TMS and DMCA, Why I Don't Worship "A Particular Relational Inflection"

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:34

Well, greetings and welcome. Sorry about the 15 -minute delay there. Past 15 minutes,

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Rich and I have been beating our heads against the wall. Everything had been working fine up until just before the start of the hour, and then

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Wi -Fi started getting weird, and then my Wi -Fi in the unit went down, and I couldn't connect up to any of my other sources of Wi -Fi.

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It just... I finally got something working. Whether it'll continue to work or not, never, never know.

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I am in the wilds of western Texas somewhere in a city

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I've never stopped at before, so I know nothing about it at all. And so we're just going to do the best we can.

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Unfortunately, that means that everything I had queued up, set up, ready to go is completely gone, and so I have to put it all back together again.

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And that's life. Welcome to a driving line dividing line.

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We, as I said, are in west Texas on our way home after a very enjoyable period of time, and I could go over all of that.

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We need to get to issues that are important, and I suppose we need to start with my post that I put up this morning, because that's obviously the first thing we need to talk about right now.

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And that was on Twitter. I mentioned in a post this morning that I had said nothing about the discussion going on online regarding Peter Sammons, the

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Master's Seminary, and the posting of information that demonstrated that in an online class taught by Dr.

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Sammons, there was extensive use of R .C.

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Sproul, Wikipedia. I've been told that there is more that has not actually been posted, and that this material not only did not have any attribution, in other words, it did not say, as R .C.

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Sproul said, it was woven into the text of the teaching.

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So it wasn't like it was a separate paragraph over here, but you'd have it woven into the text where there would then be stuff that doesn't come from Sproul or whatever source being cited, and then it picks back up again.

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And so obviously there was a lot of discussion about this initially.

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What those defending the class were saying is, well, you don't have to do that.

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This is oral. This is teaching. You don't have to give your sources, which of course was absurd and ridiculous.

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Of course you do. If you're using entire paragraphs or entire articles, yeah, you have to give that attribution.

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So that was silly. And then what happened was the class was pulled a few days ago.

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And a letter was put out that basically said that they're going to redo the class and that the reason that there had been no attribution of all of the large amount of material that had been utilized was because of a technical problem where the footnotes with the attributions did not transfer to the teleprompter that was being used to provide the notes for the videotape.

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And then yesterday, I think it was yesterday, I think the term is

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DMCA. You can go on YouTube and a number of people have tried this against us when

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I would quote someone, I would play a video of something they're saying and then say, actually, that's completely wrong.

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And that is legally something called fair use. When you are criticizing something, when you are quoting a portion, you're not just playing the whole thing to try to get people to watch your stuff.

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You're quoting material for educational purposes, for criticism, for interaction.

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That's called fair use. And all sorts of people, every cult group that we've ever gone after, has done the same thing.

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They will say, that's our stuff, they can't do that. And then we have to respond, that's called fair use.

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We are criticizing this material and so on and so forth. And so I heard,

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I believe it was yesterday, that the Master's Seminary itself had filed,

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I think, again, Rich, am I right? Is it DMCA? You're the one that has to deal with all that stuff.

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So I've only heard about it secondhand as far as that goes.

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A filing was made against Thoughtful Orthodox, the

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Twitter account that had obviously put a tremendous amount of work into examining this material.

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You can't put together the quotations and the material that documents these things having spent a great amount of time doing this.

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And so the video evidence of the utilization of these materials has been removed from YouTube.

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And so I mentioned this morning, I said, for now,

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I am seeing that TMS has had the video documentation of the misattribution, i .e. plagiarism, removed from YouTube.

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Which means necessarily that they are claiming a copyright on material they admit was someone else's in the first place.

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And I said, can someone explain this to me? How do you claim copyright on material you have admitted wasn't properly posted and used in the first place?

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So if the admission is, yes, there is material in here from all these different sources, but it's not attributed to where it came from.

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How do you claim a copyright on that and then use that to have the video removed that caused you to take the class down in the first place and admit it needs to be redone?

