Sponsor Message and Introduction to Biblical Worldview and Government Obligation
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Theological Perspective on Current Times and the Influence of Shaping Ideas
I believe that scripture in the Bible is very clear that God is the one that raised up each of you, and God has allowed us to be brought here to this specific moment in time. This is Jenna Ellis in the morning.
Jenna Ellis: Good morning. Well, it is Friday, and on Fridays, we tend to do, occasionally a 30,000 foot perspective of issues, that go beyond just the headlines and tie this to the biblical worldview, the truth of the Christian life and how, we need to understand the times. And today. There is a great new book that you absolutely have to read if you are a Christian or if you're listening to this program and you're not a Christian, well, first of all, you should be. And, we would be happy to help you, through that process and also a local church, as well. And, this book is even for you as well, because if you want to understand what is going on in the times and the ideas that are shaping and actually reshaping Western civilization and even the evangelical church, we talk a lot in the headlines about, the Democrat socialists or about affordability or about open borders or about the, the pro life, versus, you know, feminist perspective, you know, all of these seemingly, different ideas. The LGBTQ movement, for example, that, that seem to be completely separate issues that activists care about. But in reality, a lot of them are connected.
Introducing the Book 'Faith in the Crossfire' and Its Focus on Christian Faith Under Attack
And their philosophical and even theological roots of these movements are intentionally trying to reshape the meaning of truth, undermine faith in scripture, and even undermine the church. So the book is titled Faith in the Crossfire When a Dialectical Revolution Targets Christianity. And this is by, my good friend Bill Roach, and he joins us now. and, Dr. Bill Roach is the dean of the Norm Geisler School of Apologetics at Veritas International University. We've, talked to him previously about Christian nationalism, about a, lot of different important theological topics. And so, Bill, I'm so grateful that you joined us, for this today. So give us an overview of how this book is targeting what, views and philosophy in our modern post truth society is trying to, to undermine when it comes to the reality to which God has presented us to.
Dr. Bill Roach: Well, thank you, Jenna, for having me on. I really appreciate it. And like I've said, I deeply appreciate your friendship and all that you've done to help get this book out and all that you do for the sake of defending the historic Christian faith and the biblical worldview.
The Historical Battle for the Bible and the Defense of Scriptural Inerrancy
And, you know, this topic, Faith in the Crossfire, is something that has been a book that I've hypothetically been working on for, almost two decades. And the reason I say that is, is that I have been committed to defending the total truthfulness or the inerrancy of the word of God with several scholars. And this just seemed to be the next logical step. And let me tell you exactly what I mean by this and how this came about and why it's important is that, you know, within the last hundred years, evangelicalism has truly had what was known as a battle for the Bible. And Harold Linzel wrote the book titled the Battle for the Bible, and he talks about what happens when institutions and churches drift away from the authority of scripture and from the concept of truth. And in response to that, we had what was known as the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy. And figures such as R.C. sproul and Norman Geisler and Carl F.H. henry and Francis Schaeffer and Jon Gerstner, all these key figures that we look at as classic evangelicals came together to explain what do we mean by the concept of inerrancy, and what do we not mean by the concept of inerrancy? And how I got into this is that my mentor was Dr. Norman Geisler. And Dr. Geisler was more than just a mentor to me. He was almost like a father to me. And a number of years ago we put out a different book titled Defending Inerrancy. And we worked really closely with R.C. sproul and J.I. packer to put this book out. And it's because at that time we saw a trend happening within our evangelical institutions where they were starting to question the inerrancy of the Bible again. And some people were doing with outright attacks, but others were doing it with these sort of hidden little philosophical tricks today, really through different approaches to interpreting the Bible. So they weren't just attacking the Bible itself, they were attacking the historic methods of interpreting the Bible known as hermeneutics. And we put that book out as a response to it in much of, the same way that we argue that the Constitution should be interpreted according to the intent of the Framers.
The Rise of Woke Hermeneutics and the Birth of the Book 'Faith in the Crossfire'
We said the Chicago statement should be two. Well, since then, the battle has just continued to rage because at that time, the issue of woke hermeneutics and the rise of this existential methodology, it was always there, but it came to the forefront. And we've all seen that. We saw as evangelical institutions, parachurch organizations, churches, they all went woke for the last 10 years. And that's what gave birth to this book. It was the idea that I want to stand with classic evangelicals and defend not only just the concept of truth, but the concept of true truth. And that's a phrase that comes from Francis Schaeffer. I don't want to have woke truth. I don't want to have existential truth. I don't want to have some kind of perspectival truth. I want true truth, namely that which corresponds with reality. That's what gave birth to it. Seeing it firsthand in our institutions, with conversations with people across the country on this issue. I said, somebody has to write this book. And that's what gave birth to this book.
Critique of Subjective Truth and the Undermining of Objective Reality by Dialectical Approaches
Jenna Ellis: That's. That's incredible. And, it's so important to have the, have the true truth. And if listeners are thinking, well, of course we have the truth. I mean, what else is there? you can see how much this dialectic has really undermined true truth in favor of a standpoint, epistemology, or just a perspective. When we have this view of my truth versus your truth, and well, I'm just speaking my truth. It's this framework that truth is subjective and that everyone's individual experience can lead them to different conclusions about reality. And that somehow, simultaneously, we all can coexist in alternate universes, basically, and alternate views of, of morality, of anthropology, of theology, of, morality. I mean, all of these questions that.
Central Thesis: Conflict Between Logos and Dialectic in Contemporary Society
That go into what builds and undergirds a society. And we're seeing so because of all of this, so much collapse in real time. And so just to kind of set the table though, before we get too far into this, ah, you explain in kind of your central thesis that the contemporary conflict is deeper than partisan politics. And it's a conflict between the logos and the dialectic. And so when we use this term, the dialectic, and I've heard you Know, James Lindsay and, you know, other, philosophers kind of use this term.
Defining Dialectic: From Rhetoric to Hegelian and Marxist Contradictions
Can you define that and what it means so that when people hear that, they're processing and understanding what exactly it is we're referring to?
Dr. Bill Roach: Yes, what it is is it's this concept that has really been birthed in different eras of philosophy. First of all, there are different time periods that use dialectic. Sometimes it's just a way of just talking about rhetoric and how to reason properly. That's an old school, sort of Aristotelian form of dialectic. But what happened is that the term was radically changed with a man named Hegel. And Hegel is a German philosopher. And what he tried to do is he tried to say that ideas evolve and grow through contradictions, trying to overcome with some kind of middle position. So he would label it as you have a thesis and an antithesis that's always reconciled through a synthesis. And what that does is it actually makes the concept of truth evolutionary. It's evolving. The concept of truth is constantly progressing towards some type of end. And for him, it was a type of utopian end. And Marx was also a dialectical theologian in many respects. He wasn't just an economist. And what he was arguing for was having this thesis antithesis constantly pit against one another to find Mr. Middleman leading towards his utopia. Now, I want to break this down in a very common example that I try to give with people like this. You know, these terms are heady, they're philosophical. But I think everybody in the United States is familiar with, you know, the.
The Dialectical Method as a Revolutionary Tactic: From Football to Social and Theological Control
The game of football. We all watch it. Sunday afternoons, we watch college football, professional football. And we all realize that you have two teams that are going against one another that are trying to run the ball down to their goal. And think of it like this. You have on the field, you have, say, one team versus the other team. But what if you had another group of individuals there, almost like the refs in this regard, and they were pitting the two teams against one another with the goal that they could run the ball down into the end zone. And this is exactly what goes on, is that you have a thesis and an antithesis. Think of it as the two different teams that are constantly fighting against one another. And when people get distracted by that, they just push the ball down a little more. Namely, the refs push the ball down a little bit more. And that's exactly what I'm talking about that goes on here is that people will pit classes of people against one another or ideas against one another in order to achieve the end goal of revolution. And we've seen this, we see this with things like classic Marxism where they pit the rich versus the poor in order to have a collectivism to control society. We've seen this during the time of 2020 where people didn't just pit the rich and poor against one another, they pit social classes against one another. Black versus white, the oppressed versus the oppressor. And what did it always lead towards? More control against individuals as they ran their ideas through. And what I'm saying is, is that these things not only happened politically, they've happened philosophically, and they've happened theologically. And theologically, this movement, this Mr. Middleman controlling movement, is what's known as dialectical theology.
Contrasting Dialectical Evolution of Truth with the Fixed, Eternal Truth of the Bible
And it just dominated the last century of theology. And evangelicals have actually bought into it more than they have rejected it. So that's a simple explanation of it. We can go into a lot more depth with it.
