Perspicuous and Vulgar: On the Clarity of Scripture

0:37 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. I am Cory J. Mahler. And I'm Wo. In this episode, we will be discussing Scripture qua scripture, which is to say Scripture as the inerrant, plenarily, verbally inspired Word of God which Christians must read, believe, and defend, and which Satan ceaselessly attacks. If I am not convinced by the testimonies of Scripture and clear rational arguments, for I believe neither the Pope nor the councils alone, since it is a fact that they have often erred and contradicted themselves, then I am by the passages of the Holy Scriptures, which I have cited, overcome in my conscience and held captive to the Word of God. Therefore I can and will retract nothing, because it is neither safe

1:25 nor healthful to do anything against conscience. Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise. God help me, amen. This was Martin Luther's testimony to the Die of Arms in April fifteen twenty one. I wanted to open with that statement because um it's one of the most famous things that Luther said that's known you know within Lutheran Lutheranism. It's not known across uh Protestantism Protestantism ism at large. And I think probably a lot of people know the phrase here I stand somewhat famously even if they don't know where it came from. Uh the reason I wanted to open with that in particular is that there are a couple points in there that Luther makes about appealing directly to scripture and about plain reason that although modern

2:11 Lutherans believe that those words are our inheritance and the Luther's spirit and those words is our spirit, in fact it's pretty normal within our churches today to go in the opposite direction, to obfuscate scripture and to try to think make things more complicated than they are, and to either ignore rational arguments or perhaps even to say that reason has no place in the faith. And as a result, when someone, especially a layman, points to scripture, we're frequently shouted down or mocked or belittled uh or reprimanded as though we have done something wrong. And so this episode today we're talking about scriptural inerrancy, about the plain reading of scripture, about the plain words of scripture, and why

2:58 that's actually true, whether it is true that scripture is plain. I've made a point in numerous past episodes, virtually all of them, and I'll probably say it in every episode. Scripture is clear. And when I've been saying that, it is a very deliberate needle driven into the eyes of these men who think the scripture's not clear, who think that when we read these words on the page that are given to us by God, transmitted through time miraculously, and by human hands at the same time. We can't really be sure what we're reading. And so to say scripture is clear about anything is defiance against that spirit. Um before we get into the the nature of reading scripture, I think it's important to begin with uh the point in time where

3:44 the lady was actually first able to read scripture because one of the things that was lost in the Western Church was access to the Word of God as uh as Rome continued to preserve Latin as the sole language, people didn't speak Latin anymore. And so only the very educated would know Latin and the books themselves were incredibly expensive because they were all handwritten. So it was really a breakthrough for the first time, particularly in English, when the Word of God was translated into English. And so we're going to begin there. And so of course if we begin there we have to begin with really three men, that would be Wycliffe, Huss, and Tyndale. Two of them, the latter two, were executed for their efforts.

4:28 Uh Wycliffe did actually manage to live out his life And the things for which the Roman Church persecuted these men, yes, they had disagreements theologically, but that was not the core of it. The core was that these men wanted the scriptures to be accessible to the laity, which is to say they wanted it to be in the vernacular. Because as mentioned, having it in Latin when no one speaks Latin anymore, except for the tiny upper educated crust of society, is not making the Word of God accessible to the common people of your nation, and scripture is very clear. You are supposed to study and discuss and think about the Word of God when you rise, when you go to bed, as you walk by the way, at dinner, all of these times you are

5:13 supposed to discuss these things, you cannot do that if you don't have the scriptures in a language who understand. And so in the case of Wycliffe, who has one of the first English translations of the Bible, and he translated it. He his associates may have translated the Old Testament, but he certainly translated the New Testament. And so the Roman Catholic Church didn't manage to kill him as mentioned previously. He managed to die a natural death. However, just to show the vindictiveness and the spitefulness of the Roman Church, they dug up his bones, burned them, and then tossed the ashes into the river, in order to make a statement about their disagreement with him, which is to say that they did not want

5:58 the common people to have the scriptures in their hands in a way they could understand them, because that challenged the power of Rome. If the scriptures aren't a language that only those associated with Rome, which at the time would have essentially been only priests would have known Latin, or the handful of men who were highly educated at universities reading texts in Latin. Rome could have exercised a great deal of control then, and in addition, Rome objected to any attempts to produce the Bible, really at all. It wasn't just producing the Bible in a language that was understood by the common people in the vernacular. If you attempted to print and master distribute the Bible in Latin, they still would have killed you for that.

6:41 Because you would have been making it accessible not to the common man, but outside of Rome's control. And it's that it's that control that Rome wanted to exercise. And that's basically sacerdotalism. It's the belief that the priesthood, in the Roman sense here, they act as a go-between for the laity and God. The only way you can get two god is through your priest. That's basically the view of Rome at the time. It's still somewhat the view of Rome today, of course it's complicated by the fact that Rome also seems to think that you can go through Mary or the Saints, but that is a separate issue. But it's this sacerdotalism that lies at the core of the problems that we will be discussing today.

7:26 Because when you have pastors or priests or even theologians who are arguing No the common man, no you cannot understand the scriptures, you cannot read them for yourself, and understand what they mean I have to do it for you. All of that falls under the umbrella of sacerdotalism. There was a there's a fantastic quote that we found uh from one of Wycliffe's opponents who they in their hand wringing way they stated the jewel of the clergy has become the toy of the laity. They're referring to scripture there. God's word, which was the jewel of the clergy, meaning them, had become the toy of the laity. They were so terrified of the idea of the common Christian abusing or misusing scripture that they were willing to kill men to keep

8:16 them away from it. Well, and of course they were, because even if you had it in Latin, particularly if you had it in the vernacular, but even if you had it in Latin, then educated man could start reading the scriptures and start think seeing things like say 2 Timothy 316. All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. If you start reading these things that are all throughout Scripture, it's not in just one place or a handful, it's everywhere, beginning to end, Genesis to Revelation. If you start seeing these things, these men will start asking questions Why have we restricted this from the laity? Why do they not have access to this?

