Ehrman/Wallace Debate

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line.

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The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the

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United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

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James White. And good afternoon. Welcome to, well, let's see, will this be, yes, the last

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Dividing Line of the year? In fact, let's see, next

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Tuesday is New Year's Day. And I fly out next

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Tuesday evening. So what are you thinking? Are we going to do something next Tuesday? Probably not, huh?

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No. Just going to let it, just let it slide in and, well, that would mean nothing next week.

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Special announcement here, our plan. Well, you're going to do a program. I'm going to be up to my hip boots.

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No, no. You're going to do your own program. You're going to do a solo Dividing Line featuring all the new features and wonderful things in the

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AOMN web store, right? If I were to do a show, the first thing I would do is turn the heater on over here. I was actually thinking of re -recording the intro today to have, instead of the desert metropolis, the frozen tundra of James White's office.

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There's just no reason to turn it on. I mean, it's all the way up to 65 already. Come on.

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It's not that bad. Think of the money we spend to cool this place during the winter.

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And we're just getting a head start. During the summer, you mean? During the summer. We're just getting a head start. You know, it's just going to, you know.

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See, we're so discombobulated by cold weather, we can't even think straight. No, that's not true. Anyways, you were saying?

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I was saying that we will be unveiling the new web store at AOMN .org,

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New Year's Day. Yes. That's why I was saying you should do a special program by yourself.

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Well, the special program will be online and people can go online to the store link there.

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You can explain all the wonderful, neat new features and how it's going to look so much better than the old one.

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It has stuff in it. It has stuff in it. And they can go and they can click that stuff and they can get it and they can finally get the

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MP3 downloads again, which is where the biggest complaints are. People need the downloads and they need certain programs.

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What will be nice about it is that the, I just saw something on the cameras up there that looked odd, but it really wasn't.

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What will be nice is that if you click into a particular item, the old store couldn't do this.

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We can basically flag things and say, these are related items. So if you did a series of dividing lines on that particular subject, you can look up and say, oh, well, there's a bunch of dividing lines up here.

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I should click into it and see what they were about because somebody's gone in with a brain and said that they are related.

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So with a brain? Well, too many people rely on computers to do this stuff and we need someone with a brain to sort through and go, oh,

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I've actually listened to this program and this is what it's about and tie it in with that one.

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So we relied on Algo's brain. We will be relying on Algo's brain more and more. Yes. All right.

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But are those going to be available yet? Well, we have what we call Algo's top MP3 picks.

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They are featured on the main page of the store and along with a number of books that will be featured up there as well.

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The initial design will be just a real basic design, just getting started. It's going to get just gorgeous someday.

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I'm anticipating come March, there's going to be some real big surprises with the website. Oh, good.

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Excellent. Excellent. In a good way. Okay. So something will happen on the first, but it won't be a dividing line. Let's put it that way.

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So basically what I'm saying is next week, nada, because on Thursday, I can guarantee you,

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I won't be doing dividing line. I will be teaching up at Cornerstone Seminary in Northern California.

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And that's from like eight o 'clock till four o 'clock. And after that, I don't want to talk to anybody.

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Yeah. But if they've got wifi, we could just open up Skype and - Well, I suppose. Yeah. I'm not sure if the seminary would necessarily appreciate the live stream.

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Go for that. Yeah. But yeah. Who knows? But anyways, so that's what's going. So this will be the last of 2012 and sort of the first of 2013.

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And then we'll get into it in the week after next week. And like most people, we'll be finishing off all of the sweets that have invaded my diet horribly.

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And getting back to eating really good stuff again, as we all do for about the first three weeks of January.

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And then after that, it doesn't really work as well. I saw a sad story this morning. Supreme Court denies

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Hobby Lobby request for reprieve from healthcare mandate. Supreme Court has denied a request by Hobby Lobby to shield the company from the so -called contraceptive mandate.

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While its legal battle plays out, after a federal court last week similarly ruled against the Christian -owned company, the lower court had earlier refused to protect the company from an

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Obamacare -tied requirement to provide contraceptive coverage and the fines that come with it for not complying.

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CEO David Greene, who had taken his case to the appeals court after losing the lower court ruling, had argued that his family would have to either violate their faith by covering abortion -causing drugs or be exposed to severe penalties and quote, the

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Supreme Court's latest ruling is not on the underlying merits of the mandate itself. It simply denies the company's request for an injunction while legal battle on the merits plays out.

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There are currently more than 40 cases pending against the rule. Once again, theology matters.

