August 11, 2005

Alpha & Omega Ministries iconAlpha & Omega Ministries

4 views

Comments are disabled.

00:12
From the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded
00:19
Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us. Get to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
00:26
Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
00:32
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
00:42
United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
00:49
James White. Good afternoon and welcome to The Dividing Line on a
00:54
Thursday afternoon. Lots of stuff to look at today and to take your phone calls at 877 -753 -3341, 877 -753 -3341, is the phone number where you can get involved with the program today.
01:13
Well, where do we start first? I suppose it would be best to skip over the unpleasantries of recent developments, shall we say.
01:24
Really not much more to be said than what has been said on the blog and on the documentation provided there.
01:33
Let's just say that sometimes in dealing with folks who have a long history of opposition to the gospel, it can get a little bit unpleasant.
01:42
And of course, sometimes that lasts for like 14 years. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, then don't worry about it.
01:50
That's perfectly fine. We don't have to even concern ourselves with it. But if you follow the blog, then you know that of which
01:57
I am referring to. But unless there are further developments there, and who knows, maybe some excuses will be offered like space aliens or something like that.
02:08
We can discuss that should it come up. But other than that, I think anyone who wants to know the truth is able to determine what the truth is.
02:19
And that's really all there is to talk about at that point. I was out once again on what's called the
02:26
Sun Valley Parkway, which is basically Charlie Keating built the
02:31
Sun Valley Parkway many, many years ago. At that time, it was out in the middle of nowhere. And he was going to build a community out to the northwest of Phoenix.
02:43
And it was going to be, I don't know, his dream community, I guess.
02:48
They were going to have covenants there about how you could behave and all sorts of stuff. And so he built this road that goes from way northwest
02:56
Phoenix all the way around what are called the White Tank Mountains down to Interstate 10.
03:02
A lot of you have heard of I -10. That's a rather major road across the United States. And of course, he ended up in prison.
03:09
So the community didn't get built. They're building stuff out there now, sadly. But it is a cyclist's paradise, because on some days, you'll only have maybe 10 cars pass you while riding for hours and hours on end.
03:25
And it's just a nice, wide, open road. And if you don't like playing tag with cars, because most people don't know how to drive with a bicycle nearby them, then that's a great place to ride.
03:39
And so if you're trying to get a lot of miles in, in fact, the, what do you call it? The far end down near I -10, they use that because it's fairly flat as a time trialing area.
03:49
If you want to ride time trials, I know a fellow that, in fact, I used to ride with back in the 90s just set the 100 -mile time trial record out there on the
03:58
Sun Valley Parkway. So it's a great place to go ride. And so I was out there day before, no, just yesterday morning, yesterday morning.
04:07
Seems like a long time ago. But I was out there yesterday morning doing, I thought I was doing 50 miles. I did 49 miles because I forgot,
04:14
I didn't add things up correctly and got back and beamed my workout to my, to my computer and went, duh, don't, do not do math in an oxygen -starved state.
04:25
You know, while, well, right now I know everyone thinks every time you talk about how warm it is in Phoenix, everybody says, yeah, well, it's a dry heat.
04:34
For the past couple of days, it's been, there's been more moisture in the air in Phoenix than in Miami. Okay. This is the monsoon.
04:41
This is our incredibly icky time of the year. So the worst time in the world to go back to being a bicyclist, but that's what
04:49
I did starting June 14th. And so I was out there trying to get a 50 -mile bike ride in.
04:55
And it's also one of the only ways that I can get much studying in, without distraction, in listening to what people have to say.
05:04
And the MP3 players has made that, oh, so much easier than it was. Well, you can even do a lot of, a lot of things that we get to do today, back when
05:13
I was riding back in the 90s. So anyway, I've been doing a lot of listening to John Dominic Crossan.
05:19
And I likewise took the time to track down some lectures by Dr.
05:26
Marcus Borg, because he will be a part of the discussion on the subject of the resurrection on the ship.
05:34
So coming up, if you're not aware of this, especially for those of you in the Seattle area, if you're listening to this,
05:40
I would imagine that you are aware of this by now. But in case, you know, you've been hiding under a rock, fearful of a thermonuclear attack or something like that, we have our conference and debate coming up in basically two weeks from now in Seattle.
05:57
And that's going to be incredible. And of course, that's where my focus is, or it needs, that needs to be where my focus is.
06:04
It is, that is where it is. But boy, there's a lot of stuff getting in the way of really getting the stuff done that I want to get done.
06:09
Anyhow, so I'm out there listening to Dr. Borg. And I mentioned in channel this morning, it must have been rather odd to see this fellow riding along the road out in the desert.
06:24
And every once in a while you'd hear, oh, no, that's not what it means.
06:29
And it's sounds of disgust and things like that, as I was listening to these, these lectures, especially concerning the
06:38
Bible and, and all the rest of this stuff. But then part of the, one of the lectures, well, a series of lectures ended up being a discussion between Marcus Borg and N .T.
06:52
Wright. And these are from the Chautauqua Conference Center, where I've been listening to a number of presentations by Dr.
07:02
Crosson and Dr. Borg. And it was fascinating to listen to the two going at it.
