Debates Past, Debates Present, Debates Future

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 morning. Welcome to the Dividing Line here, sort of flying by the seat of our pants, brand new sound board, problems with the headsets,

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I'm still a little hot, and we'll see what happens. We don't know if everything's going to work, but you remember the last

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Dividing Line, we had that static, well it turned out to be the sound board was finally giving its notification of retirement, and that's how it did it.

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And so we have a new sound board in, but when I was a new sound board in, and now the headset stuff is not happy with us at all.

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And so my prediction is halfway through the program, I will no longer be able to hear anything at all. That's just my prediction.

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But we're here for the program today, even though I have a debate coming up in only approximately five hours from now, we will begin taping at the

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Jewish Voice Broadcast Studios in Phoenix. No, it is not open to the public, I'm sorry, but there is limited seating, and those seats were taken quite some time ago.

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And so that will be recorded between 6 and 9 .30. That's three and a half hours.

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I would assume they're going to try to get three hour long programs into that period would be my guess,

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I don't know. We will find out, but with four people speaking, even at three and a half hours, that's going to be a little bit shorter than what

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I am accustomed to anyways. And it's going to be very, very, very challenging because when you're on television, everything has to be very, very fast.

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You have to speak quickly. You have to be very, very clear. You don't have time to lay a foundation. You have to sort of build your foundation into what you're saying.

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It is going to be very, very challenging, but I've certainly been listening to Anthony Buzzard for a long time now.

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Some of you listened to the exchange we had on the Unbelievable Radio program in London back in February.

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After I give you a little report on the debates this past weekend, we're going to be listening to some more with Anthony Buzzard because it would be sort of silly for me to attempt to go to a different topic when my mind is wrapped around what

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I'm going to be doing in just a couple of hours, so that would be silly. But I do want to fill you in on what happened this past weekend.

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We are four -sixths of the way, and as of this evening, five -sixths of the way through crunch time.

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It's my own fault that I did this, but six debates in four weeks.

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We had the debates a couple of weeks ago with Christopher Ferrara and with David Silverman on Long Island, I believe.

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Did you say the Silverman debate is up in the MP? The debate with the Vice President of the American Atheist is

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New Testament Evil is in the MP3 area, if you want to listen. I'm sorry?

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Oh, the CDs? Well, okay. Yeah, well, all right. So the audio is available. For those of you who still use

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CDs, you're probably on dial -up too, but anyway, we will have the videos of those available eventually as well.

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So we had those debates a few weeks ago, and amazingly enough, you've been able to listen to discussions of the debates on Iron Sharpens Iron.

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Turrets and Fan was on to discuss the Christopher Ferrara debate, and unbeknownst to me, this past Friday, I believe it was, or was it

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Saturday, I think it was Saturday, Jamin Huebner was on Iron Sharpens Iron to talk about the debate with David Silverman.

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So I found that very interesting. And so this past weekend, of course, we had two

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Roman Catholic debates. Well, we had one Roman Catholic debate and then a debate with a Roman Catholic on monergism versus synergism.

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Both were with Robert St. Genes. And they both went very, very well.

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Dr. St. Genes was very nice. There was no, it wasn't,

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I was concerned, I'll be perfectly honest with you, I was concerned it was going to be like 19, was it 95,

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I believe it was, and we had the Boston College debate. And in 1999, we had the mass debate, but it wasn't.

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It was much more like later in 99 or 2000, was it 2000 we had the papal infallibility debate that was the self -moderated debate.

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I listened to that while writing last week. I think it's the first time

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I've listened to all the St. Genes debates again. I did not listen to the first mass debate. I listened to the one we did in Salt Lake City.

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But I normally don't go back and listen to debates, but I did this time just simply to refresh the memory, remember things, how

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Dr. St. Genes argues, et cetera, et cetera. And I could not help but chuckling at the recollection of the papal infallibility debate in Clearwater, because we're at this very large

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Baptist church and the pastor of the church is going to be moderating. And he assured us, oh, hey, I've moderated debates before.

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I know exactly what to do. And we start the debate and he gets up and says, here's what we're going to be doing.

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You know, we're going to have a debate tonight. Everybody's going to be nice. Okay, gentlemen, you go to it. He goes and sits down. No introduction of us.

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This is no timekeeping, no nothing, just introduction and then sat down.

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And so I had to very quickly take over and we did self introductions and I had to keep in, you know, say, okay, next we're going to be doing this.

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And it was a fairly complicated debate format, too, because we did it like in three sections and there was lots of, you know, so I was operating a little bit of a handicap there because not only did

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I have to keep the time for myself, but I had to announce the time and then all the rest of the stuff. But anyways, it was one of those memorable instances in the history of debating.

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But anyway, so this weekend we did two debates. We had one debate that, judging by the responses, the few responses

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I've seen on the Catholic Answers web forums, this is an area that Roman Catholics in general do not know almost anything about.

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And I know that Robert St. Genes did a master's degree at Westminster Seminary, but by his own testimony, he did not agree with what he was being taught even then in the

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Reformed perspective. And from my conclusion, with all due respect to Robert St.

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Genes, he does not understand what we believe. His objections are to a straw man. He does not understand

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Reformed theology. I'm sorry that I honestly believe, if you will listen carefully to the terminology that he used and the arguments he presented, and he just does not understand the issue.

