Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, YouTube theologians. Welcome to the Theology Q and A podcast. I'm Pastor Wolfmuller, pastor of St. Paul and Jesus Deaf Lutheran Church in Austin, Texas. Come visit.
Joined by Pastor Andrew Packer, pastor of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Collinsville, Illinois. You can visit him too, if you're there. It's no problem. Pastor Packer, I heard a rumor about you that you lost your voice yelling at the TV when the Texans were winning the game on Monday night. Is that what happened?
[00:00:24] Speaker B: No, I had no hope of winning that game in action. My voice went out slightly before I watched the game, so no connection there. I. I already had a very little hopes.
[00:00:34] Speaker A: We should have Texans versus Packers. That's a thing. You know you have to be a Packers fan, right? Because your parents. Well, it was Texas.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: It was Texans versus Steelers, because Steelers are my team.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: Oh, the Steelers.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: I grew up not far from Pittsburgh.
[00:00:47] Speaker A: Oh, I was just looking at Brett Favre, thinking, and I thought, Packers.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: Aaron Rodgers. We gotta get you. We gotta get you on the right page here.
[00:00:54] Speaker A: Holy schmoly. Aaron Rodgers, Packers, Right.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Yes, he was backers, but they lost.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: Also to the Bears. Bears.
That was good because all the guys had the, like, the cheese graters on top of their heads. I thought that was a classy move. Those are always Chicago. Welcome to all the Chicago watchers. We're answering your theology questions, which you can send to us at Wolfmuller Co/contact. Quick commercial. And that is the. This little book that I wrote about the prodigal son comes out tomorrow, January 15th. So three slavers, three freedoms from the prodigal son. That's cool. All right, what do you got, Pastor Packer?
[00:01:31] Speaker B: First questions on created in the image of God. Oh, Genesis.
[00:01:36] Speaker A: Okay, good.
[00:01:38] Speaker B: Glad you're excited about this one.
In Genesis 1:26,27, Scripture says that Adam was created in the image of God. Genesis 5:3 says that Adam, father to son Seth in his own image and likeness.
I've always been taught that we are conceived and born in sin, but we are reborn into the image of God in our baptismal faith. So we now bear the image of God. I heard an LCMS pastor on a recent podcast say abortion is wrong because the unborn baby is created in the image of God. Of course we believe abortion is wrong, but that seems an unscriptural reason to give. Could you please clarify this for me?
[00:02:09] Speaker A: This is such a phenomenal question and such an important topic. So the. The. This is right. First of all, how the question outlines things. We're creating the image of God, but We lost that image of God in the fall. The image is lost.
All mankind fell. And Adam's fall, one common sins infects us all. God's image lost, et cetera, et cetera. I can't remember the rest of the words, but that's the idea. So that Seth is in the image of Adam. We're born of what Paul says. We bear the image of the man of dust.
We are of our Father, the devil. That's John 8.
So that we do not have the image of God according to creation.
But.
And this is one of the places where we really differ from the, I think, the whole Reformed confession, because whenever you hear Christians now talking about ethics and morality, they push it back to the image of God, which is right. I'll tell you, it has to do with Moses, with Noah.
But it's wrong that we have the image of God, but it's right that we should treat each other like we have the image of God. So even though the image of God is lost, the key text here is Genesis chapter nine, where Noah comes off the boat and the Lord is kind of redoing the rules of the garden. He says, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth. He gives Adam. Sorry, he gives Noah the authority to eat meat. Remember, the Lord gave to Adam the authority to eat all the fruit, but now eat meat. And then he also talks about if a man kills another man, his life is forfeit, he should be put to death because you were created in the image of God.
So even though we are not conceived and born in the image of God, the Lord expects us to act like it.
And the basis of our morality and the basis of our laws and the basis of the way that we treat each other, is based on the fact that God created us in his image.
Now, the key thing about the image of God, and here's where we, I think Lutherans differ from almost every other theological tradition, is that we do not say that the image of God is essential to our human nature, but rather the imageableness. I don't know the right words to use. The imageableness is what's.
Is what our nature is, so that we are going to bear some sort of image.
So remember, like Psalm 115 or Psalm 135, which are almost the exact same. It says that it's talking about the idols. And it says that all those, they have eyes, they don't see, they have ears, but they don't hear. They have mouths, but they don't speak. They have feet, but they don't go anywhere.
All those who make them become like them, and so do all who worship them, so that we bear the image or the likeness of that which we worship, which is the Problem of Romans 1. You give up the worship of God for the worship of the creation, and you start to, in some ways, be recreated after the image of your own idols which are dead and dying.
And so we all are bearing an image, but we are born not bearing the image of God.
Now, stunningly, and I can't get over this, in Philippians 2, it talks about how Christ humbled himself, taking upon himself the likeness of men, so that we who have lost the likeness of God and thrown away the likeness of God and abandoned the likeness of God to rescue and redeem us, Jesus takes upon himself. He who is God takes upon himself our likeness.
Not considering the likeness of God as something to be grasped, like Adam and Eve did, you will be like God in the garden. Jesus takes upon himself our likeness so that he can begin to restore us to the image and likeness of God, which happens through baptism, through the work of the Spirit, so that we're being renewed from glory to glory. That's how Paul talks about it after that image of him who is the firstborn of all creation, the Lord Jesus.
[00:06:44] Speaker B: So.
[00:06:46] Speaker A: Anyway, this is just such a marvelous thing to think about. This image of God which is which Jesus is restoring in us, is true. But on this question, do we not abort babies because they have the image of God? No, but we don't abort babies because we were created in the image of God.
That's the Lord's thing. So the value comes not from the having of the image of God, but from the intention to have the image of God which is expressed in the original creation.
[00:07:18] Speaker B: What do you think about the idea?
I've heard some talk about the idea of God, image of God broadly and narrowly. So narrowly, image of God is what you've just described. Holiness, righteousness, innocence, those kind of things. And that's completely lost at the fall.
