Early Church History Class DL from GBTS

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. Do you like my new background? It's really very pretty because I'm not in Arizona as you probably can guess. We are on the road and currently we are at Grace Bible Theological Seminary in Conway, Arkansas.

Behind the camera is a majority anyways of the class that we are having this particular intensive weekend. We did eight to four o 'clock today and we'll be doing eight to four tomorrow and eight to four on Saturday.

We're doing early church history and we're going to have to pick up the pace because as I knew I would fall behind. Trying to get through AD 600 in that period of time is next to impossible but we will do our best.

This is part of the library and this is part of the... you can if you'd like to sort of show folks where we are here in the sort of central aspect of the seminary. We've got our library around us here and it's what is it five o 'clock in the afternoon here in Arkansas.

I had to put the camera on auto focus so I apologize for the going back and forth but that's just the way it is. Now you went that direction but see the problem is you folks were smart. You are standing right where we really can't shoot you because you have the sun right behind you and not only can the camera not see you but I can't either.

Dr. Johnson here could stick his tongue out at me right now and well okay I saw that and I wouldn't really know about it. We have about 23 about 23 students. Who has traveled the farthest? I want to know who traveled the farthest.

This is a squirrel and I forgot to... I was going to tell everybody at the beginning of class that if you're using an iPad please be very careful around this individual because he is a convicted iPad killer.

The iPad is fine. It doesn't matter if you're an iPad and you have a tire track on you, you're pretty much out of the game. That's all there is to it. Squirrel, Gene Pliatt, you know I can't think of anybody else in reformed twitterdom that has managed to take a common animal and turn it into my own name.

That's not your name, it's mine. I understand that. I'm just simply saying you have done something almost no one else has been able to do. I'm not sure that that's really what you want to do in life or a great goal but you did manage to do it.

Arboreal rodents. Arboreal rodents. We do have some interesting students in our class. You came all the way from Superior, no one's farther away than Oregon. There you go. When you come from Oregon, are you a student or a refugee?

A little bit of both. Are you in the part of Oregon that is completely insane or are there a fair amount of sane people around you? You're just outside the insane. All right, good. Because during COVID, we had a bunch of people come down to Apologia from Oregon, Washington, come from California.

You're in the insane metro. Okay, well, all right. Then you are a political refugee and so I think we should treat you with special honor, especially if we're going to be sending you back to be mistreated amongst the craziness and zaniness there.

Anybody from Texas? Oh, goodness. All sorts of... Well, I know that. I should have known that one. New Mexico? New Mexico doesn't like me either so I guess that's okay. I know we have at least one Arizonan.

Yep, right there. But you're sort of a refugee too because you live near the Harmonic Convergence. Yeah, I live in the Vortex Zones of Northern Arizona, which is the spiritual capital of America. For those who can't hear that, the second most beautiful part of Arizona.

And if you've never been to Arizona, there's everything in that state. It's not just the Grand Canyon. That's beautiful. I haven't seen the Grand Canyon since 1985 though because I don't want to fight with all of the tourists.

So if you want to see the Grand Canyon but from the bottom, there's a place called Sedona and that's unfortunately been taken over after the great Harmonic Convergence of 2000... forget what year that was.

Yeah, I think it was even late 90s. Was it late 90s? Okay, all right. The New Agers moved in and there are crystal shops everywhere. And oh, it is amazing what has happened there. It used to be more known for that beautiful chapel with the cross.

Now it's known for all the New Age wackos. So it's sort of an evangelism area to be sure. Challenging but beautiful, beautiful, beautiful area. If you ever get a chance, Sedona is well worth going visiting.

It's a beautiful state. So we are here studying early church history and let me ask you guys who are here, what do you expect in three days having traveled here in an intensive class? What do you expect at the end of this?

Anyone? We're not telling you because you're the professor. Okay, so we don't want to say a word.

What were you? Yes, sir. Just having a better understanding of development theology. Development theology. Starting from Christ until, what did you say, about 600? Yep.

The Pace and Purpose of Early Church History Study

Was today's class different than you expected it or pretty much to be what you expected it to be? About what I expected. Okay, I've got one about what I expected.

I'm just going to say we spent eight hours today and I don't think we made it to the third century.

Oh, no, no, no, no. Are you kidding? No, no, no, no, no, no. We are barely into the second century and we haven't actually even gotten to the apologists. So we have just scratched the surface. There's no two ways about it but I knew that that would be the case because I want to take the time to read some of the specific material from Ignatius and Clement and I just realized the first thing we gotta do tomorrow is do Diognetus because that's the best stuff that I know of in that time period and we didn't even get to that today.

