You're listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, visit nakedbiblepodcast.com and click on the support link in the upper right-hand corner. If you're new to the podcast and Dr. Heizer's approach to the Bible, click on newstarthere at nakedbiblepodcast.com. Welcome to the Naked Bible Podcast, Episode 187, ETS, Conference Reviews, Part 1. I'm the layman, Trey Strickland, and he's a scholar, Dr. Michael Heizer. Hey Mike, how are you doing in Rhode Island? In Rhode Island, indeed. Pretty well. Pretty well. It's not as cold as the last time we were here. Yeah. I never thought I'd actually ever be in Rhode Island. So when I'm texting my wife, I always end it in Rhode Island. I'm eating dinner in Rhode Island. Has she gotten the message yet? She's got the message. Yeah. Well, she replies back, how you do it in Rhode Island. So I'm actually enjoying the state. I never thought this would be a state that I'd make it to. But here I am. Here you are in all your glory. Yep. Well, we had some great interviews lined up for this episode. Yeah. We have four scholars that agreed to spend some time with us. We have Hugh Ross. He's probably the most well-known from Reasons to Believe. We're going to talk with Hugh about his book, Improbable Planet, and a few other things again that sort of go with Hugh Ross. Doug Grote Heist is next, and we want to talk to him about his thoughts on anti-intellectualism in the church. And that's something, again, that's sort of in the wheelhouse for our audience. Then we are followed by Andy Nacelli. We interviewed Andy last year. This year we're going to be talking about a new book of his, No Easy Fix. It's about the higher life or the Keswick theology. If those things are new to you, well, you know, stay tuned. You'll find out what those things are. And then lastly, Dr. Maurice Robinson, who is the world's chief defender of the Byzantine majority text. A long time ago, we did an episode on textual criticism, and, you know, you heard about the Alexandrian text and reasoned eclecticism. Maurice represents the other view, Byzantine majority text. And I think people are going to be real interested in what he has to say, too. Well, we're back at ETS again, and we have with us Dr. Hugh Ross, of course, this is going to be a familiar name to many listeners. Glad to have some time with you. He's very busy. He's much in demand, as you might realize. But as we jump into it, maybe somebody out there doesn't know who you are. So let's start with a little bit of self introduction and how you got to be doing what you're doing now. Well, I'm trained as an astronomer, got my PhD at the University of Toronto and did research in quasars and galaxies at Caltech. And as well as I was at Caltech, I got called into the ministry. So I've been on the pastoral staff of a church near Caltech for the past four decades. So I'm kind of in both camps, theology and science. How did our TV get started? Reasons to believe? Well, I was at Caltech and was another Christian astronomer there. Said, Hugh, have you ever thought about sharing your Christian faith with someone who's not a scientist? And I said, well, tell me where I can find these non-scientists. He says, walk off the Caltech campus, right? I took them literally and just went up to strangers and started talking to them. How the book of nature confirms the book of scripture. And I was amazed at how quickly people responded and gave their lives to Christ. I mean, with the scientists, I knew I'm in for a two year project before they give their lives to Christ. But for people who don't have PhDs in the sciences, they can be much more rapid once they see that it's true. They're willing to to move to the next step. Now, earlier today, in fact, at the conference, we talked to Doug Grothys and he read a paper here that essentially dealt with anti intellectualism in the church. So do you how are you run into that? I mean, do you run into people that sort of would shy away from doing apologetics, kind of shy away from thinking too much about science and nature that we should just accept these things by faith?  I run into that a lot, especially in the Bible belt. And it usually stems from the fact that you got Christians who see science as the enemy of the Christian faith rather than the ally. So how I deal with it is basically show them. It's the other way around. Science is the best friend we have for persuading non Christians that the Bible is the inspired and errant word of God and that Jesus Christ is our savior. And so once they realize that science is the friend and not the enemy, they're much more receptive. How much do you has your work sort of increased? Has it shifted a little bit? Have you changed tactically, I guess, in the in the wake of militant atheism? Well, has it affected anything you do at all? Not really. I mean, we've always been engaging atheists, especially in the scientific community. And we engage them with a testable creation model, basically saying we have an explanation for the record of nature that we're convinced provides greater predictive success and a more comprehensive explanation than the nontheistic models. And I think one reason why Christians run into a lot of hostility, they're basically on the attack saying, here's why your model is wrong. And they're not really understanding of the scientific community works. They're going to hang on to their models no matter how many flaws you point out in them, until you propose an alternative model. So we've always taken a positive approach that when we engage scientists, we say, here is our model, we want you to critique it. Well, scientists love to critique everybody else's models. So that's how we get to engage them. And they're surprised when they discover this isn't what we thought it was. Well, that's great. Your most recent book, I don't know if it's your most recent book. It's the most recent one that I've looked at, Improbable Planet. The feel it gave me was like a sort of a Christian version of Rare Earth, the one by Brownlee. And I can't remember the other author, but is that fair? Yeah, it's Brownlee and Ward that came over the book Rare Earth. What's different is that the book Improbable Planet was born out of a year-long study I gave in our church on the creation texts in the Bible. We literally studied every single creation text and noted that every one of these texts links the doctrine of creation with a doctrine of redemption and then actually taught how there are places in the Bible that declare that God begins His works of redemption before He creates anything, which means that the Bible is implying that everything God creates is for the purpose of redemption. And that launched a three-year study in my part, surveying the scientific literature to put that biblical implication to the test. And the book is basically the outgrowth of that three-year survey, the scientific literature, where we conclude every event in the history of the universe, Earth, the solar system, our galaxy, the history of Earth's life, and every component plays a role in making possible the redemption of billions of human beings. And so I've been going on university campuses saying, we have a better way to advance science. Interpret science from a biblical redemptive perspective. You will make more scientific discoveries, your publishing success will go up, or understanding the book of nature will increase. And it's a great way to engage these unbelieving scientists with a paradigm they'd never really considered. And that's how we get conversations started with them because they quickly recognize, you know what, this perspective's got merit. Can you give us a couple of examples from the scientific world that illustrate the point? Well, the book closes by looking at the fact that you can't have billions of people living on Earth at one time, unless they're living during an ice age cycle. And that cycle is driven by variations in Earth's orbit. However, those variations will typically bring you enormous climate instability. And indeed, that's been the case throughout the entire ice age cycle, except the last 9,000 years. During the last 9,000 years, seven different orbital cycles have all come into sync to give us this unique period of extreme climate stability. And we now know, for example, that the ice age cycle couldn't happen unless you have five simultaneous, unprecedented tectonic events. And I would argue all of them are miraculous. And you say, well, why? The sun's getting brighter and brighter. The sun has never been brighter than it is today in the history of life. And yet we got ice. For 90% of Earth's history, there's been no ice. But without that ice and without its cycling between 10% coverage and 23% coverage, you can't sustain billions of human beings. And without that unique 9,000 period of extreme climate stability, you can't set most of the human race free from coming up with agricultural products to engage in science, engineering, technology, and develop the technology and the global communication where billions of people can hear the good news as salivations through Jesus Christ, not in millions of years, but literally in just decades. Right.  