And more broadly speaking, the image of God includes things like rational thoughts, the ability to love language, things like that. Or even things like. I've seen people talk about Adam and Eve are king and queen on the earth. So that's part of burying the image. And we still have that. We still have dominion. So what do you think about that distinction between a narrow image of God versus a more broad image in that way?
[00:08:03] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know. I think you could.
I mean, I think there's room to explore here. I think some of the advice that Luther gives on the image of God is pretty helpful in that we don't have access to how things were before the fall.
So that there's so much that's lost even to our own experience and our own reason that it's very difficult to have access to.
I want to be slow to. To say that the image of God is something that also is shared with the angels. So, like rationality and thought and language is shared with the angels. And I don't think that the angels were given the image of God in the same way that God gave his image to humanity. So I think there's something unique about that original gift of the image of God.
But.
But the idea is certainly, I mean, this idea that the image of God, that God's creating us in his image has durative, moral, ethical and legal imprint is so clear from Genesis 9 that even as we debate about the relationship between God's image and our essence, we still are to act, to treasure each human being as having value because of that original creative intent.
But yeah, I don't know about the broad and narrow. That'll be something fun to think about.
[00:09:43] Speaker B: All right, the next one.
Attending a church different to my theology, I have this question as When I first became a Christian a few years ago, it was through my friends who attended Presbyterian Church in Australia.
I still attend this church and even serve on kids and youth teams. However, my theology is now entirely Lutheran.
The issue I'm facing is this. I love my current church. The people are amazing, and I see God working in it. I don't want to leave the church. However, I don't agree with their teachings on important things such as the sacraments.
Most Lutheran churches in my area of Australia are very liberal, having just allowed female pastors, etc. Is it better to stay in a healthy, theologically conservative church that I don't agree in full with or go to a less healthy, theologically liberal church that is more in line with my theology?
[00:10:31] Speaker A: I might answer this question in the broad and narrow sense, in the very narrow sense.
I am praying daily for the lma, the Lutheran Mission Australia, which is a new church body that's formed after the LCA Lutheran Church of Australia voted for their way forward.
What was that, a summer and a half ago or last summer or whenever that was. And so there's. There's these little LMA churches, Lutheran Mission Australia churches starting all over the place, and they're looking for people just like you to be a part of this. I mean, it's A pretty exciting group. So if you visit Lutheran Mission Australia and see what's close by and, and get in contact with them, start meeting with them, etc. Etc. So that's kind of answering the church in the narrow way, but in the broad sense, this is a really good question to think about.
So we want our doctrine and our confessions to match up with the scriptures.
What if there's not a local congregation in range that has those convictions?
Okay, so what to do in that situation?
Number one, this is now the driving content of your daily prayers.
Lord, give me a faithful church where I can worship and serve and bless the people there. That's. That's number one.
Number two, to be in contact with the, I suppose, bishop or president or someone who has authority in the church body, faithful church body that is closest to you.
So, for example, this looked like for our friends that were in Greece, and there's no Lutheran church in Greece getting in contact with the missionaries who were in Romania, and they actually started to come and visit, monthly visit. And I think our missionaries out there, and I think that we're going to have to do more and more of this as people contact us. There's going to be some kind of visitation that's happening so that even though you might still be involved in a local congregation that doesn't share your convictions, you're in contact with a traveling preacher or pastor, missionary, and you're trying to make those contacts. And especially as this, your conviction around the Scripture grows and other people become a part of it, now you're really ready for a church plant.
How do we manage those?
But in the meantime, if I'm going to a different church, like, say I have Lutheran convictions, but the only options I have around me are Orthodoxy or Catholicism or confessional Reformed churches or Anglican churches or something like this, to go to those churches and to hear the preaching of the Word and to rejoice when you hear law and gospel clearly preached. The question is, can I participate in the sacraments there?
And this is the answer is no.
I mean, I don't want to treat the situation lightly and as if there's going to be no difficulty here and as if this happens instantly. This is not what I'm saying. But eventually your fellowship at the altar is a confession.
And if the altar where you're going says that it's not the body and blood, it's just the real presence of this divine nature of Christ. And you commune by faith, not by mouth, etc.
You can't confess that while believing something different or if you're going to the Catholic Church and they're confessing that this is the unbloody sacrifice, which is propitiatory and earning the forgiveness of sins as the act of the priesthood of all believers, you just can't participate in that.
So.
So to go to the church and to rejoice in the fellowship of the teaching when it's right, and to enjoy the people there and even to be connected in theological conversation to the church leadership, I think that's all okay.
But there's a way to say, I'm just. I'm a Lutheran and I'm in exile because I don't have a Lutheran church around here. So I'm kind of sheltering as a sojourner, as a theological sojourner in your fields, but I can't participate at the table. And to have that understanding, it's also important to know that leaving a church does not mean abandoning all the people at the church.
And it is okay and, in fact, in a lot of ways important to try to maintain those friendships that you have in the old fellowship.
So that, as you're saying, hey, I'm realizing that my convictions line up with the old Lutherans rather than the old Calvinists, but I love you, and you're my brothers and sisters in Christ, and I want to cherish the friendships that we have.
This is good. It doesn't mean you don't have to cut people off, especially socially and in regards to friendship when you. When you have a different confession. But eventually, our. And sooner rather than later, our fellowship at the altar has to express. Has to be in line with our confession of faith. And so that's the thing that you're working towards in this particularly difficult situation.
[00:16:07] Speaker B: All right, next one's on evangelism tactics.
[00:16:09] Speaker A: You don't. You're not even adding in anything to this. This is a.
This is. Pastor I. Carrie was saying the other day, Pastor Packer has to say more in your podcast. It's just you talking too much, but. And here I show up, and you don't even have a voice.
[00:16:24] Speaker B: You know, you probably prayed for this. Is that what happened?
[00:16:30] Speaker A: No, that's why. That's why.
