Well, last night I probably gave too much time to the first part of the lecture and didn't give enough time to the second part. So I'll try and be as imbalanced tonight favoring the second part, if I can do that. But as an introduction, it was interesting to see that book again, Spirit Wars, that really was born from a sort of culture shock that I went through when I came back from Aix-en-Provence from spending 18 years in what we used to call godless France because it was extremely secular humanistic. And there was no place in French culture to ever speak about one's spiritual experience in public. And so it was a very strange kind of place. Now, of course, we started a theological school, a reformed school, called Faculté Libre de Théologie Reformée, which has since been changed to the Institut Jean Calvin. So that's the name from a year ago, the John Calvin Institute. And we started it in 74, and it's still going strong, which is a wonderful thing to see. And I came back to the States and went through culture shock because I had come to the States in 64 to study and thought I'd died and gone to heaven. As a European, to discover such a Christian culture, there was so much Christianity in the culture that it was quite surprising to me. So many Christian colleges, schools, radio stations, television stations, publishing houses, nothing like that in Europe. And so I knew at that period of my life that America was deeply spiritual. And then I went off to France and came back in 91. and discovered that America was just as religious, just as spiritual, but it was changing religion. That's been so odd to see happen. And I'm sure you've been seeing it too, but because I sort of was the spy coming out of the cold, I was able to perhaps sense it in a more radical way, and I started writing books. My first book was entitled The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back. I was very proud of that title, actually. And my father-in-law, Ed Clowney, some of you know, came up with the subtitle, An Old Heresy for the New Age. I like that one, too. Since then, I've not done too well with titles. So the first one was The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back. got into trouble because people didn't know what Gnosticism was. It was sort of a very specialized word. And so when I wrote my second book, I entitled it Spirit Wars, Pagan Revival in Christian America. And of course, then I'd moved to describing the situation as pagan, not Gnostic, because that was a little more But even then, people found themselves offended by the use of pagan. Now around here, pagan means people who play golf on Sunday mornings. Still. But pagan can be offensive to some people as you think of witchcraft and things like that. I wrote my third book and its title, well I wanted to give the title Return of the Rabbi because as you can see there was something going of the trilogy here. But my publisher was not interested in trilogy. I was following, of course, Star Wars. And that seemed to me to be such a classic taking up of the pagan notions and presenting them in modern attractive form. The third book was, oh, I forget the title of it now. Does anyone remember the title? Maybe not. But it was something about Paul's understanding of the pagan world. That was the rabbi who was returning, by the way, the Apostle Paul. And somebody actually came to me and said, when are you writing your fourth in your trilogy? I thought that was funny. Anyway, since then, I've obviously been writing more books on this subject. And as we were coming along tonight with Chris Wisdom mentioning how that perspective seems to be constantly confirmed as our culture goes along. I don't know how you are experiencing it yourselves here in the Deep South, but I'm sure you're seeing much of it on the television and even in the culture of the South. And it's important to be able to name what's happening. You know, I found myself going around speaking about the situation, and people would say, isn't the situation awful? But how do you oppose awful? It is so vague. And I got the impression that what was needed was to bring some useful categories. that Christians could use that would make sense of the situation, avoid some of the awkwardness that I was experiencing by using terms like Gnostic and pagan and so on. So I was looking for categories that would work for the average Christian as we look at what's happening in our modern culture and try to speak the gospel to it. in an intelligent and useful way. And I was brought to look very carefully at what the Apostle Paul says in Romans. And I'll just find that section of my lecture of last night, just to give you a little sense of where I was going. I looked at that text and I hope this becomes the favorite text of all of you. I've had various favorite texts from the Bible in my lifetime, 1 Corinthians 1545 was my favorite text for a long time. And I made all my students write an exegesis of that text. And I loved to catch them out by failing to understand what it actually said. So that was my twisted sense of professorial authority. But First Corinthians 1545 is, as it is written, the first man, Adam, became a living being. The second man became a life-giving, the second Adam became a life-giving spirit. I was blown away by that text because actually it says everything about human existence in those few words. beginning with the creation of Adam prior to the fall, by the way. Here's Paul talking about a situation prior to the fall. And then the resurrection of the second Adam, which of course includes the present and the future. And that's just in that phrase. The first Adam became a living being. The second Adam became a life-giving spirit. And you can spend your entire life trying to work that out. It is absolutely fascinating. So I would enjoy getting students to try to interpret that text. But another one, of course, is Romans 125, which really caught my attention, where Paul says, they exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature or the creation. It's the same term in Greek. Thesis. rather than the creator who is blessed forever. And looking at that text, which is only 18 words in Greek, it seems to me that Paul is laying out there the only two possible ways to be a human being on this earth. I love to find simple things. And, you know, sometimes when you find something simple, it's a sign of genius. And this is what the apostle Paul is, a genius. So any of you who hear