SRR 103 Steve Matthews, Knox Seminary, and Imagining a Vain Thing

I do a podcast.

I'm not interested in your podcast. The anathema of God was for those who denied justification by faith alone. When that is at stake, we need to be on the battlefield, exposing the ear and combating the ear.

We are unabashedly, unashamedly Clarkian. And so, the next few statements that I'm going to make, I'm probably going to step on all of the Vantillian toes at the same time. And this is what we do at Simple Riff around the radio, you know.

We are polemical and polarizing Jesus style.

I would first say that to characterize what we do as bashing is itself bashing. It's not hate. It's history. It's not bashing. It's the Bible. Jesus said, woe to you when men speak well of you. For their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way.

As opposed to, blessed are you when you have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness.

It is on. We're taking the gloves off. It's time to battle. Welcome back everyone to another episode of Simple Riff around the radio. This is your host Carlos joining you with Steve Matthews, a very special guest, Steve Matthews from the Radio Lux Lucid podcast.

Why Steve Matthews Wrote *Imagining a Vain Thing*

And I've really been looking forward to this interview. We're going to talk about some of his publications and his book, Imagining a Vain Thing. And I was, it was kind of a bummer because we had done this interview a while back, but we had some sound quality issues come up and we just haven't been able to redo the recording until up until now.

So I'm very excited and looking forward to getting to talk to Brother Steve about his book and some of the things in it. And so without further ado, I wanted to welcome you to the party and if you could introduce yourself to our audience.

Carlos, yeah, thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here with you. And yeah, we had that interview you and I did a little while back and it ended up that, as you said, we had some sound quality issues.

Lord willing, we'll be able to get through this. So, yeah, it's great to be here. So I really look forward to having a chance to talk to you.

Yeah, definitely. It's a privilege to have you on with us. And I'm really grateful for your, you know, for you joining the network and having your excellent podcast. You're pretty much one of my main sources that I go to for getting a Christian perspective on, you know, what's happening in the news and politics and economics.

And so I'm very grateful for your podcast and for your book as well. And your articles that you've written have been very, very edifying personally for me. So I'm really excited to introduce people to you and to some of your publications so that they can also benefit from them.

And so basically the topic of our interview is going to be your book called Imagining a Vain Thing. And the subtitle is The Decline and Fall of Knox Seminary. And this was published by the Trinity Foundation.

Let's see. Back in when was this?

2008.

2008. That's right.

Yeah.

Okay. So I read this book and I enjoyed it very much. I learned a ton from this book. I was very, very pleased with it. Very surprised by a lot of the subject matter. And so I was just wondering if you could kind of give some of your book, why you wrote it and things like that.

Sure. Sure. Yeah. Well, one of the things I think that really motivated me to write that was just, well, I can tell you, I went down, I attended Knox Seminary in the fall of 2006. So the fall semester 2006 is when I went down there, which hard to believe was over 12 years ago at this point.

And the thing that really motivated me to go there, Robert Raymond, well, there are a couple of main reasons. I wanted to study with Robert Raymond. I wanted to study with Cal Beisner, both of whom had done work with the Trinity Foundation and I very much admired John Robbins' work and the Trinity Foundation.

And, you know, of course, both of them were, were Clarkians. You know, there are men who, or at least, you know, men who admired Gordon Clark, maybe let's put it that way. And they were men who, you know, I think were logically sound in their thinking.

And one of the things that really impressed me about Knox was they put a strong emphasis on logic. You know, most seminaries these days don't do that. You know, for most seminaries, you know, logic is if it's included at all, I mean, it's kind of a, an elective.

It's kind of something off to the side. But I mean, that was really central. It was really core to, to the Knox mission, to the Knox degree program. And that, that really intrigued me. So anyway, I went down there and I had, had some concerns before I went there because of some things that Knox had on the website.

They had this thing by, by the Old Testament professor, Warren Gage. It was called the John Revelation Project. But, you know, I thought to myself, well, you know, it's, it's the seminary that, that has, in my opinion, the best teachers.

And maybe there's gonna be some things that I don't agree with, but I'll go there and we'll see what happens. So I went down there and as I said, in the fall of 2006. And there were some very good things about Knox, but there were some things that very much concerned me about Knox.

And principally that, that thing was the teaching of, of Warren Gage. And, you know, I remember we had a convocation ceremony before the whole semester started. And, you know, and everyone, all the professors got up and they said, oh yeah, you know, we're, we're going to teach according to Westminster standards.