07:08
I'm not really certain how much anybody sitting there who hasn't been studying this stuff for a long time was getting out of it, because the vocabulary is very, very specific.
07:22
And, you know, I would just imagine someone who just, you know, attends a conference center for the, for the fun of it during the summer.
07:30
I don't know a lot about this place, but it seems like some place you go for the summer and you stay and, you know, do your summer vacation type thing.
07:37
And they bring these folks in who all seem to be way off the left someplace. So I'd imagine a lot of these folks wear
07:44
Birkenstocks and have patches on their sleeves and things like that. But anyway, what an amazing thing to listen to these these discussions and sort of wondered just and listening to the audience questions afterwards.
07:59
Some people get it, but some people you can tell are just going, what are you people talking about? So anyways, N .T.
08:04
Wright and Marcus Borg are going back and forth. And partly because I think of the fact that they did a book together.
08:14
And so maybe they were promoting that or something. I don't know. But it's interesting to listen to to the give and take.
08:20
I want to play a section of it here and interact with it. Part of it that that caught my attention, especially and made me go, hmm, this would be something to be worthwhile sharing with folks.
08:36
Is that you listen to N .T. Wright and, you know, sometimes he says things you just go, yeah.
08:47
Oh, good. Boom. You know, he's going to do something. He's going to do that in part of what
08:53
I play here. But then having just said that, he can turn around and take everything back that you just said in essence and leave you going, what?
09:07
And that takes place in this as well. So it'll give you a little sense of of Borg, but also some odd stuff from N .T.
09:18
Wright. So here, let's listen to my turn. OK, well, I'm taking you again.
09:23
OK, OK. Well, I think I'd like to press you a little bit on an assumption that I was making as I was preparing my talk.
09:32
That's Borg. And he's asking a question of N .T. Wright, namely that you would stretch the limits of the spectacular further than I probably am willing to.
09:40
I mean, do you think that Jesus did feed five thousand with a few loaves and fishes? Let me let me stop right there.
09:47
They don't like using the term miraculous. They would rather use the term spectacular.
09:54
Yeah. OK. And that had been part of this was the introductory discussion they were having.
10:00
So it was foundations. And so it had to do with worldviews and things like that.
10:06
And interestingly enough, Borg identified them both as postmodernists. In fact, he identified himself as a post, post, post modernist.
10:13
If that gives you some idea of where he's coming from. You think he did walk in the water? I don't mean. Let me let me say where I come at this from.
10:21
I don't find it helpful to say as an exercise in abstract thinking, how far do
10:27
I or don't I stretch the limits of the spectacular? I begin by saying, as I think you probably do, if God is
10:35
God in any meaningful sense, God can do all sorts of things that probably are outside our initial assumptions.
10:42
And that's not just within modernity, but within all sorts of other cultures. Would you extend that to other religious traditions?
10:48
Oh, there are all sorts of evidence for all sorts of odd things happening in all sorts of different traditions, religious and not.
10:55
And some of those happen, do you think? Oh, yeah. You know, the world is full of extraordinary things that are well documented, but which modernism has really had a hard time coming to terms with.
11:07
By the way, I don't describe myself as a postmodernist, except in the very loose senses that you use. I think of myself as a post postmodernist, but that's a conversation.
11:16
That's a conversation for another occasion altogether. And I'm post post post. Well, that's fine, that's fine.
11:22
And the check is in the post, in case you're wondering. I start by looking at the big picture of the rise of Christianity and the resurrection of Jesus within that.
11:36
We'll come to this on Thursday, I think. And in the light of what I discover at all sorts of levels, as a historian, but as I've already said, doing history is a self -involving exercise as a self -involved historian.
11:50
Looking at that question, I find myself saying, of course, all the early
11:56
Christians knew that dead people don't normally rise. I mean, that's part of the given, but that Jesus actually did for reasons which we'll come to on Thursday.
12:04
And that in the light of that, I look back at the rest of the stories and I say, this is very bizarre, but it looks as though some of this stuff actually happened.
12:13
Now, of course, it is part of the deal, as with the Exodus stories, that when you have a Moses doing stuff with a rod and a serpent, the magicians of Egypt can do the same thing.
12:23
It's part of the given in the New Testament that Jesus did exorcisms. The early church did exorcisms and so did
12:29
Jews and no doubt other people do exorcisms. However, the resurrection does seem to be a complete shock both to Judaism and to Hellenism.
12:40
But it's in the light of that shock, not as... Now, the problem is not because it's a one isolated oddity.
12:47
It's not like God making a square circle or God making pigs fly or something like... or Santa Ni with his head under his arm in that delightful story.
12:56
This is more like new creation. It's a reaffirmation of something within creation rather than a bizarre twist as though some celestial prankster was just having a fun day.
13:11
There's a story of the Buddha walking on the water and I'm willing to take that story equally as seriously as the story of Jesus and say probably yes or probably no to both.
13:22
And then I would add, again very quickly, I was in a debate with another scholar earlier this year and he said, why do you have a problem with the virgin birth?
13:30
There's a story about Lao Tzu being born from the side of an elephant. And I said, if you'll believe that Lao Tzu was born from the side of an elephant,
13:40
I'll believe in the virgin birth. Okay, that's one I need to type out. I need to put a mark there.
