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LinkedIn is great at connecting you
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but it can't connect you with motivation
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from your professional community,
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but it can't give you any insight
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into why Dave's is still talking on mute.
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And while it can't stop your boss
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LinkedIn can help bring your career to the next level.
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LinkedIn is the network that works for you.
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Visit LinkedIn.com to learn more.
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(upbeat music)
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This is "I'm Daunted Life," a man's podcast.
0:43
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
0:44
Let's get into it.
0:45
All right, guys, as I teased in the last episode,
0:48
we've got a very special episode for you today.
0:50
I know I've had a lot of people asking
0:52
about this episode and when it was gonna come out.
0:53
So it is right here.
0:54
It is ready for you.
0:55
So I have been taking my time with this one
0:57
'cause I wanted to make sure
0:58
that it was gonna work out well
0:59
that I could present it to you guys in a way
1:01
that you would enjoy and that you would like.
1:03
So as I teased last week,
1:04
this is going to be basically a review of the debate
1:08
that Andy Stanley and Jeff Durban had
1:11
on the Unbelievable Podcast with the host Justin Briarley.
1:14
And so if you're not familiar with the Unbelievable Podcast,
1:17
I've talked about it several times here on this show,
1:19
it's basically a podcast that brings on people
1:22
from divergent worldviews and then they come together
1:25
and have a debate about it.
1:26
Now, what you might be thinking is just like any other debate
1:29
that you've seen, you see these debates
1:31
and they're just like firing things back and forth
1:33
at each other.
1:34
It kind of gets vitriolic at different points,
1:36
but this is one of the most amazing podcasts
1:39
because you'll have someone that's two people
1:42
that used to be Muslim, one is now an atheist
1:44
and one's now a Christian and then they're kind of talking
1:46
about their worldviews and everything,
1:48
but very, very rarely does it get like caddy
1:51
or people insulting each other back and forth.
1:54
I think that has a lot to do and there's a lot of the,
1:57
I guess the positive goes to the host Justin Briarley
2:00
because he does a really good job of kind of playing referee,
2:02
but even when he's not having to intercede,
2:04
these people typically don't just go at each other personally.
2:07
They're kind of just talking about the ideas.
2:09
So that's definitely a podcast for you guys to check out.
2:12
It's Unbelievable with Justin Briarley
2:14
and it comes out every Friday,
2:15
but I remember whenever this podcast was announced
2:19
and I immediately got super giddy.
2:22
And the reason is 'cause with the background is that,
2:25
and I talked about it on episode 23 of this podcast.
2:28
So if you've been listening for any length of time,
2:30
I talked a little bit about it back then
2:32
because Jeff Durbin has a ministry called Apology,
2:35
a church and he's a pastor of a church
2:37
and he does a lot of ministries on the sidewalks
2:41
outside of abortion clinics.
2:42
And he goes straight to the Mormon temple
2:44
and he's basically preaching the gospel to these people.
2:47
And he took a lot of offense to what basically went down
2:52
with Andy Stanley.
2:53
So if you don't know who Andy Stanley is,
2:54
you've kind of been living under a rock.
2:56
So this is a guy who is the pastor of,
2:58
at last I checked the largest church in the United States.
3:02
So it's just in the Atlanta area,
3:03
but it's kind of a multi-site concept.
3:05
And so you could definitely call him a mega church pastor.
3:08
His father is Charles Stanley.
3:10
So I know a lot of you guys know him.
3:11
Maybe you grew up listening to him on the radio
3:13
or watching him on television or something like that.
3:14
So he comes from that ilk.
3:16
But let's just say there was quite a bit of fracture
3:21
whenever Jeff Durbin was going at Andy Stanley
3:24
in his worldview.
3:25
And I listened to an entire hour, hour and a half long podcast
3:28
where they're basically breaking down Andy Stanley's sermons
3:32
and they're breaking down some of his worldviews
3:34
on a very, very specific topic.
3:36
And so I'm gonna go and introduce this part.
3:38
But basically what this podcast is going to be today
3:40
is I'm gonna bring in clips from their talk together.
3:43
And so I've got the link to the entire talk
3:45
in the description, it's a link to the YouTube page.
3:48
So it's all good, there's plenty of permission
3:51
and all that going on with that.
3:52
So you can just check it out there.
3:54
But I want you to have some of the context.
3:56
And I'm not gonna show you every bit of this interaction.
4:01
I'm not gonna kinda go in and break down every sentence.
4:04
But there's a lot of different parts
4:05
where they're kinda going back and forth.
4:07
And so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna bring in the clip
4:09
and then I'm just gonna talk about it a little bit.
4:11
And then here at the end of the podcast,
4:12
I'm actually going to give you an idea
4:14
of who I think the winner was, right?
4:16
And some people are like, oh, you can't declare it a winner.
4:18
It's a couple of Christian pastors and that's weird.
4:21
But I mean, I don't care about that.
4:23
Like I just wanna bring it to you in a way
4:25
that I think is gonna be interesting.
4:26
And so we will be declaring a winner.
4:27
And so what I'm gonna do for you right now
4:29
is I'm actually going to play for you
4:31
the very first two minutes of this podcast, okay?
4:34
So I'm gonna be giving you the kind of the audio timestamp.
4:37
So if you guys are watching this on the YouTube link
4:39
or you're listening to it,
4:40
you kinda have an idea of where I'm at at a new point here.
4:43
But Justin Briarly does a really good job
4:45
of kinda giving you the background
4:46
of where this debate comes from.
4:48
So we're gonna be coming in and out here.
4:49
But let's go ahead and listen to the first couple of minutes here.
4:53
Well, today on the show, we're asking,
4:54
is it time to unhitch Christianity from the Old Testament?
4:58
My guests are Andy Stanley and Jeff Durbin on the show today.
5:01
Andy Stanley is a pastor,
5:03
communicator, author and the founder of North Point Ministries.
5:06
And North Point Community Church
5:07
is one of the largest churches in North America.
5:10
His latest book is Irresistible,
5:12
reclaiming the new that Jesus unleashed for the world.
5:16
Andy says that to make Christianity
5:17
the irresistible force that it was in the lives
5:20
of the first followers of Christ,
5:22
we need to be clear that the Bible
5:23
isn't the foundation for faith in Christianity.
5:26
Rather, the events documented by the New Testament,
5:28
the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ
5:31
are the foundation.
5:32
But too often, says Andy Christians try to defend
5:35
and incorporate the Old Testament into their faith.
5:38
And we simply don't need to do that.
5:40
We need to effectively unhitch Christianity
5:42
from the Old Testament.
5:44
Well, as you can imagine, since preaching on that topic
5:46
and publishing the book, opinion has been split.
5:49
I read some Amazon reviews ranging from pure heresy
5:52
to one of the most important books you'll ever read.
5:54
And of course, Andy has had a number of people
5:57
who have responded online on blogs, podcasts and elsewhere.
6:01
Well, one of Andy's most vocal critics
6:02
joins me on the show today to talk about the book.
6:04
He's Jeff Durbin, pastor of Apologia Church in Arizona
6:08
and founder of the popular YouTube channel,
6:10
Apologia Studios as well.
6:12
He says that Andy is acting a bit like a modern-day Martian,
6:15
cutting Christianity off from the foundation
6:17
of the Old Testament.
6:19
And Jeff believes that the Bible, both old and new,
6:21
are the inspired and inerrant word given to us by God.
6:24
And Christians are called to believe it and defend it all.
6:27
So today, we're looking at Andy's book, irresistible,
6:30
and asking, is it time to unhitch Christianity
6:33
from the Old Testaments?
6:34
All right, guys, so there you go.
6:37
That's the intro to the talk that we're gonna have today.
6:39
So here's my encouragement to you right now
6:41
because we're about to get into the actual showdown.
6:43
We're gonna get into Stanley and Durbin going back and forth.
6:46
But this is what I would really suggest to all of you to do, okay?
6:50
I would suggest that you listen to this podcast episode
6:53
to this debate first in its totality and then come back
6:58
and hear what we kind of have to say
6:59
and I'm gonna kind of pull out the highlights.
7:01
That would be probably the best thing for you.
7:03
I know that's gonna be a little bit annoying,
7:04
especially if you're driving, you know,
7:06
don't be clicking on the links and all that while you're driving
7:08
wait till you get to red light or something like that.
7:10
But I've got the YouTube link there in the description.
7:13
And wherever you get podcasts,
7:14
I'm pretty sure the unbelievable podcast
7:16
with Justin Briarley is on there.
7:18
And so this was the second to last episode that was released.
7:21
So you're gonna see it right there,
7:23
right there ready for you to listen to it again.
7:25
Listen to it at one and a half or two times speed.
7:27
So you can kind of buzz through it.
7:28
You'll still get the overall gist of it,
7:30
but that would be my number one recommendation for you
7:33
is to go ahead and do that now and then come back
7:36
and join us, you know, seven minutes or so
7:38
into this podcast and then we can kind of get going from there.
7:40
But if you guys have done that and you've come back,
7:43
welcome back. Here's the deal.
7:45
We're gonna go ahead and get into the showdown right here.
7:46
And so this is gonna be Andy Stanley
7:48
and we're basically gonna be talking about the concept
7:51
of quote unquote, unhitching the Old Testament
7:53
from Christianity.
7:54
And this is around the nine minute and 21 second mark.
7:57
So let's go ahead and get back into it.
7:59
- We obviously, the topic today is Andy's book,
8:03
this question of unhitching Christianity
8:05
from the Old Testament.
8:06
Let's start with you Andy.
8:08
Just, is that a fair assessment?
8:10
Do you use those words specifically
8:12
of what you're doing in this book?
8:14
Because I've had lots of people with different opinions
8:16
of what you're doing.
8:17
Tell us what the book is about firstly.
8:20
- Well, do you start with the book
8:22
or with the word unhitched?
8:23
- Well, let's start with unhitched.
8:24
Yeah, what do you mean by unhitching
8:27
the Christianity from the Old Testament?
8:30
- I don't want to spend too much time on this.
8:31
It just interrupt me if this goes too long.
8:34
That was a term I used in a particular sermon
8:38
in a particular series, I guess really almost actually
8:42
a year ago, I'd just done a 12-part series
8:46
through the life of Jesus leading up to resurrection.
8:49
And it was going well, so I thought,
8:51
"Hey, I'll spend three weeks
8:52
"and just keep the story going narrative-wise
8:55
"through Acts, so I spent three weeks on Acts."
8:57
So in the message in Acts 15,
8:59
where I talked about the Jerusalem Council
9:01
and this momentous decision to,
9:03
and the word I used was unhitched Christianity
9:06
from the Sinai Covenant, from circumcision.
9:08
And again, whatever, I mean, everybody knows
9:10
something happened there that was of extraordinary
9:12
significance for the church.
9:14
I used the word unhitched.
9:15
And then to tease my next series,
9:19
which was called "The Bible for Grown-Ups,"
9:21
I made the comment, "Hey, and perhaps those of us
9:25
"modern Christians, I forget these words,
9:27
"we need to consider, we need to unhitch our Christianity
9:29
"from the Old Testament as well."
9:31
Kind of paralleling that there was a momentous detachment
9:34
from what it meant to be a Jesus follower for Gentiles,
9:37
that perhaps we need to think through
9:38
some of those things ourselves.
9:39
It really was a tease.
9:41
In fact, in the message, I said,
9:43
"And we will come back and talk about this more
9:45
"in the next few weeks."
9:46
Well, and understandably so, people took that phrase
9:50
and it sort of became the banner under which
9:53
I do all ministry.
9:55
And interestingly enough, in our churches,
9:57
everyone was scratching their heads like,
9:59
"Why is this such a big deal?"
10:00
Because I teach from the Old Testament all the time.
10:03
In fact, that next series was a four-part series
10:05
and two were from the book of Genesis.
10:06
So in terms of my track record, nothing could be further
10:10
from the truth that I don't teach from the Old Testament,
10:12
don't believe the Old Testament,
10:13
don't think the Old Testament points to Jesus.
10:15
All the things people keep reminding me of on social media,
10:19
I'm like, I know, and if you actually paid attention
10:22
to my history of preaching, you'd know that.