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There is no such thing as a, you know, the secular worldview is opposed to the

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Christian worldview. There is no question about this. And the question is going to be whether the secular worldview will become so predominant that it's hatred of the gospel and it's hatred of God's people will, in essence, run

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Christians out of business and out of the public square. That certainly is exactly what many, many, many people want.

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They won't admit that because they're not honest, but that is exactly what many people want.

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And this is a part of it. And we just pray God protect your people.

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But look, Christian businesses are a blessing on a nation.

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Businesses run by Christians where there is going to be morality and ethics involved.

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It's a blessing on a nation. And if God withdraws his blessings, he withdraws his blessings.

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And that's what's going to happen. And we just, we look at this and we pray, Lord, I certainly have been talking about this for a long, long time.

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Lord, protect your people. And that does not necessarily, protect your people does not necessarily mean that your people will continue to be able to do and enjoy the things they've been able to do and enjoy.

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And I have to keep telling myself that. I have to keep reminding myself of that. That our range of freedoms, activities, enjoyments in the future, well, look at how

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Christians have to live in Pakistan. We've had it real easy for a long time.

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And who knows? Who knows? I've had this next little item in my folder for a long time and I never got to it.

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I'm not sure why. I do have a couple of things queued up and we will take your phone calls if you'd like at 877 -753 -3341.

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What's the date on this thing here? December 21st. So it's not it hasn't been too long.

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And there is a picture of Pope Benedict doing his blessing thing. This was

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Wednesday, December 19th, 2012. And it says the Pope pressed his opposition to gay marriage

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Friday, denouncing what he described as people eschewing their God -given gender identities to suit their sexual choices and destroying the very essence of the human creature in the process.

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Now, everyone knows who has listened to this program more than 10 times that I believe that Roman Catholicism is a false gospel and a false church.

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I believe that it is a false system of worship, that it engages in idolatry and the elevation of Mary, the denigration.

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It's as a false gospel. It elevates people. I mean, this man standing here, the man who said these words, allows people to call him

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Holy Father, a term that is only reserved for God in Scripture, the vicar of Christ, who is the

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Holy Spirit. There is much I have been consistent for a long, long time.

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In fact, we can go back to the dividing lines if we had them from the 80s and 90s before the

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Wayback Machine and before where we start in 1998. We don't have almost any of those, do we?

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Just some. We had to get at least a couple of them from them in the store.

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Yeah, OK. Anyways, you can go back for many years.

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In fact, almost 30 years in my life, not quite that long.

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Being that I'm an old man now, we're both in the same same decade now,

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I feel better about that now because I felt a little badly making fun of how old you were before. Now we're in the same decade.

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So it's though you're still older than I am, but but we're at least in the same decade. But combing the hair there.

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Anyways, it's been a long time. Everybody knows that I have a strong stance against Roman Catholicism.

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I defend Sola Scriptura, Sola Gratia, the five solas, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But I have often been concerned by the imbalance of sometimes normally, not always, but normally younger folks who hear the appropriate repudiation of false teachings from Rome and then come to the weird conclusion that that means

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Rome never says anything that's true or ends up feeling weird or imbalanced or strange when you have to agree with something that the

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Pope says. Well, look, if the Pope says the sky is blue, that doesn't mean the sky isn't blue. And what the

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Pope said in this presentation, very little of it could

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I find anything wrong with. And I'd have to agree. I mean, it is perfect.

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Let me read this again. Denouncing what he described as people eschewing their

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God given gender identities to suit their sexual choices. Exactly right.

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Exactly right. I agree. Destroying the very essence of the human creature in the process.

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Yep, exactly right. No question about it. Benedict XVI made the comments in his annual

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Christmas address to the Vatican bureaucracy, one of his most important speeches of the year. He dedicated it this year to promoting traditional family values in the face of gains by same sex marriage proponents in the

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US and Europe and efforts to legalize gay marriage in places like France and Britain. In his remarks,

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Benedict quoted the chief rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, in saying the campaign for granting gays the right to marry and adopt children was an attack on the traditional family made up of father, mother and children.

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Haven't heard anything wrong yet, have you? People dispute that, quote, people dispute the idea they have a nature given to them by their bodily identity that serves as a defining element of the human being, he said.

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They deny their nature and decide that it is not something previously given to them, but that they make it for themselves.

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Exactly right. The manipulation of nature, which we deplore today where our environment is concerned, now becomes man's fundamental choice where he himself is concerned, he said.

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It was the second time in a week that Benedict had taken on the question of gay marriage, which is currently dividing France and which scored big electoral wins in the

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United States last month. In his recently released annual peace message, Benedict said gay marriage like abortion and euthanasia was a threat to world peace.

