April 20, 2004

The Limits of Argumentation and Why Some Responses Fail

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us.

Yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence. Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation.

If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll-free across the United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is James White.

And welcome back to The Dividing Line. For those of you who have been sitting around waiting the entire weekend, it doesn't rush Limbaugh to say, well, it's only such and such a number of hours, but there's 21 hours to go until Broadcast Excellence returns and all that stuff.

I don't think he has a golden microphone either. But anyway, it is, yeah, it's Tuesday. Yes, it's Tuesday morning, 11 a .m. Mountain Standard Time. I've finally given up and start telling people Pacific Daylight Time and all that stupid, silly stuff.

In fact, somebody put a URL in about daylight savings time and how it's supposed to save us energy and stuff like that. We tried it in, what was that, 77? I think it was 1977, that dark, dark year here in Arizona.

It didn't work. When it's still light at 10 o 'clock at night and 107 degrees, it just doesn't work too well. We sort of voted on it and then voted it right back out and said, that's enough of that. Sort of open lines and other things to discuss today, 877 -753 -3341.

Those of you who have been following the blog, I don't know. What do you do with someone like Dave Armstrong? I mean, really, it is a question that you face because just simply by being out there. I mean, if you read his materials, he's very, very high on himself.

And make sure that you know how many books he's written. Of course, they're vanity published, but how many books he's written. And you read the top of his page and it's exegesis and history and apologetics and philosophy and all this stuff.

And you know in your heart of hearts that this fellow, bless his soul, has no idea what he's talking about. He's read some books, but the important foundational stuff that allows you to actually make sense out of all this stuff, he's clueless.

He has no idea what he's talking about, but he writes constantly. I mean, he must live on two hours of sleep and must type at 130 words a minute. That's the only way that you could possibly produce the kind of verbosity that he produces.

So what do you do? Because it's really disturbing to me that I hear from people and they go, well, what do you think about what he said about this? And it's really hard for me to go, well, have you really thought about the foundation of this argument and the background of this argument?

People need to learn how to examine argumentation and see through fluff. See through stuff that just shouldn't even be called an argument. It's complimenting it way too much to call it an argument. And it's just, how do you deal with folks like that?

He posts this horrific image of me with an arrow sticking out of my head, blood everywhere, and tries to say, well, you had that angel cartoon about Patrick Madrid and you were stoning him. Actually, I think Patrick, not only since he's in Envoy magazine and hence they use cartoons all the time, but I think if you really got him on an honest moment, he would have to admit that that's one of the best caricatures of himself he's ever seen.

I mean, he looks good in that. He really does. He looks better. Well, I think I look all right in mine, too, but he looks good. He looks really good. There's no arrow sticking out of his head. There's no blood anywhere.

And everybody knows that it was a part of the debate that we specifically talked about, whether Moses would have stoned you had you used this kind of argumentation.

He looks better than Spurgeon did and the one with Dave Hunt.

But, see, Spurgeon was just a background thing there. Well, he was also being strangled. No, he was not being strangled. He had a gag in his mouth. No, I mean, he really looks good. I'm sorry, but Mr. Armstrong's artist isn't an artist.

He shouldn't be doing what he's doing. He's not good at this. Angel is a professional. He knows what he's doing and he's good at it and he's making a point. There's no point in anything Mr. Armstrong, in his disgusting little graphic, has produced.

But he's got a new one. I mentioned last night and yesterday on the blog, he's got a new one. They took the blood off. It's still the same thing. And if anyone's, you know what they could have done? I mean, this is so simple.

This would have actually maybe communicated something. And it might have been funny, but they blew it. What they could have done is, if you look at my graphic, the one that's on my blog, the first one that Angel did for me.

Do you notice something about those little arrows? They're the little play arrows. They have the little rubber suction cup on the end. If they had just taken the Roman Catholic one with a suction cup and stuck it to my forehead, no blood, and then just slightly changed the visual of the face to one of surprise or duh or something like that, it might have been funny.