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There's no sense in that. Is there? I saw someone said, well, yeah, it's copyrighted material, but it was plagiarized.

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It's been admitted. The class has been taken down, right? And it's going to be redone, right?

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So there's material already in it that was somebody else's that wasn't supposed to be there, right?

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And it was the posting of this information together with this research that resulted in saying, well, we messed up.

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At least that's what the letter said. Then why would you take down the documentation that led you to that action?

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As I said, the optics on this are really, really bad because clearly the utilization is fair use utilization.

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You're saying there's a problem here. And so that's the very definition of fair use.

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So that doesn't make any sense. And so, as I said in my little thing there,

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I said, this is clearly fair use. And given the pulling of the class and the admission of at least problems, the proper response would be something like, thank you.

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We are very sorry we missed this. We will do better. Not here. We will use YouTube to remove the documentation that forced us to do what we did.

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The optics here are just really bad. And this concerns me tremendously.

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I love TMS. I've been there. It's just so sad to see this type of thing taking place.

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And it would be far, far, far, far, far, far, far easier for me to never say a word about it.

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I mean, you just need to understand the connections all through conservative, evangelical,

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Reformed, I mean, just everywhere. I know so many

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TMS grads and have been so involved in ministry with TMS grads. And that shouldn't be affected by anything.

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In fact, I would imagine most TMS grads are going, ooh, what's going on? This is weird.

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But I had to say something because it's like, what's going on? This is not how you handle this.

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If this evidence is solid evidence, and it seems that it is, you took the class down.

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That's enough to say, yep, that's solid evidence. So as I said in the tweet,

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I think TMS, please, whoever is behind this, and I probably know who is. I've probably met whoever is at some point.

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Pull the DMCA claim. Stop it. Just stop it.

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Don't do that. Don't do that. Don't claim copyright on fair use material that was being used to say, hey, this is not that man's material.

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Now, so I cannot see the other side on this one.

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I really, really can't. I cannot see why in the world you would try to take down the evidence that was actually clearly used to cause you to make the changes that you did.

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So let's put that off to the side. I've made that statement. And I'm assuming we're still working here.

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I haven't heard back from Rich on anything that I've said to him. So either he. OK. Is it

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DMCA? OK, thank you. So I did have that right.

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Thank you. Digital Millennium Copyright Act. OK, whatever. All right. So it's DMCA. Pull the

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DMCA claim and let that be posted again because that's what caused you to do what you did.

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But I want to back up to the letter that was sent out and make a comment on that. And I think

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I have every right to make this comment and to comment on this because I've been teaching for a long, long time.

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And I have recorded classes. I remember, wow, 2006 or seven.

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I remember flying to a secret location to record stuff that was going to be translated into Farsi and satellite transmitted into Iran for Muslims.

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And now I've never been a teleprompter user.

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A fact about the only time I've ever used anything even like that was to read the commercials for CrossPolitik.

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They've got a computer thing sitting out there. And so I read that I did read a commercial off of that once.

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But I'm and I'm not a I'm not huge on notes.

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Anybody that just took my early church history class just a matter of weeks ago, well, months ago now,

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I guess, will tell you that while I do have notes for the class, when

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I teach in a classroom setting, I am I love being peripatetic. I hate being tied to the podium.

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I hate when there's a, you know, you got to do the zoom stuff and the and the cameras and stuff, because I love walking all the way to the back row at the top.

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And sitting down back there and have everybody turn around. And the first time I do it,

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I joke that I'm seeing who's playing Tetris or Minesweeper or whatever else while they're pretending to take notes in the class, which stops all that immediately.

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And but I just like being out there, which means

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I'm not really closely connected to my notes in that way.

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And I was thinking with irony that I taught a class for TMAI, which is the

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Masters Academy International, which I've taught for in Kiev, in Czech Republic, in Russia, all over the place.

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And I was teaching in Switzerland, Zurich. I was teaching

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Hebrews for TMAI in Zurich. And fantastic organization, by the way, very worth your support.