[00:16:31] Speaker B: That's why I can't talk.
[00:16:33] Speaker A: I always like you pushing back on what I say. What about this? Hold on. Think about this.
[00:16:38] Speaker B: Well, I didn't have anything to push.
[00:16:40] Speaker A: Back on on that one.
[00:16:41] Speaker B: All right, evangelism tactics.
When I read Acts in the epistles, I cannot help but notice the difference in tactics between the apostles to the Jews and St. Paul.
The apostles to the Jews preach repentance and then the gospel, whereas Paul determined to know nothing but Christ and him crucified.
Seems to me that there is a counterintuitive axiom at work, at least at the outset of the evangelical task. The more civilly righteous the harvest field, the more the second use of the law is required.
The less civilly righteous the harvest field, the greater the need for the gospel from the outset.
Would be wise to consider whether we are more similarly situated within the apostles of Jews or St. Paul when formulating our external posture.
My view is that modern America is more similar to classical Corinth than 1st century Judea, acquiring more gospel and less condemnation. So I guess the first question would be, do you agree with their framing of the, the situation, the difference between the preaching styles there? And then the second would be, how do you view, how should we approach modern America? Does it require more gospel and less law, or is this headed in the wrong direction?
[00:17:56] Speaker A: So I think that the reading the book of Acts and paying attention to the strategy and tactics is great.
I love that approach. I think you could isolate the distinction by even just looking at Paul. So the book of Acts gives us seven sermons from Paul in seven different circumstances to seven different audiences. And in each one, it's interesting, he will use a text that's native to the people to whom he's preaching. So in the synagogue, he quotes the Old Testament to the Christians, he quotes Jesus to the Athenians, he quotes these two Greek pagan poets, you know, to the, when he's, when he's there in Asia Minor, he. And this is this business where they think that he's, that he's who? Mars, you know, come down from the messenger. Sheesh. And that Barnabas is Jupiter. And he, he's, he's making reference to the old paganism stuff. So that he, he is, he's bringing texts to which the people are familiar. And then he goes from there.
Like for example, in Athens, his text in large part is this engraving on the statue to the unknown God. And he's preaching on their text to bring to them Christ and the doctrine of the Resurrection.
So to the Epicurean and Stoic and pagans, he preaches the Resurrection. Well, really, in every single one of his sermons, he preaches the Resurrection to the Christians, he preaches the warning of false doctrine and the blood of Christ. To the, to the Jews, he's preaching from the synagogue that Jesus is the Christ. So you can see that in each place his argument is slightly different. You can also see in Paul, in each circumstance he acts differently in relationship to the law.
So sometimes he'll press his rights as a Roman citizen, appeal to Caesar. Sometimes he withholds his rights as a Roman citizen and then presses them later, like in Philippi. He lets himself be beaten and then the next day says, you're going to do this to a Roman citizen? And they're like, whoops. Other times he doesn't mention it at all.
And so he's becoming all things to all people.
So that there is a particular flexibility in the preaching of law and gospel.
This is shown most profoundly by Jesus, who will in some circumstances just blast away with the law and in other times speak with such tender mercy and kindness, depending on the situation of the particular conscience.
When, when we were trained to preach, we were trained on this beautiful text of the proper distinction between law and gospel by C.F.W. walther. And he says it's not a proper distinction of law and gospel to preach the gospel to hard hearted sinners, nor is it a right distinction to preach the law to tender despairing sinners, so that there's an awareness of the state of the conscience that's being, that's reflected in wisdom. What this email is asking is, should that also be considered not just with the individual, but also with the culture? In other words, ought we try to determine the sort of state of the conscience of the culture and then rightly divide law and gospel? To that we could ask the same question. Should we do that with a congregation? In other words, I've noticed this, that I'm almost always preaching to individuals, but should I preach to the congregation as a whole more? Because it seems like the epistles are often addressed not just to individuals, but to the congregation as a whole. And can we do that? And I think that that's right. I think we can think about these things and explore them in this way. What's.
Are we living in a time of culturally hardened heart where we have to address the pride of assumed self righteousness with the thunderclap of the law of God?
Or are we living in the midst of a cultural despair and hopelessness that needs the.
That needs the balm and the comfort of the kindness of God and the. And the blood of Christ.
But I think it's all in. In some ways we're kind of answering the question already that it's always going to be both.
I mean, and half the time it's pride hiding under despair or despair masquerading as pride. And so it becomes especially difficult because people's presenting symptoms are not often the root cause of the problem or whatever.
So I guess this is all to say, I don't know.
In other words, I think it's a right way to explore the book of Acts and the application of law and gospel. But I think there's a lot of kind of complicated layers that are going on and sometimes the law and the gospel must both be preached. And in some ways we have to trust that the Holy Spirit is going to take the law and the gospel and bring it to the sinner in the proportion that the Holy Spirit knows is best for their repentance and faith.
I can't hear you, Pastor Packer. Your voice is totally lost.
Are you muted?
[00:23:25] Speaker B: I was muted, actually. I was trying for people not to hear my cough and I was muted.
[00:23:31] Speaker A: I said, man, you went from raspy.
[00:23:33] Speaker B: To totally to nothing to gone.
It just went. It's a miracle. My voice is back.
You mentioned that Paul uses some key texts, right from the pagans when he goes to different places. Are there any key texts or.
[00:23:53] Speaker A: What.
[00:23:53] Speaker B: Would be the key text today? Are there key texts? Because it seems like we're much more maybe in some ways fragmented, individualized, hyper individualized culture.
So are there key texts you could reference? Would it be movies or music? Like what would be the key texts that if you were going into a place that was mostly unbelievers that Paul would reference today?
[00:24:16] Speaker A: I've been thinking about this a lot. It has to do with this kind of project. I got mulling around having to do with story and people have noted that post modernity, that would like the mark of post modernity is the destruction of the meta narrative, which, the idea that we're all in this sort of fragmented time.
