Transcription
And you can come and smash me. Calvinists making a big fuss. James White can't stop talking about me. And uh, I did. I posted my uh 30-minute roast, 40-minute roast, so you can go watch the roast. Indiana, what's up, man? Come, come, uh, let's chat about our exchange. You got to unmute. Yo. Hey. Are you there? What's up? Can you hear me?
Yeah, I can hear you. Yeah. I mean, I was perfectly cordial to you when I asked you if you wanted to debate. You said, "I'm not interested in representing a position in a debate forum, but you're open to a conversation." And I asked you a couple times if you'd like to chat. So, where did I do anything like what you accused me of?
Um, no. Yeah, I, I came on here to publicly apologize. I'm humbly admitting that I was wrong. I misrepresented our conversation. I deleted the tweet. Not as a, I'm trying to hide what I did, but I did. I misrepresented and I exaggerated our conversation. Shouldn't have done that.
Fair enough. I will take it down because you were— Well, I mean, you have to do that. I mean, I mean, I didn't come here to be like, to try to cover my ass or anything, but I, I, you know, there, there comes a point where you do make a mistake online and you got to come up and you got to admit that you, that you overstepped your bounds. Um, I was a little agitated. Um, because, and, you know, secondarily, you know, uh, I don't know, I get a lot of DMs from people who, I don't know if they're affiliated with you at all, and I'm not going to assume that they are, but a lot of just horrible DMs and they're all telling me to debate you. Uh, and the just the horrible things I hear come coming in my DMs. So, uh, and I apologize for allowing that to bleed over into, you know, me talking about you on a public forum.
That's all good. It's, it's forgiven and forgotten. You can, if you anytime you'd like to have a conversation about the topics, uh, the issues. It's an open forum. It's, there's an open door there. I would also say that if you post, you know, the Instagram stuff calling out Orthodoxy, you have to expect pushback. I can't speak for all the people that DM you or what the comments are. My comment on your post, you know, going after relics was just, "Would you like to have a debate about this?" And that's just my default modus operandi for everybody.
Gotcha. Gotcha. No. Yeah. And I, um, respect that. I don't know. I'm not super familiar with a lot of your content. Um, so again, another apology, you know, just like making a blatant, um, you know, um, statement about, you know, questioning your Christianity, 'cause I really don't, I haven't taken the time to go over everything, uh, that you post. So, yeah, I'll take some time to look over, you know, your position in more in depth and, yeah, definitely be down to have a conversation.
Yeah, we can, we can. It can be friendly. We don't have to be adversarial. It can be exchanged back and forth. It's fine. We, we do that often. So, it's entirely up to the guest or the people that come on. If they want to have a heated exchange, I'll do that. If they just want to have a conversational exchange, we can do that as well. Absolutely. Again, I, I know I already apologize. You already forgive me, but I just want to say, so sorry. Like, I really, embarrassed. Um, because, honest, and, and I'm not going to lie, like, when I was typing that, I, I actually was thinking, I was like, "I think I might be exaggerating a little bit." Uh, and I still posted it anyway. So that should just, you know, that I feel, I definitely feel shame in that. So, okay. Um, but yeah.
All right, everybody. I'm not going to take up much of this, you know, space or any time. If you want me to stay up here and you want to hear my opinion on whatever we're going to talk about. But, uh, if not, I'll just. It's up to you. Like, so we can talk about the principle behind relics. We can talk about what your issues are with Orthodoxy, or we can save it for another time. It's balls in your court.
Um, well, again, you know, I'm not super familiar with the, the major distinctions between Orthodoxy and Catholicism. I, I mainly, I don't know if y'all people focus, see what I post. I mainly focus on Catholicism because that's where I'm, what I'm more familiar with. I have, you know, half my family is Catholic. Um, grew up in Louisiana. You know, Catholicism is all over the place. Um, Orthodoxy, I've just, it's like, that's just within the past year and a half that I've really even understood that there was a distinction between the two. Um, so, and as far as I'm concerned, is there a distinction between, you know, what Cath, Catholics believe about relics versus what Orthodox believe about relics? Um, you know, is there, is there something different there?
Well, we would believe. I mean, there would be some level of distinction between what we would say about relics and what a Roman Catholic would say. We do not disagree about the reverencing. I cut out there. Yeah, somebody was calling you. We don't disagree about the reverencing of the relic. Uh, but we do disagree about what's going on there and how that happens. We believe in the doctrine of the energies, which is that God's uncreated energies permeate his creation and in particular, in a special way, the uncreated energies and power of God are present in his physical spatial dimensions and locations that are sanctified. So churches are still holy. In the New Testament, Peter talks about the holy mountain where the Lord was transfigured, that lets us know that places can still be sanctified. There was the pool where people would go in in the Gospel of John to be healed where an angel would stir the waters. There can be, uh, you know, holy pools. Even in the book of Acts, you'll notice that, uh, when Paul, they take cloths from Paul's body and they heal people and it drives out demons. And this is on the principle of Elijah's bones that resurrect the person who falls into the tomb and they touch the body, touches his, his relics and he's resurrected. So we believe that the bodies of the saints are endued with the power of God because we become little arcs of God and they do have that power. Uh, Roman Catholics do believe in these things, but they believe in a created grace, which is very different from uncreated grace in the Orthodox Church. Um, but yeah, we do believe that the relics have power to, to do these things.
Interesting. No. Yeah. And that, that's something that is undeniable. You know, when you read the scriptures, read in Acts, it's like, "Oh, a handkerchief is taken away to heal people." I, where my concern is, is when you are presented with these, you know, vague stories, you know, there's not like a distinctive teaching, you know, there isn't a formula that's presented to us from apostolic witness on, uh, the, on the activity of the spirit through physical objects. We just hear that, you know, like, for example, the woman who, who just touched Jesus's, uh, clothes, right? Like, would I, like, is that, like, is that something I would formulate doctrine off of, or is that like, like, was it because she actually touched his clothing?
No, that's a great example. That's actually a great example because, or was it faith? You know, it. So is it like, like, for example, when Jesus talks to Nicodemus, he says the activity of the spirit is like the wind, you know, it goes, just like the wind, you can't see it, but it, you know, it's powerful and you can effects. In the same way, it's like, how can we formulate like solid, concrete doctrine on these vague, you know, spiritual experiences that we're seeing, um, you know, in the first century church in Acts? You know, the spirit is extremely active. Uh, people are being filled with the spirit. So I guess my concern is, like, are we making like false correlations there? Is it, was it the faith of the people bringing the handkerchief that was where the power was, or was it the actual handkerchief because it was, you know, touched by Peter or or Paul or whoever?