Has anyone reviewed the book and sort of tried to either pigeonhole you or take the discussion to, you know, the whole global warming kind of thing? We get into that a lot. I've actually written two books on that subject. And our theme is that the Book of Job tells us how to manage the planet for the benefit of all life and tells us that God has designed the Earth so that we'll never face a choice between ethics and economics. And that's what's driving this global, you know, climate debate. One side says we have to stabilize the climate and we need to sacrifice the economy to do it. The other side is saying you can never enforce that. People will cheat. That's not going to work. But what will work is if you come up with solutions to stabilize the climate, they'll put more money in everybody's pockets. If people economically benefit, at the same time they do its best for the climate and life on Earth, they're going to do it. And so we're basically saying the Bible anticipated this thousands of years ago.  I mean, do you get drawn into that? We get drawn into the debates, but what's different is we're Christian and we're not climate change deniers. We're saying, yes, we're a great risk for bringing about the conditions that existed throughout the Ice Age cycle, except for the last 9,000 years. What's different is we're proposing solutions to stabilize the climate, keep the temperature where it needs to be, that actually benefit the economy rather than kill the economy. And we give several examples in our books of how we can do that. What I find remarkable is the solutions we propose are all in the oldest book of the Bible. The book of Joe basically tells us how to go about it. And it's like, so I'm trying to communicate to the scientific community saying, rather than trying to persuade everybody to make a draconian economic sacrifice to do the right thing, how about if we pursue solutions that are economically beneficial for everybody. And I find interesting about the book of Joe. It doesn't tell us to focus on temperature. It tells us to focus on changes in precipitation. And if we focus on those changes, it simultaneously takes care of the temperature problems. So for example, because of human abuse, we have made the Sahara Desert 10 times bigger than it was during the days of the Roman Empire and the Gobi Desert four times bigger. There are ways we can shrink those two deserts back to where they were. And by shrinking them, we can now grow wheat in what used to be the Sahara Desert. That would provide food for people that need the food. It would give them income and would soak up huge quantities of greenhouse gases. Everybody wins. But it's basically focused on maintain the planet the way that God gave it to us before we started abusing the planet. Do you get any pushback from any in the science community or the religious community or wider evangelical community about that? Because some of these, this is just me now, it seems like people have planted a sword in the ground for whatever reason. And I'm sure the reason is that there can be some variety there. But they've just sort of staked out a position they've aligned themselves either for economic or political reasons with a particular perspective. Do you get pushback from those things? I do get pushback. But why pushback to the pushback and saying, the problem is you're only looking at a limited number of solutions. And God has designed the planet so we're never put in that rock in a hard-placed position. Let's pursue solutions that are win-win, not win-lose. And from a Christian perspective, we human beings are sinners. You're never going to get the whole human population agreeing to an economic sacrifice to do the right thing. The sin nature that the Bible speaks about means that won't work. And so we need to counter that. But that's what I find remarkable. There are solutions. And it tells me how wonderfully God designed the planet so that we're never caught between that economic rock and the ethical hard place. With a title like Improbable Planet, and then again some of the content as well. Let's shift a little bit and talk about... You and I spoke at the same conference years ago. It's over 10 years ago now, the God, man and ET thing. Because you always sort of get drawn into the probability or improbability of extraterrestrial life. So I remember your presentation and I agreed with it then. I agree with it now. But for the sake of listeners, what are your thoughts on probability there? How unique... Well, a lot has happened since we were speaking at that conference. Today we have discovered over 3,700 planets outside of our solar system. And when the first ones were being discovered 20 years ago, the anticipation, the astronomical community, these planets are going to be just like the planets in our solar system. Well, none of them are. Not only have we not found a twin of the Earth, we haven't found a twin of Venus, we haven't found a twin of Jupiter or Uranus or Neptune. In fact, we're finding all kinds of planets that are very different from our planets. Things that we call super Earths and many Neptune's. These are actually the most common planets we're discovering and our solar system doesn't have any of them. And what we now realize is that the more we learn about extra planetary systems, the more evidence we are uncovering that our solar system is unique. We're not finding any other system that has the capacity to sustain advanced life. And it's actually led to the recognition of something we didn't know before. Every single planet in our solar system plays a role in making advanced life possible here on Earth. So Venus has to be exactly the way it is. Mars has to be the way it is. Every one of the planets must be exactly the way they are to make our existence possible here on Earth. Yeah, I just recently read something about Jupiter, how it shields us from a certain number of asteroid collisions and attention. I'm sure that's not the only one, but in what I was reading was kind of the most obvious illustration just because of size. But I'm sure, again, the arrangement is what it is and then that causes issues with orbits and trajectories. It's necessary that Jupiter be the most effective shield. So it's crucial that your biggest gas giant be the most massive and the closest to the sun. But it won't work if Jupiter has to do it all by itself. You need another gas giant, smaller and more distant, then two more that are smaller yet and more distant. And guess what? That's exactly what we have. But one thing that impresses me, the eight planets we have in our solar system, we have no destructive mean motion resonances. Typically, when you get more than three planets, you're going to get destructive mean motion resonances. And what is that exactly? What that means is you're going to get planets orbiting in such a way that two or three will line up periodically and cause gravitational disturbances to wash through the planetary system, which would disturb the orbit of a planet like Earth and make it a non-candidate for advanced life. And of all the parameters space in our solar system for mean motion resonances, it adds up to about 99% or in that 1% where it doesn't happen. And actually, the moon itself plays a critical role in breaking up those mean motion resonances. So we actually need our moon orbiting us with a certain mass