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And I had one wonderful brother that had been translating me for all the class.

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I think it was a three day class, long days. And then he had to leave. And so for the like the last three hours, this scholar just always scared me.

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He's a polymath. He's brilliant, just on a level that you just can tell there aren't that many people over that level.

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He translated the last like three hours that I did. And when most of the students had left the room, he was still sitting there and he said,

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Dr. Weitz, where are your notes?

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It does not look like you are using notes. He says, no one can teach the book of Hebrews without notes.

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And I explained to him, I said, well, I think the Greek text is the greatest notes in the world.

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But the reality is that I had just preached through Hebrews for years. And so I didn't need notes.

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And so I didn't use notes. And he was just blown away by that. So I'm not really a teleprompter manuscript type speaker guy.

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But what seems very obvious to me is that if Dr.

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Sammons developed the material itself, if he was the one that put the words that are being put up on the teleprompter together, there is simply no way he could not have recognized that the attributions were gone.

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There's no way. You know, when you're reading your stuff, because you remember writing it, and it uses your colloquialisms and your style and stuff like that.

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And you know when it switches over to quoting somebody else. And so I've quoted

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R .C. Sproul in my books. But if I were reading my book, I would, on a teleprompter,

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I would know the difference between what I wrote and what R .C. Sproul wrote. It's a different language.

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It's different. You didn't write it. I remember writing what I write. And so, well,

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I mean, OK, a single sentence, I might not. But when you're talking about context.

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And so the idea that was put forward in the letter, well, the attributions were there.

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They just disappeared. I'm like, but you'd only get through the first time you quoted somebody before you'd go, well, wait a minute, guys.

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Sorry. Hit the brakes here. We're missing something. Because all

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I've got here is just the text without any of the notes that would say, as R .C.

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Sproul said or as it's said from Wikipedia or as it's said from Michael Horton or whoever else.

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You'd know that. And especially given the fact, the nature of the citations, they're woven into the text.

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So they're meant to look like they are a part of a steady flow. So I don't know where there would have been.

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I suppose you could say, well, there would have been a footnote here and a footnote there. But that would mean that you're putting it actually, you're intermixing it with your own words.

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And if you've got extensive, if you're quoting two or three sentences and then you put one of your sentences and then two more sentences from what you're quoting, that's never done.

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And no one could possibly stand there and be reading it and not realize what's going on.

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So I am thoroughly unconvinced of the explanation that, well, it was a technical glitch and this stuff just disappeared.

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So what do I think it was? I don't know Peter Sammons. I only learned of him,

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I think, last year or the year before I bought his book, which I actually bought his book, which is a dissertation on reprobation because I thought, wow, what an incredibly depressing topic to do your dissertation on.

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Important. Who did you talk into doing that? Important.

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But that was the first I knew of him. And I have actually nothing against the guy.

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It seems we really disagree on how you define classical theism.

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And I have been told by some people that he's said some pretty disparaging things about me, unfortunately.

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But the reality is, this just looks to me, just standing back and looking, this looks to me like someone who was asked to do too much too fast, took shortcuts, got lazy.

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You're being told we want you to be teaching these classes live, we want you to record these things here.

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And this looks like what happens when that kind of pressure gets too much.

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I don't know. I don't know. But fundamentally,

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I'm just saying to everybody involved, I hope that there will be people, because there are so many people in the

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Masters group that I have had wonderful ministry with and influence upon, and many who have said to me over and over again, you introduced me to textual criticism, you introduced me to Reformed theology, you introduced me to loving the

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Trinity, over and over and over again, all over the world. And I just simply have to believe that there are a lot of those folks that likewise are going, this looks so bad, and it needs to be handled appropriately, and right now it's not being handled appropriately.

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Pull the DMCA, redo the class, deal with the underlying fundamental issues, and move on.

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And somebody has to be willing to say it. Somebody has to be willing to say it.

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That's really all there is to it. So there you go. There's that. I had seen some other stuff that had popped up.

