Ergun Caner - Southcrest Baptist Church - April 13, 2013

Apparently Dr. Ergun Caner spoke at the Southcrest Baptist Church on April, 13, 2013 (link).  He includes some of those same comments about how bad he is or was at handling funds.

9:15 "After I said the word 'married' they didn't hear a word. I could have said, 'and by the way, I'm a member of Al-Qaeda' Right? Turk, you could believe it."

I bet people could believe it.  His jihad-related claims in the past were pretty widely accepted at first.

22:35 "Brother Jerry asked me to do something specific. I've never preached my testimony in a (your?) church twice. I did it a decade ago."

It would be interesting to hear how different the testimony sounds now.  I also suppose this explains why Caner was giving this testimony even though other messages he delivered in 2013 didn't have the same emphasis.

24:35 "For three years, he kept coming"  | 26:20 "going into my senior year"

These make it sound like he was saved in 1983, since he graduated in 1984.

34:30 "For 17 years, I am disowned. Now I live with haters, and I live with people who always mock me. The thing that really gets to me is that when they mock my testimony, they're actually mocking the boy who led me to Christ. And if you make fun of a guy who gets disowned for 17 years, you're really sort of a hard heart."

a) 17 years would mean he was saved in 1982, since his dad died in 1999.
b) It's not "mocking" to point out that Caner's testimony has often been presented in terms that are not true, such as claiming he immigrated as a teenager or that his father was a polygamist.  Even the testimony he offered at this church in 2013 is inconsistent with itself - was he saved in 1982 or 1983?

35:05 "A year after I got saved, both my brothers - all three are born again."

This has been a pretty consistent aspect of his testimony, that there was about a year (or eight months) gap between his conversion and that of his brothers.  But in Caner's book, "Unveiling Islam," it is written that Emir Caner was saved on November 4, 1982, after going to a revival service "the following year" from when Ergun had been saved (p. 19).  So, that would put Ergun's conversion in 1981.

36:20 "In 1995, my grandmother got saved.  My grandmother died in 1999 at the age of 97 years old."

That would seem to indicate his grandma got saved at age 93 or so.

43:20 "It took me 3 years, Erdem and Emir another year, my mom another nine years, my grandmother - 13 years."

That 13 years number indexes well to 1982 as the year Ergun got saved.

-TurretinFan

Ergun Caner Announcing Music School Re-opening(?) At Brewton Parker

Brewton-Parker's Vimeo page has a video (link - downloading is enabled for now) titled: "Breaking News: President Ergun Caner announces the reopening of the music school at Brewton-Parker College."

Around 3 minutes in, Ergun Caner states: "I don't need you money, I don't need your dollars, I need your students. Bring 'em here."  That is surprising, considering the current accreditation status of BPC (link to report from SACS).

Around 4:15 in, he states: "Oh, I don't mind if you bring your money, because what I wanna do is I want SACS to watch with their mouths agape as we build the Stanley Performing Arts Center."  I do think they may stand with mouths agape, but perhaps not for the same reasons that Caner wants.

Around 4:45 he states: "I've never seen a place like this.  I've never seen a place where people came in with checks that we have no idea what to do with. That people whose names I didn't know, who had no reason to trust me, certainly not from what they read, and obviously I've only been here 121 days."  I wonder what reading he is referring to?  Perhaps he's thinking of the Ergun Caner Affair article, which indexes Caner's own words from dozens and dozens of sources.

-TurretinFan

The Word "Baptism" in Gothic

My baptistic friends (or any of my friends that think that only immersion is baptism) will be glad to know that in the Gothic Bible, one of the words that is translated, rather than transliterated, is the word we transliterate "baptism." In "The Goths of the Fourth Century," Heather et al. provide the following item:

βαπτίζειν/ -ίσμα/ -ίστής (baptizare/-isma/-ista): daupyan, daupeins, daupyands (sc. John the Baptist); cf. ufdaupyan, 'dip', diups, 'deep'; Ger. taufen.

It's not a matter of earth-shattering significance, but it is interesting as a minor lexical note to observe that the fourth-century Greek/Latin/Goth speaker Ulfila (see earlier discussion here - and here) evidently understood "baptism" narrowly as "dip" as opposed to more broadly as "wash" or the like.

