Intertextuality, Matthew 16, A Bit More David Allen

Greetings, welcome to the program. You know, we started doing this stuff back in the 1980s. We will never have a perfectly accurate count of how many programs we've done, because we don't have recordings from all the stuff back on the days before the internet, when we were doing this on Saturday afternoons on radio stations, sometimes driving out to these musty, smelly radio studios out in the middle of nowhere to do the program that nobody was listening to on a Saturday.

The station was just happy to have somebody to do something. But we have lots and lots of them now on Sermon Audio, getting up around 3 ,000, I think, somewhere in that general vicinity. Been doing this a while.

And who knows how long we'll keep going. I mentioned on Twitter just a few minutes ago that you ought to tune in to every program, because eventually, Rich Reier is going to keel over.

Right during the program.

And that'll be must-see TV. It really will. You'll want to be able to say, I was watching that day when it all came to a screeching halt. And gallows humor, folks. It's what happens when you get past a certain milestone in the years as they roll by.

So I'm doing, I'm filling in at Apologia a good bit. I think I've done the last three weeks. I'm doing next week. And then I'm going to be gone for all of September. And we'll be doing road trip dividing lines.

But last Lord's Day, before yesterday, I did a study of the Prologue of John. It'll be directly relevant to the debate coming up in Tullahoma with Dale Tuggy on the Prologue of John, specifically John 1, 1, 3, 18.

And so when I sort of got the call to do this week, I'm not sure why I thought of doing this. But I decided to do the Prologue of 1 John. And I wanted to give the folks some background information as far as how important it is, how useful it is, that we break out of the mindset that we very often have in American modern Christianity, where we take the Bible and we break it up into parts.

And very often, the connections between the parts get lost. We don't see them. And our appreciation of the consistency of the text, the message of the text, is impacted by that. It really is. And so yeah, OK.

And it's gone again. Well, I hope my truck's out there somewhere. I got no earthly idea since this oven and it failed at whatever. Anyway, yeah, Windows, what can I say? So as I was looking at 1 John, when you buy commentaries on these things, there'll be discussions about authorship.

And did John really write this? Was this the elder John? Oh, it just decided to come back.

Hello.

It just, oh, OK. And my truck's still there, too. That's the important part. And yours isn't, but mine is not. Just kidding. That's why it disappeared. They blocked it. And Rich's minus one pretty truck.

Anyway, as I was translating through it, because obviously, 1 John is almost always the first book you translate when you learn Greek. It's baby Greek. It's a level 2 out of 10, I would say. And so if you want to encourage people to continue the study of Greek, you don't want to start them off in a really bad place.

And so as I was reading through it, I was just struck by the purposeful connections between 1 John and John chapter 1, the gospel of John and the epistle of John. And I know, I know the critical scholarship would say, well, that's what you'd expect a forger to do,.

And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But what was fascinating to me is when you accept the Bible as the word of God as a whole, we have further commentary on the meaning of the prologue of the gospel of John thanks to the prologue of John.

So let me give you some examples here. One of the things that I emphasized in my sermon a week ago, not yesterday, but a week ago, there were two things I wanted to communicate to everybody. I want everybody in the church to understand.

The first was an insight that my dad shared with me. One Christmas night, somewhere around 1984-ish, I think, maybe 83, probably 84, because I started my Greek studies by that time in college. And my dad had gone to Moody Bible Institute, and he had studied under Dr. Kenneth Wiest.

And when I first started showing an interest in theological things, he took me to a reading Christian bookstore, and he bought two sets of books for me that I still have in my library this day. One was A .T. Robertson's Word Pictures in the New Testament, and the other was Kenneth Wiest's, I think it was Word Studies in the New Testament, something like that.

Robertson was brown, and Wiest was black, as far as the hardback covers. And so by the light of the Christmas tree, after a wonderful turkey and dressing dinner, like my dad always provided for us, just the best in the world, he got out his old Greek New Testament, which I have.

