Can a Consistent Eastern Orthodox Believer Be the Bible Answer Man?

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:37

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. Got nothing up on the screen. Nothing there at all. Welcome to The Dividing Line today.

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As normal, we're just learning how to do this. There we go. Hey, all right. We've only been doing this since,

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I don't know, sometime in the 80s. Just not quite this way. And it's a beautiful day here in Phoenix, but we have a very, very important topic to get to.

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I just sadly looked at how much audio I have, and it's 53 minutes. I don't know if I'm going to be able to get through all that, but I'm going to try to do my best.

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Today on the program, as you know, on the last program, we commented on the conversion of Hank Hanegraaff, the president of CRI, to Eastern Orthodoxy.

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I tried to provide some kind of background, some kind of fair commentary on the issue of Eastern Orthodoxy and some of the subjects that this raises.

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In the days after that, I began hearing about comments that were made.

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I had a former student of mine send me sort of a transcript of comments that Hank was making on the

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Bible Answer Man broadcast. Now, I'll be perfectly honest with you, I haven't listened to BAM for a very, very long time, pretty much since 2003, primarily because it went off the air here in Phoenix.

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It had been easy to listen to. It wasn't easy to listen to anymore, and so I had not really been monitoring things very closely.

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And so I actually had to have someone give me some direction as to where to find the information.

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And I downloaded Monday and Tuesday's programs of this week, where Hank addressed his conversion and then a number of the phone calls that came in in relationship to this.

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As I listened to the program, I was struck by a number of things.

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Once again, it has been many years since I have seen Hank. It's been many years since I sat in the studio.

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I was only in California. I was never in the studios in Charlotte. But I was struck by the fact that having been in the studio defending fundamental beliefs, such as Sola Scriptura and Sola Fide, that Hank was now taking the opposite position.

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But at the same time, some of the things that struck me were basically the utilization of language, very similar to, for example, the

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Lutheran -Catholic Accord, which said, well, you know, we agree that we are justified by grace through faith.

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Well, if anybody knows church history, if anybody knows the Reformation, then they know that statement is primarily irrelevant.

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You can talk about being justified by grace through faith all you want. We live in a day that has history behind it.

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And the question is, are you justified by grace alone, through faith alone, or not?

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Is it grace alone through faith, grace alone through faith alone? There are reasons why that term alone is there.

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There are huge reasons. They have tremendous, tremendous implications. For example, very often my

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Roman Catholic friends will speak of being justified by faith working through love, borrowing from Galatians chapter 5.

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Well, that sounds like a wonderful phrase. It's actually the opposite of what

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Paul was talking about in Galatians chapter 5. But the point is the avoidance of the word alone has a purpose.

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There's a reason for it. And when you say through faith working through love, what you're doing is you're opening the door to the entire sacramental system of Rome.

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You're opening the door to baptismal regeneration, to the distinction of kinds of sin, priestly absolution.

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All of that comes flooding through that slight difference in terminology.

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And even my East Northwest friends should be able to understand that these terms are extremely important because the difference between truth and heresy at the

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Council of Nicaea, for example, was one letter. The difference between homoousius and homoiousius, right?

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So, one letter can make all the difference in the world. And hence, one word can very clearly distinguish between whether we are saying that a person is justified solely by looking away from themselves and looking to the finished work of Jesus Christ in their place.

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The God who justifies the sinner who is not working, the not working one,

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Galatians 4, verse 5, over against the working one who thinks that by his doing things, he is somehow working the system, adding something to that empty hand of faith.

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It is only the empty hand of faith, not the hand of faith that brings anything in it, not the idea of sacraments and merits and anything else along with it.

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Only that empty hand of faith can grasp the hand of grace. If there's something in there, you'll never be able to grasp it.

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And so, I defended these things in the studio, in Hank's presence, and it was very plain that he was on my side, that he affirmed what

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I was saying at that time. Now he's affirming the other side. Something has changed, but it struck me that in listening to Hank's soldiering on, continuing on as the

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Bible Answer Man, that he's going to attempt to do this and say, well, you know, I've always affirmed mere

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Christianity. I did not know. I have criticized the mere Christianity movement for many years now in this program, and as I said,

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I haven't been listening to Hank, and so I did not know that he would be utilizing that specific language, so I didn't have him in mind specifically when

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I was talking about it. But he repeated this over and over and over again, this mere

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Christianity issue. Well, as we'll see as we listen, the problem with this is this mere

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Christianity merely leaves out the gospel. The gospel is no longer a part of mere

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Christianity. That is extremely troubling, and so the real question is, why would an

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Eastern Orthodox catechumen want to be called the Bible Answer Man?

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Is that even consistent with an Eastern Orthodox understanding of Scripture, which is a part of the greater tradition and can only be understood within that tradition?

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Now, my argument, by the way, I have obviously many objections to doctrines and practices within Eastern Orthodoxy, and I pointed out in the last program that defining

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Eastern Orthodoxy is difficult. There are divisions between the various branches. As much as they might want to try to cover that over, anyone who knows the system knows that there are strong divisions.

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But the real question that has to be answered is, how could someone who is in Eastern Orthodoxy take the position of being the

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Bible Answer Man? I thought the Bible Answer Man, that that very title, that position,

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I mean, it's not a position. It's not like it's a biblical position or something. Someone doesn't get elected to be Bible Answer Man.

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But the presupposition of it is, is that the Bible is the final source of the answers for the questions that you're going to have about the

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Christian faith. But in Eastern Orthodoxy, that's not the case. You can go on YouTube right now, go on YouTube, put in Eastern Orthodoxy, Sola Scriptura.

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Start paging down. Page after page after page of videos by Eastern Orthodox individuals who are rejecting the concept of Sola Scriptura and saying, no, that's never been what the apostles taught.

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You have to have apostolic teaching. You have to have the tradition. The scriptures are a part of that tradition. You cannot interpret that scripture outside of that tradition.

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So, how is it possible to be the Bible Answer Man when the worldview and religious commitments that you have embraced would forbid you from doing so?

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And can Mr. Hanegraaff actually try to pretend that nothing has changed?

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He will actually make the statement that my beliefs have been codified in 20 different books. Nothing has changed.

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Oh, yes, something has changed. It is very, very difficult for anyone,

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I think, to take seriously the assertion found on CRI's webpage. If you go to the webpage for,

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I think it was the second day, the 11th, in the description, there you have that very statement.

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Hank's beliefs have been codified in 20 different books and nothing has changed. And it's like, yes.

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I mean, can you imagine if I converted to Roman Catholicism and said, well, hey, my views have been codified in 24 books.

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Nothing's changed. Of course something has changed. The very matrix, the very milieu, the very context of everything that I've written was totally different than what

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I would now be saying was true. So, didn't everyone who bought

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Hank's books, weren't they assuming the background of Sola Scriptura in his own thought?

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And if Sola Scriptura could no longer be affirmed, how can that be understood as not being a change?

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These are questions that a lot of us have had. So, I want to listen to what

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Hank has to say. I want to interact with it. I'm going to try to be concise, but I want to let him speak for himself.

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I am playing this at 1 .2 speed so we can get through it a little bit faster. I always make that announcement, and it gets boring after a while.

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But here goes this. I'm going in chronological order. So, this is from Monday's program.

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Yeah, so my question is, I've been having some good discussions with some of my Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic friends as to whether or not praying to the saints is biblical.

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And as you can imagine, I'm sure it always kind of gets back to the issue of Sola Scriptura. And so I was just kind of wondering your take on that, how you would answer that, and just maybe your definition of Sola Scriptura, maybe just shed some light on that for me.

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Yeah. Now, at this point, the first statement should have been, well, you need to understand,

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I have joined the Eastern Orthodox Church, and Eastern Orthodoxy believes that the

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Scripture is a subset of tradition, and so I no longer believe in Sola Scriptura. That isn't...

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Am I really asking for too much to suggest that that needs to be said to people?

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That you can't just simply allow them to continue to assume things from the past when you've made this step?

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I would be under moral obligation. Of course,

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I wouldn't be on the air because Rich wouldn't put me on the air if I did this, but I would be under moral obligation to make this known.

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That's not what happens. But what's really important here is listen as Hank redefines

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Sola Scriptura. Question. I think one thing that we must recognize, and this is critical, we can never pray to the saints as we pray to God.

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We certainly can pray that the saints are praying for us, and that is not only the saints who are here among us.

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All Christians are called saints from a biblical standpoint, but also those who have gone before us.

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We don't pray to the saints as, again, one prays to God, but we may pray that the saints are praying for us, asking our

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Lord Jesus Christ to guide us and sustain us. Actually, is he saying that you cannot communicate with saints in Eastern Orthodoxy?

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I'm just... The distinction as we pray to God, okay, but can you pray to saints needs to be just sort of directly stated one way or the other,

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I think. Down the path of life. The Orthodox and the Catholics have different views on this.

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In terms of Sola Scriptura, I have always been committed to the Bible as the infallible guide for faith and practice.

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The infallible guide? Are there any other infallible guides? Remember, Sola Scriptura is that the scriptures are the sole infallible rule of faith.

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When we talk about these terms, no one has the right today to redefine the terminology that has been used for hundreds of years for personal gain or for personal benefit or to make something easier.

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So, let's define Sola Scriptura as it really is. Are the scriptures the sole infallible rule of faith or are they a subset of a broader rule of faith called

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Tradition with a capital T? That's the question. I think that's what it means.

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It means that the Bible is infallible. It was inspired by the Holy Spirit. We do not make this claim for the autographs, but most certainly we don't make this claim for the translations,

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I should say, but we most certainly make this claim for the autographs, and the beauty is we have so many copies that we can get back to the autographer.

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Now, I think it's also critical to recognize that we are following not only the

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Scripture in the sense of an infallible guide for faith and practice, but we also have

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Church history. Okay. Now, immediately, what we're seeing here is a redefinition.

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He's saying, yes, we have the infallible Scriptures, just as Roman Catholicism says we have infallible Scriptures, but in Eastern Orthodoxy, that is not enough.

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It is fundamental to the concept that God has given to His people

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Tradition. The Tradition of the Church and that the Scriptures are a part of that Tradition and cannot be understood outside of the context of that Tradition.

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Just as it says in Universal Catholic Catechism within Roman Catholicism, that Scripture is the written, you have the oral, and the written cannot be understood outside the context of the

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Church. Both Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy agree on this, they just come to different conclusions, because they define what that Tradition is differently, because there is no way of defining

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Tradition in any specific manner. By looking back at history, you get to pick the writers that you, you know, okay, these words by John of Damascus are

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Tradition, or the West. Oh, no, actually, it's Augustine. Oh, no, no, actually, it's Maximus. No, actually, it's

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Triton. You know, I'm sorry, but Church history is very, very, very messy.

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And anybody who wants to say, well, we're just going with what the early Church taught, I can immediately tell that person has never done any serious reading in the early

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Church. This is just immediate. They've done it with really thickly rose -colored glasses on, because the definition of Tradition, extremely problematic.

