1 Timothy 2, Men and Women in the Church, then a Full Review of Shapiro/Craig

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1 Timothy 2, Men and Women in the Church, then a Full Review of Shapiro/Craig

00:29

Good afternoon, welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White. We are in first Timothy chapter two, first Timothy chapter two, mainly because we want to have some type of a meaningful discussion about some of the stuff going on in social media and ain't going to happen to social media.

00:50

So got to do it someplace else. It's first Timothy two, eight, therefore

00:56

I wish, and then the first assertion is to pray, the men in every place lifting up holy hands without wrath.

01:09

And it's literally dialogus mu, which would normally be reasonings, but when coupled with orgaism would mean dissension, fighting, so on and so forth.

01:23

So Paul begins a section with Boulamai, so as an apostle, he is desiring, expressing apostolic desire for ordering the church to pray.

01:36

So this is about prayer. And then to Andros, now the men in every place, the men in every place.

01:47

Now, what's interesting is the next verse says, likewise, also, gounikos, women.

01:58

You already know that word. If you hear the constant utilization of the term misogyny, that's from meseo to hate, and then gune, women.

02:15

So gounikos, there are places in scripture where Andros and gounikos when put together would be husband and wife.

02:25

But it doesn't look like what you have here. It's not like,

02:31

I wish husbands everywhere to pray, lifting holy hands without wrath and dissension, and likewise, wives to adorn themselves with proper clothing.

02:44

In this instance, it would seem that Andros and gounikos are being used generically of men as a whole and women as a whole within the church.

02:58

So men are to be men of prayer. Lifting up holy hands is a common stance of prayer in the

03:09

Eastern world and continues to be today. There's nothing wrong with it. Reformed people need to get over it.

03:15

At the same time, if you're the only person doing it, maybe you're drawing attention to yourself. So something to think about.

03:22

But it was a cultural thing, and I don't think it is relevant to the form of prayer, though it is interesting to respond to our

03:31

Muslim friends who think that the only form of prayer is on your face. Instead, this would have been understood simply as an exhortation to prayer, to men everywhere, and that the point is that it is to be done in a particular way, which is with holy hands, not hands marked by sin or greed or graft or whatever else it might be, without wrath and dissension, which would mean this is talking about within the body, that there is to be, and it's tough because we are all sinners and we rub each other the wrong direction and there is friction, but without wrath or dissension, when the body prays, there should be a great deal of unity in that.

04:25

And then likewise, as complimentary to that, I wasn't trying to make a point there, but it is there, women to cosmeo, from which we get cosmetics, to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly, discreetly.

04:53

I don't know how anybody would describe leggings that way.

04:59

I don't know, how in the world did that even become a controversy? But yes, there are teenage and college women today who paint themselves, basically.

05:12

I can't tell you between it being paint or something else. I mean, it is as immodest as the day is long.

05:20

It is meant to get people to stumble and to look at you. That's what it is. I'm not even going to argue about it.

05:26

It's obvious. Good luck making that fit with idus, kai, sofra, sunes, cosmein, in 1

05:36

Timothy 2 .9. With proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments.

05:44

So the point is, again, drawing attention to oneself over against being able to serve others, to be able to, and again, it's a slightly different context, but it's the same attitude.

06:06

Philippians 2, not looking to your own things, the things of others. And the other issue being,

06:18

I've used the illustration many times before when I ran sound at a very large megachurch.

06:25

Oftentimes it was the people who had the best voices, or at least thought they had the best voices, who created tremendous division because they want everybody to see, or in this instance, see and hear them.

06:40

And they would run over people, right, left, and center to get that attention.

06:48

And so I think that's what Paul is warning against here. But rather than doing that, rather by means of good works as is proper for women making a claim to godliness.

07:01

So if you want to adorn yourself, then adorn yourself with good works.

07:08

That doesn't mean you have to run around looking frumpy all the time, but what you should be seeking is to adorn yourselves ergon agathon, with good works, which is fitting, proper for gunaik sin, who are making a claim, who are making a promise of being godly.

07:41

So very clearly, the term of women here has to be general.

07:48

It can't just be wives. This is for all women, young women, older women, married, unmarried.

07:56

These are general categories that Paul is writing to Timothy in.

08:04

Now, let me just mention, again, warning to new listeners, maybe haven't looked at the program before, things like that.

08:18

One of the most dangerous places on the planet for the Christian soul or spirit is the

08:27

Christian bookstore, as rare as they might be anymore. But that can be online as well, which it is for most things today.

08:38

The reason being, you can go down those rows of books or enter your search parameters in, wherever you are, and you will find commentaries on the

08:57

New Testament. And if you are not aware of all the wide varieties of viewpoints out there, or if you think there is much more unity of viewpoints than there actually is, or if it bothers you to realize the wide variety of viewpoints, because as a modern

09:15

American or modern Western thinking person, if there's a bunch of viewpoints, then no one must know the truth.

09:23

That's how we are taught. That's the way we think. It doesn't make any sense when you actually analyze it, but that's sort of the default mode that we go into.

09:35

The problem is that you will pick up a commentary on this, and the first thing you'll discover when you start reading 1

09:42

Timothy, if you read the material at the beginning of the commentary, is that there are a number of people, not your conservatives, but a number of people, who will question the canonical status, or at least, not the canonical status, the authorship of the pastoral epistles.

10:01

So, for years, we have, for example, engaged

10:07

Bart Ehrman, who would have what I would call a minimalist Pauline corpus, which means he has about seven books that he would say

10:17

Paul wrote. This would not be one of them, none of the pastorals. Why, you might ask?

10:23

Well, long story, but sometimes it's vocabulary, though I find that to be an incredibly weak argument, because you're going to write differently to an entire church than you are to one of your co -workers.

10:37

I'm now in the Paul position, in the sense that more than 30 years of ministry under the belt, moving toward 40,

10:47

I know a lot of young men that are now in ministry that I taught years ago.

10:54

And so, I know that when I speak to them, I will use different vocabulary, different means of expressing myself, than when

11:03

I'm talking to an entire audience, or talking to an entire church. That's just obvious. So, the vocabulary argument isn't much for me.

11:12

For Ehrman, one of the big things is he has a particular theory as to how the early church looked, and the pastorals don't fit in that.

11:21

Now, it's strange that you would come up with a theory about what the Christian church in the first century looked like without using the first century documents actually to express that, but he accepts this evolutionary concept of things, and that's part of the issue.

11:37

If you want to read more on that, the heresy of orthodoxy. The heresy of orthodoxy is the book you need to—we've recommended it many, many times before.

11:46

So, the point is, if you pick up a commentary, you're going to run into people who say, Paul, didn't you write these things? Which is why your modern leftist, quote -unquote, mainline denominations will really not even take what is found here seriously.

12:08

Or if they do, they won't view it as being Pauline, but as part of the tradition of the church.

12:14

And once it's just a tradition of the church, then tradition can be changed by other tradition, and that's part of the reason that it functions that way.

12:24

Okay. So, immediately, so, women, prophetic godliness, and so, when verse 11 says,

12:40

Gune, a woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness, this would not, again, suggest to us that we're talking here about wives only.

13:01

But that's the point, because the very next verse is one of the key controversial verses.

13:09

But I do not allow or permit—the first word is didaskain, to teach, but to teach a woman,

13:20

I do not permit neither to exercise authority over a man, but to remain in silence or in quietude.

13:34

So, one of the interpretations out there, which you'll find from a lot of conservative people, is that what's actually being referred to here is only a wife.

13:48

The wife must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness to her husband,

13:56

I do not allow a wife to exercise authority over her husband, and that's why

14:01

I said you can find other places where andros, and that's the term that is used here, andros and gunikos, those terms can be found other places where it's specifically talking about husbands and wives, but that's why we started as far back as we did and have been following the train.

