October 21, 2003

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to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the
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United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. Well, you see, there's an advantage to listening to The Dividing Line live.
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I know some of you can't do that. I know some of you listen by archive because you slave away behind a firewall and those mean nasty network administrators will not let a real audio stream through your firewall.
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I know that some of you are oppressed and sort of like that scene in Monty Python, that type of thing.
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But, you know, I understand, it's okay. But there is an advantage to listening live because you get to hear the pre -show.
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And sometimes it's nothing at all. And then sometimes, like today, we featured interesting stuff.
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There's no two ways about it. Oh, I tell you, you know, I made a major mistake.
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I must admit, you know, some people will not admit to mistakes. I admit to them all the time. And I made a major mistake.
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I introduced a Canadian to Talk A Hero and the results have simply been frightening.
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Absolutely frightening. I mean, almost, well, like a new person has been born as a result.
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And it's a very frightening thing. And we got to hear the Talk A Hero remix, the techno,
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Talk A Hero techno, whatever it was. It was very, very, very frightening, actually.
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And so anyways, the people that were listening to the pre -show are awake and alive right now.
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But by the way, I don't know if the folks, in fact,
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I need to respond to this. Yeah, there it is. I need to, yeah, I need to respond to this email message.
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But last week, our friend from Atlanta was kind to call in and read the brochure for the upcoming seminar at Southern View Chapel, which is in Springfield, Illinois, 4500
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South 2nd Street, Springfield, Illinois. This is going to be November 7th through the 9th that I'm going to be speaking there.
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And I had seen this, and I remembered it was a very, very nice brochure, very nicely laid out, very colorful.
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It's sort of yellow and blue. Actually, it's only two colors, but it looks very colorful, yellow and blue.
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And we found it. Well, I didn't find it. It just appeared on my desk. I think someone else found it.
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And we read the things last week. But justification, you know, 9 to 10 a .m.,
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justification including an evaluation of a new perspective. For those of you who are in St. Paul, we were at the
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Chicago, Chisago, that's hard to say. I bet you everything is based in Chicago. Chisago Lakes Baptist Church, Twin Cities Bible Church, they got together, and we were at the facilities of the
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Chisago. It is a Baptist church up there. I can't say
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Chisago too many times. And anyways, very nice facility, nice folks there. And we did, well, four full hours of lecture, and I barely touched on new perspectivism in the process.
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I mean, it's just a huge subject. If you're going to do it, do it well. We have one hour on Friday, November 7th, 9 to 10 a .m.,
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10, 30 to 11, a defense of the Trinity. Why is it important? And then that evening, the
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King James Only controversy, that's an hour and a half. That's just enough time to sneak it all in, the presentation on that.
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And then Saturday, during the day, nothing going on, but in the evening, 7 to 8 .30, a comparison of Calvinism and Arminianism.
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And then Sundays, I'll be on biblical sufficiency, part one, part two, part three. So that'll be,
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I'll be talking about solo scriptura, and solo scriptura, and the inspiration of scripture, and the canon, and all that neat, wonderful, fun stuff.
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So that'll be on November 7th through 9th, and I'm sure if you drop them a line, www .svchapel
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.org, that's for Southern View, svchapel .org, I'm sure they'd send you one of these too. Because I know some folks are going to be coming from quite some distance to be there with us, so that'll be cool.
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So I found the information, I'm glad that I did.
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Had a great time up there in the Minneapolis -St. Paul area, and called it,
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I learned to call it the Twin Cities, because if you're in St. Paul and call it Minneapolis, they don't like that. And there's sort of a, the two cities sort of don't like each other a whole lot, and so if you're smart, just refer to the
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Twin Cities, and everybody will be happy, and you won't offend anyone, which is, I think, a good thing. Hey, I got an email.
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I know they don't read emails, of course, but I thought this one was sort of ironic.
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I announced the week before we left that, well,
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I announced last week. You know, when you travel, time just sort of disappears.
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I announced that we had, I had been corresponding back and forth the end of last week with Mr.
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Matitix. Was that last week or the week after? Man, I tell you, you know, when you're gone every single weekend for five or six weeks in a row, you just completely lose track of where in the world you are and what the world is going on.
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And I guess it was last week. And I played some clips from the debate with Mr.
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Matitix on the subject of the perpetual virginity of Mary, and I mentioned that I, at the end of the program, that I've been very, very, very clear in expressing to Mr.
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Matitix my views on his activities, his teachings, and the fact that the term apostate,
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I think, is very applicable to a person who once knew the truth, who once, for example, wrote a paper that his professors described as a classic on John Owen's Doctrine of Perseverance, and yet he can turn around and tell audiences that Protestants believe
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X, Y, and Z, and not even try to respond to the best, always respond to the worst, etc.,
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etc. And so anyway, I didn't hear anything for a while. And I just got a note yesterday, and I fired it off to Eric Svensson to see what his schedule looks like.
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It looks like both Eric and Jerry are not available this week, but both are available next week.
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So this afternoon, I'm going to write back to both of them and say, okay, can we pencil in next
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Tuesday morning and go as long as we need to go? That means that's when we're all going to get to hear the quote from Josephus, and if we don't hear the quote from Josephus, then we're going to obviously make the point that I bet
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Jerry's told many people about this alleged quote from Josephus, and it doesn't exist.
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And hopefully hear him retract that, and then we're going to talk about what
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Bower, Dunker, Arndt, and Gingrich says, and whether Mr.
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Mattox even has the 3rd edition and has had the 3rd edition all along, and what it says, the translation that it gives in Matthew 1 .18,
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and all those neat, wonderful, fun things. We're going to get to read the Odes of Solomon, and I'm not going to do that again, because that's probably one of the most infamous dividing lines ever, was reading the
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Odes of Solomon. And we're going to listen as Mr.
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Mattox attempts to explain to us that just because a writing like the Odes of Solomon contains errors, doesn't mean that it can't contain truth.
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And I'm going to go, okay, great, so if you had found a reference to monotheism in the
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Book of Mormon, you would glom on to that as if it has some relevance to the truth. It should be very enjoyable, and of course,
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Eric's going to be... I didn't play this, I suppose I should. Well, maybe
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I did. I don't remember what I played. But at one point, Mr. Mattox mocked
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Eric Svensson's work on Haos, who said Ron Tichelli's article destroyed it, and even seemed intimate to me anyway, that other apologists have abandoned the use of the phrase.