It's in my office. I should bring that in here. He got out his Nessie Olin, man, what was that, 23rd edition, I think, something like that. And I had the 27th edition, and, well, it might have been 26 back there, then I think about it.

Anyway, and he walked through the prologue of John and said, have you ever noticed this? And the issue was that when John speaks of the logos, the word, he uses the imperfect form of I, me, ein. So in the beginning was the word.

Now, an imperfect does not point to a point of origin, does not point to a beginning. As far back as you push the beginning, the word is already in existence. And the word was prostanteon, was with God.

Again, eternal relationship. And the word was God, as to his nature, deity, eternal, not something that starts in time. And as you walk through the prologue, as soon as he starts talking about the creation of the things, he uses a genita.

He uses the aorist form of another verb of being, but it's an aorist form. And it can refer to point of origin, in time, things like that. And he keeps this distinction all the way up to verse 14. And in verse 14, you have the incarnation.

And the word became, now he uses a genita, became flesh.

Why?

Because the word had not eternally been flesh. The word entered into flesh at a point in time. This is the incarnation. And I just, I'm so thankful to have that memory of that discussion on a Christmas night, many, many, many moons ago now, over 40 years ago, with my dad, who's gone to be with the Lord, and my mom, who went before my dad did.

And so I shared that with the folks at Apologia. And I want you to remember this. And then the other thing I did is I talked about the book ends, how John 118 is the book end of John 1 1, and how the two verses help to interpret each other.

That was the author's intention. And answer many of the key questions in regards to the meaning of the prologue. And so yesterday, as I began speaking, and of course, as I prepared, I was struck by the fact that the prologue of 1 John evidently assumes you've already read the gospel.

And it provides insight into the meaning of the gospel of John as well. So for example, in 1 John 1 1, what was from the beginning? Ha 'en ap arkeis. Now, of course, an arkei ain't halagas, John 1 1. Here's our case in 1 John 1 1.

And what's the verb? Ain't, the imperfect form of I'me. What was from the beginning? Not what was created at the beginning, but what was from the beginning, which we have heard. So what was from the beginning has entered into our experience that we can hear what we have seen with our eyes, what we have gazed upon.

And that same word that he uses, as I recall, in 1 John 1 14, we beheld his glory, same word. And our hands handled, touched, concerning to lagu teis zoes, the word of life, lagas. Hopefully, you don't have the same level of Greek background that Joe Ventilacion had.

And you can recognize that in Greek, lagas, nominative form, lagu, genitive, singular form. They're not different words. They're just different forms of the word, depending on how they're functioning in the sentence.

Remember, tan, dayan, tan, dayan, tan, dayan. Yeah, that was a great night. Anyway, concerning the word of life, and the life was manifested, and we have seen and bear witness. And again, martyreo, to bear witness doesn't mean necessarily give your life.

It means to testify, is, again, used, this is John. John testified concerning Jesus. Same terminology is being used. And then it says, and proclaiming to you the eternal life, which ein was pros tan patera.

What is John 1 1? The second phrase? Kaelagos ein pros tan patera, is with God. And the assertion finally got around to that. I was sitting here going, is he ever going to put this up? I have it, I put it up here.

I made the font big. I did the whole nine yards. But, you know, I assumed that he was off talking in the chat channel, doing whatever, you know, just how it works, you know. Anyway, and we are proclaiming to you the eternal life, which was, there's your ein again, the same eternal form used in the prologue, which was pros tan patera, which is with the Father, was pros tan thean in John chapter 1.

But we know that that's what he intends in John 1 1 because of John 1 18. And then when you allow 1 John to be a commentary as well, now you have further evidence of the fact that the God with whom the word was in John 1 1 is the Father.

So you have one who has eternally existed. And our Kaelagos in the beginning was the Word. And Word was with God. That is, the Logos is with the Father. John 1 1 18, 1 John 1 2 identifies him as the Father.

