Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, YouTube theologians. Welcome to the Q and A Theology Q and A Podcast. That's what it's called.
We're live streaming?
No. Did I press the live? Huh? If people jump in here, that'll be interesting. I'm Pastor Wolfmuller, Pastor St. Paul and Jesus Deaf Lutheran Churches, joined as always by Pastor Andrew Packer, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Collinsville, Illinois. Pastor Packer, I heard a rumor about you, and that is that you only want to answer questions about women in ministry from now on. Every question.
True?
[00:00:31] Speaker B: No, not true, hopefully.
[00:00:35] Speaker A: What do you got?
Something different?
[00:00:41] Speaker B: Yes. This is actually one we've answered before, but we get a lot, so I thought I'd bring it back since it's a hot, hot issue again.
What does the Bible teach about God's plan for Israel? Ah, we get that. Almost more, I would say, next to baptism. That might be up there. We got a lot of questions about this. We've answered it before, but I thought it'd be good to bring back, just because people are obviously still asking about it. So what's God's plan for Israel?
[00:01:08] Speaker A: I'll tell you a parable. So you got to imagine that you're a piece of wheat. What is that called?
Seed. You're a. You're a kernel of wheat.
And. And you're just there in the bag, you know, living your life with all the other wheat kernels, until one day this man comes along, looks at you and smiles. Wow. Who's this guy? And he pays all this money for you, and he takes you home.
And then this guy is so good to you. He takes you out of this bag and he goes and he puts you in the ground. And there you are, covered in dirt in the sun, and you start to grow. And the man comes out and he looks at you and he smiles. And you think, this guy, this farmer loves me so much. I mean, it's amazing. And. And then when the. When the rainstorm comes, he's nervous that you might get hurt. And the. And the bigger you get, the more he smiles. When the weeds come around and crowd you out, he comes and pulls him away. He. You think this guy. I. I've never been loved like this guy loves me. Until one day he comes out of the bar. This is after you're full grown and you've got this big head of wheat, and he comes out of the farm with a sickle.
What is this? I thought he loved me. What's he doing? He loves you. It's okay. So this is Israel. And this is the promise that God gave to Abraham is that you will bear the seed. And I'm going to give you a bunch of kids and I'm going to give you this land. But it's all for the sake of the seed. So the love of God for the place of Israel and the people of Israel is 100% bound up to their connection to the promised seed, Jesus Christ. Now this is true for all of us. The love of God is never apart from Christ.
He who gave up his own son, how shall he not also, together with him, give us all things, but especially the geography and the particular nation and people of Israel?
God's love for them is bound up to Jesus. That is their purpose. And when Christ has come, the land and the people have done the job. It's tetelestai.
It is finished.
So Paul will make this point in Romans and say, has God cast off Israel? And he says, no, he hasn't cast them off. Look at me.
In other words, the love of God is extended to Israel through faith in Christ.
But apart from faith in Christ, any claim to God's love is both foolish and arrogant. And here we get into the danger of Judaism and Zionism is it wants to see God's love for the people and for the place apart from Christ, our Lord Jesus and his death and his resurrection.
So that we, Paul will write like this in the end of Galatians, that we are the Israel of God.
That the Lord has cut off the natural branches and grafted in the wild olive branches. And he did it to provoke his people to jealousy, because he desires all people, and I think especially these descendants of Abraham, but he desires all people to come to repentance and the knowledge of Him. But the land and the people were for Christ, and now it's been cut down. The temple's been destroyed. The Lord accomplished this judgment even as Jesus prophesied with tears in his eyes as he rode into Jerusalem on the donkey on Palm Sunday, that they did not receive the time of his visitation. And so not one stone is going to be left upon another.
So the nation of Israel now is not the.
Has nothing to do with the promises of God. In fact, the. The dispensational idea that wants to have God's promises for the land as unkept, and so it has to be kept now stand in direct contradiction to the prophecy, to the promise to this, to the clear statements of the Lord in Joshua, where he says he gave them the land or all the way to the river. Everything that God promised, he gave into their hands. So that there are no unkept land or people promises.
And the church has to be particularly clear headed about this, especially as it confronts the, well, the lies of dispensationalism and the distortion of it as well. So, so that's the preface to, to kind of set the playing field so we can answer the questions. But maybe I'll pause there and have you jump in because then we want to go to say, okay, well what of Israel now and how do we think of it?
[00:05:59] Speaker B: Yeah, I think there's two just very different ways of reading the Bible. You either read the Old Testament as being about the nation Israel, or you read the Old Testament as being about Jesus.
And if it's about Jesus, then you see how it continues into the New Testament. If you make it just about the flesh and blood DNA Israel apart from Christ, then I think you end up in all these weird places where people end up today. Like if you don't see it being about Jesus and preparing the way for Jesus, it's basically like the preface to the New Testament, setting it up for him so that you see who he is, where he's coming from, what he came to do, et cetera, et cetera. And then also it doesn't make any sense why Paul would Write like Romans 9 where he has to say, look, did God fail on his promises?
No, because not all DNA Israel was of faith. They didn't always have faith. It's always been about faith, not about DNA. And he goes to great lengths in Romans 9 and 10 to go over all of that. So why does he need to write that if it's just about DNA and about the spot on the earth? The only other thing I would add to what you said is not only do Christians inherit that strip of land, right, we inherit the whole earth.
