SPEAKER_1: It is the 5th of February, 2026.
SPEAKER_1: I am Corey J.
SPEAKER_1: Mahler.
SPEAKER_1: This is At Any Cost.
SPEAKER_1: This is the 15th episode.
SPEAKER_1: It is a question and answer episode, and I will go ahead and get right into the questions.
SPEAKER_1: I don't have any housekeeping matters for this week.
SPEAKER_1: The first question here, I will pull up the actual wording of the question instead of just my summary.
SPEAKER_1: How do we discern between false brethren and those who will be saved as through fire, especially given the current climate?
SPEAKER_1: And so, this is one of those questions that is going to just be relevant for quite some time, given the reality of the times in which we live.
SPEAKER_1: But, of course, this is a reference to the passage in 1 Corinthians, and I'll pull that up here.
SPEAKER_1: Probably helps if I switch over to Logos, so you all can see that.
SPEAKER_1: I'm on the log, there we go.
SPEAKER_1: So.
SPEAKER_1: So, the reference here is to 1 Corinthians 3.15.
SPEAKER_1: If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.
SPEAKER_1: And you could also read that as if through fire.
SPEAKER_1: It's not saying that, you know, purgatory, they try to draw that out of here.
SPEAKER_1: This is not purgatory.
SPEAKER_1: It is exactly what the verse says.
SPEAKER_1: You suffer the loss of the works not being actually good.
SPEAKER_1: So, for instance, those who do things they think are righteous, that turn out not to be righteous, those works, you don't get credit for them in eternity, basically, is what is being said here.
SPEAKER_1: This is also a reference to a few places in the Old Testament where there's a reference to God pulling something out of the fire, which is almost a proverb, a proverbial saying, that thing being rescued.
SPEAKER_1: So, one of those would be, I happen to remember this because I just read this passage in Zechariah, but Zechariah 3.2, And the Lord said to the slanderer, of course, the slanderer being Satan, one of his names, the Lord rebuke you, O slanderer, and the Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you.
SPEAKER_1: Behold, is not this like a brand plucked from the fire.
SPEAKER_1: And of course, it says Jesus here, because the Septuagint uses Jesus, because it's the same name instead of Joshua, as it is translated in your Bible undoubtedly, if you're using the Masoretic text.
SPEAKER_1: So, this is a proverbial saying, someone who has been rescued from destruction.
SPEAKER_1: And so, how do we tell those who are not false brothers, but are doing wicked things from those who are, in fact, just wicked?
SPEAKER_1: They're not even real brothers.
SPEAKER_1: They are going to spend eternity apart from us.
SPEAKER_1: It almost feels like I have to say this every episode, but it remains true, and so it bears repeating.
SPEAKER_1: Part of this is going to be a wisdom call, because you simply are going to have to be able to tell true brothers from false brothers.
SPEAKER_1: Part of this is going to, of course, be works, right?
SPEAKER_1: Because a Christian is known by his works, ultimately.
SPEAKER_1: Yes, it is your faith that saves you, but your faith is demonstrated in your works.
SPEAKER_1: And so you can look at the works of those who are claiming to be Christian, and you can run an assessment on the basis of those works.
SPEAKER_1: It's not a wicked thing to do that.
SPEAKER_1: In fact, that is using your God-given wisdom.
SPEAKER_1: So if you have someone who claims to be a Christian brother, but everything he does in his life is wicked, and we can, of course, think of the most obvious examples of this.
SPEAKER_1: You have the female so-called pastor in the rainbow stole, saying BLM and all that nonsense, right?
SPEAKER_1: Clearly not your sister in Christ.
SPEAKER_1: That's the obvious example.
SPEAKER_1: We're not asking really about that.
SPEAKER_1: That's not difficult.
SPEAKER_1: Everyone can make that call.
SPEAKER_1: The question is, how do you discern those who are closer to being Christian, right?
SPEAKER_1: They're better at presenting themselves as Christian, and the better the person is at deceiving, the harder it is going to be to detect him.
SPEAKER_1: That's sort of how deception goes.
SPEAKER_1: It's one of the reasons that sometimes what Satan is doing is difficult because Satan is very good at deceiving.
SPEAKER_1: He's been doing it a long time.
SPEAKER_1: He doesn't sleep.
SPEAKER_1: He's better than most human beings at deceiving people.
SPEAKER_1: Most people aren't that good at it.
SPEAKER_1: And so you can get a pretty good feel for whether or not someone is trying to maneuver you to stab you in the back to be sort of blunt.
SPEAKER_1: You have instincts.
SPEAKER_1: God gave you instincts.
SPEAKER_1: In large part, you should trust those.
SPEAKER_1: They're not always accurate.
SPEAKER_1: Sometimes they're 95% accurate instead of 100%.
SPEAKER_1: But you should trust them, at least as a data point in making your final assessment.
SPEAKER_1: And so if someone gives you a really bad feeling, well, those are your God-given senses telling you there's something off here, there's something wrong here.
SPEAKER_1: Listen to that.
SPEAKER_1: But the biggest part of it is going to be looking at those works.
SPEAKER_1: If you have someone who is producing good works, who happens to simply be in error, that's a different thing.
SPEAKER_1: You should want to rescue that brother from his error.
SPEAKER_1: He is not a false brother.
SPEAKER_1: He's simply a brother in error.
SPEAKER_1: There are many of those.
SPEAKER_1: Most Christians are going to have some false belief somewhere.
SPEAKER_1: It's not going to damn you if you have some minor false belief.
SPEAKER_1: There's a question about that later on, so I'll get into that when I get to that question.
SPEAKER_1: Hopefully get to that question.
SPEAKER_1: There are a lot of questions.
SPEAKER_1: So for the false brothers, it's very similar to what we have to do all the time in our current social and political climate.
SPEAKER_1: We're all accustomed to this.
SPEAKER_1: If you are dealing with new people, you don't go ahead and bring up all of your political beliefs right up front, right?
SPEAKER_1: Particularly if you're one of us, right?
SPEAKER_1: You're a guy who's on the far right, so to speak.
SPEAKER_1: You're not far right by historical standards, of course, because most of us are pretty moderate by historical standards, even if you would call yourself far right.
SPEAKER_1: A separate topic perhaps, but related here.
SPEAKER_1: You already know how to do this because you know that many times you are going to be dealing with people in society, in your social life, who would cause you harm if you revealed all of the things that you actually believe.
SPEAKER_1: And so you're already running that sort of assessment.
SPEAKER_1: Unfortunately, you have to run that assessment in the churches as well, particularly these days, because there are many false Christians, there are many who claim the name of Christ and don't follow Christ at all.
SPEAKER_1: We run into this all the time.
SPEAKER_1: You can see many examples of this, particularly on X, where any number of us at this point will post a Bible verse, sometimes in quotes, sometimes not, and then someone says, well, I don't believe that.
SPEAKER_1: Well, that's the problem.
SPEAKER_1: They don't actually believe what Christianity teaches because they aren't actually Christians.
SPEAKER_1: And so, use those skills that you have undoubtedly developed with regard to politics and just living your life in society, and translate that into the church.
SPEAKER_1: It's again unfortunate, but that is the reality of where we are today.
SPEAKER_1: And you can also think of the verses that speak of handing someone over to Satan, right?
SPEAKER_1: Because, ultimately, that is the point of driving someone from that fellowship, is you want him to repent, right?
SPEAKER_1: That's...
SPEAKER_1: it's speaking of excommunication.
SPEAKER_1: And I know that someone in the comments will post, well, weren't you excommunicated?
SPEAKER_1: Yes, by a church that thought that racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism were sins.
SPEAKER_1: Found nowhere in scripture, addressed thoroughly in stone choir and elsewhere.
SPEAKER_1: So, for those who want to look for those, that's all there.
SPEAKER_1: I can put some of that in the show notes as well.
SPEAKER_1: And obviously, I recognize that happened.
SPEAKER_1: Luther was excommunicated.
SPEAKER_1: Chrysostom was driven from his church at some point.
SPEAKER_1: You can think, of course, of Matthew 5, right?
SPEAKER_1: Your reward will be great in heaven, because these people who are persecuting us today for believing the things that Christians have always believed, well, their ancestors, spiritual or physical in many cases, persecuted the prophets in the same way.
SPEAKER_1: So, blessed are you when they persecute you for the sake of Christ.
SPEAKER_1: And of course, I posted the video of me being challenged by police outside my church.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not hiding that.
SPEAKER_1: I recognize that's the reality of where we are today.
SPEAKER_1: It's important for people to see that.
SPEAKER_1: Like I've mentioned before, when people ask about, say, confronting their pastor on some particular issue of false doctrine, usually judaizing, but sometimes other things, your outcome may very well be that he calls the police on you and has you escorted out of the building.
SPEAKER_1: So, I tell people, you need to be ready for that.
SPEAKER_1: It doesn't mean that you don't do it.
SPEAKER_1: It means you be ready for it.
SPEAKER_1: But to get back to the immediate question about false brothers, exercise the wisdom that God has given you and run the same sort of identify friend or foe analysis that you would in the world at large with regard to social and political issues.
SPEAKER_1: The next question here.
SPEAKER_1: Next question is about the Lutheran Church.
SPEAKER_1: I don't believe I answered this one previously.
SPEAKER_1: I think I answered something that was similar to it, and so I'm remembering that.
SPEAKER_1: But the question is, I have been strongly considering joining our local LCMS congregation.