13:52
I guess it's one of the reasons that I've found listening to some of the lectures to be a little bit more interesting than books because books have editors and editors flag something like this and go, do you really want to say that?
14:06
Is that really where you want to go with this? Because I listen to that and I go, wow, you actually think there's a parallel there.
14:17
And evidently he does. You have a proper religious grounding, purpose, context, history.
14:31
You've taken into account the absolute amazing element in a monotheistic religion, not in a polytheistic religion, not in an animistic religion, but in a monotheistic religion where you have a transcendent
14:54
God. You've taken into account how utterly amazing it is that that God would enter into his own creation and the purposes of doing that and how vastly different the
15:10
Christian perspective on the virgin birth is and the reasons for the virgin birth and the purpose of the virgin birth than you'd have in any of these other religions.
15:21
And then you can just sort of throw it out and say, well, if you believe that Lao Tzu came out of the son of an elephant, then
15:28
I'll believe the virgin birth. I've mentioned to folks that I didn't mind listening to Dr.
15:37
Crossan as I was writing the week before for a long period of time, because he's a
15:43
Roman Catholic in the sense of being raised in a Roman Catholic church. He was a priest for almost two decades and I hear where he's coming from.
15:55
But to Dr. Borg, as I understand, is a Swedish Lutheran or came out of a
16:01
Swedish Lutheran background and hence is a Protestant liberal, way, way liberal.
16:08
I mean, not even within the bounds of Orthodox anymore, of course. And it's not nearly as fun to listen to Dr.
16:16
Borg as it is Dr. Crossan. No, not even close. And that's why, I mean, that kind of lighthearted, if you'll believe, and whether, though he tries to hide it, he cannot help but hide the fact that he really finds historic
16:34
Orthodox Christianity, which he describes as the former paradigm, over against the emerging paradigm, which is his own,
16:41
I guess, this very pluralistic type of thing, affirming really nothing more than whatever you feel.
16:53
He really can't hide the fact that he really, really doesn't have much respect for anyone who can possibly believe that kind of stuff.
17:04
He likens it to the difference between the Ptolemaic and Copernican views of astronomy and, of course, what that means is that if you're the fundamentalist and anyone who believes that the
17:17
Bible is actually the word of God, it's God breathed, he even used that term once, which shocked me, if you actually believe those things, then you're in the old, you know, the world spins around the earth type of perspective.
17:30
So, anyway, I just found that amazing, how very facile he is at that point, and it's,
17:41
I don't know, not enjoyable to listen to. This is really a comment with a question attached, but a footnote.
17:52
By the way, you said the majority of North American scholars believe in Q. That's certainly true.
17:59
Worldwide, it's much more complicated than that, and most Q scholarship is not done in North America.
18:05
There is a problem which we from the other side of the Atlantic Sea hear. Now, let me stop and make sure that you're tracking here.
18:12
The subject of Q is not exactly something that most evangelicals are running around discussing, though it's probably something we'll be discussing a whole lot more, should be discussing a whole lot more than we are.
18:24
Q, of course, is a term that refers to a German word,
18:29
Quella, which means source. So much of theology is just simply knowing a little something about another language, and it is simply the terminology that is used to refer to a never seen hypothetical collection of sayings, not actions, not activities, but sayings of Jesus that is allegedly to have existed, and it allegedly existed because when you look at, for example, the
19:04
Harmony of the Gospels that I'm using in teaching through the Synoptics right now at our church, you look at Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and there are times when
19:15
Matthew and Luke and Mark are tracking together in reporting the same particular incident, and they're pretty much online with one another, and then there will be these sections where Mark, if he's placed in the middle, is missing.
19:29
Mark doesn't record a particular incident, and one might say, well, how does that, you know, what's the importance there?
19:39
Well, people argue constantly, and have been for hundreds of years now, as to the relationship that exists between the
19:48
Synoptic Gospels, and in the U .S., as Dr. Wright just noted, the primary viewpoint of quote -unquote scholarship, and of course, how do you define that?
20:03
The people on the left don't have any problem in essence saying the people on the right aren't really a part of scholarship, and the people on the right return the favor very frequently, and people in the middle try to be as broad -minded as possible,
20:16
I suppose, but using the term in its broader sense, the majority of scholars would seem to believe that Mark is the first Gospel written.
20:28
This is called Markan priority, and that Matthew and Luke possess
20:34
Mark, that they possess, I would assume in written form, what
20:40
Mark writes. And so when Matthew and Luke are talking about something else, when they have one of these sections where Mark isn't there anymore, well, where did that come from?
20:52
Especially when there is a great deal of agreement between Matthew and Luke in recording this non -Markan material.
21:00
Well, what is the source? And that's where Quella comes in. What is the
21:05
Quella, the cue, the source? And so the idea is there's this hypothetical collection of sayings, because most of the time when they're doing this, it's something where he's just talking about something.
21:23
It's a collection of sayings of the Lord Jesus. And so the cue source, or as Marcus Borg has even done a book called, the cue gospel, where he just basically collects all that stuff.
21:35
Oh, thank you very, very much. I appreciate that. Don't worry. That was my weather thingy warning me about something stupid.
