Ninety Minutes of Biblical Exegesis and Theological Ruminations

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. Here we are in our old haunts. It's good to be here, though it's a brief time home, less than two weeks, and to be honest with you, it just feels like I'm stopping briefly.

It's just a little while, and then we're off to G3, and we're off to Conway to teach early church history, and we've got Chris Arnzen's pastor's luncheon in southern Pennsylvania, and all sorts of other stuff we're going to do along the way.

I'm not getting to do quite as many stops and doing churches because I've got to get all the way across the country, and so those are long days, and so I can't do shorter stuff and then have time to be doing too much other things along the way, but anyway, still going to be very, very, very busy, and I should mention that on the 10th of September, I'm going to be at Covenant Grace Church where I always am, and will be the first weekend in December as normal, Lord willing, but I'm just going to be there for one quick evening as I'm coming through, and we're going to do, I do this little thing, I've done it a number of different places.

I always do it a little bit differently because there's so much you could do, but it's an evening with ancient Christians, Christians you never heard of. I just draw different things out of the early church and talk about people who sealed their testimony with their blood, and sometimes people we don't know almost anything about.

Maybe we'll find out more about them someday in the get people's appetite whetted a little bit for reading and church history, and that will be at Covenant Grace Church on the 10th, yes, the 10th of September.

That's when I'll be getting through. That all assumes that I don't, you know, drive off a cliff, get run over by a semi or anything else in the process, but if you're in the area, look that up, and I'm looking forward to that.

Jude 3-5 and Contending for the Once-Delivered Faith

So, so many things to look at. I want to start off just like I most enjoy doing, looking at a text of scripture and asking us to go back in the days when we all thought we were on the same page, and we could talk about our faith in biblically defined truth without having to go, oh, have I checked what that famous writer said or that famous writer?

Oh, I don't know. What if they take a, you know, different perspective? I mean, yeah, back when we could just, we thought that we were all in agreement that, you know, if it's scripture, then it's what we need to believe, and just take us for a moment to the little book of Jude, and look at a, just a couple of verses, because there's some stuff in Jude that is highly challenging.

Who were the angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode? You look at 2 Peter, you look at that, you look back at Genesis. There's some interesting stuff to think about there.

I guess I should have checked that before the program started. I think I made that about a month ago, and there ain't nothing I can do about it now. Ain't nobody here to grab me a cup of water, so we'll see how that works.

Anyways, Jude 4 and 5, very interesting text, and you know that, really, starting with Jude 3, Beloved, while I was making every effort to write to you about our common salvation, which is, by the way, is koine, koines soterios, koine Greek, you've heard of koine common Greek?

That's the term that's used. Our common salvation, I felt the necessity, the extreme need to write to you exhorting that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints.

The, literally, the once for all handed down to the saints' faith, and you know, we've, over the years, we've often referred to this, this is one of the key apologetics texts, especially when you look at epagonizami, to contend earnestly to, you know, it's a command to believers to recognize that the faith will always be under attack.

Every generation will have different forms of how that attack comes, and we have to remember, looking back in history, that when someone spent their life in a particular dispute, there is a high likelihood, and this is the case for all of us, that that might have produced some level of imbalance amongst them.

When particular Baptists were being persecuted for being Baptists in the post-reformational period, is it possible that that could become such a common, everyday part of the battle that there could be some imbalance that might slip in?

Well, yeah, it's, I think all of us recognize that that's the case. We can give so many examples. People who live in a context, they're constantly dealing with Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Mormonism. The danger is you're pulling one direction, and it's next to impossible to remain perfectly balanced when you're constantly pulling one particular direction and not multiple other directions that would allow you to remain more balanced.

But here Jude is telling us that there needs to be an earnest contention, an earnest battle. For what? For the once-delivered-to-the-saints faith. That's, hoppox is the same term that the writer of the Hebrews uses to refer to the one-time sacrifice.