and a certain way to make sure that doesn't happen. In fact, the fine tuning is greater. We now realize that you actually have to start the solar system with five gas giants where one of them gets kicked out. If you don't start with five, you can't explain the Mars Earth orbital system. Has that kicking out? Do you run into people who would use something like that to support like a catastrophes model? I mean, like the old Velikovsky kind of thing. Well, it's not a planet coming towards the Earth. It's a planet going away from Earth. So it's the opposite of a catastrophe. And actually, there are two models, one which says that the fifth gas giant was completely injected and one that says it rejected to about 50 times the distance from the Sun that Neptune is. And actually, a group of astronomers are trying to determine if indeed that very distant gas giant planet exists. But either way, it explains our solar system configuration. Obviously, everything you just said, there isn't unique to you. The scientific community knows this. The ones who, again, are in the astronomy community, the astrophysicist community, but you still have so many people. I don't know if the right word is predisposed to wanting there to be extraterrestrial life or believing that it is. Do you think something else is motivating that? Well, I would say from a non-theistic perspective, you have to believe that life is common in the universe. From a Christian perspective, you can have it either way. You can say God doesn't waste miracles, so He only has done it here, or God is so enjoying to create, He's done it many times. And so it wouldn't be a shock to me if we find life on another planet, but I would conclude it's there because God miraculously created it. But so far, everywhere we look, we see hostility. We have yet to find a galaxy that's sufficiently like ours to be a candidate for life. We've yet to find a star that's a candidate or a planet that's a candidate. I'm not saying we'll find one, but we've been looking hard for over 50 years, and everywhere we look, we see hostility. The only place that's favorable for advanced life is right here. Now, in the reverse, let's say 100 years from now, we still don't have any evidence of life elsewhere. Do you think that's going to disturb maybe a community? I don't know if you'd want to use the word atheistic community, but something that, community that really desperately wants to find something superior to us, again, advanced life forms of some other character, almost like a substitute theas. What I am seeing is this, as we learn more about how the moon formed, about this movement of the gas giant planets in our solar system, the unique features of a Milky Way galaxy in the start of the sun, the comments you see in the scientific literature, this is actually published in the British Journal Nature. The more we learn about the history of the solar system, the more it's causing us philosophical disquiet. And what they mean by that philosophical disquiet, we're not able to explain this from a naturalistic perspective. Right, right. And keep in mind the Bible told us in advance, the majority of humanity will reject the evidence for the Creator, God of the Bible, no matter how strong the evidence gets, but there will be a large majority that will accept. That's something I'm personally seeing in the scientific community. There is a significant minority of research scientists are saying, you know what, I can't deny the evidence, this testifies of the God of the Bible, but this for a majority they're just saying, this is sure causing us a lot of philosophical disquiet. Right, let's go back to the Christian orbit, Arden Pan.  Do you still have any of that going on? Do you find churches more broadly, denominationally, whatever, are more open to thinking about other models, including your own, or is it still kind of... We still see hostility at the church level, but it's nothing like it was 30 years ago. Okay. So as time goes by, we're seeing more and more openness, mainly because we've taken the approach with churches and pastors. There's a mission field out there to be reached. And you're not going to reach scientists and doctors and dentists and lawyers and engineers with an anti-science message, and basically taking them back to the Belgium Confession. Article two, God gave us two books. And so as I was speaking today at this conference, God gave us a book of nature to bring people to the book of Scripture and to the foot of the cross of Jesus Christ. And we're finding increasingly, even with pastors who have no training in science, they're appreciating that the book of nature, science in particular, can be a powerful tool to bring unsaved people to faith in Jesus Christ. So as I engage pastors, I'm basically exhorting them. Focus on the front door, not the back door. Focus more attention on who you can bring into the church and who might leave. Yeah, that's good advice. How can people find out, of course, get and read Improbable Planet? Well, we have a website, reasons.org. I also have a Facebook page and a Twitter page where I answer people's questions. They're welcome to engage me there. But all of our resources are available at reasons.org. Okay. Okay, Trey. Earlier, you referenced eight planets, so I'll take it you don't consider Pluto a planet then. Well, Pluto got demoted. The reason Pluto got demoted is when it was discovered, we grossly overestimated its size. We now realize they're asteroids bigger than Pluto. So we keep Pluto on the list. We got to add about 30 more bodies. And so they either call it a dwarf planet or a non-planet. Right. And so now there's come a new term where you get Plutoed. That means you've been demoted. It's pretty good. All right. Well, thanks again. You're welcome. Well, we're here again at the Evangelical Theological Society annual meetings. This year, of course, we're in Providence, Rhode Island. And we have with us Professor Doug Grooth-Heiss. Could you just start off by telling the audience a little bit about where you teach, what your degrees in, what your specialties are? I teach Apologetics and Ethics at Denver Seminary and Professor of Philosophy. I've been there since 1993. And I have a PhD from the University of Oregon in Philosophy from 1993. Good. Well, we wanted to have Doug on the program because he's given, I guess, a couple of papers, but one that really caught my eye was a paper about anti-intellectualism in the church. Right. So how would you define that? In other words, what prompted you to propose that? Well, I teach Apologetics at Denver Seminary and a half for 25 years. And sadly, I have to make an Apologetic for Apologetics at the very beginning. Right. So the thing that impedes or even can destroy Apologetics is anti-intellectualism, which is the idea that faith and reason are completely separate. And the one ought not apply arguments and analysis to matters of theology, matters of the spiritual life. So over the years, I have talked about how the different aspects of theology, the topics of theology, all oppose anti-intellectualism in terms of doctrine of God, Christ, salvation, and so on. And so I've put that together in a paper that I'll be reading at the conference called Anti-intellectualism and Systematic Theology. That's maybe a little more technical than what we want to do here. Sure. But this is a plague on the church because we're called to give a reason for the hope that we have when people ask us why we believe. And this is part of reverencing Christ as Lord and part of our sanctification is to think well with unbelievers and think well with believers. So it's a great concern that I have, and I've had it really ever since I became a Christian back in 1976. I'm a thinking person. I'm a philosopher. And I need to engage my intellect for the cause of Christ. The first summer I was a Christian in 1976, I really didn't know what to do with my intellect. And I was around a number of Christians who were terrific evangelists and they were learning about the Christian life, but they didn't have any theology of the intellect. So, or what they had was bad, I should say. So my first summer was very frustrating because I still had all these questions about Christianity. I had converted out of a background of