Sola Scriptura Refuted? A Discussion with Jay Dyer & Beau Branson

Thank you. [Music] [Music] Foreign. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Thank you. Thank you. [Music] Thank you. Thank you. Foreign. Welcome to another episode of Faith Unaltered. I am your host, Tyler Fowler. With me is my co-two co-hosts, Dave Russell, Dell Glover, a good buddy of ours, Dane Von Ace, and our two guests, Dr. Beau Branson and Jay Dyer himself. Guys, how are you doing tonight?

It's good to be with you all. David, what's up, brother? How you doing?

Another week, brother, in the books. Doing all right, man. How are you?

Not bad, not bad. I'm tired, bro. Long week, you know, just garbage. But I'm excited to have this conversation tonight. So for those that don't know the background to all of this, right? All the Orthodox shows we've been doing, because we've been putting out a number of them, we've had a couple debates with Father Jonathan Ivanov, Sam Samuel Fragg, and we've just been talking Orthodoxy. And so for those that don't know, I'm really investigating Orthodoxy. So much so that I've become a catechumen in the Orthodox Church. What's interesting is that both Dell and David are trying to keep me from going going that way. Um, but like I said, I, I'm investigating. I want to know the truth, and I don't care what I label myself. I just want to follow Jesus the correct way, right? And so we've been exploring Orthodoxy. And so I have two very qualified individuals with us tonight to help me out with that. We're going to talk about Sola Scriptura. Uh, J. Dyer, bro, Beau Branson, and this, guys, I'm ready to, I'm ready to kick this off. Dane, uh, before we do get started, Dane and Dell, how have you guys been?

Della, go ahead. Y'all have been good. Um, just did a show, uh, earlier this morning on, um, SJ Thomason's channel that was on the side of Turin. So we were looking at the medieval history of it and looking at the 1389, uh, Darcy Memorandum. So yeah, this is my second show today. So you must be tired as well.

Uh, I'm not as tired. I mean, I'm used to doing four or five shows a week. So, uh, next week, this is my second show today. I am tired, officially. So he, uh, he just chugged some red cream soda, so he's ready to go.

There is some good energy in the Canadian red cream soda. Yes.

Right on, right on. Dane, how you doing, brother?

Yo, I'm great. It's fun to be, uh, back on Faith Unaltered. Always a pleasure. Um, I had a busy week. I've been in Memphis, uh, for, um, my church's like annual conference. It's more than I need to explain, but just a big church conference. And, uh, got back home last night and went to the last night of Vacation Bible School at our church. So, uh, that one night of VBS wore me out more than the whole conference from the past three days. So, um, but I'm doing good. I'm, I'm in good spirits. Happy to be here to discuss, uh, Sola Scriptura with y'all. It's going to be a fun show, I believe.

So I do believe so. All right. So without further ado, I will let our guests introduce themselves. Take a couple minutes, tell our audience about you guys. Uh, we'll start with Jay. Jay, welcome and thank you for doing this. I was excited to meet you a couple, what, about a month ago now? You visited our parish and that was a good conversation when we had a little bit of dialogue together. And so I was excited that you, uh, you agreed to come on here and talk Sola Scriptura with us. So how are you doing and how's, how's it been since we've seen each other?

Great. Yeah, it was really cool. I didn't realize, like I said, you guys are so close. I would have come to to meet Dr. Branson much sooner if I'd known that he was that close. I assumed, you know, when you hear other states, you think four or five, six hours away, but you guys are only two hours away. So, uh, yeah, we had a great weekend up there with you guys and, uh, got to meet everybody and, and yeah, it was, it was cool to chat. And I remember you were asking about, you know, Sola Scriptura and other issues like tradition and church fathers. And so, yeah, I'm happy to to discuss that. I've had quite a few exchanges over the years with various Protestant pastors and apologists. And I myself, uh, did the Protestant Bible College for a while. So, so yeah, I feel like I can, uh, you know, hopefully have a good perspective on both sides of it to contribute to the conversation. And what I do is, uh, do a lot of debates, do a lot of movie analysis, do a lot of geopolitics. Host the fourth hour of He Who Cannot Be Named every Friday. Um, what else do we do? We do live events now. So we do, we do comedy and philosophy talks and all kinds of stuff. So you can find me, uh, on YouTube or on Rockfin or any of the other social media outlets.

Right on. And I do have your channel in the description of this video. So if anybody wants that, they can just go down there and click it and they'll lead you right to it. Uh, Dr. Beau Branson, how are you doing, my friend? Now, we met from, uh, the Orthodox Church, uh, that you attend and that I attend now. And so how are you doing, brother, and how's it been since the last time I seen you?

I'm doing all right. Um, I don't have a whole ton of news like everybody else. I've just been writing this whole summer.

Right on. Bring life. Do you want to plug your book that you're writing?

Um, sure. Yeah, I'm in the middle of writing it. It's gonna be like a four views book about the Trinity. So it'll have, um, it'll be me, William Lane Craig, Dale Tuggy, and Bill Hasker. So I'm, I'm in the middle of, uh, finishing up my, my criticisms of William Lane Craig as we speak. So yeah, it should be interesting. I think it should be out sometime maybe the end of the year or something like that. So.

Okay. Keep us updated. And I'll, I'll keep people updated on my end for sure. So I'm excited to hear about that. But all right, guys, let's jump into it, shall we? I'm, like I said, I'm, I'm excited because here's the thing. So I don't, what I don't want to accomplish in this discussion, I don't want to merely destroy Sola Scriptura or anything like that. If proven false, what I want to do is be able to present our listeners with a more robust, a stronger alternative to Sola Scriptura. And so to start out, I think, um, and you guys, uh, we'll start with Jay, if you want, uh, can you present us a positive case for the infallibility and authority for both scripture and the Orthodox tradition?

Yeah, I can. Um, well, I make, I can give you what I, how I would argue that. Um, but I did have one question before we started. Not, I'm not trying to be rude or or anything. I'm just curious, what, what type of Protestant tradition do you guys come from? Would you say classical Protestant, Reformed, or like Evangelical Lutheran? What, what Protestant tradition are we talking about?

So I came from a Protestant, uh, so Southern Baptist, reformed. So reformed Southern Baptist tradition. And our other two Protestant buddies here are, they, I'm, I'm evangelical. I, I guess, like, you know, William and Craig, Michael Cossa, those types.

Okay. I would say the same as Dale.

Okay. Yeah. I'm just curious. I'm a theological mutt, as they say. Yeah. As Josh says, you know, because that just because that can kind of, there can be a kind of a range of, uh, levels to which, you know, people in the Protestant world may or may not give credence to tradition. So it just kind of depends on, you know, what, how far back, I guess, in history we're talking about. But so the question is, what, uh, relatively quick argument, I guess, would I give for the infallibility of scriptures and and what the Orthodox Church being the also infallible church? Is that what the question was? Just the, just the authority of the Orthodox tradition versus like a Roman Catholic tradition or something like that?