It might have actually, you know, maybe you could have made a point with it or something. Yeah, but there's only one problem with that.

What? The problem is that it would have required him to have some original artistry. That's true. And I would like to point out, as the president of the organization, at the bottom of the page where that page is.

Yeah, it's got a little copyright there. Copyright.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, in fact, Mr. Armstrong had to steal it. Yeah, well.

And modify it. He's done that before, and I've pointed out to him that he shouldn't do that. But, anyway, that's, yeah, whatever. I'm not overly concerned about that. But I am. The point is that that would have been funny.

That would have been, oh, ha, ha. You know, kind of get a little chuckle about it. But the fact that Mr. Armstrong can't see what the first one was all about and refuses to acknowledge, you know, that was really dumb to post that.

That was, you know, you just won't do that. Well, that illustrates then what happened in my response to his writings, is when you respond to him. And I don't know if anybody followed, if they went to his blog and looked at it.

I provided some of the links and stuff. But I went through, I provided, I quoted from his book, and then I quoted from an article I had written. And the whole point was to illustrate the difference in exegetical methodology.

I have one, he doesn't. And he doesn't because he doesn't know the field. He's just, he doesn't know what he's doing. I mean, that would be, it would be like my trying to write to a CPA and criticize an audit that he's done on a major corporation.

I'm not trained in that. I don't know the terminology. I don't know the basics, the foundational rules that you're supposed to do and why you put this in this ledger and why you put that. I don't know that stuff.

That's not my area. You can go to school and learn those things. But he hasn't done so. And so I just provide it as an example. Well, he writes this response, which has nothing to do with the text. It has nothing to do with exegesis.

It just simply proves my point. But then that's one of the things. See, he just ignores this. Well, okay, yeah, I did. Because it wasn't worth responding to. I mean, it's just that bad. So I did respond to it after he said I wouldn't.

And so I responded to it, demonstrated. It had no connection with reality whatsoever. It was really, really bad. And his response to that is basically to accuse me of attacking him and all the rest of the stuff, which for him means I pointed out that he doesn't know what he's talking about.

Where do you draw the line? I mean, it would be so much easier to just ignore all these people. But the problem is we're one of those few folks that actually gets out there and we get our hands dirty.

We actually take on these individuals and show where the argumentation is bad. And you're going to end up with dirt on your hands and on your face when you wallow with some of these folks. And we try to figure out where the line is.

This guy, sadly, there are people who write recommendations of his stuff. I mean, you've got Scott Hahn and all these folks, which amazes me. Because you look at some of his books and it's just like, wow, there's just no substance here.

It's just rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle. And quote John Henry Cardinal Newman, and that's the end of the subject. And there's no meaningful argumentation going on at all. Where do you draw the line? Because eventually I have to trust that the people who are reading these things or concerned about these things can eventually go, hey, wait a minute.

That wasn't even a response. That's not even a meaningful argument, without my having to hold their hand and show that to them. But sadly, in a postmodern world where for a lot of folks, if you can produce a response and spell it right, that somehow means something.

The view of logic, rationality, the ability to examine argumentation. Let's face it, folks. Listen to the political dialogue in our nation. There's not a whole lot of meaningful discussion going on there.

And yet you get people all excited. I mean, I could play my Howard Dean wave here. It's just like, whoa. People look at this kind of stuff. And as long as your mouth is moving, somehow you're making a point.

Instead of going, you know what? That person didn't answer that question either. That person didn't answer that question either. Wow. You know, all the rest of that kind of stuff. It's a daily battle as to how to decide what you respond to and what you don't.

Second Temple Judaism and the New Perspective on Paul

Well, on a much higher level, on a much, much, much higher level, on an extremely much higher level, I was looking at an article that was linked on a blog. It was linked, I think, for the purpose of, in essence, telling us that we really, we cannot continue to use the foundational mechanisms of interpretation that were a given amongst evangelicals for centuries.