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The Vatican went on a similar anti gay marriage media blitz last month after three

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US states approved gay marriage by popular vote. Well, there wasn't three states, it was two states and one that turned down.

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Yeah, so that's not even quite accurate. Anyways, after the peace message was released last week, gay activists staged a small protest in St.

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Peter's Square on Friday. Gay activists sharply criticized the pope's take on gender theory and insisted that where gay marriage had been legalized, families are no worse off.

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Italy's main gay rights group, Arca Gay, called the pope's comments absurd, dangerous and totally out of sync with reality.

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They misspelled sync. And a coalition of four US Catholic organizations. I love this. And a coalition of four

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US Catholic organizations representing gay, lesbian and transgender people said the pope had an outmoded view of what it means to be man and woman.

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May I stop and simply ask a question that I keep asking at points like this? Why haven't these people been kicked out?

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Why haven't they been removed from the one true church? Again, it's nice to say, you know.

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Right about what's being said here, but if you're the infallible leader of the one true church, why can't you do basic church discipline?

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Haven't figured that. Oh, it's grace. No, it's not even New Testament. But we'll get to that in a moment. Increasingly, Catholics in the

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United States and around the world see what we see, Catholics following their own well -formed consciences.

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Ah, here's where we start getting the interesting stuff. Are voting to support equal rights for LGBT. I'm surprised

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I don't have QRL, PMT, so on and so forth. And eventually it'll get long enough that it'll be just the entire alphabet.

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Rights for LGBT people because in their churches and communities, they see a far healthier, godly and realistic vision of the human family than the one offered by the pope.

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According to a statement from the group's call to action, Dignity USA, Fortunate Families and New Ways Ministry.

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I mean, I just stopped to point out that Reformed Baptists, such as myself, do not have any popes.

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And so we don't have a parallel situation, but if there was a group that called itself

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Reformed Baptist that defended LGBT perspectives and teachings, their members would be disfellowshipped from our churches.

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They would be brought up on charges for denying fundamental biblical teaching. We wouldn't just sit back and go, well, you know, we need to be inclusive and open.

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No, we would definitely deal with it. But that's not what is happening here.

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Church teaching holds that notice church teaching. Have you noticed something so far in all of this?

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Oh, we've heard true things. But, you know, when you grab your chest like that, I'm starting at your age, at your age and with my issues.

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Don't do that. Okay. I was just watching Rich in there. I'm sitting here talking. I'll suddenly grabs his chest.

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I'm like, oh, no, oh, no. It was he had put it stuck his phone in his shirt pocket.

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It was vibrating. This is a live program, folks, and we do not edit it.

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Church teaching, you know, something. Church teaching, well -formed conscience.

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You haven't heard a word of scripture so far, and that's where I'm going with all this eventually. Church teaching holds that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered, though it stresses that gays should be treated with compassion and dignity.

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As Pope and as head of the Vatican's orthodoxy watchdog before that, I love that you can just tell there's there's an axe to grind.

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The person who wrote this Benedict has been a strong enforcer of that teaching. One of the first major documents released during his pontificate said men with deep -seated homosexual tendencies shouldn't be ordained priests.

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Hello. Maybe we should rethink that whole priest thing. Maybe we should go back to like biblical parameters for what the elders were like.

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So I guess if you don't have deep -seated homosexual tendencies, it's OK to be a priest.

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OK, you can see there's a problem there. For the Vatican, though, the gay marriage issue goes beyond questions of homosexuality, threatening what the church considers to be the bedrock of society, a family based on a man, woman, and their children.

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Yeah, that's exactly right. In his speech, the Pope cited Bernheim as lamenting how a new philosophy of sexuality has taken hold, whereby sex and gender are no longer a given element of nature that man has to accept and personally make sense of.

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It is a social role that we choose for ourselves, while in the past it was chosen for us by society.

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Well, even that would be incorrect. It wasn't chosen for us by society. It was chosen for us by God, our

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Creator. I'll just stop there and read just the final line and then make some application here.

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877 -753 -3341 is the phone number. When freedom, quote, when freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the maker himself is denied and ultimately man, too, is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God, Benedict said.

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Those are true words. Those are words that are true because they reflect biblical teaching.

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And the Pope said them. The Pope can say true things, but he says true things not because he's the

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Pope. That's the difference. This is the same thing when we look at church councils.

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We do not invest in church councils, some kind of inspired authority.

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When the Council of Nicaea says what it says about the nature of Christ, it's true because it reflects biblical revelation, not because Nicaea said it.

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But what Benedict said, Cardinal Ratzinger said, is absolutely true because it reflects a biblical worldview.