Okay. So I would say that that would be two-fold. First argument I would make is that from scripture itself, there's a continuity of revelation that comes from the Old Testament time when we didn't have what we could say is a fixed canon per se. Even though in the Old Testament period, we did have divine revelation that was conveyed through both an oral and a written, uh, means, eventually, as you know, Moses, Joshua, and the prophets write their texts down. Prior to that, however, it's not written down, it's, it's oral. So I think one thing that we could derive from that that we would all, I think, agree on, unless we're higher textual liberals or something, is that the, the ability to transmit the information, uh, orally is, is something that God can providentially do, right? So there's nothing that prevents God's Providence from, uh, maintaining and preserving the, the tradition that's passed on from Adam to to Abraham. That's that's, uh, that's not written down, right? So he can still do that. So when the texts, be the revelation, begins to be written down, we might assume that therefore we would toss away the oral testimony. Um, but one thing that's interesting and all the research that I've read, and aside from maybe Torah only Jews that would argue the Karaites or something, most Judaism historians and rabbinical, uh, history would agree that there was not a Sola Scriptura principle going on in the Old Testament period or the period of the Moses and the prophets. So for example, we read in Isaiah speaks of the, the law and the testimony, right? The law being, of course, the first five books, primarily the testimony being the prophets, and perhaps even the interpretive structure that the prophets themselves might give to the law of Moses and to subsequent prior revelation. So, you know, when we have small texts like Zephaniah or something like this, or other Old Testament minor prophets that are called, uh, preachers, right? In other words, they were acted. They weren't just having one sentence of divine revelation, or excuse me, one paragraph of a chapter of divine revelation. They may, but they might have also been preachers. And so this is a preaching is a prophetic office, and that doesn't always necessarily refer to predicting the future. And I know a lot of you guys probably already know that, but there's a reason I'm saying that, which is that they would be exegesing and expounding the law. And then as subsequent revelation came, it would be also exegesed and expounded. But again, at no point in any of that time frame in the Old Testament is that divine revelation restricted to only following the written text. And one way we know that is that when we get to the New Testament, when we have the fulfillment of a lot of the prophecies and a lot of what the Old Testament types were looking forward to, we have places in the Gospels where Jesus refers to traditions. Now, I understand that as a Protestant, you might say, well, but, uh, Jesus is God, so he can refer to whatever traditions he wants to, and they therefore become invaluable, you know, because he sort of references them or looks back to them. And, but I would argue that we don't just see that ending with Christ. We see this as a continuing principle even after the death of the last Apostle. This is why, for example, we have the, you know, the phrase that, uh, out of Egypt, my son came out of Egypt, right? Which is not a specific reference of anything in the Old Testament. It's interpreted to be either allegorical or for some or from, uh, Hosea or one of the other passages, or it's interpreted to be, uh, a reference to an extra-canonical text. We have many references to extra-canonical texts as well, again, also from the Old Testament. So you have, for example, references to the Book of the Wars of the Lord. You have the references in the New Testament to the Book of Enoch. And so for us, that suggests that divine revelation is not necessarily limited to only the written texts, right? So you might say, well, but the, it's still Sola Scriptura because really only that text that's referenced in the book of Jude from Enoch is the only infallible aspect. Everything else is is doubtable or a doubtful, excuse me. Um, and I would say that if we restricted ourselves to a few examples, that might be the case. However, the, the best argumentation, I think, is when we get to the way that the prophets are seen, the way the apostles preached. We find in Paul's Epistles and in Peter's, uh, Epistles, the statement that they preach the word of God. And preaching the word of God during this apostolic period is not restricted to simply citing the text, right? It would be all of the oral teaching of the apostles. So, for example, when Paul says that he commissioned Timothy, and I would argue that from the two letters to Timothy, he's, he's making Timothy the bishop of Ephesus. He says, I laid hands on you, Timothy. Timothy, you then lay hands on men after you who are able to transmit this body of doctrine that's being handed to you. And he talks about all the things that you heard in the presence of many witnesses. If we go to the book of Acts, we know that Paul taught in Ephesus for three years, day and night. So Paul was, uh, you know, expositing and teaching far more orally than what he wrote. You see? And so that whole body of apostolic Pauline interpretation is what he's committed to Timothy to hand down. And you'll notice, by the way, that this is intimately tied to the succession of the bishopric. So the laying on of the hands. And even go so far as to say that I appointed you, Timothy, in Ephesus. No one else is appointed in Ephesus according to Paul's succession there. So that means that in the city of Ephesus, at that apostolic time, there's literally only one correct believing church in Ephesus. That's the one that's quote Orthodox, right? The correct believing one. Likewise, the apostles then went out and did the same thing. And we know, I think, because we have the presupposition of divine inspiration and and divine Providence, we know that they weren't teaching different things, right? So Paul wasn't teaching something different theologically, ultimately, than maybe what was being taught somewhere else. If there was a disagreement, we know that Acts 15, we have the Jerusalem Council and the decision of, you know, coming together and deciding, okay, let's not require of the Gentiles more than was expected of them in the way of covenant, right? For admission into the church. If God, if Noah can be righteous before God prior to Abraham and the giving of circumcision, then circumcision can't be absolutely necessary for righteousness before God. Therefore, they come to this decision on the basis of again, not just citing the text of scripture. They do cite the text of scripture, but there's references, is what I'm saying, even in the book of Acts, to two non-canonical things, to extra-biblical things, principle traditions. For example, it is more blessed to give than to receive. Acts says Jesus taught. Of course, we don't have any written record of Jesus teaching that. A couple more examples, you know, Jesus says in Matthew 23 that the scribes and the Pharisees sit in the seat of Moses. That's the cathedral in the Greek, and that's the idea of a cathedral, the bishop's sitting in the seat of the cathedral, right? So Moses. So when Ezra set up what we know of as the rabbinical system or the synagogue system, this was so that Israel could have teachers that weren't just located in Jerusalem, right? So you could have a teaching of the law throughout the land of Israel. This is where we get Allah Ezra, the synagogue system. So Jesus is essentially saying that it is the tradition in the church in the first century, uh, worship at Temple, synagogue worship service, the presupposition is the scribes and the Pharisees sit in the seat of Moses. Therefore, do as they say, but not do as they do. There's no text anywhere in the Old Testament that explains this authoritative succession of a seat of Moses. Therefore, it is a tradition that Jesus is recognizing and accepting. And we can think of many, many other examples. And I'm going to try to finish this up soon. I know you're good. I mean, you asked a tough question. It's like, can you prove your whole system in like one, right? So, um, so, uh, you know, we have, we have other textual, uh, references. One I wanted to mention too, that just came to mind, uh, in the book of Chronicles, we have the reference that, uh, Hezekiah organized the worship. I think this is the wrong word. Remember, Hezekiah organized the liturgical worship as laid down by his father David. And it talks about not just the liturgical worship in the sense of having an altar and having, you know, the Levitical ceremonies, it's the actual service, the liturgical worship service, and its ordering with the music and the symbols and all this kind of stuff. So this is based on tradition. Now, we know that God's very concerned with how we worship Him because in the story, uh, what is it, Leviticus 10 or 11, Nadab, who offers strange fire, and God doesn't accept that. So, you know, many Protestants, if you're a classical Reform Protestant, you'll talk about the regulative principle of worship, that we can't worship God in any way or in any pattern other than what he's given us. And believe it or not, as Orthodox, I think we would argue, yeah, you're correct. However, when we come to the New Testament, we don't actually have the specific pattern of how the service is supposed to be conducted. I understand that, yes, Paul and Corinthians limits us about certain abuses, and he says, don't, uh, celebrate the cup, uh, getting drunk and fornicating, and don't do this, but there's not actually an explicit order of the service. Just like there was no explicit written pattern of how the worship service was to be conducted. And yet, we're told in Chronicles that Hezekiah ordered the service according to the pattern of his father David. I think David was 2, 250, 100 years, you know, before Hezekiah. So there was this tradition as to how the liturgical worship of Israel was to be done. Now, coming to my final points here, I would argue that in terms of Sola Scriptura, when we get into the post-apostolic period, we find the church fathers, especially in the first three centuries, many of them absolutely citing texts, many of them citing many texts. And because of that textual witness, we can reconstruct fairly accurate, fairly consistent gospel. Uh, there's an attestation, is what I'm trying to say, uh, from these first three-century church fathers. For example, in Irenaeus Against Heresies, from about 180, there's a ton of texts that are cited, right? So you could, you could compile kind of what Irenaeus knew of as the Bible pretty well. But what we don't, we still don't get for these three centuries is any clear pattern or idea of what the absolute canon of scripture is. Now, we get Marcion, who's one of the first to set up his own canon. So actually, the first idea of a specific canon comes from a heretic. And it still ironically doesn't prompt the church at this point to actually lay out a definitive canon of scripture. And for the Orthodox, we have obviously a little bit of disagreement with the Roman Catholics because they typically cite certain, uh, councils under Pope Damasus and during the time of Augustine for their canon of scripture. Uh, we, because we don't defer to just papal fiat and authority, we're not immediately going to accept that. However, it is an attestation to the fact that in the West, in the days of Augustine, it was pretty clearly understood that the deuterocanonical texts were absolutely part of the canon of scripture. In the East, there are varying canons. And all we can go to some of the, uh, academic literature that I have from, uh, evangelical scholars. I usually try to restrict my citation and sourcing when this debate comes up to to Protestant evangelical scholars. One of the great books on this is by Lee McDonald, Formation of the Christian Biblical Canon. And at the back of the text, he gives an appendix that's very helpful for showing, um, between Old Testament and New Testament, the differing canons that were pretty popular in different church fathers and in different centuries. So, for example, and again, I'm going to wrap up with this point here to try to make it very quick, and then I'll tie in how this relates to the infallibility of the church. But for example, when we look at some of the earliest lists of the canon of scripture, for example, the Old Testament, we have in the fourth and fifth century, we have the predominant canons of Melito of Sardis, Origen, Athanasius, and Cyril of Jerusalem, as well as Epiphanius, and Gregory Nazianzen. Okay? So there's there's commonalities amongst these lists and the differing sort of competing canons that were being used. However, there's also quite a bit of difference here. For example, Melito's canon does not include the deuterocanonical texts. However, uh, Athanasius's canon does include certain deuterocanonical texts. For example, the Letter of Baruch, it includes Epistle Jeremiah, and includes, uh, First and Second Esdras. Uh, whereas Cyril of Jerusalem's canon includes Baruch, Epistle of Jeremiah, but not the, let's see, there's one difference that they have that he has without Athanasius on, uh, Esther. So Cyril of Jerusalem includes Esther. Athanasius does not include Esther, as far as I can tell, at least from Lee McDonald's list here of the canon. Um, Epiphanius has basically the same list, it looks like, as Cyril of Jerusalem. But that's just the Old Testament text. And Gregory of Nazianzus, interestingly, includes, uh, actually leaves out quite a few Old Testament texts that even Protestants would accept. So the point is that we're getting a lot of varying canons. And there's, there's a few more here. There is, uh, Council of Laodicea, which includes the Epistle of Jeremiah, and Baruch. And then there is the New Testament. We'll move on to the New Testament canon here. Um, Hilary lists, no, I'm sorry, this is the, that was the East. This is the Latin Church's West Old Testament. The, the Western Church's Old Testament canon. Now, uh, Hilary has a list that includes Tobit. Jerome, of course, has what Protestants accept as the Old Testament canon. And Jerome's argument, of course, was that well, that's what Jews are accepting, so we'll go with that. Which I don't think is that good of an argument, by the way. Jerome, of course, taught most of the other things that Protestants don't teach, so I don't, I don't think Jerome's going to be too great of a source. Rufinus has a, a selection of Old Testament books which is fairly consistent with the Protestant canon. Of course, Augustine, the Council of Rome, Council of Hippo, Codex Vaticanus, none of those will work for the Protestant canon at all. They typically include the deuterocanonical texts, but they also have differences amongst themselves, by the way. So Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Alexandrinus, also having mostly deuterocanonical texts, but also variations amongst them. Then moving into other church fathers, Eusebius, um, disputes, uh, the Catholic Epistles. Interestingly, Clement, uh, includes texts that we wouldn't include. We wouldn't include the Shepherd of Hermas, the Acts of Paul, or the Revelation of Peter. Cyril of Jerusalem, uh, in his New Testament canon, has what we would typically would include, but he also does not believe that the Book of Revelation was canonical. And this is going to be important because one of the interest, one of the crucial points that we want to stress for Orthodox, when it comes to canonicity, was that a lot of the church did not accept the Book of Revelation as canonical. And it was actually Athanasius, if you read F.F. Bruce's book, New Scripture, who's been one of the most famous Protestant evangelical scholars, he's got some great chapters on Athanasius convincing Rome that, no, actually, we should include, uh, the Catholic Epistles and the Book of Revelation. So to me, that suggests that no, we can't really divorce. I mean, it's easy for us nowadays to look back and say, well, we have this, you know, this basic 66 book, so the King James Bible, the Protestant canon. Why can't we just go with that? It's pretty obvious, isn't it? Again, put your mind in the in the attitude of a person in the fourth, fifth, sixth century, when you go to your local church, and there's not a specific necessarily Bible there, right? There's not a 66 books of the Bible. Here's the key point. What is there? There you're going to have lectionaries, daily readings that are being done in the churches. And when I got into a lot of these Protestant scholars talking about how the canon came to be, I didn't even realize as a Protestant guy, a reformed guy, that liturgy was a huge piece of the puzzle for how the canon came to be. So I'm not saying it was the only puzzle piece, but it's a big piece. Because when canonicity is being discussed, and and for us as Orthodox, it eventually comes about by the time of Trullo and Sixth Council, you know, I mean, we would find attestation to the earlier, uh, Pope Damasus and and Augustine canon, but it doesn't necessarily for us, equate to, uh, ecumenical status until it's really covered by The Ecumenical Council and then it's received by the rest of the church. So the irony here is that for the Orthodox, the canon is really late. And even then, it's still kind of flexible because John of Damascus, when he lists his canon, it's the same as the Orthodox canon, but he also lists an extra. I think he's, I think he says Clement, he thinks Clement is canonical as well, which is interesting because I'm not sure why he thought that. There's probably scholars that could tell you why he thought that. But he has the Apostolic Canons, or something, is that what it is? Uh, yeah, he does. You're right. He has the canons, and I think he has Clement in there too. But, uh, that might be because he's going from an earlier, you know, ruling from, you know, a synod, or he might have just been pulling from, was it, uh, children? Anyway, point being is that, uh, for us, it's pretty late. And, you know, liturgy played a key role in that. So when the church father said, okay, what books are canonical? Well, let's look at what books were used and read in certain important ancient apostolic sees. Let's look to the ancient liturgies, the Liturgy of Saint Mark, uh, the Liturgy of Saint Basil. Uh, let's look to the daily readings and lectionaries that are read in the churches. Let's look to the tradition of the church and the various sees in terms of what their, their tradition was about apostolicity. Because for example, Matthew doesn't list who the author is. So the only way that we would know that Matthew was written by the Apostle Matthew is that the church's tradition says, this is Matthew, the Apostle's gospel, right? Right. And so, ferreting that out from, um, which are not necessarily heterodox. I mean, there's pseudepigrapha that might contain true tradition. I think, uh, our liturgy, you know, references things that are in some of the pseudepigraphical texts. The point being that if canonicity is strictly requiring apostolic authorship, which sometimes Protestants argue, there's a lot of problems there because we're immediately going to have to rely on the testimony of the church again to examine, for example, to know that Matthew wrote Matthew's gospel, and that we shouldn't accept other pseudepigraphical texts that have, you know, apostles' names attached to them. So it's a confluence of things, is what I'm trying to say, that go into how and why the church chose what books they did. And you cannot divorce it from this historical process. Therefore, if I do believe the text, and I do believe the guidance of the church within history, just like I believe God's Providence can guide Abraham to faithfully know the TR, the tradition passed down from Adam, I can believe that God's Providence can continue to preserve in the church, which is something more than what was existing in the Old Testament, which is the body, right? So Jesus says in the Gospels, as you know, that he will send the Holy Spirit, the Gospel of John, and that the Spirit will guide you and lead you into all truth. And for us, he's speaking to the collective body of the church there, right? And that promise didn't leave when the last Apostle dies. Not like when John died, okay, well, the Holy Spirit's gone, so good luck. You know, hopefully you can figure it out. Here's a roadmap of DIY, and hopefully you don't come up with a liturgy or church worship service that God hates. No, there's a pattern of worship that Moses, that assuming the Adam path, I'm getting, uh, I had too much coffee today because I was having to do this podcast. But there's a pattern of worship, the apostles laid down in the sees that they went and and evangelized and set up. And immediately after the apostles, that's precisely what we see when we read Ignatius, when we read Clement, when we read Ambrose, when we read Cyprian, when we read Irenaeus, they, Justin Martyr, they have this liturgical pattern of worship. And even in Justin Martyr or in Irenaeus, we have them discussing the liturgy in its its celebration. But we still don't even have like a full-on worship service. But we can go to ancient texts like the Liturgy of Saint Mark at Alexandria, and I think it dates from, I don't know, 200 or something like that. We can see, um, other liturgical celebrations from around that same time. For example, the Easter controversy. So we know the church was celebrating Pascha and Easter early on because they were having these big debates with Pope, uh, Victor over it, right? And the Quartodeciman controversy. So we know that liturgical worship is the norm, absolutely, during these time periods, even if we don't have an international giving us a full service, we do have those services, is my point. And those services play a key role centuries later in the determination of the canon. Therefore, we must have some historical body that is the preserver and the expositor, the guardian of this tradition. And I would argue that the first thousand years of Christianity, when we go to those councils, when we go to those synods, that synodal structure that we have in Acts 15, the church operates precisely in that way, both in local synods, even though we see those, you know, Council of Gangra, Elvira, we have ecumenical synods, which we see with, you know, Nicaea and the subsequent ecumenical councils, and the canons of those councils. I would say are one of the strongest arguments against the the papal perspective. So the, so you asked me specifically too about Roman Catholicism and why Orthodox is not Roman Catholic. Well, I would say that the easiest way to demonstrate that without going into papal documents and and papal dogma and Roman Catholic dogma would be to say, well, we know kind of the claims of Rome about what it sees itself as as the true church. But is that the way the church operated in the first millennium? And if the church of the first millennium operated in an Orthodox synodal way, and I think that it's demonstrable they did, and if there are canons in every one of The Ecumenical Councils, the first seven at least, that actually directly contradict and conflict with the Vatican I claim and interpretation, to me, that's the strongest proof possible that the Church of the first millennium was not the papal monarchical system, but rather a synodal system of first amongst equals. And by the way, the Alexandria document that just came out that we just live-streamed on, pretty much, it basically concedes about 90 to 95% of the Orthodox points, I should add, which is a Roman Catholic, uh, uh, Francis approved commission. Yeah, yeah. So I would say those things are the reasons why, uh, I think that Sola Scriptura is not true, and the formation of the canon basically requires some notion of the infallibility of the church within history.

Right on, right on. Well, y'all, we can just pack up and go home. Jay just killed it, and so we're done here. I mean, there's nothing else left to say. No, it's fine. Uh, but no, I, there, Jay, there's so many things that you said there, I want to hit on. First and foremost, thank you, because I actually got, uh, Lee McDonald's book because you recommended it. I also got F.F. Bruce. So if those who are interested, if you don't have any money, that's actually fine, because if you sign up for a free trial on Scribe, they've got the audiobook of F.F. of F.F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture, on there for free, and you just cancel the free trial whenever you're done with it. But, but great books and things that, you know, things were mentioned in those books that really led me deeper. So I ended up getting this book, The Biblical Canon, from Lee McDonald, and I also got his, uh, newer version out, The Formation of the Old and New Testament Canon, on Logos. And so I'm diving into those now. Big, thick books. Haven't finished them yet, but I'm really interested in seeing which way, uh, Lee McDonald is going to go there. But let me, let me just ask my host real quick, guys, is there anything in what Jay said, uh, that you want to touch on, maybe some key points or highlights that stood out to you guys? Dale or David? Um, and then we'll go to Dane as well.

Uh, yeah, I have a couple, couple questions. I was trying to write down. One of the first things you said there, Jay, is about, yeah, it's definitely possible in God's Providence that he could preserve the oral tradition, um, through the succession and that sort of thing. So I just kind of wanted to ask your take from an Orthodox perspective, because obviously, when it comes to the down to the preservation of the written scripture, um, even the most conservative evangelical scholars and Bible scholars do admit it's not a hundred percent. It's probably about 95% been preserved. Um, so how do you, like, if, if that's not 100% infallible in terms of the written scriptures, why does it need to be 100% infallible in terms of the preservation of the oral tradition? Or, or is it? Do you guys think there could be some minor errors there?

I would say that the, what we talk about when we talk about passing on the, uh, faith once we're all delivered to the saints, that would be that would be referring to the totality of the divine revelation committed to the apostles and to their successors. So that's a body of doctrines, ultimately, that includes things like, you know, previous scripture and, uh, apostolic exegesis and things like the, the liturgy. So, in other words, we believe that Paul, you know, really did set up a liturgical worship service, right? And for us, this is an important point about scripture. Scripture is more of a liturgical document than it is like a private devotional document. There's nothing wrong with you reading it as a private devotion, but it's not primarily for that. It's primarily for an ordered worship service. And that's why the Jews actually operate the same way, right? They had a structure of how you would read certain certain texts and certain books in certain orders. And then it kind of concludes with, um, nowadays, at least, the synagogue system, which does have a basis in a lot of the older temple and synagogue services from the patristic and, uh, uh, time of Christ era. Like there's a structure to that. And so for us, we simply adopted that same structure and pattern because we would say that Paul set up this kind of worship out of the existing temple and synagogue systems. That's why there's a great book on this that, uh, my buddy Lewis, he did a whole documentary that you could look up on Orthodox Shahada, and the book is Orthodox Worship: Living Continuity with the Synagogue, the Temple, and the Early Church. And it kind of makes this point. So the way it relates to what you're asking about the inerrancy of certain texts, so the question of inerrancy, I think, is a different question from whether or not there was a historical place for the church to determine the canon. Um, I don't know of anybody that, except for maybe like a King James onlyist, that thinks that literally every, like, you know, jot and tittle is necessarily, quote, infallible or in that sense, because we have to go from copious manuscripts which do have like, you know, minor discrepancies amongst them. So, but, but copyist errors is different from whether the body of doctrines handed down has been faithfully preserved and, and whether or not the texts themselves, for the most part, exhibit continuity and inspiration, which I would say they do. They think they're God-breathed, right? Um, but that isn't, but we don't have autographs. So we don't have the actual text that Paul wrote or Matthew wrote. This is again, another thing that points to the, uh, necessity of the church in this. If I, if I can't go in a time machine and see what Matthew was writing, and I don't even have copies of Matthew, I think like, you know, there's like a fragment of John from the year 9, year 100. Right? Most of the other, uh, fragments and gospel collections are second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh centuries. So again, I'm having the point you're making, I would concede it, and I would say, all the more reason why we have to kind of trust the testimony of the church and God's Providence to preserve the text, because we don't have the autographs, meaning the ones written by Paul or Matthew.

Gotcha. All right, cool. And just one last question before I turn it to David to save time, but, um, one thing, so I was interested, you mentioned some, uh, models in the New Testament times that you think kind of support, uh, sort of, um, what one biblical scholar calls a formal controlled process type thing, right? But there, there are, I think there's other models too, whereby an informal controlled, uh, transmission of oral tradition could also work, right? So we have the Bereans, for example, they don't just defer to what Paul says, they check for themselves in the scriptures to see, to test the teachers and the leaders, and stuff, to see, are they telling the truth or not? So do you think,

Well, but yeah, and I think that's a good question. But if, you know, if you notice Deuteronomy 13 and Deuteronomy 18 already laid down the principle that any coming prophet has to be consistent with prior revelation. So anybody in the days of Isaiah, if they were lettered, they might conceivably do the same thing. Oh, here's a guy, Isaiah, over here, claiming to be a prophet. I can check and see if I'm lettered, you know, is, is what he's saying consistent with pre-prior previous divine revelation? Yes, it is. So therefore, uh, maybe I should listen to him, right? So if we're in a period when there is ongoing divine revelation, it's definitely necessary that we would cross-reference and check what's being said with prior revelation. But, and I would, I'm assuming doing it for Protestant, you believe there's some kind of cessation at some point with the death of the apostles for public divine revelation, unless you're you're charismatic. I don't know. But, um, no, I, I, what I'm saying is that cross-referencing and checking divine revelation that's new doesn't really in any way affect whether Sola Scriptura is true or whether there's oral tradition or not, okay?