He either uses hoppox or ephipox, the strengthened form of it, but has the same meaning. And so, part of the apologetic is a recognition that the faith has been once for all delivered to the saints. And so, while we can recognize the need for the faith to be expressed in a wide variety of ways, when the gospel goes out into the world, it needs to encounter all of the changing vicissitudes of culture and language and time that God in his providence has decreed we would need to face and proclaim the gospel to individuals.

That doesn't change the fact that it is a once-for-all-delivered-to-the-saints faith. And so, I would suggest that we think very seriously about how to define the once-for-all-delivered-to-the-saints faith and to be able to separate the apostolic proclamation of that once-for-all-delivered-to-the-saints faith, which is found in Scripture, from the explications and developments of theology so as to answer particular questions that would mark how that faith has been proclaimed in different cultures.

Especially how we in the West have inherited a certain set of theological questions, and we have to be very, very careful that we do not redefine the once-for-all-delivered-to-the-saints faith as something that no one in Jude's day could have even recognized.

So, if you want to talk about apostolic faith, if you want to talk about this faith from Jude 3, then it needs to be something that Jude would have recognized. And if you're defining as necessary to the Christian faith things that were utterly unknown to the apostles themselves, you need to explain how that works and how you can avoid basically saying that the once-for-all-delivered-to-the-saints faith was not enough, that there needed to be more, if that's where you're going.

It's in the context of the assurance that the faith has been delivered. Now, you need to understand what was the first and greatest, well, not so much the first, but in the first three centuries, what was the greatest external theological threat to the church?

Gnosticism. There were heresies internally. It was how to handle persecution and the results of persecution and things like that, but externally, it was Gnosticism in all of its forms, whether it's the more esoteric general form of Gnosticism or the specific form, Valentinian Gnosticism, which was specifically designed to look like Christianity as much as possible.

When you consider that God knew that he was going to bring that testing against the church, he had a purpose and intention for that. Then you understand that one of the key issues was, has the faith been once-for-all-delivered-to-the-saints, or is there more to be delivered?

That is relevant in every generation of the church, but it's especially relevant then, because these people are coming along, oh yeah, some of them would claim that it was actually apostolic, but they couldn't.

They came up a second-century wackadoodle gospels to try to make it sound like it was, but the reality was that it was not apostolic. There's something very important in that hapax, the once-for-all-delivered-to-the-saints faith.

It didn't come forth from them. It is something brought to them and given to them by God. It's in that context that it says, for certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ.

It is God's intention that the church not simply experience her pilgrimage on earth on flowery beds of ease. Instead, just as there had been certain men who had crept in to Galatia, to the churches in Galatia, here certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation.

I'll try this again, and if the eyes roll back and bad things happen, what is that taste? This could be a very important video someday. Make sure we have it copyrighted, Rich, so that the day that James White drank whatever it was that either made him pass out on the program or start spouting sonnets.

Who knows what the result could be? I have no idea. Anyway, long beforehand marked out for this condemnation. Doesn't sound like this is something that's catching God by surprise, and he's like, oh, I just had no idea this was going to happen.

This is terrible. No, there is a purpose in this testing, and they're ungodly persons. God has a reason for them. They're ungodly persons, and they turn, okay, I don't know what any of that means, but I did receive your message, and I don't get the connection, but anyway, they turn the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

I wish I could put this, oh, oh, now we know why women live longer than men, because a woman would have tasted it and said, yeah, I'm not going to go with something that I actually concocted, you know, four weeks ago.

Okay, anyway, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God in sensuality and deny our only master and Lord, Jesus Christ. Now, there are some textual variants in verse four, especially if reading the King James Version, but I want you to notice the phraseology that's used there.

Deny our only master and Lord, Jesus Christ. There is a denial of who Christ is when you pervert the message of the gospel, which, of course, is to turn the grace of our God into sensuality or licentiousness.

That is a denial of our only master and Lord, Jesus Christ, which would mean that the vast majority of what we watch on Twitter today, of all the rainbow-stoled women and homosexual men, and then everybody who is not even sure what their sex is, but are pretending to be Christians, you turn the grace of God into sensuality, into licentiousness, into homosexuality, transgenderism, gay mirage, etc., etc., etc.