So it's not like the promise is less, it's actually more. We will inherit everything. The new earth is all going to be ours. We're not just focused on one little strip of land, we're focused on receiving the whole thing because of Christ who rules and reigns over all things, not just what people want to argue about with Israel. So yes, the current state nation of Israel has nothing to do with Old Testament promises, has nothing to do with any of those things that's all been fulfilled in Christ and people. What, what's the phrase he used to call it replacement theology or whatever to make it sound like bad or whatever, but I don't think that's true either. It's not replacement theology if it's always been about Jesus in the Old Testament. Nothing's been replaced. It's still, it's the same plan. You just didn't understand it in the Old Testament. And that's not, it's not our fault you didn't get it in the Old Testament. Now we're telling you this is always how God wanted to fulfill it. Like nothing changed.
This was God's plan from the beginning. This was always plan A. This is not some kind of plan B that God didn't pivot. Like this has always been what he planned on doing from the beginning. Well, actually I was going to say before beginning of time, but the Bible says before the foundation of the world, right? This is what God's plan was to send his Son and to redeem us.
[00:08:20] Speaker A: So that replacement theology is exactly what Paul says in Romans where he says the native branch is cut off and the wild branch is grafted in. So we have a grafted in theology.
And that middle wall of partition, this is Ephesians 2 that Christ made one out of the two tearing down the middle wall of partition. And that's particularly that wall that stood between Jew and Gentile. That wall has been, has been torn down.
So wolfmuller Co dispensation or dispensationalism is I think the place to go to this, where especially to this dispensational claim that God has two people, his spiritual people, the church and his earthly people, the, the Jews and that he has two different plans and so forth. That's, that's got to be torn down. There is a, there is another problem that we have to face with this question and that is that in general you have the conservative liberal divide. And the conservative divide is like because we out of these wars like Israel versus Hamas or Israel versus Lebanon.
And, and you have the conservatives like pro Israel. And then you have the, the, the liberal progressive side which is pro Hamas.
And here the Christian church is in the middle. We. So I think you can be, you can have a different political conclusion without thinking that Israel like the, the reconstitution of Israel as a Nation state in 1948 is a fulfillment of biblical prophecy. You can just say that, that Israel has.
And this is how I, I think about it and but this is just my very very opinion opinion. So you can totally disagree that Israel has inherited the sort of Western project from Europe and is now sitting right in the middle of those who have inherited the Eastern project from Mecca, which is all these Islamic nations. And so it's two very different projects. And the United States is part of the Western project of civilization and Islam is its own thing. And so we do have a kind of unique political relationship with Israel. We. But it has nothing to do with biblical prophecy.
And we can't think that. So that you get like Ted Cruz, you know, saying, hey, those who this, if you bless Israel, God will bless you.
And applying that to our politics, that is wild and I think particularly dangerous. I keep looking for Ted walking around so I can tell him that I haven't seen him here.
[00:10:55] Speaker B: I mean, I think that's one of the problems. Right. The moment you take that theological language and, and apply it to modern day Israel, then what it does is it causes a lot of Christians to overlook anything bad Israel might do. So rather than calling them out like you would any other ally, you're afraid to call them out because we're afraid of, oh, if I, if I speak against what they're doing, I'm speaking against God. That's how some people think about this now, which is terrible. We should be able to critique what they do just like we do any other nation. When they do things that hurt the interests of Christians anywhere in the world. Like, Christians should be able to speak up about that and not fear that they're going to be cursed by God because they disagree with something the current nation of Israel is doing. Like, that kind of thing to me just blows my mind. Like, how can you look at that and see them do something wrong and be like, well, I can't say anything because I don't want to. If I curse them, then God's going to curse me. Like, no, if they're doing wicked things, call them out for it just like you would any other nation.
That, that's, that's one of the things this frees us to do is to either agree or disagree based on what we think is best politically now, not based on the promise given to Abraham. So it gives us a lot of freedom with that.
[00:12:02] Speaker A: Yep. And we have to remember that Judaism now is not what Moses taught. It's not what David believed, it's not what Isaiah preached. It is the fundamental point of Judaism is that Jesus is not the Messiah. I mean, it's a negative assertion.
It's a rejection of Christianity.
I mean, it is Phariseeism, but it's Phariseeism amplified by the promise that Jesus gives. If you don't receive me, you don't receive the one who sent me.
And so it's built on that rejection. And there's kind of three things that are, I Mean Judaism is anti Moses. It doesn't have the sacrifices, it doesn't have any blood that's gone.
So it's anti Moses, it's anti Jesus because it rejected Jesus and it's anti Scripture because it can't receive.
If the promises of the Old Testament are true, then it's over. Like the Lord set a timeline on a bunch of these things. Like Daniel says, here's how many weeks you got. And then that's. We're way, way past it. So that can't be true either.
So anti Scripture, anti Moses, anti Jesus. So the veil is over the face. So we just don't want to be, we want to be clear headed about what Judaism is. It's not like, again, it's not like Boaz and Ruth and Noah and Moses. Like if they came to church, if Amos came to visit Collinsville, he wouldn't go to the synagogue, he would come to your church.