Uh, just one quick follow-up, if you don't mind. I know I said that was fine. Okay. Just to follow up quickly on that. So are you saying, for my understanding, I thought the Orthodox divine revelation, in terms of the oral tradition, is still open, right? Like, you guys, I know you guys ended the seven ecumenical councils, but couldn't there be a future council? Or is it only ecumenical councils are not new divine revelations?

So divine revelation is a body of teaching, the full apostolic deposit, we could say. So, for example, Jude speaks of the faith once for all delivered to the saints. So when John died, I would, I would argue there's not any new public divine revelation. Ecumenical councils expounding, uh, the, the apostolic deposit is not new divine revelation. So those are different things. We would say that the councils explicate and they make precise what is already there in the, the data of divine revelation. So there's nothing that, there's not a new divine revelation.

Gotcha. So it's kind of, they're infallible or inspired in adjudicating on the previous revelation, type?

Okay. Yes.

Okay. Cool. Uh, yeah, over to you, David. I don't have nothing as of yet. I'm still thinking right now. Questions we'll probably, I'll try to get back to later. That was a lot to take in. I mean, uh, can't hit it on, uh, one point. That was a very broad question for you, and I'm glad that you had the gumption and and drive to answer it the way you did. So thank you for that.

All right, right on. Let me, so let's go to Dane. Dane, if you've got any questions or if you want to add anything, and then we'll go to Bo to see if, uh, Bo wants to add anything as well.

Cool. Yeah, I think that was an awesome, uh, answer to a big question, uh, Jay. So thank you for that. And I did want to ask one follow-up around, um, the synodal structure of the Orthodox Church and in the councils. And just sort of ask a question that I've heard, uh, some Protestant apologists bring up when when talking to some Orthodox folks, and it's the question of like, how, how do we know the Orthodox Church is on the correct side of every synod? When there are dissenters who would say that they're apostolic. So an example being, uh, the Coptic Church and the Monophysites, you know, not adhering to Chalcedon. And so what's the way to discern the Orthodox Church, the Chalcedonian Creed, it's, it's solid, it's sound, it's apostolic, when we have this group of the Monophysites claiming that they're actually, um, correct and rejecting that synod? So if you could parse that out, I'd love to hear your answer. Dr. Branson, or me? Who are you asking to? Either one.

If, uh, I mean, whoever wants to be called Dr. Branson, I've been rambling for a whole time, so.

No, you probably know more about that than I than I do. I'll have some stuff to say to follow up on.

Well, I would say that a lot of time, the question you've asked, a lot of times, people are confusing two different categories. I'm not saying you're necessarily doing that, but in this debate discussion, which I've been, you know, hearing and having for probably 20 years on this question of authority and how do we know which one is right and who who's got the legitimate claims, I would say between a Protestant, a Roman Catholic, and an Orthodox, we all kind of are in the same boat. All of those systems will, in the final analysis, admit that the only ultimate assurance that the individual has is the work of the Holy Spirit. They all, at least, give verbal credence to that at some point. For the Roman Catholic, the assurance is supposed to come through the Holy Spirit leading the individual through ultimately the papal documents, right? I mean, the magisterium, which is ultimately the papal approval and statements, are the final arbiter, right? The final word on the issues. And so the assumption being that the individual Roman Catholic then is supposed to be in a privileged position epistemically to be able to parcel out all of the papal teachings into their correct bins and categories of authority, right? So that's how the papal system works. The Protestant system is similar, except that it's the Holy Spirit leading the individual to accurately understand and interpret the text of scripture, ultimately, right? So for the Orthodox person, um, we agree that ultimately the final arbiter of assurance for an individual has to be the Holy Spirit working on the heart of the individual. But where we would disagree with those other two systems is the means that he uses. So whereas we're not primarily saying that the means of certainty and assurance, not saying that Roman Catholicism is reduced to papal documents, but in terms of knowing the dogmas and having assurance in their system, it is, that is the work of the Holy Spirit, uh, leading it through the papal documents, right? And by the way, if you got, if you're a Protestant, it's, I would argue it's easier, uh, because you've got this one. If you're a Roman Catholic, I've got like a giant stack of paper documents, so you got a lot more work to do, right? A lot more to weed through. So hopefully you can put them in the right bins. But, um, so where we disagree with the Protestant, as I said, is that the the

The Bible has its place, and it's definitely, I would argue, inspired and inerrant. Uh, again, in terms of the body of doctrines passed down to the church, I don't mean that I don't think that means that every copyist manuscript is inerrant. I think there are a few copyist errors, but even still, it has a great, I mean, it's amongst all the ancient texts, as far as I'm aware, it's the most unanimity and historical attestation above any other texts that are out there. Like Plato has only all the texts of Plato from like the Middle Ages or whatever.

So, um, so it has its place and all that, but it's none of that equates to being the ultimate authority or the sole authority or the final arbiter. Because it's kind of like if you think about the Constitution, right? The Constitution is the nation's, uh, ultimate authoritative document. However, we need some kind of role of existing people to exposit that and give the final word on the law. And that's, of course, what the Supreme Court is. The Supreme Court exposits and kind of gives the final interpretation of the document. And we're just simply arguing that, not just because we want it to be the case, but that Jesus actually did establish a body of teachers who have authority. And we see that in Acts 15, and we see the church continuing that synodal system all the way up until today. And by the way, the normative governing system is local synods, right? It's not actually ecumenical. So you got 300 years with no ecumenical synod, yeah, the church is continuing to exist.

So, assurance comes in one sense for the individual by the Holy Spirit. Ultimately, I think since, I mean, the New Theologian has a whole great chapter on that, uh, in his, uh, Mystical Discourses. But for public profession, the Orthodox just simply disagrees with the model that the Roman Catholic Church has and the model that the Protestant has. And we would argue that the first thousand years of the church, which are so crucial, especially for the Roman Catholic apology, they demonstrate this synodal public confession.

So how am I going to know whether the Chalcedonians are right or whether, um, the, uh, you know, anti-Chalcedonians are right? Well, at the end of the day, we're not going to be able to turn off our brains, right? We're not going to be able to just pick an authority figure, right? And that's the, the Roman says, well, I'll just pick that. Well, and then in the process, well, I'll just pick the Bible. None of the, neither of those really answers or solves the individual knowing for sure which one's right, because you still have to go into interpreting and knowing the information.

So, but beyond that, there are other things in the councils, for example. Uh, and so Chalcedon, for example, the question would be, is Chalcedon consistent with Ephesus? And so every one of the ecumenical councils begins with, after Nicaea, obviously, begins with the notion that we are continuing the tradition of what we said before. And this kind of builds all the way up, you know, through the seven slash eight councils up until the Palatine Synods for the Orthodox, that we're being consistent with the canons and the revelation that came before. So it's true that there are false councils, Roberson on at office and all that for us. But there's really no way to adjudicate this problem without going into the actual specifics of the argumentation. There's no a priori way to know, oh, uh, uh, uh, this is the right council because of the Pope, right? Because Roman Catholicism itself actually doesn't give you a consistent, coherent list of the councils. For example, Lateran 649 should be a Roman Catholic ecumenical council based on their system, but it's not. It never has been. Uh, and the reason it wasn't at that time, if I recall, is because the emperor didn't sign on to it. Well, if it was the papal system at that time, who cares whether the emperor signed on? It shouldn't matter.

But, uh, anyway, long story short is that, yeah, there are certain structures and things within the councils themselves about universal acceptance and this kind of stuff, and it has to eventually be received by the whole church. And so it's not just this total top-down model, but it's also not a total bottom-up model where it's like, well, it's all the word of the people, or, you know, that would be more of a Protestant model, right? Because of the Protestant doctrines of, uh, freedom of conscience and that you can't bind me to your interpretation, these kinds of things, right? So it's, I would just argue that history demonstrates that it's neither the Protestant nor the Roman Catholic model. And the specifics of the Oriental question are a little more hairy, but if you go into the actual theological issues, I think we can show who's right and who's wrong.

Oh, cool. Thanks, man. Right on, right on. All right, uh, Dr. Branson, is there anything that you would like to add, uh, to either the question that Dane asked or to, uh, the arguments and the positive case that Jay brought up a little bit ago? Yeah, um, I could just give some, some thoughts that I had, um, that obviously kind of support Jay's position because it's my position. But yeah, um, I, the, the way I can, I mean, part of what got me, um, interested in Orthodoxy was I was very interested in Judaism, uh, first. And in Judaism, there's this idea, I mean, in the Bible, right? God gives the Torah to Moses, the written Torah, but then it's just taken for granted that people will have disputes about the law, right? It's not taken for granted that, like, it's so clear that there'll never be any, you know, any reason to worry about it. So God just takes it for granted, of course, people are going to be arguing about how to interpret this and how it applies and whatever. And so Moses will be the judge, right? So God specifically gives that authority of interpreting the Torah to Moses. And then an interesting thing that happens is God never tells Moses to delegate that authority, but his father-in-law does. And so Moses just says, yeah, that's a good idea. I'm here from, you know, morning till evening. So, so he sets up this whole hierarchical system where, you know, over, I think it was groups of 50 or 100 or whatever, or there's judges, and then there's a whole kind of system to appeal it all the way up to Moses, right? And the interesting thing, I mean, one interesting thing about that is just the concept of sort of delegating authority. It just seems to be taken for granted in scripture that if God has given Moses this authority, then Moses has the authority to delegate it to people below him if he wants to, right? Because that's never something he asked God about. God doesn't give him a commandment about it. It's his father-in-law, and he just does that, right? And the Jewish tradition is that of course Moses then passed that authority down to Joshua and the 70 elders, and it describes part of that in the Bible, right? Where he lays his hands on, uh, on Joshua, and it says that, you know, God's going to take from the spirit that's on Moses and put it on Joshua. So you get this idea of the laying on of hands, which is a big deal in, in the Jewish idea of ordination. And then, uh, Jay mentioned Ezra too, who, you know, when you, when you have people coming back from, uh, the Babylonian captivity and all this, like, you, you've got a situation where people don't really speak Hebrew. So the text is in Hebrew, but people really, you know, or speaking in Aramaic. And that's actually kind of the origin of where we had, why we have a sermon today. It goes back to, you know, what would have just been this liturgical reading of a section of the Torah, but because people couldn't really understand that, they would read it in Hebrew and then they would read it in Aramaic or they would interpret it to the people in Aramaic. And that's where we get the idea of a, of a homily. And that's also where, like, you get the Targums and this sort of thing. And, and also, um, in the, at the same time, I think it's in Ezra or Nehemiah that God talks about, like, you know, you'll, they'll have to be people set up who can interpret the law for the people, right? So again, it just kind of takes for granted that there needs to be a class of people who are experts who just devote themselves to to learning the Torah and being able to to interpret it and apply it. Uh, and the Jewish tradition is in that gets passed down again from, so it's from Moses to the, the 70 elders to the judges, I forgot to mention the judges, and then Ezra, and then down to the rabbis and the Men of the Great Assembly and the Sanhedrin.

Um, and an interesting thing is people that people overlook this because the way it's translated in the Gospel of John. But in the Gospel of John, Jesus celebrates Hanukkah. And it's translated in English in your Bible, it'll say something like the Feast of Dedication. And people don't necessarily realize that that's the official name for Hanukkah. So when in the book of the Maccabees, Antiochus Epiphanes, you know, desecrates the temple and sacrifices, you know, it was like pork or whatever, you know, to Zeus or something, and so then it had to be rededicated. So the Feast of Dedication celebrates the rededication of the temple. That's nowhere in the Protestant Bible, right? So, so it's not in Protestant scripture. It's not in the, the feast isn't even really mentioned in the book of the Maccabees. The Maccabees talks about the events, but it's just something that the rabbis created, the Feast of Hanukkah, and Jesus is there celebrating it, right? And so he, and, and he tells the disciples at one point, you know, whatever the Pharisees say, you should do what they say because they sit in the seat of Moses. But he says, don't do as they do because he thought they were hypocrites, right? But, but it's interesting because he doesn't say, like, forget about them, they're hypocrites, so they don't count. He says, you have to do what they say because they sit in the seat of Moses. So he, he seems to say that they do have the authority to create new festivals that are not mentioned in the Torah. Um, he seems to think they have authority that the, the disciples have to follow it and so forth.