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But how he gets there and how he defends it is where we have to part company with him.

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But the statements are still true. When freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the maker himself is denied.

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Folks, that is the secular worldview. This is why I have emphasized this over and over again.

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I'm going to emphasize it again. I'm sorry if you get bored with it. But what was the central emphasis of the revelation that God gave to his people when they were faced with the idolatry of the

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Babylonians around them? What was the main thing he felt his people needed to know about the one true

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God? That he is the creator of all things, including themselves.

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Creator of time, sovereign king over all of things, yes, but he's the creator. Everything comes from him.

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You see, if you don't have that and our society no longer has that, it's gone, folks.

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If you believe that and you actually live in light of that, notice I didn't say if you just believe it, because I think one of the biggest problems we as Christians have.

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Is that we say we believe that, but we don't live in light of it, it does not impact the way we think and the way we respond to the world around us.

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If you believe and live in light of the fact that you have a creator who has made you, then you recognize that the way you've been made, how you look, the gifts you have, where you are in life,

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God is behind that. God's behind that.

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And as a result, man, I remember as a young person, this was drilled into my head.

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God gave you the gifts that you have. And when you see someone that doesn't have, that you don't have their gifts, if you feel covetousness, if you if you covet what they have that you don't have, you're sinning.

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You are questioning God's wisdom. Man, that was that was drilled into me and I'm glad that it was because I look around and I see people absolutely miserable.

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They're stuck on the the the hamster wheel trying to keep up with the

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Joneses. They ruin their lives, they ruin their relationships, they ruin their health.

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Why? Because they think that happiness and joy and fulfillment is going to be found in having what somebody else has, not just on the shallow surface level of things, but in looking like them and being like them.

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And you don't have to think that way. You do not have to think that way when you understand that there is a personal.

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Sovereign creator who made you and placed you where you are for a purpose. The sad thing is the laws of this nation were based upon that worldview, and that's why there is such a massive chasm developing between the form of government we've been given and the people who are now trying to use that form of government.

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The two can't go together. The Founding Fathers knew that there is a necessary worldview connection to this experiment and liberty, and my deepest concern, the conclusion

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I have come to is that we've passed the point where this experiment in liberty can continue in its current form at all.

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Immoral people who have no ethics and no morals cannot be a free people, cannot be a free people.

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And the fact that especially our young people are willing to trade their liberties and their freedoms for baubles for a little life goes back to worldview issues.

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And most Christians who are talking about this are just going, well, we need to change how we present this. We need to change how we present that.

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It goes to the heart. But anyways, I started preaching. Back to this. What Benedict said is exactly right.

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The maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God. Exactly right.

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But how does anyone know they're a creature of God? See, Rome says it's by natural law.

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We say that yes, in the sense that we are all created in the image of God, there is that undeniable character that is there.

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But we differ strongly with Rome in regards to this autonomous natural law that exists apart from the supremacy, primacy, and sufficiency of the special revelation of God in Scripture.

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And that's why I would hope. Now, like I said, this writer,

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Nicole Winfield, probably has an axe to grind. And I am sure that there were biblical references sprinkled throughout what

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Benedict said. But the fundamental difference between how Roman Catholic apologists, and I've listened to Roman Catholic apologists.

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I've listened to them attempting to address these things. I listen to Catholic answers live every once in a while. It's not enjoyable to do, but I do.

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It's part of my job. And there will be times when these social, ethical, moral issues come up.

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And we will say many of the same things, but there is a subtle difference and the subtle difference goes to the fact that Rome no longer has the foundation that a true

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Christian church must have. She still has the scriptures and therefore will still say true things.

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But the centrality, and the sufficiency, and the primacy, and the supremacy of the very spoken word of God has been dogmatically denied in the

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Roman system of things. And so as a result, you get this subtle difference, a subtle change.

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True things, yes, but not defensible in the same way that we would present them.

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877 -753 -3341 is the phone number. It has been quite some time since we last listened to a debate that we had begun listening to,

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I would say last summer. And what's interesting is in this particular debate, an announcement was made about an upcoming book that at the time seemed like it was a long time coming.

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Now we're talking about just about next month. Lord willing, oh, and by the way,

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I got an indication for Amazon this morning that my

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Nestle Allen 28th edition Greek New Testament has shipped. So I will soon have it to look at and realize that the only thing different is a few readings in the pastoral epistles.

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But that's interesting in and of itself. I mean, for geeks like me, it's still interesting.

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But you may recall the debate that took place this last, was it

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August or October? None of them thinking about it. No, it couldn't have been October. Had it been August. I don't know.

