Debate Review: Galatians 3:1, Basil's Real Argument

Welcome to the Dividing Line. It is Tuesday, post-debate Tuesday. Well, actually, I understand there's a bunch of debates coming up. I guess the same topic is going to be debated in this thing in Florida, which I've heard some of the participants describing as a bloodbath and bloodsport.

I won't get into that right now. But anyway, thanks to everybody who came out. I was really surprised how many people showed up on a Saturday morning in October. There's so many other things going on.

And my thanks to Craig Trulia for coming out and engaging in the debate. I thought it went wonderfully well. And I think that possibly, maybe, we did do what we wanted to do. We'll really be able to tell, I think, after this next thing that's coming up that involves the ortho bros and taking on David Wood and stuff like that.

We'll be able to, I think, we'll be able to tell pretty quickly if we were able to distinguish ourselves from some of that kind of behavior. But so much has happened since Saturday morning. Believe it or not, we, you know, I understood going into this that there were a lot of very immature people online.

And, you know, when people spend three to six hours a night looking at themselves on webcam and talking to each other and creating this echo chamber of we are the greatest thing that's ever happened in the world, you can't expect much in the way of meaningful review of the debate.

But the stuff that happened the very same day, I mean, Alex Sorin did this, you know, this watch party thing where you stop start and you make comments and, you know, that way no one can actually follow the flow of the argument and things like that.

It's just extremely childish. But anyway, during the cross-examination, one of my complaints in regards to Craig was he decided that he would not let me say more than one or two sentences in a row and he would just interrupt and go someplace else.

And so at one point, the problem being when I'm speaking, especially in the context we're in, a lot of people who don't do public speaking know that sometimes you end up in a place where there were two issues with the venue once we got started.

One was it's very dark. And I would assume that the musicians had lighted stands and things like that when they do their music and stuff like that. And it was mood lighting and blue and stuff like that.

And it looks really good on video. I Or is it supposed to be purple? I'm not sure. Anyway. So, for example, I really couldn't take notes. I have a remarkable tablet that I write on and I was scribbling away as fast I could, but I couldn't read what I was writing until I got up to the podium.

That was the only place that had direct light. Everything else was a blue ambient light. I basically had to do that debate without notes. The lighting was so bad. And then the other thing is, my assumption is the musicians have ear stuff.

You know, the things that they wear. All the professional musician people have them and stuff like that. So there aren't fold-back monitors. And if you've never spoken for a group, the fold-back monitors shoot the sound back to you.

Well, the problem with that is you end up with feedback. That was the big gremlin when I ran sound many, many years ago. And so we're seated behind the speakers. So all we're getting is the bounce-back sound, which is very muffled and not really clear to hear speaking.

So there were a number of times I had to ask him to repeat something. I misunderstood what he was saying. So during cross-examination, that becomes really bad because if I'm still talking and he starts talking while I'm talking, and I don't immediately stop talking, then I'm not going to hear what he's saying at all.

And there was this one point where we were talking about the rather obvious differences between a set of grieving parents and a picture of a child that they lost, and venerating an icon of somebody who lived 800 years ago.

And I was talking about, well, they knew this individual, there was personal knowledge. And in the midst of that somewhere, he said something, interrupted me again, and said something about, do you have knowledge of Christ, or something like that.

I never heard what he said. You can hear it on the video, but I never heard what he said. And I just kept talking. And Alex Sorenson, did you hear that? Did you hear that? James White says he doesn't know Jesus Christ.

And Jay Dyer picked it up. That was one of the first things I saw when I got online, when I got home, was all this discussion of James White denying he knows Jesus Christ. And you're just like, finally somebody sent me the clip.

And I'm like, you are kidding me, right? I mean, the mental maturity level of the ortho bros is in single digits, eight, nine years old. I mean, it's astonishing to see. I'm very thankful, by the way.

I'm very, very thankful. There have been some good reviews written. There have been some fair reviews written. I have not seen a single fair review from an orthodox person thus far. I've seen Roman Catholics who have done a good job in analyzing the debate and liturgical Protestants and things like that.