10:25
But again, hey, we're all busy.
10:26
I don't expect everybody to drop in
10:28
and listen to all my service.
10:30
So that's kind of the history of how that word
10:33
became associated with my whole view of Christianity.
10:36
I do use the term within a specific
10:40
and different context within the book.
10:42
So, and then of course, and you guys can appreciate this,
10:45
then the next rumor was, well, Andy wrote Irresistible
10:49
because of all the flack he got from the sermon.
10:52
Well, the sermon book came out in September
10:55
and nobody knows anything about publishing,
10:57
you know, you don't get a book out that quick.
10:59
So that's kind of the brief history of the term
11:02
in my tainted reputation.
11:05
That perhaps I earned, but my communication style
11:08
and our local church is super specific
11:11
and I'm pretty consistent.
11:12
And I understand people who drop in from time to time,
11:16
you know, may misunderstand my approach.
11:17
And I take responsibility for that.
11:20
- So that kind of gives you an idea
11:24
of where Andy Stanley's coming from
11:25
and kind of his view on the whole situation
11:27
and the little audio snafu there with his audio
11:30
was on his end when he was recording.
11:31
So just so you know that.
11:33
But here's the thing guys, just to kind of go back,
11:35
I listen to Andy Stanley's sermons every week pretty much
11:39
'cause he's one of my favorite pastors to listen to.
11:41
I really like his ideas.
11:42
I will say in the last several years,
11:44
he's gotten way more TED talky,
11:46
way more like, hey, let's just kind of like give you
11:48
some good practical life tips type of thing.
11:50
And he's always been a little bit that way
11:52
but I feel like he's even more so that way.
11:54
So if that's not really your style,
11:55
you're not really gonna dig some of his more recent content.
11:59
But I gotta be honest with you,
12:00
the sermon that he said this in,
12:02
in the sermon series that he said this in,
12:04
as I listened through it the first time,
12:07
I just listened right through it
12:09
and didn't have any problems with it whatsoever.
12:11
It was only after the fact when I saw
12:13
that it was basically everywhere in Christian circles
12:16
that Andy Stanley had done some sort of
12:18
heretical, a Marcian type thing, right?
12:21
And so the point that he made there
12:24
about how the people in his church
12:25
that listen to him every week,
12:27
they don't really react the same way
12:29
as people on the outside, like I'm with you
12:32
because I don't attend his church
12:33
but it's almost like I do
12:34
because I'm listening to his sermons every single week.
12:37
So I knew where he was coming from.
12:38
And so again, if you go back to episode 23 of this podcast,
12:41
it was entitled Andy Stanley, a Heretic question mark.
12:44
And I said at the end that, no, I don't think he's a Heretic.
12:47
I think if you have a better idea of the context
12:50
through which he is speaking
12:52
in some of the things that he's teaching
12:53
and his teaching style that it would make more sense.
12:56
So that is Andy Stanley's basic overview.
12:58
And again, that's kind of the crux
12:59
of the whole issue here today.
13:00
But what I'm going to get into now
13:02
is I'm going to get into their theses, right?
13:04
Because each one of them has a different thesis
13:06
in terms of what they're going to be defending
13:09
and kind of what they're going to be describing
13:10
in the conversation today.
13:11
And so the first one we're going to do
13:13
is going to be at the 13 minute mark right around there.
13:16
And it's basically, this is Andy Stanley's thesis
13:19
on the whole deal.
13:20
And so I'll kind of give you a basic rundown
13:23
of what the thesis is, but then beyond that,
13:25
I'll give you a better idea of,
13:27
well, let me just kind of give you a summary of it here.
13:28
So here's Andy Stanley's thesis.
13:31
It's that the Bible is not the foundation of Christianity.
13:35
The resurrection is.
13:37
So it's not a difference in theology,
13:39
it's more of a difference in approach.
13:41
And thus, we need to come closer to the resurrection, okay?
13:45
So again, we're going to go into around minute 13 here.
13:48
So let's go back into the interview.
13:51
- As I understand it, the book is really actually
13:54
what your primary concern is,
13:56
is with reaching the next generation,
13:59
a post-Christian generation,
14:01
which as far as you can see,
14:03
just doesn't necessarily buy into the idea
14:06
that the Bible is the word of God and so on.
14:08
And you have to start at a different place in that case.
14:11
And it's, you're trying to say,
14:13
well, actually we need to go back to the early church,
14:15
'cause they didn't have the Bible as we have either.
14:17
And just take us through that.
14:20
What you're responding to,
14:22
how you think that we can in fact,
14:25
make the gospel irresistible again
14:27
for this next generation?
14:29
- Yeah, a little bit of the backstory is about nine years ago,
14:34
I was watching a video, Sam Harris,
14:37
who was at a university setting,
14:39
doing his Sam Harris thing where he dismantles the Bible
14:43
and there goes Christianity.
14:44
And it occurred to me, wow,
14:45
there is a false assumption that skeptics for generations
14:48
have leveraged and have baited Christians into this debate.
14:53
And really what I can think is a false assumption
14:56
and the assumption is as the Bible goes,
14:57
so goes Christianity.
14:58
So if you dismantle the Bible,
15:00
Christianity goes away, you've undermined Christianity.
15:03
If you, if it's a 66 card, house of cards,
15:06
if you pull out Genesis, pull out Leviticus,
15:08
pull out Revelation, the whole thing comes tumbling down,
15:11
which is just not true.
15:12
And I thought, this is, once in a time,
15:14
maybe this didn't matter
15:15
because you had to buy tickets to debates.
15:17
Who's gonna read their books?
15:19
But now every middle school or high school
15:20
or college student has access to all that misinformation
15:25
and now you can find out what else is in the Bible.
15:27
Think about this without ever opening a Bible
15:29
or owning a Bible or even holding a Bible.
15:32
And so I had just felt compelled,
15:34
this is really about nine years ago,
15:36
to step back on sort of the classical apologetic method
15:39
that I was taught, I mean, I didn't make any of this up.
15:41
35 almost 40 years ago to say, hey,
15:44
I would like to read, the way I say it is,
15:47
I would like to tether the faith of this generation
15:49
to the event that created the movement
15:52
that eventually brought us the Bible,
15:54
to tether their faith to the event,
15:56
that launched the movement
15:58
that eventually brought us the Bible.
16:00
So none of this is new,
16:01
it really just is a different approach.
16:03
And it's really putting the spotlight
16:05
in terms of the foundation of our faith
16:07
on the event of the resurrection,
16:08
which every apologist who ever debates
16:11
any of the new atheist or anybody else,
16:13
eventually they get to the issue of the resurrection
16:15
because the documents documenting the resurrection
16:17
aren't dependent on an anerrant scripture,
16:21
they're just dependent on a historically reliable scripture.
16:24
So, you know, that was the thing that motivated me.
16:28
And so I've been talking about this for many, many years.
16:31
And I kept being misunderstood
16:33
as people kind of dropped into specific sermons.
16:35
So one afternoon, Dr. Geisler, he's 86 now,
16:39
he called me at home, I remember standing on the front porch,
16:42
he said, Andy, you have to write about this.
16:44
I'm like, I don't want to write about this,
16:46
that's not my thing.
16:47
I mean, that's technical.
16:48
That's a, you know, he says, no,
16:50
you're going to continue to be misunderstood.
16:52
If you don't write about this,
16:53
it's not enough to talk about it.
16:54
So I did a little short e-book
16:56
called Why the Bible Tells Me So Isn't Enough Anymore.
17:00
And then eventually I'm wrote Irresistible.
17:02
So my heartbeat, or the reason I did all of this
17:06
really is to shift the approach,
17:08
to shift the conversation.
17:10
And to really, I mean, I ask church leaders all the time,
17:13
what's the faith of the next generation worth?
17:15
And I think it's worth everything.
17:16
And so I just began to want to help church leaders
17:20
tether the faith of this generation
17:22
to the event of the resurrection,
17:23
that brought us the movement,
17:24
the church that eventually brought us the Bible.
17:26
So it's nothing new, it's really just sequential.
17:29
And anyway, but I understand why it's a little bit, you know,
17:33
well, it makes people nervous.
17:34
- Sure. - I get filled.
17:36
- So again, the thesis there that he's saying
17:40
is that the Bible is not the foundation of Christianity,
17:43
the resurrection is, okay?
17:44
And that it's not a difference in theology,
17:46
it's a difference in approach.
17:47
And thus we need to come closer to the resurrection
17:49
because it was the event that led to the movement,
17:52
that led to the Bible, right?
17:53
So that is his main idea.
17:56
And so the thing that you have to ask yourself
17:58
is do you agree with that argument?
18:00
Because I got to say just from a practical level,
18:03
just from a practical base level, it makes sense, right?
18:07
Because we get a lot of our ideas about things from today
18:11
and what we think is right and wrong,
18:13
based on what we learned from the reality of the gospel.
18:16
And the reality gospel comes to us
18:18
because of an event that occurred, right?
18:21
But Jeff Durbin, this is gonna be the first time
18:23
we're gonna be hearing from him.
18:24
He's got a different thesis, right?
18:26
And so this is kind of my summary of Jeff Durbin's thesis
18:29
and then I'm gonna let him give it to you his way.
18:31
So his thesis is the Bible is the foundation of Christianity.
18:36
Our theology will lead us to our practice and methodology.
18:40
And thus we need to come closer to the word of God, okay?
18:44
So we're gonna start at about the 18 and a half minute mark.
18:48
So if you wanna meet us there,
18:49
that is where we're going into now.
18:50
So let's get into Jeff Durbin's response
18:52
and his thesis for this discussion.
18:54
- Jeff, let's bring you in at this point.
18:59
One of the things that Andy says in his book
19:02
is in light of the post-Christian context in which we live,
19:06
it's time to stop appealing to the authority of a sacred book
19:09
to make the case for Jesus.
19:11
In the information age, that habit unnecessarily undermines
19:15
the credibility of our faith.
19:16
It makes our message unnecessarily resistible.
19:20
And so a lot of what I think Andy is getting at,
19:23
which then the Old Testament kind of comes into
19:25
is this idea that we can't speak to skeptics
19:29
from a position of asking them to accept
19:31
the inerrancy infallibility of the Bible.
19:34
We've got to start on this ground of,
19:35
okay, well, let's look at this as a historical document.
19:38
Do these claims stand up historically?
19:40
It's true.
19:41
What do you make of that particular approach?
19:43
I suppose to apologetics generally.
19:46
And obviously we'll then start to talk about
19:48
how it keys into the Old Testament stuff.
19:51
- No, thank you very, very much.
19:52
I think it's important, Andy said that it's not a difference
19:56
in theology, it's a difference in approach
19:58
in terms of approaching the law of God and these issues.
20:02
I think it's important because I think it is deeply theological.
20:07
The theology underneath us as a foundation
20:09
will lead to practice and to methodology.
20:12
And in terms of where we're at today
20:14
with a culture that's where it's at today,
20:16
I think we need to get closer and closer
20:18
to the worldview and the theological foundation
20:22
of the apostles that were preaching in the book of Acts
20:24
and how they were approaching the world.
20:27
And in order to do that, we have to go to the text itself.
20:29
And I think what you can see just universally
20:31
throughout the scriptures is an appeal
20:33
to the self attesting authority of the Word of God.
20:36
Always and in every case.
20:38
Even when bringing up something like an example,
20:40
like the resurrection of Jesus,
20:43
Peter actually says, and Andy refers to this
20:46
in some of his work in second Peter 1 16 through 19.
20:49
And when he refers to the fact that we were eyewitnesses
20:52
to his glory, he then goes on to say,
20:54
"But we have something more sure, the prophetic word."
20:58
And so he bases actually the certainty
21:01
and the surety of his testimony,
21:04
not on the fact that they were eyewitnesses.
21:06
He of course mentions that we're eyewitnesses to him,
21:10
but he has something more sure, the prophetic word.
21:13
And I think this is interesting too.
21:14
And I would just say this with, and I love and respect Andy,
21:17
a tremendous amount.
