Is the Pope Catholic? Who Knows? Mark 1:1 and Bart Ehrman. More on Hillsong

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. It's sort of a normal time, though I guess on Tuesdays it's normally more in the morning, but hey, it's a Tuesday, Thursday thing, so it's pretty close. Welcome to the program.

Pope Francis, Evangelical Unity, and the Reformation

An article appeared. The date on this was the 23rd of July. Let me read you some of this. Somewhere in Pope Francis' office is a document that could alter the course of Christian history. It declares an end to the hostilities between Catholics and Evangelicals and says the two traditions are now, quote, united in mission because we are declaring the same gospel, close quote.

The Holy Father is thinking of signing the text in 2017, the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, alongside Evangelical leaders representing roughly one in four Christians in the world today. Francis is convinced that the Reformation is already over.

He believes it ended in 1999, the year the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation issued a joint declaration on justification, the doctrine at the heart of Luther's protest. The German firebrand had accused the Catholic Church of teaching that man was saved by faith and good works rather than by faith alone.

That's not exactly the most accurate statement I've ever read. In 1999, after extensive talks, Catholic and Lutheran theologians conclude that the two communions now shared, quote, a common understanding of our justification by God's grace through faith in Christ, end quote.

A subject that we addressed at that time, actually, long, long ago. In 2006, the World Methodist Council also adopted the declaration. I somehow missed that one. But not one major leader of born-again Christians has publicly endorsed the text.

So most of the world's 600 million Evangelicals don't realize that the protest is over. From the shanty towns of Sao Paulo to the high rises of Seoul, Evangelicals and Catholics still eye each other warily.

Well, of course, one of the main problems here, of course, is that the document does not carry dogmatic weight. Now, Francis could change that. But it did not carry dogmatic weight, and the World Lutheran Federation does not even represent meaningfully, historically Lutherans.

So the idea that we somehow have missed the idea that the Reformation is over, the protest is over, no. Many of the former are reluctant to even describe Catholics as Christians, while the latter often dismiss Evangelical groups as sects.

Well, there's reasons for this that evidently the author is unaware of. But not everyone is resigned to enmity. As far back as 1984, an influential charismatic magazine published an essay entitled Three Streams, One River.

The author, Richard Lovelace, argued that Catholicism, Evangelicalism, and Pentecostalism were three tributaries forming one great torrent of Christianity. Many observers would count Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism as a single stream, given that most Pentecostals are Evangelicals.

Which, once again, illustrates what Carl Truman was talking about when he said that the term Evangelical no longer serves any meaningful function. Lovelace wrote, there will be many knots to be untied before we have a united church which is truly Catholic, Evangelical, and Pentecostal.

Many knots to be untied. Today that phrase calls to mind Pope Francis. He has popularized devotion to Mary, undoer of knots, which seeks our Lord's help in resolving unseemingly intractable problems. The rift between Catholics and Evangelicals has long seemed to belong to that category.

For much of his life, Francis must have viewed Evangelicals with suspicion. An old-school Argentine Jesuit, he would have watched in dismay as his flock drifted off to Evangelical churches. Nearly one in five Latin Americans now describe themselves as Protestant.

You can imagine his discomfort when, in 1999, he first celebrated Mass for charismatic Catholics. They spoke in tongues like their Pentecostal counterparts when he elevated the host, but as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, he began attending noisy, praise-filled gatherings of Evangelicals and Catholics.

At first, he sat discreetly, sipping mate. No idea what that is. But in 2006, he went on stage where he knelt as Protestant leaders prayed over him. A pastor with a microphone hollered, Fill him with your Holy Spirit and power, Lord, in the name of Jesus.

Well, there it goes. Theology matters again. The image of the Cardinal kneeling, head bowed, beneath the outstretched hands of Evangelicals was so startling that a traditionalist magazine ran the headline, Buenos Aires, Sede Vicante.

The Archbishop Commits the Sin of Apostasy. A papal biographer says that after the blessing, the Cardinal was on fire. He began to meet Evangelical pastors monthly. He would arrive by public transport and enthusiastically join their improvised prayer sessions.