Um, and then there's the passage about binding and loosing that I was, um, uh, get amused when I hear certain interpretations of it. When people talk about like binding and loosing demons, like as though you would want to loose demons. Fair enough. But, but if you, um, I got interested in that because of the, it's mentioned by David Stern in the Messianic Jewish Manifesto and in his, uh, Jewish New Testament Commentary. But if you just look up binding and loosing on the Jewish Encyclopedia, those are technical terms, uh, in rabbinic Judaism that you see all over the Talmud, right? And it's, it's essentially, so the term for an interpretation, the Jewish sort of technical term about an interpretation of the Torah is halakha, right? So from the word halach, meaning to, to walk, so it's the way in which you should go. So it says, you know, Moses will tell you the way in which you should go. In other words, if you, you know, have a dispute about how to interpret the Torah. So halakha is, is sort of like, it's kind of like the equivalent of like, like common law, like judge-made law, right? So you have the, like the Constitution is written, but, you know, a judge will interpret it, and then once they've made that interpretation, and that sets the precedent, and future, uh, you know, future legal cases have to follow the same precedent. And in Judaism, that's the idea is that, you know, the rabbis or whoever is around at the time, they'll, they'll issue halakha, uh, and then, you know, you have to kind of follow the, the precedent. And, and the term for that, that the term for forbidding something is binding, and the term for permitting something is loosing. So you'll see like, you know, the House of Hillel binds divorce, and the House of Shammai looses divorce, or whatever. And, and the way, so in Judaism, what you would do, right, if you, according to, you have a, you know, little minor sort of questions or disputes or whatever, you just go to your local rabbi. If it's a, if it's a bigger issue, there's what they call a bet din, a house of judgment, which has to be a, it's basically a council of at least three or more rabbis, right? Um, and, and they're, so they can have a bet din, and they issue halakha, they bind or loose, whatever, right? And there's kind of, there's stuff in the Talmud about this that like, you know, when they, when a bet din binds or looses, whatever, you know, God in heaven will confirm that, you know, decision. And so if you look at the language that Jesus uses, it's very clear. And like I said, you can just look up binding and loosing in the Jewish Encyclopedia, and they say this, they're like, yeah, that's what Jesus is clearly talking about here because it's exactly the same sort of structure. He says, wherever two or three, and by the way, he's not in that passage, he's not addressing a big multitude of people, he's specific, only the 12 disciples are there in that scene. So he's not addressing like all Christians everywhere, he's addressing the 12 disciples. And he says, whatever, whatever two or three of you, the disciples, are gathered in my name, I'm there in the midst of you. And whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. So what it seems like he's saying is that he's, he's giving them the authority to make halakha, right, from the Messiah, not from Moses, right? And since he's greater than Moses, they have an even greater authority now, right? And if you, if you assume, I mean, and that's even Protestant scholars will acknowledge this if they've, you know, um, uh, you can, you can find some Protestant commentaries on those verses and so forth. The thing that they'll, they'll usually, uh, try to argue is, you know, whether that can be passed down or if it was sort of just, you know, for the 12 disciples. But my, what I would say is, you know, it's clearly mirroring, I mean, there's, there's nothing in the actual Old Testament about binding and loosing, all that that's all Jewish oral tradition or the oral Torah, right? And so, in any way, in the Jewish system, I mean, it is passed down, and the way that it's passed down is through the laying on of hands. Um, and so you, you see this in the book of Acts too, right? Where the apostles will lay hands for various things. One is the baptism of the Holy Spirit, but also when they're ordaining, uh, deacons and presbyters and and so forth. Um, and so also I would point out that in, in the book of Acts, so just like with Moses, he doesn't wait for God to sort of tell him that he can delegate this power. It's just sort of taken for granted that he can delegate it, he can pass it down if he wants to. And in the book of Acts, what you find is the apostles, once the community gets too big and there's these kind of disputes between the Hellenizers and Greeks and the Hebrews, they appoint the seven deacons, right? And there's no like divine revelation that says this is okay, whatever. They just assume that they can delegate part of their authority, and they only delegate part, right? So they say, we're going to still be preaching, so we're going to be the ones to explain, you know, the gospel, they're going to retain this kind of interpretation, you know, function, but they say, we don't need to be, you know, just serving tables or whatever, so we're going to delegate that to the deacons. Um, and so one thing I would say about this also ties into kind of that this structure of, you know, bishop, priest, and deacon. People sometimes argue about that, well, where's, you know, where is this threefold structure? And I think you can argue that it actually is there in the New Testament. But even if it wasn't, I would just say it's just part of the same idea that you can delegate your authority and you can delegate part of your authorities. In the same way that they just delegated sort of certain functions to the deacons if they want to, they can delegate certain functions to priests, but reserve certain functions for themselves. And that's really what you have in the Orthodox Church, right? As priests can kind of do everything except ordain. Or priests and and bishops. And the way that you, by the way, you know, an interesting, another interesting parallel, the way that you ordain a rabbi is you have to have three rabbis together to lay hands on someone to ordain the new rabbi. And that's what you do with a bishop in the Orthodox Church. You have to have three bishops to all lay hands on the one bishop, right? And so it's the same sort of structure. And the same issue too, with like, if you have sort of minor issues, you would go to your priest or your bishop. But for a bigger, more serious issue, they have to have a council. And what's a council? Well, it's at least three bishops, just like the bet din is at least three rabbis, right? So there's these exactly parallel sort of sort of structures. And that's one reason why I, I did become Orthodox and not Catholic, is because there's not really anything in Judaism like, um, a papacy, right? There's no sort of single head. There's a conciliar or synodal sort of model. And it's the same structure in, uh, in, in Orthodoxy. Um, and that, I guess that's basically what I would say that, you know, so it's, you know, in Judaism, you don't, at least in, in Orthodox Judaism, you don't have, um, you don't have a papacy, right? But you also don't have just kind of a free-for-all where just anyone can interpret the Torah and issue themselves, right? And also, you don't, I mean, you know, Jews wouldn't say that, uh, that they're infallible necessarily. It's just sort of kind of like, once precedent has been set, that's the precedent that's that's been set, right? That's that's how we do things now. Um, and, you know, I mean, it's a similar sort of issue, like with the Supreme Court. It's like, um, you know, the Supreme Court could overturn the Supreme Court, but a lower court can't. Even if a lower court, you know, if you're a judge in a lower court, you might think that the Supreme Court really made a bad decision on some case, but you just say, but, you know, that's the way the authority structure is, right? So that's the, because you do, you know, if you want to have a functioning community, it can't just sort of be a free-for-all, right? Like it could, it wouldn't work to have like the Constitution and a bunch of laws, but like we all just interpret the laws for ourselves, right? Like that delves into chaos real quick. Yeah, so you have to have some sort of, some sort of system, you know, some some idea of who's. And like, you know, like I would say frequently, I think the Supreme Court interprets the Constitution incorrectly on of issues, but like I don't, I mean, I, but I understand like we have to have a system, right? Where I mean, someone has to have the final say, even if they, even they get it wrong. Anyway, that kind of gets into other issues about infallibility and whatever.

Yeah, if I can, Bo, let me ask you this, because you were talking about Jesus delegating authority to the apostles. Do you think because Jesus does that, that sets the precedent for the apostles to delegate authority in some sense, anyway, maybe an aspect of it, that says the precedent for the apostles to delegate authority to those whom they choose? Yeah, I mean, that's what I'm saying. It's exactly, I mean, that's the system in Judaism is that rabbis can ordain new rabbis, right? Um, and the, and the new rabbi has the same, you know, is is equal in authority to any other rabbi, right? And it looks like the same thing. Jesus is just saying, you know, just like the Pharisees sit in the seat of Moses, they have this authority to to issue halakha, to make decisions about how to interpret the Torah, so you have to follow that. But they get that from Moses, right? It's the spirit Moses has been sent down this chain. And I, it just looks like what Jesus is doing with, you know, even the whole symbolism of taking 12 disciples to represent the 12 tribes and then the 70 apostles like the 70 elders, you know, it's like a heading on affirmation to what Moses did there. Yeah, it's just kind of like he's starting a new Israel, right? But but instead of Moses, it's Jesus, right? Right, which is obviously higher, higher authority. Amen. So, yeah, that's how I see it. It just seems so obviously supposed to be this parallel thing. And, um, another thing I, I, that I mean, I guess is a little bit off topic of Sola Scriptura, but, you know, you don't see in, in the Old Testament, right? There's plenty of times when Israel, you know, is is doing all kinds of things it shouldn't be doing. I mean, it down to even worshiping false gods, right? Worshiping like literally putting idols in the temple and worshiping idols in the temple, right? Um, but there's a commandment, you know, if you are a male Jew, uh, you have to go to Jerusalem to the temple three times a year and you have to make a sacrifice. Uh, and that's never abrogated. That there's never a revelation from a prophet or something that says, oh, well, because they're all screwed up and they're doing everything wrong, it doesn't count anymore and you should just kind of make sacrifices at home or we should start our own temple or something like that, right? It's just like, that's the temple, so you, you have to go there and don't worship the idols while you're there, but, but you still, you know, I mean, that's still that's still Israel and that's still the temple, right? Um, there's, there's no, there's no such thing as Protestantism in the Old Testament, right? I mean, the closest thing you get to it would be something like the Samaritans, right? Who start their own temple, but, um, I mean, even even Jesus in the New Testament was just like, yeah, salvation's from the Jews, not the, you know, when he's talking to the Samaritan woman, like, yeah, yeah, salvation, that's us. But, um, yeah, I mean, you know, first go to the Samaritans, then to the Gentiles, right? So first use in the Samaritans, but, um, but yeah, doesn't he also say that there's a time where you won't have to go to this temple or that temple, but you'll worship me in spirit and truth? Yeah, that seems very Protestant. It doesn't, to me, here's I guess here's why, because if you notice, right, in the book of Acts, and this is after the resurrection, so it's after the crucifixion, after the resurrection, after the Ascension, even after Pentecost, right? Um, the disciples were worshiping in the temple. And, and you don't do anything in in the temple except offer sacrifices, right? Well, they also preached in the temple, right? So, like, uh, yeah, and they, it, and, and also at that time, Gentiles also couldn't go into, uh, the inner parts of the temple still either. I would say that they were, they were probably doing that, probably up to 70 AD anyway, because Christ hadn't done that final judgment on Jerusalem yet. That I think he was predicting. So I mean, you could look at it from that way too, I think. So, uh, but no, Jay, go ahead, man. I'm sorry. No, I am the host here. I'm not, I don't want to, even though Jesus says that it will not be in this temple alone that you would worship the Father, we do find in the even in the New Testament text, and even in places you might not expect, like the book of Hebrews, for example, Hebrews 13, which is about, you know, what elements are fulfilled in the New Testament. Hebrews doesn't get rid of the notion of an altar. In fact, in Hebrews 13, Paul says that we have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat. So altar, sacrifice, and eating is still very important in the New Testament churches' worship, which he identifies with the heavenly Jerusalem. For us, when the Apocalypse is revealed to John, and he sees this ordered liturgical worship service in heaven, you look at Revelations 4, 5, and 6, you notice he sees all the incense, he sees people wearing vestments, elders, he sees angels. Looks very much like an Orthodox Church service because for us, the Divine Liturgy is that celebration of the heavenly worship on Earth. So while it's true that Jesus is saying to the woman, the Samaritan woman, if you think about her context or her dispute with the Jews, it was precisely over the question of where should we worship God. She says, Jacob's Well. Jesus says, no, sorry, it was at the temple that was the theologically correct position. However, a time is coming when the whole world will worship God in spirit and in truth. That just means in the Holy Spirit, right? It's not saying that there won't be specific places that we gather to that are holy. In fact, the New Testament includes the notions of certain locations actually being holy. Peter says in his epistle that Jesus was transfigured on the Holy Mountain. We know that in the Gospels, right? We have the, the pool where the angel stirs in the Gospel of John, the pool, so it's a holy, holy site. So alters, holy things, which are typically kind of contrary to the Protestant idea of, well, that's all fulfilled, that's the Old Testament ceremonies, we have holy things anymore. There's many, many instances, I would say, where we find this carried over in the New Testament.

I was going to to finish what I was going to say when they go to the temple, right? You, you typically do offer a sacrifice in the temple, right? And if you think about it theologically, it would be, it would make no sense to, to be offering blood sacrifices, right? Or offerings for sin. But if you, if you're familiar with the sacrificial system, right, the one offering that is not in any way connected with sin and it doesn't involve a blood sacrifice is the thank offering or the Eucharist, right? Which is also specifically leavened bread. That's other whole other issue. But, but it's interesting, you know, a lot of times people don't think about this. They think, oh, well, this sacrificial system's been sort of done away with because Christ is the final, you know, sacrifice for our sins. But there is a sacrifice that's still left, right? That is not a sacrifice for sins, um, and it's, it's the bread offering, right? The grain offering or the thank offering. Um, and in, in the book of Acts, what you read is that the disciples would go to the temple every day, um, and then it says they would go home and break bread from house to house. And if you know about the, the thank offering, it would be, uh, it would be a pretty substantial amount of bread, and the, the commandment says that you can't let any of it, um, uh, you can't leave any of it over for the for the next day. Um, and, and the idea there is partly that you would, um, you would then be sort of incentivized to to feed hungry people or invite people to come and share it because you can't, um, you can't leave any of it over, right? So you have to, and you, you have to make a big amount, so you have to share it with people. So it looked, and it looks very much like, I mean, they're, they're going to the temple to to worship, and that's, you would normally think where you would offer a sacrifice. And then it specifically says they go home and break bread, uh, from house to house. So it looks very much like the Eucharist. And it looks like they're still doing that, you know, in the temple and in a sacrificial sort of way, like with the Old Testament Temple liturgy of the grain offering. Um, and then of course, once the temple's destroyed, um, they, and, and presumably in, you know, outside of Jerusalem and other places, they would just celebrate that on on their own. Um, but it doesn't look to me, I mean, you know, you still have to have someone sort of again delegated to, um, to do that, to make that that offering, right? And it doesn't seem to me that there's any indication that it's just again, kind of a free-for-all, like anyone can just consecrate the Eucharist or whatever, um, that I see anyway.