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Actually, I'm not sure of a whole lot of apologists who are involved in this field that even deal with original languages very much.
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Eric Svensson and I do, obviously, but who was he referring to? He didn't give us any names.
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I would like to ask about that. That should be interesting, but hopefully that will be next
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Tuesday. Let me just read to you what
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Mr. Mattox says. I'm still very interested in joining you and Eric Svensson in a live radio analysis of our debate, but I have not heard further from you on this.
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Actually, I had written back to him, but he was proceeding paragraphs of mentioning how busy he is. I offered to be on your show the day you first had a show discussing our debate last week, but you were unwilling to have me on at that time, as your emails clearly prove.
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I remember at one point I had written to him and I had used the phrase, I can't believe you're demanding to be on the program.
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You don't have any basis for demanding to be on anything. It'd be like me calling up Carl Keating, I demand you have me on today!
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I've said many times I'd be glad to be on Catholic Answers Live and take calls and whole nine yards, but I've never been invited to be on Catholic Answers Live.
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I'd love to be on EWTN, I'd fly down there, I'd appear on the program with as many people as they would like to have on.
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No problem at all, but I can't demand it. And then he wrote back, I never said anything about demanding.
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Well, you see if this doesn't use the term, does not substantiate the term demand.
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Anyways, as your emails clearly prove, unfortunately I cannot do it this week as I'm already booked to teach classes on Tuesday and Thursday and also have two lectures to prepare and deliver at the
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Catholic Family News annual conference in Philadelphia this Friday through Sunday, October 24th through the 26th.
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And if he does that the way he normally does that, he will be writing them as he walks through the door, so I'm not sure that would really have a lot to do with it, but that's fine.
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But I love this last line. But I could do it next week or any other week of your choosing.
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After I suggested it might be construed as cowardice on your part to have a one -sided show in which you would beat up on me in absentia, you then agreed to have me on, and I hope that you'll follow through on this and won't invite further suspicions by withdrawing the quote invitation end quote.
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Look, Jerry, if you want to be the subject of a live Vivisection on this program, that's your business.
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We'll have you on and we'll be glad to do it. I'm getting emails from folks going, is this guy serious?
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I mean, he can't possibly be serious about this. Yep, he's perfectly serious.
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And so I'm going to write back to Eric and him today, and I'm going to say, let's do it.
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Let's do it. Next week from this morning, Tuesday morning, that would be the 28th of October.
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It is October, right? It's been a very fast month. Very, very fast month.
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It was September the last time I really noticed the calendar. 28th of October, and we will have
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Mr. Matitix and Mr. Svensson, and we'll go as long as we need to go. And we'll have some interesting questions for Mr.
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Matitix to answer in regards to the subject of the perpetual virginity of Mary and his claims and the whole anachronistic reading into the history of the church, all sorts of things that weren't there.
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And I'd like to ask, in fact,
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I need to do something here. There we go. I'd like to ask, was this like the Josephus thing?
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Was this a part of what converted you when you say the Bible converted you to Catholicism?
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Is this an element of that kind of material that converted you? Where did you first hear this?
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Who came up with this stuff? You know, I did get an email this week, and the email did provide a possible source of Mr.
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Matitix's confusion. And there is a reference.
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It's found in Early Church Fathers Volume 8. Hegesippus said something about James, and he mentioned that James was 94 years old.
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No, no, no, no, no. Take that back. This is the ironic part. The only mention of the age of James at martyrdom, you know where that's found?
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Fox's Book of Martyrs. I love the idea that Gerry Medix has been going around giving folks information that actually found its original source in Fox's Book of Martyrs.
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That would just be absolutely positively classic if that was the case. But something tells me
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I don't think Mr. Matitix is going to want to buy into Fox's Book of Martyrs. But hey, you know, that's what we'll find out next week anyways.
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So you all set your clocks. Mark your calendars. Take a day off work.
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Do whatever you need to do. And that'll be funny.
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What's up with Fox's Book of Martyrs? Catholics don't like the Fox's Book of Martyrs, and it's not exactly your source of documentary history either.
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So I just really sort of doubt that he's going to want to buy into that one, besides it's too old.
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94, I mean, that would make James a very, very, very, very old dude. So that wouldn't make any sense.
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So anyway, that's what we'll do next week, and otherwise there will be suspicions of cowardice on my part, yes.
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Just keep in mind, folks, that I had never even, I mean, debates, I knew they existed, but had never really thought about them.
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Until one day the phone rang at our little offices at Alpha and Omega Ministries.
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This was back when we had offices on Camelback Road in Phoenix. And the phone rang, and I picked it up, and the voice on the other end was that of Jerry Matitix, calling from the much nicer offices, much bigger nicer offices of Catholic Answers in San Diego, California.
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And it was he who was inviting me to debate, and I said yes.
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And it was only, what, that would have been 89, no, no, was that 89?
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Yeah, no, that was 90, that would have been early 90. And only three years later, the article appears in This Rock magazine that calls me a debate junkie.
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It was called The White Man's Burden. Of course, Jerry wasn't with Catholic Answers any longer. In fact, he was with them for only about six, well, our first debate was in August of 90, and by January 91, he was histoire.
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So, he wasn't with Catholic Answers much longer than that. And by the time he was the darling of Catholic Answers, he was the anti -Catholic convert.
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Of course, I remember asking him in one of those conversations, Jerry, you call yourself, you said you were an anti -Catholic, you know, and you liken it to, you know,
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Paul. Paul's great conversion on the road to Damascus type of a conversion.
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You were this great anti -Catholic. So, what books did you write against Catholicism as an anti -Catholic, since you like to use that term?
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Well, I didn't write any books. Did you write any articles? Published anything? No. Did you write any tracts against Catholicism that you distributed to folks?
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Well, no, I didn't. Did you do any debates? No, I didn't do any debates. Videos, audios, tapes?
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No, no, I didn't do that. So, exactly why do you use that term yourself? Well, I was very opposed to Catholicism.
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That's what makes you a quote -unquote anti -Catholic. Ah, what you have to go through to be a convert in the sense of making it sound like your conversion was this, you know, you knew all this stuff about Catholicism, but you were proved wrong.
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Nah, the vast majority of the people who convert to Roman Catholicism, you know,
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Jerry and Scott Hahn would have known more than most, but you read Rome, Sweet Home, and only one of two possible things is true.