And the Word was as to his nature, deity. And then back to 1 John, and was manifested to us, John 1 14. So it's so clear that the author of 1 John is not only assuming that his audience has the gospel, but he's purposefully connecting this epistle at the very beginning with that gospel as well.

And I know the way that we have translated the Bible and formatted the Bible and things like that. It creates this, I can memorize this verse here and this verse here, and it sort of breaks stuff up. And the idea of looking for the themes and the connections and the language and the use of verbal forms and things like that can seem somewhat daunting or maybe irrelevant.

And very often when we preach the text, you know, those of us who are ministers who preach the text, we don't explain these things. I certainly tried last night, myself, to do that, and noticed, as normal, the clock in the back of the church we rent is too small for me to see very well.

And so, and I don't like tapping on my phone or running a clock or something like that. No matter how it feels to me, it always ends up being right at an hour. It's just what it is. I'm not sure how that is working that way.

But anyways, I wanted to show that to you. There's so much of that in the New Testament and Paul and things like that, that this type of analysis, these things, seeing those connections, I think is important and helpful to people.

So anyways, you can, even though we didn't have it up very long, you can take that down. I almost said something, but, you know, he's busy with, he's busy with whatever he's doing over in the other room, which is not listening to me, but hey, don't worry about it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Okay, now I had this tweet and I wish it was clearer as to exactly when these things, okay, it looks like August 5th. Wow, it's been there this long?

All right.

I bookmarked this tweet from a Roman Catholic by the name of Mr. Casey, at Mr. Casey 62. I'm not sure what 62 means. Maybe it means a date of birth. So then we're same age. I, it doesn't look that way to me, but anyway.

And I thought, you know, I'm not gonna spend a whole lot of time on this, but I think it would be useful to folks to just sort of walk through something like this, because this is the kind of claim that you see all the time and historically and biblically aware Protestants used to be prepared for this kind of stuff, but we don't talk about much in our churches any longer.

And so just want to run through it. I wish there was a way to, yeah, there really isn't. So he's responding to someone that I think I follow, Sola Chad, it said, who tricked Catholics into believing that Peter is the rock?

Okay, so he's responding to that as a traditionalist Catholic. Here's what he says. Who tricked Protestants? You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna, since this is all gonna be talking about this, I'm gonna put it up there so that when we get to it, we can, in fact, I'll just go ahead and.

Okay, who tricked Protestants into ignoring every piece of evidence that proves Peter is the rock? Every piece of evidence. Rich finally got to use his camera over here. You'll notice, he just said, can you hear the teacher from?

I call that the Edward R. Murrow angle.

Okay.

That is my favorite shot.

Yeah, and it is my least favorite. In fact, I hate it. So that's why it's his favorite. And that's just how life goes at Alpha Omega Ministries. After we've been working in the same thing for,.

How long has it been?

When did, 30, how many years? 38 years, okay. All right, I am looking over here. So, I mean, I suppose that. All right, 15 reasons why we know he is. Peter is the rock. Now, it's fascinating to me. A person who would go back and listen to the third debate that I did in January of 1990, no, December of 1990 at City of the Lord in Tempe, Arizona, debated the papacy, would find a lot of this stuff addressed there.

And certainly, just a few years later, when we did a over seven hour, two night debate in Denver on the papacy, all of this stuff is fully addressed. This traditionalist Catholic doesn't seem to have any idea what any of the problems with this are.

When you live in an echo chamber, that's what's gonna happen. You're not gonna be aware of what's outside of that. And look, there are Protestants that do the exact same thing, I get it. I'm not saying that it's great for anybody, but here it is.

All right, 15 reasons why we know he is. Jesus and the apostles spoke Aramaic to each other, not Greek. How do you know that? I mean, do you know what was said in Greek, what was said in Aramaic, and what might've been said in Hebrew?