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And so that made it a little bit more challenging because it's always best to debate with someone who's going to be using their terminology consistently because they understand the position that they are denying.

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And listening to the responses from certain Catholics, you can't tell you.

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In fact, hey, everyone should give me big kudos. I have been informed that there was one guy on the

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Catholic Answers Forum that has accused me of making up the terms monergism and synergism.

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That's pretty cool. When I can start making up terminology that was in use hundreds of years before I was born,

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I'm really getting up to the upper levels here. So anyway, so the first debate was on monergism versus synergism.

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And the one thing I would have changed about the debate is

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I would have asked the question that I asked in my closing. Now, the

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MP3s, these are already on the Calvary Santa Fe website, and I've linked to them on the blog. And so I would invite you to listen.

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And if you do listen, I should have queued this up. I apologize. I should have downloaded it and queued this up. Right at the end of my, basically, final opportunity to speak, because I went first in that,

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I asked a question right at the end. And the question was very straightforward, and it would have clarified things if I had asked it during cross -examination,

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I should have. And that was, I asked, Dr. Starnes, do you believe that God is attempting to save every single human being equally?

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Do you believe this prevenient grace is extended to every single human being in the exact same way? Because that would get to the whole issue of whether there is an elect, what's the nature of this prevenient grace that he talks about, et cetera, et cetera.

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And so I asked that question and Dr.

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Starnes got up and said, well, I'll answer that question. I even said, thank you. You can hear me probably in the background saying, thank you, because this would be very helpful.

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But then the answer he gave demonstrated that he had not heard the question. I don't mean just didn't hear it, you know, audit in an auditory fashion.

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He heard it, but he did not understand it. And it was, you know, everyone,

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I think, like me, was sort of excited. Yes, I will answer that question. Good. We're finally getting it. After all this time, we're finally getting it.

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And he didn't answer the question because I just don't think he understands what the issues are. I'm sorry. I just don't.

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There are people, there are Protestants who basically made their mind up about, quote, unquote,

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Calvinism a long time ago. And you can stand on your head. You can turn blue.

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You can do everything in the world. They're not going to hear what you're saying. They've already established the categories of thought on this subject in their mind.

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And you might as well talk to the wall as get through there. And I think that's the situation here. And I can think of many

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Protestants in the exact same boat. So that was very, very interesting. Then we had a break.

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And I just saw someone quoting a good old Turretin fan here in Channel.

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It was quoting somebody. Was that Turretin he was quoting here? I'm not sure. I'm not sure who that was, but maybe it was

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Turretin himself. I'm not sure. But it was a quotation using monergisms and synergism that was obviously long before me.

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And so that was probably. No, not Turretin. OK, I'm not sure who it is. Anyway, we had a hour and a half break between the two debates.

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And I we went back behind in this room in the back and we all had dinner together, including

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Bob's and Janice. And we had some interesting conversation back there. We really did.

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And it went fine. And I think at first there was a little bit of tension.

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But but I think that was dispelled fairly, fairly quickly. And so then we started at, was it six o 'clock or seven, seven o 'clock with the debate on the bodily assumption of Mary.

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Now, let's give kudos to Bob's and Janice. I can't think of anybody else who has any publications or any, you know, any credentials in the debating field that would debate this subject.

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You could never get Carl Keating to defend the bodily assumption of Mary in a debate. You could never get Jimmy Akin, Tim Staples, Scott Hahn, Patrick Madrid.

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These people would not ever do this because they all recognize that fundamentally what you have to establish is the authority of the church.

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First, because there simply isn't any biblical or historical foundation for the bodily assumption of Mary.

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The bodily assumption of Mary demonstrates beyond all logical contradiction the fact that Rome has long ago freed herself from the constraints of scripture and tradition and invested in herself basically the same level of revelational authority that Joseph Smith claimed for himself.

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Believe it because we say it. Believe it because of our own authority.

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It is the demonstration of sola ecclesia. It's the most recently dogmatically defined dogma.

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But all three of the dogmas that have been defined in the modern era, that is, the

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Immaculate Conception in 1854, 1870 for papal infallibility, and then 1950,

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November of 1950, for the bodily assumption of Mary. All three of these illustrate the fact that what scripture says and what church history says is irrelevant to Rome.

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Rome gets to just make it up as she goes along. And when there's things that are contradictory to her definitions, well, those just weren't really tradition.

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And then anything that she finds that uses similar terminology and how she can invest with the magic charism of apostolic tradition and all as well.

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And so we've got to give Robert St. Genes some credit for being actually willing to defend the belief.

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But we also have to recognize that the only way to do it is to make the bland and bald assertion that, well,

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Rome is the final authority. Now, Robert's approach on this is quite interesting.

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And I knew that he was going to go here. He did this with Matt Slick. And I had been the day

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I flew over to New Mexico Thursday, I had done a 68 mile ride and had listened to the

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Boston College papacy debates. And that was a long debate. It was a four and a half, at least four and a half hours.

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I think it's huge. Four man debate and very challenging.

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No two ways about it. But I had listened to that debate. And and ironically, one of the primary areas of discussion between myself and Robert St.

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Genes at that time had been Acts chapter 15. So as I as I recall,

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I was coming down Cave Creek Road at a fairly decent rate of speed because it's downhill. And that's when we were discussing what was

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Peter's role? What was Paul's role? What is Sagao mean here? Who makes the decision for the council?

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What is Eggo Creno mean when James says, therefore, I judge and and all this stuff.