Right. I appreciate that. But David, is there any follow-up since you brought up or okay. All right, let's shift gears then, uh, for a minute. So we recently did, uh, on Faith Unaltered, a couple shows, um, one entitled Why Orthodox, the other entitled Why We're Protestant. And Dale, unfortunately, being a Protestant, he had some issues going on while we were doing that first episode. And so he actually had came back on the podcast in order to give his side of the story. And, and there's a quote that I want to read and I want to get Jay, I want to get your opinion on it, and Dr. Branson, I want to get your opinion on it as well. But in this episode, he says, Dell says this, he says, quote, we have the Protestant Bible, 39 books in the Old Testament as well as the 27 books in the New Testament. In Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics, and Protestants all agree that these books are in the canon. Therefore, great Protestants win the debate and can use the 66 books as a standard to assess any other later books, doctrines, or traditions that may come up. And as I get into the fourth topic, I'll say that I think some Orthodox and Catholic doctrines and other books are inconsistent with the Protestant Bible. End quote. What would your guys' response be specifically to the understanding that because we all agree on the 66 books, therefore the Protestants win the debate by default, and Orthodox and Roman Catholics would need to justify our other books or disqualify? Go ahead though. So that wasn't an argument for Protestantism in all of its full, in all of its doctrines. It was merely that was an argument for mere Protestantism being the the default. So, uh, yeah, over to you guys to answer that. Yeah, Jay, if you want to take this one first, you can. Well, my first sense would be that it's, uh, fallacious reasoning because the fact that we all three agree on something would really have nothing to do with its status in terms of whether it's true or false. And I mean, I hear a lot of people arguing all the time that, you know, people say, well, the churches don't agree, so how do you, how can what you're saying, uh, be the case if if all the churches and the different groups, they all disagree, so why should we believe you? Well, it's kind of premise on the same kind of reasoning that the status of agreement or disagreement really has nothing to do whatsoever with whether this list or that list is correct, uh, or false. So that's number one, a fallacy. Uh, I would say that the, another point would be that, well, if there's divine revelation in those other texts, then it really, again, doesn't matter how far we scale it down or how much, like it's a question of what the divine revelation in toto is, right? So there's not, this is really irrelevant to what the, the content of on revelation is, what groups accept or reject. What it's a question of is what is that content? What is that divine revelation? So that is going to be known again, only through some kind of historical attestation of a historical body that preserved it and decided, you know, what, what the book would be. And it doesn't matter, like how many Protestant groups kind of come along and say, well, I like this canon, I like this canon. It really ends up being kind of something that any individual Protestant could conceivably construct on his own. Because if the Protestant idea of not being bound by anybody else's interpretation, the right to private interpretation, the right to freedom of conscience, and so forth, in these matters, then what on what basis? Everybody probably knows that, you know, Luther disagreed or doubted certain books. Let's say for the sake of argument, Luther said, I reject the Catholic Epistles and the Book of Revelation. On what basis can a Protestant really say, well, you don't have the authority to do that? Because it doesn't really matter what, if, if the Protestant position is right, it's premise on the notion that it doesn't matter what any historical group said with a canon of scripture was. So the fact that we all agree on it is really irrelevant to the Protestant presupposition of the right of private interpretation and the authority of the individual to basically, I've done my own research, I've prayed a lot about it. By the way, I always, I like to propose this thought experiment to process when this comes up. I just simply say, what would you say to me if I said, I've done a lot of praying and the Holy Spirit has led me, trust me, I've read a lot of conservative scholars, and I believe the only acceptable book in the New Testament is just the book of Jude. That's it. So sorry, you're all wrong. But I want to know, like, on what basis would you say that that's wrong? Because I can appeal ultimately to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to my own personal striving for truth. What typically, a lot of Protestants appeal to. But if we don't have any normative authority, as we say in terms of a philosophy, right, within history, how are we going to, on what, how would we adjudicate that position being wrong? Or Luther throwing out certain, you know, five, six books of the New Testament, like why would that be wrong? Oh, yeah. Are you asking it, um, yeah, so the way, the way we're warranted, I would say, is is in the same way as the almost in the same way as the Orthodox position, according to Father Jonathan. And I know from what you said, it sounds like you have some differences with him, but, uh, he's an Orthodox priest. He's been on the show a couple of times. But, uh, Father Jonathan Ivanov. Father Jonathan, I'm not familiar with him. I don't, what, what, how do you know I had differences? So, so at the end of the day, the way it's warranted, look, we appeal to the Holy Spirit. This provides us with a warranted true belief with respect to, you know, hold on this. So, but appealing to the Holy Spirit, as I was arguing, it can give, that's the ultimate thing that every individual will rely on. But when we raise the question of normative authority and delusion, that shifts out of just the individual existential experience domain into the public domain, and that involves history, right? So on what basis would you say that any Protestant with a different canon is wrong or in delusion? Because we're going to have to appeal to some historical normative authority, right? That's different than existential assurance. Those are two different categories. They're related, but they're different. So two responses. So in the first place, on the individual level, remember I said warrant, not justification. Warrant carries with it a factive component as an epistemic criterion. So under Alvin Plantinga's definition, warranted entails that if we're warranted, then the belief is in fact true. So that's just the part of the definition of warrant. And that it just comes down to, do you know internally whether you're warranted or not? But that's not, but I was talking about the public notion of normativity as distinct from the individual's subjective assurance. Two different. Okay, okay. So maybe I think I might be answering you with the second more objective argument. And this is where I was trying to say, I'm kind of like you guys, but a bit different in that I would say, look, it's the, this, the Holy Spirit acting upon in true individual Christians, cross denominations, over time, over all of time. And hold on. So for us, for example, the list of canon that we accept would be Trollo slash, uh, Sixth Council, right? So do you think that there's another way to identify the biblical canon than that historical process? I, I think that there, yeah, I think that there is. I think it's just basically the Holy Spirit working within the individual. So there's not any public way to adjudicate between competing Holy Spirit claims. The only, the only, the only way to do that is by saying that I think that the majority of true Christians over time have all accepted these books. And on that front, there's only that again, that's presupposing that Protestants, Orthodox, and Roman Catholics are all true Christians. And so how do you know you have the right definition or category of what, who, I mean, are Mormons, right? Or they're excluded, presumably, right? Yeah, they would be excluded. So, but wouldn't they be excluded in part because they don't have the Nicene teaching of eternity? Yeah, that's exactly why I would deny them. Okay, so, but does that mean that you accept the Council of Nicaea? I, yeah, I believe that the Council of Nicaea more or less has true propositions. I don't think it's inspired or anything or infallible or anything. But well, what, what do you think goes into a council, for example? You think it's just the confession that's produced, or what do you think is entailed there? Yes, so my understanding, and you kind of, this is why I was asking you before, is I, I thought that the Orthodox view is that when a council comes together, they are almost getting, uh, some kind of inspired divine revelation. Well, but I'm asking on your perspective. I'm just wondering because you said, I accept Nicaea, but when I go to the canons of Nicaea, I mean, they teach probably 20 things that you don't believe. Are you, are you familiar with those things? Probably not. No, I'm just thinking of the Trinity aspect of it. So, okay, well, wait a minute. So, but Nicaea, and then the Nicene, you know, Constantinopolitan Creed says, for example, I believe in one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. And I would argue that it makes sense to interpret that the way the people that wrote it, right, meant it. So, for example, Cappadocian theology, Basil, Nyssa, when they wrote One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, there for the Creed, they're referring to the visible Episcopal structure that is attending those councils, right? They were bishops, they did the Eucharist, right? The canons of Nicaea talk about the Eucharist, it talks about giving the Eucharist to the dead, it talks about feasts, it talks about virgins, it talks about all of these things that Protestants don't accept. So when you say, well, I accept Nicaea, Nicaea is predicated on a kind of historic authority. So you're not accepting Nicaea, you're saying I accept the Trinity, not the Council of Nicaea. Yeah, uh, it's exactly, I think you said it was your second point that you gave in your opening, where I would take the views of protestant, look, I'm accepting the true propositions that are that are in there. So now it's not the Council of Nicaea, and it's not even, it's not, you're right, not the right, the Creed that's produced by the first and second councils, right? So it's not the Creed that I like. Sorry, like, yeah. Um, yeah, I, I agree with you as a, as a historian, we would want to understand what the, uh, people meant. And, okay, for the sake of argument, maybe they meant, uh, visible universal church. I disagree with them. I think that there's an invisible universal church. So I would reject that part of the council. So yes, I, I am subscribing. Well, it's interesting because we don't. But see, through these centuries, then, what you're saying is the true Christian appeared to be aligned with Nicaea and people's public confession, but now it's getting scaled down, right? What? Oh, no, actually, it's not. What you guys are saying, you guys are not actually a true church. It was what that would amount to, at least the classical reformers, many of them were consistent enough to say that the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches are not true churches. So is a true Christian now the pert, and this is, this was your measure of then whose canon of scripture we accept? You see that it's getting whittled down to to basically just being Protestantism? So it's assuming the thing that was in question. So, so in terms of, okay, so to start off, let me rephrase it like this, and I don't mean to cut you off. It, so basically, you're saying that the canon of scripture is determined by what the true Christians at all times believed. The true Christians at all times believed the propositions out of Nicaea that affirm Protestantism that I adhere to. So basically, it's just restating your position of what Protestant Christianity is, is now scaled down to what a true Christian is. Does a canon then, is just what the Protestant canon was? But none of that, all of that is just a big circle. So I wouldn't say necessarily all of true Christianity. I'm just saying, kind of, it's an argument that the default is one way we can identify which doctrines are true Christianity is that the majority of Christians thought across sex or different sex and denominations over time subscribe to it. And only the process hold on. But in the area in crisis, the big contention of Nicaea, Orthodoxy was in the far in the minority. So would that make Arian and Sumerianism true because it was the majority at the time of Nicaea? Well, there's been about 1700 years where Arianism is not the majority. You see. Well, but I'm saying, let's just take your position and imagine that we're a Christian in the year 300. Well, how would your, on your principles, how would we know where the, where the true delineator between a true Christian and a false Christian is? Well, we'll see that, okay, so at that time, uh, we might have an issue, right? But I'm, I'm saying for me, right now, because I wasn't your position out to be true from the beginning. I mean, no, I'm saying we have a mechanism today as Protestants to know, um, that just was not the same mechanism. It doesn't work now. It wouldn't, it wouldn't have worked for the first several centuries. Yeah, they would have had another mechanism to tell at that time because, yeah, and that would be what I mean. So is that, this is basically an admission that the first several centuries of the church is not the Protestant church? No, again, it wouldn't have been Protestantism, it was called Christianity. Well, sorry, it was biblical Christianity at this point, but they don't have access to a clear canon and no way to really recognize the true in the false church is what you were admitting? No, I, I'm saying so they had a different mechanism, right? Through the Holy Spirit, of recognizing which scriptures. In the first century, they also have, what is this mechanism? And what do you have any evidence of this from history, or what you're just sort of asserting this? I'm not trying to be mean, I'm just saying like, no, I mean, Jay, you're kind of leading him too. Let him answer first. Let's see what he's got to say in a roundabout way first. So, well, he's asserted the mechanism. I just want to know what. Yeah, so, okay, let Jay, let me ask you a yes or no question. Would you accept that there could be additional mechanisms that apply today that maybe didn't apply back then that are valid, like progressive revelation or something? Yeah, are you saying like that we today, because of information, internet, we have access to mechanisms for determining things in history that they didn't have then? Is that what you're getting at? Well, no, because the original question that Tyler asked is my, my mere Protestantism as the default. So it's an argument that I had had. And the principle, how do I, how do we discern that today? Is that okay? Well, for two thousand years, uh, the majority of Christians across denominations or sex.

all accept these 66 Protestant books. Some of them except others, uh, additional ones, but everyone agrees on these. So we can say, at least these, we know are inspired. But why would the majority acceptance somehow equate to the proposition that, therefore, those are the true books? That's what I'm, I'm calling into question the assumption there, basically.

Okay, and by the way, what exactly was the mechanism? I didn't hear that. You responded with a two-quote way, but what was the mechanism? It's the Holy Spirit producing properly basic beliefs with respect to these books and their status over, over time, across the denominations. So, in fact, in the third, fourth, and fifth century, the true Christians did know the Canon of scripture. Yeah, I think, yeah, for the most part. I mean, how, if many of them couldn't read and many of them didn't have access to a full Canon of scripture, were they somehow knowing in these centuries before the Canon actually came to be, which is a consensus of basically every Protestant scholar? How are they knowing the Canon of scripture?

Yeah, so I think, I think you're right that the, that the people who are illiterate couldn't read it for themselves, but they could have it, with most of them, right? They could have it read to them. Um, and in that case, they recognized the word of God that's being read to them at the local churches. As I showed from Lee McDonald, many of them didn't have the full 66 books, nor the full Orthodox Canon eventually, which comes about by the Sixth Council. So what I'm saying is, what's the mechanism by which they're supposed to know the Canon of scripture, which, by, I'm just saying, by necessity, they can't know that. You see?

Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, of course. I, I don't think any Christian in the first century knew the full Canon of the New Testament. Well, say the third century. So, remember, this was supposed to delineate true and false Christians. And you're saying that it's the lowest common denominator of people who believed in the things that were taught in scripture, but they didn't even know what the scriptures were because they didn't have access to a full Canon. That's kind of what I'm getting at. So the average guy in the year 300, shouldn't the means of salvation be the same for somebody saved in the year 300 to somebody saved in the year 2023?

Um, not, not necessarily. So the means of salvation, yes, the conditions for salvation, but not necessarily the means of learning that. That's, that's what I was trying to argue is that today we have an additional mechanism that I think warrants my, my Protestant default argument. Uh, and you're right, I, that that type of argument wouldn't necessarily apply for Christians in 380 or before. So I would need to postulate some other mechanism, like the Holy Spirit, James White type, type argument, and we can debate that.

So, but how, but doesn't it matter which Canon we have, whether it's right or wrong? Right? Why? I mean, I don't think so. I mean, no one, I thought, I thought the Canon was part of true and false Christians. So now, but it's not, it's not an essential, uh, belief necessary, the way the way I, well, it's indirect. I could conceivably scale it down to just the book of Jude. So the way, so the way I determine the essential, you know, you're, you're a damned heretic versus you're a Christian, a true Christian, is from the Bible. So it's whatever the Bible explains. The question originally was, what are the contents of the Bible? So that's being assumed in that answer. Exactly. It's implicit that you need to know what the, what the criteria are. So I'm not, what we're here to talk about. So, you know, we can't just say, well, it's the Bible. The Bible is the Bible. How do we know what books are the right list of books? For example.

And the reason this matters is a point that, for example, Luther makes. Luther makes the point that, well, I definitely don't want Maccabees and Syrac and some of these other deuterocanonical texts in there because they give credence to the notion of, uh, prayers for the dead. They give credence to the notion of works going up as a memorial before God. Um, so, you know, for Luther, it was very important to exclude those because the three, the theological presuppositions that Luther had to set, works and law and grace, and law in a dialectic, couldn't allow for texts that could be supportive of what he was arguing against Catholics. Right? So, in other words, his theological presuppositions determined for him the Canon of scripture. And I'm just saying, it seems to me that the Protestant position will be a lot more honest if it was, I'm not calling you out or saying you're a bad person. I'm just saying, if we were to say that, look, you know, ultimately Protestantism's view of the Canon presupposes Protestantism. That's kind of the point.

I'm not, okay, I need to think that over. I'm not sure that it presupposes it, but I, yeah, like, can I just interject one thing? That, that's, it's not the case that everyone agrees on those 66 books, too. So I think that's something you're maybe not taking into account. It doesn't have, uh, second, third John, or, uh, II Peter. There's an Armenian Canon of scripture that doesn't have a few of the books. Um, I mean, so there are, there are New Testament Canons, uh, and Old Testament Canons that are, that are smaller than the Protestant Canon. Yeah. But the majority of, of Christians over time, across the thing, are Roman Catholics, aren't they? Yeah. So we should just be Roman Catholic? No, I'm just saying that's, we can accept whatever, what the majority of those Christians across denominations accept. On what basis? Scripture is right. On what basis are we supposed to adopt the majority position argument? That seems to come with pre-packaged with assumptions, basically.

Well, I think because the Bible tells us that the Holy Spirit says. Now we're back to the Bible. And I'm asking, I think the bottom line of it is, it, I, I don't think we're getting a non-circular definition. Right? Isn't that, I mean, it seems like we're sort of defining the Bible in terms of what true Christians believe, but then how we determine who's a true Christian is going to deter, be partly determined by what's in the Bible, which amounts to a Protestant reading.

If I can interject here real quick, is this, so I watched your debate with Pedro Jay, is this the same line of argumentation that Pedro is using? That it, I don't know, it took a little bit of the debate and, and he still really didn't grasp, uh, what you and even the audience was trying to show him in his circular reasoning. Is that kind of the same thing that's going on here? Or, or am I off?

There was a point, I think, in the debate where Pedro did, uh, go down this line of thought. I remember two specific points that he made. I think one of them was this point, which I was just again trying to say, well, look, you know, it's fine to say these things, but when we actually dig into what is meant by those things, it turns out to really just be a restatement of the original proposition, which would just be a circle, basically. So, um, and by the way, I'm not being unfair because I would say, for example, a lot of Roman Catholic debates I've had, Roman Catholics will say something like, well, look, the only way to know the Bible is through the office of the papacy, otherwise we wouldn't know what books are supposed to be in that collection. And they'll just sort of default to again, those Augustinian, Damasian, Pope Damasus synods and said, well, see, this is how we know. But then at the same time, it's, they'll say, well, the reason we know the papacy is true is because of Matthew 16. So Matthew 16 is confirmed by the papacy, but the papacy is known because it's confirmed by Matthew 16. And that's a circle. And if a person does want to make a circular argument, then okay, that would be consistent with a certain type of epistemology. But 99.9% of Protestants and Roman Catholics want to have a type of an evidentialist, uh, you know, foundationalist epistemology approach. And so that's going to be difficult, I would say, for them to tease out. But yeah, uh, and then Pedro had another argument about Divine artifact, which was that if God from all eternity knew the Canon, then the Canon's the six, six books, the Protestant Canon was predetermined in the Divine mind or something like that, which is, it just ignores the historical realities of the fact that, yeah, but it didn't just drop into our lap. Like the, the book and its transmission and its history has a, has a formative process in these centuries of the church. And again, you know, I would argue that if we want to have a lowest common denominator of Christianity, then it's going to be the same doctrines and dogmas that were required, were required in these centuries. And when we go to those centuries and we find the nice, you know, Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed as the, the, the basis for what you would have to believe and would be catechized in. And we can go and read, for example, Saint Cyril of Jerusalem when he does catechesis, the catechetical lectures, very famous, patristic corpus, it's modeled on the Creed. So he just exposits in a catechetical way the teachings of the Creed. And this is the, this is the Bishop of Jerusalem. This is, and this is consistent with what the other bishoprics and Christendom are teaching. So they're expositing and teaching these things the way that we as Orthodox expose it and teach them to teach them. So this idea that you can get verbal credence to these centuries, and then when we actually dig into it, we find out that it's, it's not really credence because most Protestants, most evangelicals would not have anything to do with the actual church where Athanasius was at, right? They would be running him out, or he would be running them out, right? So that's the reality of the situation. And in fact, a lot of Protestantism actually matches up to a conglomeration of many early church heresies. There's elements of Marcionism, elements of Gnosticism, elements of Messalianism, Montanism. And depending on what process we're talking about, we actually have precedent in a lot of these heterodox groups. Even in Irenaeus's day, when he, in Against Heresies 180, writes about, you know, what doctrines are necessary to join the church, right? As a bishop, if you're going to join my church, uh, you're going to believe in the tradition. He says in book three of Against Heresies that aligns with the apostolic succession. And he says one of those great churches is the Church of Rome, which because of Peter and Paul has a lot of honor. And he says, we ought to look to them as an example of a church that we should want to be in communion with, and that we should base our apostolic succession principles on, right? The way that Rome does apostolic succession as a model for how the true churches are recognized through apostolic succession and the tradition that they confess. So his appeals are to tradition, apostolic succession, in 180, again, for the, uh, orthodox normative church of that time. So the point is just that if Protestantism is not a historical reality, then there's at some point a division, a divorcing, a loss of what the, and it really doesn't matter what flavor Protestantism is, you're ultimately going to have to come back to some kind of, uh, blackout view, right? So the apostles laid down the, the positive faith, and then depending upon which process we're talking to, right, it's, well, it was all blackout, or well, they had a lot of good with a lot of bad. Um, and it's sort of like, well, why are people who are basically heretical the ones that are preserving and determining the kind of scripture, right? Right. It seems to not really make sense given the fact that you might argue that in the Old Testament, okay, so the Jews were often heretical, they fell into heresy, but the church is different from Old Testament Israel. So Protestants like to use Old Testament Israel as a model, but we can't absolutize the period of the Old Testament because the reality has come to replace the type and the foreshadowing. So, for example, the, what circumcision did, its height, baptism is the reality. And when a lot of Protestants, for example, have a, take issue with the Church Fathers in baptismal regeneration, which they universally teach, the argument will be, well, let's go back to the mode of operation of the Holy Spirit during the Old Testament because circumcision didn't affect spiritually what it signifies, therefore baptism shouldn't. But this is to take the Old Testament modus operandi and absolutize that as if there's not a distinction between the Old Testament, the New Testament, precisely on sacraments and the Holy Spirit. And there is because Christ said with Pentecost, right? It's a whole new thing. Right? Pentecost is a huge fulfillment of the Old Testament Feast of Pentecost in weeks. So it, it's the reality of which those things were the types. So we can't go back to the types. But much of Protestantism is predicated on this point, on returning to typological and shadow realities.

