Dancing with the distinguished professor--Post II
(Originally published at What's Wrong With the World. Link to original post at 'permalink' below.)
"The Question" about "Before Abraham was, I am" and "I and the Father are one"
While preparing for this debate on Unbelievable (podcast here, previous analysis post on the debate here), I had hoped that it would be possible to get Dr. Evans to admit his views about Jesus' sayings and the incidents surrounding them, if not immediately then at least fairly early on, by means some carefully worded questioning, and that at that point we could move on as quickly as possible to having a forthright debate about the historicity of John.
I was wrong. During the entire first portion of the debate, Evans took extra time (at a certain point his time spent talking compared to mine was at nearly a 2 to 1 ratio) to talk in obscure, dodgy terms about his views, to say obfuscating things such as, "The Gospel of John is indeed historical, but it's a mixture," and to misrepresent his own statements in 2012.
I did attempt to pin him down and clarify some of the issues between us. At minute 12:30ff, I asked this:
I would like to get you to state clearly what your position is concerning the historicity of, for example, the dialogue where Jesus is talking to the Jewish people and ends it by saying, "Before Abraham was, I am." And then they throw stones. And I just want to clarify before you answer that: I am not asking whether John quoted these things word-for-word or verbatim, but I am asking whether that incident occurred in addition to anything in the synoptics in an historically recognizable fashion.
Justin at this point (and I'm grateful to him for trying to get me more of an opportunity to speak), does not throw the ball back to Craig Evans but rather asks me why I think this is an important matter. What with my answer to that, more lengthy talk from Evans (in which he does not answer the question), and commercial breaks, etc., I do not return to pressing the question and getting Evans's answer until about minute 22:17. There I state what is obviously intended to be the same question like this:
And again, as I said before, I'm not asking whether you think that this is recorded verbatim. What I am asking, let's just take those two cases, and I'd kind of like to get a clear yes or no. Do you think that those two incidents, where Jesus was in these places, was having these discussions, these dialogues, and culminated by saying in the one case, "Before Abraham was, I am," and in the other case "I and the Father are one" and then they went to stone him. Do you think that those incidents, where he said those things, occurred in a recognizable way in history? What is your opinion on that?
And Evans answers, "I think they did." (Minute 22:53)
It is difficult to see how my question could have been clearer. I worded it at such length and with so many qualifying phrases specifically with the intent to rule out, unequivocally and openly, the so-called "broad paraphrase" or "broad ipsissima vox" view, according to which Jesus presented himself as God implicitly in the ways described in the synoptic Gospels instead of the relatively more explicit statements reported in John, and according to which these incidents in the Gospel of John were invented in order to "make explicit" what was implicit in Jesus' sayings and deeds as recorded in Mark. Michael Licona has expressed this position like this:
Stated differently, John will often recast Jesus saying something explicitly the Synoptics have Him saying implicitly. For example, one does not observe Jesus making his “I am” statements in the Synoptics that are so prominent in John, such as “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). That’s a pretty clear claim to deity. Mark presents Jesus as deity through His deeds and even some of the things He says about Himself. But nothing is nearly as overt as we find in John. Granted, the Synoptics do not preserve everything Jesus said. However, in all four Gospels, Jesus is cryptic in public even pertaining to His claim to be the Messiah. In Matthew 16:16-20 // Luke 9:20-21, Jesus charged His disciples that they should tell no one that He is the Messiah. In Luke 4:41, Jesus would not allow the demons to speak because they know He is the Messiah. In John 10:23-25, Jesus is walking in the temple when some Jews gathered around Him and said, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” Now, if Jesus was hesitant to announce publicly that He is the Messiah, we would not expect for Him to be claiming to be God publicly and in such a clear manner as we find John reporting.
That statement, by the way, was made by Licona in defense of none other than Craig A. Evans, last fall, when Evans's comments in the 2012 debate came to light. There can be little doubt that Licona is attributing this position to Evans and is providing arguments that he says are the reasons why scholars take Evans's position concerning these "overt" claims to deity in John. Indeed, he even said at that time that he himself "wouldn't go as far as" Evans.
