Transcription
And so, for example, when St. Paul says, "We're not saved by works of the Torah, works of the law," he means you're not saved by keeping those commandments that separated Jews from Gentiles.
I know you uh you recently have have written a book called the Baal Book, uh which was um uh which a lot of people were were discussing uh not that long ago. I know we wanted to talk about Old Testament continuity. You have a lot of information on that. This came up in a live stream. I did a couple of days ago, which was kind of the inspiration for this show. Somebody had sent in requesting this subject. So, I know you're kind of a master in this field. So, I'm glad to have you on to discuss it.
Yeah. I Yes. That's I mean, religion of the apostles, that's really what it's about. Uh it's it's trying to demonstrate that all of the beliefs of Christianity following the veneration of the saints, the sacraments, the church, etc., etc., all of that was extant in second temple Judaism, particularly in the first century AD. And so not only did the apostles have access to it, right? But uh this is what they were practicing. This is the religion they were practicing in the world. and that, you know, their writings in the New Testament evidence this.
Um that they had these ideas and yeah, the there's this presupposition that's a basic presupposition um to evangelicalism that is uh that sort of Christ comes and sort of okay, we're done with Judaism like that's over. That was like religion 1.0 and now we're starting from scratch with religion 2.0 which is Christianity. So uh the only even though of course you know they're not going to want to sound like Marcianites. They're not going to say no no the Old Testament is scripture. The Old Testament is scripture. Um but functionally right in terms of their solos scriptor arguments it functionally isn't for them.
Mhm. So, exhibit A, right? Uh, Presbyterians, your sort of diehard rock ribbed Calvinists have what they call the regulatory principle of worship, right? Which is the only the only things you do in worship are things that the Bible commands you to do in worship. And when they say that by the Bible, they only mean the New Testament.
Right? Yeah. They do not mean the Bible, right?
Um, and so that's kind of exhibit A of this thing that like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. Forget about all that, right?
Um, so the the how do I want to approach this? So the way they justify that, the way they try to work around Marcianism, right, and not being one, not saying, "Oh, we're just going to reject the Old Testament." Uh, nevertheless, we're going to substantively ignore it. uh is Calvin's distinction between the the civil and ceremonial and moral laws which has bled out from Cal well all of Protestantism and evangelicalism in the United States had this Calvinist Puritan layer at the bottom.
Right. Right. That's that's the first wave of Christianity in this country. So this affected everyone. Now, never mind that that distinction appears nowhere in the scriptures.
Mhm. Least of all in the Torah itself, right? The law itself does not make any of those distinctions. And never mind the fact that in order to do that, it's sort of like the Jedp thing. You have to like go through a chapter of Leviticus and be like, "Okay, well, this verse is civil law and this next verse is moral law." And then you got three verses of ceremonial law and then you got.
Yeah, that's a that's an interesting critique especially from the solos scriptural framework. You have to accept some level of tradition and you're well you're making up your own tradition at that point. So you're appealing to something outside of the scripture to even get to that distinction. You know what I mean?
These categories of this categorization.
Yeah. A modern modern tradition.
Yeah. Yeah. And well, so they can appeal to this being an ancient distinction. There's a problem with it though, right?
The first place where you actually see that distinction in the law, and I don't think most Calvinists know this. I don't even know that John Calvin knew this, right? But the first place you see that is actually, believe it or not, in the 3rd century in a text called the letter to Tammy. Unfortunately, it's a gnostic text. And the Gnostic author of the letter to Tammy was trying to do like a middle way between Marcianism and Orthodoxy.
Right? By categorizing Well, some of this we keep and then some of it we just junk.
Right. Right. Yeah. I was I was going to say that probably some kind of pseudo pseudo Marcianism uh text. Pseudo Marcian text.
Yeah, it was semi semi-arianism, I guess.
Yeah, there you go. That would be the right way to say it.
Yeah. Yeah. I I feel like um I feel like that's that is kind of a a common thread with a lot of different modern Protestant distinctions. You see them make appeals to condemned heretics quite often. Uh you see them make appeals to um uh to origin for some of the exceptions in its theology or to maybe say Tertullian. You'll see like the church fathers taught this. It's like some some Protestant um videos like the church fathers taught this and they appealed to origin of Tertullian. We did we did a video me and Alex not that long ago responding to a guy whose name was like reformed pastor and he was like the early church taught this. Those were the two people he appealed to.
