An Arminian Loses Psalm 33:10-11, SES and Rome, the Comma Johanneum Once Again

And greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. It's a Friday. We move things around just, well, because we like to do that.

And we don't want to be overly predictable and stuff like that. Got a lot to cover on the program today.

Today's June 10th. Yesterday on June 9th, William W. Birch posted an article,

James White, Twitter, and God decreeing evil. The evangelical

Armenians are busily tweeting away out there.

And anyway, what was fascinating was, well, not only, you know, it's interesting.

The Armenians and the TRO, Texas Receptus Only type reform guys, both yesterday, incredible examples of just these guys.

Hey, what did you do with the rest of my prop?

I felt the, I didn't want the fire marshal to get upset.

Actually, I have no idea. It was there. I didn't, I didn't remove it from the room. You know what?

I think I lit a candle in the other room. See? See how quickly he blames me. See how it is?

That might have been what it was. That might have been what it was. But we can't light him up today. He would look more interesting with a treble.

But anyway, we have our, we have our straw man.

Yeah, we have our straw man. Just remind us of what a straw man looks like. We have our straw man. There were many, majority inhabitant of the

Twitterverse right here. Just, just so you know, these people are banging with the keyboards out there till their little straw hands fall off.

Anyway, saw examples of, of just incredible misrepresentation from both sides.

So I'm getting it from the Calvinists and the Armenians. That's, that's not overly unusual. Anyway, so I started looking at this article from this, this fellow.

And I thought it would be interesting to respond to what he has to say about Psalm 33.

Because in my conversation with the evangelical Armenians, I had pointed out that Psalm 33 is just this beautiful refutation of their perspective.

And so I brought it up and I started, I was going to read through it today. And discovered that the most obvious, clear, compelling portion of Psalm 33, to which

I was referring, obviously, in which I've addressed numerous times in sermons and Bible studies and here on the program,

Mr. Birch forgot was there. He just skipped over it. Didn't even realize that's what

I was talking about. And somewhat diminished the value of the article.

But still, we'll take a look at a little bit of it anyway here. Calvinist James White.

So I guess I'll call him Armenian William Birch. Calvinist James White insists that his deterministic

Calvinism is unquestionably outlined in such passages of Psalm 33, that free will does not exist and that God is exhaustibly meticulous to create, rendered certain, and brings into reality whatever occurs.

Well, mainly, if you mean by free will, the idea that man is free and God isn't.

I believe in free will as defined by Scripture. I mean, we're creatures.

My will is not autonomous. My will is limited to my creaturely state and to my fallen state.

So, you know, these are, you know, one, two, three, the fourth and fifth volumes back there, right through there, you can see them.

You know, Jonathan Edwards wrote a little something on the will, a little, huge amount on the will.

And it'd be nice if everybody familiarized themselves with the appropriate terminology for discussion of these things.

But I'm assuming, since he's an Armenian, that by free will, he means autonomous will. And I do believe that there's one autonomous will in the universe.

It's God's. And I don't believe that the creature man is autonomous.

Other Calvinists assume the same from reading Job, that free will does not exist and that God is exhaustibly meticulous to create, rendered certain, and brings into reality whatever occurs.

If both claims are true, then we have explicit contradictions among the Hebrew prophets, namely Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and Hosea, to name a few, neither of whom espouse hard determinism nor any semblance of a notion that free will is a farce.

Well, you know, you get these just general claims. Isaiah is just as clear.

Jeremiah, incredibly clear on the slavery of the will and the fallenness of the nature and, you know, all these things.

Daniel? Daniel 4? Really? So many errors, so little time.

But here, if we read Psalm 33 and we're talking about God's decree and the relationship of the accomplishment of his will versus man's will, where do you think we'd be focusing our attention?

Where do you think we'd be focusing our attention? Well, it's pretty obvious, but somehow

Mr. Birch completely misses it. He says, The Chesed of Yahweh.

God, again, loves righteousness and justice. This is of paramount significance, yes, because it, of course, represents his own being.

Justice is the foundation of his throne. Now, he's unfortunately skipping over some of the foundational stuff here.

You have, after the assertion that the earth is full of the Chesed of Yahweh, verse 4.

So, verse, I'm sorry, verse 5, forgive me. Verse 6,

Why? Well, because he's the creator. He is the maker of all things.

Now, that would be enough in of itself, but the worldview of the psalmist here is going to be explicitly stated for us.

There are many people who want to limit God's sovereignty to the bare creation of the natural universe, and they'll allow him to be sovereign over tsunamis and earthquakes and forest fires and hurricanes and that kind of stuff.

You know, that natural stuff, the acts of God. We'll let God be sovereign over that.

Most people, well, religious people, anyways. Now, that's just all naturalistic materialism, doesn't really have any meaning.

To the secularists, anyways. But, this is clearly purposeful on God's part.

His creation isn't, and people are standing in awe of him, for he spoke and it was done, he commanded and it stood fast.

So, there is a word from God, he commands, and it stood fast.

So, you have the creator bringing the creation into existence in verse 9.

Our author says, Created order bespeaks of God's omnipotence and sovereignty. He rules over all the earth, the seas, and all the inhabitants of the world standing in awe of him.

And then, God, every moment looks from heaven, he sees all the sons of men, verses 13 and 14.

He went from verse 9 to verses 13 and 14. And then, he goes through 13 and 14 and stuff, and then says,

Here, at verse 17, having only five verses to the end of the song, we have yet to encounter even the slightest hint of James White's exhaustive determinism.

And I have to wonder, I remember talking to a former Mormon, a missionary, who was saved.