They never discussed indulgences or the Immaculate Conception. I just have to stop and go, why not? If they're true, why wouldn't you discuss them? If they're part of the divine tradition, why wouldn't you explain them?

I'm just one of those old... How'd that happen? I'm just one of those old fogey guys. Let's see, where did we go? He now believed that their shared baptism was more important than their differences. When baptism isn't directly connected to profession of truth.

As Pope, he has continued to sidestep theological disputes, unlike the former Vatican doctrinal watchdog, Benedict XVI. Cardinal Ratzinger. He's willing to say, let's leave those to the theologians. That's giving Bob St. Jenna's hives.

In Buenos Aires, he met a British-born South African pastor called Tony Palmer. We've talked about him. Palmer belonged to the Convergence Movement, which seeks to blend charismatic worship with a more historically grounded liturgy and understanding of the sacraments.

The cardinal became Palmer's spiritual father, but reportedly discouraged him from becoming a Catholic. Arguing that he was called to serve as a bridge builder between Catholics and evangelicals. Francis said to have told the evangelical leader recently, I'm not interested in converting evangelicals to Catholicism.

I want people to find Jesus in their own community. Let's be about showing the love of Jesus. Now again, those of us who know anything about historic Roman theology, look at this and just go, so much for that old line.

Well, is the Pope Catholic? Because today you go, I don't know. That's a good question. Does he understand his own theology? We wonder. Like his mentor, Palmer believed the Reformation had already ended.

He bluntly challenged Luther's spiritual errors to reject the Protestant label. It's like saying you're racist, even though you're living in a country that no longer has an apartheid system in place, he argued.

Which demonstrates how little he knew about the issue. When Francis wanted to reach out to evangelicals after he was elected Pope, he didn't do the obvious things. He didn't ask the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity to organize a conference to seek advice and group evangelicals and Catholics together in America.

Arguably the most advanced such dialogue in the world. Instead, he rang his old friend. During a leisurely meeting at the Vatican, Palmer recorded a video of the pontiff on his iPhone. Remember, we actually showed some of that.

Designated an apostolic representative for Christian Unity by Francis, Palmer took the film to a minister's conference in Texas. In Texas! Organized by prosperity gospel preacher Kenneth Copeland. Palmer introduced the film with what must count as one of the great Christian orations of the 21st century.

Really? I haven't had very many then in the 21st century. Brothers and sisters, Luther's protest is over. Remember, we played this. We actually played this in the program. He told the audibly stunned audience that he was speaking to them in the spirit of Elijah, who prepared the way for something much greater than himself.

Palmer was unaware, of course, that as he stood at the lectern, he had just months left to live. But with hindsight, there was a spine-tingling moment when he announced that he would introduce the papal video with a short prayer.

This was a dying man's prayer, he said. When you know that you are about to die, you certainly pray the most important prayers. Palmer read John 17, 20 -22. Francis' face appeared. I'm skipping over stuff.

La la la la la. Let's see. The pope spoke of the need for all Christians to have a personal relationship with Jesus. Sir, as an evangelist, that deserves a high five, said James Robeson. I knew that would wake you up.

Who helped to inspire the rise of America's religious right in the 1980s. Before he then became an infomercial guy on late night TV. Once an interpreter explained what a high five was, the vicar of Christ slapped the beaming televangelist's hand.

Oh, wow. I know one person it would be. Anyway. That day, Palmer gave Francis a draft text called Declaration of Faith in Unity for Mission. Which he hoped the pope would sign with evangelical leaders in 2017.

A month later, Palmer died after motorcycle accident in England. An event so shocking that it has inspired mind-bending conspiracy theory videos on YouTube. Francis hasn't given any public sign of whether he will sign the declaration.

But he has taken steps that seem to prepare the ground for it. Days after his friend's death, he became the first pope to visit a Pentecostal church, offering an apology for Catholic persecution of the movement in Italy.

Last month, he asked forgiveness of the Waldensians, a communion regarded as the world's oldest evangelical church. We talked about that. But even if the pope does sign the declaration in two years' time, full, visible unity between Catholics and evangelicals will remain unlikely.

