Kaiser, shout out by the way, I told him I did not want to go about this debate like we've seen it done so many times where you go to 2

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Timothy 3, 16, 17, and they're ready for that. I said, I want to create a transcendental argument, something that we can say, something within sola

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Scriptura is necessary for our human experience. And so as I was looking into this,

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I came across a really good book that I want to do a shameless plug if y 'all are okay with this. Please.

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The Canon of Scripture, a Presuppositional Study. And so, so many good chapters by Philip Kaiser.

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Dr. Kaiser goes into the mechanics of what Scripture is and how it comes about is Scripture always comes about by a prophet.

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A prophet is somebody that is called out by God. Now, the people of God don't always know that, so they have to always test what the prophet is saying to see if it comes true.

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But that's something that Kaiser argues for is that Scripture always comes from a prophet, which when

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I was reading this, I was like, well, what about the apostles? What about somebody like Luke or Jude? And he goes into how those people that are closely associated with the prophets or the apostles, the moment that they write and are inspired, the inscripturation is inspired the moment it's being penned.

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And the point is not to be later voted upon by ecumenical councils or so forth. And so to go back to what your question is, is a prophet has to give a scripture.

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Now, the apostles we see in Paul's writing at the end of Romans chapter 16, 2

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Peter chapter 1, and the book of Revelation, even the apostles saw their own writings as prophetic.

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So they were they had a prophetic ministry when they wrote Scripture. And so that's number one, though.

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The key point is Scripture comes to God's people by a prophet. And so you said a few other things.

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I have those questions. So glad you, David, you're so gracious to send me these questions beforehand.

26:33

Thank you. I was like, man, I'm going to have to go look back from these things.

26:38

Well, I took a lot of them off of what you guys said in the debate, too. That's good.

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I know we kind of did this before. So with questions I could send out. But I think it was Dr. Tim Stratton that really got us into the actually sending them out to everyone instead of just, well,

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I'll send them out to these guys and this guy. Like, it's kind of become a religion for us to send our questions out beforehand now.

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And I think it's thanks to him. So shout out to Dr. Stratton on that one. Now, Dr. Stratton, did he debate

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Dr. White a few months ago? Yes. About a year ago now. You should see our channel. We had him and Chris Dade on.

27:14

OK. Well, tell Dr. Stratton that Jeremiah the Apologetic Dog says, hey, and I really appreciate a lot of his work.

27:21

For sure. Absolutely. So, Jeremiah, like when you're talking about prophets and stuff, you know,

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I understand for the Old Testament, right? I would even like I would categorize apostles and stuff.

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I would express a little bit of a distinction and a little difference in the

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Old Testament versus the Old or the New Testament versus the Old. But, like, what do you do with, like,

27:48

King David? I mean, he writes the Psalms and his plethora of writers that are writing the

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Psalms now. My whole goal is not just if it's a prophet, even though I know that's where in Deuteronomy that was their standard, you know, and that's who could write

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Scripture. But as far as, like, King David and stuff like that, what would you say to that?

28:17

Yeah, because I do want to go back to the question that kind of brought up three points, transmission, reception, and inscripturation.

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And so, like I said, I've been challenged by this book. So I really want to encourage our audience to go check out the

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Canon of Scripture Presuppositional Study by Philip Kaiser. Because his big point, and I love it.

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To me, it's strong to say, look, no matter who we point to, like King David, if we point to the

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Apostle Paul, when they write Scripture, it's prophetic. And so it carries the dynamic that the apostles or the prophets of old carried.

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And it's important because Paul refers to his own writings that way. Peter, for one, refers to his own writings the prophetic word.

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We have a more sure foundation in that which is revealed by God. And he says, not only does Paul have that, but Peter quotes from the

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Old Testament. So my understanding would be the inscripturation comes from someone who has a prophetic ministry.

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Now, I like what you said. I do see a difference between a mere prophet versus someone that has multiple facets like King David.

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And then I was going to also say the apostles, to me, yes, they had a prophetic ministry. But they were uniquely sent out by Jesus, hence the word apostle.

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Right. God. Yeah. By God. And so the inscripturation that I would kind of hold to and really in light of Kaiser's point is prophet.

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But that also extends to those who are closely associated with the prophets or apostles.

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It's the moment that they were writing. It was inscripturated. That's the moment it's inspired not to be later voted upon.

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And so here's another key point in our conversation, reception. Okay. Now, this is interesting because I'll probably bring up the

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Roman Catholics as we go just to kind of compare and contrast. I would take the position that the church fallibly and passively receives that which is

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God breathed. Okay. Now, because the biggest pushback and we'll get into kind of the differences between ontology and epistemology and does solo scriptura necessitate tota scriptura.

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All important. Good, good points. But what we're saying is, no, that which is infallible belongs to God and him alone.

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But that doesn't negate how we can passively receive scripture by looking at tradition, looking at scholarship, looking at history and being convinced very reasonably of how that has taken place.

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So the reception of it have the God's people do that passively. And then the other point is transmission.

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I thought of transmission in kind of two ways, because I would say the prophets and by extension, those close to the apostles and prophet, they are the ones that transcribe.

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But then there's also this idea of how God has preserved his manuscripts throughout church history.

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So you get into textual manuscripts. Right. And the transmission that follows and me being reformed.

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I'm over here saying that God has very, very orderly appointed for the church to be able to receive.

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And this would be unique to just reformers. But God has purpose with how God's word has dispersed the way it has over time.

31:32

Right. Old Tyler, you got anything? I want to play devil's advocate for a second. I do.

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I do. And so because I'm hearing, Jeremiah, you you appeal to church history, which

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I absolutely love. Right. So I've been delving into studying the Eastern Orthodox lately, namely because a good friend of ours,

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Josh Sherman, has recently converted to Eastern Orthodoxy. Another good friend of ours, co -host

31:59

Travis Worth, is a catechumen of an Eastern Orthodox Church now. And my good buddy, Joshua Davidson, which is also my co -host of CSG, has really been delving into the study of Eastern Orthodox.

32:10

And so I was like, you know what, guys, if there's something here like I want to know. Right. And so I'm I'm really curious, given the fact that we look at church history and I do have a quote.

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I'm not sure if you're familiar with Timothy Michael Law. He wrote the book When God Spoke Greek. OK, I got

32:26

I've got kind of a lengthy quote here, and I'd like to read it for our listeners and as well as our as well as you and Dale, because I don't think,

32:33

Dale, you've heard it yet either. But just to preface this quote, I would just want to ask, in a sense, what do we do with church history and the definition of Scripture, given that that definition seems to have multiple meanings, depending on who you would ask?

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Even now today, we've got the East that affirms different books of Scripture. We've got

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Rome that affirms different books as Scripture or deuterocanonical. Right. And we've got Protestants, the three main branches that affirm different books of Scripture.

33:04

Right. And let me just allow me to read this quote. Like I said, it's kind of lengthy, but just to give everybody an idea of what

33:10

I'm talking about. Michael Law, or Timothy Law, writes this. He says, quote,

33:16

Christian canon lists in the first four centuries were in any case by no means regular or universally definitive, perhaps putting too much confidence in the

33:26

Jewish evidence, like the mention of the 22 books and Josephus's against Appian. Some have argued that the

33:32

Christian Old Testament was established as early as the second century. The list of books was complete.

33:38

Some were in and some were out, and there was no further modification to the church's Old Testament.

33:44

The very use of canon lists by Christian writers in the first four centuries, however, demonstrates that Christians were still debating the status of the book.

33:52

In other words, if the Old Testament were universally recognized, there would have been no need to continue issuing canon lists.

34:01

Law then goes on to describe canon lists beginning with the earliest from Melito of Sardis, circa 190

34:08

AD, who, quote, leaves out Esther, doesn't specify exactly what was contained in Jeremiah.

34:14

In some Septuagint collections, Baruch, Lamentations, or the letter of Jeremiah was included together.

34:20

And probably, and the reason he says probably here is because of the way Eusebius preserves

34:26

Melito's list. He writes Chi instead of A. Anyway, Greek grammar there.

34:33

But probably includes the wisdom of Solomon. Origen, who, quote, adds the 22 books of the

34:40

Hebrew canon, first and second Maccabees, includes the epistle of Jeremiah and the prophet

34:45

Jeremiah, and insists that Tobit, Judith, additions to Esther, Ecclesiasticus, and wisdom of Solomon are of divine origin.

34:53

And with the exception of Baruch, cites from non -canonical books with the introduction, it is written, the signal that he treats the writing as scripture.

35:02

Athanasius, who argued that there were three sets of books, canonical, ecclesiastical, that could still be read for edification, and the apocryphal writings that were to be avoided.

35:13

Baruch and the letter of Jeremiah were included along with the prophet Jeremiah in his main canonical section.

35:18

And in his second category, he lists wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Esther, Judith, and Tobit.

35:24

He does not specify which books were he considered apocryphal. And then, last but not least,

35:30

Augustine defines first and second Maccabees as being held canonical, though not by the

35:35

Jews, but by the church in City of God. Also in City of God, Augustine also refers to Tobit as scripture and frequently defends wisdom of Solomon.

35:47

Law also lists several regional canons, or councils, excuse me, that affirmed a broader

35:52

Septuagint canon, and I'll just list a few of these. The first one is the Momson List of 360, in the 60th canon from the

36:00

Council of Laodicea in Asia Minor, roughly around 364 to 365, and in Canon 85 of the

36:07

Apostolic Canon. So, just given, like I said, the various lists, the various differences between the lists, do you see that as a problem if we look back at church history and see these differences in there, or not so much?

36:23

I see you're shaking your head no, so how would you go about that? You know, I was listening to that, and those were some really good quotes.

36:31

This kind of shows me kind of what I was trying to lay the foundation for is there's only one thing that's infallible.