I gotcha. I got you. So let me ask you this real quick, and then we can just have another discussion around, by the way, is why baptism and the real presence are so important? Baptismal regeneration and the real presence. Right on. Right on. I appreciate that. So let me ask you this, and forgive me, I just want to make sure that I've got this down and, and our audience has got this down as well. So if you were to answer the questions that you asked Dale, specifically about understanding and knowing what exactly the Canon is, how would you, and and you can be brief if you want to, um, how would you argue non-, uh, without begging the question, how, what would your answer look like, uh, like I said, without begging the question?

Yeah, we have to go to the historical testimony and witness of the church. So obviously, the internal evidence of scripture, it doesn't tell us what books make up the book of the Bible. Right? There are cross-textual references, sure, between different authors citing other authors, and different authors citing certain Old Testament books. But if that is, is if pure citation is somehow canonicity, then, well, now we've got the Book of Enoch being cited, so, you know, pagan philosophers, right? Sure. And we also have, um, yeah, well, again, we don't, we don't have throughout the Roman Empire and the sees of the early church, we don't have a consistent Canon. We have varying Canons of varying lengths. But we do have a body of oral teaching that accompanies interpretive those texts, because texts don't just stand on their own. This is another thing that I think Protestantism rests on this, uh, Enlightenment and, and post-printing press notion or something, this weird idea that the text just means what it says and it says what it means. But texts don't operate that way. Texts require an interpretive matrix, a schema, a, a web of beliefs that we have about that text. And each text is situated within the rest of the texts, and they don't really make sense without the holistic context. And I think most Protestants believe in canonical interpretation and holistic execution. Sure. But even the Bible itself, I'm saying, it doesn't make sense without the milieu and the context of the church. You see? Right? Because the church is the pillar and ground of truth. Timothy, it says to Timothy, Paul says to Timothy, not the other way around, right? Paul says to the Thessalonians, continue to keep the traditions whether written or not. And again, those are just really, I think, points bolstering what we're saying, which is that the Bible is a, is situated within a context and milieu of the life of the church, the liturgical life of the church. It's meant to be, meant to be heard and exposited by an authority figure in a structure. And you can't have that divorced from the actual history of the church. So the way that I get around a circular argument would be that, well, just simply that the history of the church, we can go into these guys up here, demonstrates that there's no clear Canon. Uh, varies amongst many centuries. Tradition is seen by these guardians of the text as necessary for the text. Uh, that's who makes this final authoritative decision for us, the Orthodox. Uh, so that, to me, is consistent as a system.

Okay. Right on. Uh, Bo, is there anything that you would like to add to what Jay just said? And then I want to get Dane's, uh, opinion on some of this stuff because you've been very quiet, bro, and I'm getting worried about you over there.

So I'm listening, man. Yeah, I know, right? When there's smarter people in the room, just sit back and listen, right? Be a sponge, right? That's what I'm doing. Go ahead, Bo. No, no, I don't have anything to add for now.

Okay. All right. Uh, Dane, so, um, Dale said something that I, I would, uh, like to hear, uh, Jay or Dr. Branson's opinion on, talking about how in the scriptures, um, and from a sola scriptura perspective, you can get this list of primary, uh, doctrines. And I'm, you know, I'm skeptical that that's true. Um, I think first of all, people give different definitions of what is primary. You know, um, but second of all, the scriptures don't necessarily give a list. This is primary, this is secondary, this you have to believe, this you can have liberty of opinion. So what is y'all's response when you hear a Protestant say, uh, sola scriptura can provide all the primary doctrines? I'm just curious. I mean, I know you would disagree, but

Well, one, I would say that the Protestant position is easily self-refuting on that point because if sola scriptura is a primary doctrine, sola scriptura can't provide the Canon of scripture necessary for sola scriptura. So that's one primary doctrine that it can't provide. Certainly the New Testament teaches the doctrine of the Trinity as it reads the Old Testament, but whether or not this is completely clearly evident just from the exodus of the scripture, I think there's a, there's a development in the sense of explication of the doctrine of the Trinity and the other Christological doctrines, which are implicit in the scriptures. But the way that their, the church exposes them, utilizing a lot of philosophical concepts and things that are extra-canonical, various insights from Platonic, Neoplatonic, Aristotelian philosophy later on, I mean, those things are very helpful and they kind of become part of the expression of the church, the mindset of the church. But none of those things are contained in the scriptures. And so to me, it's just kind of, I mean, explicitly, right? Like, I don't know, something like the Fifth Council's doctrine of hypostasis. The idea, we could say, is in scripture, but that's expressed, that specific terminology and the expression that it, that it's encapsulating that we see in the Nicene Creed, that's not in scripture. So, you know, there's so many things like this that I think when we put it in context historically, it makes, it makes so much more sense that it's not, not really these texts, it's a group of people. The community is the body of Christ expression, the word, right? The Living Word. We're the Living Word doesn't mean that the texts aren't important or they're not, in another sense, the word. But Jesus is calling us to more than just abstract propositional knowledge, post-Enlightenment Reformation, but actual participation. And the Protestant devaluing of sacramentology, I think, contributes to that idea that the highest faculty in man is propositional knowledge and this kind of stuff. And that's all just really a movement away from a visible, social, living community.

Cool. Thanks. Yeah. Dr. Branson, is there anything that you wanted to add on that?

Could you kind of rephrase the question for me? So, yeah, I'm just curious your response to Protestants who claim that scripture alone, uh, can give us the primary doctrines, the things that must be believed for a person to be saved.

The main thing, I think, when I think of a question like that, I mean, you know, so of course it could, and I, I apologize for it, but it just seems like such a crazy idea to me to think that that actually is is true. That like, that's how the Bible is written. It's always, I mean, even when I was a Protestant, I remember when I was a Baptist, like as a kid, sometimes people would, I don't know if they were joking or if they were serious, but you know, they'd be like, they'd refer to the Bible, they'd be like, this is like the instruction manual for your life. And I always, I mean, even as like a, you know, teenager, I was like, this is a really poorly written instruction, you know? Like, like there, it's not arranged by topic, there's no index, like it's like they're just like, that's just not at all how it's written. Um, it just has always struck me as a really crazy idea to think that the Bible is supposed to be, like this. You know, people talk about the clarity of scripture, and it just seems, um, I, I just, I can't, I can't figure out why anyone would think that unless they just had to, like, unless they were forced into it by, you know, sort of a system that that requires it. Because I mean, I just didn't, I just, like, why would you, like, why would you read Lamentations or something and think, oh, this is so, it's like the Summa Theologica over here, you know, it's just so laid out in such a clear system, and it's obviously not. I mean, I, you know, I don't know. I, could you, I guess in theory, like, could you go through the Bible and figure out what are the primary things or something? I mean, I, I guess, but, um, I mean, it's certainly not like, I mean, it's obviously not written that way. It just, it's always just struck me as a really weird thing to think. But I don't know what evidence it's based on, like what I think.

Yeah, so this has been this has been a real, uh, tipping point for me because as, as we were talking before the show, Dr. Branson, that I'm, I'm a pastor in the Methodist Church. And so I am, you know, Protestant, but I've been really struggling with, with upholding sola scriptura for a while now because this idea that it can provide a list of primary doctrines. And then usually the definition people will give me is, well, primary doctrine is that which deals with salvation, how a person is saved. But Protestants, we don't even agree on that, right? So, some Protestants would affirm baptismal regeneration and infant baptism, while others would not. And, you know, I'm more on the side of baptismal regeneration and big proponent of infant baptism. But, you know, a Baptist would disagree with me on that. And I'm like, well, at this point, we're two Protestants that disagree on a primary doctrine because this is how a man or a woman is saved. Like, so, I've been, you know, I'm, as, I'm definitely still, you know, believing in the infallibility of scripture and the inspiration of scripture and the, the divine authority of scripture. But sola scriptura is a little too far for me.

So yeah, no, I agree. It's one thing that always struck me when I was a Protestant is it, you know, I felt like, I mean, either the Bible just is not clear, or we're all idiots, or I have to just, anyone who really disagrees with me on something serious, I have to just assume that they are evil or be, you know, stubbornly resisting something that is really, you know, but, but the reality is, it just seems so obvious to me that, you know, there are sincere people who just did, you know, sincerely disagree about about some things.

Right on, guys. Right on. So here's the thing, we are at the two-hour mark. I've got one more question left. Um, would you all be interested in, if not, that's okay. I've got one super chat right now. I would like to get to that. But would you guys be interested in answering audience questions after we wrap with this question?

Sure. I'll probably jump off, but, um, I'm in for your last question for sure.

All right, sweet. So if you have a question for Jay, Bo, or the panel, go ahead and send us that. As Josh said in the chat, super chats get answered first. And it would really help in supporting our ministry as well. So thank you for those. So Jay, I've heard on a few of your videos now that deal with sola scriptura, that German theologians and scholars after Luther used like higher criticism to dissect the scriptures. Can you give us a brief timeline of the key points of this happening from Luther's time till today? And does the logical outcome of this process result in something akin to what Marcion did in the early second century?

Well, certainly Luther himself believed that the text of scripture, at least the different points as he saw them canonically, because there seems to be some fluctuations as to what he thinks is the Canon over time. And I've read a lot of Luther. I've actually read more Luther than Luther and Calvin than I have any of the other. I haven't read a lot of the second generation Lutherans or whatever, but I kind of had a phase when I was really into Luther, so I got heavy into his ideas when I was 18 or 19. And, um, what, what I see is kind of like a lot of rhetorical flair and a lot of sort of doubting at different phases of what he thinks the Canon is. And what I argue when I argue this point, I think people, there are scholars that have made this connection, but, um, there's a couple books that Father John Whiteford recommends that go into this, which if you go watch our stream that we did, he, he recommends some of those texts. But the idea is that Luther kind of set the stage because he was a kind of a translator, textual critic, scholar to a degree. I mean, you translated, you know, the Luther Bible, but, uh, the new German New Testament. But, uh, the problem, I think, is that the principle that he lays down of doubting the canonical rule, which had been pretty well established in the West for a long time, you know, up to his time, that really set the stage for transferring the preservation of the scriptures from the church, or some ecclesial entity. Now it becomes the purview of the university. And we see this directly going on with Tübingen and the different, uh, German universities that now take it upon themselves to kind of be the locus of the authority for scripture. And the whole Protestantism ends up going in this direction over time. It may not have, it's not overnight. So I, I don't know the exact, you know, like critical scholars like a generation after Luther, because I've never really followed the, the Lutheran tradition that much. But I can tell you that, you know, I don't think it's accidental that Julius Wellhausen, who is the father of the documentary hypothesis, he's coming out of these schools. And so he's kind of the first to say, I'm gonna go on a, a rampaging, you know, quest against anything that has to do with ceremony. So he just sort of wants to purge the Bible of anything ceremonial. And this leads to the theory of there being different, uh, JEPD, the Yahwist school, the Elohist school, Priestly school, Deuteronomist school. And so now that the New, the Old Testament is first on the chopping block to get sort of divided up into this, which is ultimately a denial of the continuity and coherence of the text. But remember, Jesus said, if we accept the Gospel of John, the scripture cannot be broken. So this is a really strong breaking of the scripture because now we're sort of dividing it up into incoherent jumbling of different competing schools based on the terms that are used, the names of God that are used in different sections. So, for example, I'm reading right now a rabbinical book on the, uh, theophanies and the manifestations of God in the Old Testament to, in preparation for the debate that I'm going to do with, uh, Daniel Hikachu, the Muslim guy. And the rabbinical texts are interesting because there's a lot of debate and fluid, there's fluidity, is the point here. It's like there's not this strict Unitarian view, but a lot of the debate of fluidity centers around the assumption that, well, Deuteronomy doesn't have theophany, so it's a Deuteronomist text. The Priestly text allowed for theophanies because they wanted people to come to where God was embodied in the theophanic presence, right? So, but this is all based on presuppositions, right? So, um, the presuppositions of unbelief typically in critical schools will treat the texts as if they're any other text. So the idea is that, well, I have to treat the Bible like any other text, and I'm going to subject it to the same scientific evidential criticisms of any other religious texts or any other literary text. It's kind of the rule in the higher textual world. But again, that really just assumes the Bible isn't what it claims to be, right? Because if the Bible is what it claims to be, then it's not going to be subject to this typical, you know, kind of unbelief approach. But I mean, you can, you can definitely trace, uh, Luther's questioning, I think, of the Canon and the rise of Protestant textual criticism from there, straight to Julius Wellhausen and all of the documentary hypothesis, which ultimately leads to the complete dissolution in the academic world of the Old Testament. Then we get the Jesus Quest doing the exact same thing with the New Testament. So I'm not saying Luther himself didn't believe the texts, right? Um, but he allows for the possibility. He's, he sets the precedent for the academic world being the new authoritative expositor, whereas prior to that, it was the ecclesial world. And clearly Jesus didn't set up an academic debate squad, he set up a church, right?

Right on. Thank you for that. I appreciate that so much. Uh, Dr. Branson, anything that you would like to add?

I wouldn't have much to say about that except I hate Hegel. That's all. That's it.

We'll get a t-shirt made. There you go. With a little line. Yeah, there you go. There you go. Uh, Dale or David, and Dane, since you've got to leave here in a minute, is there anything that you want to add to to what you just said?

No, I, I am good. Just don't like higher criticism. Moses wrote the Torah. Paul wrote all the Epistles attributed to him. I mean, the, the fact that that's even, uh, been circulated in in Christian circles is is kind of shameful, in all honesty. So how's that? Just look up Julius and he, he was very open about what he wanted to get rid of, you know, he had this assumption that true religion can't have ritual and ceremony. So all that stuff had to be purged, and then then we would get to the true sort of core, scaled down religion. I can't imagine any religion without ritual and ceremony. So yeah.

Guys, uh, this has been enjoyable. Uh, appreciate, uh, Dr. Branson and Jay, y'all's time. Uh, the other three, I see all the time. So, um, I'll see you soon again. Um, but, uh, this has been great. I gotta hop off and go help get some kids to sleep, so.

Nice. Appreciate you joining us, Dane. God bless all y'all. God bless you. Thanks, man.

All right. David, Dale, anything? Any questions, comments, concerns? You guys both good?

Oh, so this isn't the closing? No, I, I mean, yeah, I've got my last question now. Uh, Jay just answered it. So if you've got any follow-up or if you want to ask a question or whatever.

No, just, I don't have any further questions at this time. But, uh, just for the closing, I just wanted to kind of reiterate uninterrupted what my argument was again, just for the audience to get it out, uh, properly, type thing. So I'll do that at the closing, though.