The grammatical, historical methodology of interpreting Scripture, as useful as it might be in certain situations, really cannot tell us how we should look at the Old Testament or how we should look at how the apostles, I guess, would have us to look at their own writings.

An article was presented, linked, it's by Peter Enns from Westminster Theological Journal, Fall 2003, Apostolic Hermeneutics in an Evangelical Doctrine of Scripture Moving Beyond a Modernist Impasse. And it was interesting that the individual who cited this cited a particular portion of it, a particular section of it that indicates, at least to me anyways, what the real purpose of the citation itself was.

And the section that was cited said, Despite protestations to the contrary, grammatical-historical hermeneutics does not account for the New Testament's use of the Old. However self-evident grammatical-historical hermeneutics may be to us, in whatever very important contributions it has made and continues to make to the field of biblical studies, it must be stated clearly that the apostles did not seem overly concerned to put this principle into practice.

Now, part of the importance of this is that Enns continues on to say things like the following,. The matter will no doubt continue to be debated among evangelicals, but I take it as beyond any reasonable doubt that the Second Temple interpretive environment is the proper starting point for understanding what the New Testament authors said about the Old Testament.

My impression as to why the debate over Second Temple influence on the New Testament authors continues is not because the facts are in serious question, although they should always continue to be thought through, but because these facts cause difficulties for a doctrine of Scripture that modern evangelicalism has constructed for itself.

Let me translate that. You've been hearing a lot about Second Temple Judaism. You hear a lot about Second Temple Judaism. This terminology is now entering into the vocabulary of all of us, and it is entering into, when I say us, I'm looking at this audience, I'm looking at the people who, look, let's face it, if you take the time to either tune in this program, and isn't that an odd word to use, tune in, dial up, get on your computer and go to a particular website and listen to this.

That's how a webcast works. Then you want to. You want to listen to this type of program. You want to deal with these kinds of issues. You're apologetically minded. You're biblically minded. You have a desire to know God's truth and to apply God's truth and to defend God's truth in our day.

And so when I say us, that's what I'm really talking about there. And so this type of stuff that was commonplace in seminaries, not necessarily conservative seminaries, but middle of the road to liberal seminaries quite some time ago, it certainly was not anything new to me, going to Fuller Theological Seminary anyway.

This has now moved into our context. It has moved into our world. And that's why we discuss it. And it's going beyond this now into the very vocabulary of people in the pew who are serious about their faith.

And so this phraseology, Second Temple Judaism, is thrown around with a tremendous amount of freedom. But we need to try to understand what's being said. Now, there's everything right in saying that we should interpret the apostles within the context in which they wrote.

Everyone believes that. That's foundational to historical grammatical interpretation, context, context, context. You interpret the text in the light of its context. You listen to the author and his purposes, his means of communicating.

No question about that. And if all that is being said in the section I just read is that the apostles need to be heard within the context of how the Old Testament was interpreted in their day, then certainly we can learn from that and we can accept that, we can understand that, and seek to apply that.

Now, it seems to be being suggested that context and listening to what someone is saying was not important in Second Temple Judaism. I would submit to you that there can be no human conversation, there can be no communication, without the use of that kind of interpretation.

I don't care what Jew in the Second Temple Judaism it was who was speaking to another Jewish person. They expected their words to be taken in the context in which they were offered. The argument being that you have Pesher interpretation at this time, you have Jews in the Second Temple period interpreting the Old Testament in a myriad of ways.

And you do. I mean, again, anyone who's gone to seminary, you have to take intertestamental studies, you have to read various of the intertestamental Jewish literature or even the Jewish literature that is contemporaneous to the New Testament in the century after the New Testament.