36:38

And so I would say as we look to church history, which we should because we have a historic faith, the fact that there's so much disagreement shows us the fallible nature of man and looking at tradition and looking at history.

36:51

And so even though we hold that with a loose fist as Protestants, because I love my

36:58

Southern Baptist brothers, I grew up in a context where I was at a

37:04

Southern Baptist church that did not look at church history at all. And looking back, and I have the responsibility of shepherding this flock here at 12 .5

37:12

Church, is I say, man, we have so much to learn from church history. Not all Southern Baptists are like them, just saying my own experience.

37:19

And so I try to say, hey, when you read somebody in church history, test their arguments to the scripture.

37:26

And so when I start talking with Roman Catholics, they just simply quote an early church father's conclusion about a text about baptism or something.

37:34

I'm like, can you give me the exegetical argument they gave for that? And they're like, oh, we just know what they believe.

37:39

And I'm like, what happened to test all things and hold fast to that, which is good. What happened to being a noble Berean?

37:45

So anyway, when we talk about different canon lists, is it a problem? On one hand,

37:51

I want to say no. And this is where I love the providence of God, because all of these lists all contain the

38:01

Protestant canon. They just have more. And so I'm saying you've got God's truth there.

38:06

Now, if someone's trying to be a systematician and their epistemology is different because they're trying to harmonize 1st and 2nd

38:13

Maccabees or something like that. And is that going to affect with their doctrine of purgatory? Oh, yeah. You know what

38:19

I mean? So like it has devastating effects on how you'll interpret like 1st Corinthians chapter 5 and seeing if that's going to lend support to purgatory or something like that.

38:29

So, yeah, I'm aware of that. And that is dangerous. That's why at the end of the day, we still have to keep studying these things.

38:35

But when you boil it all down, God's truth is still there. You know what I mean? And so that's kind of my first thought.

38:41

Number two, I love the Deuterocanonical books as of, you know, and I would call it apocrypha, not pejoratively, but just saying

38:49

I recognize the Maccabean revolt as being historical and really good information for me to know about.

38:56

Right. But I'm asking the question, what's God breathed and what's not? Right. And so when we say

39:04

Sola Scriptura, I think y 'all have interacted with the other Paul on YouTube. I love that guy.

39:10

I'd love to interview him, too. But I loved what he said one time. He said Sola Scriptura is more of an epistemology.

39:18

And I love that. Now, I would still call it a doctrine. He may not. But it definitely is a type of worldview that's different than the

39:25

Roman Catholics and the Greek Orthodox and so forth. And here's why I think it's so different is because as Protestants, I would say the

39:34

Scripture is self -attesting. When God speaks, it speaks with an authority different than any other revelation.

39:42

OK. And so when I read in, you know, John chapter 10, where Jesus says, my sheep hear my voice.

39:47

Now, people may not like this and this may not be as objective as they want. And I'm saying we can have those other types of discussions.

39:54

But this is telling me there's something going on with God's word drawing his people to themselves.

40:00

Now, that's a worldview, whether someone likes it or not. And we can do these internal critiques and back and forth. But that's really what the

40:06

Protestants were pushing for is Scripture is self -attesting as the ultimate precipient for truth.

40:13

And you can't appeal to a greater authority to confirm that. So our worldview has to always be going back to what

40:21

God has revealed. But that doesn't negate looking to secondary authorities and seeing how that happens.

40:28

So before I get all preachy, what do you think, Tyler? I think—well, I know, Dale, you've got—Dale, let me hear you out, and then

40:35

I'll respond. Yeah, so I know this is about—this show is about Jeremy's views.

40:41

But I just wanted to contribute something and maybe ask you for some clarification, Tyler, because I was thinking about these lists from the last show we were on.

40:49

And like I said, I don't see it as that much of a problem. So number one, look, all human beings, these are not inspired human beings.

40:58

They're fallible. And, you know, I understand that some people think, well, the argument from pedigree, how could the church fathers in the second century get it so wrong?

41:08

But, I mean, look at the New Testament. How could Peter, speaking to Jesus, get it so wrong?

41:15

Multiple times. And he gets it wrong multiple times, right? Can I add to that real quick?

41:21

Yeah, sure. You look at the church of Galatia and the church of Corinth. Just because they were starting to deviate from the gospel of grace and not understand things, we're not going to point to Paul and say, hey, that's your fault.

41:32

No, we're pointing to the nature of man of saying—and this is what I've told Roman Catholics. I think we should expect the second century church to get many things wrong because of the nature of what it means to be human.

41:43

However, we know Christ is going to build his church, so the gospel will always be there.

41:49

Yeah, so my kind of following up on that, because I noticed that the earliest list is exactly what the

41:55

Protestant Bible is, so it was good. The earliest list confirms what we believe. And then it's only later on, about 20 years later and beyond, that there's, like, mix -ups and stuff like that.

42:06

So has anyone looked into, like, what was the sitz and lieben going on? Is there a cultural reason as to why this guy has this particular list or is interested in this controversial book?

42:20

Has anyone tried to—yeah, Jeremy? Yeah, a lot of this gets brought up in this book.

42:27

So when we see discrepancies over books, whether Jude should or shouldn't be in the canon, things like that, this is actually a good thing, saying the fallible church is taking seriously the

42:38

Scripture, which has been entrusted to them. And the Bible even calls it tradition, right?

42:44

God's truth, the gospel, has been handed down to be received, and so the word there is tradition.

42:50

And so, you know, I don't take the view that Roman Catholic does to say that it's an infallible tradition in terms of how they've structured it with the

42:57

Magisterium. But no, that's good when even, like, Martin Luther is like, man,

43:03

I'm not sure when I read the book of James if that should be in the canon or not. And you've got to think, he's coming out of Roman Catholicism, so he has those vestiges, and he's just come to this newfound understanding of salvation by faith alone.

43:16

And so when he's reading James 2, I can see him specifically struggling with that. And so I'm saying these are actually good things, that the people of God are taking these matters very, very serious.

43:27

Yeah, and the last thing I'll contribute before we move on. But I was thinking about Augustine, because that was someone that you asked, right?

43:34

And I asked you, what was his reason for including, was it 1 and 2 Maccabees? It was. Okay, and you said, he tells us his reason is because, oh,

43:43

Christians are being martyred in his time. Obviously, when he's writing City of God, the barbarians have conquered

43:48

Rome in 410, and the vandals are on their way to his city and stuff like that, right?

43:55

So there's this sitz and lieben that could explain why he's partial to it. Oh, Christians are martyring, and the

44:01

Maccabees, they're martyred. It's not necessarily a pure interest of what is scripture, what's not.

44:08

There could be this cultural thing that's influencing him and stuff like that. So, yeah.

44:14

I know that's what Sherman was talking about, and I would love to get him back on here to explain this.

44:19

He did explain it in that video that we did with Matt. And so for anyone that's interested in it, because I'm probably going to butcher it, please go check that out.

44:29

But I know that there was one father, and I don't remember if it was Augustine or Athanasius or someone else.

44:38

Oh, who wrote against early guy, a really early 2nd century father.

44:45

Man, his name is scathing. Nope. Ignatius? Nope. Keep going.

44:50

Polycarp? Nope. Just a martyr. It was him. He made the argument that one of the reasons that martyr was using the

45:03

Septuagint is because more of those scriptures, the way they're worded, for example, Isaiah 53, is pointing to Christ.

45:11

Whereas his argument to the Hebrew scriptures and to the Jews, namely, is that they've changed that.

45:16

Now, I don't know if that's what happened or not. But that's what martyr says, is that the Hebrews intentionally changed that to point away from Christ.

45:23

And so I think that was one of those cultural reasons. It was definitely polemic. It was definitely one of those apologetic things that Justin would use the

45:33

Septuagint over the Hebrew canon. But I find it, the thing that stands out amongst everything that you guys have said, and it's the one thing.

45:42

It's what I listened to with the James White videos, and it was the thing that was brought up in every single one of them.

45:48

And White said the same thing you did, Jeremiah, is that scripture is self -attesting, right?

45:53

It reveals itself. The church doesn't establish the canon, but it recognizes the scripture.

45:59

And I just have a hard time with that. Why? Why do I say that? Because not only do we have disagreements, granted, there is the

46:07

Protestant canon in every single one of those lists. And I think that's something that Dale and Josh and myself thought was miraculous almost about this canon list, about all these canon lists that stem from, against Apion, Josephus, all the way down, is that there is this core set of books that stands out above the rest.

46:30

And I find that, I think it's beautiful. But there's still this disagreement. Even today we find, you know, because I believe that there's

46:38

Christians, that there's true believers in God in every denomination, including Eastern Orthodox, including

46:43

Roman Catholicism, right? And it just, it bothers me in one sense that there's still this disagreement.

46:51

Well, if you ask Jeremiah, what is scripture? He's going to give you the Protestant canon. If you ask an Eastern Orthodox, what is scripture?

46:58

He's going to give you another set, right? And it's almost subjective in the sense. So that's the thing that stands out to me the most.

47:04

I'm sure you guys have got a rebuttal to that, and I would love to hear it, honestly. Yeah. Solid Scripture, like I said, it's a whole worldview where we're saying it's self -attesting, but we don't disparage church history.

47:20

And so this is where, when I'm talking to a Roman Catholic, and the moment that I'm starting to say things like you, saying, well, hey, some things that kind of confirm my heart reading

47:29

God's word is looking back at church history. And they're like, oh, it's no longer scripture alone then.

47:35

And I'm like, okay, we got to talk about this now, I guess. You're right. And I'm like, all solid scripture is saying is the ultimate authority is that which is

47:45

God -breathed. You have to make a case for something other than scripture being

47:50

God -breathed, and how are you going to do that? Well, if you go back to the scripture to do it, well, you're doing that whole solid scripture thing in principle.