And one of the things that he said that struck me was, You know, after I got saved,

I start reading through my Bible, and I would see where I had marked things, and then there would be entire sections of just incredibly relevant truth that was directly contradictory to what

I believed as a Mormon, and there was no marking. And I couldn't even remember having read it. Well, for Mr.

Birch, who is an Arminian, he does not even say a word.

Type a syllable about the key text of the psalm.

It's right there. Notice what it says, verse 10.

And this is, of course, what I was talking about specifically to the evangelical

Arminians. Now, please note, it's very obvious.

We have here strong parallelism.

In verse 10, you have the council of the nations and the plans of the peoples.

And Yahweh nullifies the council of the nations. He frustrates the plans of the people.

So, whose will is being accomplished here? I mean, this is the free libertarian will of the peoples of the nations, and Yahweh is not constrained by that.

He frustrates their plans. He nullifies their council.

They intend to do something. God says, no, not going to do it.

You may have a will. You may have plans. That's not what's going to be accomplished.

And then directly parallel. Notice, the council, first phrase, verse 10.

The council of Yahweh stands forever, verse 11. You have the plans of the peoples, second clause, verse 10.

The plans of his heart from generation to generation. How can you not see that?

How can you not hear that? What is God saying? I will accomplish my will even when that means your plans come this way, my plans come that way, and guess who loses?

It's not God. It's not God. I hear Arminians over and over and over again say, well, you know,

God's will is not always done. You know, God wants to do all sorts of things, but, you know, man doesn't allow him.

And then they run off to Acts 7 or some other horribly misinterpreted text.

I wanted to know. That's why I saved this article. I'd like to know, how does an

Arminian deal with a text like Psalm 33? Well, I brought up some of these texts to our open theist friend on Unbelievable a couple weeks ago.

And they don't really deal with them. But what I didn't expect was,

I'll just completely skip it. I'll go from verse 9 to verse 13. And everything in between, just, it's not there.

I won't even comment on it. It's not even there. So there you have direct statement versus 10, 11.

God's counsel and God's plan established forever. Council of the nations, not just individuals, but the nations, the plans of the peoples.

Can all get together and say, we are going to do this. And God says, really?

Oh, okay. So you say. He who sits in the heavens laughs.

Then you have, blessed is the nation whose God is Yahweh. The people whom he has chosen for his own inheritance.

Whom he has chosen. I suppose you might be able to properly point out, just in passing, that it doesn't say the people who has chosen him to be his inheritance.

It's the people whom he has chosen for his own inheritance.

I think there is a significance difference between the two. Just like there's a world of difference between Jesus Christ died to make men savable.

And Jesus Christ died to save. Those are not equivalent statements.

Not by a long shot. Not by a long shot. So I'd like to be able to tell you what

William Birch says about this. But he was just in such a hurry to get to the point of saying, we have yet to encounter even the slightest hint of James White's exhaustive determinism.

Well, when you skip over the main part, that's going to happen. You know, it's just.

So anyways, so he skips over it. And then of course has a conclusion. If you are surprised the psalmist fails to expound upon or defend

James White's and the Calvinist's exhaustive, meticulous divine determinism, then you are not alone. Because you likewise skip over entire texts of scripture.

I mean, this is sort of how people dealt with Romans 9. You know, I remember talking to a guy after doing a class on Romans 9 years and years and years ago.

And he said, you know, I'd read that passage before. And I remember thinking to myself, that sounds like predestination.

But I know we don't believe that. And so I just simply moved on from there. It's amazing the amount of blindness that tradition creates.

He goes on to say, Astonishingly, White then chides the Society of Evangelical Arminians on Twitter for not considering Psalm 33 as propagating exhaustive determinism, stating,

I love Psalm 33. I got a little Twitter war with the Evangelical Arminians. I even said to them that Psalm 33 is such a glorious refutation of what you're saying because there in the psalm you read, man plans this and man intends to do this.

And the very next verse says, but God's plans are going to be what's established and God's intentions are going to be what happens.

And man's plans are frustrated. God does away with them. The psalmist does not say that. He must have mentioned the wrong psalm.

We will give him the benefit of a doubt, even though he clearly, certainly does not deserve one. So he skips it.

Psalmist, that guy couldn't even get the right psalm. Hey, you know what?

Maybe he was using an electronic version put out by the Society of Evangelical Arminians and it's just slightly edited.

Maybe they found a Masoretic text someplace. It didn't have that little part about the

Lord nullifying the Council of Nations. It's frustrating. But he even, I gave a fairly decent citation of the text there.

And he doesn't realize that, yeah, there you go.

Well, that was interesting. Very, very, very, very interesting. All right.

There's that. Psalm 33. Love it. It's beautiful. Awesome. Tremendous. Recommend it to you.

I mentioned on Tuesday that, you know, last week,

Dr. K. Scott Oliphant at ReformCon 2016, once again, my thanks to John Sampson just came by.

And he was there for ReformCon. And I'm wearing Ivy Connerly's shirt that he gave me.

Well, it's not actually Ivy Connerly's shirt. I just wouldn't take his shirt. But it's for his new album.

And it looks really cool. And it's King of Kingdoms is what it's called.

I thought it was really cool graphic. And it does really look really neat. Ivy's great because we've worked together on some stuff.

But he knows I'm not a big rap guy. I like reading some of the lyrics and stuff.

But it's just not my thing. I mean, I remember being incredibly,

I don't know, when I was a kid, when I first heard, was it?

No. Matthew Ward. Matthew Ward. I was a little afraid that my parents might hear that.

Because that was really rockish. And even though I was listening,

I have a My Youth Christian playlist on my iPod. Well, in my iTunes library.

And I was actually listening to a Matthew Ward song recently. And I was listening to the lyrics. I was like, man, those lyrics are really good.