8:55 Why do the priests not want me to read the Word of God? If the Word of God is telling me to read the Word of God. And it's because Rome wanted to maintain that authority, because the authority of Rome is built on a handful of claims, one of which being that the Pope essentially is Christ on earth, and they will actually literally use those words from time to time. And so if Scripture is the Word of God, God speaking directly to whomever is reading or listening, Then you don't need this go-between. You don't need the Pope. And then you can start to question the Pope's power, which is exactly what Rome, of course, did not want. And Rome hated the the fact that the scriptures had been translated

9:46 into the vernacular, that when they executed John Huss, they actually used Wycliffe's Bible as kindling on his pyre for his stake. That's they they burn the Bible to murder a man for preaching and speaking from a Bible that they didn't want people to have access to. And if you look at these men in history, Wycliffe, Huss, and Tyndale, they did make doctrinal errors. We're not saying that Rome was wrong about the errors that these men made, but I think that that's actually part of the point of why it's so important that scripture be accessible to everyone. Because for these men, prior to the Reformation, you know, uh, Wycliffe was in the the mid-1300s When they undertook translating scripture into the vernacular, they ceased to be,

10:42 they they became outlaws. They effectively became outside of the church, which meant that they didn't have the support of other Christians in the establishment and that's not normal. Christians are not supposed to be solo. W when we talk about scriptural inerrancy and about the fact that the word is fruitful for these things, it does not follow that we want every man sitting under a tree by himself reading his Bible and never having any contact with other Christians. These things are meant to be discussed. God says that iron sharpens iron. That's talking about doctrine as much as anything. And there are numerous places in scripture where it says, particularly in the New Testament, there must be disagreements among you, so that the

11:26 truth may be known. So when doctrine is reasoned out properly and argued from Scripture, that is what God wants of us. He wants us to have Scripture, to read Scripture to discuss it and to argue to figure out who is right. And the the what we're going to get to in the second half of this episode is the one of the main attacks today. for a while the attack was well, scripture's not real or it's true, but it's not accurate. And there's some of that today, but it's sort of morphing into a thing where you can just say, uh, you that's that's your interpretation. you have your Bible and I have mine, and we can just believe what we want. And as long as we confess Jesus in our heart, it's all good, man.

12:14 And that's when the when the papists and others repeat the the silly lie that there are 30,000 denominations today. it's pure nonsense for one thing. There may be a couple dozen branches that have discernible, very particular beliefs that differ from each other, and all the rest is basically just flavors of Baptist and one or two others. We should also point out that the claims from Rome and the East when it comes to unity are complete fabrications out of whole cloth. They are not unified. You have various groups within each of those umbrella church to use the term loosely bodies That don't agree with each other. They have categorical disagreements on doctrine from, in the case of the Eastern Orthodox, one national church to another, or even one body within

13:07 a single nation to another. And so the unity they supposedly have and they try to make as an argument against Protestants is just complete nonsense. The facts do not bear it out. We can throw in the for the show notes the the picture showing the relationship of the various Eastern Orthodox churches who are and are not in communion with un one another over various things. It's as complicated as the org chart for any large international corporation, if not more so. Some of them are near are some are not in communion with each other. they don't anathise each other, but they say, Yeah, we're we're not even of the same belief. So and that falls just under the umbrella of quote unquote orthodoxy.

13:48 Yes. And you've got the same thing going on in Rome with those I it depends on how far you're willing to extend the umbrella. Are those who think the seat of Peter is vacant still Roman Catholic? Are they not? Are the Jesuits and the Dominicans the same it's just it's never ending. So their their claims of unity are complete nonsense. But you mentioned the word solo versus say perhaps sola. It does bring up the the issue of most people don't even understand what sola scriptura means anymore. Because no one knows Latin, which is funny that we're talking about translating things into the vernacular and we discover a problem related to people not knowing Latin, but it is what it is. People look at sola scriptura and they they won't know the term

14:35 because people aren't taught even English anymore. They think it's the nominative, and so they think it's scripture alone. But that's not what it is. It's in the ablative. It is by scripture alone. And what we mean when we say sola scriptura is that scripture is the norming norm. It is the norma Normands. it is the standard by which all doctrine is tested. It does not mean that we take only scripture. We still look to our fathers in the faith, we still look to tradition, we look to all of these good things that have been preserved by the grace of God. They are just not the ultimate authority. And so when you said that these men were separated from the church That's true and that is exactly as you said, unnatural.

15:23 Christians are supposed to live within the context of the Church, in a Christian society, in a Christian nation, in Christian families, and part of that is you have to have the word. Because we're going right back to headship as we always do. It is incumbent on the master of the house, which is to say the father, the the oldest man in the house typically. It is incumbent on him to know the word, and to see that those in his house are instructed in it. And that's why you have the the admonitions in the small catechism, as the father of the house is supposed to teach. And also, he is supposed to question those in his household and see if they are actually learning this material, because one day the

16:08 father is going to stand before his father in heaven and have to answer for what he did or did not do with regard to the authority he was given on earth. And the reason the the discussion of scriptural inerrancy and its suitableness for teaching is so important is that particularly for for new believers coming to the faith or even so for someone who's not a Christian yet, but they think they want to be a Christian and they want to know what does that mean? You look at this enormous menu of fighting, bickering, angering, angry, in many cases killing each other for fifteen hundred years or more, groups that all call themselves Christian and every single one of 'em says that all the others are wrong.

16:52 How is anyone to know how to make sense of that? And the easy thing for people to do is to throw up their hands and say, either to pick one, which is one of the reasons that that I started I mentioned last week that I I had rebranded and started talking a lot more about my faith and particularly about being a Lutheran. I did so because I saw more and more of men the men on Men on the right of the political sphere being attracted to Christianity and not and having there's a very problem. They see all the bickering, they see all the options, they don't know what to do, and they're either not Christian or they're barely Christian, and so they don't have any frame of reference for evaluating scriptural or doctrinal claims.

17:38 All they can do is sort of look at the food superficial aspects of things and what I saw years ago and what's continuing to this day is that a great many men who want to become Christian because they see, even if they don't understand God, they don't understand Jesus and justification, they understand that Satan's real. They understand that evil is a real thing and that it is supernatural. It's not just that there are bad people, some of which are in some ethnic groups, but they're bad people in general. It's that they see that those people cannot solely be bad because they had bad parents or they had a bad religion or a bad upbringing. There's an animating spirit that is clear in the world.

18:23 And in many cases, it's only clear to unbelievers. Christians don't even see it anymore because we just say, oh, well, we're all sinners. Unbelievers can see more clearly than us that this is a spiritual war that we are in the midst of. And so these men who don't know Jesus, but they do know that Satan is has to be a real thing, they look at the churches. And so one of the tests is, Well, which one's biggest? The answer is Rome. Rome has more than a billion adherents worldwide, so obviously I mean, they're the winner by default, clearly. I mean if that's the that's the churchiest church you can go for. And then when you actually look at Rome, they have smells and bells, they have great optics, you know, they have they have

19:02 vestments, they have beautiful buildings, they have history, they have historic claims, some of which are actually true, many are not, but you know, again, even if some of their historical claims are not true, if someone is coming to the church as a blank slate, they're gonna go for whichever one has more historical claims. And so it it appeals to them that Rome and that the East will say, we're older than those other guys, that Protestant stuff, that's new. that started in in the fifteen hundreds. And the reason I started talking about my f my Lutheran faith was to say, hey, the reformation was just that. It was not a revolution. It was not an overthrow of the church to replace it. It was a reformation of the church as she had been centuries

19:52 prior, and a restoration of beliefs which had been once held within the church and then were lost precisely because the people were prohibited from having access to scripture. And that's actually what happened to Luther, although he was a scholar. was he was reading the word, But it wasn't until he actually went back and actually really read Romans and Galatians that he had the breakthrough that what he had been taught in his own churches and what he'd been teaching as a as a teacher in the church was actually false. It was contrary to scripture. And so the Reformation didn't begin in in a fever dream of Luther or in his desire to be a revolutionary. It became it began in the Word of God. It began in a man reading scripture for the first time clearly

20:43 and saying, hey, this isn't what what God told us. And if that's the case, then something has to be done. And we're in a similar situation today. And so we're talking about why scripture but is both inerrant and why it's accessible. It's not a mystery to us. And it's very important that we combat anyone who says, Oh, it's it's really confusing because when people are coming into the church and they're looking for a church, if they see us making those claims, A, they're not going to be interested in us because we're we're equivocating. We're saying we're saying that truth is unknowable, that it's just all up for grabs and whatever you feel, man. And And they know that that is a worldly thing.