14:22

So, you'd have to theorize that somewhere, maybe at verse 11, a change takes place that just simply isn't announced, that Paul just wasn't clear, you sort of have to argue that maybe, you know, maybe

14:45

Paul could assume that Timothy already knew this and so he didn't have to provide the transitional statement.

14:54

You have to assume something, because if you just look at the text as it stands, there's no reason to assume that verse 12 is not a general statement but has become a husband -wife situation.

15:10

But they might argue, yeah, but look at verse 13, for Adam, for it was

15:18

Adam who was first created and then Eve. Well, yeah, except Adam and Eve represent the entire human race, they are the first humans, and the order of creation is considered to be relevant in regards to authority.

15:43

And so, it really seems like verse 13 is not talking about Adam and Eve in their marriage relationship, but Adam and Eve as created, and that, of course, that's the whole point of verse 13, is protos eplosthe, first made, first formed, and very plainly, culturally, historically, that would give the priority and the preeminence of authority to Adam over Eve.

16:18

And then, and it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived fell into transgression.

16:24

So, there is an assertion of the woman's experience of deception.

16:35

It does not mean that Adam did not fall or sin, he did, but it wasn't based upon deception, it was willful transgression.

16:46

But the woman demonstrated a lack of discernment, and Paul draws upon this.

16:57

And so, when you look at 1 Timothy 2, 12, very often it is brought up, it's thrown about in Twitter, Facebook, wherever, as a standalone verse, and if you allow it just to stand alone, then there's different ways that you can approach it.

17:20

But that's why, if you follow through it, this then is the section that goes into 1

17:27

Timothy 3, and what's 1 Timothy 3 about? It's about offices in the church. And to me, the compatibilism, egalitarian controversy, which both terms are, you would think by now would have come up with something better than that.

17:48

They're a mouthful, and I don't know how good they are in expressing anything, but the role, the

17:58

God -intended relationship of male and female in the church is big stuff now in Big Eva.

18:13

And historically, I don't think there's really any argument here, historically, an abandonment of the idea that the eldership in the church, now again,

18:31

I would argue, I think I can defend this fairly strongly, that we are given two offices in the church for perpetuity, the elder -slash -bishop -slash -pastor office, and the office of deacon.

18:53

These are laid out for us in 1 Timothy 3 and in Paul's epistle to Titus in chapter 1.

18:59

And paralleling those two is extremely useful and helpful to us. The point is, and for me, this is the key, if you believe that the scriptures are intended to provide to the church what the church needs for her ministry in perpetuity until the coming of her

19:25

Lord, few people believe that anymore. But if you do believe that, then you must be a complementarian for one simple reason, and that is that there is no mechanism of laying out what the requirements for a female elder would be.

19:50

And it is the elders who are to preach and teach the word of God in the congregation with authority.

20:02

That term authority was used above there, with authority. One of the reasons that egalitarianism is making great strides and has, of course, destroyed the mainline denominations, it has.

20:16

It's not the only thing that did it. It's a part of a complex of things. Every single denomination that you've ever seen embracing female leadership in offices for which we have no biblical qualifications ever listed, every one of those denominations has continued into rank liberalism and unbelief.

20:37

That is a historical fact. It's a historical fact. Our history proves it.

20:45

Why? Because it's a part of a complex of things, a diminishment in the trust in the word of God, and fundamentally, a diminishment in believing that it is

21:00

God's intention that the scriptures function in such a fashion as to give the church that kind of supernatural foundation.

21:14

Once you abandon that, that's pretty much it. That's pretty much it.

21:19

You are going to be left to become a mirror of the society around you, because you have nothing else to guide you.

21:28

And that's exactly what we've seen over and over and over again. And now it's happening in quote -unquote Big Eva as well.

21:35

But if you believe that scripture lays out how the church is to function, then it becomes very clear that in the authoritative proclamation of the word of God, in the worship of the church, we are only given qualifications for men to function in that fashion.

22:00

If you think otherwise, I've asked this question, of course no one answered it, but if you think otherwise, give me the references, because there are none in the

22:11

New Testament that would give you the qualifications of a woman in the position of authoritatively preaching and teaching the word of God in the context of the gathered body.

22:23

And this is where the issue comes up today, and that is there needs to be application of this.

22:33

If your church does not believe that the word of God is ministered from in the gathered body with authority, then you're not going to worry about whether it's a male or a female sharing, because there's nothing about limiting sharing to men or to women or to both.

23:01

And for a lot of churches, that's all you got. Once you're to the point of nothing but Hawaiian shirts and bar stools, and let's just have ourselves a nice little talk for 15 minutes, because I don't want to go too long, because I don't want to bore you, because we entertained you up to this point, and that's about as long as we can get before you're getting ready to leave again.

23:25

In that instance, it doesn't matter. But if we're serious about believing that it's

23:32

Christ's intention that his church have his voice within it through the ministration of the word and the sacraments, the

23:44

Lord's Supper, baptism, then those are authoritative activities.

23:53

And biblically, we can only say this is pleasing to God, we do it this way, because here are the requirements as found in his word, and we have followed these requirements.

24:08

Now, don't let people drag you off into all the bad argumentation, yeah, well,

24:17

I know a lot of men who haven't done it right. Well, yeah. And if perfection was the standard, then only

24:25

Jesus could have ever done any of these things, could not, not even any of the disciples or apostles would have qualified.

24:31

That's not the point. The point is that we are given qualifications for men to authoritatively minister in the church to reprove, rebuke, exhort, train in righteousness.

24:48

And when those are actions of authority, they're actions to be undertaken by men.

24:57

Yet, we still believe that men are men and women are women. We will always believe that, we can't believe in anything other, even when that means we're deplatformed or thrown in the hooscow.

25:09

As followers of Jesus, there's no choices at that point. And of course, the one thing to keep in mind is, yes, our society might turn upon us and throw us in prison for believing that, but that also means that society will not belong upon the earth anyways.

25:24

It will collapse internally fairly quickly because it's not living in the real world.

25:30

Anyway, so for me, all of this stuff

25:37

I'm seeing going back and forth and back and forth, social media and everything else, arguing about the meaning of this word or that word, really, it just boils down to, you know, maybe

25:47

I'm oversimplifying, but for me, it just boils down to fairly simple. And if you really do believe that Christ has organized his church in such a fashion, that its worship is to be ordered by his word, then the issue of egalitarianism, complementarianism isn't an issue.

26:06

The text is plain. You have to start engaging in multiple levels of canonical authority.

26:16

Liberals do that. Liberals have done that. The result's always been disaster.

26:23

Every one of those churches is dying. If you want the best way in the world to turn your pretty, beautiful, wonderfully architecturally designed church into a discotheque or a 7 -Eleven, then abandon the highest view of scripture, ordain women to become bishops or whatever else you want to call them, and you'll have that before long.

26:49

So there you go. So there's my comments on that. You say, well, that's too simple. Well, works for me.

26:56

Works for me. Okay. So while I was away doing hopefully important stuff,

27:05

I saw that over the weekend, the interview that we had been told was coming.

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William Lane Craig was on the Ben Shapiro program. Oh, by the way, this morning, we've already mentioned this on Facebook and Twitter, but this morning, very early this morning, what

27:27

I think is going to be an explosively important discussion took place on Justin Brierley's unbelievable radio broadcast.

27:37

I know this for many reasons, but the primary reason is that when I was in the studio with Justin just a few weeks ago, it was the 23rd of April, I walked over to the

27:48

Premiere Studios. I can walk to Premiere. I can give you directions from multiple tube and rail stations on how to get to Premiere by foot.

27:58

It's on Chapter Street, just off Vauxhall Bridge Road. Anyways, in studio, when we got done doing two programs, one's already aired, the one

28:09

I did with Abdullah Al -Andalusi, and then there's gonna be another one on Romans 9. I think maybe this is gonna drop this weekend.

28:15

I don't remember. Anyway, Justin asked me, I have a good relationship with Justin.

28:22

We do not see eye to eye on everything, but the one thing that has to be said plainly is that Justin is always fair in how he treats his guests, no matter whether he agrees with them or not.