atheism and submisticism, but I didn't know what to do with them except read the Bible, pray, speak in tongues, witness to people. But in the fall of 76, I discovered Francis Schaeffer's book, The God Who Is There, which I've now probably read 10 or 12 times. And he gave me a charter for developing a Christian mind. So that I didn't have to be afraid of the great matters of controversy and the perennial questions of the ages. And that's what I've tried to do ever since is know what I believe and why and take that to as many people as I can. What kind of pushback do you get? Or I could ask it this way. What do you think causes this sort of... It almost becomes a point of spirituality to oppose this kind of thing. So why are people taught this? And what kind of pushback do you get? Well, there's several reasons. One is a bad reading of Scripture. Paul talks about God making foolish the wisdom of this world in 1 Corinthians. And people think that means that God is against sound reasoning or critical thinking. And I think if you look at that carefully, what he's saying is that the cross is foolishness to those who don't believe. It's not that the cross or the Christian message doesn't cohere logically. It's that it's an offense to our pride. Sure. And you can't just start out from human philosophy and somehow in six steps get to the cross. It's a revelation from God. It's not based on human reasoning, but that doesn't mean that it is hostile to human reasoning. So there's that selection of texts and then also sometimes people take Colossians 2-8 out of context, which says see to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy rather than on Christ. And they take that to mean all philosophy. And it says hollow and deceptive philosophy, which was a kind of probably early or proto-nosticism that Paul was dealing with. And then when you go to Paul's ministry himself, he's always having dialogue, reasoning with people. With Jews, with God fears. Sure. And with philosophers in Acts 17. All Christian philosophers love Acts 17 because Paul is dealing with the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers on their own ground literally in the Areopagus and also topically. He's arguing philosophically and he's exposing the fallacies of their own philosophy. Why do you think that's so difficult other than just bad exegesis of those two passages? Do you think the Church is sort of reflexively teaching its people to stay away from competing ideas? Yeah, I think sometimes, I think part of it may be a lack of courage and confidence that if we retreat into our realm of faith, which is private and subjective, then we don't have to outthink the world for Christ. We preach, we give, we try to lead a moral life and follow Christ. But this area of engaging the world with Christianity is absent from a lot of settings. Now there's been a resurgence of interest in apologetics in the last 10, 20 years and also in Christian philosophy going back even 30, 35 years and I'm very grateful for that. So I think there's a movement toward the reinvigoration of the intellect. But still, some churches will not preach apologetics. They won't really support people who want to go into philosophy or one of the humanities and that needs to change. This will sound like, maybe these two things are related, maybe they're not, but do you think this attitude has both contributed to militant atheism and also because of militant atheism, that's why we're seeing a resurgence in apologetics? Do you see a circle there or the different points? Well, Pascal said in the Ponsays, atheism shows a strength of mind, but only to a certain extent. And what he meant was, I think, that in his day, to be an atheist, meant you were different and you had to give arguments. You had to support it. And I think today, the new atheists are giving arguments and they are very militant about it. And part of their fuel is the Christians who say, I just believe and I know the Bible is true in my heart. So they're easy targets for any kind of a philosophical atheist, but the responses to the new atheism have been very powerful. And I think you're right. It's a good point that it's sparked more apologetic engagement because you have Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins on television selling tons of books. And they don't pull any punches. They don't say, well, Christianity has some good points, but we think atheism is a little bit better. They're saying things like Christianity is utterly irrational. Faith is opposed to reason. And Dawkins has even said, I don't think religious people should be allowed to raise to educate their own children. He's made very inflammatory statements like that. But we've always had a need for apologetics. Anytime someone says, I don't believe because it's irrational or I don't believe because it makes no sense, then we should engage that person lovingly and thoughtfully. What would be some of your recommendations for specifically responses to the new atheism, either by Christians or I'm trying to Burlinski, I guess he's a Jewish fellow. Somebody like that who's thrown their hat in and defended at least theism. What would you recommend? Well, there's so many responses to atheism proper and to the new atheism. It's blow my own horn. I've got about 200 pages of natural theology in my book, Christian Apologetics. But you mentioned Burlinski, who is a Jewish agnostic. He wrote a book several years ago called The Devil's Delusion. And he gives very strong arguments against atheism in four intelligent designs. So I really like the book. I do too. He's quite a character. I met him and he's very urbane and witty. When you hear him being interviewed or you see him on a video, I encourage people to do that. He doesn't seem to like Sam Harris very much. No. No, I think the more knowledgeable and balanced agnostics and atheists realize that there's more heat than light in Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. Terry Eagleton wrote a book criticizing Hawkins and Harris. And Terry Eagleton's a Marxist atheist, but he said they don't even get Christianity right. And they're not duly respectful towards the tradition. Yeah. That's good. Well, we're glad you could spend a few minutes with us. And again, for our audience, our audience runs into anti-intellectualism a lot. I get a lot of email. We get a lot of interaction with people who I had this question in church and I got shut down. I was told to don't think too much about this. That's dangerous. Just have faith. Right, that sort of thing. So I wanted to have a well-known. And certainly, you're publishing. You're not only publishing for your students and under peer review, but you're trying to produce some material for the average person. Oh, definitely. Definitely. And also, I think one of the best books you could read on this would be my friend JP Merlin's book, Love Your God With All Your Mind. It's now out in a second edition. Tremendous developing a theology of the intellect and then how to think critically, how to engage in apologetics, how to create a culture of learning in your church, which we often lack, sadly. Have you read any of the books associated with kind of reinventing the scholar-pastor role yet? You're thinking of the book, The Pastor Theologian? Yeah. I've read parts of those and I support the idea. A pastor should be a thinker and should be a public intellectual for the cause of Christ. And we shouldn't separate scholarship and the pastor. Augustine was a pastor. Lutheran, rather, Calvin was a pastor. Jonathan Edwards was a pastor. And theology is really for the church. And then the church goes out into the world and defends it. Yeah. Well, thanks for your time. You're welcome. Thank you. Well, we're back at ETS and we're with Andy Nacelli, some of you might recall that we interviewed Andy last year. And for those who didn't hear that, we're going to ask him to introduce himself again, give us a little self-introduction, who you are, where you teach, what your degree is in, what you teach, that sort of thing. My name is Andy Nacelli and I am Associate Professor of New Testament and Theology at Bethlehem College and Seminary in Minneapolis. And I'm one of the elders of Bethlehem Baptist Church. So we're a church-based school. Some