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Like I said, I had to reset everything, and it sort of disappeared.

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Such is life. Wow. Did you see that?

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Oh, it just popped up. It is all over my, just seeing it now, this black boy beating the tar out of this teacher.

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And then a Marine walks up, but he walks up. He just, he doesn't run up.

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He just walks up. I do not understand why he did that, but we've all seen the video.

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It's, part of you just has to feel for any teacher in the system until you then realize that it is the teacher unions that fundamentally have helped to create these contexts in the schools themselves.

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It's the left that has created the fatherlessness, the destruction of the family that creates these young men who just have no restraint.

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They have, if you don't have a father in the family, this is the result.

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You have testosterone without guidance, without honor, without discipline.

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And I mean, this is horrific to watch. There's no two ways about it.

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But I saw a video, almost wish I could get out of my mind, but I saw a video about three weeks ago of a shooting in Chicago.

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It was, they were all black folks that were shooting and being shot. But a young man who dispatched about five people in cold blood, just,

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I mean, you're talking, walking up, someone's on the ground and shooting him in the face. That kind of absolute cold blood, women and men.

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We have to recognize God created us to have children in a certain context.

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God created us to have sexuality in a certain context. And our society has decided that the sexual act, and not even necessarily the sexual act that creates life, but the pleasing of one's desires is now the greatest right that you have.

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It's the most important thing possible. And so we have the video of the program a number of years ago, it's like 2019, where a black woman, she was the host of the program, had all these young black men.

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And how many babies do you have by how many different women? And there was one guy that had 28 babies by like 18 different women.

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And thankfully, everybody else had fewer. But the point was, here's an entire culture, an entire culture that is focused upon the ultimate thing is sex itself, not commitment, not bringing into the world life, not family, none of that.

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So you've got your baby mamas and your baby daddies, and it's become an entire culture. And then the music and the art reflects it.

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So you have people, male and female, being paid millions and millions of dollars to not only sing about rampant sexuality, nothing about marriage or family or honor or discipline or any of that kind of stuff, but rampant sexuality.

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But you have black women who are paid millions of dollars to appear in public, in essence, nude, on the stage, and then to lecture the world about morality.

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This is what we have. And the result is inevitable.

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We see it. It's all around us, but you can't point to it. Because that would bring conviction to the entire society and say that there actually is an objective reality that we have to recognize, or the results are going to be horrific.

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But there's something more. And I understand, especially amongst reformed people, there is a real hesitance to even contemplate such things, but there is something absolutely demonic.

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The evil, you've seen it, we've all seen it, where people just, they start beating someone.

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And it's almost a demonic fervor. The speed at which their arms are flying and the anger that is clearly being expressed.

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And that's what this young man did to this teacher. She's already out. She went down. She was out first shot.

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She was unconscious. She's defenseless. And he is just beating on her.

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He wants to kill her. He wants to kill her. Where does that come from?

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We see it over and over again. All these fights, all these massive things. Or the evil in the young man who, when the shooting started in this shooting, he shot,

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I think, a woman first. And it looked like maybe her sister or a friend or something kneels down next to her on the ground.

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And when he shoots another guy farther away, as he walks by, he simply blows the head off of the girl who is kneeling down next to her friend.

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Doesn't even slow down. What kind of evil produces that?

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And it's amazing. No one will even venture to mention the powers of evil.

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Demonism. In looking at these situations. I honestly think 100 years ago it would have been the first thing everybody was thinking about.

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You can't talk about it now. Can't talk about it even amongst Christians. Even when you would think there would be an ability to do so.

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No. We have to teach our children, and we have to be much more explicit about it than my generation was, about what is good about self -control.

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Discipline. Honor. Respect. Our society right now is saying that we are to honor and respect what that which is evil.

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That's one of the reasons that honor and respect is gone. It was funny. I was on the drive today.

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This rarely happens, but I guess I somehow sort of got along with some guys.