21:24 We have ceased to recognize that we again, and we talked about the genealog genealogy of ideas. A pagan can look at the when at the way Christians talk in our churches and see that a lot of it can't be Christian because it's modern. It's a modern ethos. It's a modern philosophical approach to something that, if the claims are true, is ancient, is is originated from God. It's originated from a supernatural source. And so it's not going to be buffeted by the whims of philosophy as it evolves over the centuries. And so having these discussions and talking about the clarity of scripture is not just about it's not about winning arguments on the internet. It's not about seeing who's going to be more right.

22:08 It's about reaching souls that are lost and are groping in the darkness towards God in a way that as Christians, Scripture says that's clearly that's possible. That it is possible for to for people to grope their way towards God. You can't save yourself. You're not going to come to faith because you try really hard or because you think about it. Faith is given as a gift through the hearing of the word, which is scripture. So pointing to scripture is the way to save souls, and denying scripture outright or denying access to scripture is a way to damn souls, and that's why this conversation is important. It's worth actually emphasizing what you said about Luther. Luther was a monk, and he still did not have access to

22:56 scripture, not ready access until he had been a monk for a while, because even from those who were in the church being trained to teach in the church, they were largely using secondary and tertiary materials instead of scripture. That's how far Rome had corrupted things by the time of the Reformation, and why the Reformation was absolutely necessary. And that's something that's just that's unfathomable to us today. we can't even understand not having the Bible. Because like I have I don't know I probably have a dozen Bibles in my house and I've done Yeah. And I have the Bible on every one of my devices too in in numerous translations and you know it's w we're so buried in scripture that we we take it for granted

23:45 that Yeah. But it in that day it was something the men literally died to get their hands on, as they should. It was worth dying to get their hands on a single Bible. For the the common man, the only time you would see a Bible is if there happened to be an altar bible in your church. And it would be in Latin, so it would be of no use to them. Yeah, it would it would be in ornate Latin. You wouldn't even be allowed anywhere near it, so even if you had been able to get near it, it would have been useless to you. But you were allowed to view it from afar at best. And now you know I have logos open here in the background on my computer with however many probably a hundred different translations and

24:23 various languages and diglots and triglots and interlinears and the wealth of materials we have today. And it it reminds me of a a comment from Luther about men in his day, how little of an excuse the pastorate teachers had for neglecting it's from the large catechism how little excuse they had for neglecting their duties and properly learning and studying the word considering what they had at their disposal. Now imagine what we have at our disposal, and how little fathers and even pastors, and if we have any theologians, bother to learn about these things, despite the immense wealth of material that we have on hand. it's really just unforgivable. It is a tragedy. And so as we start talking specifically about the issue, uh I

25:18 wanna begin with a particular word that's used very often in these discussions. And that word is interpret. So if I'm talking about something from scripture and I talk to you and you have a different idea and I don't agree with your idea and we trade you know proof text back and forth. At some point one of us is probably gonna say if we're taking cheap shots, you and I, Corey, wouldn't do this, but it's very common in Christian discourse for somebody to say, well, that's just your interpretation. And that's a word that's incredibly dangerous. And so I want to begin by focusing on what does the word interpret or interpretation mean in scripture? What does it mean today and where did it come into the

26:02 English language? So we're going to start in the middle with the definition of the word and the etymology. Interpret one of the one of the proper definitions of it is to expound the meaning of to render clear or explicit and it came to us via old French from Latin uh interpretare meaning to explain, to expound, and to understand. Now, when you say interpret in terms of Christian dialogue, in in view of the Latin root of the word, that's entirely fair. The problem is that no one knows the Latin root, and that's not what they're actually talking about. Uh the the word when we say interpretation today is much closer to the word that's actually in scripture. And so when you look in scripture for where interpreter interpretation is

26:50 translated in in English, it's also correctly translated. Now I'm not trying to set the modern word against the scriptural word because they're it's a good translation, but it's important to note that when interpretation is discussed in scripture, it's never used the way we use it today, ever. There are four things that are impr interpreted in scripture. The first is visions and dreams, as in the case of Joseph when he was translating the dreams for his master. Uh the second is signs and wonders, as in the case where Daniel translated for Balth Balthazar, what Mene Mene Tekl Uparasan meant. The third is prophecies, which are interpreted by a prophet before before they come to fruition. And prophecy is an interesting case because once a prophecy has been

27:43 fulfilled, it is generally accessible. the plain reading of the prophecy is going to match up with what was prophesied. But in But until such a time as God makes manifest his will described in that prophecy, you aren't necessarily going to know what it's going to look like. And we talked that about that in the previous episode where we talked about Genesis 3:15 and the promise of the Messiah, and how that was a less fleshed-out version of that promise than was found in Isaiah, where he talked about be her the Messiah being born of being born of a virgin, and of us being healed by his stripes. Those were also prophecies, but they were much more explicit prophecies, both fleshing out the earlier one and pointing to the ultimate fruition.

28:29 So So prophecy is interpreted in advance. It's not it interpreted in arrears. the last one is interpretation of foreign languages. This is seen most often in the New Testament, where at Pentecost and also in the churches where some were given the gift of tongues, others were giving the given the gift of interpretation. Now it's important to low note that in all four of these cases, what is being interpreted, it's not the way we talk about interpreting scripture. It's top talking about interpreting something that's unknowable to the observer or to the reader. When you have a vision vision or dream, the reason that the prophets who were given the gift of interpreting those visions and dreams had to do so is that it was symbolic language.

29:19 When you have the seven fat cows and the seven skinny cows and who knows what it meant. It's it wasn't a it wasn't accessible via reason to interpret that dream. It was a gift of God that the gift of the vision was interpreted by the gift of interpretation. So in scripture, and that's a that's again the case in signs and wonders and the foreign languages and prophecy, it is a gift from God to interpret the unknowable into something knowable. And so when we look in scripture, we see well, this is what interpretation means. And in our own minds, I think that sort of becomes rooted. And then when we say to each other, Well, that's your interpretation, even if we're not necessarily thinking it, fundamentally, that's what's actually coming

30:10 out of our mouths is that well you're you're scrying in the guts of scripture and you have some you have this pile of stuff and you've turned it into something that you think, but when I ri rifle through those guts, I find something different. I find another interpretation. And that's simply not what the word means today when we're talking about it's it's not a good word to use in Christian discourse. You know, if if I were had a book in front of me and we were sitting side by side and I handed you the book or you know, the a comic book even, and I said, like, can you interpret this for me? And you looked at it and it was English, you'd stare at me and laugh, like, what are you talking about?