You are denying our only master and Lord, Jesus Christ. It is a denial of the Christian faith. They do not exist together. I was so thankful last, was it last evening on Tucker Carlson? Evening before.

It was evening before. There was a fellow, a black fellow, well, more of a brown fellow with a big old afro, somehow associated with formal church. I didn't quite get what the conversation was about there as far as his relationship to the Church of England, but he was spot on, unapologetic, clear.

It was wonderful. He was talking about these groomers and these pedophiles, and he just did not pull any punches at all. Again, when you're British and you've got that accent, it just sounds so much more intelligent than when the rest of us say it.

You can say the exact same words, but as long as you put it in that lilting tone, it sounds so much more erudite. Anyway, so I was very thankful for that, brother. Don't know what the connection there was, but I'm just really glad that Tucker Carlson had him on.

The point was, you turn the grace of our God into sensuality, you will be denying our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. That term despotane, that's master. It's a strong term. Kurios is as well, but you put the two together, and there is a clear emphasis upon Jesus as having judicial reigning authority in the church and one's relationship.

The only way to turn the grace of God into licentiousness, into sensuality, is to fundamentally undercut the clarity of the revelation of Scripture in regards to sexual morality, and hence, undercut God's law.

There is a connection between what the law of God says and the lawgiver, who is our Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. It is right there at the end that you have a certain interesting variance, and it seems to me that it was probably due to the presence of nomen sacra, the abbreviations of the divine names, in the early papyri that led to this.

But we've got even our Lord Jesus Christ, our Lord Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, and then just Jesus Christ. So, there's clearly numerous possibilities presented by the appearance of the textual variant there at the end of the verse.

But what's interesting, then, is to deny the despoten kaikourion, the Master, the Sovereign Lord, our Sovereign Lord Jesus Christ, to deny Him is to do so theologically. It is to pervert. When you pervert God's grace, it turns into sensuality.

That is a denial of who Jesus Christ is. A lot of people want to try to separate that kind of stuff off and say, oh, I honor Jesus. I just am a homosexual or believe in transgenderism or whatever else.

You can't do that. That is a denial of His rights as despoten kaikourion. And then it's right there that we have this other variant that's so fascinating. Now, I want to remind you, though you know all things, that Jesus, having once, hapak, same term used in the giving of the once for all faith, having once saved a people of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe.

Now, we've known about this variant for a very, very, very, very long time. It's been listed in the critical editions, the Greek New Testament. Interestingly enough, it won't be listed in the Textus Receptus, though it's an ancient reading, and that's one of the problems in having that kind of perspective.

A large, and again, just as in verse 4, this is an incredibly complex variant. And some people would say, and we shouldn't have to talk about that. Okay. You can ignore the reality of the situation and just glom on to whatever text you've decided to embrace and call it good if you want, but here's just the Nestle on 28th edition.

Kourios, let's see, the Kourios, Kourios with an article, Kourios without an article, God with an article. Then you can, some of the words get transposed, Lord, God, Lord again, Hati Theos Christos, that one's really interesting, that's P72.

That's the corrected reading of, of, no, no, the original reading is, oh, okay, I see, there's even been a correction within P72, but P72 has Theos Christos, which is fascinating. Jesus, another form of using Jesus, and then Lord Jesus, and then just Jesus without the Lord.

That's, there's a lot of different readings. And I've mentioned a number of times before that the CBGM analysis of Jude, this was really the first, I would say, communicable, important outcome of the CBGM analysis was the Nestle Allen 28th went from using Lord to Jesus.

And so, what's important about this is if you just consider the textual variants can actually have relationship to other textual variants. So, if we read as the LSB has, which is what I was reading from, well, I was reading English as I was reading.

Deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ, and the very next sentence is, I want to remind you, though you know all things, that Jesus, who was just described as Master and Lord, having once saved a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe.