people say, you know, deep thinking is not spiritual, remember that our founders of the faith were geniuses, intellectual geniuses. But anyway, Paul is giving here, in very simple phrases, only two ways of being a human being. You either worship the creation or you worship the creator, and there are no other possibilities. So I began to think about that and what exactly he was saying. And the worship of creation, you see, can include virtually every kind of religion and unbelief as well. It can include atheism. It can include witchcraft. It can include Hinduism. All these different non-Christian religions are all worshiping creation in many different ways. There's spiritual worship of creation. There's atheistic worship of creation, if you can forgive that formula. In other words, you can... think of yourself as just fine and you don't give any recognition to God and that's a sort of self-worship as an atheist does. So really this phrase covers virtually every other way of looking at God other than the biblical revelation, which is the worship of the Creator. Now somebody came to me with an excellent question last night, which was, Well, how about Islam and Judaism? Aren't they also worshiping the Creator? And aren't they then valid? Well, remind me to come back to that. But first of all, I want to give you what I think is implicit in those two ways of being. One is that everything is in a whole circle. of life, and in it are rocks and trees and human beings and God. So you can talk about God within this view of things. So it sounds spiritual, but God is within the circle the way you're in the circle and everything else. So God and the rest of us are all one. And it turns out in thinking that way that God becomes an impersonal spirit. If God cannot be separated from the creation, then there's no way of dealing with God really in a sort of a personal kind of definition. He becomes very quickly just the powerful energy that goes through everything. And the worship of nature ends up being the worship of what we call the Magna Mater, the Great Mother. the goddess, and you worship nature as the goddess, and her womb represents the whole of existence. But of course, there's no personhood there. But it means that as you look out at the world, everything is belonging to everything else, and there is nothing external to the world. And I thought the best way to describe that, well, there is a classic way to describe it. It's called monism. Some of you scholars may have well heard that term, monism. But my wife one day said to me, you know, you could make that much simpler if you simply drop the M. I thought, that's a good idea, because that doesn't make non-intellectual people feel embarrassed when you say one-ism. It's very simple. And that's precisely what it is. That's what monism is. It's the theory of oneness. So I began to think about that in terms of describing what Paul is saying as one-ism. And then the other possibility, worshipping the Creator. Now that's very different, you see, because it means that the Creator is separate from the creation. It's not that he's separate in the sense of not interested, but in his being, to use a fancy term, in his ontological essence, he is other than the creation. He is involved in the creation through the spirit and so on. But in terms of who he truly is, ultimately speaking, he's different from the creation. And why is that? Anyone here never had a birthday? Put your hand up. You've all had birthdays. God never had a birthday. God had no beginning. He has always existed. Now that's difficult for us to figure out, right? It's impossible for us to figure out, and yet that's what scripture constantly is telling us. I cited last night the first line of the Bible in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. That's the programmatic statement, actually. It's a programmatic statement given to Moses to take this religion to the pagan world of Egypt and Canaan. In the beginning, God, and there was nothing else. That was such a revolutionary notion in the pagan world of Moses' day. And of course, I like to say that once you read that first line of the Bible, in a sense, everything else in the Bible is commentary. Once you understood what that statement is saying, it's interesting that in Exodus 3, 4, I forget, 3, I think, where God reveals His name, is it 3 or 4? 3. It's always been odd to me. We read it the other day, my wife and I, and God reveals himself as I am who I am. And, you know, it seems like odd, strange, but what it's actually claiming is I am in control of my own existence and I'm not dependent on anything else. That's the revelation who God is, that Moses takes the Pharaoh who's worshiping Isis, the goddess of nature. So you have this radical distinction with the revelation of God in the Old Testament. And then of course, here in Romans 125, it is stated systematically as the worship of the creator who is blessed forever. Now that means, you see, that Paul is telling us that we are in this world faced with two kinds of reality, the creator and the created. And everyone here in this room is created. God is the only existing being who is uncreated. And since that is true, that has to affect the way we think and act. and are engaging in our own lives on this earth, if that is true. The question is, how do you do that? But certainly, that's the essence of the Christian, of the biblical revelation of who God is. Am I getting too complicated? Because not all of us are used to this kind of thinking. But I'm trying to get to the basic level of where we all have to begin. And I'm suggesting, then, that if it's true that there is God and he's separate from us, and then there's us, the whole of the universe, actually, the cosmos, then there are two kinds of beings, or two kinds of existence. To that, I gave the term twoism. All right? So I finally get to my little formula. Things are either oneist or twoist. And that's where I will come back to what I promised you, to try to do some justice to the God of rabbinic Judaism and Islam. Because often people say to me, but aren't they twoist? And in a certain sense, you have to say yes. But in another sense, you have to say they're false two-isms. In Islam, it's very clear how false it is because some of you may know that in Islam, God is considered what's called a singularity. He's alone forever. I often wonder where this cruelty comes from in the practice of Islam in various places. And it comes, I