The Socinians Are Amongst Us! Or Are They?

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White. It is a road trip Dividing Line. Yes, in fact, if the Lord blesses, the large majority of the next two months will be road trip Dividing Lines.

I say if the Lord blesses, that's road safety, health, all that kind of fun stuff. But yes, we'll mainly be on the road, with a few exceptions, all the way through teaching early church history, which is beginning of October.

And so here we are, and it doesn't look like today. Well, there's a chance. We got some wonderful rain where I am yesterday. It was great. I love hearing the rain on the top of the fifth wheel here, and it was good.

So good to be with you. I just did a program in Texas with a fine brother there. I won't mention any more about it because that hasn't aired yet, so that would be sort of weird. But where I talked a lot about some of the things I'll be talking about today, and that's dangerous.

It's dangerous because as I'm sitting here, and I don't have notes in front of me and things like that, I know how my old brain works. I'm going to go, but I already mentioned that. Was that on the other program or this program?

I just know at some point that's going to happen. It's just, so I may repeat myself a couple times just to make sure I get everything going. I really, really, really understand what the psalmist was saying when he said, when he spoke of the blessedness of when brethren dwelled together in unity.

I know through the years there have been those times. I mean, I ended up at a Reformed Baptist church because I needed to have a consistency between what was being preached in the pulpit and what I myself was saying to people on the street at a LDS thing or a Jehovah's Witness thing or wherever.

I needed to have consistency. And so when that exists, it's a great blessing from God. If you live in a place where you have a church, where you have that kind of consistency, you have that kind of unity, you should be very, very thankful for it.

Very thankful to the Lord for that kind of a blessing. There are a lot of people that don't get to have that. So over the past 48 hours, some of you may have noticed a period of, I don't even know how to describe it.

Nastiness is hardly an appropriate term, though it is properly descriptive. A period of attack on me and this ministry and utilization of language by Christian men on just an amazing level, just a level that you wouldn't expect, especially from people who hold high positions in seminaries and leadership positions and things like that.

And it would be very easy just to simply throw everything up on the screen and just fire back. But I don't want to do that. I will be reading some of the material just simply, once again, to try to help people understand.

Because I'm seeing a lot of folks, I've seen folks who've not commented before commenting and going, wait, wait, wait a minute. What is going on? You all used to be on the same page. You were speaking at the same conferences, teaching in the same classes.

And accusations literally of Socinianism? Now, I just thought I'd mention in passing that, in all probability, about 97 to 98 percent of the audience has never heard the term before. It's an obscure term.

Those of us who teach church history, of course, have had to talk about Socinianism and the Radical Reformation and things that came out of the Radical Reformation in the 16th and 17th centuries. But Socinianism is a deeply heretical movement that developed out of what's called the Radical Reformation or the Anabaptist movement.

Problem is, all these terms are incomplete. They're not sufficient to really—the Anabaptists were a massively broad group. And to say that the Anabaptists gave rise to Socinianism, there's no one Socinianism.

The very essence of much of that wing of the Radical Reformation was non-compliance and a rejection of any kind of strict definition of faith, belief, confession. And so when you look at all the various confessions that came out of that wing of the Radical Reformation, you've heard it called the Anabaptists.

But again, it's not a good descriptor. You look at the confessions, and they're going to be all over the map. They're going to be very, very different from one another. And so Socinians in general, in general—got to be very, very general at this point—Socinianism in general was a rejection of the broad spectrum of Christian orthodoxy, specifically focused upon a rejection of the Trinity, pre-existence of Christ and the deity of Christ, that then had implications with the subject of the atonement, all aspects of soteriology, anthropology.

You could, in some ways, look at modern, what we might call—I hate using the term progressive. I hate using the term liberal. Again, these terms aren't really properly descriptive. But when you look at Union Theological Seminary, okay, the Walker Seminary, you know, the walking dead.

They've been dead for 140 years, but they're still walking around. There ain't much left of them. I'm not sure how walkers walk if their muscles are falling off. But anyway, if we look at that dead shell of what has called itself Christianity in the past, a lot of connections to Socinianism.

