Dear @Wookin_Panub,
Why are you promoting this so much? I have clicked three times on your links and it is not even available to listen to yet. Also, why should anyone invest so much time to listen to two guys?
Best Wishes, Shawn
It is absolute nonsense to think that Christianity can be separated from the Hebrew Scriptures. Not to mention that such a view reveals profound ignorance of the much older Messianic Faith that is preserved in texts of the Old and New Testaments.
Copy and paste works too, you know 
Furthermore. I cannot control that they keep pushing back the clock
I have not listened to the debate yet (am at work; thanks for the reference, @Wookin_Panub), but the sermons are not this extreme. I think that the drift is not, as some say, throwing away the OT; it’s focusing on Christ as the best revelation–something Christ himself said. . We had a discussion about this here , and below this is a link to an article that he is not a Marcionite–thus, doesn’t reject the God of the OT as someone else. Marcion and the first ecumenical councils - #9 by Randy
Thanks. Good discussion. I look forward to the debate; they usually have a very good format.
But why is this so important for you?
Because this doctrine “mere Christianity” being pushed by Andy Stanley, William Lane Craig and others are growing in the church. It is the death knell for Christianity. mere Christianity is a step towards liberalism
Well maybe that’s being a bit melodramatic there Wookin? I’m glad the future of Christianity, such as it is, isn’t in our hands.
But anyway: thanks for sharing this Wookin! I thought both of them ended up making a lot of good points and I learned from both.
By the way ,… for those who may just want a freshly uploaded youtube link so you don’t have to search around at the radio site: here it is now at youtube.
[and at this link you can listen to it at higher speeds]
One point Andy made that stuck with me on my initial listen was this in response to “What about the 10 commandments?” He noted that you could follow all ten commandments and still be a lousy spouse, employee, friend, etc… But there is no way you are let off the hook if you listen to (and Andy referenced some N.T. love passage here…) which gives us a much higher standard than the 10 commandments ever did.
My pastor would fight to the death against the heresy of Marcion. But the OT represents about 2% of his Scripture citations. And that 2% is generally uncontroversial moral exemplar passages.
How is Stanley’s teaching any different from Bill Bright’s 4 spiritual laws?
I find such an approach rather thin, but I don’t consider it to be heretical.
Stanley has nothing to do with Marcion. That’s just the rumor that might circulate among Stanley’s critics who haven’t really listened to him. Durbin (who opposes Stanley) didn’t accuse him of anything like that. He had more substantive rebuttals and concerns - and even though I didn’t think Durbin made his case in the end, I still think he brought forward the best defense that could be made as a caution against Stanley’s approach, making a lot of good and true points along the way.
After listening to the whole exchange, I have following comments.
The first thing that hist me is that is exchanges like these, that help push Christianity away from none Christians. How can two Christian ministers argue so much and use the same bible quotes to support the opposite position?
As a biblical scholar, I find Jeff to be reasonable and measured and well read. But Andy makes my skin crawl. Here the top three comments on his presentation:
- Early in the talk he talked about how he talks with nonbelievers and has to remind himself that they are “not one of the elect.” How can any Christian place themselves above another?
- Later he insists that: “had there been no resurrection there would be no bible” and he repeated this fanatically. Jeff tried to talk him down from this position, but he could not bring logical reasoning for this (false) statement.
- And then he goes on to say that the (inerrant) Bible then appeared in the 4th century, but claims to be teaching as the early Christians did. As Jeff said, the early Christians did not jettison the OT. Those scholars worked diligently to reconcile the OT with the New. The Bible that appeared in the 4th century was a product of the Church (priests and scribes) and not of the original writers of the scripture. Only fragments of some of the original scriptures have survived and all we have is the “Bible” from the hands of the priests written after the council of Nicea.
This is a rather misleading statement. Yes, only fragments of the original manuscripts have survived to today, but we have direct copies of the original manuscripts. You make it sound like the council of Nicaea got together and created the manuscripts we have now from their memory and imagination. That’s not accurate at all.
Did you mean that to read “They had” direct copies…?
I was under the impression that the closest we may come to “original manuscripts” today might be from the dead sea scrolls.
I mean what we have today are copies of the original manuscripts, not someone’s jotted down memories of what the original manuscripts said, or something fabricated by filling in a bunch of blanks while looking at fragments. Textual criticism says that we are very certain what the exact content of the original documents was except for a few places that don’t affect the central message.
I only made one listen-through as well, and may have missed that I guess. But I don’t recall Andy saying that … or if he did say something like it, I think you mistake his attitude. I’ve listened to a few of his sermons online and he doesn’t at all strike me as one who gravitates towards any “us and them” attitude, much less using that as a vehicle of condescension. So I think you really mistake him in that.
What I will say that bothered me about Andy’s side was not so much what he said but how interruptive he was toward Durbin, often not letting him finish his thoughts (until the moderator restrained him). So I did find that exasperating. But we shouldn’t hold that against the substance of what he presented.
That he did. And they were both right about what they were saying - though talking past each other a bit. Yes, the Jewish “law and prophets” would have still been there to be sure, but there would be no Christian church attending to any of that today were it not for the life of Christ, and the life of Christ would almost certainly be just one of the unknown and forgotten martyrs of the far past had they not had the resurrection to turn them around. So in that sense, Andy is right: we have no 66 book “Christian Bible” today without the resurrection event.