Let me, let me address that. So, it's not, in our view, it wouldn't be an either-or. Uh, there's a relationship of synergy that goes on there because, for example, in the Gospels, you know, there's the place where it says, "And He, Christ, could not work many miracles there because of their lack of faith." It's not that Christ didn't have the power. It's this, it's that God has determined and decided to have a reciprocal relationship with human beings and creatures such that he won't, if they don't have faith. So the power would not have gone out of him had the woman not had faith. You're right about that. But we can know some of the doctrines because if I recall, and I'm going from memory, but I think the word there is *dunamis*, which is the Greek word that Paul uses when he talks about the energy and power *dunamis* that's at work in him. And he says, "It is the power of God at work in him to do according to God's purpose." So, what is that power of God? I mean, is it an actual essence of God? Is it the divine persons, uh, or is it a divine energy? Well, thankfully, we know because in Corinthians, Paul says, in the in the chapter, uh, 13, where he's talking about the spiritual gifts, he says that the, uh, spirit apportions the gifts as he wills according to his inner *energeia*. So these are energetic gifts. So this is a New Testament doctrine of the uncreated energies, and no church teaches this except the Orthodox Church. There are no churches that teach the uncreated energy doctrine. So relics themselves point to this principle of divine *dunamis* and *energeia*. And it's not just scant examples. We have, for example, in Hebrews 13, Paul says that the New Testament church has an altar from which we eat, that those who serve in the in the tabernacle have no right to eat from. So Paul calls the New Testament altar an altar that we eat from. And in the earliest records of the of the Christian church after the death of the apostles, you can read something like the martyrdom of Polycarp, where they are collecting his relics, where they are reverencing the cross, even from that early of a date. If you go to Rome, you can go into the catacombs and you can see images of Christian iconography. You can see altars underneath the city of Rome in the catacombs. So the early church had all of these things on this sacramental principle, which is why, for example, Jesus spits in the dirt and he makes clay to heal a guy's eyes. I mean, Jesus could have just thought and willed the guy's eyes to be healed, but he chose to use stuff, physical matter. That's why Paul says the cross is the instrument of our salvation. That's why in the Orthodox Church, we honor and revere the cross.
Okay. Now, again, where my concern lies is how do you set up an objective, um, formula for use for for putting this into practice? Like, um, because, like, like we've already established, like there isn't necessarily an exact consistency, um, with, you know, divine objects, right? Like Jesus heals without dirt, Jesus heals with dirt, Jesus heals the, uh, the nobleman's son without even being there, but then he goes physically to Lazarus. So that there's, you know, there's obviously not, uh, a lot of consistency there, but I would argue that this is like Jesus is using context or the apo, like, there's context is key in these, in these scenarios. And it's not so much the actual physical objects. It's, you know, the, uh, um, I'm lost for words.
Well, let's, let's think about, uh, in John 3, right? Jesus says that the bronze serpent was, uh, put up on a pole in the book of Numbers to heal the Israelites when they were being bitten by the snakes. And he likens the cross to that very thing. So, there's a continuity here of objects having the ability to be endued with sacramental grace, energetic *dunamis* power. And that's not a principle that goes away in the New Testament. And I've already listed, uh, several examples, but there's many more. There's oil is used in the New Testament. Bread and wine are used in the New Testament. These are physical means of grace that are premised on the incarnation itself. Jesus took on a human body, which is the image of God, even in a, in a created sense. So God doesn't have a problem with created things, but Protestants tend to.
Hey, can I add real quick? Um, this was brought up, Father Russell made this point. I never thought about this, that if you notice Christ's miracles, in the order of time, they become more and more incarnational. Um, that it starts with like just, you know, uh, proclaiming that, you know, you're, you are healed, and then it, each miracle that happens gets more and more incarnational. It's the touching, it's going, it's putting the, there's a chronological order of then spitting into the mud and putting into the deaf man's ear, which itself is a pedagogical lesson. So he's taking people, um, you know, from the power of God's commands to then teach them that it's by touching and becoming one physically with my body that actually heals. And of course, um, it's a both and. It's not simply your faith that saves you. Um, for example, uh, or vice versa, simply the power of Christ that saves you. It's, for example, in the confession, if you don't have faith and you're receiving the divine energy of Christ's forgiveness, he's not going to force it on you. That your, uh, lack of faith can prevent you from receiving the healing graces of, of Christ. So I would say it's a both and. It's not simply, well, the person just had faith, or Christ just said something. It's incarnational. Um, it's tangible. It's sacramental. Um, and it requires one's faith to receive that. Mhm.
Um, another, another brief point, while you're thinking, is that you mentioned, you know, the, the guidance of the Holy Spirit kind of leading us and letting us know the parameters of where this is and isn't appropriate. You know, Jesus says that he promised the Holy Spirit to the church, right? So he says that in John when he sends the Spirit, in Acts 2 of Pentecost, there's the assumption, I believe, that the Spirit really will lead and guide the church into all truth. "I will not leave you as orphans. I will not forsake you. I will be with you until the end of the age." That promise didn't go away, right? With the first and second century church fathers like Clement, Polycarp, Ignatius, etc. They express the same faith as what was handed down from those apostles. And in those writings, we already see the acceptance of relics and the veneration of the bodies of ho, holy men.
Wait, which writings? What are you talking about? Martyrdom of Polycarp. Okay. And then also St. Did you mention St. Ignatius and his martyr? Yeah. So these are people that were taught by John the Apostle, for example, Polycarp.
You there anything else you want to discuss? I'm thinking, dude, okay, that's fine. I mean, there's, I mean, here's another, uh, classic. If you look at Joshua 7, in the Masoretic text, it points out that when, uh, Joshua, in verse 6, it says, "Joshua tore his clothes and he fell to the earth on his face before the ark of the Lord until evening." He and all the elders of Israel, and they put dust on their heads. And most Protestants who are sort of iconoclastic would have tremendous problem with Orthodox, you know, prostrating before the cross or bowing and venerating icons and this kind of stuff. And yet, it's a very principle from the Old Testament itself, as Joshua prostrates before the ark.
Well, so, so I, yeah, I've heard that argument plenty of times. And the context of that is not venerating the ark. It is, it is he's lamenting. Um, well, then why is he falling down towards the ark? Because the ark was, uh, the where the presence of God was made manifest. But isn't it a physical object with, with images on it? Exactly. And who, and who? So they were bowing down to images. And in the New Covenant, what is the image of the living God? It's the person of the Logos, Jesus. Jesus Christ. And so would you bow before his physical body? I would b, I would bow before Jesus in the flesh. Yes. Okay. Which, you know, not, not a picture of him. But wait a minute. Is his body created? His, yes. His body was formed in the womb, in Mary's womb. So, you're bowing before a created thing. So, okay. So, are we saying that Jesus is the created being? The body of Jesus. Body is absolutely. Okay. Well, yes. So, I'm bowing before Jesus. So, okay. Wait, are we separating Jesus's flesh from his deity? Is that what we're doing? Is that what we're doing?
Not at all. In fact, if you read the Council of Ephesus, this is the very argument that Cyril uses against Nestorius to prove the deity of Christ and the real presence in the Eucharist, that there's only one divine subject. Because he says, in the, in the canons of Ephesus, you, if Jesus was a mere man, you would be eating the flesh of a mere man, and that would be cannibalism. But he argues that you're eating the flesh of the God-man, and that's what deifies you. So, it's the Protestants that would reject Ephesus on this point.