As Father Dwight Longenecker, an American Catholic priest who has raised evangelicals, explains, there is no single authoritative body that could be reconciled with Rome. Evangelicals could include the most rabid, anti-Catholic, fire-breathing fundamentalists, right through to the prosperity gospel televangelist, evangelical Anglo-Catholics, Charismatics, and modernist Protestants, he says.

He says that few are truly interested in unity with the Catholic Church. For most evangelicals, any reunion with Rome is very low on the agenda, if it's there at all. This is for two reasons. Despite their current friendliness toward Catholics, they still have a deep distrust of Rome.

They simply cannot conceive the idea that Roman Catholicism has much good in it. They might view us as brother Christians, but we are still deeply deluded. And it goes on from there. Well, I just, I don't know, I would not put something like that past Francis at all.

Now, obviously, it would be fascinating to read a prequel, a pre-release, something that would give us some idea of what the elements of this would be. But, you know, no one's sitting around going, oh, well, that'll end the Reformation.

Well, there's already been people, you know, I wrote a book review for the CRA Journal, I don't know, a number of years ago, about a Wheaton professor that had said, yeah, Reformation's over. And to be honest with you, for the vast majority of people who call themselves evangelicals, it is.

They don't know what the Reformation was about, they don't have any passion. I've said over and over and over again that if you are opposed to Catholicism, for any other reason than a deep and abiding dedication to the Gospel, you understand Sola Scriptura, you understand Rome's denial of Sola Scriptura, and what it has led to, what it means, you've seen its effect.

If justification by faith is just one of many doctrines, if it isn't something you're passionate about, if you're not a Roman Catholic just because you think the Pope looks funny in those long dress things, and you're not really into candles, and the crucifix always looks a little creepy to you, if that's why you're not a Roman Catholic, then you're not really a part of the Reformation.

You may have the freedom to view things the way you do because of the Reformation, but the Reformation's been overviewed for a long time. So, the people that I would think would be the absolutely most panicked about this, would be Catholic Answers.

Close up shop, go home, what's left to do? If we're not going to evangelize the Protestants, and of course evangelism for them is first and foremost a reference to the church, not to repentance and faith in Christ or any of those things, it's church, church, church, church.

They've got to be looking at this going, you've got to be kidding me. What's going on? And I'll be interested in seeing if something happens, what their response would be. But I don't know, it's fascinating to me.

That was by the way from the catholicherald .co .uk, The Pope's Great Evangelical Gamble. And it sounds legit to me, it really does. And 2017 would be a time to do it. Right now we are planning on doing a debate in May of 2017, with an evangelical in Wittenberg, Germany.

But with a quote-unquote evangelical who basically believes the Reformation is over. Or should be if it's not. Or that we should all get on board and stop beating a dead horse. In other words, someone who's compromised on the issues of the Reformation, Sola Scriptura, the nature of the gospel, justification, centrality of these things, so on and so forth.

So that really caught my attention. That's interesting. That is really, really interesting. And then, oh man, where did that go? Let's see here. Where did that go? This probably isn't even going to come up for me.

No, it did. Alright, let's see if this is where it was at. Yeah, here we go. I was already totally planning on doing the next segment, which by the way is on textual criticism and a textual variant. So if any of you are really into having your own Greek text open or something like that, you might want to click, obtain, open, whatever it is.

But Bart Ehrman is going to be doing two debates over the next six months or so on the subject of the deity of Christ. One with Justin Bass on September 18th. The University of Dallas in Texas. I have to get Emilio Ramos over there to report on this one for me.

Did Jesus consider himself God? And then February 12th to 13th, this will be part of the, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary has some interesting get-togethers. They've had Ehrman down there a number of times.

And he'll be debating Michael F. Byrd on the proposition how Jesus became God. And that's February 12th to 13th of 2016. Now, what strikes me especially about this is I remember the fervor. I remember the almost anger of Bart Ehrman in emphasizing that he is not a theologian.

And he will not defend theological statements. Now, I know what he's going to do here. But I know how he's going to handle it. I'm going to be shredding his book, reviewing his book in South Africa in a couple months.

Which, by the way, is, as I said, I reviewed it when it came out. But it is an amazing book because here is a man who admits that until he started researching this book, his theological understanding of basic things was absolutely below Bible college level.