That fits perfectly with the description of Jesus as Master and Lord, as despoten kai kurion. Now, if it just simply said that the Lord, having once saved a people out of the land of Egypt, it probably would still be referring to Jesus as the Lord who saved the people out of the land of Egypt, but it's so easy to see how a scribe would be like the normative way of expressing the Lord saved the people out of the land, would use the term kurios.

Jesus would be unusual, and you see that in all the plethora of variants that occurred as a result of that at the end of the end of the verse, but there's a consistency, and so to deny Jesus's Lordship, that's turning the grace of God into sensuality.

That's the denial of Jesus's Lordship, and then you have to realize that means that Jesus will judge those who deny his Lordship, and that's the illustration it's then given, because what did the people of Israel do?

They turned the grace of God into sensuality. What Moses comes down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments, and what are the people doing? They're engaging in sensuality. So, there is a place for comparing the variants in regards to the flow of the argument of the text itself.

All of that to say, this is an incredibly high Christology passage. You can't fit most of the marshmallow views of Jesus that are prevalent in progressive churches today into this text. They're not going to like this.

The ladies with the rainbow-colored stoles are not going to be reading this text as part of their sermonettes for Christianettes, because there is power here. There is authority here. There is Jesus reigning in his church.

There is Jesus as only Master and Lord, Jesus as the one who saved a people out of Egypt, and that was, oh yeah, Yahweh, the creator God, the only God that exists. So, very strongly presenting an understanding of the deity of Christ, even in the context of dealing with the situation in the early church and false teachings that were coming against them.

Biblical Theology, Christology, and Post-Nicene Development

Now, why start here and spend the first half hour of the program? Well, it's been a long time since we've done this. I mean, it's probably been six or eight months since we talked about Jude 5, just as an example of CBGM.

I haven't really been discussing CBGM much, unfortunately. And certainly, when the next volume of the current work coming out of Munster, or if it's the one that's coming out of Birmingham, the Gospel of John, that will change.

We will have much to discuss when that happens, to be sure. But here we have a text of Scripture, and I benefited greatly many, many years ago in Bible college from reading a book called The Lord of Glory by B .B. Warfield.

And when I was driving back from Colorado, I listened to a lecture from about six, seven years ago by Scott Swain, who is now the president of RTS in Orlando. And it was a lecture where he was disagreeing with, laying out and disagreeing with B .B. Warfield, specifically in regards to Warfield's concerns regarding the biblical evidence, basically.

Is there a truly biblical foundation for certain commonly used theological conclusions that have developed, especially post-Nicaea in the Christological controversies and period after that? And as most people know, John Calvin, likewise, looked at the post-Nicene doctrinal development and felt that there were imbalances, that there were certain directions you could go that would inevitably lead to bad conclusions.

And almost all the discussion when it comes to these things is more of a, that could lead to this, than it is, if you just held that and didn't go to this, it's not really a big problem. But for a lot of people, the emphasis is upon, well, we can't go there because someone might do this.

Well, the reality is there is not a single element of sound Christian theology that has not been taken out of balance by somebody at some point in some time. Unitarians or modalists, they'll all argue that we could actually really be able to reach the Muslim people if we just didn't have this Trinity doctrine in the way.

Well, okay, that still goes to the very essence of what the Christian faith is. And so, yeah, I'm sure Muslims would like it if Christianity was more like Islam, but we can't go there. So the question really is, what was that once-for-all delivered-to-saints faith, and are there answers to speculative questions that are not addressed in Scripture that believing Christians can disagree on in regards to, well, let's speculate about this, and is there, as long as it's not a part of the once-for-all delivered-to-saints faith, and that becomes the issue because there will be some say, once it is, once there is a consensus, I'm starting to wonder if maybe some of that apple cider fermented or something.

That would be funny. That would be, you know, by the end of the program, yeah, okay. It's just a very different taste. You're all gonna be able to say you watched as the man killed himself with the bad stuff out of the refrigerator.

Anyway, there have been differing emphases that did not involve any kind of actual denial of apostolic or biblical truth. The problem is that a lot of people want to identify their emphasis with the whole of the faith so that if you question that, then they will accuse you of a lack of orthodoxy on everything, and so I remember in seminary realizing that Calvin had pushed back against certain traditional Trinitarian formulations.

