Rutgers' Racist Professor, More Muhammed Hijab, and the Neo-Socinian Nonsense Again

Well, greetings and welcome to the Divine Line. We're back here in Phoenix, Arizona in our regular studio, ready to go. Wasn't the longest trip, but when you push it way, many hours past what you're comfortable driving to get home, it seems like it was a long time.

Less than three weeks, but the big one's coming. The big one's coming in February, March. We're probably talking solid five weeks, maybe a little longer to get everything in. It's going to be a big one, so please be praying toward that.

The five debates and possibility of a nationwide program right at the beginning, again on the subject of Roman Catholicism. Lots of stuff going on there. Someone sent me this morning, first thing I got this morning was a super spin article.

That's the only way to describe it. It was horribly biased and unfair. Just really from the left-hand side, trying to defend Francis against those terrible Burke and the other guy down in Texas. They're just terrible, horrible people.

So much going on there that looks like next month in January, I'll probably be doing a number of sermons at Apologia Church. January is a very, very busy time for Jeff Durbin. Of course, these days, every day is busy for Jeff Durbin, especially for his wife, Candy.

The twin girls are home, by the way. I should let you know that that adoption has gone through and Piper and Nora are home. I think Jeff said one was six and a half pounds, the other was five and a half pounds.

That's big for 10-week preemie babies. They were really, really early and had issues, had problems. Because my son was 4 '13", we brought him home, so he was only seven weeks early. Anyway, they're home, but that means, wow, January is so busy for him because of end abortion.

Now, we have 18 states where legislation is going to be being testified to give equal protection. We know, obviously, that you're up against not only the culture of death, but you're up against the pro-life industry as well.

But it's a testimony to the magistrates. You have to keep pushing, you have to keep moving forward. Last year, I preached three out of four Sundays in January. I don't know how many I'll be preaching this year, but we will be looking at Roman Catholicism and seeking to make sure that our people are appropriately aware of what the issues are.

It just seems like today, once again, we're going through one of these little waves that you get. There's a constant movement out of Roman Catholicism all around the world, but there are waves. You hear much more about people going into it than people coming out of it.

I've said this many times, you just listen to the convert speaking. When someone leaves Roman Catholicism, they're talking about coming to the gospel and coming to Christ, coming to understand what the gospel is for the very first time, what it means to have peace with God, what righteousness is, all these types of things.

When people go into Roman Catholicism, what you hear about is the church, the church, the church, the church, the church, the church, the church, which is tough these days with Francis, but they're still doing it.

They're still doing that kind of thing. A lot coming up in just the next, literally, number of weeks. I don't know how I'm going to get prepared for all of it because there's just so much stuff going on.

My thanks again to everyone that made the last trip possible. I was really surprised this morning, I took the last stuff out of the freezer in our non-working refrigerator. I'll be taking it in for service tomorrow.

I was really, really surprised. I put a bag of ice in that freezer more than two days ago, and it was hardly melted at all. What you can do, learn from me. If your refrigerator dies, I hope you have a little fridge out in the other part, because this unit has a little outdoor kitchen thing.

It has one of those office size little cooler type things. It's not a really full refrigerator. It doesn't have a freezer in it. I put everything in there that was just going to die, that I was going to have to throw out or whatever.

I discovered that if you put enough ice, not enough, I mean, I didn't have enough, but if you put ice in the freezer, you can put stuff in there and it won't freeze it, but it'll keep it about the temperature that a refrigerator would normally keep it at.

Your freezer isn't the largest portion of stuff, but between the two, I got home, didn't get food poisoning yet. Anyways, we'll see about that. That's how it goes. You got to find ways to adapt. Hopefully have it all working fine on the way out come February, because that's going to be a huge trip and I do not have time to be troubleshooting stuff.

I'm going to be concentrating on other things and need to be concentrating on other things during that period of time. Pray toward that end. So much happening in the world. I saw a video and I thought, well, first of all, congratulations to Dusty Devers.

That's amazing that someone that open about their position. Now, of course, pretty conservative area, but still, given the murderous intention of the media these days, that someone that open about their stance on life and things like that could be elected.

Amazing thing. It's good. It's exciting. The Republic Sentinel is reporting that Michael Cassidy, a Christian and former military officer, tore down and beheaded the Satan altar in the Iowa Capitol. I don't know if you saw that.

Did you see the pictures of it? Yeah. Someone set up a satanic idol in the Iowa Capitol next to the manger scenes, all based on freedom of religion, of course. Which, by the way, I just hope, no, I was going to say I hope everyone would know.