In a very recent debate with Bart Ehrman, though without naming Evans, Licona makes a similar statement of the so-called "ipsissima vox" position concerning these claims to deity, which Ehrman was pushing Licona about:
So what Mark does is he gives us a literary portrait of Jesus, of Jesus claiming to be God through his deeds. Whereas what I think in John’s gospel, and virtually every single Johannine scholar will say, that John is giving us a paraphrase. He’s taking Jesus’ stuff and he’s restating it in Johannine idiom. And many will say that John takes what Jesus would have said and done implicitly and he restates it in an explicit manner. So did Jesus actually make some of these divine claims explicitly, word-for-word, like he does in John? Who knows? But whether he did or not is irrelevant. He still made claims through his actions and the things that he did that came to the same thing.
Since I knew that this confusing position concerning John and the synoptics is current among scholars, and since I believed that it was Evans's own position based upon his 2012 comments, I worded my questions extremely carefully so that he should have answered "no" if he holds the position described by Licona concerning these two sayings. Not only did I go on at length describing the scenes, not only did I ask if they (including the sayings) occurred recognizably in history, not only did I emphasize twice that I was not asking if the scenes occurred verbatim, I also expressly stated in my first statement of the question that I was asking whether these incidents occurred in addition to anything in the synoptics. I emphasized this again at about 26:15. If John is merely creating quite different scenes that are meant to express theological content expressed only implicitly in historical scenes reported in the synoptics, then the scenes reported in John did not occur in addition, in history.
In 2012, Bart Ehrman emphasized, as he often does, the alleged tension between John and the synoptics given the absence of these relatively overt claims to deity in John. This is part of Ehrman's stock in trade. I have not transcribed these comments by Ehrman, but you can watch them here, beginning at about minute 1:03:18. Ehrman's entire emphasis is upon these sayings, the sayings in which Jesus claims his deity most clearly in John. When he returned to the attack on John in discussion with Evans just a half an hour later, he was harping on the same theme.
[I]n the Gospel of John, Jesus says a lot of “I am” sayings, very famous sayings, “Before Abraham was, I am,” “I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the father but by me,” I am the bread of life, I am the light of the world,” etc. These “I am” sayings, and, at once point, of course, he says, “The father and I are one.” So, my question to you is, do you think the historical Jesus really said these things?
While he throws in a few of the "I am" sayings with predicates, he brackets the entire list with claims to deity, the second of which is not even an "I am" saying. This, again, is harking back to the argument he made just shortly before.
Evans answers,
I think most of these things were not uttered as we find them by the historical Jesus. So I suspect we don’t have too much difference on John. My view is the gospel of John is a horse of another color altogether. It’s a different genre. John is often compared to the wisdom literature. It’s like Wisdom is personified. Chokhmah, lady Wisdom, or in Greek, Sophia. She wanders the streets. She calls out to people, she does things. Well, nobody would read that and think, “Oh, did you see Wisdom going down the street the other day.” Nobody would think that is a literal person.
Not only does this falsify (as I pointed out in the last post) Evans's eye-popping statement that Bart did not even ask him about "Before Abraham was, I am" and that these sayings were not even in question. It also gives the extremely strong impression that Evans agrees with him about those sayings, which were of such great interest to Ehrman.
That is undeniably the way that Licona took Evans, or he would not have defended him as he did, with arguments that apply only to Jesus' unique claims to deity in John. (The argument that Jesus would have been more cryptic about his identity as God really says nothing either way about a metaphoric statement like, "I am the true vine.") It is also the way that New Testament scholar Rob Bowman apparently understood Evans, when these remarks came out last fall, for he defended at that time, in response to the controversy, not only the historicity of Jesus' "I am" sayings with predicates (such as "I am the bread of life") but also the historicity of his claims to deity, such as "Before Abraham was, I am." Bowman's is a good article and well worth reading.
In a podcast released just this month, on May 2, Mike Licona alludes to this same matter again, naming Evans and quite clearly implying that Evans's position applies to those statements of Jesus in John that are pertinent to his deity (minute 9:18):
So, whether Jesus made the I am statements in John's Gospel. Look, admittedly it's a difficult matter. And honestly, I don't know if he did. If someone put a gun to my head and said, "Did he say these statements," I would probably weigh slightly on the side to say, "Probably not,"...But I can understand why most Johannine specialists think that he did not. So for example, my HBU colleague Craig Evans...he doesn't think Jesus made some of those I am statements in John. However, he has no problem thinking that...Jesus regarded himself as God.
