Highlight: Some Corrections For Brandan Robertson

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Can I share with you one of my major frustrations in discussing the difference between progressive views of the Bible and conservative views of the

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Bible? The conservative view of the Bible is so cut and dry, black and white, and simple. They say the Bible is the inerrant word of God.

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There are no errors. As you understand it is what it means, and you need to accept it as the absolute truth on all matters that it talks about.

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This makes it really easy for a conservative Christian to pick up the Bible and say, I read a passage, it made me uncomfortable, or I disagreed with it, or I didn't understand it, but I've got to believe it because it's the word of God and that settles it.

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But we literally look at no other book in the world like that, especially when it comes to ancient literature.

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When we study ancient literature that's not the Bible, we need to learn the culture, the context, the language, the beliefs, and backgrounds, and philosophies of the world from which that text comes from to begin understanding what the text is actually saying.

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Of course conservative theology doesn't hold the Bible to those standards and when... Excuse me.

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It's just not true. This is the manipulation that I referred to. I'm not going to challenge a man of being a manipulator unless I have proof, and that is the kind of manipulation that I'm talking about.

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For him to say that, you know, when you go to these other ancient texts, you know, you're doing like background, author, what were they thinking, like who were they talking to, the audience, all those things, like that's what you do when you do ancient literature, but that's not what conservative

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Christians do when they go to the Bible. I'm sorry, Brandon, I know you went to Bible college and I'm confident that in a

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Bible college you had to have taken a hermeneutics class, or you knew they were available, because what does hermeneutics teach you?

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It's the art and science of biblical interpretation, and what does it say? Is it, yes, this is the revelation of God, but you need to take into account who's the author, when was it written, who is the audience, what were they thinking in that time, what's the context, all those things.

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Brandon, you're talking about what every Christian conservative Bible seminary, good or bad, does when they approach the

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Bible. It's called exegesis, and historically that's what you find in the

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Christian tradition is exegesis, go to the text, draw out from the text its meaning, and you know,

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Brandon, I know you're not an ignorant man, you're a sinful wicked man, but you are not just an apostate, but you are a man who knows that there's this thing called the reformed world and the reformed tradition.

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I know you're not ignorant, you heard Christians like me talking about hermeneutics and exegesis, so you are deceptive,

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Brandon. You're trying to pretend like, you know, conservative Christians, they just go to the Bible and say, that's the Bible, word says it, that's the words right there.

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That's not how Christians approach the Bible. Are there people like that? Yeah, there's a rare breed of people that have no concern for context or consistency, but those people are ignorant, they're as ignorant as you,

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Brandon, because you know that the Christian tradition teaches hermeneutics, exegesis, go to the text, draw out the meaning, author, intention, context, audience, time, when was this written, what was going on in the surrounding areas, what were the philosophies of those that the author is interacting with, what was the worldview?

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You're just talking about hermeneutics and exegesis. Right. That's all you're talking about. Every hermeneutics class or exegetical class

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I ever took, that was one of the first things that was mentioned, was the rule of hermeneutics is you have to take these things into consideration in your interpretation of the text, but there's just a duplicity in his statement.

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First, it was, oh, we don't want to take this view of the Bible where it's accepted as what it is, scripture, as the word of God, and then he equates that with not taking into account the particular audience, who wrote it, for what purpose it was written, what's the context, all of those things.

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There's just, there's a duplicitous kind of, you know, way of presenting this that he's,

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I think it's what the Apostle Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 4 when he says, we've renounced a disgraceful underhanded ways.

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We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word, but by the open statement of the truth, we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God.

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This is cunning. Right. It's shameful, disgraceful underhandedness.

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Right. Because what he's doing is he's saying, look, there's these two categories. On the one hand is the category of guys like Brandon Robertson that wants to take into account the worldviews of those of the day, the author, the audience, you know, context, what's going on around.

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And then there's the simpletons that just accept the Bible as the word of God. They just look at it as the word of God. That's actually, Brandon, you are fully aware that isn't the case.

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You know that that is not the categories we have to deal with. It's either Brandon's way where you actually do this in an intelligent way to say, what did the author actually mean and what's going on?

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Or you just go to the Bible and say, that's the Bible. It's the word of God. Believe it. Like, you know, that's, that's all we've got is the simpleton versus, you know, the

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Brandon Robertson's. Here's my challenge. Anybody, go to Amazon, do a search in the search bar, type in the word hermeneutics, hermeneutics, look it up.

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See how many books come up training you to actually do the art and science of biblical interpretation and how every single one of them gives you this standard.

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Who wrote it? Who's the audience? When was it written? What was the context surrounding it?

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All those things. And how does this work with other scripture and content and consistency?

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And I challenge you to go to Reform Theological Seminary, Westminster Seminary, go to Whitfield Theological Seminary, go to Moody, go to Dallas, go to wherever, pick a school and look through their courses and see if you see a course in there about hermeneutics.

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And in a conversation or a debate, the conservative way seems superior because it's so clear. Anybody can understand the conservative argument that you should be able to believe everything in the

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Bible, pick it up, whatever it says, just take it as you understand it. And that's the truth. But that isn't true.

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That's not what the Bible is. For starters, the Bible is not one book, but a library of books written by dozens of people over thousands of years in different places around the world, in different languages, with different philosophies and political situations.

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And so when we look at the Bible, we need to ask each individual book and even each individual chapter, when was this written?

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Who's writing this? To whom is it being written to? What is the purpose? What genre is this text?

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And as you do those things, as you ask those questions, you begin to unpack layers of meaning in the text that are not obvious if you're just reading it from your modern perspective with a surface -level reading.

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When you engage the Bible from that critical perspective, you unlock so much that's not there.

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Can I just make a comment here? Reading the Bible from your modern perspective, Brandon, is what you do.

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You engage in eisegesis. You approach the Bible not as an historical text with an historical meaning, a consistent text that consistently speaks to something.

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You are the one that actually goes to it with your modern mind and looks at it and says, he's wrong about that.

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You're the guy, Brandon, that said that Jesus had to repent of his racism. You're the one that reads all your leftist politics and political ideology into the text and then accuses the

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Lord of glory of being a racist. You're the guy that takes your modern interpretation and understanding to the text and you eisegete.

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You don't exegete. You don't follow the same rules that you're actually claiming here. You go to the text and you read your modern sexual ethics into the text because the sexual ethics you promote aren't in the text.

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They are decried by the text. They are militated against by the text. And yet you read your ideology and sexual ethics into the text.

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You try to get around plain statements of Scripture where it's just clear, clear, clear. It cannot be controverted.

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It is right there. It is apparent. And it's not in one place or two places or three. It's everywhere. It's thematic.

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It's everywhere. You read those texts and you say, that's not authoritative. Or actually,

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I think that if we read this thing into it, then we'll have a better understanding it, attempting to subvert it.

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That's what you do, Brandon. And I was saying earlier, and some of you guys might be saying I'm being really tough on Brandon.

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I am the way that you're supposed to be. You see that the serrated edge in Scripture is reserved for men like this, apostate men who try to lead people astray, who are unstable.

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This man is dangerous. My only input here though, is to say this, that clearly the man is a messenger from Satan.

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Clearly the man is being used for Satan's purposes. But to be honest with you, I don't think

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Satan put his best into this guy because the contradictions are so glaring and obvious.

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You're not even good at what you do, Brandon. You're a terrible apostate and it's easy to refute every single one of your two minute videos.