And we're going to be, you know, adhere to these things. Well, you got into class with, with Warren Gage. And I mean, almost from the very moment we sat down in class, he started attacking the Westminster standards.

You know, with, with him, you know, you know, of course, you know, the Westminster standards are very clear. You know, that we know we, you know, what we know from scriptures, what we know about God, what we know about, you know, Christian doctrine comes from the express statements or the necessary inferences that we get out of the statements in scripture.

And, and he immediately began attacking these sorts of things and teaching an interpretive method that was really more Roman Catholic medieval than it was reformed. And long story short, without going too far into this, I ended up leaving after the first semester and on my way back to Cincinnati, I'm from Cincinnati.

So I was down there in Fort Lauderdale. I actually put all my stuff in a U-Haul truck and got a trailer and hitched my car up to it, drove back to Cincinnati.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's a, it's a pretty good haul. And the, I actually broke it up into two days and, and the second day, the, my trip actually took me through Eastern Tennessee, which is where John Robbins was living.

So I had made an arrangement to go talk to John Robbins and then we sat and talked for about three hours at his, yeah, in his study. And, and anyway, when the meeting concluded, you know, he had asked me, I was afraid he was going to do this.

I'm glad he asked me, but I was afraid he was going to do it. He says, well, how about you write something on this? And, and so that was really the genesis of the book. It was, it was, it was John Robbins prompting me to, to write that.

So, so that's, that's kind of in a nutshell how I came to write the book.

John Robbins, Knox Seminary, and the Background to the Controversy

So had you met Robbins prior to that point?

I had not, no, that was the first time I had met him. Now he and I had corresponded a little bit via email. That was the, that was the first time I ever met him in person.

Okay.

Very cool.

Yeah.

Maybe someday, some other day we can schedule another interview to talk to your interactions with Robbins. That would be great, I think, because a lot of people have a, yeah, a lot of people have very bad information and just kind of caricatures of who he really was.

So that would be fun to do sometime in the future as well.

Yeah.

And I wanted to ask you what, what was your motives for, for attending seminary to begin with? Were you pursuing pastoral office or what was the intent there?

Yeah.

My, my basic thought was to study for the ministry. So, I mean, that's really what was my, what my motivation was at the time.

And, and did, so I think. Now you said you have a, your retirement plan or something like that. So you're not really...

That's right.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm in a totally different line of work right now. I work in, in retirement plans. I do administration for 401k plans at, for an insurance company. So yes, it has nothing to do with, with anything seminary related, you know, and Lord willing, you know, who knows?

I mean, you know, what, what I've been doing here is, as you mentioned in the introduction, I've been doing some, you know, some blogging, doing, now doing some podcasts.

Right.

Since you and Tim have been urging me to do this, and I'm glad that you have. So I've been, you know, that, that's kind of been where, you know, my ministry work has been. And of course I've been doing, over the past year, Trinity Foundation Radio as well, doing podcasts for the Trinity Foundation.

But I have not been involved in, you know, full-time ministry at this point.

No.

Okay.

Yeah.

Interesting. So, you know, and I was gonna, I was gonna joke about this because in the book, it was really funny. You, you mentioned that you were a Reformed Baptist, but then I recently heard again that you are a Presbyterian now.

So what happened, what happened there?

Well, let's see.

I, I actually went over, I joined the, the church where, where I attend right now, which is a Presbyterian church. I did that back in 2011. You know, it was just for me, you know, and I mean, it was something that, that for me over time, you know, it just kind of grew in my conviction that, that that's what the Lord had called me to do, you know, in terms of, you know, that's where I felt most at home, theologically, was as a Presbyterian.

Okay.

And it's like a PCA, OPC, or?

It is, actually, no. It is, it's, it's, it's something that probably a lot of people haven't heard of. It's called the Bible Presbyterian Church.

I have.

I think Pastor Hines used to be in one of those.

Yes, Pastor Hines would know. Well, in fact, Pastor Hines, he was the associate minister at my church before he got his current position.

So yeah, so he and I actually know each other.

Yeah.

Wow.

Okay, cool.

Very cool.

Yeah, we were, we were joking about it with some of our other, because obviously we've had, you know, the Reformed Baptist Presbyterian debate with Brandon Adams and Pastor Hines, and had a lot of really interesting episodes about baptism that really interesting episodes that have kind of forced me to think about this a little bit more carefully.