30:50 why do you need me to interpret it? So we instinctively know that interpret doesn't mean what it meant in Latin. It doesn't mean to explain or expound any more. When we say interpret, we're saying we're beginning with something unknowable and turning it into something knowable. And that's the real danger when we're addressing scripture because one of the common attacks on scripture itself is the denial that it's clear. The denial that what the words that you have in front of you can possibly be understood, either unless you're a pastor or unless you know the original languages, or maybe they can't be understood at all. Maybe the only possible fruit of having access to scripture is numerous conflicting interpretations with no tiebreaker, with no one to say, this

31:38 is right and this is wrong. And that's why it's so important to make sure that we're speaking clearly when we're talking about scripture because when we talk about scripture on this podcast, we're not interpreting anything. You know, unless we translate. So for example, the the quote that I gave began with from Luther, Corey, you translated that from the original German, 'cause the version I had wasn't a meme. And I don't want to I don't want to make claims from memes even you know, it was a pretty good translation, but you gave one that's probably a little less common that's what's typically quoted, but is a faithful interpretation of Luther's original words. That was an interpretation. Because you started in German, which I can't read, and I didn't

32:17 have access to the source material readily, and you gave me something in English. That is interpretation. But us discussing what's in scripture, we're not interpreting, we're using reason. Yeah, we do actually retain the Latin sense because we do still have the word interpreter. So we retain it there. Because when you use an interpreter, it literally means someone who is translating from an language you do not know into a language you do know. And so if we think about it, we do still have the sense of the term, but when people use interpretation, what they really mean when it comes to scripture and things like that is personal interpretation, which leads us into personal truth, which is not a thing.

33:00 Something is true or false. These are basic laws of logic. It is not a personal truth, because truth is not personal. Truth is truth. A statement is true or false, and it is so for everyone, at all times in all places, or else it's not true. And additionally here we we have the issue of when it comes to truth, let's look at translation. the famous part of that Luther quote is Hirste is Ischkanist Andes. If I were to interpret that as Luther saying, I would like an orange juice, please. That's not an interpretation, that's just wrong. And so there is an actual truth content there. It means something. And if you translate it accurately, you are relaying that truth, you are properly interpreting it.

33:55 But if you mistranslate it, you aren't interpreting, you are misleading. But there is another source of this idea of personal truth or personal interpretation Particularly in the American context, although there are also some cults, supposedly Christian cults in Europe and other places that engage in the same behavior, it's Pentecostalism. It's enthusiasm. It's the belief that if I just do whatever, at least they're using the word, which is better than they are sometimes, but if I just stare at the word, I will suddenly be given this personal insight into the secret meaning of the word. Now, it's careful, it is important to carefully divide here the difference between a regenerate Christian will have the Holy Spirit, and so will

34:45 be able to read and understand scripture, which is a very important point for what we are discussing today. Versus those who say that they will be given some sort of Gnostic special insight into the Into the real meaning that everyone else has gotten wrong. Those people, that is a cult practice, that is not Christian. And that's another source of this personal interpretation, and it's it's of a kind with people who gibber in nonsense, supposed languages, in church and say that's speaking in tongues. It's not. Scripture's very clear. There should be an interpreter because tongues are human tongues. The point of that gift of the Spirit is so that you can talk to someone who does not speak your language.

35:30 Less important today given technology and the fact that again we have this wealth of material for learning languages. Back in biblical times, it would have been impossible, basically, for a common man to learn a foreign language from a country that was three hundred miles away even. And so those gifts were more important back then. But there was another point I wanted to add here quickly. There are two terms that we should mention because they're the typical terms you hear when well one is the typical term you hear one is a mistake, but they're the typical terms you hear when discussing this issue perspicuous or perspicacity, perspicuity. Two different terms there perspicacity versus perspicuity.

36:14 Perspicuity is what we're talking about, which is that scripture is clearly expressed and easily understood. Perspicacity is a term some people mistake. That's a quality of having already insight into things. So a person has perspicacity, scripture has perspicuity. You can also say perspicuousness, but that one's awkward. That's what we're talking about here. Scripture is clear. Scripture can be understood by the average man if he reads it. But again, for the regenerate Christian, you will also have the Holy Spirit there guiding you. So if there are people who say that scripture isn't clear, you can't understand scripture, it's dark and it's incomprehensible and penetrable, they're actually

36:53 calling God a liar. Because God says that He will help you to understand these things, and scripture also throughout says that it is clear. I have a quote here from Luther in a book that the Reformed happened to love, The Bondage of the will. But he he threads the needle here when it comes to the fact that yes, there are some parts of Scripture that are still confusing. There are. But the core doctrines, the core truths of scripture, the overwhelming majority of Scripture, is clear and easily understood, so here's the quote from Luther. The subject matter of the scriptures, therefore, is all quite accessible, even though some texts are still obscure owing to our ignorance of their terms, truly it is stupid and impious when we know that

37:40 the subject matter of scripture has all been placed in the clearest light, to call it obscure on account of a few obscure words. If the words are obscure in one place, yet they are plain in another, and it is one and the same theme, published quite openly to the whole world, which in the scriptures is sometimes expressed in plain words and sometimes in Sometimes lies as yet hidden at obscure words. Now, when the thing signified is in the light, it does not matter if this or that sign of it is in darkness, since many other signs of the same thing are meanwhile in the light. Who will say that a public fountain is not in the light, because those who are in a narrow side street do not see it, whereas all who are in the marketplace do see it?

38:20 Your reference to the Corsean cave, therefore, is irrelevant. That is not how things are in the Scriptures. Matters of the highest majesty and the profoundest mysteries are no longer hidden away, but have been brought out and are openly displayed before the very doors. For Christ has opened our minds, so that we may understand the scriptures, Luke twenty-four forty-five, and the gospel is preached to the whole creation, Mark sixteen fifteen. Their voice is gone out to all the earth, Romans ten eighteen, and whatever was written was written for our instruction, Romans fifteen four. Also, all scripture inspired by God is profitable for teaching second Timothy three sixteen. See then, whether you and all the sophists can produce any single

39:02 mystery that is still abstruse in the scriptures. Luther is of course responding to Erasmus who had argued essentially that Scripture was impenetrable. And this is something that we emphasized in a previous episode when we were talking about election. We specifically pointed out the destin predestination versus a so-called double predestination or the hypostatic union of Christ or the Trinity or the Eucharist, these are a few places where scripture is clear, but reason is not clear. And that's a very limited set. So it's a trick that the devil plays on us and that we are all too willing to play on ourselves and on each other to say that, well, this verse seems to contradict this verse, so I'm going to pick the one that I like the most.

39:54 And And uh the reason that I began with that quote in part was that uh again, Luther refers both to the testimonies of scripture and to clear rational arguments. I mentioned that the reason is something that Christians are either used too much of, as in the case of some denominations where reason is used in the magisterial sense, where r all of their beliefs beliefs must be in submission to their own reason. As Lutherans, we advocate the ministerial use of reason, where we do our best with what we have, and where our reason fails us, we look at the plain words of Scripture and where we don't understand them, we still confess them. That is what faith means. But reason has a very precious place in the church.