Yeah. Yeah. No, I do reject, um, real, uh, physical presence. I do believe in real presence. The spirit is real. Um, and that's a, that's a whole another topic in and of itself, but, um, which I, I don't know if you guys. Did Jesus deify the human body that he took on? Um, yeah, his resurrection body was his glorified, uh, body, right? So, so God can de, make matter deoiform and transfigured. Um, yeah. I mean, at the transfiguration, he was appearing in his glorified state, you know, after the resurrection. Um, he was in his resurrected body. So, he only does that to Jesus's actual body, or does he do it to our bodies, too? Um, yeah. Yeah, I believe our resurrection body is going to be, you know, renewed in a, you know, something that is distinct from what it is now. Absolutely.
So when John 6 talks about "you must eat my flesh and drink my blood to have life in you," is that not talking about the Lord's Supper, the Eucharist?
So I believe John 6 does not point us to the Lord's table. It points us to the cross. And the Lord's table subsequently points us to the cross. So, I'm actually, uh, I just finished a script. Uh, I'm, I'm gonna post a video soon. A lot of people have been like, in my DMs, I don't know if y'all know the YouTuber, his name's How to Be Christian. He posted a video like a long time ago. And I made the mistake of arrogantly, you know, you know, saying like, "Oh, I'm going to make this reply, whatever, whatever." Um, and, you know, he quote-tweeted me for months and months and months. And me being a procrastinator and, you know, whatever. Long story short, I put it off, but I finally finished the script. I'm going to make a video on this. So, I've been studying through John. And if you take the Gospel of John and you read it as from the perspective of John, Jesus preaches the gospel with a specific formula, right? John 6 is not this separate chapter that's unrelated to John 2 or John 3 or John 4 or 5. You know, Jesus is very consistent in his, in his preaching. Um, you—
What does any of that have to do with the presence in the Eucharist? It has to ex— We're talking about John 6, are we?
Well, you're talking about the, the logical sequence of the Gospel of John and this formula, but what does that have to do with the real presence in chapter 6?
So, well, you're saying that John 6 is like proof that— I'm saying it's one example because when he talks about it, it offends a lot of people who walk away and he says, "Is this a hard teaching?" Now, if he's just teaching a spiritual presence, that's identical to the Old Testament conception of the sacrament. So, there would be nothing offensive or weird about that. Why didn't he stop them from walking away?
Okay. So, uh, so never in scripture do we see people understanding correctly and then walking away from Jesus. It's always— But it wouldn't be a hard teaching, is what I'm saying. Yeah. Exactly. They, they did not understand the spiritual truth. But he says, "This is a hard teaching." If it's if it's if it's the Old Testament understanding of of this the sacramental presence, which is largely symbolic in John, it's not a hard, it's not a hard saying. In John 6, what was the first statement that made them quote grumble?
Uh, I don't have it pulled up. What it— When he told them, "This man offers his flesh." No. When he said that he came down from heaven, that was the first thing that made them grumble. Quote, so when he's saying this, this is a hard saying, they were confused about the entire him coming down from heaven. How are you the bread? How are we going to eat your flesh? Like, none of this makes sense because they were thinking, and let's, let's look at the words of Augustine, for example. They were thinking carnally. Augustine taught the real presence. When he talks about carnally, he's— Let me read thousands of pages of Augustine. So let me explain what he's talking about. He's saying that by eating carnally, it's not that there's no physical eating. They thought they were going to get a free meal. John 6, the grumblers are thinking, "You've been feeding people with bread and loaves and fish. Where's our free meal?" Jesus is saying, "I'm not talking about a free meal of loaves and fishes. I'm talking about eating the true bread that comes down from heaven." Guess what? That's the Passover, the Pascha. And if you look at Hebrews 13, the passage that I mentioned earlier, when Paul, we believe Paul wrote this, when Paul talks about the animals that are sacrificed by Israel at the tabernacle and the temple, he says that those animals do not have the grace to profit those that eat of it. But we have a altar that we eat from. And our high priest offering is what does sanctify us. In verse 12, it says that it is his blood that you're partaking of. So Paul calls it an altar with a sacrifice and it's the blood of the high priest, contrasted to the symbolic sacrifices of the animals. And you're telling me that, no, Jesus is just teaching the symbolic view of the Old Testament, which is a contradiction from what Paul's saying in Hebrews 13.
No, I believe in a real body, real blood that really bled, really died on a real cross at a real point in time. What is, is Paul talking about what happened on the cross? Or is he talking about the altar that we eat from?
When he's talking about the blood of Christ, he's talking about the, what happened on the cross because that's where Jesus— I just read to you the passage where he's contrasting what we eat from what the Jews eat.
All right. Well, let's read it then. I just read it to you. Hebrews 13. Do you want me to read it again? Let me pull it up. Let me pull it up. Hebrews 13. Where we at? Verse 9. All righty. All right. Hold on one second.
"Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today. Do not—"
So verse nine, you said? Yeah. "Do not then do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings. But it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods which have not benefited those devoted to them. We have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat." Okay. Down to verse 13.
All right. "Therefore, let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. 13." No, 213. You're skipping the verses that are the most important. Oh, okay. "For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy places by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp. So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Therefore, let us go to him outside the camp and bear reproach, bear the reproach he endured." Okay. And then the next verse. Okay. "For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come through him. Then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God. That is—"
Do you know, do you know what that word is there? What is the word? *Eucharistia*. Do you know what most Protestant scholars admit about this passage that that it means thanksgiving? It means offering, which could be thanksgiving, or it could be a ritual service or ceremony. The entire passage is about the superiority of our eucharistic offering and meal that we eat versus what the Jews eat at the tabernacle, the animals.
Okay. So you're removing the contrast and you're literally, you're literally saying that it's equivalent to the Old Testament symbolism. No, I'm not. So, um, how does this, when you take Jesus's words into consideration, when he says, "God is seeking such people to worship him in spirit and in truth," and then the new covenant, the law is going to be written on our hearts. We're, we're transitioning to the truths of the spirit here. So I don't, I don't know what you think that means because God gave the church a liturgical worship service that's not recorded in the New Testament, and all the apostolic churches have it. So I don't know what you mean by worshiping in spirit and truth because we think that means liturgy, because that's how God always was worshiped throughout the Old Testament.
Okay. So I mean, right here he says, you know, "sacrifice of praise to God, that is—" So he defines it, "the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name." So it's like, in the context now, it's— It's in the context, you're doing a false either-or. It means— Hold on. No, it doesn't. It's a false either-or. The whole context is eating. And you're saying, "No, it's really just about spiritual praising."
Hold on. Hold on. Go back. Is this at the mega church in the first century? Did Paul go to the mega church where they were praising with their lips and they didn't have the Eucharist? And by the way, spirit and truth doesn't mean not a visible there church. Um, it means the Holy Spirit, okay? The spirit of truth. Okay. Yeah. So, which is in a visible, manifest, visibly in a visible body. All right. Um, when Jesus in the— when Jesus says, "God is seeking such people to worship him," what's the context? You just keep assuming the evangelical spiritual low, low church interpretation of all these passages, which you've not demonstrated. I'm giving you counter evidence to that low church symbolic interpretation, and you're just restating the symbolism.