21:19
But I think it's providential, brothers,
21:21
that in this moment, we have,
21:24
just behind us in the last week or so,
21:26
we have William Lane Craig, who is a brilliant, brilliant man,
21:30
who I think is probably the best out of any of us
21:32
to talk about the historical evidences
21:34
for the resurrection of Jesus Christ and all those things.
21:37
He's a brilliant man, and he was talking to another brilliant
21:39
man that I've actually had in my program, Ben Shapiro,
21:43
and he was talking about the resurrection.
21:45
Yet anybody can go see this online, I'd encourage you to do so.
21:48
When Dr. Craig points this to the historical evidences
21:53
and the logical consistency of the resurrection of Jesus Christ,
21:58
at the very end of this strand of amazing evidences
22:02
and logical argumentation, Ben Shapiro's answer is,
22:06
I find that uninteresting.
22:08
And I think that goes back to the issue of where Andy says,
22:12
it's not a difference in theology,
22:13
it's a difference in approach.
22:15
And I think that it is an issue of theology
22:17
and the condition of man, because in that case,
22:21
I think we need to look what the scriptures say
22:22
about someone like, say Ben Shapiro,
22:25
when there's an argument of historical evidences
22:29
and logical consistency, the problem according
22:32
to the Apostle Paul in Romans chapter one
22:35
is not a lack of evidence or knowledge of God.
22:38
Paul says that we all know God, that the problem is
22:41
that we're suppressing the truth and unrighteousness
22:43
for that which is known about God as evident within them.
22:47
And here's what it says, for God has made it evident to them.
22:51
So the problem is a simple suppression of the truth,
22:54
not that we're neutral towards God,
22:56
that we just don't have enough evidence
22:58
for lighter information.
23:00
The problem is actually breaking through
23:02
that simple suppression of the truth.
23:04
And it's not to say that we don't use historical evidences
23:06
and have those things.
23:08
It's to say that that's not really the problem.
23:10
The problem is that we won't take God
23:13
at His self-attesting word.
23:15
We won't believe God, we don't want His word.
23:18
And I'll just say one final word amount
23:20
in terms of what we build on after the resurrection.
23:25
So post-cross and post-resurrection,
23:28
when Jesus is on the road to Emmaus,
23:30
there's a moment where He chastises these people
23:33
who now see Him alive from the dead.
23:35
And what is He chastised them for?
23:37
He chastises them for not believing all that the prophets
23:42
and Moses had spoken concerning Him.
23:45
And so there's a consistent theme throughout the scriptures
23:49
of the self-attesting nature of the word of God
23:52
and that the problem with fallen humanity
23:54
is not a lack of evidence, insufficiency of evidence,
23:57
a lack of good logical argumentation.
24:00
The problem is that we are rebels against the king.
24:03
We don't want God in our thinking.
24:04
And so what we do is we exchange Him for an idol.
24:07
And again, you see just this consistency
24:09
throughout the old and new testament
24:12
that the problem is that we will not accept God at His word.
24:15
And the answer from scripture is Romans 1, 16.
24:19
It's the good news.
24:20
The gospel is the power of God for salvation.
24:22
That's what God uses to raise people to life.
24:25
But I think we need to ask ourselves the question,
24:27
do we believe that Christ is the foundation
24:29
of all knowledge, all knowledge, or not?
24:33
And I'll just say one final word here,
24:34
so I don't go on too far and take too much time.
24:37
That when we talk about approaching the current atheistic
24:42
or unbelieving or agnostic culture and worldview
24:46
with the Christian worldview,
24:48
and we try to cater our theological approach
24:50
or our politic methodology to it,
24:53
I think that we're losing the strength
24:56
of the biblical worldview in the gospel
24:59
when we step into the unbeliever's position
25:02
and we assume neutrality along with them.
25:05
And we try to actually borrow from their standards
25:09
and methodology rather than actually showing them
25:12
that without the biblical worldview,
25:13
without starting with Christ in your thinking,
25:16
there is no meaningful appeal to logic.
25:19
There's no meaningful appeal to evidences.
25:23
We don't have uniformity in nature,
25:25
which is the foundation of all appeals to evidence whatsoever
25:29
without the biblical God.
25:31
So if we don't start with the self-attesting word of God
25:34
under our feet, standing on it,
25:37
we don't even have a coherent appeal as Christians
25:40
to laws of logic, to morality, ethical appeals,
25:44
or to an appeal to any evidence at all.
25:49
So there you have the beginning of Jeff Durbin's response.
25:51
So again, in my opinion, this is his thesis.
25:54
It's that the Bible is the foundation of Christianity.
25:56
Our theology will lead us to our practice and theology.
26:00
And thus we need to come closer to the word of God.
26:03
And so here's the thing is right after you hear Andy
26:06
make a lot of sense, well then Jeff Durbin comes in
26:09
and he starts to make a lot of sense, right?
26:12
And his big thing is you can kind of tell
26:14
he's starting to build his argument
26:15
against the apologetic-only approach.
26:18
And then typically it's that apologetic approach
26:20
where it's basically looking at logic and reasoning
26:24
and things that exist outside of the Bible.
26:26
And so I'm not necessarily gonna get into my opinion
26:28
on that just yet, but he made a very interesting comment
26:31
and he makes it several times throughout his speech
26:35
or throughout his debate rather.
26:37
When he's talking about the interaction
26:38
between Ben Shapiro and William Lane Craig.
26:40
And so obviously Ben Shapiro.
26:42
Ben Shapiro showed conservative commentator
26:43
or Thadox Jew, William Lane Craig, one of the foremost,
26:47
if not the foremost, apologists on the planet,
26:49
debate, or all those different things.
26:51
And so Ben Shapiro had William Lane Craig
26:53
on his Sunday special.
26:54
And so that's just a Sunday show that he does.
26:56
That's outside of his normal show,
26:57
but it's more of a long-form interview type show.
27:01
And so I would encourage all of you
27:03
and the link is in the description here
27:05
to go and watch that interaction.
27:07
Because you're basically watching somebody
27:09
that has the gospel and the Judeo-Christian worldview
27:15
basically coming out of every pore of his body
27:18
and William Lane Craig and he knows how to argue it.
27:20
And he is a genius and he's talking to Ben Shapiro.
27:23
And I thought it was pretty enlightening.
27:25
This is more towards the end of their conversation
27:28
where he does make this very cogent
27:30
and very powerful argument about how we really should depend
27:34
on Jesus and the gospel and those types of things.
27:36
And Ben Shapiro does just straight up look at him
27:38
as an Orthodox Jew and just say,
27:40
"Yeah, that's not really that interesting to me."
27:43
And so you have to wonder, he's basically spent,
27:45
I think it was about 45, 50 minutes into that conversation,
27:47
basically buttering Ben Shapiro up,
27:50
basically dropping some knowledge
27:52
on this really, really smart guy who's really, really dumb
27:54
in terms of his particular worldview
27:56
as it pertains to Jesus Christ and the truth of the gospel.
28:00
And that was his response.
28:01
Yeah, I'm just not really that interested in it.
28:04
So it just kind of is what it is.
28:05
It was a very interesting interaction.
28:07
And so I thought that was a very effective thing
28:09
for Jeff Durban to do, which is to drop that in here.
28:12
Now, the thing about the start of this conversation
28:14
between Stanley and Durban is that it started out
28:17
very, very polite.
28:19
They were really, really polite towards one another.
28:21
It was almost disappointingly like slobberingly too polite.
28:26
And I was like, really?
28:27
Are we just gonna for an hour and 15 minutes,
28:29
have y'all say how much you like the other one
28:31
and how you don't really wanna make this
28:33
a disputation type of a thing?
28:35
But then it turns and it turns relatively quickly
28:39
in terms of the totality of the conversation, okay?
28:42
So at this point, we're looking at like
28:44
around the 37-minute mark.
28:46
So like 36, 47, something right there.
28:49
Durban had just finished kind of a lengthy diatribe
28:52
about a number of different issues.
28:54
And Stanley pretty much ignored that.
28:57
He pretty much didn't engage with any of the information
29:00
that Durban just brought before this moment.
29:03
And then we possibly have the most important interaction
29:08
of the entire debate, okay?
29:09
And so again, this is at like the 36-47 mark
29:12
right around in there and it goes to about 43-30.
29:15
So let's go ahead and get back into the debate here.
29:18
- Okay, lots to engage with there, Andy.
29:23
I suppose my question is interestingly,
29:28
Jeff brings up the Oropagus and the way Paul interacts there
29:32
in Act 17.
29:33
- Yeah, the sermon where Paul never even told them
29:35
who he was talking about.
29:36
- Right, and you use this as an example in your book
29:39
of the, you know, to support your case.
29:41
- I think, I mean, I think Jeff,
29:44
I think you just went in a circle.
29:46
So let me ask you just a couple of questions.
29:48
I mean, what?
29:49
See, here's my opinion.
29:53
If Christ has not been raised,
29:55
your preaching and your faith is useless, right?
29:59
- Yes.
30:02
- That's not original with me, you know that.
30:03
And also, you don't believe, well, I should say that.
30:07
Do you believe Peter and John believe Jesus was the Messiah
30:12
between the crucifixion and the resurrection
30:15
or did something happen to their faith
30:17
after the resurrection?
30:18
I mean, and it's, people always go to the Luke 16,
30:22
yeah, Luke 16 passage, yeah, Luke 16,
30:27
which is so silly to me.
30:30
Okay, because Jesus is in a parable.
30:33
He's talking in a parable.
30:34
Let me read the verse right, no, let me read the verse right before this.
30:38
The law and the prophets, this is, I mean, this is,
30:41
now this is Jesus, these are Jesus' words teaching.
30:44
The reference you just gave us was within the context
30:47
of a parable about Abraham's wisdom and all that.
30:50
The law and the prophets were proclaimed until John,
30:54
John the Baptist.
30:55
Since that time, the good news contrast,
30:59
since that time, the good news that the kingdom of God is being preached
31:03
and everyone is forcing their way into it.
31:05
So, I mean, I get the parable thing.
31:09
We can talk about that.
31:10
And you and I both spend our days exegesis scripture.
31:14
But more to the point is the apostle Paul saying,
31:17
okay, if there's no resurrection, Christ isn't raised.
31:19
If Christ isn't raised, game over.
31:22
He doesn't say, but we have the law and the prophets
31:24
and we still have the apocalypse of John
31:26
which have been written yet, of course.
31:27
We still have it.
31:28
In other words, the whole thing is the resurrection.
31:31
And to your point about William Lane Craig's conversation,
31:35
I agree with you.
31:37
What's going on in the hearts of men and women
31:39
in terms of their response or openness or their election?
31:43
Again, we have no control over that.
31:44
I'm just talking about how we approach them with our conversation.
31:48
And I doubt we would take a very different approach,
31:51
not talking about approaches,
31:53
but in terms of actual conversation.
31:55
So, when my kids were little, not little,
31:57
when they were going into high school and college,
31:59
I said to them, look, you know,
32:00
when you get in a literature class or biology class
32:04
and people bring up questions about the Old Testament
32:08
or some of the what may be considered odd stories in the Bible.
32:11
I said, don't get in a big spitting match with them about this.
32:14
Here's your answer.
32:16
You know what?
32:17
Yes, that's strange.
32:18
Yes, that's odd.
32:19
No, I can't explain that.
32:20
But, you know, Jesus believed that.
32:23
And I just figure if somebody can predict
32:25
their own death and resurrection and pull it off,
32:26
I just go with whatever that person says.
32:28
That's not a convincing argument.
32:31
It's tethering our faith to the event of the resurrection
32:35
that the Course confirmed what Jesus taught
32:38
and it confirmed what Jesus taught about the law and the prophets.
32:40
So again, it's sequential is the difference.
32:43
And anyway, so I'll get back to my question.
32:46
So do you believe anything happened to Peter and John
32:49
after the resurrection?
32:51
I mean, because again, I think where you're incorrect
32:53
or where you kind of smoothed over it,
32:55
the sermons that we find at the beginning of Acts
32:58
are all about the resurrection.
32:59
They're not repeating the sermon on the mouth.