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And Church history is very, very important, because the practices of the early Christian Church have been passed down to us by men like St.

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Ignatius, or Polycarp, or Irenaeus, or Athanasius. Now, men are not infallible.

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Okay, so, when Irenaeus passes down to us the Apostolic Tradition, that Jesus was more than 50 years old when he died, do we believe that?

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Does Hank believe that? Because I can give you the reference. And he claimed the Apostles passed it down.

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So we believe that, right? It is only the Scripture that ultimately is infallible.

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But we have a guide. We have an oral Tradition that we are blessed to be able to follow as well.

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So, here is a man who is promoting the Orthodox position. It's identical to the

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Roman Catholic position at this point. We have the Scriptures. They're the only things that are infallible, but that's not enough.

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That's not enough. You need something more. This is, you know, when the guy's asking about Sola Scriptura, just be straight up from them.

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I don't believe it anymore. I have another viewpoint now, and here's why. You can't allow people to call in and confuse them in this way.

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That's just not right. It's just not honest. You have to be straight up front.

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And that's not what happened here. The early Church was guided by community memory.

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And I think that is something that has been wonderful as it has been passed down through the generations.

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Now, let me just point something out. Over and over again, the assumption is, even by Eastern Orthodox folks that are tweeting me even now with videos about the true

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Church and everything else, the assumption that we're going to hear from Mr. Hanegraaff is that what you have in Eastern Orthodoxy is the faith of the primitive

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Church. He keeps saying we have to get back to the primitive Church. The reality is that what we have in Eastern Orthodoxy is the tradition of the 7th and 8th century

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Church. And it's interesting to me, because this certainly interfaces with some of the work that I'm doing these days.

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Why that time period? Why that time period? Well, think about it. What world -changing event took place that would put sort of that would function you know, we're talking about we're talking about these days finding these incredible fossils or there's still soft tissue after allegedly hundreds of millions of years and all the rest of this kind of stuff.

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And sometimes there's a cataclysmic event. I can't imagine. What would be a worldwide cataclysmic event?

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Anyway, that has buried these things suddenly and freezes them in time, in essence.

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What kind of worldwide event would have functioned to, in essence, freeze the development of tradition amongst the churches in the

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East around the 7th and 8th century? Yeah, exactly.

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The rise of Islam. You can't understand the history of Eastern Orthodoxy without seeing it in the light of its constant interaction both in open warfare with as the

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Byzantine Empire contracts under the pressure of Islam and with the help of the

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Crusades, by the way. But as the Byzantine Empire contracts, you still have the free

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Byzantines outside of Islam, but then you have all sorts of folks that would be eventually identified as Eastern Orthodox who now live under Islamic rule.

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What this does when you have such a constant apologetic force right there, you have the conflict, it freezes your theology and your tradition.

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It's no longer going to be developing at any type of speed or pace because now you have to this is what we believe and we now must defend it.

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And that constant pressure remains on Eastern Orthodoxy and that's why when you, if you're really serious and look at what

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Eastern Orthodoxy identifies as tradition, it's not 1st, 2nd, 3rd century. It's 6th, 7th, 8th century.

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If you're going to look at it in an unbiased fashion. And so that's what we have here.

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That's what is being presented. And one of my biggest concerns about Eastern Orthodoxy is there really isn't any way to correct any traditional errors that had developed by that point in time.

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You have to assume, just as in Roman Catholicism, you have the specific claim of the guidance of the

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Holy Spirit, the development of tradition, etc. etc. You have to assume that all the developments traditionally from the primitive church up to that time period were somehow guided by the

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Holy Spirit. Now, I can count on one hand the number of people

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I personally know who've actually read any of the argumentation, for example, of 2nd Nicaea.

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The 2nd Council of Nicaea. Everybody knows about the 1st one. Almost nobody knows about the 2nd one. And it had to do with the iconoclastic controversy and things like that.

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The argumentation used by the church fathers there is embarrassingly horrific on any exegetical level.

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To say that that is binding upon the church is to show such disrespect to the

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Scriptures themselves. But what can Eastern Orthodoxy do about that? I can't see how its system allows for any kind of reformation.

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Important issues when you start doing what Hank is doing right here where he is promoting the idea of this external guide that becomes the lens through which you read the

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Scriptures. Which again reflects back upon how can you be the Bible answer man when in fact the answers that you're going to provide have been determined by your commitment to a religious system that does not function on the basis of Sola Scriptura and the sufficiency of Scripture?

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These are the questions that must be answered. ...repository of redemptive revelation as I've termed it over the years.

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And we have a community memory as well. Let's go back to the phone lines.

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Dr. Daniela listening in Tel Aviv, Israel. She's listening on the web. Hi, Daniela. Hi, Hank.

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I just learned about the attacks in Egypt from you, and I would too like to offer my prayers to those who suffered this attack.

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God be with them and God be with you in your ministry. Thank you. I am calling to ask for clarification.

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I am a member of WorthyChristianForums .com and there is a thread there that has spoken of your conversion yesterday to Greek Orthodox.

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This arrived in an article that is published in PulpitandPen .org entitled The Bible Answer Man, Hank Hanegraaff Leads the

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Christian Faith by Jeff Maples. It was published today. By the way, can

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I just point something out? The fact that that article and others went the nuclear route from the start, instead of dealing with the reality of how conversions normally happen and immediately went for the

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I'm going to judge the heart thing rather than focusing upon what the real issues are. Have you noticed that so much of the conversation has been poisoned by that?

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And what it's allowed is it's look, Hank's going to focus upon the excessive stuff and then not actually deal with the serious criticisms.

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The real issues. That's what happens when your first response is to use the bazooka.

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You give the other side the means of defense by focusing upon the extremity rather than upon the substance.

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We obviously didn't go that direction and our criticisms actually haven't been addressed because it's easier to deal with that kind of thing.

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That you and your wife were chrismated at St. Nektarios Greek Orthodox Church there in Charlotte, and I was wondering if you would answer that because there's quite a bit of conflict on the board as to whether or not this is true.

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Well, I don't know anything about what you're communicating with respect to this individual or this post or have no knowledge of that, but yeah,

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I mean, I am now a member of an Orthodox Church, but nothing has changed in my faith. I have been attending an

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Orthodox Church for a long time, for over two years, and really as a result of what happened when

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I went to China many, many years ago, I saw Chinese Christians who were deeply in love with the

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Lord, and I learned that while they may not have had as much intellectual acumen or knowledge as I did, they had life.

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And so I learned that while truth matters, life matters more, and I remember flying back from China after spending time with just common people who had a deep, intense love for the

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Lord and wondering, was I even a Christian? I was comparing my ability to communicate truth with their deep and abiding love for the

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Lord Jesus Christ, and as a result of that, one man by the way said to me, truth matters, life matters more.

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In other words, it is not just knowing about Jesus Christ, it is experiencing the resurrected

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Christ, and as a result of that I started studying what was communicated by the progeny of Watchman Nee with respect to Theosis, and that drove me back to the early

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Christian church, and I suppose over that period of time I have fallen ever more in love with my

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Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That's sort of like my wife. I've never been more in love with my wife than I am today, and I've never been more in love with my

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Lord Jesus Christ than I am today. And so I've been impacted by the whole idea of knowing

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Jesus Christ, experiencing Jesus Christ, and partaking of the graces of Jesus Christ through the

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Eucharist or the Lord's table. Now, okay, I want you to hear what he's saying. Truth matters, life matters more.

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I want you to think about what that means. I mean, again, we live in a day of pithy sayings, but pithy sayings have to have a meaning if they're going to be relevant for Christians who follow

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Him who is the truth. How can you distinguish between the two? I fully understand.

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I fully understand the very negative experience of encountering people who are so focused upon their understanding of orthodoxy that they don't seem to have any life at all.

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I get that. I mean, I get accused of it all the time. Not from people who actually know me, but I get accused of it all the time.

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And we certainly live in a day that denies the existence of objective truth, but you see, from the

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Christian perspective, the two are so intimately connected that they cannot be separated.

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Jesus Himself said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. You can't do just the truth part and not the life part.

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But this takes us back to what I did say on the last program. And that is one of the reasons that you have the conversions.

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And you've got conversions going both directions, all different directions. Conversion is not anything surprising whatsoever.

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But one of the reasons you have conversions is when, and I was quoted in an article, accurately, that appeared on WorldNet Daily this morning, on this subject, and one of the things

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I said to the reporter was the Puritans who developed

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Puritan worship that did not have all the icons and the symbolism and the smells and bells and the

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Gregorian chants and everything else. The reason that they're, first of all, they're responding against a dead, external, formal orthodoxy in Rome where you had all the symbols and no reality.

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They're responding against that. And what made their worship yet so rich and vibrant and their lives so rich and vibrant was the depth of the theology that informed what they were doing in worship and their encounter with God in the proclamation of God's truth.

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So, as I said, you can read of Jonathan Edwards dismounting from his horse in the woods and contemplating the relationship of the

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Divine Persons and the Trinity, and he is reduced to tears. Now, what happens when you still have

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Puritan worship, but now you have individuals who don't even know what the relationship between the Divine Persons is, so as to be able to contemplate it to any depth anyways?

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Without the truth element and the depth and the beauty of that truth element, not in just a a flat type of orthodoxy, but the depth, the beauty of that truth,

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Puritan worship becomes extremely unsatisfying. And so the person looks at that and goes, well, what

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I'm missing is because I don't have something more. And so you go looking for something more, you find the smells and bells, and this is here's where the depth is, here's where the beauty is, and that's what you're attracted to.

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The problem is that beautiful liturgy and all the symbolism doesn't have the necessary truth content in regards to what

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Scripture really is, in regards to how a person is made right before God. It has enough elements, however, to maintain itself.

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I mean, I said last time, give the Orthodox their props, they're actually

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Trinitarians. They really are Trinitarians. Much more than the vast majority of Roman Catholics are, or even

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Protestants for that matter. They're actually Trinitarians. Now, are they do they then consistently follow that through to see what the

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Gospel is and how? No. There's the problem. But hey, give them props, they've got enough truth to hold the edifice together and make it attractive.

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But then what attracts you to it leads you away from fundamental sound, biblical teaching.

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We talked about this last time. But you cannot separate truth and life.

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So here Hank is saying, I saw there was, I was missing something. So rather than looking more deeply at what he should be doing within the context he was in, he starts looking for something else.

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Not just he, but he and his family start looking for something else. I think that's probably an important part here.

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And that has become so central in my life. But as far as my, the statement that you mentioned that I've left the

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Christian faith, nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact, I believe what I have always believed is codified in the

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Nicene Creed and is championed by mere Christianity. I believe in one God, Father Almighty.

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Did you catch that? Championed by mere Christianity. Well, here's the problem. He's going to quote now from the

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Nicene Creed. Great, wonderful. I was just teaching on the Council of Nicaea myself. Great, wonderful.