And, let's face it, for a lot of seminary students, it's just one of those classes where you just try to keep your eyes open. It was interesting for me because I was already involved in apologetics. So I think I got a whole lot more out of my experience in seminary, especially at Fuller, because it was an apologetic experience for me than a lot of people did because I saw the relevance of this stuff early on.

I mean, my last year in seminary I was on a local radio station. Some of you have heard the quote-unquote debate discussion that I had with Robert Funk, the head of the Jesus Seminar, where he told us all to go to hell and hung up on us.

That was my senior year and my final year at Fuller. And so I figured out early on this stuff was important. So studying that material, you have to read that material, and you know that there's every kind of possible interpretation offered during that period of time.

After I graduated from Fuller, I was actually thinking about going to ASU for a while, doing some stuff in Jewish studies. I bought the Talmud and the Mishnah, and I've got actually an excellent library of Jewish materials.

And I took some classes and went to the local synagogue and did some studies of Mishnahic writings and the Holy Land of the Arts. And so there's no end to the number of examples that could be given of these strange, odd means of interpreting the Old Testament.

What's being said today is, and this is, in case you're wondering, exceptionally central to the new perspective on Paul issue, because that's where the Second Temple Judaism, that's where that terminology is coming up all the time.

In essence, what is being said is we need to look at the Second Temple Judaism and we need to see the apostles as Second Temple Jews utilizing the broad range of interpretive methodologies that they used.

And of course, the result of that becomes, in essence, that we can't really identify one particular methodology that the apostles used, and therefore we shouldn't necessarily say that there's one particular methodology that we should use.

What's even more troubling than this is that the Second Temple issue, what I hear all the time, and I'm not necessarily saying that Enz is saying this, he's very careful to qualify his statements, there's no question about it.

But what we hear all the time is, well, you know, we need to read Paul through the lens of Second Temple Judaism. And in fact, we have people saying, we really can't understand Paul, and we've missed the boat because we're not interpreting this particular document, whether it's Romans or Galatians or whatever, we're not interpreting it within Second Temple Judaism.

There's a little problem with that. And that normally ends the conversation, unfortunately, for most evangelicals, because, let's face it, most evangelicals don't know what Second Temple Judaism is. Very few of us have ever read anything about it, and very few of us have ever dealt with it in any serious fashion.

And so it's like when someone says you have to interpret Paul within this context, basically what you're saying is there are very few people who can interpret Paul. And it might be a proper argument that, in essence, means that the promoters of New Perspectivism, they really do, in essence, say that without them we really can't understand Paul.

But my problem is, and I'm trying to get a hold of someone's attention, but they're rather busy not listening to me, my problem is that no one really knows exactly what Second Temple Judaism is all about.

What I mean by that is go get Sander's book, if you want to invest in my ad, then again, just get it from the library. Go get E .B. Sander's book and take a look at it. Actually, good suggestion. MDH and Channel just suggested something.

Instead of getting Sander's book, go buy D .A. Carson's book and send the money to his direction. It's going to give you the same information, just in a maybe even more understandable way. And if you can't get through the book, just read the last chapter and all will be well.

If you look at the sources that are being used, if you look at all the writings that are being examined to build this understanding of Second Temple Judaism, no one can seriously suggest that we have a clearer, better handle on Second Temple Judaism's interpretation of the Old Testament than we do on the New Testament itself.

Let me give an example. Let me try to do a little demythologizing of scholarship here. This is one of the reasons people come down on me all the time, is because instead of just using all the scholarly language and arguing in that realm, what I like to try to do is take the issue and make it actually understandable to everybody.

And for some reason, that's considered like being a magician and revealing the secrets of how you do your magic tricks. You're automatically a black sheep for that forever, because you're actually demonstrating magicians are just normal folks like the rest of us.

So, here's how it might work. Let's fast forward 2 ,000 years into the future and forget the subject of eschatology there for a while because all the dispensational premillennialists fell off the wagon.