My side, I simply, you know, I could miss it, but I have not seen anything approaching the behavior from what would be my side that I've seen from the orthodox. I mean, my block list and mute list has exploded from just the nastiness.

And you were getting voicemails down here at the office from folks that day. Somebody, by the way, twisted that. I had mentioned that on X. Yeah, I saw. I corrected it. Oh, corrected it. It wasn't threatening.

It was just, right. Okay. Yeah. You know, just amazing types of behavior and stuff like that. So I appreciate the good reviews from people who actually listened to the debate and actually understood how to analyze the debate.

But I have not seen a single good review from an orthodox person so far. Not one. I've seen all sorts of emotional diatribes and stuff like that, but I have not seen a single one. And it is interesting.

There was this one guy who said I won, but you could tell the only reason he was saying that is he actually has more animosity toward the Eastern Orthodox as a Roman Catholic than toward me. I have been noticing that there's a fair amount of that, more than I expected.

You know, you see all this ecumenical stuff going on. You figure everybody's lovey-dovey. Not really. You'll notice the ortho-bros refer to the. And those are the Roman Catholics. And there are beefs that go way back.

And if you know anything about church history, you know that for nearly a thousand years, the two sides have been anathematizing each other right, left, and center ever since 1054. And it got really bad, you know, in the 13th, 14th, 15th centuries.

And now, of course, we're in the day of lovey-dovey ecumenism. And I'm still thinking there's going to be something happening by 2033 in some kind of movement toward unification or something like that.

Evaluating the Debate by Its Thesis and Argumentation

We'll find out. But anyway, so my thinking was, given the stuff that we have taking place online, and the fact that this debate is going to continue, that the issue of icon veneration is going to be debated at this thing in Florida.

I thought it would be really important, while the topic is still going on, to talk a little bit about the fact that, from my perspective, social media, while it has made it possible, I mean, have you looked at how many views we've got so far?

I mean, there was over 40k, I think, yesterday. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So just think about that. I mean, we're in a time of church history that is unlike any time in the past. There were people watching that live all around the world.

That's pretty cool, really, when you think about it. It's an amazing thing that most of us didn't see coming. But along with that comes the social media mindset. And I want to talk a little bit about why you have a thesis for a debate, why you're supposed to have an order to debate, why there's supposed to be a certain kind of decorum in debate.

I want to respond to a few other comments that were made that just struck me as I saw them being made online. And then the main thing I want to get into, and I mentioned this already, is there were certain claims made by Mr. Trulia that just simply don't pan out when you check them out, which you can't necessarily do in the middle of a debate.

And so we're going to be looking at the very thin line of argumentation that he actually provided. He provided a tremendous amount of art history and a lot of discussions about that, but he didn't actually really try to defend the thesis.

And I think part of it's because in his mind, he was debating for a different audience that already accepted the authority of Nicaea II. And so all the stuff, the thesis was icon veneration as defined by the Second Nicene Council in 787 is apostolic.

So what would he have to prove? Well, he would have to define what icon veneration is. He'd have to define veneration as it was used at Nicaea II specifically. And then he would have to forge the link between 787 and the first century.

And that link cannot be assumed, supposed. It cannot be, well, it seems that maybe this icon's looking upwards and therefore, that's not going to substantiate the argument. And to make it apostolic, you have to make a connection to the apostles themselves.

And so he did try to do that in the second half of his opening without having really, again, he left it to me to explain to the audience what Nicaea II was about. If you listened to him, you wouldn't have had a clue.

You wouldn't have known anything about its background, Empress Irene Terrasios, the anathematization of the other side, which took place in the first session. And then there were other bishops that had to be sort of officially brought in or out.

And their case was put off to the second, third sessions. He tried to make a big deal about that. It's irrelevant. Read it here. Like I said, during the debate, it's not a cheap book, but it came out six years ago, finally in English, the entire acts of the Second Nicene Councils right there.

