Context is everything.

I mean, it's everything.

There's nothing without context.

When Calvinists talk about the tension and the paradoxes,

they're not actually talking about tension and paradox between passages. The tension

and paradoxes between what they are saying and the passage. In Ephesians chapter 1, it says

chosen in him before the foundation of the world. That's kind of problematic if you think being chosen

relates to salvation because by time you get to chapter 2 verse 12, Paul says at that time you were without Christ and without God.

So how would you be in him and without him at the same time?

They'll talk about the paradox between predestination and free will.

If you just use it the way Paul uses it, there's no paradox.

There's no paradox at all.

There are some presumptions when we interpret scripture.

The underlying presumption is something called propositionalism. Proposition is a statement

like cats or mammals. Jesus is God. Okay, these are propositions. We tend to think of Christianity as

data. There's a data set that constitutes Christianity. But really what I think the New Testament is

trying to present to us is that Jesus is the way, the truth in the life.

It's a way of interacting.

It's a way of relating.

Apologetics as a defense of a data set

is fundamentally flawed and disoriented

because it takes us away from relating properly and it moves us toward this static

...