28:35

He's always incredibly fair. And so he asked me, he said, so who do you think

28:43

I should get to dialogue with Andy Stanley? And I sort of got the feeling that what he was saying was, he'd never do it with you.

28:52

Never do it with you. So in light of that, who might he do it with that would do a really good job and bring the issues out?

29:03

And I, it didn't take me more than a second to go, well, I would really recommend you my fellow elder

29:11

Jeff Durbin. And so I was really excited when I think the next day

29:17

I got an email, uh, no, uh, Twitter, Justin and I use

29:22

DMs on Twitter to communicate generally, uh, asking for Jeff's email address.

29:28

And then once I gave that to him the next day in my email box, Jeff, Jeff's as well, invitation to Jeff to join him this, um, um, this morning, 4 30

29:42

AM Jeff's time. And for those of you who know Jeff, that was one of the biggest challenges.

29:48

He's a bit of a night owl, um, but not that time in the night owl. I am four 30.

29:53

It wouldn't have been any problem for me. Uh, but that was a sacrifice of love on Jeff's part.

29:59

Um, and they did video, uh, they, they did, uh, they did zoom video.

30:05

Uh, so, um, and what's exciting to me is that Jeff tells me they went much longer than I had told him they would.

30:15

And evidently Justin explained that they'll have to edit it for the actual radio airing on premier and terrestrial radio in the

30:24

UK, but that the full version will be on the podcast. So you'll want to catch the video full version on the podcast because they went much longer and they,

30:38

I think the reason that happened is because I, I think, um,

30:44

Justin was probably very interested in the apologetic methodology aspect of the book irresistible because it, it is strange that in Stanley's perspective, apologetics, and that's, it is connected with what we're gonna listen to with William Lane Craig, because it comes from not just Craig, but Craig is a, probably the best known representative of some of the perspectives that Stanley is attempting to incorporate, causing him to adopt a highly unusual, historically condemned view of the relationship between the

31:28

Hebrew scriptures and the Christian scriptures between the old Testament and new Testament, Tanakh and the Christian scripture, however you want to put it.

31:35

And so from what I understand, they spent a lot of time on apologetic methodology at first, only then getting to the issues of God's law and stuff like that, uh, later on, which

31:46

I guess I should have predicted because I could see that that would be where Justin's primarily primary interest would be, uh, because he does favor the minimal facts, argumentation, things like that, that Andy Stanley incorporates into his, what

32:06

I would say, denigration of the old Testament scriptures as to their relationship to the new and their continued and abiding validity in the demonstration of what

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God's will is, the nature of God, et cetera, et cetera. So, uh, that's supposed to be out on the 30th,

32:23

I believe, of, um, of May. And I'm certainly looking forward to it.

32:29

Very, very happy that Jeff got to do that. And my hope is what this is going to lead to is getting

32:36

Jeff over to London, maybe on the way over to someplace else. Uh, I'm, I'm using my contacts as best

32:43

I can to introduce Jeff to a wider audience over there in Europe, where I've had the opportunity of doing stuff for years now.

32:49

Um, I would love to see Jeff have the same opportunity I do. And that is basically

32:54

I go to London and I just, I contact Justin beforehand, say, well, what, what, what do you want to talk about?

32:59

What I'm, I'll make myself available. And, um, uh, generally he comes up with really fascinating and interesting stuff and he's really good at matching guests, um, to, to address a wide range of topics.

33:13

And so, um, yeah, I'm, I'm hoping that that's going to be the result of all this.

33:18

And, um, I'm just thankful that Justin asked and then acted on my recommendation.

33:24

And so, uh, thrilled, uh, that I can recommend to people, my fellow elder,

33:30

Jeff Durbin, and know that he's going to step up to the plate and swing big, go for the fences. And, uh,

33:35

I'm sure that he did. So I saw some screenshots of what the Zoom thing looked like with Andy and Jeff and stuff.

33:43

And I did make the comment, I think Jeff's going to scare the Brits with his big man beard. I bet she has a gun right out of the sight of the view of the camera, you know, that type of thing.

34:00

Uh, I can just see that coming. So anyways, um, that took place this morning and I got good word about it.

34:06

So we're, we're thankful about it. So it is connected, um, to what we're going to look at here. And that is, uh, the discussion between William Lane Craig and, uh,

34:17

Ben Shapiro. Now, of course, Ben had John MacArthur on what? Less than six months ago, three months ago, something like that.

34:25

Um, and this is a very, very, very different conversation. Um, and as soon as it aired,

34:30

I saw all sorts of stuff on my Twitter feed, uh, about, man, I wish Ben Shapiro would have somebody on who actually believes in sufficiency of scripture, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

34:39

So I listened to it initially between flights at DFW. And, uh, then

34:45

I had to listen to it again while queuing everything up. But of course I was listening to it at 1 .8 at that point.

34:51

Um, so I've marked what I think is most relevant and interesting in providing a contrast and in providing a, uh, at least from my perspective, my understanding of reform theology and the reform worldview.

35:08

And I am a presuppositionalist, uh, a critique of,

35:14

I have always said, and Craig verifies this in this conversation, that, uh,

35:23

Craig is a philosopher first and a theologian second. And when it comes to evangelism, he is a philosopher first.

35:30

To him, philosophy is a tool of evangelism. And as a result,

35:37

I believe it ends up, uh, ruling over and then fundamentally,

35:44

I think, altering the message of important elements of the scriptures themselves. And so there you go.

35:52

Um, yes, someone channeled going, uh, DFW means Dallas Fort Worth.

35:58

I suppose not everybody who travels would know what DFW was, but it was the Dallas Fort Worth airport, um, which is a place where if you fly

36:06

American airlines and I am an executive platinum flyer on American airlines, uh, you visit

36:12

Dallas all the time. It's a hub. One of our main three main hubs would be

36:18

Dallas, Phoenix, and Charlotte. And so you'll see me mentioning those places all the time.

36:25

Okay. Let's, um, let's dive into what, uh, I didn't do the video thing. It's so much easier just to do audio, throw it into, um, audio note taker someday when audio note taker becomes video note taker, uh, and allows us to, to do it that way.

36:40

Great. Fine. Wonderful. We'll do it till then. We're, we got to do with what we got to do.

36:46

So, uh, you're just stuck looking at me, which I realize is not all that impressive, but okay.

36:52

So how do we get from the idea of an unmoved mover in, in some of the arguments that you've been making to the idea of a moral

36:58

God who cares about us and is involved in the world? Now I appreciate Ben Shapiro.

37:03

All of us appreciate Ben Shapiro. Ben Shapiro is an incredibly bright guy. All of us love watching

37:09

Ben Shapiro make leftists look like idiots. And, uh, that's great, but we know that Ben Shapiro was not a

37:15

Christian. He is a form of Orthodox Jew. And, uh, so issues relating to, uh, the

37:24

Messiahship of Jesus, cross resurrection, all these things are central in talking with, with Ben Shapiro.

37:31

And so I appreciate this. This is an incredibly important question.

37:38

And, you know, cause Craig's been talking about his, you know, cosmological argument, et cetera, et cetera.

37:45

But Shapiro's a sharp guy. And he realizes, yeah, but that doesn't really give you a personal God that just gives you a

37:51

God concept, the need of a God of a certain form. Uh, but it's not going to give you the personal

37:56

God of Judaism. And it's certainly, well, at least conservative, not even conservative,

38:02

Orthodox Judaism. Um, and it's certainly like give you to the Trinitarian God of the Bible.

38:08

And one of the issues we've raised many times in talking about the perspective promoted by William Lane Craig and others, uh, is that when you don't start with the

38:18

Trinitarian God, the, the only true revelation of the doctrine of the

38:24

Trinity is going to be based upon divine revelation. God has to tell us that he exists in this way.

38:30

You don't just sit there and stare at a three -leaf clover and go, ah, yes, three divine persons, one being, perichoresis.