So it seems to be a common thread.
Yeah. Orchid was opposed to icons. G whiz. I wonder if it's because he was a platonist, you know, like.
Right. Um, yeah. So, uh, yeah, but to to their credit, I've never seen any Calvinist appeal to the letter to Talib to justify. But the other place where this becomes super problematic is, of course, Christ says he didn't come to abolish the Torah, but to fulfill it, right? He says, not a not a a yod or timmel or jot or tit if you're a KJV guy, uh, is going to pass away. Right? That's um and so you know all of our Protestant and evangelical friends will be quick to say no no no we don't believe we don't believe Christ abolished it we believe he fulfilled it.
Right? But first of all in a lot of cases fulfilled and abolished are basically synonyms for them because either way they throw it in the dust bin right? But but also then you have this problem of now that you've made this distinction of these three parts of the to Torah or the law or the commandments that Christ fulfills them all in completely different ways.
Right? So Christ fulfills the moral law by keeping it perfectly but then it still applies. Whereas he fulfills the ceremonial law by keeping it perfectly but it no longer applies because he kept it perfect.
Right? And then the civil law could go either way. So it it depends. Um, most Protestants evangelicals will say, "He fulfilled the civil law perfectly and it's gone." But then you get your theonomists and your Christian nationalists and stuff who want to say he fulfilled it perfectly and no, we need to reinstitute it.
Yeah. It it depends if they're preaching on tithing that week or not. That's really.
Yeah. Yeah. That's what it comes down to. In the Old Testament, they kept 10%. So therefore, give me 10% of your money. Oh, but wait, no, no, no. He fulfilled all this stuff. But except for that one. That one you still got to keep though.
Yeah. I had I had someone in the Orthodox church try to pull that on me with tithing. They're like, "Oh, that's an Old Testament thing. That's an Old Testament thing."
So, I I showed him a quote uh from um St. Athanasius where he said uh in the Old Testament uh the the the Jewish people tithe 10% to God. Uh Christians do not do that. Christians give up everything they own.
Give it to give it to the church. And I said, "Hey, if you want to follow that instead, I'm cool."
Right? There you go. Yeah. Let's let's let's start keeping that standard there. Give up literally everything.
Right? Yeah. Like I'm all in.
Um, but so yeah, so that that's kind of an incoherent argument then, right? Because fulfilled means different things for the different sections of the law which partitions you've just created ad hoc essentially right and because it's an ad hoc or even the proof that it's an ad hoc segmentation is you then get debates about well is this particular commandment part of this or part of that right?
Um, this is the whole uh I I guess we have to say Skittles to get around the YouTube algorithm. Is that the.
Yeah, there you go. That's the whole argument where they try to take those texts that are clearly against certain sexual acts and they say, "Oh, well, that's just talking about temple prostitution, right? And what they're doing there, they're holding to that Protestant presupposition that if this is a ceremonial thing, then it no longer applies. So we just have to get it recategorized, right? It's not part of the moral law. It's part of the ceremonial law that's gone.
Right? Well, well, what's interesting about that is they'll even do similar in the New Testament and say that it's just some kind of like historical thing like with with head with head coverings. They do that with the head covering thing. I remember having a conversation with my senior pastor that was very convicting. This was this was something that that sat with me for quite some time. Still sits with me today. And if you know anything about the the history of the abolition of head coverings in in in churches started in the Roman Catholic Church, it was because of a feminist protest, right? It wasn't anything theological. But in Protestant circles, the excuse is they'll say, "Oh, well, this is talking about uh you know, only temple prostitutes didn't veil. Only temple prostitutes didn't have head coverings on their head." So therefore, this was just a specific historical context. You don't need to do that anymore. So, it's I mean, first off, find me one church father, one person in the first thousand years of the church that ever said that.
Yeah. It's a big fat zero. You're just making things up out of thin air, making these distinctions up. They do this even in the New Testament. It's it's it's wild.
Yeah. Yeah. And it's it's purely an ad hoc thing, right? So uh the reality is right the reality is that everything in the old test old testament new testament continuity old testament continuity with orthodox Christianity and by that I just mean you know actual Christianity is 100% 100% Christ was telling the truth when he said not one yod or tim for those who don't know anything about the yod is the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet It kind of looks like a comma, right? Um, and a tim is a piece of a letter. It's a like a little foot at the bottom of a T that lets you know it's a T and not a hat. So, it distinguishes two letters. It's a piece of a letter that distinguishes two letters of the alphabet. Um, and so what what Christ is saying there is true. It's it's all still in effect.
