Transcript: Episode 0006

“Perspicuous and Vulgar: On the Clarity of Scripture”

This transcript:
  1. Was machine generated.
  2. Has not been checked for errors.
  3. May not be entirely accurate.
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00:00:00 – 00:00:04:	Thank you for making me recommend for you!

00:00:30 – 00:00:43:	Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast, I am Corey J. Moller, and I'm Woe.

00:00:43 – 00:00:47:	In this episode, we will be discussing Scripture, Quas Scripture, which is to say Scripture

00:00:47 – 00:00:55:	as the inerrant, plenarily verbally inspired Word of God, which Christians must read, believe,

00:00:55 – 00:01:02:	and defend, and which Satan ceaselessly attacks.

00:01:02 – 00:01:07:	If I am not convinced by the testimonies of Scripture and clear rational arguments, for

00:01:07 – 00:01:11:	I believe neither the Pope nor the Council's alone, since it is a fact that they have often

00:01:11 – 00:01:17:	erred and contradicted themselves, then I am by the passages of the Holy Scriptures, which

00:01:17 – 00:01:22:	I have cited, overcome in my conscience and held captive to the Word of God.

00:01:22 – 00:01:27:	Therefore, I can and will retract nothing, because it is neither safe nor helpful to do

00:01:27 – 00:01:29:	anything against conscience.

00:01:29 – 00:01:34:	Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise, God help me, amen.

00:01:34 – 00:01:39:	This is Martin Luther's testimony to the die of arms in April 1521.

00:01:39 – 00:01:45:	I wanted to open with that statement, because it's one of the most famous things that Luther

00:01:45 – 00:01:53:	said that's known, you know, within Lutheranism, it's known across Protestantism at large.

00:01:53 – 00:01:58:	I think probably a lot of people know the phrase, here I stand, somewhat famously, even

00:01:58 – 00:02:00:	if they don't know where it came from.

00:02:00 – 00:02:04:	The reason I want to open with that in particular is that there are a couple points in there

00:02:04 – 00:02:10:	that Luther makes about appealing directly to Scripture and about plain reason, that although

00:02:10 – 00:02:16:	modern Lutherans believe that those words are inheritance and the Luther spirit and those

00:02:16 – 00:02:22:	words are spirit, in fact, it's pretty normal within our churches today to go in the opposite

00:02:22 – 00:02:27:	direction, to obfuscate Scripture and to try to make things more complicated than they

00:02:27 – 00:02:34:	are, and to either ignore a rational argument, so perhaps even to say that reason has no

00:02:34 – 00:02:42:	place in the faith, and as a result, when someone, especially a layman, points to Scripture,

00:02:42 – 00:02:48:	we are frequently shouted down or mocked or belittled or reprimanded as though we have

00:02:48 – 00:02:50:	done something wrong.

00:02:50 – 00:02:55:	So this episode today, we're talking about scriptural inarrency, about the plain reading

00:02:55 – 00:02:59:	of Scripture, about the plain words of Scripture, and whether that's actually true, whether it

00:02:59 – 00:03:02:	is true, the Scripture is plain.

00:03:02 – 00:03:07:	I've made a point in numerous past episodes from the Provincial Album, and I'll probably

00:03:07 – 00:03:13:	say it in every episode, Scripture is clear, and when I've been saying that, it is a very

00:03:13 – 00:03:18:	deliberate needle driven into the eyes of these men who think that Scripture is not clear,

00:03:18 – 00:03:24:	who think that when we read these words on the page that are given to us by God, transmitted

00:03:24 – 00:03:29:	through time miraculously, and by human hands at the same time, we can't really be sure

00:03:29 – 00:03:31:	what we're reading.

00:03:31 – 00:03:37:	And so to say Scripture is clear about anything is defiance against that spirit.

00:03:37 – 00:03:43:	Before we get into the nature of reading Scripture, I think it's important to begin with the

00:03:43 – 00:03:48:	point in time where the lady was actually first able to read Scripture because one of the

00:03:48 – 00:03:54:	things that was lost in the Western Church was access to the Word of God as Rome continued

00:03:54 – 00:03:58:	to preserve Latin as the soul language people didn't speak Latin anymore.

00:03:58 – 00:04:04:	And so only the very educated would know Latin, and the books themselves were incredibly

00:04:04 – 00:04:08:	expensive because they were all andridden.

00:04:08 – 00:04:13:	So it was really a breakthrough for the first time, particularly in English, when the Word

00:04:13 – 00:04:17:	of God was translated into English, and so we're going to begin there.

00:04:17 – 00:04:20:	And so of course, if we begin there, we have to begin with really three men that would

00:04:20 – 00:04:24:	be Wycliffe, Huss and Tindale.

00:04:24 – 00:04:29:	Two of them, the latter two, were executed for their efforts.

00:04:29 – 00:04:32:	Wycliffe did actually manage to live out his life.

00:04:32 – 00:04:38:	And the things for which the Roman Church persecuted these men, yes, they had disagreements

00:04:38 – 00:04:40:	theologically, but that was not the core of it.

00:04:40 – 00:04:45:	The core was that these men wanted the Scriptures to be accessible to the laity, which is to

00:04:45 – 00:04:47:	say they wanted it to be in the vernacular.

00:04:47 – 00:04:53:	As mentioned, having it in Latin, when no one speaks Latin anymore, except for the tiny

00:04:53 – 00:05:01:	upper educated crust of society, is not making the Word of God accessible to the common

00:05:01 – 00:05:02:	people of your nation.

00:05:02 – 00:05:04:	And Scripture is very clear.

00:05:04 – 00:05:08:	You are supposed to study and discuss and think about the Word of God when you rise, when

00:05:08 – 00:05:09:	you go to bed.

00:05:09 – 00:05:15:	As you walk by the way at dinner, all of these times you are supposed to discuss these things.

00:05:15 – 00:05:21:	You cannot do that if you don't have the Scriptures in a language who understand.

00:05:21 – 00:05:28:	And so in the case of Wycliffe, who has one of the first English translations of the Bible,

00:05:28 – 00:05:31:	and he translated it, his associates may have translated the Old Testament, but he certainly

00:05:31 – 00:05:34:	translated the New Testament.

00:05:34 – 00:05:40:	And so the Roman Catholic Church didn't manage to kill him, as mentioned previously.

00:05:40 – 00:05:46:	He managed to die a natural death, however, just to show the vindictiveness and the spitefulness

00:05:46 – 00:05:48:	of the Roman Church.

00:05:48 – 00:05:53:	They dug up his bones, burned them, and then tossed the ashes into the river in order to

00:05:53 – 00:05:58:	make a statement about their disagreement with him, which is to say that they did not want

00:05:58 – 00:06:01:	the common people to have the Scriptures in their hands in a way they could understand

00:06:01 – 00:06:06:	them, because that challenged the power of Rome.

00:06:06 – 00:06:10:	If the Scriptures aren't a language that only those associated with Rome, which at

00:06:10 – 00:06:15:	the time would have essentially been, only priests would have known Latin, or the handful

00:06:15 – 00:06:20:	of men who were highly educated at universities reading texts in Latin.

00:06:20 – 00:06:25:	Rome could have exercised a great deal of control then, and in addition, Rome objected to

00:06:25 – 00:06:30:	any attempts to produce the Bible really at all.

00:06:30 – 00:06:35:	Wasn't just producing the Bible in a language that was understood by the common people in

00:06:35 – 00:06:39:	the vernacular, if you attempted to print and distribute the Bible in Latin, they still

00:06:39 – 00:06:43:	would have killed you for that, because you would have been making it accessible not

00:06:43 – 00:06:47:	to the common man, but outside of Rome's control.

00:06:47 – 00:06:54:	And it's that control that Rome wanted to exercise, and that's basically sacerdotalism.

00:06:54 – 00:07:03:	It's the belief that the priesthood in the Roman sense here, they act as a go-between

00:07:03 – 00:07:05:	roar, the laity and God.

00:07:05 – 00:07:08:	The only way you can get to God is through your priests.

00:07:08 – 00:07:12:	That's basically the view of Rome at the time.

00:07:12 – 00:07:15:	It's still somewhat the view of Rome today, of course, it's complicated by the fact that

00:07:15 – 00:07:18:	Rome also seems to think that you can go through Mary or the Saints, but that is a separate

00:07:18 – 00:07:20:	issue.

00:07:20 – 00:07:25:	But it's the sacerdotalism that lies at the core of the problems that we will be discussing

00:07:25 – 00:07:27:	today.

00:07:27 – 00:07:33:	Because when you have pastors or priests or even theologians who are arguing, know the

00:07:33 – 00:07:39:	common man, know you, cannot understand the scriptures, you cannot read them for yourself,

00:07:39 – 00:07:40:	and understand what they mean.

00:07:40 – 00:07:43:	I have to do it for you.

00:07:43 – 00:07:47:	All of that falls under the umbrella of sacerdotalism.

00:07:47 – 00:07:53:	There is a fantastic quote that we found from one of Wycliffe's opponents who, in their

00:07:53 – 00:07:59:	hand-bringing way, they stated, the jewel of the clergy has become the toy of the laity.

00:07:59 – 00:08:01:	They're referring to scripture there.

00:08:01 – 00:08:06:	God's word, which was the jewel of the clergy, meaning them, had become the toy of the laity.

00:08:06 – 00:08:14:	They were so terrified of the idea of the common Christian abusing or misusing scripture

00:08:14 – 00:08:17:	that they were willing to kill men to keep them away from them.

00:08:17 – 00:08:22:	Well, and of course, they were, because even if you had it in Latin, particularly if you

00:08:22 – 00:08:26:	had it in the vernacular, but even if you had it in Latin, then educated man could

00:08:26 – 00:08:32:	start reading the scriptures and start seeing things like, say, 2nd Timothy 316.

00:08:32 – 00:08:36:	All scriptures, breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction,

00:08:36 – 00:08:37:	and for training and righteousness.

00:08:37 – 00:08:41:	If you start reading these things that are all throughout scripture, it's not in just

00:08:41 – 00:08:45:	one place or a handful, it's everywhere beginning to end, Genesis to Revelation.

00:08:45 – 00:08:50:	If you start seeing these things, these men will start asking questions.

00:08:50 – 00:08:54:	Why have we restricted this from the laity?

00:08:54 – 00:08:56:	Why do they not have access to this?

00:08:56 – 00:08:59:	Why do the priests not want me to read the Word of God?

00:08:59 – 00:09:04:	If the Word of God is telling me to read the Word of God?

00:09:04 – 00:09:09:	And it's because Rome wanted to maintain that authority, because the authority of Rome

00:09:09 – 00:09:16:	is built on a handful of claims, one of which being that the Pope essentially is Christ

00:09:16 – 00:09:21:	on earth, and they will actually literally use those words from time to time.

00:09:21 – 00:09:28:	And so if scripture is the Word of God, God speaking directly to whomever is reading

00:09:28 – 00:09:32:	or listening, then you don't need this go between.

00:09:32 – 00:09:37:	You don't need the Pope, and then you can start to question the Pope's power, which is

00:09:37 – 00:09:41:	exactly what Rome, of course, did not want.

00:09:41 – 00:09:48:	When Rome hated the fact that the scriptures had been translated into the vernacular,

00:09:48 – 00:09:54:	that when they executed John Huss, they actually used Wycliffe's Bible as kindling on his

00:09:54 – 00:09:57:	pyre for his stake.

00:09:57 – 00:10:02:	They burned the Bible to murder a man for preaching and speaking from a Bible that they

00:10:02 – 00:10:05:	didn't want people to have access to.