think, from a God who is impersonal. Because a God who exists alone cannot be personal. Because the very definition of personhood is relationship, right? In the Christian faith, we have the revelation of God as Trinity, so that God is personal in his relationship between the three persons of the Trinity. Now, don't expect me to explain this. It is a total mystery. But it's clearly revealed, and it's wonderfully true, because that means that personhood, you see, is anchored in the person of God himself. so that God can be independent of what he's made and yet still be personal. Now, the problem with Islam is that in order for God to be personal, you have to do two things. You either become a Sufist. Now, a Sufist is a mystical Muslim who joins the whole pagan system that everything is God I am God, therefore I am personal. God is personal. But you've made God then totally dependent on the world. The more orthodox Muslims argue that in order to be personal, God created human beings. That is said in certain Hadith. But of course, that as well makes God dependent. for a fundamental attribute of divinity dependent on human beings. And so God finally is brought down to our level, and that's a monist God as well. In other words, it really does not stand up to being a God who can be this distinct being who is both transcendent and personal. You see what I mean? The biblical God is the only God that can actually claim that and those kinds of attributes to be both personal and transcendent. Now, if I've got this wrong, some of you theologians correct me, but I do think that we have here the basic weakness of Islam. Now, the problem with Rabbinic Judaism is similar because, of course, they rejected Jesus and rejected the Trinity, and they've had to deal with this same kind of a God. Anyway, so here we are with these two kinds of forms of reality. Oneism, everything is divine. Twoism, only God is divine, we are his creatures. And we figure out how to be spiritual on that basis of our definition. And I do think that this has deep effect upon the way we think of things. You're expecting a lecture on sexuality, I know. So I'll get to it now. I believe, as some of you heard me say last night, I believe that you have two kinds of sexualities that correspond to these two ways of being. There's the, say, a onest kind of sexuality, which celebrates the sameness of everything, or a different kind of sexuality that celebrates distinction, which is the way the world is put together. One, I used the terms last night, you can call them two different views of cosmology, a homo-cosmology or a hetero-cosmology. A homo-cosmology, and I'm not using that term sexually, a homo-cosmology is a cosmology that believes that everything is the same, ultimately. It's the same nature, which is what one-ism is. A hetero cosmology celebrates difference. Homo means the same in Greek, hetero means different. And so at the very essence of where we begin to think and establish our lives and worship, says Paul, we're either worshiping a oneist view of existence or a twoist view of existence. Am I making sense? Would anyone like to ask me a question at this point? I did have one question about Islam as a oneist system in terms of ethical practices. some of the things that, for example, we encounter people who have traveled, relatives of mine who have traveled either in the military or other missionaries, other capacities, who see really two systems of ethics going on within certain... Islamic faiths? Islamic countries where, you know, there is the morality police on the one hand, and yet there are sexual practices that clearly are... Yeah, I think you've got to expect a lot of inconsistency in a system that is so confused from the get-go. I don't know how else to describe that. I know I was reading this morning that they put an English fellow in jail in Saudi Arabia for drinking wine He's been in jail for six months for drinking a glass of wine. In France, when I was there, I played golf with some very well-placed people. One was a constructor of ocean-going liners. When I first met him, I said, what do you do? He said, I made boats. And I thought, what are these little things? It's actually ocean-going liners. billionaire. Anyway, he was used by the French government to work on treaties sometimes and he went to Saudi Arabia and he said you go in these palaces and when everything's calmed down the wall opens and all the drinks you would want are right there. So there is inconsistency and I'm not sure we should be surprised about that. In Afghanistan, of course, there is pedophilia, which is absolutely horrendous. Even though they throw homosexuals off buildings in some places, in other places they're actually practicing pedophilia with young boys. And remember one soldier was just kicked out of the the army, an American soldier, because he couldn't stand this anymore, because on the American air force base in Afghanistan, this chief of police had a little boy chained to his bed, and he would just have sex with this boy, and the boy was screaming and so on, and he just punched him. He was kicked out of the army. Tells you a lot, I think. But anyway, That's where I see some very inconsistent things, too, from that poorly conceived of system. Any other questions to this point? All right, well, I will make some progress then. I mentioned last night the statement of a philosopher in England by the name of Colin Gunton. He's a theologian, philosopher, taught at King's College died in 2003, but a very brilliant man. And he actually said, when you ask the question of origins, there are only two possibilities. Either the world creates itself, or it was created by an intelligent transcendent being. There are no other solutions. Where else do you establish origins? And of course, one-ism has a notion of creating oneself. And twoism is that God is the creator. And we find a world that's already been designed in which we live and move. So these two systems you see, which I think get us down to basics. I don't think you can go any lower than this in terms of where we begin to think. And that's where I want to establish how we think about sexuality. And I think the Apostle Paul does it himself. He gives us the example as he talks in Romans 1 about how people think. He talks about God the Creator and people seeing God's work in the creation. He moves from that to spirituality in, well, about God the Creator in verses 18 through 22, about worship, And he talks