SPEAKER_1: I don't know how many Lutherans in the area I live in, or I don't know many Lutherans in the area I live in, nor was I raised Lutheran, but I do believe the Lutheran confessions are consonant with the word of God and is the only church I wish to advance being a member of.
SPEAKER_1: One of the obvious things noted after viewing the congregation's staff is that there's a female educator.
SPEAKER_1: I would presume this may be a Sunday school or Bible study teacher.
SPEAKER_1: Do you have any advice on how to proceed visiting the church service at this congregation?
SPEAKER_1: Or is this a clear marker to stay away?
SPEAKER_1: So I don't think it's necessarily a clear marker to stay away, because it's going to depend on what educator means.
SPEAKER_1: Could be a teacher.
SPEAKER_1: We have, and in that case, I mean a school teacher, not a Bible study teacher.
SPEAKER_1: It's a different thing.
SPEAKER_1: In many cases, you're going to have a school attached to the church, and so if it's an educator in that sense, that's not a problem, because it's going to be a primary school.
SPEAKER_1: They're going to be teaching children, which women are permitted to teach children, that's fine.
SPEAKER_1: Women are permitted to teach other women as well.
SPEAKER_1: There's some limits on that, but that's sort of a tangential issue.
SPEAKER_1: If you have a woman who is leading the Bible study that is mixed men and women, that's unacceptable.
SPEAKER_1: If you have a woman who is standing up in teaching and just saying that she's not acting like a pastor, but that's really what she's doing, that's not acceptable either.
SPEAKER_1: The best way to figure it out is either attend a service or watch one online.
SPEAKER_1: If you're watching online, you can probably get through things much more quickly, much more efficiently, because you can skip around and figure out if she appears and if she does appear, what she's doing.
SPEAKER_1: So I would say just do that.
SPEAKER_1: Check the live stream if they have it.
SPEAKER_1: Check their back catalog of stream services.
SPEAKER_1: If they have that, that's the easiest way.
SPEAKER_1: Or go to a service.
SPEAKER_1: You could email the pastor and see what he says.
SPEAKER_1: That's also an option, but I think the easiest way is just look at what they're actually doing.
SPEAKER_1: Women should of course not be doing those things.
SPEAKER_1: I've gone into that before many places and many times.
SPEAKER_1: But it's not necessarily a red flag that she's listed.
SPEAKER_1: People just like to be listed.
SPEAKER_1: They like to be included.
SPEAKER_1: They like to be on the website.
SPEAKER_1: It may be she's doing nothing wrong.
SPEAKER_1: There's a non-trivial chance she's doing something she shouldn't be doing, but the only way to figure out which one it is, is to actually look at the service or attend one of the services.
SPEAKER_1: So hopefully it's a good church.
SPEAKER_1: Hopefully she's not doing things that God has told her not to do.
SPEAKER_1: But these days, you just have to check.
SPEAKER_1: The next question is about Greek.
SPEAKER_1: Hello, Corey.
SPEAKER_1: I'm early in my Coina Greek journey myself, and greatly enjoyed your Septuagint series.
SPEAKER_1: Thanks for the great content.
SPEAKER_1: I have a few questions about your learning process that would be super helpful.
SPEAKER_1: One timeline, how long did it take you to feel comfortable with your understanding of Greek?
SPEAKER_1: I'll just answer these sequentially.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not fluent in Greek, and I'm obviously completely fine admitting that.
SPEAKER_1: I am probably quite a ways off from being fluent in Greek.
SPEAKER_1: My German is much better than my Latin is better than my Greek.
SPEAKER_1: But, you know, maybe at this point, they're about parity, but I don't need to have the fluency in that sense, because I understand the mechanics of how language works.
SPEAKER_1: I'm pretty good with that part of it.
SPEAKER_1: And so having access to things like Logos, which obviously I pull that up all the time, you can use the language if you understand the mechanics of how a language works.
SPEAKER_1: Obviously, it helps a lot if you know the alphabet, because Greek's a different alphabet.
SPEAKER_1: But if you know those basics and then you understand language, you can achieve a lot without yourself being fluent, absent access to those materials.
SPEAKER_1: So in terms of the timeline, I can't give you really an answer because I'm not personally fluent.
SPEAKER_1: The general rule for a language is going to be something like 10,000 hours, I think it is, that you want to invest to reach a certain level of fluency.
SPEAKER_1: It's going to depend on the distance of the language from your native language and other languages you know.
SPEAKER_1: So for instance, if you know Italian, right, it will take you less time to pick up Latin than Japanese.
SPEAKER_1: So that's going to partly depend there.
SPEAKER_1: Greek is a little more distant from other European languages, so as an English speaker, it is not something where you have huge overlap.
SPEAKER_1: You already know some of the terms, some of the language, the vocabulary, just because English has imported so much from Greek, mostly Latin and French, right, and obviously French, ultimately Latin, some German, in the case of French being some German, not in the case of English.
SPEAKER_1: English is a lot of German.
SPEAKER_1: But not as much of an overlap in terms of the overall language, English and Greek.
SPEAKER_1: So there's a lot of stuff that's going to be new for an English speaker.
SPEAKER_1: Not least of all because English has dropped a lot of the things that other languages have.
SPEAKER_1: Inflection and things like that.
SPEAKER_1: We have very little of that left in English.
SPEAKER_1: Personal pronouns basically the only exception.
SPEAKER_1: The word blonde, which we ultimately Latin, but we took it from the French there.
SPEAKER_1: And so that's why that E is on the end.
SPEAKER_1: It's blonde with an E if it's referring to a female.
SPEAKER_1: It's blonde without the E if it's referring to a male.
SPEAKER_1: Everyone forgets that rule, but it's one of the only things in English we have that's inflected other than the personal pronouns.
SPEAKER_1: But that's basically the rough answer for timeline.
SPEAKER_1: Grammar reliance is the second question.
SPEAKER_1: Do you still need to frequently reference grammar?
SPEAKER_1: Yes.
SPEAKER_1: For me, in the sense of referencing a grammar, which is telling me functionally how the mechanics of Greek works, I don't have to reference it in sense of what most people hear when they hear grammar, because I know that stuff.
SPEAKER_1: I know what the accusative is.
SPEAKER_1: I know what the dative is and the genitive and all of these things.
SPEAKER_1: But in order to actually understand how a particular Greek verb has been conjugated, yes, of course, I'm going to use logos.
SPEAKER_1: But the nice thing about logos is...
SPEAKER_1: I'll go ahead and just switch back over to logos here for a second.
SPEAKER_1: One of the nicest things about logos is...
SPEAKER_1: Let's pull up...
SPEAKER_1: Not the nets, because the nets does not have the full thing that I want here.
SPEAKER_1: So we'll pull up the lexem.
SPEAKER_1: And so one of the nice things here, right, like garments, I click on this and it tells me, of course, it doesn't show the interstitial menu to you, because why would it do that?
SPEAKER_1: But anyway, if you click on a word, it gives you all the information you need about the word, which obviously very useful.
SPEAKER_1: It also gives it down in the lower left, which it also does not show in the preview for streaming, because why would they implement that?
SPEAKER_1: But with these sorts of tools, you can get a lot done in the language in which you are not yet, anyway, personally fluent.
SPEAKER_1: Methods and resources, the third sub-question, as it were.
SPEAKER_1: What did you use to learn and what was your overall approach?
SPEAKER_1: I have some Greek books, just standard language learning books, and then I've used some online tools a bit.
SPEAKER_1: And then most of it has just been looking at scripture, switching back and forth between the Greek and the English and using the available tools in Logos, because the tools are very nice.
SPEAKER_1: And no, this is not an advertisement for Logos.
SPEAKER_1: I absolutely hate their pricing model, and I think that it's highway robbery.
SPEAKER_1: But the reality of our situation is that these tools overcharge, and part of it is not their fault to give them credit where credit is due, because of course, this is IP, intellectual property, and so the ultimate owners of these things get to set some of the terms and the prices and things like that, and so they don't have 100% control.
SPEAKER_1: But my position, as I've been very clear all along, long held position, most resources of this kind at least should be free.
SPEAKER_1: The men who are capable of using these resources who aren't going to get off into crazy trouble on their own with them should have access to these.
SPEAKER_1: If someone is going to seminary to be a theologian, someone who has the skills to do that, he should just have access to all of the materials for free.
SPEAKER_1: You should not be gatekeeping things related to God.
SPEAKER_1: That's completely ridiculous.
SPEAKER_1: No Christian should want to do that.
SPEAKER_1: But tangential issue there.
SPEAKER_1: The fourth and final subquestion.
SPEAKER_1: You recommend modern Greek pronunciation, very much so, over Erasmian.
SPEAKER_1: However, most Koina materials seem to stick exclusively to Erasmian.
SPEAKER_1: That's also true.
SPEAKER_1: What's the best way to learn and practice modern pronunciation for Koina?
SPEAKER_1: So for modern pronunciation, you're just learning modern pronunciation.
SPEAKER_1: You're not learning it for Koina, really.
SPEAKER_1: It's not sort of the difference here.
SPEAKER_1: It's that Greek hasn't changed as much as English in the same period of time.
SPEAKER_1: Of course, English isn't that old.
SPEAKER_1: But it's closer to say what German has done.
SPEAKER_1: And so I've mentioned before, I can pick up a German text from the 1500s and get through it just fine.