40:46 And this is found in scripture itself. When you look uh there are seventeen or sorry, thirteen places in the New Testament where the Greek word dia legomi is used, that word means to converse or address, to lecture, to argue, or to reason. Now, when it appears in the New Testament, almost all the uses are in the term in the sense of dialectical reason, of arguments, not in a you know knockdown drag out argument, but making a series of logical propositions to reach a conclusion. And they're done principally by Paul. Uh in Acts 17, uh he repeatedly reasoned with the scriptures from the scriptures with both the Jew and Greek. Uh says the same thing in in Acts 18. Uh it says three times in 17 and 18 that he reasoned,

41:37 sorry, four times. I'm just scrolling through here, five times. It just keeps going. Over and over. Paul is going to the synagogues and to the public places and he is reasoning from scripture. Now, Paul had revelations directly from God, and his writings to us are the revelation of God. But when he spoke to his fellow Jews and he spoke to the Gentiles, There were there were cases where he would reveal something prophetic, but his go-to was to reason from the scriptures. Now, the scripture that they had in that day was the entirety of the Old Testament, the Tanakh. They didn't have the New Testament yet because Paul hadn't written it, and and the few other authors who contribute to what we call

42:24 the New Testament today. But when he reasoned with them, he was obeying God. He was saying, look, here we have the prophecy in Genesis and Isaiah and elsewhere that there would be a Messiah, and now I point to you to Jesus and to his life and to his preaching and his ministry and his death and his resurrection, as a testimony to the fulfillment of those prophecies. Paul was using reason to explicate prophecy. See again, he didn't have to use special revelation from God to explain the prophecy because it was in the review mirror, both the prophecy itself and its fulfillment. What Paul had to do was to use a plain reason from the plain words that were given to the Hebrews in the Old Testament and to all of us to say, look, God said this

43:16 and then God did this. What God said and what God did look exactly the same. That's reason. It takes faith for us to believe it, but just as a as a jurist, as someone particularly at the time who, you know, just having access to the facts and not after having access to faith, could potentially believe that too. Now it may not be salvific without faith, but they would reach the same conclusions by virtue of reason. Now, to be clear, we're not saying here that reason can save you. That's never the point. It is faith that saves and faith alone. But reason is a gift of God that is given to every man, although not an equal measure. Some men are apparently entirely bereft of reason, and some men seem

44:02 to have too much of it because they can't shut it off. But reason is a gift that is given to us by God to help make sense of the things that God has also given to us. And scripture is what God has given to us. God has not given us tradition. Tradition is what has been passed down for our benefit. But I want to quote um Luther's works volume one, where he's talking about Genesis. Uh and we're going to get into in a minute one of the reasons we're talking about this is This is that recently on the internet there have been people who call themselves Lutherans and call themselves Christians who are directly in opening attacking Genesis. Again, they're saying, well, yeah, it's true, but I'm not gonna go

44:42 along with it being factual. that's a bridge too far. And one of the appeals that that these men actually made was to the church fathers who disagreed in some cases with Genesis being a narrative, particularly the first nine books, which are considered you know more metaphorical, kind of kind of a a narrative but not a factual recounting. Here's what Luther had to say. Whenever we see that the opinions of the fathers are not in agreement with Scripture, we respectfully we respectfully bear with them and acknowledge them as our forefathers, but we do not on account, on their account, give up the escort the authority The authority of Scripture. Aristotle's statement in the first book of his ethics is well put

45:26 and true. Better it is to defend the truth than to be too much devoted to those who are our friends and our relatives. And this is above all the proper attitude for a philosopher, for although both truth and friends are dear to us, preference must be given to truth. If a pagan maintains that this must be the attitude in their secular discourses, how much more must it be in our attitude in those which involve the clear witness of Scripture that we dare not give preference to the authority of men over that scripture? Human beings can err, but the word of God is the very wisdom of God and the absolutely infallible truth. So that's what Luther had to say about his forefathers in the faith, the the church fathers, disagreeing with with Genesis.

46:12 And that's what we're talking about here. It is possible for anyone to err. It is not possible for a man to err and to be faithful to Scripture. And so the reason that these are arguments and discussions must be had and must be had in public is so that it can be plain to all where the scriptural revelation ends and where man's additions to it begin. Because reason can go f too far and there are some denominations that take reason too far. But reason can also be neglected. And so y it's a it's very dangerous for anyone to advocate, well, we can't know what that means. Well yes, it is theoretically possible that you can read something in scripture that you cannot understand, but it's incredibly unlikely.

47:01 And those things have already been identified in the past by all of the other men who for thousands of years have struggled with these same questions. So we don't need to come in blind and and mindless to scripture. We can look to what the fathers have said, but we can only look to them in the light of scripture and not the other way around. As Corey, as you mentioned, that when Luther was was first accessing Scripture even as a monk, it was through the eyes of other men and through the words of other men. And his revelation was was he when he finally read scripture itself and realized that what he had been handed through tradition didn't add up. It wasn't what was scriptural. And so reason has a very crucial place in the life of

47:44 a Christian, again, subordinated to faith, but used wherever possible to make clear that which can be made clear from scripture. And I would just want to pose a question to those men who say that you know we cannot use reason in order to interpret or in order to exegete would be a better term, really. What are they using? What are they doing when they are reading scripture? How is it that they are teaching? Because you will hear this from certain pastors and teachers that well you can't use reason in order to understand these things or they aren't clear or any of these. What is it they are doing that these other men cannot do? And why is it that we should believe them? Of course we know what they're actually doing, it's a cartel.

48:38 Is what it really is. They have the exclusive authority to interpret scripture because they got a little stamp on a piece of paper piece of paper saying that they're allowed to do it according to whatever group. If it's the Roman Church then it's according to the Pope. If it's some other church then typically it's according to some seminary. And that's not how it works. I'm not saying that seminary education is bad. It certainly in our era has its problems. But just because you have an M-div does not mean that you are an expert in all things scripture. In fact, it may be a fairly good indication that you were not. One would hope that those with an MDiv would recognize that. Because in basically any other field, the higher you go in degrees

49:29 and education that field, the more you realize how little you know, and of all places in which that should be true, it should certainly be true when it comes to scripture, because you're dealing with the word of an infinite God. You should absolutely know it forward and backward the things that can be known. But you are going to realize that there is always more for you to learn. It's the same thing that is said in the small catechism. It's those who read it through once then throw it in the corner and think ah I've I've read that, I'm good enough, I'm done. No, you read it every day, because God will continue to teach you, and so you continue to read scripture because you will continue to learn. And so I just I would want to know what these