about those who reject God the Creator, what do they do? Well, they worship creation. And to do that, you see, they make images of the creation. It's not primitive, it's perfectly logical. If you're worshiping creation, you will make idols and worship them to remind you of what the creation really is all about. So that's what Paul says they do. They don't worship the Creator, they worship idols. And then he moves implacably from theology to spirituality to sexuality. And I think we have here another example of the genius of Paul in the way he constructs arguments and understands things. And he sees that sexuality, which is an essential element of the human being, It's interesting when we read in Genesis 1.27 that God creates us male and female in His image. Sexuality is an essential part of human dignity, right? Because we're made in God's image, which is where we get our dignity, frankly. Sexuality is essential. So if you've got the worship of God wrong, and the spirituality from that, your understanding of God is wrong, and then the spirituality you work out from that is wrong, you will get ultimately your sexuality wrong. That's what Paul is saying, I believe. And the proof is his statement in verse 26, for that reason. What reason? Well, it's verse 25. They worsted and served the creation rather than the creator. For that reason. And then he goes on to describe homosexuality and lesbianism. There's another for that reason in the Bible, which is key. It's Genesis 2.24. For that reason, a man shall leave his father and mother. That reason is because God created him male and female in the previous chapter. Now we have a for that reason, and it's the refusal of God as the creator that produces a perverted view of sexuality. So I last night tried to show that that view of sexuality bears out in an analysis of how homosexuality has been practiced throughout the ages. Not many people know this, and since I did it last night, I won't go through all the details, but simply to say that throughout time and space in pagan cults, the shaman or priest was a homosexual. And you have to ask, how is that possible? Why is that the case? And it's not that these various groups got together and said, oh, you can do that. Well, we'll follow you. Because it goes throughout time and space. You can go as far back as 2000 BC to the worship of the goddess Ishtar. And she has homosexual priests. I mentioned last night Augustine saw the homosexual priests of Artemis, who was the goddess at Ephesus when Paul went there, marching down the streets in makeup and fancy clothes. There's nothing new in this world. You get to the time of the conquistadores in in South America, and they discovered all kinds of homosexual practice among the Mayans and the Aztecs and so on. And then I've discovered statements by modern leading homosexuals that agree with this, that say, yes, homosexuality has a spiritual factor to it that is absolutely essential for the changing of our world into some new world that they want to produce. And it is really something that is not said very often. You have to sort of scrounge around and find these statements, but they are there. And when I say that, I don't say that to try and make homosexuals feel guilty. It is a warning, it seems to me, because most homosexuals don't know that history of things, don't realize that their sexuality is actually the expression of one-ism, though of course it is, because what is the homosexual act? It's the celebration of sameness, right? It's the celebration where, to experience it, both males have to become a male or a female. They are both male and female, which is the joining of distinctions and making them one, which is what God says you shouldn't do. So there is a real sense that homosexuality in its very embodied reality is expressing a oneness view of the world, even though people have not thought that through. How many Christians do we know that don't think through things they do? So I'm not wanting to make homosexual friends of yours, and you shouldn't either, feel guilty. Some homosexuals have been abused as kids, and it's almost like not their fault that they have these tendencies. But I wouldn't want to excuse the evil behind that, the abuse. You know, if you start saying, but you're okay, then really you're not getting to the heart of the evil. So while not wanting to make homosexuals necessarily feel guilty, some do it deliberately and it's more easy to deal with them. But at the same time, I think we need to warn a whole crowd of people about this truth, namely homosexuals themselves that claim to be Christians. What's their problem? Well, their problem is, frankly, that while they say they love Jesus, they forget that Jesus is their creator. And so inevitably, their Jesus will not measure up to the biblical Jesus. who the scriptures tell us is the one through whom all things were created. So just to have a Jesus who likes me, and I like him, as you were saying, is really a very slim hold on the Christian faith. And you make up your own Jesus. So we say this to warn those people. We certainly say it to warn the church, that more and more is adopting this sort of compromising view of things for the sake of a sort of a sentimental show of love to people and not want to hurt people. So we say it for individuals. We say it for the church to be on its guard and to build a correct view of who we are. And we say it for ourselves in our own ministry with homosexuals. I've not had many experiences along this line, but I did have one. I gave a lecture like this some years ago. And at the end of the lecture, I was on a dais. And this fellow comes towards me. And I remember I was standing on the platform, and I was still looking up at him. He was 6'10". And he looked rather angry. Now, I know I'm tall, right? But I thought that was the last time I'd ever give this lecture. Anyway, he thrust a piece of paper in my hand, turned on his heels, and walked out of the building. Well, I was relieved. But I looked at the paper, and it was an angry, handwritten prose, and on it it said, I'm mad, I'm damn mad that my homosexuality is forcing me into paganism. I think that was wonderful, that he had had, he'd seen something, you know, and a few years later, I didn't know who the guy was, A few years later, in Vanderbilt University, this was in the Midwest, so I was in Vanderbilt, speaking to some Christian students, and they were asking me about how you apply this to your friends. And