Right? But you have to know how to read and interpret it.
Right? Right. And that's what the discussions that happen about the Torah in the New Testament, whether we're talking about in St. Paul's epistles like Galatians and Romans, whether we're talking about Acts 15, right? Those discussions are about how to correctly read it.
Mhm. Right. So to use Acts 15 as an example, a lot of times people who don't get it will sort of proof text Acts 15 is like, "Oh, see the the the law doesn't apply in the church anymore, right? Except, you know, don't eat food offered to idols, don't be sexually immoral, and yeah, we don't care about that blood thing. Go ahead and have your sausage. Um, but um that's actually not at all what is happening there.
Um, so uh what's happening there is if you go and you read what's called the holiness code in Leviticus which starts in Leviticus chapter 17 and then people argue about where exactly it ends. Some people have it going all the way to the end of Leviticus. Some people have it stopping after chapter 23. Close enough for government work. If you if you right look at that section of Leviticus, it's called the holiness code. Most of the introductions to the commandments there are given. God says to Moses, say to the sons of Israel, right? Do this. Right? So when the food laws, the kosher regulation is given, it's say to the sons of Israel, right? There are four times in the holiness code where instead God says to Moses, "Say to the sons of Israel and to all the foreigners dwelling in your midst." And then it gives commandments. One of those is the beginning of Leviticus 18 that gives the commandments about sexual immorality. One of those is about idolatry. And twice it's about eating blood. And so that's the big tip off in Acts 15 is that the eating blood thing, the strangled animals and eating blood, it's mentioned twice, right? That connects it directly to what's going on in Leviticus. So what St. James does at that council that he's presiding at, even though St. Peter was there for some bizarre reason. Don't tell Roman Catholics. Um, is he takes a super literal reading of Leviticus. He takes a super literal reading of the Torah. He says, "Okay, well us Jews, right, we were given this, right? But if you read it closely, the only parts of this that apply to non-Jews living among us, right, dwelling in our communities are these four things.
Correct. Yeah. Yeah. It's It's interesting that you bring that up. You they take the hyperliteral reading of it. We were just kind of talking about this, weren't we? We were talking about people reading the scriptures without uh using the lens of apostolic tradition, using the lens of the the teachings of the church. Well, this is how you get uh you know people like uh what's his name? A messenger of truth saying that well, you know, he just makes the most wild statements. It's like you could say well, you're going to take everything super hyperliteral. Well, there's no male or female in Christ Jesus so there's no more genders anymore. It's just.
Nobody's got genders. It's you know. It's a free-for-all, you know.
Yeah. Well, yeah. And Yeah. So what Acts 15 is saying is the exact opposite of the law. Does it apply? Acts 15 is saying, "No, the Torah still applies the same way it always did, right, in the church." Uh that non-Jewish people were never commanded to keep all this other stuff, right? And so we shouldn't, right?
Um, and that's so so those commandments, this actually touches on something from that video and that discussion uh that uh those commandments that were given to just the Israelites that were to set them apart from everybody else, right, were referred to everywhere in Jewish and early Christian literature. Okay. Everywhere as the works of the Torah or the works of the law, everywhere that phrase is used outside of the Bible in early Christian sources and Matthew Thomas, his dissertation was published St. Paul's Works of the Law. It's a published dissertation, so you're reading a dissertation. But he pro he just proves this, right? He literally surveys every piece of Christian and even gnostic literature for the first three centuries of church history. It shows how they all use it to refer to that, right? And so, for example, when St. Paul says we're not saved by works of the Torah, works of the law, he means you're not saved by keeping those commandments that separated Jews from Gentiles, right? Such that Gentiles would now have to keep them also.
Yes. Right? That's what he's saying every single time. He's not talking about works in general. He's not talking about, right, uh trying to live a life pleasing to God. He's not saying, you know, all the commandments are optional. Now, uh right, this is this is the caricature that St. Paul's opponents used to get him killed, right? That St. Paul says is false over and over again throughout the scriptures and our evangelical and Protestant friends are saying it's true that St. Paul was lying and that is what he taught.