47:57

And then the pushback is kind of prima scriptura. And I'm like, well, you would have to show exegetically, the tradition that's used a handful of times is meant to be theanustos, which

48:09

I actually believe is because I believe the tradition is the handed -down gospel, but in the way that Rome or Greek Orthodox would.

48:17

So that has to be an exegetical case. And so to me, when we're asking about the canon of scripture, it's a separate argument than sola scriptura.

48:28

Sola scriptura is a worldview. It's a type of epistemology, to quote the other Paul. And so when we talk about the closed canon, we're saying that happened in time, and we can be persuaded on good reasons of how that came about without having the infallible certainty of God's self -attesting word.

48:46

And so I want you to know, Tyler, I feel you when we're over here saying we don't have a golden index. That would be really nice to have.

48:53

This evening, I'm actually going to try to do that, though. Okay. So we'll get there as it comes out in the conversation.

49:04

But yeah, does that make sense? It does. Sola scriptura doesn't say we don't look to tradition at all.

49:10

We just look at it as a secondary authority, and with all the diversity we're over, saying that's exactly what we'd expect.

49:16

Absolutely. I agree 100%. And just to add to what you said about making the cumulative case for what is scripture and given reasons why we're in 49 minutes right now.

49:26

And so I don't think maybe we do, but to make that case necessarily, love to have you back on a second episode to do that.

49:33

But I agree 100%. It takes time. And the thing that – because you had said just a second ago that you would classify the gospel or define the gospel being handed down as tradition.

49:44

If anybody's having these conversations, I think that is the important thing that we all have to start with is define your terms.

49:52

It's just like any apologetic thing, right? Any conversation about Christianity you're having, especially with somebody else that believes maybe a little bit different than you, define your terms at the get -go, and you will go right past a boatload of headache.

50:06

I promise. That's good. What do you think, David? Wow. I mean, there's a lot said there.

50:13

I mean, we could start, but I love something that popped up, as Tyler was saying, about a cumulative case of what we got and stuff like that.

50:22

And I started examining – and this was early on, so I'm just speaking off the top of my head.

50:28

I had a lot of debates with Roman Catholics because I was raised with Roman Catholics all my life. My stepdad was a

50:33

Roman Catholic and stuff like that. And I came to the point that, just like Tyler did, there's true believers in every aspect.

50:41

There is that notion of the invisible church. Okay, there is the invisible church versus the visible church, and we got a little bit of that last week.

50:50

We had the open mic, and I thought it was beautiful. Go ahead. Do you mind if I just interrupt?

50:56

Just a quick question for you. Do you think – okay, so I understand under inclusivity certain

51:03

Catholics can be saved and that sort of thing. But do you think that Catholicism proper, like somebody who understands all of the doctrines of Catholicism, is saved or – yeah.

51:15

I do believe that there is a mere Christianity, and I think that that mere Christianity, if people adhere to that, then that's enough.

51:24

I mean there – I think there's going to – in other words, I think there's going to be a lot more people in heaven than you think.

51:29

I think there's going to be a lot of people you thought would be in heaven that probably aren't. So there is a lot of that, but I think it does come down to how much you study.

51:39

There's lifetime. This study is a lifetime of study. I was looking at a gentleman that talked about how the study of the canon, the

51:48

Old Testament canon, took him most of his life to study the Old Testament canon. And what

51:54

I see on the surface, like I see problems with the apocrypha, blatant contradictions, like even down to the reign of Nebuchadnezzar.

52:04

And then I see, being familiar with Greek philosophy and Dale Ewood too,

52:10

I see stuff like the Wisdom of Solomon displaying blatantly neoplatonism.

52:18

Can you give an example of that? I haven't written down, but I'll go off the top of my head.

52:24

So in the Wisdom of Solomon, they use exact phrases in the

52:29

Greek that would be used by Greek philosophers describing neoplatonism, such as the soul weighing down the body, stuff like that.

52:40

So when you look at that, you could see that Solomon and his people never write it, so it has to be pseudepigrapho.

52:46

We probably all agree on that. But even if it's by a Hellenized Jew, we see the

52:51

Greek philosophy producing itself in there. We don't see that in the Gospels. We don't see that when

52:58

Jesus holds account to the Pharisees on what is written versus what is said.

53:06

We don't see any of that. So I said, well, did they have a better grasp on the scriptures than we're giving them credit for?

53:13

What's the cumulative case for that? And that's kind of like my process, and that's how

53:19

I kind of go about it. So when – at the end of the day, when I see Judith get

53:26

Nebuchadnezzar's reign wrong, like blatantly wrong, I have to say, okay, what's going on here?

53:32

What's the bigger picture? And then I look into what is actually written, and then that's kind of like how

53:38

I compare and contrast. So – Send me that passage later. Oh, I will, man.

53:43

I can send you each and every one of those passages. Then I look further into church history because we can't stop at the second century when we look at church history.

53:55

When you look at Glossa Ordinaria, we see that all the apocryphal books are stated specifically that they aren't scripture.

54:04

And this is the unified church at the time. This is all throughout the Middle Ages. The Glossa Ordinaria was used all throughout.

54:12

So even by then they had come to the conclusion, hey, look, these aren't scriptures, and they had their reasons. Now, I'm still investigating a lot of those reasons just in my spare time because I'm actually –

54:25

I was telling Tyler I got to talk about the new perspective versus the old perspective of Paul right now in my classes, and I got nothing.

54:35

So, yeah, I got to look at that. So there's a lot of stuff that's in my head, and there's a lot of stuff that I investigate.

54:44

But when I look at it cumulatively, I see a consistency, and I'm sure

54:50

Jeremiah and Dale and Tyler, you both will agree that – or all of you will agree that you'll see the gospels.

54:57

You'll see those epistles of Paul. You'll see these core documents that are with us the entire time.

55:08

The earliest lists have the four gospels. And the way they're grouped together is even by the

55:15

Holy Spirit if you ask me. They're not grouped together in any sort of way to – they're not put on the same level as like the

55:24

Shepherd of Hermes. They're not put on the same level as even Hebrews, who we don't know who the author is.

55:30

So we see this, and we do see a criteria that pops its way into history, which is the apostolic, close friends of the apostolic people that claim that they're writing down what the apostles said.

55:49

Or eyewitnesses – they're interviewing eyewitnesses and their close companions to an apostle.

55:55

That's the New Testament. The Old Testament, like Jeremiah said, would be prophetic.

56:01

Either a prophet writes it or God gives a prophecy to a king and priest.

56:07

And then there's history, which contains prophets. So you have kings and chronicles, and you have kings that talk about Elisha and Elijah and their prophecies and the things that came true there.

56:22

So I would – that's where I would – that's kind of like how my process works. But anyways, I probably said too much.

56:28

I'm not trying to preach. Back to the questions. Tyler? TYLER COWEN You appealed to tradition is what you're saying.

56:34

No, I'm just kidding. But you know what? Joshua said – Joshua Sherman said something that was really – and I want to point this out.

56:41

He said something really strong. He said the pillar – the pillar is the church.

56:47

The pillar of all truth is a church. The pillar of truth is a church. It's a pillar of truth. And I said, well, a pillar has to have a foundation to be set upon.

56:56

And that foundation – apostles and the prophets, right? So to me, that is what is self -attested.

57:04

That is the scripture that is self -attested. That's why I hold to the version of soul scripture that says it is sufficient.

57:11

Okay, anyways. Okay, fair enough. All right. Right on, right on. Guys, before we transition, is there anything, like, closing to that whole spiel that you would like to add to?

57:23

I would like to add one thing, and I say this with love, and we may all differ a little bit when I say this.

57:28

I do agree that there are gods elect in all these different denominations within Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholics.

57:36

But this is how I view that. In order for somebody to be saved, they would not be holding to, like Dale was asking,

57:44

Roman Catholicism proper. Now, this is my own personal stance. As long as somebody doesn't hold to the exclusion of sola fide,

57:53

I think there's room for discussing how baptism works, you know, and all these things. Because when I look at the early church fathers,

58:00

I find someone like Marius Victorinus clearly held to salvation by faith alone, and yet he had a version of baptismal regeneration.

58:10

You know what I look at that and see? Inconsistency. I don't anathematize him on that basis. Now, with Rome, after the

58:17

Council of Trent, they have at large anathematized salvation by grace alone through faith alone.

58:24

So you know what that allows me to do? Evangelize the Roman Catholics as I bump into them today.

58:30

And before the Council of Trent, I can claim Augustine. I can claim all these guys that didn't carry that fundamental denial of salvation by faith alone.

58:38

So I hope that makes sense, and I wasn't trying to be mean in saying that. No, no, yeah, that makes perfect sense. Thanks for answering, because I actually kind of agree with you.

58:46

Catholicism proper, I don't think, leads to salvation. There are a couple of problematic doctrines, at least in there.

58:54

But that doesn't mean that any individual Catholic might not be saved, right?

58:59

Because maybe they don't know. Right. And just so I'll add my two cents into that,

59:06

I think there's absolute tenets of Roman Catholicism proper that justify—and

59:13

I don't mean that in a good way, right? They justify it themselves in its work salvation.

59:20

I mean, you look at the indulgences. You look at the concept of merit within the Roman Catholic Church.

59:26

That goes, in my opinion, against the gospel 100%. Salvation is by grace through faith alone in Christ alone.

59:33

And, no, I have a big problem with somebody that would hold that. Yeah, I would agree.

59:41

The only thing is, Dale, you kind of alluded to this, is that there are individuals, right?

59:48

And I see, even in Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism, I see what we call the problem of dissent, right?

59:56

There is that we must take into consideration. And that's where my view of mere

01:00:02

Christianity would present itself, right? So even if someone would say, yeah, I hold to this idea of what

01:00:12

Catholicism is producing at the time, whatever doctrine, they might hold to that.