Like the, the.
[00:13:47] Speaker B: Because he was a Christian.
[00:13:48] Speaker A: Right, right.
[00:13:49] Speaker B: That's what people miss. Like these Old Testament saints were Christians. They were looking forward in hope to the coming Messiah. We look backwards to the Messiah who's come, but the faith is in the same, the same guy. It's in Jesus. Like to get that wrong, to think that they were saved under some kind of different religion is to get everything backwards and all messed up.
[00:14:07] Speaker A: Now this again.
And I know but like that doesn't mean that we can't support the nation, but it, but it has to be disconnected from our theological stuff. That's that we. So, so that's a, it's a. Those are two totally very different questions.
[00:14:25] Speaker B: All right, next question.
This has to do with can I honor God while disagreeing on communion with my future spouse?
I think this is a question we actually comes up a lot in pastoral care, these kind of questions. So I'm going to summarize what's going on with her. So she grew up with an evangelical background, but now has come to a Lutheran understanding of all kinds of things.
But her and her possible future spouse do not agree on things like the Lord's Supper, I'm assuming baptism, all kinds of other things, including eschatology.
And so it wasn't a problem earlier on in the relationship, but now obviously it's starting to come to a head.
So she wants to know what does she do about this? Can she go to her husband's, like if she ends up marrying him and goes to his church that isn't Lutheran, should she take communion? How can she honor him as her, as her head in the relationship, what should she do about this? But I think maybe we should step back even a step further.
And I'll start with this question. What should they do before they get married to figure this out?
Because I think that's. This is what I try to encourage is like, figure this out before you get married. Don't wait till you get married to try to figure it out. I don't usually see that going real well. So let's start there. How would they figure this out before they get married? And then if someone's married in this position, what should they do?
[00:15:49] Speaker A: So here's two difficulties that are added and a benefit that are added to the theological conversation when you are engaged or dating and trying to sort things out. Number one is that you have this extra motivation of wanting to work it out.
That's an advantage. Because, like, if you're just two friends and you disagree, it's like, oh, fine. But when you're thinking about weaving together a light, two lives into a home, then it's going to matter. Are we going to baptize or not baptize the babies? You know, are we going to commune together or not?
So it forces the question, which is a benefit, but it's a definite danger, because then there's these sort of, you know, that you're motivated to agree. So then, did I. Do I really agree with her, or am I just doing it so that we can be in the same church? It's. It puts it on a slightly different footing. So my suggestion is twofold.
Number one, you're not trying to become Lutheran or Baptist or whatever, Catholic or Lutheran.
You're trying to know what the Bible says.
So I'm not defending my Lutheran and you're not defending your Catholic. We're just studying the Scriptures so that the whole debate, this is how to sanctify the debate. The whole debate is just moving us deeper and deeper into the word of God. That's the goal. That's what the Lord wants. And we can receive it as a blessing if we think of it that way. The second is then to simplify the question, to say, what does Jesus want to give?
What does he want me to have? This is what the church has established, is to give out those gifts of God. And so does Jesus want me to have a symbolic meal, or does he want me to eat and drink his body and his blood?
Does Jesus want me to have a picture of dying and rising with him, or does he want me to have the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit? In baptism.
So do we just ask that question? And again, it sanctifies the question. So now it's not an argument or a defensive sort of thing. But look, we're just.
And you could, who knows, maybe you got a Baptist and you got a Catholic, and we're just saying, hey, we're just going to look at the scriptures and you both end up as Episcopalians or something. I mean, all we want to do is chase after the truth. And I think I can say that with. Well, no, I know I can say that with confidence because I'm confident that you track down the truth from the clarity of the scriptures and you end up Lutheran. So just, you know, don't be afraid. Just let the Bible teach and, and let those conversations unfold. That way. It's.
It's good to have someone else involved, too. So when you're dating, to be talking to the pastor and, and, and to be talking to both pastors, be like, let's go talk to your pastor. Let's go talk to my pastor.
Let's look at what each church says. Let's compare it with the scriptures so that you have that outside voice coming in. That's also really helpful because sometimes when it's. I mean, Carrie and I did this. We.
We spent about. We were engaged forever and ever, like probably 16 months. It was ridiculous.
And, and we spent the whole time trying to figure out what church taught the simplicity of Christ. We were visiting all these different churches, and when it's just the two of us were. It was. It was hard. We could sort of lose our bearings. And so, so to have the, the pastors involved to kind of help navigate is going to be particularly helpful. It's also nice to note that the, the sacraments force the question.
So it might be possible to say, well, let's agree to disagree until you have to decide to either baptize or not baptize your baby. I mean, it forces the question. The Lord's Supper, when the pastor holds up that bread and you says, what is it?
And I have to say, well, it's bread or it's the body of Christ, that it forces the question. So let the sacraments force the question. That's what they're supposed to do. You, you got. So those are going to be part of the chief conversations about, about what you're. What you're aiming at and what you're going for.
It is
[00:19:51] Speaker B: hard.
[00:19:52] Speaker A: It's not impossible.
We've got a lot of families that are in this situation where they have a divided confession.
It's not impossible, but it is difficult. And it adds a layer of difficulty to marriage that is not insignificant. It's a significant burden to be married to someone with a different confession.