But even then, the Socinians lived in a time where you didn't quite have the level of philosophical skepticism and secularism, naturalism you could draw from to come to your conclusions. And so in many ways, those churches are even worse, the new ones, than the Socinians were.

But Socinianism, to say that someone is a Socinian—let me use this as an example. The provisionists, especially Leighton Flowers, are really angry when we identify them as semi-Pelagians. And they'll drag out books defending Pelagius and say, Pelagius didn't believe what Augustine said and all the rest of that stuff, which is sort of beside the point.

There is something historically defined as Pelagianism, and there is something historically defined as semi-Pelagianism. Just as there is something historically defined as Nestorianism. But most modern research would say Nestorius didn't actually believe what would eventually be identified with his own name.

It happens. But when you listen to Leighton Flowers and the provisionists and their choice meats and all the rest of this kind of stuff, they clearly have a view of man, where man is not dead in sin. In many ways, they even go beyond the Wesleyan-Arminian perspective in regards to prevenient grace and present the idea that there is a capacity on the part of the unregenerate man that is the essence of what Pelagianism and semi-Pelagianism is all about.

So it's an accurate thing to point that and go, this was the defining issue. This was the defining issue. It would be inaccurate if you just simply said, well, you know, Pelagius had a certain interpretation of a text scripture and therefore you all are connected.

You have to be very, very careful and try to be very, very accurate because there are certain definitional aspects of a movement that if someone is on the exact opposite side of that, trying to make some type of historical connection for whatever your purposes are is just dishonest.

It's unworthy of a serious historian. It's unworthy of serious scholarship. So you have to be very, very careful. I'm often very uncomfortable with how flippant many even of my friends are in throwing out the term Gnosticism.

And I've probably become more uncomfortable in having had to have spent so much time reading so much more Gnostic material just over the past couple of years. There is a specific essence to Gnosticism.

And just because someone's a dualist, for example, doesn't necessarily make them a Gnostic. So we, unfortunately in our day, not just our day, it's easy to throw out insults and accusations to attempt to accomplish something.

And you may feel like you're accomplishing something important or useful, but facts are facts. And you see this in the polemic of the Reformation. Luther did it to other people, other people did it to Luther.

I think Luther sort of figured if it's done to me so often, I might as well do it to others, this kind of thing. And only the most sound-minded and disciplined on both sides restrain themselves from that kind of behavior.

And so today, this morning, I get up and I discover that the assertion is being made that there is a great deal of Sassinianism going on, and that evidently I'm guilty of it. So Scott Swain, president of RTS Orlando, I believe, July 21st, 6 .55 a .m., says, so I think it's safe to say that Sassinianism is making a comeback, and it's very online.

For some reason, very and online are capitalized. Now, if there wasn't a context here, you could, again, make connection to just about any leftist liberal denomination today. But that's not a comeback, and I suppose they have an online presence, but that wouldn't be the issue.

No, there is a context. The context is a program called The Mortification of Spin, featuring Carl Truman, that aired on the 19th, so two days ago. I listened to it last night. And Dr. Fesco and Dr. Carter, now both Fesco and Carter are part of what I would identify as the scholastic traditionalist movement of our day.

Fesco, very much, again, a fan of Thomas Quinas, very much an opponent of Van Till and presuppositional apologetics. Carter, of course, author of Contemplating Scripture, Why the Great Tradition. And we have quoted from, especially Dr. Carter, in his definition of great tradition exegesis.

And in the comments that were made, now, again, I listened to the program last night. It's a short program. I just did a program right before this. And so I do have the program right here, but I don't believe that it's queued up properly.

And I didn't test the sound. And so I'm just going to have to skip that. I believe I have the comment that was made. Let me see if I can scroll back. I apologize for this. I should have. Yeah, here we go.

That should be right here. I think this is the quote. Yeah, here's the quote. Karl Truman, again, we have not exchanged pleasantries in a while, but for a while we would text each other about the Tour de France.

We're both big Tour de France fans, and tour's going on right now. It was pretty much one today with, they're not in Paris yet, so there's still something could happen. But last mountain stage, and Jonas Fingergaard has probably pulled it off.