00:10:06 – 00:10:14:	If you look at these men in history, Wycliffe, Huss and Tyndale, they did make doctrinal

00:10:14 – 00:10:15:	errors.

00:10:15 – 00:10:21:	We're not saying that Rome was wrong about the errors that these men made, but I think

00:10:21 – 00:10:25:	that that's actually part of the point of why it's so important.

00:10:25 – 00:10:31:	This scripture be accessible to everyone, because for these men, prior to the Reformation,

00:10:31 – 00:10:35:	Wycliffe was in the mid-1300s.

00:10:35 – 00:10:44:	When they undertook translating scripture into the vernacular, they became outlaws.

00:10:44 – 00:10:48:	They effectively became outside of the church, which meant that they didn't have the support

00:10:48 – 00:10:53:	of other Christians in the establishment, and that's not normal.

00:10:53 – 00:10:56:	Christians are not supposed to be solo.

00:10:56 – 00:11:02:	When we talk about scripture and air and sea and about the fact that the word is fruitful

00:11:02 – 00:11:08:	for these things, it does not follow that we want every man sitting under a tree by

00:11:08 – 00:11:13:	himself reading his Bible and never having any contact with other Christians.

00:11:13 – 00:11:15:	These things are meant to be discussed.

00:11:15 – 00:11:17:	God says that iron sharpens iron.

00:11:17 – 00:11:22:	That's talking about doctrine as much as anything, and there are numerous places in scripture

00:11:22 – 00:11:26:	where it says, particularly in the New Testament, there must be disagreements among you so that

00:11:26 – 00:11:29:	the truth may be known.

00:11:29 – 00:11:36:	When doctrine is reasoned out properly and argued from scripture, that is what God wants

00:11:36 – 00:11:37:	of us.

00:11:37 – 00:11:43:	He wants us to have scripture, to read scripture, to discuss it, and to argue, to figure

00:11:43 – 00:11:46:	out who is right.

00:11:46 – 00:11:50:	What we're going to get to in the second half of this episode is that one of the main

00:11:50 – 00:11:56:	attacks today, for a while, the attack was, well, scripture is not real, or it's true,

00:11:56 – 00:11:58:	but it's not accurate.

00:11:58 – 00:12:04:	There's some of that today, but it's sort of morphing into a thing where you can just

00:12:04 – 00:12:07:	say, that's your interpretation.

00:12:07 – 00:12:11:	You have your Bible and I have mine, and we can just believe what we want.

00:12:11 – 00:12:17:	As long as we confess Jesus in our heart, it's all good, man.

00:12:17 – 00:12:23:	The papers and others repeat the silly lie that there are 30,000 denominations today.

00:12:23 – 00:12:25:	It's pure nonsense for one thing.

00:12:25 – 00:12:32:	There may be a couple dozen branches that have discernible, very particular beliefs that

00:12:32 – 00:12:38:	differ from each other, and all the rest is basically just flavors of Baptist in one or

00:12:38 – 00:12:39:	two others.

00:12:39 – 00:12:44:	We should also point out that the claims from Rome and the East, when it comes to unity,

00:12:44 – 00:12:48:	are complete fabrications out of whole cloth.

00:12:48 – 00:12:49:	They are not unified.

00:12:49 – 00:12:56:	You have various groups within each of those umbrella church to use the term loosely bodies

00:12:56 – 00:12:57:	that don't agree with each other.

00:12:57 – 00:13:04:	They have categorical disagreements on doctrine from, in the case of the Eastern Orthodox,

00:13:04 – 00:13:10:	one national church to another, or even one body within a single nation to another.

00:13:10 – 00:13:16:	The unity they supposedly have and they try to make as an argument against Protestants

00:13:16 – 00:13:17:	is just complete nonsense.

00:13:17 – 00:13:19:	The facts do not bear it out.

00:13:19 – 00:13:25:	We can throw in the, for the show notes, the picture showing the relationship of the

00:13:25 – 00:13:29:	various Eastern Orthodox churches who are and are not in communion with one another over

00:13:29 – 00:13:31:	various things.

00:13:31 – 00:13:34:	It's as complicated as the org chart for any large international corporation, if not more

00:13:34 – 00:13:35:	so.

00:13:35 – 00:13:39:	Some of them are not in communion with each other.

00:13:39 – 00:13:43:	They don't have anathematize each other, but they say, yeah, we're not even of the same

00:13:43 – 00:13:44:	belief.

00:13:44 – 00:13:48:	That falls just under the umbrella of quote-unquote orthodoxy.

00:13:48 – 00:13:49:	Yes.

00:13:49 – 00:13:53:	You've got the same thing going on in Rome with those.

00:13:53 – 00:13:55:	It depends on how far you're willing to extend the umbrella.

00:13:55 – 00:13:59:	Are those who think the seat of Peter is vacant, still Roman Catholic?

00:13:59 – 00:14:00:	Are they not?

00:14:00 – 00:14:03:	Are the Jesuits and the Dominicans the same?

00:14:03 – 00:14:05:	It's just, it's never ending.

00:14:05 – 00:14:07:	Their claims of unity are complete nonsense.

00:14:07 – 00:14:13:	And you mentioned the word solo versus, say, perhaps solo.

00:14:13 – 00:14:19:	It does bring up the issue of most people don't even understand what solo-scriptura means

00:14:19 – 00:14:24:	anymore because no one knows Latin, which is funny that we're talking about translating

00:14:24 – 00:14:30:	things into the vernacular, and we discover a problem related to people not knowing Latin.

00:14:30 – 00:14:32:	But it is what it is.

00:14:32 – 00:14:36:	People look at solo-scriptura, and they won't know the term because people aren't taught

00:14:36 – 00:14:37:	even English anymore.

00:14:37 – 00:14:39:	They think it's the nomative.

00:14:39 – 00:14:42:	And so they think it's scripture alone, but that's not what it is.

00:14:42 – 00:14:43:	It's in the ablative.

00:14:43 – 00:14:45:	It is bi-scriptural alone.

00:14:45 – 00:14:52:	And what we mean when we say solo-scriptura is that scripture is the norming norm.

00:14:52 – 00:14:53:	It is the norma-normans.

00:14:53 – 00:14:57:	It is the standard by which all doctrine is tested.

00:14:57 – 00:15:03:	It does not mean that we take only scripture.

00:15:03 – 00:15:05:	We still look to our fathers in the faith.

00:15:05 – 00:15:07:	We still look to tradition.

00:15:07 – 00:15:12:	We look to all of these good things that have been preserved by the grace of God.

00:15:12 – 00:15:15:	They are just not the ultimate authority.

00:15:15 – 00:15:21:	And so when you said that these men were separated from the church, that's true, and that

00:15:21 – 00:15:27:	is exactly as you said, unnatural Christians are supposed to live within the context of

00:15:27 – 00:15:33:	the church, in a Christian society, in a Christian nation, in Christian families.

00:15:33 – 00:15:37:	And part of that is you have to have the word.

00:15:37 – 00:15:42:	Because we're going right back to headship as we always do, it is incumbent on the master

00:15:42 – 00:15:47:	of the house, which is to say the father, the oldest man in the house typically.

00:15:47 – 00:15:52:	It is incumbent on him to know the word, and to see that those in his house are instructed

00:15:52 – 00:15:53:	in it.

00:15:53 – 00:15:58:	And that's why you have the admonitions in the small catechism as the father of the

00:15:58 – 00:16:01:	house is supposed to teach.

00:16:01 – 00:16:06:	And also, he is supposed to question those in his household and see if they are actually

00:16:06 – 00:16:11:	learning this material, because one day the father is going to stand before his father

00:16:11 – 00:16:16:	in heaven and have to answer for what he did or did not do with regard to the authority

00:16:16 – 00:16:19:	he was given on earth.

00:16:19 – 00:16:24:	And the reason the discussion of scriptural and errancy and its suitableness for teaching

00:16:24 – 00:16:30:	is so important, is that particularly for new believers coming to the faith, or even

00:16:30 – 00:16:35:	for someone who's not a Christian yet, but they think they want to be a Christian and

00:16:35 – 00:16:37:	they want to know what does that mean.

00:16:37 – 00:16:44:	You look at this enormous menu of biting, bickering, angering, angry, in many cases killing

00:16:44 – 00:16:49:	each other for 1,500 years or more groups that all call themselves Christian, and every

00:16:49 – 00:16:52:	single one of them says that all the others are wrong.

00:16:52 – 00:16:55:	How is anyone to know how to make sense of that?

00:16:55 – 00:17:01:	And the easy thing for people to do is to throw up their hands and say, either to pick one,

00:17:01 – 00:17:06:	which is one of the reasons that I started, I mentioned last week that I had rebranded

00:17:06 – 00:17:09:	and started talking a lot more about my faith.

00:17:09 – 00:17:14:	And particularly about being a Lutheran, I did so because I saw more and more of men,

00:17:14 – 00:17:20:	the men on the right of the political spear, being attracted to Christianity and having

00:17:20 – 00:17:22:	this very problem.

00:17:22 – 00:17:26:	They see all the bickering, they see all the options, they don't know what to do.

00:17:26 – 00:17:32:	And they're either not Christian or they're barely Christian, and so they don't have

00:17:32 – 00:17:38:	any frame of reference for evaluating scriptural or doctrinal claims.

00:17:38 – 00:17:43:	All they can do is sort of look at the superficial aspects of things.

00:17:43 – 00:17:49:	And what I saw years ago and what's continuing to this day is that a great many men who want

00:17:49 – 00:17:53:	to become Christian because they see, even if they don't understand God, they don't understand

00:17:53 – 00:17:57:	Jesus and justification, they understand the Satan's real.

00:17:57 – 00:18:02:	They understand that evil is a real thing and that it is supernatural.

00:18:02 – 00:18:06:	It's not just that there are bad people, some of which are in some ethnic groups, but

00:18:06 – 00:18:08:	they're bad people in general.

00:18:08 – 00:18:15:	It's the, they see that those people cannot solely be bad because they had bad parents or

00:18:15 – 00:18:19:	they had a bad religion or a bad upbringing.

00:18:19 – 00:18:23:	There's an animating spirit that is clear in the world.

00:18:23 – 00:18:27:	And in many cases, it's only clear to unbelievers.

00:18:27 – 00:18:31:	Christians don't even see it anymore because we just say, oh, we're all sinners.

00:18:31 – 00:18:34:	Unbelievers can see more clearly than us that this is a spiritual war that we are in

00:18:34 – 00:18:36:	the mid-stuff.

00:18:36 – 00:18:41:	And so these men who don't know Jesus, but they do know that Satan has to be a real thing.

00:18:41 – 00:18:45:	They look at the churches and so one of the tests is, well, which one's biggest?

00:18:45 – 00:18:47:	The answer is Rome.

00:18:47 – 00:18:49:	Rome has more than a billion adherents worldwide.

00:18:49 – 00:18:52:	So obviously, I mean, they're the winner by default, clearly.

00:18:52 – 00:18:56:	I mean, that's the, that's the churchiest church you can go for.

00:18:56 – 00:18:59:	And then when you actually look at Rome, they have smells and bells.

00:18:59 – 00:19:03:	They have great optics, you know, they have, they have vestments.

00:19:03 – 00:19:06:	They have beautiful buildings.

00:19:06 – 00:19:09:	They have history.

00:19:09 – 00:19:12:	They have historic claims, some of which are actually true many are not.

00:19:12 – 00:19:17:	But, you know, again, even if some of their historical claims are not true, if someone

00:19:17 – 00:19:22:	is coming to the church as a blank slate, they're going to go for which everyone has more

00:19:22 – 00:19:24:	historical claims.

00:19:24 – 00:19:29:	And so it appeals to them, the Rome and that the East will say, we're older than those

00:19:29 – 00:19:30:	other guys.