-TurretinFan

The Passion of St. Saba the Goth

Many Goths who professed faith (whether Nicene or not) suffered martyrdom - sometimes at the hands of the pagan Goths, sometimes at the hands of other Christians.  St. Saba the Goth was an apparently orthodox (i.e. Nicene) Christian who died at the hands of the pagans.  For a variety of reasons, it's hard to have a great deal of confidence in this story, although presumably there was actually a professing Christian man who was drowned by the pagans.  In "The Goths of the Fourth Century," p. 102, Heather et al. explain: "As with other texts of this nature, part of the function of the Passion is precisely to authenticate the circumstances of martyrdom in order to validate the cult that ensued from it."  Likewise, p. 104, n. 17: "The first and last paragraphs of the Passion closely imitate the corresponding sections of the Passion of St. Polycarp ... ." (see the discussion of that interpolated work at this link).

Ulfila: The Trinity, the One True Church, and Appeals to Scripture and Tradition

In a previous post (link) we mentioned that we would be discussing Ulfila's trinitarian errors.  What did Ulfila believe? In "The Goths of the Fourth Century," pp. 128-29, authors Heather et al. explain:

Ulfila's theology shares with Arius its emphatic differentiation between the three Persons of the Trinity. Auxentius further reports his hostility to both of the above groups (i and ii) who wished to use language in '-ousios' ; both views, with others, Ulfila denounced as irreligious and Godless heresies, the work of Antichrists (§29[49]). This is firmly in line with Auxentius' repeated insistence that Ulfila's teaching conformed with that of Christ and the evangelists as shown in the New Testament, and with 'tradition'. The New Testament never uses language involving '-ousios' when describing the relationship of Father and Son, and one of the main criticisms of both 'homousians' and 'homoeusians' was that their definitions were non-scriptural. Ulfila based his position entirely on Scripture, and Auxentius' account of it is liberal in its citations.

The groups listed as (i) and (ii) are the homousians (led by Athanasius of Alexandria but also championed by the Cappadocian fathers: Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa) and the homoeusians (led by Basil of Ancyra).

Heather et al. provide a translation of The Letter of Auxentius, which was cited by the 5th century Arian theologian Maximinus, but includes a description of Ulfila.  Two chaptering systems have arisen for the letter, and I'll be using the same citation system as the book does:

From chapter 26[44-45] (p. 138 of Heather et al.):

In accordance with tradition and the authority of the divine scriptures, he never concealed (the truth) that this God is in second place and the originator of all things from the Father and after the Father and on account of the Father and for the glory of the Father; and furthermore that he is great God and great Lord and great king and great mystery, great light [... c. 28 letters ...] Lord, provider and lawgiver, redeemer, saviour [... c. 50 letters ...] originator of [...], just judge judge of all the living and the dead, holding as greater (than himself) God his own Father [John 14.28] - this he always made clear according to the holy gospel.

From chapter 28[47-48] (pp. 138-39 of Heather et al.):

He therefore strove to destroy the sect of homousians, because he held the persons of the divinity to be, not confused and mixed together, but discrete and distinct. The homoeusion too he rejected, because he defended not comparable things but different dispositions, and used to say that the Son is like his Father, not according to the erroneous depravity and perversity of the Macedonians that conflicts with the scriptures, but in accordance with the divine scriptures and tradition.

From chapters 31-33[51-54] (pp. 139-40 of Heather et al.):

Now since there exists only one unbegotten God and there stands under him only one only-begotten God, the Holy Spirit our advocate can be called neither God nor Lord, but received its being from God through the Lord: neither originator nor creator, but illuminator, sanctifier, teacher and leader, helper and petitioner [... c. 15 letters] and confirmer, minister of Christ and distributor of acts of grace, the warrant of our inheritance, in whom we were 'sealed unto the day of redemption' [Eph. 4.30]. Without the Holy Spirit, none can say that Jesus is Lord, as the apostle says; 'No man can say, Jesus is Lord, except in the Holy Spirit' [I Cor. 12.3], and as Christ teaches; 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no one cometh unto the Father, but by me' [John 14.6]. And so they are Christians who in spirit and truth worship and glorify Christ [cf. John 4.23], and render thanks through Christ with love to God the Father.
Steadfast in these and similar doctrines, flourishing gloriously for forty years in the bishopric, he preached unceasingly with apostolic grace in the Greek, Latin and Gothic languages, in the one and only church of Christ; for one is the church of the living God, 'the pillar and ground of the truth' [I Tim. 3.15]: asserting and bearing witness that there is but one flock of Christ our Lord and God, one worship and one edifice, one virgin and one bride, one queen and one vine, one house, one temple, one assembly of Christians, and that all other assemblies are not churches of God but 'synagogues of Satan' [Rev. 2.9, cf. 3.9].
And that all he said, and all I have set down, is from the divine Scriptures, 'let him that readeth understand' [Matt. 24.15]. He left behind him several tractates and many interpretations in these three languages for the benefit and edification of those willing to accept it, and as his own eternal memorial and recompense.