33:01
They're not repeating the story of the good Samaritan.
33:03
It's you crucified, you know, you murdered,
33:06
you killed the author of life.
33:08
God raised him and we've seen him.
33:09
So those early sermons were all about the resurrection
33:13
because something extraordinary had happened.
33:16
So anyway, and you know all that.
33:18
I'm not, this isn't new information.
33:20
This is just what we emphasize and how we sequence it.
33:23
Yeah, go ahead, Jeff.
33:25
I'll work my way backwards, Andy.
33:26
I appreciate all those questions very, very much.
33:28
And I'll just stand on the one point when you say,
33:31
you know, if somebody rises from the dead,
33:33
I'm gonna go with what they say, I'll believe what they say.
33:35
And I think this goes to go back to fundamental principles
33:38
in terms of how do we approach the world and miracles
33:41
and signs and wonders in the law of God itself.
33:45
We have a standard, a principle by which we're told by God
33:48
to test prophets and those who claim they're from God.
33:52
And Deuteronomy chapter 13, verses one through five,
33:56
God even tells his people, he says,
33:57
even if someone comes and they have signs and wonders.
34:00
So they have signs and wonders, it looks legit.
34:03
It looks like the miraculous is happening.
34:05
He says this, but they lead you after other gods,
34:08
gods which you have not known.
34:10
That's how you know there are false prophets.
34:12
And God says that you're not to listen to the voice
34:13
of that prophet.
34:15
God is testing you to see if you love him.
34:17
And so God has, even at that point in history,
34:20
given his people a principle that you test all things,
34:24
even miracles by the foundation
34:27
of God's own previous revelation of himself.
34:30
But come on, and the gospels, look, you know this,
34:34
this is history, I know you believe this.
34:37
Of course.
34:38
They go to an empty tomb, they assume grave robbers
34:42
and then Jesus appears and their faith comes back to life
34:46
and their message is about what we've seen.
34:49
We are witnesses and we have seen it.
34:51
So don't forget that, don't forget that.
34:53
We're missing that, it's important.
34:55
I don't think we should smooch over that.
34:57
- Wait, wait, they were glad.
34:59
- Jesus on the road to Emmaus with their confusion,
35:01
saying, oh, we thought he was the Messiah.
35:03
We thought he was gonna want to rescue Israel,
35:05
all those things, what does Jesus say to them?
35:08
He says, slow of heart to believe all
35:11
that the prophets have spoken.
35:12
He actually chastises them, Andy.
35:15
He chastises them for not believing what?
35:18
Believing in his own word, the previous revelation of God.
35:22
And so whatever their confusion was at that moment,
35:25
Jesus chastises them for not believing
35:28
what the prophets had spoken about him.
35:30
- I mean, I don't get the connection, but I mean, yeah.
35:37
But that's not really the point I'm making, but anyway.
35:41
- And just back to the signs and wonders issue.
35:44
When you say, if someone rises from the dead,
35:45
I'm going with them, Andy, you know as well as I know.
35:48
- And then I'm tying this specifically
35:50
to the resurrection of Jesus.
35:52
- No, I know, and I'm making a point on that.
35:54
But what is the foundation of your faith?
35:56
I mean, why do you believe what you believe?
35:58
The word of the living God.
36:00
Okay.
36:03
- Yeah, Jeff went there.
36:07
Yeah, that was your mic drop moment
36:11
of this really the entire debate.
36:14
I remember listening to this while I was driving
36:16
in the truck and I was like, oh, geez.
36:20
Because you can tell during this whole interaction
36:22
Andy's starting to get a little bit frustrated, right?
36:25
So he's interrupting, you know, he's trying to say,
36:28
no, this was, that wasn't my point.
36:29
This is my point.
36:30
You know, towards the end of that little clip,
36:32
you can tell he's being a little bit dismissive.
36:34
Like, oh, well, that's not really my point, but whatever.
36:37
And then he thinks he's got the gotcha question.
36:40
And he asks Jeff Durbin, basically,
36:42
what is the foundation of your faith?
36:43
And then he just nails him between the eyes,
36:46
the word of the living God.
36:48
And I listened to this at two time speed and the gap
36:51
between Durbin saying the word of the living God
36:54
and Andy saying, okay, it was even long.
36:58
We're listening to it at two time speed.
36:59
Andy Stanley had no idea how to respond.
37:02
And Justin Briarly had no idea how to intercede.
37:05
And if you watch the video of it,
37:06
you can actually see these guys on video talking.
37:09
And Andy Stanley is just frozen.
37:10
And then he just kind of shrugs his shoulders like, okay.
37:14
Like it was a huge point.
37:16
Now it's not exactly a turning point
37:17
because there was a whole lot of interaction
37:19
that came after this.
37:20
But, you know, this was a huge moment for Durbin here
37:24
because you can tell Andy's starting
37:25
to get a little flustered and Durbin is just calm.
37:27
And it's like he knows what's coming.
37:30
He knows what he's going to do.
37:31
And then he just kind of goes from there.
37:33
Now a little while, like right after this clip,
37:35
we kind of get into Andy Stanley asking,
37:38
just in general, but mainly asking towards Jeff Durbin,
37:41
you know, would there be a Bible
37:43
if we didn't have the resurrection?
37:45
So this was an interesting little interaction.
37:47
So let's go back into the clips here.
37:49
- I mean, in that sense, I'll just come in here, Jeff.
37:54
When you are actually though evangelizing,
37:59
speaking to someone about Jesus, about Christianity,
38:02
how does that make a difference?
38:04
Because for Andy, as far as I understand it,
38:07
he's going to tell him about Jesus,
38:09
about his life, death and resurrection.
38:12
And he's going to say, you should trust this man.
38:14
You should trust in this.
38:16
And he's not going to say,
38:18
and I'm also going to tell you everything
38:19
about the Old Testament and everything else in the Scriptures
38:22
'cause there's a whole other set of stuff you need to believe.
38:26
I'm assuming you're also going to tell him about Jesus,
38:29
his life, death and resurrection.
38:31
But how does your presuppositional approach
38:34
kind of make it any different to the way Andy's
38:37
going to introduce people to the gospel?
38:39
- I really appreciate how you asked that, Justin.
38:42
It's important because yes, that is exactly what we do.
38:44
When we go out to the Mormon temple,
38:46
when we go out to downtown Phoenix,
38:49
when we go to the abortion clinic to go
38:51
and minister to the mothers and fathers there,
38:53
we're preaching Christ.
38:55
We're preaching him crucified in his resurrection.
38:57
We're calling people to repentance and faith.
39:00
But what we're talking about here
39:01
is actually how we begin to engage
39:04
in the defense of the faith
39:05
'cause that's what we're talking about.
39:06
We're talking about apologetics.
39:08
And what I think we need to recognize
39:10
is that again, from the Old Testament,
39:12
literally from the book of Genesis onward,
39:14
there's the assumption of the self attesting word of God
39:17
as the foundation of the proclamation.
39:20
And so what I'm saying is that we're not basing it
39:22
upon a neutral position of saying something like,
39:26
well, there's this person historically
39:27
that people say rose from the dead.
39:30
And so I'm going with what they say.
39:31
No, we're saying it's actually much stronger than that.
39:34
There's a stronger appeal at the bottom of that.
39:36
- Let me ask you this question.
39:37
Would there be a Bible if there had been no resurrection?
39:43
- Can you explain that a little more?
39:43
Would there be a Bible if there had been no resurrection?
39:45
- We have the Bible, but not the old law and prophets,
39:49
but I mean, this extraordinary piece of literature
39:52
we call the Bible with the Hebrew Bible
39:54
or Jewish scriptures, whatever you call it,
39:55
and the New Testament documents.
39:57
Would that even exist for us
39:59
if there had been no resurrection?
40:01
- Well, I would say it'd be impossible for there
40:03
to have not been a resurrection.
40:05
The first century church had a Bible.
40:10
One of the things that you talk about,
40:12
which I think we have our Bible
40:15
if there had been no resurrection.
40:17
- Well, again, when you ask the question like that,
40:21
it's interesting because the Greeks up to a gent
40:24
which the early Christians had.
40:26
- No, but just, this is yes or no.
40:28
- I'm trying, actually, I'm answering the question,
40:31
that Bible that they had that they actually knew about
40:34
that was held up in the temple,
40:35
that they all had access to.
40:38
- The long prophets.
40:39
- The long prophets had prophesied
40:41
the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
40:42
It was a guaranteed and sure event in history.
40:46
But of course, if Christ had not been raised from the dead,
40:49
then there would be, to be pitied,
40:53
there'd be no faith, of course, but we know.
40:56
- There would be no Bible.
40:57
- There would be nothing to,
41:00
in terms of believing in this man who said he was the Messiah.
41:03
- There would be, I know there would be no Bible, correct?
41:07
- Well, the Old Testament said
41:08
that the Messiah was gonna rise again from the dead.
41:11
- Right, sorta.
41:12
Nobody expected a resurrection,
41:13
but if there had been no resurrection,
41:16
there would be no the B.I.B.L.E.
41:18
and you and I would know virtually nothing
41:21
about the long prophets because we learned everything,
41:24
we learned about the long prophets in church
41:26
and it would have been, you know,
41:28
relegated to the Anuma Elish
41:29
or some other Babylonian myth
41:30
and some, but we just studied it in school.
41:32
But there would be no Bible
41:34
if there had not been a resurrection.
41:36
- Well, I think that that's a non-sequitur
41:38
in terms of trying to create a disjunction
41:40
between the Old Testament.
41:42
- No, no, no, it's not, no.
41:43
- Is this one unified revelation?
41:45
I think that's actually the major point
41:47
of conflict between us is that Christians historically
41:50
have seen that this is, there's an organic unity
41:52
between the Old and the Testaments and the Sovereign.
41:54
- I agree because Jesus rose from the dead
41:58
and his story worth telling.
42:00
- Because it was an opposite that he would done something.
42:02
- And Gentiles began to take the Hebrew scripture
42:06
seriously because they took a Hebrew scripture seriously.
42:09
Jesus, again, it's sequential.
42:11
- So after taking that huge overhand right,
42:16
I feel like Andy Stanley had a pretty good counter punch
42:19
right here because you had Andy Stanley on his heels
42:23
a little bit and then Durban says what he says, right?
42:26
He hits him with the word of the living God.
42:29
And then this is Andy's immediate response.
42:30
I mean, Durban got to talk for a little bit
42:32
but then Andy would just like,
42:33
let's get to the crux of the matter.
42:35
Would there be a Bible?
42:36
Would there be a B-I-B-L-E
42:38
if we didn't have the resurrection?
42:40
And you could tell that Durban was kind of struggling
42:42
with coming up with a great response, right?
42:45
And so this is kind of the tip for tat thing
42:47
that we have going here.
42:48
And this is kind of where you first start seeing
42:50
that they're kind of talking past one another a little bit.
42:53
You sense that there is some common ground
42:55
but neither one of them is really wanting to give an inch here.
42:58
And so that kind of carries itself through the rest
43:01
of the interview here or the rest of the debate.
43:03
So a little while later around the 51 minute mark,
43:06
hopefully I've been giving you guys the timestamps.
43:08
I can't really remember.
43:09
But around the 51, 51, 20 minute mark,
43:13
we have Andy Stanley kind of come again
43:15
with basically like the who is Jesus part.
43:18
And so we're going to see a nice little quick interaction
43:20
between him and Jeff Durban here.
43:21
So let's go back in and rent again.
43:23
It's around the 51 minute and 19 or 22nd mark.
43:26
- And when it comes to that, in that sense,
43:31
you feel that too often the church is trying to do
43:34
too much work when they approach the skeptic
43:36
and the non-believer by kind of having to try
43:39
and defend vast reams of scripture.
43:41
- Right, right, and that's the point is we,
43:45
the pressure is not on us to defend everything in the Bible.
43:48
In terms of, again, if we're having a conversation
43:51
with somebody who will give us enough time
43:53
to even have these conversations,
43:54
which we all know is rarer and rarer.
43:57
The issue is, and here's where we all agree,
43:58
the issue is who is Jesus?