01:00:17

But that's not what they really believe because they haven't really investigated. They just accepted Jesus Christ as their

01:00:23

Lord and Savior, and that's kind of where they are. And if they really knew about it, they'd probably join in with the problem of dissent, which the

01:00:31

Catholic Church likes to turn its back on. And so does Eastern Orthodoxy to an extent.

01:00:37

I would say that they're a lot better at handling things like that, but they're not – they still do it.

01:00:44

There's still a lot of it that goes on. And I've noticed that. I even just listened to a recent debate between Eastern Orthodox and Protestant, and it was really interesting to see that actually naturally come about.

01:01:00

And I would actually send that to each and every one of you to get your opinions on it.

01:01:06

But anyways, it was a good debate. It was a good debate, but yeah. I totally agree with what you're saying there,

01:01:12

Russell, because one example I gave, Richard Swinburne. I think if you follow the logical entailments of his belief about the

01:01:20

Trinity, the functional monotheism model, he's a heretic. He believes in tritheism, but he doesn't realize the logical implications.

01:01:30

So I have no – he's saved. I believe he's a saved Christian. But if you understand the logical implications, that's where the problem is kind of thing.

01:01:39

And let's be honest. None of us have the original tradition. We don't.

01:01:45

Yeah, some of these traditions go back thousands of years, and you can see that replicated. I don't know about that.

01:01:51

You could see that replicated in the mass, and you could see that represented in the liturgy.

01:01:57

You could see a lot of it. But to say that the set tradition is what it was and it hasn't evolved,

01:02:05

I think that's kind of – I think we need to take another look at that. And you see even the

01:02:12

Eastern Orthodoxy changed up in the 8th and 9th century. You can see where that happens. You could see where – and some of it was carried on from early on, no doubt.

01:02:23

But you could see the mass and the way that changed when it got converted over to Constantinople.

01:02:32

I mean, they did change. We don't have the original tradition. The best we have is from Acts where we know that they met twice a day.

01:02:41

One was for believers, and one was for nonbelievers. I always thought that they met second for the believers because they actually ate and they hung out together and ate food and listened to the teachings of the apostles.

01:02:57

But the first one we know they greeted everybody with the holy kiss. They – side to side, they kissed each other, and that's where they sat down, and they had the unbelievers there, and they would preach.

01:03:09

How the churches ran, you could see several. And I just – and I just listened to this again for the second time.

01:03:16

You can see several of the churches ran by the presbyter, by the laity almost.

01:03:24

It was wild, and I was looking at that. Some early church fathers that were talking about that that are well -known.

01:03:30

It was pretty wild, but anyways. I'll kick it back to my brothers.

01:03:36

Dale, you got anything? No, I think we pretty much covered that issue.

01:03:42

I think we're kind of largely in agreement on this, actually. I've actually got – sorry,

01:03:48

Dale. Go ahead. No, no problem. Yeah, I'm finished. I think we're largely in agreement, so that's good.

01:03:55

Yeah, there's so many things I could say about that. I won't, though, just for the sake of the show. And I've actually got a question for Jeremiah.

01:04:02

So, Jeremiah, in a debate – let's get back on Sola Scriptura. In a debate you participated in, you guys talked about the ontology and epistemology of Scripture.

01:04:12

And we have actually brought those words up tonight. Can you break those two concepts down for us and explain the difference between the two?

01:04:20

Yeah, so there's a lot I can say. And I will say this, that when we start talking about either feature ontology or epistemology or ethics, we are already presupposing an entire worldview.

01:04:33

A worldview has those three pillars, and they're interdependent with one another.

01:04:38

That's why we can distinguish those categories, but they can never be truly separated. Does that make sense?

01:04:44

Yeah. And so, I mean, I have these conversations with atheists all the time that say I'm conflating my

01:04:49

Christianity with epistemology and ontology. It's not true. Anytime you talk about epistemology, you're always assuming a type of existence.

01:04:59

And so when it relates to Sola Scriptura, Peter Williams, the gentleman that I engaged with the debate in, he said, canon one, ontology, and canon two, epistemology.

01:05:10

And his point is if you don't have a golden index, an epistemological list of what the Scripture is, then you get no ontological canon.

01:05:18

And I'm over here saying, well, you're welcome to posit that worldview. But since I believe the

01:05:24

Scriptures are self -attesting, and I'm allowed to look to the secondary authority of history, no problem whatsoever.

01:05:31

And so that's what they're trying to do is to say that it's a self -defeating argument. If Scripture is sufficient, then

01:05:37

Scripture should also give you the parameters of Scripture. Dr. White has always said, look, Sola Scriptura doesn't necessitate

01:05:45

Tota Scriptura, even though those are important. But how we come to the completion of the canon is a different issue.

01:05:51

It's related, but it's not necessary for establishing the epistemology of God's perspicuous, clearly revealed

01:06:00

Word. And that's why I made it transcendental. There's a feature in Sola Scriptura that's embedded in it that's different than Rome's tri -part structure.

01:06:09

And it's that God's Word is perspicuous. It's clear on the issues of salvation, rule, and practice, and so forth.

01:06:15

And I'm saying unless that's already true as a precondition for our human intelligibility, everything's going to render itself in chaos because you never have a clear enough starting point.

01:06:28

And so does that kind of make sense? Is the epistemology is the list, and then ontology is the nature of Scripture.

01:06:35

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Dale? Yeah, no, that makes sense to me, the way you've kind of said it there.

01:06:46

I've never heard of it kind of distinguished in terms of the epistemology and ontology.

01:06:51

But yeah, the way you've described it makes sense to me. Is there a way that—so reading

01:06:57

Dr. James White's book, Sola Scriptura, he lists the difference between canon one and canon two, right?

01:07:04

Is that kind of what you're talking about? Do the two—okay, gotcha. And it was easy because—did y 'all listen to Peter Williams' debate,

01:07:13

Dr. White, about a decade ago? Oh, that's on the internet. Yeah, I think so.

01:07:19

Is Peter Williams the Roman Catholic? Yep. Okay. That's Peter S. Williams, right?

01:07:25

I know there's a guy called Peter Williams. Yeah, and he didn't change his argument over 10 years, so I was ready for it.

01:07:32

That's always nice, ain't it? Yeah, that's true. And Peter, brilliant man.

01:07:38

So, I mean, I really appreciated that exchange. And then the other gentleman, Joe, I believe is his name, he stepped in for—I cannot—Swan?

01:07:49

I can't remember the Roman Catholic's name. Swan something. He's pretty popular. Swan Sona. He's actually a friend of what

01:07:57

I was doing, PRA. He's a good guy, and he's really smart. Oh, heck yeah.

01:08:02

Really good. Really good. He was supposed to be in that debate, and he had things come up.

01:08:07

And so Joe stepped in, and to Joe's credit, he has a whole website called Shameless Potpourri, and it's quoting that—I think it's 1

01:08:16

Timothy 3 .15 about the church being the ground and pillar of the truth or something. So I was able to study all of his arguments, and it was like, let's go, baby.

01:08:25

Nice. Right on. So I do want to speak to something.

01:08:31

Yeah. Because it's something you said, Tyler. It would be nice if we had a list, right?

01:08:37

And so with that going in super depth, something that intrigued me by this book—and y 'all, maybe you'll get a kick out of this.

01:08:45

I've latched on to this argument, and I had to give up my eschatology in order to make it work. I've had to change eschatologies in order for this to work.

01:08:52

Oh, boy. Yeah. Okay. Because, you know, the eschatology discussions are like superheated when people are just dogmatic and uncharitable.

01:09:00

Right. And I was one of those. But this book rocked my world. I even called my pastor that I served with, and I was like, hey, what this book is offering, a stronger case for sola scriptura and cessationism, which

01:09:14

I love my continuationist brothers. I just want to throw that out there. I just said, all I have to do is let go of my premillennialism, and it can work.

01:09:22

So I don't know where y 'all are at on the spectrum. At 12 .5, I've been teaching through the three orthodox positions of eschatology.

01:09:29

And I started with premill. I did postmill. I had to listen to a lot of Jeff Durbin. I feel like I understand the framework well.

01:09:35

And then all mill. And so that's been good. And, by the way, I mentioned to y 'all, I think, off air, something that you'll see on my channel, is

01:09:41

I do a lot of work against full or hyper -preterisms, because that's rearing its ugly head in my local town.

01:09:49

Okay. Just out of curiosity, and you might have mentioned it, what did you change to? You were premillennialist.

01:09:56

So in order for this to work, it takes a very specific understanding of Daniel Nunn, and it's outside the purview of premillennialism.

01:10:07

So all mill or postmill can account for how Dr. Kaiser works. And so I'm in the middle of all mill and postmill, and I do a lot of work with Dr.

01:10:16

Sam Frost, who is all mill. And I love Kim Riddlebarger on the case for all millennialism.

01:10:22

But I've not pushed away postmill. I enjoy listening to how they formulate things, and my church understands.

01:10:29

I'm just going to give it time for whatever sits in my heart. And so, obviously, I've had to look at the

01:10:34

Olivet Discourse and Daniel Nunn, the Book of Revelation, differently leaving premillennialism. But the thing is, here at 12

01:10:40

Five, we say as long as you're orthodox within these three views, we can have charity, awesome conversations about the nature of the millennium, about how

01:10:50

God has fulfilled his promises to Israel. But the essentials are Jesus is coming back, future bodily the judge of living and the dead.

01:10:58

We as believers are going to receive resurrected bodies fit for eternity, and God is going to restore heaven on earth.

01:11:05

Those are essentials, non -negotiables, things that full preterism takes away. So that's our take at 12

01:11:13

Five. So I'm somewhere in the middle of all mill and postmill. I would say that too.

01:11:19

There's just something in me that says Jesus is coming back, right? He's coming back. And I can't wait.