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Either the representation in Rome, Sweet Home is grossly inaccurate, or Scott Hahn didn't know what he claimed to know.
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Now, I've heard the man quote John Owen, or was it Jonathan Edwards? I forget who it was.
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And so, it would seem to me that it's more likely that the presentation in Rome, Sweet Home is inaccurate than it is the other way around, but in either case, the vast majority of these folks you hear on EWTN and Catholic Answers and all the rest of this stuff, they were anti -Catholic in the sense that they were ignorant of the real reasons to be opposed to Roman Catholicism.
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Their reasons weren't the best, and that's true of a large portion of what's called fundamentalism today.
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If you've never taken time to hear what the other side has to say, that doesn't mean you're wrong to be opposed to the other side.
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I'm not saying that it's the responsibility of everybody to go out and read the
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Book of Mormon so that you'll be a knowledgeable opponent of Mormonism, but obviously, most people would have to admit that their reasons for not embracing most other faiths are not because they know positively where those other faiths are in error, how they're contradictory to Scripture, or what their
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Scriptures are about, or anything like that. The whole convert syndrome is a fascinating thing to observe.
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Of course, I've commented on it many times in the past, and it is valid in regards to Mr. Mattocks as well, though certainly
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John Gerstner thought he was a person who knew what he was talking about, at least initially, before his conversion.
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But that's a whole other story that goes way, way back, good grief, back to 1990, right now that I'm thinking about it, 1991, around in there, because I debated
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Mitch Pacwa in January of 1991, and it would have been right after that that I spoke with John Gerstner about both
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Mattocks and Hahn, because they were both running around talking about this famous Reformed theologian they had met with.
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And it was ironic, one of them called him Dr. G, and the other one called him
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Dr. John. Now, let me think here for a second, Dr. John G, I wonder who that is.
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They wouldn't use his name, but they would make reference to him in this famous meeting at a holiday inn, as I recall, on the
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Pennsylvania Turnpike, and how John Gerstner had not been able to give a response to their brilliant arguments for Roman Catholicism.
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Well, I have to wonder if one of those brilliant arguments was Josephus' citation of James, or something along those lines.
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I don't know, something tells me the Odes of Solomon didn't get read during that meeting. They would have been kicked out of the holiday inn if they had read them too loud, probably.
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877 -753 -3341, 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number, it is the access number, as they say on all of those programs, that's how you can access the program today.
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I guess they're trying to get geeks to call in that way. And you can get on board with your questions.
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We had one person call last week, didn't get on, so feel free to pick up with the,
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I just dropped my John Owen CD, that's not a good thing to do. I don't think Mr., I don't think the right Reverend John would appreciate being dropped.
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That's a great CD to have, by the way. Uh -oh, where's the CD? I bet you it's still in the drive. What do you want to bet if I hit this button down here?
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Something's going to pop out. Yep, there's John Owen right there. Put him back where he belongs. Oh, on Thursday?
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Oh, okay. Well, the person who didn't get on on Thursday is going to call back on Thursday, I guess. So we'll, whatever he does, he doesn't want to call on Tuesday.
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Not next Tuesday, anyways, that would be a bad thing. That would be very confusing. But anyway, 877 -753 -13, you know
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I need to get this right. 877 -753 -3341. It's right here on my monitor. I've got it right in front of me.
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Some of you are going, wow, he's got a computer monitor for the program. Yeah, it's my computer monitor. That's just my computer monitor.
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My email comes in during the program and the whole nine yards, and that's where I'm working on the chapter on the canon right now.
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Still working on that. It does not help to travel. But anyway, I did put together a
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PowerPoint presentation on New Perspectivism for this weekend. I never used it, but I put it together.
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And while we are waiting for your phone calls here on the program this morning, I thought I would mention something.
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I hold in my hand N .T. Wright's What St. Paul Really Said. It was Paul of Tarsus, the real founder of Christianity, as I have noted.
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This 1997 publication is one of the main ways through which
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New Perspectivism is coming into the church today.
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Hey, look at that, airport improvement fee. You know, if you walk through any Canadian airport, at least the one up in Vancouver, you have to shell out $8 to help them improve their airport.
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It's not enough they nail you on the tickets and stuff like that. You've got to walk through this thing and you've got to shell out money.
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And there's my receipt for having gone to the Vancouver airport. Isn't that great? In two different languages.
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Leaning over to throw it out here. There it goes. Anyway, obviously
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I had this with me when I was sitting in the Vancouver airport waiting to fly back to the
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United States. There is no food in that airport. It's terrible. They don't even have
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McDonald's there. They had a McDonald's in Sao Paulo in the airport, but they didn't have one in Vancouver.
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Where is culture? Where is civilization here? Anyway, one of the things that I've been mentioning recently in discussing new perspectivism.
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In fact, there's a new main page article. And even if you saw it last night, there's some updates on it.
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And so there's two pictures I mentioned in my brief mention of Brazil, myself and Eros, my translator.
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And how much we look alike. And that picture is on the main page, aomin .org right now.
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And then just this morning I got a picture of the whole group. All the gathered pastors.
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And it's a very large group as you can see from the picture that is right on our main page right now. And yeah, we really shouldn't call it an article.
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It's more of a blog. Isn't that wonderful how we make up new words? Blog. I've put a blog on the main page,
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I guess you might say. A couple of rambling thoughts. A little bit about Brazil. A little bit about solo scriptura versus sola scriptura.
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And then a little brief thought on new perspectivism. I've come up with a term. I was trying to think of a term that would capture what
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I see going on in new perspectivism. And as I've been reading this stuff and especially considering all the arguments put forward.
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The righteousness of God is God's covenant faithfulness. And there's no imputed righteousness of Christ.
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There's no great exchange. You're just declared to be righteous in the sense of being in the family of God.
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And that leaves open all sorts of issues of whether you're going to stay in the family of God. How you stay in the family of God.
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The method by which you stay in the family of God. Covenant works of righteousness. Covenant works of faithfulness.
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And all these other issues are hanging around out there. And all this kind of stuff. But as I've been thinking about, especially 2
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Corinthians 5 .21. Philippians 3 .9. Trying to read Romans 4 with this view of the righteousness of God.
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As not having all of the aspects that Reformed theology has historically seen in these passages.
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And I kept looking at those things going, man this is. And finally I came to, you know, it's a squished down.
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It's a one dimensional. It's less than the biblical definition of righteousness.