44:01
And if, I mean, that's the most important question
44:04
anybody can ask, who is Jesus?
44:06
And, you know, that's where it begins.
44:10
And once that question's settled,
44:12
honestly, I don't care if they become Calvinist
44:15
or covenant or dispensational, I don't really care.
44:17
I just want people to embrace the fact that Jesus Paul said it.
44:21
He died on the cross-earth sin and was buried,
44:23
you know, rose from the dead.
44:24
So that's the issue.
44:26
And then how we organize it, how we categorize it,
44:29
those are interesting conversations to have.
44:32
But I think where we all agree is,
44:34
how do we get people to engage in that conversation
44:37
and arrive at the conclusion that Jesus
44:38
is who the Apostle Paul, Jesus was?
44:41
- So obviously, Andy Stanley's making quite a bit
44:44
of a reductionist argument there,
44:47
kind of breaking it down to its most basic levels,
44:49
but you gotta be honest, guys.
44:51
Have you, haven't you had interactions before
44:53
with people where you felt like you were having,
44:56
you're trying to talk to people about Jesus
44:57
and all they want to ask you about is Jonah and the whale.
45:00
Right, they want to ask you about Noah's Ark,
45:02
they want to ask you about Adam and Eve and the snake,
45:04
they want to ask you about those types of things.
45:06
And so here you are, if you're not a skilled debater,
45:08
if you're not skilled at kind of keeping things on task,
45:11
you're kind of drowning a little bit,
45:13
like no pun intended with Noah.
45:14
But that's kind of the deal is like,
45:15
that's what you feel like.
45:17
It's that you're stuck kind of defending things
45:19
that are in the Old Testament that you don't fully understand,
45:22
that you don't really understand the context.
45:24
You're stuck seeing, well, isn't there slavery
45:26
in the Old Testament and didn't, you know,
45:28
God's smite entire groups of people
45:30
and didn't, you know, God's people go in
45:32
and slaughter women and children,
45:33
like you're stuck having to do all those things.
45:35
And it's not that those topics aren't important.
45:38
It's just that that does kind of take you away
45:40
from the central point of contention,
45:42
which is did Jesus die?
45:45
Did he rise again?
45:47
And did he do that for your sins?
45:49
Is he your pathway to salvation?
45:51
So again, another good point by Andy Stanley here,
45:54
but let's go ahead and get into Jeff Durban's response.
45:57
- Well, I think it's important if I could just mention,
46:00
just bring in here, Justin, that in 1 Corinthians 15
46:03
when the Apostle Paul talks about if Christ is not raised
46:05
and our faith is in vain,
46:07
I think it's important to point to where he continues
46:09
to go from there, the foundation of his hope
46:12
with the resurrection of Jesus Christ
46:14
is based in the Old Testament prophecies he mentions.
46:18
- No, it's not, no, it's not.
46:20
- Well, it's based, Andy, let me finish my phone.
46:22
It's based on an event in his life.
46:26
He, listen, he was the first...
46:28
- Andy, do you have to finish his thought there, Andy,
46:32
and then I'll bring you back in.
46:33
Yeah, go ahead.
46:34
- Yeah, so he then goes on to tell a story.
46:36
My point here is that the resurrection itself
46:38
is not just an event in history.
46:40
It's an event in history that's connected
46:42
to the promises of God, which you would agree with, Andy,
46:45
I know that you will,
46:46
but you're creating a disjunction at this point,
46:48
and you're saying it's just the event in history.
46:50
You just need to know about this event in history.
46:52
The Apostle Paul, in fact, does in 1 Corinthians 15.
46:55
Yes, he does, quote, scripture, Psalm 1101.
46:58
He must reign until he's put all of his enemies
47:01
under his feet, the last enemy is death,
47:03
and that's when he delivers the kingdom over to the Father.
47:06
So he does actually connect the Old Testament prophecies
47:09
of Messiah right inside there.
47:11
It's in tandem.
47:13
My point here is that you have to see the resurrection
47:17
the way that the early Christians did,
47:19
and that is that it has meaning because
47:23
it is connected to the promises of God
47:25
in the biblical worldview.
47:26
It's not just an miraculous event out there
47:29
in the world sort of sustained.
47:31
- I agree with all that.
47:32
I agree with all that.
47:33
- Let me finish the thought.
47:34
And this gets back to before,
47:36
I didn't get you to finish the thought.
47:39
When God gives a test of a prophet,
47:41
he says even if they have signs and wonders,
47:43
but they lead you after other gods, what's that mean?
47:46
God's previous revelation of himself
47:49
is the standard, it's the testing point.
47:52
So even if you have somebody rise again from the dead,
47:56
and Andy, you and I know we're pastors.
47:59
You and I know that we have to deal with people
48:01
who are deluded today by a lot of this,
48:04
these people who are doing these false miracles
48:07
and making legs grow and bringing people up on stage
48:12
that have been preset to come up there
48:14
and stand up and all those things.
48:15
Well, there's signs, there's wonders, there's miracles.
48:18
There are people who have even claimed in history
48:20
to have raised people from the dead.
48:22
Just because there's a sign and wonder,
48:24
it doesn't mean that actually accords with biblical truth.
48:27
The standard is the word of God as the starting point
48:31
that gives meaning to the resurrection of Jesus.
48:34
- So you can see there, Andy, again,
48:37
let's try to hop in and finally, Justin Briarley was like,
48:39
"Hey, man, let's let Durbin make his point."
48:41
'Cause Durbin doesn't, you know,
48:42
I don't think ever in this interview
48:44
actually interrupt Andy Stanley.
48:46
But again, you can see the differences
48:48
between their two approaches, right?
48:50
Andy Stanley is the pragmatist, the practical,
48:53
let's look at the event and Jeff Durbin's like,
48:55
"No, no, no, it's bigger than the event."
48:57
And the reason why we know it's bigger
48:58
is because we can go back to the scriptures
49:00
and actually prove we have a proof in the Old Testament
49:03
that says, "Look, these events were preordained.
49:06
"We knew this was coming and we knew it was coming
49:08
"because of this and that actually undergirds
49:11
"the entire thing, right, and undergirds the event."
49:14
And so that's an interesting kind of back and forth
49:17
between them, but at one point here,
49:19
as we're getting towards the end a little bit,
49:20
around the 56 minute and 19 second mark,
49:23
you see Briarley kind of come in and he's asking Andy Stanley,
49:26
he's like, "Hey, you know, we're almost an hour
49:28
"into this thing, what's the rub, right?
49:31
"You know, where's the disagreement, right?"
49:34
And so he asks Andy Stanley this
49:36
and Andy Stanley doesn't have a response.
49:39
He's like, "I don't know, like I don't really know
49:41
"what the rub is."
49:42
And so Durbin actually chimes in and says,
49:44
"Well, actually I do, I know what the rub is,
49:47
"I know where the disagreement's coming."
49:48
And so this is Durbin's response to that.
49:50
- So I think the point is that Andy and I
49:55
would both confess together, we would stand hand-in-hand
49:58
together, that there's prophecy of Jesus,
50:02
these prophecies give meaning to the resurrection of Jesus.
50:05
My point is that I'm saying, stand there
50:07
as the grounding at all points.
50:10
And Andy is arguing that we just need
50:11
to have an event driven, just to announce the event.
50:15
The event is what gives it its foundation.
50:17
The event happens.
50:19
And what I'm saying is, is that if there's no grounding
50:22
underneath that event that gives it meaning and context,
50:25
then it's just a miraculous event claim.
50:29
And it's just as easily dismissed by someone
50:31
like Ben Shapiro, who says, "I find it very uninteresting."
50:34
- So again, at this point, there's been punch,
50:38
there's been counter-punch, but you see Durbin trying
50:40
to kind of bring some consistency here,
50:42
because I gotta admit, by an hour into this thing,
50:45
I was a little confused as well, right?
50:47
'Cause I'm very familiar with both of these guys' ministries,
50:49
and I know what their worldviews are,
50:51
and I kind of have an idea of how they exegete scripture
50:53
and all those things, 'cause I've been listening
50:55
to each of them for years, Andy, for a little bit longer,
50:57
but I've been listening to both of them.
50:58
But this was a very good summary, you know,
51:00
in less than a minute of, "Hey, hey, this is where we disagree."
51:04
Because Andy was very flummoxed at this point,
51:07
and he's just like kind of exasperated,
51:08
he's like, "Well, yeah, I don't really know where we're disagreeing.
51:11
"I don't know why Jeff's not really getting my point."
51:13
And Jeff's like, "Look, this is the point," right?
51:15
And then this leads a few minutes later,
51:17
right at the one hour mark,
51:19
so like one hour and a couple of minutes,
51:20
or a couple of seconds after that, rather.
51:23
It kind of gets into this whole,
51:24
there's a very interesting interaction here
51:26
about can we just say the Bible says, right?
51:30
So some people have kind of come against that and said,
51:33
"Man, in 2019, you can't argue what the Bible says," right?
51:38
Like that just doesn't work now.
51:39
And believe me, I've been kind of pulled into some
51:42
of those arguments in some of the previous episodes
51:44
and we're talking about abortion,
51:45
you hear people that are very, very angry at pro-lifers
51:48
that don't use the Bible.
51:49
They're angry at pro-lifers that only use science
51:52
or logic or any of those types of things,
51:54
and they're not appealing to a Christian worldview
51:56
to the Amago Day or something like that.
51:58
And so this kind of gets a little bit into that territory.
52:01
So again, if you're following along,
52:02
it's at one hour and about two seconds,
52:05
and so let's go ahead and get back into the debate here.
52:08
I do want to get though to the issue of the Old Testament
52:11
a bit more specifically in this last segment, folks,
52:13
because inevitably, Andy, that's where a lot of the
52:17
controversy and confusion in some ways of about the book
52:20
and what you've preached has come.
52:21
People thinking that you're effectively saying,
52:23
rather like, as I mentioned, like Marcian,
52:25
that second century heretic who said,
52:28
"We just need to ditch the Old Testament."
52:30
You know, it was almost a completely different God
52:33
for the Old and New Testament.
52:35
And as I understand it from what you're saying,
52:37
Andy, you're not saying anything like that,
52:39
but in that last section, Jeff was saying,
52:43
hang on, when Paul went to the synagogues,
52:45
he showed them that Jesus was the Messiah from the Scriptures,
52:49
and we've got to start with the Scriptures.
52:51
That's why he says you're missing a point there
52:53
if you think we start with the event,
52:55
or we start with the Scripture,
52:56
which the event is, if you like, the fulfillment of.
52:59
But then, so what's your problem with that?
53:02
And if we're not speaking to a specifically Jewish audience,
53:06
does that give us a different reason,
53:07
a different methodology, Andy?
53:10
- I think, again, these are not the Apostle Paul's words,
53:14
but I think this was his intent.
53:15
Whatever it takes, I mean, the Apostle Paul,
53:19
these are his words, by all possible means
53:22
that I might win some.
53:24
So if the Old Testament is an on-ramp, great.
53:27
If the resurrection's an on-ramp, great.
53:28
If my personal experience is an on-ramp, great.
53:31
If brokenness and tragedy in a person's life
53:34
is an on-ramp, great.
53:35
If a sick child does not mean,
53:37
whatever the on-ramp is to faith, I'm all for it.
53:40
And I think we would all three agree with that.
53:42
And so for some people, the Old Testament is an on-ramp.
53:45
And I'm sorry, I would never, of course, never discount that.
53:48
The interesting thing is, my Jewish friends
53:51
who are Christians, all of them came to faith,
53:54
the two of them came to faith,
53:55
all of them came to faith in Protestant churches.
53:57
None of them came to faith through the Old Testament
54:01
as an on-ramp.
54:02
But I had a professor at DTS, Dallas Theological Seminary,
54:05
who did come to faith as a young Jewish college student
54:09
through the on-ramp of the Old Testament
54:12
that was presented to him as bi-Christian.
54:15
So I'm not, I mean, an on-ramp to faith
54:18
and recognizing who Jesus is and that spark of life
54:21
that comes to life once they hear
54:22
and how they're gonna hear if somebody doesn't go,
54:24
I'm 100% for all of that.