Okay - yeah I wasn’t reading very carefully and glossed over the word “copy of” thinking instead “original manuscripts”.
Still what we do have is [so I’m told] pretty impressive, I’ve heard compared to any other documentation that is had about anything else that happened that long ago.
I think that these are good questions.
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To clarify, I think that Stanley wasn’t arguing that nonbelievers were not elect. Durbin is a Calvinist. Stanley is not. He is not agreeing with him about the election issue–he’s arguing from a millennialist position that would not agree with election–and calling him out. He was baiting Durbin to agree that from his own position, he’s not even supposed to be evangelizing. Durbin didn’t bite on that to follow it.
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Durbin’s argument is that we need to rely on the NT use of the OT as evidence. Because Paul and Jesus alluded to OT, that is the way we should talk to millennials and everyone else. Stanley argues that as most people like the New Atheists have no faith in the OT anyway, we should talk to them about where Jesus meets them–as the new commandment and revelation–rather than use the controversial OT.
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I agree that Stanley should not have interrupted Durbin. That was a major shortcoming. However, Durbin was repetitive and presented the tautology of “the reason we should believe is because of God’s Holy Word.” Thus, whatever is written is true. Thus, he says we have no other reason to believe than to read the Bible. Stanley’s point is that doesn’t work with someone who is taught that the OT has holes like evolution and other problems the New Atheists have found.
I also wonder how Durbin argues with people of other holy books–Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists. Does he have any other reason than to argue from an ancient text? Is it just because of gut feeling that he accepts it? -
I found it interesting that Stanley seemed to be addressing post-Christian audiences in the Southeast (overevangelized), and Durbin, pre-Christian druggies (in some areas) and fundamentalists (in others). It reminded me of Enns’ interview with the pastor from Ontario, where his church tried to meld post-Christian and new converts. Post-Christians felt that the “all have sinned” approach was condemning of them, and new converts were glad to have their sins forgiven. They are two sides of the same coin, in some ways.
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This reminded me a bit of the debates between the Arminian John Wesley and his sometimes friend and sometimes opponent, George Whitefield, the Calvinist. Wesley focused on the “method” of meeting people where they were, whereas Whitefield was more Calvin focused, I think. George Whitefield - Wikipedia
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It made sense to me that both can be right in some areas. Durbin was right that preaching originally to the Jews required that Jesus and the Apostles rely on their most sacred rock of their society and Temple–their Scriptures. However, Paul used Corinthian and Greek worship (such as to the unknown God) to appeal to the Greeks (“to the Greek I am a Greek,” etc)
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I felt uncomfortable with Durbin’s response that if others don’t accept the OT at face value, like Shapiro, it’s because of hardness of their hearts and sin. Sure, the NT authors appealed to the OT for the Jews; but they didn’t do it for the Greeks, knowing that as for Shapiro, it would be uninteresting. Also, the Calvinist idea of the Fall, especially as spoken of by some, isn’t easily accepted by many nones currently as being unjust.
–WLC’s argument for the Resurrection was probably (I did not hear it) like Josh McDowell’s–great if you accept the NT account, but if you say that the writers wrote what they wanted, not convincing. I would have to read it myself to find out, though; but this would be another point in Shapiro’s favor. I’ve often struggled with trying to accept McDowell’s account because of that. -
In terms of the NT use of the OT, the twisting of Scriptures with sensius plenior (using verses which did not originally mean what the NT author said they meant) would not be convincing to many millennials today, especially those adherent to strict logic. I don’t personally find them helpful. (An aside: the NT authors and Jesus didn’t rely only on the OT; they also relied on miracles).
I would agree with Stanley in this respect.
Also, as my pastor (Brethren origin though he is), remarked, “antecedence does not indicate precedence.” Just because it happened in the scriptures doesn’t mean it’s what we should do.
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Durbin makes a mistake in the Timothy allusion to “other Scriptures” in that Scriptural definition of the time included a low level of trust, such that they included the Shepherd of Hermes, etc, that were not included in the canon.
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Stanley argues convincingly for his approach that Jesus and Hebrews both say that the OT covenant is obsolete, and that Jesus has a new commandment.
Thanks for the discussion.
For all the apparent animosity these two were supposed to have, by representing “different approaches”, they never really allowed their audience much room to see them as at odds (other than Stanley interrupting Durbin all the time - unable to restrain his own excitement to keep his own point front and center, I guess). They are two men who both obviously respect each other as brothers in Christ.
One of Stanley’s turns of phrase (or metaphor actually) that I thought productive was “the on-ramp”. Whatever a person’s “onramp” to Christianity, why wouldn’t we want that ramp available to them, whether it be the Old Testament, the Bible, testimonies of Jesus’ resurrection … or even anything else.
That set me thinking. There are both on-ramps and off-ramps to and from Christian faith. And not only should Christians not obstruct on-ramps, but perhaps they should also do something about the “off-ramps”. I think Biologos sees one of its main roles as that of trying to at least somewhat staunch the exit traffic away from faith that might be seen as the YEC exit-ramp.