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 Arminians are busily tweeting away out there. And anyway, what was fascinating was, well, not only, you know, it's interesting.

The Arminians 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 didn't want the fire marshal to get upset. Actually, I have no idea. It was there. 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. Anyway, we have our straw man. Just remind us what a straw man looks like.

We have our straw man. Majority inhabitant of the Twitterverse, right here, just so you know. These people are banging away on the keyboards out there until their little straw hands fall off. Anyway, saw examples of just incredible misrepresentation from both sides.

So, I'm getting it from the Calvinists and the Arminians. That's not overly unusual. Anyway, so I started looking at this article from this fellow, and I thought it would be interesting to respond to what he had to say about Psalm 33.

Because in my conversation with the evangelical Arminians, I had pointed out that Psalm 33 is just this beautiful refutation of their perspective. And so I brought it up, and 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, and 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 Arminian 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 exhaustively and meticulously created, 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, 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 Arminian, 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 exhaustively and meticulously created, 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.

Do the Psalmist and Job contradict the prophets? 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 Psalmist begins his song by extolling the Lord and calling on his people to praise him, noting that praise is becoming the upright.

Thus praise is befitting, because the word of the Lord is upright, and all his work is done in faithfulness. He loves righteousness and justice. The earth is full of the loving kindness of the Lord. The Chesed of Yahweh.

God, again, loves righteousness and justice. This is of paramount significance. Yes, because it, of course, represents his own being. It's a very, justice is the foundation of his throne. The Psalmist continues glorifying Yahweh for his creativity and his providence.

The sovereignty of God is rightly defended here, for he spoke and it was done. He commanded and it stood fast. 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, By the word of Yahweh, the heavens were made. And by the breath of his mouth, all their host. He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap. He lays up the deeps of storehouses.

Let all the earth fear Yahweh. Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him. 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. Well, religious people, anyways. Now, that's just all naturalistic materialism. It 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 stand 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 song. 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. Yahweh nullifies the counsel of the nations. He frustrates the plans of the peoples. The counsel of Yahweh stands forever, the plans of his heart from generation to generation.

Now, please note, it's very obvious, we have here strong parallelism. In verse 10, you have the counsel of the nations and the plans of the peoples. And Yahweh nullifies the counsel 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 counsel. He frustrates their plans.

He nullifies their counsel. They intend to do something. God says, nope, 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 counsel, first phrase, verse 10, the counsel 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 act seven 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 nine 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 1011. 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 exhausted 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 exhausted 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. I remember talking to a guy after doing a class on Romans 9 years and years and years ago. 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, 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 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 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. He just came by and he was there for ReformCon. I'm wearing Ivy Connolly's shirt that he gave me. Well, it's not actually Ivy Connolly's shirt. I just wouldn't take his shirt.

It's for his new album and it looks really cool. It's called King of Kingdoms. I thought it was a really cool graphic and it does 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 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 just, that was really rockish, you know. 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, five, six times a week, probably.

And then, 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. It was just like, 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, I think, 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. 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 tracts.

Why? Well, we'd more agree with Erasmus than Luther on the nature of the will. Well, the wheels came off of 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 50 years later became a Roman Catholic. And of course, Geisler just, there's no connection. He's just in denial. 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 mystified by Roman Catholic apologists.

I mean, this book, it's pathetic. I mean, it honestly is on, 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 Whittaker 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.

Did not even seem to understand what the criticism was. It was all about, well, but I think you're misrepresenting Aquinas. Aquinas actually said this, and I go, okay, you know, I guess when you are so absolutely wedded to Aquinas, that he's your ultimate authority, then you're just going to be mainly concerned about arguing about 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 seven, eight hundred 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. But, anyways, I don't believe it's possible to consistently find Aquinas' views on God, faith and reason, natural theology, epistemology, metaphysics and anthropology to convene you 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 might be able, 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.

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.

Ha! 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. 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 bucks 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.

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. Blah, blah, blah. 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 two, which concerned the nature of God, but it was very difficult for volume four 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, he did not know 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.

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 on the theology 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, fully refuted in the Institutes of the Christian Religion.

I wonder why no one reads the Institutes of the Christian Religion at SES. Well, 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. And, just thought I'd let him know about that. 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 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. 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 in evangelism and just fundamental issues where there is, again, it's the fundamental difference between a Reformed understanding of epistemology and a priority of Biblical revelation to human philosophy and all of those things.

There are certain Reformed folks, the Ecclesiastical text folks, the Textus Receptus folks, and they're not, 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. 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.

Well, Pickering said it was Family 35. Have you started the translation of Family 35 yet? Because that's not what the basis of the New King James is. I'd be interested if that's an ongoing project to provide the inerrant well, to provide an English translation of the inerrant manuscripts.

How are you going to decide 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, maybe I misunderstood.

I thought it was the author. It's a 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. 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. Call Bill and make descended on this person. Oh, you bet it's scripture. Oh, yeah, all this, just descended on this person. And I've said many times before, I'll say it again.

The comma johannium is a late addition. 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 lobbying 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 had, 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 Percocet 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, 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.