Goodness, I will forget stuff because there's too much to cover. There just really is. But when I started off talking about my background which did not raise me to have any concern about church history, how many of you felt like you had a similar background to myself?

That's vast majority. That's what I want to, at the very least, I want this class to help erase that and to build a connection to those people that, well, many of whom gave their lives and many of whom suffered greatly.

When we get to Cyprian I will read you a a letter that continues to be hard for me to read it after having read it probably 20 times in various contexts without tearing up. It is that amazing to get that connection and Rich was with me once when I sort of felt that connection as well.

When I debated Gerry Matitick in 1993 in Denver, Colorado, we did seven hours of debate on the papacy over two nights while the Pope was in town. He didn't attend unfortunately but he would have been welcome and would have enjoyed his participation.

We visited the Papal Treasures Exhibit and they had a display of the actual manuscript, at least one page in the actual manuscript, p72. I told you about this morning and I'm sure you all remember that and you wrote it down.

But the connection that I felt in looking at that piece of papyrus to someone who lived 1 ,800 years earlier and yet who loved the Word of God enough to make a copy of it for himself was really special.

It helps us when we see those things, it helps us to remember that when we believe that Christ is fulfilling his promises to build his church today, we are still a part of that. I've seen that desire for connection to the early church abused and turned into something that was negative.

But on the other hand, when you use it as a recognition of Christ's faithfulness after all these years, it can be a tremendous encouragement. I don't like to use the term uncertain future because actually we know the future is certain.

It's in Christ's hands and he's going to accomplish his purposes. But between now and then, whatever your eschatology is, there could be some very, very trying times and to be assured of the fact that Christ is building his church and I'm a part of it.

What does that mean? I'm a part of it. It's one thing we talk about this seminary, we talk about taking stands for truth, and we talk about how we've got all these students coming from all sorts of different places because of a commitment to the centrality of biblical sufficiency.

But we're a part of a much, much, much larger picture, much, much, much larger purpose. And on the one hand, that can make you feel so small you don't matter, but that's not the case. Your role is absolutely just as central as anyone else's.

And I've often wondered, the guy that copied p72, could he have had any idea when he was copying that manuscript that 1800 years later it would be an encouragement to someone like me? He could have had any idea.

I think about that so often when I look at people and we're going to tell, I'll give you a heads up, we're going to tell the story of two subdeacons from the year 303. There are a few dates that you all do need to remember for a certain final examination.

Everybody who's ever listened to my, I've done church history classes in the past, and everybody knows I say this to every church history class, and I'm telling you this as an official part of the class.

There is one date you absolutely have to know for the final examination, and that is the date of the Council of Nicaea, which is AD 325. Tattoo it on your brain because you need to know it. Now we're going to know more about the Council of Nicaea than just simply the date.

Anybody happen to know the traditional number of bishops at the Council of Nicaea? 318. Very close. We have 308. That's close enough for a cookie, but this date is close to that. It's 303, May of 303.

Two subdeacons are arrested and brought before a Roman official, and he wants to know where the scriptures are. He wants to know where the manuscripts are. They say we're not the readers. Only the readers would have those.

We're just subdeacons. We don't know. Well, who are the readers? And they say, we are not traitors. Do with us as you will. That's the only historical evidence of their existence, and they were executed.

We know their names. That's all we know about it. We don't know how old they were, where they came from, whether they're married, whether they had children. Nothing for one little brief moment, but you got to realize for 99 .999 of all Christians in history, that's more than they ever got.

We don't know their names, but remember the book of Revelation. You know what I'm talking about. The martyrs souls under the altar. How long? Be patient. How long? God doesn't forget. He knows exactly for that.

We only know a few names, and we can speculate, and I like to think about, you know, were they married? Did they have children? How would that impact me if I were in their position? I think about my grandkids.

What if you're put in a position here in the United States, where you you either stand firm, or if you do stand firm, you will not see your grandchildren again. Most of you aren't grandparents. Almost nobody in here old enough.

Maybe. Yes, no, maybe. Not yet. Hoping for? Okay, there you go, but don't look at me and tell me that that would not weigh upon a person's mind. That if you stand firm, you'll never see them again, because I want to see them grow up.