But anyways, there's a cool video of Karl and Phil and I in a graveyard talking about stuff. And so we've been to conferences together. Almost everybody's on the critical side these days. We've been in conferences together.

The discussion, once again, did not name names. And the description of the people that are being warned against has nothing to do with myself, Dr. Johnson, Sam Waldron, anybody who has expressed any concern about this modern movement and situation.

And so wouldn't have anything to do with us, if accuracy meant anything. They were talking about basically the person with his Bible under a tree. No creeds, no confessions, just me and my Bible type stuff.

Which I don't know anybody who's saying that. There are people who say that, but they're not reformed. They're not in this conversation, but they keep being brought up as boogeymen. They're out there.

They're everywhere. No, not in reformed churches, they're not. And we all know who you're aiming this at. And they're just untrue statements. No one's saying that confessions are bad or creeds are bad.

We are pointing out that the highest level of authority that a creed could possibly possess would be its complete fidelity to biblical revelation. We are saying that confessions have to be amenable. They have to be able to withstand scriptural analysis and scrutiny.

And we are saying that there is not an external ecclesiastical authority that transcends time, that creates an inspired tradition that then becomes the lens through which the Bible must be read. That all traditions, even those claiming to have great antiquity, are to be subject to the ultimate authority of scripture.

Those are not really overly arguable positions in many ways. And I think that's why we have the straw man. I do not have a straw man with me. I do have Ultraman, but I don't think Chris would appreciate that if I use him for my straw man illustration.

So I did not bring straw man with me on my road trip. If I see one at any of the stops that I'm at, I will definitely grab one and have him. In fact, now I'm going to be looking for straw man. Got plenty on the internet, but you can't really hold them up to a camera.

Anyway, so let me read what was said by Carl Truman. The polemics one reads against Thomas Aquinas online do nothing other than reveal the total ignorance of those doing these polemics concerning the history of their own theology.

That's not the whole quote, but let me stop. Who's this? It really does not help when you do this kind of vague thing out there. I mean, I'm giving you, I'm telling you, you can look up mortification of Span.

I gave you the date. You can listen to this. You know who's talking. I've told you who the guests are. That's really how you do it in a respectful fashion, I would say, is you do it that way. But what polemics are these?

I have put Thomas in his context, and maybe there are others, and I just haven't had time, and some would like to point out to me, but I wonder how much time I've actually spent reading Thomas's words on this program since December.

It's been a lot. And so this kind of statement, this kind of general, okay, who are these polemicists? What have they written? What are we talking about? Then reveal the total ignorance of those doing these polemics concerning the history of their own theology.

And since we're not told who this is, there's no way to even evaluate the value of the statement. It's a throwaway statement. I mean, as much as I respect Carl, it's a throwaway statement. There's a 30-year, continuing to quote, there's a 30-year vast body of scholarship demonstrating the intimate connection between 17th-century Reformed theology and Thomas Aquinas.

Now, you can reject 17th-century Reformed theology, but don't start claiming to be a Protestant heir of the Reformers. Now, I would assume this is in reference to a number of people, Muller especially, but what does intimate connection mean?

You can draw an intimate connection between Calvin and the early church, but what's the nature of the connection? Is there an, you know, with Calvin, it would be the complex challenge that was his to say, on the one hand, we aren't starting a new church, but on the other to reject the ecclesiastical authority of the established church of his day, which is what he was doing.

So, again, what does intimate connection mean? And are we simply talking about utilization of certain language, terminology in certain areas? What is the intimate connection between 17th-century Reformed theology and Thomas Aquinas on the nature of the Lord's Supper?

I would say 99 of that relationship is negative rejection, right? So, it would be helpful if what this actually said was 17th-century Reformed theology proper in regards to these particular aspects of the doctrine of God over against everything else.

Didn't say that. But it says, oh, Rich says he has a straw man ready if I need him again. Well, like I said, it could be fun. You know, some of these RV parks, they have pretty interesting gift shops.

And so, I could end up with a kachina doll or something, but I don't want to do that. Anyway, back to the point here. But here's where the connection to everything else we're talking about. You are not a Protestant heir of the Reformers.