No, vast majority wouldn't because vast majority are public schooled. There is not a single one of the founding fathers, including the non-Christians, that would have approved of a Satan altar in any Capitol anywhere.

Just so you know, they weren't as stupid as we are today. They're like, no, we want God's blessing, not God's curse. So yeah, we're not doing that. But it was there and a guy named Michael Cassidy, a Christian and former military officer, tore it down, beheaded it and chucked the head in a trash can and then turned himself into police at the Capitol.

And the Satanists will be pressing charges. It's like a fourth degree, some little thing, type thing. But there are pictures now all through Twitter of the decapitated idol. And yeah, Rich is what? Algo?

I'm not going to mention that because the idol now, having been decapitated, looks like the president. And it's about as functional. That was quick. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yes. And I did have some people on the trip say to be nice to Rich.

So oh, yeah. As long as Algo said it, then it's perfectly fine. Okay. So one of the things that I ran into was a video of Rutgers professor Brittany Cooper. Now, with what happened last week, and I didn't comment on this, but what happened last week, or was it the week before?

Well, all the fallout was last week. With the presidents of MIT, Harvard and Penn, wasn't it? Not able to offer a full-throated condemnation of the calling for genocide of the Jewish people. Was 1938 really all that long ago?

I mean, think about it. We're coming up on 100 years, aren't we? And it just doesn't seem people can remember very, very long ago. So maybe that's it. But there was this thing called World War II and these people called Nazis and places called Auschwitz and Birkenau and Dachau and Ravensbruck, Buchenwald, all these places where unthinkable things took place.

But hey, it's okay. So one of the threes resigned and then Harvard has demonstrated that why would anyone want to go to Harvard? In fact, why would anybody want to go to any of these institutions any longer?

I mean, I'm being absolutely serious. Because isn't it real obvious that education isn't taking place there anymore? Why are people donating millions and literally billions of dollars to these institutions?

Some of them don't even play football. Or if they do, they don't do it well. That's about all they're worth these days. You don't have scholarship taking place any longer. Isn't that clear? Isn't that obvious?

I mean, why would you go to Harvard? Anyway, we need to come to understand what has happened to what used to be called the academy, what it means to become woke. And we can sit there and go, woke means you're broke.

Well, it does. It really means that it's all over. And so this Brittany Cooper, I don't know how these people become professors. But let's just listen to just a little bit of some recent comments that she made.

And realize that she will be defended in making such comments at almost any institution at all, let alone Rutgers. So here's some of the things Brittany Cooper had to say.

I think that white people are committed to being villains in the aggregate, right? The real sort of issue here, and I've heard people sort of say it, is one, I think that white people viscerally fear.

It's not that white people don't know, right, what they have done. They know. They fear that there is no other way to be human, but the way in which they are human, which is to... So, you know, like you talk to white people and whenever you really want to have a reckoning about it, they say stuff like, you know, it's just human nature.

If y 'all had all of this power, you would have done the same thing, right? And it's like, no, that's what white humans did. White human beings thought there's a world here and we own it. Prior to them, black and brown people have been sailing across oceans, interacting with each other for centuries without total subjugation, domination, and colonialism.

We have seen what a show this iteration of treatment of other human beings means, and that my hope is that we would do it differently, you know, in the moments when we have some power. We will not do it perfectly, but I do think that all of us can sort of agree that our politics that says like there are superior and inferior human beings just isn't the way to go.

And that's the thing that white people don't trust us to do because they are so corrupt. You know, their thinking is so morally and spiritually bankrupt about power that they can't let, you know, they fear viscerally, existentially letting go of power because they cannot imagine that there's another way to be.

It is either that you dominate or you are dominated.

Now, I just, I'll just stop there because it just, it goes on and on and on. But, you know, I think back on my own childhood and I think about the first house I really remember was a farmhouse outside of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

And my dad had been passing by it and it was all broken down. The windows are broken and he had found out who owned it. And he went to him and said, I'll fix this up if you let me and my family live in it.

And the guy's like, there's bats, there's a huge number of bats up in the attic and there were. And it says, I just don't, I don't think you could. Well, my dad said, I think I can. And so my dad fixed the place up and, you know, I can, I can remember so much about that home.

I remember watching Walter Cronkite talking about the Vietnam war. Some of my very first memories, the Ho Chi Minh trail and all that kind of stuff. We were poor as church mice. I mean, we had nothing.