I want to see them get married. Man, I'd like to actually live long enough to see my great-grandchildren. I think that would be pretty awesome, though at about that age, it's like, okay, that's enough.

I'm not sure how Methuselah handled it. I mean, can you imagine? Oh, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandchildren. I can't remember any of them anymore. What are you talking about?

How in the world could you keep up with the birthday presents for a family like that? It's just like, wow. But seriously, though, I just think of those two subdeacons to just pop in and pop out, and could they have known that their sacrifice could have an impact 1 ,700 years later?

They've never even thought of it, would never even thought of it, but they wouldn't betray their fellow believers. There's going to be lots of possibilities in the future of our having to think about stuff like that, and church history allows us to do that.

Church history allows us to have that opportunity of stepping back, and it functions as a mirror, because if the Spirit of God was in them, the Spirit of God is in us. It's one of the few times that we can have somewhat of a distance to look at ourselves and to think of ourselves in that way, and that's why I think church history is so completely necessary for a well-rounded theological education.

Of course, as I said, so much of our language was developed back then. You're going to be surprised at some of those developments, I think, as we dive into it. We think about Nicaea, and we think about Trinitarian stuff and stuff like that, but there was more than that.

The form and shape of the church and the function of the church and ordinances and sacraments and all those things, all that development started back then. We can either just simply do what most of us have done and say, it didn't matter, they messed it all up anyways, or we can go, no, it does matter, and I need to look at those things.

How many of you are already actively involved as pastors in churches, and how many of you are moving that direction? That pretty much covers everybody. How much do you know about the history of your own churches?

I suppose we could talk about Reformed Baptist as a whole, there's a lot that can be studied there, a lot of names, things like that. In the cities where you are, would you say that your churches are representative of evangelicalism, or are they sort of in the minority in being Reformed and things like that?

Anyone? Minority? Elements of both? When you look at pastors in your area, would you say that the majority have a serious perspective on theology, or is it more of a C-sensitive type of a context? A lot of C-sensitive, pragmatic C-sensitive, so that puts you in a, how many of you would say you feel like you have at least three close relationships with ministers outside of your church?

In your area? That's good. How many of you wish you had more? Of course. I would think that that would be an opportunity for us to be a light and to encourage others in maybe reading some books and getting some resources that would be of assistance to them as well.

Political Pressure, Social Issues, and Ministry in a Polarized Age

We're going into a, well, we are in the middle of a political season. How many of you feel pressured about how you are going to handle dealing with the key sociological, theological issues that are very much a part of the current election cycle?

How many of you feel pressure that you need to address these issues in a ministerial fashion? No one? One? I mean,.

I'll just, I'll say personally, it's huge. I am a software engineer in Austin, Texas. Okay. So it's.

A liberal. Mecca. Austin, Texas. Yes. They allow Christians there? I mean, that is the biggest blue.

Dot in the state of Texas that there is. Yeah, I'm from a certain very large rock band church, and we are very prominently attacked as a Calvinist church. A rock band megachurch.

One of my best friends is John Cooper. What do you want? Most everybody's going, who? Does anybody, wait a minute, wait a minute. I'm gonna let you finish, but how many of you don't know who John Cooper is?

Okay. How many of you are simply not raising your hand because you do not want a camera aimed at you ever? Okay. There's an honest man in the back. Very good. Very, very good. Okay. So I'm going to stop asking questions because, so all of you know John Cooper.

Okay. Skilling. All right. Good. That you're just all staring at me like I'm not, I'm not going to answer a word this guy's saying. So, so you know you and you know John, right? Not personally, but you know who.

Yes. Okay. All right. All right. So you're in a rock, when you say a rock band megachurch, how would people in Austin confuse that with Calvinism? People attend, people attend in the system of preaching.

So the preaching is reformed?

Very. Cool. Formerly led by Dr. Matt Carter, he's written Steal Away Home. It's a book about Spurgeon and his right to end slavery in the UK and America. Super reformed. I taught systematic theology from Weybrood Systematic Theology at my local church.

There are some people that just.

Dismiss you immediately upon saying that. But I will, not necessarily in here, I'm just simply.

Saying somewhere. Yeah. I like to think of us as being on mission to the post-Christian nation.

Gotcha. Well, Austin, yeah definitely, is just so weird to me. I think most of the leftists in sort of feel like they're surrounded, as they develop a siege mentality there. Unlike Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, where they own everything and it sort of works the other direction.