54:26
So again, I think we would all three agree with that.
54:31
So I'm certainly not trying to remove
54:34
any sort of on-ramp to faith, for sure.
54:37
- What I'm getting though is that in your view
54:39
for a post-Christian society where there may be-
54:42
- You can't start with the Bible says the Bible.
54:44
I mean, you can, the Bible says the Bible says the Bible says
54:46
but here's the thing, everybody else now knows
54:49
what else the Bible says.
54:51
It's, so now I'm beginning to spit and match
54:53
on a six day creation, young earth, old earth,
54:55
Levitical law, homosexuality.
54:58
I mean, it's like, oh gosh, you know,
54:59
where the issue is who is Jesus?
55:03
That's the issue and if you get that straight,
55:06
the dominoes start falling in, you know,
55:08
good directions for the most part.
55:09
- I think the only way we can get there, Andy,
55:11
is by saying the Bible says.
55:13
- No, we don't have to say that.
55:16
- If I could finish the thought,
55:17
the Bible says that Jesus rose again from the dead.
55:19
- No, it actually doesn't say that.
55:21
- That's how you know Jesus rose from the dead
55:23
because the biblical witness gives you that testimony
55:26
that Jesus rose from the dead.
55:27
- You just changed terminology,
55:30
which is a very subtle but important shift in terminology.
55:34
- I didn't, that Bible is where you get the message
55:38
that Jesus rose again from the dead, but--
55:39
- No, it's not.
55:41
- Explain that, Andy, explain that.
55:43
Well, what do you mean by saying the Bible doesn't say
55:45
that Jesus rose from the dead?
55:47
- Because the Bible doesn't say anything.
55:51
John did, Moses did, David did.
55:54
- And that's in the Bible.
55:55
Paul did, but it was only in the Bible
55:58
once it got put in the Bible.
56:00
Here's the way of thinking about it.
56:01
- That's incoherent.
56:02
- Well, let's allow Andy to finish his thought.
56:05
- Let's allow Andy to finish his thought there, Jeff.
56:06
Yeah, go ahead, Andy.
56:07
- You don't put, you don't put something in a safe
56:10
to make it valuable.
56:12
You put it in a safe because it's valuable.
56:15
The New Testament documents were collected and protected
56:19
and meticulously copied because very early on,
56:22
they were recognized as valuable.
56:25
And in the fourth century, these preexisting,
56:28
valuable witnesses and documents were collected
56:32
and put in the document that somebody,
56:34
we don't know who, titled the Bible.
56:36
So, sequentially, that's how we got our Bible.
56:40
And so, this is one of the things I argue for in my book.
56:43
In fact, I've been teaching this for seven years.
56:45
That when we preach and teach, instead of citing the Bible,
56:48
we just drop back and say, John,
56:51
and I witnessed the resurrection says,
56:53
Paul, who steps onto the pages of history
56:55
as someone who hated the church says,
56:57
Jesus said, we cite James, the brother of Jesus.
57:02
What would it take to convince your brother
57:03
who's the son of God?
57:04
James said, drop back, cite the authors.
57:08
And again, it's just a different way.
57:10
It's a different approach.
57:11
And it obviously is more accurate.
57:14
- And before you come back in, Jeff,
57:16
you believe actually that this is a more evangelistically
57:19
effective way of presenting the claims as well.
57:22
- It is, because I've been doing it for years,
57:24
and I hear the stories, read the emails,
57:28
and get the thank you notes.
57:29
Hey, I finally brought my brother,
57:30
and yes, it's more effective.
57:33
And it's what the early church did.
57:35
So, it's what Jesus did.
57:37
Sometimes Jesus said, the law and the prophets,
57:39
sometimes Jesus says Moses,
57:40
sometimes Jesus says David.
57:42
So, you know, thank you.
57:44
- And I suppose this is the point, Jeff,
57:46
is that the early church, they were doing the stuff
57:49
that we now see as this authoritative,
57:52
infallible word in the New Testament.
57:54
So, they were, by definition,
57:57
they weren't referring to all of the documents
57:58
that you would now say are the word of God, Jeff.
58:02
So, I think this is the point Andy's driving at,
58:05
is if they could do it, so can we.
58:07
We don't have to, as it were,
58:10
say the Bible says it's the testimony
58:14
of who the Bible then records that's the important part of that.
58:18
- Right, and it's inspired, yeah.
58:21
- Yeah, and there's just a difference in perspective here.
58:24
And this controversy actually goes back to the time
58:27
of the Reformation in terms of,
58:29
is it the scriptures that create the churches,
58:31
that have the ultimate self-attesting authority,
58:35
or does the church recognize and declare the scriptures
58:40
to be the authoritative word of God?
58:42
Which, where are we going?
58:43
Which part is the foundation?
58:45
And I think that's critical.
58:48
We would agree, 2 Timothy 3, 16 through 17 says,
58:51
"All scripture is Theonostos, it's breathed out by God."
58:54
So, the origin of scripture is from God.
58:57
The Holy Spirit of God carries people along
58:59
to write what they write, and it's interesting.
59:02
- So, why don't we just cite the people
59:03
that were carried along?
59:05
- Well, let me just point this out,
59:07
that in the time of the apostles,
59:10
after Jesus' death and resurrection and ascension,
59:13
the apostle Peter refers to the writings
59:15
of the apostle Paul that were happening in his day.
59:18
And he says, in 2 Peter 3, 16,
59:21
he says, talking about things that Paul is writing,
59:24
they're difficult to understand.
59:25
He says, "There are some things in them
59:27
that are hard to understand,
59:28
which the ignorant and unstable twist
59:30
to their own destruction as they do the other scriptures."
59:35
So, what's interesting is that in the time
59:37
of the apostles, during the writing of these works,
59:41
the apostle Peter equates the letters of Paul,
59:44
the writings of Paul with the other Holy Scriptures.
59:47
He's equating the writings of Paul
59:49
with the Old Testament Scriptures.
59:52
- You're making my point.
59:53
- No, I'm actually going against your point.
59:56
What I'm saying is that they weren't just writing letters
59:58
and then the church comes later and says,
1:00:00
"Well, yeah, we recognize that as authoritative.
1:00:02
What they were giving was they, honest to us,
1:00:04
breathed out words of God."
1:00:06
So, what I was saying was,
1:00:07
is that you are telling people today
1:00:09
that Jesus rose again from the dead,
1:00:11
because why the authoritative word of God tells me so.
1:00:15
That's where I get it from that word of God.
1:00:18
And I think it's important to recognize that distinction
1:00:20
is that it is, I think, appropriate,
1:00:22
and I don't think we should shy away from this
1:00:24
to be able to tell the world,
1:00:25
well, the word of God says.
1:00:27
I don't think we should shy away from that.
1:00:28
And I think that's one of the concerns I have
1:00:30
with this apologetic methodology
1:00:32
is is teaching Christians to actually be afraid to say,
1:00:36
"Well, God says."
1:00:37
- So, again, there you see at the end,
1:00:39
Jeff Durbin is kind of coming at the apologetics-only approach
1:00:43
and not basically leaning on the scripture.
1:00:45
And so, there was a lot to kind of break down in there.
1:00:48
But ultimately, Andy Stanley,
1:00:49
that is, he did kind of make a very weird argument
1:00:53
about things that aren't in the scripture
1:00:55
versus things that are.
1:00:57
And I think this interaction between these two,
1:00:59
it was about eight minutes long or so,
1:01:00
this really, really shows that they are definitely
1:01:03
talking past one another.
1:01:04
Because I don't think that you can say seriously
1:01:06
that either one of these guys
1:01:08
doesn't take the scriptures seriously,
1:01:10
that either one of these guys
1:01:12
doesn't really want to lean on everything
1:01:15
that we have from an evidentiary standpoint.
1:01:17
It's whatever they think is primary.
1:01:20
It goes right back to their theses from the beginning,
1:01:22
where Andy thinks it's in the event that is primary,
1:01:24
whereas Jeff Durbin thinks it's just the scripture
1:01:28
that that's the primary thing that we should be focused on.
1:01:31
So, there's about a 15 or so minute little gap here
1:01:35
at the end where the interaction I didn't find
1:01:37
all too compelling to share with you all.
1:01:39
So, we're just gonna forward all the way to the end.
1:01:41
So, we're gonna get right into their final thoughts.
1:01:43
So, here's like about a nine minute interaction
1:01:45
between the two of them
1:01:46
where they're kind of giving their last pitches as it were.
1:01:49
So, hey, this is kind of my thought.
1:01:51
This is my thought process on this.
1:01:52
This is my main argument.
1:01:54
So, let's go ahead and go back into that.
1:01:55
That is at the one hour in 23 minutes
1:01:58
in about 30 second mark.
1:02:00
So, let's get back into it here.
1:02:02
- I'm gonna give a chance for you guys
1:02:03
to just give some final thoughts.
1:02:05
So, Jeff, I'll start with you
1:02:06
and then I'll have Andy finish up.
1:02:08
- Well, I appreciate so much being with you Andy today.
1:02:11
Again, I love and respect you
1:02:13
and I'd love to maybe come hang out with you sometime
1:02:15
and hash these issues out.
1:02:16
Although, I read in your books an analogy that I really hated
1:02:19
because you use the golf tee analogy.
1:02:22
So, it can't be golf 'cause I think it's from the devil.
1:02:24
- Yeah, I don't play golf.
1:02:26
So, I don't, I don't, I don't fish.
1:02:29
I'm the greatest husband because I don't have any hobbies.
1:02:31
I'm just home all the time, new source.
1:02:34
- Okay, well, I'll just say that,
1:02:37
I don't think Andy really responded
1:02:38
to any of the substance of the argument that I made.
1:02:40
And when he says that our command,
1:02:43
our marching orders in the New Testament
1:02:44
are to love as I have loved you.
1:02:48
The question is this, how did Jesus love them?
1:02:51
He loved them according to God's law,
1:02:54
which says, master, what's the greatest commandment
1:02:57
in the law?
1:02:57
Jesus says, hear us, rail the Lord of God, the Lord is one.
1:03:00
You should love the Lord of God with all your heart
1:03:02
and soul and mind and strength.
1:03:03
You should love your neighbor as you love yourself.
1:03:05
That's quoting from Leviticus, by the way.
1:03:08
He says, all the law and the prophets have built upon these.
1:03:10
So, if we're gonna love like Jesus,
1:03:13
then we're gonna have a love for God
1:03:14
and love for one another.
1:03:15
And what's that look like?
1:03:17
Well, according to Jesus, all the law and the prophets
1:03:19
are love God, love neighbor.
1:03:21
The 10 commandments, love God, love neighbor.
1:03:23
Even down to the judicial law
1:03:26
and animal husbandry laws have to do with love for neighbor.
1:03:30
So, I think we have a problem when we disconnect that.
1:03:34
And we say, well, Jesus teaches a really supreme
1:03:36
and valuable way of love.
1:03:37
That's so different from that harsh Old Testament law.
1:03:40
No, Jesus teaches us what the law was pointing to all along.
1:03:44
This is how you love God and love neighbor.
1:03:46
And when he talks about the Old Testament law,
1:03:52
not quoted in the New Testament as an authority,
1:03:55
I think you're gonna see again different
1:03:58
from what I just quoted from in 1 Corinthians,
1:04:00
chapter nine, verse eight.
1:04:01
Even down to something that can be seen as so irrelevant
1:04:06
to Christians today when we read that.
1:04:08
Animal husbandry laws, he says this,
1:04:11
"Do I say these things on human authority?"
1:04:15
Does not the law say it the same?
1:04:17
And he quotes the law and he says,
1:04:18
does he not certainly speak for our sake?
1:04:21
It is written for our sake, not on human authority,
1:04:24
on what God's authority.
1:04:26
And so I think that it's important to recognize
1:04:29
that the, again, 10 commandments are quoted
1:04:32
with the assumption of continuity,
1:04:33
but you're supposed to see it now in a spirit-filled,
1:04:36
new covenant way.
1:04:38
And if somebody says, well, how are we supposed to know that?