Obviously, we should not agree with Ulfila's errors, even while we recognize interesting parallels between his appeals to scripture and tradition and those of his opponents, as well as the claims of unique catholicity of those in agreement.

-TurretinFan

Ergun Caner - Ohio Free Will Baptists - Men's Retreat Early 2007

A number of recordings of Ergun Caner have been removed the Internet, including four or so from an early 2007 Men's Retreat of the Ohio Free Will Baptists, featuring Ergun Caner.  An amalgamation of several clips from these messages is apparently preserved over at FBC Jax Watchdogs (link) and is also discussed at A Squirrel in Babylon (link).  The amalgamation is only about 7 minutes long.

The first part begins in the middle of a sentence and continues until about 2:25:

... until I came to this country, I saw through television. It was whatever the Turkish government allowed into the country that passed through the censors, and secondly it was what was basically free, or didn't have to be translated. And so we got a lot of sports. And we got a lot of shows that would be almost self explanatory. And that actually became this big window into America for me. For instance, 'Andy Griffith' was a show that we would get. I didn't understand it, but I thought all of America was sort of like Mayberry, and, it's true, I thought all of America was like Mayberry. It was in black and white and they sent it for free, and so I thought, and I moved to New York. And its not a real good comparison there.
The second thing was American baseball. And, the, Cubs, WGN, would send Cubs games. And I learned American baseball by watching, they didn't have to translate it, you just - you watch the game. You would hear, apparently it turned out to be Harry Carey in the background, and that's how I thought Americans talked, but that was, that was, you didn't have to translate it.
The third thing that I got, which is a little embarrassing, but it's true, was out of Atlanta, Georgia - and in Instanbul it played every two weeks for two hours, we would get a tape, of - and I guess it was a tape, they'd put it on, Turkish television, there on Biruki, which was the station. Georgia Championship 'Wrastlin'. And nobody ever told me that it was fake, you understand. So you will hear me constantly throw out references to things from my youth, because I thought Americans were the toughest people on the planet. Y'all got hit in the head with shoes and boots and chains, and I thought Rick Flair was the governor, and, Dusty Rhoads was the mayor and so that was my upbringing.

I think Caner definitely did watch wrestling growing up, but he grew up in America, not Istanbul.  He moved when he was a toddler, not a teenager.

The next part begins around 2:25 and continues to about 2:45:

Turkish, twenty-one generations Turk, came to America in my young teens. Moved from Brooklyn, NY, to Marion, OH, from Marion, OH, to Columbus, OH, Whitehall, from Whitehall to Gehanna, OH.

As mentioned above, he moved to America as a toddler.

The next segment is part of Caner's typical story about his in-laws not being thrilled about him dating his now-wife, with assorted ethnic slurs and stereotypes. (2:45-3:15)

The following segment is him saying that if he could get a PhD then anyone could. (3:15-3:33)  Some people have pointed out that technically he got a different doctorate, not a PhD.

The next part begins around 3:33 and continues to about 4:23:

I was devout. We dressed differently, we spoke differently, we acted differently, and I drove up that highway to go to the Mosque in Toledo every Sunday. I played soccer in Marion and in Galleon, as a Muslim. And we came to this country and came to this state to build mosques here. We were quote-un-quote missionaries to you. We came in '78 when Ayatollah Khomeni said "We will not stop 'till America is an Islamic nation." And now my people come here - the olive skinned come here four times faster than any other people group except for the Mexicans, and we're not in the back of Chevys. 

The photographic evidence suggests he dressed like normal Americans.  Also, he came in the late 60's not the late 70's.