They're a lot better than a lot of the less rockish songs back then. It was really good stuff.

He breaks me and then puts me back together again. And it was really cool. Anyway. So I'm not a big rap, hip -hop type guy.

To be honest with you, most of the time I can't understand what's being said. Sorry.

Just the way it is. I still listen to Keith Green four or five, six times a week, probably.

I don't know if any of you saw the little game thing they did at ReformCon.

Where you had to identify the 1990s Christian music. 1990s

Christian music. And I just sat there picking my nose. Never heard of any of this stuff.

None of it. I just kept going, are we sure these are Christian songs?

But having said all that, chased that rabbit around the tree a few times. Dr. Oliphant gave an excellent presentation prompted by the book put out by nine contributors to the

Evangelical Exodus book, which I mentioned to you. We had picked up on Kindle and I hadn't gotten to the last appendices.

There was something in the Kindle file that would not allow my

Kindle to read the first page of the second appendix.

Even when I tried to start there, it crashed my Kindle. So I just went to the second page and started there and it worked fine.

So I got all that taken care of. But it was striking.

Very, very striking. To listen to these converts to Roman Catholicism.

You know, I fully understood what they were saying because I've said over and over again, the dividing line, satirologically speaking, of the

Reformation was between those who believed in the mere necessity of grace and those who believed in the sufficiency of grace.

It's one thing to say grace is necessary, but it's not enough. You've got to do, and then the list can be short or long.

Over against those who say God's grace is sufficient to save because He intends to save a particular people by His grace and He does so.

That's where the dividing line was. Well, that's not where the dividing line is when it comes to quote -unquote Catholic Protestants.

And so, as I've said many, many times before, what you have today is you have all these people paddling around in the middle of the

Tiber River. They're not on the far side, and they're not on the

Roman Catholic side. Remember, the Tiber River forms the western boundary of the city of Rome. So, they're not on the eastern side where Rome is.

They're on the western side. Well, I'm on the western side. They're on the eastern side.

That's where Rome is. And these people are paddling around the middle, and they really haven't taken a position.

And what they don't realize, and what the vast majority of Calvary Chapel -esque folks don't realize, is on the issues of the

Reformation, they're on the Roman side. They're on the Roman Catholic side. I remember, I forget what year it was.

Late 1990s, I think. I was invited to speak to a men's fellowship of a

Calvary Chapel -esque type church here in the valley. I had a great time talking about Mormonism and stuff like that, and we all agreed on stuff like that.

And they all decided, hey, you guys grew up to Salt Lake City and do this stuff? We ought to go along with you.

And then they said, do you remember this? But we'd like to bring our own tracks. Why? Well, we'd more agree with Erasmus than Luther on the nature of the will.

Well, the wheels came off that one real fast. We couldn't get together because we're proclaiming a different message.

We're proclaiming a different message. There's an inconsistency there. When you're doing apologetics, you all need to be on the same page.

And so, this division has been around for a long, long time.

A very long time. And I've said many times before, I'm thankful for my inconsistent

Arminian brothers, who don't take Arminianism to its logical conclusion, but its logical conclusion is a man -centered belief system that cannot account for powerful, saving grace.

And so, whenever Arminian prays for... Well, and again, there's all sorts of different stripes and versions and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

But today, anyways, in the church today, the dividing line has moved from where it was at the time of the

Reformation. Well, anyway, most people know Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte was founded by Norman Geisler.

And most everybody knows Norman Geisler is not Reformed. And remember, just a couple weeks ago, we played a video by that Jack Chick dude.

Well, it's not Jack Chick, but I guess he works for Jack Chick or whatever. And he identified Norman Geisler as a

Jesuit. Well, Norman Geisler is not a Jesuit. But Norman Geisler is extremely compromised in his soteriology by his commitment to the synergism of Rome and to the epistemology of Rome via Thomas Aquinas.

Incredibly compromised by that. And that's why he is opposed to Reformed theology, is because there are fundamental errors in his soteriological, epistemology, a number of areas like that.

We've pointed this out many, many times over the years. And so, when

I was at SES, whatever year that was, after we had a little impromptu debate on apologetic methodology, questions came up regarding Roman Catholicism.

Because everybody knew this situation was ongoing there at SES. They say there's like two dozen, 22 to 24 people, staff students, who have converted to Roman Catholicism that have been associated with SES.

And of course, those of us who are Reformed are sitting outside going, there's a reason for this. I mean, one of Geisler's co -authors on a book on Rome, a couple of years later, became a

Roman Catholic. And of course, Geisler just, there's no connection. He's just in denial.

He's just, okay, fine. The sad thing is, I looked at the responses that SES has posted.

They posted a response to Oliphant. And I was incredibly disappointed.

I mean, it didn't even seem like there's a willingness as yet on the leadership of SES to realize, we've got a problem.

Our students are not introduced in any meaningful or even any positive way to the best of the

Reformers. You know, we recognize they existed, but you know, the average

SES student is going to know 10 times of Thomas Aquinas of anything they know of any of the

Reformers. And so you put together your anti -Reform soteriology, your synergism, your love for Aquinas, which includes then the

Roman Catholic, and whether you, you know, you don't do this purposefully, but it's communicated.

The subjection of the written tradition to the broader category of tradition, which inevitably in Rome results in the subjection of the written word of God to the oral tradition, which is how you get dogmas like papal infallibility and the bodily assumption of Mary and things like that.

You're, it is not, it should absolutely be expected that bringing

Calvary chapel -esque type guys who have been saved by a proclamation where there's no knowledge of church history, there's no knowledge of the

Reformation, it's a man -centered proclamation regarding the gospel.