So, the aseity of the son, that he is autotheos, I was aware of the fact that that was outside of the mainstream of post-Nicene orthodoxy. That in post-Nicene orthodoxy, the son's participation in the divine being is mediated to him from the father, and Calvin's like, but that fundamentally demands a form of subordinationism that biblically is not possible because the son is identified as Yahweh.

You can't divide that up to where one Yahweh becomes the source of the other's Yahweh-ness. Doesn't make any sense. And so, he emphasized the fact that the son is autotheos. He is God in and of himself, not by extension or participation, and that's the other thing is, what terminology do you use?

Everybody likes to come up with new terms to pretend that they're actually protecting some kind of orthodoxy, yet anyone who reads early church history knows that so much of the dispute and condemnations and everything else was over people using the same words and meaning different things.

East-West, Greek-Latin, all this kind of stuff that unfortunately became deeply connected with politics as well. It's funny how many people today will glibly throw out their alleged fidelity to, for example, the Council of Chalcedon, and they don't know diddly about the political background and forces that were involved, even in the choice of words.

And the question really becomes, if there are certain words in especially the later creeds that were put there specifically for political advantage and compromise in the ancient Holy Roman Empire, shouldn't that be something that we're aware of?

And doesn't that, wouldn't it be appropriate to say that those formulations then need to be understood first and foremost in a scriptural context? And if there are concepts that have no scriptural foundation that we should not be bound by them?

Because, I mean, no Protestant that I know believes that they're bound by the canons and decrees of Chalcedon, but only by the creedal statement. And the creedal statement's vitally important, again, because of its biblical fidelity, but certain terms that are used in it are there because there were these different parties, and these different parties had different political people behind them.

And y 'all had to get, do you really want the House and Senate of the United States to have to get together and come up with a compromise statement of Christian theology? You don't think that there was the same politics back then?

Sure was. Of course there was. So these are important questions for us to be considering. And for me, when I see one of the followers of Christ find in the inspired word these descriptions of Jesus, that's the foundation that I want them to have, not what a bunch of men who gathered wherever, and historically we look back and we favor this and disfavor that because of our particular predilections.

And so you get different understandings of these things, and you've got Ephesus, and you've got the robber's synod, and you've got rampaging monks beating the snot out of each other. I mean, even killing people.

People died from mobs of rampaging monks in the early church. They did. They were on the wrong side of the dispute. Well, I'm going to guarantee you something. Rampaging monks do not determine Christian theology.

And to any extent where they ever did, you better go, hmm, look at that pretty closely, to be sure. But it's finding in the supernatural God-breathed, this is the word of Christ, my sheep hear my voice, scriptures that is the foundation that will allow anyone to stand firm in the coming days of trial and difficulty.

Carl Trueman, Justification, and the Doctrine of God

And so this is just one text I would look at. Now, all of that then, I truly prefer to spend my time in scripture. But I listened to a webcast while driving back, and it was an interview of Carl Truman.

Now, Carl Truman is interviewed pretty regularly, especially after his book from last year or a year and a half ago, whatever it was, that was fairly popular. But Carl's been interviewed for a long time, and this interview was helpful for me to hear, because now I understand that since the years, years and years ago, when we would do conferences, and we did a number of conferences back east, and we were saying the same things, there wasn't any issues.

And then I'm sensing a change, and he talks about it. He talks about the shift in his understandings over the past, about the same period of time as it's been going on amongst Reformed Baptists as well in regards to Aquinas and classical theism and things like that, whatever classical theism is.

I mean, by any definition that I've seen of historic classical theism, we're all classical theists, other than just a few people out toward the fringes. In fact, well, anyways, I'll leave that alone. There was a lot in the interview that was very interesting to me, because it was very ecumenical.

The two interviewers, one was Roman Catholic, one was Eastern Orthodox, and they're both formerly Reformed men. That's interesting. I mean, I have a hard time not wanting to ask any person who has left the Reformed faith and embraced Rome, especially, how they can explain abandoning the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ.