01:11:26

Isn't it wild that people would try to take away our blessed hope and call it a realized hope? Right.

01:11:31

He's coming back. Tyler, you coming back, man? He's coming back, right? Tyler's like,

01:11:38

I ain't saying nothing. Yes, Jesus is coming back. He's coming back, yes. No, I was thinking about my conversations with some

01:11:45

Jehovah's Witnesses, right? And the way they get around that is they, and I forget the

01:11:50

Greek word off the top of my head, right? I'm focused on Sola Scriptura. But they say, no, instead of coming, this word means presence, right?

01:11:59

Like he's already present. And so I'm just sitting here like, in certain contexts, yeah, it means presence.

01:12:05

But in certain contexts, it means coming. So, you know, that's just kind of what I'm thinking of right now.

01:12:10

We recently had some Jehovah's Witnesses over to our house. We invited them over to share a meal and to talk theology.

01:12:18

Like, where are you coming from? Let me tell you where I'm coming from. And so it was really, really edifying to learn about what they were saying.

01:12:25

I just can't get on board with them whenever it comes to their teachings about Jesus and other things like that.

01:12:32

But that's kind of what was going through my head there. But, yes, Jesus is coming back. I do want to address this as what if you're not

01:12:38

Orthodox. And I do want to make a clarification here. We're not talking about a specific sect here of Orthodox.

01:12:45

We're just talking about a teaching that is

01:12:50

Orthodox. I know that individual. That was an inside joke to me. Oh, was it? Okay, go for it, man.

01:12:56

You got it. Well, when we say Orthodox, we're saying that which is biblical.

01:13:02

And so this individual that lives in my hometown, that's the constant conversation we have because some people don't like the word

01:13:08

Orthodox. Just give me what the scripture says. It's like, hey, I'm doing that. But we don't disparage church history either.

01:13:14

Right? So that's all he was getting at. But real quick, I know we're at an hour and 15 minutes.

01:13:20

I can give you a flower review of the thing that broke my eschatology. And in return,

01:13:26

I feel like I have a better, stronger sola scriptura and cessationism. And I hope that doesn't offend anybody, me throwing that in there.

01:13:34

How dare you? No, I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. What Kaiser sets up to do is to say the

01:13:40

Old Testament predicted when God would speak and when God would not speak.

01:13:46

And I'm like, okay. And so he says the Old Testament predicted the intertestamental period when

01:13:51

God would not speak. There would be no prophetic word. And even the Apocrypha books themselves say, hey, there was no prophet living during this time.

01:14:00

Which remember earlier in my argument, what's crucial to scripture is it has to be prophetic. And so the Apocrypha books give themselves a way of saying, yeah, this is not during a time where God was speaking.

01:14:12

And so Kaiser makes the point the Old Testament predicted that. And then also predicts that there would be a sealing up of prophet in vision after the destruction of the temple in 70

01:14:23

A .D. So what that would mean is there's no more word of God after 70

01:14:29

A .D., after the first century. So if this were true, think about the devastating effects that this has on almost all the cults.

01:14:38

So this throws out Islam because they have the

01:14:44

Quran and they had another self -proclaimed prophet, Muhammad. And this argument would say, no, that comes after 70

01:14:51

A .D. You can't do that. This throws out Mormonism with the living prophet in their added books. You can't do that.

01:14:56

And then obviously it's going to have devastating effects on Roman Catholicism that has the apostolic secession, right, of a living voice of God on earth with the pope and the magisterium.

01:15:07

It's like, nope, that all stopped after 70 A .D. And you just go on and on and on. And it even touches continuationism to say, no, there's not a revelatory word after this point.

01:15:18

So y 'all can imagine me thinking, if Kaiser can do this, I'm all on board.

01:15:23

And I just have to change my understanding of Daniel 9 to make it happen. Jeremiah, can

01:15:29

I ask you a question? Absolutely. And this is not like full, like, pedal to the metal seriousness.

01:15:35

But let me read you something, and then I want to get your take on it. So I'm in Luke 2, and I'm at verse 25.

01:15:41

Now there was a man in Jerusalem named Simeon who was righteous and devout, looking for the restoration of Israel.

01:15:47

And the Holy Spirit was upon him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the

01:15:54

Lord's Christ. So my question to you is, is Simeon the first one God spoke to between the intertestamental period and the

01:16:00

New Testament period? I feel like this is trivia, because I'm trying to think.

01:16:07

You just made a comment, bro, about God not speaking in the intertestamental times. And I'm like, well, Simeon was living during that.

01:16:14

And we're saying the rough range of the 400 years.

01:16:19

So that's the big point. Because with John the Baptist precedes Jesus, which we'd say

01:16:25

Malachi says is going to happen. And so, yeah, when we're saying during the intertestamental period, there's a bleeding over to that.

01:16:34

And so that is interesting, because I would say he said that with the arrival of John the

01:16:41

Baptist ministry. But it's interesting, because even the apocryphal books don't claim to be written by a prophet.

01:16:49

You don't see the thus saith the Lord. And that kind of goes back to how you would understand

01:16:56

Hosea chapter 3. And I'm trying to think of the other one, Hosea and Amos chapter 8. That does make this strong case that God is going to have a type of judgment where there is going to be a famine, not in bread, but in God's word from sea to sea, from as far as the east is to the west, that you won't be able to hear the word of God.

01:17:14

And so, but I like your point with Simeon, like that to me would say, OK, the 400 years is over at this point.

01:17:20

Yeah, and not to mention about you brought up John the Baptist and being a prophet, right? He's the last prophet.

01:17:27

And that just brings a whole new realm of meaning to me anyway, or another addition to it.

01:17:32

Whenever Jesus said the first would be last and the last would be first. And he says that John being the last prophet is the greatest of them all.

01:17:38

I'm just like, so anyway. Not when with John the Baptist. Really blows your mind, man. Like, like being you saying that,

01:17:45

Tyler, just blew my mind. You know, that was that was amazing. That was a good point. With John the

01:17:51

Baptist kind of being the last of the prophets of old. It's interesting because Paul even saw his own writings as prophetic.

01:18:00

Peter said that about his own writings. Anybody carried along by the Holy Spirit. And then the apostle

01:18:05

John in Revelation refers to his own writings as prophetic. And so what that tells me is you do have a unique God.

01:18:16

And long ago, speaking in various ways with the prophets. Right. But then something being categorically distinct, different, yet still having continuity.

01:18:27

That's why earlier I was saying it's important that Scripture be prophetic. Whether that be at the hands of an apostle.

01:18:34

But they would be functioning as the prophets of old giving us Scripture. And so, yeah, this whole book kind of says, hey,

01:18:44

Scripture itself, beginning in the Old Testament. Tells us, predicted when God would speak and when he would not speak.

01:18:50

Yeah, we're not allowed to read any presuppositionalism. Maybe you? I'm totally kidding.

01:18:58

Actually, since David said that, Jeremiah. You know what's funny? You know what's funny, though, is that I was making a presuppositional argument.

01:19:06

And everybody was getting on me a week ago. I said, guys, I'm an accumulative case topologist. I said, so I do see value in some of the presuppositional stuff.

01:19:15

Was it Gary Habermas? Is he known for an incremental case? Gary is an evidentialist.

01:19:23

I read the five years on apologetics. I can't remember who represented the accumulative case.

01:19:29

Accumulative case was Feinberg. Paul Feinberg. And what

01:19:34

I liked what he did is he kind of strayed away from the old accumulative case.

01:19:42

Okay, so there's two types of accumulative cases. There was the one that said, okay, this argument is like a bucket, but it's got a leak.

01:19:48

So if I put it on top of another bucket with a leak, it will be fine. And the buckets go all the way to the floor to where it will plug up all the leaks.

01:19:58

But the new accumulative case is a lot different than that. It's saying, okay, let's take random arguments.

01:20:05

Let's see where people are at, and let's witness to them where they're at. It's more of a relational apologetic than it is anything else.

01:20:15

But I was going to ask you this. I was going to ask you this because you mentioned it, and I want to press you on it just a little bit.

01:20:23

There is a lot of those apocryphal books like Maccabees where they do say that they're not inspired, basically.

01:20:31

Exactly. Specifically those. Okay. Yeah, I knew there was a few, and I knew that even in the

01:20:38

Zedake document in Jubilees, they also have similar claims.

01:20:45

So I was wondering about those. I might say that wrong. No, no.

01:20:50

So check this out. So this is something I tried to bring up in my opening statement, I think. So we know in Romans 3,

01:20:57

Paul says the oracles of God belong to the Jews. So Jews had an understanding of God's word.

01:21:04

And so a lot of this kind of moves to the Gospels with what Jesus said. Well, he appealed to the threefold distinction within the

01:21:10

Tanakh, Moses, the prophets, and the writings. And then I think it's in Matthew 23 and other places.

01:21:16

He quotes from the book of Genesis, the blood of Abel, all the way to Barakah, right, one of the martyrs.

01:21:23

And says that would have been in 2 Chronicles. This would have spanned the entire Tanakh. And so the point is they are excluding the apocryphal text.

01:21:32

They're talking about what is God -breed, the standard that Jesus held the Sadducees or the

01:21:37

Pharisees to. And there was never an ecumenical council to determine what that is.

01:21:44

So there was a standard of what Scripture was in itself, attesting nature, that even

01:21:49

Jesus held them to. Have you not read these things? And I always thought that was compelling to say, okay, when we do look inside of Scripture, we seem to be getting these markers of, yeah, they did not see the apocryphal text, those that came after the writings as being

01:22:05

God -breed. Many of those apocryphal books said this is not written by a prophet, right?

01:22:11

And we're over here saying that's a problem. And then Kaiser is saying, and then even Hosea and Amos are saying, yeah, there's going to be a period where God is not going to speak in any way.