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So I just been listening to this. And if you watch the video from the little flip video, my my one surviving flip video camera, the other one having been stolen out of my bags at JFK.

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If you watched the video of the cross examination, you know that during the entirety of the cross examination period, when

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Dr. St. Genes had the opportunity of asking questions, it was all on Acts 15. It wasn't about the bodily assumption of Mary, because you might as well not argue about the bodily assumption of Mary.

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You're not going to get anywhere scripturally or historically on the matter, even though there was at one point where where Dr.

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St. Genes said, well, all we need is to have people talking about it. If we can demonstrate that somebody in the ancient church was talking about, that's all we need.

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And I just really hope people think about that for just a little. All we need is that somebody talked about it.

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Well, folks, you can find in the writings of people in the early church, because remember, the first people talking about this were not actually

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Orthodox believers. You can find in the transcendence,

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Beate Maria and stuff like that, you can find people talking about anything. You could read those texts in such a way as to as to be grounds for anything at all.

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And so in light of that, I just found it amazing, but there's no reason to even go there.

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He had to make his argument based upon his assertion that Peter, as Pope, dogmatically defined a belief without reference to scripture or tradition in Acts chapter 15.

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Now, Peter argues in regards to the nature of the faith from the

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Old Testament in his epistles. Paul argues specifically for the concept of the inclusion of the

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Gentiles and the whole issue of justification by faith over and over again from the

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Old Testament scriptures. That's what Romans is all about. Romans 4 and all the citations from Genesis 15 and all the rest of that stuff.

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But his whole argument was Peter, as Pope, stands up in Acts 15 and without scripture and without tradition, even though this is in scripture.

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So it really doesn't fit, but without scripture, without tradition, defines a dogma in the recension of circumcision.

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And so it was just a matter of having to go through the text and demonstrate, well, Peter does stand up and Peter does say that which is commensurate with the vision

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God had given to him about not calling the Gentiles unclean and all the rest of that stuff. And yet,

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Paul and Barnabas then speak and there's more discussion and then

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James gets up and clearly James is in charge of the council. Peter isn't in charge of the council and the council is not called a papal council.

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They have come to the apostles and the elders. And it is James that gives a decision and he has to try to separate what

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James does. With James just talking about something else and Peter's already given the decision, it's just impossible to hold the text together.

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And we ended up talking about James's citation of the Old Testament and where does that say anything about circumcision?

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And I really think that anybody who just listens carefully to that cross -examination will see that Acts 15 provides no foundation for the argument that was made.

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And that was all he had because I was able to demonstrate very clearly that the position he was taking was directly contradictory, not only to the biblical mandate that we are to believe, only that which is revealed by God as binding upon us and that which is theanoustos.

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But in this case, the Roman Catholics are left in a difficult spot because I was able to utilize numerous patristic citations that I had in my opening statement that I repeated in my closing statement.

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Where early church writers, we had Gregory Nazianzus, we had

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Athanasius, we had Augustine, we had Cyril of Jerusalem speaking directly against the kind of ecclesiastical absolutism that Rome has now adopted long, long ago.

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So the same people who say, two thousand year old church have to go, just don't worry about those guys at the beginning, okay?

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Just don't listen to them, you know? And so I honestly don't know how it could have been any clearer than it was.

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I mean, I think we need to put together finally the Roman Catholic series, you know, because I mean,

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I think we're up around 40 debates. Some we don't make available because we've repeated the topics later, we have better recordings, whatever.

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But we could probably put together an easy 24 debates. You know, the five with Pacwa, a couple with Matityx, the

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St. Genes ones, Madrid, you know, ten in the great debate series alone.

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Now the Immaculate Conception, Bodily Assumption. We could definitely do the Marian Dogmas. Now that would be fun, we could do the

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Marian Dogmas. That would be cool. We definitely want to include the one with Vinnie Lewis. No, no,

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I did not say the Looney Tunes version. In fact, you know what?

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I don't even list that in my debates. Really? I don't think I list that in my debates.

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It's in the shopping cart. I don't think it's on my thing. Was that an actual debate with Equal Times?

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Yes, it was. It was over the phone, but you actually had a moderator and everything. He had a stopwatch.

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I'm going to go over to my thing here. I'm going to go over to the website here and see if I have that listed.

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That's in the web? That's in the shopping cart, really? You bet. Really? It's entitled

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The Apologetics of Vinnie Lewis. Really? Actually, with Dr.

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St. Genes' opening remarks in that debate, I was wondering if he wasn't going to go sort of a Vinnie Lewis kind of direction there.

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What do you mean? Fatima proves everything. Oh, well, that was interesting, wasn't it? Yeah. I do not have that listed.

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I wonder if we have a date on it. I'm really not sure that I want to include that in the list. We're over 100 now anyways.

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What does it really matter? We've asked Algo to put together a – because I'm looking at the list here, and it ends in November of last year.

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We're over 100 now, and we've asked Algo to put together a list of what we've done since November of 2009, so we can get that up to date, but we have passed the century mark in the number of formal debates.

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Now, I would like to point out also that utilizing the Ergen -Kanner method of debate enumeration,

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I have done 987 ,462 debates using the

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Ergen -Kanner method of debate, because that's not only every conversation

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I've ever had with anyone, including a taxi driver on the way to the airport, but I am now including my own self -arguments when

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I'm debating myself. So I'm at 987 ,000 debates. You wanted to say something?