Jenna Ellis: Yeah, and two really important points that I just want to underscore that you said is that this dialectical, philosophy is a view that truth continually evolves. And so this is the contrast and the complete opposite of what the biblical actual true truth worldview says. Where we know that truth is fixed. It's a fixed point of reference, is the person of Jesus Christ who is the same yesterday, today and forever. I mean, the, the consistency of the character, nature and person of God is replete throughout Scripture. And we know that truth does not change.
Distinguishing Genuine Debate from Dialectical Theory's Denial of Binaries and Objective Truth
Now we can apply truth to various situations, but, the nature of truth does not change. And so when we're talking about the word of God versus this dialectical theory, that's a really important, just basic point to know difference. And the second thing, that I want to underscore as well is that, how the, the Marxist and the Haglian theories are practically working themselves out. We've talked about Marxist theory, a lot of the oppressor versus the oppressed. And you know, how they, they pit these two groups together, as you mentioned, to kind of move toward the middle. And so contrast that though, how the dialectical theory, pits those two groups to move toward the middle and advance their non truth or false worldview versus a genuine debate of ideas? Because I think a lot of people in hearing that might wonder, okay, well, don't conservatives do the same things when we say we want, you know, more speech and that, that good ideas will override bad ideas? And so we do see some contrast, but that's very distinct from what the dialectical theory is.
Dr. Bill Roach: So what the dialectical theory fundamentally affirms is that nobody's position is correct. What they're trying to do is they're trying to deny what are known as binaries out there. And whatever the synthesis is. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis, that's just a temporary placeholder. We're never actually landing in the place of truth, even when the dialectic occurs. Because think of it as. It's not just one instance. It's almost an infinite number of instances where this takes place. So you'll have the first thesis, antithesis that's reconciled through synthesis. That synthesis becomes a thesis that then requires an antithesis with another synthesis. And it just keeps going and going and going. And what you'll find is that where this becomes readily apparent is that the Christian worldview would say, sometimes we can meet in the middle on something, whether politically or theologically.
The Nature of Truth and God's Unchanging Character Versus Evolving Ideologies Like Marxism
But that meeting in the middle is not the denying of truth. It's actually the acceptance of truth. That's actually where we say reality is found. So when we look at a position where two individuals rightly disagree, when we are reconciling those differences, we're actually coming to an agreement on the concept of truth. We recognize that either I'm right and you're wrong, or you're right and I'm wrong, or somebody else is right and we're both wrong. But we're not arguing that truth is evolving or that these different irreconcilable positions are both true and halfway middle positions. We're arguing that there's one theology of the Bible, one reality that God has given to us. And the reason for it is, is that it's not just that the Bible is true. It's, that the God who gives us the Bible is wholly true. God's nature is truth. God's nature is unchanging. And when God creates, creation reflects the Creator in every sense of the term like that. Obviously, creation's finite and it's been given over to the fall. But it's also given by the unchanging God who upholds creation and upholds His Word and allows human beings to know both creation and His Word, to know true truth. And what you'll find is, is that a lot of people in a generation that might be our parents or our grandparents generation, they were readily against Marxism. They saw exactly for what it was. And the revolutions that they tried to bring about were nothing more than the syntheses. But in contemporary American society, we do have a lot of Marxists. I'm not going to deny that but the thing about Marxism is that it's an ever evolving ideology that needs a host to. And if the Marxists weren't able to get the United States in particular with the exact same categories that it did in say, Russia or other countries, it evolved.
Cultural Marxism, DEI, and Pride Flags: The Evolution and Impact on Truth
And the way that it did it is it did it by turning it into a cultural Marxism. So instead of just pitting the rich versus the poor, they did it on a racialist lines or on a feminist line or some kind of gender line. And that's where we see it today. And in fact, when you look at the COVID of the book, there's a hidden way of understanding this. The icon that's on the front of it, the spiral that's actually the dialectic. But the coloration of it is actually an admixture of pride colors showing that it's continuing to evolve into cultural Marxism. And that's where people see it today. Everybody here today is giving up the concept of truth when they're flying pride flags, or buying into this entire movement because they're buying into cultural Marxism, which fundamentally gives up the concept of truth. So it evolves in our different eras. So our generation maybe doesn't buy into classic old Marxism as much, but a lot of evangelicals have bought into cultural Marxism. And that's why I wrote the book. I wanted people to see the full connection between the dialectic Marxism, cultural Marxism and all the rest of the.
Jenna Ellis: And that's so incredibly important that, the debates that conservatives have, and when we say, you know, the good ideas will outweigh the bad ideas, that is an explicitly, moral premise to say that there is a distinction between good and evil, right and wrong, and there is an objective universal standard by which we determine that. And we actually say there is a winner and loser of debates and that we can, can arrive to true truth and we can have a conclusion about what ideas are right and what ideas are wrong. Where the dialectic will say, well, nobody's right.
The Pervasive Influence of Dialectical Methodology Undermining Truth and Western Civilization
And this goes back to, you know, well, my truth, my experience, is, is right for me. And that may not be your preference, but whatever is right for you and no judgment. And you know, we can, we have so many examples of how this has, this methodology has pervaded our culture and it is undermining truth and it's undermining, Western civilization and all of the values like, justice, like fairness, like morality, that are essential to a moral and upright society, that are a necessity for law and order. You have to say what is right, what is permissible what is required versus what is prohibited in a society. And so for the church to be embracing this on any level is really dangerous.
Book Promotion: Faith in the Crossfire and its Author Dr. Bill Roach
And we've got to take a break here. Dr. Bill Roach, but, he's going to stay with us throughout the program. And again, the book is called Faith in the Crossfire. When a Dialectical Revolution Targets Christianity by William Roach. you can get that on Amazon wherever books are sold. Faith in the Crossfire. And we will be right back.
Dr. Bill Roach: Foreign.
Listener Support Appeal and Welcome Back to Jenna Ellis in the Morning
Jenna Ellis: Hi, I'm Jenna Ellis. Did you know that this content is listener supported? Without people like you, this podcast would not exist. And that's why we need you. A generous monthly gift of any amount will help sustain American Family Radio and specifically this podcast. Please consider becoming a monthly financial partner today by visiting afr.net forward slgive that's afr.net give ah, welcome back to Jenna Ellis in the Morning on American Family Radio.
Jenna Ellis: Welcome back. I'm still here with my special guest, Dr. William Roach, who is the author of this brand new book called Faith in the Crossfire. When a Dialectical Revolution Targets Christianity.
The Evangelical Church's Embrace of Dialectical Theology and Relativistic Truth
And this is a defense of objective truth at the Christian worldview against this dialectical movement that is reshaping Western culture and also, really alarmingly, the evangelical church. And so I want to go into that more now that we've, defined the dialectical movement, by contrast to truth and the biblical worldview, and how the dialectical movement, is attempting to say that there is no truth and, there is no way that we can reason, our way to an answer and to a conclusion. how has the evangelical church been hoodwinked into accepting this replacement, of a dialectical theology instead of the biblical worldview?
Dr. Bill Roach: So for a number of years now, I have tried to raise that exact question with people. And a lot of people have thought, well, you know, these evangelicals bought into this because they got it from, you know, the universities or the culture. That's completely correct. I can't deny that a lot of students coming in picked it up. But the real question is, how did their professors get it? Because if you think about it, you know, within the last 50 years, evangelicals have done a lot of work in apologetics and philosophy to defend the concept of truth. And yet we have all these individuals out there who are giving you, you know, standpoint epistemology, or they're giving us a hermeneutic that's called a kingdom hermeneutics, which is a diversity approach to hermeneutics. And their argument is you know, when we get to heaven, every tribe, tongue and nation is going to be there. We want the church on earth to look like the church on heaven. And, you know, in heaven, there's just all these different people, and they're all going to have these different perspectives. And we should just allow those perspectives to be seen in our classrooms, in our interpretation of the Bible. But what they're doing is they're really giving us a form of perspectivalism or a relativistic approach to the concept of truth.
Critique of Hermeneutics Classes Promoting Perspectivalism and Relativistic Truth in Seminaries
And I remember I was listening to this sort of presentation that was given. It was like a doctoral colloquium, and it was held with individuals where one was a professor at Wheaton College and the other two were actually professors at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. So two sort of classic evangelical institutions. And, you know, South Eastern is a Southern Baptist school that went through the conservative resurgence. And they have these guys up there and they're giving this whole approach to hermeneutics where some of the figures on the panel were all sort of Latin American, and they wanted to have this Latin American interpretation of the Bible. And they had another individual on there who was African American, and he was giving his African American interpretation of the Bible. And they were saying, you know, when you guys read the Bible, you miss so many things that our cultures can just see that your culture doesn't see. That's a deeper reflection of what we find in the biblical text itself. And they're going along and the question was raised, well, what about just an objective interpretation of the Bible? And they all scoffed at that concept. They all just gave it up because they were fully committed to different racial perspectives, have different insights into the biblical text that give us different realities. And you must just trust them that it's there. And if you don't trust it, they would label you as a form of a racist or an oppressor, or you affirm this naive understanding of truth and all the rest. And I knew right then and there the answer to my question, where did these guys get it? They got it in their hermeneutics classes.