01:22:23

So in my opinion, that doubly hits Roman Catholicism's list as they appeal to the dudo list, and they have an ongoing living prophet after 780.

01:22:34

All right. Well, I have a question for you, because I'm trying to look at the list.

01:22:39

I think we've pretty much covered all the areas there. But one of the questions is about what do you think is one of the strongest arguments for sola scriptura?

01:22:49

But I'd like to add, what do you think is one of the strongest arguments against sola scriptura, and how do you respond to that?

01:22:57

Fair. So my favorite way of presenting sola scriptura, obviously

01:23:02

I'm going to appeal to 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17, saying, look, that which is God -breathed, all of scripture equips the man of God for reproof, for godness, all these things.

01:23:13

And it's like, man, scripture, that which is distinguished from all other things, that's going to grow me in sanctification, right?

01:23:21

But it's funny, I actually mentioned this to David Pullman a year ago. He didn't like this point. But I told him,

01:23:27

John 17, 17, to me, this is sola scriptura in a nutshell. Father sanctified them in the truth.

01:23:35

Your word is truth. Now, Kaiser brings out a point of saying this would have been totally different if Jesus would have said your word is true.

01:23:44

Because when you say something is true, you are judging its truthfulness, if it's right or wrong.

01:23:50

Jesus didn't say that. He said your word is truth. And so this is a completely different worldview.

01:23:57

This is a different paradigm. The word of God, whether it be rhema or inscripturated through a prophet, prophetic ministry, that's the highest court of appeal.

01:24:06

And that's the bar, the precipia of truth itself. What is truth? That which corresponds to reality,

01:24:13

I would add, as perceived by the sovereign triune God. Because this all comes back to truth.

01:24:19

Truth at the end of the day is so important. And when I talk to my students or discipleship with adults, it's like, why are you a

01:24:25

Christian? Is it because that's what grandma told you was right, and she took you to church, and you're just doing the same old, same old?

01:24:31

Or are you convinced that Jesus is the truth? Because if you're convinced this is truth, this is a game changer.

01:24:39

And if it is truth, we should be able to be equipped to talk about these in such a way that the world is not going to be able to have an apologetic, a defense when we come at them with truth.

01:24:50

So John 17, 17 is so important because not only is the word of God truth, but it can sanctify us.

01:24:56

It can grow us in being set apart. So that's what I like. Anything that touches on that.

01:25:03

Obviously, John's gospel says the scripture cannot be broken. Hebrews 6 talks about when God speaks or makes a promise, it's of the highest authority.

01:25:11

And it even makes a type of circular argument. Forgive my presuppositionalism, but there are types of circularities that aren't vicious.

01:25:19

As Vantillians, we would say, are virtuous. So that's inescapable.

01:25:25

Everybody's worldview is circular to a degree. Foundationalism will get you out of that. Oh man,

01:25:31

I'm not taking that bait right now. So does that kind of answer,

01:25:37

Dale, on the positive side, how I start laying the groundwork for Sola Scriptura? And I do make a distinction.

01:25:43

Sola Scriptura is pinpointing what scripture is by its nature, not necessarily getting into the completion of the canon and what those parameters are, even though I'm waiting for somebody to really press me on the scriptures that predict the intertestinal period and the sealing up of vision and prophet after the destruction of the temple, which those have eschatological implications.

01:26:05

But to me, it's like, you want the golden index? It's there. Can I ask you a question,

01:26:10

Jeremiah? Absolutely. So I'm looking at John 17, 17 right now, and Jesus says,

01:26:19

Given that graphe, the word normally meant scripture, in the

01:26:26

New Testament, is not used, how do you know Jesus isn't referring to himself there? I would say it's necessarily both.

01:26:34

So in John 1, you have Jesus exegeting the

01:26:39

Father in verse 18, which is the bookend to verse 1. And so the whole point of Sola Scriptura is not an emphasis on the scriptura part, that which is inscripturated, but the principle of how

01:26:51

God has clearly revealed himself. And so I agree with you. I'm saying, yes, this would also include

01:26:58

Jesus being the logos, right? The one who has clearly made the

01:27:04

Father known. I'm just saying it doesn't stop there. So the word of God is, you know, being expressed through the

01:27:11

Son, or in the Old Testament where you have theophanies, where you hear a booming voice, or through the writings of the prophets.

01:27:18

So I'm kind of just saying the word of God, in whichever form it takes, that's truth. Gotcha. And even

01:27:24

God's spoken word, right? You know, I mean, God created through the word of God, right?

01:27:30

Which has so many connotations. When you apply the word God to Jesus, it's just, again, mind blown. Don't forget.

01:27:37

My mind's blown. I mean, guys, I'm telling you what, like, Dale, Tyler, Jeremiah.

01:27:43

I mean, Jeremiah, you just opened up a whole new world, a whole new avenue of study with eschatology and the word.

01:27:50

You know? Like, I'm going to have to look into eschatology and how it relates to the Holy Scripture. Like, I didn't know that.

01:27:57

But it makes sense. John MacArthur, pre -millennialism, pre -Trib.

01:28:03

And, I mean, when I preached at my church. You know, partial preterism.

01:28:10

But, like, you know, just what you described tonight. And, like, there's avenues that I haven't even looked into yet that didn't even come to mind.

01:28:20

I'm going to have to get Kaiser's book and look into that as well. I think that's going to be beneficial. I will send you the link because he has a website to where you can give a donation of any amount, and then you can get the

01:28:31

PDF to download. All right. So, I'm just going to. So, I want an answer to the second part of the question.

01:28:38

I know. They chimed in. I was like, oh, they might have gotten me out of that one. Oh, were you guys trying to do that?

01:28:44

No? Okay. So, it's up to you. Do what you want. No, no. I would definitely want to answer it. And I love this question when it gets brought up in debates because it's forcing the person to steel man the other position and to think, okay, what is the hardest thing?

01:28:58

And I guess it would be looking at church history.

01:29:04

So, like me being a Reformed Baptist, I can't see one Reformed Baptist in everything that I believe, early church history.

01:29:11

Right? You know what I mean? Like, I believe the church, Semper Reformanda. I believe that there is an ever -growing and refining of theology, which is actually an era pointed back to the early church.

01:29:22

You know what I mean? And so, I think initially when Roman Catholics say, we just look everything through ancient eyes.

01:29:29

Right? This unbroken chain of tradition. I think, Dale, that is so appealing to people.

01:29:36

It's saying we are the ancient faith that's been preserved all throughout time.

01:29:42

There's something appealing about that. And I think Peter Williams' argument of trying to canon one, canon two.

01:29:51

Yeah, I get it. I want the golden index. And I think they have it with church history being. And this is the key. Church history being infallible.

01:29:58

Tradition being infallible. And the Reformers are saying literally it can't be because that belongs to God and Him alone.

01:30:05

And the Scriptures aren't just written by man. Right? They were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

01:30:10

And since it is God -breed, that's why sola scriptura is true. It's because of its nature.

01:30:17

Does that make sense? I hope I wasn't like a politician and danced around the question. Oh, no. That was awesome. I was just sincerely interested in what your take is because obviously this is something you've studied a lot.

01:30:27

So great answer. Thank you. Thank you. And just to add to what Jeremiah said, you know, in talking about Rome, I know we've been kind of dissing on Rome a lot tonight, but I think they have a fundamental problem.

01:30:38

And that's what I was talking about earlier with some of their, if you don't believe this, your anathema.

01:30:44

Right? And one of those things is not only the infallibility of church history, but the infallibility of the pope.

01:30:51

And the problem, the fundamental problem I see in that, and it's funny because an

01:30:56

Eastern Orthodox guy brought this out, right? Like I was reading one of their books and he brought this out, is that, well, what do you do when the popes disagree with each other?

01:31:04

And you can't have it both ways at that point. If one pope contradicts another pope and both are infallible, you got a problem.

01:31:12

And so, yeah, go ahead, Jeremiah. So on my channel, I've debated two

01:31:17

Roman Catholics. The one was on sola scriptura that we've been talking about and the one before that was on one of the

01:31:22

Marian dogmas, was Mary sinless or not? Oh, yeah. We got all into this dance, and we agreed that we would not get into sola scriptura or Rome's tripart structure of authority because those are the deeper underlying issues because when you look at the passage of Scripture alone and you use exegesis in Scripture, interpreting

01:31:43

Scripture, they have no case. They have no case, and they know it's a far stretch. And so I just wanted to say that definitely want to encourage the audience to go check out some of those things.

01:31:53

And tell me what you think about this, Tyler. In my closing of my opening statement with the sola scriptura debate,

01:31:59

I said there is actually, because the biggest critique is sola scriptura makes complete anarchy, right?

01:32:06

You can just be your own pope and interpret the Scripture any way that you want. That's the thing. You all have a billion denominations, right?

01:32:12

Obviously, that's evidence that you all can't agree. Sure. So the more I looked into that, I was thinking, you know, those who are anti -sola scriptura, now that takes on a whole new meaning because that's something that Rome holds in common with Mormonism, you know, being anti -sola scripturist.

01:32:30

Well, they differ on virtually everything, the nature of God from being unitarian all the way to polytheist, right, as well as salvation only being for 144 ,000 to universalism, right?

01:32:43

And I'm just saying to reject sola scriptura is true anarchy, right?

01:32:49

Now, think on the flip side. Those who have confessionally held to sola scriptura on gospel issues, you want tradition, then we have

01:33:01

Trinitarians to the bone, you know what I mean, or sola scripturists. The single person of Jesus being both human and divine, there's a strong unity there, and salvation by faith alone.

01:33:12

And those are all first -year gospel issues that, for those that hold sola scriptura, all of those are in common.

01:33:19

It's the tertiary doctrines that you can kind of land all over the spectrum. Right. No, I agree. I think you're absolutely right.