people might know the name John Piper. So he was the pastor of our church for over 30 years and he's a chancellor of our school. And it's a delight to be a pastor in that church while shepherding students. And I teach New Testament theology and ethics. And let's love, love, love what I get to do. It's a dream. So I teach research right, shepherd. I love it. What's your academic background? Yeah, I went to a Bible college and then to Bob Jones University for an MA in Bible and a PhD in theology. And then I went to Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in the Chicago area for another PhD. And that one is in New Testament, Acts of Jesus in Theology. And I did that one with D.A. Carson. So I worked for Don for almost 10 years as his assistant. And it's kind of like us getting to clerk for like a Supreme Court justice. Like for a New Testament guy, it's pretty cool. Right, right. Yeah, it would be. Well, you have a new book. So tell us about that. So the latest one is called No Quick Fix. And it's a book about higher life theology. So I try to explain the history behind it to tell the story of it and then explain what it is and then I evaluate it. Well, let's start with what it is. Then you can get into a little history. But so for someone like, what in the world's higher life theology? It has different names. Some call it let go and let God theology or Kezik theology. So the basic idea is that in the Christian life, there are different stages of Christians. So in the comic world, thank you, you got Clark Kent and Superman. There's like the normal average, you know, failing Christian. And then there's the above average, you know, succeeding, successful, victorious Christian. Some call it the higher life or the deeper life or the abundant life or the second blessing all kinds of different terms for it. But the key issue is that there are two distinct kinds of Christians and you can experience something that elevates you from stage one to stage two. And is this drift over into, you know, the old charismatic baptism of the Holy Spirit kind of thing or is it different? Okay. So the Pentecostalism has a view of this stage one, stage two as well. And for them, the key to moving between those is a baptism of the spirit. Some say it results in speaking in tongues or something like that. So yes, it's similar, but not the same thing. Same thing. Wesleyanism has a two-stage approach where the stage two is entire perfection or Christian perfection. There's another similar version that Dallas Theological Seminary in its early days taught. Lewis Perry Chafer was a theologian. He was one of the co-founders of Dallas Seminary where the stage one is that you're a carnal Christian and stage two is your spirit filled. And what moves you from stage one to stage two is experiencing a crisis of dedication.  So Kezik Theology or Higher Life Theology says that what moves you from stage one to stage two is a crisis of consecration, which equals letting go and letting God. So it's kind of a passive, it's not me and just trusting Jesus to do it all and then boom, you enter the stage two. Is this some sort of, you know, when I hear let go, let God, you know, let Jesus do everything, I naturally wonder, well, where does that fit into obedience and sanctification? How is it or is it similar to something like you'd read about in the East where you have these sort of meditative plateaus?  The phrase like go and let God is so plastic and it's, so it can mean so many different things to different people. So what Kezik Theology meant was very specific. So that's good you point that out. I like the phrase that Jay Packer recommends, trust God and get going. So yeah, we want to be trusting God. Absolutely, faith in Jesus. Yes, yes, yes, yes, and actively pursue that growth. There's no passivity about it. What's the history, you know, behind this? Yeah, the father of these movements that distinguish between these stage one, stage two Christians is John Wesley. And then that moved on to other people within Wesleyanism. And then there are different branches after that. There's Charles Finney and Asa Mahan are one branch and there are other versions of Christian perfection that is kind of coalesced into the Kezik movement in 1875. They're someone named Hannah Wittlesmith and her husband Robert Purcell Smith were kind of precursors to the Kezik movement. But 1875 is when it all came together. Kezik, it's spelled K-E-S-W-I-C-K. The W is silent. It's a place in the Northwest part of England where they had their first convention and it became known as the Kezik Convention. And that first generation went until about 1920. That encapsulates the higher life theology I'm talking about. Later on in the Kezik Convention's history, it changed its views and became more reformed in its views such that I'm gonna gotta only be in England for the first half of next year and the director of Kezik invited me to speak there in July. Wow. Knowing what I've written. Sure. I declined because I'm coming back in June. But that would have been cool. Yeah, really. So let's talk a little bit evaluatively. In your book, how do you assess this whole thing and how other than sort of a Wesleyan context, if it even is used anymore in a Wesleyan context, but where do you see this kind of thinking? So how do you evaluate it and then who's sort of representative of this now? Or something like that? Yeah. It's actually pretty common right now in certain circles of evangelicalism and a subset of evangelicalism is fundamentalism. That was part of my background and it was very common there. Evaluating it, I think in my book I give 10 critiques which I preface with genuinely saying I'm thankful for many good things about the people in this movement who loved God, wanted to be holy. So there's so many good things about the people involved. Names that people would know like Hudson Taylor and Andrew Murray. Sure. ATG Mool, et cetera. So when I critique it that there's really one fundamental critique and everything else is secondary. The main critique is that this view of higher life theology separates justification from progressive sanctification. When I think that those two concepts are indissolubly connected, you can't separate them. If you genuinely experience justification, then God will be progressively sanctifying you. We can't disconnect those. We can't just join those. And that's essentially what this does. So you wouldn't have someone who has genuinely embraced the gospel. There's your justification element. It wouldn't be normative to have that person like not progress. Is that what you're saying? That should be sort of this organic process that every Christian should be experiencing. And you're saying that this idea kind of would let there be a category of non-progression that all of a sudden it hits. Or is that what you're getting at? I'm saying with reformers that the same faith that justifies a person is the same faith that progressively sanctifies that transforms that person. There's no category in the New Testament for someone who is a Christian, who bears absolutely no fruit and is permanently carnal. That's what I'm disagreeing with. And that's what higher life theology has a category for. Right, right. Yeah, that would be allowed to exist within the system. So how do you, in your book, how do you sort of get at that? What are some key passages? The key passage is Romans 6, which argues that a non-Christian is under, since tyranny, but after becoming a Christian, we're no longer slaves of sin. We don't have to serve sin anymore. That's the whole point of Romans 6 is saying, sin is no longer your master. You have another master, righteousness, Jesus, and you are not to serve sin anymore. You're not a slave to sin. The way higher life theology frames it makes it sound like you could be a slave to sin. So there are other passages I work through, like 1 Corinthians 2 and 3, talking about the carnal spiritual Christian and Ephesians 5, 18. What does it mean to be filled by the Spirit? John 15, a Biden Christ. What does this mean? And I argue in those passages that none of them have a category for a permanently carnal Christian that is fleshly in every way. Everyone is fleshly in some ways, and God is sanctifying us out of those, never sinlessly