Despite the phrase "some of," this is once again clearly alluding to the relatively more overt statements by Jesus of his deity in John and to the position Licona has spelled out elsewhere.
There has not previously been any question among those who addressed this topic, on either side of the question of historicity, of Evans's making a sharp distinction between those "I am" statements with predicates that do not claim deity and "Before Abraham was, I am" which does. On the contrary, the explanations and arguments made have always assumed that Evans's so-called "loose paraphrase" or "broad ipsissima vox" position (described above) applies to both--if anything, even more to the deity claims, since they violate Jesus' supposed secrecy about his identity.
It was therefore quite surprising to me for Evans to say, when pinned down by my emphatically and carefully worded question, that he believes that "Before Abraham was, I am" and "I and the Father are one," with their scenes, occurred in a recognizable fashion separately from any incidents in the synoptics.
Leaving aside truly wild hypotheses such as alien intervention or inability to understand a question in one's native language, worded in a painfully explicit fashion, there are three hypotheses left:
1) Evans has changed his mind about these two sayings (though presumably not, as this very debate shows, about other "I am" sayings) in a very striking way since 2012, somehow did not happen to mention this change of mind to concerned inquirers last fall, and hasn't gotten around yet to telling his colleague Mike Licona, leaving him under a misimpression about his current view. In that case, of course, Evans should have acknowledged in the debate with me on Unbelievable that he has had a 180 change of mind on this matter. But he said nothing of the sort.
2) Evans was keeping a secret mental reservation in the 2012 debate with Ehrman, deliberately ignored Ehrman's emphasis upon Jesus' deity claims, so his answer to Ehrman applied only to the "I am" sayings with predicate at that time. This also left all the rest of us under a misimpression when those comments came to light.
3) Evans did not answer truthfully my question on April 11 concerning these two sayings.
Take your pick. Further evidence on this matter comes in this very debate at one hour and five minutes where Justin asks a good question about how Evans's view affects interactions with skeptics and supporting Jesus' claims to Lordship in interacting with skeptics. Evans immediately answers by saying that Jesus' divinity is expressed in all four Gospels and by Paul and therefore (1:05:37) the argument for Jesus' divinity does not just "ride on the Gospel of John and sayings we find there, however we are to understand their development and how they came to come into this form that we find them in John." (emphasis added) This sounds very much like the "broad ipsissima vox" view of the divinity claims in John, which was precisely what my question was designed to rule out. He then emphasizes again the "high Christology of the synoptics." This is particularly interesting, since it would be odd for him to make this response if he really does now believe that the more overt claims in John were uttered separately and recognizably, as he seemed to state in his earlier answer to my painstakingly-worded question.
But if you think 1 or 2 is true, then Evans should immediately clear matters up with Licona and others, so that Licona isn't out there wrongly attributing to Evans the "broad ipsissima vox" view. "No, Mike," he should say. "I actually believe that Jesus said 'Before Abraham was, I am' very much as recorded there. Oh, there might have been some slight wording difference, such as 'Before Abraham began to exist, I am.' And he was probably speaking Aramaic. Or he may have spoken at greater length asserting that he was the 'I am', while John recorded only a portion. A very narrow, modest concept of ipsissima vox may apply, as it may anywhere else. But Jesus made a very overt claim to deity both there when he had that debate about Abraham and said something very recognizable as, 'Before Abraham was, I am' and when he said, 'I and the Father are one.' The messianic secret argument doesn't work. Jesus did claim to be God in the relatively more overt and public manner that we find John reporting. John was not merely making explicit what was implicit in the incidents reported in Mark. Rather, John was historically reporting separate incidents that occurred, where Jesus made these more overt claims to deity, different from any events in the synoptics. I'm so sorry for the misunderstanding."
And he should make this public, so that no one else is confused and so that others do not continue attributing the "broad ipsissima vox" view to him concerning these two statements.
I'll wait here for that to happen. Let me know if it does.