The next part begins around 4:23 and continues to about 4:45:

I was 30 before I got married. Some of y'all waited a while too, didn't you.  But in my culture you are sworn off at 5, and you are married at 9 or 13. I wasn't in any rush. Turkish women got better mustaches than Turkish men.

By the way, this is not true of any of the Turkish women I've known.  Turkish culture has (in the past) included arranged marriages, but Caner wasn't raised in Turkey.

The next segment is him talking about how as a younger single preacher ("finally, the churches that would call me as pastor, were the ones who would put up with my bad accent, and loved me in spite of me"), old women tried to fix him up with their unattractive granddaughters. (4:45-6:05)  If they didn't care for his accent, it was because he was a Yankee.

The final segment is about him joking about "women behind the pulpit" and the reason for them being there is to vacuum, and how this will shut up the people demanding women pastors. (6:05-7:01)

Update: MP3s for this have been posted and described as Caner1 - Caner2 - Caner3 - Caner4)

Caner1:

0:00 "The definition of a fraud is somebody who looks like something, but is actually something else."

Indeed.

0:45 "Turkish, twenty-one generations Turk, came to America in my young teens. Moved from Brooklyn, NY, to Marion, OH, from Marion, OH, to Columbus, OH, Whitehall, from Whitehall to Gehanna, OH."

Discussed above.

2:00 "My full name is Ergun Michael Mehmet Gioviani Caner."

No, it's Ergun Michael Caner.

2:25 "Her father - this is not a joke, this is the truth, anybody from North Carolina will know this city - her father is from Possum Kill, NC, right near Smithfield."

It's not a place on Google maps in North Carolina.

6:10 "I've had the honor of having 14 books written."

13:25 "'But Paul, being grieved' - There's one language translation in the Latin, that uses a great word here - 'annoyus' for the word 'grieved' What's that sound like? Y'all ever been annoyed on your way to church?"

It's a mystery where he came up with this, as the Vulgate has "dolens" not "annoyous."  In fact, the root for "annoy" is French, which may be related to the Latin term, "inodiare."

20:20 "I have only been a Christian, and thus a Baptist, since I was 18."

By the time he was 18, he was apparently already at a Bible college.

21:00 "I'm not a smart man. If I got a PhD anyone can get one."

Discussed above.

32:25 "I had to learn the language on Broad St. in Columbus, Ohio. You can learn the language."

His grandmother never learned the language, according to his reports.  But maybe that's because she came as an adult, not as a toddler, like he did.

32:40 "I moved to this country. Come join in our reindeer games, but I learned English."

Same note as above.

40:30 "I lived in this state, until I was almost 18 years old, and hated you and thought that you hated me. I wasn't just any old Muslim, I was devout."

40:45 "We dressed differently, we spoke differently, we acted differently, I drove up that highway to go to the Mosque in Toledo every Sunday. I played soccer in Marion and in Galleon, as a Muslim. And we came to this country and came to this state to build mosques here. We were quote-un-quote missionaries to you. We came in '78 when Ayatollah Khomeni said "We will not stop 'till America is an Islamic nation." And now my people come here - the olive skinned come here four times faster than any other people group except for the Mexicans, and we're not in the back of Chevys."

Discussed above.

41:45 "And anything I knew about you, I only learned from the imam or in my mosque - the mosque in Toledo - the mosque in Monclova - the mosque up in Cleveland - the mosque on Broad St. that my father built - as a muezzin."

His father didn't build that mosque and calling him a "muezzin" -- well, he clearly wasn't vocationally a muezzin.

42:05 "Abinadab, Salat, Zakat, Swan, Haj, all of the five pillars."

The first pillar is the Shahada - not "Abinadab" whatever that is.

44:20 "For three years - y'all hear me - he was a high school buddy."

We hear this "three years" a lot, and it fits with his "going into our senior year" comment below, but not with the 1982 date he has other times said, or the 1981 date implied in his book.

44:30 "How many of us knock on a door. We're getting ready to give them the Roman road, we're going to walk them down the four spiritual laws, we knock on the door - or the Calvinists - they knock on the door and ask the two questions, knock, knock, knock 'You elect? No? Alright, see you!'"

That's not what Calvinists say.

45:15 "I don't roller skate. There's not a lot of roller skating going on in the sand."

Considering Caner grew up in Ohio, not Iraq, the sand reference is quite misleading.

