Horrible Arguments for the Roman Priesthood, Did Jesus Say the I Am Statements?

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:30

I just looked over at Twitter and Strava just posted kudos to Jim Frerichs for setting a new fastest known time at the

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Grand Canyon rim -to -rim. You ever done rim -to -rim? Yeah I'm talking to you.

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You're the only other person in the building. You know it took you a long time to answer that question.

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I mean how old are we getting? I used to live up there. I had to remember. I know I know you used to live up there.

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No, I've never done around the rim -to -rim. Well rim -to -rim would be north to south or south to north, either one.

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Oh well you go straight across but there's actually a way to drive around the canyon to Jacob Lake.

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Like on your feet. No. Going from one rim to the next. I did not do that. Not do that. No. I did rim -to -rim.

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I did north to south but not in one shot. This guy did it in two hours 39 minutes and 38 seconds.

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Now I'm gonna tell you something. There was one spot coming down to the north where you know

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I'm afraid of heights and there was a spot that was extremely narrow, steep drop -off, cliff type thing and the donkeys had gone through and decided to evacuate everything right there and leaving you only the little spot on the outside.

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That was one of the hardest things I ever did in life. Let me tell you something. That was tough but it no

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I didn't two hours 39 minutes 38 seconds. You got to be in pretty super shape to do something like that.

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That's incredible. Hi everybody. Are we doing the dividing line today? Yes we are. See how easy it is to distract me?

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I'm making all sorts of extra noises today. I had a real good ride this morning.

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I did a metric century but something kicked in.

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It has kicked in the past few hours and my sciences have gone insane and so I've got all sorts of stuff going so I'm gonna be sniffling and coughing and doing stuff like that and I apologize because I was gonna take a

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Claritin or something to try to slow all that down and I left the house and we don't have any here and my

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Lutherol will not not help with this. I can read all those little things in there and does not help with the sinuses at all.

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I don't think I don't think Luther said anything about sinuses but I could be wrong. He talked about a lot of other bodily functions so maybe he did.

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I don't know but anyway lots of stuff to get to today.

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I mentioned last time that we had the great lost dividing line and we're taking steps to make sure it never happens again.

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Did we did we take the proper steps? Are they they're both gone? Cool. All right. Well I see a little red light now.

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That's really confusing. Now you've got little red lights but they're both on. So evidently that's the unit.

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That's the hard drive up there? Oh cool. Anyway didn't didn't know.

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Anyway on that lost dividing line I had addressed an issue.

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I said you know what I want to still talk about this and then we will get in that.

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Oh Luke Huck. Hello Luke. Tuning in for my first ever live dividing line.

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That's sort of like a first -time caller on Rush's show or something. So we we called him out.

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Luke Huck has tuned in for his first ever live dividing line. Maybe the last has happened in the past.

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But anyway I had addressed an article on that lost one.

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I want to do it again. I may not spend quite as much time on it as I did originally but I did want to address it.

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And everybody's saying it's waiting. We're still we're still recording but it's not actually going out.

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The live stream that had been going fine for four or five hours and then as soon as I announced that we're going live it stops working.

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That starts telling me something. That starts telling me something. It really does. I mean

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I think there's somebody out there messing with us and everybody in channel says still nothing here.

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So are we gonna be able to continue recording if you decide to change over to the other way of doing it?

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Okay so I'm just gonna keep on going and if this all of a sudden just pops up in the middle of things that's just sort of how it's gonna be and we'll just see how it how it works.

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What I was addressing was an article that appeared September 15th 2017 at catholic .com

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obviously the website of Catholic Answers. More Bible clues for the priesthood.

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Now we've debated the subject of the priesthood. We did a debate with Mitchell Pacwa on the subject of the priesthood and I thought that was a good debate and Mitch Pacwa I think was honest in admitting that basically what happened is there was development of doctrine over time and that while in the

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New Testament the episkopos, presbyteros, the overseers, bishops, presbyters are all the same office and there really isn't any question about that.

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They're used interchangeably. That over time the presbyters developed into priests.

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Now when you think about what Rome teaches about the priesthood and I'm not gonna take the time today to reread the things that we've we've done on the subject of the priesthood in the past but the priesthood is the sacramental priesthood of the

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Roman Catholic Church is central to her sacramental life to her whole understanding of how we have salvation, grace from God, the

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Holy Land Yards. And so the idea that this massively important office which according to Roman Catholic teaching was initially established by Jesus on the night of his betrayal because according to Roman Catholic teaching when

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Jesus said do this in remembrance of me then the necessary corollary in light of I would argue development of doctrine centuries and centuries and centuries down the road is that for his disciples to do what

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Jesus was doing because Rome teaches Jesus was working the miracle of transubstantiation then he was ordaining the apostles as priests at that very point in time.

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So when he says do this in remembrance of me this is the ordination of the apostles as priests.

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And so the whole concept of a sacramental priesthood with sacerdotal powers and the centrality of that to the concept of the mass and everything else this is such a vitally important concept that you're immediately struck by the fact that there is nothing in the

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New Testament about it. You have two different discussions of what deacons are supposed to be about how the qualifications and the

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Hawaiian Yards and then you have elders and you know elders, presbyters, bishops, same thing.

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Nothing about priests, nothing about qualifications, nothing about their duties, nothing about their functions, nothing about any authority, nothing.

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There is nowhere in the New Testament where the apostles go about establishing churches with bishops, deacons, and priests.

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There's nothing there. The entire history of the early church provided to us in the book of Acts, nothing.

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The entire book of Hebrews with its full discussion of priesthood issues, nothing.

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Zero. And so it's just one of those issues where it's just so painfully obvious that Rome has, this is why

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Rome can't believe in sola scriptura because Rome would have to fundamentally change and alter its entire structure and doctrine if it were to embrace the sufficiency of scripture.

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So it's really illustrative of the desperation of Roman Catholic apologists to read this article from catholic .com,

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more Bible clues to the priesthood. Why would you need Bible clues? How about explicit statements?

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I mean, this is central to the entire sacramental life of the church, but you need

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Bible clues. And then to look at the nature of these clues demonstrates the incredible incredible weakness of the

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Roman system. And that's why I would love to come to San Diego to the very home of Catholic Answers.

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And let's do what we did in 1990 for the 28th anniversary of our first Catholic Answers debate.

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Let's go to San Diego and let's do a debate on the priesthood.

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This is by Carlo Broussard, by the way. And the last time I suggested last year when we did the sola scriptura series, a debate with Carlo Broussard, he just very kindly said,

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I'm not allowed to. And I'm like, is this an apologetics organization? What do you mean you're allowed to?

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You're allowed to go on the air and make claims and statements. Why aren't you allowed to defend those against knowledgeable, prepared opposition?

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Well, maybe it'd be nice if maybe things had changed. I mean, we had the debate with Catholic Answers at G3 back in January with Trent Horns.

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So why not? Well, let's look at some of these arguments.

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First argument, priestly ranks. Now, what you're not going to get is any kind of direct reference to the

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New Testament. Most of us would sort of think, well, let's see, this priesthood issue is in the

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New Testament church. So you might want to go to the New Testament to find that. But no, you can't really do that.

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What you got to do is you got to go to New Testament texts that make reference to Old Testament stuff.

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And then instead of letting the New Testament be the fulfillment of the old, you have to read Old Testament categories into the new.