I have a deep sympathy, though, because it.
If. So, if someone's like, well, look, you know, I got lots of options of getting married, so, like, this was going to be very difficult, so I think I'll go with a different option.
And you're like, okay, great.
But it seems like right now people are. It's hard to find someone to get married to.
Marriage is difficult.
So in some ways we're in a culture of sort of marriage famine, where I might answer this question in a different way if. If marriage was not so difficult to achieve. But I see the young people who want to get married so desperately, and they're marriageable. I mean, they are fit for marriage and they can't find anybody to marry. So then they say, pastor, I found someone.
She's very faithful, she's very Christian. We pray together. But she goes to the evangelical church or she goes to the Catholic Church. Can you bless this?
I have a really hard time saying, no, it's not going to work just because it's so. It seems like it's a difficult thing today.
So, Anyway, that's my 5 cents on that question.
[00:21:35] Speaker B: What I try to encourage is something very similar. I usually tell them, go to both pastors, right? Like go to your pastor and her pastor or vice versa, whatever. But go through their. Whatever adult instruction looks like at those churches together. At both places, I try to encourage them. Before you get married, you need to pick.
You need to pick one, and that's where you're going to be.
And that doesn't always work out. But like you said, I'm also not afraid of that because I figure if they come through my adult instruction, then I'm going to convince them to be Lutheran, because that's what the Bible teaches, right? So I'm pretty confident that if they come, we can work this out.
But also I just know that when you start having kids and if it's mixed messages in the house, what often happens? Not always. There's families that do make this work, but what often happens is you don't go to church because there's disagreement over what to do, so you just don't go at all. And I would rather have them going to a church that I think gets some things wrong, but at least they're going together than not going anywhere. And the kids not going anywhere. Not being raised in the faith because mom and dad just rather an impasse, and nobody's gonna budge. And we're both set in our ways. And so now nobody's going to church.
So I tell them, hey, take these classes before.
Figure it out. Work this out before you get married, and your life will go much better. Like, get it solved. Now, that's. That's my advice. Get it solved before you get married. If you have to solve it afterwards, fine, figure it out. But your life will be much smoother and easier if you figure it out before you actually take your wedding vows.
[00:23:08] Speaker A: Yep, I've got about four couples, and they will go to Mass and then come to St. Paul.
It's an amazing thing. And every Sunday they're faithful in both places. And it's a really interesting thing to me. And I don't know exactly what. You could probably give me some advice because it's the. It's the. It's the Roman Catholic brides that are even. They'll say, like, pastor, we think that the Lutheran doctrine is right. We agree with the catechism, but they don't want to give that up. That.
That being Catholic. And it's a. And the guys are like, if you agree, that's all that matters. And. And the women are like, no, there's something.
Something more there. And I'm. I've been meditating a lot on what that more thing is, but it's a. It's. It's difficult. And. And I. And here's the. So this is why we're trying to restart the Walther League, right?
Because I want to say, look, Lutherans got to marry Lutherans. And the kids are like, okay, yep, I'm ready. I want to marry. Where are they?
And so I'm like, okay, I can't say, hey, you Lutherans got to marry Lutherans. If I can't, like, help them find each other so that they can. Because that's what they want. That's the kind of primary impulse. But it just.
We're in a scarcity of. Of young people, and especially the. The young men who. Like, this is the statistic. Crazy statistic, is that the young men are more theological, more conservative and more committed to marriage than the young women nowadays, which is like the world flipped on its head.
And so.
So anyway, there's some work to do there because. Because this idea that we. That you.
That you come together as husband and wife at the rail, this is what we're shooting for.
But we gotta. We gotta have the circumstances where that is a possibility.
[00:25:01] Speaker B: You know, I think they're often worried about disappointing their moms.
Like, I think that's a big part of it. Like, they don't want to disappoint family.
And I get that. Like, that's a, you know, that's actually a good impulse, right? Like, that's something that's good. Like, not letting down the family on these decisions. I think that's a big part of it.
Are you ready for a very different question? Okay.
Is using AI for sermons betraying our faith?
[00:25:30] Speaker A: Let me see what the chatbot says about that.
[00:25:32] Speaker B: So, yeah, so I'm very strongly against AI and machine writing for anything ministry, whether that's copy text for social media or devotion, or worse yet, a sermon. I would love to hear your thoughts on the ethics of using artificial intelligence in ministry.
I've unfortunately noticed a lot of people using it, and I'm saddened that they're being deceived in this way.
As a side question, I unfortunately suspect my pastor of using it to write devotions that he emails out. How do I confront him on this issue, especially if he sees no problem with it?
[00:26:01] Speaker A: Yeah. What? I've been thinking about this.
I've been trying to think about this
[00:26:06] Speaker B: a lot,
[00:26:09] Speaker A: but I don't. This is. My problem is I don't have many conclusions. So what?
Maybe I let you go first on this and then I might riff on your thoughts.
[00:26:22] Speaker B: I. I am against having, like, AI, like, write out your sermon or, like, write out your devotion or whatever. I do think it can be used in several ways for sermon writing. For example, I think it'd be used for reviewing your grammar or even that your flow. Like, I. I just preach from an outline. So sometimes I'll put my outline in there and say, evaluate this for. For flow. Like, how's my flow of thought?