You're a Protestant heir of the Sassinians. Just be honest about it. We aren't told who the you is. That's what makes this. Brother, love you. Irresponsible. It's just irresponsible. Accusing someone of being an heir of the Sassinians is a very serious accusation.

That's, if within a Presbyterian denomination, that would be something you'd bring up, not to the session, but synod, something like that, assembly, whatever you want to call your particular group. That's accusation of heresy.

And how is it that someone who would say that our theology must be first and foremost focused upon scriptural revelation rather than metaphysical categories of Thomas Aquinas, what does that have to do with Sassinianism?

Well, Sassinians rejected that. Well, again, you're whitewashing. You're being very broad. But the fundamental essence and definitional character of Sassinianism was the rejection of the doctrines of Trinity and the preexistence of Christ and his deity and divinity.

There is no Christianity when you do not have a divine Jesus. Everything else goes. Everything else goes. And so unless we're doing the, well, you know, I can make a connection over here. You can do that with anybody.

You can do that with Luther. You can do that with Calvin. You can try to make these artificial connections to groups of the past. The only reason to do it is dishonest polemics. It's just that there's no scholarly reason to do it.

There's no ecclesiastical reason. There's no brotherly reason to do it. There's no reason within the church to do it. But if you just want to lob some grenades someplace, okay, just admit what you're doing.

So there was no identification of who was being spoken about, but it's thrown out there. And that's what Scott Swain was riffing off of, was once Karl Truman comes out and defends Thomas, not really defends Thomas, but defends the concept of the connection between 17th century reform scholasticism and some elements of Thomas's theology, certainly not the vast majority, then it's sort of like, all right, we've got Truman, let's go.

And it just seemed like the wheels fell off behaviorally from a number of people, sadly. So we had Stephan Lindblad from IRBS. Well, what happened was, you recall after the last program, recall during the last program, I commented briefly in passing, because we were talking about hermeneutics, we're talking about supremacy of scripture, relationship to tradition, how we ground our faith and our beliefs, and the only sure basis for so doing.

And I mentioned that Richard Braselis was teaching a class on hermeneutics for founders of ministries. And a few hours later, on Twitter, Richard tweeted me, says sub tweeting me, which he's been doing for months, and he knows it, and he admits it.

He actually addressed me. And in so doing, opened up the opportunity for a conversation to take place. And I think some people were scared, honestly, that a good conversation might actually take place.

And so I responded, and let me, here's what Richard said. I noticed you mentioned me on your DL today, a friend informed me of it. You claimed I have not provided a response to your claim of reformed biblicism.

You are correct, I have not. I actually said that I've not seen anyone interact with anything that I've said, based on Calvin's response to Saddoletto. I could have used all sorts of things, but that seemed appropriate at the time in light of the Roman Catholic element.

I didn't say, I don't believe it. I said, Richard hasn't responded. This is if it was his job. The phrase is only weeks old. Now, Calvin's letter to Saddoletto was written in 1539. I'll let it be defined by more than one person before thinking about a response.

So in other words, your entire position, which was his and my position for years, and what I presented when I taught at his school, is idiosyncratic. It's not. It is, if you read John Murray's Commentary on Romans, if you read Mu, that's all I'm laying out.

It's standard position we've held for a long, long time. I have lectured on hermeneutics for many years and provide what I think is a good reflection of reformed hermeneutics in those lectures. Well, we may disagree.

Also, I've written several books, usually laying my hermeneutical cards at the table. As you mentioned, I'm going to be teaching hermeneutics for founders in Florida soon. So if you want to know what I think, read my books and join us in Florida next month.

By the way, Florida is way more red than Arizona and D .C. Well, again, Richard doesn't really seem to be able to tweet without snark. So there was a fair amount of that there. And so I responded, and basically what I said, see if I can like to read it.

I said, I hope you will lay out with clarity how what you once believed makes mincemeat a confession and then lay out exactly how pre-modern exegesis can be differentiated from, say, the methodology used in writing such commentaries as those on Romans by Murray and Mu.