So you would feel pressure with the election because you're in a massively blue spot in the middle of a red state. And so you're running against the flow. I get that. But how about anybody else? Let's put it this way.

Are you dealing with social issues such as transgenderism, definition of marriage, genetic manipulation, vaccine mandates? Are you dealing with things differently in 2022 than you did in 2014? Yeah. Well, I would say probably going a little more.

Hard on them than they can do because of the fact that they're so prevalent now. But also there's people in our church who, if you dare to tie that to a political party, they get offended. It's so obviously political.

Right. It's so obviously political on the left, but there's people in our church who are offended by it. You can't talk about who to vote for.

Within your capacity. So what you're saying is, even though the media is so plainly biased, and even though leftist churches have absolutely no compunction whatsoever about doing that, there's still very much the idea that even though it has theological ramifications, you can't talk about it.

From the pulpit in the church. Yeah. So you can address the issues, but you just can't say who's.

Actually representing the issues. Yeah. So like, well, we all know what that means. But yeah, I get it. Anybody else? I mean, this just seems to be, when I talk to folks at least, and maybe this is the difference.

When I talk to folks privately, this is a big, big issue.

The Church's Response to Transgenderism, Pride, and Cultural Emboldening

Yeah. So I want to say something. I think the homosexuality and the transgender issues that's going on, I think it's been an emboldening topic in the church. This last Pride month that happened in June, it was the first time I'd seen many, many pastors step up and speak out more boldly.

Yeah. I actually did a post talking about the fallacy of the Pride flag, and had over 15 ,000 likes on Instagram and tons of comments and tons of shares. There was a little bit more aggression, I would say, in the Christian church than there was in previous years.

I think we've realized finally that it wasn't, you know, in the 70s, it was, we just want acceptance, and then it was, we just want toleration. And now it's celebration, and it's condemnation that you don't.

It's this trend that I think has happened. And I think that pastors are finally realizing, if we don't stop and push back now, we're just going to push further and further back. And so there's just been, I think, an intensity and a magnification of pushback that has been enlivened.

I think that COVID purified the church in a unique way.

Purified, that's an interesting term. How would you define that? I think that it brought.

Clarity of where people were at, maybe things that were unsaid in previous years were forced to be said. It also revealed who had the spine to stand up against government mandates, and where their loyalties lay.

But I think that there was some sort of resistance for the first time in my lifetime to the American evangelical church, which I believe actually produced some emboldening that I hadn't seen before in my generation.

Yeah, I was raised in a milieu.

That would basically say, you never make political statements from the pulpit. And we believed in the myth of neutrality, that we could be neutral on these things, and the church was never going to be a threat, or the government was never going to be a threat to us, and stuff like that.

But everything's changed so much over the past few years that I think a lot of people are still trying to get reoriented to the, well, you can't get reoriented to a landscape that's changing constantly.

And that, for us older folks, that's the top part. You younger folks, you've grown up in a world where you expect it to be different next month than it is this month. And most of my life was lived, you know, last year is going to be pretty much the same as this year, and next year, and everything else.

So you're used to the ground shaking under your feet. I don't know that I can ever adjust to that. It's hard. But I've had to come to realize that you can't just keep your mouth shut. And interestingly enough, I was saying in 2000 that the homosexual movement was not asking for equal rights.

It was asking for uber rights. And I had a lot of people who said, ah, you're just overreacting, you're, you know, stuff like that. And now we see it's not even uber rights. It's, you will capitulate to us, and you will celebrate us, and you will not open your mouth to criticize us or say anything, or you will be fired, canceled, your bank will make it impossible for you to get your money out.

We won't honor credit card charges and donations to your ministry and everything else. It's just astonishing where it's gone. But it really, in hindsight, we should have gone, well, duh, where else could it have gone?

There's no stopping point. There's, it's not a slippery slope. It's a cliff. There's no place to stop at a cliff. It's, it's just going all the way. Some people say they're going to overplay their hand, and there's going to be a reaction.

But that assumes that they don't already control the media and the educational system. And my big concern is when I talk to young people today, and I'd be asked, interested if any of you have university ministries.

When I talk to young people, they're statists. And what I mean by statists is they believe the state exists to make them happy. And therefore, they look to the state for everything. The state has to, has to solve every problem.

And so they're, they have no ground to understand what it means to be self-sufficient and to handle things for yourself. How do you get someone like that to vote, to limit the power of the state? Because they're statists.