45:50 "For three years, I dressed differently, I would take my prayer rug and roll it out in the high school bathrooms."

a) The photos we've seen have shown him dressed more or less like all his peers when he was with his peers.

46:35 "I got a B.A., an M.A., an M.Div., a Th.M., a D.Min., and a Ph.D. and guess what - God ain't impressed."

He didn't earn a Ph.D.

46:55 "Finally, I decided - going into our senior year - I'll show him."

Discussed above.

49:10 "Jerry said, 'here he is,' like you gotta point out the boy in a dress, right?"

Discussed above.

52:45 "November the 4th, 1982, I go home, I tell my father, I say 'Baba, I'm saved' and it was the last day I saw my dad."

I'm not sure why he called his father "Baba."  As for the 1982 date, it's inconsistent with the "three years" and "going into my senior year" comments, since he graduated in 1984.

55:15 "I've written fourteen books."

It would be interesting to see that list of titles.

56:40 "I was 30 before I got married. Some of y'all waited a while too, didn't you.  But in my culture you are sworn off at 5, and you are married at 9 or 13. I wasn't in any rush. Turkish women got better mustaches than Turkish men."

Discussed above.

57:15 "finally, the churches that would call me as pastor, were the ones who would put up with my bad accent, and loved me in spite of me"

Discussed above.

Caner2:

0:00 "... until I came to this country, I saw through television. It was whatever the Turkish government allowed into the country that passed through the censors, and secondly it was what was basically free, or didn't have to be translated. And so we got a lot of sports. And we got a lot of shows that would be almost self explanatory. And that actually became this big window into America for me. For instance, 'Andy Griffith' was a show that we would get. I didn't understand it, but I thought all of America was sort of like Mayberry, and, it's true, I thought all of America was like Mayberry. It was in black and white and they sent it for free, and so I thought, and I moved to New York. And its not a real good comparison there.
The second thing was American baseball. And, the, Cubs, WGN, would send Cubs games. And I learned American baseball by watching, they didn't have to translate it, you just - you watch the game. You would hear, apparently it turned out to be Harry Carey in the background, and that's how I thought Americans talked, but that was, that was, you didn't have to translate it.
The third thing that I got, which is a little embarrassing, but it's true, was out of Atlanta, Georgia - and in Instanbul it played every two weeks for two hours, we would get a tape, of - and I guess it was a tape, they'd put it on, Turkish television, there on Biruki, which was the station. Georgia Championship 'Wrastlin'. And nobody ever told me that it was fake, you understand. So you will hear me constantly throw out references to things from my youth, because I thought Americans were the toughest people on the planet. Y'all got hit in the head with shoes and boots and chains, and I thought Rick Flair was the governor, and, Dusty Rhoads was the mayor and so that was my upbringing."

Discussed above.

3:15 "Stelzer Road Church is still there, it has a new name now."

Really?  Looks like it has the same name to me.

3:25 "I got to see Jerry Tackett for the first time in 20 years, just a couple years ago, and he's just a preacher boy."

I thought he was a teacher?

5:10 "When we finally settled in, we moved to a little place called Whitehall, OH, and then we moved from Whitehall to Gehanna."

What happened to Brooklyn, Marion, and Columbus? (see Caner1 message)

14:00 (This is where he makes the women preacher joke, discussed above.)

15:45 (This is where he sings the KJVO Bible song, claiming that Clarence Miller taught it to him.  The crowd cheers with amens for it.)

16:50 "I had the honor of being in London, England, debating, and in Glasgow, Scotland"

It would be lovely if there were any evidence of this.

21:20 "In my family, my father had many wives - my father had many half-brothers and sis-- I have many half-brothers and sisters."

His father had two wives, one after the other.  He has two half-sisters, but that's apparently it.

35:35 "I'm a member of Thomas Road Baptist Church that has 28,000 members, quote-un-quote, the CIA couldn't find half of them. I've learned its harder to get a church to move than it is to get somebody off a membership rolls."

That's probably not exactly right, but it's one of the more candid statements I've heard from him.

36:50 "We begin facing, I don't know East, which way is East?"

They pray towards Mecca, which is mostly East, but not exactly East, from Ohio.

37:40 "Do you know what he's doing? He's repeating the first six verses of the Koran, over and over and over. A Muslim repeats the first chapter of the Koran, the first six verses, over and over and over."

The first Surah has seven verses, not six verses.