How do you know what level of proficiency any of the apostles would have had in Greek? I mean, you can assume that Jesus didn't speak Greek. I'm not sure what he was speaking to Pilate in. I doubt Pilate was proficient in Aramaic, having been sent there from Rome.

So that's all speculation. And remember, the Matthew 16, 18 claim, the Petrine promise, which is in the cupola of the Vatican, in gold. Look up, and it's in Latin, but it's around the cupola up there.

I saw it, and it's in gold. Not talking gold leaf, we're talking it's in gold. Without it, you have no papacy. Even with it, you don't have a papacy for that matter, but without it, it's done. This is the central text.

And there are so many problems with the Roman Catholic interpretation of this text that, as I pointed out in the debate in 1993, you take each of these issues, and let's say there's a 50 -50 chance that the Roman Catholic view is right on this issue.

And then, but that's dependent for this next issue, and there's a 50 -50 chance. Once you put the whole line together, there's like a 3 chance that the Roman Catholic claim is true. Because you just have so many, it might be this, might be that, then it might be this, might be that, might be this, so on and so forth, all the way down the line.

So you're gonna see that despite the boldness of this fellow's claims, it doesn't pan out. Jesus and the apostles spoke Aramaic to each other, not Greek. I would assume in most instances that would be true.

But what facility do they have in any of the languages, we don't know. Next, the Aramaic word for rock is kepha. Well, again, 1993, I presented the argumentation, Chris Karagounis' scholarly article, that in that context, the better Aramaic term was minra.

There's more than one word for rock in Aramaic. And you have no idea, because we have no Aramaic original for Matthew. He's gonna make the claim, we'll talk about that in a moment. But you got nothing.

So you're assuming, you just assume what the Aramaic word would have been when you don't know. So the ultimate authority of the Petrine promise is, again, based upon speculation about languages we have no original sources for, fascinating.

Now, kepha is, and I think part of what the guy's responding to here is a less than sterling argument that Protestants frequently use, because they note the difference between kepha and kephos. That's not really relevant.

Just as I was saying, I hadn't really thought about this, when we were looking at 1 John and lagu, lagas, different forms in the Greek language. But I think that's the main thing the guy has in the back of his mind is, oh, well, kephos, that's Peter, but kepha means a big rock or something like that.

Well, we could argue that, and he's gonna spend a lot of time, not gonna spend much time refuting it because it's not relevant, but that's where it's coming from. So he says, so Jesus actually said, you are kepha, and upon this kepha, I will build my church.

He doesn't know that. Pure speculation. How do you know he didn't say minra? And the most important thing is, as was pointed out long, long, long ago, but Roman Catholics don't read criticisms outside Roman Catholicism, just like most Protestants don't read Roman Catholics.

The fact of the matter is that the real issue here is why, right here, in Matthew 16, 18, and I say to you that su I Petras, you are Peter, kai epitaute te Petra, oka dameso mutaine ecclesian, kai pulae hadu u katascusus in altes.

So, and upon this rock, this, why, why doesn't he say it upon you? Well, why, and upon this rock, I will build my church. That's, if you're talking to the person you're identifying, that's not how you speak.

And you can sit here and pretend, well, that wouldn't have been in the Aramaic. You don't know what the Aramaic was. You don't know what's in Aramaic. There is no Aramaic of Matthew. He's going to make that claim later on.

But the point is, this is the issue that he never even acknowledges, never even acknowledges. And this has been part of not only Protestant, but old Catholic criticisms of pre-Vatican one, papal authority claims and things like that.

It's nothing new, but the problem with the internet is you can take arguments that have been refuted many times in the past. And as long as you repeat them enough times on social media, they sound good.

You'll convince somebody. So then he says, you know that because when Peter is referred to by his actual name in the New Testament, he's called Cephas. He gives a number of different places where that is.

Yes, he is called Cephas. There's no question about that, that Peter, Petras, and Cephas are interchangeable, but that doesn't mean you know what term Jesus used because he uses taute. That's the problem.