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It is taking a smaller narrower definition and forcing it into all these passages.
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Where it just doesn't fit. And finally last night I came up with the right term.
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That I'm going to be using in the future when I talk about this. I was thinking about it. And I'm sitting here looking at this monitor in front of me.
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It's a 19 inch monitor. Someday, someday I'm going to have a flat screen. I'm going to have one of those beautiful LCD things sitting here someday.
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But I'm looking at this and it's got who knows how many millions of colors. And all that kind of stuff on it. And I like to have beautiful, beautiful pictures.
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Right now there's a beautiful snowy picture on my screen. A big mountain in the background. And even though it's going to be 101 today.
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I'm just wishing that it was something other than that. But it's beautiful. And I've got lots of colors. And the people in the channel know
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I use this thing called window blinds. That I can change all the colors and the look of windows and all the rest of that stuff.
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And so I was looking at that. And all of a sudden the right term came across my mind.
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For the minimized, squished down definition of justification.
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Monochrome. Remember monochrome monitors? My first few, I remember my first monitor on this compact portable ha ha ha.
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Was like this 8 inch green thing. And then when
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I got a bigger computer that had a 20 meg hard drive on it. Thought I'd never fill that up.
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It had that amber color. Sort of the orange. But they were monochrome.
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Just one color. And that's what this doctrine of justification is.
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It is a monochrome definition. All the color and the vitality and the depth.
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And the fullness of righteousness. Has been taken out.
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It's been squished down into this flat monochrome concept of righteousness.
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Of justification. And if we only get the one call we've got right now. I'll come back to that and illustrate that.
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In one of the ways in which N .T. Wright addresses the subject of justification. And specifically the Hebrew law court.
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But before we take our phone calls. And before we come back with that. It is the bottom of the hour.
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And therefore we take that wonderful break. In which you get to hear all those other voices other than my own.
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Advertising wonderful things. And Steve Camp sings. And does things like that.
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So we're going to take our break and be right back right after this. It's all worth righteousness you know.
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Can I manufacture grace myself tonight. The history of the
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Christian church pivots on the doctrine of justification by faith. Once the core of the reformation.
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The church today often ignores or misunderstands this foundational doctrine. In his book
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The God Who Justifies. Theologian James White calls believers to a fresh appreciation of. Understanding of and dedication to the great doctrine of justification.
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And then provides an exegesis of the key scripture text on this theme. Justification is the heart of the gospel.
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In today's culture where tolerance is the new absolute. James White proclaims with passion the truth.
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And centrality of the doctrine of justification by faith. Dr. Jay Adams says. I lost sleep over this book.
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I simply couldn't put it down. James White writes the way an exegetically and theologically oriented pastor appreciates.
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This is no book for casual reading. There is solid meat throughout. An outstanding contribution in every sense of the words.
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The God Who Justifies by Dr. James White. Get your copy today at AOMN .org.
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Answering those who claim that only the King James Version is the word of God. James White in his book
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The King James Only Controversy. Examines allegations that modern translators conspired to corrupt scripture.
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And lead believers away from true Christian faith. In a readable and responsible style. Author James White traces the development of Bible translations.
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Old and new. And investigates the differences between new versions. And the authorized version of 1611.
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You can order your copy of James White's book. The King James Only Controversy. By going to our website at www .AOMN
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.org. What is Dr. Norman Geisler warning the Christian community about in his book? Chosen but Free?
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A New Cult? Secularism? False Prophecy Scenarios? No, Dr. Geisler is sounding the alarm about a system of beliefs commonly called
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Calvinism. He insists that this belief system is theologically inconsistent. Philosophically insufficient and morally repugnant.
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In his book, The Pottish Freedom, James White replies to Dr. Geisler. But the Pottish Freedom is much more than just a reply.
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It is a defense of the very principles upon which the Protestant Reformation was founded. Indeed, it is a defense of the very
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Gospel itself. In a style that both scholars and laymen alike can appreciate. James White masterfully counters the evidence against so -called extreme
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Calvinism. Defines what the Reformed faith actually is. And concludes that the Gospel preached by the
32:47
Reformers. Is the very one taught in the pages of Scripture. The Pottish Freedom. A defense of the
32:53
Reformation and a rebuttal to Norman Geisler's Chosen but Free. You'll find it in the Reformed Theology section of our bookstore at aomen .org.
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Here I stand. On the ones for all delivered me.
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On the world. It's all above His holy name.
33:15
Here I stand. And welcome back to the Biding Line. We have callers now.
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And they're not asking about New Perspective as a moderator. But be that as it may.
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We'll get around to that eventually. 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number.
33:33
Let's go up to Iowa where it was probably warm this weekend. As it was in the
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Twin Cities area. And talk with Kendall. Hi, Kendall. Hello, James. How are you, sir? Good.
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Well, when I just got in the office and got online to the webcast.
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And you were talking about Catholicism. So I wanted to ask you a question. Yes, sir. We could talk about the New Perspectivism, though.
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No, that's all right. We cover it all. Actually, we don't. We do not cover eschatology.
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But other than that, we cover it all. In dealing with the New Perspectivism, how did they, and I haven't read much on it.
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But how did they get around all the Greek legal terms in the Book of Romans? Well, actually, that's what
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I was going to address. Was N .T. Wright, and for those who have this book, it is especially presented on pages 96 and following.
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He really emphasizes that the forensic background of the dikayas, dikayasune, dikayao family of terms is to be found in the
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Hebrew law court. And there's even a diagram on page 97 where it says the Hebrew law court.
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And then you have judge, and then a line goes down, and you have it split off to plaintiff and defendant.
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So plaintiff bringing the accusation, defendant the accused. And I'll just read here.
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It says, one, in the biblical Jewish law court, there are three parties, the judge, the plaintiff, and the defendant. There is no director of public prosecutions.
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All cases take the form of one party versus the other party with the judge deciding the issue. And then he goes on to talk about the fact that, what does it mean to use the language of righteousness in this context?
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It means something quite different when applied to the judge to what it means when applied to the plaintiff or the defendant.
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Applied to the judge, it means, as is clear from the Old Testament, that the judge must try the case according to the law, that he must be impartial, he must punish sin as it deserves, that he must support and uphold those who are defenseless and who have no one but him to plead their cause.
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For the judge to be righteous and to have him practice righteousness in this forensic setting is therefore a complex matter to do with the way he handles the case.