38:05 "If you fall down and break your leg, my father said, you get up and say 'inshallah'- God willed it."

No, you might say something, but inshallah is a forward-looking statement like "Lord willing."

Caner3:

12:20 "I told her, I said, 'In Turkey, you have Persian, Arab, and Anatolian, I'm Anatolian. In the Anatolian world, the man is not in the birth room, the man is in another room."

And Swedish ...

29:35 "I spank my boys. Why? 'Cause my mama did it to me, my grandmama did it to me, I pass it on to them, I hope they pass it on to their kids."

It is interesting that Caner does not mention his father.  This seems unusually candid.

Caner4:

2:40 "The Muslims hunt me down. More often than not--- I'm not talkin' 'bout them hunting me down to try to kill me, they just try to shout me down. And so I spend most of my time in secular audiences. I have two rules when I go to a college - I go to any school, I don't care where it is - I prefer to go to state schools, community colleges and universities, because that's where the Muslims are teaching. Now I'm telling you this, because this is one of my deepest passions. We got it somehow wrong in the last 80 years. The way we think of it, as Christians, is we think well, man, if I'm really good at what I do, I'll get a church to call me, and if I'm really good at that, then I'll get to a bigger church and then a bigger church, and if I'm really good I'll end up in a denominational job, and then if I'm really good I can end up in a Bible college, and then maybe even be in a seminary."

a) Has this Muslim shout down happened even once?  I can't find any evidence corroborating this claim.
b) It is sad that Caner sees the gospel ministry as a stepping stone to bigger and better jobs.

4:10 "Because the really good guys end up in college and seminary, the guys who can't get those jobs end up teaching in community colleges and such if they can find a job at all.  Schools that look for diversity want to hire somebody who's got a name that seems unpronounceable. They end up being the only voice for faith reason to kids in the state schools and the state university."

There are Christian professors in state universities, and they are good in their fields.

4:50 "If you ever hear that I leave Liberty University, it's not going to be to go to a seminary. As a matter of fact I fought becoming the president of Liberty Seminary in the first right, until Dr. Fallwell explained to me I could keep doing what I do.  If you ever hear that I leave Liberty University, it's going to be to go to some tiny community college, some state university. Put me on the floor as the only Christian teaching in that department. Surround me with leftists and liberals and lesbians and losers and put me around those people so I can be the only candle in the midst of the darkness."

a) It sure didn't turn out that way.  He went to Arlington Baptist College and now he's at Brewton-Parker College, while apparently continuing his connection with Veritas Evangelical Seminary.

5:50 "I'm going to one of our sister - our brethren schools. Northwest Baptist Seminary is a regular Baptist seminary out in Tacoma, Washington, but it will be for the purpose of debating a Hindu, specifically he is a Shaivite, and debating a Christian professor who doesn't believe much who's published "The Sister Faiths," a book that has to do with all religions being basically the same.

a) I can't find any record of any debate by Caner at Northwest Baptist Seminary.
b) I can't find any book called "The Sisters Faiths," but Martin A. Cohen wrote "Two Sister Faiths: Introduction to a Typological Approach to Early Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity."  But Cohen is a Rabbi, not a Christian professor.

8:05 "I have in my contract for every debate, two rules. Number one, no money. So, if you've got a community college you want me to come to and you know - we gonna set up a debate - you find somebody that'll debate me, I don't want a cent. And I don't want that guy making a cent, because what do they say about us, they always say, 'well, you're always after money, you're always after money.' Well that way, I can look 'em in the eye and say, 'Look, just pay my plane ticket and put me in a room.' The second thing is, no charge. That is, everything - you go into iTunes, all you gotta do is download it. It's free. And some of the things you can get is I preach at campus church, every Wednesday night on Liberty mountain. And its not just for Liberty University students.  We have 5000 kids that come, every Wednesday nights. And they are Liberty kids, but they are also kids from Randolph-Macon - it's an all-girls school. And you'll know 'em because these girls look like they can whoop you. They are - they wear the triangle - they're the lesbians and they all sit together, but they come because we respect them enough - I'm not going to point them out, but I'm not going to back up one lick. I'm never gonna say 'well, that's a lifestyle choice,' I'm ona say 'it's sin before a righteous God,' but I'm also going to turn to the kids and say, 'But all y'all who are playing around by going to second base and thinking you're getting around God's rule, you're messing up too.'"

a) Where are any of these supposed debates.  If there were contracts signed, someone should have copies of them.

b) We've gone to iTunes and seen what was there - there weren't debates.

c) Caner is referring to what is now Randolph College, formerly Randolph-Macon Woman's College, in Lynchburg, VA.  Interestingly enough, they changed their name July 1, 2007, and began admitting men.

d) I would encourage anyone to listen to those campus church messages on iTunes and see if you ever once hear him addressing sexual sin.