If he was trying to make the play on words, he did it in the most obtuse way possible. So it's highly probable that we're missing something by trying to push that alleged identification, as we'll see.

Next point, Matthew's gospel was originally written in Aramaic, see Saints Papias and Irenaeus, second century, and Eusebius' history. Oh, so we'll just simply, hey, they mentioned an Aramaic Matthew.

Yeah, they did.

We don't have it. We don't have it. And there have been extensive papers written, so on and so forth. What is very obvious is the Matthew we have today was not originally written in Aramaic. It was written in Greek.

So you have to pretend that the Matthew we have is not the original work of Matthew, and you don't know who translated it, and so you have a derivative work that's in the canon of scripture. And by the way, before you go, yeah, but we're the church, we can define who says what, but I don't think there's a single member of the papal biblical commission today that believes that Matthew wrote Matthew.

So don't give me that. Catholic answers used to do that. Back in the olden days, back in the Patrick Madrid, Carl Keating, olden days, how do you know Matthew wrote Matthew? And maybe they just didn't know back then that since Vatican II, especially, Rome doesn't know who wrote Matthew, and Rome believes that it's a pseudonymous work.

Somebody else wrote it, not Matthew. So to then say Matthew's gospel is originally written in Aramaic, you don't know that. Yes, there are references to an Aramaic Matthew, but that doesn't mean it was the gospel of Matthew.

We don't have it. We can't check it. Therefore, anything you're doing here is pure speculation, and you're gonna tell me this is the ultimate authority for the Christian today? You don't accept this kind of speculative argumentation, and you got nothing?

This is the sand foundation upon which the papacy is built. It truly is. Then he says, when Matthew's gospel is translated into Greek, by whom, when, we don't know, and somehow the Aramaic disappeared, we can't find it, don't know, the translator knew some Greek readers might not know the word kepha meant rock, so to make the rock image clear, he used the Greek word for rock, petra.

Upon this petra, I will build my church. Well, how do you, did you know who did the translation? Did you talk to them? Did they leave anything behind whereby you can discern this, or are you just simply mind reading someone from 2 ,000 years ago?

Evidently, that's what you're doing, because you're ignoring, again, the fact that this translator, whoever it was, said taute, epi taute te petra, upon this rock. Not upon you, he had just said, and I say to you, soi, first person singular, second person singular, sorry, I say to you, soi, that sui petras, you are Peter, chi epi taute.

That's something else.

That's the only way that language can be understood. It's referring to something else. And if you just do what Roman Catholics normally do, and maybe look at some early church fathers, you'd find many of them who will say this is based upon the confession of faith that Peter had just enunciated, that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God.

That's what they believed. And they weren't, were they early Protestants? You're not gonna say that, now are you? Yeah, probably not. So, upon this petra, oh, Bill Meagers, again, ignoring, I mean, he puts the word this, he just never seems to recognize that he needs to explain why you go from you, second person, to taute, third person.

That's not, doesn't even know the issue exists. Vast majority of Roman Catholics don't. Vast majority of them don't. Petra is feminine, Peter is a man, so Matthew had to take petra and masculinize it to petras.

He has to use petra for rock, so his Greek readers will understand the concept. He can't use the feminine petra for Peter's name. Again, now, this is why I say he seems to be primarily arguing against the petras, petra thing, which is what I heard when I was a kid.

When I was young, that was, and so there's nothing wrong with pointing out that that's not the strongest argument on the planet. He says, the claim that petra means rock, but petras means stone was true in Attic Greek, but never in Koine Greek, the Greek of the New Testament, entirely different dialect.

That's way overstating it. In Koine Greek, both petra and petras meant rock, see fourth and fifth tweets. Well, that's not my argument, and so I'm not going to spend any time pulling out the TLG stuff and looking for every use of petra or petras in Greek literature in the ancient world.