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It's not enough. It's not enough. Because it doesn't answer some of the key questions in regards to, well, if the

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Nicene Creed was enough, then Paul wasted his time writing something as long as Romans. We need something more than that.

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That's a nice summary of key central issues. It's a benchmark. It's vital.

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But as he himself says, it becomes the foundation of what? The gospel. Well, is the gospel definitional of Christianity?

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Yes or no? Does Eastern Orthodoxy preach the same gospel that Hank would have affirmed 15 years ago?

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No. So, something has changed and it's fundamental. Creator of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible, and in one

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Lord Jesus Christ the only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages, light of light, true

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God of true God, begotten, not created, of one essence with the Father, through whom all things were made.

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Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. Now notice, that version of—it's a later version, obviously, of the

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Nicene Creed there. Who for our salvation? Flesh shed out?

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They didn't at that point. They didn't at that point. That's why it's simply not sufficient.

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Unless you're going to—if you're going to say that's enough for mere Christianity, then there's no place for the gospel. Became man.

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He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate and suffered and was buried. Then he rose on the third day.

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According to the scriptures, he ascended into heaven, and he is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead.

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His kingdom shall have no end. And in one Holy Spirit, the Lord, the

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Creator of life, who proceeds from the Father, who together with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified, who spoke—

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To catch that, this is East and North Oxford, who proceeds from the Father. This is the Filioquoit Clause. This is whether the

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Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, or just from the Father. This is the difference between East and West on that issue. Most folks wouldn't have caught that, but that's why it stayed the way it was.

36:12

Through the prophets, in one holy apostolic church, I confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

36:19

I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the aged to come. In other words, I am as deeply committed to championing mere

36:27

Christianity and the essentials of the historic Christian faith as I have ever been. So, this is evidently how he's going to be dealing with it.

36:36

I'm championing mere Christianity as defined by Eastern Orthodoxy, and no longer is defined by commitment to the sufficiency of Scripture, justification by faith alone.

36:52

How can you say nothing's changed? He may have—

36:58

Hank may well have convinced himself that nothing has changed, but the rest of us out here recognize, yeah, something has changed.

37:10

I've been raised in a Baptist church most of my life. Now, this one's very important, because this guy asks an extremely important question, and I just simply ask a question.

37:21

I'll tell you how I would have answered his question, but then listen to how

37:27

Hank answers it, and the direction that it goes. Fascinating.

37:33

I've been with some others, you know, when I was in the military traveling, but in my area, I have a hard time—I'm very comfortable in my faith with the

37:39

Lord. I'm very comfortable with that. But I don't find many churches in my area where they actually hold the sacraments and they don't hold them genuine.

37:50

The Lord's Supper, you know, they pass it around to anyone, and I see people partaking that you're thinking, well, you shouldn't be.

37:57

My question is, I've got some friends that are part of a Catholic church here. I've gone to services with them. I know you can't necessarily control everyone from, you know, wrongly partaking in communion, but I was looking at maybe to join the

38:09

Catholic church, would you think it would be alright to join a Catholic church? Now, I mean, immediately, immediately, here's a guy, he has a valid concern.

38:25

The churches around him don't care. I don't like the term sacrament. Early Baptists use it.

38:31

I understand that. I prefer ordinance, but Jesus Christ gave to, and only to, as soon as Eastern Orthodoxy says there's more, they're departing from Scripture and the early church.

38:46

That's one of the clear evidences of the kind of development that takes place that's then read back into the church.

38:51

But Jesus Christ gave to his church baptism and the supper.

39:00

Before I heard this, did I not, on the last program on Monday, specifically point out and point to the lackadaisical, unbiblical, surface -level view of the supper amongst so many quote -unquote believing

39:17

Protestants as one of the reasons that people go elsewhere? If you really think that Christ gave this ordinance to the church, don't you think you'd treat it a little bit differently?

39:27

It says a lot about your attitude toward the church, toward Christ's authority in the church, the whole nine yards. No question about it.

39:34

He's got a good question. I appreciate the fact that he can recognize, man, this doesn't make any sense.

39:40

But then for him to say, well, yeah, the Catholics seem to have a better view of that. Think I could join the Catholic church?

39:46

Oh my goodness! My immediate response to him would be, sir, what are you thinking?

39:52

What makes the ordinances so special? They are a picture of what? Of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

39:58

So you're going to abandon the gospel so you can have a better picture of what you've abandoned?

40:06

You're going to abandon the finished work of Christ on Calvary for the limited propitiatory sacrifice of the mass just simply so that you can have more respect for it?

40:23

This is throwing the substance out for the external. I cannot imagine how anyone would answer any other way.

40:34

That's not the answer that he actually ends up getting. ...partake in some sacraments that are holy in manner?

40:44

I believe in the real presence of Christ in the sacraments as the church has for the vast majority of its history.

40:53

I personally, and I've said this on the broadcast for 30 years, I believe that Roman Catholicism is a true church but with significant error.

41:02

The Eastern Orthodox split from the Roman Catholic Church a thousand years ago, and then the

41:10

Protestants split from the Catholic church 500 years later. Nonetheless, what we champion at the

41:18

Christian Research Institute, and I mentioned this earlier on the broadcast... Now, let me just point that out. One of the big issues here is, is

41:26

Hank Hanegraaff CRI? Have they coalesced? That's something

41:34

CRI has to decide. But Hank is representing here. He's saying, this is what we

41:40

I am representing. This is what we represent. This is what we believe. Did the people who donated to build up CRI believe this?

41:53

Can one person just go, yeah, it's great, y 'all did that, but we've decided to move over here.

41:59

These are questions that need answers. It is an essentials unity, non -essentials liberty, and in all things, charity.

42:06

So the real issue is, do you hold to the essentials of the historic Christian faith without equivocation?

42:13

I should mention that for the first millennium of Church history, there was essentially one Orthodox New Testament faith, and it was rooted in seven ancient ecumenical councils.

42:24

Well, here we go. Now you're going to start getting... I mean, this is absolutely basic level, standard

42:32

Eastern Orthodox apologetics. There was just one faith, and Rome split off from us.

42:39

They added stuff like purgatory, and they added the

42:45

Filiochoic Clause, and they started doing stuff with celibate priests, and of course, this

42:51

Bishop of Rome thing, no one ever acknowledged that he was the prime above everybody else.

42:57

He was just one amongst equals. They went off to do their thing, and so we're the ones that still represent what had existed for the first thousand years with theosis and our less advanced

43:11

Mariolatry, but there's still a lot of Marian devotion there, and so on and so forth. This is

43:17

Eastern Orthodox apologetics, is what it is. It is a very simplistic view of Church history that is not defensible in any fashion.

43:30

He's actually going to say here that theosis was the universal view of people, even up through Martin Luther, which again just makes me stutter as to how anybody can actually make that claim.

43:45

Now, most people don't have a clue what theosis means. The only reason that I have much of a knowledge of theosis is because of the abuse of the use of that terminology by Mormon apologists, but the reality is that the worldview difference between the

44:05

East and the West goes way before this time period. The fractures existed way before this time period, and it almost seems inevitable that the split would eventually come.

44:16

It was primarily political stuff that caused it, but this is a very simplistic view, but once that early

44:26

Church becomes the lens through which you view the Scriptures, here's where the issue is, because here's a guy asking a question, and he's not getting a biblical answer, is he?

44:37

This is supposed to be the Bible Answer Man, not the Eastern Orthodox Answer Man, but that's what he's getting, and I can't see how

44:46

Hank could do anything other than this. How can he? I mean, if he's going to be consistent with his own commitments to the

44:57

Eastern Orthodox faith as an Eastern Orthodox believer, then you have to answer as Eastern Orthodox would answer, and since you don't believe in solo scriptura as an

45:06

Eastern Orthodox, how can you do anything else? I can't see how you can do anything else.

45:12

And that may well have remained so, had it not been for the Bishop of Rome, assuming a dominance that was not warranted, he was one among equals, he may have been a first among equals, but this was always about collegiality and hammering out the faith in the seven ecumenical councils.

45:31

But this split may never have happened if it had not been for the Bishop of Rome assuming dominance and apart from an ecumenical council altering the universal creed of the

45:42

Church. In fact, I quoted the creed earlier, the Nicene Creed. The Roman Catholic Pontiff And you notice, he quoted it in the

45:50

Eastern Orthodox fashion, not in the Western fashion. No one would have noticed that, well, the vast majority of people wouldn't have, the

45:56

Eastern Orthodox would. Or the Pontiff of Rome altered the creed.

46:03

And as a result of that, we had a great schism and...

46:08

That wasn't the only reason. By a long shot. Again, this is...

46:14

You know, Hank's going to say later on, well, you know, I spent 15 years studying eschatology before I wrote my books on that subject, and maybe someday

46:21

I'll be able to address all these things. I've only been studying for a couple years. Okay, fine, but you've made the commitment based upon whatever level of study you've done to this point.

46:30

And now you're putting this stuff out there. You can't really complain if someone responds to it.

46:35

A continuing deviation between Eastern and Western theology, the

46:41

Eastern and the Western Church. So, if we reduce this to Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism has always forwarded the notion that in the intermediate state after death, there are certain sins that can be atoned for.

46:56

Now remember, you know what he's supposed to be talking about? Everybody's forgotten the question by now.

47:02

Can you imagine this poor guy sitting there going, what? That was the answer to my question?

47:09

So, you're saying, you're saying I can't join the Roman Catholic Church because of its higher view of the ordinances, not because of the gospel or anything else, but because of some historical schism, and really

47:23

I should be thinking Orthodoxy. Sounds like it's basically what's being said. We have temporal punishment in purgatory.

47:29

I actually should amend my statement by saying they haven't always, but they do at this point.

47:35

And that's part of the point that I'm trying to make. Orthodoxy, however, considered the notion of purgation, which was defined by the

47:44

Council of Florence in the 15th century and defended by the Council of Trent in the 16th century. They considered this to be a late innovation, lacking precedence in both

47:55

Scripture and the teaching of the Fathers. I agree 100%, by the way. Eastern Orthodoxy is right in its criticisms of Rome, in regards to the development of purgation, in regards to the papal claims.

48:10

They're exactly right. The problem is if they then use that own standard upon their own teachings, then they would have to abandon a number of their traditional developments over time as well.

48:19

They just go a little bit farther back, that's all. But they can't do that. And they have no way of doing that, because they don't believe in sola scriptura.

48:29

So in distinction to the Catholic idea of purgatory, the Orthodox community viewed the intermediate state as a foretaste of either eternal reward or eternal punishment, both of which are ultimately fixed on the day of judgment.

48:43

Now, a couple of other points. Catholicism and Orthodoxy are also divided on the validity of papal infallibility, or the idea that when the

48:52

Pope speaks ex cathedra from the chair, he does so infallibly. Case in point. In 1950,

48:59

Pope Pius XII dogmatized the widely held view that Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.