And we were joking. I was joking with him about how you drank the Paedo-Baptist Kool-Aid, and we're going to try to see if we can win you back over to the, to the truth. But yeah, it was an interesting comment because part of your defense for writing the book or against accusations is that you said you were Reformed Baptist.

You didn't really have, I guess, like a bone to pick in the fight.

Right.

So that was interesting. So I wanted to write, I want to jump into the book. And I wrote a little review. I gave you five stars on Goodreads. It was an excellent book. I really enjoyed reading the book.

And I really heartily, yes. And I heartily, without reservation, recommend it to our listeners to read it. It's a very fascinating book. You will learn a great deal from it. And the theology that you're criticizing is horrendous, but what you're defending was outstanding.

So I really appreciated your book for that. And I read a short, I wrote a short review, and this is what I, what I said here. So it's called, I said, this expose by a former Knox student demonstrates how neglecting the historical grammatical hermeneutic of the Reformation leads to all sorts of fanciful, fanciful eisegesis and ultimately heresy.

A case in point is Warren Gage, the John Revelation Project, and the controversy surrounding the medieval hermeneutics he taught at Knox Theological Seminary. It's a shame when such fiascos and reforms institutions are not resolved biblically.

Very informative and insightful book. And I learned new things about reform hermeneutics, including an enlightening discussion about typology. So I thought it was an excellent book. So why don't we, now that we've kind of set up the groundwork, why don't we talk about your, you know, who is Warren Gage?

Who are these people? Warren Gage, Fowler White. Who are they?

Warren Gage, Fowler White, and the Knox Seminary Crisis

Okay, yeah.

Okay, very good. Good question. Warren Gage, he, you know, as you mentioned, and as we kind of talked about earlier, Warren Gage, he was the, at the time, he was the Old Testament professor at Knox Seminary.

And he was, he was a very charismatic. Now, when I use the term charismatic, I don't mean in terms of speaking in tongues, that type of thing. But he was somebody that he could be very engaging, I guess, if you will, pun intended, in terms of his personality.

Very smart. And he was, was actually, by profession, he was a, was a lawyer. And so he was very good at speaking publicly, very good with words, very persuasive in many ways. And, and he wrote, he, his educational background was, was actually, I mean, he was, was a Presbyterian.

But he got his doctorate from the University of Dallas, which from the sound of it may not necessarily tip you off, but that's actually a Roman Catholic school.

Right.

And, and he was, was very Roman Catholic in, in his teaching, in his thought process. You know, so he was, he was almost a Roman Catholic in, in, in Presbyterian clothing. I mean, he wasn't officially a Roman Catholic, but much of what he taught was, had a, had a Roman Catholic cast to it.

And, and he was very much into typology. And, I mean, one of the things I remember he said in class, and maybe this will kind of give listeners sort of a sense of where he was. I remember one time he says, well, you know, you need logic, but you need imagination too.

He was always talking about imagination. You had to use your poetic imagination. So when you read the Bible, you had to use imagination and intuition. You know, those are not hermeneutical categories that are recognized by the Westminster Confession of Faith.

That is, however, the sort of thing that is very common in, in, in Roman Catholic circles. You know, especially like this sort of medieval mysticism that, that a lot of people like. And he wrote this John Revelation project.

And, and it's, it's a little hard to get into it in, in, in great detail. But he, he tried to draw the, there was a, a literary connection between these two, these two, these two books. And, and it was, again, it was, it was really the conclusions that he drew were not based upon expressed statements in scriptures or logical inferences of scriptures, but they were based upon literary structures and imagination.

And as you can probably guess, that can lead you into, you use the term asegesis, you know, reading into the text, right? You know, he, he, it, it lets people read into the text pretty much whatever they want to do.

And, you know, these, you know, he presented these ideas at a couple of, on a number of different occasions at, at public seminars that were held at Knox Seminary. Before that, before I got there, but he presented these ideas in public seminars and, and his, his, his ideas were put out there on the website.

They called it the Knox website. They call it the John Revelation project. And his, I can say not only were his conclusions not reformed, but his method was not reformed. You know, as I said, instead of using plain statements, logical inferences, comparing scripture to scripture.

He was, was reading into scripture, his own ideas, and this created major problems. And he also had persuaded some of the faculty to go along with him, you know. So, you know, Warren Gage was kind of the, the key figure in this whole thing.

He was the, the ringleader, if you will. The whole John Revelation project was really based on his, his doctoral dissertation. So he was the guy that was really driving this whole idea that, that we have to interpret the Bible using our imaginations.