38:40

Yes. And no, that doesn't work that way. The creation does tell us that God is powerful.

38:49

And the creation tells us that we should be thankful to God.

38:56

We are his creatures. Um, and really that he's going to judge us, but it doesn't tell us almost anything else.

39:07

And while God's law, moral law is written upon our hearts as the creatures of God, the specifics of that law are not to be found in examining a rock or contemplating the beauty of the cosmos.

39:24

Uh, there are specific things that are only revealed in scripture and who

39:30

God is and how we are to worship him and how we are to know him is something that God revealed from the start.

39:40

And that's why scripture is so vitally important. And so it's a good question that Ben asks.

39:48

Well, it's quite right that arguments like the cosmological argument or the teleological or design argument, which we haven't talked about, don't get you the moral properties of the creator and designer of the universe.

40:00

Not only the moral properties, but the fact that we worship a triune God. One of my concerns is that this form of apologetic approach leaves you tacking on at the end, the central revelation of who

40:18

God is. That's why Bonson said, I'm not going to defend bare theism.

40:25

I'm not going to defend deism. Um, I don't think any of those are rational perspectives.

40:31

Uh, I'm going to be defending Christian theism, which is Trinitarian theism.

40:37

And I, I think that that's, uh, appropriate. But the moral argument and the ontological argument do.

40:45

Both of those lead to a being, which is the moral paradigm and source of all moral value and moral obligation.

40:53

But not triune. And I would argue a Unitarian source of morality is problematic because you can't define how

41:03

God is love. And if you can't define how God is love, you can't really define how God is just and righteous or merciful, or you can't define loving kindness again in it comes out different in a

41:20

Unitarian concept. And I don't think that Craig's appeal to the moral argument is going to be sufficient at that point without the

41:32

Trinity, without the relationship of father, son, and spirit in eternity past. And so those arguments compliment the cosmological and teleological arguments by telling us something about the moral properties of the creator and designer of the universe.

41:47

So you have multiple arguments that you're going to use here to try to illustrate general broad categories.

41:59

But what he loathes to do is to make the kind of authoritative proclamation that Paul did on Mars Hill, when he was interrupted, by the way, um, he didn't get to finish his argument.

42:16

As soon as he mentioned the resurrection of Jesus, didn't even get to mention Jesus's name.

42:22

But when he said God was going to judge by the one whom he raised from the dead, the laughter drowned him out.

42:30

But he got there. That is to the point of making the authoritative proclamation that God was going to judge the living and the dead by this one that he has raised from the dead.

42:44

And he doesn't make that argument on the basis of bowing to their philosophical supremacy -ism, even when it cost him the opportunity to continue the proclamation.

43:00

He had to proclaim the central aspect that God had done something that no philosopher could ever predict, but that the scriptures did.

43:10

And that was Jesus's point too, in Matthew or Luke chapter 24. Now, looking at those properties, what makes that being a

43:17

God of mind? And what makes that being a constant? Meaning like present now, as opposed to the kind of deistic conception of a

43:24

God who laid things in motion, maybe embedded moral codes within us, and then walked away. What makes God something that is present in the universe at the moment on any level?

43:34

Now, these are good questions. And I would be answering them very differently, probably because I would have approached the whole subject differently in the first place.

43:46

But especially, I don't think you would ever come to the conclusion that the

43:56

Trinity is anything other than a later speculative thing to sort of believe in, but there is no centrality.

44:06

I would ask William Lane Craig, is the Trinity central to your worldview?

44:13

Or would your worldview be pretty much the same if you were a Unitarian? I think that's a perfectly honest, fair question to ask, because I don't see how

44:31

Craig incorporates how the Trinity solves the problem of the one and the many, for example, or gives us a grounding for understanding personality in an appropriate fashion because of the relationship of Father, Son, and Spirit.

44:43

I don't see how that ever comes out. It certainly doesn't come out in this conversation, especially the person who would reject the doctrine of the

44:53

Trinity. And I think that needs to be challenged.

44:59

A couple of questions there. First, with regard to why you think this is a mind, most all of the arguments that I just shared do lead to a personal intelligent creator.

45:08

The first argument does. The teleological or design argument leads to a cosmic intelligence that has created the world.

45:15

Cosmic intelligence. The reality is that the teleological argument, well, again, you could fit all of this into a

45:28

Unitarian scheme, but if you just talk about intelligence,

45:36

I do believe that the cosmological argument is a valid argument, given what's called the principle of sufficient reason,

45:48

PSR. The problem is PSR requires you to have an intelligent personal creator.

45:59

And so, you know, if you will accept the validity and rationality of just brute facts, and you can get around the cosmological argument.

46:10

So all of this, again, takes us back to those starting presuppositions and how often in our conversations, especially with unbelievers, look, the whole point of presuppositionalism, you never let the unbeliever judge

46:22

God. And you never forget what the Bible reveals about the nature of the unbeliever as a suppressor of truth.

46:31

These are absolutely necessary to understand. The moral argument leads to a personal embodiment of moral value, because persons are the source of moral value, not inanimate things.

46:44

The ideological argument leads to a being who is omniscient and morally perfect, and therefore is a person.

46:50

But not Triune. The ontological argument would never even suggest it. Couldn't suggest it.

46:57

These theistic arguments don't just leave you with some kind of unmoved mover. They give you a personal creator and designer of the universe who is perfectly good.

47:06

But not in the sense of defining what good is.

47:15

And in fact, one of the problems here is that people who approach the faith in this way will often be the first ones to balk at the idea that the

47:25

God of the Old Testament was truly good, when the idea that it is good for God to judge the world in the

47:34

Flood, which was... I don't know why people always point to Israel and the

47:41

Amorites or something as the horrible example of genocide or something. The Flood was a whole lot more than that.

47:46

Now, numerically, maybe not so much. There wouldn't have been all that many people in the world at that point, but it was a...

47:53

percentage -wise, it was pretty big, okay? Yeah, per capita judgment, very high.

48:00

Very, very high, yeah. But yeah, the people who have been convinced by this kind of argumentation are going to They were asked to judge from the start.

48:16

There you go. Now, some of them give you a being that is metaphysically necessary. The second version of the cosmological argument that I mentioned leads to a being who exists by a necessity of his own nature and therefore cannot fail to exist.

48:30

The moral argument leads to a being who is the paradigm and source of all moral value. Now, if you believe that some moral values are necessary, which most ethicists do, that means this being is also necessary in his existence, and therefore...

48:44

Now, you know, I just don't think that Dr. Craig hears himself sometimes because he's said this so many times, but did you catch...

48:50

Let me just replay just that last section. I'm gonna actually go to normal speed here because we've been playing at 1 .2.

49:00

Just... Listen. You believe that some moral values... which most ethicists do, that means this being is also necessary in his existence, and therefore...

49:16

So, if you believe, as most ethicists do...

49:23

You see what the basis, the foundation here of all this stuff is? So, you know, if you come to the conclusion, so you get to reason this out for yourself, and then you can join the majority of ethicists.

49:36

It's not all, but the majority of ethicists... You're going for...

49:43

There's a 51 % chance here, and that's good enough. That's always been one of my criticisms of this approach is, you know, the majority, you know, go with this, and, you know, it's up to you, and if you believe this, you put together with that, and so on and so forth.

50:03

Look, I think it's valuable to look at the fine -tuning of the universe, and I think the moral argument is wonderful, but that's because I'm starting with an acceptance of what

50:14

God has revealed about himself and his world. And I recognize the person

50:20

I'm talking to is suppressing the same knowledge. That's really the difference.

50:25

Having demonstrated that a being like that exists, it cannot fail to be present in the world today. That means that this being also exists now.

50:32

It couldn't cease to exist. Now, that still leaves open the question of deism. Has this creator and designer of the universe, perfectly good, revealed himself to us in some way that we can know him more personally, or has he remained aloof and distant from the world that he's made?

50:50

That's still an open question to talk about. And yeah, deism becomes an option when you don't start with scripture, and Dr.