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So, quote, let's start with 1 Peter 2, 9. All agree this is an allusion to Exodus 19, 6, which refers to Israel as a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

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Peter is obviously drawing a parallel between Israel and the church. But rather than disproving the Catholic position, this verse actually supports it.

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Let's see how. During the time of Exodus, the universal priesthood of the Israelites was merely one rank, the lowest rank of priestly status among two others.

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The top level of Aaron, the high priest, and the middle level, which comprised his sons, Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar, who served with Aaron.

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Now, I'm not really sure what he's talking about when he talks about the universal priesthood of the

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Israelites. There is a specific priestly group, as we'll see in the discussion of Korah, but won't argue about too much right here.

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When we look in the New Testament, we discover a top level there too, Jesus, our high priest.

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We've already seen that bottom rank consists of the body of Christian believers, 1 Peter 2, 9, in a parallel with the universal priesthood of the

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Israelites. It makes biblical sense for there also to be a New Testament parallel to the middle rank, ministers specially ordained to serve the people with Jesus, just as Aaron's sons served with him.

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Yeah, this is supposed to be serious argumentation. And for some people, I guess, who just maybe just out of simplicity or not much familiarity with logic and logical fallacies and things like that,

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I might go, oh, okay. Yeah, that sounds great. The problem is this kind of argumentation can be used to prove absolutely positively anything.

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All you've got to do is set up some type of category from the Old Testament.

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And this, of course, is what Rome does with Mary all the time. I mean, all the parallels you allegedly find,

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Elijah and all the rest of this stuff. The Old Testament becomes a playground of just looking for whatever you want to find.

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And you don't have to worry about whether you're being consistent. You don't have to worry about matching everything up. As long as you can find something to put together, it's good enough for people who already want to believe.

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So here you have this idea that, well, this makes

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Aaron Jesus. And so Jesus must have regular priests beneath him above the universal priests that are never mentioned in the

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New Testament. And you got that little problem with the fact that that specific group of priests are the

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Aaronic priesthood, which is specifically said to have been fulfilled and passed away in the Book of Hebrews.

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That's a bit of a problem. But again, Rome doesn't have to worry about that because Rome's ultimate authority isn't actually scripture.

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It's Rome. So if Rome says, well, here's a parallel, that's good enough. It doesn't matter if the

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New Testament itself says that this is the old and it's passing away and the functions are gone and fulfilled in Christ.

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They don't have to worry about any of that stuff. I mean, hey, they're the same people who come up with the idea that you don't have to worry about that ephipox, that emphasis in the

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Book of Hebrews of the once for allness of the sacrifice of Christ, despite the fact that in Roman Catholic theology,

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Jesus's death is represented as a propitiatory but imperfect, not perfect sacrifice, does not perfect anyone over and over and over again in the

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Roman Catholic mass, which is a direct violation of the argument of the Book of Hebrews itself. But again,

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Rome's ultimate authority is Rome, not the New Testament. So they don't have to really worry about that.

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Then the next argument, who is the rebellious Korah? A second obscure clue.

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We appreciate the admission that this is really obscure. Pointing to this middle rank is

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Jude's passing remark. Yeah, it's always good to use passing remarks as evidence that some

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Christians in the first century had fallen into Korah's rebellion. Woe to them for they walk in the way of Cain and abandon themselves for the sake of gain of Balaam's error and perish in Korah's rebellion.

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Now, this is Jude 11. And of course, the point of Jude 11, given that you have

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Cain and Balaam and Korah, all who engaged in, oh, rebellion, that's the point that ties them all together.

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So these are rebellious people. That's it. To look for anything else, you might as well start looking for, okay, so who's the fulfillment of Balaam's donkey?

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What about the way of Cain? What can we figure out with Cain? There's just so many things we could do.

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But again, this kind of argumentation doesn't worry about consistency.

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It just, as long as you can find anything, just string it all together. This is only for people who want to have a reason to believe.

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It doesn't have to be a sound reason. It doesn't have to be a reason that actually survives examination, as long as it's there.

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So Jude 4 sets the context by stating that there were ungodly persons who pervert the grace of our

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God into licentiousness and deny our only master and Lord Jesus Christ. So what is this? This is rebellion.

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How were these men perverting God's grace? Whatever they were doing, it was something similar to what, and then notice what he does here,

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Korah did. No, it was similar to what Cain and Balaam and Korah did.

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It was rebellion. It has nothing to do with priesthoods. It has nothing to do with anything, because there was no priesthood in the day of Cain.

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There was no priesthood in the day of Balaam. Well, yes, there was, but Balaam wasn't part of the priesthood system.

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So if, again, you were to allow Jude to define his own categories, already the argument just collapses.

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It's just laughable, but there you go. But who was Korah, and what did he do that was so bad?

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I should have grabbed one of our Aaronic priesthood tracks, but we have this track where a friend of ours from years and years and years ago did a drawing of Korah, Dathom, and Abiram as the earth opened up, swallowing them, and we wrote this for Mormons, because Mormons claim to hold a priesthood that it does not exist biblically, and we passed out thousands of these things over the years, and I should have grabbed one of those and showed you about what that looked like.

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Anyway, Korah was a figure in the Old Testament who, along with many other

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Israelites, rebelled against the authority of Moses and the Aaronic priesthood. See, it's rebellion, but rebellion in general, not rebellion against priesthood issues.

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Korah and his followers rejected the hierarchy of the Aaronic priesthood, claiming themselves to be the same rank. We get a hint of this in Numbers 16, 8, 10 through 11, and Moses said to Korah, would you seek the priesthood also?

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Therefore, it is against the Lord that you and all your company have gathered together. So they're rebelling against Yahweh and against his ordering of things.

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In response, Moses proposed a challenge which consisted of Korah and the other rebels filling their censers with incense while Aaron did the same, and seeing whose offering the

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Lord would accept, the Lord rejected the offering of Korah and his followers, making the mouth of the earth open up and swallow them into Sheol.

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Moses had the censers hammered out and made into a covering for the altar as a reminder to the people of Israel, so no one who is not a priest, who is not of the descendants of Aaron, should draw near to burn incense before the

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Lord, lest he become as Korah and his company. By the way, this actually demonstrates that the Aaronic priesthood as a whole was one priesthood, and as we see in the book of Hebrews, it disappears.

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It's fulfilled. Notice that the warning here was not only against those who would object to Aaron as high priest, but also those who object to the priestly rank of the descendants of Aaron.

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God was not only serious about the top level rank of the high priest, but also the middle level of his ministerial priests. It is against this

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Old Testament backdrop that we must read Jude 11, and it's mentioned as some early Christians participate in Korah's rebellion.

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If Korah's rebellion was present in the first century, now here's the argument. Here's the argument. If Korah's rebellion was present within the first century

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Christian community, there must have existed a priesthood above the universal priesthood to rebel against.

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That's the argument. The argument is that they are rebels, and when you allow all of Jude 11 to speak, you see that because it mentions

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Cain, Balaam, Korah. This level of desperation, this is twisting of Scripture.

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It's twisting of Scripture, and it's so obvious and so blatant.

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That's why I'd love to get the guys at Catholic Answers to try to defend this stuff in debate.

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I don't think they'll do it because this is indefensible in debate. This is so bad.

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This is worse than Jehovah's Witnesses. I mean, at least Jehovah's Witnesses come up with a little better argumentation for some of their stuff.

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This is just horrific, but that's what happens when you have beliefs that have been forced upon you.

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You deny Sola Scriptura, and there you go. That's what you've got, and you're stuck with it.