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You realize that you endured three hours and four minutes with Vinny Lewis.

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Is that – that's probably when I started losing my hair. That's – It started at the beginning of that conversation, and by the time it was over, it was all gone.

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Oh, man. You know, we have that in MP3. We have it in MP3 and on CD.

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How about that? I'm going to have to pull – It's number 466 in your shopping cart. I'm going to have to pull that down and listen to it.

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It's not like it would be overly relevant, but I do need to pull it down and listen to it, just for the fun of it.

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Just for the fun of it. That's funny. Okay. Anyhow, so it was –

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I do want to thank the folks at Calvary Santa Fe, Paul Scazzafava, the pastor there, and all the guys,

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Ryan, who helped take care of me. I'm not sure if I told you, but for the first time in all of my travels,

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I went to New Mexico without my toiletry bag. No razors, no toothbrushes, no deodorant, no nothing.

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And I've always laughed when I go to a hotel and it says, Did you forget something? Ah -ha -ha! And there I stand. So I had to call

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Ryan and say, Help! And Ryan was very kind and did a target run for me.

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I've just been doing too much traveling. That's all there is to it. But they did a great job.

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Then I spoke the next day. All this is already up online. They did a really great job putting stuff up. And I spoke on the new perspective on Paul.

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And then Sunday morning, I preached on the security of the believer. And I would like to grab that and make it available on our website.

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I really would. In talking with Paul, he made a comment to me on Saturday that changed the direction

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I was going to go in the sermon. And instead of going to John 6 first, I went to Titus chapter 2 first.

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And everybody really seemed to appreciate that. So if you've got issues in understanding the concept of why it is that believers have security in Christ and how that's consistent with a consistent exhortation to godliness and why

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I would say that the people who teach that you can be saved without repentance are utter heretics in preaching a false gospel, where is the balance in all of that?

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But I thought the thing on Sunday morning was really helpful along those lines. So there's a report on the past weekend.

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As I said, now in about four and a half hours, I will be teaming up with Dr.

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Michael Brown, the very same Michael Brown that we debated here on the program on the doctrines of grace.

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He and I will be on one side debating Sir Anthony Buzzard and Dr.

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Joe Good, who are Unitarians who deny the deity of Christ. I cannot tell you what

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Dr. Good believes. We've tried to find out. We'll find out in four and a half hours, I would imagine. But Sir Anthony Buzzard, a well -known

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Unitarian, engaged him before, not only in the program, as far as reviewing comments that he made.

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Some of you may recall the first time you may have heard of Sir Anthony Buzzard was when I played portions of his debate with Shabir Ali, which wasn't much of a debate because both deny the deity of Christ.

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But he also denies the preexistence of Christ, and that really is the fatal flaw of his perspective.

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I think that's his greatest weakness, and we will be addressing that in just a few hours.

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And then a week from Friday on ABN, abnsat .com,

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the Aramaic Broadcasting Network, we will be doing a live Skype debate.

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Both these two debates, it's unusual. I'm not going to have to travel anywhere. The Jewish Voice Broadcast studios are about two and a half miles from my home.

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And Skype, I'm going to be sitting right at the same spot. If you're used to seeing my

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YouTube videos where I'm sitting there in my office and that is my office, that's not a studio or a set or something.

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I'm just sitting there writing from my computer, and I sort of turn a little bit to the right, and voila. That's where I will be for the

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Skype debate with Abdullah Kunda. I'm not 100 % certain what it's on. I think it has to do with the contrast, comparison, the

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Bible and the Koran. But Abdullah Kunda is the same gentleman, Muslim gentleman, that I debated at the

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University of Sydney last August, down under. And looking forward to hopefully an opportunity next year to go back down there.

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I would like to do some more debates with Abdullah Kunda. He's quite a challenging young man.

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So then after that, I've got a few weeks until the debate with Robert St.

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Genes on purgatory in Oregon. And Bob has actually written to me yesterday with another possible topic for a debate.

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Now, of course, you have to have somebody to sponsor debates and things like that. But it was a very good topic.

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Again, one that none of his compatriots would ever dare to defend.

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But in regards to the truth claims of the Roman Catholic Church in light of its use of bogus documents down through history, including the donation of Constantine and the pseudo -Isidorian decretals, which

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I think would be absolutely fascinating. So anyway, things continue on.

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I'm going to be in Minneapolis, then in Oregon, and two weeks later in Lima, Peru, with HeartCry Ministries.

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And then I'm going to be in St. Louis first weekend in December, as I have been for 11 years in a row now. That's a new record.

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But then I'm going from St. Louis to Detroit before coming back for a

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Jesus or Muhammad marathon on ABN with Sam Schmoon and David Wood and Tony Costa.

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And all of us are going to be there doing our thing there at the beginning of December. And then the polemics class there in January.

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And then I got to start talking with folks about we really got to get focused. It's difficult to do. We really got to get focused on getting to the

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United Kingdom. And we're going to need your help to get to London in February.

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And it just goes on and on. We stay very, very active while the Lord gives us life and breath and the ability to do so.

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So obviously it's impossible for me. There's only so many things

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I can do. So it is impossible for me to change my mind set right before a debate.

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So I'm thinking about Anthony Buzzard right now. And I'm thinking about his position. So I have queued up the end of a debate that Anthony Buzzard did with Fred Sanders of Biola.