The mirror is broken, we're just shards. It's the wasteland. And so everybody's kind of crafting their own little story and they don't have a common story.
So that the, the. Especially in the age of, of anti hero, all the mythologies are busted down too. So we used to have sort of a common American origin story and the story about George Washington cutting down the cherry tree and, and the Boston Tea Party and, and all. And we had this sort of like, like an American text.
There even was this creation like the American songbook. This, this is the kind of like, this is the stuff that holds. That's all, that's all forgotten and, and everyone is, is busy kind of as a curator of their own, curator of their own history and curator of their own identity.
So it's very difficult. One of the Questions I like to ask people when I can. This is like I'm always trying to figure out what's the right question to sort of sort out a person's text.
One of them is that, well, what kind of music do you like to listen to? What's your favorite song? If you had to, if you had to build a soundtrack for your own life, who would be the singers? You know, the lead singers. Show me your liked songs on your Spotify playlist. And in some ways that gives you like access to the sort of narrative that that's there. I'll sometimes ask people what are the movies that defined you? Which I don't know what they are for you, Pastor Packer, but for me, the two movies that shaped me most were Braveheart and Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
This is like who I am as I'm like some sort of weird combination of those two movies.
What about you? I don't. Do you? I'm. Should I guess yours.
[00:26:28] Speaker B: Like from when I was a kid. Are you saying growing up.
Probably the ones that it. Probably some combination of Karate Kid, which I watched when I had chickenpox, like I think multiple times a day for like a week.
So Karate Kid would probably be up there. Rambo was a really big Rambo fan. And probably, probably Star Wars.
[00:26:52] Speaker A: Those are probably the ones. This is happen. This is so like, you know, but this is. People don't have that anymore. I mean people like even the idea of going to a movie is kind of lost this anyway. There's so many.
There's so, so this is a really difficult thing to say. What are the texts that we can exegete to understand our, our particular culture? It's. This is a difficult text. But. Well, I don't know. What would you put on that list? What would you.
[00:27:19] Speaker B: I don't. I. My problem is that even like music so hyper individualized because of Spotify, because of streaming, like even I. I'd always check the Golden Globe winners every year just to see kind of like what's. But it's more of a reflection of Hollywood itself. Not really even because half the things that win Golden Globes, like it doesn't mean people are watching them. Right. It just means that they gave the message that Hollywood wanted to hear this year. So it doesn't even mean much necessarily. Doesn't mean like lots of people watched it. So I think it's really hard right now to figure out exactly what are the.
What are the things that are shaping people's thinking the most. I mean it's the algorithm, ultimately. And because of the way the algorithm works, it, I think it is slightly different for each person. And I don't know if there's any.
I don't know if there's any key text that you could quote in a room full of, let's say, 100 adults.
And all the 100 adults would get the reference, whether it was a movie, a book, a song, even if they're the same age. I'm not sure. There's like, you know, you'd have to be probably really.
You have to probably have the same gender, the same age. Like, it'd have to be really super specific, I think, to get there. So I'm not sure. I have no good answer for that. That's why I asked.
[00:28:34] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, it's a good. If I, if the, if you, the listener have ideas about this, like, what would be the text that. If Paul was preaching in, like, in Washington, D.C. i was thinking about this actually, when I was in Washington, D.C. because we have all these monuments engraved with all these texts. And here's the Emancipation Proclamation, and here's the Gettysburg Address at the Lincoln Memorial. And then here's the kind of the World War II memorial. And there's, there's. All of the memorials have words on them, which is significant, very significant.
And they're engraved with this, this kind of the story of America. That's what this is. The monuments are there to tell the story. But we've.
I don't know, we've lost. We've lost so much of them.
[00:29:16] Speaker B: I mean, even if you reference a historical event from even 50, 60 years ago, you're going to have a good portion of the people in the room who don't know what the event you're talking about.
Well, I can't remember what I was reading. Recently, someone realized they gave a speech somewhere or something and they mentioned, oh, I remember what I saw. It doesn't really matter, though. But they were saying they gave a speech somewhere and they. I think they had mentioned Chamberlain on multiple occasions and some, some things and no one knew who he was talking about afterwards. They have to ask him.
Like, even big historical figures, people just don't know who they are and what they did. And like, it's just we're. We're lost to people. Anyway, let's go to the next question.
[00:30:01] Speaker A: You have these moments too. Like, even, like, hey, we landed on the moon. But now that's not. Oh, really? We. I mean, even, like, yeah.
[00:30:09] Speaker B: Did we.
[00:30:10] Speaker A: That's amazing that these, even this gets Questioned. I mean, we just live in a time where there's, there's no authority and there's, there's no story.
[00:30:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Binding everyone together.
All right, this is on the King James Bible and the esv, so this one should be fun.
Hi, Pastor. I really enjoy watching your YouTube videos. My wife has been watching a YouTube guy, Robert Baker, that holds to the only true word of God is the King James Bible.
He is so King James only guy. He is quick to point out that there are many verses missing and word changes to have different meanings. He also said because of this scripture and these other versions can't interpret themselves. We have checked in our ESV Bibles for the errors that he points out and all the things he says seem to be true.
I was wondering if you have heard of him or have some insight on this. I'm hoping you do a video on this and we look forward to hearing what you have to say on this topic.
[00:31:07] Speaker A: I have things to say and I don't know if I can put them in a coherent order.
So you see if that. So, okay, let's take a half step back and kind of work on background stuff. So especially when it. In regards to the New Testament, there are basically two big manuscript families.
So there is the, on the one hand, the. What could be called the majority text or the Texas Receptus.
This is the text that is the Greek text that's behind the King James version of 16:11.
It's connected pretty closely to the Greek from Erasmus and from Luther's German New Testament. It's just kind of. This here was the best manuscript of the Greek New Testament that comes to us from history and the ancient church.