00:19:30 – 00:19:31:	That Protestant stuff, that's new.

00:19:31 – 00:19:35:	That started in the 1500s.

00:19:35 – 00:19:41:	And the reason I started talking about my Lutheran faith was to say, hey, the Reformation

00:19:41 – 00:19:42:	was just that.

00:19:42 – 00:19:44:	It was not a revolution.

00:19:44 – 00:19:48:	It was not an overthrow of the church to replace it.

00:19:48 – 00:19:54:	It was a Reformation of the church as she had been centuries prior and a restoration

00:19:54 – 00:20:01:	of beliefs which had been once held within the church and then were lost precisely

00:20:01 – 00:20:05:	because the people were prohibited from having access to Scripture.

00:20:05 – 00:20:09:	And that's actually what happened to Luther, although he was a scholar, he was, he was

00:20:09 – 00:20:14:	reading the word, but it wasn't until he actually went back and actually really read

00:20:14 – 00:20:21:	Romans and Galatians that he had the breakthrough that what he had been taught in his own churches

00:20:21 – 00:20:25:	and what he'd been teaching as a, as a teacher in the church was actually false.

00:20:25 – 00:20:27:	It was contrary to Scripture.

00:20:27 – 00:20:35:	And so the Reformation didn't begin in a fever dream of Luther or in his desire to be

00:20:35 – 00:20:36:	a revolutionary.

00:20:36 – 00:20:39:	It became, it began in the word of God.

00:20:39 – 00:20:45:	It began in a man reading Scripture for the first time clearly and saying, hey, this

00:20:45 – 00:20:48:	isn't what what God told us.

00:20:48 – 00:20:51:	And if that's the case, then something has to be done.

00:20:51 – 00:20:55:	And we're in a similar situation today and so we're talking about why Scripture is both

00:20:55 – 00:20:58:	an errant and why it's accessible.

00:20:58 – 00:21:03:	It's not a mystery to us and it's very important that we combat anyone who says, oh, it's,

00:21:03 – 00:21:08:	it's really confusing because when people are coming into the church and they're looking

00:21:08 – 00:21:13:	for a church, if they see us making those claims, hey, they're not going to be interested

00:21:13 – 00:21:16:	in us because we're, we're equivocating.

00:21:16 – 00:21:21:	We're saying, we're saying the truth is unknowable that it's just all up for grabs and whatever

00:21:21 – 00:21:22:	you feel, man.

00:21:22 – 00:21:25:	And they know that that is a worldly thing.

00:21:25 – 00:21:30:	We have ceased to recognize that we again, and we talked about the genealogy of ideas.

00:21:30 – 00:21:34:	A pagan can look at the one, at the way Christians talk in our churches and see that a lot of

00:21:34 – 00:21:38:	it can't be Christian because it's modern.

00:21:38 – 00:21:39:	It's a modern ethos.

00:21:39 – 00:21:47:	It's a modern philosophical approach to something that if the claims are true is ancient, is,

00:21:47 – 00:21:49:	is originated from God.

00:21:49 – 00:21:51:	It's originated from a supernatural source.

00:21:51 – 00:21:56:	And so it's not going to be buffeted by the whims of philosophy as it evolves over

00:21:56 – 00:21:57:	the centuries.

00:21:57 – 00:22:03:	And so having these discussions and talking about the clarity of Scripture is not just about,

00:22:03 – 00:22:05:	it's not about winning arguments on the internet.

00:22:05 – 00:22:08:	It's not about seeing who's going to be more right.

00:22:08 – 00:22:15:	It's about reaching souls that are lost and are groping in the darkness towards God in

00:22:15 – 00:22:19:	a way that, as Christians, Scripture says that's clearly that's possible, that it is

00:22:19 – 00:22:23:	possible for people to grop their way towards God.

00:22:23 – 00:22:24:	You can't save yourself.

00:22:24 – 00:22:28:	You're not going to come to faith because you try really hard because you think about

00:22:28 – 00:22:29:	it.

00:22:29 – 00:22:34:	Faith is given as a gift through the hearing of the Word, which is Scripture.

00:22:34 – 00:22:42:	So pointing to Scripture is the way to save souls and denying Scripture outright or denying

00:22:42 – 00:22:45:	acts to Scripture is a way to damn souls.

00:22:45 – 00:22:48:	And that's why this conversation is important.

00:22:48 – 00:22:53:	It's worth actually emphasizing what you said about Luther.

00:22:53 – 00:22:58:	Luther was a monk and he still did not have access to Scripture, not ready access until

00:22:58 – 00:23:04:	he had been a monk for a while because even from those who were in the church being trained

00:23:04 – 00:23:11:	to teach in the church, they were largely using secondary and tertiary materials instead

00:23:11 – 00:23:13:	of Scripture.

00:23:13 – 00:23:18:	That's how far Rome had corrupted things by the time of the Reformation.

00:23:18 – 00:23:23:	And why the Reformation was absolutely necessary.

00:23:23 – 00:23:26:	And that's something that's just that's unfathomable to us today.

00:23:26 – 00:23:30:	We can't even understand not having the Bible because like I have, I don't know, I've

00:23:30 – 00:23:33:	probably done some Bibles in my house and I've done it.

00:23:33 – 00:23:34:	At least.

00:23:34 – 00:23:35:	Yeah.

00:23:35 – 00:23:39:	And I have the Bible on every one of my devices too and numerous translations and, you

00:23:39 – 00:23:46:	know, it's, we're so buried in Scripture that we take it for granted to something that,

00:23:46 – 00:23:51:	but in that day it was something that men literally died to get their hands on as they

00:23:51 – 00:23:52:	should.

00:23:52 – 00:23:56:	It was worth dying to get their hands on a single Bible.

00:23:56 – 00:23:59:	For the common man, the only time you would see a Bible is if there happened to be an

00:23:59 – 00:24:01:	altar Bible in your church.

00:24:01 – 00:24:05:	And it would be a Latin, so it would be of no use to them.

00:24:05 – 00:24:07:	Yeah, it would be an ornate Latin.

00:24:07 – 00:24:09:	You wouldn't even be allowed anywhere near it.

00:24:09 – 00:24:14:	So even if you had been able to get near it, it would have been useless to you.

00:24:14 – 00:24:17:	But you were allowed to view it from afar at best.

00:24:17 – 00:24:22:	And now, you know, I have logos open here in the background, my computer with however many,

00:24:22 – 00:24:27:	probably a hundred different translations and various languages and diglots and triglots

00:24:27 – 00:24:31:	and interlinear and the wealth of materials we have today.

00:24:31 – 00:24:37:	And it reminds me of a comment from Luther about men in his day, how little of an excuse

00:24:37 – 00:24:40:	the pastor teachers had for neglecting.

00:24:40 – 00:24:42:	It's from the large gaticism.

00:24:42 – 00:24:46:	Now little excuse they had for neglecting their duties and properly learning and studying

00:24:46 – 00:24:50:	the word considering what they had at their disposal.

00:24:50 – 00:24:58:	Now imagine what we have at our disposal and how little fathers and even pastors, and

00:24:58 – 00:25:04:	if we have any theologians, bother to learn about these things, despite the immense wealth

00:25:04 – 00:25:10:	of material that we have on hand, it's really just unforgivable.

00:25:11 – 00:25:14:	It is a tragedy.

00:25:14 – 00:25:20:	And so as we start talking specifically about the issue, I want to begin with a particular

00:25:20 – 00:25:25:	word that's used very often in these discussions and that word is interpret.

00:25:25 – 00:25:32:	So if I'm talking about something from scripture and I talk to you and you have a different

00:25:32 – 00:25:38:	idea and I don't agree with your idea and we trade proof texts back and forth, at some

00:25:38 – 00:25:41:	point one of us is probably going to say if we're taking cheap shots, you and I, Corey

00:25:41 – 00:25:45:	wouldn't do this, but it's very common in Christian discourse for somebody to say,

00:25:45 – 00:25:48:	well, that's just your interpretation.

00:25:48 – 00:25:54:	And that's a word that's incredibly dangerous and so I want to begin by focusing on what

00:25:54 – 00:25:59:	does the word interpret or interpretation mean in scripture?

00:25:59 – 00:26:01:	What does it mean today?

00:26:01 – 00:26:03:	And where did it come into the English language?

00:26:03 – 00:26:08:	So we're going to start in the middle with the definition of the word and the etymology.

00:26:08 – 00:26:15:	One of the proper definitions of it is to expound the meeting of to render clear or explicit

00:26:15 – 00:26:22:	and it came to us via old French from Latin interpretari meaning to explain, to expound

00:26:22 – 00:26:23:	and to understand.

00:26:23 – 00:26:30:	Now when you say interpret in terms of Christian dialogue, in view of the Latin root of the

00:26:30 – 00:26:32:	word, that's entirely fair.

00:26:32 – 00:26:36:	The problem is that no one knows the Latin root and that's not what they're actually

00:26:36 – 00:26:38:	talking about.

00:26:38 – 00:26:43:	The word when we say interpretation today is much closer to the word that's actually

00:26:43 – 00:26:50:	in scripture and so when you look in scripture for where interpret or interpretation is

00:26:50 – 00:26:53:	translated in English, it's also correctly translated.

00:26:53 – 00:26:58:	Now I'm not trying to set the modern word against the scriptural word because it's a

00:26:58 – 00:27:05:	good translation but it's important to note that when interpretation is discussed in

00:27:05 – 00:27:09:	scripture, it's never used the way we use it today ever.

00:27:09 – 00:27:13:	There are four things that are interpreted in scripture.

00:27:13 – 00:27:18:	The first is visions and dreams as in the case of Joseph when he was translating the

00:27:18 – 00:27:20:	dreams for his master.

00:27:20 – 00:27:27:	The second is signs and wonders as in the case where Daniel translated for Balthazar,

00:27:27 – 00:27:36:	and many, many Teclupars and meant the third is prophecies which are interpreted by

00:27:36 – 00:27:42:	a prophet before they come to fruition and prophecy is an interesting case because once

00:27:42 – 00:27:46:	a prophecy has been fulfilled, it is generally accessible.

00:27:46 – 00:27:52:	The plain reading of the prophecy is going to match up with what was prophesied but until

00:27:52 – 00:27:58:	such a time as God makes manifest his will described in that prophecy, you aren't necessarily

00:27:58 – 00:28:01:	going to know what it's going to look like.

00:28:01 – 00:28:05:	And we talked about that in the previous episode where we talked about Genesis 315 and the

00:28:05 – 00:28:11:	promise of the Messiah and how that was a less fleshed out version of that promise than

00:28:11 – 00:28:17:	was found in Isaiah where he talked about the Messiah being born of a virgin and of us being

00:28:17 – 00:28:19:	healed by his stripes.

00:28:19 – 00:28:25:	Those were also prophecies that they were much more explicit prophecies, both fleshing

00:28:25 – 00:28:30:	out the earlier one and pointing to the ultimate fruition.

00:28:30 – 00:28:38:	So prophecy is interpreted in advance, it's not interpreted in arrears.

00:28:38 – 00:28:43:	The last one is interpretation of foreign languages, it's seen most often in the New Testament

00:28:43 – 00:28:49:	where at Pentecost and also in the churches where some were given the gift of tongues,

00:28:49 – 00:28:54:	others were given the gift of interpretation.

00:28:54 – 00:28:59:	Now it's important to note that in all four of these cases, what is being interpreted?

00:28:59 – 00:29:03:	It's not the way we talk about interpreting scripture.

00:29:03 – 00:29:09:	It's talking about interpreting something that's unknowable to the observer or to the reader.