49:11

Now, Orthodoxy has always resisted this kind of unilateral dogmatization. From the

49:17

Orthodox perspective, papal infallibility defined, this is a critical point, it was defined during the first Vatican Council in 1870, has no basis in the creeds and confessions of the historic

49:29

Christian faith, and thus it is anathema. The final point I'll make in the time that I have remaining before we go to break is that Orthodoxy considers the immaculate

49:37

Did you hear the source of authority there? Was it scripture? Alone? No, it's scripture, councils, tradition, as defined by Eastern Orthodoxy.

49:48

That's the problem. Which was, again, defined by Pope Pius IX in a papal bull back in 1854 as an unwarranted innovation in the

50:00

Christian faith. Because according to this Catholic dogma, from the moment of conception, Mary was kept free from the stain of original sin.

50:08

Well, Orthodoxy of course has always venerated Mary as we should, but... Really? We should venerate

50:14

Mary? Do you know what veneration means? You know, this has been discussed.

50:20

Uh, veneration, worship, how are they related? Is this guy going to understand that you're using the term veneration in a completely new context all of a sudden?

50:30

...that she was born with the same broken nature as all other human beings. So unlike Protestantism, which shares a common history and geography with Catholicism, Orthodoxy was never a part of the

50:41

Western narrative. That is pure Eastern Orthodox apologetics. That is, you go to almost any

50:47

Eastern Orthodox webpage, start reading through, Protestants are pretty much just dismissed as irrelevant.

50:58

Because we're just simply a split off from the Roman Catholics. They're primarily focused upon Roman Catholicism, as far as authority claims are concerned.

51:06

And we're split off from them, so we ain't got nothing. Because from both their perspectives, well, you have to have this chain, you know, this apostolic succession type thing.

51:16

Not an apostolic succession of truth, an apostolic succession through history. ...did not have a

51:21

Reformation, they didn't engage in the Crusades, they didn't participate in the selling of indulgences, and didn't subscribe to such dogmas as limbo and the celibacy of the priesthood.

51:30

And yet, despite these differences, a growing number of Orthodox and Catholic believers today consider themselves to be two lungs in the same body.

51:38

Again, that's why we champion mere Christianity. We hold to the essentials. In essentials, unity.

51:44

In non -essentials, liberty. All things charity. So I think Catholic Church, True Church, was significant here. I personally could not join the

51:50

Catholic Church, but I have many brothers and sisters in that community, as I'm sure you do as well.

51:56

So, there you go. Gospel, non -definitional. Non -definitional. Mass, purgatory, we disagree, but two lungs, same body, so on and so forth.

52:10

Again, is that is this the historical position of Christian Research Institute? No. Well, it's not.

52:19

But, time is going very quickly, we press on. And I'll say something else, and this is in line with what

52:25

Rod said, and it's on my heart. Okay, he quoted from Rod Dreher, he obviously very much likes the

52:31

Benedict option. Thinks it's good stuff, and we understand why now.

52:36

That's the Rod Dreher he's talking about. There's so much wackiness in the Church today. I'm talking all over the place.

52:45

You think about luminaries in the Christian Church forwarding and pontificating the notion that we no longer have to confess our sins.

52:55

In fact, to confess our sins is now thought of by these luminaries as spitting in God's face or slapping

53:00

Him in the face. It is an affront to God to confess our sins and ask for forgiveness. And so many people are embracing this kind of thing.

53:12

And it's been difficult as I've looked at the landscape to find a safe place for family and friends where you can communicate that which has been accepted throughout

53:25

Church history. What the martyrs were willing to die for was always the essentials of the

53:32

Christian faith, and because they were willing to die they were willing to change a culture. And they did.

53:39

Until, of course, it became popular to be a Christian again. And then the culture, well, it trumped the

53:44

Church. All of a sudden it became popular to be a Christian and Christians were going to Church for all the wrong reasons.

53:51

They wanted an experience. They wanted to enhance their business. We have to get back to what the early

54:01

Church believed in. And he suffered and was buried and he was raised on the third day according to the

54:08

Scriptures. And he ascended into heaven. And he's seated at the right hand of the

54:13

Father. And he will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead.

54:19

And his kingdom will have no end. All of that simply to say the issue ultimately for all of us is are we living for mean earthly vanities, the approval of man, or are we living for the approval of God?

54:36

And again, Rod Dreher, no one says it better than he does. I have often quoted him.

54:41

He's eminently quotable. And as he talks about the culture, we ought to have... I just realized

54:47

I could actually clean... I guess I can't do that. Thinner?

54:55

Brighter? No, I wanted to take out some of the long spaces there. Anyways, I think you have in those statements part of the reason why

55:06

Hank did this. A lot of people are asking why, why, why, why, why. I think part of it and there's never any just one reason.

55:14

There's normally a very complicated set of reasons why people make moves like this. But you can't help that there's so much surface level foolishness in popular, what's called pop

55:32

Christianity in the United States that the serious hearted person doesn't want to have anything to do with that kind of thing.

55:41

And there are churches right near CRI there in Charlotte that are just loopy.

55:49

And you heard him say there's just so much weirdness out there that he wants something.

55:54

The idea is I want something that's consistent. It's the vision of the mighty ancient church standing in the midst of time.

56:06

And you so much want that that you'll look past the reality that history doesn't substantiate.

56:13

Or you'll twist history because you want it so badly. You don't think people do that?

56:21

They do it every day. They do it absolutely every day. I think that has something to do with it. I really do.

56:27

All right, we have to press on. Jeff, he's listening in Abilene, Texas. SiriusXM131.

56:32

Hi, Jeff. Well, Hank, how are you, sir? I'm good, thank you. Thank you.

56:37

Well, I wanted to thank you for your ministry. You're a very studied, learned man in Scripture.

56:44

I want to first start by saying you are a real blessing to a large number of people around the world.

56:51

Hank, there's something that I tend to notice when listening that you maintain that Protestants and Catholics hold to the essentials of our faith.

57:04

But Hank, that's not true. Catholics do not hold to the core essentials of our faith.

57:10

In fact, they do not ascribe to sola fide. Now, here's someone calling in. And what he doesn't understand is that if you're an advocate of mere

57:21

Christianity, you have a fundamental presuppositional difference. Because he doesn't believe that sola fide is definitional.

57:28

It's not a core belief. And the mere Christianity movement,

57:35

Norman Geisler said, I remember sitting at KPXQ years and years and years ago listening to him on BAM, on Bible Answer Man, saying, if you think justification by faith is definitional, then there weren't any

57:48

Christians until the Reformation. That was what Geisler said. So, a lot of people can't defend that as a core issue, historically or biblically.

58:00

But that's why he's saying what he's saying, and doesn't seem to realize that Hank probably hasn't agreed with that for a long time.

58:08

And so, for that purpose, I don't think that we can call the

58:14

Catholic Church a Christian Church, at least not in its orthodoxy. And so, when we say things like the

58:23

Catholic Church, while they may differ on certain non -essential issues, they do differ on essential issues.

58:32

Well, let me simply say, I appreciate your call. I've often defined the

58:37

Roman Catholic position as best I know how, with respect to sola fide. The Roman Catholic Church does not hold to a crass system of works righteousness.

58:47

They believe that we are saved by God's grace through faith. They believe that the faith...

58:53

Okay, now I stop right there. In 1999, when the Lutherans and the

58:58

Catholics, the liberal Lutherans and the Catholics did their thing, their agreement, that's how they swept the

59:07

Reformation under the rug. And that's what Hank just did. He just swept the Reformation under the rug.

59:13

When you say that we are justified by grace through faith and just pass in silence over whether it's faith alone or not, you're whistling in the dark as you're walking past the graveyard.

59:28

You're ignoring the reality of where you are today, 500 years after the

59:33

Reformation. There is a vast difference between the message of justification by faith alone and the message of justification by faith plus, well, faith working alone, therefore climbing up all the stairs in Rome till your knees bleed praying to the saints.

59:57

You can't say those are the same thing. And I have sat in Hank's presence multiple times and have said, the issue of the

01:00:07

Reformation was not the necessity of grace. It was the sufficiency of grace.

01:00:16

To say, well, Rome doesn't teach a crass system of works righteousness is simply to say that Rome recognizes that Pelagianism cannot be defended.

01:00:33

That doesn't change the reality that Rome denies any meaningful interpretation of sola gratia because that grace has to be channeled through the sacraments of the church.

01:00:50

And that grace cannot save any individual outside of their cooperation through the sacraments of that church.

01:00:59

Has he heard all this before? Of course he has. Has he forgotten it? No. Once you want something, then you start filtering what would keep you from obtaining it.

01:01:12

And I think that's what we're hearing with an answer to this question. ...fused with works, and those works are meritorious.

01:01:19

So this is not a crass system of works righteousness. We may disagree with Rome on that position when you get to the minutia of how they define faith.

01:01:31

The minutia? The sacramental system? Priests and sacramental forgiveness?

01:01:40

That's minutia? I don't think

01:01:47

Hank's going to be heading to Wittenberg any time soon because he has left having any meaningful basis for celebrating the

01:01:56

Reformation. East and North actually care less about it. That was just a dust -up of those people that we left behind a long time ago.

01:02:05

...and how they render the distinction between faith and works. But this has always been sort of a debate that Western Christians have had.

01:02:15

That Reformation debate in the West raised the question in the Orthodox East, and I think this is something that most people don't know.

01:02:23

In the Orthodox East, they were raising the question why is there a polarization between faith and works?

01:02:31

We don't know what that's all about. Because it had been settled since the Apostolic Era that salvation was always granted to us by the mercy of God.

01:02:43

Granted to those who followed Jesus Christ. This was the mercy of God. That's not an answer to the question,

01:02:48

Hank, and you know it. Well, you knew it. I'm not going to say you know it. You may have just been blanking that stuff out of your mind to substantiate what you're doing.

01:02:58

But you know that the issues of the Reformation were significantly more important and significantly deeper.

01:03:06

You've probably memorized East Galatians. Are you going to say that was just a tempest in a teapot? How can you say that the early

01:03:13

Church had answered all these things when the first treatise on the Atonement doesn't appear until the 4th century?

01:03:21

I mean, on the one hand, you're talking about all this knowledge of Church history. If we know Church history, on the other hand, those of us that actually do know

01:03:28

Church history are going, what are you talking about? These were important questions.

01:03:33

They remain important questions to this day. They're cooperating.

01:03:39

Their position is such that they cooperate with God's grace. Well, what can a dead man cooperate with? Eastern Orthodox folks don't believe we're dead men.

01:03:49

Eastern Orthodoxy does not believe that we're dead men. Their anthropology is, as I said in the last program, sub -biblical.

01:04:01

As is the anthropology of pretty much almost every synergist, huh? Yeah. That's another important issue.

01:04:07

Well, what I'm pointing out, though, is something different. I'm saying in the East, an opposition of faith versus works was unprecedented.