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So dealt with that, like I said, a few weeks ago, but we unfortunately lost that, and we wanted to address that.

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I'm not going to spend any time on this, but I did save an article. This is just the title.

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World's First Lesbian Bishop Calls for Church to Remove Crosses to Install Muslim Prayer Space.

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Well, what do you expect? When you put non -Christians in the position of pretending that they are, they're going to act like non -Christians.

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It's not really overly surprising whatsoever along those lines.

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What I wanted to deal with today primarily is an issue that came up while I was in Germany.

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Once again, it is an issue that we have dealt with before.

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I'm actually looking for something here real quickly. What did

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I call that thing? I'm not sure if I want to project this or not.

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I should have brought this up obviously before diving into this, but let's see if it just pops up.

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What did I call that? Oh, is it that? Let's click on it and find out.

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Of course, that's always when you find out that the program you're using needs to be updated or whatever.

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Who knows? Yeah, I double clicked on it and absolutely nothing is happening whatsoever. I double clicked on it and you don't want to open it.

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Let's try it again. Well, evidently, I'm not supposed to use it because when you double click on it to open it, it doesn't open it.

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That's really not good. I'm going to click on something else. Evidently, Keynote no longer works on this system.

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I wonder if I forgot to update something because there was a whole new iOS update.

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That's a shame. I have been left high and dry. Oh, something's happening.

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Okay, now it's opening everything that I've clicked on over the past few minutes all at once.

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It all of a sudden decided, oh, am I supposed to do something? Oh, okay. Good. Wonderful.

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Thanks. Appreciate that. Let me see here if this is the one that I actually wanted.

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There's some neat stuff in here. We could talk about this, I suppose. Oh, I didn't know

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I had that hidden in there. That's cool. That'll work. I'm not sure

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I'm going to project it, but it'll work. Anyway, sorry about that. Of course,

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I'm having my technical problems and obviously, Rich is too because Twitter is telling me that ain't working, huh?

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Got nothing. If that doesn't prove that there's somebody out there hacking us, I don't know what does.

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If you can go four or five hours without announcing it and it works fine, and as soon as I say, okay, we're going live, it's dead as a doornail.

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That tells you there's somebody out there, maybe works for one of the IP companies or something, has decided they're going to try to keep us from being able to do this.

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I think that other way of doing things is the only way we're going to be able to do it in the future. I know we're recording, but you announce we're going live and then it's dead.

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You got to minimize everything because that's all you're seeing on the screen. It's dead. I don't see anything.

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Anyway, we will press forward and hopefully next time we'll be live.

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We'll do another deadcast today. Next time, we'll just have to go with the assumption that there's somebody out there that doesn't want this to be live and do it the other way.

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Hopefully, that will work. Anyway, we have many times discussed a number of related issues.

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Mike Licona posted an article, my date on it is

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September 30th, so a few days ago, risenjesus .com. Are we reading an adapted form of Jesus' teachings in John's Gospel?

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I first saw this as it was being posted by a

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Muslim on Facebook who specifically said, as a

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Muslim, I would like to thank Dr. Michael Licona and Jonathan McClatchy for advocating the view that Jesus did not actually say the

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I Am statements. In the video, Airman asks Evans if he thinks

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Jesus actually uttered the I Am statements in John's Gospel. Evans answered that most of them were probably not uttered as recorded and that John was probably of a genre different than the other

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Gospels. Licona then is quoted as saying, now I realize some of my rather conservative brothers and sisters in Christ will experience some discomfort at Evans' statement.

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Why would that be? I mean, why would anyone have a discomfort at someone saying that what's in the

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Jesus didn't really say? How strange. They do not realize, and listen carefully folks, they do not realize this is the position of the majority of New Testament scholars, and that probably includes the majority of evangelical

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New Testament scholars as well. And then Ijaz Ahmed, the Muslim who posted this says, thank you to these two.

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Well, there's a little bit of a tweak there from Ijaz's perspective, I'm sure. But now it's interesting,

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Samuel Green from down in Australia commented on Ijaz's post and said, you cannot single out the

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I Am statements of Jesus from these professional academics. Read their books, they say the whole story of Jesus is made up.

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This includes his virgin birth, healing the sick, raising the dead, etc. Airman believes that Jesus was made the

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Messiah by later Christians. The Quran affirms these aspects of Jesus's life in it. Why do

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Muslims accept these professional academics when it comes to the I Am statements, but not when it comes to the virgin birth? The whole approach to these academics is that the gospels can be confidently deconstructed.

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This is sheer conjecture. Now, I have for a long time been pointing out the systemic inconsistency of Muslims who will utilize

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Bart Ehrman. I point out that when I did that debate at Duke University, three of the four books on my

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Muslim opponents table were by Bart Ehrman. Bart Ehrman is cited constantly by Muslims as the go -to source when it comes to the issue of, well, anything, especially the transmission of the text of the

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New Testament. This is what Samuel was talking about. The problem is, of course, that there are many apologists,

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Mike Lycona being one of the primary ones, who because they utilize the minimal facts argumentation and because they utilize the majority of scholars argumentation.

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Well, there's a price that comes with that. When you argue, for example, that the majority of scholarship agrees on these four minimal facts in regards to the resurrection, you've now invested in whatever majority of scholarship means.

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I don't know what that means. I'll be honest with you. I have no idea what that means. Majority of what scholarship?

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Majority determined by what? Who did this survey?

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I've taught in seminaries and studied in seminaries long enough to know that, for example, the vast majority of people with a seminary degree, let's just say you've got a master's degree from a seminary someplace.

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The vast majority of those folks will accept the positions that were default amongst their favorite professors.

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Maybe not amongst all of them, but their favorite professors. So the dating of the

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Gospels. If you surveyed them, you're going to come up with a real large number of folks that are going to, say, adopt a later dating of the

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Gospels. Now, how many of these individuals have ever critically interacted with any of the argumentation in regards to the subject of the dating of the

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Gospels? Very few. Very, very few. They've just simply accepted the dates that were given to them and then operate on the basis of that.

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The arguments that, how many have ever even thought through? Why, for example,

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Bart Ehrman has a minimal, very, very minimal Pauline Corpus.

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Pauline Corpus is the number of books Paul actually wrote. From his perspective, that number is extremely small.

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Seven books, I think. Well, why? Well, he's

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Bart Ehrman. You don't have to ask why. No, actually you do. And when you really start digging into it, you discover that they have theories, just simply theories that, well, the pastoral epistles can't be

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Pauline because they reflect a later period in church history. Well, how do you know it's a later period in church history?

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Well, because I have a theory as to what the church initially looked like and then it developed into this and developed into that.

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And since it represents this later one, then these have to be later. So your theory based on, well, based on my interpretation of what

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I consider to be the original books of Paul, and that's where you find the circularity of it. Well, but they also says, you know, there's different vocabulary in the pastoral epistles than you have in the genuine

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Pauline epistles. Well, you know, guess what? There's different vocabulary in Bart Ehrman's popular books than in his scholarly books.

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So clearly he didn't write either. He didn't write, if he wrote the scholarly ones, he didn't write the popular ones, right?

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Or his emails. Oh, his emails are very different than his scholarly works. It must be somebody else that wrote that, right?

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That kind of stuff just generally doesn't get taken into consideration. And so when you talk about majority of scholars, are you talking about people who actually work in the field?

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Who are actually doing regular current research? Who are you talking about?