We were in the bottom, the bottom bracket as far as income and everything else. And so when I hear these people talking about my privilege, the power and everything else that I've had, and I just want to go, what are you smoking in that school of yours?

I mean, seriously, uh, I, I just can't even conceive of it to, to just talk about just white folks as a whole. We know there's all sorts of different kinds of white folks. Just like, I know there's all different kinds of black folks and Brown folks and yellow folks and other kinds of folks.

Um, to, to be this kind of shallow racist type of, of person and to get paid to do it, to get your position because that's how you are, uh, is absolutely positively amazing. It is so sad to see this kind of stuff, um, happen.

You know, we, we thought this was, this stuff was going away, but no, no, you have to use it to divide people. And there's, there's Brittany Cooper. Just, you can just talk about white folks, white people, uh, cause they're just so morally bankrupt and it's so spiritually bankrupt.

And it's like, I, I, I think back on 2016, when I first started this, saw this stuff coming and it has just, it's become a steamroller since then. This is CRT on steroids. This is, this is what it does.

It destroys, it divides it, it, it, it is destructive of any kind of society that wants to survive. And I, I don't know that this society wants to survive. That's the point. That's, that's the problem.

Responding to Brittany Cooper's Racist Generalizations

Um, want to spend a few minutes and we're going to have again, uh, get back to another topic, uh, toward the end. Wow. I already spent eight. How'd I get through 18 minutes? That's astonishing. Um, I have not forgotten and we're just not making fast progress, but I apologize.

I keep it on my computer, so we will be able to get to it. Um, but I do want to continue responding to Mohammed Hijab. Now what's interesting since last time I did this, I sent an email to Mohammed Hijab, uh, the speaker that you're, we've been playing, asking when he was going to be coming to the United States and seeing if in any way to try to make my travel schedule and his travel schedule hook up.

You know, that's much more difficult for me these days because I'm not flying, but, um, I'm still able to get around a little bit. I never heard back from him. And then only a few weeks ago during the height of the Hamas Israel stuff, uh, which seems to be calming down a little bit at the moment.

Um, here I see a video of him leading protesters in the streets of London and they're, they're calling for Jewish blood. And I'm like, well, that would explain why I didn't hear back, I guess. Um, but my, what a difference, uh, only a few years, uh, can make because this is 2018.

So, you know, five years ago, um, five years and one month actually now looking at it. Um, little bit surprising, little bit surprising, but the arguments are still the same. So let's, let's do about 20 minutes here and then we'll do 20 minutes on another topic to sort of, uh, wrap things up, uh, uh, on, uh, on this one.

The Shema, Monotheism, and the Deity of Christ in Isaiah and John

That guys, when you look at the old Testament, do we see this? Because when we look at the old Testament, we find the Shema chapter six, verse four, Shema Israel. Hero Israel. My Lord, our Lord is one Lord here.

When you look at the first commandment, chapter 20, verse three of Exodus, you find there's no God beside me. I'm your Lord and there's no God beside me. You find an Isaiah chapter 43, verse 11. Once again, the discussion of I'm your God.

And besides.

Me, there is no savior. Now it's interesting. And, and I would, I would point this out, uh, to Muhammad, if we were to have a conversation on these things. Um, I, I love when people go to Isaiah 43, cause I I'm, I'm sitting there going, go ahead, go to verse 10, go to verse 10, because Isaiah 43, 10, obviously for all of you who deal with, uh, Mormonism, one of the key texts that we use, the last part of the verse before me, there was no God formed.

There should be none after me. Um, Christians defend the doctrine of monotheism and we do so from, well, most of us anyways, who want to make a biblical case, um, make our arguments from scripture and we make our arguments against not only the polytheistic systems, but against, uh, for example, uh, those within our community that will, um, muddy the waters for the sake of, uh, tradition or personal advancement or whatever else it might be.

I'll let you figure out who that might be. Uh, we defend monotheism and there are numerous texts with which you could do that. But Isaiah 43, 10 is an excellent one. Before me, there is no God formed.

There should be none after me. But what's fascinating of course, is the beginning of that verse. You are my witnesses, says Yahweh, and my servant whom I have chosen, she may know and understand and believe that I am he.

Um, Anahu, which in the Greek Sept, Anahu in the Hebrew, which comes across as Ego Aimi in the Greek Septuagint, a text that Jesus quotes of himself and applies to himself on the night of his betrayal in John 13, 19.

And so it's interesting when, you know, someone like Muhammad Hijab will, will quote that text, not realizing that if he were looking at the entirety of the Christian scriptures, that text, including verse 11, would be referring to the deity of Christ.