till glorification. And with Ephesians 5, 18, be filled by the Spirit. And John 15, a Biden Christ. I'd argue that those are saying that you can progressively increase in how you obey those commands. I think every Christian is filled by the Spirit to some degree. Every Christian abides in Christ to some degree. I don't think those are mystical categories that, oh yeah, an elite number of Christians obey, and everyone else doesn't do it. So you've used the word mystical and mysticism a couple of times. Is this where you see other than fundamentalism, which is, again, a small sector of believing Christianity, do you think this sort of idea has influence in, you know, we could say Christian mysticism, but like a common pejority would be like evangelical Gnosticism. I mean, you see these sorts of phrases on the internet in both sort of descriptions of hey, here's who we are and also critiques of some group or some movement or some person or some book or some idea. So give us, is there a more popular, something wider than the fundamentalist context, somebody that we would sort of have heard of or maybe a book or something like that that you either suspect or you really believe is sort of caught up in this idea and perpetuating it. Well, now you're testing my pop cultural knowledge, which is very low, very sparse. And I have friends and acquaintances and people I don't know ask me all the time this question of, you know, is this person Kesik? Is this person Kesik? And my answer is I, there's so many pop people teaching today, writing pop-level books and I'm just not familiar enough to say, yeah, here's a perfect example, but the basic gist that's present all over the place. Let's approach it a little bit differently. Would there be sort of famous teachers or preachers that would let the category of, here's a Christian, they never grow, they never show any fruit, they let that category exist and then they have a second category. Yeah, are you familiar with the Lordship Salvation debate that happened in the 80s, 90s? Yeah, it feels old, but yes. So the people advocating for what they called non-Lordship Salvation would fit into what I'm disagreeing with. Okay.  Doesn't mean you obey him perfectly, but he's your master. You can't have one without the other.  I'm trying to remember that. Who's the guy here at ETS that's sort of known for this now, Wilkin? Yes, that's the Grace Evangelical Theological Society. Okay. And that's exactly what they argue. Okay. Non-Lordship Salvation. All right, so can you talk just about that society or that movement just a little bit more before we wrap up? Somebody in our audience may not have heard of that, or maybe they have. So their basic take is a two-step view of the Christian life, which means there's a permanently carnal, there's a category for a permanently carnal Christian, someone who's bearing no fruit. And they argue essentially what Lewis Berry Chaffer argued, and then take that a step further, such that even people like Charles Ryrie wouldn't line up with them in every degree. So give an example, on the issue of repentance, that group is well known for saying the Greek word for repentance is metanoia. And they would argue that the etymology of that word is change of mind. And they'd say it means change of mind and only the mind, nothing else, that the word means you just simply change your mind about who Jesus is, factually. Who was he? And once you agree, you were sent in your mind to those facts that's sufficient for repentance of its change of mind. And I would argue along with most theologians throughout Church history that repentance is a change of mind that results in a change of life.  It's an actual turning from sin. That's not simply a change of your mind. It's a lecture about who Jesus is. That's what I expected of that. Yeah, it's a much wider net. All right, well, we hope that the book does well. It's by Aleksandre Press. So what's the title again? Just to remind everybody. No Quick Fix. No Quick Fix by Enny Nacelli. Thanks for spending some time with us again this year. My pleasure. Thank you, Mike. Well, we're back at ETS and we have a special guest with us. We have Dr. Maurice Robinson. Here to share some time with us. And I'm going to let Dr. Robinson introduce himself. Where your degree is from, what you spent your career doing. And then we'll just use that as a springboard. Okay, well, I'm glad to be here and able to do the podcast. And as far as where my degree is from, my terminal degree was at Southwestern Baptist Seminary in Fort Worth. And my major area was in New Testament textual criticism. And I did my doctoral dissertation on the singular readings in Greek manuscripts of the Book of Revelation. So that's part of my background. Otherwise, I can tell you a little bit about my own background. I'm actually a Yankee. I was born in Massachusetts, but grew up in Florida. So you're sort of home? My relatives, I still have relatives up in Massachusetts. So well, Dr. Robinson, you're known very widely in the academic community and even broader than that for probably being the chief voice, defending a Byzantine majority text. So if you could again, explain what that means and why your work is different than maybe other textual critics. Well, there's a lot of complicated things that could be talked about. But to keep it really simple, the current so-called critical texts, which are usually the Nessah-Lyland text or the United Bible Society's text, which tend to be used as the textbooks in Bible colleges and seminaries, tend to be based on what is called reasoned eclecticism. And they have a preference to follow the earliest manuscripts only because the presumption is that the earlier the manuscript, the closer the text is to the autograph and therefore the better the text. And those are the Alexandrian? Right. That is primarily the Alexandrian text, although there's another text called the Western text, which is also equally early with the Alexandrian. But it is not usually favored because it has so many wild and crazy readings. I favor the Byzantine text, which really doesn't show up until later manuscripts. But the problem is that if you go to the church fathers of the fourth century, you will find the Byzantine text being used by them. And this would include Chrysostom. It would be Basil of Caesarea. And you have later, you'd have Gregory of Nessah, Gregory Nazianzus. And they're all using the Byzantine text without even a hint that that might have been a new development. So they are apparently using a text that was already well known prior to the fourth century. And there are other reasons, they're a little bit complicated, but there are other reasons for preferring the text found in the later manuscripts in view of that early patristic support. And also in the terms of the localization of texts, the Alexandrian text comes primarily from the Egyptian region, if we could allow any geographical assignment to that because of where the papyri was found. Can you put a number on that? Like how many Byzantine majority readings show up in church fathers of the fourth or fifth centuries? Has anybody counted that? I can't put the number on it because I don't work with the church fathers. But John Bergen cataloged all of the biblical quotations in the church fathers in the first five or six centuries. And he came up with over 86,000 quotations. And of those he said the Byzantine text was being quoted in a three to two proportion, which means about 60 percent of their readings were quoting the Byzantine text, whereas 40 percent of their readings were quoting either the Alexandrian, Western or just some independent variety of texts. That's really interesting because my field is Semitic and Old Testament. And you have this none of the texts, for lack of a better term, families or types. You've got Samaria and Pentateuch. What was underneath the Septuagint? You've got the majority texts, but they all hit the same chronological wall because of Qumran. And it sounds like that's sort of the same situation. Well, the Byzantine text hits that wall in terms of our actual Greek manuscripts. We have only a very few Greek manuscripts that actually date from before the fourth century, and they're all papyri. Almost all of them are very highly