Right. Right. Getting back to our topic because I'm wandering as I'm want to do. Uh um yeah, when you look at when you look at early Christian discussions with Judaism, right, the whole argument whether you're talking about say Justin whether you're talking about uh I did a so I still hold out hope that someday this may be published. I don't know. You I I'm imagining you haven't ever published an article in an academic journal. Um sometimes they accept things for publication and then literally wait years to publish them. So this may see the light of day at some point. It's a paper I did with a co-author. We presented it at a conference uh and then this journal accepted it for publication has been sitting on it for years. Um, but uh about St. John's uh sermons against the Judaizers.
Mhm. And one of his core arguments in those homalies is uh that this is another thing that it was it was an evangelical like Bible conference, academic Bible conference I presented at too. So they had no idea that at no idea. Uh this is in the category of you know, hey, this is my second time on this stream. I get invited a lot of places. I don't get invited back a lot of places. Um, but they'll probably never invite an Orthodox person again. But one of his central arguments is that uh Judaism, rabbitic Judaism at that point in the 4th century uh had uh no temple, no priesthood and no sacrifice.
Mhm. Whereas Christianity had a temple and a priesthood and a sacrifice.
Right? So evangelicals don't know what to do with that like remotely. Half of them are probably dispensationalists and really had no, you know, um but the core of that argument is not just a gotcha, right? Like nener your temple was destroyed, right? Like.
It's an argument about continuity, right?
Right? Yes. Because the rabbitic Jewish argument toward Christians was look what it says in the Torah. The Levitical priesthood is an eternal thing, right? The the the sacrifice sacrificial system is forever, right? Uh the the place where God is going to place his name, he's placing it there forever.
Yeah. Right? And so that was their counterargument to Christianity, right? So that and that therefore since those are forever, your priesthood, your whatever you're doing over there, that's illegitimate, right? And so St. John Chrissum's response is part one really it's eternal huh well where is it now?
Yeah. Yeah. Now where is that sacrificial system right now? Who knows? Let's find out temple right now.
And then part two he's not just saying oh we have one right because a Hindu could say I have a temple and I have a sacrifice and I have a priesthood. Right? He's saying that the Christian one is the continuation of that.
Correct. Right? He's saying, "I can tell you where it is right now. It's in your local Christian church."
Yes. Right? That's where it is. Uh but that is an argument for continuity with the Old Testament. Right. That that yes, these things are forever, but now here's where they are, albeit in fulfilled form because the Messiah has come and his the the the Jewish person he's arguing with would have to admit, well, yes, if the Messiah has come, that changes it, you know, things, right? Things are going to be transformed, right, by the fact that that has happened. They deny it has, but still they accept the postulate that when that happens, these things will change. into this uh fulfilled form.
Yeah. I mean the the the Old Testament uh talks about it quite a bit. Um, you know that the uh pro prophesies this new covenant with new promises uh and also with also uh with uh it prefigures talking about the Eucharist talks about uh the Eucharist the in the last um for the Protestants in the last book of their Old Testament. It talks about uh talks about the institution of the Eucharist. So, I mean, I I feel like there's a lot that they kind of have to pick and choose to hold up to whatever hermeneutic they're trying to use to say that there is a differentiation between some of these things and like, oh, it's a civil, it's the it's the moral. These things don't carry over. We're just going to kind of la this part. This part goes here. So on and so forth. But you find the full continuity as with just about continuity with just about uh everything else in in uh Christian history in orthodoxy.
This is the this is a common theme um discussing this with with Protestants. The question that I always ask and I always try to frame it around this this um this point here because it makes it easy for them to digest is well you know just like the guy that we were talking about in the last stream. He says, "Well, where, you know, everybody says they're the one true church?" Or you've got like this group that says they're the one true church. This person says they're the one true church. It's like the atheist, which religion is correct? There's so many religions. Which one's correct? Argument. Well, for Christianity to say which is the one true church. Well, which is the church that one, Christ established, and two follows the teachings that the apostles taught their disciples and was handed down faithfully. Well, guess what? The only place that you find that in is in the Orthodox church. We have the same faith as the Christians of the first thousand years of the church. Um, that the church was a one institution and the uh boundaries of that were defined by the anathemas. Guess what? We still hold to them. Uh Roman Catholics not so much anymore. Uh Protestants not not really at all in practice. Anglicans will say they do, but they they don't they they hold a branch theory. You don't believe in.