But let's go 2 ,000 years into the future somehow. And let's say that people were attempting to understand the context of Christianity in the 300-year period from 1900 through 2200. Let's make it 1800 through 2100, something like that.

Let's make it so it's our general area. And let's say they attempted to create this on the basis of a very limited number of documents. And let's put a list of the documents together here for a second.

They managed to get a few chapters. Let's say from Boyce's Abstract of Theology, fine work by the way. Founding professor at Southern Seminary, Reformed, Calvinistic. You get a few chapters of that. So, you've got a good start there.

Then, let's say you got a couple of chapters out of Karl Barth, his Dogmatic Theology. There'd be so many copies of the book around these days. You got a couple chapters out of N .T. Wright. Then you got the complete text of The Purpose Driven Life.

Because there were billions of copies of that left for archaeology to dig up. All read once. Dog-eared with bulletins stuck in the back. Then you found a couple chapters from T .D. Jakes, Benny Hinn.

Then you found the Book of Mormon. Now you go, wait a minute, that's way outside. No, no. You see, when we're talking about the range of material that scholars are examining, that you'll see in the Carson book, that you'll see in Sanders.

There is a huge range. And as long as it quotes the Old Testament, it's considered to be a part of Second Temple Judaism. So what that would mean is, we need to have a little material from the Jehovah's Witnesses, from the Baha 'is.

We need to have Roman Catholic material, Eastern Orthodox material, Mormon material. We need to grab it from everywhere. So you grab all this stuff that comes from completely different perspectives. And then you try to create a consistent whole that you then insist people must look through this lens, this, well, it would have to be a very multifaceted lens.

And you have to look through this multifaceted lens. And this becomes the only way that you can understand the writings of someone you put in the middle. Let's say that the thesis that's being presented 2 ,000 years from now is that the only way to understand the writings of R .C. Sproul is through this multifaceted lens created by stringing together chunks and bits of Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Baha 'i, Roman Catholicism, every form of Protestantism there is.

You put it all together, and that becomes the only proper lens through which you can understand R .C. Sproul. Now, does R .C. Sproul talk about all these different perspectives? Yeah, he's written a lot of stuff.

He's probably talked about Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, certainly talked about Roman Catholicism and Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, all that stuff. But does that mean that becomes the interpretive grid, the lens through which we must look to understand him?

And could we even create such a lens? And would it actually clarify anything, or would it be like any multifaceted lens? Would it actually diffract and confuse what you're looking at? Like a human being trying to look through a fly's eye with its hundreds and thousands of facets to it.

Indeed. It wouldn't really help. And yet, for some odd reason, so many in New Testament scholarship today are grabbing at this concept of Second Temple Judaism. And I say, wait a minute. We have significantly less knowledge and understanding and ability to reconstruct any type of consistent viewpoint of quote-unquote Second Temple Judaism than you could ever have for understanding the New Testament in and of itself.

And so for someone to say this becomes the lens through which we must view Paul, I say, how? I mean, how do you do this? How do you create this? And when you actually go to the original sources, you go to Sanders, you go to Dunn, you go and you read what they're actually saying, and you actually dig into what they're saying, you go, wait a minute.

I mean, this writer, he looks at the Ascension of Isaiah, and he focuses upon this particular element. But boy, it seems like the conclusions he comes to are very tentative. He's not saying he's certain because, you know, we don't know who the author was.

We know considerably less about the authors of these books than we do of the New Testament books. So we know little of their context, little of their authorship, sometimes have no idea who the audience was.

But somehow we're supposed to take these gems from these things and put them together, and voila, we have this magic interpretive grid. Well, it might get your books published, it might give you your position in the seminary, but it doesn't really help much if your ultimate purpose is to edify the people of God, does it?

So that's what's going on. And I just shake my head at it and go, man, this is no longer something that it's just going to be the specialists that are arguing about this. This is getting down to the very, you know, as long as it's now out there, Peter Jennings and ABC are going to find it.