1:04:41
I would say the New Testament gives you divine revelation
1:04:45
on how you're supposed to view these things.
1:04:47
Judicial law is assumed as continuous,
1:04:50
the death penalty, festivals, all of that.
1:04:53
And so, and this is the final thing I was saying
1:04:55
that this is I think so critical.
1:04:58
In Ephesians chapter two, the Apostle Paul
1:05:00
is addressing the issue of the holiness code.
1:05:03
Like, what are we supposed to keep?
1:05:05
How come not the dietary law is the holiness code?
1:05:07
And the answer is so clear from the New Testament.
1:05:09
It's all throughout.
1:05:11
Those were dress rehearsals.
1:05:12
Those were training wheels.
1:05:14
Those don't apply anymore because now we have the substance
1:05:17
who is Christ and now we're filled with the spirit of God.
1:05:20
But what's interesting here is as Paul's addressing
1:05:22
that very issue in Ephesians chapter two
1:05:25
about the holiness code and all the rest.
1:05:28
And throughout, he says in Ephesians two, 11,
1:05:32
therefore remember that at one time
1:05:33
you Gentiles in the flesh called the uncircumcision
1:05:36
by what is called the circumcision,
1:05:38
which is made in the flesh by hands.
1:05:40
Remember, and this is critical here guys,
1:05:42
that you were at the same time separated from Christ,
1:05:45
alienated from the commonwealth of Israel
1:05:48
and strangers to the, he says this,
1:05:51
covenants plural of promise singular,
1:05:55
having no hope and without God in the world.
1:05:57
But now in Christ Jesus, you who were far off
1:06:00
have been brought near by the blood of Christ
1:06:04
for he himself is our peace who has made us both one
1:06:06
and broken down in his flesh
1:06:07
to the dividing wall of hostility
1:06:09
by abolishing the law of commandments expressed
1:06:11
in ordinances.
1:06:13
And so what Paul does there is he says
1:06:16
that he just made my point.
1:06:19
- Well, actually I haven't, I've made the opposite point
1:06:22
because what he says is that now you were one strangers
1:06:25
to these covenants plural of promise.
1:06:28
You were strangers to the commonwealth of Israel,
1:06:30
but now you've brought near to what?
1:06:33
To the commonwealth of Israel,
1:06:35
to the covenants plural of promise.
1:06:37
If we've been brought near to the covenants of promise
1:06:40
and we've been brought near not just to the Abrahamic covenant
1:06:43
Andy, but to the blessings of what God gave to Moses,
1:06:47
to the blessings of the Davidic covenant,
1:06:49
in Christ, we've been brought near to the blessings
1:06:51
of all those covenants, including the land, right?
1:06:54
And this is what I would say.
1:06:55
When now the Bible teaches us by divine revelation
1:06:59
that that promise is actually the whole world,
1:07:02
not just the land.
1:07:03
That's what the Bible teaches us.
1:07:05
But it also says this, and this is where I'll end
1:07:08
and this is something I encourage everyone to go read.
1:07:10
Deuteronomy chapter four does not see the law of God,
1:07:13
the way that Andy describes it merely as sort of like,
1:07:16
law and harsh and just a temporary covenant kind of a thing.
1:07:21
It says that the nations were supposed to see this law
1:07:24
and say, what kind of nation is this
1:07:26
that has a God so near to it is this,
1:07:28
and has rules and statutes of law so righteous as this law.
1:07:33
All God was supposed to be seen as a blessing to the world.
1:07:37
It was justice and righteousness and goodness
1:07:39
that the world can look in it and say,
1:07:42
what kind of God is this that has a law so perfect as this?
1:07:46
I think when we cast that away,
1:07:49
I think we lose the benefits that are promised
1:07:51
in Jeremiah 31, Isaiah two, Isaiah 42 and Ezekiel 36.
1:07:56
- Okay, thank you.
1:07:57
The Sinai law was so superior to the Canaanite,
1:08:01
Egyptians, American laws at the time.
1:08:04
That's a great point and irresistible.
1:08:07
I talk about how much better it was for women,
1:08:09
for foreigners, for everybody.
1:08:11
It was superior in every way.
1:08:14
And it pointed to and it substantiated
1:08:17
and supported the idea that Israel
1:08:19
would eventually be a light to the Gentile.
1:08:21
So I agree with all that.
1:08:23
I just don't think that you and I are involved
1:08:25
or connected to that covenant.
1:08:27
We weren't there, it wasn't for us.
1:08:29
- I mean, I'll give you your final moment here now.
1:08:32
And one thing that did make me laugh
1:08:34
when I was reading your book was you obviously anticipated
1:08:37
that people like Jeff and many others would disagree
1:08:40
with you or I guess in your view,
1:08:43
misunderstand what you're saying at one point you said,
1:08:45
"Why would I blow up my career by writing this book?"
1:08:49
Which made me laugh out loud.
1:08:51
- Yeah, that's not coming.
1:08:52
- Yeah, okay, but we've heard Jeff's essentially laying it down
1:08:57
and saying this, in so many ways,
1:09:01
we're connected to that Old Testament law.
1:09:04
All of what Jesus has done is fulfilled
1:09:06
and helped us to live it in this new way.
1:09:08
And often you're saying, "I agree with you, Jeff."
1:09:11
But obviously you've got a different sense of how exactly
1:09:14
then we're meant to deal with you.
1:09:15
- Well, we disagree over continuity and discontinuity.
1:09:18
So let me just read what Jesus said.
1:09:21
"A new command I give you," which means we miss this.
1:09:25
"I am stepping in front of Moses."
1:09:28
This is something, I'm giving you a new command
1:09:31
as I love one another to which they thought,
1:09:33
"Well, that's not new," to which Jesus would have said,
1:09:36
"I'm not through 'cause I'm about to redefine it."
1:09:39
As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
1:09:42
And then here it is.
1:09:43
I mean, we've all preached it and taught it and memorized it.
1:09:45
By this, by this one thing, by this,
1:09:49
everyone will know that you are mine, not Moses.
1:09:52
By this, everyone will know that you're my disciples
1:09:55
if you love one another the way that I have loved you.
1:09:58
And then again, he gave his life and defined love.
1:10:01
We don't get to define love.
1:10:03
So you can go the complicated way and try to figure out
1:10:06
continuity and discontinuity.
1:10:07
Those are fascinating conversations,
1:10:09
or you can just go the simple way and say,
1:10:12
"My responsibility is to love you
1:10:15
"the way that God and Christ love me,"
1:10:17
which is sacrificial, it's never self-serving,
1:10:20
it's always honoring, it's always you first,
1:10:22
you punctuated it by washing the disciples' feet
1:10:25
and say, "Now, if you ever get too big for your britches,"
1:10:28
'cause you're Peter and Paul and the rock stars
1:10:30
and the book of Acts, you just remember this night
1:10:32
because in my kingdom, not like the Gentile world,
1:10:35
if you wanna be great in my kingdom,
1:10:37
you must be a servant, you must be a slave of all,
1:10:39
you get in the back of the back of the line,
1:10:42
that's what it's gonna look like.
1:10:43
And that got the attention ultimately of the empire
1:10:47
and the world.
1:10:47
- So there you have it, that's the end of the debate,
1:10:52
essentially the end of the debate.
1:10:53
And it's kinda interesting there at the end,
1:10:55
it's almost like, you know, Jeff Durbin
1:10:57
is a very, very talented speaker,
1:10:59
but it's almost like he didn't know how to end a debate.
1:11:02
It's like he looked down at his notes and he's like,
1:11:04
"Well, I got like five or six more points to make,
1:11:06
"so I might as well just mush that into the very end."
1:11:08
And then obviously, Andy Stanley is one of the most skilled
1:11:11
speakers that we have in modern Christendom.
1:11:14
And so he had a very cogent into the point last minute
1:11:17
response there and he kind of was able to put a bow
1:11:19
on most of his comments there.
1:11:21
But let's get into just my quick thoughts and reaction
1:11:24
to this in its entirety.
1:11:25
You know, hopefully again, you took my advice
1:11:27
from the beginning and you listened to the entire thing
1:11:28
on your own.
1:11:29
So the first thing that I wanna kinda point out
1:11:32
is I cannot, for the life of me,
1:11:34
find any high-minded, biblically based person
1:11:39
that thinks that Andy Stanley won this.
1:11:43
Like most high-minded Bible people is not in the Stanley
1:11:46
camp on this type of a thing.
1:11:48
But at the same time, I can't really find most logic
1:11:53
first people in the Durbin camp, right?
1:11:57
So a Durbin is appealing to the word of God
1:12:00
and the strict interpretations of what the Bible says,
1:12:05
whereas Andy Stanley is appealing to logic.
1:12:09
And so that's the thing,
1:12:10
whenever you listen to something like this,
1:12:11
it's difficult.
1:12:12
It's difficult as a listener,
1:12:13
because we all have our different worldviews
1:12:15
and we have our different upbringings.
1:12:16
Maybe you were more fundamentalists,
1:12:18
maybe you were more liberal in your upbringing
1:12:20
in terms of what you learned inside of the church.
1:12:22
And so one of these reactions and one of these ways
1:12:26
of comporting yourself is going to be more attractive to you.
1:12:29
And so I thought that that was pretty interesting
1:12:30
that even on the back end when I talked to people
1:12:32
that liked this, there's no one that went in,
1:12:35
you know, an Andy Stanley kind of guy
1:12:37
and then came out thinking,
1:12:37
"You know that Jeff Durbin, he really won me over.
1:12:40
"I haven't really seen that.
1:12:41
"I'm sure there's people out there that have listened to that,
1:12:42
"that have kind of switched, but I haven't really seen that."
1:12:45
Now on the other side of that,
1:12:47
one thing that I found that was just interesting
1:12:48
and this is just kind of because I'm a nerd
1:12:50
when it comes to just flowing on things,
1:12:52
Andy Stanley looked to be flowing the entire time, right?
1:12:55
You can see him looking directly at the camera.
1:12:57
You can see him just interacting.
1:12:58
You can see him obviously waiting for verbal pauses
1:13:01
or just interjecting himself right in the middle of a sentence.
1:13:04
And you can't really do that
1:13:05
if everything you're wanting to do
1:13:07
is bulleted out and planned to a tee.
1:13:10
Whereas Jeff Durbin was more so reading,
1:13:12
which I was surprised by, to be honest,
1:13:14
because when you watch any of Jeff Durbin's preaching,
1:13:17
he's not really going off a notes,
1:13:19
like which is why his preaching is so incredible
1:13:22
in a lot of ways is because when he's quoting scripture,
1:13:24
he's quoting it from memory.
1:13:26
And he's quoting it like not because he's memorized it
1:13:29
in preparation for that speech
1:13:31
so that he could just give it to you.
1:13:34
It's just in there.
1:13:35
It's just in his brain.
1:13:36
It's in his heart. It's in his soul.
1:13:37
And it just comes out whenever it needs to during a sermon.
1:13:40
So I thought that was a little bit interesting.
1:13:42
And the other thing I wanted to point out
1:13:43
is Stanley throughout this conversation,
1:13:47
you can see him visibly getting more and more frustrated.
1:13:51
And so towards the end,
1:13:52
they both kind of cooled off a little bit
1:13:53
and it just kind of, it was what it was.
1:13:55
But I mean, I kind of pointed it out
1:13:56
and you can hear it even in his voice,
1:13:58
even if you weren't watching the video earlier on
1:14:01
and all the way through the middle,
1:14:02
he's just getting frustrated.
1:14:04
It's like he doesn't understand why Jeff Durbin
1:14:07
can't just get it, right?
1:14:08
It's like, ah, why can't you just think my way?
1:14:10
Like, why can't you just do it my way?
1:14:12
Like, why aren't you understanding this?
1:14:14
Everyone else is understanding this, right?
1:14:16
And you can see that coming out.
1:14:18
And Jeff Durbin was relaxed the entire time.
1:14:22
And so from a debate standpoint,
1:14:24
I mean, one of the big rules of debating
1:14:26
is don't let your emotions get the best of you.