51:01

Craig feels it is a very, very unwise thing to start there. The question as to which of these is true,

51:08

I think, stands or falls upon the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Who do you think Jesus of Nazareth was?

51:14

Jesus claimed to be the decisive self -revelation of God, and I believe that we have good reasons to believe that those claims were true.

51:23

Now, let me just point out, I'll say it again, Dr. Craig adopts the New Testament documents as generally reliable historical works perspective, and I just simply have to point out to you that if if they are just generally reliable historical documents, then when our

51:53

Muslim friends try to poke holes in them by positing self -contradiction within them, is mere general accuracy enough to substantiate something as amazing as claiming that God himself entered into human flesh?

52:16

That's really the question. And that therefore the God revealed by Jesus of Nazareth exists.

52:22

Okay, so let's get into that. What is the proof that Jesus was who he says he is in the gospel?

52:29

Well, first we need to establish who he thought he was. When you look at the religio -historical context of the life and ministry of Jesus...

52:38

Or, I would say, when you allow all of the New Testament to speak, even within its religio -historical context, but I would say there is a consistent revelation, and it's inspired, and it comes from God concerning who

52:56

Jesus is. So that means I don't get to pick and choose which parts of the New Testament I'm going to allow to speak to this.

53:03

If you're just looking at the New Testament as generally reliable, why do you insist that the portions you're going to focus upon are the primary ones and not what's someone else might focus upon?

53:14

I think they all have to be harmonized because of the nature of the text. If you don't think that... If you've already abandoned that high level of the view of scripture, or just don't think it's defensible, or you can get to it later on, you don't have the same foundation

53:29

I do to demand the consistency of looking at all of what scripture says. And how many times in our debates over the years has it come down to allowing scripture to define the parameters of who

53:43

Jesus is? Our Muslim friends will pick certain verses and ignore other certain verses. The Unitarians will do the same thing, and we say, no, you've got to listen to all of it.

53:52

Well, there's something behind that, and behind that is the inspired, supernatural consistency of a divine revelation that is intended to communicate something to us.

54:05

If you start off by saying, eh, we can skip that... I think you can show that among the historically authentic words of Jesus...

54:16

Among the what? Let me... I think you can show that among the historically authentic words of Jesus...

54:25

Who gets to determine that once you have decided that you're not even going to defend the integrity of all of those words?

54:32

Why do you defend just certain portions of those words? ...were claims that he thought he was the

54:42

Jewish Messiah, that he believed himself to be the Son of God in a unique sense that set him apart from Jewish kings and prophets, and finally, that he thought that he was the

54:54

Son of Man predicted by the prophet Daniel. Now, when it says that he was different from other kings and things like that as the

55:03

Son of God, again, that requires a pan -canonical, all the way across the canon, consistency in the definition of what

55:12

Son of God means, and once you've bought the, eh, mainly reliable, eh, not going to defend the consistency part, how can you...

55:23

He's assuming what he's not willing to defend and evidently hoping people won't see that. To whom

55:28

God would give all dominion, power, and authority. So he had this radical self -understanding of being

55:37

Messiah, Son of God, and the Son of Man, and at the trial scene before the

55:42

Sanhedrin in Mark 15, all three of these titles come to a head when the high priest asks him, are you the

55:50

Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One, that is the Son of God, and Jesus says, I am, and then virtually quoting from Daniel, and you will see the

56:00

Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven and seated at the right hand of the power. And at that point, the high priest rips his robes and says, you have heard the blasphemy, what more witnesses do we need?

56:11

Jared And I agree a thousand percent, this is central to an edification of Jesus' self -understanding of himself, but if the words he's quoting aren't inspired, if the record we have is not inspired, it's insufficient to substantiate the claim that you're making based upon it.

56:32

It just is. Tom And Mark says they all condemned him as worthy of death, and that enabled them, since they didn't have the ability to carry out capital punishment, to deliver him over to the

56:42

Roman authorities by slandering him as a pretender to be king of the Jews, and therefore a political figure who could be tried for treason and sedition and crucified.

56:53

Jared So from the Jewish perspective, this narrative has some holes in sort of Jewish philosophy. The narrative begins with the idea that Jesus appears in front of the

57:02

Sanhedrin, and then claims to be the Messiah. Well, there's nothing actual criminally in any of the tractates that say that if you declare yourself the

57:08

Messiah, this is actually a punishment, a punishable offense. Tom No one says that it is.

57:15

It was certainly dangerous in the socio -political context of the day.

57:21

The Sadducees didn't want anybody doing that. The Sadducees had a vested interest in getting rid of anybody who claimed that particular phraseology.

57:33

But no one's arguing that the point of blasphemy was the utilization of the coalescence of Psalm 110 and Daniel together that you get in Jesus' words.

57:49

Jared There are many Jews, including Bar Kokhba, who have declared themselves messianic figures. The real gap here is that in the

57:55

Gospels, Jesus' vision of himself as the Messiah is completely different from the prior vision of what the

58:00

Jewish Messiah is, and is actually outside the scope. Tom Prior visions, because your intertestamental literature, the literature written between Malachi and Matthew, in that second temple period up to the destruction in AD 70, shows not a monolithic understanding of the

58:21

Messiah. There's certainly very highly politicized examples of that.

58:27

But there were other viewpoints of the Messiah that are very, very interesting, but it wasn't just one view.

58:34

Jared Of how Jews describe the Messiah, or really have ever described the Messiah, the Messiah in Judaism has always been a political figure who is destined to do certain things, restoring the kingdom of Israel, maintaining control of that kingdom, bringing more

58:47

Jews back to Israel. All of these things are considered sort of political things that the Messiah does. But the idea of the Messiah as embodiment of God is something that's foreign to Jewish religious philosophy going all the way back to the beginning.

58:56

So even the idea that the Sanhedrin would be questioning him in those terms and would get from that, that what he means is,

59:02

I am God, which would be a much more punishable offense, presumably without the actual blasphemy, that's, it's an oddity.

59:08

I think you're absolutely right. It's an oddity. Well, I'm not sure what an oddity is in that context.

59:14

It certainly is not part of what would be expected by, especially the

59:23

Jewish leaders in their viewpoint. That doesn't change the fact that Jesus made these claims concerning himself, and the reaction of the

59:34

Jewish leaders is fully understandable and is consistent with how they would have understood things at that particular time in that particular place in history.

59:43

Now, the question, I think, that is raised by your interpretation,

59:48

Ben, is this. Why should we believe Jesus' reinterpretation of the

59:55

Messiah rather than the one that the chief priests and the people held? And I think the answer to that is his resurrection from the dead.

01:00:04

That's, you know, that's certainly central. I'm not going to dispute that, but I don't think that's the only ground.

01:00:14

The Jewish understanding of the Messiah was to be primarily developed in that intertestamental period, and we would not give specific authority to the writings that enshrined those views.

01:00:28

And Jesus very often, you know, the messianic secret in the gospel ministry, things like that, all goes to his dealing with that particular issue.

01:00:38

Jesus' resurrection from the dead is Yahweh's public and unequivocal...

01:00:45

I caught that the first time through. That's not something I would have done, talking with a

01:00:51

Jew and using the divine name. That's a, yeah, it's unnecessary throwing of gasoline in that particular context, but anyway.

01:01:04

Vindication of the man whom the chief priests had rejected as a blasphemer. It is the divine demonstration that these allegedly blasphemous claims are in fact true, that he was who he claimed to be, and that therefore

01:01:21

I follow Jesus in his conception of what it means to be the Messiah. So when it comes to the resurrection...

01:01:27

I mean, I think it's a valid argument. The empty tomb validates all of Jesus' claims. No, no, no, no toys about it.

01:01:34

Why is resurrection proof of So Lazarus is resurrected. Now, did you catch that? Why is resurrection proof of divinity?

01:01:42

It's not proof of divinity directly. As he says, Lazarus was raised from the dead.