Read it for yourself. There isn't any argument here. The other side was anathematized before the arguments about icon veneration began. That's a fact. No one can argue with that. There's the book. It's right there.

So you would think that the fact that this was run by Terrasios, who was a political secretary to Empress Irene, who was elevated to position of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople in one week.

So become a priest. Top guy. One week. Completely irregular. Even Pope Hadrian said, what? What is that all about? Never would accept it by Nicaea I. The Nicene Church would never have allowed that. Everybody knows this.

Again, this isn't even stuff that is worth arguing about. It's just facts, historical facts. All of that goes to the validity, argumentation, acceptance of materials by the Second Nicene Council. But he didn't bring any of that up.

I'm the one that brought all that up and brought up the anathemas because that was what this is about. If you refuse to kiss the icon, if you have knowledge of what this council has taught and you refuse to honor the icon, you are anathematized.

You are cut off from the church. You are cut off from the life of God. You are a heretic. You will burn forever in the fires of hell. Okay, so Nicaea II made this a central element of the gospel. Now it's fascinating and it is coming out rather clearly and this is one of the useful things about doing debates like this.

Rome doesn't view it that way. I think if you were Orthodox, you could make a pretty decent argument that Rome might call it the Seventh Ecumenical Council, but living in light of that, making application of it the way they do?

No, Rome really doesn't do that. Nicaea II has, as understood by the Orthodox and as understood by Roman Catholics, are two different things. Same council, two very different takes, which is a very valid, interesting inquiry in and of itself, something worth looking into and thinking about.

So anyway, so just briefly, and this may be useful in looking at future debates, certainly in looking at the debate with Dr. DeYoung in March, you need to understand what the thesis statement is. A debate has a thesis statement so that there can be organization of thought and argumentation and interaction based upon logical categories of argument.

If you don't have a thesis statement, you don't have a debate. You just have people flapping their gums, but you don't have anything that's going to have any meaningful long-term benefit. And so the arguments are to be analyzed as to how they relate to the thesis statement.

So if you're making arguments about stuff that is not part of the thesis statement, you're wasting your time. And it is a valid thing for a viewer of the debate to wonder, why is this person arguing about stuff that isn't relevant to the thesis statement of the debate itself?

Are they wasting time? Are they playing to a particular audience? Are they trying to create certain emotions, feelings, and things like that? Listen to the interaction. That, of course, is where I think debate actually takes place, is during the cross-examination.

And to the responses offered at the end of the debate. Who remains focused? Who remains focused on the thesis statement? And who wanders from the thesis statement, if either one does? How well does each side respond?

Are there responses to the point? Are the questions asked by the other side divergent from the thesis? Are they helpful or not helpful? These are things that you can look at. In fact, some of you may recall, many moons ago, that one of our moderators in our debates on Long Island, Bill Shishko, was a debate coach.

And he would tell the audience before the debate started, this is what you should do. Put the thesis statement on a piece of paper, draw a line down the middle, pro, con, and as the one side makes their presentation, write down their points.

As the other side responds, write down their points. Then draw lines between the two. Did this side respond to that? Did that side respond to that? You could do a double line for a real strong response, a single line for a less strong response.

You can use arrows to go, no, it looks like it went the other direction on that. Put the stuff down there, because otherwise, you have what we have in social media, which is emotional analysis. And that's not going to accomplish anything for anybody.

It might make you feel good. The ortho bros were dancing in the streets on Saturday. They felt real good. Did that mean anything? Not in the slightest. Those emotions will pass. It is what was said that is true, and logical, and coherent, and factual, that has lasting value.

The emotional stuff is just there, and then it's gone. But as Western society is collapsing under its own rebellious foolishness, that emotionalism is what gets you clicks, and gets you Patreon members, and stuff like that.

You need to learn to suppress emotion. I think there'd be a lot of folks today, honestly, that would say, no, no, no, you should never suppress your emotions. No, I say, suppress your emotions. Because emotions are almost never conducive to logical, rational thinking.