The Existential Method's Redefinition of Truth and Its Danger to the Christian Gospel
And in the hermeneutics classes, so many people bought into what Shaffer warned us about, namely the existential method, which is this idea that our different perspectives or our existential situations give us not only special insights into, quote, the Bible or into theology, but they can radically redefine what the Bible is saying. So let me give you an example of this, is that the idea is that in the reading of the text, you not only have your special insight into the text. But in the very reading of the text, you're deconstructing and reconstructing that text according to your different perspectives. And we've seen this not only in biblical hermeneutics, but we've seen the entire legal field buy into this. I mean, Derrick Bell made an entire career out of this and landed as a professor at Harvard University and Harvard Law on it. So my whole thesis on this is that a lot of evangelicals listened when Machen warned them in the book Christianity and Liberalism, that theological liberalism is not just another branch of Christianity, but a completely different religion. But we did not listen to Francis Schaeffer, who warned us about the existential method. In fact, we didn't only fail to listen to him, we bought into that exact same method. So when you hear people saying, well, I'm using the hermeneutical spiral, or they're reading Heidegger and Gadamer and they're reading individuals like Jeanine Brown and her communication, or these different relativistic approaches, whether it be speech act theory or narrative approaches, they are buying into the existential method. And when they do that, they give up the concept of an objective word of God.
The Significance of Objective Truth for the Gospel and the Danger of a Relativistic Faith
And for your listeners, I want them to hear what the significance of this is. If there is no objective word of God from the God who speaks, then we don't have a clear understanding of what the gospel of Jesus Christ is. That one true gospel that must be true for all people at all places and all times has to be given to us in order for Christianity to be true and for our ability to communicate that gospel to all people at all times, in all places. But if we have a perspective existential method, then it's a different gospel for different people with different understandings, as it's constantly evolving, namely the dialectic to different people groups. In that sense, what happens is that if you bring an objective idea to the matter, they're going to call you an oppressor. And if we as evangelicals buy into that, then missions is not the liberation of people from their sins. And you know, the beauty of what Paul talks about, about how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news. Rather, we're bringing oppressive news which is completely contrary to the Christian worldview. So they got it from their hermeneutics classes. They bought in the existential method, and it kills the concept of a one true gospel for all people at all times, in all places.
Living Constitutionalism vs. Originalism and the Perilous Application to Biblical Interpretation
Jenna Ellis: And this is so important because, you know, listeners, should be readily familiar with, the living Constitutionalism approach, where, you know, the progressives, like you were saying, would say that the Constitution is a living, breathing document and how we apply it, and we interpret it in 2026 is going to be very different than when the framers initially drafted it and ratified it in 1787. And so we don't. We lose that, authorial intent, you know, the author, the meaning resides with the author. And we lose that original interpretation. We lose the ordinary meaning. And so then the application just becomes however we want to conform it to the outcome that we prefer. And obviously, this is, this is just. Has had disastrous consequences for our justice system and for the legal system. And advocates of originalism, say no, you have to read the document as it was originally intended and all of those principles. And in the same, same way, if we are taking that type of progressive, sort of living document approach to the word of God, that is an even more grievous error.
Personal Interpretations of Scripture and the Pervasiveness of Dialectical Methods in Evangelicalism
because this is, I mean the Bible is not just a written document. It is truly the word of God. And so we, but we can, I think, readily consider, examples of that even just in our own, kind of everyday Christian life. I'm sure that, you know, you've all heard pastors or maybe fellow churchgoers or may even be guilty of this yourself, saying, well, this is, you know, what this, this passage meant to me or, you know, or taking something out of context and saying, well, you know, this is a promise of, of God to me and completely abandoning the correct interpretive approach, originalism and an understanding that the inter. The intent and the meaning, reside with the author who is God himself. And so this has, I can see, you know, just how this has pervaded, evangelical Christianity. And the, the problem that, that you're addressing is even deeper than that. when you're saying, Bill Roach, that this is even being taught in seminaries, I mean just how like the living constitutionalism is taught in law schools. I mean that's, that's how lawyers understand and to interpret the Constitution is through just the, the cases and the opinions of the Supreme Court.
Big Eva's Tactics: CRT, Intersectionality, and the Perversion of the Gospel
After that, I mean, they're taking opinions of people who didn't author the Constitution instead of going to the original document itself. And so how have, how have Christian churches and and particularly, you know, big Eva or big evangelicalism, how have they in practical terms taken this from seminaries and then applied it in the way that they are presenting the gospel? And really it's a perversion of the truth.
Dr. Bill Roach: I'll give you a few examples of it. So you hit it right on the head. This is a tactic of Big Eva to push postmodernism and revolutionary ideas into the church. And I think the biggest example that we remember about it, remember the debate that happened within the Southern Baptist Convention on critical race theory and Resolution 9. And one of the things that they talked about was that critical race theory and intersectionality are, quote, useful analytical tools. That's a fancy way of saying critical race theory, which is this idea that we must expose hidden racism by individuals who are part of the oppressor class. It's a fancy way of saying people who are minorities have special insights into reality and they've been oppressed, and you must believe them, and you must interpret everything according to what they tell you to. And if you don't, then you're a racist, sexist, bigoted homophobe. We've seen this for years on end. And the idea of intersectionality is just adding more layers to that. So maybe it's not just a minority status. It might be, you know, if you are a black woman who came from a Muslim background living in the middle of some third world country, you've got a lot of intersectionality points there. So you're gonna see a lot more areas and aspects of reality that, quote, white Western men who are Christians, quote, don't see, and you can liberate them, but they must just trust you. And if they don't, they're a racist, sexist, bigoted homophobe. Well, when the Southern Baptist Convention passed that resolution, they thought, oh, we're just saying there's useful insights from this. Well, the problem is, is that there are no useful insights to critical race theory for the interpretation of the Bible. Fundamentally, it attacks the concept of true truth and the historical grammatical approach to the biblical text.
Dialectical Theology's Roots in Marxism, Hegel, and Ancient Gnosticism
And if you look at the ways that people reacted to that, if you push back against them, you're saying things like, well, you know, these minorities don't have special insights into the Bible, therefore you're a racist. Or if you don't buy into this, you don't want the church on earth to look like the church in heaven. And they used all of these different kinds of tactics in order to, in essence, tell people to shut up and listen their language, their words. Because you must trust us with what our existential approach to hermeneutics is telling you. And in very practical terms, people then went out and gave entire sermon series on how critical race theory can help you understand the Book of Galatians or Colossians and, you know, the racial dynamics that were taking place within it. Well, no faithful interpreter of the Bible, quote, has ever seen it. Why? Because they're Gnostics into, the text. And that's one of the key things of this, is that critical race theory, when you trace it back, it's dialectical. And the dialectical aspect comes from Marx and Hegel. But then there's a great book that's been put out titled Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition. You're like Hermeticism. What in the world is that? That's old gnostic religion. And James Lindsay was one of the early individuals to point this out, that the attack here is really a revival not of just modern Hegelian philosophy, but it's old Egyptian Gnosticism where they give up the idea of objective truth for, quote, special insights into reality.
Gnosticism vs. Faith and Reason: The Revival of an Ancient Competing Religion
There is no objective revelation because there is no objective concept of revelation. So the old debate between Christians has been, you know, is it faith versus reason? Is it Jerusalem versus Athens? When the fact of the matter is it's not faith against reason, it's Gnosticism against faith and reason. It's not reason or revelation. It's is it Gnosticism versus reason and revelation? So it's not Jerusalem versus Athens, it's Alexandria, the birthplace of this versus Jerusalem and Athens. And that's what I show. The religious nature of this is not just between modern philosophy and contemporary evangelicalism. It's a revival of that old gnostic religion. And in one sense, this is exactly what Moses faced with the Egyptians. These were the exact same figures. And it's just evolved over the time period. And in a modern secular age, it doesn't look like a old classic Egyptian religion. It looks like individuals pushing cultural Marxism, DEI intersectionality, saying that critical race theory is nothing more than the analytical tool, it's the existential method that's found root within our evangelical churches and our evangelical seminaries.