It's become their ultimate authority. That's, that's the big concern that I have, is outside of a massive work of the Spirit of God, we are up against an incredible, incredible barrier. Any of you do university stuff, go on university campuses?

I do. I have friends at universities and so on that I actually work with now. Right. But it is, it's like you were saying earlier, that, I mean, that's all you know. And that's all we've been wanting to drink.

You didn't know who they were, who they were. Everybody, everybody. So, you don't know who they are. And so when someone comes in and gives you water, I mean, wait a minute, what are you giving them? Yeah, that's true.

That's true. And it's, it's really the whole thing. So, it makes sense. Everybody understands there's chaos, but everything's supposed to be on the banner fly going on. That's just how it is. So, like I was going to present it, or the Lord's grace is showing, coming grace in marriage or in friendships, where you see, oh, why do you come to me like this?

So, why do you? Yeah. So, self-sacrifice. Why would someone sacrifice for somebody else? Why would somebody serve somebody else? We can definitely show that to this younger generation, but it is a huge challenge.

It is such a huge challenge to be able to explain what's going on in the world around us. And in the church, I mean, let's, let's go ahead and mention it. I've, I've never seen the kind of division, the ease of division that we are experiencing in the church today.

And I've, I've sort of explained it by saying a unified healthy church is a blessing on a nation. Therefore, if our nation is under the judgment of God, we can expect this kind of division and have to learn how to be faithful in the midst of that kind of division.

But at the same time, when you look at the early church, they found division to be the greatest scandal, even when they were under the greatest pressure from outside. So, they're being persecuted and they still believe that division is a heinous sin before God that is to be avoided.

So, sometimes I wonder if we've just gotten so used to being divided, so used to, I don't like it here, I'll go find someplace else. Don't like you do things, I'll start a new church. It really makes me wonder if we've just gotten so used to it that we don't even think about the possibility of what it would be like to have a unified testimony to the world.

Because the division, look, think about it in our own, in our own culture. Every time, there's a movie coming out. How many of you have heard the 1946 movie? One, two, just two? Nobody else. Okay, good.

I'm glad so that I can warn you. You will, you will hear and be warned now. There's a movie coming out called 1946, the thesis of the film is that homosexuality did not exist in the Bible until it was put in there by the Revised Standard Version Committee in 1946 when they mis-translated the Greek term arsenikoitas or arsenikoita in the plural in 1 Corinthians chapter 6 and in, that's a good idea, very good, in 1 Corinthians chapter 6 and in 1 Timothy 1 10.

And so the whole idea is there is no biblical foundation for a resistance to or a conviction against homosexuality. And so they're going to be interviewing these scholars and all the rest of this stuff.

I would imagine you've seen the memes and the videos on TikTok where people have been promoting this idea. It really has an impact. In fact, the first time I addressed it on the Dividing Line was because one of the members of Skillet contacted me and said, how do we respond to this?

And so I did a whole segment on the Dividing Line on it and then it just kept blowing up and happening more and more and more. And so I've done even longer segments demonstrating what the New Testament actually says on that particular subject.

But that involves understanding Greek lexicography and the development of lexicons and how we do all that kind of stuff. That's why they get away with it. That's how they can use that type of complexity to silence Christians, because that's what they're seeking.

They're seeking to silence Christians. If we don't know how to defend it, then we'll maybe not say it as loudly. But there's an example of a belief. I grew up and we didn't talk about this stuff in church.

That's not the stuff you talk about in church. You don't talk about homosexuality in church. That'll offend somebody. And so as normal, the church ends up behind the eight ball. We're always responding.

We're not ahead of the curve. We're always behind the curve. And so there's an example of how we can try to say, God's Word says this, and the enemy always has somebody who claims to be a Christian on the other side to be able to say, oh no, he doesn't.

Oh no, he doesn't. That division results in us not having a unified voice to be able to say, you want to know why judgment's coming upon our nation? Here's why. How can that even happen when you have so many people who call themselves Christians who will deny that there is any such thing as a grounds for God judging this nation?

So that division, we've just become used to it. We really, really have. And I was going to say, it's not a blessing. And in that context, it's not. But at the same time, I did preach a sermon once called, what was it called?

The Blessing of Apostasy. The Blessing of Apostasy. And what I meant by that was, when John says first John 2 9, they went out from us so it might be demonstrated they're not truly of us. It's a horrible thing when unbelievers stay in the church and drag down our witness and our witness to the world.