You don't believe these that cops are condemned heretics. Like no. Like anyway.
Well, let's let's set aside the the early church for a second of the first century, right? If you look at the church in the era of St. Ambrose and St. Augustine in the west and uh St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory the theologian, St. John in the east, right? What church today is doing exactly what they did?
Right? You know who I stole that argument from? That's pretty much a quote from an argument that John Calvin made to uh Cardinal Satalto during the Reformation.
So, so by Calvin's standard, by John Calvin standard, the Orthodox Church is the true church.
Um, but um yeah, so a couple things about about the vocabulary, right? So I mentioned them doing the weird things with fulfillment, right? Where like, well, Christ kept this and fulfilled it, but it still applies. Well, Christ kept this and he fulfilled it, so now it doesn't apply, right? Where they're right weirdly equivocating. So there's this tendency to read the word fulfill in terms of this idea that prophecy is predicting the future, right? So there is something in the Old Testament that predicts the future. Something about Christ in particular. And so then once Christ actually comes, right? So once Christ is actually born in Bethlehem, the prophecy that he'd be born in Bethlehem, right? Oh, that's fulfilled, so we don't need to worry about it anymore. It fulfilled its purpose, right? Like prophecy fulfillment.
Um, that's not what the word fulfill means. The word fulfill means literally filled full, like filled up to overflowing, right? And so when the New Testament talks about fulfillment, it's referring to that concept. This is why so many people interpret uh St. Matthew's gospel so badly, right? Because they share presuppositions with atheists, frankly, right? So, your local atheist will come to you with prophecies in St. Matthew's Gospel like, "Out of Egypt I have called my son." Oh, have you gone and looked that up? That's clearly talking about Israel. That's not talking about Jesus. And your typical evangelical response to that is no, no, no, it's talking about Jesus. It's just predicting the future about Jesus, right? Uh and trying to dogle that into the original context somehow, right? Or um the one that everybody gets all hot and bothered about when they're trying to condemn the Maseretic text, uh for no reason. uh the the whole uh a virgin or a young woman shall bear a child.
Mhm. Right? And the the atheist points out, well, that's talking about the sereroite war. That's not talking about Jesus. Right? And again, you get the evangelical who says, "No, no, no, no, no, no. We have to dogle this into that that this is talking about Jesus." That's not what St. Matthew is doing, right? So to use the second one during the soreomite war which is badly named because it wasn't between the Syrians and the Ephreites the Syrians and the Ephreites were on the same side and were attacking Judah. But uh during the Sirite war, Isaiah prophesies that this woman standing here is going to have a baby. And before that baby is old enough to know good right from wrong, good from evil, right? Before he's weaned, God will have delivered Judah, right? That's the original context, right? St. Matthew takes that pattern. Look, the birth of this child was this was the sign from God that deliverance for his people, right, had come and says Christ takes that pattern, right? Right. The birth of Christ takes that pattern and fills it up to overflowing.
Right? It is the much more extreme right example. It is the reality.
Right. This was like a shadow of that.
Yeah. This was like a sort of minor application of that principle.
Right. And here's the whole thing.
Yes. Right? And so when we talk about the Torah or the commandments of the Torah being fulfilled, right? We don't mean, oh, that was pointing to Christ somehow prophetically, and so now we're done with it because because Christ's here. We mean that, right? So the Sabbath that was on the last day of the week, pointing to this rest for God's people in the future, is transformed into the Lord's day, right? The resurrection, the beginning of the new heavens and the new earth.
Yes. On the first day of the week because now that has come in Christ, right? That's fulfillment, right? Filling up, right, to overflowing.
The the other term I want to mention was new because uh a lot of times people use that new covenant language to say, "Oh, no, it's brand new." like the old Covenant's gone, right? I got rid of my old Chevy. I bought a new Chevy, right? Like um and and and they're similar in some ways, but the new Chevy is way better in a whole bunch of other ways, you know?
Um, and that's not really, especially in Greek, what Keny, which is the word that's translated new, uh like New Testament is kniki, right? New covenant. um uh ky uh means more like renewed or refreshed.
Mhm. And a place where you could see this really obviously is in first John when St. John says, "A new commandment I give to you, love one another, right?" Yes. That doesn't mean they'd never heard that before.