But he doesn't realize that and neither did his prophet. That's the problem. The writer to, the writer of the Quran never read Isaiah, did not know it was contained in Isaiah. And in fact, thought that all sorts of other things that are not in the canon of scripture were in the canon of scripture and included those things in the Quran.

So there's a major problem. But Muhammad Hijab is talking about Nicene Trinitarianism and he's trying to contrast that with what's found in the Old Testament. But if you don't understand the relationship between Old and New Testament, you're going to stumble into basic errors and miss what the actual.

Testimony of the scriptures are. Now someone might argue about the word Elohim and this is the weakness of the argument. It's a weak linguistic argument. Word Elohim is a majestic plural, they would argue.

Look, there are 9 ,000 pronouns in the Bible which relate to God's name. Let's take for example Genesis chapter 1 verse 1. Barashit, Barashit, Barah, Elohim. The word Barah means he created. Whenever you find a pronoun in the Old Testament referring to Elohim, you will always find it in third person male singular.

One more time, third person male singular. You don't find a plural version of that. You don't find a pronoun which is pluralized.

You know, it's funny when we deal with Mormonism, we always point out to them, since they are true polytheists, that they will talk about how Elohim has a plural ending and yet it has been a regular statement of ours for decades.

But when it's used of the one true God, now when it's used of false gods, then it's going to be used to the plural verb and with plural pronouns. But when it's in reference to Yahweh, then it is in the singular and singular pronouns will be used.

There isn't any question about that and Trinitarians don't believe in multiple gods and therefore you wouldn't expect to use a plural pronoun in that place. So that doesn't, it's not a real good.

Argument there. So now the question will be is this, a Jew who is acquainted with the Torah, with the Old Testament, why would one ask him to realign his belief, his theological doctrines, into believing in a triune God when in fact he's been instructed quite explicitly in fact in the.

Old Testament not to break the commandments? Well, of course, we're not asking them to break the commandments. They need to understand, for example, in the prophecy, and I spoke on this last Sunday in Kansas, the prophecy in Isaiah 9 -6 of the coming Messiah, which I've actually heard some Jehovah's Witnesses, Jehovah's Witnesses, I've actually, right, let's get them all confused here.

I've actually heard some Muslims apply Isaiah 9 -6 to Muhammad. They just skipped the El Gabor, mighty God part when they did so. We covered that, oh wow, 2008, I bet, around 2008, 2009, that time frame, I remember that.

But in Isaiah 9, when this coming one, the Prince of Peace is described as El Gabor, mighty God, same phrase that's used of Yahweh in Isaiah 10 -21, only a matter of sentences later, we're not talking about two different Yahwehs, we're not talking about multiple gods, we're talking about one God, and then in the Incarnation, you have the revelation, a much deeper and personal revelation of that one God in the ministry of Jesus and in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

Again, the primary place where the.

Doctrine of the Trinity is revealed. You see, it gets a little bit more interesting, even when you look at the New Testament. Now, we know the New Testament has different authors. There's 27 books of the New Testament.

You've got Paul, who's written from 7 to 13 books, and there's dispute as to exactly how much he's written. John, written many books. Who is John? We don't know who John is, by the way, we don't know who John is, but yes, Paul had a kind of exaltation Christology, there's no doubt.

He did believe that Jesus was divine, and a good example of that is the second Philippians, the hymn, but he believed in a kind of subordinationism, and how do we know that? Because if you look at line 9 to 11, it's quite explicit that God gives him the name, so he didn't have it before.

Jesus did not have the name before, and he makes it above all names.

Okay, so it's a little confusing there, but he's talking about the Carmen Christi Philippians chapter 2, and what he's not seeing is that the Son has voluntarily made himself of no reputation, and he has done so by taking on a human perfect nature.

So, it's humiliation by addition rather than subtraction, okay? And so, he has acted in tapina sofrune, humility of mind, he has done the Father's will, and upon his resurrection, he is exalted and given the name which is above every name, but that's in light of his finished work.

So, to argue, well, he didn't have that before. Well, how could you have it before you do the work that is then associated with it? That doesn't make any sense. And then what he misses is that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, the glory of God the Father.

Well, so you have Jesus Christ is Lord, Yahweh, to the glory of God the Father, and the quotations from Isaiah where Yahweh says every knee will bow, every tongue confess to me. So, it's being applied to Jesus, and that glorification of Jesus in light of his finished work is not of a separate deity to the denigration of the Father, but says to the glory of God the Father.