And a debate is only relevant to logical, rational people. Emotional people will see and hear anything they want in a debate. I can't believe some of the I'm seeing people say, I said, during the debate, when it's in reality just their emotions.

They're having an emotional reaction to someone challenging their traditions. It has nothing to do with what I actually said, nothing to do with what I actually argued. It's truly amazing. That suppression of emotion should involve holding both sides to the same standard.

Even the side you favor. And that's why I'm very thankful that the reviews that I've seen from my side, that's what they did. This one fellow that I've met in the past, he wrote, hey, White didn't destroy Trulia, but he won the debate, and here's why.

What were the oh, wow, destroy, destroy, destroy, destroy. It's just pure emotions. There's no logic, there's no rationality to it. It's just, this feels good to scream and yell and dance and stuff. And okay, if that's what you're into.

But if you want to actually honor being made in the image of God, thinking rationally and logically might be a good thing. A couple, just a couple things. There was this one, there's this one Orthodox writer online that very seriously suggested that the reason that Peter recognized Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration was because the Jews had icons of Moses and Elijah.

Just think about that one for a second. I mean, we don't really need to spend any time. It would almost seem like mockery. They didn't have Polaroids. And if you've noticed, hand drawings of people's faces generally vary a lot.

And there would have been, I don't know, 1400 years between Moses and the Mount of Transfiguration. Yeah, but they're literally people suggesting that. And you just, how do you even reason with someone like that?

You probably can't. There are people that are beyond reason and you just smile and say, have a nice day and move on. But then another guy, I almost grabbed the screenshot, but I didn't. Another guy, I pointed out at one point during the debate that very often what's argued, and DeYoung has argued this as well, is that icon veneration was so much a part of the church and so much a part of the worship of the church that that's why you don't see any references to it.

I mean, when you look at the very, very, very, very few references that you can actually try to promote, and Hieria in 754, the supposed seventh ecumenical council, and then Nicaea in 787, the other supposedly seventh ecumenical council that anathematized Hieria, both of them produced what are called, their oros are their decisions.

And the arguments that they utilized, the citations from preceding generations, centuries, early church fathers, things like that, are called the florilegium, or legia, plural. And Hieria produced those things, just as Nicaea too did.

And what's fascinating is many of the same citations are used by both and interpreted the exact opposite way. And that's where the issue of forgeries from both sides, more from the iconophile side, but forgeries were a part of both councils.

And of course, at Nicaea too, the other side has already been banished in the first session, so you're going to get away with whatever you want to get away with. Who's going to go, I'm not sure that's real, when everybody else just got kicked out the door in the preceding session.

So you have that kind of stuff. And so what I was pointing out was this silence, especially in the Antonicene period and up through the period of the pre-Nicene, Nicene, and then into the early Antonicene period.

This silence, there are no sermons, there are no books, there's no discussion of how to paint icons, how to venerate icons, what veneration means, you don't have this, the honor passes through the icon to the archetype stuff, that nobody's talking about any of that kind of stuff.

Basil doesn't use those words until 375, and he doesn't mean anything about physical art when he says it, and everybody knows that. Everybody knows that, that's fact. Truly is responsible. Well, it doesn't have to be one-to-one.

Okay, so you can take his words and apply them to something completely different, but you still have his authority. As I pointed out, if I did that with Craig's own book against the papacy, I could make him into a papist, and he'd have no reason to complain because he's done it with Basil and defended it in public debate.

So, this guy, I mentioned, well, we all know the early church was having the Eucharist regularly, right? And so, the argument would be, well, if you're doing something and no one's arguing about it, then there's not going to be any references to it.

But there's references to baptism, Eucharist, all through the writings of the early church. Just because everybody was doing it doesn't mean they weren't talking about it. In fact, that meant that that's why they would be talking about it.