Okay. All right. Let's jump then to, uh, the audience questions. And again, uh, before I jump into these, I just want to say again, thank you for Jay and Bo for coming on. Uh, this has been super enlightening for me, and I know I'm going to be on this video for a little bit now. So if you like the content, if you liked what Jay said, what Bo said, and the little pushback that we got from, uh, Dale and Jay, that was fun. So I appreciate that, guys. Cordial and and heated and so I like it. But, uh, but like, like this video. Think about subscribing to the channel as well. If you can't financially support us, obviously subscribers help us in multiple, multiple ways. And if you all would please pray for us, I think that's one of the best ways to support anyone is by offering prayers up to God for that person. And so that would be a really great way to help us out as well. But the first super chat we have here is from Orthodoxology. I'll post it on the screen and read it out. Have you guys ever encountered the first principles of scripture argument made by Clement of Alexandria that Anthony Rogers and the likes make? And what are your thoughts on that?

I'm not familiar with this argument. Now. Oh, I'm not either, to be honest. Dr. Branson? Yeah, no me neither. Okay. So Orthodoxology, if there's another way you want to, uh, phrase it or kind of elaborate on it a little bit, send me a comment and I'll post that up as well. Let's see here. Our other super chat is from Jamie Church. Can't change the law. Second Thessalonians 2, thoughts? Uh, that's the, isn't that the section about the apostasy and, uh, you know, the man of sin, correct? Yeah, I guess the argument is that anyone that would attempt to quote change law is therefore, uh, the man of sin. I, I don't see how that relates to executions, too. But, uh, yeah, I think if you watch the documentary that my friend Louis made over at Orthodox Shahada, it's called Orthodox Worship Continuity, uh, with the Old Testament Temple and Synagogue, you'll, you'll see that the church isn't really, quote, changing the law. Now, if Jesus gave the law, which we would say the New Testament makes it clear that he was there at Mount Sinai. He says this to the Pharisees, you know, in John 5 and John 8, 9, that he was there with Moses, he was there with Abraham. So Jesus is the one that gave the law at Mount Sinai. And if certain ceremonial or dietary things referred in their practice and their celebration by the Jews to him, and he fulfilled those things, then they can still be kept in a unique spiritual way. So, for example, for us, you know, if you look at Paul's Epistles and to the Corinthians, he says that not to put to seeds in a field, he says that's a spiritual principle that we still keep by not being united with unbelievers. So even the ceremonial commands are not necessarily, quote, done away. They might be fulfilled in a certain way that they were cut by Israel, but then spiritually still kept by us as the church. And then some of those ceremonial commands are also still kept by the church. We still have holy places, we still have holy water, we still have an altar, we still have incense and a temple. And a lot of those things that were in the Old Testament, we still have. But I would also add too, that for the Jews, it was never the Jewish idea that all of the laws were supposed to be kept by the Gentiles anyway. It's physically not possible.

So yeah, I was going to say that it's something I've noticed. I think it's one thing that attracted me to Orthodoxy too, was I, I felt like I didn't really find a lot of churches that I thought had a coherent relationship with the Torah. Um, and of course, yeah, in Judaism, um, you know, Jews don't expect Gentiles to keep the Sabbath or keep kosher or, you know, any of these things. There's, uh, in Judaism, there's there's the idea of the Noahide Commandments, which for them, there's seven, um, uh, which are so if you, if you think about that, the idea is sort of, sort of like concentric circles, right? So you've got, you know, Adam and Eve, anything that God commands them, uh, has to be followed by all of their descendants. Anything that, you know, God commands Noah has to be followed by all of his descendants. And and so on. So you get these sort of, you know, smaller circles as you get down to Abraham, and then Moses and the children of Israel, and then the Davidic Covenant, you know, and then you get down to Christ. And you could tell that that what happens in the, in the book of Acts as kind of this question, like, is the, so is this New Covenant with Jesus like on yet smaller, you know, concentric circle? So it's all taking place within the Torah. And so Gentiles need to, you know, become Jewish to be able to get into that Covenant? Or is he taking us all the way back up out to, you know, Adam and Noah, and it's, you know, expanded to everyone? And the, the ruling that that James, uh, gives at the, this Council of Jerusalem in the book of Acts, where he says, look, let's just tell the, the Gentile converts, uh, to abstain from blood and things that have been strangled, sexual immorality, and not to eat food sacrificed to idols. Those are four of the Noahide Commandments. In later rabbinic Judaism, they left out a few. It's not clear if that's kind of an early stage of the development of that idea, or maybe that rabbis came up with some extra stuff later, or the ones that he's leaving out are kind of self-explanatory too for Christians. So, but anyway, I mean, you know, the, the, um, the Torah is, you know, even on the Jewish view, and it's, it's only specifically given to Israel and it is not expected, um, for Gentiles to follow all. In fact, interestingly, you know, in Judaism, you know, there's the, even the idea that that some of the Commandments in the Torah, um, really should not be kept by Gentiles. I noticed something in the chat a while back about keeping the Sabbath, and it always, always kind of, I mean, I used to kind of think about that sort of issue too, but, you know, in, in the Talmud, I mean, it really is like a gentile who observes the Sabbath is worthy of the death penalty. I mean, it's a really like, it's this hugely insulting thing in the, in the Torah because there's this commandment to to Adam, you know, you'll work like after the fall, you have to work now and bring bread out of the earth by the sweat of your brow. And it's a specific, you know, a specific gift to Israel to have the Sabbath, and it's not meant for Gentiles. And so for, you know, in the Talmud, it's the end. And in Maimonides, you know, there's some very harsh words for, you know, uh, Gentiles trying to keep the Sabbath, um, because it's like, that's not, that's not directed towards you. So there's not a lot of Torah or law that that is directed to Gentiles anyway.

I'd like to add a point too, if I can. Yeah, I just remembered. So, uh, if you read Hebrews, particularly Hebrews 7, is a really important chapter in regard to this question because Hebrews, obviously, the book is about the superiority of the New Covenant to the Old. And we might be tempted to think, on a surface reading, maybe that, well, Hebrews is really just saying that all the Old Testament stuff is fulfilled. You know, when I was a Protestant, I typically read it that way. Although I detect that this question is kind of coming from probably a Messianic Judaism or Hebrew Roots kind of, uh, vantage point or something like that. But if you read Hebrews 7, it's very interesting because it notes that contra the, uh, sort of Messianic Hebrew Roots type of attitude, there is still a priesthood, but it's a new priesthood that is, is fulfilled the Aaronic priesthood. So, in other words, priesthood didn't go away. The Aaronic priesthood was instituted as a lesser, newer priesthood from the Melchizedekian priesthood, right? And Hebrews is making the argument of superiority of the Melchizedekian priesthood into the church. Is the Melchizedekian priesthood? This is very important for us because it's a great, it's a crucial argument that we have to make against Muslims because Muslims want to retain worship from the Torah and the prophets, yet there's no notion of sacrifice, no notion of temple, no notion of altar, no notion of priesthood. But God has always had a priesthood. And in fact, Hebrews 7 is arguing that the eternal heavenly priesthood of Melchizedek is the priesthood of Christ. So that was typological of Christ. It's superior to the Aaronic. The Aaronic was an image of that, believe it or not, is what I think Hebrews is arguing. So it's saying that in verse 12, the priesthood being changed, therefore there is a change of the law. So, in fact, you're correct, the church can't change the law, but the Godhead can change the law, right?

Right on. That I love it. I love it. Guys, uh, so the next super chat we had is from Deanna Dee's. Let's see. She said, thank you for having Jay on. Uh, I know we just got one. Let's see here. Solomon, Jay's ultimate appeal is same as yours, Dale. Holy Spirit. So I made a distinction between normativity and the notion of public authority, and a separate question of the individual's subjective assurance, which comes to the Holy Spirit. So I made a distinction, actually, between these two different things, which are often conflated. For example, you'll hear Roman Catholics do this a lot where they say, well, the only way for you as an individual to have certainty is the Pope. But does the Pope really do that? Does he actually function to give individual certitude? And that question, and that sort of they didn't switch that the Roman Catholic apologists are doing there, it's kind of trading on an ambiguity of category confusion. So normativity and public authority is not the same thing as personal subjective assurance. Those are two different things. They relate to one another, but they're two different things. So my ultimate, the fact that my ultimate appeal is the same really doesn't say much because in the in the final analysis, everybody's going to appeal to the Holy Spirit, right? What I said at the very beginning, the Protestant, the Roman Catholic, the Orthodox are all going to say that for the individual's final ultimate appeal of assurance, it's going to come down to the Holy Spirit. So we all, if we all agree on that, well, then why do we have all these different groups and sects and churches? Well, that's because of the historical public, uh, uh, events and debates and, you know, the messiness of church history, right? That, that's the public domain. And the debate that we're ultimately having here is not whether the individual can have a assurance. The debate that we're having is what's the public normative authority that states what the Canon is, what the scriptures mean, and binding and losing.

Dr. Branson, anything that you'd like to add?

No, I think that's right. I, I always think it's weird when people, I just find infallibility such a weird thing to argue about because if it's, you know, if the idea is we're talking about like knowing something with 100% certainty or something, right? Um, I mean, I'm not, I mean, like, let's suppose the Pope is infallible or something. I always think, well, good for him. Like, I wish I was the Pope so I could know. But, but I'm not, I'm never going to be 100% sure that the Pope is infallible. So like, if he issues some, I mean, if he says something I think contradicts the Bible, like, I'm not going to be like, oh, I guess that's really the right way to think about it. I'm just going to think like, oh, I guess I was wrong that he was infallible. So, you know what I mean? Like, so it just seems like, I mean, because if, I mean, even if I've got like 90, I'm 99% sure that he's infallible, like just the way probability theory works out, like if he says something I'm like 99% sure isn't right, then I'm just going to have to revise my probability distributions and think, I guess he wasn't infallible. I probably.