10:00 "So y'all can go get those things. You can download those. Now, let me just tell you ahead of time that the music is not southern gospel, it's industrial goth."

I'm sure it wasn't southern gospel music, but come on - "industrial goth" isn't really a specific musical genre, and I doubt they were playing Marilyn Manson (which is kind of goth/industrial rock) or the like.

11:30 "The problem with Southern Baptists is this: they are so reserved, they don't know the difference between dignity and death."

And now he's the president of a Southern Baptist seminary.

-TurretinFan

Ulfila and Early Church Priorities

Ulfila (also sometimes written as Ulfilas, Ulphilas, Uliphilus, or the like) is possibly the most famous of the Goths in church history.  For those caught up in the terminology of today, no we're not talking about Emo types, but the Germanic warriors who dominated a big chunk of Europe toward the end of the Roman Empire.

Sozomen's Ecclesiastical History 6:37 at 11 (Heather et al. translators of this and other works in "The Goths of the Fourth Century," p. 100) describes Ulfila in this way:

As a matter of fact, he had given the greatest proof of his courage, resisting many dangers on behalf of the faith at the time when the Goths were still worshiping in pagan fashion. He was also the original inventor of their letters, and translated the holy books into their native language. It is for this reason, then, that the barbarians from over the Danube in general adhere to the doctrines of Arius.

I'm certainly not supportive of any of the anti-Nicene groups that existed in the fourth century (especially not those associated with Arius).  Nevertheless, it is notable that it was a priority even at that time to translate the Bible into the language of the people as a predicate to evangelizing them.  Likewise, keep in mind that Nicaea in the fourth century did not necessarily have the prestige it now enjoys.  Heather et al. explain (p. 131):

To take up Sozomen's second point, the fact that Ulfila was not a declared opponent of Nicaea does not make him a supporter of it -- if indeed this whole way of seeing the matter is not anachronistic. One suspects that in the fluidity of the first 'post-Nicene' generation adherence to that settlement was not the touchstone of orthodoxy that it later came to be.

Philostorgius' Church History 2.5 (Heather et al. pp. 134-35) provides a similar report to that of Sozomen (and Sozomen may, in fact, be reliant on Philostorgius, see pp. 96-97):

It was this Ulphilas who led the exodus of the pious ones, being the first bishop appointed among them. He was appointed in the following circumstances: sent with others by the ruler of the race of the Goths on an embassy in the time of Constantine (for the barbarian peoples in those parts owed allegiance to the emperor), Ulphilas was elected by Eusebius and the bishops of his party as bishop of the Christians in the Getic land. Among the matters which he attended to among them, he was the inventor for them of their own letters, and translated all the Scriptures into their language -- with the exception, that is, of Kings. This was because these books contain the history of wars, while the Gothic people, being lovers of war, were in need of something to restrain their passion for fighting rather than to incite them to it -- which those books have the power to do for all that they are held in the highest honour, and are well fitted to lead believers to the worship of God.

One interesting point to note about this is that clearly Ulfila (or more likely his group, rather than just him personally) had a pretty clear concept of the canon of Scripture.  We can't accurately judge that canon today, because the Goths were non-Niceans (and generally classified therefore as Arians) and consequently most of their literature was destroyed by the dominant orthodox.

Heather et al. explain (chapter 5, p. 124):

The precarious survival of these texts is a reflection of the thoroughness with which the victorious 'orthodox' church of the fourth and later centuries succeeded in eliminating the writings, and in large part the reputation, of its opponents.