00:29:09 – 00:29:14:	When you have a vision or dream, the reason that the prophets who were given the gift of

00:29:14 – 00:29:20:	interpreting those visions and dreams had to do so is that it was symbolic language.

00:29:20 – 00:29:24:	When you have the seven fat cows and the seven skinny cows and who knows what it meant,

00:29:24 – 00:29:29:	it wasn't accessible via reason to interpret that dream.

00:29:29 – 00:29:37:	It was a gift of God that the gift of the vision was interpreted by the gift of interpretation.

00:29:37 – 00:29:43:	So in scripture, that's a kind of case in signs and wonders and the four languages,

00:29:43 – 00:29:52:	and prophecy, it is a gift from God to interpret the unknowable and to something knowable.

00:29:52 – 00:29:57:	When we look in scripture, we see, well, this is what interpretation means.

00:29:57 – 00:30:00:	In our own minds, I think that sort of becomes rooted.

00:30:00 – 00:30:05:	Then when we say to each other, well, that's your interpretation.

00:30:05 – 00:30:10:	Even if we're not necessarily thinking it fundamentally, that's what's actually coming

00:30:10 – 00:30:16:	out of our mouths is that, well, you're, you're scrying in the guts of scripture and

00:30:16 – 00:30:20:	you have some, you have this pile of stuff and you've turned it into something that you

00:30:20 – 00:30:25:	think, but when I rifle through those guts, I find something different.

00:30:25 – 00:30:31:	I find another interpretation, and that's simply not what the word means today when we're

00:30:31 – 00:30:35:	talking about it's not a good word to use in Christian discourse.

00:30:35 – 00:30:40:	If I had a book in front of me and we were sitting side by side, and I handed you the book

00:30:40 – 00:30:46:	or the comic book even, I said, like, can you interpret this for me?

00:30:46 – 00:30:49:	And you looked at it and it was English, you'd stare at me and laugh like, what are you

00:30:49 – 00:30:50:	talking about?

00:30:50 – 00:30:52:	Why do you need me to interpret it?

00:30:52 – 00:30:56:	So we instinctively know that interpret doesn't mean what it meant in Latin.

00:30:56 – 00:30:59:	It doesn't mean to explain or expound anymore.

00:30:59 – 00:31:04:	When we say interpret, we're saying we're beginning with something unknowable and turning

00:31:04 – 00:31:06:	into something noble.

00:31:06 – 00:31:11:	And that's the real danger when we're addressing scripture because one of the common attacks

00:31:11 – 00:31:17:	on scripture itself is the denial that it's clear, the denial that what the words that

00:31:17 – 00:31:23:	you have in front of you can possibly be understood, either unless you're a pastor or

00:31:23 – 00:31:28:	unless you know the original languages, or maybe they can't be understood at all.

00:31:29 – 00:31:35:	The only possible fruit of having access to scripture is numerous conflicting interpretations

00:31:35 – 00:31:40:	with no tiebreaker, with no one to say, this is right and this is wrong.

00:31:40 – 00:31:44:	And that's why it's so important to make sure that we're speaking clearly when we're

00:31:44 – 00:31:49:	talking about scripture because when we talk about scripture on this podcast, we're

00:31:49 – 00:31:52:	not interpreting anything, you know, unless we translate.

00:31:52 – 00:31:57:	So for example, the quote that I gave begin with from Luther, core, you translated that

00:31:57 – 00:32:00:	from the original German because the version I had was in a meme.

00:32:00 – 00:32:05:	And I don't want to make claims from memes, even, you know, it was a pretty good translation,

00:32:05 – 00:32:09:	but you gave one that's probably a little less common that's what's typically quoted,

00:32:09 – 00:32:13:	but is a faithful interpretation of Luther's original words.

00:32:13 – 00:32:17:	That was an interpretation because you started in German, which I can't read and I didn't

00:32:17 – 00:32:20:	have access to the source material readily.

00:32:20 – 00:32:23:	And you gave me something in English, that is interpretation.

00:32:23 – 00:32:24:	But that's disgusting.

00:32:24 – 00:32:25:	What's in scripture?

00:32:25 – 00:32:26:	We're not interpreting.

00:32:26 – 00:32:27:	We're using reason.

00:32:27 – 00:32:33:	Yeah, we do actually retain the Latin sense because we do still have the word interpreter.

00:32:33 – 00:32:37:	So we retain it there because when you use an interpreter, it literally means someone

00:32:37 – 00:32:42:	who is translating from a language you do not know into a language you do know.

00:32:42 – 00:32:48:	And so if we think about it, we do still have the sense of the term, but when people

00:32:48 – 00:32:53:	use interpretation, what they really mean when it comes to scripture and things like

00:32:53 – 00:33:00:	that is personal interpretation, which leads us into personal truth, which is not a thing.

00:33:00 – 00:33:02:	Something is true or false.

00:33:02 – 00:33:05:	These are basic laws of logic.

00:33:05 – 00:33:09:	It is not a personal truth because truth is not personal.

00:33:09 – 00:33:10:	Truth is truth.

00:33:10 – 00:33:17:	A statement is true or false and it is so for everyone at all times in all places or

00:33:17 – 00:33:20:	else it's not true.

00:33:20 – 00:33:30:	And additionally here, we have the issue of, when it comes to truth, let's look at translation.

00:33:30 – 00:33:39:	The famous part of that Luther wrote is, if I were to interpret that as Luther saying

00:33:39 – 00:33:45:	I would like an orange juice, please, that's not an interpretation, that's just wrong.

00:33:45 – 00:33:48:	And so there is an actual truth content there.

00:33:48 – 00:33:49:	It means something.

00:33:49 – 00:33:53:	And if you translate it accurately, you are relaying that truth.

00:33:53 – 00:33:55:	You are properly interpreting it.

00:33:55 – 00:33:58:	But if you mis-translate it, you aren't interpreting.

00:33:58 – 00:34:01:	You are misleading.

00:34:01 – 00:34:07:	But there is another source of this idea of personal truth or personal interpretation,

00:34:07 – 00:34:12:	particularly in the American context, although there are also some cults, supposedly Christian

00:34:12 – 00:34:17:	cults in Europe and other places that engage in the same behavior, it's penicostalism,

00:34:17 – 00:34:23:	it's enthusiasm, it's the belief that if I just do whatever, at least they're using

00:34:23 – 00:34:25:	the word, which is better than they are sometimes.

00:34:25 – 00:34:31:	But if I just stare at the word, I will suddenly be given this personal insight into the

00:34:31 – 00:34:34:	secret meaning of the word.

00:34:34 – 00:34:42:	Now, it's careful, it is important to carefully divide here the difference between a regenerate

00:34:42 – 00:34:45:	Christian will have the Holy Spirit.

00:34:45 – 00:34:50:	And so we'll be able to read and understand Scripture, which is a very important point

00:34:50 – 00:34:56:	for what we are discussing today, versus those who say that they will be given some

00:34:56 – 00:35:01:	sort of gnostic special insight into the real meaning that everyone else has gotten

00:35:01 – 00:35:02:	wrong.

00:35:02 – 00:35:07:	Those people, that is a cult practice, that is not Christian.

00:35:07 – 00:35:12:	And that's another source of this personal interpretation, and it's of a kind with

00:35:12 – 00:35:18:	people who gibber in nonsense, supposed languages, in church and say that speaking in tongues,

00:35:18 – 00:35:19:	it's not.

00:35:19 – 00:35:20:	Scripture is very clear.

00:35:20 – 00:35:25:	There should be an interpreter because tongues are human tongues.

00:35:25 – 00:35:28:	The point of that gift of the Spirit is so that you can talk to someone who does not

00:35:28 – 00:35:30:	speak your language.

00:35:30 – 00:35:34:	Less important today, given technology, and the fact that, again, we have this wealth

00:35:34 – 00:35:41:	of material for learning languages, back in biblical times, it would have been impossible

00:35:41 – 00:35:46:	basically for a common man to learn a foreign language from a country that was 300 miles

00:35:46 – 00:35:47:	away even.

00:35:47 – 00:35:52:	And so those gifts were more important back then.

00:35:52 – 00:35:56:	But there was another point I wanted to add here quickly.

00:35:56 – 00:36:02:	There are two terms that we should mention because the typical terms you hear, well, one

00:36:02 – 00:36:06:	is the typical term you hear one is a mistake, but the typical terms you hear when discussing

00:36:06 – 00:36:13:	this issue, perspicuous, or perspicacity, perspicuity, two different terms are perspicacity versus

00:36:13 – 00:36:14:	perspicuity.

00:36:14 – 00:36:18:	Perspicuity is what we're talking about, which is that Scripture is clearly expressed

00:36:18 – 00:36:20:	and easily understood.

00:36:20 – 00:36:23:	Perspicacity is the term some people mistake.

00:36:23 – 00:36:26:	That's a quality of having already inside into things.

00:36:26 – 00:36:29:	So a person has perspicacity.

00:36:29 – 00:36:30:	Scripture has perspicuity.

00:36:30 – 00:36:33:	You can also say perspicuousness, but that one's awkward.

00:36:33 – 00:36:35:	That's what we're talking about here.

00:36:35 – 00:36:37:	Scripture is clear.

00:36:37 – 00:36:42:	Scripture can be understood by the average man if he reads it.

00:36:42 – 00:36:46:	But again, for the regenerate Christian, you will also have the Holy Spirit that are guiding

00:36:46 – 00:36:47:	you.

00:36:47 – 00:36:49:	So if there are people who say that Scripture isn't clear, you can understand Scripture,

00:36:49 – 00:36:55:	it's dark, and it's incomprehensible and penetrable, they're actually calling God a liar.

00:36:55 – 00:36:58:	Because God says that He will help you to understand these things.

00:36:58 – 00:37:02:	And Scripture also, throughout, says that it is clear.

00:37:02 – 00:37:07:	I have a quote here from Luther in a book that the Reformed happened to love the bondage

00:37:07 – 00:37:08:	of the will.

00:37:08 – 00:37:13:	But he threads the needle here when it comes to the fact that yes, there are some parts

00:37:13 – 00:37:15:	of Scripture that are still confusing.

00:37:15 – 00:37:16:	There are.

00:37:16 – 00:37:23:	But the core doctrines, the core truth of Scripture, the overwhelming majority of Scripture, is

00:37:23 – 00:37:24:	clear and easily understood.

00:37:24 – 00:37:28:	So here's the quote from Luther.

00:37:28 – 00:37:32:	The subject matter of the Scriptures, therefore, is all quite accessible.

00:37:32 – 00:37:37:	Even though some texts are still obscure owing to our ignorance of their terms, truly it

00:37:37 – 00:37:42:	is stupid and impious when we know that the subject matter of Scripture has all been

00:37:42 – 00:37:47:	placed in the clearest light, to call it obscure on account of a pure obscure words.

00:37:47 – 00:37:52:	If the words are obscure in one place, yet they are plain in another, and it is one in

00:37:52 – 00:37:56:	the same theme, published quite openly to the whole world, which in the Scriptures is

00:37:56 – 00:38:01:	sometimes expressed in plain words and sometimes lies as yet hidden at obscure words.

00:38:01 – 00:38:06:	Now, when the things signified as in the light, it does not matter of this or that sign of

00:38:06 – 00:38:11:	it as in darkness, since many other signs of the same thing are meanwhile in the light.

00:38:11 – 00:38:15:	Who will say that a public fountain is not in the light because those who are in a narrow

00:38:15 – 00:38:21:	side street do not see it, whereas all who are in the marketplace do see it.

00:38:21 – 00:38:25:	Your reference to the Corsian cave, therefore, is irrelevant.

00:38:25 – 00:38:27:	It is not how things are in the Scriptures.