01:33:25

I never liked the anarchy argument. I mean, it's because they have the same problem, and I think you did a great job of enunciating that just now, and so I really don't have anything to add, but I agree with you.

01:33:38

Absolutely. Guys, I want to say one thing before we close, and I know I've been playing devil's advocate a lot tonight, and it's because mainly

01:33:46

I've been researching these things lately, and I find some of the things that I was told by some of my good

01:33:55

Protestant friends and even my Protestant pastor, right, that there's more truth to it, right?

01:34:00

That's not the whole story, and I think it's important, like what Jeremiah has been enunciating tonight, that we really don't, if you do anything, don't disregard church history.

01:34:09

I mean, there is so much to learn there, but I do want to bring up one more thing, and I'm going to agree with you guys tonight, okay?

01:34:16

I'm going to end on a good note, and I want to read a piece from Ecclesiasticus, then

01:34:22

I want to read a piece from the New Testament, and I want to bring it all together, and so Sirach 24, or Ecclesiasticus 24 .21

01:34:29

says this. It says, those who eat of me, and it refers to wisdom in this context, those who eat of me will hunger for more, and those who drink of me will thirst for more.

01:34:42

Now, if you're a good New Testament reader, and you know your New Testament, that should be ringing out to you.

01:34:49

Didn't Jesus say something like that? And as a matter of fact, he did. In John 6, 35 -59, he says this.

01:34:55

Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

01:35:05

And I want to end with this. We remember the scene set at the Mount of Transfiguration whenever Jesus was in his glory, and he brought his closest inner witness of friends among him, right?

01:35:19

Peter, John, and James, if I'm not mistaken. And what do we see in that scene?

01:35:26

We see Moses, we see Elijah, and we see Jesus, and we see a cloud come down, and we hear from this cloud, this is my beloved son,

01:35:35

God the Father speaking. This is my beloved son. Listen to him.

01:35:42

Even if Jesus was alluding to Sirach here, what is Jesus saying that he's greater than what

01:35:50

Sirach said, even about wisdom, right? I think I've got my own views about wisdom whenever it comes to this, but Jesus is

01:36:00

God, period, end of subject, right? And the Old Testament, and as well as the

01:36:05

New Testament, or I'm sorry, the Apocrypha, speaks about wisdom being created in some sense, right?

01:36:12

And what's interesting, I think, that given the fact that Jesus is God in the flesh,

01:36:18

God incarnate, he's greater than tradition, he's greater than what was written in the intertestamental periods, and he's the source of Scripture.

01:36:29

I think we should do, I think we would all do good to do what God the

01:36:34

Father commanded us, and to listen to the Son. And I'll end with that. Can I piggyback on some of that?

01:36:41

Please. That was excellent, by the way. Thank you. Interesting you brought up the amount of transfiguration in Peter, James, and John.

01:36:51

Peter quotes this in 2 Peter 1, right? He leaves out the part where he was rebuked by God the

01:36:56

Father, telling him basically to be quiet and listen to Jesus. Yeah, I would too. But what he transitions from talking about the

01:37:03

Holy Mount is we have a more sure word, a prophetic word, that's like light shining in the darkness, probably quoting

01:37:11

Psalm. And he goes into those things that we just talked about. And what I love about that is

01:37:16

Peter was an eyewitness of these things, and yet he started wanting to build these tents to worship, right, with the implication of Jesus, Elijah, and Moses.

01:37:26

And that's when he got that healthy rebuke. And so I think we learn from that is the

01:37:32

Scripture is a more sure foundation even more than our own experience.

01:37:37

And I love my foundationalist brothers and analytic philosopher brothers, but I'm saying there's something you can be even more certain, and it's the truth of who

01:37:46

God is and His revealed word, which would be Jesus, just like you said. And you're talking about wisdom.

01:37:52

This is why I love philosophy, is because Christians should love wisdom more than anybody else, right?

01:37:58

And, you know, I do think philosophy is the handmaiden to theology, but that's to say anything good you can find in philosophy, you can find those principles embedded in God's word, right, who is the fount of all wisdom and knowledge.

01:38:10

I want to say this. This is where me and David differ, but I love him. Proverbs 1 .7

01:38:16

says, The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction.

01:38:23

And so I believe that what this is saying is for you to have knowledge and the true sense of, you know, and now we could qualify it as justified true belief, it must be built on Yahweh, the one true

01:38:36

God who has revealed these things. If you reject that as a worldview, as your precipium, as your starting point, then you're going to go down this route of absurdity, in my opinion.

01:38:47

And then the Proverbs continue to make that same point, but attach it to the

01:38:53

Holy One. So in Proverbs 9, love this. Do not reprove a scoffer, for he will hate you.

01:39:00

Reprove a wise man, and he will love you. Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be a wiser still.

01:39:05

Teach a righteous man, and he will increase in learning. So for one, that's why I love the healthy types of disagreement.

01:39:12

We can sharpen one another, Proverbs 27 .17, right? And so, hey, if I am seeking wisdom, discretion, and understanding, hey, throw those disagreements at me.

01:39:23

Let me process, let me understand it where you're coming from, right? And then he says in verse 10, the fear of the

01:39:28

Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.

01:39:34

I love Greg Bonson. I love the immediate application that he reaches into Colossians 3.

01:39:40

He points back to Christ. All the riches and treasures of wisdom and knowledge, all these things are found in Christ.

01:39:46

The logos, the eternal logos, the second person of the Godhead. You want to have wisdom?

01:39:52

You want to have knowledge? Look to Jesus. Look to his word. And I would go the distance to say, and if you reject that starting point, then you don't get any of it.

01:40:01

That was for you, David. What do you think, David? Ah, here we go.

01:40:11

No, I'm just joking. I'm not taking the bait on this one, man. That's smart. That's wisdom. No, you know what? Okay, that was a good one, too.

01:40:21

Anyways, man, it's been a great, great show overall, though. I was going to reference

01:40:27

Dale. I know he probably has some things to say about it, too, but yeah. Me and Dale are a lot closer and are apologetic than a lot of people know.

01:40:37

Yeah, well, we both study philosophy, right? Thanks for having me on. I'd love to do this again sometime.

01:40:44

Y 'all are awesome guys, and man, I think we could talk for hours and hours, so we just got to schedule this out and do it, right?

01:40:50

Yeah, man, anytime, bro. If you have a debate that you're itching to get scratched, then let us know and we'll host it for you.

01:40:59

I was just going to ask, are there any specific topics you're really interested in? Y 'all may laugh at this, but people have been saying, why don't you debate

01:41:08

Layton Flowers? I'm like, this man is brilliant, but I would like to do that.

01:41:16

I don't know if y 'all have connections. Yes, we do have connections. I've been talking with Marlon Wilson, and so something to do with determinism

01:41:24

I would like to do. But like you said, David, I will have a smile on my face.

01:41:29

I want him to be like, you know what? I disagree with Jeremiah, but I like him. That would be my goal. Well, it's going to be kind of hard not to like you, man.

01:41:37

You're a good guy. But talk to my wife. She's like, you don't understand. Well, she married you, so you got to be good to an extent there.

01:41:45

I was good when it counted. Jeremiah, and I would have to talk to him, but if you debated

01:41:53

Layton on Marlon's channel, maybe I could set something up with you and Tim Stratton on our channel.

01:42:02

I think that would be a pretty sweet conversation. I would like it. And I just want to say, I tip my hat to these guys. I don't pretend to be smarter or wiser than them, but it doesn't mean we can't have good discussion and debate.

01:42:12

That's how I approached. I'm a basketball fan. I played high school ball and in college and stuff.

01:42:19

And my goal was to not get mercy ruled by Peter and Joe in that debate. And so people are like, oh, no, there was good points both ways.

01:42:25

I'm like, yes, we did get steamrolled. Right on. Right on. David.

01:42:32

Well, real quick, there is an audience question, and I would like to address it just real quick.

01:42:37

So the Vulture asked, looking at the history of that Greek, and I'm assuming, and correct me if I'm wrong, Vulture, that you're talking about John 1717.

01:42:46

Was it created from the Westcott and Hort text? I'd ask if the text is perfect or contains errors, and how can we know if we don't have the originals?

01:42:56

And so I'm not exactly sure what you're talking about. So I've got Bruce Metzger's textual commentary on the

01:43:02

Greek New Testament 2nd edition, and there's nothing about John 1717 in there.

01:43:09

I guess I could go look at my critical text to see if there is a variant at that point.

01:43:15

But Metzger does a pretty good job, and David, and maybe even Jeremiah, if you guys, I know, David, you've got the book.

01:43:20

That's why I brought you up. But is there variants that he doesn't address?

01:43:27

Because he doesn't address the one, or if there's one in John 1717. But Jeremiah, do you?

01:43:34

I definitely have to look. Yeah, I mean, I'm looking at it right now, and there's not in there. So I don't know if he hits all the variants or just the major variants, but I'm not seeing a variant.

01:43:44

So, Vulture, if you could either message me, faithunaltered at gmail .com, to continue this conversation since we're getting ready to wrap up.

01:43:52

Tell me what you're talking about, because I'm not seeing it. He was asking me today on Real Seekers about this, but I think his question here is how can we tell if there's a scribal error if we don't actually have the original to compare them in.

01:44:08

Okay, you got that. Yeah, that's what I wanted to address, too. But, Jeremiah, I know you're a pastor, and I know you've had this conversation, probably,

01:44:17

I'm assuming you've had this conversation before. What would you say at this point? Yeah, this is where I'm just so indebted to Dr.

01:44:24

White. Definitely recommend his book, The King James Only Controversy. Yeah. And I used to be more

01:44:32

TR, and just being like, man, my new King James Bible, I'm going to try to say that this is somehow better than the

01:44:40

ESV and some of these other versions. And that was less sanctified, Jeremiah, back in the day.