50:10 men are doing when they are somehow exegeting scripture, but without resorting to reason or and again, we know what they're doing. They're reading what others have written and just parroting it. Which there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. Some very good teachers are simply we could call them a synthesis teacher. You're synthesizing materials from others who know more than you, and then teaching it to others who know less than you do. That's perfectly valid. You have scholars who do that as well, who synthesize quotes from various other authors, and Peeper did a lot of that. A good scholar in his own right, but a lot of what he did was corralling together quotes and things, and Volter did some

50:52 of that as well. That's not a condemnation of those men. Sometimes that is what you need to do as a teacher. But But reason is a gift from God. It is a valid tool, but as you said, it's just something we do not put it on a throne. It's not the magisterial use of reason, it's the ministerial use. Reason is a servant we employ to help us understand Scripture. And Scripture itself testifies over and over again that it is complete, that it is from God, that it is inerrant, and that it is valuable for these purposes. I I mind a few verses I like to read now that just um from old and new testament that make clear how much God reinforces to the Christian that this stuff is vital. In Isaiah 8, God says himself, to the law and to the

51:48 testimony, if they do not speak according to this word, it is because there is no light in them. In Matthew four Jesus said, but he answered, It is written, again quoting back to the Old Testament, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Now those who heard Jesus speaking in his earthly ministry were blessed that all of the many words that he spoke were direct from the mouth of God, which John records is more than could be written in all the books in the world. That statement is equally true of scripture, and that's one of the things that one of the attacks that Satan threw these through these vipers who live in our churches today will make is that they

52:32 will try to subdivide scripture that we have before us, the Bible that you have in your hands, and say, well, this part, yeah, this part's definitely from God, but this part might yeah, it's a little a little sketchy, I'm not sure about that. Uh and a a couple episodes ago I uh exhorted people to to read the red letters in the New Testament for a very specific purpose. And I spent more time talking about how dangerous it was than I did about actually describing what you would have because of this very reason. That there are people again who will say, well if it's not in red, well maybe God didn't really say it. I actually heard Kanye say that this week in a in a quote and I was just shaking my head, like, please, Lord, don't

53:13 put me in the same boat as him as a theologian. But it's important to remember that every word of scripture is from God and God Himself says it. And if you don't believe that, then you call God a liar and the truth is not in you and you do not have God. And that's where this stuff comes down to. when you when Corey and I fight for sound doctrine, for agreeing with scripture, even when we don't like it, there are things in scripture that I have a hard time with. Not because I don't believe them or that I don't want to obey God, but because they're hard to hear, because they condemn things that I have believed in the past, or the way I want to live in the future, or the things I like to do right now.

54:00 Those are not reasons not to believe God. But there are hardened hearts and there are seared consciences in men who will gleefully say that these literalists like you and I, Corey, don't really have access to scripture because we're so dumb and we're such hayseeds that we just read the Bible and believe it. And that's just that's really dangerous and it's embarrassing and Christians should be better than that. That's not what God says. In Matthew five, Jesus reiterates what was said in Isaiah. He says for truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter nor the least stroke of a pen will by any means disappear from the law until everything is accomplished. Now this in the King James is the famous jot and Tittle

54:47 quote. I think here I actually used NIV because I liked how it worked best with the Greek. But the smallest stroke of a pen and the smallest letter refers to the fact that there's no part of scripture, there's no corner that you can find, there's no piece of a letter that you can find that is so insignificant that you can leave it out and still have God. And there there's a word in there that I want to highlight because Jesus said, will by any means disappear from the law. Now one of the games that these vipers will play is they'll say, well the law, that's the Torah, that's the first five books, that that's the Pentateuch. that's the book that's the law of Moses. That's just that's a tiny portion of the Old Testament.

55:31 He's not talking about the whole thing. Nonsense. Jesus, who is the Word, knows what the Word is. He knows what was revealed to Moses and to the other prophets because he's the one who revealed it. So when these men try to say, Well, Jesus isn't really talking about the whole thing, they're trying to devalue souls. And that's why fighting over inerrancy and fighting fighting over the whole of scripture being vital is so Is so important. Really, it's it's the same thing that we run into again and again and again and again. Satan has changed his tactics over the centuries because he has done certain things and the church has responded and dealt with the issue, and so he does something else. We've mentioned that

56:18 the Church handled with the Reformation Article IV justification. We handled that problem. Yes, there are still cults, sects that do not get it right, but the church handled the problem of the denial of by grace through faith. And so what did Satan do? Well he switched gears. He's going to attack the first article of the Creed, creation, ontology, the nature of things, instead of attacking justification. It's the same thing that's happening here. If Satan cannot keep the scriptures out of the hands of the laity, which he can no longer do, because good luck putting that back in the bottle at this point. Everyone who wants to have a Bible can have a Bible. Everyone can have the Word of God. Anyone with a smartphone has access to a wealth of information that

57:13 would make the wealthiest scholar in human history envious in comparison. Kings had libraries the likes of which don't even hold a candle to what we have today. And so Satan isn't going to attack that because he can no longer keep it out of your hands. He cannot make it so it's just in Latin and you don't know Latin. But what he can do is he can have false teachers, wolves, snakes, he can send them out and they'll tell you Is that what God really said? So of course he's not really changing his tactics that much from the beginning. But the goal now is to make you think that scripture is unclear. That scripture is difficult to understand that you cannot just read Scripture as a layman and understand it and get something out of

58:01 it, and that's not what Scripture says. Because the goal as ever is to get you to willingly or unwillingly, wittingly or unwittingly, call God a liar. That's what happens with the denial of certain aspects of creation, it's what happens with the denial of ontology, it's what happens when you say that scripture is unclear. Because God says it is clear. In Hebrews four it is written, For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two edged sword, piercing the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, in discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And one of my favorite quotes I found was from Isaiah fifty-five. says, For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways

58:52 my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there, but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes for goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which per which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. God gave us these words for our clarity, for our comfort, and for our salvation, and any time Satan through his servants on this planet gets you to doubt, even a tiny bit of it.

59:40 That is the whole armor of God having a chink put in it. That is a place where now Satan can get through the armor and can get to your flesh, where God is no longer protecting you because you're no longer believing God. It's not that God has lost his power. It's that you have set aside his word, even by the smallest degree. And when we do that, we're we're a terrible risk. One of the reasons that that we did this episode this week was that for the last few days there's been a a stink, and I'm not gonna go into the drama because we've we've been talking enough about Enough about Twitter, but there are those who claim that the six days of creation are they're true, but they're not literal. In other words, God has revealed something that's true in the in

1:00:27 the narrative sense, but not in the factual sense. And one of the attacks that this man, Limenstein, on Twitter made, was to was to mock the six days of creation where in Genesis one and two God reveals that in the beginning God said, Let there be light, and there was light. That was day one and it wasn't until later that he created the sun and the stars. And so these mockers, these scoffers will say, Well, the six days of creation can't be literal because how can God say that there was light on day one when there was no source of light until later days? Because as the big brained ratitor, these guys all know through their material knowledge of the world, that in order for there to be light, you need an unbounded nuclear reactor in the sky emitting photons.