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I have a feeling who it was. There was an oversized load, and I noticed that oversized load groups, sometimes car in front, car in back, then you have the oversized load.

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They will communicate on channel 19 on CB. I think that's what I was listening to. They were just good old trucker boys.

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They were throwing in some colorful metaphors along the way.

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But they were talking about transgenderism. One particular guy was talking about transgenderism. What was amazing was, despite the colorful metaphors, he was demonstrating what we might call common grace.

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He's like, you can't convince me that what these people are saying makes any sense at all.

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This is insanity. Of course, he was exactly right.

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It's the exact same thing that we're saying. There are a lot of people that get it, but they don't have the worldview to get it and then connect it to everything else that's going on.

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That's why they only see bits and pieces of it. We have to be communicating to our children, and especially to our young men, but our young women as well, but especially young men as that testosterone kicks in and that body develops and their muscles are there and there is this energy.

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I was taught to channel that into being the best person

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I can be. I was raised as a Christian, and so you look at your life.

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What gifts has God given to you? How can you use them in the service of Christ and the service of others?

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Be the best that you can be. It wasn't just an old was that the Marines Army? I think it was

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Marines. It isn't just an old advertising slogan, and that allows you true manliness is controlling and restraining that great power that you have.

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This young man, they said was 6 '6", 270. That's a front line of the

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Dallas Cowboys or any other NFL football team. That's huge, and this poor woman has no chance against him at all, and so he just lashes out.

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He wants her dead because she took his Nintendo Switch during class.

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That means he has no respect for authority, no respect for education, no respect for himself, and you know why.

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We all know why it is, and it's not going to get any better at all until there can be honest proclamation.

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This is why this is happening, but even amongst Christians, I think we're afraid to even venture into the area of how much of this is just simply demonic.

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When you listen to what these people are listening to on a regular basis, and I think back to because God can save anybody,

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I think back to a situation when I was teaching Christian school where one of the troublemakers,

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Tony, in my class, I caught him listening to Eminem, and I actually listened to some of what the song was he was listening to.

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It was horrific. It was horrific. It was the... I went off on that class.

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My son, remember, because he was in the same class. I went off on that class like I've never gone off on any class in any context before, and the reason

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I mention it is Tony and I are friends. We keep in touch on Facebook.

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He ended up in the Marines. He's really made a life for himself, and the

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Lord is merciful, but the fact is I think he would admit thinking on that kind of stuff, feeding that kind of stuff into his mind was poisonous, and that's what's happening regularly, and we're, oh, we can't be prudes about anything.

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No. When you watch the viciousness of these beatings, not just this one, but so many others, you sure that's just, you sure there's nothing in the spiritual realm involved there?

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I don't know. I don't know. Makes you really wonder. Makes you really wonder. Okay, well, completely shifting gears here, we've covered some broad stuff.

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I want to ask, let me once again, yesterday on the program,

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I read from Adonis Vidou's The Same God Who Works All Things and Separable Operations in Trinitarian Theology, and I emphasized a few phrases from one of the key sections of the book.

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For example, the notion that a divine person is nothing but the divine essence under a particular relational aspect.

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I made reference to especially the idea of particular relational inflection in the sentence, the identity of the persons is not revealed by separable acts and wills, but precisely in the unity of the divine will and actions, since the persons are nothing but this will and power under a particular relational inflection.

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I think most people, when they hear something like that, are really left wondering, why have

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I never heard anything like this before? And the other side will say, well, you should have, in the 20th century, he stunk theology -wise, and that James White guy in his

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Forgotten Trinity book, he stunk as well, and yeah, we recommended it, but we're smart now, we don't recommend it anymore.

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But the fact remains that any serious -minded person that is involved in ministry knows that explaining the

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Trinity in biblical language is tough enough. Going through the texts,

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I'm always so tremendously encouraged when

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I talk to our young people in our churches, and I explain the doctrine of the

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Trinity to them, and I walk them through the scriptures, and they memorize those scriptures, and when you ask the catechism questions, they give the proper scriptural answers, and they show that they understand.