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And obviously, when you're talking about issues of Scripture, and you can pretend all you want that you can assume naturalistic neutrality in asking the question, did

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Jesus say what's in the Gospel of John? There is no neutrality. If you are approaching texts that breathe the supernatural as a naturalist, this is going to impact how you interpret them, especially when you place them side by side.

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And so when people look at the Gospel of John, they go, oh, this can't be historical.

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You don't have this stuff going on in Matthew, Mark, Luke. Well, okay, you've got some of that stuff in Matthew.

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But aside from that, this kind of open teaching on Jesus' part regarding who he is, conflict with the

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Jews, it's not in the Synoptic Gospels. And so John's clearly just making this up.

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He's writing later on. You can talk about his theological reflection.

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You can talk about it as the beloved disciple expanding upon hints that Jesus gave here, there, everywhere.

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But fundamentally, it just can't be the same thing because, well, there can't be any reason why the earlier

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Gospels would have a different audience or a different approach. There can't be a reason why only the later writings of John would get into such personal conversations amongst the apostles or the details of specific conversations with the woman at the well or with, there's no reason in the world why

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Nicodemus' conversation with Jesus wouldn't be recorded by the Synoptics, but would be recorded by John.

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Think about that one for a second. I'm being facetious here, but making a point.

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You're not even allowed to theorize that, well, you know, is it possible there might have been things in the context of the writing of the

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Synoptic Gospels that are earlier than John that would have, because of the purpose of the writing, the audience, the timing, that John is able to bring things out, that he has the freedom to bring things out, that the

39:05

Synoptic Gospels would not have done so for numerous reasons, people still being alive, the purposes of why they're being written down, an agreement amongst the disciples that these are things that we're going to focus on first, and these are things that we're going to not focus upon.

39:24

We don't know. And the problem is that a large majority of scholarship thinks it does know.

39:38

I mean, so much of what's written today just assumes mark and priority, just assumes it, and then builds from there.

39:46

Yet, computer models argue against it, and just the fact is we don't know the order in which the

39:56

Gospels were written. It certainly seems fairly clear that John is the last to be written, but we don't even know that.

40:06

So there's a lot of certainty on things that are actually not certain, and when we talk about the majority of scholarship, these issues are almost never brought up.

40:22

And that's why I just loathe the term. I loathe when it's used by Christians. I loathe when

40:28

Shabir Ali uses it. Well, scholars tell us, and then you find one scholar who says one thing, and then he weaves together something over here and something over there, and ends up with saying, well, scholars have already told us when actually scholars didn't say anything like that at all.

40:42

So we've talked about a lot of this stuff before along those lines, and you just need to be very, very careful when you hear people saying things like this.

40:53

But going back to what Samuel Green had said, and then Ijaz responded to Samuel Green.

41:01

I'll get it to go the right way here eventually. I know you know who

41:09

Evans and Lycona are, so I'm not sure if you're being serious or not. Well, Samuel Green was focusing primarily upon Ehrman.

41:16

But Craig Evans, I forget how long ago it was, we reviewed a debate between Evans and Ehrman four or five, maybe six years ago now,

41:32

I think. And I at the time said, you know, thankful for some of the good stuff Evans has done, but not my perspective.

41:41

Way off in the woods as far as I'm concerned. But I recognize that when you're talking about academia in the

41:58

West, we have lamented many times the desire of Christian academia to be accepted at the table.

42:10

And therefore, the idea of the Lordship of Christ over all areas of knowledge, of human knowledge, is simply not going to be accepted there.

42:20

And it wasn't, well, it was about a year and a half ago, we had that discussion of that book on inerrancy.

42:27

And we addressed some apologists who are saying, unless we take a particular perspective, we're not going to have a place at the table.

42:40

And I pointed out, we're never going to have a place at the table. If the requirement of having a place at the table is to embrace naturalistic materialism as a fundamental starting point, we can't go there.

42:58

Not if we still believe 1 Corinthians 1 and 2. Not if we believe that preaching the gospel will always be foolishness and that the wisdom of this world will always lead to error.

43:08

And I just mentioned in passing to my Muslim friends, you don't seem to realize that you're embracing this kind of stuff, is injecting absolute poison into the very bloodstream of your system.

43:32

The very same people who, for presuppositional reasons, say that something supernatural like the resurrection simply cannot be affirmed historically, will say the exact same things about any supernatural element of the

43:48

Islamic message as well. They have to, if they're going to be consistent. Now, they may avoid it just because they're afraid, but they will have to, and on the exact same presuppositional grounds.

44:00

So, if you want to accept their conclusions and go, ah, you're an anti -intellectual unless you believe this, well, then you're going to abandon the

44:11

Isra and Mi 'raj, and you're going to abandon all the supernatural elements of the story of Muhammad, at least in the

44:20

Hadith, not necessarily in the Quran. But the very, I mean, seriously, one of the primary arguments of the

44:26

Quran for its own inspiration is that nothing could ever be produced like it. I'm sorry,

44:31

I can't think of a single critical scholar on the planet that would accept that argumentation as having any validity whatsoever.

44:40

Any validity whatsoever. There's far too much variation in form and style within the

44:50

Quran. There are sections of the Quran, I'm sorry, that just simply are not compelling. You try to, you actually try to say that's a meaningful argument, they wouldn't buy it for a second.

45:01

Wouldn't buy it for a second. So, I'm trying to be consistent here because I'm saying to people on my side, don't buy into this majority of scholarship stuff.

45:13

Same thing for you. What that scholarship is based upon is pretty important, pretty important stuff.

45:23

Anyway, correct me if I'm wrong, but you're trying to say that two top conservative

45:29

Christian evangelical scholars, I assume he means Evans, Craig Evans, and Mike Licona, are merely professional academics whose books include

45:37

Denying the Virgin Birth, Healing and Miracles by Jesus. No, he was specifically referring to Bart Ehrman. If that's the case, then one, you're wrong.

45:45

Two, they're evangelical just like you are. And three, they literally reject none of the things you mentioned. So, either you're being facetious for the sake of it, or this is just a poorly thought out comment, or you just should have read a little bit closer.

45:57

And Sam, it could have been clearer as well because the antecedent did include Evans and Licona, but obviously he was referring to Ehrman and his ilk.

46:08

I fail to see how or why Ehrman needs to be mentioned. Well, because it was a conversation with Bart Ehrman, and I've certainly seen it, and we've mentioned it.

46:18

Excuse me again. We've mentioned it. When I see most people interacting with Bart Ehrman, they want to be seen as being a part of the conversation at the table.

46:42

And so, they grant to him things that shouldn't be granted to him. They don't challenge him on his naturalistic presuppositions.

46:51

I've seen Licona do that. I saw Craig Evans do that. But both are clearly compromised as holding to consistent biblically mandated supernaturalism in the presuppositions of their methodologies to begin with.

47:12

We've talked about that on this program. We have, within the past six months, four months, specifically said in regards to Mike Licona's regards to the gospel of Mark, and the whole

47:26

Andy Stanley thing, and all the rest of that stuff that came up. Look, just be straight up front. Mike Licona does not believe in the inerrancy of scripture.

47:35

Believe me, I've been doing this a long time. I taught in a

47:40

Southern Baptist seminary for years. And you had to sign up a thing that said, I will not teach against the

47:50

Baptist faith and message, and I believe in inerrancy. Look, I've seen the ways that people can come up with to find a way around inerrancy, the redefinitions of that term.