It's not about, you know, most of them come in not having a clue, let alone a strong conviction on sola scriptura, especially as it is misdefined by Roman Catholic apologists.

I mean, this book, it's pathetic. I mean, it honestly is not, I truly expected evangelical exodus to have some kind of substance to it.

There was nothing deeper in this than what you'd get listening to any Catholic Answers Live program. It was just horrible, just showed no serious interaction with the best, well, this is understandable, with the best that the

Reformed tradition has produced because the Reformed tradition isn't something they'd be exposed to. So, Whitaker, or Salmon, or any of those, no familiarity with those things.

I mean, my book was listed in a long list of books, that was the only reference that I found, that I listened to, that I heard anyways.

There might be something in those last appendices I haven't gotten to yet, but anyway, just wanted to read some quotes from this book.

Because I listened to the attempted response from SCS, and it just completely missed the point.

Didn't even seem to understand what the criticism was. It was all about, well, but I think you're misrepresenting

Aquinas.

Many different ways that Thomas Aquinas can be understood, and completely missing the real issue of why you continue to create

Roman Catholics. Why is this? And someone very rightly pointed out in a

Twitter DM yesterday, you know, it's not just SCS that creates, it's not just those people that creates converts to Rome.

You've got, Gordon Conwell's been doing it for a long time, and there's even been graduates of Westminster that have become

Roman Catholics. Yes, but the difference is, if you're a

Westminster grad and become a Roman Catholic, you are directly repudiating the fundamental epistemology, bibliology, soteriology of the school and the religious perspective represented therein.

Go to SCS, you're just simply adding the sacraments. You're still a synergist. You've got the same epistemology.

You've got the same subjection of scripture to a higher philosophical authority.

It's consistent. The road is just not that rough to travel.

That's the point. That's the whole point. So, check out some of these quotes that I grabbed.

What Geisler found in St. Thomas was a theologian whose views on God, faith and reason, natural theology, epistemology, metaphysics, and anthropology were congenial to his evangelical faith.

Let me tell you something. Stop you right there. Aquinas was a Roman Catholic. Now, you need to realize something.

A lot has changed in the past 700 -800 years.

A lot has changed. So, you can find places where Aquinas would disagree with modern

Roman Catholic formulations. I get that. But, he was fully wedded to the concepts of sacramentalism and sacramental salvation and all the things that come with it.

Fundamentally, Geisler has a Roman anthropology, not a Reformation anthropology.

That's why he does apologetics the way he does apologetics. It's all related. It's all related.

If you're a synergist, I'm glad some of you don't go as far as Norm does, but why?

Is it just a matter of taste? I hope it's a matter of restraint. I don't believe it's possible to consistently find

Aquinas' views on God, faith, and reason, natural theology, epistemology, metaphysics, and anthropology to be congenial to your evangelical faith.

That says a lot about your evangelical faith and not a lot of good things about your evangelical faith. Although Geisler, of course, rejects those parts of Aquinas' thought that embrace distinctly

Catholic doctrines, his love of the angelic doctrine inspired his students to investigate St.

Thomas' body of work with greater depth and less antipathy to Catholicism. What those students discovered is that Aquinas' Catholicism was not some time -bound product of the medieval church, but a wealth of theological insights in perfect continuity with his predecessors, such as St.

Augustine, and with his successors, such as those of the Council of Trent. Now remember, this is the

Catholic convert speaking, and you could certainly make arguments that there are inconsistencies between Augustine and between Aquinas and Trent, but once you've capitulated on the key issues of man's sovereignty, synergism, the power of grace, it's all just a matter of taste at that point.

It's just a matter of taste at that point. That's the problem. That's the problem. Here's another quote.

This issue was really brought home to me while I was doing research for Geisler's... Now check this out. I remember when

Bethany House started putting out Geisler's Systematic Theology. I was like, really?

Okay. All right. So here's a guy who was working with Geisler, doing research for him on his books.

Now I realize a lot of the big authors do that. I don't get to have folks do that. Closest I ever came to that was when

I wrote The Potter's Freedom. I've told this story before. When I wrote The Potter's Freedom, the first edition of Chosen But Free had a lousy index in it.

Lousy. Especially a scripture index. I realized that pretty early on, and so what

I would do to make sure I was being accurate in addressing everything that Geisler said about any particular text is

I paid folks in Amazon gift certificates. I had about three people,

I think, all through our chat channel. I would pay them $10, $15, $20 in an

Amazon gift certificate to go through their copy of... I may have even bought a copy for one guy...

of Chosen But Free, page by page, carefully go through, looking for a particular text, the whole book.

Then send me every page where that text was cited. I could go get you right now the copy, the first edition of Chosen But Free in my library with the results written down inside the book.

Here's where John 6, 37 is addressed. That's the closest I've ever gotten to getting somebody to do stuff.

Check this quotation out. This issue was really brought home to me while I was doing research for Geisler's Systematic Theology.

My job was to find quotations from the early medieval and reformed writers that supported his views.

This was easy for Volume 2, which concerned the nature of God, but it was very difficult for Volume 4, dealing with the nature of the church and the last things.

It became clear that the theology I had been taught was very different from the majority position of the church of history.

In the end, I simply used a word search and listed any quotations that sounded as if they could support his view and hope that they would not be cited out of context.

Troubling, troubling. Here's another quotation. The more I learned about the great thinkers of the past, the more

I saw that what I was being taught at SES simply did not match up. For example, I discovered that what Geisler taught about Thomas Aquinas, his philosophical hero, concerning God's sovereignty was not only incorrect, but was used by Aquinas as an example of an error when he explained his own view.