All right. Well, you, you're not letting me talk. So, um, because you just keep restating that it's a symbolic thing. I don't think I've used the word symbol once. Okay. You called it quote spiritual, which in your mind as an evangelical is contrasted to the physical or the flesh. But that's why I keep making the point that that's what g, well, that's what Paul is contrasting to the Jews who eat at the temple, the tabernacle, in a carnal way. He's not saying that the way to eat non-carnally is not with your mouth, because he says we eat at an altar. You don't have an altar. Okay?
So when Jesus says in John 6, he says, "Come to me and you will never hunger. Believe in me and you will never thirst." So when Jesus says that, he says, "You will never hunger and you will never thirst when you come to him and believe, believe in him." Why then? So I know why I continually partake of the, uh, the elements of the bread and the wine. I know why I continually do that. But why do you continually partake if Jesus says you will never hunger and you will never thirst?
Why then in your tradition do you have to continually come? Because he says the same type— Hold on, bro. Hold on. Because in your theology, that sacrifice does not perfect you, 'cause sin can still make you fall away from grace, and therefore you need to come back to the throne of grace and reobtain what has been lost. And so when Jesus says, "Come to me and you will never hunger and and believe in me and you will never thirst," right? You're negating those words.
I'm not. I have a different interpretation. Hold on. Then jumping down. Look, he says, "Naw on my flesh." That must mean that he's going to start this whole liturgical process of calling him down from heaven into a wafer. And his blood is made present. We're not Roman Catholics. We don't have wafers. Okay. Well, whatever. You say whatever. I mean, Roman Catholics use a Judaized, uh, bread, so it's that matters. All right. Point being, um, I don't know. I mean, we're jumping all over the place here.
Well, this is great because I remember, um, this was brought up once, I think, in a homily. Um, well, I went to church once. I, I read some of the Bible. Isn't that enough? You go get him, Jesus. Um, you go get him, Jesus. Why do I need to go to church again? Why do I need to? Yeah, this is just like an overly simple reading of Christ is the life source. Hey, Jamie. And if you separate yourself from him in different way, like, so, yes, of course, you will never thirst when you're with me. We do all kinds of things that separate us from God's powers. Okay. So when Paul says that nothing will separate him from the love of Christ, I mean, is that nothing like? No, you have to balance passages with other passages. You can't take one verse and squeeze every verse into that verse because of— Exactly. I agree. But let me agree. Listen, Hebrews 6 in a vacuum. You can't read John. I didn't take it. I, I went immediately to an eucharistic passage in Hebrews 13 to help explain it. I didn't take it into vacuum. Did I argue that it was only John 6 that proved— Let's read from John's perspective consistently. I don't know that you have John's perspective. Consistently in John's gospel, Jesus is very consistent. In John chapter 2, he uses the earthly metaphor of a temple being destroyed to represent the spiritual truth of the resurrection of his body. The people who were there were confused because they were thinking physically. But the disciples. Yeah, but you just keep. Listen, you're making an assumption. Three. Listen, stop. I know what you're doing. You're contrasting spirit. Listen, it's a false dilemma. You're contrasting spirit to flesh. Number here. Let me talk. You're contra— I already know what you're doing. It's not a good argument. You're contrasting. That's your opinion. No, it's not. It's a Gnostic view. I'm trying to tell you. That's why you're out of accord with what the church always taught about this. What, what is Gnostic about my view? Mike, I see you laughing out there, bro. I blocked you, bro. What's Gnostic is that the passages about spirit are not contrasted to body or physicality. It's Holy Spirit. And every Protestant does this Gnostic anti-matter reading into these texts. I know I used to be a Protestant. When I read Romans, Paul talks about the body, the flesh fighting the spirit. I assumed that that was physical body fighting the Holy Spirit because somehow quote immaterial things are better than physical things, and that's a Gnostic heresy. Okay. No one is saying that immaterial things are better. We're, what we're saying is that the, that is what you've been saying is fallen and needs renewal. The first coming of Christ, why is there a second coming of Christ? The first coming of Christ is to deal with our sin. And what did sin do? According to Ezekiel, the soul dies from sin. So the first, the body and the soul dies. So I don't know what you're talking about.
Well, yes, through Adam, all flesh dies because all sin. So yes, the flesh and the soul die. But Jesus's first coming was to make us born again in the spirit and the s. Yeah. And that happens through baptism. Water baptism. That's a physical. Okay. Sure. No. Wait a minute. So you're saying sure. Now there's water that's used as a medium of regeneration. You're saying sure to that? You agree with that?
No, I don't. But you're, I mean, you're just shifting or what argument do you want to focus on? You want to jump to the— No, I'm making another point that physical things like water are mediums of grace. That's why in Acts 2 it says, "Repent and be baptized for the remission of your sins." And then it says that thousands of them were actually physically water baptized. Okay? So Cornelius received the Spirit without water. I'm not saying that God can't send his Holy Spirit and do it in that way. But in Acts 2:38, as well as Titus 3, it specifies that the labor of baptism is the labor of regeneration. Does Titus 3 not say that?
Repeat yourself. Does Titus 3 not call the labor of baptism the labor of regeneration? Um, I'll have to go study that. I'm not going to. And that's the same thing Peter's talking about in Acts two. I'm not saying that the Holy Spirit can't move outside of the presence of water. But the normative means by which regeneration occurs is through physical water. So throughout all of this, your war is against physical objects. And all of your interpretations are that somehow quote spirit is anti-matter. Okay. All right. Got it. That's your interpretation of what my position is. Um, is that not your position?
Back to what I was saying. John 3. So, you're not going to address any verses. You're just going to do a walkthrough of what I already addressed. Okay. Yeah. Yes. Because you're, you're shifting the, you're shifting the goalposts. No, bringing up further examples is not moving the goalpost. That's a different fallacy. You got to let me. I, we're, we're, I told you, you're walking through talk when you say, "Okay, Jesus's body is, uh, the true temple and he destroyed the other temple." That doesn't help your case. Jesus's body is physical. No, I, yes, I agree. The physical body of Christ was necessary. Was absolutely necessary because just as sin came into the world through the flesh, it had to be destroyed in the flesh. How does this prove your low view of sacraments? I, I don't have a low view of sacraments. Yes, you do. By definition, you literally do. I believe, I believe that communion is worship. Is, is water baptism regeneration? I, I believe that I am regenerated by the Holy Spirit prior to water baptism. Then you have a low view of the sacraments by definition. No, I believe water baptism is worship and it is acceptable. Is it the labor of regeneration according to Titus 3:5? "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy, he saved us through the washing of the labor of regeneration." Yeah. And the, and he, Peter describes the water as what's not doing the washing there. Uh, it's the Spirit. No, he says that it's not washing your body. He doesn't say it's not water. He says, "Yeah, not by a washing of dirt off your body." So, so not taking a bath, water baptism is not a bath. So, that's what Peter's talking about. He's not saying that there's not a presence of the Holy Spirit to regenerate you at water baptism.