00:38:27 – 00:38:32:	Matters of the highest majesty and the profoundest mysteries are no longer hidden away, but

00:38:32 – 00:38:36:	have been brought out and are openly displayed before the very doors.

00:38:36 – 00:38:41:	For Christ has opened our minds so that we may understand the Scriptures, Luke 2445, and

00:38:41 – 00:38:45:	the Gospel is preached to the whole creation, Mark 1615.

00:38:45 – 00:38:50:	Their voice has gone out to all the earth, Romans 1018, and whatever was written was written

00:38:50 – 00:38:53:	for our instruction, Romans 154.

00:38:53 – 00:38:58:	Also, all Scripture inspired by God is profitable for teaching 2 Timothy 316.

00:38:58 – 00:39:03:	See then whether you and all the sophists can produce any single mystery that is still

00:39:03 – 00:39:06:	abstruse in the Scriptures.

00:39:06 – 00:39:11:	Luther is of course responding to Erasmus who had argued essentially that Scripture was

00:39:11 – 00:39:12:	impenetrable.

00:39:12 – 00:39:17:	And this is something that we emphasized in our previous episode, we were talking about

00:39:17 – 00:39:18:	election.

00:39:18 – 00:39:25:	We specifically pointed out the predestination versus the so-called double predestination

00:39:25 – 00:39:31:	or the hypostatic union of Christ or the Trinity or the Eucharist.

00:39:31 – 00:39:37:	These are a few places where Scripture is clear, but reason is not clear, and that's

00:39:37 – 00:39:39:	a very limited set.

00:39:39 – 00:39:44:	So it's a trick that the devil plays on us and that we are all too willing to play

00:39:44 – 00:39:51:	on ourselves and on each other to say that, well, this verse seems to contradict this

00:39:51 – 00:39:52:	verse.

00:39:52 – 00:39:55:	So I'm going to pick the one that I like the most.

00:39:55 – 00:40:02:	And the reason that I began with that quote in part was that, again, Luther refers both

00:40:02 – 00:40:07:	to the testimonies of Scripture and to clear rational arguments.

00:40:07 – 00:40:14:	And I mentioned that the reason is something that Christians are either used too much

00:40:14 – 00:40:20:	of, as in the case of some denominations, where reason is used in the Magisterial sense,

00:40:20 – 00:40:25:	where all of their beliefs must be in submission to their own reason.

00:40:25 – 00:40:29:	As Lutherans, we advocate the ministerial use of reason, where we do our best with what

00:40:29 – 00:40:33:	we have and where our reason fails us.

00:40:33 – 00:40:37:	We look at the plain words of Scripture and where we don't understand them.

00:40:37 – 00:40:38:	We still confess them.

00:40:38 – 00:40:41:	That is what faith means.

00:40:41 – 00:40:46:	But reason has a very precious place in the church.

00:40:46 – 00:40:48:	And this is found in Scripture itself.

00:40:48 – 00:40:56:	When you look, there are 17, or sorry, 13 places in the New Testament where the Greek

00:40:56 – 00:41:02:	word, D. L. Ego Mai, is used, that word means to converse or address, to lecture, to

00:41:02 – 00:41:05:	argue, or to reason.

00:41:05 – 00:41:12:	Now when it appears in the New Testament, almost all of the uses are in the sense of dialectical

00:41:12 – 00:41:18:	reason, of arguments, not in a knockdown dragout argument, but making a series of logical

00:41:18 – 00:41:21:	propositions to reach a conclusion.

00:41:21 – 00:41:24:	And they're done principally by Paul.

00:41:24 – 00:41:31:	In Acts 17, he repeatedly reasoned from the Scriptures with both the Jew and Greek.

00:41:31 – 00:41:34:	It says the same thing in Acts 18.

00:41:34 – 00:41:38:	It says three times in 17 and 18 that he reasoned, sorry, four times, I'm just scrolling

00:41:38 – 00:41:39:	through here five times.

00:41:39 – 00:41:41:	It just keeps going.

00:41:41 – 00:41:46:	Over and over, Paul is going to the synagogues into the public places, and he is reasoning

00:41:46 – 00:41:48:	from Scripture.

00:41:48 – 00:41:58:	Now Paul had revelations directly from God, and his writings to us are the revelation of

00:41:58 – 00:41:59:	God.

00:41:59 – 00:42:07:	But when he spoke to his fellow Jews, and he spoke to the Gentiles, there were cases where

00:42:07 – 00:42:13:	he would reveal something prophetic, but his go to was to reason from the Scriptures.

00:42:13 – 00:42:18:	Now, the Scripture that they had in that day was the entirety of the Old Testament, the

00:42:18 – 00:42:19:	Tanakh.

00:42:19 – 00:42:22:	They didn't have the New Testament yet, because Paul hadn't written it, and the few other

00:42:22 – 00:42:26:	authors who contribute to what we call the New Testament today.

00:42:26 – 00:42:30:	But when he reasoned with them, he was obeying God.

00:42:30 – 00:42:36:	He was saying, look, here we have the prophecy in Genesis and Isaiah and elsewhere that there

00:42:36 – 00:42:41:	would be a Messiah, and now I point to you to Jesus and to his life and to his preaching

00:42:41 – 00:42:44:	and his ministry and his death and his resurrection.

00:42:44 – 00:42:52:	As a testimony to the fulfillment of those prophecies, Paul was using a reason to explicate

00:42:52 – 00:42:53:	prophecy.

00:42:53 – 00:43:00:	See, again, he didn't have to use a special revelation from God to explain the prophecy

00:43:00 – 00:43:05:	because he was in the review mirror, both the prophecy itself and its fulfillment.

00:43:05 – 00:43:11:	What Paul had to do was to use a plain reason from the plain words that were given to the

00:43:11 – 00:43:17:	Hebrews and the Old Testament and to all of us to say, look, God said this and then God

00:43:17 – 00:43:22:	did this, what God said and what God did look exactly the same.

00:43:22 – 00:43:23:	That's reason.

00:43:23 – 00:43:30:	It takes faith for us to believe it, but just as a jurist is someone, particularly at

00:43:30 – 00:43:36:	the time who, you know, just having access to the facts and not having access to faith,

00:43:36 – 00:43:40:	could potentially believe that too, now it may not be salvific without faith, but they

00:43:40 – 00:43:44:	would reach the same conclusions by virtue of reason.

00:43:44 – 00:43:48:	Now to be clear, we're not saying here the reason can save you.

00:43:48 – 00:43:52:	That's never the point it is faith that saves and faith alone.

00:43:52 – 00:43:58:	The reason is a gift of God that is given to every man, although not an equal measure.

00:43:58 – 00:44:02:	Some men are apparently entirely bereft of reason and some men seem to have too much

00:44:02 – 00:44:05:	of it because they can't shut it off.

00:44:05 – 00:44:10:	The reason is a gift that is given to us by God to help make sense of the things that

00:44:10 – 00:44:14:	God has also given to us and scripture is what God has given to us.

00:44:14 – 00:44:17:	God has not given us tradition.

00:44:17 – 00:44:23:	One is what has been passed down for our benefit, but I want to quote Luther's works of

00:44:23 – 00:44:27:	volume one where he's talking about Genesis, and we're going to get into in a minute, one

00:44:27 – 00:44:31:	of the reasons we're talking about this is that recently on the internet there have been

00:44:31 – 00:44:35:	people who call themselves Lutherans and call themselves Christians who are directly

00:44:35 – 00:44:42:	in opening attacking Genesis is again, they're saying, well, yeah, it's true, but I'm not

00:44:42 – 00:44:44:	going to go along with it being factual.

00:44:44 – 00:44:46:	That's a bridge too far.

00:44:46 – 00:44:51:	And one of the appeals that these men actually made was to the church fathers who disagreed

00:44:51 – 00:44:57:	in some cases with Genesis being a narrative, particularly the first nine books, which are

00:44:57 – 00:45:04:	considered more metaphorical, kind of a narrative, but not a factual recounting.

00:45:04 – 00:45:06:	Here's what Luther had to say.

00:45:06 – 00:45:12:	Whenever we see that the opinions of the fathers are not in agreement with scripture, we respectfully

00:45:12 – 00:45:18:	bear with them and acknowledge them as our forefathers, but we do not on account, on their

00:45:18 – 00:45:24:	account, give up the authority of scripture, Aristotle's statement in the first book of

00:45:24 – 00:45:31:	his ethics is well put and true, better it is to defend the truth than to be too much devoted

00:45:31 – 00:45:35:	to those who are our friends in our relatives.

00:45:35 – 00:45:39:	And this is above all the proper attitude for a philosopher, for although both truth and

00:45:39 – 00:45:43:	friends are dear to us, preference must be given to truth.

00:45:43 – 00:45:48:	If a pagan maintains that this must be the attitude in their secular discourses, how

00:45:48 – 00:45:53:	much more must it be in our attitude in those which involve the clear witness of scripture,

00:45:53 – 00:45:58:	that we dare not give preference to the authority of men over that scripture.

00:45:58 – 00:46:03:	Human beings can err, but the word of God is the very wisdom of God in the absolutely

00:46:03 – 00:46:05:	infallible truth.

00:46:05 – 00:46:11:	So also Luther had to say about his forefathers and the faith of the church fathers, disagreeing

00:46:11 – 00:46:12:	with genesis.

00:46:12 – 00:46:14:	And that's what we're talking about here.

00:46:14 – 00:46:17:	It is possible for anyone to err.

00:46:17 – 00:46:22:	It is not possible for a man to err and to be faithful to scripture.

00:46:22 – 00:46:27:	And so the reason that these arguments and discussions must be had and must be had in

00:46:27 – 00:46:35:	public is so that it can be plain to all where the scriptural revelation ends and where

00:46:35 – 00:46:41:	man's additions to it begin, because reason can go too far and there are some denominations

00:46:41 – 00:46:43:	that take reason too far.

00:46:43 – 00:46:47:	But reason can also be neglected.

00:46:47 – 00:46:52:	And so it's a very dangerous for anyone to advocate, well, we can't know what that means.

00:46:52 – 00:46:58:	Well, yes, it is theoretically possible that you can read something in scripture that

00:46:58 – 00:47:01:	you cannot understand, but it's incredibly unlikely.

00:47:01 – 00:47:05:	And those things have already been identified in the past by all of the other men who for

00:47:05 – 00:47:08:	thousands of years have struggled with these same questions.

00:47:08 – 00:47:13:	So we don't need to come in blind and mindless to scripture.

00:47:13 – 00:47:18:	We can look to what the fathers have said, but we can only look to them in the light of

00:47:18 – 00:47:21:	scripture and not the other way around.

00:47:21 – 00:47:26:	As Cory, as you mentioned, when Luther was first accessing scripture even as a monk,

00:47:26 – 00:47:30:	it was through the eyes of other men and through the words of other men.

00:47:30 – 00:47:35:	And his revelation was when he finally read scripture itself and realized that what he

00:47:35 – 00:47:39:	had been handed through tradition didn't add up.

00:47:39 – 00:47:40:	It wasn't what was scriptural.

00:47:40 – 00:47:46:	And so reason has a very crucial place in the life of a Christian, again, subordinated

00:47:46 – 00:47:56:	to faith, but used wherever possible to make clear that which can be made clear from scripture.

00:47:56 – 00:48:03:	And I would just want to pose a question to those men who say that we cannot use reason

00:48:03 – 00:48:09:	in order to interpret or in order to exegy, it would be a better term, really.

00:48:09 – 00:48:12:	What are they using?

00:48:12 – 00:48:14:	What are they doing when they are reading scripture?

00:48:14 – 00:48:17:	How is it that they are teaching?