So, it didn't make any sense, and this guy responds, and honestly, his response was, well, you can't make that point because you don't agree with what they believed about the real presence. Now, think about that for just a moment, because a lot of people would emotionally resonate with that argument.

They go, yeah, if you don't agree with what they believe, as if your understanding of what they believe defines what they believe. I mean, your understanding may be 47th hand down the road. You may not have read anything that they've actually written yourself.

Most people online, that's the way it is. But I just stopped him and I said, wait a minute, did you think about that before you posted it? Let's say that's true. I disagree with you. We could talk about what real presence meant, all the rest of that stuff.

It certainly didn't mean transubstantiation, and a lot of Eastern Orthodox would agree with that. But what does that matter? That wasn't my point. My point was not, I agree with them in the entirety of their Eucharistic theology.

My point was, if your argument is that since everybody's doing it, no one's going to talk about it, then that refutes your argument. Everybody was doing the Eucharist, but they still talked about it. You see, it doesn't matter whether I agree or not, the point still stands.

And it's astonishing how few people can think to that level. We can thank the public dis-education system for having produced a lot of people who cannot follow a logical argument if their life depends on it.

How do you think people are getting elected get elected? So anyway, all right, so here's what we need to get into. I'm going to put up a section from the debate. Now, I'm just going to play a small portion, because here's my assertion.

Truglia's Case for Apostolic Icon Veneration

My assertion is that the majority of Craig's opening was a plausibility argument. It is possible, given all of these scattered references from art historians, that Christians produced art. Well, no one's actually disputing that.

In fact, I forgot to bring it up. I'm sorry. I might actually be able to, but I'll just mention it to you. One of the screens in my opening statement was, this is what Craig truly has provided to you, because I knew what he was going to say, at least in general.

This is what he needs to provide to you. And one of the things I mentioned was, Christians had art, and Christians had chalices and signets and seals and stuff on gravestones and stuff like that. No one argues that.

That was part of my opening presentation. Here's what you actually need. Definition of veneration. You actually have to have the idea of the honor paid to the image passing through to the archetype, which you can't get until you twist Basil's words in 375.

And this is what you need. This is what you've been given. I already had that. I haven't seen anybody mentioning that or going, well, yeah, that is sort of what was going on. It's there. That's the nice thing about having recordings of all this, is for the few people who want to mute the emotions and go, who argued the thesis of the information is there.

And so, we didn't get the definition of veneration. And here's the key part. The attempt to forge the apostolic link. That's what this debate is all about. Because that's what the thesis statement was.

Veneration, icon veneration, as defined by the Second Nicene Council in 787, is apostolic. And to demonstrate that, you have to go back into the apostolic period. Now, how did he do that? We did that in a couple ways.

First, he went back to Jewish tradition. Jewish tradition. And said, well, the Jews had a form of icon veneration. Now, I don't think he would want to say that it was actually consistent with Eastern Orthodox veneration.

I would hope that he would not say something like that, because it's just indefensible. But the idea is, well, the Jews, they had images. God commanded the making of the cherubim above the mercy seat and things like that.

Yeah, but they didn't venerate the cherubim. And if they did, that would be considered a violation of God's law. And so, he went back to various things. I'll look at one of them in a second. But then, when it came to the New Testament, there was one text, and that's what I'm going to play for you here, that came up.

And that's why I began my, I think this is the second cross-examination period it is. Well, not second. The cross-exam was broken up into 1010 -1010. So, this is the second 1010. That's why I focused on Galatians 3 .1.

And I have seen, I am thankful that I have seen a number of people, not just Protestants, but others, going, yeah, that stuck with me. Really? He was seriously trying to make Galatians 3 .1 one of his primary proof texts, that Paul was holding up a crucifix?

I mean, even if Paul held up a crucifix, that doesn't mean he was venerating it. That chasm, Craig never tried to jump over because he can't. He just assumes it. He puts out a plausibility argument and just hopes that you'll jump over the chasm on your own.