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They understand why this is important, they understand how the Trinity is revealed in scripture, and then they start getting the relationship between the divine persons, and so they don't make the confusion of confusing the

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Father with the Son, and the Son with the Spirit, and their prayers don't have that immaturity that so many people's prayers do, where you start off talking to the

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Father, and then you switch over to what the Son did, and there's been no transition. I've seen people growing in their commitment and their love for the doctrine of the

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Trinity, especially because, like I said, in the Forgotten Trinity, I love the Trinity, and I want other people to love the

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Trinity, and the only way I've found to get people to love the Trinity is not by introducing them to Aristotle's sterile

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God, but to the living Word of God itself. You can baptize

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Aristotle's sterile God all you want. That's not Yahweh. That's not how God has revealed Himself.

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And so, I think most people recognize in ministry in the

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Church, this is going to get you nowhere. What is being accomplished by saying, since the persons are nothing but this will and power under a particular relational inflection?

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You didn't get that from Scripture. You didn't get that from the Apostles. And in fact, as it is now being forced upon us, you got it from Thomas.

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It even mentions it in the Thomistic formulation. That's what we're talking about here.

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And so you're literally at a point where it said here, and I read this yesterday and I just happened to notice the very first footnote in this chapter is from Aquinas.

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Remember this. This does not mean there is no knowledge of the persons precisely in their propria.

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Once it is understood that this propria is not to be sought away from the substance but precisely as a modality within the substance.

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A modality within the substance. It will be recognized that the way of appropriation is not a mere consolation prize.

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Something that we need to put up with. Hoping for our eyes to be finally opened. In a sense, that is true.

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No, it's not. Of course, but there is a real contemplation of the divine persons.

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How? How? How? Precisely by learning to discern within the unity of their operation, parenthesis, the only place any person may be found, exclamation point, parenthesis, the modal trace of each person.

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How many of your people in your church are going to be drawn to deeper contemplation and worship of the

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Triune God by this? By looking for the modal traces of person's inflections?

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Appropriations? Our people are not stupid.

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And they're going to know, ain't my Bible. Nope, it's not.

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It's not. It's not there anywhere. There's nothing that even suggests it.

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But let me contrast this. Let me contrast that kind of language, the modal trace of each person with what we find in Scripture.

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And so, once again, I consider those places where, as I've described it in the past, the veil of eternity is drawn aside and we are privileged as followers of Christ to see the interaction.

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I'm not even sure these folks would actually accept that term any longer. You used to, but you don't anymore.

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The interaction of the divine persons. In eternity past, in Philippians chapter 2, a divine person had a certain mindset.

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A divine person. The term is phaneo, to think.

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And we are told to have this mindset which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although existing in morphe theu, in the form of God, did not hegeomai, to consider, to regard.

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He did not consider ta 'ana isa theo, the equality he had with God, something to be held on to at all costs.

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Or pogmon. Did the father engage in the same activity of consideration as the son?

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How could he? What was being considered is the son's equality with the father. The father can't consider his equality with himself.

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Is there nothing unique, specific to the consideration of the son's relationship to the father?

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He has to know he is the son. He has to know he is the father. He has to know there is an equality between them.

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That's what isa means. Ta 'ana isa theo. This is key to the demonstration of the deity of Christ.

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So much of this theology, so much of it, can only exist in the sterile hallways of academia.

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It cannot go outside, and it cannot go where the gospel needs to go.

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It can't, because it has to assume certain things. Was there anything in the consideration of the divine person who is the son, the divine person who became incarnate, that is at all unique to the son?

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Because what we're being told is, nope, nope, it's only the processions, it's only begetting, being begotten, spiration, that's the only, it's all add into, that's the only way you can distinguish.

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Everything else has to be the same because of simplicity. Has to be.

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And no, we will not demonstrate that the apostles taught that, but it has to be. Then, likewise, how do you have a reflexive pronoun?

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In verse 7. He 'altan ekenosen. He emptied himself.