Indeed, a similar fate awaited the Gothic translation of the Scriptures.  Very few manuscripts survive and much of the evidence we have for the text is based on the fact that parchment was expensive and consequently reused (Heather et al., p. 147):

It is noteworthy that all these texts, like the Codex Carolinus referred to above, are preserved as palimpsests, that is to say on pages of parchment cleaned of their Gothic texts and re-used, but still decipherable beneath the later writing: we can easily imagine how, as the Gothic kingdom of Italy was replaced by Byzantine domination, copies of the Gothic Bible would become superfluous and join the stocks of discarded books whose materials were available for re-use.

Not only were Gothic Bibles not useful to non-Gothic-speakers, they were suspected.  Salvian, in De Gubernatione Dei 5.2.6 (Heather et al., pp. 156-57) argues:

They read the same things, you say, that are read by us. But how can they be the same, when they were written in the first place by bad authors, and are badly interpolated and badly translated? They are not really the same, because things can in no sense be called the same when they are defective in any part of themselves. Things that have lost their completeness do not keep their integrity, nor do they retain their authority in any way when they are deprived of the power of the sacraments. It is only we who posses the holy scriptures full, inviolate and complete: for we either drink them at their very source, or at least as drawn from the purest sources through the service of a pure translation.

Heather et al. again (p. 148):

To summarise, no part of the Gothic Bible survives complete, though the relatively extensive remains of the New Testament that we do possess are perhaps the most useful from a historical point of view, because of the Graeco-Roman terminology which they contain; in a manner of speaking, this replicates the Goths' own experience in confronting the Roman empire and its institutions. Enough fragments of the Old Testament survive to attest to its existence in Gothic; the absence of the Books of Kings from the surviving fragments is consistent with Philostorgius' assertion that these books were not translated by Ulfila, but obviously insignificant as evidence, given the tiny quantity of the Old Testament text that does survive.

In short, the Bible was an important priority in the early church, even for those "Christians" whose theology included serious Trinitarian errors.  Lord willing, I'll address some of those errors in a subsequent post.

-TurretinFan

Ancient Historians - More or Less Reliable than Modern Historians?

The fathers weren't always good historians. When we challenge some of their particular historical claims, it's not rare for people to argue "Surely father X, being over a thousand years closer to the event in question, had access to better sources than we do. Therefore, we should trust the fathers' account."

There is some intuitive appeal to that argument. After all, time does wreak havoc on documents, and presumably all the documentation we have from those events necessarily existed in the time of the fathers, together with further documentation now lost.

Still, the argument is flawed. The documentation may have existed, but the individual fathers may not have had access to the documents. Documents from one part of the empire were not necessarily available throughout the empire.

Furthermore, some of the fathers very uncritically accepted others' historical accounts. In some case, such acceptance was a rational necessity: there was no way to verify every detail, and what could be readily verified seemed to be more or less accurate. Sometimes a historian was working from the account of a previous well-respected historian.

Peter Heather and John Matthews have written "The Goths of the Fourth Century," (Liverpool University Press, 1991, Volume 11 of the Translated Texts for Historians series). This work is a go-to work for understanding the Goths of the 4th century, and incorporates a wide variety of historical research into the subject, including archaeology.

The authors note this problem I've mentioned above (chapter 4, p. 97, internal citation omitted):

In adapting his predecessor's narrative, however, Sozomen compounds several errors of Socrates, notably in supposing Ulfila to have been active in Gothia in the time of Fritigern and Athanaric, and he moves from he persecution of the late 340s, as a result of which Ulfila left the Gothic territories, to that of the early 370s without any apparent awareness that different events are in question, or that Ulfila, expelled from Gothia in the first persecution, had no personal connection with the second. Further, his conception of the chronological connection between the Hunnish attack on the Goths, the settlement of the Goths in Thrace, the supposed dissension between Athanaric and Fritigern and the latter's conversion to Christianity is, to put it mildly, confused.

That's Socrates the noted historian, not the much earlier Socrates, the noted philosopher.

You may recall other examples of this same kind of principle. When you read the Koran, it seems pretty clear that Mohammed was under the impression that Jesus' mother Mary was the same person as Miriam, Moses' sister. The name of the two people was the same, but - as most people familiar with the Bible know - the two were eons apart, chronologically.

Mohammed is a fairly extreme example, but he was over 1200 years closer to the time of Jesus than we are, yet was in a vastly inferior position in terms of his historical knowledge. So, when we consider modern historical research against patristic historical assertions, we should be open to the idea that modern historians often do have access to better quality resources, research materials, and methodologies than their ancient predecessors.

-TurretinFan