21:46
There's nothing anywhere in the county that's overly relevant. It just did the boom, boom, boom thing.
21:54
We have a weather alert for Maricopa County. Aren't we all excited about that? Anyhow, hey, it's live webcasting, folks.
22:02
It happens. So anyway, what they're discussing here is the fact that in American scholarship, that's almost all that you're even taught in certain schools.
22:19
That's almost all that you don't even hear a whole lot about much else in a lot of seminaries in the
22:26
United States. And I was very interested in hearing Dr. Wright in essence say, no, we don't know that cue existed as a collection of writings.
22:38
We don't know what it would have looked like. There's all sorts of discussion about this. And that's one of the things
22:46
I was going, yeah, very interesting to hear someone in his position saying that.
22:53
And that's what he's talking about there. So that's going to come back up here in a couple moments in the first question that is asked in regards to the
23:01
Gospel of John from the audience, too. So there's the background for that. I know most of you were all aware of that, but we want to keep our bagel in the same direction here.
23:09
Like when, you know, you have this thing called the World Series, but only American teams take part in it.
23:18
We do feel sometimes we're being, well, never mind. I notice you're not playing the
23:26
Rugby World Cup that's coming up soon. Or maybe you are, but you're not going to win. I have a different account of how our view of history remembered and history metaphorized impinges upon our decisions about Jesus.
23:41
You were saying that it's dependent on a prior reading of individual incidents in the
23:46
Gospels as history remembered or history metaphorized that makes us then say, therefore,
23:51
Jesus was like this. I suspect, actually, that not only for me, but also for the majority of people, e .g.
23:59
in the Jesus seminar, which I know is quite a broad category in itself, it actually works the other way, that there's a big picture of what is likely or unlikely, which then leads people to say, in this respect, this is metaphorical or this is remembered.
24:15
Is that not a fair point? Yes, yes. Response time? Yes, sure. And I would agree that not enough scholars acknowledge the extent to which their gestalt, or overall picture of Jesus, affects what they then will see as historical and non -historical.
24:32
Let's stop that one right there. I want to repeat that, because maybe, again, some of the
24:40
British lingo, some of the background terminology made you start watching something on television.
24:47
Listen to what Dr. Borg says here, because I'm afraid that in discussing almost every single aspect of both debates, between myself and Dr.
25:05
Crossan, and then the discussion with myself and Dr. Renahan, and then Dr. Borg and Dr.
25:11
Crossan on the ship, almost anything we can talk about is going to come back to this, because the entire presentation that they make, the entire position that they sketch out, is based upon the presuppositions that they've started with, which in essence say,
25:33
Jesus could not have been more than this. Jesus could not have been unique. We have to turn
25:39
Jesus into an illiterate Jewish peasant, and so when you find him reading from the book of Isaiah in the synagogue, well, he couldn't do that.
25:48
And so this obviously is a later story being projected back upon Jesus, and what's it trying to tell us, and then you get to do all this wonderful spiritualizing and allegorizing and coming up with theories, and that's how you write papers to become tenured in your position, and voila, voila, voila.
26:05
So every time, no matter what passage of scripture we bring up, that's what's going to come back to, is they don't have to worry about harmonizing anything.
26:18
They don't have to worry about seeing things as a whole.
26:24
You can just simply chop the entire story up and treat everything as, well, in my understanding of what
26:32
Jesus could have been, then this would mean this, and he wouldn't have said this, but what
26:39
Luke here is communicating is, Luke was having a power struggle in the church in the 80s, or in the 90s, and this is why he says this, and there you go.
26:52
And that's what you end up with. So listen again to what Dr. Bourke says here. This is remembered. Is that not a fact?
26:58
Yes, yes. Response time? Yes. And I would agree that not enough scholars acknowledge the extent to which their gestalt, or overall picture of Jesus, affects what they then will see as historical and non -historical.
27:14
And then I would immediately argue that of course it is a, well, it's the classic hermeneutical circle, if you will.
27:20
There's this reciprocal back -and -forth relationship constantly between gestalt and data.
27:26
So it's not simply you come up with a gestalt and then make the judgments about the data. It is a back -and -forth thing.
27:33
Except I don't know how it can be much of a back -and -forth thing for the Jesus Seminar. I suppose if someone were to find the rest of 7Q5, which is a fragment from Dead Sea Scrolls that may contain a section of the
27:45
Gospel of Mark, if it does, it would push it back 30 years, and it would destroy the vast majority of the argumentation and hypothesizing concerning the early period in Christian history.
28:03
I suppose that would be one instance where they would have to deal with that.
28:10
But other than that, without some major find like that, really how do you, since these are starting presuppositions, how do you address those things?
28:20
That's going to be one of the questions that's going to come up in the cross -examination and the discussion on the ship and all of it.
28:28
So it's going to be very, very important. And I suppose what I would say about your way of working with the question of gestalt and data is that one of your tests for the viability of an overall hypothesis is the amount of the data that it can accommodate within it.
28:51
And I think for your... I'm going to stop right there because we need to take our break. What he's about to say about right is something he would say much more about me, and will say much more about me,
29:05
I would imagine, in just a couple of weeks. But we're going to take our first break, and your phone calls as well at 877 -753 -3341.