But he pulled a lot of other people along with him. You know, you, you asked me about Fowler White. Fowler White was the dean of faculty at the time. And he was also the professor of New Testament when I was there as well.

Interestingly enough, Fowler White and Warren Gage had a relationship that went back many years. Warren Gage was the older of the two by probably about 10 years or so. And I believe if, if I'm going by some memory here, but my understanding is that way back when Fowler White was a teenager, that Warren Gage was, I don't know if he was a youth minister or a youth leader, but they went to the same church.

And I think that, that, that, you know, Fowler White sort of looked up to Warren Gage maybe as an elder brother in Christ type of a thing. And, and of course, by the time when I was at Knox, you know, Fowler White, he had a, he had a doctorate as well.

I mean, he was a professor there and he was a Westminster seminary graduate. But I mean, I think, you know, he looked up to Warren Gage and I think to a large degree was really pulled along by Warren Gage.

And he actually taught a lot of Warren Gage's material or ideas that were inspired by Warren Gage in his New Testament class. So not only was I getting Warren Gage in Warren Gage's class, I was getting Warren Gage in, in, in, in Fowler White's class as well.

And I'm going to say something here in, in Fowler White's defense as well. And this is kind of an interesting thing. I left seminary, I was only there one semester, I was there in the fall of 2006. And I could kind of see one of the, one of the reasons I left is because I could kind of see where the school was going.

The school was, was being pulled along after Warren Gage. And I realized, you know, this is, is not a direction that, that I thought was healthy for the school. And it wasn't something I really wanted to continue to be a part of.

And so that's one of the reasons that I left, not the only reason, but it was one of them. Well, in, at the end of the 2006 -2007 academic year, so about six months after I left, a graduating student made a complaint to Fowler White, because Fowler White was dean of faculty, and said, you know, that Gage is teaching a lot of stuff in class that's, you know, maybe not really very reformed, which was the case.

And, and Fowler White, to his credit, and I think he deserves credit for this, over the summer spent a lot of time listening to classroom recordings, basically led an investigation, and concluded that yes, you know, that Warren Gage was teaching doctrines that were, you know, that were against the Westminster Confession.

And I was kind of surprised at that, because I didn't, you know, Warren, you know, Fowler White was very much someone who was, as I said, followed Warren Gage quite a bit. But to, like I say, to Fowler White's credit, he actually, at some point, you know, finally said, you know, this stuff's gone too far, enough is enough.

I mean, of course, he ended up paying for it with his job, too, unfortunately. But, but to that extent, you know, to the extent that he was willing to criticize Warren Gage eventually, too late, unfortunately, but he did criticize him, he ended up paying for it with his job.

Okay, so yeah, thank you for setting up the background there. And you attended the seminary, like in, was it 2006?

Yeah, it was fall semester 2006. That's when I was there. Interestingly enough, that actually coincided right with the very end of D. James Kennedy's ministry. For those people who aren't familiar with Knox, you know, Knox was actually literally right across the street from Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church.

They're on Federal Highway in Fort Lauderdale.

That's right.

And it was actually under the session of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church. It was almost a little bit, you might think of it as an extension of Coral Ridge itself. And yeah, D. James Kennedy was still preaching there.

And over the Christmas break, right at the end of December, he had some very serious health problems. And he was no longer able to fill the pulpit after that. And he passed away, D. James Kennedy did, in August of 2007.

So I was there really the last few months of his long and well-known ministry.

The John Revelation Project and Irrationalism in Hermeneutics

Interesting. So you mentioned the John Revelation Project. And I guess that was sort of the thesis of Warren Gage's work. And, you know, I haven't been a Christian for that long. I guess it's been about maybe 10 years.

And I guess for most of that time now, I've been more involved in the reform world, been more reformed by conviction. And to be honest, I've never heard of this before. I'd never really heard of this problem, this issue, this controversy before.

And Tim and I, we're not Presbyterian, but we do try to stay informed as to what's going on in the reform world. Because that's what we agree with it in a lot of ways. And we do research and things like that.

But I had never come across this before, prior to reading your book. And that might be the case for some of our listeners as well. So if you could explain for us, what exactly is the John Revelation Project?

Sure, yeah, as I said, it's kind of, I think maybe to kind of encapsulate, I mean, I could go in and maybe get into a lot of the weeds on it, but maybe more just kind of a high-level answer to you. It's a project that is, it's an attempt to interpret the book of Revelation using literary structure and imagination, rather than using the tools of logic that are outlined for us in the Westminster Confession.