Not my point, not the issue. And by this time, and by Jesus' time, any distinction between petra and petras had ceased to even exist in Attic Greek. That's probably an overstatement, but between the eighth and fourth centuries BC, they were used as rock and stone in Attic Greek poetry, but that distinction had long disappeared by the time Matthew was translated into Koine Greek, having become more popular in the fourth century BC and continuing in widespread use until the fifth century AD, even though, obviously, over that 1 ,000-year period, there would be some who would not necessarily identify all of that as Koine Greek.

So let's say petra and petras are synonymous. It's not relevant to this particular argument. If Matthew had wanted pyrrha to mean stone, not rock, he would have used a Greek word for stone, lithos, or even clearer, cephos, which means small stone.

Okay, maybe so, but again, did you see what you just did? You don't have a translator doing this anymore. Well, you're talking about Greek, but you said this is all written in Aramaic, so you don't mean Matthew.

You mean the translator, who is an uninspired person you don't know. Maybe you just didn't even notice that, but I find it rather interesting. Here, Jesus uses the second-person personal pronoun, you, singular, seven times in these three verses.

The context is clearly one of communicating a unique authority to Peter here and to Peter alone. Again, common error, which demonstrates this individual is in an echo chamber, is only reading Roman Catholic material, and has never read anything that comes from the other side, which is the same thing with almost every Protestant in reverse, but yes, and I say to you, you are Peter.

Those are second-person singulars, as we pointed out when we read it, but, and upon this rock is not second-person singular, third-person. The pronoun, demonstrative pronoun, which is put in the feminine to match Petra, by the way, does not make sense if the continued direction is Peter himself, but please note, and I will give to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.

Verse 19, doso soy, I will give to you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. What is doso? If this long post that he made, maybe he cut and pasted something else, I don't know, but if this long post is gonna have any meaning to it, he says, communicating a unique authority to Peter here and to Peter alone, okay?

So I'll ask the same question that I've been asking for a number of decades now. What is doso? Well, doso is from, it's a standard verb, didyme, to give, but why is it doso? Because it's future tense.

I will give to you, not I am giving, that's how it's almost always interpreted by Roman Catholic advocates, is that it's not a future, it's a present, it's not. I will give, so, yeah, right there, now that Rich caught up with me, I will give, right there, doso, to you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.

So when did that happen? It didn't happen here, even though the guy says that he is communicating unique authority to Peter here and to Peter alone, but it's in the future. When did it happen? Well, the only two answers are, Matthew doesn't record it for us, or it happens in Matthew chapter 18, but you can't say Matthew chapter 18, because at that point it's to all the apostles together, not to Peter alone.

And down through church history, of course, there were all sorts of different views of these things, and the primary people initially pushing certain interpretations of Matthew chapter 16 happened to be in Rome for some strange, odd reason, and people outside of Rome had very different understandings of these things.

But you can't, there have been those who would have seen Matthew 18 as the fulfillment, but you can't do it anymore because of theological development within Roman Catholicism, and especially after Vatican I, and the infallibility of the pope, absence of supremacy of the pope.

Remember, again, this is church history stuff, but there was a time when there were three popes busily anathematizing each other. It was right after the Babylonian captivity of the church, where you have the Avignon papacy, papacy in Rome.

The papacy in Rome had left Rome and went to Avignon, and then another group, this reestablished authority in Rome, claimed to anyways, and they're busily anathematizing each other. And then a council appointed a new pope to oppose the other two, but they refused to go, so now you got three popes.

And so it was the Council of Constance that finally rescued the papacy, because the papacy could not rescue itself. And so there was a brief opening there. This is in the 15th century, early 15th century.

There's a brief opening there for what's called conciliarism, the idea of having councils as the ultimate authority. But the papacy shut that down real fast. And especially after Vatican I in 1870, there's no way that that can rise from the dead, shall we say, and become the way things would be done, unless you're gonna go, well, okay, so we were wrong back then, so much for papal infallibility, that type of thing.