I didn't say that the Holy Spirit was not present in baptism. You said that it's not regeneration. You just said that. Yeah. I believe that I believe the Christian is regenerated by the Holy Spirit through faith prior to baptism. You're saying that, but the Bible doesn't say that. It continually links it to the celebration of the sacrament. Shows us that. Yeah. It doesn't use that exact wording, but it shows. No, it doesn't. My examples that you won't talk about literally link it to baptism. Cornelius. I mean, dude, I mean, you're saying, "Oh, but that's just an exception." Like, that's— No, it's not. The Holy Spirit can move. The Holy Spirit can move the— You're taking the work of God and saying, "No, that's an exception. The thief on a cross." No, I'm not. I'm dealing with all of the passages. And that's that's prior. The thief on the cross is prior to the institution of water baptism in Acts 2 as the normative means. I already said normative. I didn't deny the possibility of the Holy Spirit doing and moving people. Stop interrupting me. You're new to all this, man. Why you interrupting? Make the distinction of normative means of grace versus. Okay, so we're done. I'm When does that, when does it make that distinction? So you, okay. You literally think that using terminology that helps to clarify is not in the Bible itself. Is the word Trinity in the Bible? No. But so that's a double standard. You're using the double standard. It's perfectly laid out. No, I'm just saying, like, where are you establishing that? Um, you said that there's no— All the examples I'm giving you, Acts 2, where it says, "Repent and be baptized for the remission of sins." And then they're water baptized in Acts 2, right? Yeah. And then but and then it says John baptized with water. But that's the Old Testament. They didn't. They're what? Do you know when is when is Jesus's baptism instituted? At when he sends the Holy Spirit? No. At the end of the gospel when he says, "Go forth and baptize all the nations." That's when he institutes it. Stop interrupting me. He said, "Shut up." He says it is a Trinitarian ritual action, and that's what they do in Acts. Matthew 28 is talking about water baptism. You didn't even know that. No, I know. Matthew 28. He, he— No, I— You said baptism was instituted at Pentecost. You said Acts 2. It's Matthew 28, not Acts 2. Oh, okay. Yeah. All right. I'm, I'm, I was confused by your, your question. The, the obvious question that everyone should know, when was baptism instituted? You were confused by that? How would you be confused by a basic question? All right. I, I, a question about normative means. It's established then. So you can't appeal to cases, um, prior to the institution of baptism as, uh, possibly normative means. Now, as Jave pointed out, can God send the Holy Spirit and, uh, save somebody apart from the normative mean? Sure. But Protestants always take an exception to the rule. Let's say to be the example to be the example, then I can do that. It's the exact, the same analogy of saying, "Well, could I be saved of a terminal cancer without going to a specialist in the hospital?" It's like, yeah, but okay, maybe there was a case or two where that happened. Like, why in the world would you build a whole therapy on not going to get healed because you could be healed apart from the normative means? That's Protestantism for you. It's crazy. It's like, well, even if you found those cases that were exceptions to the rules after the institution of baptism, um, you're going to base a rule on the exception to the rule and put yourself in that sort of danger. That's just seems crazy to me. Call me crazy. Okay, we will. No.
Yeah. And I, and I, I understand that like we're in agreement that we disagree with each other, and I'm just trying to, you know, have a— Well, no, it's been a great conversation and, and it's, yeah. So, and I, I apologize that we're getting a little wrong. That's cool. Uh, maybe we can shift a little bit because we're going to disagree there. More maybe a more fundamental question would be, how do you know what the word of God is in terms of the canon of scripture, and what is your basis for it?
The canon conundrum, Protestant nightmare. Um, yeah. So, I mean, the, um, um, I, I would say that the recognition of infallibility does not require the possession of infallibility. The simple historical fact, and this is a historical fact that I think we should all agree on, is that neither Jewish reception of the Old Testament nor early Christian reception of the scriptures happened through means of infallibility. Period.
I mean, you just contradicted yourself within like three sentences. You just said that. You just pick apart my statement, please. The first thing you said, which was confused. I don't know what you mean by infallibility can happen through what did you say? How did you phrase it? I said recognition of infallibility. Meaning the re, recognizing God's word does not require possession of infallibility. Meaning that I have been— So, so Matthew, so Matthew, so Matthew might not have written Matthew's gospel.
I'm not answering that. That's a, that's a— You're not going to answer it. That it's like, like, I don't, I, I don't understand how to answer that question. Well, it's an important question because it underdoes the assumptions of your argument. So, why would you— I don't understand why you wouldn't at least attempt to answer it. Well, it's a topic that I'm not well-studied on. I'm not apostolic authorship is very important for inclusion into the canon. And Matthew's gospel doesn't tell you that Matthew the disciple wrote it. So, guess where you get that knowledge from? Tell me. Tradition. Got it. So you're relying on tradition. Is that also perhaps wrong?
All right. Well, Acts 17:11. You're not— So, you two Quoque fallacy? Huh? You're asking me a question when I ask you a question? Yeah. That's two Quoque fallacy. All right. Whatever. Um, all right. Whatever. Okay. So, you don't think fallacies matter? I don't understand why, why you just blow past this. I ask you a question and you say, "I'm not going to answer it." And then I'm going to— You're going to ask me a question. That's called a two Quoque fallacy. And then you say, "Whatever." Okay. Uh, well, ask the question again. What, what are we saying here? I told you I'm not an expert on how we have determined how Ma, that Matthew wrote the Gospel of Matthew. The only way is through tradition. So, I'm not, I'm not going to speak on something I'm not an expert in because I will make myself out to be a fool and I don't intend on, I don't intend on doing that. And I see all you guys laughing in, in the, you know, out there. Why don't you come up here and, you know, tell me why we have every single book of the Bible, you know.
All right. So, look, we're, let's just stop there because I don't want us to go into a bad direction. We can go and study and read and you can look into the question if you want, and maybe we can come back. And we, we don't, I don't want this to go in like a sour direction because we, you apologized, you're, you're a good dude. Go ahead. I want to say, I want to say one thing. Sure. All right, guys. Come on. Like y'all are— Don't worry about the chat. You can't look at. You can't look at the chat. Go ahead. Say what you're going to say. Just don't. Yeah. Um, all right. Well, so how do we determine what scripture is? And my simple answer, and I know this isn't going to satisfy, uh, the people who are listening, but prop, say, okay, you have something, you're proposing something to be the word of God. Say, look, I have this, this is, I'm calling this the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew wrote it, uh, it's the word of God. Um, and I have, you know, I've never seen it before. I, I haven't studied or anything. Uh, what's my first, you know, line of action? Uh, that's why I was pointing to Acts 17:11. So you have proposed.