Theological Nature of Political Conflicts and the Capture of Evangelical Institutions
That's why it's such a big deal. It's a competing religion, not just a different perspective.
Jenna Ellis: Yes, and that is a really, really key point because, you know, when we're talking about, you know, the news of the day and whether, the, the communism and the. And the democrat socialists, you know, is a bad form of economic policy, or we're talking about, you know, all of these different policy angles, the left would have you believe, which is not accurate about their position, that this is a completely secular view and that faith should not enter the public square and so Christians, you confine your theology to your churches, they're not doing that themselves. This is a theological viewpoint, it's a doctrinal viewpoint. And they are purposefully trying to tell Christians that it's not, so that we cannot counteract their false views with the actual true truth. And so, so this is so fascinating to me and why revolutions in epistemology eventually, as you argue, become revolutions in doctrine, ethics and institutional missions. And so with the capture of a lot of these evangelical, churches, they now have not only, the Christians they want to excise from the public square, and they're presenting this falsely as if they are just some, you know, secular theorists, but then they actually have evangelicals and so called Christians being apologists within the theological viewpoint of their own theological, premises. And so they, they have essentially, tried to, to capture both views simultaneously. And this is incredibly dangerous.
Counterbalancing Dialectical Tactics: Reclassifying Theological Disagreement as Political Speech
And so as we're, and we're almost up against a break, but I want to ask you this question, before we break Bill Roach, how do we understand as Christians how to counterbalance this and express and explain that this is a theological view, this is the dialectical versus the logos, without, I guess, ah, assenting to the claim that is false by the secularists, that all of these political views and political arguments aren't rooted in any sort of faith or theology. And they try to foreclose our arguments at that initial threshold stage.
Dr. Bill Roach: So I address that in the book and I do it in sort of a unique way. I think we're all familiar with CS Lewis and his book the Screwtape Letters, where he employed satire not as just entertainment, but as a form of moral diagnosis. And you know, by presenting temptation from the vantage point of a senior demon, Lewis exposed how rare, rarely advances through outright denials of truth, but through like subtle acts of reclassification.
The Tactic of Relabeling: Politics in the Church and Theology in the Public Square
So shifting categories, you know, dulling moral perceptions, reframing, you know, vices, virtue and so on and so forth. But one of the things I look at is, is that, you know, when we look at this entire debate, whenever you push back against them, they're saying, well, you're just being political within the church. And you know what's funny is that the real politics says we don't want to be theological, the church says we don't want to be political. And I say they're doing exactly what Screwtape quote, warned us about. And I asked what if theological disagreement for them were no longer answered on theological grounds at all, but reclassified as, quote, political speech? And by labeling these doctrinal claims and moral judgments as political expressions, one could avoid engaging in the substantial questions about truth and orthodoxy and doctrine. And that's exactly what they've done in the political arena. They're going to use this tactic and say, well, you're just doing theology. And they relabel everything as theology. And we can't, quote, have Christianity in the public square. Then when they're inside of, our evangelical institutions, they relabel everything as politics and, quote, we can't bring politics into our institutions. So in both arenas, they have muted the mouths of people trying to say no. These are deep issues about philosophy and epistemology, truth and the doctrine of revelation. So to both of them we have to deny it and say, I know what you're doing. I see the tactics.
Framing the Situation: Denying Dialectical Tactics and Psychological Warfare
I'm not blind to what you're doing. Truth has its place in the public square, whether it's in politics or. Or within the church. Because what they're doing is they're using this as a tactic to make you think, oh my goodness, I really am bringing politics in the church. Or, oh my goodness, I'm really bringing theology into the public square. That's just not permitted today. We have to deny their framing of the situation. And to close, I'll just give, like, a little analogy of this. When a lawyer goes into a courtroom, they must properly frame the situation. And when we walk into a theological classroom or into the public arena, we must properly frame the situation. And when people use these dialectical tactics, they keep us distracted and blurred. It's a form of psychological warfare. It's propaganda to keep us from speaking about these matters. That's why it's so important. That's why we have to see it for what it really is.
Book Promotion: Faith in the Crossfire and the Need for a Response to False Attacks
Jenna Ellis: So well said. And this is why we have to be prepared to give a response, and to understand and be able to, to consider that what, what, defenses and other attacks are happening so that we can respond truthfully and we're not taken in or, caught unaware of how to, get around and simply reject, these false attacks from, from those who are seeking to undermine true truth. So we've gotta take a break here really quickly. But, the book is Faith in the Crossfire. When a Dialectical Revolution Targets Christianity. That title again is Faith in the Crossfire. You can get, this book on Amazon or wherever books are sold. We'll be right back.
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The Ultimate Conflict: Serving the Dialectic Versus Serving the Logos (Jesus Christ)
Jenna Ellis: Welcome back. And I'm talking to Dr. William Roach, Bill Roach on his new book, Faith in the Crossfire. You need to read this. Understand what is happening in our culture with undermining truth, undermining, the very word of God, and how the dialectical method and theology is, capturing evangelical churches. And how this attack, Dr. Roach, is, is actually an attack on Jesus Christ himself being the person of God, the word, the logos.
Dr. Bill Roach: That's exactly what it is. You know, we have this biblical admonition that we find that says, choose ye this day whom you will serve. And one of the things that we find is that you could choose ye this day to serve the dialectic. And what that's going to give you is a philosophy rooted in Hegel, expressed through Marx and Marcuse and Derrick Bell and Kimberly Crenshaw and intersectionality and CRT and all the rest. And we've seen the net effect of that. Or you could choose ye this day whom you're going to serve, and you can serve the Logos, the word of God. And here's what I mean by this. You know, in Jon's gospel, he talks about in the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God. And the word was God. And the Greek term for word is logos. That's what we mean by this. The logos is the creator, the sustainer. That's exactly what the Bible talks about who Jesus Christ is, but the Logos also is the grounds of knowledge. Jesus Christ is unchanging. He orders the world. He orders the world in a way that can be known. And he is the mediator of not only salvation, but he's the mediator of all revelation, which means general revelation and your Bible. So if you think about it, there's a really big difference today that we must look at. Do you want an ordered reality or a disordered reality? Do you want an eternal objective reality or a dynamic, evolving, conflict driven reality? Do you want one that's personal in Jesus Christ or do you want one that's impersonal, namely the dialectic in that regard, do you want one that's going to give you union with God through the mediating work of Jesus Christ, or do you want one where you come to your self realization through some kind of like New age sort of m. Mystical approach in that regard, the point is, is that we must see that buying into the dialectic is buying into something with a capital D that fundamentally attacks the Logos with a capital L, namely Jesus Christ. The view of philosophy, the view of revelation, the view of how salvation has occurred and the end goal of humanity are fundamentally different. And that's what I try to bring out in this book, is that I give a lot of examples of the ways that evangelicals have bought into this dialectical approach or neo orthodox approach or a critical race theory approach where I say they're all the same family. And in doing so they fundamentally attacked the concept of God's creation and the Logos, namely God's creator of all things.
Jenna Ellis: Wow.
Understanding the Times: Reading 'Faith in the Crossfire' for Clarity and Truth
And this is why this is so important that everyone who is listening read this book, get this. I mean Christmas is coming up. This would be a great gift. give someone instead of, you know, something else that they don't need, get them something that they do need, which is an understanding of the times and this this really biblical explanation of what is going on, not only in our institutions of civil society, but also our institutions of in our church and why this is so critical to understand the times. The book is Faith in the Crossfire. When a Dialectical Revolution targets Christianity, you're going to learn a lot about this, and why these modern ideological conflicts are fundamentally theological and epistemological. And you can take this then and be better equipped to actually deal with the headlines, to deal with a knowledge of what's going on, to hopefully give this to your pastor, so that we can ensure that that other pastors are aware of what's going on who may not even be you know, who see some of this standpoint epistemology or you know, this this dialectical method that maybe they themselves haven't even thought through all of this. we need clarity and we also need to preserve the truth and always advocate for the person in of Jesus Christ, the truth of the gospel with clarity, with knowledge, with objective reason, biblical authority and have the path forward so that we always advocate for truth. So Dr. Roach, thank you so much for coming on today. Again the book is Faith in the Crossfire When a Dialectical Revolution targets Christianity.
Book Availability and Contact Information: Faith in the Crossfire and Preborn
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Sponsor Message and Introduction to Biblical Worldview and Government Obligation
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Jenna Ellis: I love talking about the things of God because of truth and the biblical worldview. The U.S. constitution obligates our government to preserve and protect the rights that our founders recognize come from God our creator, not our government.