As we've already talked about, the idea of the Westminster Confession talks about using the express statements of Scripture or the good and necessary consequences, or another way of talking about good and necessary consequences is to say good and necessary inference.

Comparing Scripture to Scripture, going in and comparing different passages of Scripture, what do these things say? How can we reconcile these things logically? And instead of using those things, Warren Gage's approach to trying to talk about Revelation was to, I would say, to use literary structures and to use imagination.

I mean, literally, he would talk about using, you have to have a poetic imagination. That was something that he would talk quite a bit about in class. And poetic imagination is simply another way of saying that he's just making stuff up.

He's just, I mean, I remember one time, literally, I mean, that's what that is. One time in class, he even said, he says, I can't defend this stuff logically. And I thought that was a pretty extraordinary thing for him to say.

I mean, it's a form of irrationalism. Maybe that's a way of talking about it. And listeners have probably come across this in one way or another, because irrationalism is very, very popular in a lot of so-called Reformed circles today, whether you're Reformed Baptist, whether you're Reformed, you know, whether someone's a Presbyterian.

There is a hatred of logic in many circles. And Warren Gage just represents really one particular variation on that common day hatred of logic that you see nowadays.

The Quadriga, Sensus Plenior, and Roman Catholic Hermeneutics

Right. And that kind of leads into my next question. So in terms of its influence, I know you, is it mainly confined to the Presbyterian world or to the seminary, to the seminary itself? Or do you see other, like you mentioned, kind of other forms of it or its influence in other movements that are more prominent today?

Sure. Yeah. Now, the Journal of Revelation project itself, I haven't really seen that quoted or having been influential much outside the walls of Knox Seminary. Kind of interestingly enough, just without getting too far afield here, just to give maybe a little bit more history of what happens, I said I was there in the fall of 2006.

Well, I mentioned earlier that D. James Kennedy passed away. He died in, if my memory serves me correctly, August of 2007. Well, this was just as this whole controversy with Warren Gage was coming to a head.

And the. I won't won't get off into too much of that right now, but the school, and I believe this was late in 2007, they actually took the John Revelation project off the website. Now, I went and I actually copied it off the website before they were able to do that.

So I have a full text of the John Revelation project, but they actually took it down. And so far as I can tell, they don't publicly put it out there. I at least I haven't seen any evidence of it now. I'm not saying that they didn't teach it in class because it was Warren Gage actually just retired from Knox Seminary back in 2014.

And so he was there for many years after I had left. And, you know, I don't know how hard he pushed that stuff specifically in class, but I would find it hard to believe that that he didn't teach some of those ideas, at least some of them, maybe all of them or maybe some of them.

I don't know. But it would be kind of odd if he didn't teach at least some of that stuff in class for many years thereafter. So I don't know. I mean, you know, it's it's one of those things with ideas.

Sometimes it takes a while for them to to to have an effect. You know, somebody might teach something now and it really doesn't blossom, so to speak, you know, for maybe many decades later. Right now, I haven't seen a lot of influence of the John Revelation project.

But as I said, I think it's very easy to find that sort of irrationalism that drove Warren Gage in in many different areas. Doug Wilson's a guy that comes to mind, you know, Doug Wilson, somebody that hates logic and is very influential.

Right. I remember in the book you talk about how there's a connection between the John Revelation project and Federal Visionist, that they also valued or admired the work of of Warren Gage to some extent.

So I remember you talking about that. And I guess it's not a surprise because, yeah, they do go hand in hand. And some of these points that there is some overlap there. So that's that's. Yeah. Yes. And that's like one of the major false teachings plaguing the reform world today.

And it's even bleeding over into, you know, it's it's pretty pervasive. You know, given the fact that we're obviously talking about an extended series on John Piper and just how pervasive this problem is.

And so, you know, so I didn't before. And it's funny because I mentioned that I wasn't really aware of this controversy. I had never really come across it. And then interestingly enough, I kind of spoke to you soon because I was watching a DVD called The Marks of Occult.

It's by the same people who produced Amazing Grace, The History and Theology of Calvinism. It was a very good DVD. It's one of my favorite DVDs. Actually, I highly recommend it to our listeners. And it was it's by the Nicene Council, I think, or they also call themselves the Apologetics Group.