01:04:16

In the East, they believe that salvation comes through faith in Christ who fulfills the law. They believe that true faith is not just a decision, it is a way of life.

01:04:26

They believe what the Scripture teaches. You see, then, that a man is... Are you hearing an

01:04:31

Eastern Orthodox person defending Eastern Orthodoxy here? I hope you can hear that. It's very clear.

01:04:37

They had it right all along. They didn't make these distinctions. In other words, they weren't actually involved in asking and answering important questions that Paul addressed in Galatians.

01:04:50

That's right. Their tradition had pretty much shut off meaningful discussion of this issue.

01:04:57

That's true. That's true. Because of a bad anthropology and a sub -biblical view of grace, these questions didn't even come up.

01:05:09

But now you're defending that? Has to, if he's going to be consistent. ...justified by works and not by faith alone, which is to say, we cannot...

01:05:17

Let me go back here. You see, then, that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone. What's that?

01:05:24

James 2 .24. How many times we had to deal with that? And I dealt with it with Tim Staples.

01:05:32

Hank was on my side, not Tim's. Now he's on Tim's side. Has something changed? Yeah. ...is to say, we cannot add anything to what

01:05:40

Christ has done. Faith by itself, however, if it does not have works, the point is, as James puts it, is dead.

01:05:49

We are not talking about the idea that somehow or other we can do what Christ did.

01:05:55

However, we are talking about the fact that we need to participate in an active faith because if we...

01:06:00

See, active faith, sacraments, so on and so forth. ...we're demonstrating that the faith that we have is not a real faith.

01:06:07

Now, again, there is a difference between Protestants and Catholics and Orthodox on this position, but I'm out of time for this edition of Bible Instructions.

01:06:12

We'll be back here tomorrow. But I'm out of time, and I'm glad I don't have to keep talking about it. Uh... That was interesting that that happened at that particular point in time.

01:06:22

Well, the next program began with a little monologue about his conversion.

01:06:28

And so we dive right into it. I wanted to approach an issue first on this broadcast because I have been asked by, well, many, many people to do so, including a dear friend who called me, wrote me, and expressed concern.

01:06:46

Concern that I had walked away from the faith once for all, delivered to the saints.

01:06:52

Why that concern? Well, evidently, although I don't clutter my mind with what goes on with regard to Internet fabrications, people are posting this notion that somehow or other

01:07:03

I've walked away from the faith and I'm no longer a Christian. And I simply wrote to this dear friend and said, look, my views have been codified in 20 books.

01:07:17

So my views have not changed. Now there's... that became the basis upon which the description was put upon the website.

01:07:25

My views have been codified in 20 books. All of that changed when you knelt before the altar in an

01:07:32

Eastern Orthodox church. How can you not see that? That was not the milieu.

01:07:38

That was not the context of those 20 books. How can... Hank, how can you not see that?

01:07:48

I just don't understand how he can have convinced himself that he's going to be able to just continue right on doing what he was doing.

01:07:58

I can't conceive of it. In fact, Kathy and the kids have simply found a church community that has greatly benefited from the work of the

01:08:08

Christian Research Institute. And as a result of that, we not only have friends, but we have people who have been impacted and people that are now impacting us.

01:08:24

For example, within our church, we have the privilege to learn Greek. This is something that many of my kids and my wife certainly wants to do.

01:08:33

This comes up a couple times and I'm like, you didn't have this opportunity before?

01:08:41

I don't understand this part. You had the opportunity to learn Greek for decades.

01:08:48

You had hundreds of people on your program who teach

01:08:54

Greek. Well, maybe not hundreds, but who had studied Greek. And now all of a sudden, it's important to do that?

01:09:03

That's some advantage of Eastern Orthodoxy or Greek Orthodoxy? They want to do that, not just to learn

01:09:10

Greek, but they want to be able to overcome translational obstacles. In other words, the Bible was written in secular

01:09:16

Koine Greek, so you can read the original language in which most of the

01:09:22

New Testament was written. But I would say even more than that. Unless you're going to spend a lot of time getting really good at that, you're not going to be overcoming too many translational obstacles, by the way.

01:09:31

Kathy and I, we've always loved each other, but we have been more in sync spiritually over the last ten or so years than ever before.

01:09:41

I have been typically more skewed towards truth, and quite frankly, Kathy more skewed towards life.

01:09:47

But today, we are on precisely the same page in life and in truth, and we're loving it.

01:09:57

This is a very wonderful time in our life and ministry, and so daily we thank God that He has saved us by grace alone, through an act of faith in our dear

01:10:06

Lord Jesus Christ. You catching that? This is purposeful, folks. It's not by grace alone through faith alone.

01:10:13

It's by grace alone through an act of faith. That is, and that's not even because, you know, he has accurately dealt with James 2 in the past.

01:10:27

This is Eastern Orthodoxy speaking. This is a knowing unwillingness to affirm the language of sola fide.

01:10:38

That's what this is. And again, if you say that that's not a change, then what would be a change?

01:10:45

You know, joining Mormonism? Well, okay. Does it have to be that radical? It was done all that we might experience life now and experience life in the age to come.

01:10:56

At present, I happen to be struggling with some physical ailments and have limited strength.

01:11:01

But I see this too as wonderful, because it has taught me to lean more heavily upon the arm of God as opposed to leaning upon the arm of Frosch.

01:11:11

But the posts evidently are quite interesting. Now, at that point, he went off on Rodney Howard Brown.

01:11:22

Why? I don't know, but he spent a long time on Rodney Howard Brown, which

01:11:27

I felt was irrelevant. Just completely irrelevant. And so I skip all that and go back to what's actually important.

01:11:36

A good friend of mine, who has one of the largest churches in the country, who wrote me.

01:11:42

In fact, he passed along what is being spread on the internet in this regard.

01:11:48

And he said, have you really left the faith? And I wrote him back and I said, of course not.

01:11:55

Now, he did the right thing. He came to me and I said, of course not. I haven't left the faith. I'm in love with the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

01:12:01

My faith has only been deepened and strengthened, particularly over the last 10 years. And he said, well, whatever.

01:12:08

I know one thing. I love you and I trust you. This was a far better thing to do. And I'm simply exhorting

01:12:14

Christians. I don't like to talk about myself on the radio. I very seldom do, but sometimes it's necessary and I've been asked to do that and so I've done that.

01:12:20

Sometimes it's far better to rid yourself of the false perceptions that people communicate.

01:12:28

My view on everything from faith to Scripture has been clearly codified in my writing and that over the last 30 years.

01:12:42

It was and it's changed. Any logical person is going to recognize that when you change the foundation upon which you argued before to something different now, you can't just simply go, well, let's just continue on and there's my 30 years worth of work.

01:13:06

30 years worth of work, okay? And then you knelt before an altar in an

01:13:12

Eastern Orthodox Church. Look, Hank Hanegraaff does not have the right to redefine

01:13:19

Eastern Orthodoxy and that's what's going on here.

01:13:26

On one hand, he's defending it, but then saying, well, I haven't changed. I believe the same things

01:13:32

I've always believed. No, that's not true. We've already been hearing that. We've been listening to it, detecting it, what's being said.

01:13:42

There needs to be consistency. There needs to be consistency, especially from someone running a program called the

01:13:50

Bible Answer Man. Let's go back to the phone lines. We'll talk, or go to the phone lines. First call up is Tim. He's listening in El Paso, Texas.

01:13:56

Hi, Tim. Hi, Hank Hanegraaff. I appreciate you taking my call. I actually wanted to talk to you about the very thing that you were just talking about right now on the radio, and in the interest of full disclosure,

01:14:10

I do a podcast called... I'm not interested in your podcast, but you can ask me your question. Oh, that's fine.

01:14:16

I wanted to ask you about... yesterday you got a call from somebody who referenced an article written by a guy named

01:14:22

Jeff Maples, and it had to do with exactly what you're talking about, and so I think the concern that I have is from what

01:14:31

I understand, the Greek Orthodox Church does not hold to the doctrine of justification by faith alone, and that would be problematic, to say the least, but I would like, if you could answer as to whether or not you hold to the doctrine of justification by faith alone that not faith and works, and then

01:14:57

I would like to have an opportunity to talk to you about it, because...

01:15:04

He's bouncing all over the place because he's nervous, obviously, but I think that the

01:15:10

Bible Answer Man should be able to answer that question very succinctly, very clearly. I think that's necessary.

01:15:19

It's an up and down question, yes or no. We know where Eastern Orthodoxy stands on it, so straightforward answer is absolutely necessary here for it to be the

01:15:29

Bible Answer Man. I'm trying to be self -promoting. The reason that I was wanting to tell you that I do a podcast is because I'm friends with the person who wrote the article,

01:15:38

I'm friends with him online, and from... I heard you yesterday affirm

01:15:43

Roman Catholicism as a true church, and another... This isn't yesterday, though. Let me just interrupt, because I'm running out of time, but this is not yesterday.

01:15:51

I have been saying this for 30 years, that Roman Catholicism is a true church with significant error, and I have pointed out that error.

01:16:00

I have pointed that error out consistently, while I have pointed out, in tandem, that there are many

01:16:08

Roman Catholics who are brothers and sisters in the Lord. In the same sense, there are many brothers and sisters in the

01:16:15

Lord within the Orthodox Church and within Protestantism. But I think you need a little context to understand this issue of justification by faith.

01:16:25

If you think back to Western Europe, think back before the Reformation era, when there was a great concern over the prevailing notion that salvation depended on human merit rather than the grace and mercy of God.

01:16:41

This was a Western conundrum. Was it? Did you hear the distinction just made there?

01:16:50

That is the accusation of pure Pelagianism, that when ignorant

01:16:57

Protestants make that toward Roman Catholics, Roman Catholic apologists have a heyday in tearing them apart.

01:17:05

That's a grossly inaccurate representation of what was going on in the medieval period.

01:17:14

That's Pelagianism. What he just said, let me play it again, so if you want to hear a definition of Pelagianism, here's

01:17:21

Hank Hanegraaff defining Pelagianism. When there was a great concern over the prevailing notion that salvation depended on human merit rather than the grace and mercy of God.

01:17:32

Rather than. That's not what they say. That's not even what the Mormons say. I mean, the

01:17:38

Mormons get pretty close, but again, Hank heard me say this

01:17:44

I don't know how many times. The issue of the Reformation was not the necessity of grace.

01:17:51

Rome affirmed the absolute necessity of grace. The whole sacramental system is the channeling of grace.

01:17:59

The issue was the sufficiency of grace. So that's just a misrepresentation, and I don't think he's concerned about much anymore because of what he then says.

01:18:10

Well, it's just a Western conundrum. That was just you guys. You all are a left orthodoxy at that point.

01:18:16

And that's why it becomes irrelevant. This was a Western conundrum. The Eastern Church had no context for some kind of a polarization between faith and works.

01:18:30

The seven ecumenical councils had long settled that conundrum through the recognition that salvation comes through faith in Christ who fulfills the law.