so I told this story, and one of the students came up to me and he said, I know that man. Well, I'm in 6'10 from the Midwest, It's possible, but he was a member of the same church. And I said to him, tell me about this fellow. He said, well, he was one of the leading voices in American opera. And he said, after that lecture, he left that career, gave it up. He took a job overseeing an old people's home. And I said, does he still sing? He said, you should hear him sing in church. Praise the Lord. He'd come back to the Lord. And I want to stand next to him in heaven and hear him sing. So we say it for ourselves as well. to bring truth, you see. We can bring a certain kind of sentimental love that at certain times is okay. But I think the most thing we have to bring as Christians is truth. Jesus said, I'm the truth. I'm the way, the truth, and the life. He is the logos. And that's part of what we bring to people, isn't it? We should show affection and understanding and care Appreciation. People are made in God's image. But because of that, because they're made in God's image, they need to hear truth. So that's the reason why I believe we need to get this understanding of the larger implications of what this form of sexuality is doing to people. How am I doing for time? You have 15 minutes left. 15 minutes. Then you can take questions. Yeah. Well, anyway. So I've been throwing at you these complicated terms, simplified, oneism and twoism. Can I justify this biblically? How do you put the Bible together? Is it just text that you cite? Does the Bible bring a sort of an overarching message? Does the Bible communicate, if you will, a cosmology? Not simply biblical text that you can throw around. And then you ask, well, how do you find that? And some people say, of course, God is love, so you have to love everybody. But that's an awfully sort of loose and not very precise expression of things. I believe that you can justify the biblical cosmology of twoism or justify the cosmology of twoism through the Bible with the notion of holiness. Holiness. Now, that's not wholeness, by the way. I found some scholars that confuse those two and say they're both from the same root. These are scholars, I was surprised. They're not at all from the same root. Wholeness means everything together, right? And it comes from the Greek term holos. Oh, okay. Halas, that's an H. From that term, we get Catholic. Catholic is made up of two words, kata, which is a preposition meaning according to, and halas. So Catholic is according to the whole. So the Catholic church is the universal church, if you will. Now, that's a good notion. We like to bring things together and make sense. But it's not holiness. Holiness comes from a different Greek term. I got to do it in English. Hagios. That's an H. Hagios. Now, you see, those two terms are quite different in their Greek roots, right? You cannot confuse them. They sound closer in English, wholeness and holiness. Remember, though, wholeness has a W often in front of it. Not always, by the way, but it often has a W. But when you go to this level of the Greek, there's no question. These are two different words. So if holos means whole. What does Haggios mean? Well, it means making distinctions, actually. You call things holy that are separate. And it's not necessarily a moral term. The utensils on the table in the temple were called holy. utensils, but they're not moral. They have a special function. They're set apart for a special function. Actually, the Greek term comes from the Hebrew code, meaning to divide or to separate. Max, am I correct in this? You should know. It means to distinguish. That's a dynamic understanding of holiness. I told the folks last night, I thought that holiness was this better than thou kind of sense of how good you are. And of course, that kind of moralism doesn't do any of us any good. We're all broken, we're all sinners. But holiness, if it's understood in terms of the right places where things belong, is dynamic for us to understand. Because we have things like, well, Moses, remember, when he hears the name in chapter three of Exodus, it's holy ground. It's distinguished from other ground. God sanctifies the seventh day. God blessed the seventh day and made it holy. That's where we get the term holidays. They're holy days, as opposed to other days that are work days. So all holiness means is separating things to their rightful places. And I'm arguing here that this is the basis of twoism. This biblical notion of holiness really is expressed in twoism. First of all, because God is holy. He has a distinct place other than us and our world. That Christian hymn catches it. God of wonders beyond our galaxy, you are holy. The universe declares your majesty, you are holy. Now understand that that term means not so much that God is morally pure, though he is, but that he is totally distinct from us. His place of being is other than ours. I just went past, I was walking this afternoon in your lovely town, and I saw the Anglican Church, it's Episcopalian now, what's it called? Holy Trinity, it's called Trinity Church. A lot of churches are called Holy Trinity. And that's because, you see, the very being of God is holy in that sense that the three persons of the Trinity are distinct. They're unified, but they're brought together in their difference, and they're never confused. And that's what it means for God to be a holy Trinity. So if God is that way, if God is twoist, I know I'm confusing you with two and three, but if the Trinity is a twoist notion in the sense of a unity of distinctions that are never eliminated but produce something of value in their distinctiveness, if that is what God is like, then surely that's the way he would create the world, right? To reflect who he is. So the world needs to look holy. The world needs to be holy. And that's what God does in Genesis 1. God separates the day and the night, the seas and dry land. He creates different kinds and gives them all specific individual names and says it's good. So distinction making is good. Twoist thinking is valid. I spent a whole section last night, that's why we lost our time, describing what's going on in our world today in the busting of the binary. Some of you will never forget that now. But I read this afternoon a student at Cambridge University describes herself as a non-binary trans. Get that one. Her sexuality is a non-binary trans. I'm not quite sure what that means, that she doesn't