SPEAKER_1: There will be some quirks, there are some rules that have changed, there have been some standardizations in terms of spelling.
SPEAKER_1: But by and large, any German speaker can pick up a text from the 1500s in German and read it.
SPEAKER_1: So I have a Luther Bible that's on my shelf over here from 1545.
SPEAKER_1: That's not that much more difficult to read than modern German.
SPEAKER_1: English is not the same, because English has changed a lot.
SPEAKER_1: You have Old English, you have Middle English, you have Modern English.
SPEAKER_1: And I'll put a link to Chaucer in the show notes, for anyone who wants to go and look at it.
SPEAKER_1: You can see how much it's changed.
SPEAKER_1: For Greek, it's not as big of a change.
SPEAKER_1: So just learn how modern Greeks pronounce their words, and then read the Koina as if it were modern Greek.
SPEAKER_1: There are some things that have changed.
SPEAKER_1: There's some spelling quirks and things like that, but you won't have trouble doing that.
SPEAKER_1: And the reason I recommend that you learn modern pronunciation and not Koina, really it's kind of twofold.
SPEAKER_1: One, Erasmus just constructed his pronunciation rules, partly because he didn't want any vowels to sound the same.
SPEAKER_1: The problem is, natural language has things that sound the same.
SPEAKER_1: That happens.
SPEAKER_1: I can think of a number of different vowel pairings in German that are not the same, but sound the same.
SPEAKER_1: And English does the same thing, of course.
SPEAKER_1: English less so because English has a lot of weird sounds from importing other languages and blending them together.
SPEAKER_1: But the second part of the reason would be that you have an entire world of materials available to you if you are learning modern pronunciation.
SPEAKER_1: Because the Greek still exists.
SPEAKER_1: The Greek language still exists.
SPEAKER_1: The Greek language is still in use.
SPEAKER_1: If you are learning Erasmian, that's not in use because it was never in use, because it was never a real thing.
SPEAKER_1: It was a constructed pronunciation of Greek specifically for use in Biblical studies.
SPEAKER_1: So just use modern Greek because you are going to have more materials available to you, and it will actually be helpful as well.
SPEAKER_1: Because say you want to visit Greece at some point, you will actually be able to speak to people.
SPEAKER_1: Not if you are Erasmian.
SPEAKER_1: They will look at you like you have two heads.
SPEAKER_1: So it just makes more sense to learn modern.
SPEAKER_1: There is no benefit to learning the Erasmian other than you can talk to pastors who also learned it.
SPEAKER_1: But I don't think that's very compelling.
SPEAKER_1: The next question, moving on to some of the questions from X, I believe now.
SPEAKER_1: I don't know that I will get to many of the questions in the chat this time.
SPEAKER_1: I will go through and write them down because I have a lot of questions.
SPEAKER_1: I will not get through all of them this episode.
SPEAKER_1: But the next question, what are your thoughts on why the left can organize so easily, often around a single issue, while the right cannot seem to do so, even on a very small scale?
SPEAKER_1: I'm thinking about the American context specifically.
SPEAKER_1: It seems like there are relevant internal and external factors.
SPEAKER_1: This is very true, and it certainly makes things more difficult in the American context.
SPEAKER_1: Because let's see, what is the best way to start for the core reason here?
SPEAKER_1: The core reason really is that politics is the identity of the left.
SPEAKER_1: That is who they are, because they ultimately found their life on that.
SPEAKER_1: They don't have any other coherent organizing principle.
SPEAKER_1: They don't have something that means more to them than politics.
SPEAKER_1: Politics is their life.
SPEAKER_1: Politics is their core.
SPEAKER_1: And so, it's going to make it easier to organize people when you are appealing to their highest principle, to speak about principles they don't have.
SPEAKER_1: But when you are appealing to them in that way.
SPEAKER_1: Versus the right, well, anyone on the right has things that he cares about ultimately more than politics.
SPEAKER_1: And that's correct, you should.
SPEAKER_1: You care about your family more than politics.
SPEAKER_1: You care about politics because you care about your family.
SPEAKER_1: You care about God more than you care about politics.
SPEAKER_1: You care about politics because you care about God, because you want to bring our politics in line with what God demands.
SPEAKER_1: Ultimately, that's what Christian nationalism is.
SPEAKER_1: It's sort of a short summary of that.
SPEAKER_1: But politics is the end goal for the left, because the left is animated almost exclusively by power, which they're not wrong for that.
SPEAKER_1: They recognize that power ultimately is what matters in these affairs, and that's true.
SPEAKER_1: The person who has the power sets the rules.
SPEAKER_1: Mike makes right in a certain sense of right.
SPEAKER_1: Not in the sense of ultimate moral good versus wrong, right?
SPEAKER_1: But in the sense that the person who has the power gets to set the terms and say what is right and wrong.
SPEAKER_1: That's absolutely true.
SPEAKER_1: The left is better at recognizing that than the right, at least these days.
SPEAKER_1: In the American context, there's another aspect of it.
SPEAKER_1: It's actually perhaps two facets, same thing.
SPEAKER_1: The first part of it would be that we have this strain of individualism and just sort of being obstreperous almost, just being disagreeable in the US., particularly on the right side of politics, that has been there since the beginning in the American context.
SPEAKER_1: Part of it is going to be constitutional, not uppercase C referring to the document, but lowercase C referring to the people, because just some of the people who came over here from Europe were more like that than average, and it has entrenched over time.
SPEAKER_1: A bit of it's genetic in our case, partly because we have the Scottish admixture and things like that, people who are a little less agreeable, and Germans aren't entirely agreeable when it comes to certain things.
SPEAKER_1: So part of it is going to be constitutional in that sense for us, and then entrenched and sort of a feedback loop with how our society has been organized.
SPEAKER_1: And then there is also the fact, the second facet of this, libertarianism has long been a force on the right side of politics in the US.
SPEAKER_1: Left as well, but very minor over there, because left libertarian never really got any traction.
SPEAKER_1: Supposedly right-wing libertarianism has, for many years, decades, been part of the right-wing in the US context.
SPEAKER_1: And so, because of that, and because of the intellectual push they've had, they've had fairly good funding in some cases, you have various outfits putting out, all these pieces trying to push libertarianism and libertarian thought.
SPEAKER_1: And it gets tied up with the American love of freedom and liberty, regardless of whether or not the person who is advocating for those things knows what either term means.
SPEAKER_1: And because of that fact, it makes it more difficult to get men to follow orders, to fall in line.
SPEAKER_1: And ultimately, if you don't have people willing to follow orders, you don't have an actual movement.
SPEAKER_1: All you have is a bunch of people in a room arguing with each other and not cooperating.
SPEAKER_1: That's the problem the right has.
SPEAKER_1: It is very difficult on the right to be a leader, because most men are not very good at following orders.
SPEAKER_1: They always want to question your orders, which I'm not saying you can't question the orders of a leader, but there's a time and a place.
SPEAKER_1: If you're in the middle of a battle and your commander tells you to do something, unless it is completely and utterly insane, and you know that because you're in a position to know it, and he isn't, so unless you have a compelling, truly compelling reason to ask him about his order, right?
SPEAKER_1: You just obey.
SPEAKER_1: That's what you do as a soldier.
SPEAKER_1: And we are going to have to recognize that we are actually in a war.
SPEAKER_1: It is not simply political disagreement.
SPEAKER_1: It's a war.
SPEAKER_1: And so in a war, and given that we are in a war, men need to learn to follow orders.
SPEAKER_1: That's going to be difficult on the right side of things in the US context, for all the reasons I mentioned and some others as well.
SPEAKER_1: The left does not have that problem, because again, no animating principle for them, except for politics and power.
SPEAKER_1: So for them, politics is the goal.
SPEAKER_1: It's the end.
SPEAKER_1: It's the thing toward which their life is oriented.
SPEAKER_1: For the right wing, it's not.
SPEAKER_1: And so you have men who are going to have competing principles, as it were, because they want to try and make whatever the leader has said, whatever someone has told them they need to do, consonant with these other things that demand a greater allegiance.
SPEAKER_1: The problem is that all of those things about which you actually care, and I'm not saying they're wrong.
SPEAKER_1: Again, I'm saying those are right.
SPEAKER_1: You should care about those more.
SPEAKER_1: But all of those things about which you actually care, you can't get to them, you can't defend them, you can't achieve them without the power.
SPEAKER_1: The left recognize that aspect of it much better than the right.
SPEAKER_1: The right needs to get more serious about the fact that if you do not have political power, if you do not maintain political power, and if you don't crush your enemies when you have political power, you will never achieve all the other things that are more important than political power.
SPEAKER_1: You need the means to achieve the ends.
SPEAKER_1: For us, on the right wing, politics is the means to the ends we seek.
SPEAKER_1: For the left, politics is the end, and so they will do anything to achieve it.
SPEAKER_1: We need to be willing to look at politics and political power in the way that they look at all these other things they're willing to do to achieve that.
SPEAKER_1: Because otherwise, they win.
SPEAKER_1: The side that wants it more generally wins.
SPEAKER_1: We need to want it more than the left, and we need to be willing to wield it in a way that even they aren't willing to do, quite yet.
SPEAKER_1: Now, I think they will in the near future if they should have power again, but we need to be ruthless, because that's politics.
SPEAKER_1: And again, men need to learn to follow orders.