48:02

And I know that for majority of continental scholars and the like, inerrancy is that silly

48:09

American doctrine. And so I can recognize redefinition of a phrase all the time.

48:21

And this is a redefinition of it. Now, I don't think

48:27

Craig Evans believes in inerrancy. I don't believe Mike Licona believes in inerrancy. And I'm well aware that if you believe in inerrancy, you're in the small minority.

48:35

I don't have any problem with that. If you believe in most of what the

48:42

New Testament teaches, really believe in it, you're going to be in a small minority. I would argue, if you really believe what

48:50

Islam actually teaches, you're gonna be in a small minority in the Islamic world. I mean, let's face it, the vast majority of Muslims in the world are nominal

48:57

Muslims. They don't really believe all that stuff. They just do what they do, go along with it, but it doesn't impact their daily life.

49:05

They may even say the prayers, but it's just formality. And I've talked with many Muslims that will admit, yeah, yeah, that's obvious just by the way they react, by the way they respond to things.

49:15

Yeah. It's not something that really impacts their life and is the very matrix in which they make decisions and things like that.

49:25

So I don't have any problem saying I'm in the minority. I think we can hold our own quite well when you give us equal time to engage the debate, but I'll perfectly accept that I'm in the minority.

49:42

No problem at all. I do not make any claims to what the majority makes me write because I recognize the error of that.

49:51

I fail to see how or why Ahriman needs to be mentioned. Go read any of my NTTC articles,

49:57

New Testament Textual Criticism articles. You won't find Ahriman as a source. Well, why not? He may be avoiding that just simply to avoid having to deal with his being an apostate and his comments about anti -supernaturalism and things like that.

50:13

Maybe. I don't know. But for example,

50:18

I've found his dissertation to be very useful. Second time reading through it for myself.

50:29

Why not? It just seems to be a part of Christian culture to appeal to Ahriman anytime news of the

50:35

Bible's veracity being doubted comes to light. Well, in this situation, he was the one raising the question.

50:40

He was the one that asked Craig Evans about this particular subject. The problem is

50:45

Ahriman has nothing to do with my post. This isn't coming from liberal scholars. This is from your own people unless you think that Evans and Lycona aren't

50:51

Christians. No. But as you well know, there is a significant difference between the approach of evidentialism, the approach that is the minimal facts, evidential type of approach that Mike Lycona or William Lane Craig or that group would utilize, and the perspective that I would present.

51:20

There's a fundamental difference. But this is interesting.

51:26

I would strongly advise you to try to study Islam before commenting on what and why

51:32

Muslims believe what they do. Muslims accept their scripture as the criterion for truth since knowledge from God is atemporal.

51:43

Sounds like you recognize a presuppositional element to your scriptures that would preclude the very approach of all of these guys, whether it be

52:00

Ahriman or even Lycona and Craig. I think if you'd be consistent, you'd have to go, hey, you know what?

52:08

The Christians who are consistent on their side are James White, not the other guys.

52:17

On the other hand, since Christianity a priori accepts, this is interesting, and I'm going to have to explain this to folks.

52:23

On the other hand, since Christianity a priori accepts that there is a human hand in the development and origin of scripture, then these sorts of criticisms are valid from a historical critical perspective.

52:32

Unless you plan to change the nature of revelation and scripture in your faith, there's really no way to avoid these painful conclusions.

52:38

Now, I think we need to hear this even before I take the time to talk about Ipsissima Vox and Ipsissima Verba and all the rest of that stuff that we'll do here in a moment.

52:52

I think we really need to enter into this because there is a fundamental difference in a historic orthodox approach to the nature of scripture, and when

53:11

I say that, I'm referring to specifically a reformed approach, but I would say this, we can trace this all the way back to the early church, and the

53:24

Islamic approach. And what I hear here is

53:29

Muslims accept their scripture as the criterion for truth, since knowledge from God is atemporal.

53:41

So the Quran is given a status that is separate from its historical manifestation in time.

54:01

And part of the reason for this, if you know Muslim history, is there was the development over time of the idea that the

54:09

Quran itself is eternal. There was debate about this in the early centuries.

54:17

I think honest Muslims will recognize that reality. Honest and well -read.

54:23

You could be well -read and ignore it, I guess, and just not be aware of it. But Muslims developed over time the idea that the

54:36

Quran is uncreated. It's co -eternal with Allah, and it is sent down to the angel

54:53

Jibreel on Laylatul Qadr, the night of power, the month of Ramadan, and then sort of piecemealed out to Muhammad over the course of a couple of decades, as need arose.

55:10

And what's important is, from at least a majority perspective today, that Muhammad has nothing to do with the content of the

55:21

Quran. His understanding, his growth in learning things.

55:30

For example, we've talked about the encounter between Muhammad and the Christians from Najran, which many people see as behind portions of Surah 3.

55:43

And from our perspective, we go, huh, I wonder what would have been different in the

55:53

Quran had that encounter taken place earlier.

56:03

If exposure to a more in -depth revelation of what

56:09

Christians really believe about Jesus, the nature of Sonship, which I think the

56:14

Quran plainly misunderstands, certainly never gives any accurate discussion of.

56:21

So you either have to say it either misunderstands it or just decides to ignore it, which

56:27

I find difficult to believe. But anyway, we automatically ask those questions.

56:33

The Muslim can't ask those questions, because there is nothing of man. There is nothing of the finger of man or the human hand in the

56:42

Quran. Muhammad is an mp3 player. He's an mp3 recorder.

56:48

That's it. There's no interpretation. There's no filter. There's no nothing. It is pure dictation transmission.

56:58

And many Muslims think that this really makes the

57:03

Quran superior to the Bible. They will point to the personal elements of the

57:13

Pauline epistles or the clear recording of sins of men and and the failures of prophets and just all sorts of things like that as to them plain evidence of the error of viewing the

57:35

Bible to be the real Word of God. This is why they believe that what we have today is not what was originally given.

57:44

This isn't the original Torah and Injil. It's been changed. They're very fuzzy on the details and where the real stuff went and all the rest of that.

57:55

But that's the idea. And on one hand,

58:04

I recognize that many

58:10

Muslims have never been given a real clear, compelling presentation on the nature of the inspiration of Scripture.

58:22

Not only because a lot of Christians are just ignorant about it, but let's be honest, a lot of Christians they encounter don't hold a very high view of Scripture in the first place.

58:30

If you hold to the idea that Mark was in error in what he said about the location of things, yeah, if you think that's the majority view, well, okay, there you go.

58:51

But I would suggest to a Muslim, you might want to, you know, just as Ijaz said, well, you need to know why Muslims believe what they believe.

58:57

Well, you might want to ask yourself the question, what does the New Testament reveal Jesus' view of Scripture to be?

59:03

Or the Apostle's view of Scripture to be? Rather than someone coming down the line. Same way that I've read the

59:09

Quran to seek to understand the original author's understanding of Christianity or all sorts of other issues, you might want to do the same thing.

59:21

And it is beyond question when you allow the writers of Scripture to define their own parameters, what they believe about Scripture itself.

59:38

David said, by the Holy Spirit, quotation of the

59:44

Tanakh as God has said, have you not read what God spoke to you?

59:49

Men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. You're not going to come to a modernistic, this fits into the academy view of Scripture from Scripture itself.

01:00:03

That's going to come at a much later time period. And so,

01:00:11

I would say that my view is much more apostolic than those who are attempting to find a way to make the

01:00:19

Bible fit into what the academy today would like it to look like. But I would just simply like to say to Ijaz and to those who take that perspective, it sounds like what's being said here.