A brief note on chreia
A point I should have put into the previous post: I have already dealt with Evans's extreme over-interpretation of the term "chreia" here. Contrary to what he stated with great confidence, there is no technical use of the term chreia that means that it was an accepted and encouraged practice of the time to write apparently historical documents that included invented sayings and incidents. The "pedagogic practices" to which Evans alludes were writing/rhetoric manuals that involved rewriting known sayings and anecdotes or using them in speeches as a rhetorical exercise. There is no good evidence in any event that the gospels were written according to the rhetorical practices taught in those manuals. The term chreia itself simply means "anecdote" and does not carry the kind of heavy meaning that Evans attributes to it. Nor is there any reason to accept his strange interpretation of Matthew 13:52--that Jesus was instructing his disciples to put words into his mouth. It is difficult to believe that anyone would think that that is what that verse means, but I am learning to put nothing past professional biblical scholars. Evans has apparently mastered the art of saying implausible things with great confidence, and repeating them over and over again as if they are the only possible conclusion anyone could draw from the data, so that some laymen hasten to agree with him, assuming that he must know what he is talking about. In any event, if you're interested in the chreia claims, please see the earlier post.
Shifting position within the course of the Unbelievable show
One of the most interesting aspects of the debate was the way that Evans's position on the historicity of John became clearer as the debate progressed. If you listened only to the first 2/3 or so, you would (I would guess) be puzzled and perhaps a bit frustrated about what he thinks. He would make foggy statements like, "[T]here are these interpretive elements" (minute 9:11), "It's not a question of just wild imagination" (9:20). Or (my favorite), "How he is summarized or paraphrased or elaborated on has to be true to the...entire context of his ministry, his teaching, and very true in light of the Easter event." (31:30) Whatever "very true in the light of the Easter event" means.
In general, though, the intention was to imply that Evans thinks John is mostly historical, contrary to what he said in 2012. For example, at minute 20. "John is an invaluable source...It is supplemental [to the synoptics]."
About 20:21 we have another of the many references to Wisdom: "There is this stylized teaching as Wisdom for many, many verses in a row." (See the previous post on the falsehood that there are many "I am discourses" in John that go on for "many many verses in a row.")
A shift begins to take place around minute 50, after Justin asks Evans whether several of the "I am" sayings (he happens to pick ones with predicates) were so-called "chreia" (on which, see here) rather than being historically said by Jesus. First (around minute 50:30) Evans makes a fairly blatant argument from silence against the historical occurrence of the "I am discourses" (whatever they are) from the fact that they don't occur in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. He tries to dodge back and claim that the mere fact that they aren't in the synoptics isn't what he's using to argue against their historicity, but in fact, it is exactly what he is using in this point to argue against the historicity of...something or other. As discussed in the previous post, the "I am discourses" in John are, with one exception (the Bread of Life discourse), a figment of Evans's imagination. This makes it conveniently difficult to figure out precisely what Evans is denying the historicity of, since he keeps talking about something that scarcely exists in John's Gospel anyway. Presumably the Bread of Life discourse. What else? He has listed (at about minute 18:30) the sayings that allegedly inaugurate these "discourses," even when these sayings don't actually inaugurate discourses, and he claims (51:15) that saying, "I am this," and "I am that" is a feature of the allegorical Lady Wisdom, so presumably it is these sayings whose historicity Evans is questioning. The ones he lists at 18:30 are "I am the light of the world," "I am the bread of life," "I am the way, the truth, and the life," "I am the good shepherd," and "I am the resurrection and the life." Now he says (51:13) that this "style of teaching" is "commonplace in John"--a rather large claim, which rhetorically widens his emphasis against the historicity of John to questioning a "commonplace style of teaching" in that Gospel rather than to just whether or not we have some long discourses "verbatim" and "top to bottom."