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Did the father empty the son? Because it's a reflexive pronoun. Did the spirit empty the son?

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This is important. This is actually going to that which is theanoustas.

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Nothing Thomas Aquinas ever said was theanoustas. It is secondary at every level. No matter how highly you exalt him, how many pictures you have hanging in your office.

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And so we're going to the actual source of Christian theology. He made himself of no reputation.

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Did the father make him of no reputation? Now, he does this in perfect harmony with the father.

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There is no division, but there is no necessity of identity and sameness.

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And we don't have to trace a modal, look for modal traces to identify the persons.

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It's right there in front of us. It's as clear as day. Because it then says,

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Morphain doulo labone. I take that participle as the means by which the emptying takes place is by that positive taking on of the human nature.

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But it's the son who does this. It's the son who does this.

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Is there not something unique about the person of the son here?

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Is there not something unique about the person of the father as the source of the very fountainhead of divine grace and the divine decree?

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Is there not something special about the spirit of God who applies the work of Christ in the lives of believers?

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This has never been an issue amongst us until now. Where now, instead of rejoicing in being able to see in passages like this, the interaction of the divine persons and the overwhelming beauty of the glory of God being worked out in the work of salvation and the roles that each divine person plays.

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And they are different roles that involve beautiful, gracious, harmonious, eternal interaction.

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And you're willing to trade that in for Aristotle's sterile deity? I'm not.

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I'm not. I'm not going to teach people to look for modal traces.

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I'm not going to tell people, well, really the only thing we're really, really saying is that the divine persons aren't really, well, they're, you know, they're nothing more than, what was the term here?

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Nothing but the divine essence under a particular relational aspect. The relationship of Father, Son, and Spirit is so much deeper and more full and beautiful in Scripture than that, that I just look at that and go, oh, it's arid.

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It's arid. Particular relational aspect.

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Okay. There's reason to be concerned.

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I thought, silly, naive me, that when I read church history and I would read speculative theology and I would read someone, you know,

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I learned decades ago to be able to read somebody, you read Augustine and you read stuff like, oh, wow, that's a great insight.

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And then you go three pages farther on and you go, oh, wow, okay. That was really bad.

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And, you know, the neoplatonism that influenced him, you learn to go, okay, that probably came from that and go past that and, oh, here's a golden nugget and it's right next to a piece of coal.

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And now all of a sudden we're being told, no, that you can't do that.

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You've got to go with what these guys are saying, you see, if you're really going to be orthodox like we are.

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So now we have philosophical speculative theology and we're being told this is definitional.

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And the unwillingness of the advocates of this stuff to provide us with, and in fact, to mock the idea of needing to have exegetical foundation.

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You biblicist. We are so past you. We are doing natural theology here.

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You don't need the Bible for that. And I, I'm just,

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I'm putting my stake down right here. I'm telling you something. Listen. Kick me out of your club all you want.

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Do whatever you want. Simple fact of the matter is this. This won't last. This stuff won't last.

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It has to be dug up every few generations and get people excited about it again because it doesn't last.

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Because the sheep of Christ will starve, stinking to death on a regular diet of speculative philosophical theology.

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The apostles didn't do it. I'm not going to do it. Now, are there certain people who just really seem to have a real love of doing this kind of stuff?

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Yeah. Yeah, there are. And I'm thinking of one guy who's working on making shipwreck of the faith because of his love of that kind of stuff.

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And my experience, again, over decades in ministry, is if those people don't get plugged into a situation where they are tethered down to reality and made to minister within the body, they end up like a

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Chinese spy balloon. Loading off someplace, who knows where, and making shipwreck of the faith.

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They really do. They really do. So, just think of how many...

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There's only so many places where that veil of eternity is drawn aside, but they are so deep.

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And when you try to apply this mechanical, philosophical, we're doing this because Thomas told us we had to do stuff to it, it results in such a mockery of the text of Scripture.

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It evacuates it of meaning that the sheep know.