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And I was listening to this while writing this morning and came back and even typed out some quotations from it.

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Threw some other stuff on the iPad for the debate this afternoon. And so I want to play some of his statements.

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So you have an idea. We're not going to be able to live stream because obviously it is a video recorded program.

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And hence it is going to air at some point on the Jewish Voice broadcast. My hope is and my understanding is we will be able to purchase these ourselves and make them available through the ministry sometime in the future.

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And I imagine it will be extremely high quality stuff. I mean because these guys have got really nice studios and this should look really, really good.

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So we will have that available as well. And so let's listen to some of the comments that Dr.

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Buzzard made. This is at the end of the debate. So you're getting into more of the meat of the matter, really,

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I think. The quality of the sound isn't all that good because it was recorded outside. Some of you may recall that I asked

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Sir Anthony about this debate when we were on the Unbelievable Radio program in London. And I said, in fact, it was rather odd.

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I kept hearing crickets. Was it outside? And he says, yes, it was actually a very odd location.

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It was outside. And so I had thought maybe it was just a bad recording or a fan or maybe somebody used one of those programs where you don't register it.

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It puts some silly sound. You know what I'm talking about? Actually, it was a cricket.

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It was just a plain old regular American Southern California cricket. So you might catch a cricket.

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And every once in a while a plane flies over, which is sort of cool too. But let's listen to Sir Anthony Buzzard, and I will be breaking in and commenting as we go along.

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I heard that Jesus was the creator of heaven and earth. I think if you take a Bible and look and see what is said about who created the heavens and the earth,

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I think you'll find it was God. And the word God in Scripture in the New Testament 1 ,320 times refers to the

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Father. Now, immediately, yeah, you can hear the cricket, can't you? It was right near the

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MP3 recorder. You could just tell. All through this debate, we will hear our

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Unitarian friends assuming Unitarianism, not proving Unitarianism.

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1 ,300 times, theos refers to the Father. Well, how many times does kurios appear and that refer to the Father? He likes to say, well, there's a couple times where Jesus is called theos, but it's 1 ,300 to 2.

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Well, it's actually more than 2, but let's say it was 1 ,300 to 8. So still the numbers, just overwhelming.

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This is a remarkable fact, he'll say. Well, it's remarkable only because it doesn't prove anything.

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The normal term that is used for the Father in the New Testament is theos, but the normal term that is used for the

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Son is kurios. Now, kurios is a more exalted term than theos is in the

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Old Testament Greek Septuagint. Theos is used of the pagan gods. Theos is a translation of Elohim.

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And Elohim is significantly less personal and direct than Yahweh is.

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But kurios is a translation of Yahweh. So, is that really a meaningful argument? No, it's not.

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And clearly, we're going to be going after this assertion on Sir Anthony's part that Jesus is not the

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Creator. He goes to Hebrews and says, well, God rested, and since God is the Father, then

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Jesus didn't rest, therefore He's not the Creator. But the point is, you have direct, repetitive statements.

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Hebrews chapter 1 says, Colossians chapter 1 says, that Jesus Christ is personally involved in the creation.

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I think he actually goes to Colossians 1 here in a second, so I'll let you hear how he explains it. When Roman Catholic scholars like Rahner sit down and do a patient study of what is meant by the word

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God in the New Testament, in Greek, theos, I'm using the modern Greek pronunciation, they say that it means invariably the

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Father. There are two occasions only, for sure, in which the word

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God is applied to Jesus in some sense. I'm trying to remember off the top of my head which ones that he will accept where theos is used for Jesus.

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But there's many more than that, obviously. He does dismiss the gravel -sharp constructions at Titus 2 .13

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and 2 Peter 1 .1. We'll go into those and demonstrate the consistent translation of those. I put a note, this is what's really cool,

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I mentioned this on the blog yesterday, but I've found a way, well, it's not found a way, it's just learned how to insert notes into the

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Olive Tree software on iPad, including original language in Unicode and hyperlinks to other texts.

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And so I put my discussion of Romans 9 .5 into the Romans 9 .5 section, I put the textual critical information on the reading of the os at John 1 .18

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into John 1 .18, and so on and so forth. And so that particular app is becoming sort of an apologetics study

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Bible type thing that is pretty cool, maybe someday. I guess some people now in channel are commenting on what

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I said about the fact that Yahweh is always represented by kurios in the

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Greek septuagint. I'm not sure what the issue is, translation of Yahweh?

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No, of course not, they don't translate it. But they rendered Yahweh, the Tetragrammaton, as kurios, as they did

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Adonai, which is why you have the problem in the

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English Bible of distinguishing between the two, which is why they use L -O -R -D in all caps for the translation of Yahweh, and in small letters for the translation of Adonai.

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But the reality is that the Tetragrammaton is still rendered by kurios in the

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Greek septuagint, so that's fairly straightforward. Let's continue on with what

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Buzzard had to say. The very imbalance of that evidence suggests to me that they're not equally

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God. That's extraordinary. I've already mentioned to you that the word God, if you count up the

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Hebrew word Elohim, multiple thousands of times, it refers to a single person.

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I have to say that if you have a pronoun, it seems to me a pronoun does describe an undifferentiated person.

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Now this is something I'm going to catch him on. He very strongly emphasizes, as a

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Unitarian, if God speaks using singular pronouns, then that must mean he's only one person.