00:48:17 – 00:48:23:	Because you will hear this from certain pastors and teachers that you can't use reason

00:48:23 – 00:48:27:	in order to understand these things or they aren't clear or any of these.

00:48:27 – 00:48:32:	What is it they are doing that these other men cannot do?

00:48:32 – 00:48:34:	And why is it that we should believe them?

00:48:34 – 00:48:36:	Of course, we know what they're actually doing.

00:48:36 – 00:48:41:	It's a cartel is what it really is.

00:48:41 – 00:48:46:	They have the exclusive authority to interpret scripture because they got a little stamp

00:48:46 – 00:48:53:	on a piece of paper saying that they're allowed to do it according to whatever group.

00:48:53 – 00:48:56:	If it's the Roman church, then it's according to the Pope.

00:48:56 – 00:49:00:	If it's some other church, then typically it's according to some seminary.

00:49:00 – 00:49:01:	And that's not how it works.

00:49:01 – 00:49:04:	I'm not saying that seminary education is bad.

00:49:04 – 00:49:08:	It's certainly in our era has its problems.

00:49:08 – 00:49:17:	But just because you have an MDiv does not mean that you are an expert in all things scripture.

00:49:17 – 00:49:20:	In fact, it may be a fairly good indication that you were not.

00:49:20 – 00:49:25:	One would hope that those with an MDiv would recognize that because in basically any other

00:49:25 – 00:49:33:	field, the higher you go in degrees and education that field, the more you realize how little

00:49:33 – 00:49:36:	you know, and of all places in which that should be true.

00:49:36 – 00:49:40:	It should certainly be true when it comes to scripture because you're dealing with

00:49:40 – 00:49:42:	the word of an infinite God.

00:49:42 – 00:49:47:	You should absolutely know it forward and backward, the things that can be known.

00:49:47 – 00:49:51:	But you are going to realize that there is always more for you to learn.

00:49:51 – 00:49:54:	It's the same thing that is said in the small catechism.

00:49:54 – 00:49:57:	It's those who read it through once, then throw it in the corner and think, I've read

00:49:57 – 00:49:58:	that.

00:49:58 – 00:49:59:	I'm good enough.

00:49:59 – 00:50:00:	I'm done.

00:50:00 – 00:50:03:	No, you read it every day because God will continue to teach you and so you continue

00:50:03 – 00:50:08:	to read scripture because you will continue to learn.

00:50:08 – 00:50:14:	And so I just, I would want to know what these men are doing when they are somehow exegiting

00:50:14 – 00:50:18:	scripture, but without resorting to reason or, and again, we know what they're doing.

00:50:18 – 00:50:22:	They're reading what others have written and just parroting it.

00:50:22 – 00:50:26:	Which there's nothing necessarily wrong with that.

00:50:26 – 00:50:30:	Some very good teachers are simply, we could call them a synthesis teacher.

00:50:30 – 00:50:35:	There's synthesizing materials from others, who know more than you, and then teaching

00:50:35 – 00:50:38:	it to others, who know less than you do.

00:50:38 – 00:50:40:	That's perfectly valid.

00:50:40 – 00:50:44:	You have scholars who do that as well, who synthesize quotes from various other authors

00:50:44 – 00:50:46:	and peeper did a lot of that.

00:50:46 – 00:50:51:	A good scholar at his own right, but a lot of what he did, was corralling together quotes

00:50:51 – 00:50:53:	and things and vaulted in some of that as well.

00:50:53 – 00:50:58:	That's not a condemnation of those men, sometimes that's what you need to do as a teacher.

00:50:58 – 00:51:03:	But reason is a gift from God.

00:51:03 – 00:51:09:	It is a valid tool, but as you said, it's just something we do not put it on a throne.

00:51:09 – 00:51:13:	It's not the magisterial use of reason, it's the ministerial use.

00:51:13 – 00:51:19:	Reason is a servant we employ to help us understand scripture.

00:51:19 – 00:51:25:	And scripture itself testifies over and over again that it is complete, that it is from

00:51:25 – 00:51:29:	God, that it is an errant, and that it is valuable for these purposes.

00:51:29 – 00:51:36:	I mind a few verses I like to read now that just from Olden New Testament that make clear

00:51:36 – 00:51:44:	how much God reinforces to the Christian that this stuff is vital.

00:51:44 – 00:51:49:	And Isaiah 8, God says himself, to the law and to the testimony.

00:51:49 – 00:51:54:	If they do not speak according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.

00:51:55 – 00:52:01:	In Matthew 4, Jesus said, but he answered, it is written, again quoting back to the Old Testament,

00:52:01 – 00:52:06:	man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

00:52:06 – 00:52:14:	Now those who heard Jesus speaking in his earthly ministry were blessed that all of the many words

00:52:14 – 00:52:19:	that he spoke were direct from the mouth of God, which John records as more than could be written

00:52:19 – 00:52:20:	in all the books in the world.

00:52:21 – 00:52:26:	That statement is equally true of scripture, and that is one of the things that one of the

00:52:26 – 00:52:31:	attacks that Satan through these vipers who live in our churches today will make is that they

00:52:31 – 00:52:37:	will try to subdivide the scripture that we have before us, the Bible that you have in your hands,

00:52:37 – 00:52:42:	and say, well, this part, yeah, this part is definitely from God, but this part might,

00:52:42 – 00:52:45:	yeah, it is a little sketchy. I am not sure about that.

00:52:45 – 00:52:53:	And a couple of episodes go, I exhorted people to read the read letters in the New Testament

00:52:53 – 00:52:58:	for a very specific purpose, and I spent more time talking about how dangerous it was

00:52:58 – 00:53:02:	than I did about actually describing what you would have because of this very reason that there

00:53:02 – 00:53:08:	are people, again, who will say, well, if it's not in red, well, maybe God didn't really say it.

00:53:08 – 00:53:13:	I actually heard Kanye say that this week in a quote, and I was just shaking my head, like,

00:53:13 – 00:53:18:	please, Lord, don't put me in the same boat as him as a theologian, but it's important to

00:53:19 – 00:53:25:	remember that every word of scripture is from God, and God himself says it, and if you don't

00:53:25 – 00:53:31:	believe that, then you call God a liar, and the truth is not in you, and you do not have God,

00:53:31 – 00:53:38:	and that's where this stuff comes bound to, when you, when Cory and I fight for sound doctrine,

00:53:38 – 00:53:43:	for agreeing with scripture, even when we don't like it, there are things in scripture that I have

00:53:43 – 00:53:50:	a hard time with, not because I don't believe them, or that I don't want to obey God, but because

00:53:50 – 00:53:55:	they're hard to hear, because they condemn things that I have believed in the past, or the way I

00:53:55 – 00:54:01:	want to live in the future, or the things I like to do right now. Those are not reasons not to

00:54:01 – 00:54:08:	believe God, but there are hardened hearts and there are seared consciences in men who will

00:54:08 – 00:54:14:	gleefully say that these literalists, like you and I Cory, don't really have access to scripture,

00:54:14 – 00:54:19:	because we're so dumb, and we're such hayseeds, that we just read the Bible and believe it,

00:54:19 – 00:54:24:	and that's just, that's really dangerous, and it's embarrassing, and Christians should be better

00:54:24 – 00:54:33:	than that. That's not what God says. In Matthew 5, Jesus reiterates what was said in Isaiah,

00:54:33 – 00:54:38:	he says, for truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter,

00:54:38 – 00:54:43:	nor the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the law, until everything is

00:54:43 – 00:54:48:	accomplished. Now, this in the King James is the famous John Titl quote, I think here I actually

00:54:48 – 00:54:55:	used NIV because I like how it works best with the Greek, but the smallest stroke of a pen

00:54:55 – 00:55:02:	and the smallest letter refers to the fact that there's no part of scripture, there's no corner

00:55:02 – 00:55:07:	that you can find, there's no piece of a letter that you can find that is so insignificant,

00:55:07 – 00:55:14:	that you can leave it out and still have God. And there's a word in there that I want to highlight,

00:55:14 – 00:55:20:	because Jesus said, will by any means disappear from the law. Now, one of the games that these

00:55:20 – 00:55:25:	vipers will play, he'll say, well, the law, that's the Torah, that's the first five books, that's

00:55:25 – 00:55:30:	the Pentateuch, that's the book, that's the law of Moses, that's just that's a tiny portion of

00:55:30 – 00:55:36:	the Old Testament. He's not talking about the whole thing, nonsense. Jesus, who is the word,

00:55:36 – 00:55:41:	knows what the word is, he knows what was revealed to Moses and to the other prophets,

00:55:41 – 00:55:47:	because he's the one who revealed it. So when these men try to say, well, Jesus isn't really

00:55:47 – 00:55:52:	talking about the whole thing, they're trying to devalue your souls, and that's why fighting over

00:55:52 – 00:55:59:	an air and see and fighting over the whole of scripture being vital is so important. Really,

00:55:59 – 00:56:06:	it's the same thing that we run into again and again and again and again. Satan has changed his

00:56:06 – 00:56:12:	tactics over the centuries, because he has done certain things and the church has responded

00:56:12 – 00:56:20:	and dealt with the issue, and so he does something else. We've mentioned that the church

00:56:20 – 00:56:27:	handled with the Reformation, Article 4 justification. We handled that problem. Yes, there are still

00:56:27 – 00:56:35:	cults, sex that do not get it right, but the church handled the problem of the denial of

00:56:35 – 00:56:43:	by grace through faith. And so what did Satan do? Well, he switched gears. He's going to attack

00:56:43 – 00:56:48:	the first article of the creed, creation, ontology, the nature of things. Instead of attacking

00:56:48 – 00:56:55:	justification, it's the same thing that's happening here. If Satan cannot keep the scriptures out

00:56:55 – 00:57:01:	of the hands of the laity, which he can no longer do, because good luck putting that back in the

00:57:01 – 00:57:07:	bottle at this point, everyone who wants to have a Bible could have a Bible. Everyone can have

00:57:07 – 00:57:13:	the word of God. Anyone with a smartphone has access to a wealth of information that would make

00:57:14 – 00:57:20:	the wealthiest scholar in human history envious in comparison. Kings had libraries the likes of which

00:57:21 – 00:57:28:	don't even hold a candle to what we have today. And so Satan isn't going to attack that because

00:57:28 – 00:57:33:	he can no longer keep it out of your hands. He cannot make it so it's just in Latin and you don't

00:57:33 – 00:57:41:	know Latin. But what he can do is he can have false teachers, wolves, snakes. He can send them out

00:57:41 – 00:57:45:	and they'll tell you, is that what God really said? So of course, he's not really changing his

00:57:45 – 00:57:51:	tactics that much from the beginning. But the goal now is to make you think that scripture is

00:57:51 – 00:57:57:	unclear. That scripture is difficult to understand. That you cannot just read scripture as

00:57:58 – 00:58:04:	a layman and understand it and get something out of it. And that's not what scripture says because

00:58:04 – 00:58:11:	the goal as ever is to get you to willingly or unwillingly, willingly or unwittingly, call God a

00:58:11 – 00:58:18:	liar. That's what happens with the denial of certain aspects of creation. It's what happens with

00:58:18 – 00:58:26:	the denial of ontology. It's what happens when you say that scripture is unclear because God says

00:58:26 – 00:58:35:	it is clear. And Hebrews 4 is written, for the word of God is living an act of sharper than any

00:58:35 – 00:58:40:	two-edged sword, piercing the division of soul and spirit of joints and marrow and discerning the

00:58:40 – 00:58:47:	thoughts and intentions of the heart. And one of my favorite quotes I found was from Isaiah 55.