And yet, he doesn't seem to see any kind of problem in being seen as one who can make pronouncements in these areas. This is not where his doctoral research was in. I still continue to wonder exactly how it is that the analysis of a certain form of the Alexandrian text, in particular patristic sources from Alexandria, gives you the basics, the basis for making, for writing some of the books that Bart Ehrman writes.

But then again, these days, as long as you're an unbeliever, it's sort of like, you know, most of these, well, Dawkins, his scientific research does not give him any basis for saying all the incredibly stupid things that he says, but doesn't stop him from saying it.

Anyway, so he's going to be engaging in, in, in debates on the deity of Christ. And I, like I said, I just, we were in Rich's office. I remember, you know, exactly where I was standing when I had the conversation, unpleasant conversation with Bart Ehrman on the phone because he, he did not, he said he had not agreed to the title.

Of the debate and that he would only debate misquoting Jesus as if that's a debate title in the first place. It's not, it's not even a meaningful thesis. But he had no interest whatsoever in doing anything that would involve his theological claims.

It's fascinating. Someone sent me a link. I haven't had a chance to download it. I'll see if I can get to it. In fact, someone just now sent me another link. This time was saying, please address this video.

Bob Wilkin. Oh, please. Wow. It's been a long time since I had to deal with that name. But someone else sent me a link to a video from an atheist reviewing my debate with Bart Ehrman and buys into Ehrman's theological assertion that if the Bible is inspired, there would be no textual variation.

This comes up again in dealing with the King James only us who, you know, once you, once you buy that, once you ignore the historical reality of the, of the context of which revelation comes, you gotta go one or two directions.

Either you go the Bart Ehrman agnosticism, atheism direction, or you go the, I'm going to pick a text and this is it. And I will not defend it in any meaningful fashion because to do so is to put myself in ground that I, I, I can't really stand on.

And I know that a lot of our listeners already know exactly why all that stuff is wrong, but that's why we have to keep addressing it over and over and over again with that in mind. And let me find this here.

On August 4th, really it was only about a week ago. On August 4th, Bart Ehrman put on his blog an article about Mark 1 -1 as an intentional alteration of the text. Now, as is common in most of this kind of material, he hedges his bets very heavily.

He says there are thousands of textual witnesses in the New Testament. These witnesses attest, Bart, you need an editor. It's amazing how many really basic spelling and grammar errors fill your things.

But anyways, these witnesses attest hundreds of thousands of variant, variants, V-A-R-I-A-N-C-E. It's, that's, that's not the right word, Bart. Of variants, T-S should be, among themselves, the vast majority of those differences are immaterial and insignificant and don't matter for much of anything.

Now that's, that's the part that our Muslim friends skip over. They don't catch that part. Let me, let me mention it again. The vast majority of those differences are immaterial and insignificant and don't matter for much of anything.

That's the part that gets lost. Some of them are highly significant indeed. Most of the changes were made by accident. Some were consciously made by scribes who wanted to change the text. And in Mark 1 -1, we have a variant where it is hard to tell which it is.

Where it is hard to tell which it is. At issue are the words, Son of God. Did Mark begin his gospel by announcing that it was about Jesus Christ or about Jesus Christ the Son of God? It is a difference of four letters in Greek since the Son of God would have been abbreviated as one of the Nomena Sacra.

All right. Let's, let's take a look at this. I should be feeding you the appropriate information here. Here is the text up here in the upper left corner. Arcae to Euangelio, Jesus Christ, and then you'll notice the brackets and the sigla here.

Let's go ahead and do this. There we go. Around who you say you, Son of God, Jesus Christ, Son of God. And when he says it would be a difference of four Greek letters. Let me show you what that means.

Here is Sinaiticus and Sinaiticus. Well, first, let me go back here and show you this first. Over here is where we have the textual data. And here you see the sigla for a phrase added or deleted depending upon the manuscript.

This little cross, by the way, is, was indicative, at least in the 26th and 27th editions, of a change between that and, as I recall, the 25th edition. Then you have the minus indicating these manuscripts do not contain what is in the text.

And you have Sinaiticus and then notice the asterisks. That is the indication of the original hand. But then notice down below where it says TXT, which is the text that has been included in the reading here, which includes Son of God, TXT, Sinaiticus 1.