And they, I believed the president was Jerry Johnson. And he had a pretty active ministry and blog a few years back. I don't know if he's still around, but I think he went to Knox Seminary as well because he interviews D. James Kennedy in the Amazing Grace DVD.

And but when I was watching The Marks of Occult, sure enough, he had I think he had R. Fowler White on there. And so, I mean, they're definitely they're out there. You know, it's like it's it's only just a matter of time when this stuff kind of starts to seep in and hit you.

So, yeah, there's definitely out there.

Yeah. Yeah. So and I think really maybe that for for most listeners is maybe the biggest lesson to take away from. And we talk about the John Revelation project isn't so much just specifically what Gage taught in the John Revelation project, but rather the dangers that come with irrationalism.

And there can be a lot of different forms of irrationalism there. Yeah. It's as soon as somebody abandons clear thinking. I mean, he's going to go there's a million different ways somebody can go with that.

You know, and one one man may go off on one tangent like Warren Gage. Somebody else is going to go off on another tangent. But they all have in common what they all have in common is the fact that they reject sound logical thinking.

And I think that's really the big. Yeah. Yeah.

And that makes sense. So now that you mentioned a lot about hermeneutics and, you know, the Westminster Confession, I want to go ahead and read it. I believe this is chapter one, section nine of the Westminster Confession.

It says this. The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself. And therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any Scripture, which is not manifold, but one, it must be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly.

So this is a standard, you know, sort of reform. That's the standard reformed way of doing hermeneutics, is that correct? There is a you you have to search out Scripture with Scripture. Right. And so and then there's the also the the the the I guess the complement to that is that the the meaning of Scripture, you can deduce you can either deduce it by the express statements or by or by necessary good and necessary consequence.

And so this is a very this is kind of like a sort of a standard way of understanding the Bible that helped the Reformation to recover the gospel and a lot of truths that were lost during the medieval ages.

And so how and you mentioned the quadriga and in the book, you mentioned the quadriga and also the census plenior method. And so I was wondering if you could talk about those a little bit and compare, you know, kind of compare and contrast them to the to the reformed hermeneutic.

Typology, Marsha’s Dictum, and the Limits of Biblical Types

Sure. Exactly. Very good question, Carlos. The you know, you kind of going back to the quote there that you had from the the Westminster Confession, it talked about, you know, that's chapter one, section nine.

It talks about, you know, that the meaning of any scripture is one. Now, the the purpose behind that, the behind the having that in the confession of faith, that was a denial of what Rome taught and still teaches about about biblical interpretation in in in Roman Catholic circles.

This is something that began. This is really a medieval concept. There's something that they called the quadriga. Now, if anybody's ever studied Latin. They might recognize that word. A quadriga is is a Latin word for a four horse chariot.

Think about a four horse chariot. A quadriga was kind of like a Roman version of a stretch limousine. OK, not everybody had a four horse chariot. Yeah, that was something only Caesar would have. Now, maybe like you've seen.

I don't know. There's you seem like these triumphal arches and sometimes it'll have at the top of it'll have, you know, some important person, maybe Caesar. You know, and he's driving a four horse chariot.

Well, that's a quadriga. That's what that is. And and so that's where this interpretive method takes its name. It takes its name from this four horse chariot. And the reason that they call it a quadriga is because the Roman Catholic Church taught that every passage of scripture has four different meanings.

And I apologize, I don't have the the the those four meanings here in front of me. I've forgotten what those are right now, but they say that each passage has four meanings. There's a literal meaning, there's like an allegorical meaning, etc.

I can I have the book in front of me and I'm on page 20 where you talk about that. So I could read it. Why don't you go ahead and do that? Yeah. Yeah, I can read and you can comment on it. So you have a footnote here that says on page 20.

In fact, no passage of scripture has more than one meaning. This foolish medieval method is still the the official practice of the Roman Catholic Church state. Paragraph 115 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church of 1992 states, according to an ancient tradition, one can distinguish between two senses of scripture, the literal and the spiritual.

The latter being divided into the allegorical, moral and anagogical senses. The recent controversy at Knox Theological Seminary centering on Professor Warren Gage was to a large extent prompted by allegations that he advocated the use of the quadriga.

While a student at Knox Seminary, this writer personally heard Dr. Gage promote the use of something very similar, a hermeneutic principle called the sensus plenior, Latin for the fuller sense. Like the quadriga, sensus plenior finds multiple senses in a single passage and conflicts with both the laws of logic and the confession of faith.