For the first hour we thought through the conclusion to a presentation from Dr. Jemar Tisby, considering standpoint epistemology, whiteness, etc. Then I looked at the “shocking” statements I made in the debate with Dr. Riddle on the TR. Ninety minutes. We will do another program, Lord willing, on Friday.

This morning’s regular edition of The Dividing Line should, Lord willing, make its appearance tomorrow, same time. It is physically impossible for only one person to do the program and run the electronics that are located in a different location, so, we will do our best to continue with our Ehrman response, possibly throw in some Ahmed Deedat material, etc.,

Stumbled on a Soteriology 101 video asking if I am “right” about Matthew 23:37, so we dealt pretty fully with that new presentation for the first ninety minutes, then touched upon some other topics including Bart Barber’s amazing defense of Ed Litton. Mega edition, two full hours! I head out on Road Trip #2, heading for G3, so programs for

This week Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary is holding their annual conference (March 10-12, 2015). The theme of this year’s conference is The Law of God in a Lawless Age. Here is the scheduled: Tuesday, March 10 1:15 – 2:30 – New Covenant Theology & The Law of God: Views, Critiques, Proposals Dr. Richard Barcellos – Pastor of Grace Reformed Baptist

I think I am somewhere in North Carolina, on my way to Atlanta for G3. Have a bit of a preview of what will be upcoming there, and then reviewed the debate I had with Dr. Gregory Coles on Saturday afternoon, discussing the language and terminology issues relevant to “Side B” advocates of “Gay Christianity.”

   Part of me says I shouldn’t post this, but I figure those who don’t like me will use anything anyway, so why not give them something fun? This morning I did a Calvinist ride. It didn’t start out that way, but hey, it must have been predestined. I was originally focused on doing the steepest, toughest climbs I know of

On a Dividing Line in July of this year, Dr. James White discussed a section from a book by Dr. Matthew Barrett on the dangers of what he has termed “Biblicism”. The section was taken from Dr. Barrett’s forthcoming Systematic Theology. However, this post is not an interaction with the fuller points of that section but rather on what Dr. Barrett has tracked down to be the origin of the term “Biblicism”.From the following screenshot of the section, we can see that Dr. Barrett has informed us that “The earliest use of the word ‘biblicism’ in English occurred in 1827 in a work by Sophei Finngan in criticism of ‘biblicism.’”I was unaware of who Sophei Finngan was. As it turns out, Finngan was a Roman Catholic Priest. The title of his book in 1827 was “The Mania of Seduction Unmasked; or, A Scriptural View of the Rise, Progress and Decline of Biblicism: With Much Interesting Collateral Matter.” (The book can be read for free on Google Books.) As you can see below, Finngan offers a brief definition of Biblicism. The criticism of Biblicism in this initial definition is that of “a factious scheme, by cunning caught and spread”.Noting that Finngan was a Catholic, it would certainly do us good to determine what he would have found so disturbing with what he called “Biblicism” that he would liken it to a contagion “caught and spread”.Let us dive into what he meant and the implications involved with Dr. Barrett’s usage of Finngan. We see below that on pages 6-7 he wrote about the “angel of light” who were “clanging the clang of the war-whoop” with the end to “regenerate [Catholics] in Bible-laver”.And also on page 7, Fingan mentioned Baptists and Methodists and then would mention that they are “discordant in creed” (i.e. many denominations – does this sound familiar?) of the Episcopals and Presbyterians. He further stated that they were “anxious to preach” to Papists. They thought that they were “Girt” for a “goodly work” of saving Papists with the Gospel. Along with the earlier reference to the “war-whoop”, he would note that the “goddess of Biblicism sounds the trumpet of war!” Finngan would surely feel that these Biblicists were dangerous because they were attempting to preach to the Catholics.At this point, we are still left wondering what, exactly, the “Biblicism” is that Finngan is describing. Let us look now at page 117. Finngan makes a plea there to the Protestants to “desert that church as not worth remaining in” because it “makes no provision for the sacred unity of faith” Finngan goes on to tell us what these Protestants have traded “the sacred unity of faith” for. He says that “every Protestant is bound to believe” the following statement: “proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture” as stated by the 39 Articles. He follows this by urging again that they “abandon their own Communion so flagrantly destitute of the essentials of salvation – Unity of belief.”Yes, you have read that correctly. Finngan, a Catholic, is opposed to the Protestant definition of Sola Scriptura. Finngan has apparently coined the English term “Biblicism” in order to write his diatribe against Protestants and their belief that doctrine should only be “proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture” as opposed to the “Unity of Faith” and belief in the Catholic Church.The last citation I will provide from Finngan is from pages 122-123. There Finngan stated that Protestants “should imitate this memorable example of Cornelius; they should not recur to Scripture, but, like him by an angel of God, have reference to Church authority.” As you can see he also mentions the Priesthood in succession to “the Divine Commission to Peter”.In summary, we have seen that the first usage of “Biblicism” in the English language was indeed a “criticism” (per Dr. Barrett) of Biblicism. More importantly, we have also seen that the “Biblicism” Finngan was critical of was nothing other than what we have come to call Sola Scriptura as defined in the 39 Articles. As we have stated elsewhere, this is yet another example of problems with uncritically resourcing the works of Catholic theologians. Most readers would be unfamiliar with Finngan and would not know that he was Catholic or what he specifically meant by “Biblicism” without digging into the source material. But in this section after Dr. Barrett has written his theses against a quite specific type of “Biblicism”, he notes that Finngan was offering criticism against Biblicism in the earliest English usage of the term.The logical conclusion is that Dr. Barrett and Finngan have in mind the same definition of Biblicism.I would like to give Dr. Barrett the benefit of the doubt – maybe he just did a search to find the first usage and saw that it was critical (it looks like a citation above with the “(19)” at the end of the quote. But as this is an excerpt he placed in his Reformation as Renewal from his forthcoming Systematic Theology, footnote 19 must be from the ST.) I would be remiss not to point out the fact that Dr. Barrett referred to R. Scott Clark’s work on the “Reformation understanding of authority” and then cited Finngan who explicitly called Protestants to come back to Rome and the “Church authority” – it is only slightly ironic at this point.As Dr. White, myself, and many others have pointed out, Dr. Barrett’s theses against “Biblicism” do not apply to the Reformed Biblicism we have been discussing. This Biblicism which Dr. Barrett is critical of, according to Finngan, is nothing more than a reliance on Scripture Alone! I would like to believe that any Protestant would be able to proudly wear the badge of “Biblicism” as it was initially defined and offered as a pejorative against Protestants by Finngan – that of having our beliefs “proved by most certain warrants of holy Scripture.”

We didn’t let a little thing like 5,281 miles get in the way of doing the DL today. With the help of Skype (which seems to keep improving in quality), my MacBook Pro, a really decent Internet connection here in London, Rich’s work back at the office, and our faithful King of All Things Internet in Texas (we had server

The first half hour today I played a few segments from a, well, discussion, not really debate, between Craig Evans and Rabbi Tovia Singer.  Then we opened the phones and took calls on such subjects as Old Testament salvation, 1 John 2:2, and more! Here is the YouTube link:

As I promised on Wednesday, I continued my review of Kent Brandenburg’s amazing hit-piece here, taking up the whole hour on the subject.  I happened to notice (thankfully, after the show was over), that not only has he replied on his blog, but, of course, the Troll of Trolls, the single nastiest, meanest, lowest stalker on the Internet today, “James