But you're begging the question because we don't know yet that Acts is actually part of the scriptures. Okay. I'm just using what happened in Acts as an example of what could be done to determine what is the word of God. But that example is, uh, assuming the thing in question because we don't know yet that that's even allowed in the canon. Maybe Acts, maybe Luke, you know, about like the pseudonymous gospels and the, uh, the, you know, Gnostic gospels, the false gospels, right? Super. There are objective ways in which we have found them to be unreliable, and they were— I'm not, I understand that, but I'm just pointing out that just because there's a name mentioned like Luke, or even if it said Matthew, like, it doesn't tell you that that's authentically the disciple of Jesus. It might be, you know, getting off topic. We're getting off topic. So, no, it's not on topic. It's perfectly on topic. Okay. We have proposed. We have proposed word of God.
This is proposed to be the speech of God. You take what you know to be the speech of God and measure it against what is proposed to be the speech of God. You have, you have the apostles coming to the church in Berea and preaching the gospel to them. And then this doesn't work as an example because this is the word of God. Acts, you don't know that Acts is the word of God. So you're using a thing in question. So it's begging the question. Can I give you an example of what I'm talking about?
If you scroll down on my wall, you'll see an old tweet that I retweeted called Protestantism and Soul Scripture Refuted. And what I do there is I use the Baptist textual scholar Lee McDonald's list of the debates about the canon and the different church father lists into the fourth, fifth, sixth century. And you'll notice that whether it's the New Testament or the Old Testament, there's variation amongst all of these different lists. So what I want to know is whether it's Origen, or whether it's Chrysostom, or whether it's Athanasius's list, or Cyril of Jerusalem's list. How do you, as a Protestant, know, or what do we do to determine amongst these church fathers, who are not Protestant, which one is the right list? Exactly what I was saying. You know, take the, what we know to be the speech of God, which we, you're using the book of Acts, and the book of Acts is not known yet to be the word of God. That's the thing in question.
Well, I mean, okay. So, how, how do we know? I mean, the earliest, um, um, testimony of the church. I mean, the, the apostles themselves handed these letters off to someone, right? Yes. Yeah. So, yeah. But you know, we don't have autographa, right? No. Yes. Yes. I know. I know. Okay. So, how do we know the authentic from the non-authentic ones? Do you know what the earliest list of the canon of the canon is? Uh, the earliest, not necessarily, but I do know that there are lists prior to, you know, the council that everybody loves to, uh, reference in like, what, 380, 383 or something like that. There, there were plenty of lists prior to that. Um, I don't know about plenty, but there are some, a handful. A handful. And funny enough, most of them were closer to the Protestant canon. And no, that is completely false. You're totally wrong. I mean, I've got them pulled up. Do you want to look? Do you want to walk through them and see that that's false? No, I, I didn't say they were exactly, but no, they're not even close to the Protestant canon. Okay, that's just simply not true. I've got canon 85 of the Apostolic Canons pulled up right here. This is one of the earliest. The other earliest is the Canons of Laodicea. And the canon that's listed in the Apostolic Canons from the 300s, it includes, uh oh, the deuterocanon. That is not the Protestant canon. Okay. So you got one. No, this is not one. This is canon law, church law for the church in general, having a normative canon that includes, where is this originating from? This is just church. Everyone in general is agreeing on it. Much of the church that follows the Apostolic Canons. Correct. It's the earliest. It's the, let me finish. It's the earliest. Let me finish. It's the earliest collection of canon law in the churches in the 300s. Okay. And then you have plenty of testimony after that saying that the deuterocanon is second tier canon, a distinct, uh, good for edification, but not for faith. And no, that's not true. What does Athanasius say that the, the deuterocanon is for? I don't know. He says it's for the catechumens. Yeah, I, well, I haven't, I haven't studied that, so I can't speak on that. Okay, so that refutes what you just said. One guy. No, Athanasius is not just one guy. What is, what is, what does St. Augustine, what does Augustine say about the deuterocanon? He, he affirmed the deuterocanon, right? So is that now two guys? What about Jerome? What about, wait a minute. No, Cyril of Jerusalem. Cyril of Jerusalem does not have the Protestant canon. He doesn't help your case. You have one. No, he doesn't. You have one church father, Jerome. Why are we supposed to follow Jerome and Cyril of Jerusalem? No, he doesn't. He doesn't have your canon. He does not have the Protestant canon. Yeah. Yeah. He included Baruch. Yeah. Uh, that's not the Protestant canon. And he, I don't think he has Revelation, if I recall. So how does, how does Cyril of Jerusalem help your case? Talk about Old Testament. That's the only. No, no, no. It's not just the Old Testament. It's both the New Testament and the Old Testament. It's the canon. Well, that's what, that's where we differ here. What? That you're wrong. No, the, uh, Old Testament. That's what I'm talking about. No, I'm talking about the canon. That's not just the Old Testament. There's differing New Testament lists. Athanasius goes to Rome to convince Rome of Hebrews and Revelation because they didn't think it was canonical. Cyril of Jerusalem does not have Revelation in his canon. Okay. So, that doesn't help your case. I'm, I'm aware that there was debate on. Okay. So, how do we know which one's right? Who we follow? That's my question.
Again, back to what I said earlier. You test what is proposed to be the speech of God with what is known to be the speech of God. And you're referring to the book of Acts, which is in question. Okay. All right. Well, I, I feel like I'm not really getting myself anywhere, but let me ask you, how do you determine what is the canon of scripture?