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For the plaintiff and the defendant, however, to be righteous has none of these connotations. They, after all, are not trying the case, nor less obviously to us because of the moral overtones the word righteous now has in our own language.
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Does the word mean that they are, before the case starts, morally upright and so deserving to have the verdict go their way?
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No. For the plaintiff or defendant to be righteous in the biblical sense within the law court setting is for them to have that status as a result of the decision of the court.
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And so what he then applies that to is, look, there is no transference of righteousness from the judge to whoever wins the lawsuit.
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And so this is where he has a problem with the idea of imputation. It is merely the idea that there is a declaration made by the judge.
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If the judge has declared righteously, then he is righteous. He has been faithful to the covenant, in essence.
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And when the plaintiff or the defendant is declared righteous, then he is declared to be in the right.
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But there is no transfer of anything from the judge to the individual being judged. Well, what
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I have been pointing out is, here is another good example of this monochrome aspect of New Perspectivism.
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And what I mean by that is, yes, the Hebrew law court and the forensic nature of justification of the declaration by the judge, that is a part of it.
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But it is missing an element of the forensic nature that the text of Scripture itself presents.
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And that is, in Romans chapter 8, you don't just have the judge and the person bringing the charge, which would be the enemy of our souls, and then the defendant.
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It is very clear that the major element of the gospel and of the law court setting is completely missed.
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And Wright repeats this over and over again in this book.
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And that is, there is a substitute. There is the advocate that stands between the defendant and the judge, and it is the man
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Christ Jesus. And the whole idea of union with Christ, substitutionary atonement, the whole incarnational concept of Christ living a perfect life and the righteousness that is his, all of that is just blown out the window.
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It is just not even a part of the consideration of these passages. And the result of that, then, is this very flattened out, very monochrome, vanilla -flavored result that really does not do justice at all to the richness of Romans 8 or Romans 4 or Ephesians 1 and 2 and so on and so forth.
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Would he say we're declared righteous? He would say that we're declared righteous in the sense of the judge has said that because we have had faith, we are now in the family of God.
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But the actual demonstration of that claim of vindication is primarily eschatological.
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That is, there is a present tense state, and in fact, I can pop it open here to the...
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But we would agree, I mean, from the reform perspective, that it is also an eschatological declaration.
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Except that in this case, the emphasis is reversed. It is far more eschatological than it is present.
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The idea of looking back upon our justification, having been justified by faith, is not so much that the relationship that we have with God is one in which there is this perfection due to the presence of the righteousness of Christ.
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Instead, it is simply stating, well, you have done what is necessary to be declared, to be in covenant harmony, to be in the family of Abraham.
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Now, whether that is actually going to remain that way becomes one of the big issues. Let me just read this.
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Under the conclusions on page 131, he has three main points.
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Therefore, covenant justification, the covenant declaration should be issued on the last day in which the true people of God will be vindicated and those who insist on worshipping false gods will be shown to be in the wrong.
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Number two, law court justification functions like the verdict in law court. By quitting someone, it confers in that person the status righteous.
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This is the forensic dimension of the future covenantal vindication.
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So the present declaration is of a status that points to the future covenantal vindication.
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But you would say in the present you have been justified, right? Not in the sense of the future covenantal vindication which awaits the eschatological.
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You are a member of Abraham's family by what you have done. But one of the things that concerns me is
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I don't see any meaningful discussion of what the nature of your standing in the family of God is.
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I mean, look at the tense of the verbs many times in Romans, having been justified. Oh, I agree.
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And we have peace presently with God. I don't know. I want to read more about that.
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I'm just trying to get a grasp on exactly what he's saying. So would you recommend that book to maybe read and understand him?
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Well, yeah, in the sense of if you want to understand any particular movement that is troubling the church, you've got to read it.
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One of the issues that I've really found concerning in this work is later on the discussion of how not only the ecumenical task, but also the discussion that he gives of how the
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Galatians who were seeking to be justified by works were still justified by faith nonetheless.
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And I'm like, where did Galatians chapter 5 go? Christ will be of no benefit to you and things like that.
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That just leaves me going, you know. How does he handle the Philippian text that you mentioned earlier about not having a righteousness of our own derived from the law, but that which is...
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Yeah, Philippians 3 .9 is one of his big things. Basically, what he does is he...
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Where did... Well, I had it in Philippians 2. Okay, yeah, here. He says, the key phrase here, importantly, is not dikaiosune theou,
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God's righteousness, but dikaiosune ek theou, a righteousness from God. All too often, scholars have referred to this passage as though it could be the yardstick for uses of dikaiosune theou, but this is impossible.
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Thinking back to the Hebrew law court, what we have here is the righteousness, the status, which the vindicated party possesses as a result of the court's decision.
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This is a righteous status from God, and this is not, as we saw, God's own righteousness. And so he, again, goes back to the
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Hebrew law court, doesn't use Paul's own understanding of that law court with the centrality of Christ as the advocate within it, and says it's simply a righteous status.
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It is not, when Paul says, not having a righteousness of my own, that which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that is upon faith, he is simply saying that is a righteous status that is granted to anyone who believes in Jesus.
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It is not the imputed righteousness of Christ. There's no imputation at all. What's the emphasis on the death of Christ, then, from his perspective?
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Well, what's the... I'm sorry, I didn't hear all that. Well, in dealing with what the death of Christ actually did, how does he then twist that, or how does he...
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Well, it was the true demonstration of God's faithfulness to the covenant made to Abraham to bless the nations.
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But he became sin on our behalf. Ah, but see, 2 Corinthians 5 is one of the key issues that I have with Wright, because his reading of that text is really weird.
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Fundamentally, what he says about 2 Corinthians 5, in fact, it's on the very same page as what I was just reading to you, is what he says when he quotes it.
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He says, I have left the last critical phrase untranslated, which is, Decaius sunetheu, righteousness of God. This time it is certainly the righteousness of God, and generations of readers have taken it to be clear evidence for a sense in the lower half of the diagram.
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He has a diagram where he divides up the possible meanings of righteousness of God. I have pointed out in detail elsewhere, however, that Paul is not talking about justification, but about his own apostolic ministry.