01:18:39

The ecumenical councils were not focused upon soteriological issues. That was not their focus.

01:18:45

These were not the issues. No matter how much weight you want to put on them, no matter how much you want to ignore the fact that especially the latter ones, the

01:18:56

Biblical argumentation they used is laughably bad, no matter how much you want to ignore all that, the reality is, well, this has all been settled.

01:19:05

This is the problem with orthodoxy. It's fossilized. But it's already been decided.

01:19:12

What if you didn't really deal with the issue? Well, it's already been decided. But what about, it's already been decided. Can't do anything about it.

01:19:21

We're stuck in the 8th century, and if in -depth work had not yet been done in certain areas, well, just move on from there.

01:19:32

You know, Paul put this pretty plainly. I mean, it doesn't take a lot of figuring out.

01:19:37

Paul said, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our

01:19:43

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, through whom we have access by faith in this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice and hope for the glory of God.

01:19:51

Have you expressed your understanding of that to your Eastern Orthodox friends, Hank?

01:19:57

Because as you excitedly learn Greek, hopefully they will explain to you the relationship between verbal forms and the fact that what you have in the statement, even ignoring the, even not dealing with the textual variant that's there, between ecumen and ecumen, you have a statement that the peace we have with God now is because of the past reality of having been justified by faith.

01:20:27

So, our present possession of peace is due to the reality of justification as a past tense event, which in Romans 5 -1 has been argued all the way through Romans 4 to have been by faith in Abraham's experience, not by baptism, not by sacraments.

01:20:48

But what's more, Hank, given your new commitment to Eastern Orthodoxy, do you have an interpretation of this from tradition?

01:20:56

Because to interpret it outside of tradition would be inappropriate as an

01:21:01

Eastern Orthodox person, right? The Eastern Church saw true faith not just as some kind of momentary transaction, but rather as a transformational way of life.

01:21:16

Now, how do you fit the transformational way of life, so it's a lifestyle, with the fact that in the

01:21:23

Greek, the faith is something, the justification is something that precedes having the peace.

01:21:31

See, here is where we test a system by the actual words of Scripture. But once you subjugate

01:21:37

Scripture to the ultimate system, you can't do that anymore. Now, I realize he's going to be, he's going to experience a lot of contradiction, because that's not how he's done things in the past.

01:21:55

Where will he go from here? That's the question. Through his great kindness towards us, we're justified by faith.

01:22:02

We're empowered by the Trinity to do the thing that you're talking about, the works, to give the cup of water, the piece of bread to those who are in need, and in that way bring glory to our

01:22:15

Father who is in heaven, because as we have done this for the least of these, we have done this for our

01:22:21

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. So, I've been talking about mere Christianity for 30 years, and I am just absolutely amazed that people are now raising these

01:22:33

Hank. Hank. You're not absolutely amazed. You're engaging in defensiveness here.

01:22:40

You're not absolutely amazed. These issues have to come up, because you've made a fundamental change.

01:22:47

You weren't promoting this definition of mere Christianity when you had me on the program three times.

01:22:56

I think there were, how long were the staples programs? There were at least two hours each. They may have been three.

01:23:02

Let's say there were two hours each. That's four hours plus three hours. That's seven hours. Seven hours of programming time with me in studio to represent the other side.

01:23:13

And these issues came up, and you were not presenting this. You know that. Don't tell us,

01:23:20

I can't believe that people are bringing this up. I've always believed it. No, you haven't.

01:23:25

No, you haven't. Questions. Again, in essentials, unity.

01:23:31

Non -essentials, liberty. "...and all things charity." "...We'll be right back with more answers to your questions."

01:23:37

"...Right here at the Bible Instant Request." Now, I kept going with this because I wanted you to hear something.

01:23:44

Did you hear what was just — listen to the beginning of the advert as it goes out.

01:23:50

"...and all things charity." "...We'll be right back with more answers to your questions." "...Right here at the Bible Instant Request."

01:23:56

"...a trend in many parts of the contemporary American Christian Church is the propagation of cliches that are neither

01:24:01

Christian nor true. One of these is the idea that no sin is any worse than any other sin.

01:24:07

That is, from God's perspective, all sins are equally bad. Okay, so you've got an article in the

01:24:13

CRI Journal about cliches in modern Christianity that are actually true, and we just got done hearing the cliche of essentials and non -essentials, liberty and all things charity, being repeated over and over again as a cliche to get around with dealing the fact that there has been a fundamental change here, and that there is a fundamental difference between holding the soul of Shatorah and soul of Fideh.

01:24:39

That just struck me as a very unusual thing there. I can actually see light at the end of the tunnel here, but we have to keep playing.

01:24:48

I wanted to ask you, my question is about Jewish people and the rejection of Christ.

01:24:54

You know, I get, you know, with Christ and, you know, the whole political thing back when he was with his ministry, but, you know,

01:25:02

I just don't get, like, Okay, now here's a question. It really isn't directly related to any of this stuff?

01:25:14

Okay. How do you answer that? Everything that was written in the Old Testament and the things that Christ did when he was alive.

01:25:20

And I guess I asked you this because I have a stepdad who's Jewish, and, you know, he just totally just says,

01:25:27

I just don't believe it. That's pretty much it. So I just wanted to know what your thoughts were about, you know, Jews today rejecting

01:25:33

Jesus. Yeah, I don't think we have to classify it as Jews rejecting Jesus, but people in general rejecting

01:25:39

Jesus. And the reason this happens is because, not the intellect being deficient, but rather the will.

01:25:49

People do not want to live within the parameters that God sets forth for them to live within. They don't want to be participants in the kingdom of our

01:25:56

Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. They do not believe that Jesus Christ is the only one who can walk through the doorway of Old Testament prophecy, and thus they reject him as Messiah.

01:26:06

Now, is there any good reason for doing that? Well, ultimately, as Jesus himself put it, light came into darkness, and therefore there is no good reason.

01:26:15

The only reason being that men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil.

01:26:20

So what we have is the light of creation, we have a knowledge of the triadic one written on the tablet of our consciousness, and if we respond to the light we have been given, we can receive—

01:26:33

Now, this is an area that I've criticized Hank on before. Okay.

01:26:40

There is nothing, by the way, in Romans chapter 1 that says the Trinity is revealed in creation.

01:26:47

That was what was just said, but read Romans 1. It's his divine nature, his power, nothing about the

01:26:54

Trinity. It's just not there. But some of you would go, oh, just stick with the

01:27:00

Eastern Orthodox stuff. There is a connection. There is a connection in what you're about to hear.

01:27:07

And if we respond to the light we have been given, we can receive more light.

01:27:13

I've quoted Pascal in this regard many times. God dwells in enough light, so if you want to find him, you will, and he dwells in enough darkness, so if you do not want to find him, you won't.

01:27:23

So again, it is a matter of the will. Now, there are those, and certainly many of my detractors do not believe in faith alone, and that's what has to be exercised here, but they believe in regeneration alone, which is to say that God must first regenerate.

01:27:39

Now, do you know who he's talking about here? Hopefully you can hear. His detractors are

01:27:45

Calvinists, Reformed people, and he's saying we believe in regeneration alone, not faith alone.

01:27:53

And I heard this, and I'm like, what's the benefit of misrepresenting us in this way?

01:28:00

Because it's not we believe. It would involve a fundamentally obvious category error to assert that we believe that you're justified by regeneration alone.

01:28:11

We're not justified by regeneration. We are saying that regeneration is necessary to have saving faith.

01:28:17

That's what Romans 8 says. We could debate those issues. Well, we actually generally can't find folks to debate those issues very well, but we can debate those issues, but that's our position.

01:28:28

So why misrepresent us? Why has this become something that's so standard in this presentation, and what does this have to do with what the guy asked, is another question.

01:28:40

Well, this is all lead up to the connection. Here it's coming.

01:28:45

Yeah, and certainly many of my detractors do not believe in faith alone, and that's what has to be exercised here, but they believe in regeneration alone, which is to say that God must first regenerate, whether Jew or Gentile, must regenerate a person, and once that person is regenerated, then they can have an active faith to seek after God.

01:29:06

They can respond to the wooing of the Holy Spirit, and so this person, in their view, would be classified as a person that can't respond, perhaps because God did not give them the ears to be able to respond.

01:29:17

Just as a cow can't fly, they cannot respond. Only those who have been regenerated can respond.

01:29:24

Now, I put this on Facebook, some of you already know. Listen carefully. And I certainly would not hold that position.

01:29:32

I would hold the position that you sort of alluded to in the prologue to your question, which is very akin to Jesus talking to those who are persecuting him and saying, how often

01:29:43

I would have longed to gather you together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.

01:29:52

We have ample opportunity. Do you hear it? I've documented him doing this in the past.

01:30:00

We documented Norm Geisler doing it. We documented Dave Hunt doing it. That's not what

01:30:07

Matthew 23 -37 says. Now, here's a man who prides himself on his memory, and yet, over and over again, we've documented him misciting

01:30:18

Matthew 23 -37. It's not because he's trying to, it's not because, oh, I can't quote this correctly, I need to change words. No.

01:30:24

For all of these individuals, what, when they are quoting off the top of their head, what they give you is what they think the text is saying, rather than what the text actually states.

01:30:36

So what you heard him, here, let's, you know, I want to make sure you hear this so that you understand what the connection is that I'm going to be making.

01:30:44

And I certainly would not hold that position. I would hold the position that you sort of alluded to in the prologue to your question, which is very akin to Jesus talking to those who are persecuting him and saying, how often

01:30:58

I would have longed to gather you together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.

01:31:06

So the emphasis is, you were not willing that I should gather who? You. That's what he said.

01:31:13

How often would I have gathered you? Go read Matthew 23 -37. It's not a translational issue.

01:31:18

It's not a textual issue. Matthew 23 is a chapter of condemnation, probably the strongest language in all

01:31:27

Jesus. Well, it's certainly the strongest language in everything that's attributed to Jesus. And it is a condemnation of the

01:31:37

Jewish leaders. And Jesus was not saying to them, I want to gather you, but you would not.

01:31:42

Therefore, I was frustrated. That's not what he's saying. How often would I have gathered your chicks in other words, you have the

01:31:50

Jewish leaders, they're staying in the way of what God would do for those that are under their authority.

01:31:58

It's not them. And yet in the mind of the synergist, it gets changed.

01:32:08

So it ends up being even misquoted. So you can make the point, you were not willing. The condemnation of Matthew 23 -37 is that these

01:32:15

Jewish leaders were not willing for God to do with those who are under their control. They're the ones being condemned for going over land and sea to make one proselyte, then turning him into twice the son of hell that they themselves are.

01:32:30

It's a judgment passage, has nothing to do with the use that's being made. Here's the point.

01:32:38

Our traditions can end up going so far as to alter our very memory of what the text actually is saying.

01:32:49

And once you become Eastern Orthodox, how could you even correct that? Because you see,

01:32:54

Eastern Orthodoxy, by subjugating scripture to the ultimate category of tradition, the exegesis of the text is no longer the issue.