29:12
We'll be right back. This portion of the dividing line has been made possible by the
29:34
Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. The Apostle Paul spoke of the importance of solemnly testifying of the gospel of the grace of God.
29:42
The proclamation of God's truth is the most important element of his worship in his church. The elders and people of the
29:49
Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church invite you to worship with them this coming Lord's Day. The morning
29:54
Bible study begins at 9 .30 a .m., and the worship service is at 10 .45. Evening services are at 6 .30
30:02
p .m. on Sunday, and the Wednesday night prayer meeting is at 7 .00. The Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church is located at 3805
30:10
North 12th Street in Phoenix. You can call for further information at 602 -26 -GRACE.
30:17
If you're unable to attend, you can still participate with your computer and real audio at prbc .org,
30:24
where the ministry extends around the world through the archives of sermons and Bible study lessons available 24 hours a day.
30:33
Is the Bible true? Never before in history has the authority and inspiration of the
30:39
Holy Scriptures been so viciously attacked by those outside the pale of orthodoxy and within the walls of traditional evangelicalism itself.
30:47
Join us August 27, 2005 at the Sea -Tac Marriott for an historic debate between Evangelical Christian apologist
30:55
Dr. James R. White and world -renowned Jesus Seminar co -founder and Bible skeptic
31:01
Dr. John Dominic Crossan as they debate a topic which every Christian should be concerned about.
31:07
Is the Bible true? Seating and tickets are limited, so call today 877 -753 -3341 or visit aomin .org
31:17
to reserve your seat today. That's 877 -753 -3341 to be a part of this historic event that will illuminate the fault lines of faith between conservative and liberal
31:30
Christians alike. Under the guise of tolerance, modern culture grants alternative lifestyle status to homosexuality.
31:38
Even more disturbing, some within the church attempt to revise and distort Christian teaching on this behavior.
31:43
In their book, The Same -Sex Controversy, James White and Jeff Neal write for all who want to better understand the
31:50
Bible's teaching on the subject, explaining and defending the foundational Bible passages that deal with homosexuality, including
31:57
Genesis, Leviticus and Romans. Expanding on these scriptures, they refute the revisionist arguments including the claim that Christians today need not adhere to the law.
32:07
In a straightforward and loving manner, they appeal to those caught up in a homosexual lifestyle to repent and to return to God's plan for His people.
32:17
The Same -Sex Controversy, defending and clarifying the Bible's message about homosexuality. Get your copy in the bookstore at aomin .org.
32:53
And welcome back to The Dividing Line. We are listening to an exchange between Marcus Borg and N .T.
33:00
Wright on basically the same issues that we are going to be discussing up in Seattle. Dr.
33:06
Borg is now making an observation concerning N .T. Wright's gestalt, his worldview.
33:14
Let's listen in. Now, listen to what he's saying there.
33:30
I think it's an insightful observation. And if I were Dr. Wright, I'd be extremely complimented by it.
33:39
And I would like to think, in point of fact, that what Dr. Borg would say is that I need all of the synoptic tradition to be what the synoptic tradition claims to be in its historical claims.
33:53
And that is that his perspective requires a large portion of the synoptic tradition to be historical.
34:03
Obviously, Dr. Borg requires basically none of the synoptic tradition to be historical at all.
34:10
That's what he's saying here. To be historical. I know the beep has just gone, but a one -liner on that.
34:17
Ever since Albert Schweitzer, it has been clear that one particular overall way of reading the gospel, namely locating
34:24
Jesus within the world of apocalyptic Judaism, means that at a stroke, you get a whole lot more of the gospel tradition making historical sense over against the
34:36
Vreda view, which again has had a long run for its money this century, which is that Jesus was a teacher of abstract or timeless truths rather than one who was living within the narrative of apocalyptic
34:49
Judaism. And then you lose quite a lot. And I would simply add that Schweitzer's apocalyptic vision, though it allowed a lot to be accommodated that had been cast aside, in turn it accounted for a lot needing then to be cast aside afresh.
35:06
So it excludes as well as includes. And that's why we've had subsequent debates through the post -Saunders period and so on.
35:13
How do we go to Q &A? Do you call on people? Do we call on people? People come forward?
35:20
There's a microphone here. My name is Don Jackson, chaplain for the
35:25
Unity Week. We certainly follow the Jesus Seminar with a great deal of interest.
35:32
And I observe that the book of John is not considered to be historical material by and large, by the
35:39
Jesus Seminar. When you talk about the spectacular, one item in the book of John really gets my attention.
35:48
That's a raising of Lazarus from the dead. Now, the
35:53
Synoptic Gospels doesn't mention that at all. And I would think that the Orthodox position would have a great deal of difficulty in defending the historicity of the
36:05
Lazarus story and not see it as a metaphor. I just wonder what...
36:10
Now, you need to understand the question that's very much the type of assertion that you hear all the time in New Testament scholarship today.
36:21
If something is not contained in multiple sources, then you can't possibly believe that it's historical.
36:31
And I hear this and I go, excuse me, wait a minute. I thought it was a given, taken from the start, that any
36:42
Gospel writer, Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, there really aren't any other competitors, to be perfectly honest with you.