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And I've discussed this. I read the other place. I read that article,
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I don't know, about 6 months ago on the Dividing Line. You might want to go back and look in the archives and go over that. Anyways, he says that he has already ascribed this in chapter 3 as the ministry of the new covenant, that the point at issue is the fact that apostles are ambassadors of Christ, with God making his appeal through them, and that therefore the apostolic ministry, including its suffering, fear, and apparent failure, is itself an incarnation of the covenant faithfulness of God.
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What Paul is saying is that he and his fellow apostles, in their suffering and fear, their faithful witness against all odds, are not just talking about God's faithfulness, they are actually embodying it.
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The death of the Messiah has taken care of their apparent failure. Now, in him, they are the righteousness of God, the living embodiment of the message they proclaim.
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Yeah, that's... I mean, what scholar has ever taken that position? I don't know.
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Good question. I mean, the first Corinthians, yeah, 5, were ambassadors, right? Pleading people to be reconciled to Christ.
45:41
Yeah, that's the context, but his argument, and I'll have to make this quick because we've got a number of the callers now, but his argument, in essence, is that the last phrase, if you take verse 21 as a statement about justification, that it becomes this floating little statement that has no place in the context.
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I completely disagree with that. And I addressed that a few weeks ago in Austin when
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I was at Dayspring Chapel, and they have the MP3s online for free for anybody who wants to listen to those.
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I don't have the URL. Maybe somebody in the channel can pop it up for me, but if you'll just Google Dayspring Chapel, it should pull it up for you.
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I'll call in Thursday night. My question was on dealing with Catholics on the view of, you know, like with Mother Teresa becoming a saint versus what the
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New Testament says about saints. Okay. Well, we've got three calls lined up, and one of them is on something similar, so maybe we'll get to it.
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If not, give us a call back on Thursday. All right, thanks. Okay, thanks a lot. All right, let's run off to Adam in Akron, Ohio.
46:46
Hi, Adam. Hi. Hello. How are you, sir? I'm doing pretty well. Just calling you because I've been talking to a couple of Jehovah's Witnesses and need some help witnessing to them.
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We've been trying to set up a time, and we haven't actually met yet, but we've got two topics that we're going to be discussing.
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One I know a little bit about, and that is the nature of evil and where does evil originate from.
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And the other one is the reappearance of Christ, the coming of Christ in 1914 supposedly.
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Right. And I went to the school library and looked up Encyclopedia Britannica and other encyclopedias, and I even got on Israel's website.
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And Israel, in all these places, said that the second Nebuchadnezzar, the date they used the
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Conclave of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, was in the late 6th century
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B .C., and they keep on saying it's in the early 7th. Right, right. And I had gotten a book by Johanson, I believe his name, called
47:57
Gentile Times Reconsidered. I haven't actually gotten it yet, but Robert Bowman, Dr.
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Robert Bowman, suggested that that would be a good book to deal with that issue. Hold on, hold on, slow down there.
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Take a breath. I'm supposed to respond to these things. Right, I was just figuring out what was going on and everything.
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I was just wondering if you had any comments on any of those topics or anything? Yeah, I'm not sure if we still have it.
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Rich, do we have it on MP3? I don't know. I did a dividing line years and years ago.
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I'm not even sure if it was called a dividing line. I think it was. Anyways, we did a tape, and we had it available for a while, and it must have sold five or six copies probably during its lifetime, on the 1914 prophecy, where I go through that book and simplify it for you, because you'll discover it's not an easy book to read.
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It's not real simple or anything. And so it's definitely the book that you want to get.
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Dr. Bowman is correct that that would be the one that you want to look at. In essence, you're correct.
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Jerusalem fell in 586 -587. The reason you use two numbers like that is because they did not go
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January to December. Their years covered a portion of the 586 -587 time frame.
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There's no question of the dating of the fall of Jerusalem in the 19th regnal year of Nebuchadnezzar.
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Nebuchadnezzar was not even king in 607 when the Watchtower says that he was king and that Jerusalem fell.
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This is one of the historical factual issues where the society has completely changed history to fit their current teaching.
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But remember something. They're changing that current teaching. A process has been going on for quite some time now, where the 1914 teaching will eventually be dropped by the
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Watchtower side. There's no question about this. Remember the 1914 teaching was originally that Christ returned invisibly in 1874, and that 40 years later in 1914 was when
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Armageddon was going to take place. Then 1874 got changed, 1914, 1915, 1918, so on and so forth, and eventually 1914 became the spiritual return of Christ.
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There's a tremendous amount of information both on the history of the society's changing of its doctrine, as well as the historical fact that Jerusalem fell in Nebuchadnezzar's 19th regnal year, in 586 -587, but I haven't found a whole lot of Jehovah's Witnesses who were really willing to listen to that particular information.
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As to the issue of the origin of evil, remember from the Watchtower's perspective, at least if they've read historically what the
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Watchtower teaches, Jehovah has been likened, I think by Dwayne Mignogne, to the heavenly weatherman.
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That is, the Watchtower society is sort of the original modern version of the open theist, in that God is not eternal in the sense of existing outside of time, his knowledge of the future is actually predictive, and certainly not due to any divine decree or anything like that, and hence they have a real hard time with the sovereignty of God and things like that.
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So both those subjects are going to be a little bit tough to deal with, with a
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Jehovah's Witness, not because the Bible isn't clear on those things, but because there's just so much information to cover.
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So I hope it goes well for you. Do you think
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Romans 9 would be a good place to start? Yeah, certainly. That's a place that you can go in regards to God's eternality and his sovereignty and the issues concerning theodicy, the origin of evil.
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You can go to Genesis chapter 50, Joseph's statement there about his brothers and his being sold into slavery in Egypt.
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You can go to Isaiah chapter 10, that's an excellent passage. Acts 4, 27 -28 would give you the opportunity of transitioning from the sovereignty of God and the origin of evil into a presentation of the crucifixion and salvation and things like that.
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So there's a number of different places that you could go in dealing with that particular perspective as well.
52:16
Well, thank you. All right, thanks a lot, man. God bless. I hope it goes well for you. Thank you. Let's pop on up to at least the city
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I flew into. It's not the city I spoke in, but the city I flew into, Robin, in Minneapolis.
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Hello, Robin. Yes. I'm sorry, I couldn't catch you, actually. I was planning on it, but I actually had to work.
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Yeah, sure, I know. Actually, we were up against the weather, and that is up in the
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Twin Cities. The weather was beautiful over the weekend. It was like 77, 78 degrees.
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And up there, you're up against the weather when it's good weather. Down here in Phoenix, you're up against the weather when it's raining.