But Galatians 3 .1 is what we're going to look at. And then he added his own unique thing, which is his Dionysius theory. And I'll be honest with you, 99 .998 of the audience has no earthly idea what he was talking about.

I did see somebody catch it. I did see somebody catch it. I'm not sure who it was. Obviously, some kind of church history geek. But there was somebody who was like, did he just seriously say that Dionysius, pseudo-Dionysius, is first century?

That's 500. What are you talking about, first century? Okay, now that guy hasn't read his article. Okay, well, two articles. Well, it's part one, part two of the same article, I guess, with Nicotopoulos.

And look, the vast majority of people haven't. And you know what? The vast majority of scholars in the field haven't either. So all of that is granted. The difference being, I have. And a week from yesterday, so on the 26th of October, if you go to the GBTS website, Grace Bible Theological Seminary website, their next pro-pastor journal will be available for free downloading, electronically, which includes my right at 9 ,000 word refutation of the Nicotopoulos Trulia theory about pseudo-Dionysius.

Okay, so I think I have done more interaction with the foundational assertions of that theory than anybody else in print so far. And my analysis utilized the Thesaurus Lingua Graeca database, which, man, we were renting that thing when I was working on my doctorate back in the late 90s, when we couldn't afford to rent it.

But we did. Now it's all online, subscription, stuff like that. But I demonstrate that the pseudo-Dionysian corpus did not exist before 500. And that their ingenious attempt to put that back in the first century simply can't stand up to the documentation itself.

But he used it in the debate. And I just briefly said something about it, but there was absolutely no way to even try to explain it, which I thought was a little bit cheesy to make that kind of assertion.

And to say that it has been demonstrated, I think he actually used the terminology it has been demonstrated to be first century, is just really self-serving. Especially because I don't know of anybody outside of Eastern Orthodoxy that holds that position at all.

Nobody. So to make that kind of self-serving assertion, especially knowing that you're debating a guy who has read it carefully and responded to it rather fully, and there you go. So those are the three things.

I want to look at those three things. And then we will, having looked at the Jewish traditions, Galatians 3 .1, I'm not going to go more over Dionysius. Like I said, I just told you you can download the article next Monday for free.

Then I want to respond to Stephen Boyce, who made a comment about the Basil quote from On the Holy Spirit 1845. And we'll close with that. We're going to go over an hour, definitely, probably over an hour and a half.

But I want to respond to that because we've had Dr. Boyce on the program before, and I think it will, for me, what's important is that this shows you what conversion does. I really believe that Dr. Boyce would have recognized the abuse of Basil before his conversion, but now he defends it.

And can literally, he has the capacity to read the language, read the context, recognize that Basil's statement was a one-off illustration, actually borrowed from somebody else. It was not central. It was not even trying to parallel the actual issue at hand, which was numeration.

And yet, the use by John of Damascus, and then through John of Damascus, Nicaea too, and through Nicaea too, all Eastern Orthodox. You look at any video online today defending icon veneration. You listen to the upcoming food fights in Florida.

I guarantee you, you will either hear it directly quoted, or you will hear the principle enunciated. That the honor given to the image passes through to the archetype. That's Basil, 1845, on the Holy Spirit, and that's not what he was talking about.

It is a misuse of his words, and yet Boyce actually defends the idea. But you can come up with a valid principle from that. You can take what the guy was talking about, ignore the context, and come up with a valid principle to make dogma.

That's what happens when you convert against your conscience. That's what happens. So I have a whole thing, and I'm sorry that it may take longer than most of you want to look at. I have a whole thing.

The Jewish Mezuzah and the Limits of Icon Evidence

Because what percentage of people today... Now, I'm teaching early church history. In fact, we have class Thursday night. I hope you remember that. I'm teaching early church history right now, and one of the assignments in the class, it's optional, but one of the assignments is to read on the Holy Spirit by Basil.

And we'll give the context and stuff like that, and now we'll probably talk about this, because it came up. But 99 .995 of Christian people in the world today have never read that book. They have no idea what its context was, no idea what the issues were, who were the New Mamakoi, and why was this relevant in 375?