Some examples of how this pre-modern methodology, man, I wish Twitter threaded things more logically. Some examples of how this pre-modern methodology can be practiced with regularity and consistency and how it differs from the mincemeat formula.

I've yet to see specifics. I suppose it would be good to ask when you wrote your paper on Colossians 2, 11 through 12, was that before or after your adoption of a new hermeneutic? How specifically would this new hermeneutic impact the exegesis of such text?

It would seem that a great tradition interpretation would be a given, yet clearly you do not hold to that. So how does it work? Now, those are calm, fair, important questions. And I think some people freaked about it.

I think they freaked out that that conversation might actually take place. And so they jumped in and just started throwing verbal bombs, making sure that a calm, meaningful conversation could not possibly happen.

It was sad. And you know, all of you who did it, you know exactly who you are, and you know what your motivations are. You know what your motivations are. Here's his brief response to my questions. Here's a brief response, won't answer all specifics, but gives just my shift of the years.

Due to my training and in line with it, I once denied the covenant of works. I did so because the phrase is not in the Bible. And to come to that doctrine requires subsequent revelation to shed interpretive light on antecedent revelation.

I was committed to a hermeneutic that limited meaning to what I thought the human author in his original reading audience would have thought. Now let me just stop there for a second. This isn't, see if you were hoping for some exciting flamethrowing thing, I'm, the only reason I do all of this is the edification of the church, and these, this is the real issue.

All the rest of, all the nastiness stuff I care less about, but it's out there, so it has to be dealt with. But this is an important question, because everybody keeps saying, well, there's, you either have pre-modern exegesis, and it's the genius of the early church, or you have grammatical interpretation, grammatical historical interpretation, which, as it's being defined, means there can be no spiritual aspect, there can be no relationship of this text to the rest of the text description.

It's just mind reading the author, and mind reading the original audience. And again, I don't know, if this is what was taught at masters, how would anyone at masters have ever held to Orthodox Christian theology regarding the hypostatic union?

I just wonder if the people who were teaching back then would recognize their own perspective in this. But I like the example, covenant works. Okay, that's a, that's not a biblical phrase, but it is the result of an analysis of biblical truths based upon the assumption of the harmony of all the text description, sort of like the pactum salubris, eternal covenant redemption.

And so this takes us back, I don't have my board with me right now, and I do actually have that other monitor, but I have not been able to set it up yet. This takes us back to when I was in the big studio, and I graphically represented, you know, here's biblical doctrine, and then because of these biblical doctrines, here's the next level of doctrine that is necessary in light of biblical teaching, the doctrine of the Trinity.

It's monotheism, three persons, equality of the persons, doctrine of the Trinity. But then you go beyond that to the next level, and beyond that to the next level, and eventually, you have to draw a line.

Calvin did. When God makes an end speaking, we should be silent. I think that's wisdom. And so the covenant of works would be a conclusion drawn from certain aspects of biblical theology based upon the idea, and this is why liberal theology can't do this, based upon the idea of the harmony and inspiration of scriptures.

They don't believe that, and so, I mean, they don't even believe you can come up with a Pauline theology. Paul contradicted himself, so they go on from there. But anyways, I was committed to a hermeneutic that limited meaning to what I thought the human author and his original reading audience would have thought.

And obviously, what the author intends to communicate to his audience is utterly central, but I do not understand. I would like to know where, who at masters ever taught that once you know what the original author intended to communicate to his audience, you cannot connect that to anything else the author says in that book, any other book, to what any other author says, and certainly can't make a connection between Old Testament and New Testament.

Now, maybe there was some of that. Maybe some of the dispensationalism could get in the way of that. I could see that the Old Testament, New Testament issue, the Tanakh, and the Greek scriptures, I could see something possibly coming up there, but I just can't see how it can ever be so tightly limited as it's being described by so many people today.

Okay, this says three, so, because when you, especially a couple days afterwards, when you try to go back, and then comments have come in, it's better than Facebook, I guess. But anyway, sometimes it makes me long for the old days, the VVS.