SPEAKER_1: We need to treat it more as if we are, which we are in reality, soldiers in a war, instead of men discussing philosophy around the dinner table.
SPEAKER_1: That's how politics has been treated by the right wing for many years.
SPEAKER_1: That's not what it is.
SPEAKER_1: Politics is a knife fight in a bar.
SPEAKER_1: You need to take it a little more seriously than discussing the philosophy of Kant over coffee.
SPEAKER_1: Kant would approve of the coffee incidentally, but we just don't take it seriously in the same way the left does.
SPEAKER_1: And it's for a number of reasons, but that needs to change, and it needs to change yesterday.
SPEAKER_1: I have a question here from the chat.
SPEAKER_1: Hi, I'm EO, but I love the podcast.
SPEAKER_1: How do I start to get educated on political science?
SPEAKER_1: What reading material, podcasts, et cetera?
SPEAKER_1: I don't know of that many podcasts for political science, but if you need, say, the philosophy background for it, there is the History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps, is probably one of the better summary podcasts for philosophy to give you.
SPEAKER_1: And at this point, it's many, many hours of listening, but it will give you sort of the foundation you need for many political ideas, because many political ideas ultimately are philosophical.
SPEAKER_1: So you can pick and choose the episodes that are relevant, listen to the political philosophers instead of others.
SPEAKER_1: But insofar as reading is concerned, that is almost an endless number of suggestions.
SPEAKER_1: But for anyone on the right wing, you probably want to read Schmidt first.
SPEAKER_1: That's just the reality of the matter.
SPEAKER_1: So definitely read Schmidt, and then looking at what books I happen to have here.
SPEAKER_1: Most of my political science books are actually in another room.
SPEAKER_1: But it's partly going to depend on what your goal is with reading political science.
SPEAKER_1: Why are you reading it?
SPEAKER_1: Are you reading it to get into politics?
SPEAKER_1: Because then you want practical.
SPEAKER_1: Are you reading it because you just enjoy it?
SPEAKER_1: Then you probably want to go heavier on the philosophy.
SPEAKER_1: So depending on your goal, you're going to tailor your reading list to that goal.
SPEAKER_1: So if it's just for enjoyment, then read whatever you like.
SPEAKER_1: But if it is for discussing with other men, it's because you want to understand this fundamental aspect of humanity and human nature, then go heavy on the philosophy, even more so than the straight political science, as it were.
SPEAKER_1: But the practical side of things, read about actual campaigns that worked.
SPEAKER_1: It's the same sort of thing that you have over in the military, right?
SPEAKER_1: The military will read about historical battles and what worked or didn't work, because theory is one thing, but it's sort of like a battle plan.
SPEAKER_1: It doesn't survive contact with the enemy.
SPEAKER_1: So, you can read political theory all day.
SPEAKER_1: You're not going to get a real, deep understanding of how the game is actually played, how the sausage is actually made, until you actually start looking at real campaigns, real politicians, and probably get involved in it as well.
SPEAKER_1: So, tailor your reading list with regard to what it is you want to achieve.
SPEAKER_1: It's basically the spectrum, his philosophy on the one end, and reading about the nitty-gritty of running a campaign on the other.
SPEAKER_1: Next question is, nice and short and easy one.
SPEAKER_1: Will you start a Bible study?
SPEAKER_1: I have begun the process of revising my notes on Genesis, partly because obviously this time they will be based on the Septuagint instead of the Masoretic text.
SPEAKER_1: And I don't know when I will start that, but I do intend to at least do a Bible study on Genesis.
SPEAKER_1: I'll make the video freely available in the audio and whatnot.
SPEAKER_1: I won't give a timeline on that because again, I have no idea when I will manage to set the time aside and actually get through that and finish that.
SPEAKER_1: But yes, I do intend to resume...
SPEAKER_1: I did a Bible study back at my church in California.
SPEAKER_1: I do intend to resume doing that.
SPEAKER_1: So hopefully in the relatively near future, but I guess we will all see how that goes.
SPEAKER_1: The next question, what makes someone Lutheran?
SPEAKER_1: I actually want to abstract this one out at least one level, I think, because I will answer the question itself, but I think abstracting it out of level is perhaps more helpful here.
SPEAKER_1: My first answer would be, of course, that a Lutheran is just a Christian.
SPEAKER_1: That is, what you should believe about whatever denomination is your denomination, whichever one you claim, because if you think that you're some other thing than Christian, why are you still that denomination, right?
SPEAKER_1: You are part of your church, part of your denomination, because you believe it teaches the Christian truth.
SPEAKER_1: And so, if you are a Baptist, it's because you don't believe that baptism saves.
SPEAKER_1: If you are any number of, usually non-denominational Baptists as well, you probably don't believe in the real presence, because if you believed in the real presence, you would not stay in one of those churches.
SPEAKER_1: If you don't believe that the Mass, the Roman Catholic Mass forgives your sins, you're probably not going to stay in a Roman Catholic Church.
SPEAKER_1: And so, my first answer again is that I am a Lutheran, because I believe that that is simply another word for Christian.
SPEAKER_1: For those who don't know the history, the Roman Catholics during the time of the Reformation started calling the Protestants Lutherans, because they were trying to say, you follow a man instead of following Christ, perhaps never realizing the irony of the fact that they call themselves specifically Roman.
SPEAKER_1: But leaving that aside, the Lutherans just said, okay, fine, we'll keep that term, we're fine with it, because we believe what Luther has taught, and so we agree with that.
SPEAKER_1: But to give sort of the abstracted-out answer to the question and get into some specifics as well, you have different levels at which you can answer that question, right?
SPEAKER_1: And you can do that with any denomination.
SPEAKER_1: And so the first one would be, what is a Christian, right?
SPEAKER_1: Well, a Christian is one who believes in Christ crucified for sinners, right?
SPEAKER_1: You can expand that out, you can talk about all the different points in the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Athanasian Creed, you can point to the Lord's Prayer, you can say, you believe the Ten Commandments, and you believe this, that, and the other, right?
SPEAKER_1: You can go through all those specific points, but ultimately, a Christian is one who believes in the Gospel, which is why we can say that Adam was a Christian, because Adam believed Genesis 3.15, spoken to him directly by God, that probably helps a little bit, but perhaps didn't help with the tree bit.
SPEAKER_1: But believing in the Gospel is what makes a Christian.
SPEAKER_1: But in another sense, there are those who will believe that a Christian is simply someone who attends church, right?
SPEAKER_1: Much of the world says, well, he's a Christian, he goes to church, he must be a Christian.
SPEAKER_1: That doesn't make him a Christian, in the ultimate sense of being a Christian.
SPEAKER_1: This gets back into the difference between being something essentially and being something according to believing in the tenets of it, right?
SPEAKER_1: And, you know, it's the no-true-Scotsman thing again, right?
SPEAKER_1: You're Scottish because you're born Scottish, not because you agree with the design of the flag, or you like scotch, or you love golf, right?
SPEAKER_1: That's not what makes you Scottish.
SPEAKER_1: You're Scottish because you're Scottish.
SPEAKER_1: You're American because you're American.
SPEAKER_1: That's something you are essentially.
SPEAKER_1: Christianity is an ideology.
SPEAKER_1: In order to be a Christian, you actually have to believe the tenets of Christianity.
SPEAKER_1: You can't just say, I'm a Christian, and then you're a Christian.
SPEAKER_1: That's insufficient, right?
SPEAKER_1: Think of what Christ says.
SPEAKER_1: Lord, Lord, did we not know?
SPEAKER_1: I never knew you.
SPEAKER_1: So to be a Christian, you actually have to believe in the tenets of Christianity.
SPEAKER_1: By and large, what that means is believing what is taught in the creeds.
SPEAKER_1: There's a reason we have creeds, right?
SPEAKER_1: You have creeds because they're a summary of the faith founded in Scripture, and they are a short way to explain, what do you believe?
SPEAKER_1: The Apostles' Creed is the short statement of the Christian faith.
SPEAKER_1: So, that's ultimately what it means to be a Christian, right?
SPEAKER_1: It's belief in the tenets of Christianity.
SPEAKER_1: So, to be a Lutheran is to believe in the exegesis of Christianity as set forth in the binding documents of the Lutheran Church, which would be the Book of Concord, which I don't think I actually have on my desk right now.
SPEAKER_1: I think it's over here somewhere.
SPEAKER_1: But the Book of Concord is one of the answers to what it means to be a Lutheran, because that is ultimately the definition of Lutheran understanding of the Bible.
SPEAKER_1: So, that is one of the answers to what is a Lutheran.
SPEAKER_1: Do all Lutherans know everything taught in the Book of Concord?
SPEAKER_1: Well, the answer is no.
SPEAKER_1: You can go to my timeline and find me catching pastors, Lutheran pastors, who don't know things that are taught in the Book of Concord.
SPEAKER_1: And so, does that make them not Lutheran?
SPEAKER_1: I don't think that's fair.
SPEAKER_1: I actually don't believe it would be fair to say that, no, you're not Lutheran, because you don't know absolutely everything taught in the Book of Concord.
SPEAKER_1: You can be a member of a church, a member of a denomination at different levels, as it were.
SPEAKER_1: And so, you can be a Lutheran because you believe in what Lutheranism teaches.
SPEAKER_1: You can be a Lutheran because you're a Christian, and your whole family's always been Lutheran, and you just attend the Lutheran Church, even if ultimately your doctrinal and theological knowledge is pretty shallow.