And they're going to dig it up. And folks in the pews are going to sit there staring at this stuff on television going, where did they get that? And why in the world are these scholars fawning all over it?

Why haven't I heard about this? Well, we need to be talking about it, but we need to be talking about it in such a way as to demythologize this scholarship. For many people, and we'll take our break here in a second, but for many people, even questioning, even doing what I'm doing right now and saying, excuse me, I don't really want to jump on the bandwagon quite yet.

Oh, well, you're just defending traditionalism. You're just an old, crusty traditionalist. And you won't recognize that your biblicism, its day has passed, its age has gone. 877 -753 -3341, 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number if you'd like to call in.

It doesn't have to be on that, but hey, it can be on anything in regards to that particular subject or other subjects. We'll take open phones today. After we take our break, our break, there it is, 877 -753 -3341.

We'll be right back.

Gospel, Grace, and the Reformation in the Midst of the Break

It's all works righteousness, you know. Can I manufacture grace, myself and I, in some religious place? By weeping hard on your face and saying prayers to some dead saint, you know.

Under the guise of tolerance, modern culture grants alternative lifestyle status to homosexuality. Even more disturbing, some within the church attempt to revise and distort Christian teaching on this behavior.

In their book, The Same-Sex Controversy, James White and Jeff Neal write for all who want to better understand the Bible's teaching on the subject, explaining and defending the foundational Bible passages that deal with homosexuality, including Genesis, Leviticus, and Romans.

Expanding on these scriptures, they refute the revisionist arguments, including the claim that Christians today need not adhere to the law. In a straightforward and loving manner, they appeal to those caught up in a homosexual lifestyle to repent and to return to God's plan for His people.

The Same-Sex Controversy, defending and clarifying the Bible's message about homosexuality. Get your copy in the bookstore at aomin .org. Answering those who claim that only the King James Version is the Word of God, James White, in his book, The King James Only Controversy, examines allegations that modern translators conspired to corrupt scripture and lead believers away from true Christian faith.

In a readable and responsible style, author James White traces the development of Bible translations, old and new, and investigates the differences between new versions and the authorized version of 1611.

You can order your copy of James White's book, The King James Only Controversy, by going to our website at www .aomin .org. What is Dr. Norman Geisler warning the Christian community about in his book, Chosen But Free?

A New Cult? Secularism? False Prophecy Scenarios? No, Dr. Geisler is sounding the alarm about a system of beliefs commonly called Calvinism. He insists that this belief system is theologically inconsistent, philosophically insufficient, and morally repugnant.

In his book, The Potter's Freedom, James White replies to Dr. Geisler, But the Potter's Freedom is much more than just a reply. It is a defense of the very principles upon which the Protestant Reformation was founded.

Indeed, it is a defense of the very gospel itself. In a style that both scholars and laymen alike can appreciate, James White masterfully counters the evidence against so-called extreme Calvinism, defines what the Reformed faith actually is, and concludes that the gospel preached by the Reformers is the very one taught in the pages of Scripture.

The Potter's Freedom, a defense of the Reformation and a rebuttal to Norman Geisler's Chosen But Free. You'll find it in the Reformed Theology section of our bookstore at www .aomin .org.

Ephesians 1 and the Meaning of “Saints”

Welcome back to the Dividing Line. My name is James White. I just got an email.

Do you all remember back during, well it was a little over a year ago now, during the war, the one army versus another army war. We have to describe different kinds of war now. You have major combat operations and then you have terrorism.

But when the army was moving one direction and the other army was going the other direction, I mentioned two marine generals, I just gave them a promotion, marine majors that I had known before they went over there.

They're Reformed gentlemen and they were involved in the war effort. They came home a few months later and I'm getting to meet with one this week. In fact, I've invited him to be with us Thursday afternoon for the Dividing Line.