fragmented. And the most complete ones that we have would be ones like the P66, papyrus 66 of the Gospel of John or papyrus 75, which has about half of Luke and half of John. And others are just extremely fragmentary. And they're all found in the sands of Egypt or in Southern Palestine because of the climate issue. Papyrus won't survive in a damp climate. Are there any pre-Nicene Church father readings that use the Byzantine majority? Well, there are because that's what Bergen's catalog was. So it went back. The 86,000 quotations went all the way up to about the fifth or sixth century, but the bulk of them actually were coming from the fourth century and earlier. Okay. When we get into the Byzantine majority text discussion or just New Testament textual criticism, but especially Byzantine majority, the subject of the textus receptis comes up. So if you can summarize, what's the relationship between the TR and the Byzantine majority text? Most people are familiar with the TR as being the Greek printed text that underlies either the King James Version or its predecessors, whether it's the Bishops Bible, the Geneva Bible, or even the Tyndall Bible. And it's very close to the Byzantine, but not exactly because some of the readings in the textus receptis actually come from a minority of Greek manuscripts, a very small minority in certain places. And some even come from the Latin without any Greek support. The whole Erasmus issue. Yeah. They raised some of these issues because Erasmus, Jan Kranz had written a book on Erasmus and visa as conjectural critics because of certain conjectures they made in their own printed editions of the textus receptis that had no Greek manuscript support. But if you're talking in terms of overall comparison, the textus receptis is probably about 98 and a half percent identical with the Byzantine text, which is a closer relationship than say the Byzantine against the critical text or the textus receptis against the critical text, where they are probably at about only a 94% agreement. It's still extremely high, which is why we have a reliable text in virtually all of these editions. The only question is in that last 6% between the critical text and the Byzantine or the last 1.5% between the TR and the Byzantine, which readings are more likely original? Now would your argument or your position be, okay, don't use the Alexandrian material, don't do that reason eclecticism stuff, use the Byzantine majority or are you saying we should use all of this and give equal weight to the Byzantine majority? How would you articulate your position? No, the equal weight argument would be something like what David Allen Black or Harry Sturs would hold where they considered all three of the major text types, Byzantine, Western and Alexandria, to basically be equal in authority and then they would go with usually a majority, two out of three majority of those. My position on the Byzantine text is to follow exclusively the Byzantine reading and I have various reasons for it, some of them get complicated, but I follow primarily the Byzantine text all the time and I think we should be aware of what is in the Western text and what's in the Alexandrian text, which also means be aware of what's in the various other printed editions, whether it's the critical text or even the text's receptors. We should know what they do read and why I would reject certain of their readings on the basis of my Byzantine priority position. Now you brought up the name Bergen and his name usually gets used right or wrong by King James only advocates, so what's your position on that? How would you talk to someone if you don't side with the King James only crowd? How do you talk to someone in that camp to get them to think differently? Well, I obviously am not in the King James or the Textus Receptus only type camp and I consider it a mistake on their part mainly because they don't seem to read Bergen for what he says because Bergen clearly says he's not trying to establish the King James or the Textus Receptus as totally perfect and in numerous places throughout his actual published works he says here this is where the TR is wrong and if the TR is wrong at that point then the King James would be wrong at that point as well and he has very many readings that he cites where he clearly states that he would not support the TR or King James at those points although he says for public reading in churches he did happen to prefer the King James version but for actual study he would say no there are places where it's wrong and the current King James only and Textus Receptus only people seem to overlook that when they try to elevate Bergen as one of their supporters he simply is not. Can you give us an example or two of where Byzantine majority emphasis helps you know resolve some issue like what role might it play that I'm just this is random now if these aren't good examples don't don't get distracted but like John chapter five I believe it's around verse four right you know the the stirring of the waters does it help there the the ending of Mark problem I mean how would the Byzantine majority approach really sort of resolve that or be you know equally coherent if one is following a Byzantine priority approach then all of these passages are present in text the ending of Mark the short ending only appears I mean ending at 168 they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid only appears in two old manuscripts the UBS edition cites another 13th century manuscript 304 but 304 actually has as James snap has demonstrated on his blog site it has a commentary of the awful act that just simply was not finished and it breaks off at 168 so it should not really even count and on the John five passage yes the Alexandrian texts these earlier manuscripts do omit the angel stirring the pool and the first one to go in would be healed of whatever disease he had but the Byzantine manuscripts all have this and there may have been reasons for omitting that and that might be something to do with for example Paul talked about the question of possibly illegitimate worship of angels and so there could be considerations that are theological that would lead to the omission and usually the commentaries that favor the Alexandrian text omitting at that point say the Byzantine added it because they were just adding in some local legend but if they did that then where are all these other local legends that aren't getting added in and why did that one get added in the other thing that's curious about that is later in the passage where there isn't a textual problem say it's the same things referred to right the stirring of the water which is a problem later on in verse seven of that chapter five of John Jesus says to him do you want to be made well and he says I have no one to put me in when the water is stirred right right and if you leave the passage out then that doesn't make any sense because if I were the reviser that had removed that passage I didn't do a very good job I would have gone to verse seven and I would say do you want to be made well and he said yes Lord it would have been an easy scribal revision but it never was made there's no manuscripts that omit or change it at verse seven at that point. Let's let's shift a little bit into some more contemporary things do you have an opinion I'm not asking you for insight or information but do you have an opinion on I guess it's probably been the last two or three years about supposedly a fragment you know the new testament that goes back to the first century you know Dan Wallace has mentioned this and I think Craig Evans mentioned it a couple times any opinion on that? I have an opinion that I'd like to see it with everybody else. We've been waiting for several years now for it to come out and there's been speculation that maybe it's part of the green collection at the museum of the bible and maybe they're going to announce or publish something but we don't even know if green has it Dan Wallace knows something but he had to sign a nondisclosure agreement so we don't know what's going on with that and if the stories that have been told about it are correct it was supposedly a fragment that was used as mummy cartonage in a mummy mask in Egypt and apparently because of the date of the mummy