SPEAKER_1: In fact, in some cases, that's probably good for most people, because if you just simply rely on Christ, and maybe you don't understand the union of God and man in Christ, right?
SPEAKER_1: You don't understand how the nature of man and the nature of God interact, and how the attributes of one don't become properly the attributes of the other, but they can be exercised through the union because of the personal, right?
SPEAKER_1: You don't have to get into all of that.
SPEAKER_1: Most Christians don't understand all of that stuff, and that's not what ultimately makes you a Christian.
SPEAKER_1: The same as the very hyper-technical specifics as between, say, Lutherans and Reform.
SPEAKER_1: So, if I were to argue with a Reform theologian, we're going to get into some pretty hyper-technical stuff.
SPEAKER_1: Do you have to believe on either side and understand all of that to be a Lutheran or a member of the Reform Church?
SPEAKER_1: The answer is no.
SPEAKER_1: And so, the basic definition of being a Lutheran is to know the small catechism and to agree with the small catechism, because that is the basic statement.
SPEAKER_1: It's what we teach to all Lutheran children.
SPEAKER_1: In fact, they memorize it.
SPEAKER_1: So, that's another one of the answers you can give.
SPEAKER_1: But you can see there are different answers to this sort of question depending on exactly what it is you mean.
SPEAKER_1: So, at the top level, as it were, the fullest definition of what is a Lutheran is the Book of Concord, because that is what we teach, that is what we hold, that is the statement of Lutheran belief.
SPEAKER_1: But at the basic level, at just a more functional, realistic level, it's the Small Catechism, because that's what everyone who joins a Lutheran church is supposed to believe.
SPEAKER_1: In fact, we typically have people explicitly state that they believe the teachings of the Small Catechism when they join the church.
SPEAKER_1: They don't always have someone say they believe in the entirety of the Book of Concord.
SPEAKER_1: I would hope that at least elders and others in positions of authority would read the Book of Concord and understand it, but again, the average person doesn't really need to do that.
SPEAKER_1: You don't need all of the women in your church, for instance, trying to be a theologian and reading the solid declaration.
SPEAKER_1: The children in your church are not going to read it and understand it.
SPEAKER_1: But the Small Catechism, they can understand.
SPEAKER_1: And that's going to be the same sort of different levels that you will find in any church, because over in the Reformed Camp, how many, maybe some more in some Reformed churches, but how many men in your church have actually read the Institutes?
SPEAKER_1: How many of those who read it understood it?
SPEAKER_1: So, just because someone says he's a Christian doesn't mean he is, but just because someone doesn't understand all the nuances of a particular denomination, a particular tradition, doesn't mean he isn't a member of that tradition.
SPEAKER_1: So, yes, it's not a question where there's sort of a cut-and-dry, neat answer because it depends on what exactly it is you're asking and what exactly is being answered in response to that question.
SPEAKER_1: But hopefully, that explains what it means to be a Lutheran.
SPEAKER_1: The basic answer is you believe the Small Catechism.
SPEAKER_1: You want to know what Lutherans believe?
SPEAKER_1: Read the Small Catechism.
SPEAKER_1: You want more information on what's in the Small Catechism?
SPEAKER_1: Read the Augsburg Confession, the Apology, the Solid Declaration.
SPEAKER_1: Read the Small Call Articles for fun because it's fun to read Luther.
SPEAKER_1: You can read the Power and Primacy of the Pope if you want to know why we reject Rome.
SPEAKER_1: There are more documents, but the basics are all there in the Small Catechism.
SPEAKER_1: That is the basis of what we believe.
SPEAKER_1: That is the Lutheran exegesis of Scripture.
SPEAKER_1: And I am a Lutheran because I believe that is simply what Scripture teaches.
SPEAKER_1: I am not a Lutheran because I like Luther.
SPEAKER_1: I am not a Lutheran because I am of German extraction.
SPEAKER_1: I am a Lutheran because I believe that what is set forth in the Small Catechism specifically, and in the Book of Concord generally, is consonant with Scripture on all points.
SPEAKER_1: That is why I am a Lutheran.
SPEAKER_1: And so, again, I believe it just means I am a Christian.
SPEAKER_1: We say Lutheran in order to distinguish from other groups because, for better or worse, we are not all united in our understanding of Scripture and in what we teach.
SPEAKER_1: I wish that we were.
SPEAKER_1: It would be better if we were.
SPEAKER_1: We would be able to provide and present a unified front against so much evil in the world, but I would hope that at least we can all agree on some basics and act in a concerted way to try to make things better, right?
SPEAKER_1: Just because we disagree on some specifics doesn't mean that we can't get along.
SPEAKER_1: We don't have to hate the Reformed or the Anglicans, whichever camp the Anglicans ultimately want to be in.
SPEAKER_1: We disagree.
SPEAKER_1: We're going to keep disagreeing, but we're Christian brothers and we can work together.
SPEAKER_1: And the same is true of the Roman Catholics, even though, yes, our confession certainly has some choice phrases to say about your pope, but I've heard choice phrases from Roman Catholics about the pope as well, so.
SPEAKER_1: Hopefully, that answers the question in a way that is actually useful.
SPEAKER_1: The next one is related.
SPEAKER_1: What are the minimum beliefs that are required for salvation?
SPEAKER_1: What level of doctrinal error puts someone outside the faith entirely?
SPEAKER_1: And perhaps most central to my question, do you think that someone being in severe error in terms of the law, that is, being correct about the gospel and the identity of God, but being incorrect about some component of what obedience looks like, can on its own lead to damnation?
SPEAKER_1: This one again is going to have, I think I can limit this one really to two different levels, instead of getting into something that's a little longer, a little more nuanced, perhaps.
SPEAKER_1: But there are two different kinds of error, and really only one is truly error, right?
SPEAKER_1: Error is, in this case, a false belief.
SPEAKER_1: It is an unintentional false belief.
SPEAKER_1: It is something that is done with neither the intent to be in error or with knowledge that you are in fact in error.
SPEAKER_1: Those are related, of course.
SPEAKER_1: God does overlook error.
SPEAKER_1: Scripture doesn't give us the exact contours of that, but it literally says that God overlooks error.
SPEAKER_1: And so, God takes that into account.
SPEAKER_1: God is perfect.
SPEAKER_1: He knows what you knew, when you knew it, the depth to which you knew it, if you were confronted with your error.
SPEAKER_1: He knows all of those little specifics.
SPEAKER_1: And so, his judgment is absolutely perfect, because he can take everything into account.
SPEAKER_1: He knows all of your thoughts.
SPEAKER_1: He has perfect knowledge in a way that no human judge could ever have.
SPEAKER_1: And so, you can rely, of course, on God being perfect in his judgment, perfect in his assessment, perfect in his sentence.
SPEAKER_1: But don't worry too much about those who are in some kind of error, like the ones you mentioned there, you referenced anyway.
SPEAKER_1: I don't mean not to worry about them in the sense of trying to get them out of the error.
SPEAKER_1: If you have the opportunity, by all means, try to get them out of the error.
SPEAKER_1: But if someone has mistaken beliefs about the specifics of what it is Christians are supposed to do with regard to good works, right?
SPEAKER_1: That's not going to damn him.
SPEAKER_1: He's an error.
SPEAKER_1: Like I said earlier, most men are in error in some way in some things.
SPEAKER_1: Obviously, I'm Lutheran.
SPEAKER_1: I believe the Reformed are in error with regard to election.
SPEAKER_1: I believe the Roman Catholics are in error with regard to transubstantiation.
SPEAKER_1: In turn, the Roman Catholics believe that I am in error with regard to the real presence, the way that the Lutherans interpret that in the supper of the Sacramento Union.
SPEAKER_1: We call it the Sacramento Union because the Reformed believe that we're in error with our formulation of the real presence.
SPEAKER_1: And so, of those three groups, we all believe the other groups are in error, mutually.
SPEAKER_1: That doesn't mean that everyone in that camp is damned, or this camp is damned, or all the Lutherans are damned if the Reformed happen to be right.
SPEAKER_1: I don't believe they are, of course.
SPEAKER_1: Because ultimately, the core of the faith, as I said earlier in the episode, is Christ crucified for sinners.
SPEAKER_1: Do you believe in the gospel?
SPEAKER_1: I'm never going to be a gospel reductionist.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not going to say nothing else matters, because all truth is one.
SPEAKER_1: All error is bad.
SPEAKER_1: All error is a moral failing.
SPEAKER_1: It's not just an intellectual failing.
SPEAKER_1: It is a moral failing to be wrong.
SPEAKER_1: And so, I'm never going to trivialize or minimize that, but I am similar not going to say that you're damned because of it, because that's not what scripture says.
SPEAKER_1: It's not what God says.
SPEAKER_1: God says we should try to be perfect, right?
SPEAKER_1: Be perfect as God is perfect.
SPEAKER_1: But scripture is also very clear that we can't do that.
SPEAKER_1: That's one of the reasons we need a savior, because we're not perfect.
SPEAKER_1: Christ paid that price for all of our sins, for all of our errors, but we should desire to believe correctly.
SPEAKER_1: We should desire to do the things that God has commanded that we do, and not do the things he has commanded we not do.
SPEAKER_1: It does not mean that we are damned when we fail, because that's just sin.
SPEAKER_1: Sin is missing the mark, right?
SPEAKER_1: We are going to sin.
SPEAKER_1: We are going to continue to sin, even if we are Christians.