And it'll give feedback. But also, like, I can disagree with it and be like, no, actually I like. I like the way that flows. You're wrong, right? Or I can be like, oh, no, that's a good point. That doesn't flow very well right there. So I think it can be good for those kind of things because that's what's designed to do.
I think it can be used for analyzing the grammar of. Of the New Testament or the Old Testament. Like, or you can use it to compare, have it find connections between words between, like, the New Testament and the Greek Septuagint. Like, you can find.
Find connections there that you could find maybe, maybe in a commentary, but maybe not. Maybe it missed it.
So sometimes it can be used for that kind of thing. But as far as actually writing it for you, then I think you're handing over your job to the tool rather than using the tool to assist you. So I think there can be things that can be helpful with, in helping you write a better sermon, but it shouldn't be used in place of you thinking or in place of you wrestling with the text, or in place of you like really praying through it and struggling through it and coming up with your own ideas of what to preach and how to preach it.
I think then you're getting into some dangerous territory.
And especially if you struggle with laziness already as a pastor, like, if that's already, like your temptation is to kind of mail it in, then AI makes it super easy to do that.
But you'll find too, I mean, I can tell generally when things are written by AI, it has a certain flow to a lot of uses. The way it handles phrases, the way it does various things. I can often tell, especially I see this online with sports news articles. Like, I'll start reading it. And I'll be like, this is obviously AI. Like every time I'm like, oh, geez, this is terrible. I thought it was a real article. Start reading it. It's. It's AI.
And right now I think AI articles out there, I think they're higher percentage than human written articles that you'll find online.
Last I saw, I think it might be 55, 45, something like that.
So I think there can be some good uses of it.
I agree. I wouldn't use it for a sermon or have it write a devotion. I think part of that too is part of writing a sermon or devotion. There should be prayer and intention by the pastor, which the AI contra Richard Dawkins, which would be a different discussion, I believe.
Yeah, we should talk about that as a separate thing because it's a fascinating look into atheism. But anyway, he calls it Claudia. Anyhow, I do think there's a place that it can be used by pastors with wisdom and discretion.
And I think it can be used for all kinds of things that aren't directly related to, like, I've seen guys say, oh, I'll never use it for anything.
Well, you know, we use Notion. I had it build me a prayer request tracker that built me a whole database for me to keep track of prayer requests in my congregation. And it has a set, a reminder, and a little it reminds me of stuff. Like it can build you some really cool stuff. You can use it. I've used it to Design a workout program for myself.
I've used it to figure out which shoes to buy or to troubleshoot problems with my car. It can be used for lots of practical things and it saved me a lot of time. And yet you just have to be careful to know what your boundaries are and just be really strict with it. Like, I'm not going to let it write for me. I'm not going to let it replace me. It's a tool and any tool can be used or misused. But I've thought about writing out a fuller thing of like how I use it in the ways I don't use it. But I mean, that's probably a good start. What do you, what are your thoughts on that?
[00:30:18] Speaker A: I'm, I'm interested in, in the. Why? Because there's a, there's two. I think there's two general concerns when it comes to, to AI.
One is the normal tech concern, maybe three. So, so there's. Whenever there's a new technology, there is always a right exercise of discernment about what is the cost benefit ratio.
So like, you know, Neil Postman will go back to the, to the time when that, that myth of whatever God brought down the gift of writing to like the King of Thebes and he's like, oh, this is going to destroy our memories, you know, or can you imagine the same sort of thing that would happen when, when the first guy got his strong's concordance, you know, and it, it puts every word of the Bible down there in alphabetical order with the reference. So instead of having to know where these verses are, I can just go look it up. You know, how it's, it's like it's cheating and, and the same thing. Then when the Bible becomes electronic and searchable and, and like on Logos, I can click on the word and it'll tell me the Greek word and it'll tell me the parsing and I click on it again and it'll give me every example use of that word in the New Testament. This is all cheating in a way. Like, I wrote the book Martin Luther's Theology of the Martyrs because I can just search Luther's works for martyr. And I was looking for a particular quote and I found that luther mentions it 575 times. So I read all 575 references to the martyrs and I said there's a lot here. So I ended up writing a book about it. So like that book, to know that about Luther's theology, the martyrs would have taken a lifetime of study before and it took me, you know, a couple of weeks because I could search it and, and then Google now this kind of democratization of information via the Internet and the search and then now it's amplified even further by AI because so, so if it.
So on the one hand, it's just a kind of a growth of a particular technology that, that requires a discernment because there's a cost benefit for everything. I mean, even just like typing something versus writing it out longhand, there's a, there's a, something that's there. There's a.
I, I'm always back and forth on this. Do I keep my to do list in a hard copy or on, on electronically? Because they have these different benefits. And so this is the one. So there's that one fear. The other fear though is that, that AI is becoming its own entity, this Richard Dawkins thing, that it's going to reach a point of consciousness and that is no longer thinking of AI as a tool, as a robot, but starting to think of it as a being.
And some people are already doing that and other people are warning about it. And it's. And I suppose that's the weird thing about AI is that it, it is, it presents itself to us as a personality, as a person.