Well, for the Orthodox Church, the highest authority is an ecumenical council. Okay. So, it's Are you a bunch of dudes that just decide? Uh, no, not a bunch of dudes. It's the church fathers with apostolic succession who have the gift of the Holy Spirit given to them. Does Paul say that the Holy Spirit is transferred in the laying on of hands to Timothy? Uh, yeah, absolutely. Oh, but you think that that's not true because you don't believe in apostolic succession? Not in the way you define it. No, I just said what happens in, in, in Timothy. So, what do you mean? Yeah. Paul also says that after he leaves the church, uh, false Christians will infiltrate the church successfully and draw away the disciples. No, he doesn't say successfully. They will enter the church. Will draw away the disciples. Draw away. That doesn't mean they destroy the church. The gates of hell cannot prevail against the church. Never said that. Never said the gates of hell prevailed. But what I'm saying, if they infiltrate and subvert the church, then the gates of hell prevailed. You have this line. Now you're changing. So you don't want to address. You'll throw stuff at you. Is this line of succession that you have, is this list of men, is that an infallible list? It's, it's not a question of infallibility. It's not a question of infallibility. If I know that the testimony, no, stop interrupting me. Athanasius says, for example, that at the Council of Nicaea, the Holy Spirit spoke through those fathers, right? So I don't have to accord to the councils when they state something about the scriptures the same status of divine revelation. I would say divine revelation is infallible, but I don't believe that divine revelation is restricted to written texts. And you do. But when, when Peter and Paul preach, they call it the word of God. Do you believe that it's only written, or you believe that the preaching is also written? No, I believe, yeah. The apostolic testimony, oral, written, was the word of God. Oh, okay. So, is there an oral, uh, thing that's passed on? No, we are, we are not told that oral tradition would be passed on infallibly? No. No. Is it? Well, whether you think it's infallible or not, is it passed on at all? Oh, absolutely. Oral tradition is always passed on. Okay. And was what about one of those things being the authorship of Matthew? Like I said, that's not something I'm, uh, because it refutes you. Because it refutes the point you just made. What? What point? And how does it refute the point? It's apostolic tradition that Matthew, the disciple, wrote the Gospel of Matthew. Okay, that refutes the point you just made. What? What? And what point? Like, what did I say that's being refuted here? If you can deny the oral tradition and that it, we don't, we're not bound by that, then I'm not bound by the claim of the church that Matthew, the disciple, wrote Matthew's gospel, and I can throw out Matthew on your position that, all right, that, yeah, that's okay. There we go. Good job. And that's where Protestant leads to chopping up the B. Protestantism leads. That's what Luther did, by the way. When Luther, and, and notice too, the confusion as we always see, uh, the two categories between normative, what's binding, and, uh, an epistemic category of infallibility. So, uh, St. Paul says, you're too old. He's speaking about normative, right? So it's a separate question. Um, and we can answer that whether the oral teachings and the written teachings are infallible or not. But that's a separate question. Is it binding on you? Do you have to hold it? And St. Paul obviously says you do. I have to be bound to a line of succession. Yes, you do. Yeah. The oral teaching. That's what St. Paul just said. You, and I gave you one example of this oral teaching, which was that Matthew, the disciple, wrote the Gospel of Matthew, and you said, "No, I don't have to believe that." And fine, throw it out. No. Okay. See, you, you cut me off. No, that's what you said. That's not what I said. It is what you said. What are you talking about? People just heard you say it. Fine. I don't accept that. That's not what I said. What? What did you say? Okay, you said, "Oh, so yeah, you know, so you can just throw out the idea that that Matthew wrote the gospel." And I was like, "Yeah, that's what you just." And then you cut me off. Like, look, see, he said, "Yeah." I mean, you, you cut me off. You're putting words in my mouth. No, I'm not. I'm stating. Yeah. And then you say, "Oh, just like Martin Luther cut books out of the Bible." Martin Luther actually never took books out of the. No, he actually did. He removed the deuterocanon. First printed edition. Oh, in the German New Testament, he changed words, and then when he translated his Bible, it does not have the deuterocanon. I've read six of Luther's books. First edition of his, of his. Who cares about his first edition if the tradition later on is that he says, "I want to punch Moses's teeth out and I don't care about the law," and he doesn't believe. He says that Maccabees is not scripture because it doesn't preach the word of God and includes prayers for the dead. Yeah, I agree. On what basis? That, well, first off, that it doesn't, it doesn't align with, um, the testimony of scripture. Again, begging the question. The question is, how do you know what's in scripture? And you're saying that Maccabees isn't scripture because it doesn't align with scripture. Okay. Well, scripture isn't one book. So there's that. Okay. That's totally, totally dishonest. Get out of here with that nonsense, Mike. Mike, unmute. Hey Jay, what's up? Yes, sir. Oh, wait. Did, did Indiana get booted? Yep. Oh, man. Okay. Well, I was, I was just going to say, I mean, I don't know how you came to, uh, you know, get him in a space because he had agreed to debate with myself, being moderated by Jake Growlesnake, about, you know, Sola Scriptura, his hatred of Mary. So I was just going to, you know, warn you about the type of guy that he is. Um, and I came in a little late, so I guess you guys were having a good discussion, and then it morphed into something. Oh, we've already gone for an hour. So it's, I gave him one out. I gave him another out. Yeah, he's, he's a total dishonest actor. If he doesn't have Chat GPT or his notes in front of him, he can't talk. Yeah. Um, the dude is a total snake in the grass. But, you know, uh, kudos to you for having him on. He, he literally blocks or, uh, you know, runs away from any other debate. So, I'm glad to see that at least you spoke to him. Well, he also says that I'm not in a position to debate, but he's right to debate. No, he's, he's an. I don't even understand how anyone who could hold Sola Scriptura can give an interpretation of what he believes a passage from, uh, scripture means. It doesn't make any sense to me. But, you know, I, I enjoyed your talk, uh, with him, as I enjoy pretty much a lot of the things that you do. Uh, so I just wanted to say that, and I wish he was on here because I did, I did, uh, challenge him to a boxing match. And I said that if he won, I would leave the Catholic Church and go to whatever church he, uh, worships at, quote unquote, worship. I actually was thinking too, uh, because he initially, before he apologized, had lied about what I said, and then he apologized. So I'm not going to go that route, but I wanted to offer a boxing match as well. I'm not kidding. No, the dude, the dude says that he finally, oh, I finally, you know, have a scripture debate, how to be Christian. That's been easily six months in the works. I don't, I don't know of anybody who needs six months to prepare for a simple debate on either a space or YouTube. He's, he's full of, he's full of BS. I mean, he posts pictures of, you know, uh, the Virgin Mary on the shoe, uh, you know, of people with the title saying, "Oh, look at this that I stepped in." And I just, I can't stand him, and I wish he would have been here so I can confront him in person. Oh, Lord have mercy. I can't imagine on judgment day, um, what Christ is, what Christ is actually going to say to people who, I mean, if you diss somebody's mother, that's worse than dissing. Um, well, come on in anyways. Okay. I totally thought that was. But again, thank you for doing what you do, and well, I appreciate that. I mean, you're welcome to stay and we can have a conversation about Rome if you want. I, I defer to someone better than me, obviously. I'm not going to get into that, but, um, Fair enough. Yeah. But always again, appreciate you, and, uh, I'll see you soon. I'll keep listening. I stay for only about five more minutes. Okay. Uh, welcome everybody. We had a good conversation there for over an hour. If you would like to support the stream, you can do so via the super chat function there. Super chats are also pinned there. You can do it also natively with YouTube. If you would like to call in, you can call in through the X space right here. Here is the X space link to call in. Uh, and let's do a little brief, uh, look at this before we go to the next, uh, person in line. Looks like we got quite a few people in line. So, uh, this is Lee McDonald's book where he lists the canon from various Old and New Testament lists from various church fathers. I recommend every Protestant who's interested in this question to