01:33:04

The actual meaning of the words is no longer the issue. The context isn't the meaning of the issue. Eastern Orthodoxy provides an anthropology that fits with that understanding, so why should you care?

01:33:18

That's why you cannot have an Eastern Orthodox Bible Answer Man. To be consistent with your commitment to Eastern Orthodoxy, you would have to be the

01:33:29

Grand Tradition Answer Man, not the Bible Answer Man, because it's just a subcategory.

01:33:37

And the actual wording of the text isn't the issue. It doesn't matter. The great tradition tells us how even that's to be understood, how even that's to be understood.

01:33:49

That's why I played that section. All right, like I said, I can actually see the last on my screen, so we're getting there, slowly but surely.

01:33:57

My question is, I'd like for you to clarify for me the differences, basic differences, fundamental differences, say, between the

01:34:03

Eastern Orthodox faith and Catholicism, Roman Catholicism. You know, I mentioned this on yesterday's broadcast in light of what

01:34:09

I've written in a book called The Complete Bible Answer Book, collector's edition, revised and updated, so let me give you just a brief snippet in this regard.

01:34:17

The first thing I mentioned on yesterday's broadcast is that Roman Catholicism forwards the notion that in the intermediate state after death, there are certain sins that can be atoned for by way of temporal punishment and purgatory.

01:34:28

So the first thing he lists as to the differences between the Orthodox and Roman Catholics is a fully developed doctrine of purgatory, specifically in reference to what's called satispatio, the suffering of atonement, which is then related to the thesaurus meritorum, the treasury of merit, which eventually indulgences.

01:34:51

These are things that are not accepted in the West. In the East, primarily, if you know the history of the

01:34:58

Council of Florence and what was really going on there, there's a lot of politics involved here, a lot of politics. But the first thing you mention is purgatory.

01:35:08

Wouldn't it be more important, the very basis of the idea of purgatory? No, because you no longer have imputed righteousness.

01:35:16

So the standing you have before God is, I was reminded in channel that, and because I'll be honest,

01:35:27

I had forgotten about this. I was on BAM to discuss, promote 24 pages on James chapter 2, page after page after page, imputed righteousness of Christ.

01:35:47

You've been teaching the same thing for 30 years? And promoted this? Sorry, don't think so.

01:35:57

I don't think so. Orthodoxy considers the notion of purgation, which was defined by the

01:36:03

Council of Florence in the 15th century, and then defended by the Council of Trent to be a late innovation, lacking precedent in both scripture and the teachings of the fathers.

01:36:13

Secondly, Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy are divided on the validity of papal infallibility.

01:36:19

In fact, that's where the... So purgatory, papal infallibility. The problem really arose.

01:36:27

You have the pontiff, as it were, pontificating from Rome with respect to what was hammered out in the seven ecumenical councils, and Orthodoxy saw a real problem with that.

01:36:41

They resisted unilateral dogmatization, and from that Orthodox perspective, papal infallibility had no basis in the creeds, the confessions, the historic

01:36:51

Christian faith, and thus was anathema. The third thing I think I mentioned yesterday was that Orthodoxy considers the immaculate conception defined by Pope Pius IX as an unwarranted innovation, but there's much more that could be said.

01:37:06

For example, whatever someone wants to say about sola scriptura, the reality is pitting oral tradition against a written tradition was unheard of for the first 1 ,500 years of church history.

01:37:20

In fact, what precipitated this aspect of the 16th century Reformation was the corruption that those like Martin Luther saw within the

01:37:30

Church of Rome in the medieval context, and one of these corruptions is another dividing point, which is, according to Luther, the idea that scripture could be interpreted solely through the magisterium, in other words, solely through the

01:37:44

Pope and the bishops. Now, scripture is supposed to only be interpreted through the bishops without a pope.

01:37:51

That's the collegial method within Orthodoxy. How does that differ? I mean, other than the rejection of Roman supremacy.

01:38:00

The notion that oral and written repositories were inaccessible to the person in the pew, in other words, to the average layperson, and within that context...

01:38:10

Look, I don't know that Orthodoxy can avoid this same criticism, because once you start talking about tradition,

01:38:17

Rome's far more specific than Eastern Orthodoxy ever could be in defining what that tradition is, because the tradition in real

01:38:24

Eastern Orthodoxy is defined by the liturgy and prayers of the Church. Well, that's a nice specific definition, but by the very nature of its mystical aspect, there can't be the kind of specificity that you have in Romanism.

01:38:45

It's just, maybe this is the Americanized Orthodoxy speaking. Roman Catholics and Protestants began to view the oral and written repositories of the faith once delivered to the saints as distinct, as separate...

01:38:58

Did you catch that? Back it up. Back up the truck. Listen again. Roman Catholics and Protestants began to view the oral and written repositories of the faith once delivered to the saints as distinct, as separate sources of Christian faith and practice.

01:39:13

Oral and written. Not repudiating that, but saying they can be distinguished. So in other words, they have to be all mish -mashed together.

01:39:21

Well, if you can't distinguish between what Scripture is and something external to Scripture, how can you ever get anywhere?

01:39:28

Now, the Orthodox don't engage the debate on this level or on these terms.

01:39:35

That's true. Instead, they see the Church as the pillar and the ground of truth. Which was local church in the original context, 1

01:39:42

Timothy 3 .15. Why? Because in accord with 1 Timothy 3 .15, we are told that very thing.

01:39:50

Which is a local church. And furthermore, why trust a 16th century Latin speaker over the interpretation of a 1st or 2nd century speaker of secular

01:39:57

Koine Greek? This is one of the reasons that I'm excited about my wife and some of our children having expressed such fervent interest in the

01:40:06

Greek language. Because once you know secular Koine Greek, you pass all translational problems because now you're reading the

01:40:13

Bible in its original form. Yes, it is the door that opens to the nirvana of all knowledge.

01:40:26

I don't want to discourage anybody from learning Greek. I've taught many people myself, and it's a wonderful thing, and it's great, and it's awesome.

01:40:35

I have so many people come up to me all the time, what does this text mean in the original Greek? And I'll drop my voice and say, the same thing it means in English.

01:40:45

And they're really disappointed by that. But anyway. So because the church is the body of Christ, in orthodoxy, it is seen to be instrumental in dispensing the precious grace of the

01:40:56

Holy Spirit. So again, this is another distinction between... So God's grace dispensed by the church.

01:41:02

The Western church and the Eastern church. Obviously, much more could be said. And quite frankly, I don't consider myself an expert.

01:41:08

I've only been studying this for two or three years. I didn't even dare speak out on eschatology until I'd studied it for 15 years.

01:41:16

Until I'd taken the time to memorize portions of the

01:41:21

Olivet Discourse, whether it comes through the Synoptic Gospels or John's expanded

01:41:27

Olivet Discourse in the book of Revelation. So having only spent a mere two and a half or three years on this subject,

01:41:33

I am not the expert. There are people that are far more adept at talking about these things than I am.

01:41:38

But I am learning. And at some point, the treasure chest will be part of my heart and soul.

01:41:44

And I'll be able to communicate with a whole lot more instruction. We'll be right back. So it sounds to me like what he's saying is,

01:41:51

I hope to be better at presenting Eastern Orthodoxy in the future. Isn't that what he's saying?

01:41:58

So once again, are we going to be the Eastern Orthodox Answer Man or the Bible Answer Man?

01:42:04

There is a distinction between them. I have two more blocks. One was in the same program.

01:42:10

This is from Tuesday. And then one is from a clip printed all over the place by numerous people.

01:42:20

And so I felt like it would be important to address that as well. But we're getting there. We're getting there. We'll talk next to Monique, listening in Greensboro, North Carolina.

01:42:29

WTRU. Hi, Monique. Hi, Hank, and thank you again, always, for everything that you are.

01:42:35

My question, I'll say that first. My question is, I know personally there's quite a few things throughout the

01:42:41

Scripture, but is there a particular or maybe one that we can kind of point the mainstream people to about questioning who is with the faith and who is not with the faith?

01:42:50

And I guess, you know, I have some level of irritation with it, not because people want to make sure, you know, you still are who you say you are, but, you know, it seems to me throughout

01:42:58

Scripture, Paul, when he talks about Himenaeus and Phagellus and Alexander the Coppersmith, I think is the only one he says he did much harm and didn't go into enough about, well, what did he do, other than withstanding, you know, words and things like that.

01:43:11

But is there not a specific Scripture that we can just, as Christians, really just start getting in the

01:43:16

Word and we can see for ourselves, you know, if the people are listening to you, what are you teaching? What are you saying?

01:43:21

What are you not saying? Is there not something that we can point to in the

01:43:26

Scripture that says, here's how you know that this person has left the faith? My goodness, instead of chasing it down,

01:43:32

I mean, not, you know, if you're a friend, you'd ask if you heard that, I guess, but instead of trying to chase it down or get them to qualify it, can we not just see it?

01:43:41

Yeah, I mean, what Paul says is even from among your own numbers, men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after themselves, so be on your guard.

01:43:50

Remember, for three years, I never stopped warning each one of you, night and day, with tears. Now, in the interest of what

01:43:56

I have said for 30 years, I hold to mere Christianity, and that in essence means that I hold to the essentials of the historic

01:44:06

Christian faith. There are secondary issues that I debate in a collegial fashion. For example, I'm certainly not a dispensationalist.

01:44:13

I do not believe that God has two distinct people with two distinct plans, necessitating two distinct phases of the second coming, a secret coming followed by a second coming.

01:44:21

However, I don't doubt for a moment that many of my dispensational friends are true followers of Jesus Christ.

01:44:30

Now, do I think that error has significance? I do, and that's why I wrote about it. I wrote about it because I think if you study the scriptures, if you follow the oral traditions that have been passed on in the

01:44:42

Old Testament and New Testament... What? Let me play it again.

01:44:49

What? If you follow the oral traditions that have been passed on in the

01:44:54

Old Testament and the New Testament, what you find out... I don't understand that. What oral traditions?

01:45:02

If they're in the Old Testament and New Testament, they're not oral, are they? I didn't get it.

01:45:08

...is that it is very, very clear that the essentials of the historic

01:45:15

Christian faith are always inviolate. Which is to say, the very doctrines that form the line of demarcation between the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of the cults,

01:45:27

I think, are very simple, at least to apprehend. Theologians can drown in the profundity, but they're fairly simple to apprehend.

01:45:36

And wouldn't you say, in light of Galatians chapter 1, that justification is one of those dividing lines?

01:45:46

That seems to complicate things, but yeah, it's right there. Let him be anathema. False brethren.

01:45:53

I mean, you could actually make an argument that there's stronger evidence that that was an apostolic dividing line than pretty much anything else.

01:46:03

Pretty clear. To Christian doctrine is the north star by which the course of Christianity is set.