It did come up a little bit, and I should say that both the other guys put the most Reformed spin on both Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy I'd ever heard. It's easier to do with Eastern Orthodoxy, to be honest with you.

But, yeah, as it may, it was really interesting. But there was one section, and I managed to find it, and I want to play it for you. It's just a brief section here, but I want you to listen to what Carl Truman says, because, well, I think it sheds light, or at least it should force all of us to think very seriously.

I may have to put this in, because I'm not going to be able to hear.

It in the other room, but here we go. I have to say, just going to say personally, this is something that, you know, I'm glad you invited me on the program, but it's something of a personal challenge for me, because coming from a very traditional evangelicalism where, you know, because Catholics didn't believe in justification by grace through faith, they were at best very, very second-rate Christians, probably not Christians at all.

Discovering that a lot of the theologians I respected on the issue of justification are fundamentally wrong on the doctrine of God has raised for me personally a whole host of questions about, well, how do I relate to Catholic friends who agree with me about who God is, even if we disagree on the mechanics of how he saves?

Because in the 17th century, if you disagree, you know, those who repudiated the classical doctrine of God, they were not even considered Christians. They were beyond the pale. So this raises very, very interesting ecumenical questions.

So let's think about that for a moment.

This just crossed my mind, and I forgot to announce it earlier, but I will be on CrossPolitik tomorrow. I'm not sure if it's going to be live, but we're recording at five o 'clock my time, so I don't know.

It may be the one that appears over the weekend, so I'm not sure. But yeah, I'm going to be on the program tomorrow, so on the whole Baptist transgender dust-up and everything that's come after that, and we'll see if we can come to any conclusions on things like that.

Ecumenism, Aquinas, and the Reformed Critique of the New Confessionalists

But just a programming note while I'm passing. If you think through, one of the big disappointments that I had in the interview was that section because he said that many of the men from whom I learned the doctrine of justification by faith were wrong in the doctrine of God.

Who? In what way? This morning, I don't have it in front of me right here, but this morning I saw a tweet from Richard Braselis recommending a book by Father Wynandi, and I recognized the name because Carl Truman said that he had interviewed the same man primarily on the doctrine of God.

I've seen stuff about angels and demons and so on and so forth. And of course, you have Credo Magazine editor Matthew Barrett recommending people watch a video from a Roman Catholic priest on angels and demons and exorcism and stuff like that.

You just have to start wondering if Credo Magazine isn't trying to get the impromptu, the seal of approval of doctrinal correctness from the Vatican. It's not really that big of a deal these days. It used to be really important, but anyway.

And so you have this ecumenism taking place, and I want you to think about what Carl said here, because in the current situation that we're in, what we're seeing rapidly, only six months ago, there were still many people saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

The only reason we're making reference to Thomas Aquinas is for his doctrine of God. You're going to agree with 88 of what Thomas Aquinas says, and we're not talking about anything else. And now it's just so transparently obvious from Credo and stuff like that, that that's just not the case.

That there's a whole bunch more of Aquinas' theology that is being promoted amongst Protestants, and it's stuff that is very much relevant to the Reformation and to soteriology. Aquinas did not make the differentiation that we so glibly make between his doctrine of soteriology and his doctrine of the sacraments.

They are one for him, especially the Eucharist. In fact, let me just... I'll circle back to this, but I forgot to pull this up, and I apologize for that. I wanted to have it queued up and ready to go, and I'm not sure how fast the system will...

Oh, that was instant. Thank you very much. Let me read you something. Let me read you something. Oh, most holy Jesus, who are truly hidden here, grant me to desire ardently, to search prudently, to know truly, and to carry out perfectly in praise and glory of your holy name, everything that pleases you.

Command, oh my God, the state of my life. Grant that I may know what you want, and that I carry out what is proper and needed for my soul. Grant me, oh Lord, my God, that I never fail between prosperities and adversities, so I don't become proud in the ones nor rejected in the other, that I may not have joy nor sorrow except from what takes me to you or takes me away from you, that I desire to please or displease no one except you.