At minute about minute 1:01:17, after Justin has introduced the word "extrapolation" and asked if Evans is just "prepared to go a bit further" than I am, Evans ups the ante yet further. My comments are in brackets:
I suppose so, you could put it that way....You have virtually nothing (I think there's a few verses in Matthew 11 which could be exceptional) in Matthew, Mark, and Luke that sounds like and looks like Jesus in the Gospel of John. [LM: Note how broad this statement is. Now it's the general portrait of the Johannine Jesus that is being questioned.] And so we have to ask as historians at this point. Is it just some other Jesus we didn’t know about? [LM: Wow. Pretty emphatic.] Does Jesus just simply behave and talk very differently in some circumstances, maybe when he’s down south, when he's in Samaria, Judea, in and out of Jerusalem and Bethany, or is it a lot more to do with the way the evangelist chooses to write the story? [LM: So now it's generally the way Jesus behaves and talks in John, which Evans emphatically claims is very different from that of the synoptics]. And I opt with the latter. I think it’s the same Jesus, and I think he’s presented very differently, and I guess I’m counting votes, it’s three to one. Matthew, Mark, and Luke present him a certain way. John presents him in a different way. [LM: This is a breathtaking use of the argument from silence. It is particularly irresponsible given that "critical scholars" hold that there is a lot of literary dependence of various sorts among Matthew, Mark, and Luke. But now we are going to say something so crude as that we are "counting votes"?] And I suspect, given the parallels with Wisdom literature, for example, that John is presenting Jesus in a much more interpret(ive? ed?) light. He’s being more aggressive in the paraphrasing, the theological expansion, extrapolation is a good word too, it’s dramatic, it’s literary. But that doesn’t mean the history is lost, or that it no longer reflects what Jesus actually taught. [LM: The phrases in the previous sentence are absolutely classic dodges.] Sometimes the analogy I use is the parables. Jesus taught in parables, especially if we’re looking at Matthew, Mark and Luke, and by the way the parables as such don’t even appear in John. [LM: Evans is actually going somewhere else at this point--implying that John felt free to write a sort-of-parable of Jesus by following Jesus' own example of teaching in parable. But he can't resist pausing to insinuate that there is something fishy about John because it doesn't include the parables. He is here alluding to a point that is often urged against the historicity of John by "critical scholars." A sort of reverse argument from silence. When something is in John that isn't in the synoptics, we "count votes" against John. When something is in the synoptics but not in John, this also counts against John's historicity. Heads John loses; tails John loses.] But throughout Matthew, Mark, and Luke Jesus’s teaching is characterized by parables. Mark actually says Jesus did not teach without parables. [LM: In this post, Mike Licona, perhaps having gotten the argument from his colleague Evans, literally spins this verse about Jesus' "not teaching without parables" into an argument against the historicity of John, which is ludicrous. As though Mark or Matthew were literally saying that Jesus never taught without using a parable!] And parables are fictions. [LM: Um, yes, they are.] Some of them are very realistic and reflect the way people behave; some of them don’t. [LM: Actually, no, parables are not "very realistic" in anything remotely like the sense that John is "very realistic." Merely "reflecting the way people behave" does not come close to the detailed realism of John.] But the point is Jesus’s greatest teaching on the kingdom of God, who God is and how we should live is presented in parables. And I, in a sense that's what John is doing. [LM: In what sense?] Now, I wouldn’t say John is a parable, it’s not a fiction. [LM: Wait, what was my point again?] But what John's doing is it’s taking Jesus’s teaching and his activities. [LM: And doing what with them? Inventing them, which we're going to call a "parable, but it's not really a parable," because we don't like the word "fiction." But what else is inventing scenes, sayings, and discourses that did not occur in any recognizable fashion and presenting them in a realistic fashion?] And I would agree with the idea that the Holy Spirit deepens the understanding of John and the other disciples of Jesus especially in the post-Easter setting. [LM: I had anticipated and rebutted this idea of the work of the Holy Spirit at minute 55:05.] And so he’s presenting with hindsight Jesus as the very incarnation of God, the very incarnation of God’s wisdom and expansively interpreting Jesus’s sayings in light of that.
When I, in detail, affirm the unity of the portrayal of Jesus in John and in the synoptics, Evans does not agree. And he insinuates that I am "just assert[ing]" even though I gave a whole list of the types of similarities between Jesus in John and the synoptics. Does he deny that these exist? They can be documented. Here was what I said. (I'll be quoting this in the next post as well.)
1:07:50 The nature and personality of Jesus are clearly the same in all four Gospels. And I have many, many examples of this but here in the time we have I can’t give them in detail. His use of sarcasm, his modes of thought, his rapier-sharp wit, his love for his friends, his weeping with compassion, his ability to read thoughts, even his characteristic metaphors and turns of phrase, his use of object lessons. John’s presentation of Jesus is actually very strikingly the same as the synoptics. And the differences between them are exaggerated and incorrectly stated by critical scholarship. By the use of vivid vignettes, John shows us not an allegorical abstraction but a solid and intensely real person, and he is the same person we meet in the synoptic Gospels. And we can tell that by reading them. That’s not just something we believe by faith. That’s actually right there in the text and in the documents.