Theological Perspective on Current Times and the Influence of Shaping Ideas
I believe that scripture in the Bible is very clear that God is the one that raised up each of you, and God has allowed us to be brought here to this specific moment in time. This is Jenna Ellis in the morning.
Jenna Ellis: Good morning. Well, it is Friday, and on Fridays, we tend to do, occasionally a 30,000 foot perspective of issues, that go beyond just the headlines and tie this to the biblical worldview, the truth of the Christian life and how, we need to understand the times. And today. There is a great new book that you absolutely have to read if you are a Christian or if you're listening to this program and you're not a Christian, well, first of all, you should be. And, we would be happy to help you, through that process and also a local church, as well. And, this book is even for you as well, because if you want to understand what is going on in the times and the ideas that are shaping and actually reshaping Western civilization and even the evangelical church, we talk a lot in the headlines about, the Democrat socialists or about affordability or about open borders or about the, the pro life, versus, you know, feminist perspective, you know, all of these seemingly, different ideas. The LGBTQ movement, for example, that, that seem to be completely separate issues that activists care about. But in reality, a lot of them are connected.
Introducing the Book 'Faith in the Crossfire' and Its Focus on Christian Faith Under Attack
And their philosophical and even theological roots of these movements are intentionally trying to reshape the meaning of truth, undermine faith in scripture, and even undermine the church. So the book is titled Faith in the Crossfire When a Dialectical Revolution Targets Christianity. And this is by, my good friend Bill Roach, and he joins us now. and, Dr. Bill Roach is the dean of the Norm Geisler School of Apologetics at Veritas International University. We've, talked to him previously about Christian nationalism, about a, lot of different important theological topics. And so, Bill, I'm so grateful that you joined us, for this today. So give us an overview of how this book is targeting what, views and philosophy in our modern post truth society is trying to, to undermine when it comes to the reality to which God has presented us to.
Dr. Bill Roach: Well, thank you, Jenna, for having me on. I really appreciate it. And like I've said, I deeply appreciate your friendship and all that you've done to help get this book out and all that you do for the sake of defending the historic Christian faith and the biblical worldview.
The Historical Battle for the Bible and the Defense of Scriptural Inerrancy
And, you know, this topic, Faith in the Crossfire, is something that has been a book that I've hypothetically been working on for, almost two decades. And the reason I say that is, is that I have been committed to defending the total truthfulness or the inerrancy of the word of God with several scholars. And this just seemed to be the next logical step. And let me tell you exactly what I mean by this and how this came about and why it's important is that, you know, within the last hundred years, evangelicalism has truly had what was known as a battle for the Bible. And Harold Linzel wrote the book titled the Battle for the Bible, and he talks about what happens when institutions and churches drift away from the authority of scripture and from the concept of truth. And in response to that, we had what was known as the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy. And figures such as R.C. sproul and Norman Geisler and Carl F.H. henry and Francis Schaeffer and Jon Gerstner, all these key figures that we look at as classic evangelicals came together to explain what do we mean by the concept of inerrancy, and what do we not mean by the concept of inerrancy? And how I got into this is that my mentor was Dr. Norman Geisler. And Dr. Geisler was more than just a mentor to me. He was almost like a father to me. And a number of years ago we put out a different book titled Defending Inerrancy. And we worked really closely with R.C. sproul and J.I. packer to put this book out. And it's because at that time we saw a trend happening within our evangelical institutions where they were starting to question the inerrancy of the Bible again. And some people were doing with outright attacks, but others were doing it with these sort of hidden little philosophical tricks today, really through different approaches to interpreting the Bible. So they weren't just attacking the Bible itself, they were attacking the historic methods of interpreting the Bible known as hermeneutics. And we put that book out as a response to it in much of, the same way that we argue that the Constitution should be interpreted according to the intent of the Framers.
The Rise of Woke Hermeneutics and the Birth of the Book 'Faith in the Crossfire'
We said the Chicago statement should be two. Well, since then, the battle has just continued to rage because at that time, the issue of woke hermeneutics and the rise of this existential methodology, it was always there, but it came to the forefront. And we've all seen that. We saw as evangelical institutions, parachurch organizations, churches, they all went woke for the last 10 years. And that's what gave birth to this book. It was the idea that I want to stand with classic evangelicals and defend not only just the concept of truth, but the concept of true truth. And that's a phrase that comes from Francis Schaeffer. I don't want to have woke truth. I don't want to have existential truth. I don't want to have some kind of perspectival truth. I want true truth, namely that which corresponds with reality. That's what gave birth to it. Seeing it firsthand in our institutions, with conversations with people across the country on this issue. I said, somebody has to write this book. And that's what gave birth to this book.
Critique of Subjective Truth and the Undermining of Objective Reality by Dialectical Approaches
Jenna Ellis: That's. That's incredible. And, it's so important to have the, have the true truth. And if listeners are thinking, well, of course we have the truth. I mean, what else is there? you can see how much this dialectic has really undermined true truth in favor of a standpoint, epistemology, or just a perspective. When we have this view of my truth versus your truth, and well, I'm just speaking my truth. It's this framework that truth is subjective and that everyone's individual experience can lead them to different conclusions about reality. And that somehow, simultaneously, we all can coexist in alternate universes, basically, and alternate views of, of morality, of anthropology, of theology, of, morality. I mean, all of these questions that.
Central Thesis: Conflict Between Logos and Dialectic in Contemporary Society
That go into what builds and undergirds a society. And we're seeing so because of all of this, so much collapse in real time. And so just to kind of set the table though, before we get too far into this, ah, you explain in kind of your central thesis that the contemporary conflict is deeper than partisan politics. And it's a conflict between the logos and the dialectic. And so when we use this term, the dialectic, and I've heard you Know, James Lindsay and, you know, other, philosophers kind of use this term.
Defining Dialectic: From Rhetoric to Hegelian and Marxist Contradictions
Can you define that and what it means so that when people hear that, they're processing and understanding what exactly it is we're referring to?
Dr. Bill Roach: Yes, what it is is it's this concept that has really been birthed in different eras of philosophy. First of all, there are different time periods that use dialectic. Sometimes it's just a way of just talking about rhetoric and how to reason properly. That's an old school, sort of Aristotelian form of dialectic. But what happened is that the term was radically changed with a man named Hegel. And Hegel is a German philosopher. And what he tried to do is he tried to say that ideas evolve and grow through contradictions, trying to overcome with some kind of middle position. So he would label it as you have a thesis and an antithesis that's always reconciled through a synthesis. And what that does is it actually makes the concept of truth evolutionary. It's evolving. The concept of truth is constantly progressing towards some type of end. And for him, it was a type of utopian end. And Marx was also a dialectical theologian in many respects. He wasn't just an economist. And what he was arguing for was having this thesis antithesis constantly pit against one another to find Mr. Middleman leading towards his utopia. Now, I want to break this down in a very common example that I try to give with people like this. You know, these terms are heady, they're philosophical. But I think everybody in the United States is familiar with, you know, the.
The Dialectical Method as a Revolutionary Tactic: From Football to Social and Theological Control
The game of football. We all watch it. Sunday afternoons, we watch college football, professional football. And we all realize that you have two teams that are going against one another that are trying to run the ball down to their goal. And think of it like this. You have on the field, you have, say, one team versus the other team. But what if you had another group of individuals there, almost like the refs in this regard, and they were pitting the two teams against one another with the goal that they could run the ball down into the end zone. And this is exactly what goes on, is that you have a thesis and an antithesis. Think of it as the two different teams that are constantly fighting against one another. And when people get distracted by that, they just push the ball down a little more. Namely, the refs push the ball down a little bit more. And that's exactly what I'm talking about that goes on here is that people will pit classes of people against one another or ideas against one another in order to achieve the end goal of revolution. And we've seen this, we see this with things like classic Marxism where they pit the rich versus the poor in order to have a collectivism to control society. We've seen this during the time of 2020 where people didn't just pit the rich and poor against one another, they pit social classes against one another. Black versus white, the oppressed versus the oppressor. And what did it always lead towards? More control against individuals as they ran their ideas through. And what I'm saying is, is that these things not only happened politically, they've happened philosophically, and they've happened theologically. And theologically, this movement, this Mr. Middleman controlling movement, is what's known as dialectical theology.
Contrasting Dialectical Evolution of Truth with the Fixed, Eternal Truth of the Bible
And it just dominated the last century of theology. And evangelicals have actually bought into it more than they have rejected it. So that's a simple explanation of it. We can go into a lot more depth with it.