1:14:29
Now, if you want to use some emotion with your introduction
1:14:34
or if you want to use some emotion there at the end,
1:14:36
go ahead and do that.
1:14:36
But if you use a lot of emotion during the middle
1:14:39
of the debate, it makes it seem like
1:14:40
you don't have a lot of points.
1:14:43
So it's like that person that can only win an argument
1:14:45
if they're yelling, right?
1:14:47
Like, I mean, the moment you kind of put them
1:14:50
in a corner, they just start, ah, well, you're this
1:14:52
and you're that and I don't have to listen to you.
1:14:53
Anyway, and you can't judge me.
1:14:55
You know, it was kind of one of those types of things.
1:14:56
Obviously, Andy Stanley wasn't wilding out and going crazy.
1:14:59
But at the same time, it's just like, Andy, let him talk.
1:15:02
Like this is an interaction and you keep interjecting
1:15:05
and you're not exactly making yourself look good.
1:15:07
So I thought that was interesting.
1:15:08
And the thing that's really cool
1:15:10
as you dig in this a little bit more
1:15:12
is if you dig into Jeff Durbin's ministry,
1:15:14
you see this kind of relaxed spirit in his sermons,
1:15:17
in his sidewalk ministry.
1:15:20
But to be honest with you,
1:15:21
I've never really seen Andy Stanley respond like this.
1:15:24
And, you know, there's good reason for that
1:15:26
because he's typically in a very controlled environment
1:15:28
where he's speaking in front of his congregation
1:15:30
to a bunch of people that like him
1:15:32
and typically agree with him.
1:15:33
And so it was interesting to see this type of a thing
1:15:36
because we've seen Jeff Durbin.
1:15:37
If you watch any of the apology of studios videos,
1:15:40
you see him interacting with people
1:15:41
and these are sometimes 20, 30, 40 minute long interactions
1:15:44
with these people and they are not nice interactions
1:15:47
for the most part, but Jeff Durbin doesn't back down.
1:15:50
He's very, very bold and he, you know,
1:15:53
he's got everything in his life
1:15:54
is attached to the scripture.
1:15:56
And so it was just interesting seeing Andy Stanley
1:15:58
not in that controlled environment.
1:16:00
Again, I made this point several times as well.
1:16:02
It seemed like they were talking past one another.
1:16:04
Maybe you kind of picked up on that a little bit.
1:16:06
That was a little bit frustrating
1:16:07
because it was like, okay,
1:16:09
it's okay for one of you to seed a point to the other person.
1:16:12
Like that's another kind of debate tactic
1:16:14
is where you have common ground,
1:16:16
be the first person to acknowledge it.
1:16:19
Acknowledge the common ground,
1:16:20
acknowledge that you understand their point of view
1:16:22
and that they've kind of brought you around
1:16:24
to a better level of understanding of their point of view
1:16:26
and then make your point, right?
1:16:28
You're kind of buttering them up
1:16:29
before you smack them across the face, right?
1:16:31
It's kind of one of those types of situations.
1:16:33
But the last thing I wanted to kind of point out here
1:16:35
is I kind of have a little bit of a dichotomy of feelings
1:16:39
when I see pastors like this in conflict.
1:16:42
And so there's one part of me that's like,
1:16:44
ah, this is exactly what, you know, progressives
1:16:48
and atheists and all that want to see.
1:16:49
They want to see a couple of guys
1:16:51
that are supposedly on the same team
1:16:53
arguing with one another.
1:16:54
And so part of me is like, ah,
1:16:56
that's not really the best look, right?
1:16:58
But then there's the other side of me that's just like,
1:17:01
hey, if we can have some more
1:17:03
disputations conversations between pastors
1:17:05
and we can have more pastors going at it
1:17:07
with one another and like trying to make sure
1:17:09
that we're believing the right way
1:17:11
so that we can teach our flocks the right way,
1:17:13
is it really that bad?
1:17:17
I mean, one of my favorite things about the Bibles
1:17:19
where we see where Paul traveled a very, very long way
1:17:22
to rebuke Peter to his face
1:17:24
'cause Peter was basically being racist
1:17:26
and how he was interacting with certain people
1:17:28
in the area that he was doing ministry, right?
1:17:31
And I mean, imagine if we didn't have that story,
1:17:33
I mean, it's just a couple of lines in the scripture,
1:17:35
but if we didn't have that story,
1:17:36
you would think to yourself, ah,
1:17:37
I guess these people never really fought.
1:17:40
And I'm gonna do some future episodes
1:17:41
on people like William Farrell and some folks like that
1:17:44
that were very, very in your face about certain things.
1:17:48
And if they knew you were wrong,
1:17:50
they were not gonna hint at it,
1:17:51
they were gonna come right at you.
1:17:53
But at this point, you know,
1:17:54
you've stuck with us this long, it's like, okay,
1:17:57
we need to declare a winner at some point.
1:17:59
And you guys might disagree with me here
1:18:00
and you may already know kind of where I'm gonna be going
1:18:03
with this, but if I have to pick a winner
1:18:05
for this one interaction without any of the other interactions
1:18:08
that I know from these two guys beforehand,
1:18:11
I've gotta give this to Jeff Durbin.
1:18:13
And I'm gonna give it to Jeff Durbin based on two things.
1:18:17
Number one is his main argument where it's the main
1:18:21
mic drop moment, right?
1:18:23
Whenever it's like, what is the basis of your faith?
1:18:25
Andy Stanley thinks he's got him.
1:18:27
And he says the word of the living God.
1:18:28
If there is one kind of clippable, quotable,
1:18:31
Instagram-y thing that you can pull from this, it's that.
1:18:34
And I would have said that the same
1:18:37
if it had gone the other way.
1:18:38
You know, if Jeff Durbin had tried to make a point like that
1:18:41
and then Andy responded in a way
1:18:42
that just literally stopped Jeff Durbin in his tracks,
1:18:45
I would have probably given it to him.
1:18:46
But in terms of what we were looking at,
1:18:48
which is a controlled time limit type of debate type thing
1:18:52
that's on this, you know, podcast radio show,
1:18:55
you've gotta give it to Jeff Durbin there.
1:18:56
But the secondary thing was his appeal
1:18:59
to scripture-based methodology
1:19:02
as opposed to the apologetic method.
1:19:04
So that is something that I've thought about,
1:19:06
but it wasn't until I listened to this interaction
1:19:08
where I kind of thought to myself, okay,
1:19:11
some people really will need the apologetic method
1:19:14
to understand, but it's only whenever you get into the scripture
1:19:17
that you really find your foundation
1:19:19
for any of the apologetic method to begin with.
1:19:22
So you can appeal to Greek teleology,
1:19:25
you can appeal to logic and reason,
1:19:27
you can appeal to those things.
1:19:29
But again, if we don't have the scripture
1:19:31
and that is the totality of the scriptures,
1:19:32
old and New Testament, you can't really operate moving forward.
1:19:36
And that really undergirded his main argument.
1:19:39
You know, he had his mic drop moment, which was the best moment,
1:19:41
but the best argument is that Christian
1:19:43
should be able to lean on, well, God says this, right?
1:19:47
And so most of us were trying to, you know,
1:19:49
use logic and reasoning and bring people
1:19:51
to our point of view using those things.
1:19:53
But we have the ace of spades.
1:19:56
We have it already ready to go.
1:19:58
We have the trump card and that is the reality
1:20:00
that we can just say, hey guys, God says,
1:20:02
that's why I'm saying it to you.
1:20:04
All right guys, thanks for sticking in
1:20:06
with us throughout the rest of this.
1:20:07
But before we let you go, we're going to do
1:20:09
a quick resilience boost.
1:20:10
As you know, by now we are a men's ministry
1:20:12
and our mission is cultivating manly resilience.
1:20:15
And specifically we do that by providing content
1:20:17
like this podcast that helps you forge spiritual,
1:20:20
mental and physical toughness.
1:20:21
And so I'm going to kind of give you some mental resilience
1:20:23
today, I'm going to give you all of the different resources
1:20:25
that are going to be here in the show notes.
1:20:26
So the very first thing and the most important thing
1:20:28
as you've probably seen by now is the actual YouTube video
1:20:31
of the interaction between Andy Stanley and Jeff Durvin.
1:20:34
But then I'm going to give you these as well.
1:20:35
So kind of the crux of this whole thing
1:20:37
was the irresistible book.
1:20:39
And so that is Andy Stanley's book.
1:20:41
So I have the irresistible book claiming,
1:20:43
or sorry, reclaiming the new that Jesus unleashed
1:20:45
for the world.
1:20:46
And so that is a copy, or not a copy of that,
1:20:49
but a link to that on Amazon.
1:20:50
But then we get into the aftermath series.
1:20:52
So it's part three of the aftermath series
1:20:55
where Andy Stanley makes the now infamous unhitched comment
1:20:59
or the unhitched the Old Testament
1:21:01
from the New Testament comment.
1:21:02
But I have the series link here,
1:21:04
but I also have links to the YouTube videos for part one,
1:21:07
part two, and then the last part, part three of this series.
1:21:10
Because if you really want to understand the context,
1:21:12
and if you're not an Andy Stanley person
1:21:14
or you haven't listened to him before,
1:21:16
I would urge you to listen to all three of these.
1:21:18
Because if you just listened to that one section
1:21:20
of part three of the aftermath series,
1:21:22
yes, it's going to ring a little bit weird.
1:21:24
But if you've watched his Easter sermons,
1:21:26
if you've watched him for any length of time,
1:21:28
you can kind of understand why he said it the way that he did
1:21:31
and why he brought the argument to us in the way that he did.
1:21:34
Also, I had the YouTube video
1:21:35
of Jeff Durban's original refutation of Andy Stanley.
1:21:39
And so this was about a year ago.
1:21:40
He did it on the apology of the studio's page.
1:21:42
And so he basically goes line by line,
1:21:44
refuting what Andy Stanley was coming out and saying.
1:21:47
I also wanted to remind you again,
1:21:48
go back to episode 23 of this podcast.
1:21:50
It's called Andy Stanley, a heretic.
1:21:52
And so just make sure you check that out
1:21:54
wherever you get your podcast.
1:21:55
And then the last thing,
1:21:56
the point that Jeff Durban made there at the very beginning
1:21:58
was the interaction with William Lane Craig
1:22:00
and Ben Shapiro.
1:22:01
And so I have the YouTube link to the video
1:22:04
of the Ben Shapiro show Sunday special episode 50,
1:22:06
which features William Lane Craig.
1:22:08
So guys, thanks a lot for listening to the podcast.
1:22:10
We really do appreciate it.
1:22:11
If you would, please subscribe on iTunes, SoundCloud
1:22:14
or Google Play and refer your friends to listen
1:22:16
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1:22:18
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1:22:20
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1:22:22
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1:22:23
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1:22:26
So please leave us a five-star review
1:22:28
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1:22:29
and also leave us a few sentences
1:22:30
letting us know why you like the content.
1:22:33
I'm currently booking speaking engagements
1:22:34
for the remainder of 2019 and the beginning of 2020.
1:22:38
So if you want me to speak on your podcast,
1:22:39
speak to your men's group, your men's event,
1:22:41
your coat, your team or whatever you want me to do,
1:22:43
hit me up info@undaunted.life.
1:22:45
That's the email info@undaunted.life.
1:22:48
The website is www.undaunted.life
1:22:50
and you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter,
1:22:52
@undauntedlife or Facebook.com/undauntedlife.
1:22:56
Check out our free devotionals on the YouVersion Bible app.
1:22:58
Just search "Undaunted life" under plans
1:23:00
and as always, we wanna thank the band August Burns Red
1:23:02
for allowing us to use their entire music library
1:23:05
for our content.
1:23:06
The intro outro track on this podcast
1:23:08
is their song "King of Sorrow"
1:23:09
which is off their latest record entitled "Phantom Anthem."
1:23:12
The links are in the description.
1:23:14
I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
1:23:16
Remember, keep cultivating manly resilience,
1:23:19
keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical toughness,
1:23:23
keep seeking the lion of Judah.
1:23:25
(upbeat music)
1:23:27
(upbeat music)