really want any gender at all. She doesn't want the binary of male and female to be imposed upon her, you see. And that's where we're seeing this sort of one-ism lived out in our day at the grassroots level, really, in the rejection of the binary, which is precisely the way God is as a binary distinct from us. and how God made the world via binaries, distinctions of places and things. Everything then has its rightful place. And I think that this is important to understand in terms of sexuality. As we remember what the Apostle Paul tells us in Romans 1.20, that people actually see God's handiwork in the things he made. And that doesn't just include, as I said last night, the Grand Canyon. I know my wife, with an unbeliever, stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon, and the unbeliever was crying. It didn't happen to me when I stood there, but it was so powerful and experience was unbelievable that she was crying. But God is seen in the world he's made. But I think above all, he must be seen in sexuality, which he declares as heterosexual and very good. Remember that in Genesis? At the end of chapter 1, He makes man male and female, and He declares it very good. So here we have the statement of God's creative work to be seen in everything He's made, and I don't think we can eliminate from that the way God made us as human beings, as sexual beings. And of course, if we are made as sexual beings as distinct male and female, then in a certain sense we are called to witness to the Trinity. If you thought your life had no meaning, think about that. That your relationship to the opposite sex is actually some kind of a reflection of the Trinity. which is unity and distinction. And of course, that is ultimately expressed in marriage, when we have a certain kind of radical unity. And that, as the Bible says, reflects God in himself. That's why it says that we are made in God's image. Yes? Is it not then the case that two-ism is reflected not only in cosmology in the view of creation, but in the fall, and in redemption, and in the consummation. The ultimate divide in eternity is heaven and hell, just as there is the church and the world and salvation, and in the fall there is the the remnant that is saved and the remnant that perished. Yeah, it's all in there. And you've given me the last part of my lecture, so I don't have to give it now. That we see it not only in creation, but in God's working with us and in redemption. You know, Paul says in Ephesians 5 31, that a man shall leave his father and mother and cling to his wife. And he says, this is a mystery. And it's interesting because he's citing, actually, Genesis 2.24, which is prior to the fall. When Paul usually talks about the mystery, he's talking about the gospel, which, of course, the gospel is because there is the fall. But now in Genesis 2.24, it's prior to the fall. Paul calls this a mystery. that a man shall leave his father and mother and cling to his wife and they shall be one flesh is a mystery. And of course, that is the mystery. That is to say, the deep symbolism there is worked out in Christ's love for the church, which he then says is the meaning of that mystery. But you cannot then underestimate that that heterosexual relationship is weighted, freighted with that powerful notion of mystery. expressing ultimately God's redemptive actions for us. And then the final, of course, moment is the consummation. And if I can just cite that correctly, I probably won't be able to find it. Well, the Scriptures begin with a marriage and they end with a marriage, the marriage supper of the Lamb, as the vision of the heavenly bridegroom, the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, adorned for her husband. And then the final consummation, it is indeed Revelation 4, 9 through 11. where the 420 elders stand around the throne and sing, worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you did create all things, and because of your will, they existed and were created. So throughout eternity, we will be praising God, not only for being our Redeemer, but for being our Creator. And the distinction between us and God will be completely maintained then. We will still be creatures, glorified creatures, but creatures. And that vision then of the twoist relationship between us and God is maintained throughout eternity. I like to say that twoism is the key to the cosmos. You cannot think of anything. in any kind of intelligent way without twoism. You cannot think of God and the world without twoism. You cannot think of morality without the distinction of good and evil. You cannot think of rationality without the distinction of reason and unreason. And so our whole life is made up of twoist notions. And oneism destroys them all. People don't realize it, but that's what happens. Well, I think I came to the end. You gave me that little opening to finish off, and there's the whole picture, if you like, as I have tried to understand it. All right. Do you take it that creation as male and female is almost a necessary part for expressing the image of God, or at least a superior one? Oh, it's a necessary one. Necessary. I think that's the only time where image is used. for human beings. It's used for Christ, of course. It's the image of God. But I think that's the only place in scripture where you find the image used, and it's related to male and female. Now, that's interesting, as you push me here, that if you are denying that distinction, you're denying the image. And I think, ultimately, you're denying the dignity humanity made in that image. So there are some weighty matters, you know, involved in maintaining that structure. Did I answer your question, though? Yeah. Good. Next one was... Over here? I saw a couple of answers. Oh, this one. Okay. Well, I had a comment. I wanted to get your opinion on this. suggested that unrighteousness is really the blurring of distinctions in our culture. And one of the things that seems to be prevalent in our society is the changing of the meaning of words. How does that play into the homosexual agenda? And how do we minister to the homosexual community? Yeah, well, first of all, the original sin was the blurring of distinction between the human and the divine. You shall be as God. So that's the fundamental sin, is the desire to eliminate God from his place of sovereignty over us as the creator. Now, I think that the homosexual does it in the embodiment of his sexuality in the same-sex relationship