Well, because the Council of Constantinople was coming up in 3D1, all that kind of fun stuff. So we're going to look at it, and is that anywhere near as exciting as the craziness of the ortho bros? Nope.

But which one will have lasting value? Which one will still have value a year from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now? That's the question. Okay, so I was looking for this all over the place. Yeah, there you go.

I thought this was at my house. You know how memory is so weird, especially when you get ancient like me. I could see this in a drawer, but I couldn't figure out which drawer at the house it was. You know why?

Because it wasn't at the house. It was here at the office. And as soon as I got to the office and the context changed, all of a sudden I went, I know where that is. And there it is. This is a mezuzah.

A mezuzah. You can see the little scroll thing. I don't have it in here right now. Little scroll thing goes in the back there. And you put this up on the door frame of your house. Why? Well, because in Deuteronomy, when you've got the Shema, you were to put it on the door frames of your house, put it on the tassels of your garment, so on and so forth.

And the Jews took things rather literally in many ways. And what you do is, if you really want to get the expensive ones, when I went to Israel, I did buy one when I was in Israel, you get the ones that have the scroll written by a rabbi and blessed by a rabbi.

Or you can just get cheapy scrolls. It's still the same scroll written in Hebrew. So I recall it was Deuteronomy 5 or 6 and Deuteronomy 11, as I recall, were the portions that are written on the scroll.

You put it inside here and you put it on the doorway of your house. And the whole point is, it's meant to be a reminder of your covenant obligations to Yahweh, the covenant God. So, you know, these days, the very fact that I found this in a drawer will probably be used to demonstrate that I'm being paid by Mossad.

It's true, isn't it? I mean, I hope one of you idiots, one of you guys does that. I really do. I mean, it would just demonstrate you have completely become Looney Tunes, every single one of you. Anyway, so this was mentioned as an icon.

And I'm like, why is it an icon? In other words, demonstrate the consistency of this traditional practice with what Nicaea 2 actually says in regards to the honor passing through this. Are you honoring this or are you honoring the scripture inside it?

And how does it pass through to the archetype? How is this an icon? See, I said to, right around the same time period, I said to Craig, I said, you've got icons on the brain. You see them everywhere. Because he had mentioned, did you catch the monochrome icon?

Peter's shadow? Remember the incident in Acts? One time, Peter's shadow healed a man. Now, what was the context? The context was the establishment of the authority of the apostles and the preaching of the apostles in the temple precincts itself there in Jerusalem.

And a shadow isn't anything. It's not a monochromatic anything. It's an absence of light. And to turn that into an icon, I'm sorry, you've got icons on the brain. Anything, any piece of evidence, no matter how fringe, minority, and we're going to see this with the Galatians 3 .1 thing in a moment, the N .T. Wright citation.

Anything like that is taken as evidence for the propriety of icons. I think that was illustrated in the debate. And there's a massive imbalance there. So this isn't an icon. The scripture inside it wasn't an icon.

And if there are Jewish people who run around and say, I was healed by a mezuzah. Okay, that is a good example of how physical objects can become paganized and endowed with magical powers. That has been the problem throughout human history.

And it is one of the problems that you had at Nicaea too, where you have the council literally believing and Craig Trulia believing along with them that a person was healed by paint chips scraped from an icon.

Within 20 years of that happening, the Franks in the West identified that as apocryphal absurdity. And they were right, but they got politically outmaneuvered. And so that kind of stuff was the argumentation that led to this, which the Orthodox consider to be an ecumenical council and hence infallible in its decisions.

Now they will say not necessarily in its argumentation. Oh boy, could we spend a lot of time on that one? Because I'll be honest with you, Mr. Trulia's response to the fact that not only is the florilegia extremely defective at Nicaea too, with fraudulent sources and things like that, but the reality that I brought up, and by the way, I'm going to get back to, I'm going to hit Galatians 3 .1, just a second.