01:00:34

Since knowledge from God is atemporal, their Scripture is the criterion for truth.

01:00:43

We believe our Scripture is the criterion for truth. And I don't mean that in the simplistic, fundamentalistic way.

01:00:55

And I know Ijaz doesn't mean that in the equally simplistic, fundamentalistic,

01:01:04

Islamic way, because there is that. There are some really interesting people on YouTube that come up with some strange things from the

01:01:16

Quran. We're trying to be serious in our epistemology here.

01:01:23

But the Muslims struggles to understand how we as Christians can allow, because remember, the

01:01:31

Quran is 14 % the length of this. 14%.

01:01:40

Allegedly just one author. That's the Islamic perspective. I mean, even in the sense of the means by which it appears in history.

01:01:51

Because from the Islamic perspective, God's the author, not even really author. Can you say God's the author of the

01:01:57

Quran if it's uncreated? There is no author if it's uncreated.

01:02:04

There's some real problems. I have some serious problems with the idea of anything being uncreated other than God himself.

01:02:12

I think it was a bad move historically on Islam's part there.

01:02:18

But anyway. But one author, short period of time, small text.

01:02:30

40 authors, 1500 years. Whole lot easier to try to attack this as being inconsistent with itself than something that's 14 % that size written in 20 years.

01:02:44

Apples and oranges. It's also much younger as far as transmission issues goes.

01:02:51

Again, more apples and oranges. But the

01:02:58

Muslim struggles, when we recognize that men spoke from God as they were carried along by the

01:03:08

Holy Spirit. I would argue,

01:03:13

I would say to my Muslim friends, and I get criticized for calling them my Muslim friends, by people who would never have this conversation with a

01:03:23

Muslim to begin with, interestingly enough. I think that there is something far too simplistic in the idea of a

01:03:41

Unitarian, and I don't mean that in the sense of versus Trinitarian, Unitarian authored

01:03:49

MP3 quality dictation theory of the giving of scripture over against the rich deepness of what it is that I, at least, and I'm not alone.

01:04:09

I think if you go back in history, certainly, at least in my own tradition, if you go back to Calvin and his successors up to my day, were consistent on this.

01:04:25

And that is what you have in the scriptures is a sovereign

01:04:35

God, a sovereign king of creation, who by his power and might decrees whatsoever is going to take place in time.

01:04:46

Yet, does so in such a way, in light of the incarnation, to make time important and real and eternally significant.

01:05:00

And a part of that decree is the giving of the scripture. And he chooses to give us that scripture in such a way that it will be able to be spiritually utilized in the forming of a particular people of God that will transcend all races, all languages, and all time periods, all political and geographical boundaries.

01:05:30

So that one of the miracles that we believe takes place every time we meet as the people of God in the fellowship of the faith, the body of Christ, is that we have this beautiful thing of the word and the spirit.

01:05:49

And the spirit that gave us this word then takes this word and applies it to our lives as we have need and application.

01:06:03

It doesn't change the meaning of this, but it is a spiritual miracle that takes place when

01:06:19

God's people meet. Because I have preached many times and my job as a preacher is to present the word of God as accurately as I can, not inserting my own thoughts into it, handling the text from the original languages as best

01:06:36

I can, demonstrating its consistency, its beauty, tying together its message.

01:06:44

And I have been amazed as I have talked to people after services or in weeks after services in how the spirit of God using the word of God met needs in people's lives that obviously

01:07:06

I had no idea. The turn of a phrase, the illustration that I used.

01:07:18

And we do have different reasons as to why this exists over against this.

01:07:38

We have different reasons. Christians interact with this differently than you interact with the

01:07:49

Quran. There's no question about it. And it's not just how you treat the book or something like that.

01:07:58

It's how we view our responsibility to it. I'll be honest, we have a much more personal view of the scriptures, our responsibility to know them.

01:08:14

We're not trying to, we're not getting blessings in the sense of piling up rewards like why you always say peace and blessings be upon him or the prayers on Laylat al -Qadr are worth 10 ,000 times more than any other night or any of that kind of thing.

01:08:30

No. We believe these are the very words of God, just as you believe, but in a different way.

01:08:39

And may I suggest I believe in a deeper way. I know you don't accept that, but let me explain why. I think it is a far higher view of inspiration to believe that God chose the men he was going to use and he made them in such a way that their life experiences, what

01:09:05

God was going to put them through was going to make them the perfect instrument by which he would give us exactly what he wanted us to have so that, well, at our church, at the

01:09:19

Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church, we go through the

01:09:25

Psalter on Wednesday nights and it takes us more than three years because we break

01:09:32

Psalm 119 up. It's a long one. And the range of human experience that you encounter in the

01:09:49

Psalter matches the experiences of God's people down through the ages.

01:09:55

It's so wonderful to, to recognize that God's people have gone through times of difficulty, joy, sorrow, exaltation, worship, despair.

01:10:12

And you wouldn't have that if it was just simply a dictated, what's the term you used here?

01:10:20

No human hand involved. But you see, unlike many of my fellows,

01:10:27

I don't believe that human hand of necessity demands error in the resultant product.

01:10:38

My God's big enough to use human beings so as to make it speak to human beings without it becoming merely human and therefore unreliable.

01:10:54

Unfortunately, uh, in our modern day, that's not the most common view.

01:11:01

It was once the most common view. And it's not because, it is not because, uh, we've lost the argument.

01:11:13

That's like saying that today Western culture has become, that's like saying that homosexual marriage is right because we lost the argument.

01:11:21

We weren't allowed to have the argument. The debate never took play. Um, in the same way, the reason for the secularization of the

01:11:33

West is not because we didn't have good answers. It's the judgment of God upon sin, different issue.

01:11:42

Anyway, I would suggest that we have a much, I think much deeper and higher view of inspiration than a mere dictation viewpoint.

01:11:54

Um, but many people, many people who are

01:12:00

Christians do not have as high a view of this subject as they should.

01:12:07

And that leads us to that issue. So when you say

01:12:14

Christianity operator accepts that there is a human hand in the development origin of scripture. Well, by the way,

01:12:22

I'm listening. I, I did a long ride this morning and I was, I have stumbled across this extensive video series from a well -credentialed

01:12:34

Muslim scholar on the origin development of the Quran as well.

01:12:40

And I'm just going in depth on stuff. And that's what

01:12:47

I was listening to on my ride today. Um, there is historical development and human hands all over the collation and organization and collection of the

01:13:04

Quran as well. So you've got to deal with the historical reality.

01:13:10

I know, for example, Ijaz was recently reading a book that I've got on the

01:13:16

Su 'ana manuscripts. And if you've got Muslim scholars writing books where basically their argument is, yeah, there's so many variants here in this palimpsest, this must've been some kid's, um, writing assignment type thing, you know, that, that, that would explain it.

01:13:33

I don't really think that explains it, but you've got history to work with as well.

01:13:41

You've got to deal with that as well. Um, and I just wonder who is in a better position to deal with the historical realities of that development.

01:13:52

Someone who recognizes that God was using that for a purpose in the very form of that scripture or someone who would say that's impossible.

01:14:04

Um, then these sorts of criticisms are valid from a historical critical perspective, unless you plan to change the nature of revelation and scripture in your faith.