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But it's just so normative during November, December, January, February, March, April, for things to be sloshy and icky and cold in the
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Twin Cities, that you're up against the weather. And people were out on the lakes, and they were out fishing and doing stuff.
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And everybody kept saying, this is the last nice weekend. This is going to be it. This is the last nice weekend we're going to have. And so that's what
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I was up against. Okay, well, my comment about the
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Galatians, I'm definitely not a new perspective or whatever it is person. I haven't really studied it.
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I don't know what it's about. But when the issue of Paul's use of works of law in Galatians got brought up,
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I actually have done some studying on that. One of the first things that Jewish people have as far as problems with the
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New Testament is Paul's use of the word of the law. They don't like his attitude against it.
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And what they'll use is they'll say in Matthew chapter 5, where he speaks of the continuation of the law, they'll say, well,
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Paul's in direct contradiction to Jesus. Except that Paul obviously defines exactly what he's saying, in the sense that he, in Romans chapter 3, says, do we therefore nullify the law?
54:14
No, instead we establish the law. I agree. I wasn't quite sure what you're talking about. But I have a few commentaries that say when
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Paul speaks of, I think the Greek word is ergo nomos, he's actually speaking of legalism and not necessarily the law itself.
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The point to remember is that in New Perspectivism, their take on works of law is that it's not legalism.
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In fact, that's the foundation of New Perspectivism, is that they argue that Second Temple Judaism, and this comes out of the writings of a man by the name of E .P.
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Sanders. E .P. Sanders is writing after World War II, and there is a strong emphasis in what
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I would call less than conservative streams of theology.
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Of course, most people would view me as such a right -wing nutcase that my use of the term less than conservative would be ridiculous.
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But in less than conservative branches of theology, there is a very strong concern after World War II that you not say anything or believe anything that could be construed as anti -Semitic.
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And therefore, E .P. Sanders and others writing that time period, who do not believe in inerrancy, therefore they do not have to create a theology of Paul that takes into consideration anyone else's viewpoint within Scripture.
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Because from their perspective, not only are not all the Pauline epistles Paul's, but there is no overarching consistency in the biblical revelation.
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Therefore, E .P. Sanders in studying Jewish materials comes to the conclusion that Second Temple Judaism was in fact a covenant religion, a covenant of grace, and that Jews did what they did out of thankfulness for being in this gracious covenant of God.
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And so they take works of law as being the
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Jewish national symbols. Circumcision, the celebration of feast days, the things that marked you out as a
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Jew. And therefore, what they're saying is, what Paul was concerned about, is that these
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Jews, the Judaizers, were continuing to celebrate these signs and symbols and saying everybody else had to have these signs and symbols to show their covenant faithfulness to God.
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And this was in danger of creating two different churches. And therefore, the idea of works of law is not legalism.
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It's not the idea of earning something from God or meriting something from God at all. That's one of the first things they reject.
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Now, of course, I go to Romans 4, verses 4 -5 and say, look, that is exactly what
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Paul is saying. Paul says at the end of chapter 3, for by the laws and knowledge of sin, well, I'm sorry, circumcision and external ceremonial laws do not show us our sin.
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This has been something that's been dealt with for centuries, but it keeps coming back up.
57:10
And again, that doesn't have to be a real issue. For the original writers in this field, because they don't have to worry about consistency.
57:17
You just develop your theory and then you get published and you get tenure at your school and all as well.
57:24
Well, I guess one of the things, as I have many
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Messianic Jewish friends and they do celebrate the
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Torah, they still think it's legitimate for themselves. They don't press it on Gentiles, on Christians, but they do uphold the traditions.
57:45
And I guess some of them would be considered Judaizers, but I would say for the most part, they're not. It really depends on whether they're making those celebrations something that in any way impacts their status in their standing before God.
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If they are, then that would be falling into the Galatian heresy. If they're not, then that would be an exercise of Christian liberty.
58:09
But in most situations, as I've seen, within what's called the Messianic movement, it ends up leading into...
58:17
The tendency of man's heart is always to boast in his flesh, to boast in his accomplishments, and the tendency there is to go that direction as well.
58:25
So that seems to be the case. But anyway, believe it or not, we're going to go ahead and go a few extra minutes.
58:32
Normally we'd be wrapping up right now, but we have two more callers. We wanted to grab them real quick. Thank you for your call, and hope you enjoy the cold weather that will undoubtedly be heading your direction.
58:41
All right. Okay. Bye. Okay, we're going to take two more calls real quick, because they're already online. We're just going to go ahead and squeeze it past the hour here.
58:49
You can do that when you have webcasts. It's not like the world's coming to an end. Let's talk to Paul in Illinois real quickly.
58:54
Hi, Paul. Hello. Hello, Paul. Yes, sir. Hi, Dr. White. I have a friend who is a classmate of Scott Hans at Gordon -Conwell.
59:03
Okay. And apparently he was the teacher's aide to Roger Nicole. Your friend or Scott Hans?
59:10
Yes, Scott Hans. Scott Hans was a teacher's aide to Roger Nicole. Right, or a student assistant or something.
59:17
He graded all their papers, is how he put it. But he was also considered to be the Jonathan Edwards scholar or expert amongst his classmates.
59:26
And my friend was just appalled when I gave him the tape of Scott Hans' conversion, as well as your critique of him on what's for all in Hebrews 10.
59:37
Right. Well, you know, I've met Scott Hans a couple of times, and I remember the first time we met in Phoenix.
59:47
He accompanied Jerry Matitix here for some debates. And after the debate, because they were 25 minutes late getting there, after the debate, he and Hans stood there, and Hans quoted from Jonathan Edwards a number of times on James Chapter 2 and obviously showed knowledge of that, which again raises the issue when you look at what is in Rome's Sweet Home and on his conversion tape, it's basically the same story.
01:00:13
It truly makes you wonder how someone who could know, for example, if he's a
01:00:18
Jonathan Edwards scholar, then he knows Edwards wrote on the subject of justification. He even addressed the issue of works of law.
01:00:24
And so how could you make the kind of simplistic claims and the collapse of your faith in those things that he makes?
01:00:35
It just doesn't follow. It doesn't make any sense. Yeah, my friend's conclusion was just total dishonesty.
01:00:42
Well, you know, I wasn't there when he was a student, but I can guarantee you one thing.