36:47
I mean, Thomas, completely different worldview, completely different time frame, completely different form, all the 2nd century
36:55
Gnostic Gospels, Gospel of Peter, all that stuff, just totally in a different world. So you look at the 4
37:01
Gospels, and I thought it was a given that the
37:07
Gospel writer has a purpose for writing his Gospel. That he has an audience, that he does have a context.
37:14
And everybody goes, oh yes, you'll hear them talking about that all the time. Well, as you see, Luke's context is... I'm not sure exactly how they know what
37:20
Luke's context is. They certainly don't feel that they have to be constrained by what Luke's actually saying to come up with that.
37:30
So, if each writer has his own context, his own purposes,
37:37
Luke is writing, he's writing to Theophilus, and he wants to assure him that what he has been taught actually is true.
37:52
It's sure, it's steadfast. So, he's looking at all this information, and you can only write so much.
38:04
It's not like they could use teeny tiny little laser printed fonts, and they had an unlimited supply of paper, and they could just whip these things out.
38:16
It's not quite the same thing. We can do a whole lot more than they could do technologically at that point.
38:22
So, there is a limitation size -wise. None of the Gospels are overly large, of course.
38:30
So, you have to choose what you're going to include, and you have to choose how you're going to tell certain stories.
38:37
One writer can choose to be very detailed in the recording of a particular story, but another writer might record the same story because it's very important, but it's not as central to his thesis as it is.
38:54
Maybe Matthew's recording is not as central to his thesis as it is to Luke's.
39:00
And so, he does something called telescoping. You know, the old telescopes, you'd pull them out, like the spyglasses that would be used on the old ships.
39:10
Well, you could either pull it all the way out, give all the detail, or you can push it all the way in, and you can summarize in a much quicker way.
39:19
And so, I just don't understand this arbitrary assertion that, well, if only
39:27
John tells the story, then it must not be historical, because that's what everybody says. That's what all the scholarship says is, well, you know, obviously
39:34
John's not historical, because, first of all, he's written so much farther down the road.
39:40
You know why the assumption is made that he's written so much farther down the road? The assumption is made he's written so much farther down the road because of his
39:47
Christology, because of his view of Christ. And the assertion is, well, Jesus certainly never said those things about himself, because no one in the early church really believed those things, because I don't believe those things, see?
39:59
And so, you've got to keep these things, the circularity of this argumentation is tremendous.
40:07
It really is. So, John's written way down there. John's not historical. John couldn't have known these things.
40:13
So, he's making all this stuff up. And if John's the only one who records the resurrection of Lazarus, then it could not possibly have happened.
40:24
It is simply meant to be an allegory. It's meant to teach us something. It's maybe a parallel to Jesus' resurrection, something along those lines, which
40:37
Dr. Borg doesn't believe in anyways, but, well, he completely redefines the word resurrection.
40:42
It's Christ's continuing presence in our lives. And don't even use presence there in the way that we would normally use the term presence.
40:49
Just simply, we remember what he did, and so he's resurrected. That's what resurrection means. And so on and so forth.
40:56
So, keep that in mind as that kind of question is answered. But now, listen to the response. Remember, we just heard from N .T.
41:02
Wright. And he's going to say something else about Q here in a moment. And you hear, you just want to go, rah, rah.
41:11
But you're going to stop going rah, rah in a moment. Professor Wright has to say about that. I'm not a professor, but thank you for the...
41:20
No. Oh, yes, I will, briefly. I take it that what is being described in John chapter 11 is what we would today call a near -death experience, something that looked like death, but then after a couple of days.
41:33
And, of course, many Jews knew that people did seem to be dead for a day or two. That's why they have the rule of going back to the tomb.
41:40
Did he not smell? No, that's the point. Now, I was going to try.
41:47
I did not have time. I was going to dig through my right books up here to my left on my bookshelf to see if there was some further discussion of this.
41:56
How on earth can anyone argue that the point of John 11 is that Lazarus wasn't dead, that he had swooned somehow for four days?
42:14
That just leaves me aghast. It leaves me wordless. And Borg should come back and say, hey, excuse me, isn't the whole point of John 11 is that he is dead?
42:30
Isn't that the point that keeps being repeated? And at this point, sadly, you have to agree with Dr.
42:36
Borg. That's the point. That is exactly the point. When Jesus says, take away the stone, he says,
42:43
I thank you, Father, that you heard me. The logic of the paragraph must be because there isn't a smell.
42:51
I'm quite sure that that's what's going on there. He's quite sure that when
42:56
Jesus says, I thank you that you have heard me, it's because it doesn't stink when the door is opened.
43:08
And I sit here staring at that going, huh? But this then is a matter of, as in many cultures, near -death experiences have been reported, and then it's a matter of the timing and the significance and so on.
43:25
The fact that it's only in John and not in the synoptics is quite irrelevant. All sorts of things in modern as well as in ancient history happen, we find, in one source and one source only.
43:37
So here's a situation where you've just been listening to this, and you're going, what is he talking about?
43:44
And then he transitions right back into saying something, and we'd go, ah! And that's one of the difficulties.
43:51
One of the things that sort of wakes you up. Sort of, you know, rinsing with Listerine. It just keeps you going.
