Hey guys, Matt here. For now, I plan on doing MONTHLY group calls starting NEXT TUESDAY June 9 @ 1:00pm EST If you’re interested in taking your apologetics online, I’m more than happy to help you during these calls. I have over 13 years of social media management experience and have managed influencers (including IP) and businesses, in many different niches. I’ll add this event to the group calendar shortly, but I wanted to give everyone a heads up beforehand so that you don’t miss this event. See you guys then! 😎

The most common reply to arguments for a high Christology is an appeal to divine delegation, or agency. A Christian might say something like, "Jesus calmed the storm in Mark, who but God can do that?" The dissenter replies, "That's because Jesus was given divinely authorized power, just as Moses was when he split the Red Sea. You wouldn't call Moses God, would you?" At first glance, the symmetry seems accurate. But look beneath the surface, and a serious problem emerges. What the dissenter is really doing is anchoring their interpretive framework to adjacent Jewish agency texts, passages featuring mediatorial figures such as prophets, angels, and messengers, or even inanimate objects like the ark of the covenant. The goal is to draw a parallel between Jesus and figures who mediated the presence of YHWH without ever being YHWH. The trouble is that no such parallel actually works in totality. Now you might be thinking, "But doesn't Jesus carry out divine prerogatives, just as those other figures did?" Yes, He does, but that's a distraction from the real point of contention. The real issue is what I'll call the overextension problem. The overextension problem: Agency-only models use Jewish agency parallels to explain more than those parallels can bear. They can account for how an authorized agent represents YHWH, but they cannot, on their own, explain why Christ personally occupies the YHWH-only subject-position. That subject-position turns on something I'll call identity-emphasis. Identity-emphasis: the way a text signals which figure is being made the focal bearer of divine significance in a given passage. How do we know this is the crux? Simple: in every proposed parallel, whatever mediates YHWH's presence and authority never retains an identity of its own, it functions purely as a channel for YHWH's speech and action. So here's the logic of the agency-only model: YHWH commands → the human agent obeys and signifies the act → YHWH completes it. Take Moses at the sea. He stretches out his hand, but it is YHWH who drives the waters back:

Hey everyone, my name is Matt, and I'm the Assistant Director of an apologetics ministry called Inspiring Philosophy. We want to formally announce that Transcending Answers Academy will be transitioning into Inspiring Philosophy Academy! The Inspiring Philosophy Team has partnered with Tim and this program to be the OFFICIAL Inspiring Philosophy Training Course for apologetics, philosophy, theology, and even social media training for those of you looking to become online apologists as well. Stay tuned for: NEW courses, world class scholars joining our group calls, MORE exclusive course content, social media training, and MUCH MUCH more! This will take effect immediately and you will see new features roll out in the coming months. Also, another house keeping announcement: GROUP CALLS will now be Wednesday 6-pm PST and Saturdays 10am-12pm PST. More details to come on that soon. For any and all questions about the academy moving forward, comment on this post or feel free to email: Matt@inspiringphilosophy.com and I'll respond as soon as I am able

It's been a long time coming, but we finally got none other than Dr. Joshua Sijuwade himself giving us a PRIVATE, never-before-seen lecture on how trinitarianism is true monotheism. This will be taking place at 6 AM PST on Thursday this week (April 23). This will be early for some of you, and perfect for others. Hope to see you there.

Disclaimers: 1) I am very new to philosophy and this form of thinking so be patient with my lack of understanding if this seems like a trivial problem to you lol 2) I know we more so discuss proving the existence of God and the reliability of scripture but I though this would be interesting. I have recently been trying to wrap my head around the U in the Calvinistic TULIP analogy, which stands for Unconditional Election. The idea, in brief, is that God in essence "chooses" those who will be saved. Since we are dead in our sins, we are unable to generate a response towards salvation so God in eternity past chooses those who will be saved. Some Calvinists would go as far as to say that Jesus' substitutionary sacrifice is only for the elect. That Jesus did not indeed come to save all but rather just those elected to salvation. I don't know why but this just does not compute for me. Doesn't the very idea of God "choosing" those who will be saved, regardless of prior knowledge of faith as most calvinists would point out, disregard human free will. Is it possible for those two things to co-exist at all to begin with, possibly that we are unable in our limited capacity to understand that inner working. I also wondered if this undermines the character of an all loving god if he chooses who will and will not respond to the message of the gospel. Thinking about how God wants all to be saved (1 Tim. 2:4), doesn't this go against that commonly held belief as well? Just posing questions because I dont know how many hold this belief despite me feeling like it is simply antithetical to the message of the gospel. Any thoughts would be appreciated