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Anyways, between Bart Ehrman and Dan Wallace, and we had gotten one hour, 20 minutes and nine seconds into that.

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And I thought, you know, I've already put it in Audio Notetaker. And so it's there.

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I know where we are. So let's go ahead and grab some of that. And then we can also grab a little bit more, a couple more of the sections of the audience questions and interaction from the

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Chris Green, Paul Williams stuff as well. Oh, and by the way, I posted today, man, this thing gave me fits.

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But I got the video up today where I went through at least a couple of the, well, about the only meaningful argumentative sections of Khalil Meek's presentation from The Dean Show and using the new camera and trying to get the glitches out on that.

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And a couple of times I recorded stuff with the new camera and it would just stop like 15 seconds before I was supposed to.

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I'm like, what's it doing? But I got it all figured out. And man, if I even narrated all the troubles

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I had getting that thing to work, but somehow it is on YouTube now. And hopefully it works.

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I think it rendered correctly. No, I've not seen anybody coming to channel saying, no, it doesn't work. So hopefully it's up there, but it's half an hour long.

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So a little longer than I expected it to be, but it's up there. So I would love to, again, if anyone has a means of contacting,

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I got a LinkedIn thing, but I'm not in LinkedIn. So that really didn't help me much. But a direct email address to Mr.

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Meek. I know that he debated Jay Smith and someone tweeted me that he debated

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Jay Smith in a link. I've downloaded the debate so I can listen to it. It was at Midwestern. So I know he does debates, but for some reason he would not allow the video of the debate to be used.

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And I find that odd and somewhat troubling. We would have to make sure that there was a signed and written agreement on that particular issue where we to ever do something like that.

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But again, my understanding is he's down in the Dallas area, more than happy to go down there. If we could work something out, I would love to do two debates, one on the deity of Christ and one on whether Muhammad is prophesied in the

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Bible. Because those are the two issues that he specifically raised as part of his conversion. So I think that'd be well worth doing that.

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Anyways, that is up on the website. Actually, I think it would be a good idea right before we dive back into the

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Wallace Ehrman stuff to take a brief break because I didn't bring my water in with me.

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I was rushing. I got in here one minute beforehand because I was FTPing.

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I've got a new program, by the way, for those of you who listen to WMCA in the New York, the greater

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New York area. I will be having a, I think it's monthly. I think it's monthly.

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I hope it's monthly. Program called Theology Matters. It'll be airing right before Renewing Your Mind.

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I think it's... I think it's... Well, I better find out, huh? Anyways, I recorded the first one today and I was sending it up to the radio station and got that done right beforehand.

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So let's take a brief break. We'll be right back. Be sure to tune in again next week when we'll be talking about the importance of solemnly testifying of the gospel of the grace of God.

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The proclamation of God's truth is the most important element of his worship in his church.

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The elders and people of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church invite you to worship with them this coming

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Lord's Day. The morning Bible study begins at 9 30 a .m. and the worship service is at 10 45.

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Evening services are at 6 30 p .m. on Sunday and the Wednesday night prayer meeting is at 7.

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The Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church is located at 3805 North 12th Street in Phoenix.

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You can call for further information at 602 -26 -GRACE. If you're unable to attend, you can still participate with your computer and real audio at PRBC .org

33:45

where the ministry extends around the world through the archives of sermons and Bible study lessons available 24 hours a day.

33:59

And welcome back to The Dividing Line. I don't know. I don't know if I can continue on because I just found out that Summer's in channel and she's not having

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Clementine listen to The Dividing Line. This would have been the first opportunity that Clementine would have had to listen to The Dividing Line and instead she's asleep.

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I mean, where are the priorities? That's the Grinch in the other room.

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He can't do anything anymore now because he's pulled his sleeves down over his fingers to keep them warm.

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Come on. It's 65 to 65. I can't feel my feet. Then you need warmer socks.

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Wine, wine, wine. Oh, good grief. Okay. Anyhow, let us press on.

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I am not even going to bother to try to give you the context here.

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We're just going to dive in. This was the debate between Bart Ehrman and Dan Wallace on the subject of the transmission of the text of the

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New Testament. Do a few minutes here on this and then pick up the level a bit.

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Truly, if you want to appreciate Bart Ehrman, listen to Paul Williams.

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I never thought that Bart Ehrman would have a positive effect upon someone, but listening to Bart Ehrman makes you appreciate

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Bart Ehrman or vice versa, the other direction. I don't know. Anyway, so let's just dive into where we had last stopped.

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There's probably like two people that know exactly where it was we last stopped. I don't, but the computer did, thankfully.