And that's leads to. The third difficulty is that it, it can do what we thought we only could do, and that is speak.
You know, so it used to be that it's just people kind of could communicate and the, the robots had to be communicated too, but, but now the robot can kind of talk back. And so it's a weird realm that we're in. So I don't know. I think those are the. So I'm interested in why the person says, hey, the pastor can have nothing to do with AI in, in sermon development. I, I wonder which of those realms the concern comes from or maybe some combination of all three of them.
My interest is in thinking rightly about what the tool is and then trying to sort out how it can be in service to the gospel and how it shouldn't be. And I'm just, I'm. I'm not ready to say anything about it. I'm still sort of testing like all these crazy things that it can do. So I like it. As an example, I'm going to Cologne, Germany this summer and I, and I want to learn about Cologne and I want to learn about Cologne when I'm driving around.
So what do I do? I ask Claude to write a document that outlines the whole story arc of Cologne. Highlighting very interesting things and especially talking about the connection with the Reformation. So it gives me this document. I feed it into Notebook lm which then can give me an audio overview. So I have a 25 minute podcast about the War of Cologne from 1553 to 1558 when the Archbishop of Cologne became Lutheran because he married this gal and then he was going to. He was an elector and he gets excommunicated by the Pope and it starts this war I. And it gives me this very specific basically audio book.
And it's kind of a marvelous sort of thing to do.
And I'm like, can I learn these things so quick? Because I can just get the thing to give me the thing that I don't know and give it to me in a way that I can adjust it. I mean, it's, I had the chat bot this morning.
What did I ask it to do? I said, I said build a chart with all 27 books of the New Testament by book author data was written according to Andrew Steinman's conservative chronology and, and one sentence overview of the theme. And it just gives me a chart of all 27 books of the Bible, which I could have. Now I'm, I could have done this. That's a couple hours of work and it just gives it to me in 20 seconds. This is a super helpful thing. But why is it helpful? And what am I losing when I'm not doing it?
Those are the questions for me. So I'm still in sort of observing and experimenting phase.
[00:36:22] Speaker B: Would you have it write a sermon for you?
[00:36:24] Speaker A: I don't write sermons anymore. And maybe this is part of the reason is because I, I'm so, I'm so happy I wrote books before AI because I think everybody who's an author now is not. People are going to be. Well, did they write it or do they prompt it? You know, so at least people know that I can write books.
And that's a huge advantage in the kind of post AI thing. But I don't, I, I, I don't even have an outline for my sermons anymore. And I do. I was thinking about this. How do we like anti. How do we prove that we're not AI ing the sermon? My, my liturgical idea, nobody likes this but me is that the elders would pick the text that the sermon should be on during the office hymn and then bring it to the pastor to read. And then he reads it and he prays and he preaches it.
So, so you he, there's no time to, there's no intervention. You're just giving me your stuff on the thing. That's kind of how I do it already. Anyway. So
[00:37:26] Speaker B: you look at the text two seconds before and then get up there.
[00:37:28] Speaker A: Do you know, this is. So this happened the other day where I had. I had outlined this. I thought the text was the wedding at Cana. And I had all this stuff on marriage. I was ready to preach and everything. And the vicar starts reading the text instead of from John 2, from John 1. And I'm like, oh, he's reading the wrong text. And I looked the bulletin and sure enough, I just prepared on the wrong text.
So I preached on John 1 instead of on John 2. I preached on the text that was read. I'm like, I just do that all the time. Don't tell anybody.
[00:38:00] Speaker B: It'll be our secret.
All right, next question.
[00:38:10] Speaker A: I don't think we answered that one, by the way.
[00:38:15] Speaker B: I kind of answered it.
[00:38:18] Speaker A: You.
[00:38:18] Speaker B: You avoided answering it. I gave at least a partial answer.
All right, this is on men and women.
Are gender roles still relevant without marriage in the new creation?
So their friend recently asked them, what is the point of our division into male and female on the new heavens and new earth if there will be nothing like marriage?
I said that our masculinity and femininity is not only tied to marriage and we'll still have complementary natures with different roles of head helper, justice on this side of eternity.
How would you answer that? And how biblically adequate is my response?
[00:38:56] Speaker A: I mean, I like this question a lot. So in the new creation, we'll be like the angels. Jesus says neither married nor given in marriage, but there is something fundamental to male and female from the very beginning. And it's true, even apart from marriage. So the boys are different from the girls in different ways than men are different than women, but still they're different.
And I suppose it's. It's. It is. The difference is of men and women in the new heaven and new earth is this is the difference between grandmas and grandpas, you know, and that's where we come fully into that gift of being a man or being a woman.
I do. I think it'll be marvelous to behold how the Lord really has made humanity into two different kinds of creatures, man and woman, and how fundamental it is when that is on the last day. And it's part of the glory that the Lord has given to us. But I do not know how to articulate it from the scriptures, except for, I mean, Adam and Eve. Adam was a man before there was Eve. And and there we will be on the resurrection, fully what we are now. Remember, the full packerness of the Resurrection. That's what we're all looking forward to.