May all transitory things be vile to me, but very precious, the eternal ones. May I dislike, Lord, all joy without you, and may I not be ambitious about anything outside of you, and may become pleasant to me any work for you and disgusting my rest without you.

Give me, oh my God, that I may lift my heart to you frequently and with fervor, that I do everything with love, that I take for dead anything that does not belong to your service, that I don't do things out of routine, but referring them to you with devotion.

Make me, oh Jesus, my love, my life, obedient without contradiction, poor without going low, chaste without corruption, patient without dissipation, mature without affliction, diligent without inconsistency, fearful of you without desperation, true without bending.

Make that I practice what is good without presumption, that I correct my neighbor without pride, that I build with words and deeds without falsehood. Give me, oh Lord, my God, a vigilant heart that does not go away from you for a curious thought.

Give me a noble heart that does not deviate for any sinister intention. Give me a firm heart that does not break for any tribulation. Give me a free heart that will not be dominated by any violent passion.

Grant me, oh Lord, my God, understanding to know you, diligence to search for you, wisdom to find you, behavior that you will be pleased with, perseverance that hopefully will wait for you, and hope that finally will embrace you.

Grant that I may be afflicted by sorrows here as penance, and the way of my life, I use your benefits for grace, and that in heaven be happy with your joys for glory. Lord, you that live and reign, God forever and ever.

Amen. Now, at Apologia, we start each service reading a prayer out of a book called The Valley of Vision, which is a collection of Puritan prayers, and I doubt that almost anyone would be able to consistently differentiate between this and a prayer that you would find in a collection like that, with one exception.

There was one little clue. Right at the beginning, it says, O most holy Jesus, who are truly hidden here. This is not a prayer to Jesus. It is a prayer to the holy sacrament by Thomas Aquinas. Because Jesus is physically present by transubstantiation in the Eucharistic sacrifice, then you can have prayer to him in the transubstantiated element.

Just as any Roman Catholic genuflects toward the altar or toward the monstrance, tabernacle, etc., because consecrated hosts are kept there, and since transubstantiation, therefore, that's where God is.

So you bow to God. And you can, again, if I didn't even start with that first little hint, you probably wouldn't have been able to even recognize it. But then you put it in its context, and you realize what's really going on, and this is a prayer to consecrated elements.

Does that mean anything? Well, the context always means something. And were there true believers who would have shared with Thomas this kind of religious fervor? Yeah. But this was part of the tenebrous, the darkness that we used to believe the Reformation brought us out of.

It gave us the vantage point of Scripture to be able to recognize the traditions that created this context. And so a serious Christian is going to want to recognize how this all took place and what the context was and the result of it, because Dr. Truman was saying that in classes he's taught, he's exposed his students to the prayers of Thomas Aquinas.

Well, R .C. Sproul, certainly, we, months ago, we went through portions of an article that he wrote on Aquinas that was just filled with hagiology, stuff that probably didn't happen but is reputed to have happened.

You know, a crucifix allegedly spoke to Thomas, and he was in the same place celebrating Mass when he had the supernatural experience that caused him to say, everything I've written is straw, and three months later he's dead.

You know, all that kind of stuff. If we accept the idea that this was, in fact, the greatest theologian the Church has ever known, and if we embrace the idea as Dr. Truman expressed it, in his own words, and this is what we're being told by all the new confessionalists, and that's why they don't have any problem in directing us to primarily Roman Catholic works on the Trinity, on theology proper, and he says, hey, the people that get God right are the Roman Catholics, and the people that got justification right were wrong about God.

That's why I'd like to know, in what way? How were they wrong about God? And unfortunately, what it's becoming very clear is they're wrong about God in that they did not go as far into the application of Aristotelian, Platonic, and Thomistic metaphysical categories as we demand that they go, and therefore they got God wrong, which inevitably means that the apostles never got God right, because they didn't have those categories, did not utilize those categories, and yet they believed they had passed on the once-for-all-delivered-to-the-saints faith.