So when is this? Either it's not recorded, which is highly strange, or if it is, it actually contradicts Roman Catholic teaching. But this guy doesn't even seem to know on it, doesn't even seem to know that that's there, doesn't even seem to go, oh, the future, I hadn't really thought about that.

So insisting on stone versus rock, and again, that's not the issue, is asserting that Jesus said, "'Blessed are you, Simon, by Jonah, "'for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, "'but my Father who is in heaven.

"'I tell you, you are an insignificant stone, "'and on this rock I will build my church. "'I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.'". So what Jesus is actually doing is giving Peter, the man, not his faith, not his confession, a threefold blessing.

Notice what he said there, the man, not his faith, not his confession. Many in the early church that recognize that the confession of Jesus Christ as the Messiah, the Son of God, is the cornerstone of the Christian church.

And that's why the gates of Hades will not prevail against the church. By the way, that language is offensive language. Gates are defensive. So what that means is the church will be victorious over the realm of death.

So it says, "'Blessed are you, "'upon this rock I will build, "'I will give unto you the keys.'". So he doesn't deal with the third person, he doesn't deal with the future tense, so he's just running stuff together, creating his own little narrative.

What he is not doing is blessing him, then undermining his authority, then blessing him again. I guess undermining his authority be upon this rock I will build. That tells you something about this man's view of the papacy, that the confession of Jesus as Messiah and Son of God is insufficient.

You've got to have Peter as the rock. That tells you something. The rock obviously cannot be Christ because he's the builder. Well, that's like saying the sacrifice obviously can't be Christ because he's the priest that offers it.

Oh, wait, he's both, isn't he? Yeah, careful about that kind of argumentation. Christ rather is the wise man who built his house upon the rock, the builder, the cornerstone, the foundation of faith, but Peter is his foundation for the church.

That's just pure faith. That's not what the text is saying. That's just pure faith in his part. And you know that because, looking at the grammar, with you are Kepha and upon this Kepha, this Kepha, now he capitalizes all of this, this Kepha must refer back to the closest noun.

No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't.

Where'd you get that? And by the way, I thought this was an Aramaic. How would you know? Oh, well, ah, ah, hmm. To say this Kepha refers to Jesus or to Peter's confession three verses earlier is to completely ignore the sentence's structure.

No, you are completely ignoring the sentence's structure. You are not answering why you go from second person singular to a third person demonstrative pronoun. That's your problem. You're just not even aware of it.

You've never been challenged on it. He didn't say you are Kepha, but upon this other Kepha, I will build my church. No, as I asserted very strongly in the debate at Denver Seminary long ago, the focus in this text is always on Jesus and any interpretation that changes that to, for example, Peter, who is about to be called Satan immediately after this, is a misinterpretation of the text, misinterpretation of the text.

So there you go. Okay, wanted to cover that one, had that one in the bookmarks there for a while, and finally got around to it. Now, back to in the last 15 minutes or so that we have on the program today, wanted to get back to, I think it was yesterday.

I couldn't help, honestly, but to even, I had to comment on X. Let me see if I can find this here. It was, man, I repost that one thing about someone predicting the rapture again, and my feed has been absolutely filled.

There is a, David Allen posted from the conclusion of my Liberating Romans from Reformed Captivity, which again is just such a bad book, it's just horrible. There are a couple of people he quotes that are truly problematic, but one of them, I really, he said, David Bentley Hart's verdict on Augustine and his Reformed heirs is both severe and salient.

And I went, David Bentley Hart? Seriously? The pseudo-Orthodox guy? The Universalist? You're quoting David Bentley Hart as if this is relevant? You can't find better sources than this? It seems like, hey, as long as you can throw it and it sticks to the wall, David Allen's gonna quote it.

I mean, wow. Okay, I'm sure we can find some fascinating stuff that David Bentley Hart has said about things similar to David Allen's theology too, because David Bentley Hart says a lot of really odd things.