He just wrote back to me, he says, I'll be there. Do I have to behave while you're on air? Can I shout out King James Version only epithets continuously? He says, might even bring you a cigar. One of my only vices, it's a marine thing.

That could be an interesting experience. Hey, if he makes it, I'm going to throw him on the air. We'll talk about what it's like to be a Reformed Christian in the military at war. That might be an absolutely perfect topic to pursue.

So if you hear odd noises in the background of the program, next time you'll know that we're just having trouble holding a marine down. Post-combat stress syndrome has kicked in. Am I correct here that we've got two folks online but only one line left?

Is that what I'm, no. Okay, I only have two in my window. So that's why I was just about to, well, I missed the first two then because I didn't have a window open. So I don't know who's first, I don't know who's second, I only know who's third and fourth.

So, okay, see, I never saw that. Jim in Napa Valley, welcome to the Voting Line.

I've been driving people crazy with this question in the chat room, and maybe it's just me. I couldn't have picked a better topic. This is Ephesians 1. This is the bizarre idea that when Paul, in Chapter 1, he predestined us to adoption.

We have redemption, all these things. And then from the first time he's saying you, and then the you goes on from there, is that now he's referring to, this is an idea I heard at a Bible school. Read with you on this, he says.

Okay, that's interesting.

You need to go to a Christian bookstore, I guess. That's interesting. Well, you know, it's an interesting theory, because you have the use of the us consistently. He chose us in him. So at the very least, you would have to argue that the apostles were predestined, and all the issues regarding free will and everything else that would go along with them.

But, you know, it's funny. I've noticed that non-reformed folks, they don't mind if somebody else's free will gets squished, as long as it's not theirs. In other words, there's this tendency amongst many that, well, yeah, in certain instances, you know, with like Cyrus, that's okay.

Pharaoh, that's cool, as long as it's not me whose free will is getting squished. So anyway, that's interesting. You know, he could make the argument that it's the apostles who have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of their trespasses according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished on us.

And, you know, the strongest part of the argument would be 9 and 10, that there's a special revelation of God's purpose that's only given to them, which is then mediated to the rest of us in Scripture.

But the most natural way of understanding the transition at verse 13 is not apostles, everybody else. And this seems rather obvious, but when you're looking for a theory to get you around the consistency of the teaching of Scripture, hey, you know, obvious things sometimes disappear.

That's one of the red flags that comes up when you discover someone has now abandoned their normal use of hermeneutics and are now adopting a new system. This is probably why. In essence, two things. There is nothing in the context that contrasts the apostles in Ephesians 1 with everybody else.

That is an assumed contrast that simply doesn't flow from the text itself. Secondly, Ephesians 1 .13 then brings the overarching work of salvation and eternity that has been discussed in the first 12 verses down to the application of that and the experience of that in the life of the church at Ephesus.

And, in fact, I think you're probably aware of this, I actually think Ephesians is a circular letter. It is a letter that was at first read in Ephesus, but that it was meant to be distributed around the Lycus River Valley.

I think it's the epistle that Paul is talking about in Colossians 4 .16 when he says, read the letter that's coming from Laodicea. I think that's what we call Ephesians. Anyway, there's actually a textual variant in the first verse in regards to the word Ephesus.

So that's rather interesting. But anyway, I think this is what's being discussed in Colossians 4 .16. So verse 13, the transition is not apostles, everybody else. The transition is everybody else and here's the application as it has been experienced by you and by every generation of believers because this eternal work of salvation is working out in time.

We experience it temporally. And so to somehow make a difference here, the problem is what is discussed in 13 following assumes that those who, for example, receive the Holy Spirit in verse 13 and 14 are those who were redeemed and had their sins forgiven back up in verses 5, 6, and 7.

There's no way to separate these things out, but if that's what Paul is saying, he has separated them out. He's not given any foundation as to why the Ephesian believers have forgiveness of sins or a certainty of the forgiveness of sins or things like that.