Likewise, his explanation of Aquinas' view on God's impassibility was clearly not what Aquinas believed. I found this rather upsetting because while Geisler was certainly free to believe whatever he wished, if he misunderstood the early church fathers and his favorite theologian,

I was not sure how trustworthy his other positions were. And given how many exegetical errors

I documented on Geisler's part in The Potter's Freedom, yeah.

Okay, but here is the one that I made note of. Here we go.

Norman Geisler. This is a subtitle. Norman Geisler. It was through this theological issue that I first became familiar with Dr.

Norman Geisler. Now, by the way, back up. This guy was associated with DTS, Dallas Theological Seminary.

And he was one of the few people in the book that even mentioned Calvinism. So, it was through this theological issue that I first became familiar with Dr.

Norman Geisler, the co -founder of Southern Evangelical Seminary. My father -in -law, a strong Christian who was in seminary at DTS, introduced me, listen, to one of Dr.

Geisler's books that responded to the soteriology of Calvinism. I wonder which one that might be.

Of course, like many theologians, Dr. Geisler attempts to refute limited atonement by citing scriptural passages that point to the universal salvific will of God.

But, he also uses philosophy to lend credence to the view that Jesus really did atone for the sins of the world.

Not only did Dr. Geisler appeal to me theologically, but I also learned of his credentials in the field of apologetics.

And you wonder why all these folks ended up on the other side of the Tiber. And who wrote the foreword to the book?

Frank Beckwith, who likewise swam around out there in the middle of the Tiber with the mere

Christianity folks and the Geislerites. And they just don't get why this is happening.

Oh, it can't be because of Aquinas! Yeah, it can. It's not just Aquinas. It's the theological and philosophical system that comes along with it.

So much of what these guys, the surface -level arguments these guys bring up, are fully refuted in the

Institutes of Christian Religion. I wonder why no one reads the Institutes of Christian Religion at SES.

Anyway, watching a fellow walking toward our door, having parked out in the parking lot.

Just thought I'd mention that. We have stalkers, so we sort of have to keep an eye on things.

So, if the folks at SES cannot get past their knee -jerk defense of Aquinas and really recognize what the real issue is, they're going to keep hemorrhaging people to Rome.

And we can try to help and try to point it out, but there are issues.

There are really, really issues there. All right, let me see here.

Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and switch over to this one here. We've got time to address it.

We had a little interesting encounter, once again, in the

Reformed Pub over the past few days. When I post something in the

Reformed Pub, it gets a lot of attention, a lot of comments. I'll be honest with you, for those of you who listen, who are in the

Reformed Pub, I generally watch the comments for about three or four, maybe six, seven hours, after I post something, and then

I stop. Because generally at that point, the comment threads become so long that they wander off into who knows what, everything.

And I just don't even bother after that particular point. But once again, what brought it about was, if you recall in the last program,

I was talking about William Lane Craig. And we were responding to some of the comments that Craig made about the role of inerrancy and evangelism and just fundamental issues where there is, again, it's the fundamental difference between a

Reformed understanding of epistemology and the priority of biblical revelation to human philosophy and all of those things.

And there are certain Reformed folks, the ecclesiastical text folks, the textus receptus folks, and they're not identical, but they use a lot of the same argumentation.

I just love to take shots my direction, just love to lob a few little bombs my way. And so before the program on Tuesday, Paul Barth had put something on his

Facebook page about how I and Craig had the same presuppositions and hence don't have an inerrant text.

And then Presbyterian Memes on Twitter did the same thing. Now, I assumed that Presbyterian Memes was

Paul Barth, and it is. But I wasn't absolutely certain of that at the time.

And so I called Mr. Barth out on Twitter.

Okay, if you're going to extend inerrancy past the originals, past the autographs, then could you tell us what is the inerrant perfect manuscript of the

New Testament? Is there one manuscript? And one guy mentioned Family 35, said, well,

Pickering said it was Family 35. So that's what you're—have you started the translation of Family 35 yet?

Because that's not what the basis of the King James is, the New King James or anything like that. I'd be interested if that's an ongoing project to provide the inerrant— well, to provide an

English translation of the inerrant manuscripts. And how are you going to make—how are you going to decide between when there's any variation amongst those manuscripts?

Is there just one manuscript in Family 35? Or is it a group of manuscripts? But we all know there's going to be differences between them.

They may be minor, but there will be differences, and we need to have the right one if you're going to assert this. And, of course, this goes back to the ecclesiastical text stuff.

Well, the Church has spoken, the Church has done this, and the Church has done that. I don't remember any church council saying

Family 35. I didn't know that Pickering was a church council. The Council of Pickering, maybe I misunderstood.

I thought it was the author. It's the Council of Pickering that met in Pickering sometime in the past 30, 40 years over fried chicken.

But anyway, so the result of this was some going back and forth.

Look, show us, show me this inerrant text. Well, you need to define inerrancy.

You're the one who brought it up. If you're going to claim to have it, quit playing games.

This is so childish. This is important stuff. Well, you need to chill out. Okay. So yesterday,

I've got something going on, and my appointment's in just a few minutes, and I happen to be looking at Facebook.

And in the Reform Pub, someone asks, and I just got the feeling this was a honest question on the part of this person.

Hey, what about 1 John 5, 7? In the King James, it says this, but it's not in the

ESV or something like that. I started looking at the responses, the comments that were given to this person, and I just became disgusted.

I really think some of these TR or ET guys just sit there in front of the computer and just refresh, refresh.

Look, look, someone asked about the comma. Hey, Bob, get on. Quick, quick. Okay, yeah, you get that.

All right, I'll post those links. Call Bill and make—descend it on this person.

Oh, you bet it's scripture. Oh, yeah, all this. Just descend it on this person.