[00:40:16] Speaker B: Well, I think it's a great question too, because there's a. There's a lot of talk. I've seen this even in commentaries, right, that in Christ we're basically androgynous. And then the resurrection will be androgynous and so we'll be neither male nor female. But I, I don't see that in scripture. It seems like when those people were raised up, when Jesus was raised up, he was still fully male, right? That was still part of who he is. Cause it's part of his humanity. So I think we'll be fully male and female in a way we don't even understand right now. Right. Just like the full packerness that you mentioned, or the full wolfmullerness of, of what will be. But I just.
It seems like it's. It's something we can't fully grasp right now because we don't understand how great that'll be.
But also because we so often don't, don't see masculinity and femininity and how it even differs. Like in.
Even as men and women, we even differ, I think in our piety. Like I think a pious woman lives that out differently than a pious man. Like it doesn't look exactly the same.
And so what'll that look like in the new heavens and new earth? I don't know exactly. But I do believe God created us to be man and woman for a reason, and it's not accidental. But that's part of who we are. And it does continue for all eternity. When I'm raised up, I expect to be raised up as a man, not as an androgynous being.
I expect my wife to be raised up as a woman, not as some kind of androgynous being. And that she'll be fully a woman in a way that we don't fully comprehend right now. And I'll be fully a man in a way I don't fully comprehend. But everything in the Bible leads me to believe that that's how it's going to be. Even if I can't fully understand what that looks like. I mean, what does Paul say? No eye has seen nor ear has heard. Right? How great these things are going to be. We have a glimpse of it and we don't have the fullness of it yet. And so it's hard for us to fathom what it will be like to be fully man or fully woman without sin, without marriage, without some of these things, we just. We don't know.
But it doesn't limit or mean that it doesn't matter that you're a man or a woman or that that's indifferent to God. First of all, he created you that way, right? So. And he's going to raise up your body. So he's going to raise up your body. We're very big as Lutherans on saying the body matters, Right. We even say it at the end of Holy Communion, right. That it's going to preserve us in body and soul.
And that's your. The body you currently have, and that's the body that God's going to raise up. So whatever that looks like it is going to be as a man or a woman.
Beyond that, I don't know.
[00:42:42] Speaker A: Yeah, that's. It is. So. So this is like the, this vocation of the. The place where my masculinity shows up most obvious is in my vocation as husband and father. Right. But I. I also am man as boy and man as grandfather.
And that, that's so that we. We don't want to. We don't want to, like, reduce masculinity and femininity to, like, reproduction. That's not. It's much, much more than that. That's. And I think that's the point. So we have this. This kind of gets maximized in the new heaven and new Earth. And we should also reference just this discussion of androgyny, this article that both you and I have sort of marveled over. Peter Jones.
Yes, androgyny, the pagan sexual ideal, which was prophetic back in the 90s and kind of gives the theological underpinning of the transgender movement, but points it to this gnostic ideal of the.
Of the androgynous being that's neither male nor female. And we want to say, nope, that's not. That's not us.
[00:43:48] Speaker B: Yeah. And he's really good at showing that. This is like paganism at its root, right? Like, this is from Satan. Satan hates distinction. He hates hierarchy, hates all these things. And he wants to flatten everything and make everything the same.
And God created us male and female for a reason and wants us to delight in that and not just dismiss it as something that doesn't matter.
All right, I've got a fun one now.
[00:44:15] Speaker A: These have all been fun.
[00:44:16] Speaker B: Are the gods of ancient nations really fallen angels?
[00:44:19] Speaker A: Oh, great.
[00:44:21] Speaker B: I've been reading the Unseen Realm. Oh, that's a material.
It is an interesting book and some material from Michael Heiser. He is making the case that the other nations. I didn't write this, by the way. I should. I did not write this question because someone's gonna.
[00:44:37] Speaker A: This is. Talk about.
[00:44:40] Speaker B: You were gonna accuse me of having written this one. I did not write this. Let me continue.
He's making the case that the other nations surrounding ancient Israel had had, quote, unquote, real gods that were even instituted by God himself, that they were fallen angels. I've never seen this in the Book of Concord, Walther Peeper, etc. Do we have any thoughts on this? As Lutherans, I think we've typically believed that there's God and there's angels and demons and that is it.
[00:45:05] Speaker A: Yeah, of course we believe this. How come we don't? How come this isn't normal. We have it in the scripture. So it's. This is. I'm looking at First Corinthians, chapter 10, where Paul's talking about the danger of unworthy communion.
And he says, what am I saying? That an idol is anything, or offered to idols is anything. Rather that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God. And I don't want you to have fellowship with demons.
And this is Paul riffing on Deuteronomy 32.
I'll read that for you too. And so this is the. Like. What's behind all this pagan stuff is. Is the demons themselves like. And specific demons, not like demons, is an abstraction. But you know, over there's. I mean, I don't know what demon got to be Molech and what demon got to be baal, and what demon got to be Zeus or whatever. But let's see, Deuteronomy 32, 15. But Jeshurun grew fat and kicked. You grew fat, you grew thick. You're obese. He forsook God, who made him scornfully esteemed, the rock of his salvation. They provoked him to jealousy with foreign gods, with abominations. They provoked him to anger. They sacrificed to demons and not to God, to gods. They did not know to new gods, new arrivals, that your fathers did not fear of the rock who begot you. You are unmindful. You've forgotten the God who fathered you. And that word Elohim there, that's used for gods.