Vern Poythress has a Jets article that is helpful on grammatical historical hermeneutics, and Genesis 3 .15, the presence of God qualifying our notions of grammatical historical interpretation, and Genesis 3 .15, a test case.

Now, that would be, that brings in a whole other area, and that is Old Testament fulfillment, and certainly 3 .15, Protoevangelium, its deep connection to so much of later revelation. Also, I wrote a book in the Confessional Doctrine of the Covenant of Works, which deals with hermeneutics, a bit, and the exegesis of many scripture texts.

My book, Getting the Garden Right, shows many of my hermeneutical cards. I seek to argue with the Confessional Doctrine of the Covenant of Works, and the Confessional Doctrine of the Christian Sabbath, denying either of these lands, one outside the Second London Confession of Faith.

I used, oh, I used to deny the threefold division of the law using numbers. Oh, that's, I used to deny the threefold division law, thinking it came from theological musings and systematic considerations.

I could not affirm it as based on the exegesis of text. I was wrong. From the Finger of God by Philip Ross is a good recent work on that confessional issue. Denying the threefold division of the law lands outside the Second London Confession.

I used to use fuzzy things about our Lord's state of humiliation, e .g., incarnation equals addition. Incarnation involved non-use of certain divine prerogatives. What scrubbed my vocabulary and theology was wrestling with Second London Confession 8 -7, reading Augustine, i .e., form of servant, form of God, Athanasius, understanding the extra, Calvinisticum, Owen, Turretin, etc.

I realized I was using language similar to 19th century canonics and wasn't articulating myself in line with my own confession. I was wrong. So that's him saying, I once believed exactly what you were saying.

Now that means I'm wrong, according to him. Okay. I used to deny the primacy of divine ontology, the divine economy in the interpretive process. I allowed some aspects of the divine work to condition the divine being.

Yes, I once advocated EFS, early 1990s. Didn't know that. I have no idea. Though without the words and some form of theistic mutualism. Okay. Unfortunately, theistic mutualism is defined by people in many, many different ways.

Over the years, I realized God and Trinity is what it is given. Over the years, I realized God and Trinity is what it is given creatures or not. I found that patristic authors argued the same and even advocated, we get God, theologia, right, or we get economy, ergonomia, wrong.

I addressed this issue in my Trinity in Creation. I critiqued two contemporary Reformed authors, Frame Oliphant. I think both men present views not in step with our own confession of faith, given that he says our own, that would almost communicate to me that there's something in the London Confession, not in the Westminster Confession, or that he's saying that both violate the Westminster Confession.

I've not read it, so I don't know. I have a chapter in the book coming soon, The Trinity, which treats the subject while suggesting we shelve Rauner's rule. That's good. More hermeneutical cards are shown in that chapter.

My dissertation was published in 2010. It's titled The Family Tree of Reformed Biblical Theology. Among other things, I discussed the analogy of faith, the analogy of Scripture, the scope of Scripture, and the only infallible interpreter of Scripture.

Later publication, I flesh out those hermeneutical commitments addressing various issues. I hope that helps. Yes, it does, but I think it's what triggered so many people that we can't have that. That's not going to create the emotional fervor that we need, and so people start jumping in right, left, and center.

I guess he says, well, get my books. I would think it would be rather easy and useful to a much wider audience to summarize, because there must be many of them, a key text that would allow for the illustration.

Some other people in that camp have attempted to do so, for example, John 10 -30, and have made a hash out of things, but I would love to see how something like John 10 -28 -30 would be handled differently now than then.

Is this simply a matter of, well, I now have a commitment to a particular limited vocabulary and language that I will then, how would you avoid limiting the scope of scriptural revelation to that particular vocabulary provided by your understanding of confession?

Is that even a danger? Is there a danger that confessionalism could limit artificially the actual scope of divine revelation in light of the language that existed at a particular time, in a particular place, in light of particular conflicts?

And if the framers of such a work were themselves in error at any point, history is filled with every singular church father, every single church father, Calvin, Furnitin, you can point to places where they were in error about something, either simply out of ignorance or because of the conflicts that they were involved in in their life.