And I've said many times before, I'll say it again. The Comma Johannium is a late addition to the text.

And when I say late, the Comma Johannium is not a part of the

Greek manuscript tradition. It's not. In the few Greek manuscripts it appears in, it's either in the margin, in a later hand, or that manuscript actually postdates the invention of printing.

So as far as any meaningful definition of the Greek manuscript tradition, it's not there.

And as a result, if you defend this as being original with John, not if you, you know, if you've still got an open canon, and, well, the church can add this in later on or something, well, that's another problem to deal with.

But if you defend this, please realize you are destroying, annihilating any meaningful defense of the accuracy of the transmission of the

New Testament. Because what you're saying is an entire theologically relevant and important text can just disappear from all the families of manuscripts.

Now, realize something. These are the same folks that were lobbing Maurice Robinson at me just a few months ago. Maurice Robinson's on my side with this one.

Okay? Every one of you who's been quoting majority text stuff, where were you when these people are promoting the

Comma? Hmm? Where are you? Why aren't you speaking up? And I pointed out, every one of these guys that went after me on the

Percopaea Adultery, John 7, 53, 3, 8, 11, where Dr. Robinson disagrees with me, every one of them should be going after all these guys promoting the

Comma. Every single one. If you've got a consistent bow in your body. If you've got a consistent bow in your body, you should be going after them.

If you're Byzantine priority, you should be going after them. That's not a part of the Byzantine text. Nobody was responding to them.

Nobody. So, I made some comments, pointed out the hypocrisy.

And, of course, what you would expect happened. Didn't deal.

Well, what I said in my Facebook post was this. You folks need to realize what you're doing when you defend the

Comma. You are being grossly hypocritical.

And grossly inconsistent. Here is the

Latin Vulgate. The current scholarly edition of the

Vulgate. And, of course, there, as you can see on any page, and we'll go to the

New Testament here. Textual notes. Lots of variations in the

Latin. There are 20 ,000 manuscripts. This is helpful, but let's be honest, there's still a lot of work that needs to be done, textually, critically speaking, in the

Latin. Because there's so many manuscripts. All those monasteries cranking out manuscripts all that time.

There are all sorts of texts right here that have better textual foundation than the

Comma Iohannio. Why aren't you arguing that they be inserted in the text as they're found here?

That's what I asked. That's what I wanted to find out from these folks. It's a really important question.

If, if, if consistency has any part of your thinking.

Any part of it all. You see, if you take what you're telling these young believers out into the world, out into the apologetic realm that I deal in, and if you haven't thought about these things, you're going to be nuked, trashed, destroyed, embarrassed.

You see, TR -onlyism has no textual critical theory. There is no, there are no rules for examining variants.

It's, if it's in the TR, it's right. If it's not, it isn't. Whenever these folks start producing articles, quoting manuscripts,

I just want to say, stop it. You don't care what the manuscripts say. It's irrelevant to you.

As long as the TR says it, you're going to defend it. You do not care what's in the manuscripts.

You have no consistent methodology for examining the manuscripts at all.

You don't care what's in Erasmus's annotations. You don't, you don't care about what he, what he says.

You know, here's his 1522, the third edition here. Too bad the photocopying of this was horrible.

Next to impossible to read. But, you know, here's, here's the Erasmus Greek Latin New Testament 1522.

You've got his annotations. You don't care what he said. You don't care what his, whether he was consistent in his methodology.

Once it's in what's now called the TR, however you choose amongst the various versions to create that, that's the final authority.

And you'll just simply quote any source to maintain the

TR. It doesn't matter if in, within two verses, you're going to be quoting different sources, contradictory sources.

You don't care. You do exactly what the Muslims do in attacking the New Testament. You don't care about your sources.

You have no textual critical theory. None. So there's no way to disprove it, because it's a completely circular system of reasoning.

That's, it's King James -onlyism, TR -onlyism. One's just a little geekier than the other.

That's all. So, I grabbed, well, two things, two things on the comment.

We'll go a little bit over today. Two things on the comment. When you hear these guys, what they'll do is they'll say, well, this is a very early reading, and the early church fathers knew it.

Really? Well, it is an early gloss in the

Latin. What is a gloss? A gloss is a explanatory statement, an explanation.

And they'll say, well, Cyprian quoted it. Really? You can go back. People in the pub, go.

You can look. Look in the comments just from yesterday. Cyprian quoted it. Ever looked it up?

Ever looked up what Cyprian allegedly quoted? Yeah, I have. It's in an interesting treatise on the unity of the church.

He put out two different versions of this, and because of his conflicts with the Bishop of Rome, the second one was different than the first, which is interesting.

But let me just read the section, okay? Because I think that 95 % of the

TRO guys have never bothered to look at it. That's just my experience. They're just –

I started pressing some of them in the Perform Pub last night, and they all just exploded. You know, that's – when

I debated Doug Wilson in our disputatio, it sounded great until I said, all right, let's take your system and actually apply it to a text.

Oh, that's tough. Luke 2 .22, I don't know.

That's tough to do. Here's what Cyprian said.

The spouse of Christ cannot be adulterous. She is uncorrupted and pure. She knows one home.

She guards with chaste modesty the sanctity of one couch. She keeps us for God. She appoints the sons whom she has born for the kingdom.

Whoever is separated from the church and is joined to an adulteress is separated from the promises of the church. Nor can he who forsakes the church of Christ attain to the rewards of Christ.

He is a stranger. He is profane. He is an enemy. He can no longer have God for his father, who has not the church for his mother.

Heard that one before? So have I. If anyone could escape who was outside the ark of Noah, then he also may escape who shall be outside the church.