Evans is having none of it:
1:09:00 Evans: Well, I think that’s not a very realistic understanding of John, and that’s the reason why probably the vast majority of scholars don’t see it that way. John does present Jesus in a very different way. [LM: If anyone is "just asserting" here, it is Evans.] I agree that it is the same Jesus, but the portraits in John and the synoptics are very different. [LM: In other words, the only sense in which he "agrees that it is the same Jesus" is that he takes it that the same historical person somehow lies behind John's portrait. But he has already told us that the portrait is so different that, if we took the historicity of John's portrait seriously as historians, we'd have to wonder if it were a different person!] And I think we should take that difference into account. And just to assert that it’s the same thing just won’t do it. [LM: I did not "just assert."]
I am very glad that, at least in the last minutes of the show, Evans's true views about John came to light, and they are the same as what he stated in 2012--which is to say, he strongly questions the factual historicity and literal reliability of the Gospel of John and thinks that we should not try to harmonize John's Jesus with Jesus as portrayed in the synoptics. The main reason that it took that long is that the current modus operandi of the literary device theorists involves the creation of fog and confusion about what they are really saying. If you can waste the time of your critics even trying to get a clear proposition on the table about which you disagree, there will be less opportunity for the critics to present their positive case. Obfuscation is an unscholarly and unprofessional technique, and particularly ironic when used by those attempting to position themselves as the "real" scholars in biblical studies.
Dr. Evans was quite explicit in 2012 that he has a goal. That goal is to move "conservative Christians" in a particular direction concerning the Gospel of John. Evans emphasizes that many of the "I am" sayings "derive from Jesus" but "not because he walked around and said them" but rather because,
this community that comes together in the aftermath of Easter says, “You know what? This Jesus who said these various things, whose teaching we cling to and interpret and present and adapt and so on, he is for us the way, the truth, the life, the true vine. He is the bread of life,” and so on. And so that gets presented in a very creative, dramatic, and metaphorical way, in what we now call the Gospel of John.
Evans then explains his goal:
So I’m urging people here, traditional Christians or conservative Christians, to take a new look at John and not fret over how you can make it harmonize with the synoptic Jesus. That’s the way scholars usually talk. But to look at John as doing something else. It’s not a fourth synoptic Gospel, but it really is a different genre and has a different purpose and is going about the task in a very different way.
Evans believes that this dehistoricizing of John will actually help the church by making "conservative Christians" less vulnerable to Bart Ehrman and others. One could even say he's trying to help! In political terms, this is sometimes called "taking an issue away from the opposition." If we make a preemptive concession on some issue or issues, this is supposed to strengthen our position and/or focus our energy on other issues. Evans thinks that, if he can edge Christians away from the robust historicity of the Gospel of John, they will be less likely to lose their faith when challenged by skeptics. This is because he himself does not believe in the robust historicity of the Gospel of John. (And, though I have not talked about it as much, his chreia idea induces doubts about the robust historicity of at least some parts of the synoptic Gospels as well, though it's difficult to get him to say which parts.)
But neither the Christian in the pew nor many pastors will lightly accept the dehistoricization of John that Evans wants to propose, in which John is considered a "horse of a different color," a completely different genre from anything straightforwardly historical, a book that has only "nuggets" of history, and so forth.
Therefore, Evans must hedge and partially cover his views (at least at times) in a cloud of foggy terminology, combining a sort of academic bullying (using pseudo-technical terms like “chreia”) with obfuscation. In this way he may bring some people along gradually to the point that they are willing to give up the recognizable historicity of many if not all of the “I am” sayings in John, discourses in John, and an unspecified amount of other Johannine material.
I have already seen this process at work in others. Several years ago some people would have been disturbed and shocked at the idea of questioning the historicity of John to an extent that they are now seriously considering. Indeed, it would have been said to be "uncharitable" to attribute to any putatively evangelical scholar the views that Evans holds and is promoting.
My goal is ultimately positive--namely, to uphold the historicity of the Gospels. In pursuit of that positive goal, it is increasingly necessary to answer attacks on Gospel historicity, and sometimes that has to involve bringing to light the current views being promoted by scholars who might otherwise be trusted by Christian laymen, apologists, pastors, seminarians, and other scholars.
Let us all pursue truth vigorously, to the greater glory of God and the strengthening of His church.
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