SPEAKER_1: That's one of the reasons we pray the Lord's prayer, right?
SPEAKER_1: Forgive us our trespasses.
SPEAKER_1: We need to pray that all the time, because we're always committing some kind of sin.
SPEAKER_1: We have the inclination toward sin, which is, yes, itself sin.
SPEAKER_1: I know the Roman Catholics are going to disagree with me.
SPEAKER_1: Concupiscence is sin.
SPEAKER_1: Desiring to do that which is wicked is sin.
SPEAKER_1: Acting on it is another sin.
SPEAKER_1: We recognize this in our law as well, in some cases.
SPEAKER_1: For instance, the conspiracy to commit a crime is a crime.
SPEAKER_1: Committing the crime is another crime.
SPEAKER_1: Committing it as part of a conspiracy may be a third crime as well.
SPEAKER_1: So we recognize this in our positive law.
SPEAKER_1: It's not just something that we recognize in the moral law, because the positive law, in some ways, does flow from God's moral law, and it should do so.
SPEAKER_1: But the second aspect of this is once your error has been rebuked, if you persist in that error, it is a different thing.
SPEAKER_1: It can then transform into impenitent sin.
SPEAKER_1: That's when you are in danger.
SPEAKER_1: Now, you have to recognize here that there are, again, two different sort of aspects or paths here, right?
SPEAKER_1: On the one hand, let's say you rebuke someone.
SPEAKER_1: You bring up a passage of scripture, you say, what you just said disagrees with this passage of scripture, you're wrong.
SPEAKER_1: Well, he has two ways he can, he has multiple ways he can react, but two key ways he can react.
SPEAKER_1: He can agree with your interpretation and recognize he's wrong, or he can disagree with your interpretation and not, we're going to say you're right for the sake of the hypothetical, and then not realize he's wrong.
SPEAKER_1: Well, there's a difference between those two, right?
SPEAKER_1: Because in the one case, he's still wrong, but he's not willfully wrong.
SPEAKER_1: So it does depend on the intent.
SPEAKER_1: Intent matters.
SPEAKER_1: It matters in our civil courts, it matters in our criminal courts, it matters in God's court.
SPEAKER_1: Because if you intend to do evil, that is worse.
SPEAKER_1: If you do evil knowingly, it is worse than doing it accidentally.
SPEAKER_1: So if someone is rebuked and doesn't believe you, right?
SPEAKER_1: For whatever reason, he doesn't believe you.
SPEAKER_1: He doesn't understand your argument, he thinks that you're insane, he thinks you're evil, whatever it is, he's still in error.
SPEAKER_1: That's different if he goes, I see what that says, that's not my God.
SPEAKER_1: That's where you're in danger.
SPEAKER_1: That person is now in danger of damnation.
SPEAKER_1: He is in danger of hellfire if he is just rejecting part of scripture because he doesn't think that's his God.
SPEAKER_1: God's not like that.
SPEAKER_1: God wouldn't do that.
SPEAKER_1: You don't get to disagree with God in that way.
SPEAKER_1: And so when you read the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, and you see very clearly that God burned Sodom and Gomorrah to ash for sodomy, for homosexuality, for specifically male homosexuality, right?
SPEAKER_1: You see that clearly in the pages of scripture.
SPEAKER_1: There is no denying that.
SPEAKER_1: If someone reads that and then says, I don't believe that.
SPEAKER_1: That's not my God.
SPEAKER_1: God would never burn a city because of the sexual wickedness of the inhabitants of that city.
SPEAKER_1: That man is in danger because that man is reading the plain word of God, the clear word of God, and rejecting the clear teaching.
SPEAKER_1: That is immense danger.
SPEAKER_1: And so, it depends.
SPEAKER_1: The answer to your question, ultimately, is that it depends on the nature of the error, and it depends on the intent behind the error, because intent can transform something from error into willful wickedness, into impenitent sin.
SPEAKER_1: Now, to answer another aspect of the question that was definitely asked there in the question, there's a difference between rejecting core parts of the face of faith and being in error about ancillary matters.
SPEAKER_1: Not unimportant matters, but ancillary matters, right?
SPEAKER_1: So if someone thinks, for instance, that the moral law, let's say even less than that, someone who's confused about the difference between the civil law and the moral law, right?
SPEAKER_1: He looks at the Old Testament and says, well, they have these punishments for these crimes, and these sins are treated in this way, and this is an abomination, and that's this, and doesn't understand it, perhaps.
SPEAKER_1: That's a different thing from saying, I don't believe Jesus was God.
SPEAKER_1: You're not saved if you don't believe that Jesus was God.
SPEAKER_1: You can't do that.
SPEAKER_1: You can't reject a core tenet of the faith.
SPEAKER_1: And one of the best ways to look at that is, again, the creeds.
SPEAKER_1: Look at what is in the Apostles' Creed.
SPEAKER_1: Anyone who rejects any part of the Apostles' Creed is in danger of hellfire.
SPEAKER_1: If someone just doesn't understand the distinction between the civil law and the moral law in the Old Testament and thinks that, well, that was then and this is now, granted, without hopefully getting into thinking God changed, you can't do that, but if he's just confused, that's a different thing.
SPEAKER_1: It's still sin.
SPEAKER_1: He's still in error.
SPEAKER_1: He needs to be rebuked, but that alone is not going to damn him.
SPEAKER_1: So there's a distinction there, a very important distinction between the core tenets of the faith and things that are not core to the faith, but again, all truth matters, and so the error is still sinful.
SPEAKER_1: He should not remain in that error, and once rebuked, then it can become impenitent sin, which is one of the reasons that sometimes for certain men, it's better not to know, right?
SPEAKER_1: Because if they know, then, well, now you're responsible.
SPEAKER_1: Now that you've been rebuked, you have a duty to do something in response to that rebuke.
SPEAKER_1: Whereas before, you were simply in error.
SPEAKER_1: But the overall answer to the question is, it depends on a lot of specific moving parts.
SPEAKER_1: It's similar to what you would have in any given criminal case, because of course, ultimately, when you start looking at how scripture is, sin is a crime, God is a judge in a criminal court.
SPEAKER_1: That's one of the best ways to look at it.
SPEAKER_1: And I constantly run into things in theology where I can use a legal analogy that is directly on point, if not virtually identical.
SPEAKER_1: It's the language that God used.
SPEAKER_1: I know the EO particularly don't like that fact, but God's the one who calls himself a judge.
SPEAKER_1: God's the one who calls it a judgment.
SPEAKER_1: God's the one who treats these things as a crime.
SPEAKER_1: God's the one who has a court.
SPEAKER_1: I mean, Satan acts as a prosecuting attorney till he was cast out of heaven anyway.
SPEAKER_1: It's very clear that this is conducted in a legal manner.
SPEAKER_1: Even the way that we are saved, think about it, you're not made righteous in this life.
SPEAKER_1: Yes, there's a process of sanctification.
SPEAKER_1: You're improved somewhat in this life, but you are declared innocent by virtue of Christ's sacrifice.
SPEAKER_1: These are legal terms.
SPEAKER_1: We're dealing in legal theories here.
SPEAKER_1: That is simply the way that scripture speaks about these things.
SPEAKER_1: It's the way that Christ needs to think about these things.
SPEAKER_1: The next one is also a short question.
SPEAKER_1: How can scripture be inerrant if the canon is errant?
SPEAKER_1: And I think there are really two questions here, so I'll answer both of those.
SPEAKER_1: The easy one is that the canon of scripture is not errant.
SPEAKER_1: Can't be.
SPEAKER_1: And the reason for that, of course, is that God is the author, ultimately the author of the canon of scripture.
SPEAKER_1: Nothing God has written or caused to be written by the hands of men, via inspiration, is in error.
SPEAKER_1: It is inerrant.
SPEAKER_1: I'm trying to capitalize that I, go ahead.
SPEAKER_1: It is perfect in all particulars.
SPEAKER_1: The other part of this, and really perhaps the more interesting question, right, the underlying question that causes people trouble, how do we know what the canon of scripture is?
SPEAKER_1: And we've got into this before a little bit.
SPEAKER_1: Lutherans don't have a canon of scripture, and so that's sort of the easy answer for the Lutherans.
SPEAKER_1: We just sort of say, we don't have one, and then we scuttle out of the room, right?
SPEAKER_1: Leave everyone else to fight over it.
SPEAKER_1: Which is, it has its time and its place, but how do we know which books are in scripture?
SPEAKER_1: In part, scripture authenticates scripture.
SPEAKER_1: Scripture has crossed references all over the place.
SPEAKER_1: And so if you pick something up and find zero references to that thing, and then that thing doesn't reference any of your part of scripture, you already pretty much know that's not scripture.
SPEAKER_1: You can pretty much leave that one aside.
SPEAKER_1: Maybe it's useful, maybe it's Maccabees, right?
SPEAKER_1: Maybe it's a book that isn't part of scripture, but is useful as history.
SPEAKER_1: It's useful in another way.
SPEAKER_1: Just because something is not scripture doesn't mean it's useless.
SPEAKER_1: Plenty of things are useful and not scripture.
SPEAKER_1: How do we know that the canon of scripture exists, right?
SPEAKER_1: What is the canon of scripture?
SPEAKER_1: That's sort of a fundamental underlying question here.
SPEAKER_1: And it's the difference between knowing the canon and defining the canon, right?