Correct. Yeah. He goes on to say, "But this isn't a new commandment because this is what we've told you from the beginning."
Right. Right? But now I give it to you a new.
Right? It is refreshed. It is renewed. Right? It is begun again. Right? That's the idea behind Kani. Right? Uh the old covenant went ary as St. Paul explains not because God did something wrong.
Right? Because humanity failed.
Correct. Israel failed.
Yes. I I was going to say this is almost this concept is almost spoonfed to us in the concept of Israel.
Right? Right. Uh where the where the church is Israel. It is the it is the fulfillment. It's the the flowing over it. It's Yeah. Absolutely. That's very beautiful. Flowing over to all the nations of the world.
Right? Yes. Yes. And so it's be the covenant is begun again. So everyone, the Jews get a new beginning, right, in Christ to start over after being under the curse of the Torah from Deuteronomy 30 because of their disobedience. They get a new start, right? And now the Gentiles, the the rest of the nations are invited in and given this new start, right? That it is it is refreshed, right, and renewed.
Um, so that termin really understanding that terminology and the dynamic going on there is important.
If if you were trying to explain this in that evangelical church, they probably with with the especially if they were dispensationalists. I mean it's like what do you mean? All of this stuff is, you know, there's two people. Don't you understand? You know.
Yeah. Well, that's I mean that's a lot what I'm doing in religion of the apostle. There's a section on Israel for example in there. And the reason why uh it's pretty much all, it's always funny. I've I've gotten some Protestants saying, "Oh, you know, all the all it has are biblical citations. Why aren't there more citations outside the Bible?" I'm like, "You're a Protestant." Like, that should be a feature, not a bug for you. Like, what?
Right? Right. Um, but it's just littered with scripture references because I want people to look this up and see that it's there.
Right. Um, that this is all right there uh in the way that that uh the scriptures actually talk about it. You have to come into these texts with certain presuppositions.
Right. Right. Yes. And you have to ignore certain other texts or marginalize them.
Right. In order to take that that Protestant reading. It's just they've been taught that Protestant reading and they've been taught the scriptures through that grid.
Yeah. Right? Through that tradition of men. Sorry guys. Uh these are traditions of man. Don't you understand that? These are traditions of man.
And and so every time they come to it to borrow a metaphor from St. Paul, they're reading it through a veil, right? They're you know um you don't the Romans road does not actually cover every verse of Romans. Have you noticed?
Right. Yeah. It hop skips through the book.
Yeah. Um Yeah. And so there's just there there's there's just texts, you know, and there's things one of the one of the is related to atonement, but I've had a lot of people who are thinking about orthodoxy who come from an evangelical tradition who all I say to him is go look for yourself. Find me one place in the Old Testament where they place sins on an animal and then sacrifice it.
There is no place. And that's been huge for a bunch of people who have shown up at my parish because they've been taught all their lives that you put the sins on the animal and you kill it. Right? And that's what sacrifice is, to get rid of sins. And when they find out that that is nowhere in the Bible, that calls into question what they were taught about the atonement, the death of Christ, ultimately the gospel, what they were told the gospel is, right? And all that stuff starts unraveling just from saying, "Hey," and it's something you could just, "Hey, go look." Right. Don't don't believe me. Go.
Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And that and that's um I feel like that's a huge presupposition to break for Protestants coming into orthodoxy is this kind of penal substitutionary atonement presupposition. You see this quite a bit uh uh especially amongst converts um where it seems to be a very difficult hurdle for people to come across. But you're you're writing a book on this subject, aren't you?
Yeah, that's the book I'm currently finishing up the manuscript for. Yeah.
Yeah. Very nice. Yeah, I'm looking forward to that. That'll be awesome. Yeah. And so a last kind of piece on the continuity, the places where something is fulfilled and that sort of changes how it's applied and how it functions. The New Testament points to that, right? We're not left to guess like why do we not sacrifice animals anymore?
Well, Hebrews tells you that, right? Right? It tells you the difference between the New Testament and the Old Testament priesthood in Hebrews.
Yes. The New Testament tells us that they began meeting to celebrate the Eucharist on the Lord's day.
Right. So these things that are fulfilled and therefore that changes the application in Christ we're told about.
Yes. Uh so that implies that for example if we were supposed to stop offering incense to God with prayer in the morning and the evening, right? Which is the first commandment about worship in the Bible.