01:14:13

There's really no way to avoid these painful conclusions. Well, I'm not sure what you mean by painful conclusions because the article that was referred to at risenjesus .com

01:14:28

went through, um, I think Dr. Licona, um, you know, he and I both get attacked by different people and I sensed in reading this a fair amount of defensiveness on Dr.

01:14:48

Licona's part. He quotes, um, some people who are criticizing him and, um, some things that people are criticizing him,

01:15:07

I would agree with. Um, for example, we have, he exemplifies some of the same systemic problems in New Testament scholarship that Craig Evans does specifically with his gospel fictionalization theories.

01:15:20

People know it's bad. They just won't say it out loud. Well, if you want to get ahead in certain circles, hey, you better not say it out loud.

01:15:34

That's true. The reason I say it out loud is I'm not trying to get ahead in those circles and I don't have to because of what

01:15:44

I do and the fact that we're, you know, we're sort of already here. We just try to be consistent in what we're saying.

01:15:54

Um, this is really an in -house thing, but essentially what I'm saying is that New Testament scholarship has become a very ingrown system and bad techniques have been allowed to take root and spread unchecked.

01:16:03

Some of us are concerned about this and we also dislike the instinctive wagon circling that has prevented critical conversations from being had out in the open.

01:16:12

Well, I'm afraid I've got to, got to agree with that, uh, as well. Um, so, uh, there was a fair amount of discussion and then

01:16:24

Mike responded, uh, to those comments.

01:16:29

I'll offer one comment here, but I do not intend to continue with the discussion since these discussions often end up being black holes that suck up far more time than I can afford to devote.

01:16:37

Well, I understand that. While I respect your mom and acknowledge she's very intelligent, until one spends years looking at these matters, it's quite easy to draw conclusions that are misguided and misjudge others.

01:16:49

Okay. Craig Keener has spent far more time studying the Gospel of John than you, your parents, me, and everyone on this thread combined.

01:16:57

Keener is one of the most informed and honest scholars I know. He is also one who models Jesus's teachings and the Sermon on the Mount more closely than almost anyone

01:17:03

I know. He walks with God while being committed to scholarship at the highest level. So, if some evangelicals decide to clean house in their community for the reasons you articulated above,

01:17:12

Keener would be thrown out with the trash. What a loss that would be for that particular community. I find this type of argumentation far below where Dr.

01:17:19

Laicona should be. Let's deal with what is actually being said.

01:17:25

I was offended by this. Let's throw out just how wonderful these people are.

01:17:32

No, let's actually deal with the fact that we have some people that are redefining historical terms in modern contexts that leads to confusion.

01:17:45

There are good people on both sides, but I was just really surprised.

01:17:54

Maybe there's other stuff that had been written that resulted in the emotionalism of that particular portion.

01:18:02

Keener has said that all Johannine scholars acknowledge Johannine adaptation of the

01:18:07

Jesus tradition. All! I get really nervous when people do the all thing because, well,

01:18:15

I know better. Craig Keener has undoubtedly spent more time on the

01:18:21

Gospel of John than I have, but that doesn't change the fact that when you say all, you probably shouldn't have said all.

01:18:30

To see us in action, I recommend you read through the Synoptic Gospels several times in Greek. Then read

01:18:37

John's Gospel in 1 John several times in Greek. One can also observe this in English, but it's far clearer and even more striking in Greek.

01:18:44

Okay, I've done all that. You will observe a few items relevant to this discussion. One, although the message is the same, the way

01:18:51

Jesus, scare quotes, sounds, scare quotes, in John is very different than the way he, scare quotes, sounds, scare quotes in the

01:19:00

Synoptics. Okay, stop immediately. What this raises is a subject that we have addressed before and the main thing

01:19:14

I wanted to get to today. I mean, I'll get all through this. In fact, I'm sure I won't. That is, two years ago at G3, I gave a presentation.

01:19:31

You can go back and look at it, though I have more time today than I had then, so I'm not sure it's gonna be any more in -depth.

01:19:41

I addressed the issue of two Latin phrases, abscissima vox and abscissima verba, and basically, what this is is a discussion of what do we have in the

01:20:00

Gospel. Since we have, for example, different versions of things that Jesus said.

01:20:14

You know, sometimes people say, well, Jesus actually said this a number of different times, and of course, much of the time, this is the case, is

01:20:26

Jesus obviously addressed the same issues many, many times over the course of three years, and he didn't use the same words each time, and there's nothing wrong with Matthew or Mark or Luke combining three or four sermons preached over the course of months or years and putting them in a particular place to give

01:20:54

Jesus' teaching on a particular subject. Okay, Jesus addressed the subject of worry in this context and at this time, but I'm gonna put together everything he said on that subject.

01:21:10

I have no problem with that whatsoever, but what this raises is the issue of abscissima vox or abscissima verba, and that is do we have the voice of Christ in the words of Scripture, which would include not just the synoptics but John, or do we have abscissima verba, the very words, in the sense of if you had been standing on the shore in Galilee and had an mp3 recorder, well, it's probably an

01:21:51

Aramaic, so you've got those issues, too. But even allowing for the rendering of the

01:22:04

Aramaic into Greek by different persons, and remember, the locus of inspiration is in the writing of Scripture itself, not in the translation beforehand or anything else, but it's actually what is written down.

01:22:19

Even granting that, there are times when there are differences, and so the argument has been between verba vox, words, voice.

01:22:36

Vox would be accurate but not identical, accurate but not mp3.

01:22:44

Well, I don't think those two categories are overly helpful.

01:22:52

I understand why people want to limit things to those two categories, but I really don't think those are the best categories.

01:23:00

I came up with my own. Hey, somebody else came up with vox and verba.

01:23:08

They came up with it one day, why can't I come up with one, too? And I presented the idea of abscissima intendibant.

01:23:17

Intendibant, pretty obvious that means, and that is the intention, what is intended.

01:23:27

Well, by whom? By the author of Scripture. Who is? Well, I'm referring specifically to God.

01:23:36

I would like to suggest that what we have, again, recognizing the focus of inspiration, all pasa grafe theanustas, all

01:23:50

Scripture is theanustas. It's the result of whatever providential process under the decree of God that took place in bringing together whatever book of Scripture you're talking about.

01:24:05

So, everything that happened to Peter from the time he was born up was a part of that process because it made

01:24:14

Peter who Peter was. Paul, same thing. Luke, same thing.

01:24:20

Every one of the authors of the Psalter, the unknown authors of some of the

01:24:26

Old Testament books, the writer to the Hebrews, which I think was Paul, but it was a sermon written down by Luke.

01:24:33

Anyway, the point is that in God's sovereign decree, that whole process up to the writing of Scripture itself is a part of His purpose and His plan so that what

01:24:50

God intended to make up the final corpus of divine revelation is what is given to us.

01:25:00

There have been a number of times when even in the answering of critics,

01:25:10

I have come to see the deeper beauty of divine revelation because we have more than one gospel, because we have to look at the parallels between Ephesians and Colossians, look at the giving of the law a second time,

01:25:39

Deuteronomy. The rephrasing of things in the giving of the Deuteronomas sheds light on the intention of things we find

01:25:48

Leviticus. This, as I've described it, tapestry of Scripture with its interwoven themes is what

01:26:00

God intended us to have so that we don't have to hide from the differences.

01:26:07

I'm concerned that sometimes those who wish to defend Ipsissima verba end up having to force the

01:26:15

Scripture into categories that were never Ipsissima intendament so as to avoid

01:26:22

Ipsissima vox. Some who defend

01:26:27

Ipsissima vox end up without any verba left because the voice becomes more of a melody than something that can communicate objective truth.