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So you can't have Yahweh, who's walking with Abraham, raining fire and brimstone upon Sodom and Gomorrah from Yahweh in heaven, or they would have to use plural pronouns and say we are going to.

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He just will not allow for biblical monotheism and yet biblical

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Trinitarianism. It's not really a very strong argument, but if people haven't thought through these things,

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I can see why they struggle just a little bit with it. But the problem is

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Jesus uses personal pronouns of himself preexistently in John 17, 5.

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And Anthony Buzzard does not allow for a personal preexistence of Jesus as Jesus.

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Jesus only exists as a plan. The word is impersonal. It's a plan in John 1, 1.

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And so you have the same kind of argumentation that modalists use in trying to reduce those texts, both in Philippians.

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He quotes Luther in Philippians 2. I'm ready for that one. I really should, before I leave here,

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I should throw my Philippians 2 article from the CRI Journal on the iPad as well.

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But all that's going to be discussed. Well, I hope it's going to be discussed.

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My only concern about this evening's debate is I just never go into debates without knowing really well where my opponent's coming from, or at least trying to.

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And one of the two people we're debating, I don't know where he's coming from. If he's coming from a different perspective than Anthony Buzzard, my concern is that the differences in their perspectives will end up eating up all our time, rather than being able to be focused upon what

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I really hope is the case, and that is Sir Anthony Buzzard's arguments, because those are out there.

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They've been out there for quite some time, and that's what I'd like to see addressed. I grant that the word undifferentiated doesn't occur in Scripture, but the pronouns

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I, and he, and so on in Hebrew do. And I think we have to think, what does a singular pronoun mean?

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Since everybody agrees, Trinitarians apparently, and non -Trinitarians, that none of those occurrences of the word

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God gives you a threefold God, then it seems to me to be a massively important point that God is described as a single person so often.

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Now I heard then that Jesus is the Creator. I don't think he was the Creator. Hebrews 4 .4 says that God rested.

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The word God in Hebrews means the Father, as it does almost invariably. That's just simply something we're going to have to try to challenge.

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When the Father and the Son are in view, theos is normally used of the

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Father. But when there is no distinction of persons in view, then

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I don't think you can make this assertion. It's just simply God did this, God did that. That would be the Father, Son, and the Spirit acting in harmony with one another.

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And so I don't see any emphasis upon the Father resting in opposition to the

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Son or the Spirit. That's an assumption smuggled into the text.

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In the New Testament, so it was God who rested on the seventh day. It wasn't

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Jesus. The passage in Colossians is difficult because it speaks of everything being made in Christ.

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Now it's interesting. Some of you might recall that when we did the discussion on the unbelievable radio broadcast, he used—what was the term he used for Hebrews 1?

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Oh, what was it? It wasn't queer. It was sort of an English -type thing.

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But I forget what the term was that he used for the text in Hebrews 1, verses 10 -12 that identified

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Jesus. But it said it was strange. Strange text. Well, now we come to Colossians 1.

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It's a difficult text. No, none of them are. They're very straightforward if you allow the arguments being made, because both of them are arguments.

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Both of them are apologetic texts. Colossians 1, Paul is engaging in apologetic defense of who

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Jesus really is against a proto -Gnostic kind of perspective. And in Hebrews 1, against a

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Judaizing perspective. They're right there. And you can understand what the arguments are. And in both cases,

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Sir Anthony's interpretation feeds Paul right into the argument of his opponents. And when you interpret someone in such a way that you end up making it impossible for them to argue against their opponents, then you're misinterpreting them.

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So it's not difficult at all. It's difficult for him, because it teaches something other than his presuppositions allow.

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It doesn't say that everything was made by Christ.

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Well, that's just self -evidently not the case. He is the image of the invisible

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God, the Prototokos Pasei Stisaos, the firstborn of all creation, the one who has preeminence over all creation.

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And then, Hati en alto ectiste. En alto, by him.

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Now, he has to come up with a very unusual way of reading this, for his sake.

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But the problem is, you don't have to do that. Because later on, it is going to say that all things were made di alto, and ais altan.

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So you have en alto, then you have the extensiveness of this creation, which is all things in the heavens and the earth, visible, invisible, principalities, powers, dominions, your authorities.

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Tapanta di alto, kai ais altan ectiste. So, en alto, by him.

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Di alto, through him. Ais altan, for him. And he is pra pantom, before all things.

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And en alto, tapanta, all things, hold together, sunestican.

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So, verses 16 -17, Paul exhausts the

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Greek language. He exhausts the whole range of Greek prepositions and cases.

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Now, in Greek, cases determine the meaning of the preposition. So, he exhausts the entire range of things, to make sure that we recognize that Jesus is not a part of the created order.

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He is the creator of all things. His opponents were trying to make Jesus part of the eons.

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The Pleroma. As a secondary being emanating down from God. And he simply is not going to allow that to happen.

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And so, Sir Anthony, by saying that, well, the creation was for Jesus, makes

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Paul's entire argument irrelevant to the people he's refuting. If you make the Apostle's argument irrelevant to the people he's refuting, then you're misinterpreting the

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Apostle. This is all there is to it. So, en alto, di alto, ais altan, and he is pra pantom, before all things.

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How can you possibly miss the assertion that is being made here?

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You have to have an overriding presupposition that is disconnected from the text.