Now, when you see, especially with Sinaiticus, but there are a few other manuscripts, but especially with Sinaiticus, that's indication of the first corrector. Now, there are entire studies. In fact, here it is.

Here's Scribal Habits of Codex Sinaiticus, entire book just on the various scribes and who they were and when they worked and all sorts of charts and all sorts of things in there. So, the 1 indicates the first hand, the first corrector of Sinaiticus, which could quite possibly have been in the actual scriptorium in which the manuscript was originally produced.

So, in other words, the manuscript is produced and then it is proofed and before it has even been read by anyone else or distributed or published or whatever else we call it, you have a correction made.

Now, what I was going to show you is exactly what that looks like here. And for those of you who, before you drive Rich insane, this is Accordance Bible Software. Logos can do this. I'm sure BibleWorks can do this.

But I use Accordance as my primary program. Here is Arcae 2 Euangelii u Jesu Christu. Now, notice this is, you have what it looks like. It looks like an I and a Y. Okay, I don't want to lose everybody here.

With a line over the top. And then you have what looks like an X and a Y, also with a line over top. These are called the Nomina Sacra. The sacred names, God, Jesus, Christ, Spirit was sometimes included.

Depends on the specific manuscript as to exactly how they do this. And some manuscripts would use only two letters. Some would use three. Again, somewhat of a conventional thing. But the point is that this is how you would render a particular form of Jesus Christ.

Specifically, the genitive form here. Then you'll notice right here. You see that there? I'm going to go ahead and blow it up here. So you can see it even more. There it is right there. There are four Greek letters.

Hwiu, Hwiu. This is Hwiu, but it's just two letters. And then you can barely see. There's just a slight little indication of a line there. But this would be the genitive form of Theos or Theou. And so you have Hwiu, Theou, Son of God.

And it has been inserted above the space where it would be. Actually right here where my cursor is right now is where that would be. And so when you look at it, that's the same ink and very much the same hand as the surrounding text.

There are all sorts of corrections like this in Sinaiticus. You can find them in many places. It's a little bit difficult to see here because there's some fading in the text on this particular page. But you'll find them throughout Codex Sinaiticus.

You'll find corrections sometimes in the margins, sometimes written in between lines and things like that, as you have at, well, there's one right there. You can see it right there. There's an insertion of a reading above the line.

Okay, so that's what it's referring to when it makes reference to here in the textual data to the original hand and to the first corrector. So what that's saying is we can go back to the textual data here.

We can go back to the textual data here. There we go. Is that this phrase is omitted originally in Sinaiticus. It's also omitted in the unsealed Theta. 28, Lectionary 2211. PC means palsy, a few others.

Certain manuscripts of the Sahidic and in origin. And since there's not an indication of... See down here where it says origin PT, that would be part of origin, but that's not what you have here. It just seems that that's how origin always cited it, at least when we say always.

There's still a lot of origin to be dealt with. Irenaeus and Epiphanius omit Jesus Christ. They just simply have the beginning of the gospel. Move on to Kathos, Gegrepti, as is written in Isaiah the prophet.

There's one manuscript, 1241, which is way off by itself, which has huiutukuriu, son of the Lord, which doesn't make almost any sense. And then the text is read by the original Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Codex Bese Cantabrigensis, L. Washingtonianus, which is really one of the earliest full unsealed manuscripts that would represent a Byzantine text type.

2427, a few others. And then if you have the article, the Son of God, huiutukuriu, then you have Alexandrinus, Families 1, 13, 33, and then you have the M text, the majority text right here. The Latin text, Syriac, Coptic, and the Latin of Irenaeus.

So there's the textual data. And so the quote-unquote traditional text actually represents all of the major textual families in the New Testament manuscript tradition. That is, if you have B and you have W, and then you have representatives of what's called the Western text, which would be LATT, that means this reading is represented by the entire breadth of the manuscript tradition.

So the point is that Son of God has an extremely strong textual foundation to it. It really does. Both as far as early manuscripts. Now, it would be nice, I have a... Notice this screen that I have in my desktop setup here in accordance is New Testament manuscripts.