It's probably just best exalted ones. It's sometimes used for the angels, it's sometimes used for the demons. It's sometimes used for people who are in authority.
So that these demons present themselves as I Mean like the devil himself. I mean this is the whole temptation that the devil presented himself to Adam and Eve as their counselor and friend, attempting him to follow them.
He appeared to Jesus in the wilderness, worshiped me and Jesus resisted where humanity is not. So underneath baal, underneath, underneath Zarathustra or whatever Persian, underneath Raw, underneath Molech, underneath Asherah, underneath Zeus or whatever, underneath whatever kind of Aztec pagan nonsense was happening over here, underneath the great sky God is the, the demons who were there. I think there had to be a real big thing when, when the world was like here the demons are all have their little altars, every little hill and valley and where they get to, they get to manipulate the people and get the worship of the offerings or whatever.
And, and, and then when Christianity is spreading and the devil's like, ay, this old pagan thing is not worshiping. We're gonna have to get everybody to worship me and invince Islam.
[00:47:58] Speaker B: It's like.
[00:47:59] Speaker A: And all the demons don't get to have their little, you know, temples everywhere. That had to be a big concession that moved from paganism to whatever. But yeah, I mean this is like, I don't, I don't think this is in any way foreign to our Lutheran Confessions at all. I just, I think it's the biblical background to what's going on underneath paganism.
[00:48:21] Speaker B: I agree with everything you said. I would just add Heizer does have some views in the unseen realm that I do not believe are biblical.
I think sometimes he's overly influenced by the, some of the pagan stuff around Israel that he's studying and it creeps into his writings. I think he's very helpful in making a lot of people see the quote unquote unseen realm who haven't maybe thought about it very much. So I think he has, he has a lot of good material and some good things to think about. But you do have to be careful if you're reading him not to apply everything because for example, he has multiple falls of the angels. Not just like we would say, there's the one rebellion. He has a couple different ones.
His views on the flood. He has a localized view of the flood. He has some other issues in that book, but on, on this issue I think he's 100% right. Going further in Deuteronomy 32 and verse 8, it talks about that God set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel, which is. Most of our English Bibles have that. Which doesn't make any sense. But if you look at the footnote it says, according to the number of the sons of God, which in reference to the fallen angels, makes a lot of sense. In other words, after. And this is talking about after the Tower of Babel, when they're divided, what happens? They were divided up and now they're worshiping this. This fallen angel or this fallen angel. And that makes a lot of sense then. And you see that I think in the New Testament too, part of what Christ is doing is taking back the nations, if you will, from these. From these fallen angels. And you hear this in the early church fathers. They talk about, as the gospel spread, the demons are, like, fleeing, right? Like, it's really cool. You read about it and like, they're like, yeah, the demons are, like, fleeing the cities, and they're, like, fleeing because their temples are being, you know, basically destroyed and all these cool things are happening and they're on the run. And so you see this in history itself. And so I don't know how you can. And also go back and read, like, the Iliad or the Odyssey, especially the Iliad, I think is interesting if you replace the. The Greek gods in that story and you just think in your mind, this is a demon. And then you read it and you realize, like, these demons are provoking constant warfare and bloodshed and all these things, you're like, this actually, this actually makes a lot of sense. Like, this. This actually, this actually tracks pretty well with what a demon would do. So if you read it from that perspective, instead of being like, oh, this is actually this Greek God or whatever, and you just think this is a demon influencing a war, you're like, oh, this actually maybe is not as far off as people think. Or you read about some of these supernatural things, feats of strength, some of these warriors are doing. And you read about the man. We just studied this in Bible study, I think a week or two ago here, the man who was in the tombs, right? And he's breaking chains because he's so strong because he's possessed by a bunch of demons.
And then you read these stories about these guys who can just fight and kill people for, like, hours on end without a break.
Could they have been demon possessed? Absolutely. Like, I have no doubt they could have been. Were they? I don't know, but they absolutely could have been. So I think when you start to look at the world and say, how do we end up with these nations doing what they're doing?
How do they worship these things? Why do they all require, like, child sacrifice and blood sacrifice from humans is because they're worshiping demons.
I mean, that should be everyone should be able to at least agree on that. Even if some other stuff Heizer says we want to push back against or argue with.
[00:51:42] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right.
And I think it's really important for us to just let the Bible speak on this. We don't want to go too far past what it is because the Lord says, hey, don't go too far. But I mean, we have the Prince of Persia in Daniel we and we have this promise from Revelation 20 that he'll buy he bound the devil so that he could deceive the nations no more so that there's this break in this demonic deception of the nations. So the Lord part of our rescue. The Lord's rescuing us is rescuing us from the devil's kingdom of darkness.
[00:52:21] Speaker B: So absolutely. Hey, that's it.
[00:52:25] Speaker A: Today's episode is brought to you by Rome Examined Download for free at wolfmeo co Rome. This examination of the Council of Trent and also the you guys should come at the Issues Etc. Conference. That'll be really great. Thanks Patrick Pack for all your questions. Thanks everyone for sending your questions our way. Wolfmil Co contact to send us some more.
God's peace be with you.