01:01:48

That doesn't make Lazarus God. It's very common for both Jews and Muslims to misunderstand the nature of what makes the resurrection so important.

01:01:59

It's the fact that Jesus prophesied it, said how he was going to die, said that he was going to be buried, he was going to rise again the third day, and that the

01:02:11

New Testament scriptures assign the responsibility for having done that to the Father, to the

01:02:16

Spirit, and even to the Son. He takes his own life back again. So it's a Trinitarian act. So it's not just merely experiencing resurrection, but having prophesied it and said that it is due to the fact of my unique relationship to the

01:02:34

Father, which comes out in John chapter 14. I wanted to emphasize the religio -historical context before we talked about the resurrection.

01:02:42

A miracle taken in isolation is inherently ambiguous. The proper interpretation of a miracle is going to be given by the religio -historical context in which it occurs.

01:02:52

Or maybe the prophecies about it for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, that seems to have been

01:03:00

Jesus' primary concern as to the interpretation of the miracle of the resurrection was he said to the disciples, why are you so slow at heart to believe what has been said to me from Moses through all the prophets?

01:03:12

Yeah, that part's, I think, really important. And the resurrection of Jesus is not just the resurrection of any old body, it's the resurrection of the man who claimed to be

01:03:23

Messiah, son of God, and son of man, and who was crucified for those allegedly blasphemous claims.

01:03:29

If God has raised this man from the dead, then he has, I think, unequivocally and publicly vindicated those allegedly blasphemous claims.

01:03:38

So one of the counterclaims to some of this is that the Gospels are written significantly after Jesus lives. Even the earliest

01:03:43

Gospels written, what, 70 CE? Somewhere 40 years after Jesus is crucified.

01:03:49

So what's to say, I mean, that like most historical events, there is some play in the joints here, so that this would be the historical argument against the exact veracity of the

01:03:58

Gospel revelations, for example. Now, I think it's important to understand, Ben, that— Now, so what

01:04:04

Ben is saying is if you take the later date for the writing of the

01:04:09

Gospels, I would put Mark before 70. All the Gospels could be before 70.

01:04:15

It doesn't change anything if any of them are post, but I think the synoptics are plainly pre -70.

01:04:23

If they were post -70, they wouldn't say the things that they say the way they say it. John could be post -70 without any problem one way or the other, but people argue about that too.

01:04:34

We don't have a date on it, but the point is, when you really think about it, is the general, you know, the claim that these are generally reliable historical documents, yeah, but they're relating something that isn't just simply a matter of simple history.

01:04:53

It transcends the categories of history. It's a massively supernatural miracle, and so you need something a little bit more than, well, hey, it was the

01:05:03

Jerusalem Post for that day. That's good enough. It's generally good, you know, except the advice column and the gossip column.

01:05:11

No, there's something different about these documents. In order for a historical document to be reliable, it isn't required that it be inerrant.

01:05:20

Contemporaneous, of course. So it's like Bill Craig has an allergy to the term inerrant.

01:05:29

You know, for it to be accurate, it doesn't have to be inerrant. You know, maybe there's some, you know, there's some stuff there, you know, maybe the writers didn't just quite get it all right, but da -da -da -da -da -da -da.

01:05:42

Again, this is not, this is not how the apostles would have responded to that kind of an objection by any stretch of the imagination.

01:05:54

What I would argue is that underlying the inference to the resurrection of Jesus are three great independently established facts.

01:06:03

So here come the minimalist facts for the resurrection argument.

01:06:09

We've heard it over and over and over and over again, but here they come.

01:06:15

And if this is such a great approach, this will probably result in Ben Shapiro's conversion. Which are supported by the historical evidence, and which surprisingly,

01:06:26

I did my doctoral work on this in Germany, are recognized as such by the majority of New Testament scholars today.

01:06:33

There's the argument from scholarly authority. It's always snuck in there. Who studied the historical

01:06:40

Jesus. And these facts would be that after his crucifixion and burial by a member of the

01:06:47

Sanhedrin named Joseph of Arimathea, that Jesus' tomb was discovered empty on the first day of the week by a group of his female followers.

01:06:54

Secondly would be that various individuals and groups of people then witnessed appearances of Jesus alive.

01:07:02

And finally, number three would be that the original disciples suddenly and sincerely came to believe that God had raised

01:07:10

Jesus from the dead, despite having every predisposition to the contrary. So there's your minimalist facts.

01:07:17

It used to be like five, but now it's been...make this as narrow as you possibly can.

01:07:24

Make it more defensible. The vast majority of scholars have come to accept as convincing the evidence in support of those three facts.

01:07:33

Not assuming biblical inerrancy or inspiration, but treating the Gospels as ordinary historical documents.

01:07:39

You can show, for example... Just ordinary historical documents. No inspiration. Very, very important.

01:07:46

Even though the one who rose from the dead, the first thing he did with his disciples was to talk about the inspired documents and the prophets and stuff like that.

01:07:54

But, you know, we've grown past that, I guess. The fact of the discovery of the empty tomb is attested by at least six independent sources in the

01:08:03

New Testament, some of which are extraordinarily early. No scholar denies that individuals and groups saw post -mortem appearances of Jesus.

01:08:11

The only question is whether you should or could dismiss them as hallucinatory. And again, nobody denies that the original disciples suddenly and sincerely came to believe that God had raised

01:08:20

Jesus from the dead. Evidently, the quote -unquote radical scholars are just simply being dismissed here as nobody.

01:08:28

Dr. Price certainly questions all these things, but I guess they don't exist. So these three facts are pretty firmly established, and the only question is then how do you best explain them?

01:08:38

Down through history, attempts have been made to explain these facts without recourse to the resurrection, like the conspiracy theory, the apparent death theory, the hallucination theory, and so forth.

01:08:50

I would argue that none of these naturalistic theories meets the criteria for being the best historical explanation of the facts.

01:09:02

None of them is as good an explanation as the one that the original disciples gave, that God raised

01:09:07

Jesus from the dead. And if that's right, then I think we have good grounds, indeed we're almost compelled to revise our typical understanding of who the

01:09:15

Messiah was supposed to be. So there's the argument. It's not an inspired word from God, but it's better than anything else, which of course means you get to make that judgment.

01:09:30

You get to make that judgment. It's all up to you. Yeah, you know, when

01:09:36

Paul went to Mars Hill, he actually skipped all that and said, God's going to judge you by the one he raised from the dead, whether you believe he did or not.

01:09:43

And I'm not inviting you to analyze various theories about it. I am telling you what the reality is going to be.

01:09:51

But, you know, Paul hadn't had the chance to think these things through to the level that we have today. And so, you know, we're dealing with such skeptical people, well, and people at Mars Hill were too.

01:10:01

But anyway, we just do things differently today, is basically what you've got going there. So we can have a historical argument back and forth.

01:10:08

Now, by the way, there's the minimalist argument. So that should have just overwhelming, convincing power, right?

01:10:17

Well, what did it do for Ben Shapiro? So we can have a historical argument back and forth, obviously. And I think that there are arguments that you can make.

01:10:23

I think there are arguments that I can make. I honestly find them relatively uninteresting is the truth, simply because I found them rather uninteresting.

01:10:34

Now you can simply go, yeah, but it's still the best we've got. And then say, and you need the spirit of God to do something.

01:10:41

Well, why didn't you just trust the spirit of God from the start? Why not use the apostolic route and trust the spirit of God from the start?

01:10:51

Because here you've given him the arguments and he's like, oh, that's sort of uninteresting. We could have an argument about that, but I'm not going to do that right now.

01:11:00

Why not trust the spirit from the start and make the real application that says, not only has

01:11:09

God raised him from the dead in fulfillment of the prophecies in the prophets from Moses onward, but he's going to judge the living and the dead in light of your relationship to him.

01:11:21

That seemingly is what God has used to convert people for a long time now.

01:11:26

And so, yeah, yeah, there are arguments that you can make. I think there are arguments. Now, let me slow this down so you can actually hear it, because he's speaking quickly.