If their conclusions then determine the language that we can then use, is there a danger of our limiting what scripture can say in light of our elevation of that confessional authority? It seems that this kind of conversation is scary to some people because the stuff that started floating around, like I said, Stephan Lindblad jumped in and basically said, just go read some books, quit exegeting tweets.

I can certainly understand if people don't watch the program why they would speak out of ignorance, but no one who's watched the program and is simply honest thinks that anyone's been just simply exegeting tweets.

It was unkind, unfair, and I did respond to that one. I said, your unkind comments are not needed. I tried to say, stay out of it. I know you're an IRBS professor, but stay out of it. Let's have a meaningful conversation, and he came back with, and I'm reading the tweet now, a lot of solid orthodox ministers have grown weary of the way you take tweets and attempt to tear them apart.

This isn't godly, it's not arguing in good faith, and it's a terrible theological method that has real implications for churches. Just stop already. I don't know if this was written before. Richard wrote a, how many was that?

Unfortunately, who knows which one of these tabs that's in anymore. What was that? More than 12, wasn't it? Or as many as 20 tweets. The way you take tweets and attempt to tear them apart, since December of last year, the other side of this controversy has been subtweeting, misrepresenting, strawmanning, almost everything I've ever said on The Dividing Line.

They don't quote me, they don't play it, they don't put the words up there, they don't do what I do, where I actually quote the sources, name the names. I did not name names for the first month, because I did not want to see division, but that accomplished absolutely nothing.

And so I quote people, and I ask direct questions, and if your inability to answer direct questions causes you to become angry, I'm sorry about that. You might want to consider a different line of work.

This isn't godly. What is not godly is misrepresentation. What isn't godly is strawman argumentation. What isn't godly is not dealing with what someone has actually said and taken the time to carefully think through.

That's what isn't godly. It's not arguing in good faith. I will leave it to the audience who's arguing in good faith. And it's terrible theological method as real implications for churches. Just stop already.

Real implications for churches. What do you mean by that? I mean, I reject the false accusations, that's the substance of the accusation from Dr. Lindblad, but someone else picked that up, and this is what happens.

Once you get individuals who are professors and hence have a position of trust, once they basically become unhinged, then the people who are already unhinged become really unhinged, if it's possible to be doubly unhinged.

Probably not. Anyway, so Josh Sommer popped in. Yeah, I'm losing count of the stories I hear of local churches being deliberately affected by this talking head on YouTube. Head, YouTube, talking. Of course, he has his own talking head YouTube channel, but consistency flies out the window once you get taken over by emotion.

Ironically, YouTube is not a biblical lawful means of ecclesial accountability. Sola scriptura, question mark? Here's my guess. There are a lot of Reformed Baptists, well, who listen to this program. We sort of were pioneers in podcasting, webcasting, all that stuff.

Not that we, quote unquote, saw the future. Most of the time, it's just because we were too poor to do anything else. But we have a global audience. We've never spent, I don't think we've ever spent a dime.

I don't know if we ever did try one of those Facebook promote your thing, post things. But I know people send out, nope. It says, nope. We don't promote. We don't buy advertising. And yet, we have one of the largest global audiences of any webcasts of its kind, by a long shot.

And that means a lot of Reformed Baptists listen to the program, because we've been talking about the same things and doing the same things since the 1980s. As most of you know, next year will be 40 years of ministry of Alvin and Megan Ministries.

And so I think what we're hearing here is I am giving voice to what many people in the pews are thinking. They've noticed the shift in interpretation. They've noticed the shift in emphasis. They've heard more sermons about divine simplicity than in the preceding 25 years of their Christian life.

And they're going, something's different. I don't remember the pastor quoting those sources in the past very often. I remember a whole lot of Bunyan. I don't remember a whole lot of Thomas or any of these other sources.

And some of these books are written by Protestants, written by Roman Catholics. Now, I doubt almost any of these guys have had the temerity to actually quote Craig Carter's definition of great tradition exegesis in their church.

I read it on the program. Again, I'm not trying to be coy as to it. I just don't want to, I don't know when it's going to drop. So I don't want to ruin anything. But I read that citation about what great tradition exegesis is.