01:00:48
The material that I've seen, especially in reviewing the entirety of his book on Mary, is just absolutely amazing, truly amazing indeed.
01:00:57
Well, thank you for your call, sir. I appreciate that information. Let's grab one last call real quick here on The Dividing Line today.
01:01:03
Let's go to the United Kingdom and talk to Martin. Hello, Martin. Hello, James.
01:01:09
How are you today? I'm very well, thank you. How are you? I'm so thankful to have an opportunity to slip back into my natural cadence, you know what
01:01:16
I mean? Well, okay, yeah. Every time
01:01:21
I talk to a person from England, everybody on the channel then tells me I sound like an Australian, and when I talk to Australians, they say
01:01:28
I sound like an Englishman. I don't understand it. Well, I have to say, James, you are getting better. I'm getting better? Well, thank you. You are getting better.
01:01:33
Oh, that's wonderful. You do sound more English now. Thank you very much. James, I don't know if it came up at the debate with Gerry Maletics.
01:01:45
I know you mentioned something on The Dividing Line a couple of weeks ago regarding the women at the foot of the cross. Yes. I heard
01:01:52
Eric Spencer mention this on his debate, and I was just looking through the Bible. I've heard that Gerry Maletics has often said, oh, well, nowhere in the
01:02:00
Bible does it say that Mary had other children. Right. Yes, okay, I would agree with that point.
01:02:06
But looking at Mark 1540 and Matthew 2755, they both identify a person called
01:02:13
Mary who has sons, James and Joes. Is that the correct pronunciation? Yes.
01:02:19
Okay. Now, where do we find, if we're looking at a court of law, where else do we find a very similar, if not identical, formulation of somebody called
01:02:27
Mary who has these two sons? And of course, it's in Matthew 1355. Well, you're exactly right.
01:02:35
You're exactly right. And see, what you do is, do you have Eric Spencer's book, Who is
01:02:40
My Mother? Not yet, no. Well, you need to get that. You need to get it to fly across the pond to you, shall we say.
01:02:46
Okay. We can send it to you, if you'd like. And if you look at page 98, write it down, and you will see that if you put on the left -hand column, under John 19 .25,
01:02:59
you have Mary Magdalene, you have Jesus' mother, you have Jesus' mother's sister, and you have
01:03:05
Mary, the wife of Clopas. Then if you put Matthew 27 .56, you have
01:03:11
Mary Magdalene again, you have Mary, you have the mother of Zebedee's sons, who is parallel with Jesus' mother's sister, and then you do not have any reference to Mary, wife of Clopas.
01:03:25
Then that makes Mary, the mother of James and Joseph, to be
01:03:31
Jesus' mother, as you just pointed out. And then in Mark 15 .40, you have Mary Magdalene all the way across, you have
01:03:37
Mary, the mother of James, the younger, and Joseph, which again then becomes parallel with Mary, the mother of James and Joseph, which becomes parallel with Jesus' mother.
01:03:47
And then you have Salome, which is the name of the mother of Zebedee's sons, which is
01:03:52
Jesus' mother's sister. So Salome is Jesus' mother's sister.
01:03:58
She's the sister of Mary, Jesus' mother. And so it makes perfect sense, but I don't think that Mr.
01:04:05
Matitix understood it. Right. I'm just thinking of the Court of Law, and if you're giving evidence, then clearly the character there called
01:04:13
Mary, who has two sons, and it says in the passage in Mark and Matthew that she's the mother of these two sons.
01:04:20
That's exactly right. It makes perfect sense, but it was very obvious that he had never... I just don't get the feeling he's ever read
01:04:27
Eric Sensen's book, even though he debated him. For me, if I were to go around giving seminars all the time, even in England, if I were to get to go to England...
01:04:37
I'd like to go to England, you know? If I were to go to England, and I was going to go around, and I was going to give seminars, and I debated a man who handed me my head upon a platter, and then he writes a book on the same subject, you know what
01:04:49
I would have to do just simply to be able to look at myself in the mirror in the morning? I'd have to read it!
01:04:56
I'd have to alter my presentation so as to give an answer for it. But it's very, very clear to me that Mr.
01:05:03
Matitix does not think of any of that. He feels he came to the final conclusions when he converted.
01:05:09
And now, he doesn't have to listen to what is said to him at all and change his presentation.
01:05:16
I was particularly, should I say, disgusted with... Who did you debate on the issue of Mary and the saints and images?
01:05:25
Patrick Madrid. Patrick Madrid. When he said to the audience, does anybody here worship statues? Well, that's such a cheap debating trick, because you could have said that to a
01:05:32
Hindu audience. And the Hindus would say, no, no, we don't worship the statues, we worship what's behind it.
01:05:38
But you could have said, that's the ancient Egyptians or the Greeks, and they would have come up with the same answer. It's still idolatry under a different name.
01:05:44
Oh, very much so. The term, cheap debating trick, is a very good one.
01:05:50
It's awful. Well, thank you, Martin, for calling in. You know, there's someone in Canada just in Channel right now, he's just so thankful that I'm getting to do my
01:05:58
British accent today with you. And it is very helpful to be able to have a true
01:06:04
Englishman on the program at the same time. It really does help. Make it stop! What was that in the background?
01:06:11
Someone yelling, make it stop! Well, thank you very much,
01:06:19
Martin. I truly appreciate it. And now you're going to be listening next week, aren't you? I am. What time is it there in the motherland?
01:06:25
It's ten past eight in the evening. Oh, my goodness. So this is an evening program for you all.
01:06:31
It's an evening program for me, yes. All righty, sir. Thank you very much. Thank you, James. God bless.
01:06:36
Bye. Bye -bye. Oh, well, you know, it's Martin. Yes, Martin.
01:06:42
There's no ah. That's how you say ah. And those of you who just lost the feed, it's because Pete turned it off.
01:06:51
In all caps, he's yelling and screaming in the channel. Now, this is a man who loves
01:06:57
Talk A Hero. And even uses that nick. And he's talking about my not doing a
01:07:03
British accent. Please, please. How terrible. Yes, please do that, Mr. AOMN person.
01:07:08
I appreciate that. Well, great calls today. Excellent topics. Hope it's been useful to you.
01:07:14
And I think I'll go out like this just simply for Pete so that he can be very happy as we go out and say see you
01:07:20
Thursday evening on The Dividing Line. That's AOMIN .org
01:08:59
where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates and tracks. Join us again this