that fails to observe that distinction that the image of God requires for a relationship, a sexual and human relationship between a man and a woman. So it is undermining that fundamental notion of the image of God, the dignity of human beings, and the goal of human beings to carry the image of God as Trinity. So it's pretty important, you know, at the end of the day, what is at stake. And gently, I think you can help your homosexual friend to begin to ask questions. about what they're doing and should they continue. I've seen a wonderful movie called, Such Were Some of You. Have any of you seen that? And it's 12 people that have left the homosexual life, and they've all been transformed by the gospel, such were some of you. And it is exciting to hear the testimonies of these people. talk about transformation. We don't hear it often in certain sort of Christian groups where we want to accept that state as inevitable and it can't be changed. And there are some people who find it very difficult to move out of it. But it is exciting to see these glowing Christian folks transformed by the gospel to refine their image and identity. There's one wonderful black woman. I see some black people here, so I want to encourage you as well, who was the editor of a magazine called Venus, which was for the promotion of lesbianism. And she tells her, story about meeting Jesus and her life was completely changed around. And she left that lifestyle. And she had to go to New York for a board meeting of this magazine and all the supporters and everything else. She said, I can't go. And then she thought, I've got to go. So she, as the editor of this journal, gets up and says, I want to tell you, I've met Jesus, and I've left the lifestyle, and I'd be glad to help anyone among you who would like to do this. What courage. And then she said, there was a reception after, and I thought, I'd better leave now. But she thought, no, I'll hang around. So she did. And so many people came up to her and whispered, I need that help too. So there are some wonderful stories of courage and transformation. And I don't think we should give that up too easily. I'm saying there are some. Homosexuals who never seem to be able to get out of that, but they have, as solid faithful Christians, have chosen a lifestyle of celibacy, and I really respect that. So you got those two options, really. Yes? As you were talking about twoism being the way of understanding the universe, I had a thought, and I just want to kind of confirm that my observation tracks. If I'm understanding you, you were talking about that being very fundamental to rational thought. I thought one of the basic ideas of logic is the law of non-contradiction. Exactly. A is not non-A. Right. And so that's a binary. It is. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And you know, in this new spirit, old spirituality, you read in these ancient Hindu texts, you read it in Gnostic texts, you read it today, flee the mind. You have to stop thinking. But, you know, thinking is the gift of God. But it is a fundamentally tourist operation because every word I say is distinct from every other word in order to make sense. Isn't it interesting, then, that these oneist spiritualists don't want you thinking? There's something suspicious about that, it seems to me. It sounds like they're trying to borrow twoist thinking in order to get you to be a oneist. That's right. Because they deal in model apps you shouldn't use. That's right. Flee is an imperative. It is. I have a comment that revealed my deep ignorance of using terminologies. that we just aren't exposed to. Ten years ago, a famous, pretty famous band among young people called Me Without You, and they have a song that is, the title is Bulletin Binary. Oh, no. And I just realized it today, and I went back over. There's another one, One is a Lonely Number. You must remember that one. That was interesting to go back and just, and of course I've read the lyrics, and they're like, the lyrics are like talking to someone with Alzheimer's. They're using words that they mean, I mean, it's just, you can't understand any of it. But I thought I'd tell you that. I wonder what the phrase means. Well, I've been trying to find out. I will have to call the guy. I know him very, I know the guy very well. Oh, good. He's American. And there's typical bands today in the Christian, in the Christian subculture, the bands have very little theology. You have some good ones, but it's just amazing. You know, you've got to go to have Brent Cooper that are following these bands. Most of these bands stay in my house. But, I mean, it's just incredible. of the following that they do have and how we can influence them. And I think I was telling someone, I was introduced to Reformed theology by a pope rocker at the Cornerstone Festival, and he asked me, have you ever read John Piper? I never knew anything about him. So even pope rockers can. Unfortunately, Bona was a oneist. Other questions? Well, first of all... I asked enough this morning, but do you think just because it's in our emotion that homosexual activity is worse than fornication between heterosexuals? I think we got to avoid what's called the ick factor. That's no way to discern truth. I think it is chosen by Paul because it is the overturning of the structures of creation in a rather obvious way. But Paul would never justify adultery, heterosexual adultery either. He finds that disgusting as well. So I think it's only because of its iconic function of showing a total turning away from what normal sexuality is. Paul calls it unnatural, doesn't he, instead of the natural. That's why he develops that, because it is an embodied expression of this rejection of God the Creator. Plus that word abomination is linked to homosexuality. It is, in Leviticus 18. Yeah, and that seems like a strong word about evil. It's like there's degrees of evil. I don't know if I'm seeing that right, but... That is another level of argumentation that I said I wouldn't get into, which is what the Bible actually says against homosexuality. I've been trying to give you a worldview in which you can look at those texts. Because the tendency is with those texts you can come over as very moralistic. I think there are times when you can use them and maybe times when you shouldn't use them. Yes? In trying to understand, I think I've got your tourist kind of way of looking at this. I think you have. In communicating this though with