I've got Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Washingtonianus, Alexandrinus, and then Greek New Testament papyri. And you'll notice, it sure would be nice if we would have a papyri find of the beginning of the Gospel of Mark.

But we don't. And so that's what makes it interesting that it has been alleged that the green material, the green collection, will have a first century fragment from Mark. Yeah, but of what? Highly doubtful it would be from the beginning of Mark.

Now, so now you've got the data. Now, basically, Ehrman's argument is, well, it would be very unusual for a scribe to accidentally delete Son of God due to what's called homoeotelioton. Homoeotelioton has similar endings.

What you have there is what's called a genitive chain. And we have lots of examples of where the end of the genitive chain got dropped off because of the repetition of the letters. He says that would be highly unusual because this is the beginning of the book and the scribe would be fresh at the beginning of the book.

Though he then goes on to say, well, he probably just finished copying Matthew and now he's excited about that and he's written his flourishes and now he goes on to Mark. Well, which one is it? If you just finished Matthew and now you're starting into Mark, you're not fresh.

This is just little things that come across the mind. Ehrman loves to talk about all the heretics in the early church, and of course he doesn't use that term. He talks about the proto-Orthodox. And this is one of the reasons why I've emphasized many times the necessity for people who are really serious in this stuff to read books such as The Heresy of Orthodoxy because Ehrman is a huge proponent of the Bauer hypothesis and the idea of this massively splintered early Christian movement where nobody has a clue what's going on and there really isn't anything like apostolic teaching and there's nothing like a real core message or anything like that.

And so he wants to bring in the Gnostics and basically suggest, while always hedging his bets and always saying, but we don't know, that the Gnostics, because of their denial of Jesus' true incarnation, in fact, it's funny, let me find the quote here because I think it's really important because this is the kind of stuff, there, here it is.

This is the kind of stuff that Ehrman, the people who use Ehrman, don't repeat. This is the kind of stuff they skip. That has made me think the change was made intentionally. I can't think of any reason a scribe may have wanted to eliminate the words Son of God from the text on purpose.

The words, now listen to this, the words coincide perfectly with Mark's view of Jesus otherwise and the other references to Jesus being the Son of God are not omitted from the text in our manuscripts.

Did you hear that? That's the kind of thing that's skipped. So, what he's saying is, on the one hand, he wants this to be, oh see, this is proof that the scribes changed the text, but in trying to argue for the change of the text, he has to admit, but it didn't really change the text because it says, the words coincide perfectly with Mark's view of Jesus otherwise and the other references to Jesus being the Son of God are not omitted from the text in our manuscripts.

So, what does he say that the motivation is? Well, you know, you've got to make sure that people understand that Jesus is the Son of God. So, against the Gnostics and so on and so forth, this kind of trying, you know, Barth has made his, well, he's famous because he's an apostate, but his big Orthodox Scripture thing is in essence trying to mind read based upon manuscripts that were written 2 ,000 years ago.

And I'm sorry, but that's not possible to do. He's actually promoted the idea of shifting the emphasis from actually searching for the original text to exegeting variants. In other words, trying to figure out what motivated variants.

Now, the vast majority, he admits, were pure accidents. But how do you know which is which? Well, it certainly provides a plethora of publication material to try to make your variant one of the non-accidental variants.

It's fascinating. What you don't get from Ehrman here is really a meaningful application of the normal standards for textual critical study. And that is you have the earliest attestation and you have the widest attestation amongst multiple families text types of the reading Son of God.

And it seems extremely flimsy to me to say, well, if you're copying the Gospel of Mark, you're going to be fresh. You know, you're just at the first verse while admitting that that may not have been the first verse they copied that day.

So you can put that aside as, I think, a rather surface-level argument. What Ehrman and people like him are really pushing is a form of analysis of the text that is much more based upon trying to figure out what people were thinking rather than dealing with the actual factual material.

What do the manuscripts say? Let's date the manuscripts. Go ahead and weigh them. Not in the sense, you know, weight them according to what they're due. And let the factual information speak first and foremost.

And some of you know that, for example, in my debate with Shabir Ali at Biola back in 2006, I mean, coming up on 10 years on that, wow, that's amazing, that off the top of his head, he mentioned this particular text with Varian.