SPEAKER_1: This is an important point because this gets into sort of the core of some of the objections to scripture and things like that.
SPEAKER_1: The canon of a particular author is defined by the fact that the author wrote the things, right?
SPEAKER_1: And so I can look at my shelves here and say, you know, I have some books by Luther.
SPEAKER_1: We'll go back to Luther just because I have him on my shelves here.
SPEAKER_1: I have some books by various other authors as well.
SPEAKER_1: What qualifies those books as being part of the oeuvre, the canon of that particular author?
SPEAKER_1: The fact that he wrote them.
SPEAKER_1: That's it.
SPEAKER_1: It is a book by that author.
SPEAKER_1: It is authored by that author if he, in fact, authored it.
SPEAKER_1: It's practically tautological, but that's because it is the essence of the thing.
SPEAKER_1: And so, you'll have those who will say, how is it that we have this canon?
SPEAKER_1: Because the canon pre-exists, because God is the author of the canon.
SPEAKER_1: How we know the canon is a separate question.
SPEAKER_1: Whether or not it exists is a core matter.
SPEAKER_1: If you believe that God wrote anything, caused anything to be written, then the canon exists independently of whether we have access to it, whether we have all of it, whether we know how to understand it, whether we accurately identify which books belong to it.
SPEAKER_1: For instance, Martin Luther wrote some number of works during his life.
SPEAKER_1: The Weimar Ausgabe, the complete works of Luther in the Weimar edition, supposedly contain everything he wrote.
SPEAKER_1: Could we find something else that he wrote?
SPEAKER_1: Sure.
SPEAKER_1: Could we have lost things that he wrote?
SPEAKER_1: Sure.
SPEAKER_1: That would mean that we have a partial canon with regard to Luther.
SPEAKER_1: We don't have the totality of his works because we lost some along the way.
SPEAKER_1: If, for instance, we have the Bible, right?
SPEAKER_1: And let's say a thousand years from now, somehow they lose the Book of Numbers.
SPEAKER_1: Does that mean that Numbers is not part of the canon?
SPEAKER_1: No, because God, being the author of the Book, this time through Moses, but God being the author of the Book, it is part of God's canon.
SPEAKER_1: Just because, in this hypothetical, our descendants, in a thousand years, no longer have that Book, doesn't mean the Book ceases to be part of the canon.
SPEAKER_1: It means they no longer have access to it.
SPEAKER_1: It means they now have a partial canon.
SPEAKER_1: It's a different thing.
SPEAKER_1: And so the canon is inerrant.
SPEAKER_1: Whether or not a particular group has that inerrant canon is a separate question.
SPEAKER_1: And I don't know that I want to get too deeply into how we know which books are part of the canon, because that's a long discussion, and it gets somewhat involved, and I'd probably want to bring up a bunch of exhibits and things.
SPEAKER_1: But the existence of the canon is an independent thing from whether or not any particular group at any particular time has the totality of the canon.
SPEAKER_1: Related, but distinct things.
SPEAKER_1: It's vitally important to keep that in mind.
SPEAKER_1: The canon as it exists with regard to God having authored these things is inerrant by definition.
SPEAKER_1: Whether or not any particular written version of the Bible, printed version, say, the Masoretic text that we have, right?
SPEAKER_1: That's errant, because the Masoretic text has corruptions from the Jews in it.
SPEAKER_1: And so, does it still contain the Word of God?
SPEAKER_1: The answer is yes.
SPEAKER_1: Is it the Word of God?
SPEAKER_1: I would have to say no with regard to the Masoretic text because of those corruptions by the Jews.
SPEAKER_1: But it contains the Word of God.
SPEAKER_1: And so, it is a partially correct version of the canon.
SPEAKER_1: It is not the perfect version that God inspired.
SPEAKER_1: We have that, of course, that's the Septuagint.
SPEAKER_1: Thankfully, we have that as well, because God said he would preserve his word.
SPEAKER_1: We rely on God, which is another aspect of this, of course.
SPEAKER_1: And I think I'll finish this answer here because I don't want to get too deeply into it.
SPEAKER_1: But God states that he will preserve his word.
SPEAKER_1: If we believe God, then we must believe that he has preserved his word.
SPEAKER_1: Where did he preserve it?
SPEAKER_1: Because it has to be preserved, right?
SPEAKER_1: If it is just unknown somewhere, it's not in a cave somewhere, right?
SPEAKER_1: It's the Septuagint, because that's what God preserved for us.
SPEAKER_1: It's what God preserved for the early church.
SPEAKER_1: It's what Christ himself used.
SPEAKER_1: He preserved his word because he promised that he would.
SPEAKER_1: So when we believe God, we believe that he preserved his word.
SPEAKER_1: And we find that he actually did.
SPEAKER_1: Again, one of the minor proofs of the fact that God does exist, it is, he is the God of scripture.
SPEAKER_1: But answer for another time, right?
SPEAKER_1: I think that pretty much addresses how we can know that scripture is inerrant, and in what way we mean that scripture, first at what we mean by scripture, and then second, that we mean that scripture is inerrant.
SPEAKER_1: Because it's that distinction between the thing existing and a particular instance of it being in error or not, right?
SPEAKER_1: A quick additional example, there was a thing called the Wicked Bible at one point.
SPEAKER_1: It had a single misprint.
SPEAKER_1: It said, thou shalt commit adultery.
SPEAKER_1: That was errant.
SPEAKER_1: It did not mean that there was no inerrant word of God.
SPEAKER_1: It meant the printer made a mistake.
SPEAKER_1: And so, that printing, with regard to that one line, that one word, was in error, it was errant.
SPEAKER_1: But that is a distinct matter from the canon itself existing in being inerrant.
SPEAKER_1: I will save this question about the Restorationist for next time, because it has some subparts to it, and I don't know that I want to get into it right now.
SPEAKER_1: I will quickly scroll through the chat here.
SPEAKER_1: I don't know that I will get to all of it, but let's see.
SPEAKER_1: I have someone saying that as a German from Russia, they preserved the medieval German accent.
SPEAKER_1: That's probably true with regard to certain regional accents.
SPEAKER_1: Germany, not to the same degree as Britain, but Germany certainly has regional accents.
SPEAKER_1: I know because I've tried to talk to a Bavarian before, and no, I know standard German, and I do not know Bavarian.
SPEAKER_1: A quirk of accents, though, we actually have some of the accents in the US are closer to what would have existed centuries ago in Britain because we preserved them and the British did not, which is kind of ironic.
SPEAKER_1: Let's see.
SPEAKER_1: I think that may be just about it for this week.
SPEAKER_1: I do see some other questions here in the chat that I am going to write down for next time.
SPEAKER_1: I don't know that I want to get into them necessarily this time.
SPEAKER_1: Someone asked about which internet theologians to avoid.
SPEAKER_1: The answer to that is most of them, because most internet theologians are just not going to be very good.
SPEAKER_1: But that's true for most theologians, period.
SPEAKER_1: Because most theologians are not lowercase o orthodox, they are usually trying to push some sort of agenda.
SPEAKER_1: Part of that, of course, is they haven't yet passed through the filter of history, which I don't want to get into this too deeply right now, but it's important to recognize that many of the things that have been handed down to us from previous centuries, from previous millennia in some cases, they were things that were worth preserving.
SPEAKER_1: That's why we have them.
SPEAKER_1: Most things produced in any given era are not going to be worth preserving.
SPEAKER_1: And so, we have Shakespeare, but there are probably hundreds of others whose works were not preserved because they weren't as good.
SPEAKER_1: To some degree, that's true of the Greek playwrights.
SPEAKER_1: To some degree, we just lost things due to time and weather and the reality of living in a fallen world where things fall apart.
SPEAKER_1: But you do have to recognize that there is a filter that acts naturally historically because things that are worth transmitting are the things that tend to get transmitted.
SPEAKER_1: It's not always true, but by and large it is.
SPEAKER_1: And so the reason this is important is because when you're looking at things in your current era, they have not yet passed through that filter.
SPEAKER_1: And so don't necessarily look back at history and think, wow, they were so much better at all of these.
SPEAKER_1: No, many times the stuff that was terrible just didn't get passed forward to us.
SPEAKER_1: And many of the terrible stuff today won't get passed forward to future generations because it won't be preserved because it's terrible.
SPEAKER_1: So just something to keep in mind when you're looking at what the past has transmitted to us in light of what we have today and vice versa, right?
SPEAKER_1: Don't necessarily think that the past didn't produce garbage as well because garbage doesn't get preserved.
SPEAKER_1: Think of it in a physical sense, right?
SPEAKER_1: Your actual literal garbage, you're not going to keep around, and then someone in 100 years will have access to it.
SPEAKER_1: But if you have family heirlooms, you probably will pass those down.
SPEAKER_1: The same thing happens with culture.
SPEAKER_1: I think I can answer this one quickly.
SPEAKER_1: To what extent is German and the Luther Bible still valuable for theology and Lutheranism, even though Luther didn't make use of the Septuagint?
SPEAKER_1: He actually did make use of the Septuagint.
SPEAKER_1: He spoke Greek, he had access to it.
SPEAKER_1: He just did not rely on it to the extent that he should have, which is to say, exclusively.
SPEAKER_1: It is based in large part, the Old Testament, on the Masoretic text.
SPEAKER_1: So does it still have utility?
SPEAKER_1: Of course it does.