was always fine. And then, if you're just talking about infallibility, like, like it's this metaphysical thing, like he's just got this magical power so that he, in fact, will never be wrong. Like, great. But, but if I don't have any evidence for that, then it doesn't help me. So it's, so yeah, I mean, so yeah, I do think, I mean, yeah, obviously, ultimately, everyone just has to think about things for themselves. And hopefully, the Holy Spirit leads them to, to the truth or whatever. Like, but that's kind of an epistemic point. And I take it that that's, uh, Jay is just saying that's a separate point from like, who has authority. Sort of like, I would say that, I mean, the Supreme Court has the authority in the United States to interpret the law. And that's who has the authority. How do I, how do I know that for sure? Well, I, you know, I read the Constitution. I, I took, you know, social studies in high school or whatever. And, you know, they could, those, my teacher could have been lying to me, or they could have been wrong. I could misunderstand it or whatever. But I'm pretty sure there is no Supreme Court. It's all AI generated. Yes, that is probably true. And you know that with 100% certainty. Yes. Right on, right on. Okay, guys, so that's, uh, done with the super chats. We do have, oh, no, wait, I lied. There's one more that just came in. Uh, five dollars per asper at Astra. As an Evangelical atheist, I still find the untangling of church history and religious ideas fascinating. Good, good content, guys. Evangelical atheist. Ex-vangelical. Yeah. Oh, okay. That's not me, by the way. Putting that in there. You read my Super Chat wrong. No, that's, uh, yeah, that, that caught me off guard for a second. I was like, wait a minute. Because I have heard of like, you know, Christian atheists, which I don't know. I want to interview, uh, one of the girls that I saw on TikTok, uh, advocating for that position. We were supposed to set something up, but it never came to fruition. But that's okay. Um, so, okay, so there was a couple questions that came in that was not super chats. Um, and they're kind of, I don't know, almost, I get the sense of like, imperative that they want me to ask you, Jay. Um, so this first one is, and I don't know what this acronym stands for. Uh, maybe you do. Can you guys please ask Jay about Chalk? Yeah, I think they're just being funny. That's, uh, okay. I have a sponsor. So my sponsor is chalk.com. So if you're looking for ways to boost testosterone, use the promo code J50, JLY50, at chalk.com. Right on, right on. Okay. Um, let's see here. Orthodoxology. Maybe J and Bo can bring up some common objections. I don't know, like, David, did you put that one on there? No, Dale. Common objections to what? All right, good question. Yes, said that to, to the critique. Association. Oh, I think maybe some, yeah. Uh, here against the Orthodoxy, I think is what he's asking for. No. Or again, I was thinking more on the solo scriptural line. And with that, that's a wrap. Well, I mean, we've got new things. We've heard tonight are common. We, we hear the objective. Right. Common objections are, uh, yeah, the scriptures are Theopneustos, God-breathed. They're sufficient to make the man of God able to do, you know, so. But a lot of those things are, are absolutized, uh, or assumed to be just about the written text. Right. For example, the scriptures are able to make the man of God able for every good work and so forth. Well, but does that mean that that's all that is needed because the scriptures are able to do that? Right. I mean, the church is also able to help the, you know, don't forsake the assembly, right? Pray with one another. Those texts, a lot of times don't mention other things that are integral to what we do, like prayer or going to church. So we wouldn't absolutize those things as if nothing else was needed or necessary, uh, because it's highlighting one thing that is, is perhaps even primary. I think you could even argue that some of the scripture, some of the Church Fathers, this is a common Protestant objection. Well, the Church Fathers speak of this primacy of scripture. Well, but that still doesn't negate that there's other authorities and that there's other, uh, divine revelation that's not strictly written down. Right. So the fact that one is, is, for example, in the ecumenical councils, you often see them kind of citing scripture. They'll use patristic citations prior to, like, if it's the Fifth Council, what did the previous Church Fathers say? Then they'll use arguments of logic and reason. Um, and so there's kind of, there is, you could say maybe a tier, but primacy or giving a certain, even within the scriptures, for example, we think that the gospel is going to have a, a primacy in the liturgy. They're honored above Paul's Epistles. But honoring something above or giving a kind of a stat, a hierarchy to even the text, that doesn't necessarily mean that, oh, well, then the ones that aren't, you know, the gospels are therefore fallible and they're wrong, or, you know, having hierarchy doesn't necessitate a dialectical either/or of therefore not infallible or something like that. So, um, I hear a lot of Protestant objections, I think typically based on just sort of assumptions about when one Church Father says that, you know, he has a high view of scripture, but then they'll ignore the other places where he talks about the necessity of tradition, you know, something like that. Yeah, I saw that on your Pedro's debate. That seemed like an objection that he was bringing up a lot, especially with, I think it was Athanasius. Is that, does that sound familiar? Yeah, I mean, Athanasius, you know, basically says the Holy Spirit guided Nicaea. So, right. Any Protestant would agree with that. Right. Right on. Dr. Branson. Yeah. Um, okay. All right. Uh, the last question we have actually comes from our other co-host, Joshua Davidson. And I thought this was, uh, this was pretty good. My question is, can Jay get us in contact with Peugeot? I need some symbolism. Well, all right. I mean, for to come on your show, is that what you're saying? I think that's what he's asking. Yeah, I can, I can always ask. Yeah, that'd be, that'd be great. Um, I don't know if Josh wants to add anything else to that or not. He's, uh, I don't know why he's not here. He said, uh, something about being tired or whatever, or else he would have been here. But he apologized for not, uh, being able to show up. But Jason, she gave your sponsor. If I can find mine real quick, I'm gonna give mine. It's barnabasclothing.com. So you can, uh, they've got Christian, uh, t-shirts. They've got hoodies. They've got jewelry. They've got stickers. They've got all kinds of stuff. I'm actually wearing one of their shirts now. Um, and and I love, I love Barnabas clothing. Um, I've been a brand ambassador for them for about two or three months now. And everything about them is just phenomenal. So I'm not trying to like hype them up to make them out to be something that they're not. I really, really like their, uh, their stuff. And their brand. If you want to enter discount code BCAMB Tyler F15, you'll get 15% off your order at checkout. So check, check them out. Um, like I said, they've got a lot of different things on there. And I really, really like their, uh, their quality of their materials. So let me know what you think about Barnabas clothing. David, Dell, any, I mean, we're wrapping up. Is there anything that you guys want to add? Um, now's your last chance to do it. If you do. Thank you, Mark, for the comment. I didn't see that one. Thank you, Mark. Um, and orthodoxology had that one last one. Thank you for this comment as well. But yeah, guys, uh, two weeks of worth coming in July. I'll be hosting those shows with Travis. Ben Watkins, uh, we'll be on the 8th. And Travis with, uh, Rich Suttles, The Faithiest Faithiest Atheist, will both be on those first two weeks of July. And I'm excited to, uh, see what they have to talk about. One's on the value of disagreement. And the other is on value and, uh, theism. So I'm really excited to have those deep philosophical discussions with these guys and, and see where they're, where they're at. So especially with Travis, you know, he's growing in his his walk and doing stuff like that. So I want to see where he's at now. I'll be interested to see what Travis brings to the table too on that one, since he's converted to Orthodoxy as well. You're not allowed to be on. So I'm not going to be here. I'm taking a break from from all of us. My wife's pregnant and I need to spend some time with her before this baby comes. So yeah, so if y'all could be playing, uh, praying about that, that'd be, that'd be great too. But yeah, she's, what, uh, I want to say 11 weeks this week. So she's, you know, it's still early, but she's definitely feeling that first trimester pain. So, uh, be praying for her if you would. But Dill, is there anything coming up on Real Seekers that we need to know about? Um, well, the only thing I had, I was just gonna do like that recap of, yeah, yeah, my talk with Jay and stuff. So, of course. All right, so, so yeah, so, so what I'm understanding here, so it is interesting because when I approach this question of the canonicity, I don't really necessarily care about what Jay said. He cared about this normative kind of like an outsider test. How, how do you tell as an outsider? I'm more interested in how do we gain knowledge personally as to what is scripture or not. And the, you know, that's why I can appeal to properly basic beliefs. And I think that's a valid form of gaining a warranted true belief. Um, however, I think that God can provide us with multiple sources of warrant. Some of which may qualify as that outsider test. And that's where I think my, uh, mere Protestantism or, or, you know, the Protestant Bible onlyism is warranted based on the fact of an argument, right? So a modus ponens argument. If the majority of of true Christians, uh, over, across denominations or sects, over time accept, uh, a doctrine as a true essential doctrine, um, I think Jay's right where he's saying, I might be implied that understanding what the canon is in order to use the canon to define the essential beliefs is needed. So, okay, great. So let's include canonicity as an essential belief for the sake of argument. Um, we, if they agree on that, then it is probably true. Obviously, it's a fact. You know, we can affirm the antecedent that, yeah, the majority of Christians over time across denominations do accept the Protestant canon as scr, as inspired, um, even if they accept other ones. So it's important to note, this this argument is warranted, it is valid, it is sound. Um, now, Jay, does he challenge that first premise, right? Why is it the case that the majority of, um, Christians across the denominations over time accepting something? How does that make it true? And that's where I would just appeal to the fact that look, the Holy Spirit is said to guide all true Christians, at the very least, into essential truths. Gospel truth. Isn't that based on what's in the text? The claim about the Holy Spirit guiding us, right? That's from John, right? Uh, yeah. But the question is, what are the texts? So it's a circular argument still. But it's, it's, it's not. Because if you, if you are getting knowledge from the Holy Spirit as to a certain proposition, right? Like the Holy Spirit, in the moment, produces within me a properly basic belief with respect to a given proposition or something like that, right? Um, well, I'm familiar with planning as theories. But I mean, I could just simply ask you, how do you know that that's a properly basic belief? The, the, so now canonicity of scripture, which is a historical event, is now something that's a properly basic, self-evident principle. How do you divorce the historical formation of the canon from, uh, I mean, it's not, it's not opera, it's not a self-evident principle. Well, it can be. Any proposition can. We say that. But how is that, given the fact that your basis was the text of John, you decided the text of John for how you are reading the Holy Spirit in this event, right? Okay, so, okay, so if, if you don't mind, just let me like say my thing and then I'll let you respond with your counter response. After you'll get the last word, I promise. But, um, I just want to give how it works. Like I said, so here in the moment, God provides us through the Holy Spirit that means of obtaining warrant. How does warrant work? Well, it produces a properly basic belief. This is prop, a warranted true belief. So that's propositional knowledge. How do I know that I'm warranted? Well, this is where we get into the externalism and internalism debate. I believe that we are acquainted with knowledge, so we have knowledge of acquaintance whenever we are warranted. So that's the mechanism of how I know that the Holy Spirit is actually giving me this properly basic belief and that it counts as knowledge. Um, okay, so great. So in the here and now, that's, that's how I would, I guess, um, appeal to this. I know that it's true that the Holy Spirit has to provide us with most Christians across denominations over time with the true essential beliefs, at least. That's all I'm arguing for. It's a minimal argument. I know that that is true. And using that, that's how I can make my argument type thing. Um, no, it's true that look, this, this avenue, Jay is correct that this avenue, our source of warrant doesn't necessarily work in the first century or the first 300 years necessarily. They didn't have that. They didn't have a completed canon at that point, right? So they can't go, well, look at the majority of Christians over time across denominations and gain warrant in that way. Um, it just made me find that that avenue isn't open to them. They had some other source of work. Something like James White's argument about, you know, again, the Holy Spirit is is attesting to them. Well, look, I, I'm a Corinthian, and Paul's teaching to me, the letter of First Corinthians or something like that, and I just know the Holy Spirit attests me in a properly basic way. This is the word of God. So I know at least that that is, um, that is canon, kind of thing. And you can operate on that basis over time. So that, yeah, that's my final word. Over to you, Jay. You can, if you want the last word, you can. Yeah, so I mean, I would just simply say that, I mean, if I just pause it my position as somehow a self-evident principle, on what basis would either of us try to figure out who's wrong if we have mutually exclusive claims, or if another person has a mutually exclusive claim as to what the true Christian is, or what the canon is? There's got to be some way by which we can adjudicate who's right and who's wrong. They can't both be right, right? Um, but I'm open to the fact of just saying, well, maybe in the first century, we just didn't have an outsider test to tell a third party, an atheist looking or pagan looking on. There was no available means because all, at the end of the day, all that matters is that individual Christians have knowledge that this is the word of God and live on that basis. But again, I'm just trying to figure out how it's not circular, given that your original premise, I'm arguing, isn't actually self-evident. It's actually wrapped up in a lot of assumptions. Some of those assumptions were that the true Christians line up with you, is what, what you as a Protestant believe, that's the true Christian, right? So what I'm saying is that in the original premise, there is the assumption that the true Christians and the self-evident principles that I'm laying out are the case by which we would, how do we know that that's the starting point? Okay, again, I'm not trying to debate, but in terms of that first premise, like how you're asking me that, how do I know that the majority? I took issue with two things. I took issue with the first premise's claim and I took issue with the notion that, uh, there's that this was actually the case, uh, historically. And a third point, that just because the majority of people believe it doesn't, why does that tell us that we ought to believe something? Well, right, because in this case, it's a special type of belief, right? Like the, the, I'm saying that, how do you know that? Right. On what basis do you know that? Because my point is that it's based on your Protestant presuppositions of what the text of John says about the Holy Spirit leading and guiding you. But the question is about the text. So you can't appeal to the text from the questions about what books make up the text. Of course, you can, because it's not the, I'm not reasoning or driving this conclusion from what I read in the text. But you did, because the argument was that you said that the Holy Spirit is who is my first principle guiding me to, because we're told that he would lead us into God into all truth. That's a quote from John. That's from the text. Okay, so, so here, here's what I'm saying. For, for like the early Christians, they hear the message, right? Something about you. Yeah. Okay. Okay, fine. So I, I hear this proposition about the Holy Spirit guiding us to truth. It comes from John. I, I gain knowledge in a properly basic way. This is true. This proposition is true. So it's not an argument per se. How do you know that that first position or first proposition is self-evident and true? How do I know? Uh, through, like I said, the Holy Spirit produces. Well, how do you know the Holy Spirit is the principle by which we are guided into truth? Because it's a text. It's, it's from a text of scripture, right? Do you think that's self-evident, or is it from scripture, or is it both? Okay, I see what you're saying. Like, how do I know that the Holy Spirit is operating, uh, as opposed to me? I know that your, that proposition comes from the text of John. Okay. I don't believe that it was like beamed into your head by osmosis. You got that belief from the text. The text is something out of history. Yeah. Yes. Certainly self-evident. Maxson, that you derived through philosophical speculation, right? Well, so that's true. Yeah. So, so probably you started with that. You said that it doesn't come from the text. It's grounded in an experience. So in this case, this is what we learn in scripture, right? And it's not coming from scripture. But I'm just saying, we learn it in scripture. But then you said it's not coming from scripture. No. Well, the first Christians heard it orally, and then the Holy Spirit talking about you. Yeah. This is what happens. Yeah. Not the first century Christian. Is you, you're, you're epistemic certitude justification for the self-evident principle. Okay, so, so however I get that proposition into my head, what, whatever experience do I read it with my eyeballs, or do I hear it orally like the first Christian? If it comes from the text, then Jay, let them answer. Let him answer. Let him answer first. Does it come from the text? He's saying no. But then you said yes, because grounding. So there's a difference, right? So properly basic beliefs are underived, right? So, so it's not, if I were to not derive from the text. No, it's grounded. But you said it was derived from the text, right? So you're saying that the phrase in the Gospel of John, yeah, my point, please. Um, I, I get that you're trying to do the gotcha thing. Just, just stop. Or we're friends. I, I like, I've had a great conversation with you, but just let me have it. But you're not going to tell me to stop. I mean, we're having a conversation. So, well, if I'm not, I'm not going to allow you to say and assert things without making sense. Well, it's my show. I'm not being you, right? Um, I'm just trying to get out my point and then I'll let you go. I was quiet for the entire time until you said I could talk. Okay, okay. So it's grounded in the experience of reading the Bible. That is from the text. Text. Hey, let me finish, right? Reading that problem. Then the Holy Spirit produces within me a properly basic belief with respect to the truth of that proposition. I'm not going, oh, I read this in the text, but it did come from a premise in an argument to go, therefore, it must be true. That's the difference. But that is what I think what you want to say is, um, he's so he's reading the text. The justification isn't from the text, right? The justification is exactly, just sort of there by the Holy Spirit. But the question originally is, what are the texts? What makes up the Bible? The Bible is a bunch of books, right? So the question is, which books make up this book? And so unless you want it to be circular, it's not going to be an appeal to the text. And I'm just pointing out that your first principle is an appeal to the text. I think you could say, uh, I mean, hypothetically speaking, uh, you could just imagine, you could just have a fever dream where you imagine the proposition that, whatever, whatever the proposition is, right? And the Holy Spirit, uh, magically makes you know it. So how do we adjudicate between contradictory claims of the Holy Spirit? Right. That was kind of my point with the Luther example, or the person who says, well, my canon that I've studied to is two gospels, that's it. Nothing else. Who is that? Who was that question to, Jay? Okay. Uh, well, so like, what was the question again? Because I, again, I think, how would we adjudicate between rival claims of the Holy Spirit's guidance when obviously in history, like everybody's gonna claim, well, the Holy Spirit's got hit me. Marcion thought the Holy Spirit was guiding him to his canon. Right. So when we have contradictory claims, are we going to resolve this claim apart from normative public authority? Also, I mean, but besides just hypothetically, like Marcion or like, you know, just Jude or something. I mean, there's much more innocent, like real cases like this in history, like the Peshitta, you know, is used by the, the entire, like, or has been used by the entire, like, Assyrian church and lacked, you know, Second Peter and Second and Third John. Gregory Nazianzen leaves the Book of Revelation out, right, of his canon. I mean, he specifically lists the other 26 books and specifically says nothing else is part of the canon, right? So like, there's, you know, people like Holcomb, you hold churches, and like saints, and you know, serious, like there are serious canons, you know, of scripture that are different from the, the Protestant canon. And those people would say that the Holy Spirit was leading them to believe that canon too. Luther believed that the Holy Spirit, at the point where he was denying Hebrews and Revelation, and he thought the Holy Spirit was leading him to that as well. So we've got to have some kind of public means by which we can adjudicate these these varying Holy Spirit claims, is my point. And that's really what I'm, what we're trying to get through to you guys with with the Orthodox position, right? Is that we do have a public authority that does function in that role. Cool. And, and thank you. So thank you so much. I finally got out. Thank you so much, Jay, for indulging in this. Like I said, uh, despite the, the interruptions, I've had fun. Like I've learned from you and stuff like that. So one, one last question, because my whole thing, what if there just was no outsider test, but yet there was the an internal test for Christians to tell between competing claims? Why does their, how, outsider test at all periods of history? Well, I think we see in the rise of the church fathers them pointing to those external tests in those centuries, right? If you read book three of Irenaeus, he does precisely what I said. He does have these external signifiers and signs and things that you can point to, the apostolic succession, the reciting of the common creed, what's the, you know, do they have the same faith as the church in Rome and the other churches throughout the empire? I mean, there are these external criteria that are listed in many cases in the church fathers. So first of all, I just think that it's a historically a fact that it, that that is the case. And I also don't buy the sort of whimling correct position that there is such a thing as lowest common denominator Christianity, or that we could in some way scale off who's a Christian without some kind of public historical reference. For example, Mormons are not Christian. Jehovah's Witnesses are not Christian. But that again hinges on, you know, is Nicaea an expression of what it is to be a Christian? If it is, then now we're again, it's, you see how it's not as self-evident or as clear once we get into the weeds. We actually have to start ferreting out, okay, well, actually, you know, Nicaea teaches much more than just the deity of Christ. Says all these other things. So now, now Nicaea is not actually any real historical thing for a Protestant. It's really just a, it's just a, well, it's nice that that happened, but it really doesn't have any relevance to a Protestant. You see, because the actual teaching of Nicaea includes all of these other elements that no Protestant accepts. So I'm just saying, if you can't have a self-evident, um, uh, internal positions as a Christian, when Christianity is a historic religion with a history of church fathers and people putting the Bible together, there's no such thing as a Bible or canon divorced from history. That's, I just don't see how this is possible. And I understand the motivations for why we, we might want to construct a priori guidance of the Holy Spirit. But really, my point was just that it looks to me like what that amounts to when you flesh it out is just Protestantism. Cool. But that's the thing in question is Protestantism. So cool. Yeah. Thank you so much for for answering that. And yeah, thanks for the conversation. Absolutely. All right, y'all, that was interesting. So NJ and Bo, again, I really, really appreciate you all coming on to do this. We'd love to have you guys back on again. Um, sure. Anything to talk about, like Christology or something. By the way, Jay, I was going to ask at the end of your In Pedro's conversation, there was talks about doing a Christology episode with them. Did that ever come to fruition or not yet? I haven't heard any. Haven't heard a peep. I don't know what happened with Pedro. Okay, so I mean, I haven't seen him on any more live streams or debates. So I mean, there wasn't any drama. I just haven't heard from him. No. Right. Right. Okay. Right on. If that ever comes about, let me know, man, because I would love to hear you guys talk about that, or, you know, uh, come on our show and talk about some Christology. Um, but y'all, that wraps it up for this episode. We will see you next time. We've got, uh, one more episode this month, June 30th at 7 PM Eastern Time. We're going to be talking the paranormal with one of my Roman Catholic friends, Nicholas Sulliner. So stay tuned for that. And we will see you next time. Until then, good night. God bless. And stay like Christ. Thank you, guys. [Music] Thank you. [Music] [Music]