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The sheep hear that. And I'll never forget, and we're getting toward the end of our time here, even though we started 15 minutes late.

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That was all my fault, I guess. I don't know. I hope my router got reset up there.

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Anyway, this is not new for me, to have this passion about this subject.

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I've told this story before. I went to ETS once, 1998, presented a paper, and I came away with such a bad taste in my mouth.

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A bad, bad taste in my mouth. Why? It's not that there weren't all sorts of great people there, had some great conversations, things like that.

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But there was such an attitude of we are the scholastics leading the benighted church, and they so need our deep wisdom that it just, it turned my stomach.

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I didn't want to be around that. There was so little humble servant attitude amongst these scholastics.

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And so many people have heard me say many, many times, I think everyone involved in Christian education as a quote -unquote academic should have to read 1

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Corinthians 1 and 2 minimally every six months. Or have it preached to them, maybe.

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Every six months. Just to be reminded, the wisdom of the world is foolishness to God.

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It's foolishness to God. And Thomas' attempt to baptize

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Aristotle's metaphysics and Aristotle's God failed. And his system leads to a sterile deity that bears very little resemblance to the self -revealed triune

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God of Scripture. It is such a truncation, such a squishing down of a much greater revelation so that you can keep these categories.

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If you don't that, this is going to result in this, this is going to result in that, baloney. Baloney. Don't buy it.

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Don't buy it. Be warned. Be warned. Okay, so I think today's

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Friday? Yeah, I think today's Friday. So poor Rich gets to rest the next two days.

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Though, I will have to ask if the absolute urge overwhelms me because I've still got a lot of driving to do.

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I didn't do a driving line on this trip. But again, he still has to do some stuff to get that posted up there.

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So I don't know if I'd feel guilty or guilty enough to not do that.

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We'll see what happens tomorrow. We'll see how it's going. Sunday? Okay, fine. I get that.

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We'll see, especially with some of the responses that might be coming from today's program.

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And let me just say, as I'm wrapping up here, I pray for the Master's Seminary.

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I am so thankful for so many of the graduates of that school and what they've done around the world.

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And I just simply will suggest to you that if you love the Master's Seminary, then you will want the

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Master's Seminary to do the right things. And DMCA -ing the evidence of a problem is not the right thing.

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It's the wrong thing. And so anyone who says, oh, James White's attacking the

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Master's Seminary. No. I think people realize when you're trying to give wisdom to someone who's made a mistake, you're not attacking them.

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That's how the world thinks. We shouldn't think that way. We shouldn't think that way. I have taught for TMAI around the world.

01:00:06

And I may never get to do that again for taking the stand, if that's the case. So be it. But I'm not going to be one of the people who just closes my eyes and goes, oh, well, whatever you want to do,

01:00:21

I can't. I can't. It's just that it shouldn't be.

01:00:28

Anyways, thanks for watching the program today. As I said, I get home next week, and so I'm not sure what the schedule's going to be.

01:00:37

We hope and pray that Rich will be bouncing off the walls with energy and excitement and vim and vigor by then.

01:00:46

He and I are both probably too old to be bouncing off of anything without causing great injury in the process,

01:00:54

I'm afraid. But certainly we'll be doing some programs next week.

01:01:00

We'll be back in the studio there in Phoenix and talking about what progress we're making on getting the studio stuff put together and raising funds for the unit and doing all the stuff that we're going to be doing the rest of the year.

01:01:19

So once again, it's shocking that I remember this, given how horrible we are at this.

01:01:24

But again, we need your help in doing the traveling and the fifth wheel and all the stuff that needs to be done to it.

01:01:37

And so if you go to donate at aomin .org, go to the Donate button at aomin .org, look at the drop -down menu.

01:01:45

The bottom one is the one we're talking about, the AOMobile Studio. And we appreciate everyone who's helping, and just keep that out there so we can keep doing what we're doing.

01:01:56

Thanks for watching the program today, and I'm very thankful that the connection managed to survive and that my little iPad over there, which is running all this, managed to not have its battery die.