1:01:26 That's how science gives us light, right? That that's what stars do. Stars give light. Now we're not gonna make the the scientific case for creation, even though there is one, and the more we learn about the first moments of creation, the more we see how clearly scripture, the the Genesis account of creation is literal. Um God says let there be light and there was light. Now that's God speaking. That is a voice. That is a sound, and then light occurs from it. The Redditor mocks and says, Well that's stupid, that's utterly impossible. Everyone knows that can't happen. Except in the seventies or sorry, in the thirties, they some German scientists discovered sonoluminescence, where it is literally possible to create light from

1:02:18 sound. It turns out that if you emit a particular type of sound into a liquid, it will cause a bubble to appear and collapse. And in that collapse, you get intensely high uh temperatures on the order of tens of thousands of Kelvin degrees Kelvin. When the bubble collapses, there's a flash of light. You can have a fluid where light appears by virtue of a sound being passed through it. Now what does the liquid have to do with this? Well also in the Genesis account, the spirit of God hovered over the water waters. Now the man who lock mocks the literalist reading Genesis will say, well, as is a material expert, as a scientist, I know that water is H2O. It's two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen.

1:03:09 There was no water because God hadn't created the waters yet. So what's this water stuff? It must be a metaphor. Well, again, just in the last couple decades As particle physicists and other scientists have unwound the big bang to based on the physical evidence in found in in the universe to try to figure out the very earliest moments of they don't call it creation, but it's clearly creation. What do they find before there was matter? They call it quark gluon plasma. Now you can Google that and you can read about the theoretical aspects and then the physical experiments they've done. Every scientist will describe describe quark gluon plasma as the most perfect liquid. It is a liquid that is more liquid than any liquid that

1:04:03 we have. It's more liquid than water in terms of its liquid properties. The reason they were excited is they expected a gas. Because when they were doing their simulations and their thought experiments to try to find what was there before the big bang, they thought, well it must be a gas. They found a liquid. They found waters. Now, why would God speak to Moses when he gave him the narrative of Genesis? Why would he say water? Well, Moses didn't know anything about particle physics. He didn't know anything about uh string theory, but it was also true. It literally happened. God hovered over the face of the waters, and the scientists have now simulated those very waters. These are men who deny they deny God.

1:04:50 They're trying to find something so that they can say that we didn't need God. Here's what we found instead. The more that they dig, the more that they find the first two chapters of Genesis revealed in their experiments. Now they'll never see it because their eyes are closed and their hearts are hardened, they don't have faith, and they hate God, and they don't know God at the same time. But as Christians, we don't need to be afraid of science looking to scripture as we look to scripture because they're saying the same thing. Now when I mention the big bang, you're gonna think, oh well he thinks that the you know he he's not a young earth creationist. I absolutely am, and that's the point of this discussion.

1:05:30 When God created the universe, how old was it? That's what they're trying to answer. There's a separate question that's a little more accessible to us. When God created man, when God created Adam, how old was he? Was he zero? Well, he hadn't lived a day, but God created a man, a fully formed, sexually mature man is who stood in the garden with God. So God didn't make a je fetus that gestated in a box. He made a fully grown man. Adam had an age. My personal theory, which is it's not a belief, it's just something I as I was reading scripture, I noticed Adam died after 930 years. Methuselah, who's the oldest lived man in scripture, lived nine hundred and sixty nine years. And my brain did the math and said, Well, that means that

1:06:24 Methuselah lived thirty nine years longer than Adam. That's a conspicuous number if you're familiar with numerology and scripture because forty is a significant number. It usually signifies trial. But I thought and that's what made me think, well, how old was Adam? Personally, I think he was probably created as a 40-year-old because that would make him the force firstborn man in creation, the oldest man in creation. He was the only man who was ever perfect. He was the only man who ever walked sinlessly with God. And so my personal theory. Again, this is not I'm not adding to scripture. It's not a matter of faith or salvation. It's just a theory. When I die, I'll find out. And God will say, either, yeah, good guess, or no, you made

1:07:07 a mess of this. Here's what really happened. So no faith hinges on this and there's no there's no belief downstream from it, but I I think that Adam had to have an age. Maybe he was fifteen, maybe he was twenty, maybe he was a hundred. Forty seems to work, but he has an age, and so when we look to the age of the universe, how old was the universe that God created? It was 13.77 billion years old. God didn't create a universe from scratch and then set it in motion from the beginning. He set it in motion as though it had been in motion for billions of years. And that's what we see today. That's why the starlight that comes to our eyes is older than creation because God created those stars in those places in the universe

1:07:56 with their light, with their photons already already streaming towards us according to the natural laws of the universe, in such a way that the whole thing makes sense and the whole things works. God wasn't making up something from whole cloth, well he was, but he wasn't making something that would be fictitious. He was making something that was a real whole machine. The machine of the universe is internally consistent. And so as Corey and I appeal to scientific understanding of these things, it's not an attack on faith. It is a confirmation of the faith that we find by virtue of literal, simple, plain readings of the scripture that's been revealed to us. And it's almost as if scripture somewhere says that it's the glory of

1:08:42 God to conceal things and the glory of princes to reveal them. Princes, of course, don't necessarily just mean princes. And so we are able to use the things God has given us, which would be our intelligence, our wisdom, insight, whatever attribute it happens to be, in order to investigate the world, in order to investigate the things that He created into which he placed us as head. And so science properly understood, I don't want to get into the technicalities there of what science used to mean and what it means now, but it's just knowledge. Science is a way of going about things, obtaining knowledge. It's not contrary to scripture, it does not conflict with scripture, it's not anti-Christian.

1:09:28 Most of the great men in these fields who made the major the major advances that really meant something were Christian. Some of them were monks, you have Mendel, but these were Christian men investigating creation. And that's part of why science really took off in Europe. Science, yes, in some parts of the ancient world advanced to a certain level beyond what Europe was at relatively at the time. But that all stopped many centuries ago, and Europe has been far and away in advance of others since then, because Europeans were looking at the world from a Christian perspective. We were looking at the world as something that is created by an intelligent and loving God in a way that is comprehensible to us.

1:10:22 There are of course things that are beyond our comprehension. At the time they didn't know that because they couldn't delve down into the inner workings of the proton and start looking at it going this doesn't actually make sense to us. They couldn't do that. But they could certainly look at the grand scale of things, the macro scale, and realize: this is a world built by an intelligent God. We are placed in here, in his image, we have intelligence, we can understand the world. And so you can shore up what is said in Scripture with science. Yes, today you have scientists and others who attempt to undermine scripture using science. The problem is most of the people who get high up in these fields wind up confirming the things that are in scripture, and

1:11:09 some of them wind up converting, particularly geneticists and men like that. And God says in scripture, he created the universe to testify to his own glory. And that is the reason that Christians delve into these subjects, not to try to second guess God, but to try to find God's glory in his creation. Because it testifies to it. Everyone, Christian, pagan alike, when they look up at the stars, humans are mesmerized. It's something that has always captivated the human spirit. And the Christian, frankly, the Christian, I think, has forgotten why today. Maybe we may look up and think, oh, well, that's nice. And honestly, the I think the way that most Christians today think is oh look what God did for me.