In the 1900s, Bible scholars, especially in Germany, but all over, they started to piece together all of the old manuscripts that they could find. They were gathering up. This is kind of that time of encyclopedias and museums and everything. And they're gathering together all of the old copies of the New Testament, sometimes books, sometimes whole New Testaments, sometimes a lot of times little fragments.
And they're starting to compare all these different little manuscripts. And what they realized was that there's differences here and there and there. And then here's a word that's a little bit different, or here's a verse that's not there, or here's a little. Few verses that aren't there, etc. And so they start to piece together using all of these manuscripts, they start to piece together with the goal of getting back to as close to the original as they can. We can call that the critical text.
And almost every edition of the Bible now modern translation, is a translation of that critical text. And that even that critical text itself has gone through a number of revisions and they're adding things to it. And you have to make a decision like if you have a word here and a word there in the same text, which one are you going to put in there? And so in, in my, oh, I don't know what version of Nestle island on the, on the Greek text that I have, it has all of these little, like the apparatus that's underneath it that tells you all the different little variants from all the different manuscripts. And in fact a big part of this, of this edition, this has the Hebrew in the back. That's why it's so, so fat. But a big part of this edition is all of the textual manuscripts that tells you all the different sources at the beginning. So, so they're, they're trying to piece this together to get back to the original. And they use a bunch of rules to do that. Like the older text should be preferred or the more difficult reading should be preferred and so forth and so on. And so on the one hand you have the English of the, of that received majority text. That would be the King James and the new King James, although the new King James will note has, has some textual notes it'll like if you'll notice in the bottom it'll say in you excludes or in you adds or whatever. And that would be the Nestle island or the, and that's the scholarly version of the critical text that they're using to compare esv, rsv, nasb, niv, Any other, the Beck Bible, any other edition of the New Testament of the Bible is using that critical, it's critical edition of the text to interpret in English.
So behind this argument of the kind of King James versus the other ones is those two textual families. That's what's going on there. So first of all, it's just to. Before we have an opinion about it, it's good to know that that's kind of sitting there in the background. Would you add anything to that?
Pastor Packer? To for the background of the textual.
[00:35:20] Speaker B: Families, I would add that the textual families are like 99% like similar overall and that most of the differences, like we always point out that the differences don't affect any doctrine. Like if you look, compare the differences, at the end of the day, they don't change the meaning of the text. And the biggest differences are in the Book of Revelation, like that's the.
I think there's the most differences if you look manuscript to manuscript in the Book of Revelation, as you compare these kind of things to the Texas Receptus, it's, you know, it gets complicated fast. I would also point out, before you get on to the next point, because I find this fascinating, is that they did a study.
I would. I don't have the link to it right now. I don't think I'd have to find it a couple years ago, I think about three years ago, of King James only pastors asking them what words meant like in the King James Bible.
And they got most of them wrong. In other words, they didn't understand the English because sometimes it's not just a matter of, oh, your Bible's corrupt, but also like, oh, those, they changed the words, the English words, and those English words are bad and these English words are better. But it turns out they don't actually know what many of those Old English words actually mean in the King James Bible. Which is why most King James Bibles today, if you have one, has a dictionary in the back if you bought a recent one, because a lot of the language has shifted and changed.
[00:36:42] Speaker A: So I was just looking. So I have, I. This is. I was looking this morning at a text because I was looking at, oh, some Isaiah text. I have this, which is a recreation of the 1611 King James that has it. And it's, you know, none of those spelling is standardized and everything else like this. This is fascinating thing. Well, so it also maybe is helpful to note that this is not really. This, this whole different family thing is not really an issue in the Old Testament. At least the issue in the Old Testament is quite different. And that's because, well, probably because they were not in such a hurry in, in the making copies of the texts in the Old Testament. So they had, especially the scribes had certain rules and I mean they were counting letters and they were really taking their time. When time you get to the New Testament, people are just copy, copy, copy, sin, sin, sin, sin, sin, sin.
Now I am a lot of the biblical theologians that I trust and respect have used the critical text in I was taught the critical text. We, you know, it was the Greek of the critical text that we were learned from from the seminary.
Even like the most conservative of the Lutherans, like so the Christian News, Herman Otten sent all of the seminarians a copy of the Beck Bible as a commendation to us as a gift that's translated from the critical text.
So very, very conservative biblical scholars in The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod just basically have received that critical text as the text that we would use. And in some ways I have to admit that when I grab my Greek, both the one I have here in a church, I have the critical text and then the Bible Society edition of the Greek New Testament, which is also based critical text with a couple of different adjustments.
But I think that my preference, when I just think about it, like if I here's you have these two textual families, which one would I rather, you know, what family do I want to eat dinner with? It's the majority text family. It's the, it's the receive. It's the Texas Receptus.
It just seems to me in two ways. It seems to be more pious and more churchly and also and maybe even kind of more helpful than the critical text.
And I just am suspicious. I mean this one kind of comes from the church and this one comes from the university.
And my own inclination is towards the churchly tradition rather than the academic university tradition.
So when I read, when I study personally, I'm reading the new King James. I teach from the new King James. We use the, and we have the ESV and we read from the ESV in church. So we. I'm kind of back and forth and I suppose often comparing the differences between the two. But I just like that over there.
Now that though is different. Like having a preference for the majority text is different than having the King James only idea. Because the King James only idea has to do with was the translation from the Hebrew and the Greek into English inspired by God.
It exposes though, and I do not think that that's true. I mean, I just know like the first edition of the King James Bible said you shall commit adultery, which is kind of a bad typo, you know, and everyone knew it was a typo. So it wasn't like there was like 20 years of rabid adultery in, in London and then they're like, oh wait, we forgot to say not. And then everyone, you know, I mean everyone knew that that was not.
So they fixed it in the second edition or whatever. But you know what I mean? But so that, that I, so I don't think we want to argue that it was inspired, even though it's wonderful and it's a massive gift. Not only theological gift, but an English language gift.