that's why they could determine that this was made in the first century now maybe correct it may not but until it's open for actual scholarly examination and scrutiny we can't really say much of anything I would love to have a first century fragment of Mark but unless I see what happens all I can say is right now we have no actual evidence do you think I don't know too much about it because my field is not New Testament textual criticism but last year we talked to Peter Gurry and his again new methodology or new means of classification or sorting out I mean what do you think of some of the newer developments are they going to change the way scholars look at sort of the buckets are they going to change any of the buckets or is it something that's less fundamental this new method is called the cbgm and it stands for coherence based genealogical method which is basically the creation of Gerd Mink over at Munster where they create the nesolalan text and it's based on a computerized program that once you plug in the proper information you run it through the computer and it gives out a diagram of the textual flow of all the manuscripts at that point and it does this for each individual variant reading at a different point within a given chapter or book and the trouble is very few people understand it including myself and the data the program itself has not been made fully public so we have no way to really evaluate it now Peter Gurry has actually worked with it his dissertation was on that and he's had access to it that other people have not had and whatever he says is probably based on a lot more knowledge of it than I have but I am extremely skeptical of it what are they trying to detect is it are they trying to detect patterns in manuscript problems or scribal it's a part of copying mistakes or a new method that it goes to some of the research that Klaus Wachtel has done where basically instead of having individual text types like we've been talking about Alexandria and Byzantine and Western the new concept is that there really is only one text and that variations within it flow in different directions and then manuscripts tend to group and cluster together according to the way that textual flow went but it's the idea of eliminating text types and trying to get back to the archetype manuscript which they term in German the initial text the Ausgang's text from which all other variant readings at a given point may have derived and it's a supposed improvement upon the traditional practice of textual criticism which for most people is called reasoned eclecticism where you are looking at external evidence and internal evidence and trying to get a balance between the two and this CBGM works strictly with the external evidence and then once the data comes out then the researcher can then apply his own internal evidence to try to evaluate it yeah I I guess if Peter were here I'd want to know what does flow mean and what about the assumption that there is an or text or an Ausgang text the flow is really just trying to say what reading was the mother of the readings that go in one direction or the mother of the readings that go in another direction so it's actually making comparisons trying it's comparing all of the manuscripts to try to determine from computer which reading wow which reading produced all the other ones and then they create a whole tree of descent of the manuscripts saying that the manuscripts down at the bottom of the tree are the ones that are the furthest removed from that initial text where the ones up to the top of the tree are the closest to the original text okay I you just made me a little more skeptical yeah well I mean so much so much for any intuition I hope so because I'm skeptical myself so all right if Peter listens to this Peter will have that conversation I'm sure he will well well thanks for sharing you know what you do I we should alert people again who've had some Greek and are interested in this where can they get copies of the Byzantine majority text I've worked for Lagos so we have that in digital of course in the software but for people who like to handle books where would they go well digitally first of all it's available by almost all software products and Bible works has it Lagos has it accordance has it and I'm there's several of these others out there that have it we released our Byzantine text in the public domain so anybody can use it right but as far as the printed copies the 2005 original printed copy as far as I can tell is totally out of print and the only way to get it is online in a PDF is that the is that on the new website it's on the new Byzantine website that is being posted over in Denmark Ulrich Peterson is handling that and I've been working with Ulrich Peterson and his assistant is Daniel Mount and Daniel Mount is putting together in fact a collection of my essays and published articles to be printed in the book eventually and but that new website has not only the volumes of the 2005 edition it has a PDF of the Readers edition that came out in 2010 and the Readers edition has not only the Greek text but has all the verbs parsed and it has basic lexicon entries for all of them so all of that can be obtained from the website but in printed form right now I think the Readers edition can still be had maybe through Amazon but it's being published in Germany so that's the question that's publishing on demand I think but I think you might be able to find it on the internet and we are going to come out with a new edition of the Greek New Testament not the Readers edition but a new edition of the Greek New Testament in a paperback format that's about the same size as the United Bible Society's edition and that's being published in Germany as well it should come out sometime next year I hope early next year for listeners my website you know I blogged about the new website and Ulrich is someone I know because we've worked with him through Lagos and he gave me a heads up about that and asked me to post it which we did so listeners should be aware of that go up to drmsh.com and just put in the word Byzantine and you're going to find it so if you want access to that site you could google it you could use that means but you'll you'll be able to find it and get the materials you want so thanks again for spending some time with us glad to do it thanks all right mike those were four great interviews I'm glad Hugh Ross cleared up the Pluto issue for me and it's no longer a dilemma there you go you heard it yeah and other than those four interviews mike we've attended a couple of papers what did you think about the last couple that we went to about technology and nanotech yeah it was a bioethics section and the first paper was on sort of the ethics of creating chimeras and then there was one sort of focused a little bit more on synthetic biology uh you know new advances in you know genetic technology and whatnot uh you know to be honest with you I you know I thought the q and a for both of those was actually more interesting than the paper it's interesting to hear people interact with what the speaker said uh because you know I was a little bit familiar probably more with the uh the chimera the transhumanist one than the other one but you know when people sort of probe what the speaker's saying with questions it's it's just more helpful I think actually for the synthetic biology one the way it ended about hey you know is there a really a difference if we can build life from the ground up is that really life or human life or you know creation life or can we even use a word of creation about it should we use something else maybe building or making or something like that well that's what I was hoping the whole paper would be but since it ended that way you know we had some good discussion afterwards so I think you know I can say I'm glad that we went to both learned a few things and of course got exposed to some some scholars working in these areas that they consider important stay tuned for part two and uh want to thank everybody for listening to the naked bible podcast god bless thanks for listening to the naked bible podcast to support this podcast visit www.nakedbibleblog.com to learn more about dr heizer's other websites and blogs go to www.brmsh.com