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How does he know that the manuscripts were not changed?

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He agrees with me that there are hundreds of passages that really matter. But then he wants to stress that no essential

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Christian beliefs are affected. And he quotes me to that effect. That is absolutely true. Well, now we certainly know where we are.

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We are in the very heart of the issue, the very heart of the issue that, unfortunately, our

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Muslim friends don't seem to want to fully understand what the issues are. We certainly discovered that in our last trip to London.

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We are at the very heart of the issue that we need to be able to communicate. If you are a Sunday school teacher, boy, talk about shifting gears, but I'm not.

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If you are a Sunday school teacher and you say, well, I just teach sixth and seventh grade,

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I teach young kids. If you can, in any way, communicate to them the reliability of the scriptures, not just the bland statement, but if you can understand what this debate is about, then you will be able to communicate that to others and do for them something that might have life changing implications.

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I've said many times. I can see this guy's face in my mind. I don't remember his name, but I remember his face very clearly.

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He and I both started going to Fuller Theological Seminary at the same time here in Phoenix. It was a small enough group that you pretty much got to know everybody.

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Real nice guy. Didn't go to my church, went to a different church, but real nice guy.

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And I knew where he was coming from theologically when we both started.

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All I can tell you is that when he graduated, he had a Master's of Divinity in Confusion. He didn't have the proper foundation and as a result, just, and I can understand why.

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I had to go through all those struggles. I had to deal with all the contradictory views that were being presented and all the rest of this stuff.

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And, but I went in with a strong foundation. If you, if we could send our young people off to college and even, yes, even to seminary with a solid foundation and understanding of why we believe in the reliability of scriptures.

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Oh, what a difference we could make. And my, the next generation is going to have so many battles to fight.

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And what, what I'm concerned about is that when we are constantly battling against a society that has determined to, to silence us, the tendency is that we become soft on the specifics of the faith.

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That's why you see a lot of people, we feel like we're a smaller and smaller group.

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And so let's not worry about the, the non -essentials. Well, what are the non -essentials?

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That line starts moving. And for a lot of people, it's already over the mere

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Christianity line. The non -essentials are everything past the Trinity, crucifixion, resurrection.

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Anything past that, non -essential. Hence, gospel, justification, all that stuff, non -essential.

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Now we don't want to be, you know, there's a pendulum swing where people will go, yeah, but I know people, they think everything's an essential.

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Yeah, I know. I see people, you know, make a certain kind of speculative eschatology.

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And I'm using that specifically of whether you're pre -post or for some people pre -mid -post and stuff like that.

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Turn that stuff into absolute necessities. I've been to churches where, you know, you sign on the dotted line right here with this very, very, very, very, very, very, very specific eschatological viewpoint.

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And we go, well, we don't want to go there. So we can't draw the line anywhere. And yet we all know the line has to be drawn someplace.

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What are the essentials? If you can communicate, and I mean you, and you go, how do you know who you is?

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Most of the people that listen to this program are involved in solid churches. Not all, but most.

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And most of you are probably involved in some type of service, ministry, teaching young kids.

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And if you can communicate to them and other people in your fellowship, what we're talking about when we listen to Bart Ehrman.

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And Bart Ehrman's saying, how does Dan Wallace know those earlier manuscripts, the ones we don't have?

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How does he know they weren't changed? We've already addressed this. It's been so long. Let me remind you.

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What is the response to Bart Ehrman at this point? He's admitting, look, once we have manuscripts, yeah, we know, we can take the text back to that point.

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We're okay with that. But that's in the second century. What about those first few decades?

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And what's the answer? Multi -vocality. Multiple authors writing at different times to different audiences in different places, producing multiple streams of transmission.

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If all we had was some monk in a cave somewhere and say, ah, there's the one stream, there's the one pure text.

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That's what everybody wants. That's what Adnan Rashid wants. Remember, you listen.

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I just wrote to Adnan today. I said, could really use those nice professional videos of our debates from London. I haven't gotten those yet.

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I wanted to play them from my class next week. Um, well, they're not quite ready yet.

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But, um, in that debate, remember what Adnan said? Hey, if I've got Uthman's Quran, that's good enough for me.

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And all the Muslims are like, yeah. And they don't realize that's just the same thing as the King James. And King James is good enough for me.

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Yeah. That's not the original. That's a version.

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And they, well, I like to have that. No questions. That's not what we're looking for.

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That's not what we're saying. That's not what we're claiming. Because the

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New Testament text is distributed all across the world. Yes, we have textual variation as a result.

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Because it wasn't just by professional scribes with photocopiers. But if there was alterations in the text.