But I think we want to be able to push back to the Hebrew and push back to the Greek and lean into those.
But this King James Only my professor, Dr. Marquardt always used to say that the heresies are the unpaid debts of the church.
And I think that King James only heresy or false doctrine is because we have failed to speak of the Lord's work of preserving the text.
So we so often talk about the perfect inspiration of the biblical text that the Lord inspired every letter of the autographs.
We're strong on that. But we don't speak about how the Lord God, the Holy Spirit has preserved the text so that we can trust that what we're reading and studying in church is the word of God. I don't have to say this is a 2000 year old best effort at trying to get to what God's word is. I can say when we read the text, thus says the Lord.
And so I think we do need to do a lot more work in our, in our doctrine of the preservation of the scripture.
[00:42:22] Speaker B: I agree 100%. I also think part of the problem the King James only is that if you read the letter that was the introduction to the King James Version, they actually say, we hope others will improve upon our work. They did not see their translation as the final thing because they were in a stream of people who are trying to get God's word into the common language of the people so they could read it in their own language. That was their goal. Their goal was not to create a translation that would last for, I mean, and it has to the test of time as far as, like, it's beautiful and it's greatly impacted in English language and it's a great resource and tool. But to act like that's the only translation goes against even what those translators believe they were doing. That wasn't their goal at all. Their goal was to get the English Bible into people's hands in a reliable translation.
And I think they'd be the first to applaud many of the English translations that have come out. Not all of them, but many of them. Right. That was their goal. Their goal was to get God's word into people's hands.
[00:43:23] Speaker A: All right, this by the way, is on my list of things to study more in 2026.
I had a lot of pretty, I mean, very interesting and revealing conversations last year about this very question about the different manuscripts in including questions about like, is the older manuscript to be preferred? And I've decided that that is a bad criteria because like, if you, if you look at the oldest Bible in this room right here, it's going to be the one that I never look at because it's no great. Yes, it's stuff like that. So I think that there's.
I think there's a lot of exploration to be done in this topic, so stay tuned. I think we'll probably revisit this in the next few months.
[00:44:05] Speaker B: All right, this one's about adult baptism.
I've been studying Lutheran theology and I'm coming from a non denominational background. I've been convinced of the gifts of baptism and that it truly does save. But I've been stuck on the gifts of baptism in the context of adults who've already believed by word apart from the water. In the small catechism, it says, baptism works. Forgiveness of sins, rescues from death in the devil and give the eternal salvation. All who believe this.
If I received this when I believed by hearing the gospel, what's my baptism do? Did it just strengthen me? I've been kind of confused on what people mean when they say it seals you. It appears like when an infant is baptized versus an adult. There are different baptisms. I know that's not true because there is only one baptism, but this has just been confusing me because a lot of the verses about the gifts of baptism, like where Peter says, repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of sins and you receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, are projected towards adults, or at least I'm assuming some of them were adults. Dr. Jordan Cooper, in an article I found, said these things are present through the Word, but are sealed, confirmed and strengthened through baptism. It seems clear in the Book of Acts and of the way Paul speaks of baptism that the presence of the Spirit becomes greater through baptism. He has present in a way that he has not beforehand. However, I'm struggling to understand what he means by being present in a way he is not priority. I would greatly appreciate if you could help me.
[00:45:24] Speaker A: This is so good.
The basic answer is I don't know.
And in some ways we don't have to know just because the Lord says, go and baptize. And he doesn't say, go and baptize if people don't have faith, or go and baptize if people do have faith. He just says, go and baptize all nations and teach them all that I've commanded them.
And baptism is a real thing, that we're born again through the water and the Word Christ cleanses us through the water and the Word, but not in a way that would exclude those gifts also coming to us just through the Word, just like we have every Sunday, the absolution, and then we have the Lord's Supper in which the Lord forgives our sins. It's like well, why do you have both? And I suppose the answer is because that's how it is with the Lord. It's always kind of pressed down, overflowing. He gives us his mercy in abundance.
So.
So I don't know, maybe the best picture is birth. Like, physical birth. Like, were you alive before you were born? Yeah, you were alive in your mother's womb. You existed and you had life, and then you were born.
And now you. That same life is much more cold, I suppose, and different.
The umbilical cord is cut.
You're looking around, you're not. You're given a name, which is interesting. I mean, a lot of times the parents have named the children, but nobody even know you're named after you're born. And everybody sees you after you're born. So something real happens in birth, and yet it's not like you all of a sudden come into existence.
So the relationship of faith and baptism is wonderful to think about, because even when we're baptizing babies, we're assuming that they have faith. I mean, we asked the little babies, do you believe in God the Father? Do you believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son? We ask the children, do you desire to be baptized? And then if they don't know how to talk, the parents or the sponsors or the congregation says, yeah, yeah, but we're assuming that that's what the baby would say if it knew how to talk.
So that in some ways, we practice believer's baptism.
We assume already that the baby has faith by the Word in the Lord answering the prayers of the church and the family, that he would save the children. And we see examples of that in the Old Testament, John leaping for joy even before he's born in his mother's womb.
So that even though we're born again by the word, James 1 and 1 Peter 1, we're also born again by water and the word. John 3:5, Titus 3:5.
And the Lord says, this is great.
So if you say, well, what happens to a baby? I mean, I think we sometimes assume that you. And I've heard Lutheran pastors talk like this, and it's kind of. I don't like it. They say you bring the little. You bring the little pagan to baptism, and then now they leave the waters of baptism as a. As a new creature.
Okay, okay. But also, we trust that the Lord is working through faith, through the Word, to create and sustain faith even before the baby's brought to baptism.
If there's no faith, then the Lord creates it. And in baptism, it's great.
But it's not like that.
Baptism is some sort of magic thing where the Lord says zabam, you have faith. And if someone is baptized when they already have faith, then nothing happens.