1:11:58 Look how beautiful God made the universe for me. Look at all the things that God's doing for me. That's not what Scripture says. Scripture talks about the heavens testifying to God's glory, not to man's glory, not to man's entertainment, but to God. The angels in heaven, before they proclaim the greatness of God for his salvation of man, they proclaim his greatness as creator. And that's why we keep talking about the first article because a lot of this stuff is bound up, the first article of the creeds, that God created the heavens and the earth. Because this attack that Satan is under is undertaking today is an attack on the belief that creation, that material, that humans, that us as individuals in the world came from Came from God.

1:12:47 Because if as long as you set stuff in motion, you can say, Well, yeah, there's another explanation for that, you can delete God. And that's what these men do. And they say, Well, no, there wasn't actually a six twenty-four-hour day creation. That doesn't make sense because you know, you got lights coming before stars. Clearly it's kind of made up. No. the and the appeal to science is not to say, look, you should believe Genesis now because science confirms it. Believe scripture literally, and then when the scientists agree, give praise to God for his revelation because we knew it first. Moses knew about quark gluon plasma before the scientists who discovered it. He didn't know the name, he didn't care because it wasn't about

1:13:29 introspecting matter. It was about testifying to God's glory. And that is what the Christian life needs to be about. When we talk about these material things, when we talk about race, and we talk about other things that are in the world, it is not to replace God, it is not to denigrate or to doubt God, it is to say, look at the glory of what God made. Because the bottom line is this: everything in in creation testifies to God's glory, including the diversity of mankind. So when we do the episodes on race, that is testifying to the beauty of God, to the magnificence of our Creator, that men can live at the North Pole and they can live at the equator. That's insane. there's no other species that can pull that off.

1:14:16 We can We can because within our genes, God gave us the ability to evolve in 6,000 years, not evolving from a monkey, but to change in short periods of time in response to the environment. And some of the evolution, some of the genetic changes was which is what it really is, it's just gene expression. Some of those are beneficial, and some of those are degradation because the fall is also in play. Once creation fell, our gene Our genome began to corrupt. Things started going wrong. So looking to scripture is about finding where what God says is made clear for his glory. And that should always be the motivation. Um we're not probably not even going to get into the flood thing, but I'll just point out that there are these places like

1:15:06 the six-day creation and the flood where guys say, oh, well, maybe it was a localized flood. And then we find the same flood strata all over the world. And then they make up other lies. Say, oh well, maybe maybe there was a global flood, but then all the water evaporated and all the bones were left lying around. Like it was it was a big mess and it was really depressing and poor poor No Noah, no no wonder he got drunk. Um you can't read scripture and just make stuff up and so when yeah I I want to point out that when I when I said the thing about Adam maybe being forty years old, that's a pious speculation, but it never goes any further. I would never pin anything on it. And that's where a lot of this stuff goes wrong is that

1:15:48 there are other men who will make up something that's consistent for scripture. It doesn't disagree with it, but then they say, Look what I've discovered, look what I've found, let me build up a whole religion around this thing. Uh they're they're modern scholars who do that. They find some little thing, they piously speculate, at least to begin with, and then they build a whole pantheon of lies on top of it and say, Look, you gotta believe all this stuff, 'cause this is what naturally froze flows from scripture. No. There's no proof of what age Adam was. I have no idea. I could be completely wrong. You shouldn't believe it because I said it. It's just an interesting thing to think about. But it's interesting in the context of God setting the universe in

1:16:27 motion not from infancy. You know, it's the the chicken and egg joke is answered in scripture. God tells us the chicken came first. Adam came first. The entire universe was set in motion as it is today, and then it continued as God had created it to evolve, to expand, to change, and ultimately to proclaim his glory as it goes through the motions of the incredibly unfathomably complex machinery that could only have been conceived of in God's mind. And that's why it testifies to his glory. It's not just about entertaining us. We're mesmerized because it is a natural revelation of the infinite creator who also died on the cross for us as a man and as God, because he loved us in our own place and time

1:17:17 even in the when he's also maintaining this not infinite universe, but it seems like it from our tiny perspective. The same God that knows about every quark inside every atom in the universe, and he knows their count, and he knows where they are, and he knows what they're doing right now. He also knows us individually, and he knows our troubles, and he knows our sins, and he knows our doubts and our fears, and he knows our names. And the elect had their names written in the book of life. God's a very busy God, and he has time for all of because he's more powerful than we can possibly comprehend. And these discussions should ultimately focus on how wonderful it is that a God so infinite and so magisterial made sure that scripture, a

1:18:04 book that you can hold in your hand, can be transmitted through time and be accessible to us today in a way that anyone can understand and can come to faith and be saved. And that actually raises a point that I want to reiterate from an earlier episode because people get this backward all the time. We do not trust God because we trust Scripture. We trust Scripture because we trust God. If you look at things the first way, which is incorrect, that's when you're going to come up with things like the JDEP theory and the idea of the day-age theory and all of these various things that are ways to get around perceived problems in Scripture. Because if you are justifying your belief in God on the basis

1:18:59 of Scripture, then what you are going to do is you are going to try and explain away anything in Scripture that you cannot understand, because you're really basing everything on your reason. But if you trust Scripture because Scripture is the Word of God, then any of these perceived issues aren't a problem. Because it's from God. God is perfectly trustworthy. God literally is truth. God cannot lie is a sufficient way to say it is not technically accurate but we'll go into that another time. And so you trust Scripture because it is the word of God, and you trust it because God is perfectly trustworthy. And so that order matters, which one you trust and why. And there are just a couple of things that I'll make sure

1:19:48 I add to the show notes for us this time. Saint Basil has writings on the hexameron, the hexameron just meeting the the six day creation Hex six hemer day. And I think we can also link to a couple of things about the flood. We have some materials on that that aren't behind a paywall. Which is another problem in and of itself, but for another day. Yeah. And again, we're the point is not to make a defense of oh well look how scripture accords with science. It's what you just said. Scripture accords with God. Scripture is from God, and it is in God we trust, God who made heaven and earth and gave us his word through all time for our edification. If he can speak the universe into existence, he can do anything.

1:20:38 And these men who cast doubt on, oh, well, maybe God really really didn't mean that, maybe God didn't do that. I don't think God could have done that because the math doesn't add up. They don't have God. They don't believe in God. They don't trust in God. They deny him. And if you deny the Father, you deny the Son. If you deny the Son, you have no salvation. And so it's not just about doubts or speculation about scientific things. It's fundamentally about the root of faith itself and whether it's rooted in God through scripture or r whether it's rooted in our own reason and our ability to make sense of things and then hopefully we can bolt God on so that that makes it okay in the end. That's not the Christian life, and flee from any man who even

1:21:26 suggests otherwise. God has two books, as Christians used to say, and should say again. Scripture is one, creation is the other. God is consistent as an author. We will close with a quote from 2 Timothy 3. Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed Knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is breathed out by God, and profitable for teaching, for

1:22:17 reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.