Jenna Ellis: Yeah, and two really important points that I just want to underscore that you said is that this dialectical, philosophy is a view that truth continually evolves. And so this is the contrast and the complete opposite of what the biblical actual true truth worldview says. Where we know that truth is fixed. It's a fixed point of reference, is the person of Jesus Christ who is the same yesterday, today and forever. I mean, the, the consistency of the character, nature and person of God is replete throughout Scripture. And we know that truth does not change.
Distinguishing Genuine Debate from Dialectical Theory's Denial of Binaries and Objective Truth
Now we can apply truth to various situations, but, the nature of truth does not change. And so when we're talking about the word of God versus this dialectical theory, that's a really important, just basic point to know difference. And the second thing, that I want to underscore as well is that, how the, the Marxist and the Haglian theories are practically working themselves out. We've talked about Marxist theory, a lot of the oppressor versus the oppressed. And you know, how they, they pit these two groups together, as you mentioned, to kind of move toward the middle. And so contrast that though, how the dialectical theory, pits those two groups to move toward the middle and advance their non truth or false worldview versus a genuine debate of ideas? Because I think a lot of people in hearing that might wonder, okay, well, don't conservatives do the same things when we say we want, you know, more speech and that, that good ideas will override bad ideas? And so we do see some contrast, but that's very distinct from what the dialectical theory is.
Dr. Bill Roach: So what the dialectical theory fundamentally affirms is that nobody's position is correct. What they're trying to do is they're trying to deny what are known as binaries out there. And whatever the synthesis is. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis, that's just a temporary placeholder. We're never actually landing in the place of truth, even when the dialectic occurs. Because think of it as. It's not just one instance. It's almost an infinite number of instances where this takes place. So you'll have the first thesis, antithesis that's reconciled through synthesis. That synthesis becomes a thesis that then requires an antithesis with another synthesis. And it just keeps going and going and going. And what you'll find is that where this becomes readily apparent is that the Christian worldview would say, sometimes we can meet in the middle on something, whether politically or theologically.
The Nature of Truth and God's Unchanging Character Versus Evolving Ideologies Like Marxism
But that meeting in the middle is not the denying of truth. It's actually the acceptance of truth. That's actually where we say reality is found. So when we look at a position where two individuals rightly disagree, when we are reconciling those differences, we're actually coming to an agreement on the concept of truth. We recognize that either I'm right and you're wrong, or you're right and I'm wrong, or somebody else is right and we're both wrong. But we're not arguing that truth is evolving or that these different irreconcilable positions are both true and halfway middle positions. We're arguing that there's one theology of the Bible, one reality that God has given to us. And the reason for it is, is that it's not just that the Bible is true. It's, that the God who gives us the Bible is wholly true. God's nature is truth. God's nature is unchanging. And when God creates, creation reflects the Creator in every sense of the term like that. Obviously, creation's finite and it's been given over to the fall. But it's also given by the unchanging God who upholds creation and upholds His Word and allows human beings to know both creation and His Word, to know true truth. And what you'll find is, is that a lot of people in a generation that might be our parents or our grandparents generation, they were readily against Marxism. They saw exactly for what it was. And the revolutions that they tried to bring about were nothing more than the syntheses. But in contemporary American society, we do have a lot of Marxists. I'm not going to deny that but the thing about Marxism is that it's an ever evolving ideology that needs a host to. And if the Marxists weren't able to get the United States in particular with the exact same categories that it did in say, Russia or other countries, it evolved.
Cultural Marxism, DEI, and Pride Flags: The Evolution and Impact on Truth
And the way that it did it is it did it by turning it into a cultural Marxism. So instead of just pitting the rich versus the poor, they did it on a racialist lines or on a feminist line or some kind of gender line. And that's where we see it today. And in fact, when you look at the COVID of the book, there's a hidden way of understanding this. The icon that's on the front of it, the spiral that's actually the dialectic. But the coloration of it is actually an admixture of pride colors showing that it's continuing to evolve into cultural Marxism. And that's where people see it today. Everybody here today is giving up the concept of truth when they're flying pride flags, or buying into this entire movement because they're buying into cultural Marxism, which fundamentally gives up the concept of truth. So it evolves in our different eras. So our generation maybe doesn't buy into classic old Marxism as much, but a lot of evangelicals have bought into cultural Marxism. And that's why I wrote the book. I wanted people to see the full connection between the dialectic Marxism, cultural Marxism and all the rest of the.
Jenna Ellis: And that's so incredibly important that, the debates that conservatives have, and when we say, you know, the good ideas will outweigh the bad ideas, that is an explicitly, moral premise to say that there is a distinction between good and evil, right and wrong, and there is an objective universal standard by which we determine that. And we actually say there is a winner and loser of debates and that we can, can arrive to true truth and we can have a conclusion about what ideas are right and what ideas are wrong. Where the dialectic will say, well, nobody's right.
The Pervasive Influence of Dialectical Methodology Undermining Truth and Western Civilization
And this goes back to, you know, well, my truth, my experience, is, is right for me. And that may not be your preference, but whatever is right for you and no judgment. And you know, we can, we have so many examples of how this has, this methodology has pervaded our culture and it is undermining truth and it's undermining, Western civilization and all of the values like, justice, like fairness, like morality, that are essential to a moral and upright society, that are a necessity for law and order. You have to say what is right, what is permissible what is required versus what is prohibited in a society. And so for the church to be embracing this on any level is really dangerous.
Book Promotion: Faith in the Crossfire and its Author Dr. Bill Roach
And we've got to take a break here. Dr. Bill Roach, but, he's going to stay with us throughout the program. And again, the book is called Faith in the Crossfire. When a Dialectical Revolution Targets Christianity by William Roach. you can get that on Amazon wherever books are sold. Faith in the Crossfire. And we will be right back.
Dr. Bill Roach: Foreign.
Listener Support Appeal and Welcome Back to Jenna Ellis in the Morning
Jenna Ellis: Hi, I'm Jenna Ellis. Did you know that this content is listener supported? Without people like you, this podcast would not exist. And that's why we need you. A generous monthly gift of any amount will help sustain American Family Radio and specifically this podcast. Please consider becoming a monthly financial partner today by visiting afr.net forward slgive that's afr.net give ah, welcome back to Jenna Ellis in the Morning on American Family Radio.
Jenna Ellis: Welcome back. I'm still here with my special guest, Dr. William Roach, who is the author of this brand new book called Faith in the Crossfire. When a Dialectical Revolution Targets Christianity.
The Evangelical Church's Embrace of Dialectical Theology and Relativistic Truth
And this is a defense of objective truth at the Christian worldview against this dialectical movement that is reshaping Western culture and also, really alarmingly, the evangelical church. And so I want to go into that more now that we've, defined the dialectical movement, by contrast to truth and the biblical worldview, and how the dialectical movement, is attempting to say that there is no truth and, there is no way that we can reason, our way to an answer and to a conclusion. how has the evangelical church been hoodwinked into accepting this replacement, of a dialectical theology instead of the biblical worldview?
Dr. Bill Roach: So for a number of years now, I have tried to raise that exact question with people. And a lot of people have thought, well, you know, these evangelicals bought into this because they got it from, you know, the universities or the culture. That's completely correct. I can't deny that a lot of students coming in picked it up. But the real question is, how did their professors get it? Because if you think about it, you know, within the last 50 years, evangelicals have done a lot of work in apologetics and philosophy to defend the concept of truth. And yet we have all these individuals out there who are giving you, you know, standpoint epistemology, or they're giving us a hermeneutic that's called a kingdom hermeneutics, which is a diversity approach to hermeneutics. And their argument is you know, when we get to heaven, every tribe, tongue and nation is going to be there. We want the church on earth to look like the church on heaven. And, you know, in heaven, there's just all these different people, and they're all going to have these different perspectives. And we should just allow those perspectives to be seen in our classrooms, in our interpretation of the Bible. But what they're doing is they're really giving us a form of perspectivalism or a relativistic approach to the concept of truth.
Critique of Hermeneutics Classes Promoting Perspectivalism and Relativistic Truth in Seminaries
And I remember I was listening to this sort of presentation that was given. It was like a doctoral colloquium, and it was held with individuals where one was a professor at Wheaton College and the other two were actually professors at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. So two sort of classic evangelical institutions. And, you know, South Eastern is a Southern Baptist school that went through the conservative resurgence. And they have these guys up there and they're giving this whole approach to hermeneutics where some of the figures on the panel were all sort of Latin American, and they wanted to have this Latin American interpretation of the Bible. And they had another individual on there who was African American, and he was giving his African American interpretation of the Bible. And they were saying, you know, when you guys read the Bible, you miss so many things that our cultures can just see that your culture doesn't see. That's a deeper reflection of what we find in the biblical text itself. And they're going along and the question was raised, well, what about just an objective interpretation of the Bible? And they all scoffed at that concept. They all just gave it up because they were fully committed to different racial perspectives, have different insights into the biblical text that give us different realities. And you must just trust them that it's there. And if you don't trust it, they would label you as a form of a racist or an oppressor, or you affirm this naive understanding of truth and all the rest. And I knew right then and there the answer to my question, where did these guys get it? They got it in their hermeneutics classes.