It must be that it is the same gift of being born again, which is in some profound ways it's like, it's. I, it's like getting a name when you're born. So you, you were there before, but you, you didn't. That name wasn't given, so you didn't. I was Brian Wolfmuller Like 10 hours after my birth and not for the nine months before, even though I was. But now the name is given. So the Lord is, is the one who's giving gifts upon gifts upon gifts. And, and one of the ways that he gives those gifts is through baptism. So I can say, I'm baptized, I'm baptized, and, and that I belong to God, I'm adopted into his family. I'm, I'm, I'm a child of God. It's, I can rejoice in that and I can have that absolute confidence.
I don't know if another example is marriage is an example, maybe adoption is an example. It's like, maybe you have a family that's like a foster home for a, for a kid, kid and then they legally adopt a child and now they become parents even though, like something real has happened. Even though it doesn't maybe seem like the day to day sort of stuff is sort of the same. In other words, there's ways that the Lord sort of layers his gifts on top of one another and we simply keep his command to baptize and then rejoice in the gift of baptism.
[00:50:40] Speaker B: I was thinking about Luther in the small colored articles where he says, we will now return to the Gospel, which not merely in one way gives us counsel and aid against sin. For God is super abundantly rich and liberal in his grace and goodness.
Like he just gives it in lots of different ways because he's good and gracious. So I think that's part of the answer. I, I think too, because Luther talks about this in the Large Catechism on baptism, if you believe the word on a certain day, that's, that's, that's mostly an internal thing, right? Like, whereas baptism, you can point to a day and say, I know for a fact that on that day God gave me these gifts. Like it doesn't become just like the day I believe. But here's something that God, I know for a fact, on that day God did this thing for me and it's outside of me. And Luther talks about that in large catechism, that it gives us something outside of ourselves to cling to and hold on to. Like we can look to a specific day and say, I was baptized on that date. I am baptized.
[00:51:38] Speaker A: And.
[00:51:38] Speaker B: And so even if I doubt myself, like, I know God gave me those gifts on that day. So I think that's probably part of the answer as well.
[00:51:47] Speaker A: Yeah, it's great.
[00:51:49] Speaker B: All right, next one Struggles with gaps in spiritual life.
You would think I wouldn't pick the longer reading ones on a day when I don't have a voice, but yet here we are.
All right.
As a baptized Christian who holds the two different beliefs, I sometimes struggle with feelings of distance from God, especially because I've not been really attending church. I wasn't good at keeping up church membership or partaking in the Lord's Supper.
Some of this is due to personal struggles. I tend to be quite introverted, while some is due to practical circumstances such as work and lack of transportation.
So I often find myself wondering if I'm failing in my relationship with God or missing something vital in my spiritual life. I know the means of grace, especially word and sacrament, are central in the Lutheran faith. That makes me feel lit by a little bit lost or even unworthy at times because I'm not regularly receiving the supper or gathering with the body of Christ.
So I suppose my question is this.
What are some words of comfort or assurance for someone who believes that struggles with these gaps in their spiritual life?
How can one remain close to God when feeling so physically and emotionally distant from the church?
[00:52:52] Speaker A: The I would this question sounds to me like someone who says, boy, I haven't. I haven't eaten in a long time and I'm getting. I'm getting hungry and hungry and could you help me to fight my hunger pains? And the answer is no, but you should eat.
I mean, we are not supposed to be by ourselves.
We are not supposed to live our Christian life in some sort of solo existence apart from God and his Word. I think it's one of the reasons Jesus sets up his church and reminded in the scripture, don't neglect the meeting together. Some are in the habit of doing because encouragement is found when we're together. It's why Jesus says, do this often in remembrance of me. And he says, take and eat. This is my body given for you all for y', all, not for thee, but for ye. There's a King James reference. It's. It's the you plural.
And so we are to be next to other Christians.
The old. I remember the old sermon about this was if you. You can't start a campfire with one log, you gotta. It's a weird thing that one log won't burn by itself. You gotta pile up the logs together and then the fire can burn.
Which. Okay, that's. But that's. Actually, I think this is true. We're not.
We are not meant to be Christians apart from the Lord and His words in his church. So every, Every Christian needs a pastor. Every Christian needs a congregation. Every Christian needs Christian friends. This is an important thing too, that we have to. Part of our stewardship in this Christian life is being a Christian friend. And the reason is for encouragement and comfort.
So there's a danger in some ways in the question, like, give me some comfort that the Lord has me even though I'm not in church.
Jesus has promised that no one will snatch you out of his hands.
Paul has commends the Philippians. He says the. The one who has done a good work in you, who has begun a good work in you, will bring it to completion in the day of Jesus Christ.
But part of the way that the Lord does that, in fact, I would say the chief way the Lord does that, is through the hearing of his word.
And so the Lord gives the gift of repentance through the preaching of law and gospel. That's where the Spirit is.
So the spirit of the Lord is throughout all the church. But that spirit gathers the Lord's people so that he can sustain them in the faith.
So my encouragement is to just find.
If you don't have a congregation.
Wolfmeel co. Find a church and send the zip code and we'll send you a list of the closest congregations. So we'll do that work for you. If you don't, if you, if you can do the work, it's great. We'll do the work of finding a couple faithful congregations as close as you can. That's for everybody, by the way, not just for the question. Wolfmeal co about button Find a church, send your zip code and your email. We'll find as we'll do the research to find the closest faithful church that we can and then just call the pastor and say, hey, could we have a cup of coffee and make that connection and let him be your shepherd to do this spiritual work of drawing you into the fellowship of the Lord's altar. It's just not good to be alone in this sort of thing. The Lord didn't intend for you to go through this alone.
So let The Holy Spirit gather you into his church.
That's the best encouragement that I have.
[00:56:28] Speaker B: I think that's exactly what, what they need to hear. So hopefully they receive that and go and find a faithful church and pastor. Like you said, if you're.
I even think the way the question was worded, they, they knew the answer.