43:58
That doesn't mean that we can't quote -unquote prove them. That's not the sort of thing that history is, and that's been a mosaic,
44:05
I think. But don't you find it incredible that the Book of John was written around 100 and the other books? No, the
44:10
Book of John wasn't written around 100. We don't know when any of the Gospels were written. I've been teaching
44:16
New Testament for nearly 30 years. We do not know when the Gospels were written. We should all repeat that before breakfast, just like we do not know whether there was a queue.
44:25
Scholars will tell you that they know, but they don't. It's a guess. It's a hypothesis. There is a consensus among scholars.
44:31
No, there isn't a consensus. A lot of scholars have said... I've read a lot of books that say that.
44:37
Oh, sure, sure. The fact that people repeat a mistake doesn't mean it isn't a mistake. So you don't find it incredible, then, that it's not in the synoptic
44:47
Gospels? No, no, there's all sorts of things. There's all sorts of things which occur, as I say, in one source only. Now, see, you know, it's exactly right.
44:56
That's because it's in one source. I mean, if you were actually to apply that standard to any type of historical situation, the vast majority of our knowledge of cultural history, of Rome, of great leaders, would vanish, would disappear, would be completely irrelevant.
45:16
So, he's exactly right about the fact that simply one source does not mean it's ahistorical.
45:25
So, so much of what these people say about the Gospel of John goes out the window at that point. And again, he's exactly right.
45:32
We don't know when the Gospels were written. So much of what you'll listen to from Dr.
45:39
Crossan and Dr. Borg is all based upon, well, Mark's first. Mark is in the 70s, and Matthew's in the 80s, and Luke's in the 90s, and John's beyond all that, and what they're doing is they're updating the
45:54
Gospel. I mean, that's one of the big things, that's one of the main things we have to address with Dr. Crossan is his definition of Gospel.
46:02
What is a Gospel? It's good news, right? And so it has to be good from a certain perspective.
46:07
And he keeps saying it wasn't good from Rome's perspective, but it was good from the Christian perspective. And it has to be news, that is, it has to be updated.
46:16
And what he means by that is that inspiration is where you see
46:21
Luke changing Mark. Changing Mark. Not expressing the same historical event, or the same teaching in different words, but changing
46:34
Mark, saying, well, back then in Mark's day, that was alright.
46:40
But things have changed, and inspiration, quote -unquote, and you need to realize, so often the confusion here is we're using the same words, but mean completely different things by them.
46:53
Inspiration is Luke taking the words of Mark and changing them so as to make it good news for the current generation.
47:03
Now, follow that reasoning through. What would the Gospel, quote -unquote, look like?
47:08
You can't even use the term, the. What would Gospel look like? Now, decade,
47:16
I mean, if you have that much, quote -unquote, change, decade, decade, decade, now you're going century, century, century, millennium, millennium.
47:24
The result is what? Well, the kind of belief that is being promoted by these men, and it's a belief that has no standards.
47:38
It's whatever you make it. It's this vague reflection of a leftist, liberal worldview that turns
47:47
Jesus into an ancient proponent of some sort of radical egalitarianism who was against big corporations, something like that.
48:00
You find in Jesus what you want to find in Jesus. There's no substance.
48:07
There's no truth. There is no Gospel. The once -for -all, delivered -to -the -saints faith is a joke because it changes from generation to generation.
48:19
Rather than the Gospel changing us, we change the Gospel. We make it fit us. Generation after generation, they think that's a good thing.
48:28
That's what's going on. And so, anyway, so you hear this, you hear this discussion, and you hear the statements being made, and you go, wow,
48:43
I love hearing them say, look, we don't know when the Gospels were written. So all your
48:49
Mark, followed by Luke, followed by Matthew, or Matthew, then Luke, then John, and all the theories that you come up from there are just that.
48:59
They are nothing more than theoretical. They don't have any more substance than that.
49:09
We don't know. The relationship of the Gospels. We don't know if Mark was possessed by Matthew or Luke.
49:19
I don't think that he was. But you've got to realize these folks are approaching.
49:25
Now, I do think John was well aware of all three of the synoptics, and that's why he doesn't bother repeating everything they said.
49:31
They were already well known at that point in time. But if you don't start with the assumption that they start with, and that is that there is no such thing as God speaking.
49:55
There is no such thing as God speaking. Our high view of Scripture, our view, and I refer to us because I sort of don't figure that too many
50:07
Jesus seminar aficionados are listening to us today. Our understanding of Scripture is
50:13
God breathed. Matthew 22. God was speaking. Holy men spoke from God as they were carried along by the
50:19
Holy Spirit. Peter's view. That view of Scripture, utterly, completely unknown.
50:24
That had to have been abandoned and denied within the denominational structures that created these types of perspectives generations ago.
50:36
Long time ago. God has not spoken. He has spoken uniquely in Christ. That is clearly, clearly the fundamental assertion that is being made within these contexts.
50:49
So when they talk about inspiration, they're not talking about God actually revealing propositional truth.
50:55
In fact, it's sad. Very sad. Listening to one of the introductory lectures by Dr.
51:02
Borg, he makes that exact assertion. This propositional kind of truth, that's the old way.