You would think that the clarity of the proclamation of the gospel would be enough to drive out the driftwood. But sometimes there are those who just want to, they get stuck and they want to stay there.

I'm not exactly sure why. There is a blessing to the purification of the church. Someone said, you know, the church has been purified. Well, the dividing lines have been made clearer, but I think there are still more to be discovered along the way.

I really do. So how many of you are excited about choosing a paper topic for early church history? Okay, we're all like, I'll put my hand up. What am I supposed to do? Let me tell you something. This may not work for everybody, but there are sections of chapters in my book on the Trinity that were originally papers and seminary.

And when I chose topics in seminary, I already knew what I was going to be doing. So that's helpful. And I thought to myself, what can I write for this class that will have the longest utility, that the most benefit, not for me to get a grade in a class, but to provide to others.

So for example, I did a paper called The Trinity and the Definition of Chalcedon and Oneness Theology. And I had to go to my professor, ask for an extension to do longer, to write longer than he had given us because it was a big topic.

I haven't found too many professors who are willing to do that actually. You like when you find somebody in your class so excited about your subject that they're probably more excited than you are on the subject.

But that paper has been, I've used that for quite some time and it's still available on our website. Part of it's in The Forgotten Trinity and you've seen it in debates that I've done with oneness advocates.

And so when you are thinking about your paper topic for the class, I challenge you to think along those lines. Maybe think about where you are in the church right now. What can you do to make your study something that won't just have a benefit at the end of the class, but that what you produce, maybe not the paper itself, but you could produce something from it that could have immediate positive impact in your church.

I would encourage you, like during the next two days, my hope would be that as we're covering something, as we're talking about something, all of a sudden you go, that's something that's really, really important.

That's something that my people need to know. Or that's something that there's that group in my church and boy, they would really be excited about that. Make a note of it and think about how you could, it takes time to write a good research paper.

And if you're going to invest that time, why not have it useful 10 years down the road? I just think that's how I did it. I got a lot of enjoyment out of seminary. And it also, by the way, and you may feel this way, even today, having finished class, you may be feeling, man, I wish I had a better professor than we've got.

And one of the best ways to actually do that, because almost all of my professors were way to my left, way to my left. My systematic theology professor, oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. His big area of expertise was processed theology.

Dr. Johnson is looking at me with the look of, oh, I'm not sure we want you teaching. His big thing was processed theology, whitehead and God going, universe going in and out of existence and God absorbing the good and shuffling off the bad.

But I will give him this credit. He presented the processed theology perspective. And this is how he did everything. He would present the one side and then he would present a critique of it. And then he'd never tell you what he actually believes.

Sort of driving me crazy. But he presented the processed theology thing and he was really good at it. He really did understand it. And then his first critique of it was, now the first obvious problem with processed theology is that the God of processed theology looks absolutely nothing like the God of the Bible.

Now he didn't then say, and therefore this is all heresy, because he really couldn't do that. But he made it pretty clear that, yeah, the God of processed theology is just pure philosophy and the God of the Bible is nothing like that.

So that's how far to the left a lot of my professors were. But if I was excited about the class anyways, I could still learn. There are a lot of people left that are really smart. And sometimes they see things that we don't see.

So you can take those insights and they'll get you lots and lots of facts. And you can run with it and do good stuff with it and not be limited by the fact that you have disagreements with that individual.

So it's not going to happen to you here, obviously. But if you do find yourself in a educational situation where you're having to learn from somebody who's not quite exactly on your wavelength, that's what I'd suggest you do.

I got a lot out of seminary, even though everybody was way off to one side of it. I did have some fun along the way, like the one class in the Pentateuch where, I've told the story before, but that's all right, where we had to write reviews of these commentaries.

We had to, who was that guy? He came out three weeks ago on homosexuality and said that the Bible really doesn't have any one particular view. Oh, Dratt, pretty well-known Old Testament name and it's just escaping me at the moment.

It's been a long day. And I remember I had to read his commentary on Genesis, but I had to read Gerhard von Roth's commentary on Deuteronomy. I still remember what it looks like. Is that mustard green?

I guess it'd be mustard yellow. It's mustard green. You probably shouldn't eat it. But the mustard yellow commentary, I think on Deuteronomy by Gerhard von Roth. And you're supposed to write a review and give positive and negative stuff about it.

And so I wrote my review and the positive section said, this commentary has a very nice binding. And then I moved into the negative part. Now that was a risk because the professor had held all these up and said, I feel like this is the best commentary in English available right now.