01:11:36

So we can have the historical argument back and forth, obviously, and I think that there are arguments that you can make. I think there are arguments that I can make.

01:11:41

I honestly find them relatively uninteresting is the truth, simply because I'm not sure that we're going to come to any sort of consensus on them.

01:11:48

No, we're not going to come to any consensus on them because there's so many different arguments and it's just your opinion versus my opinion.

01:11:56

And yeah, there's the point. Exactly. On the historical argument, for example,

01:12:01

I think it's fairly easy to claim there's a sect of Judaism right now in which there's a small subsection of people who believe that the

01:12:08

Lubavitcher Rebbe is still alive. The Lubavitcher Rebbe passed away. By the way, if you don't know what this is, go back about two weeks to the briefing and Dr.

01:12:16

Moeller went over this when he was talking about the synagogue shooting. He introduced you to the kind of Judaism, the ultra orthodox kind of Judaism that was being practiced at that synagogue.

01:12:30

And that's that's what Shapiro is talking about right here. And there's still people who treat him as though he is not dead.

01:12:36

They call him the messiah. They think that he was the political messiah. And they still do that 20 years after his death.

01:12:42

You know, that's not proof to me that he is actually alive. Some of them have experienced it. Right. So, you know, especially when you're talking about events 2 ,000 years ago, if people write that down,

01:12:50

I think there's sufficient... I doubt this man's tomb is empty. I mean, I haven't dug him up. So I wouldn't know.

01:12:57

But if somebody claimed 2 ,000 years from now that his tomb was empty or claimed 70 years from now that his tomb was empty, then...

01:13:03

Yeah, that's an important difference, Ben. The important time gap is not the gap between the events and the present.

01:13:11

Good evidence doesn't become bad evidence just because of the lapse of time. The critical event, as you just said, is...

01:13:17

But our ability to evaluate that evidence, if we are being asked to take the role of judge, does change.

01:13:28

It does change, given the amount of time. The time gap between the events and the recording of those events.

01:13:38

And in the case of the events of the life of Jesus and his resurrection, that time gap is extraordinarily narrow.

01:13:46

We can push back even before the writing of the Gospels and the epistles of Paul by discerning the traditions upon which they relied when they wrote.

01:13:58

And some of these go back to within, it's estimated, five years after Jesus' crucifixion. I'm thinking of the ones that Paul transmits in to the

01:14:06

Church in 1 Corinthians 15. So, we're on pretty good ground there in terms of the earliness and the multiplicity of our sources for the life of Jesus.

01:14:15

We're on very good ground. That's quite true. But that's not going to change the reality of the fact that you're asking a person to judge these things and you have not brought to them an authoritative word from God.

01:14:30

And you're afraid to do it. That's the difference. So, let's talk for a second about sort of the necessity for Judeo -Christian revelation.

01:14:38

Because, and here I'm going to merge... I'm glad he keeps bringing these things up. I mean, yeah, okay.

01:14:44

What is the necessity? So, why, you know, philosophy and all of that. So, why? So, let's talk for a second about sort of the necessity for Judeo -Christian revelation.

01:14:53

Because, and here I'm going to merge the two in terms of the idea of God personally speaking to people and giving them the morality of the

01:15:00

Old Testament, which largely is reflected in the New Testament is part of the Old Testament according to Christians anyway.

01:15:06

It reflects the chief morality of the Old Testament. It doesn't supplant it entirely. The Old Testament doesn't become nothing just because the

01:15:11

New Testament comes around. Right. Except for Andy Stanley. Just had to throw that in there.

01:15:17

That's why I'm now moving back toward the kind of theological question, which is, what's the purpose of the revelation?

01:15:22

Meaning, could we, would it be sufficient to work within the framework of the first half of our conversation with regard to sort of rational pushes not toward revelation and the presence of God in human form in Christianity or the presence of God on top of a mountain in Judaism?

01:15:36

Would a God of reason alone be sufficient? Or do you need to have, for what purpose do you need to have a God who is speaking directly to people at Sinai or speaking through Jesus in Christianity?

01:15:45

Wow. I mean, that's a really, really good question. And if we had started where we needed to start, we would have already answered that.

01:15:56

But the very fact that you're over halfway through the interview and we're just now getting to this says something to me.

01:16:04

Now, Craig's answer is going to be interesting and partially true, but I think insufficient.

01:16:11

I think that the answer of both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament can be put into one word, atonement.

01:16:18

What is needed is atonement for sin. Atonement. That's true, but only partially true.

01:16:28

I mean, as I would understand it, God speaks to man because it's

01:16:36

God's intention to glorify himself through redemption of a particular people in Christ Jesus.

01:16:42

And that's going to involve atonement. But that posits the biblical teaching from the

01:16:51

Old Testament and the New Testament that the personal God is accomplishing his own glorification in the creation of the universe and the salvation of an elect people.

01:17:06

And Craig's not going to go there. That's not the language he's going to use, even when that's the language of the

01:17:11

New Testament. He's not going to do that. His theology is not robust enough or full enough to substantiate that, even when you start talking about atonement.

01:17:21

As we've seen, the deepest, richest, most consistently biblical understanding of the atonement has

01:17:29

Jesus as the victim, as well as the high priest. And so all the intentionality of the

01:17:37

Father and the Son, the Spirit, it's Trinitarian, it's Reformed, anachronistic terminology there, it's all that stuff.

01:17:44

He doesn't have that view of theology to be able to substantiate all that.

01:17:51

And in the Levitical sacrifices, in the tabernacle and later in the temple, you had a sacrificial system whereby atonement was made for sin through the sacrifice of various animals.

01:18:04

And Jesus himself and the authors of the New Testament think of Jesus as being the ultimate sacrificial offering to God to make atonement once and for all for the sins of mankind, so that in his sacrificial death on the cross, he fulfills all of these

01:18:25

Jewish antecedents or foreshadowing of a decisive atonement for sin that will reconcile us to God and bring forgiveness and pardon and cleansing.

01:18:38

I'm thankful for the proclamation of that. I'm just not sure that it was really an answer to the question that was specifically asked, but I am thankful for that.

01:18:48

Three more quotes, and we will wrap this up, hopefully, by half past the hour here.

01:18:55

So when you argue with students, when you talk with students and discuss with them, what do you find is the best way to approach them when it comes to the precepts of traditional

01:19:01

Judeo -Christian morality? Do you come at it from the natural law perspective, or do you come at it from the biblical perspective?

01:19:07

Now, this is very relevant. We're not going to have time to do it today. I had it queued up, to get to the Fesco stuff, but natural law or Bible?

01:19:19

If Ben Shapiro can recognize these categories and ask a good question upon that, we should never get to the point where we become so confused that we can't ask those questions, though a lot of people have never even thought about it.

01:19:33

I guess I share with them the moral argument that I shared earlier in our interview. This moral argument is very powerful with students because, on the one hand, they've been taught relativism.

01:19:45

They are scared to death of imposing their values. By the way, the only thing that makes the moral argument powerful is the presuppositional recognition that the people you're talking to are made in the image of God.

01:19:59

So once again, Dr. Craig is dependent to borrow from the other side to make this work.

01:20:08

That's the only reason it's powerful, is that they're made in the image of God. If they are what they think they are, bubbling bags of chemicals, the moral arguments are irrelevant, completely irrelevant, on someone else.

01:20:20

So it seems right to them that if God does not exist, that objective moral values don't exist. They think they're subjective, person -dependent, and relative.

01:20:28

But then secondly, the premise also seems true to them that objective moral values do exist. They think it's objectively wrong to impose your moral values on someone else, and the values of tolerance, open -mindedness, and love have been deeply ingrained to them.

01:20:43

So they believe both of the premises but have just never connected the dots to see what logically follows from it.

01:20:50

This can lead to some bizarre conversations. I remember with one fellow, when we would talk about premise one, he would agree with it and deny two.