51:10
And those of you who know who I'm talking about, how many times do we hear these people who are being influenced by post -modernism, these reformed
51:19
Catholics, quote -unquote, blasting away at propositional truth? Well, let me tell you something. If the denominations those people are a part of don't do something about their being a part of them, they're going to be
51:32
Jesus seminar fodder in one generation. Look at history.
51:37
That's what has been happening. Once you deny that God can reveal propositional truth, and that's such a high view of truth, because the
51:47
Gospel is not limited to one culture and one time. To me, one of the things that proves the divine inspiration of Scripture and of the
51:59
Christian faith is the fact that the Gospel is applicable and, quote -unquote, usable.
52:07
I don't like that term. It sounds wrong, but hopefully you understand what I'm saying. It is able to speak to the needs of those who are creating the image of God.
52:20
That's all mankind. No matter where they are in this world, no matter what their culture is, no matter what their language is, it's not culturally bound up.
52:31
Now, these folks have nothing to offer like that. Nothing. All they can do is give you just general concepts of, well, you know, we need to be nice to one another, and it's better if governments don't kill people randomly.
52:47
Well, congratulations! But that's not meeting the needs of the heart.
52:54
That's not talking about putting someone in the right relationship with God.
53:02
They seem to think that's what it is, and that's really what the Gospel becomes in that situation. So, when they talk about inspiration, we shouldn't even use the same term.
53:11
That's the problem. They do not believe, in any way, shape, or form, that there was any special spiritual activity of God that took place in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
53:24
In fact, Borg even made the statement. The Holy Spirit of God did not do something special, as Mark was writing, or Luke was writing, no more special than Shakespeare, or anyone writing today who's saying good things about justice, and so on.
53:41
Absolutely nothing supernatural on that level. And that's why they're all pluralists.
53:49
That's why you heard Borg asking Wright about Buddhistic things.
53:54
And earlier, I remember a guy asking him a question about the Koran. There was a
54:01
Muslim asking basically, is there a... that kind of liberal perspective on the
54:06
Koran. And I felt like saying, oh, buddy, if you find it, you better keep it to yourself. Because that doesn't go over too well in certain areas.
54:14
But that's why they are so pluralistic. Because the idea that God...
54:21
Let's face it. If God has not spoken, then everybody's guesses are equal with one another. Everybody's opinions are the same.
54:29
Everybody's opinion is equally valid. That's why there is absolutely, positively no apologetic basis within these systems.
54:38
They can't do apologetics. How? What are you supposed to be defending?
54:46
You can't defend something when you've just basically said, hey, all opinions are equal.
54:53
There is no revelation from God. There is no once for all delivered to the saints faith that you have to defend.
55:00
So I have heard a number of times... I've heard a number of times the term apologist used by both
55:11
Dr. Cross and Dr. Borg. Never, ever in a positive fashion.
55:21
It's always... An apologist is a person who twists the truth. We historians, of course, being the ones who speak the truth.
55:28
An apologist is a person who twists the truth so as to defend a pre -existing system.
55:40
Now, of course, I would say they've got their own pre -existing system. And we'd have to discuss the relative merits and so on and so forth.
55:47
But that's how they view apologetics and apologists. So I'm not really certain what they're expecting to take place in two weeks in Seattle.
55:58
Other than some brief... Well, brief. The debate itself could be extremely long. But some opportunities to talk to some nice folks and move on from there.
56:10
But those would be the folks in the audience. Not necessarily the apologist. Because I just do not see that they have any...
56:19
There's no love lost from their perspective. To those who are apologists, for the obvious reason as well that apologists tend to be the ones who likewise have opposed their perspective and said,
56:29
Hey, wait. These folks are completely undercutting the very foundation of the faith itself.
56:34
But there isn't any way for Christianity to defend itself against militant
56:40
Islam from their perspective. Because from their perspective, God didn't speak in either one.
56:46
There's no reason to compare and contrast the Koran with the Bible. There's no reason to discuss the transmission of the
56:57
Koran, the Uthmanian revision, the nature of the Koran, the ahistorical presentation of the
57:05
Koranic material itself. Making it next to impossible to do serious exegesis even of the
57:14
Arabic. Because you don't have a historical context in which to place it. You have sections of the same surahs that are written in different places at different times.
57:24
And all the rest of this stuff irrelevant. Means nothing.
57:29
At all. In this context. That's why there's no apologetics.
57:37
And that, interestingly enough, also, by the way, is why you have so many of these particular individuals who are a part of the
57:53
Jesus Seminar Their materials end up being used by Islamic apologists against Christianity.
58:04
Now, they're being inconsistent to do that because the same background would turn and bite the
58:09
Koran as well. But they do that. You go and look. You look at Islamic apologetic sites.
58:14
They'll be using this kind of liberalism to attack Christianity as well.
58:20
Well, I found an interesting discussion that they were having. I hope you did as well. We took the entire hour to listen to it.
58:26
That will give you a little bit more of an idea of what we're up against. We go up to Seattle. Keep us in prayer. Lord willing. And everything works out.
58:32
We will see you Tuesday morning here on The Dividing Line. God bless. We need a new
58:59
Reformation Day. Brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.
59:34
If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O.
59:39
Box 37106 Phoenix, Arizona 85069 You can also find us on the
59:44
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.