Mhm. In Exodus we're supposed to stop doing that. Where does it say that?
Right? Exactly. Uh if now uh if before uh children were included in the covenant and baby boys were sacrificed on the eighth day and now children are excluded from the covenant until they're adults and could choose for themselves, right? And we withhold baptism from children. Where is that?
Right? Right? Because I can show you St. Paul connecting circumcision and baptism like five different times. Not just the actual ritual act, but the theology of it. So, for example, if if you're going to an Orthodox church that's on the new calendar, uh we already had the feast of the circumcision of Christ. I think it's still coming up. Yeah, it's in a day or two if you're in an old calendar church. Uh pay attention to the epistle reading where St. Paul says, "We've all been circumcised with Christ circumcision because we've been baptized."
Right. Right? Um, or when St. Paul uh says that talks about a a married couple in which one member of the couple has is um has become a Christian and the other one is not and he says that the faithful spouse sanctifies the other right makes the other one holy and the children holy right? He's taking the Jewish theology of circumcision because you didn't circumcise women, right? So, a man was part of Israel because he was circumcised and ate the Passover. A woman was part of Israel because she was the hus the wife or the daughter of a circumcised male. Um, so the male's circumcision made his wife and his daughters holy, made them part of Israel.
And so St. Paul is applying that to baptism. But since we baptize both men and women, St. Paul says it works both ways. So a faithful wife sanctifies her children and her husband.
Right? Right. So that there's another place, right, where baptism. So this is a sorry Baptists section of.
We'll have um we'll have Keith Fosski on to have a conversation with you about baptism or something. I don't know anybody in the Protestant apologetics world that doesn't believe in baptismal regeneration at this point besides maybe I don't know Kelly Powers. Is he still relevant today? Uh Keith Fosski would be the only one. I think even even the quote unquote Baptists uh believe in some form of baptism or regeneration. It seems like now like uh Gavin has a video talking about his distinction but he believes baptism saves for me. It's like why are you Baptist then? Like not isn't that kind of like the whole stick? I don't know.
Well, yeah. Yeah. It's like Oh, that's true. Somebody said William Lane Craig. That's true.
William Lane Craig is the omni heretic, right? Like He is fractally wrong. He chooses a heretical option for every single point of doctrine.
That's true. That is They don't even always fit together, right? Like it's just published a published a book with trinitarian heresy in it.
Yes. Right? Yeah. Several books with christoologgical heresy. Like he openly calls himself a neoapolinarian. He says his christologology is neoapolinarian.
Good grief. And it's like, you do realize that putting Neo in front of it doesn't make it better, right?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like It's like saying I'm I'm a Neo Aaran. What do you mean? What do you mean by that?
Oh, a Neo. Okay. Well, that's that's fine then. I'm sure you fixed all the bad stuff from the old one.
Yeah. The old version.
Yeah. Good grief. Question. What's the main difference between how the Orthodox and the Heterodox understand the book of Leviticus? It's kind of broad, but I think maybe he's talking about the Skittles part.
Well, it could be. Yeah. Um, yeah. Interestingly, even like reformed Judaism, uh, Leviticus 18 was the read was part of the reading cycle of the Torah and got removed in reformed synagogues because it's too politically incorrect. Yeah. Um, yeah. So, I mean, pretty much the whole book of Leviticus is written off as being ceremonial law by most Protestant groups. The uh the only part that if you're talking about conservative like evangelicals and conservative Protestants, the only part they think still applies is Leviticus 18 about sexual morality. That's the only part they're gonna quote and like.
And the verse that says love your neighbor call in man.
Yeah. The verse that says love your neighbor as yourself. That's it. The rest of it right. Um, but interestingly even Rome even Rome has completely marginalized it. um the point that a very common like around the time of of Leon and Florence, a very common argument that they used against the east was that they they would call us Judaizers because we still had u we preserve the concept of clean and unclean. So we have things like the churching of mother and child after 40 days which they had already gotten rid of. Um, so there were several things like that that we had continued to do from the holiness code from Leviticus that even Rome had kind of rejected even though Rome is more willing to talk about the continuity between the Eucharist and the sacrificial system for example, right?
And Protestants are most Protestants.
Yeah. Joe Joe Heshmire mentioned Joe Heshmire's video mentioned.
Yeah. He talks about that quite a bit. That was like his claim to fame was the uh that eucharistic um continuity argument.