00:58:47 – 00:58:53:	God says, for my thoughts are not your thoughts. Neither are your ways my ways. Declare is the Lord.

00:58:54 – 00:58:59:	For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts

00:58:59 – 00:59:04:	than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there,

00:59:04 – 00:59:10:	but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the

00:59:10 – 00:59:18:	eater. So shall my word be that, goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty,

00:59:18 – 00:59:23:	but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

00:59:25 – 00:59:32:	God gave us these words for our clarity, for our comfort, and for our salvation,

00:59:32 – 00:59:39:	and anytime Satan through his certain servants on this planet gets you to doubt even a tiny bit of it.

00:59:40 – 00:59:47:	That is the whole armor of God having a chink put in it. That is a place where now Satan can get

00:59:47 – 00:59:53:	through the armor and can get to your flesh, where God is no longer protecting you because you're

00:59:53 – 00:59:59:	no longer believing God. It's not that God has lost his power. It's the you of satiside is word

59:59 – 01:00:07
even by the smallest decree. And when we do that, we're a terrible risk. One of the reasons that we

01:00:07 – 01:00:11:	did this episode this week was that for the last few days there's been a stink and I'm not going

01:00:11 – 01:00:16:	to go into the drama because we've been talking enough about Twitter, but there are those who claim that

01:00:18 – 01:00:26:	the six days of creation are their true, but they're not literal. In other words, God has

01:00:26 – 01:00:31:	revealed something that's true in the narrative sense, but not in the factual sense.

01:00:31 – 01:00:42:	And one of the attacks that this man, Lymanstein on Twitter made was to mock the six days of creation

01:00:42 – 01:00:51:	where in Genesis 1 and 2, God reveals that in the beginning, God said, let there be light and

01:00:51 – 01:00:58:	there was light. That was day one. And it wasn't until late that he created the sun and the stars.

01:00:58 – 01:01:06:	And so these mockers, these scoffers will say, well, the six days of creation can't be literal

01:01:06 – 01:01:11:	because how can God say that there was light on day one when there was no source of light

01:01:11 – 01:01:16:	until later days because as the big brain ratter to these guys all know through their material

01:01:16 – 01:01:23:	knowledge of the world that in order for there to be light, you need an unbounded nuclear reactor

01:01:23 – 01:01:30:	in the sky emitting photons. That's how science gives us light, right? That's what stars do. The stars

01:01:30 – 01:01:37:	give light. And now we're not going to make the the scientific case for creation, even though there

01:01:37 – 01:01:44:	is one and the more we learning about the first moments of creation, the more we see how clearly

01:01:44 – 01:01:53:	scripture the the genesis of count of creation is literal. God says let there be light and there was

01:01:53 – 01:02:01:	light. Now that's God speaking. That is a voice. That is a sound. And then light occurs from it.

01:02:01 – 01:02:05:	The red at our mocks and says, well, that's stupid. That's utterly impossible. Everyone knows that.

01:02:05 – 01:02:12:	Can't happen except in the 70s or sorry in the 30s, they some German scientists discovered

01:02:12 – 01:02:20:	sonoma luminescence where it is literally possible to create light from sound. It turns out that if

01:02:20 – 01:02:28:	you emit a particular type of sound into a liquid, it will cause a bubble to appear and collapse.

01:02:28 – 01:02:35:	And in that collapse, you get intensely high temperatures on the order of tens of thousands of

01:02:35 – 01:02:41:	kelvin degrees kelvin. When the bubble collapses, there's a flash of light. You can have a fluid

01:02:41 – 01:02:48:	where light appears by virtue of a sound being passed through it. Now what does liquid have to do

01:02:48 – 01:02:57:	this? Well, also in the genesis account, the spirit of God hovered over the waters. Now the man who

01:02:57 – 01:03:04:	mocks the literalist reading genesis will say, well, as a material expert as a scientist, I know that

01:03:05 – 01:03:11:	water is H2O. It's two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. There was no water because God hadn't

01:03:11 – 01:03:17:	created the waters yet. So what's this water stuff? It must be a metaphor. Well, again, just in the

01:03:17 – 01:03:27:	last couple decades, as particle physicists and other scientists have unwound the big bang

01:03:28 – 01:03:34:	to based on the physical evidence in found in the universe to try to figure out the very earliest

01:03:34 – 01:03:41:	moments of they don't call creation, but it's really creation. What do they find before there was

01:03:41 – 01:03:47:	a matter? They call it quark glue on plasma. You can Google that and you can read about the

01:03:48 – 01:03:54:	the theoretical aspects and then the physical experiments they've done. Every scientist will describe,

01:03:54 – 01:04:03:	describe quark glue on plasma as the most perfect liquid. It is a liquid that is more liquid than any

01:04:03 – 01:04:08:	liquid that we have. It's more liquid than water in terms of its liquid properties. The reason they

01:04:08 – 01:04:12:	were excited is they expected a gas because when they were doing their simulations and their

01:04:12 – 01:04:18:	thought experiments to try to find what was there before the big bang, they thought, well,

01:04:18 – 01:04:26:	it must be a gas. They found a liquid. They found waters. Now, why would God speak to Moses when

01:04:26 – 01:04:34:	he gave him the narrative of Genesis? Why would he say water? Well, Moses didn't know anything about

01:04:34 – 01:04:41:	particle physics. He didn't know anything about strength theory, but it was also true. It literally

01:04:41 – 01:04:47:	happened. God hovered over the face of the waters and the scientists have now simulated those very

01:04:47 – 01:04:53:	waters. These are men who deny they deny God. They're trying to find something so that they can say

01:04:53 – 01:04:58:	that we didn't need God. Here's what we found instead. The more that they dig, the more that they

01:04:58 – 01:05:03:	find the first two chapters of Genesis revealed in their experiments. Now, they'll never see it

01:05:03 – 01:05:07:	because their eyes are closed and their hearts are hardened. They don't have faith and they

01:05:07 – 01:05:13:	hate God and they don't know God at the same time. But as Christians, we don't need to be afraid

01:05:13 – 01:05:19:	of science looking to scripture as we look to scripture because they're saying the same thing.

01:05:20 – 01:05:24:	Now, when I mentioned the big bang, you're going to think, oh, well, he thinks that the, you know,

01:05:24 – 01:05:28:	he's not a young earth creationist. I absolutely am. And that's the point of this discussion.

01:05:29 – 01:05:36:	When God created the universe, how old was it? That's what they're trying to answer.

01:05:37 – 01:05:42:	There's a separate question that's a little more accessible to us. When God created man,

01:05:42 – 01:05:51:	when God created Adam, how old was he? Was he zero? We hadn't lived today, but God created a man,

01:05:51 – 01:05:59:	a fully formed sexually mature man is who stood in the garden with God. So God didn't make a

01:05:59 – 01:06:08:	sheet of fetus, the gestated in a box. He made a fully grown man. Adam had an age. My personal theory,

01:06:08 – 01:06:14:	which is, it's not a belief, it's just something I, as I was reading scripture, I noticed Adam died

01:06:14 – 01:06:22:	after 930 years. Methuselah, who's the oldest lived man in scripture, lived 969 years. And my

01:06:22 – 01:06:28:	brain did the math and said, well, that means that Methuselah lived 39 years longer than Adam.

01:06:28 – 01:06:33:	That's a conspicuous number if you're familiar with numerology in scripture because 40 is a

01:06:33 – 01:06:39:	significant number. It's usually signifies trial. But I thought, and that's what made me think,

01:06:39 – 01:06:45:	well, how old was Adam? Personally, I think he was probably created as a 40 year old because

01:06:45 – 01:06:50:	that would make him the first, first born man in creation, the oldest man in creation. He was the

01:06:50 – 01:06:55:	only man who was ever perfect. He was the only man who ever walked sinlessly with God. And so

01:06:55 – 01:07:00:	my personal theory, again, this is not, I'm not adding to scripture. It's not a matter of faith

01:07:00 – 01:07:06:	or salvation. It's just a theory. When I die, I'll find out. And God will say, either, yeah,

01:07:06 – 01:07:10:	good guess or no, you made a mess of this. Here's what really happened. So no faith hinges on

01:07:10 – 01:07:15:	this. And there's no, there's no belief downstream from it. But I think that Adam had to have an

01:07:15 – 01:07:23:	anage. Maybe he was 15. Maybe he was 20. Maybe he was 100. 40 seems to work. But he has an age. And so

01:07:23 – 01:07:30:	when we looked to the age of the universe, how old was the universe that God created? It was 13.77

01:07:30 – 01:07:36:	billion years old. God didn't create a universe from scratch and then set it in motion.

01:07:37 – 01:07:43:	From the beginning, he said it in motion as though it had been in motion for billions of years.

01:07:43 – 01:07:50:	And that's what we see today. That's why the starlight that comes to our eyes is older than creation

01:07:51 – 01:07:58:	because God created those stars in those places in the universe with their light, with their

01:07:58 – 01:08:03:	photons already, already streaming towards us, according to the natural laws of the universe. And

01:08:03 – 01:08:09:	such a way that the whole thing makes sense and the whole things works. God wasn't making up something

01:08:09 – 01:08:13:	from whole cloth. Well, he was, but he wasn't making something that would be fictitious. He was

01:08:13 – 01:08:19:	making something that was a real whole machine. The machine of the universe is internally consistent.

01:08:20 – 01:08:27:	And so his core and I appeal to scientific understanding of these things. It's not an attack on

01:08:27 – 01:08:35:	faith. It is a confirmation of the faith that we find by virtue of literal simple plain readings

01:08:35 – 01:08:41:	of the scripture that's been revealed to us. And it's almost as if scripture somewhere says that

01:08:41 – 01:08:44:	it's the glory of God to conceal things and the glory of princes to reveal them.

01:08:46 – 01:08:53:	Princes, of course, don't necessarily just mean princes. And so we are able to use the things

01:08:53 – 01:08:59:	God has given us, which would be our intelligence, our wisdom, insight, whatever attribute it

01:08:59 – 01:09:05:	happens to be. In order to investigate the world, in order to investigate the things that he created

01:09:05 – 01:09:13:	into which he placed us as head. And so science properly understood, I don't want to get into

01:09:13 – 01:09:18:	the technicalities there of what science used to mean and what it means now, but it's just knowledge.

01:09:19 – 01:09:24:	Science is a way of going about things, obtaining knowledge. It's not contrary to scripture.

01:09:24 – 01:09:30:	It does not conflict with scripture. It's not anti-Christian. Most of the great men in these

01:09:30 – 01:09:36:	fields who made the major advances that really meant something were Christian. Some of them were

01:09:36 – 01:09:45:	monks, you have Mendel, but these were Christian men investigating creation. And that's part of why

01:09:45 – 01:09:53:	science really took off in Europe. Science, yes, in some parts of the ancient world advanced to a

01:09:53 – 01:10:03:	certain level beyond what Europe was at relatively at the time. But that all stopped many centuries

01:10:03 – 01:10:10:	ago. And Europe has been far and away in advance of others since then, because Europeans were looking

01:10:10 – 01:10:15:	at the world from a Christian perspective. We were looking at the world as something that is

01:10:15 – 01:10:23:	created by an intelligent and loving God in a way that is comprehensible to us. There are of course

01:10:23 – 01:10:28:	things that are beyond our comprehension. At the time, they didn't know that because they couldn't

01:10:28 – 01:10:33:	delve down into the inner workings of the proton and start looking at it going, this doesn't actually

01:10:33 – 01:10:39:	make sense to us. They couldn't do that. But they could certainly look at the grand scale of things,

01:10:39 – 01:10:47:	the macro scale, and realize this is a world built by an intelligent God. We are placed in here

01:10:47 – 01:10:53:	in his image. We have intelligence. We can understand the world. And so you can shore up what is

01:10:53 – 01:11:00:	said in Scripture with science. Yes, today you have scientists and others who attempt to undermine

01:11:00 – 01:11:07:	Scripture using science. The problem is most of the people who get high up in these fields

01:11:07 – 01:11:10:	wind up confirming the things that are in Scripture and some of them wind up converting,

01:11:10 – 01:11:19:	particularly geneticists and men like that. And God says in Scripture, he created the universe to

01:11:19 – 01:11:25:	testify to his own glory. And that is the reason that Christians delve into these subjects,

01:11:25 – 01:11:32:	not to try to second-guess God, but to try to find God's glory in his creation because it

01:11:32 – 01:11:37:	testifies to it. Everyone, Christian pagan alike, when they look up at the stars,

01:11:38 – 01:11:43:	humans are mesmerized. It's something that has always captivated the human spirit.