This is where extra Ecclesium Nullus Solis comes from, by the way. Same section. The Lord warns, saying,

He who is not with me is against me, and he who gathers not with me scattereth. He who breaks the peace in the concord of Christ does so in opposition to Christ.

He who gathereth elsewhere than in the church scatters the church of Christ. The Lord says, I and the

Father are one, and again it is written of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, comma, quote, now that's the

English translation, and these three are one. And does anyone believe that this unity, which thus comes from the divine strength and coheres in celestial sacraments, can be divided in the church and can be separated by the parting asunder of opposing wills?

By the way, the sacraments in Cyprian's day would not be the same sacraments that Rome has today.

Just thought I'd mention that in passing. He who does not hold this unity does not hold God's law, does not hold the faith of the

Father and the Son, does not hold life and salvation. That is section six of treatise one on the unity of the church under the treatises of Cyprian from the

Antonicene Fathers volume five, I believe. I have this in my accordion set up, thankfully, if you want to look it up.

Now, here is the issue. The Lord says, I and the Father are one, John 10, and again it is written of the

Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and these three are one. The phrase, and these three are one is in first John five in all manuscripts, but that's not a quotation of the

Kamiohania. How many times have you heard these guys say, Cyprian quote it? No, Cyprian interpreted the three witnesses of first John five, the water, the blood, and the spirit, as referring to the

Father, Son, and Spirit. This is the exact interpretation that gave rise to what would eventually become an insertion into the

Latin text and would eventually end up in the TR through all sorts of interesting things that took place over 1 ,200 years later, but Cyprian didn't quote the

Kamiohania. It's not there. It's not there. So, what

I did is I just opened up the textual critical material, the apparatus to Latin Vulgate in accordance this morning and started scrolling through.

Only took me a minute to find an example, and all of you

TR guys, you TR only guys in there, you know, hiding out in the pub, just waiting to try to get some disciples.

Just you're going to get them. You've got your links ready. I'd like you to take a look at John 6, verse 15.

John 6, verse 15. And in the

Latin Vulgate, you have a different reading than you have pretty much in all the

Greek manuscripts. And when it talks about Jesus going back to the mountain, the vast majority of Greek manuscripts say he departed again to the mountain.

But the Latin says he fled. He fled.

Well, what was he fleeing from? I don't know, but he fled. And I looked at the textual evidence for the reading fled.

First of all, it's, you look it up in here, that's what the Latin says. That's what the Vulgate says. Okay. So when you quote the

Latin in defense of the comma, okay, got the same thing here. Same source that you say, you got to have this.

You got to have this. Okay. And in fact, it has significantly stronger textual background than the comma has.

It's the original reading of Codex Sinaiticus. It's been corrected, but it's the original reading.

And unlike the comma, there are, the

Curatonian Syriac likewise contains this reading, which means it's ancient enough that it was used in the translation of that version of the

New Testament. Comma doesn't have that. But there are also early church fathers.

Tertullian, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, all show familiarity with this reading.

So here's my question for all you TROists who are just so excited about getting people into your little group and destroying them apologetically in the process.

Why aren't you pushing for this? Where is the

Facebook group? Fix John 615. It's got better attestation.

It's in the Latin. It's got early church fathers. Just like the comma. Why aren't you pushing for it?

I know why. So do you. We both know why. Because the manuscripts don't matter.

Textual criticism doesn't matter. You already have your ultimate authority. It's a

TR, whatever that is. You already have it. So since it's in it, at least in starting the third edition of Erasmus, since it's in it, then all that stuff you quote supports that.

But quoting that would also support this, but that doesn't matter. Consistency doesn't matter. It's hypocrisy.

It's inconsistent hypocrisy. There you go. And I imagine if I kept scrolling through the apparatus,

I could find another example and another example and another example and another example on and on and on because there is no textual critical theory.

You didn't arrive at this by study. You arrived at this by this is my tradition and now

I will go study to support my tradition. Huge difference. Huge difference between a truthful handling of scholarship and that kind of stuff.

Though, on the net, I'm not sure most people can tell the difference between the two, to be perfectly honest with you.

To be perfectly honest with you. So there you go. Can you tell?

I've said it before, I'll say it again. We need young, committed men and women who understand reform theology and have a solid foundation.

What's heading our direction, folks, is unbelievable. Did you see the bill in the

California legislature? It died. But you need to understand, every insane, communist, wacko thing that has happened in California started off as a bill that died and then came back the next year and then came back the next year and then came back the next year until you end up with this insanity.

This bill would have made it illegal to question man -caused global warming in the state of California and made it possible to sue companies and others that would express any opinion other than the consensus opinion of science.

Do you realize any person that supported that bill in the state of California works for the

Ministry of Truth in the book 1984? They are totalitarian socialists.

They are what this nation once stood against and is now becoming. They hate freedom.

They hate liberty. They want to control your mind. And they're coming for you. They're coming for every single one of us.

And do you think, for a second, that they're going to stop with silencing anyone who would say,

Hey, you know, there seems to be some real problems with this theory out there. There seems to be a lot of money involved.

George Soros is out there. There's all this fraud going on.

The real data doesn't support this. Oh, no, no, we're going to silence you. Do you think they're going to stop there?

How long? One session? Until they pass the same thing about speaking about creationism?

And then how long until it's homosexuality? Transgenderism?

This stuff is coming. And we need people who are grounded and committed and know why we can say,

Yes, God has preserved his word. And it wasn't by some hypocritical, inconsistent, hocus -pocus.

I mean, I got really upset. There are people on Twitter right now just waiting to post stuff.