read Lee McDonald's book because it's one of the best, as well as F.F. Bruce's book, Canonicity of Scripture, that admits from the evangelical perspective the absolutely indispensable aspect of church tradition in determining not just the canon, but the authenticity and authorship of the various manuscript copies. This is so key because so many Protestants, uh, when they hear this argument, they think, "Oh, you're just saying that I need infallible decisions to know what the Bible is." No, no, no. It's not just a question of normative authority about a binding canon. It's also a question about the authenticity and authorship of disputed texts versus pseudepigrapha and varying lists amongst the church fathers. So here we have Lee McDonald. This one will take but a second. Here we have Lee McDonald listing the Old Testament books in the Eastern Church in the fourth and fifth century. And you'll notice there is some variation with Athanasius basically including elements of the deuterocanon. And Athanasius says that the deuterocanon is for catechumens to read. So even if we, and we don't have a problem in the Orthodox Church with the phrase deuterocanon, you see, but it's not just a question of the deuterocanon, as we'll see. It's also a question of the authenticity of the book of Revelation, which Athanasius has a key role in determining as canonical by convincing Rome. So the East convinces the West of the canonicity of the Catholic Epistles and Revelation, according to Lee McDonald. You'll notice that Baruch is included in most of these lists. And, uh, by the way, I think it's Melito's list that James White tried to refer to in the Trent Horn debate, and Sam Shamoun pointed out that James White was dishonest and wrong about Melito's list. It's also, uh, I'm pretty sure it's Melito. It's either Vincentian or Melito's. Melito's canon. I'm not sure, but there's a video that Shamoun has on that, by the way. Um, Epiphanius, you'll notice that it's pretty much Ezra's, Baruch as well. You'll notice that, uh, Ruth is, uh, and Judges are sometimes also not included. So, for example, some of these lists will have Ruth, some of these lists won't. So, you can see they're quite different in their inclusion and exclusion. Now, yes, I admit that these aren't the most essential verses. You see, but none of that really or books, but none of that matters in regard to the Protestant idea of the final completed fixed word of God as the only sole authority or final authority for the church. You see, if we come over here to, uh, other lists here, we have pseudo-Christ. Pseudo-Christ. I'm including, uh, Sirach. You have to over here included, and some of these are just ancient, varying ancient lists. Okay, we're going to, we're going to do several of these. This is still Old Testament. If we come over here to Hilary, this is the book of the Old Testament in the Western Church in the fourth and fifth century. So one of his, uh, textual lists has also First and Second Esdras and the Epistle of Jeremiah. Uh, if you come over to Jerome, Jerome is the only church father that lists explicitly the Protestant canon. Um, and then the next list, there's some other. This is Augustine's list of the Old Testament canon. It, of course, includes the deuterocanon. And why did Augustine have this list? Well, Augustine agreed with Pope Damasus's list at the Council of Rome. Council of Rome is a regional council around mid, you know, mid-300s, late 300s, and it's maybe around 400. I forget the exact date, but it's very similar to, uh, kind of what you see in the Apostolic Canons, except the Apostolic Canons also have a differing list, as we'll see in a second. Uh, here's Augustine's list, and then next to it is the Council of Rome that we're talking about, which is very important in the West. There's another Council of Hippo that includes the deuterocanonical books, and then the Codex Vaticanus includes the deuterocanonical texts. Codex Sinaiticus has Wisdom, Sirach as well. Codex Alexandrinus also includes deuterocanonical texts. So let's look at New Testament books. Eusebius's list. It's unclear if included Revelation, uh, the book of Revelation, and it includes the Didache and the, uh, Epistle of Barnabas. Clement's list includes texts that no one else included as canonical, such as Epistle of Barnabas, Shepherd of Hermas, Acts of Paul, Revelation of Peter. Cyril of Jerusalem, who I mentioned to that guy, does not include the book of Revelation. So this does not afford Protestants any evidence or help. And you can see it right there. He has the correct New Testament, but he does not include the book of Revelation. We have Athanasius's New Testament canon, and it is the full, accurate New Testament canon that again, he helps convince Rome to accept when it comes to the book of Revelation, and I think the book of Hebrews and the Catholic Epistles. There is, uh, the Muratorian fragment list, and it looks pretty accurate, but doesn't have the book of James. Epiphanius. I don't know why Epiphanius would include Wisdom of Sirach, Wisdom, and Sirach in the New Testament. That's pretty odd. But it looks like the Apostolic Canons, which is what we're looking at right here. They do not have the book of Hebrews or the book of Revelation. But the Apostolic Canons, which had a wider acceptance, especially in the East, did include the deuterocanonical texts. And that's why it even trumps an individual church father's opinion. But it's not even final because we don't include the letters of Clement, and we do not include, and it does not include the book of Revelation. So do you understand? We're walking through the actual historical process of the lists and how much variation, differentiation there is. Now, there's not a whole lot of differentiation or variation on the Gospels. Okay? It's almost always the, uh, Catholic Epistles, Pauline Epistles to a degree. And, I mean, if Paul wrote Hebrews, I'm saying, uh, and the book of Revelation, and the inclusion of books that no one ends up really accepting, like Clement and so forth. The Apostolic Canons include two Clementine letters and the Apostolic Constitutions, apparently, which is odd. Gregory Nazianzus's list does not include Revelation or Hebrews, and the African Canons include the Acts of the Martyrs, which I don't think anybody includes. So then you have again, Canon 85 over here. Now, when Trullo meets, Trullo says, "We affirm the canons of the previous councils, and we affirm explicitly the Carthaginian list of the canon." The Carthaginian list, going from memory, is pretty much the, uh, Council of Rome list. So essentially, by the time of Trullo, and Trullo is affirmed by the Seventh Ecumenical Council, you have an affirmation of what is pretty much the, the identical canon to the West in terms of the Council of, uh, Rome and Augustine and Pope Damasus. So there's not a whole lot of differentiation. Um, I think some people, even John of Damascus, for example, um, still includes in his canon list, uh, Clement, the letters of Clement. So the Orthodox view, because we don't believe in Sola Scriptura, it's not as rigid as this Protestant idea of you have to have this like completely, you know, walled-off canon that is not in any way sort of flexible. In the Orthodox Church, there's more flexibility here because we're not proponents of Sola Scriptura. So, we don't believe that all these, they're all heretics. They didn't get the, the infallible word of God right. Well, notice Protestants take Revelation 22 and they say, "If you take away from the word of God or if you add to it, you're part of the lake of fire." Oh, so all the church fathers who were debating and trying to figure out the canon, I guess, are all in the lake of fire unless they got the canon right. It's just silly and it's totally divorced from history. Last thing I'll say on this is the, uh, one of the key things that surprised me, I don't remember if it was, I think it was in the F.F. Bruce book, but I'm going from memory, is the admission that liturgy played a really important role in the formation of the biblical canon. And a lot of Protestants have never heard that. When I was Protestant and debating and studying these issues, I'd never heard this. That was new. What liturgy? Yes. In fact, the daily readings or the lectionaries in the ancient sees and churches had a very important role in figuring out the tradition of the church in regard to authenticity and authorship of many of these texts. For example, if an ancient apostolic see, say Rome, say Jerusalem, if they had cited a text or had been, if a text had been read, and it went back as far as anyone could remember, and as far as other church fathers had given witness to, say Irenaeus, say Clement, say Ignatius, say they cited a text, those were good pieces of evidence that that's probably authentic. But it's also the liturgical cycle and the liturgical readings that help the church determine from the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh centuries what the normative canon would be. And if you understand that, and that's why I brought the Matthew example to that guy and the authorship, it's not just apostolic authorship. There's other things that go into it like liturgy that devastates the Protestant Sola Scriptura position. Snack. What's up, man?