The Existential Method's Redefinition of Truth and Its Danger to the Christian Gospel
And in the hermeneutics classes, so many people bought into what Shaffer warned us about, namely the existential method, which is this idea that our different perspectives or our existential situations give us not only special insights into, quote, the Bible or into theology, but they can radically redefine what the Bible is saying. So let me give you an example of this, is that the idea is that in the reading of the text, you not only have your special insight into the text. But in the very reading of the text, you're deconstructing and reconstructing that text according to your different perspectives. And we've seen this not only in biblical hermeneutics, but we've seen the entire legal field buy into this. I mean, Derrick Bell made an entire career out of this and landed as a professor at Harvard University and Harvard Law on it. So my whole thesis on this is that a lot of evangelicals listened when Machen warned them in the book Christianity and Liberalism, that theological liberalism is not just another branch of Christianity, but a completely different religion. But we did not listen to Francis Schaeffer, who warned us about the existential method. In fact, we didn't only fail to listen to him, we bought into that exact same method. So when you hear people saying, well, I'm using the hermeneutical spiral, or they're reading Heidegger and Gadamer and they're reading individuals like Jeanine Brown and her communication, or these different relativistic approaches, whether it be speech act theory or narrative approaches, they are buying into the existential method. And when they do that, they give up the concept of an objective word of God.
The Significance of Objective Truth for the Gospel and the Danger of a Relativistic Faith
And for your listeners, I want them to hear what the significance of this is. If there is no objective word of God from the God who speaks, then we don't have a clear understanding of what the gospel of Jesus Christ is. That one true gospel that must be true for all people at all places and all times has to be given to us in order for Christianity to be true and for our ability to communicate that gospel to all people at all times, in all places. But if we have a perspective existential method, then it's a different gospel for different people with different understandings, as it's constantly evolving, namely the dialectic to different people groups. In that sense, what happens is that if you bring an objective idea to the matter, they're going to call you an oppressor. And if we as evangelicals buy into that, then missions is not the liberation of people from their sins. And you know, the beauty of what Paul talks about, about how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news. Rather, we're bringing oppressive news which is completely contrary to the Christian worldview. So they got it from their hermeneutics classes. They bought in the existential method, and it kills the concept of a one true gospel for all people at all times, in all places.
Living Constitutionalism vs. Originalism and the Perilous Application to Biblical Interpretation
Jenna Ellis: And this is so important because, you know, listeners, should be readily familiar with, the living Constitutionalism approach, where, you know, the progressives, like you were saying, would say that the Constitution is a living, breathing document and how we apply it, and we interpret it in 2026 is going to be very different than when the framers initially drafted it and ratified it in 1787. And so we don't. We lose that, authorial intent, you know, the author, the meaning resides with the author. And we lose that original interpretation. We lose the ordinary meaning. And so then the application just becomes however we want to conform it to the outcome that we prefer. And obviously, this is, this is just. Has had disastrous consequences for our justice system and for the legal system. And advocates of originalism, say no, you have to read the document as it was originally intended and all of those principles. And in the same, same way, if we are taking that type of progressive, sort of living document approach to the word of God, that is an even more grievous error.
Personal Interpretations of Scripture and the Pervasiveness of Dialectical Methods in Evangelicalism
because this is, I mean the Bible is not just a written document. It is truly the word of God. And so we, but we can, I think, readily consider, examples of that even just in our own, kind of everyday Christian life. I'm sure that, you know, you've all heard pastors or maybe fellow churchgoers or may even be guilty of this yourself, saying, well, this is, you know, what this, this passage meant to me or, you know, or taking something out of context and saying, well, you know, this is a promise of, of God to me and completely abandoning the correct interpretive approach, originalism and an understanding that the inter. The intent and the meaning, reside with the author who is God himself. And so this has, I can see, you know, just how this has pervaded, evangelical Christianity. And the, the problem that, that you're addressing is even deeper than that. when you're saying, Bill Roach, that this is even being taught in seminaries, I mean just how like the living constitutionalism is taught in law schools. I mean that's, that's how lawyers understand and to interpret the Constitution is through just the, the cases and the opinions of the Supreme Court.
Big Eva's Tactics: CRT, Intersectionality, and the Perversion of the Gospel
After that, I mean, they're taking opinions of people who didn't author the Constitution instead of going to the original document itself. And so how have, how have Christian churches and and particularly, you know, big Eva or big evangelicalism, how have they in practical terms taken this from seminaries and then applied it in the way that they are presenting the gospel? And really it's a perversion of the truth.
Dr. Bill Roach: I'll give you a few examples of it. So you hit it right on the head. This is a tactic of Big Eva to push postmodernism and revolutionary ideas into the church. And I think the biggest example that we remember about it, remember the debate that happened within the Southern Baptist Convention on critical race theory and Resolution 9. And one of the things that they talked about was that critical race theory and intersectionality are, quote, useful analytical tools. That's a fancy way of saying critical race theory, which is this idea that we must expose hidden racism by individuals who are part of the oppressor class. It's a fancy way of saying people who are minorities have special insights into reality and they've been oppressed, and you must believe them, and you must interpret everything according to what they tell you to. And if you don't, then you're a racist, sexist, bigoted homophobe. We've seen this for years on end. And the idea of intersectionality is just adding more layers to that. So maybe it's not just a minority status. It might be, you know, if you are a black woman who came from a Muslim background living in the middle of some third world country, you've got a lot of intersectionality points there. So you're gonna see a lot more areas and aspects of reality that, quote, white Western men who are Christians, quote, don't see, and you can liberate them, but they must just trust you. And if they don't, they're a racist, sexist, bigoted homophobe. Well, when the Southern Baptist Convention passed that resolution, they thought, oh, we're just saying there's useful insights from this. Well, the problem is, is that there are no useful insights to critical race theory for the interpretation of the Bible. Fundamentally, it attacks the concept of true truth and the historical grammatical approach to the biblical text.
Dialectical Theology's Roots in Marxism, Hegel, and Ancient Gnosticism
And if you look at the ways that people reacted to that, if you push back against them, you're saying things like, well, you know, these minorities don't have special insights into the Bible, therefore you're a racist. Or if you don't buy into this, you don't want the church on earth to look like the church in heaven. And they used all of these different kinds of tactics in order to, in essence, tell people to shut up and listen their language, their words. Because you must trust us with what our existential approach to hermeneutics is telling you. And in very practical terms, people then went out and gave entire sermon series on how critical race theory can help you understand the Book of Galatians or Colossians and, you know, the racial dynamics that were taking place within it. Well, no faithful interpreter of the Bible, quote, has ever seen it. Why? Because they're Gnostics into, the text. And that's one of the key things of this, is that critical race theory, when you trace it back, it's dialectical. And the dialectical aspect comes from Marx and Hegel. But then there's a great book that's been put out titled Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition. You're like Hermeticism. What in the world is that? That's old gnostic religion. And James Lindsay was one of the early individuals to point this out, that the attack here is really a revival not of just modern Hegelian philosophy, but it's old Egyptian Gnosticism where they give up the idea of objective truth for, quote, special insights into reality.
Gnosticism vs. Faith and Reason: The Revival of an Ancient Competing Religion
There is no objective revelation because there is no objective concept of revelation. So the old debate between Christians has been, you know, is it faith versus reason? Is it Jerusalem versus Athens? When the fact of the matter is it's not faith against reason, it's Gnosticism against faith and reason. It's not reason or revelation. It's is it Gnosticism versus reason and revelation? So it's not Jerusalem versus Athens, it's Alexandria, the birthplace of this versus Jerusalem and Athens. And that's what I show. The religious nature of this is not just between modern philosophy and contemporary evangelicalism. It's a revival of that old gnostic religion. And in one sense, this is exactly what Moses faced with the Egyptians. These were the exact same figures. And it's just evolved over the time period. And in a modern secular age, it doesn't look like a old classic Egyptian religion. It looks like individuals pushing cultural Marxism, DEI intersectionality, saying that critical race theory is nothing more than the analytical tool, it's the existential method that's found root within our evangelical churches and our evangelical seminaries.
Theological Nature of Political Conflicts and the Capture of Evangelical Institutions
That's why it's such a big deal. It's a competing religion, not just a different perspective.