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You have to have an external tradition. And in this case, it is Sir Anthony's Unitarianism. In many people's case today, in the part of New Testament scholars, it is their anti -supernaturalism, their just simply inability to accept the idea that this early in the

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Christian era, someone could be describing Jesus in this way. And so Sir Anthony loves to quote various scholars, but I found it very odd that the people he quotes, the very people who had undercut most of his own beliefs.

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Sir Anthony is very odd in that, while he's a Unitarian, he holds to a high view of Scripture and to a view of the

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Atonement that is not Sassanian. He holds to a Sassanian Christology, which, interesting enough, is a very rationalistic perspective.

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It certainly isn't ancient. But at the same time, holds to very conservative views. He's really into prophecy and eschatology.

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Well, folks, you can't get into prophecy and eschatology if you don't believe that the Bible has a consistent teaching. But when it comes to this issue, he's constantly quoting liberals.

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He's just like Shabir Ali. He's quoting the James Dunn's The World, and he's quoting the

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Raymond Brown's The World, and doesn't seem to realize that those very same people would undercut so much else of what he says.

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For example, he asserts, well, the Old Testament is clearly a Unitarian document. That same realm of scholarship does not even believe that the

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Old Testament has one view of God. They would say there's monotheistic sections, there's henotheistic sections, and there's polytheistic sections.

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Does he accept that? Clearly does not. He says it's self -evident that the Old Testament is

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Unitarian. But the very same people he quotes would say it's never self -evident in any way. So, again, there's that phrase, inconsistency is a sign of a failed argument.

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And that's certainly the inconsistency of Sir Anthony's position. I would certainly recommend you look at James Dunn, who is,

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I'm quoting authorities here, but we're all quoting authorities, either ourselves or someone else. Look at James Dunn and see if you find anything of interest in what he does with those passages.

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He says that we must not read Paul through our Unitarian spectacles. And we must not read

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Paul through our Unitarian spectacles. We need to let Paul's argument teach us. James Dunn views himself as the modern

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Harnack. And from the first time I had to read Dunn in seminary, the unity and diversity of the

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New Testament, and by the way, what you discover is the unity is not nearly as much as the diversity.

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That's his perspective. Anybody can chop up the New Testament, cut it up into pieces, and then place it in contradiction with itself, and then come up with, well,

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I see this, or I see this emphasis. And that's all they're left with, because they don't have a consistent revelation anymore.

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It is no wonder that folks, and Dunn has come up with a new book since then, even more directly than this,

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I can guarantee you we'll be hearing about it this evening. I'm not sure I'm going to drag it with me to the debate, but we'll be hearing about it this evening, and I'm going to be having to make the same comments then.

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Why are you quoting people who don't believe about the Bible, what you believe about the Bible? Why don't you quote folks who, why is it that your rationalistic

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Sassanian Christology has always historically led to an abandonment of a view of the inspiration of Scripture, an abandonment of the view of the

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Atonement, and in essence an abandonment of all supernatural Christianity in total? Why is that?

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That's the question I think that Sir Anthony needs to respond to. And he's not there saying that Jesus is the creator of heaven and earth.

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He's saying, rather, that God made everything with Jesus in mind. In Jesus, everything was created.

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I'm sorry, I cannot even imagine Dunn saying that, but maybe he does. But the words are so clear and so forceful.

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He remains the subject from verse 15 through verse 18. The Father is not even introduced anywhere in that section.

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It is so clearly eisegetical to try to say that this is someone else doing the creation for the sake of the coming of Jesus.

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Total disconnect from the text of Scripture. You are also in Christ before the foundation of the world.

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At least we should attempt to put this kind of a hypothesis on our studies and say, let's think like Jews now.

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We know that Jews think in terms of plans and projects, everything in advance. Let's think that way for a moment.

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Everything was made by God in Jesus. You were also in Jesus before the foundation of the world as a

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Christian. He's talking there not about the creation of the bees and the trees and the grass.

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He's talking about intelligent beings, angelic authorities. He's simply saying that Jesus is the firstborn of this whole creation.

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There are many excellent scholars who say that when Jesus is said to be the first of the creation, that's exactly what it means.

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He's the first created being. Many of the standard Bible dictionaries admit this. That's not what

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Praetotikos means, and I don't know of any standard Bible dictionary that quote -unquote admits this at all.

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The use of Praetotikos in the Old Testament. Israel is God's Praetotikos. Was Israel the first thing God created?

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Of course not. So I'm going to be challenging these things when they come up.

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It does seem, as someone just said in Channel, the guy has such a pleasant British draw. Yeah, when someone says it with a

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British accent, no one will challenge it. I will, because it doesn't matter what accent you use.

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That is a canard. It's just wrong and can be easily challenged on the basis of the text itself.

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Again, I see the danger of just quoting authorities. My point has been here that you've got a mass of very significant authorities who undermine the

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Trinitarian argument at almost every point. That's got to be significant. I think that the

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Trinity is on the way out. I think the scholarship is now so sophisticated, so attuned to the

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Hebrew melodies of the Bible, that it's beginning to cause the Trinitarian case to become weaker.

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Now, actually, that's why I typed out. I'm going to use that quote, because Sir Anthony is quite enamored with liberal criticism and liberal scholarship, but he doesn't seem to recognize that that very same liberal scholarship that he is enamored with has its own presuppositions and its own biases, and that not only are those contradictory to the conclusions he comes to in other areas, but that those biases need to be exposed and are not biblical themselves.