SPEAKER_1: Should we want to replace it with a Bible that is based on the Septuagint?
SPEAKER_1: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_1: And I also don't have that currently on my desk.
SPEAKER_1: There is already a version of the Septuagint translated into German.
SPEAKER_1: You can buy it today.
SPEAKER_1: We already have that in German.
SPEAKER_1: We have some options in English.
SPEAKER_1: None of them are great yet.
SPEAKER_1: Hopefully the one that is coming out, I believe it's supposed to be next year, will be a good option.
SPEAKER_1: But it already exists in German.
SPEAKER_1: The Septuagint de Deutsch is, I have a physical copy of it somewhere, somewhere in this room.
SPEAKER_1: But you can buy it, unfortunately.
SPEAKER_1: This is another one of those cases where it is overpriced.
SPEAKER_1: It is 100 something dollars to get a copy of it delivered to the US, unfortunately.
SPEAKER_1: But it's available.
SPEAKER_1: It does exist.
SPEAKER_1: That's what I would say you should use if you want to study scripture in German, not necessarily the Luther Bible.
SPEAKER_1: The Luther Bible, of course, has historical utility in the sense that you can look at the development of the German language, and it's one of the major sources of that.
SPEAKER_1: So it has that usage.
SPEAKER_1: But no, my position is the same in any given language.
SPEAKER_1: We should be relying on the Septuagint, not on the Masoretic text.
SPEAKER_1: We should not be using the Hebrew, period.
SPEAKER_1: Same thing is true in German, as is true in English, French, Japanese, every other language.
SPEAKER_1: So it has utility, but not what we should be using to study scripture, particularly when we already have the Septuagint translated in German.
SPEAKER_1: I think I will answer one more question.
SPEAKER_1: If my backlog starts to get too long, I'll just run for, you know, 90 minutes at some point, or two hours, and get through some of the backlog.
SPEAKER_1: But for now, I'll leave some questions for next week.
SPEAKER_1: Regarding concupiscence, is it a sin if some part of you desires sin, but you would still morally abstain if given the opportunity, if your steadfastness would overcome your desire?
SPEAKER_1: I kind of touched on and answered that one, but to be more explicit, yes, it is still sin, because the desire to sin is sin.
SPEAKER_1: But it's just like the example I gave with the legal example, conspiracy.
SPEAKER_1: Creating the conspiracy may very well be a crime.
SPEAKER_1: Usually, you have to have an act in furtherance of the conspiracy, not just talking about it, but depends on the law of where you are.
SPEAKER_1: Creating the conspiracy, making it a concrete thing, is a crime, probably.
SPEAKER_1: I'm just going to say it is a crime.
SPEAKER_1: I'm always going to give the attorney answer, because I don't want someone saying, oh, you gave me bad legal advice, right?
SPEAKER_1: It's not legal advice.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not teaching you criminal law right now.
SPEAKER_1: But the conspiracy, for the sake of our hypothetical, is a crime.
SPEAKER_1: Doing something in order to pursue the conspiracy, probably also a crime.
SPEAKER_1: Committing the actual crime that was the point of the conspiracy is a crime.
SPEAKER_1: Committing it as part of a conspiracy is a crime.
SPEAKER_1: The same thing with regard to sin.
SPEAKER_1: The desire to sin, because it is a desire to act contrary to God, is sin.
SPEAKER_1: Doing something concrete in order to try to obtain the sinful end is a sin.
SPEAKER_1: Obtaining the sinful end is a sin.
SPEAKER_1: Not repenting is a sin.
SPEAKER_1: Persisting in that sin is a sin.
SPEAKER_1: And so I don't want it to be to the point where you get neurotic about the law, and, oh, I'm a terrible person, and I'm sinful, and I can never do anything.
SPEAKER_1: Don't do that.
SPEAKER_1: Don't despair.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not going to say that's a sin, but it is, but don't despair, because, of course, the sacrifice of Christ is of infinite value.
SPEAKER_1: God has already forgiven all of your sins.
SPEAKER_1: He knows that you are a sinner.
SPEAKER_1: He knows you're going to continue to sin.
SPEAKER_1: He knows the sins that you are going to commit five years from today.
SPEAKER_1: You have no idea what those sins...
SPEAKER_1: Well, you probably know some of those sins, but many of those sins, you have no idea what they are yet.
SPEAKER_1: You may not even recognize them at the time.
SPEAKER_1: God knows each and every one of them.
SPEAKER_1: Christ knew each and every one of them when he went to the cross, and you are forgiven for those already.
SPEAKER_1: Yes, of course, pray the Lord's prayer, ask God for forgiveness, repent, which properly means to turn away from that sin, but don't despair because of the fact that, yes, you're going to sin a lot in this life, and you basically can't 100% avoid it.
SPEAKER_1: The Christian life is not a life of perfect avoidance of sin.
SPEAKER_1: The Christian life is a life of repentance for sin, because we live in a fallen world.
SPEAKER_1: And a fundamental aspect of this, that most people get wrong, because it doesn't seem intuitive at first, but you have to understand a little bit of Christian theology to know why this is the case.
SPEAKER_1: You are not a sinner because you sin.
SPEAKER_1: You sin because you are a sinner.
SPEAKER_1: If you understand original sin, that is the conclusion, the natural, inevitable, necessary conclusion of understanding original sin.
SPEAKER_1: And unless you arrive at that conclusion, that understanding of why you sin and the interaction there, the direction of the causation, you don't understand original sin until you get to that.
SPEAKER_1: And so, again, you sin because you are a sinner.
SPEAKER_1: You are a sinner because our federal head, Adam, fell and took everyone and everything with him.
SPEAKER_1: You are restored in Christ, but you are not perfected in this life.
SPEAKER_1: Because justification, that juridical, that legal declaration that you are wiped clean, you are slated to wipe clean, you are innocent, you are forgiven for the sake of Christ, that is once and done.
SPEAKER_1: It was finished on the cross, it's applied to you when you are given the free gift of faith.
SPEAKER_1: Sanctification is progressive in this life, and final sanctification, complete, perfect sanctification, not in the reformed sense, but in the sense that I think you all understand what I'm saying, that sanctification happens at the resurrection, at the second coming, if you're still alive when it happens, right?
SPEAKER_1: So you are not going to be perfect in this life, but that's not the point of the Christian life.
SPEAKER_1: So don't despair just because, you know, concupiscence is sin, so that desire to sin is sin, and then pursuing it and committing it and hiding it.
SPEAKER_1: And your instinct, your immediate reaction, should always be to turn to God and ask for forgiveness.
SPEAKER_1: Don't hide from God.
SPEAKER_1: God hates that.
SPEAKER_1: Don't do that.
SPEAKER_1: You don't have to look at God and say, I can't come before you because I'm this unholy wretch.
SPEAKER_1: I've done this horrible thing.
SPEAKER_1: I've fallen into this particular sin.
SPEAKER_1: Yet again, I've done the thing that I hate to do.
SPEAKER_1: Think of the words of Paul.
SPEAKER_1: I do the very thing I do not want to do, and I do not do the thing I want to do because of the sin that is in me, right?
SPEAKER_1: Turn to God, that's what God wants.
SPEAKER_1: God wants you to turn to him and ask for forgiveness and try again.
SPEAKER_1: Pick yourself up, turn to God, try again.
SPEAKER_1: Don't despair, don't think that, oh, I've fallen for it again.
SPEAKER_1: No, that's what Satan wants.
SPEAKER_1: Satan wants you to wallow in it and keep thinking about how terrible and awful you are and focusing on that.
SPEAKER_1: Focus on the cross.
SPEAKER_1: I could point behind me, look at the cross.
SPEAKER_1: That's the answer.
SPEAKER_1: All of your sins are forgiven.
SPEAKER_1: That's what you should do as a Christian.
SPEAKER_1: So yes, concupiscence is sin, but that sin was also forgiven at the cross.
SPEAKER_1: And I think that I will probably call it there for this week.
SPEAKER_1: Once again, just as sort of a little bit of housekeeping here at the end, you can submit questions on the forum, omniforum.com.
SPEAKER_1: There's a request category specifically for this.
SPEAKER_1: If you happen to put in another part of the forum, I'll move it, it's not a big deal.
SPEAKER_1: But that does help me to try to organize these questions and link things so people can find it in the future.
SPEAKER_1: If you ask questions in the chat or on X, wherever else you happen to ask them, Telegram, I do write those down, try to collate those as well and get them into the show at some point.
SPEAKER_1: If you have asked a question and it has been a while and I have not answered it, referenced it, said I'm going to answer it, something like that, by all means, I don't object to you reminding me, perhaps it slipped through the cracks, perhaps you asked it and it got hidden or suppressed or something that happens on X all the time.
SPEAKER_1: I try to find things and their moderation team to be charitable has hidden it from me.
SPEAKER_1: So bear that in mind.
SPEAKER_1: But thank you for those of you who submitted the questions.
SPEAKER_1: Thank you for your time.
SPEAKER_1: I am glad I was able to answer the questions for you.
SPEAKER_1: Hopefully, I answered the questions in a useful way.
SPEAKER_1: If you have a follow-up question, by all means, feel free to ask that as well.
SPEAKER_1: And I finally managed to get this on a Thursday instead of a Friday, so I won't say just yet to have a good weekend, but survive Friday and then have an excellent weekend and go to church on Sunday.
SPEAKER_1: I will see all of you next week, and may God bless you in the interim.