01:20:57

So when we talk about premise two, he'd agree with that and then deny one. And so we went back and forth, back and forth, with this poor fellow flailing to try to escape the logical conclusions of what he himself believed.

01:21:10

So I find approaching it through this moral argument is the best way. Why was he flailing back and forth?

01:21:17

Because he's living in God's world, and he's stealing from God. And you can sit there and keep pointing that out to him, or you can point out to him what he's actually doing, and get to the foundation, to the bottom of the issue.

01:21:31

One of the things that's been fascinating to watch is people broadly accepting the efficacy of the precepts of religion without accepting the underlying truth of religion.

01:21:39

So here I would point to my friend Jordan Peterson, who talks a lot about the practices of basically what are religious practices.

01:21:46

The idea of make your room, do the moral thing, duty. But he doesn't talk in specifically religious terms. He speaks in Jungian terms.

01:21:52

He talks about the idea of deeper precepts that are embedded in myth, which is really embedded in the human psyche. He doesn't make the kind of truth of religion argument.

01:21:59

He instead makes the, if you want to get ahead, you're going to have to do this stuff argument. If you want to be happy, you're going to have to do this stuff argument. And that has tremendous cultural appeal.

01:22:06

Do you think that that is beneficial? Do you think that that is enough? How far do you think that goes? Now, this is really interesting.

01:22:12

And Craig has had the opportunity of dialoguing with Jordan Peterson. I have not yet. But it would be a very different conversation if it were to ever happen, because...

01:22:24

I think it's beneficial, but it's not enough. When I had a dialogue in Toronto last year with Jordan Peterson, rather than attack his position, what

01:22:33

I tried to do was to be invitational and say, look, you and I both affirm the objectivity of moral values and meaning in life.

01:22:41

I want to offer you something. I want to offer you a grounding for those values that we both hold dear.

01:22:47

So instead of pushing the antithesis, and I don't necessarily object to the language of invitation, but if it's going to be meaningful, especially with someone as bright as Jordan Peterson, you're going to have to make the argument to him that he's trying to have his cake and eat it too.

01:23:11

He's saying these things are true and they need to be acted upon, but then his worldview doesn't give you a grounding for where they come from.

01:23:22

And so it's the same guy we were just talking about before flailing around. The student may have been flailing around because he's not good at covering his tracks.

01:23:30

Jordan Peterson's brilliant and thinks these things through. But again, if you don't have the presuppositions down, if you don't recognize that even in Jordan Peterson there is a suppression of the knowledge of God because that requires that personal encounter with and submission to the will of God in your life, then your invitation is again misplaced.

01:23:57

The apostolic invitation was always an invitation that had authority along with it.

01:24:03

Because for him, as you say, Ben, they're just sort of floating in the air. They don't have metaphysical ground in his worldview.

01:24:09

So he's got the right values and meaning by and large, but he has no basis for them.

01:24:15

And I'm still hopeful that he will come to embrace God as an objective metaphysical reality who will provide a basis for those values and meaning in life.

01:24:27

Now, of course, in our prayer is that God, by his mercy and grace, will cause him to be born again and to come to have a spiritual life and to therefore, as a result, understand these things.

01:24:38

There's a different perspective there. Last quote. What I found really fascinating is, as I say, so many people are embracing fundamental principles of religion and even the sort of quasi -pantheistic idea, but the religious idea nonetheless, that there is a moving force behind the universe or implicit in the universe.

01:24:58

And yet, the minute you say God, people tend to run for the hills because they immediately identify their boring Sunday school class. So how exactly do we bridge that gap for folks who may have been alienated from religion by a sort of simplistic view of religion that they got growing up?

01:25:10

How do you re -educate people in the precepts of religion? Well, as you probably noticed in talking with me,

01:25:15

Ben, I don't lead with the Bible. I lead with philosophical arguments.

01:25:22

I'll just play this a second time just in case you missed it.

01:25:28

In talking with me, Ben, I don't lead with the Bible. I lead with philosophical arguments, beginning very generally.

01:25:36

There's a creator of the cosmos. There's a designer of the universe. There is an absolute moral good, which furnishes a basic...

01:25:45

So why can't I demonstrate the consistency of biblical revelation with things outside of it?

01:25:54

Why do you have to start with those things? You see, there's just an embarrassment amongst the people who hold this perspective.

01:26:03

There's an embarrassment about the primacy of scripture. There's an embarrassment of the fact that Jesus never did this. That Jesus never led with philosophical arguments.

01:26:12

Paul never led with philosophical arguments. Peter never led with philosophical arguments. And they'll dismiss all of that, saying, well, they weren't dealing with the situation we're dealing with today.

01:26:19

So they'll admit, yeah, we don't have any apostolic example of doing this, but this is why we do it.

01:26:26

And when you really boil it all down, it's because we're embarrassed.

01:26:35

And that's 1 Corinthians 1 all over again. The preaching of the message of the cross, the logos of the cross is to those who are perishing foolishness, and it will always be.

01:26:47

And as long as we want the world to pat us on the back for being really smart scholars, then we'll be embarrassed by that stuff.

01:26:54

Gotta stop wanting the world to pat you on the back. For moral values and duties. And then

01:27:00

I begin to ask, well, who is Jesus of Nazareth? What did he claim? Why should we believe what he said?

01:27:06

And then finally, and ultimately, I'll try to make the personal application and say, what difference could this make in your life?

01:27:12

So the point is, I make my philosophical arguments that fundamentally require you to have a biblical worldview for them to actually be valid, but I'll eventually get to the biblical that made the biblical worldview.

01:27:25

And part of that is just simply to appeal to the sense of wisdom on the part of the people, rather than saying, well, you know,

01:27:33

God has spoken very clearly to this. And as Jesus said... And sometimes I'll share then my story, personally, of how

01:27:41

I raised in an unbelieving family, came to believe in Christ at the age of 16, and had my life completely upended and turned around.

01:27:51

Now, I appreciate the fact that that Bill Craig is willing to make reference to, you know, personal conversion and things like that.

01:27:59

I think that's great. It's the context that's been placed in that we find to be somewhat problematic, but I appreciate the fact that he that he does that.

01:28:11

So there is a quick review. Oh, yes, sir. Yeah, I just, the thing that strikes me about that entire conversation is what is missing from it.

01:28:23

He wants to, I get the whole mere Christianity thing only wants to talk about the resurrection. I get that.

01:28:28

Okay. But nowhere, not once did he refer to all of the things that led up to that ultimate miracle.

01:28:38

If you're going to be evidentialist, even, it was not even a reference, not even a, you know,

01:28:45

Jesus did a bunch of things, and then he died and got resurrected. No reference to a miracle whatsoever.

01:28:52

And the argument that, you know, scholars pretty much, you know, for the part, they agree with me, that argument, when you leave that much out of your reference to Scripture, gives people the impression that those are the things that you really don't believe.

01:29:16

Or don't want to have to defend. Because I really think that, in essence, a lot of this has developed over time, as Dr.

01:29:24

Craig has been involved in debates, and has developed a methodology to attempt to control the battlefield.

01:29:32

He's going to control the topic of conversation by limiting the relevance of his argument to a very narrow scope of things.

01:29:40

And I've been there. I debate Muslims all the time that are throwing everything out, but the kitchen sink, or atheists do the same thing.

01:29:46

Silverman certainly did the same thing. But I just don't, I don't want to end up giving people a

01:29:53

Christianity that is significantly less than the real thing. So I get to leave that up to God, and the

01:30:01

Spirit of God, and trust him with that. So, all right, there you go, folks.

01:30:06

There's our review of that. I appreciate everybody who requested that we do it. Everybody knew that we would.

01:30:13

And once again, I point out, we played a good portion of it. We probably played not the majority of it, but we certainly, the majority of the defining issues, we let the other side speak for itself, and then hopefully responded fairly thereto.

01:30:32

That's what we do on this program when we address these particular issues. So we thank you for joining us today.