Jenna Ellis: Yes, and that is a really, really key point because, you know, when we're talking about, you know, the news of the day and whether, the, the communism and the. And the democrat socialists, you know, is a bad form of economic policy, or we're talking about, you know, all of these different policy angles, the left would have you believe, which is not accurate about their position, that this is a completely secular view and that faith should not enter the public square and so Christians, you confine your theology to your churches, they're not doing that themselves. This is a theological viewpoint, it's a doctrinal viewpoint. And they are purposefully trying to tell Christians that it's not, so that we cannot counteract their false views with the actual true truth. And so, so this is so fascinating to me and why revolutions in epistemology eventually, as you argue, become revolutions in doctrine, ethics and institutional missions. And so with the capture of a lot of these evangelical, churches, they now have not only, the Christians they want to excise from the public square, and they're presenting this falsely as if they are just some, you know, secular theorists, but then they actually have evangelicals and so called Christians being apologists within the theological viewpoint of their own theological, premises. And so they, they have essentially, tried to, to capture both views simultaneously. And this is incredibly dangerous.
Counterbalancing Dialectical Tactics: Reclassifying Theological Disagreement as Political Speech
And so as we're, and we're almost up against a break, but I want to ask you this question, before we break Bill Roach, how do we understand as Christians how to counterbalance this and express and explain that this is a theological view, this is the dialectical versus the logos, without, I guess, ah, assenting to the claim that is false by the secularists, that all of these political views and political arguments aren't rooted in any sort of faith or theology. And they try to foreclose our arguments at that initial threshold stage.
Dr. Bill Roach: So I address that in the book and I do it in sort of a unique way. I think we're all familiar with CS Lewis and his book the Screwtape Letters, where he employed satire not as just entertainment, but as a form of moral diagnosis. And you know, by presenting temptation from the vantage point of a senior demon, Lewis exposed how rare, rarely advances through outright denials of truth, but through like subtle acts of reclassification.
The Tactic of Relabeling: Politics in the Church and Theology in the Public Square
So shifting categories, you know, dulling moral perceptions, reframing, you know, vices, virtue and so on and so forth. But one of the things I look at is, is that, you know, when we look at this entire debate, whenever you push back against them, they're saying, well, you're just being political within the church. And you know what's funny is that the real politics says we don't want to be theological, the church says we don't want to be political. And I say they're doing exactly what Screwtape quote, warned us about. And I asked what if theological disagreement for them were no longer answered on theological grounds at all, but reclassified as, quote, political speech? And by labeling these doctrinal claims and moral judgments as political expressions, one could avoid engaging in the substantial questions about truth and orthodoxy and doctrine. And that's exactly what they've done in the political arena. They're going to use this tactic and say, well, you're just doing theology. And they relabel everything as theology. And we can't, quote, have Christianity in the public square. Then when they're inside of, our evangelical institutions, they relabel everything as politics and, quote, we can't bring politics into our institutions. So in both arenas, they have muted the mouths of people trying to say no. These are deep issues about philosophy and epistemology, truth and the doctrine of revelation. So to both of them we have to deny it and say, I know what you're doing. I see the tactics.
Framing the Situation: Denying Dialectical Tactics and Psychological Warfare
I'm not blind to what you're doing. Truth has its place in the public square, whether it's in politics or. Or within the church. Because what they're doing is they're using this as a tactic to make you think, oh my goodness, I really am bringing politics in the church. Or, oh my goodness, I'm really bringing theology into the public square. That's just not permitted today. We have to deny their framing of the situation. And to close, I'll just give, like, a little analogy of this. When a lawyer goes into a courtroom, they must properly frame the situation. And when we walk into a theological classroom or into the public arena, we must properly frame the situation. And when people use these dialectical tactics, they keep us distracted and blurred. It's a form of psychological warfare. It's propaganda to keep us from speaking about these matters. That's why it's so important. That's why we have to see it for what it really is.
Book Promotion: Faith in the Crossfire and the Need for a Response to False Attacks
Jenna Ellis: So well said. And this is why we have to be prepared to give a response, and to understand and be able to, to consider that what, what, defenses and other attacks are happening so that we can respond truthfully and we're not taken in or, caught unaware of how to, get around and simply reject, these false attacks from, from those who are seeking to undermine true truth. So we've gotta take a break here really quickly. But, the book is Faith in the Crossfire. When a Dialectical Revolution Targets Christianity. That title again is Faith in the Crossfire. You can get, this book on Amazon or wherever books are sold. We'll be right back.
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The Ultimate Conflict: Serving the Dialectic Versus Serving the Logos (Jesus Christ)
Jenna Ellis: Welcome back. And I'm talking to Dr. William Roach, Bill Roach on his new book, Faith in the Crossfire. You need to read this. Understand what is happening in our culture with undermining truth, undermining, the very word of God, and how the dialectical method and theology is, capturing evangelical churches. And how this attack, Dr. Roach, is, is actually an attack on Jesus Christ himself being the person of God, the word, the logos.
Dr. Bill Roach: That's exactly what it is. You know, we have this biblical admonition that we find that says, choose ye this day whom you will serve. And one of the things that we find is that you could choose ye this day to serve the dialectic. And what that's going to give you is a philosophy rooted in Hegel, expressed through Marx and Marcuse and Derrick Bell and Kimberly Crenshaw and intersectionality and CRT and all the rest. And we've seen the net effect of that. Or you could choose ye this day whom you're going to serve, and you can serve the Logos, the word of God. And here's what I mean by this. You know, in Jon's gospel, he talks about in the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God. And the word was God. And the Greek term for word is logos. That's what we mean by this. The logos is the creator, the sustainer. That's exactly what the Bible talks about who Jesus Christ is, but the Logos also is the grounds of knowledge. Jesus Christ is unchanging. He orders the world. He orders the world in a way that can be known. And he is the mediator of not only salvation, but he's the mediator of all revelation, which means general revelation and your Bible. So if you think about it, there's a really big difference today that we must look at. Do you want an ordered reality or a disordered reality? Do you want an eternal objective reality or a dynamic, evolving, conflict driven reality? Do you want one that's personal in Jesus Christ or do you want one that's impersonal, namely the dialectic in that regard, do you want one that's going to give you union with God through the mediating work of Jesus Christ, or do you want one where you come to your self realization through some kind of like New age sort of m. Mystical approach in that regard, the point is, is that we must see that buying into the dialectic is buying into something with a capital D that fundamentally attacks the Logos with a capital L, namely Jesus Christ. The view of philosophy, the view of revelation, the view of how salvation has occurred and the end goal of humanity are fundamentally different. And that's what I try to bring out in this book, is that I give a lot of examples of the ways that evangelicals have bought into this dialectical approach or neo orthodox approach or a critical race theory approach where I say they're all the same family. And in doing so they fundamentally attacked the concept of God's creation and the Logos, namely God's creator of all things.
Jenna Ellis: Wow.
Understanding the Times: Reading 'Faith in the Crossfire' for Clarity and Truth
And this is why this is so important that everyone who is listening read this book, get this. I mean Christmas is coming up. This would be a great gift. give someone instead of, you know, something else that they don't need, get them something that they do need, which is an understanding of the times and this this really biblical explanation of what is going on, not only in our institutions of civil society, but also our institutions of in our church and why this is so critical to understand the times. The book is Faith in the Crossfire. When a Dialectical Revolution targets Christianity, you're going to learn a lot about this, and why these modern ideological conflicts are fundamentally theological and epistemological. And you can take this then and be better equipped to actually deal with the headlines, to deal with a knowledge of what's going on, to hopefully give this to your pastor, so that we can ensure that that other pastors are aware of what's going on who may not even be you know, who see some of this standpoint epistemology or you know, this this dialectical method that maybe they themselves haven't even thought through all of this. we need clarity and we also need to preserve the truth and always advocate for the person in of Jesus Christ, the truth of the gospel with clarity, with knowledge, with objective reason, biblical authority and have the path forward so that we always advocate for truth. So Dr. Roach, thank you so much for coming on today. Again the book is Faith in the Crossfire When a Dialectical Revolution targets Christianity.
Book Availability and Contact Information: Faith in the Crossfire and Preborn
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Jenna Ellis speaks with Dr. William Roach about his new book, Faith in the Crossfire: When a Dialectical Revolution Targets Christianity. They explore the philosophical and theological implications of dialectical thought and how it undermines the biblical worldview. Dr. Roach discusses the historical context of evangelicalism's struggle with truth and the dangers of adopting cultural Marxism within the church. Tune in to understand the critical battle for objective truth in today's society and the urgent need for Christians to defend their faith against contemporary challenges.
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