other people who don't necessarily share this view, I'm trying to understand what is the point of contact here between how do you Well, you know, I think the point of contact is placing people where Paul places people. You're either oneist or twoist. Either the world creates itself or it's created by a transcendent being. You place people before those two options and you ask them, where are you? That's the point of contact today, I believe. Because it will make them think. they who perhaps don't do much thinking, and neither do we. But to get people to think is to start off a conversation that will lead to the gospel very quickly, it seems to me. It strikes me that there's kind of a glaring irony in the modern world, in that, as you have described, forces or cultural expressions for eliminating any duality, reducing everything to a unity. And yet, we are the computer age. Everything is done in binary form. One or zero. Have you explored that anywhere in your writings, about the irony? I should. It's coming down to ones and zeros. That's right. Information technology, IT, depends upon the binary system. That's why you asked, didn't you, earlier about what was the phrase? No, but this afternoon, epistemology, yeah. No, I'm not intelligent enough to do that. I think someone like this gentleman here could get a hold of that and do a good job and send me the results. One over here at the back. Europe I-ism, II-ism, cosmology, and how it relates to popular culture. I think it came from there. And part of what Dr. Ross just said, how then do we have seemingly so many, particularly young people, who seems to be living out that I-ism in the sense that Everything is about me. How have we gotten to the place, Romans 1, 25, where it's so important that, well, to say it like the old people do, to selfie. Oh, yeah. It's a classic expression. In a sense of, in a duality, everybody wants to take a picture by themselves. It's all about me. Even photography is oneist. You absolutely are. You absolutely are. The problem is, you ask, why are young people? Well, they've been influenced a lot by the culture. But we're also sinners. And sinners are oneists. They do their own thing. They want to describe the world that they want to do it. And young people probably have a tendency to want to do that, to find our own identity from their parents and so on. But I don't think that's a good excuse. But I do think that we need to teach our young people some really good methods of thinking. And I also saw that where what you said leads into the homosexuality part, like this young person who is so-called starving, whatever, was now her friends were toying with her about the idea where she'd get an abortion, now about going into homosexuality. So I kind of saw, listening to the lecture, kind of see where culture is tying in to exactly what you're saying, and they perhaps are not understanding what it is. But that's exactly what happened. They've come to the point that they are worshiping the creation. That's right. They lost their identity. I'm so glad that you're saying that because you were really understood. And that's where the rubber meets the road, the point of contact. And our young people need to be confronted in valid ways that you will discover yourself. I teach groups of quite brilliant young people sometimes, handpicked. But they get this stuff, and they're turned on to preach the gospel in clear ways. And I believe young people can catch this stuff and get turned on. Because if young people tend to be selfie-focused, they're also waiting for a challenge. And if you can challenge them to be against the culture by speaking truth, maybe we'll get some volunteers for our system. Judy. I'm hearing this. Since the Supreme Court did what they did, and we got to re-educate, well, we can't re-educate, but by prayer, to get our people to see that this is not the way of God, how do we do it since the highest court in the country has put, even though they say it's about their civil rights, put a stamp of proof on what they're doing. You know, Judy, how do you do it? Well, this is a long time coming. Our culture has been going towards one-ism in many ways. I mentioned last night the event of the previous day when Hugh Hefner's group, Playboy, is now eliminating the centerfold, which they launched in the 60s as this new way of understanding sexuality. And they broke all the boundaries and the limitations with Playboy. Yesterday, they declared that they're going to change Playboy because it is no longer attractive because it's too tame. Too tame. You see, in the 60s, it was the most radical thing. I remember, I was a student, and we were shocked when this thing came out. Now it's too tame. And Al Mohler says, to me, it's the sign of the end of our civilization. If Playboy is too tame. then where has our civilization arrived? And I think that the Supreme Court decision on the 26th of June is only the next great step in moving our culture to a radically pagan, oneist worldview. Now, I don't want to be negative. I think this must be taken up as a challenge by us as Christians. But we'll only do it if we understand it, it seems to me. We'll only take up the challenge if we have the tools by which to make the challenge. Not to say it's awful, but what? What was the Supreme Court action? It was a radical paganization of the understanding of humanity. It was a major step in the twisting of the anthropology that has given us a wonderful civilization. And we have to be able to put it at that level, you know, as getting rid of God the Creator. So I'll end with that note to encourage you to not be discouraged and to make the word known in as clear a way as you can. We'll have to leave with God the future. There have been ups and downs in the past before, and we know that He will win in the end, because truth will win in the end. Amen, let's pray. Father, we thank you for this time spent together. Will you bless it to each one of us? May it be useful. as we seek to serve you in this world that's imploding all around us. Help us as we try to reach out to young people especially. Give us young people who become committed to the truth, and perhaps they can turn this world around. So hear us, we pray. Grant us your blessing as we go our separate ways. Thank you for the fellowship of believers we've known this evening, and may we have each other in our prayers as we leave. In Jesus' name, Amen. But I didn't know there was going to be another side.