So, the only way that can work is if you have one God, we're monotheists, and that one God has been manifest in such a way that we recognize the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It was the Son that was incarnate, it was not the Father, it was not the Spirit, and when we say Jesus is Lord, that means a whole lot more than I think our Muslim friends have the capacity of understanding in light of the fact that the Quran and its author does not understand the message of Philippians 2.

And in fact, I would say that Muhammad Hijab knows much more about the Christian doctrine of the Trinity than the author of the Quran did. What does that mean? So, that he believes.

In a kind of subordinationism. Now, what is subordinationism? It's a hierarchy within the Trinity. Remember, we said the Nicene Trinity is three co-equal, co-eternal persons of the Godhead. Paul didn't believe this.

He believes in a hierarchy. John believed in an incarnation.

Christology. Well, now, you know, he just throws that out there, but he hasn't proven his point and really hasn't even attempted to prove his point. He's asserting some type of contradiction between the recognition of the differing roles the divine persons play in the economy of salvation with the introduction of some kind of subordinationism within the Godhead itself, which he has to somehow prove that.

Taking different roles, doing different things, okay, that's fully understandable. That's within God's freedom. But to then say that, well, and that means this kind of subordinationism, which is interesting.

There are conversations being had today within orthodox evangelical circles on this very topic, and it does not seem to me that the most efficient way of combating any form of subordinationism is by introducing philosophical complexities that almost no one in the church will ever understand.

And I would just put it this way, if you do think that certain philosophically complex doctrines and statements of doctrine are the way to protect against subordinationism, just be honest. How would you present that in this context against a Muslim?

It's one thing to say, well, we need to do this within Christian theology and, you know, within this realm. Okay. And if you want to take this outside of that realm and present this to people like this relatively young man, how are you going to do that?

How are you going to do that while recognizing at the same time that part of the debate is ultimate sources of authority? So what is your ultimate source of authority? And are you being consistent if you say my ultimate source of authority is actually not sufficient to define this subject I need to bring this other stuff in from outside?

They might catch you on that. They might go, you're not being consistent.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. Everyone knows the prologue,.

John chapter one. Yeah. Remind me there just for a second. He was, he says, everybody knows. Remind me of when Biden couldn't do that one, the thing, the thing. Everybody knows the thing. Let's hear it.

The prologue. Okay. There you go. The thing.

But the question is this, who is John? His gospel was found some 95 AD. This is the time it was.

Found, 95 AD. Found? You mean that there are people who would date the writing of the gospel of 95 AD? It's not a matter of, no one has found a gospel of John from 95 AD. I mean, okay. One of the papyrologists in the 1930s that examined P52 placed it in the 90s, but I don't think that's what he's talking about.

I'm not sure what he means by, he's not using accurate language by saying found. I think he's saying that the gospel of John is the last to be written, which is highly probable, but we don't know when it was written.

There are some people that believe it was written before 70 AD. It's very common to have 95 to 98 as well, but that's all speculation. There's, there's no, there's no date attached to it, nor is there.

Need to be. That's some 65 years after Jesus's disappearance. The irony of Jesus's disappearance,.

Which makes me, makes me think that for a while there are all these signs up on telephone poles in Jerusalem, you know, missing picture. Yeah. No, he has to say it that way because they don't believe in the resurrection.

Surah 4, 157 keeps them from being able to stand with the majority of history in recognizing the resurrection of Christ. Oh, the Ascension's right out. Yeah. Well, actually, we need to change that. No, the Ascension's right in because if you read Surah 4, 157, 158, there is sort of an Ascension there, but before the crucifixion, because in Muslim thinking, God, Allah would never allow one of his blessed prophets to die in an ignominious fashion.

And so he took him up to himself. So there is, there is an Ascension. It just skips the death, burial, and resurrection first. I'm sorry? Stolen? I'm not sure that would be the term that they would use, you know, but well, it's disappearance.

That's what he just said. Yep. There you go. That's, that's why he said what he said. All is that you'll find in.

The Gospel of John. For example, passages like John 17, 3, where it explicitly mentions that.

The Father is the only true God. Yeah, you know, we've been over it a million times before, but if you're a monotheist, that's all you can say. What can you expect him to say? You're one of many gods?

You're not God? But what are you going to do if you're going to be honest with the text? And I can, and I can very honestly say, you know, when you, when you read what every Christian needs to know about the Quran, when I deal with Quranic texts, I really do attempt to understand them within the context of which they're written.