Sometimes we just need to hear someone else tell us like what we already know. So hopefully that, that does it for them.
All right, this question's on Islam.
[00:56:51] Speaker A: So I'm an expert on that, by the way, because I am the intentional lead senior administrative minister.
So that spells Islam.
[00:57:05] Speaker B: Oh, jeez.
[00:57:08] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:57:09] Speaker B: I don't even know where to go from there. Okay, that was a dad joke and all dad jokes.
All right.
With the increasing threat of Islam in our nation, it concerns me a great deal.
What should be the Christian response? What is our obligation to defend our freedom from this Cancer vs. Jesus admonition to love our enemy? I'm afraid that loving you're our enemy in a temporal sense is naive in this instance. Would you please provide your insight?
[00:57:39] Speaker A: Great question. And I think there's already some hint of wisdom in the answer because there's kind of two problems, right?
The biggest thing with Islam. Oh, so you can download on the war against the Turk, Luther's little essay on Islam for free at Wolfmuller Co Books downloads Luther War against the Turk. And Luther discusses that Islam in regards to the three estates, family, church and state. And he says that it's a corruption of all three. It's a corruption of the family, especially in regards to the Islamic view of marriage, multiple wives, that whole business.
It's a corruption of the church because it says that Jesus is a prophet and not the son of God and says that forgiveness is from the free will of Allah apart from any sacrifice and suffering and all the other religious mistakes. It's a kind of works righteousness and a strange perversion of the Christian doctrine. The Lutherans considered Islam to be a Christian heresy and they list it under, in the first article, the Augsburg Confession. Mohammedism. Mohammedism, Mohammed, Muhammad.
Anyway, also it's a corruption of the state because it, it, there's this bloody edge wherever Islam is, wherever the borders of Islam is, this is bloody edge. And we hear about, I mean, when you hear about the severest persecutions of Christianity, it's under the tyrannical secularism of communism or especially it's on that border of Islam as it extends through Africa and all this other stuff.
So, so it is, it's very, it's.
It's bad Islam is bad doctrine.
It's bad ethics, and it's bad theology.
The tricky thing is that we.
So the United States, our kind of general cultural approach to Islam is to think of it as a religion.
And so the whole conversation about Islam comes under the rubric of religious freedom.
And that is fine insofar as Islam is a religion, but it's really not. I mean, when you start to study Islam and you look at, like, the five pillars, there's no theology there. The only theology is that there's one God and Muhammad is the prophet. I mean, that's like the depth of the theology of Islam. It's all the ethics. And so you have like, the five pillars, which is all activities, it's things to do. It's a more. It's a. It's an ethics, but it's even more than that.
It's a political argument, and it's an ideological political argument.
So we have to sort of confront Islam, I think, more as an ideology than as a theology.
So we have to do. The church has to do the theological work. Hey, this is bad doctrine. You deny Christ and therefore make salvation a matter of human works, or even worse, kind of Allah's will, flippant will. In some ways, that's terrible, but it really presents itself as an ideology, and therefore it is not under that idea of freedom of religion. In some ways, the freedom of religion in the United States is. Is really.
I mean, I think even at the beginning, it was like, you can be any kind of Protestant that you want, right? And maybe there's a little bit of room for Catholics, and if we're really stretching, we can find some room for some. Some people who are Jewish. I mean, that's kind of the. The freedom of religion was really this baseline Christianity.
It didn't. And in that way, it doesn't really address the problem of Islam. And so I think we need to revisit and do it now.
One of the greatest things that's happening in our world that is never talked about on the news or in any reporting that I generally see is the incredible amount of conversions happening from people from Muslim to Christian.
And it's not only happening in, like, Germany and other European states, in Africa, in the United States, but even in generally Islamically dominated places.
There's this underground church that's growing up in all of these churches underneath those who are in Sharia law and oppressive Islamic systems.
And we praise the Lord for that. I. I mean, it's really wonderful. And all that we can do to get the gospel and the doctrine into these different places, the better. I mean, so the Holy Spirit is working and is drawing people to himself.
So while we want to have a. We don't want to have a naivete, a political naivete, we do want to have a Christian optimism, which is the expectation of conversion.
In other words, when the ideology of Islam comes up against the preaching of the gospel, it is the preaching of the Gospel that prevails. And I think one of the deficits of the Lutheran Church is that we don't have this expectation of conversion that the Holy Scriptures are always teaching us.
I mean, Saul was a terrorist who was converted to Christ and becomes our brother who gives us half the New Testament.
And that the Lord can take the heart of someone that's devoted to an idol or a false God or other ideologies and claim it for himself must be our Christian confidence.
So when I was at HOPE in Colorado, the governor was moving, was had kind of set aside the neighborhood where we were for refugees coming from Syria, mostly Islamic Muslim families. And this has to be one of our joys is that instead of having to smuggle Bibles or do all this kind of offshore broadcasting or whatever, that the Lord is just bringing the people right there to the preaching of the gospel. Now, was it wise immigration policy? I don't think so.
But was it a massive opportunity and joy for the church?
Yes.
And I think we have to receive everything that the Lord gives in that way as an opportunity to spread the light of the gospel into the midst of a dark and crooked world.
[01:04:20] Speaker B: All right, I think that's it for today. No more listening to my voice today. You're done.
[01:04:26] Speaker A: We did it. If you have Questions Wolfmuller Co Contact, yout can send them in.
If you have concerns or complaints. I think Andrew Packer at Good Shepherd Collinsville, you can send those over there.
If you're looking for some books to pick up, we got a couple. So tomorrow, finally free by Concordia Publishing House. And then this translation of volume one of Chemnitz, A Summary of Chemnitz Examination of the Council of Trent, which you could download this guy for free at Wolfmil Co. This one, cph. I think they're doing a deal. You can. If you get 10, you can get them for 5 bucks each or something. So. Cph.org thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you soon. God's peace be with you.