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If there was, you know, some guy decided, you know what? I don't like what Paul said in that book of Ephesians.

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I'm going to change it. Well, if there is only one line of transmission, that would be a bad thing.

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But there wasn't. There wasn't just one line of transmission. There were many lines of transmission.

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And so if you had someone who made alterations to a text, it would stand out like a sore thumb.

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We would see that in the multiple lines as they appear in history. That's not what we see.

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What we see is the natural process of the transmission of one text.

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Not multiple altered texts, but the text that goes back to what Paul himself wrote.

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That's what we see. Now, I realize that most people don't think through topics like this.

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Don't think through, oh man, do I really have to think about how texts were transmitted in the ancient world?

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You know what? Thanks to the internet and thanks to the rise of secularism and thanks to the fact that the secularists hate the gospel and therefore they're going to hate the means by which the gospel is proclaimed.

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And that's the New Testament. The answer is, yep, we sure do. That's our calling.

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That's where God's placed us. We need to embrace it and love it and serve and not do this.

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Oh, this doesn't seem very spiritual to me. Your spiritual service of ministry is determined by where God places you in time.

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This is where we are. This is what we need to know. That's all there is to it.

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I don't think that Dan's theology will change, no matter which variance he looks at.

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Now, that's interesting. Partly, Ehrman is recognizing.

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Partly, he's recognizing that the fundamental aspects of Christian theology are derived from enough different passages of scripture that any one variant is not going to change them.

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I think he would admit that that's true. But partly, also what he's saying is that Christian theology really isn't firmly based in scripture alone but has an external authority to it.

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I think that's sort of implicit in some of the things he's saying. But is that how we gauge significance?

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Does the problem not matter because none of our theological doctrines are changed?

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Let me give you an analogy. Now, this is, again, to understand Bart Ehrman, you have got to understand that this came up in our debate.

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It came up in the previous debate he did with Dan. It's come up in this debate. I corrected him on it.

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Dan has corrected him on it. I'm pretty certain that Dan has corrected him on it in private conversation as well.

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I've heard less conservative scholars in dialogue with Ehrman that have likewise corrected him on it.

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This is a blind spot for Bart Ehrman. Maybe it's a blind spot because he is an apostate, and if he were to recognize this, he would recognize that one of the main reasons for his apostasy was not a valid reason.

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I don't know. Got to get into some psychoanalysis at that point. But when we say that the

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New Testament has been transmitted in such a way that we can know what it teaches despite any textual variation, that we know what it teaches about who

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God is, who Christ is, what Christ came to do, all the rest of this stuff, he hears that for some reason.

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He hears that as you are saying that there are irrelevant or non -important textual variants.

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Well, of course there are, and he would admit that at least, I would say

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I would be shocked if he would quibble at this point, minimally 90%. We would say more than that, 99 % are irrelevant to the transmission of the text.

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Most of those cannot even be explained in English. They're only relevant to word order or spelling or things like that.

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What he hears us saying is that even important textual variants aren't important, and that's not what we're saying.

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We're not saying that, but for some reason, he is just absolutely dead set on insisting that we are saying these are unimportant, that it's unimportant to know.

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Well, I'll give an example. Since I mentioned the NA28, Jude 5.

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Jude 5, the NA28 reads differently than the NA27. And interestingly enough, the

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ESV follows the NA28 before the NA28 came out. Maybe they had heads up that this was going to be what the reading was going to be.

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But it talks about Jesus. Well, let me pull it up for you here in Jude.

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I don't have to put one, but, Now, I desire to remind you, though you know all things once for all, that the

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Lord, that's the New American Standard reading, that the Lord, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe.

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And New American Standard has a footnote there. Two early manuscripts read Jesus, while the ESV has adopted as its reading that Jesus, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt.

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Now, if you look at the textual material at that point, it's pretty complex.

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There's no two ways about it. It is a difficult, difficult reading.

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And as a result, I can understand why people would struggle with it.

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And I'm not going to go through it all right now. But the point is, we recognize this reading.

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And I would not say that it's irrelevant. And in fact, it would have an impact on Christian theology in, and this is the impact that it has, in the sense that it would change the number of verses that you could list in regards to a particular theological belief.

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Now, I think you could argue that the Lord in Jude is definitely in reference to Jesus anyways.

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But if it says, Jesus delivered a people out of Egypt, wow. I mean, that would very much go into the category of a demonstration.

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The early writers, the writers of the New Testament themselves, saw Jesus as Yahweh in the

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Old Testament, as functioning with those powers and titles and abilities. So no one's saying that that's not important.