01:26:49

Interestingly enough, I don't think my best read

01:26:56

Muslim friends, if they'll think through what I'm saying, can attack what

01:27:01

I'm saying presuppositionally because I am saying that it is God's intention to give to His people a revelation that is transcendent and transcendently true.

01:27:16

And He does it through man in time, which is perfectly consistent with the central teaching of Christianity that God entered into His own creation.

01:27:28

It's perfectly harmonious. Where it separates me from those to my, well, to my left and to my right, because it's easy to see where it separates me from the folks to the left because they don't,

01:27:48

I mean, one of the fundamental things, one of the fundamental categories you're not even allowed to bring in to discussions anymore is the idea there could be this transcendent nature of Scripture that allows for it to be truly harmonious.

01:28:06

You're not even allowed to go there. You're not allowed to harmonize. But on the right, how would that separate me from on the right?

01:28:17

Well, most independent fundamentalist

01:28:22

Baptists, people with an almost dictation theory of inspiration, don't look for depth of meaning to be found in the differences.

01:28:43

They fear the differences and they try to wipe out the differences. It's almost the impetus that created the diatessaron.

01:28:51

And I'll admit the diatessaron isn't the gospel. I want Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. I want their voices.

01:28:58

I want their differences because it's their differences that creates the hues and the colors and the depth of the diamond.

01:29:06

And when you turn the diamond, all that glittering that attracts us and the colors that we see, if you flatten that all out, it's boring.

01:29:17

I'm sorry, but you can draw on a piece of paper the best diamond in the world.

01:29:24

It will never look like a diamond because the depth is found in that third dimension that that piece of paper cannot provide.

01:29:35

And I'm afraid that a lot of people sometimes, to my right, are so afraid of differences and so afraid of maybe their traditions haven't always been right that they end up losing the beauty of that of that depth that is actually there.

01:29:55

So that's why I use the term ipsissima intendibont.

01:30:01

It is exactly what the sovereign God intended us to have.

01:30:10

And therefore, when we find differences in the examination of those differences, we find deeper truth.

01:30:18

We find something that will advance the cause of the gospel or advance our understanding of how we should interact with an ever -changing world.

01:30:33

I mean, we've got challenges ahead of us that, I'm sorry, I just don't think a dictated text is going to be sufficient to do.

01:30:44

I think a text that allows us, and in fact demands of us, in -depth thought and reflection is the only thing that's going to work given what we're facing in the world today.

01:30:59

I'm not trying to say that that functional advantage is therefore the reason it was done, but it's just part of the reason that God has done this.

01:31:07

And so this stuff about how

01:31:13

Jesus sounds, if you compare how

01:31:25

I sound during a sermon at PRBC with how

01:31:32

I sound talking to Clementine at Red Robin when we're having dinner and we're having a discussion of how yummy the french fries are,

01:31:49

I'm going to sound differently. And what?

01:31:57

Just a tiny bit? Yeah. I thought you were going, oh, it's dead. Okay. I believe the reason why

01:32:08

Jesus sounds differently, and by the way, I could make the technical argument that Jesus sounds differently in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, especially between Luke and Matthew and Mark, because the

01:32:22

Greek of Luke is very different than Matthew and Mark. And there are differences, there are fewer Aramaisms in Mark than there are in Matthew.

01:32:29

I mean, we can, you can, if you want to, I'm trying to give

01:32:35

Dr. Lycona the benefit of the doubt here, but it almost sounds like he was saying, you know, I've been doing a little work on this stuff here and, you know, reading the

01:32:42

Greek stuff, okay, but read Greek too. And I could point out that there's really,

01:32:51

Jesus sounds different in all of them. But I think the reason is not that John is reworking the tradition.

01:33:02

He's talking about different things. He's talking about, now there are parallels, you know, feeding the 5 ,000, where John and Matthew are identical in some of their language, things like that.

01:33:18

But much of where the focus is in John is where you have the specific conflict going on with the

01:33:26

Jews. John chapter 5, John chapter 6, John chapter 8,

01:33:31

John chapter 9, John chapter 10, John chapter 11, or where there's been personal conversations going on.

01:33:40

John chapter 3, John chapter 4, John chapter 11 with Mary and Martha. That's where these differences are.

01:33:47

And that's because it's unique. I mean, Jesus' discussion, discussions with Mary and Martha and with the woman, the well are the longest personal discussions.

01:33:57

Well, and Nicodemus, well, depending on where you cut the Nicodemus, that one really depends on how you understand where Jesus' words cut off and John's commentary begins.

01:34:06

But these are personal discussions that you don't get in the synoptics.

01:34:12

So I'm just really surprised that some of these basic level reasons why there would be something that sounds different just get dismissed.

01:34:24

Just like, well, no, no, you can't. And my theory is this. In today's academia, to get published, you got to come up with something new.

01:34:35

If something substantiates traditional Christian perspective, it's just not going to get published. It's not going to get accepted.

01:34:43

And seeing these things this way substantiates historic, traditional

01:34:48

Christian understanding. And so it just gets dismissed, gets dismissed. So anyways,

01:34:56

I've gone over how long I was going to go and how long I expected my voice to actually survive. And this poor camera over here is going to be really, it feels unloved.

01:35:05

It's weeping. I see tears coming. Yeah, well, okay, whatever you say.

01:35:14

I just think you're probably mesmerized by the warp core today, but that's possible.

01:35:21

But I did want to mention that our Enterprise E back here, the brother who sent that, he and I had schnitzel together.

01:35:33

Well, actually, he doesn't eat schnitzel. Our other brother, Peter, had schnitzel, but I disappointed him.

01:35:42

And I want to publicly here on The Dividing Line, in light of the kind gift that he gave me of the

01:35:47

Enterprise E, I want to apologize to him because when I spoke at his church in Frankfurt last

01:35:53

Thursday evening, I didn't wear a bow tie.

01:36:00

I'm sorry. And he did. And it obviously impacted him, but he pressed through.

01:36:10

He pressed through. And he actually had to do my translation, did a very good job in translation.

01:36:16

We worked very well together. But I did to him what I do to all my translators.

01:36:22

And I love doing this. I can only do it in my German translators because I can speak enough German. But once or twice,

01:36:31

I went ahead and switched over to German. And automatically, without even thinking, they switch with me and translate it to English.

01:36:43

They just automatically do it. And then a couple times, I think once I even said something like, not actually what

01:36:51

I said was or something like that, I forget what it was. But we had a little fun. Even though it was the end of the end of my trip, and I was getting a little on the loopy side, we had a great time at the church and hopefully get an opportunity to go back there and do something more.

01:37:05

But that's where the Enterprise E came from was all the way over in Frankfurt.

01:37:11

Frankfurt am Main, auf Deutschland! Eine schöne Stadt. Anyway, so there you go.

01:37:19

That was a rather in -depth discussion. I know, hopefully it was useful. This audience recognizes we do not in any way, shape or form attempt to modify our conversations on the basis of trying to draw an audience.

01:37:42

We just deal with the issues that we feel are the most important to be dealt with. And if that means spending 45 minutes talking about inspiration theories, that's the way it is.

01:37:55

And the neat thing is this audience, this audience wants that. And so that's what we did today.

01:38:01

So I appreciate your listening in today. Lord willing, we'll do another program later in the week.