01:11:44 – 01:11:51:	And the Christian, frankly, the Christian, I think, has forgotten why today. Maybe we may look

01:11:51 – 01:11:56:	up and think, oh, well, that's nice. And honestly, I think the way that most Christians today think

01:11:56 – 01:12:01:	is, oh, look what God did for me. Look how beautiful God made the universe for me. Look at all the

01:12:01 – 01:12:07:	things that God's doing for me. That's not what Scripture says. Scripture talks about the heavens

01:12:07 – 01:12:14:	testifying to God's glory, not to man's glory, not to man's entertainment, but to God. The angels

01:12:14 – 01:12:20:	in heaven, before they proclaim the greatness of God for his salvation of man, they proclaim his

01:12:20 – 01:12:25:	greatness as creator. And that's why we keep talking about the first article because a lot of

01:12:25 – 01:12:30:	this stuff is bound up the first article of the creeds that God created the heavens and the earth

01:12:31 – 01:12:37:	because this attack that Satan is undertaking today is an attack on the belief

01:12:38 – 01:12:46:	that creation, that material, the humans, that us as individuals in the world came from God.

01:12:47 – 01:12:51:	Because as long as you set up in motion, you can say, well, yeah, there's another

01:12:51 – 01:12:55:	explanation for that. You can delete God. And that's what these men do. And they say, well, no,

01:12:55 – 01:13:00:	there wasn't actually a 624-hour day creation. That doesn't make sense because, you know, you got

01:13:00 – 01:13:06:	the lights coming before stars. Clearly, it's kind of made up. No. And the appeal to science is

01:13:06 – 01:13:13:	not to say, look, you should believe Genesis now because science confirms it, believe Scripture

01:13:13 – 01:13:19:	literally. And then when the scientists agree, give praise to God for his revelation because we

01:13:19 – 01:13:26:	knew it first, Moses knew about court cluonplasma before the scientists who discovered it. He didn't

01:13:26 – 01:13:32:	know the name. He didn't care because it wasn't about introspecting matter. It was about testifying

01:13:32 – 01:13:37:	to God's glory. And that is what the Christian life needs to be about. When we talk about these

01:13:37 – 01:13:42:	material things, when we talk about race, and we talk about other things that are in the world,

01:13:42 – 01:13:49:	it is not to replace God. It is not to denigrate or to doubt God. It is to say, look at the glory

01:13:49 – 01:13:56:	of what God made. Because the bottom line is this, everything in creation testifies to God's glory,

01:13:56 – 01:14:04:	including the diversity of mankind. So when we do the episodes on race, that is testifying to the

01:14:04 – 01:14:11:	beauty of God, to the magnificence of our Creator, that men can live at the North Pole, and they can

01:14:11 – 01:14:17:	live at the equator. That's insane. There's no other species that can pull that off. We can,

01:14:17 – 01:14:25:	because within our genes, God gave us the ability to evolve in 6,000 years, not evolving from a monkey,

01:14:25 – 01:14:32:	but to change in short periods of time in response to the environment. And some of the evolution,

01:14:32 – 01:14:37:	some of the genetic changes, which is what it really is, is just gene expression. Some of those

01:14:37 – 01:14:45:	are beneficial, and some of those are degradation, because the fall is also in play. Once creation fell,

01:14:45 – 01:14:51:	our genome began to corrupt. Things started going wrong. So looking to Scripture

01:14:53 – 01:15:00:	is about finding where what God says is made clear for His glory, and that should always be the

01:15:00 – 01:15:05:	motivation. We're not, I'm probably not even going to get into the flood thing, but I'll just

01:15:05 – 01:15:10:	point out that there are these places like the Six Day Creation and the flood, where guys say,

01:15:10 – 01:15:16:	oh, maybe it was a localized flood, and then we find the same flood strata all over the world,

01:15:16 – 01:15:21:	and then they make up other lies, say, oh, maybe there was a global flood, but then all the water

01:15:21 – 01:15:25:	evaporated, and all the bones were left lying around. It was a big mess, and it was really depressing,

01:15:25 – 01:15:33:	and poor, poor no, no wonder you got drunk. You can't read Scripture, and just make stuff up, and

01:15:34 – 01:15:39:	so I want to point out that when I said the thing about Adam maybe being 40 years old,

01:15:40 – 01:15:45:	that's a pious speculation, but it never goes any further. I would never pin anything on it,

01:15:46 – 01:15:51:	and that's where a lot of this stuff goes wrong, is that there are other men who will make up

01:15:51 – 01:15:55:	something that's consistent for Scripture. It doesn't disagree with it, but that they say, look

01:15:55 – 01:15:59:	what I've discovered, look what I've found. Let me build up a whole religion around this thing.

01:16:00 – 01:16:06:	They're modern scholars who do that. They find some little thing, they piously speculate, at

01:16:06 – 01:16:11:	least, to begin with, and then they build a whole pantheon of lies on top of it, and say, look,

01:16:11 – 01:16:15:	you've got to believe all this stuff, because this is what naturally froze flows from Scripture. No,

01:16:15 – 01:16:19:	there's no proof of what age Adam was. I have no idea. I could be completely wrong. You

01:16:19 – 01:16:23:	shouldn't believe, because I said it. It's just an interesting thing to think about, but it's

01:16:23 – 01:16:31:	interesting in the context of God setting the universe in motion, not from infancy. It's the chicken

01:16:31 – 01:16:38:	and egg joke is answered in Scripture. God tells us the chicken came first, Adam came first,

01:16:38 – 01:16:45:	the entire universe was set in motion as it is today, and then it continued as God had created

01:16:45 – 01:16:51:	it to evolve, to expand, to change, and ultimately to proclaim his glory as it goes through the

01:16:51 – 01:16:58:	motions of the incredibly unfathomably complex machinery that could only have been conceived of

01:16:58 – 01:17:03:	in God's mind, and that's why it testifies to his glory. It's not just about entertaining us,

01:17:03 – 01:17:10:	we're mesmerized because it is a natural revelation of the infinite creator who also died on the cross

01:17:10 – 01:17:19:	for us as a man and as God, because he loved us in our own place and time, even when he's also

01:17:19 – 01:17:25:	maintaining this not infinite universe, but it seems like it from our tiny perspective. The same

01:17:25 – 01:17:31:	God that knows about every quirk inside every atom in the universe, and he knows their count,

01:17:31 – 01:17:36:	and he knows where they are, and he knows what they're doing right now. He also knows us individually,

01:17:36 – 01:17:42:	and he knows our troubles, and he knows our sins, and he knows our doubts and our fears, and he knows

01:17:42 – 01:17:48:	our names, and the elect had their names written in the book of life. God's a very busy God, and he has

01:17:48 – 01:17:53:	time for all of, because he's more powerful than being possibly comprehend, and these discussions

01:17:53 – 01:18:00:	should ultimately focus on how wonderful it is that a God so infinite and so magisterial

01:18:01 – 01:18:07:	made sure the scripture, a book that you can hold in your hand, can be transmitted through time

01:18:07 – 01:18:14:	and be accessible to us today in a way that anyone can understand and can come to faith and be saved.

01:18:15 – 01:18:20:	And that actually raises a point that I want to reiterate from an earlier episode,

01:18:20 – 01:18:23:	because people get this backward all the time.

01:18:26 – 01:18:34:	We do not trust God because we trust scripture. We trust scripture because we trust God.

01:18:36 – 01:18:41:	If you look at things the first way, which is incorrect, that's when you're going to come up with

01:18:41 – 01:18:49:	things like the JDP theory, and the idea of the day-age theory, and all of these various things

01:18:50 – 01:18:57:	that are ways to get around perceived problems in scripture, because if you are justifying your

01:18:57 – 01:19:04:	belief in God on the basis of scripture, then what you are going to do is you are going to try and

01:19:04 – 01:19:08:	explain away anything in scripture that you cannot understand, because you're really basing

01:19:08 – 01:19:14:	everything on your reason. But if you trust scripture because scripture is the word of God,

01:19:15 – 01:19:22:	then any of these perceived issues are to problem. Because it's from God, God is perfectly

01:19:22 – 01:19:30:	trustworthy. God literally is truth. God cannot lie is a sufficient way to say it's not technically

01:19:30 – 01:19:36:	accurate. We'll go into that another time. And so you trust scripture because it is the word of

01:19:36 – 01:19:43:	God, and you trust it because God is perfectly trustworthy. And so that order matters, which one

01:19:43 – 01:19:50:	you trust and why. And there are just a couple of things that I'll make sure I add to the show notes

01:19:50 – 01:19:56:	for us this time. Saint Basil has writings on the hexameron, the hexameron, just meeting the

01:19:56 – 01:20:02:	the six day creation, hex six hammer day. And I think we can also link to a couple of things about

01:20:03 – 01:20:08:	blood. We have some materials on that that aren't behind a paywall, which is another problem in

01:20:08 – 01:20:16:	and of itself, but for another day. Yeah. And again, where the point is not to make a defense of,

01:20:16 – 01:20:22:	oh, we'll look how scripture accords with science. It's what you just said scripture accords with God.

01:20:23 – 01:20:29:	scripture is from God, and it is in God we trust. God who made heaven and earth and gave us his

01:20:29 – 01:20:37:	word through all time for our edification. If he can speak the universe into existence, he can

01:20:37 – 01:20:44:	do anything. And these men who cast doubt on, oh, well, maybe God really really didn't mean that.

01:20:44 – 01:20:48:	Maybe God didn't do that. I don't think God could have done that because the math doesn't add up.

01:20:49 – 01:20:54:	They don't have God. They don't believe in God. They don't trust in God. They deny him. And if you

01:20:54 – 01:21:01:	deny the father, you deny the son. If you deny the son, you have no salvation. And so it's not

01:21:01 – 01:21:09:	just about doubts or speculation about scientific things. It's fundamentally about the root of faith

01:21:09 – 01:21:16:	itself, and whether it's rooted in God through scripture or whether it's rooted in our own reason

01:21:16 – 01:21:21:	and our ability to make sense of things. And then hopefully we can bold God on so that that makes

01:21:21 – 01:21:27:	it okay. And that's not the Christian life and flee from any man who even suggests otherwise.

01:21:29 – 01:21:38:	God has two books as Christians used to say and should say again, scripture is one creation is the

01:21:38 – 01:21:47:	other. God is consistent as an author. We will close with a quote from 2nd Timothy 3.

01:21:47 – 01:21:54:	3. Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil

01:21:54 – 01:22:00:	people and imposter will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. But as for you,

01:22:00 – 01:22:05:	continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it,

01:22:05 – 01:22:09:	and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make

01:22:09 – 01:22:15:	you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is breathed out by God,

01:22:15 – 01:22:21:	and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,

01:22:21 – 01:22:26:	that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.