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And so I found that very, very interesting. I almost stopped and made a voice memo at that point, but I was going for a certain average speed, so I didn't.

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But I knew about where I was in the sound file, so when I got back, I fired it up on my laptop and typed that out.

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We're going to be using that in the discussion today. I think that's interesting, if you're investigating these things.

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Just as a parenthesis, in my own case, when this Sicilian Christology was put to me, I gave myself at least two years to even consider it.

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I objected at every point. I can remember thinking, I've got 50 verses which say that Jesus preexisted at his birth.

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Let me give you an example of one. The rock that followed them was Christ. Well, then he must have been there.

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But upon reflection, reading the context carefully, and again, I recommend James Dunn's monumental study of Christology in the making book, he doesn't say

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Christ and the rock was a human being walking around. And Paul in that very passage says,

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Paul is speaking typically. Well, of course. He also says they were baptised in the Red Sea as a type.

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Yes, indeed, that rock was a type of Christ. It wasn't Christ actually there. So, in Trinitarians, we tend to assume that God the

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Son is a given. I don't see that at all. I have first to establish that. They seem to assume that Colossians 1 .16

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is talking about Jesus being the creator of heaven and earth. When we get to Philippians 2, I read it this way.

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Let this mind be in you. Now let's take some alternatives. Paul there's saying to you, imagine what it's like.

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Now, here I'm looking forward to this. I hope we get to have this exchange. Because the

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Kyron Christie is something I've done a lot of work on, and he is right here absolutely setting up my strongest argument in Philippians 2.

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Which I don't have time to go into now because we only have five minutes left in the program. But just in summary, my strongest argument in Philippians 2 is that the context is the exhortation to walking in humility of mind.

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What is humility? Humility of mind. Tapinasophroune in the Greek language.

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What is that? Well, he's exhorting the Christian believers to live in humility of mind with one another.

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They are not to look to their own things or to look to the things of others. They are not to have vain boasting.

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They are not to put themselves first. Even though the Christians in the community have equal rights with one another, they are to lay aside those rights in the service of others.

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That's what humility is about. Laying aside your personal rights in the service of others. And Jesus is then given as the example of how someone does this.

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Laying aside what is rightfully theirs in the service of others. And I say now, when we get into the text, it's going to say, there's two ways of interpreting the text.

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Either Jesus has eternally existed in the very form of God. He possesses equality with God, but he does not consider that equality with God is something to be held on to at all costs.

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But he lays that aside, taking on the form of a human, giving himself in sacrifice on the cross of Calvary.

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Or you can read it as he does not possess equality with the Father, and does not try to grasp at equality with the

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Father. Which is what he's going to be saying. Now, which is an illustration of humility?

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Is it an illustration of humility to not have equality with God, and not try to become equal with God?

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Is that humility? And I've used the illustration many times. It would be like someone, you know, the water boy.

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I guess next year it's going to be for the Miami Heat. The water boy for the Miami Heat, insisting that the coach should put him into the game the last few seconds of the game, rather than having

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LeBron James handling the ball the last few seconds of the game. Would that be considered humility on the part of the water boy?

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Well, of course not. That's just not being insane. In the same way, not grasping at equality with God the

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Father is not humility. That's just not committing blasphemy. But if you possessed equality with God, and laid that position that you have aside, so that you might give yourself in service to others, that is the greatest example of humility ever known.

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The problem is, Sir Anthony's interpretation of this text does not allow that. But notice how he turns that upside down.

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...like to be an eternal uncreated being in heaven, and one day decides to be humble enough to become a man.

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Does that make a lot of sense to you? Or is he rather saying, as even Luther says, another authority, and many other good exegetes say, there's nothing to do with pre -existence there at all.

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He says, look at the man Messiah Jesus. He calls him Messiah Jesus there, Christ Jesus.

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Elsewhere he calls him the man Messiah Jesus. Let's suppose for a moment that Paul didn't believe in the pre -existence of Jesus, literally.

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He says, look at the example of the historical Jesus, who being, a serious mistranslation in the

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NIV, by the way, the nearly inspired version, be careful, it's Christological, because there's a huge bias.

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It doesn't say, being in very nature God. Oh no. Being in the form of God. You're going to have to look at that very carefully and weigh the possibilities.

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But being in the form of God, in the image of God, reflecting God, being so much like God that he can say, if you've seen me, you've seen

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God. Being in that condition, he didn't use... Now very briefly, not only am

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I missing the point there, but I think the NIV is exactly right. I translated, who eternally existing in the form of God myself, because there is a contrast found here, between the present tense participle, huparcom, and the activity of Christ prior to the

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Incarnation. And this is clearly about the Incarnation. Luther and Lutheranism is wrong.

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If you'd like to see an argument against the Lutheran understanding, then see the article that I provided for the

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CRI Journal a few years ago, on the Carmen Christie. So that just gives you an idea of what we're going to be facing this evening.

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Please pray that God's truth would be vindicated and clearly spoken in the debate.

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And Lord willing, we'll be back on Thursday afternoon here on The Dividing Line, giving you a report on how it goes, and maybe even when it's going to air, so you can watch for it.

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We'll see you then. God bless. We're standing at the crossroads.

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Let this moment of suffering flow away. We must contend for the faith above us fought for.

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We need a new Reformation day. It's a sign of the times.

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59:28

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