01:46:10

And as the north star is an unchanging reference point by which sailors safely guided their ships, so essential

01:46:16

Christian doctrine has safely guided the church through doctrinal storms that have sought to sink it.

01:46:22

One of the things I did on the show yesterday is, quote, the Nicene Creed, which is very, very precious to me.

01:46:28

It codifies the faith once for all delivered to the saints. Now, I don't think that the

01:46:33

Nicene Creed is inspired in the same sense of scripture, but it is a creed that has been passed along through the generations, and it squares with what the scriptures teach.

01:46:44

Is its authority due to its nature, as having come from an ecumenical council, which is an anachronistic view of the council

01:46:50

I see in the first place, or is its authority due to its consistency with scripture?

01:46:56

And how would you know? And can you as an ethno -orthodox even address the issue? And I would say as well that essential

01:47:03

Christian doctrine is the foundation on which the gospel of Jesus Christ rests. Did you hear that?

01:47:11

Essential Christian doctrine is the foundation upon which the gospel rests, but the gospel isn't itself essential

01:47:18

Christian doctrine? From his deity to the certainty that he will appear a second time to judge the living and the dead, essential

01:47:28

Christian doctrine is foundational to the gospel. You think about this, all of the religions, they compromise, they confuse, they contradict these essentials.

01:47:40

So, for example, Islam. I just wrote a book about that. It's going to be out October 10th this year.

01:47:46

But Muslims dogmatically denounce the doctrine of Christ's unique deity. They call it the unforgivable sin, shirk.

01:47:53

They affirm the sinlessness of Christ, but they deny his sacrifice on the cross, and they deny his subsequent resurrection as the only hope of salvation, the only hope of salvation, the sole hope of salvation.

01:48:08

So what I've done is I've taken the essentials, the historic Christian faith, and I've codified those essentials around the acronym doctrine.

01:48:17

The first letter D, and I won't go through all the letters, but the flip chart is available through the ministry, but the D stands for the deity of Christ, and the

01:48:24

E stands for eschatology. Now, what's interesting about eschatology is it's a great example of both essential and secondary matters.

01:48:31

It is essential to believe that the Lord Jesus Christ will appear a second time. The timing of the tribulation, the meaning of the millennium is something that we can debate vigorously, we don't have to divide about.

01:48:42

So I think this is one of those, excuse me, this is one of those areas where we can look at essential

01:48:51

Christian doctrine and say there is an essential to eschatology, and there's secondary issues as well.

01:48:57

But I think we ought to be very familiar with what the Bible teaches with respect to the essentials of the historic

01:49:04

Christian faith, and then we can see by contrast, contrast being the mother of clarity, how the cults and the world religions and those who have walked away from the faith, how they have deviated.

01:49:16

And I think this is what I've attempted to do is lay out the essentials, lay out the straight stick of scripture so that you can contrast the crooked stick of false doctrine.

01:49:30

Now, as far as I'm concerned, speaking about me personally and things that have been said about me,

01:49:35

I'm no longer a Christian, I've walked away from the faith. This is, I mean, read my books, judge me on a body of work of over 30 years, and see if what

01:49:46

I have written and what I believe holds true to what God has written, because my books are not infallible.

01:49:53

God's word, however, is the test by which you can know whether what I have said is true or is false.

01:50:00

So I have a body of work out there. Again, it's a body of work written over. Jared It still seems to me that what he's doing here is saying, hey, let's not worry about this commitment

01:50:12

I've made to Eastern Orthodoxy. I'm going to defend it. It's going to determine how I answer my questions. But hey, let's just go with what

01:50:19

I've done for 30 years. You can't do both. They are contradictory to one another.

01:50:25

I mean, it involves a massive reinterpretation of what you've done in the past to say,

01:50:31

I'm just doing the same thing now. I haven't changed. We've listened as he has responded as an

01:50:38

Eastern Orthodox. You can redefine what the original context of your own works was, because you're the ultimate authority there, but you cannot redefine

01:50:48

Eastern Orthodoxy. It sort of existed before you. So which is it going to be?

01:50:54

I know he's in a transitionary period here, but you just can't put the two of them together, no matter how hard you try.

01:51:02

Richard Many, many, many years published by evangelical publishing houses. And I think to now all of a sudden question whether I believe certain essentials of the

01:51:11

Christian faith is interesting, particularly when these kinds of questions come from men like Rodney Howard Brown, as I indicated at the opening of the show.

01:51:21

Yeah, and to that, so that everyone, one description, I can't think of the gospel it's in, but when he says, you know,

01:51:28

Jesus says, I will shorten the days for the very lack of God. Okay, just for time's sake,

01:51:34

I want to get to this last thing. So that was the two programs this week. A number of people, like Waleed Shobat, in taking a shot at me, included a clip that CRI put out months ago, where Hank is asked about theosis and Eastern Orthodoxy, which had been referenced by people who were talking about Hank moving this direction, even before the word came out over the weekend of his actual chrismation.

01:52:03

And here is, it was very short. So here is what's found in that. Back to the four months, we'll talk to Jim next in Bridgeport, Connecticut, listening on BOT radio.

01:52:12

Hi, Jim. Hi, Hank. Thanks for taking my call. You're welcome. I'd like to know if you could help me out with your understanding of the

01:52:18

Eastern Orthodox concept of theosis. Well, it's not just Eastern Orthodox. I mean, it is something that was as prevalent in the church in the

01:52:27

West as in the East. In fact, right up until the time of the Reformation, pretty much everyone believed in theosis, that we become

01:52:35

Christ -bearers since his body and blood are distributed throughout our limbs, as Cyril of Jerusalem said. But Augustine said, as God became man, man becomes

01:52:44

God. Or as Luther said, word became flesh, so flesh becomes word. The whole idea being is that we become by grace what

01:52:52

God is by nature. So we partake of the means of grace that God gives to us and through the means of grace, which center around the

01:53:02

Eucharist or the Mass or the Lord's Supper, but is not exclusive to that. By partaking of the graces, we can become, as Peter put it, partakers in the divine nature.

01:53:12

And that's been the teaching of the church throughout its history. Again, right up until the time of Luther, who taught it and said that if he could disagree with the papists on anything, it would have been this very thing that the

01:53:23

Eucharist is the primary means by which you become a partaker of the divine nature. Now this poor guy, this poor caller must have been sitting there staring at his phone going, huh?

01:53:36

I thought I called the Bible Antiman. And there was one verse, and of course, the key primary text for theosis is

01:53:47

Peter's words, become partakers of the divine nature. The idea that's done through Eucharistic sacrifice with priests and the rest of that stuff, utterly ahistorical.

01:53:57

Again, development over time, development away from New Testament. There isn't any question about this.

01:54:04

No one seriously argues from a historical perspective that the early church had bishops and archbishops and deacons and subdeacons and the idea of sacrificing priests and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

01:54:17

That's clearly development over time, which people argue, well, it's proper development over time.

01:54:24

It's development based upon scripture, so on and so forth. But that was a soon -to -be convert to Eastern Orthodoxy giving an

01:54:35

Orthodox definition of theosis. Now, theosis is a very complicated doctrine, and I don't have time to go into it today, but the idea that everybody believed it all the way up to the time of Luther is really stretching it a long ways, a long, long ways.

01:54:53

There was a fundamental worldview distinction, even in the application of theosis between East and West, even before the split itself, but certainly afterwards in the

01:55:04

Reformation of 500 years after. So to say that that remained some type of consistent belief is just pie in the sky.

01:55:11

It's really? But it also speaks to the confusion of justification, sanctification, glorification that you have within Eastern Orthodoxy, which you don't have in the

01:55:24

New Testament. But then, the comments on Eastern Orthodoxy. Okay, and do you have any thoughts on Orthodoxy in general?

01:55:32

Yeah, I mean, if you look at Orthodoxy in general, I think that you find that it is well within the pale of Orthodoxy, with kind of a play on words, in a sense, but it is certainly compatible with the essentials of the historic

01:55:48

Christian faith. Now, there are areas that Catholics and Orthodox disagree on, and certainly that Protestants and Orthodox disagree on, but in terms of being compatible with the essentials of the

01:56:02

Christian faith, absolutely. Orthodoxy is fantastic in that it uses earthly, perceptible realities to point to spiritual verities, so it's constantly pointing you to the worship of God, through prayer, praise, the proclamation of the word, through the sacraments, the liturgy pointing to the

01:56:20

Eucharist. I mean, it is the Eucharist in essence. And so, yeah, it's the early church.

01:56:27

That was the church up until the split in 1054 between East and West, and essentially what the church was teaching up until the time of the

01:56:35

Reformation and even afterwards. So there you go. That's an Eastern Orthodox person, even before the actual, you know,

01:56:45

Chrismation. That's an Eastern Orthodox person presenting Eastern Orthodoxy. This guy called the

01:56:51

Bible Answer Man, wants a biblical answer, and he gets an Eastern Orthodox answer. So here's where we are at the end of the program.

01:56:59

CRI has a decision to make. Is Hank Hanegraaff, and is there an equal sign between Hank Hanegraaff equals

01:57:09

CRI? If so, then CRI needs to become the primary voice of the promotion of Eastern Orthodoxy, if that equal sign is really there.

01:57:25

There's no way to redefine Eastern Orthodoxy. You need to be honest with what Eastern Orthodoxy really is.

01:57:31

And Hank needs to come straight out and say, this is where I stand. And you know what? I have changed my views.

01:57:38

And when you find stuff in my books about Sola Scriptura, when you find stuff in my books about Sola Fide, justification, imputation of righteousness, hey,

01:57:48

I just, that wasn't really the primitive church. What you just said about the primitive church, I hope you already heard that.

01:57:54

I had already pointed out that's anachronistic, that's not dealing with history in a serious fashion.

01:58:03

It's dealing with it based on authority rather than actually dealing with history. But this is what

01:58:09

CRI has to make the decision. Are we going to be what we were founded to be, or are we going to experience a fundamental change in light of that equal sign?

01:58:23

Those are the questions. Obviously, for those of us who do not accept the authoritative claims of Eastern Orthodoxy, there's no way to be able to recommend, support, participate in the promotion of anything in regards to the

01:58:40

CRI journal or any of these things, when in reality, the chief voice is couching everything within the context of an

01:58:53

Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox worldview and theological system.

01:58:59

And so, we've allowed him to speak for himself. We played 53 and a half minutes, well, actually,

01:59:06

I cut off about two minutes there, so over 50 minutes of recent, this week, except for that last clip, this week, comments from Mr.

01:59:18

Hanegraaff. And I think we played them long enough that we cannot be accused of taking anything out of context.

01:59:26

These are the issues. These are the subjects. Go back and listen to Hank and I talking about the

01:59:33

God who justifies. Someone just posted in channel, I wrote an article for the CRI journal on Paul and James in regards to these issues.

01:59:42

I'm not the one that's changed. I'm not the one that's changed. That is very clear.

01:59:49

These are questions that the folks at CRI need to be dealing with. So, I appreciate you taking the time to listen to the program today.