He does it very often. But when I saw Ehrman addressing it, I wanted to make sure that everyone has that information right in front of them, understands that the strongest reading, the most widely attested reading, is that of the Son of God.

But to recognize that it's there and that even Ehrman recognizes that, you know, it's sort of like how he emphasizes the angry Jesus thing in Mark as well. Was Jesus angry? Was he filled with anger or moved with compassion?

Is one of the variants. And if you want to go back and look at the conference we did before the debate, I did a whole presentation on this. But anyway. Did you see Twitter? By the way, can you comment on Rabbi Tovia Singer's claims of Isaiah 53?

Really? Seriously? In one dividing line? The fact of the matter is, we have thoroughly, fully, and comprehensively go to the blog, look up Isaiah 53. Michael Brown and I did, what, an hour and a half?

At least 90 minutes, as I recall. Worked through all of Isaiah 53 in Hebrew. So we've done that. Anyway. Want people to get to that. And is it really quarter till? Wow, how'd that happen? I had this whole list of stuff here.

Why Balance Matters in Criticism of Hillsong

Let me just, I'm going to skip over, well, one brief comment. I think doing stuff like this is important. This isn't the kind of stuff that is going to get, us a big, huge audience, because that's not ever been something we've been trying to do.

We do zero advertising, zero networking. We're just, we are any promoter's worst nightmare. But we need to be consistent. And you can't hide these things. When I look over at Kent Brandenburg's blog, it's funny because the reality is, he's so focused just on this one subject.

This is it. You look at the archives, it's huge. He's been at this ever since, like I said, I had not even heard the man's name since 2009. That one little brief thing on the blog. Well, I don't know how many articles have appeared since we started responding to him.

But he's trying to respond to everything that I've said. Here's a time stamp and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm just like, so much stuff there that it would take forever to even begin. And it's so way out.

But I did need to make a correction. I guess I referred to him as a reformed King James onlyist. He's not reformed. Well, that's good. I'm glad to know that someone who acts like that is not in the reformed camp.

We've got enough problems without that. That's good. So I did want to make that correction. I am very thankful to know that he is not reformed. But he did make the statement in one of the last articles he put up that I do not believe in solo scriptura.

See, this is why this is important. I don't know what Kent Brandenburg would say about Mark 1 -1. And I don't know what he would say about Bart Ehrman's comments on Mark 1 -1. But I know that the position being adopted would not allow any meaningful interaction with Bart Ehrman.

Because once you've said, Well, I'm going to simply grab hold of this particular text. And I'm going to invest it with ultimate authority. And I'm going to make that presuppositional. Rather than talking about the ontology of the text.

It's God-breathed. I'm going to skip the necessary distinctions there and say this particular copy limits and encompasses all of the ontology. That is, that which God has revealed. This is the standard.

Once you go there, you can't interact with any of this stuff. You're in the same boat as the Muslim who says, Uthman got it right. That's my presupposition. That's where I start. There's nothing to discuss there.

There's nothing to discuss there at all. No place to go. And then when you start saying that unless you embrace that kind of a presupposition to start with, you don't believe in the soul of scriptura.

Every... Athanasius, the great defender of the deity of Christ, who defended the ultimacy of scripture and soul of scriptura, would have used an Alexandrian text type. So you're saying he didn't believe in soul of scriptura.

That's where, again, this whole system is so... He's just spinning so fast in a circle that after a while you must get really dizzy. And that's where it falls apart. Sounds good as long as you're doing a monologue.

Just don't get into a dialogue with anybody who doesn't share your presuppositions because it's all over at that point. It's all over at that point. Before I get to the last thing, some Hillsong stuff, please remember that coming up in October, I'm going to South Africa once again.

We are arranging the debate and the debate topic has moved over to an emphasis upon marriage. What I would call the profaning of marriage, which is legal in South Africa and now legal here in the United States as well.

What we're talking about from a Christian perspective. If we can't get David Gushy and Matthew Vines and people like that to debate here in the United States, maybe we have to go someplace else. It's still English anyways.

So we've got that. I was just mentioning the lecture series on Bart Ehrman's book. That's also going to be in South Africa. Right now the intention of the Muslims in South Africa is to fly Shabir Ali in.