Well, you can't tell us what the inherent text is. Why don't you listen? Why won't you hear what

I've been saying clearly for 22 years since the publication of the

King James Controversy? The method of preservation is not what you think it is.

The evidence does not show your method of preservation. You just simply have to come up with these inconsistent ways.

You cannot consistently do this. We can. Multifocality.

Multiple authors at multiple times writing to multiple audiences. Never could that text be corrupted.

You couldn't put doctrines in. You couldn't take doctrines out. It exploded all over the world.

It was never under the control of any one group. Free transmission versus controlled transmission.

That is how God preserved his text. Not through the use of a photocopier.

People need to understand this so they can have boldness to respond to all of the attacks including those by mind -numbed socialist, secularist zombies.

Not that they're going to be listening or even understand what you're saying. But we need to be able to give a good account for ourselves.

I don't have time to be sitting there reading everything that flows through the Reform Pub or any place else in Facebook and everything else.

But it does say a lot that instead of preparing folks with a solid foundation what many people who are

Calvinists are doing are building their own little kingdom of disciples with their little twist on things that they could never take out of their little

Reformed ghetto and actually take it out into the world and take it into a mosque or take it into a university because they would get shredded and shot down.

Not simply because those people aren't listening but because they have no consistency in their argumentation. That's why

I sort of get a little upset about it. Really do. So, there you go.

This one will get a few comments on Facebook, I would imagine. And hopefully so.

I hope you will listen. Hope you will think. And let me give you...

But wait, there's more. Do you have... Is desktop presenter still working for you?

Okay. Guess what? I just looked over and realized this.

This is the... When you haven't had the earpiece in and you're talking real loud and you stick it in and you hear yourself very loudly.

This is the debate that took place down in Australia.

And we played some sections of it. Listen to what the

Muslim debater says and what text he speaks to.

Just check this out. Now, it's a miracle in itself that after the standardization of the

Quran that for 1200 years or 1300 years there's been no real change in the standard that the consensus of the majority of the

Muslim world adopt. That in itself is a miracle. You have, for example, up until the 1500s when the first Greek edition of the

New Testament was going to be printed and you had one of the great scholars of that time looking at the

Greek text and not finding one of the verses that the church at the time wanted implemented in the Bible which is the first episode of John 5 verse 7.

For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost and these three are one. He's saying it is no, you know, we had the

Textus Receptus, am I remembering it all correctly? Where there was a consensus of ancient Greek text that the scholars recognized to be authentic and this was not part of that main set of texts.

And yet it was forced into the King James Version of the Bible and in fact into that print because suddenly the authentic Greek appeared on his doorstep and they realized later that it was fabricated.

So we don't have those issues. And this is... So there you go. Isn't that interesting?

You have... Very, very common. Many Muslims do not understand the concept of...

You know, all you gotta do is go back watch my debate with Adnan Rashid on this. It is counterintuitive to the vast majority of people who have not been trained in history, have not been trained in the transmission of manuscripts or anything like that.

It is counterintuitive for them to understand that it is a good thing that we are able to recognize the original text of 1

John 5. That we don't have just one manuscript. If we had just one controlled manuscript then we wouldn't know.

We wouldn't have any way of knowing when there are textual corruptions in the text of 1

John. That it's not a good thing to establish one particular example, one particular text and say, this you know, here.

Here is our standard. The Textus Receptus. And, we will use any argument to get around any difference of this.

This is exactly what I hear from all of my Muslim friends about the

Quran. It's the exact same thing. Any argument to support the traditional text is a good argument.

I'm going to be responding to a very well read, but I think it's just endemic, inconsistent

Muslim who's making arguments about textual criticism but doing so in such a way that for example the

Christian presenter in this debate pointed out the differences that existed in the early

Qurans possessed by people like Abdullah ibn Masud and Ubaid ibn Kab. Well, his statement is, but that doesn't matter.

Because there was a consensus text, the memorized text, the canonical

Quran. You could have a personal Quran. It doesn't matter if that differs. Why would you have why would anyone, especially some of the companions of the

Prophet have a corrupted Quran in their possession? I mean, the assumptions that go into defending this, very same assumptions that the

Muslims use to defend the Quran, the Uthmanic text, rather than coming at it and saying, well,

I'd like to know what the earliest attainable text of the

Quran was. Well, guess what? I want to know what the earliest attainable text of 1st John was.

I want to know what the apostles wrote. Not what a scribe 500 or 1000 years later thought they should have written.

That should be our standard. And lo and behold, here is a man seems to be a very nice gentleman.

You have to remember, how many

Christian speakers who would be invited to speak with a

Muslim would be able to even most of the fact, he was a little off on what he said, but was fairly, you know, he didn't mention

Erasmus, and didn't have all the facts, but most

Christians wouldn't know what he knew, and if you reverse the position, what would most Christians be able to say about the

Quran in a similar vein? Almost nothing. So it's real easy for us to sit back and take pot shots, but put yourself in the guy's position.

What he needs is someone to explain the real situation about the comment to him. What's one of the

TR only guys going to say to him that's actually going to be helpful? Good question, huh?

I just happened to look over at it and saw, you know, I think we're right at the point where that's there. Interesting illustration, just to sort of throw in for the fun of it.

Well anyways, there you go folks. Hope some of this has been useful to you.

I was asked earlier whether I'm going to be addressing the Trinitarian dust -up, as it's been called, involving

Carl Truman and Bruce Ware. Yeah, eventually I'd like to read some more about it, but I've had some problems with the use of the

Trinity by some of these folks for a while, so we'll see and probably start some other huge controversy that'll get me disinvited from almost everything anyways.

So hey, that's what we do around here. Thanks for watching The Dividing Line today. Lord willing, I don't know when next week.