Now, the Quran is hard to do that with because very often there is no context. Not even the Muslims can figure out what the context is. So that can be problematic, but there is a context, John chapter 17.

And if you're going to quote John 17, 3, and then not have an answer for John 17, 5, you got a problem. Because in John 17, 5, Jesus says, glorify me, Father of the glory, which I had with you before the world was, in your presence.

Jesus is speaking about having existed as a divine person in the presence of the Father in eternity past and having been glorious. Now, that's after John 12, where he has quoted from John 6 and applied it to Jesus.

And that, I'm going to say Isaiah 6 and apply it to Jesus. And of course, that's the temple vision and seeing the glory of Yahweh and things like that. But if you're not going to be prepared to deal with 17, 5, don't just quote 17, 3 as if it has some kind of meaning in and of itself.

That's manhandling the scriptures. It's not showing respect for those scriptures. And it generally means you don't have much of a strong argument.

In where you're going at all. Explicitly mentions this. And this was such a thorn in the side of the church fathers that Augustine, a major church father who died 430 AD and who wrote an exegesis on John.

Do you know what he said? He rearranged the words of John 17, 3. He changed the word order so as to make Jesus and the Father the true gods. This is how severe it was.

Well, I'd like a reference, but knowing how Augustine handled things, I would assume that he is looking at more of the context of 17 and including John's testimony to Jesus as deity along with that. That's my assumption of what's going on.

But it's not some kind of quote unquote thorn in the side in light of the fact there's so much just in John chapter 7, just in that one chapter that testifies the deity of Christ that Muhammad's not dealing with.

And I'm not sure that he's necessarily even fully aware of the existence of that material. So we will continue with that in future episodes as well. I know we've been doing it rather slowly, but it gives us an opportunity to hear Unitarian, in this case Islamic Unitarian, arguments and to be prepared to deal with them.

I believe it's best to hear those arguments from the sources themselves rather than I'm just saying, well, it's common for such and such to say this or such and such to say that. It's good to hear how it's expressed by others so that when you hear it, you will be better prepared to give an answer because that's what we're called to be able to do.

So speaking along those lines, this morning I was directed to a webcast that was fairly recently recorded, and it's a webcast in the UK. It's Reformed Baptist, and one of the Reformed Baptists sounds so much like Justin Brierley that I'm surprised Justin hasn't sued to have his voice changed or something because it really is amazing how much they sound alike.

It's amazing. But this is the Broken Wharf Coffeehouse Sessions. Sorry, don't know anything about the guys. Again, it's new to me. The conversation is with Steve Meister and Robert Briggs, both from Emanuel up in Sacramento, and the discussion is on the modern Reformed Baptist scene.

I wouldn't have commented on it except that, once again, we have in the comments of Pastor Briggs a coalescence of a condemnation of biblicism. Once again, the boogie word of the confessionalists today.

Can't be a biblicist. Together with a slanderous use of the term Neo-Sicilian. Now, you can get away with doing that because the vast majority of people today don't know anything about Sicilianism, the various forms that it took.

They've not read its Confession of Faith. It was a major challenge in post-Reformation history. Once it arose, it spread rapidly. To be a Sicilian is to reject the Trinity. It is to reject the deity of Christ, his pre-existence.

The Sicilians believed they had a perfect form of rational philosophy, that if you were to rationally interpret the pages of Scripture, they didn't have a perfectly orthodox bibliology either, but if you were to have this rational understanding of the Scriptures, then you would come to see that Jesus truly wasn't God and things like this.

In general, the really irresponsible way in which the term is being used today, as in this context, is to just simply smear the people that are actually closest to you in the theological realm. It's fascinating because, in this conversation, there was discussion about recovering a Reformed Catholicity and being able to get along with Presbyterians and others, and yet this particular attitude results in a cancellation of the people who are the absolute closest to you in their theology.

Once again, this raises all the issues that we've talked about for coming up on two years now, because it was December of 21 when all this started happening, that when you think about what's being said, you have the issues of where we derive our ultimate authority from.

We're hearing about, well, we're recovering orthodoxies. If everyone has been unorthodox forever, and all these people who are, you know, if you listen to this, you're going to wonder if anyone had an IQ above 50 in the 1990s.

You really will. We didn't know what we were talking about. We didn't understand the Trinity or nothing. And when you really find out what's being talked about, it's a slight emphasis issue that does open up a bunch of discussion of, and how do you decide this?

And it really does come down to the supremacy of Scripture, the sufficiency of Scripture, things like that. This redefinition of biblicism into something like, well, these people think you should only use the words of the Bible.