01:44:46

But listening to Dr. White, and I do get how there are certain tools to historicity and how

01:44:53

God has preserved his word through this manuscript tradition. I like his analogy, and this is why

01:45:00

I say pastorally to people when there's textual discrepancy. So this doesn't hit totally the question that was being asked, but usually people at church are asking about the longer ending of Mark or the textual variant in John, last verse in chapter 7 into the early verses of chapter 8, 1

01:45:19

John 5 -7. Then there's another verse that's added or taken out in Acts chapter 8, all these places.

01:45:25

And it's like, Jeremiah, does this mean that there's errors in the word of God? I would say no, there's not an error in terms of we could be led astray about who

01:45:36

God is or anything like that. But what Dr. White has said was when we look at the span, we're talking about tradition, when we look at the span of textual criticism and manuscripts, we're dealing with a thousand -piece puzzle, but we have about a thousand and seven pieces.

01:45:54

And so when you ask the grammatical historical method question, what did Mark write?

01:46:00

Well, now you're going down the right path by looking at the earliest manuscripts and this particular theory of what at least makes sense to us about those earliest manuscripts that are closest to the time period of the people of Jesus and the apostles seem to carry greater weight.

01:46:18

And so I'm not a textual criticism scholar, but certain things are weighted differently.

01:46:24

And so that's why I'm of the persuasion of the critical text. It seems to make sense. And so when things get added, notice what's been added, things that do not alter the text in any way.

01:46:36

And it's similar to our conversation about certain canon lists because when these bigger lists, well, you can refine it down to still have the bare essence of what

01:46:46

I believe is God's word. Now, it is important because I do think that's a different conversation that does affect epistemology in certain ways.

01:46:55

But I trust God in those avenues. Yeah, and just to only add because he asked, the vulture asked specifically about the text of John 17, 17.

01:47:07

I agree with everything you just said, Jeremiah. I've got the NA28 right here, and the only variant, and it actually doesn't have anything to do with halagos, hassas.

01:47:20

There's no variant there. The only variant that's in John 17, 17 is this. One version says, sanctify them in the truth.

01:47:29

The other version, or the variant says, sanctify them in your truth. So just to add what

01:47:34

Jeremiah said, even if there are variants, they don't affect the meaning by any stretch of the imagination.

01:47:42

Yeah, this is well -attested, as you can see through several debates that you look into and several writings.

01:47:49

We actually have a textual critic that's a friend of mine, and you could ask him too, Stephen Boyce, and he knows a lot about that stuff too.

01:47:57

I'm good friends with Boyce. Yeah, Boyce is a great guy, man. He's one of my favorites. But yeah, and not only that, but in the art and science of textual criticism, there's so many pieces to that puzzle that I couldn't be able to even describe them.

01:48:14

I do know how we may not have the originals, but there's also arguments saying that we have a consistency within the manuscript tradition that is on par.

01:48:28

So it seems that these guys early on are trying to preserve exactly what we can, and we can see where they were unsure of things, they would put them somewhere else, whether it be on the side or right above, and there's so many arguments that you could go back and say, look, we have the closest thing to the originals that we have due to the science and how these people have broken it down over the years.

01:48:54

And so Vulture, I would look into the art and science of textual criticism if you really want that answer and dive deep into it because it's a very, very intricate, long, and detailed process.

01:49:06

And you'll come out on the other side satisfied, I'm sure. Variants aren't a bad thing. I think the originals are preserved in the variants.

01:49:13

Absolutely. I think they're preserved. You look back on it and you're just like, wow.

01:49:22

No, it's not just trust the scholars. Do the research yourself and check the scholars' work.

01:49:31

We have multiple manuscript traditions, and double check.

01:49:38

Learn a little bit of the Greek. We trust scholars all the time in everything we do, whether the earth is round or if it's flat or whatever, we trust the scholars.

01:49:48

Everything we've learned comes from somebody that does the work before us. The thing is you need to check the person that has done the work before you and see if they got it right.

01:49:57

That's how we change. That's how we progress. That's how we gain deeper understanding and through also discovery.

01:50:05

And if they got it wrong, show us. Publish it. If they got it wrong, let us know because we don't want to be believing a lie neither.

01:50:13

We are seekers and followers of the truth. So we want to get that truth. Sure. In other words, be noble -minded and be a good brand and test all things and hold fast to that, which is true.

01:50:25

But Tyler, let's focus on this gospel. Gospel.

01:50:31

Gospel documentary. We're going to have our first meeting. We need another two hours to talk about the gospel.

01:50:36

No. Yes. So, beginning of March. So, David, congratulations, by the way, brother.

01:50:42

It is your, what did you say, 10 -year anniversary? That's right. Congrats, man.

01:50:48

So you're taking the first week of March off. And I may do something. I've got to get through February 1st, to be honest with you all.

01:50:55

So I may do something that Friday or I may take it off. I will be sure to let everybody know.

01:51:01

But we are. David and I are planning to do a gospel documentary. And we've been talking about this now for a little while.

01:51:07

It's finally coming around to actually being more than just brainstorm, right?

01:51:13

I think we've got what we're going to do pretty much set in stone. Now the issue is finding the people to interview and to record.

01:51:22

And so that's, I think that's the next step in the process, which is what we're going to be doing in March.

01:51:28

So I am asking for prayers, for huge prayers to go out for that.

01:51:34

Also, if you would like to donate to that cause, we're using the donations that we get to put advertising.

01:51:42

And so when the. I love breaking up and stuff.

01:51:47

Ah, am I back? Hold on. I think you're back now. Yeah. Did you hear what was the last thing you heard?

01:51:54

Let me shut this where the donations are going. So, yeah, we are using the donations for advertisement.

01:52:02

And so if you would like to donate to us for that cause, hit me up at Faith Unaltered at gmail dot com.

01:52:09

I will send you a link that you can donate to. And we will use all that money for advertisement purposes.

01:52:15

But other than that, David, is there anything that you would like to add? No, man, just that, you know, this is what we're doing.

01:52:22

We're trying to get you guys content not only every week. So if me and Tyler are gone for any extended period of time, you will have content with our other hosts and our network like Dale and Josh and Caleb and whoever else wants to join.

01:52:37

We'll be doing that for us, but I just wanted to take that. Oh, Lacey said happy anniversary to us.

01:52:45

Nice. Thank you. But yeah, it's been 10 years since the ball and chain, you know, and I'm I'm I'm more free in the ball and chain than I am without it.

01:52:56

I'm I'm on your seven. Nice, brother. Congratulations. With a three month old baby.

01:53:02

Nice, man. I have I have a nice spread, bro. I have a 16, a 17, a seven and a two.

01:53:11

Oh, that is awesome. You have like a whole basketball team. I do, man. I got four. But, you know, it's a blessing.

01:53:18

I got I got three dogs and a cat. So that's awesome, too. So praise God. I'm great.

01:53:24

Grateful for what he's given me. And, you know, he deserves more of my time. That's why me and Tyler were talking about prayer stuff earlier.

01:53:32

And how we can get rid of our distractions. But anyways, with that, guys, you know, it was a great show.

01:53:42

Jeremiah, again, thank you so much for coming on. Guys, if you don't know the apologetic dog, go subscribe to him.

01:53:48

You've heard what he said tonight. If you, you know, just subscribe to him, you know, and, you know, pick his brain like we did tonight.

01:53:56

You know, he's pretty, pretty quick on getting back to your emails pretty fast. But other than that,

01:54:03

Tyler, I'll kick it back to you so you can close this out, brother. Just real quick, Jeremiah, if people want to get a hold of you, how can they?

01:54:14

Definitely go to my YouTube channel. I have my email posted there, which

01:54:19

I kind of have two. But the one I like responding to the most is jeremiah .nortier

01:54:25

at gmail dot com. But I also have one with my church with twelve five. You can go to twelvefivechurch .com

01:54:31

and you can see me as one of the elders there. And there's a link there you can message. I also have a website. I'm new to this world, but theapologeticdog .com.

01:54:40

Quick, easy ways. You can go to the bottom. You can see the contact stuff there. So, yeah,

01:54:45

I'm pretty easy to get a hold of. Definitely add me on Facebook. I'm still one of those old guys that does the Facebook thing.

01:54:50

And people are telling me, hey, you got to get on Instagram. I'm like, oh, I don't want to. I have to do that, but you can message me on Messenger, Facebook Messenger out there.

01:55:00

Yeah, I try to interact with as much people as I can. I love doing this kind of stuff. It's fun.

01:55:06

I said the same thing you said about Instagram. I said the same thing about TikTok. So it was good. But all right,

01:55:14

Jeremiah, again, I can't reiterate what David said. And I thank you. It's been an absolute pleasure and an honor talking to you tonight about this very topic of Sola Scriptura.

01:55:23

Dale, brother, it's always I love having you on. I learned so much, even on topics I think

01:55:28

I know everything about. Whenever Dale comes on, he just blows my mind and teaches me something new every single time.

01:55:34

And David, this is our fellowship night, bro. And so I absolutely love fellowshipping with you and the guests that you get to come on the show.

01:55:43

And it's always an honor and a pleasure to do Faith Unaltered with you, sir. And so thank you for your awesomeness.

01:55:50

In terms of David Russell, the heritage? I know, right? I've been mean to him over the last couple of episodes.

01:55:57

I love everybody, man. I love all you guys, man. I mean, y 'all blew my mind tonight. Now I got to look into eschatology and Sola Scriptura now.

01:56:05

So thanks, Jeremiah and Tyler. Both of y 'all were commentating. That guy got me all intrigued.

01:56:11

There you go. So, David, get that video ready. And we will see you next time on Faith Unaltered.

01:56:17

until then, always remember, good night, God bless, and stay like Christ.