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Dan Wallace is not saying that it's not important to look at that. But what we are saying is, the deity of Christ is not dependent upon whether you read

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Yesus or Kyrios at Jude 5. And so I don't understand,

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I'll be honest with you, it's hard for me to understand why Ehrman is so invested in this.

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That he can't even hear what we're saying about it. I find that to say more about Bart Ehrman than about us.

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Suppose tomorrow morning we woke up, and it turned out that in every Bible throughout the entire world, there was no longer to be found the

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Gospel of Mark, Paul's letter to the Philippians, or the book of 1 Peter. Which doctrines of the

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Christian faith would be affected by the loss of those three books? Not a single doctrine.

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Well, I would like to, I'm feeling positive today.

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Maybe being a new grandfather, you know, see new life and all that stuff.

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So I would like to think, but I know it's not true.

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But I would like to think that maybe whether he wants to be doing it or not, what

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Bart Ehrman is doing here, is he is giving testimony, probably unwillingly, to the fact that the

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New Testament does present to us what we call the analogy of faith.

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I would prefer a better term than that. But it is the harmonious teaching of Christian truth in many different ways all across the spectrum of the canon.

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So how many books would we have to lose before something would be lost in the sense of a defining

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Christian doctrine? Now, I think if we lost everything he listed there, if we didn't have those books, we would lose something.

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We would lose something in the sense of clarity of expression, force of expression. Certainly, when we come to synoptic studies,

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Matthew, Mark, Luke, certainly we would lose things there. But would we lose the deity of Christ?

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Would we lose the sacrificial death of Christ? No. Is there a minimum canon?

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Well, I suppose there is. But remember, there were believers in Jesus Christ before the first book of the

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New Testament was written. Of course, they had apostles at that time. It's not God's will that we should not have these things.

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But maybe in a backhanded way, he is giving testimony to the fact that, yes, the

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New Testament as a whole presents Christian theology harmoniously.

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I know he doesn't believe that. But he is giving testimony to the fact that it does present

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Christian doctrine in that way. Would it be significant? Yes, it'd be significant.

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It'd be hugely significant. Significance does not ride on whether essential beliefs are affected.

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Dan closed his talk by talking about whether we can recover the autographs. And to my thinking, he has not satisfactorily answered the question.

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And so I'd like him to try again. How do we know that the text was not changed significantly before our earliest surviving manuscripts?

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How? Because if you're going to... Remember, he wants to say, you're saying it's pure.

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You have to prove that. That's not how you do textual criticism. When you have a united multiple line, when you have the...

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And he admits this. The earliest and best and most widely attested work of all of antiquity, he's trying to argue that you can assume the guilt and corruption of the text rather than prove it.

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And I say to you, if you're going to assert a fundamental corruption, then you need to explain how multiple lines of transmission do not give evidence of it.

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If there was a... Then, in fact, what he would have to prove, evidently, what he would have to theorize is that it was the corrupt line that banished all of the accurate lines.

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That's what he'd have to argue, that there was actually a switching so that a later text...

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And this is only in a matter of decades. That's why he has to. I would like him to surprise me on this.

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But when this book comes out with these very early papyri fragments, it would seem to me that he would have a vested interest in trying to date them as late as possible rather than as early as possible.

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Because we're only talking a couple decades here. We're talking a very brief period of time. Tumultuous times?

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Yeah, the first 300 years were. But that's still what he would have to do.

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What is our basis of knowledge for that? I would like him to address that question and let me make it more specific.

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What is his basis of knowledge for that? It is the very nature of the manuscript tradition itself.

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And, you know, Dr. Ehrman has known this. His teacher knew this.

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The man that, to be honest with you, he used his name to gain the position that he's gained knew this and I'm sure discussed it.

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And if Bart Ehrman today is basically saying that Bruce Metzger was all wrong on this subject,

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I wish he'd just come out and say it. I think it would help some other folks to maybe see the evolution in his thought process and argumentation.

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At that point as well. Well, I'm not going to click the next one because the theme music is about to come up.

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But let me just remind you that it was decided that there will be no dividing lines next week.

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But the new web store will come up and, of course, the Wayback Machine will be playing along happily,

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Lord willing, next week as well. Look forward to it. I will be in Sacramento next Wednesday evening.

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There's information on our banner ads. I will be speaking on the subject of Islam up in Sacramento.

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And so those of you, the few Christians that live in that crazy place, I'd be looking forward to meeting with you at that time as well.

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We'll see you then. Thanks for listening. God bless. If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602, or write us at P .O.

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Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the

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World Wide Web at aomin .org, that's A -O -M -I -N dot O -R -G, where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.