Canon Continued

Hello, everyone. Today is Thursday, June the 22nd. I'm Ryan Hill.

I'm John Galantis. You're listening to Clearview Today with Dr. Abbadan Shah, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. You can visit us online at ClearviewTodayShow.com. Or if you have any questions for Dr. Shah or suggestions for new topics, send us a text to 252-582-5028, or you can email us at contact at ClearviewTodayShow.com. That's right. You guys can help us keep this conversation going by supporting the podcast, sharing it online, leaving us a good review on iTunes or Spotify, anywhere you get your podcasting content from.

We're going to leave a link in the description below so you can do just that. The verse of the day today comes from Isaiah 52, verse 7. How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who proclaims peace, who brings glad tidings of good things. Have you ever seen my feet? I have. They're not beautiful.

They are if you do these things. I was going to say, the gospel says... You know what's funny? I've always made fun of that verse, not because...

I mean, it was like an awkwardly phrase, like, how beautiful are the feet. But reading Isaiah... And I always thought this was something that like Jesus said. I never realized it was an Isaiah. It was like a prophecy. Reading the rest of Isaiah and putting it into context really brings out the poeticism in a lot of these prophetic books, especially Isaiah. It has so much poetry in it and so much beauty is what I was going to say. How beautiful upon the mountain are the feet of him who brings good news. That's what we're doing here with this radio show right now.

That's right. And it just makes me think, like, what do you bring into a situation? When you walk into a situation, when you walk into a conversation, what do people take out of the interaction? Are they brought down? Are they discouraged? Are they left feeling low?

Are they encouraged? Are they brought closer to who Jesus is by your interaction with them? It's just kind of like a gut check for me. Like, where am I? What am I doing? And what am I bringing to people?

Am I being an extension of the gospel in those conversations? We're so focused on what we get out of interactions. And we're so focused on what we can take from them and how I can benefit from them. What can I learn from it?

But what are you giving to the interactions? It's like you said, what are people taking out of the conversations they have with you? What do they walk away feeling? What do they walk away thinking about you or about Christ or who he is or where they are in their lives?

That's a great point. My teeth hurt. Well I think, really, the lack of your teeth hurt. My face hurts.

How are you doing? My teeth hurts. I haven't had anything solid since Monday. I had the teeth out on Monday. Today's Thursday.

Yeah, at the time of this recording. So I'm bad. That's a lot of soup. I've been eating a lot of soup, a lot of yogurt, a lot of cottage cheese. You're doing okay? You seem fine. I mean, outwardly, you seem okay. No, I'm fine. They gave me some medicine.

So I was really afraid. The last time we talked about it, when did we talk about it? We talked about it on Friday of last week. Yeah. Thank you guys for praying for Jon, by the way. We got those messages.

Very appreciated. I was terrified of the anesthesia. Yeah. How was that experience? So I'll tell you exactly how it was. I was in there, my heart was hammering and I was asking questions. I was like, what is it going to feel like? They were efficient.

I'll say that. They were not very comfortable. They weren't like, oh sweetie, it's going to be...

They were very efficient. They were like, hey, it'll be just fine. The doctor will be in a minute and we'll get it going and you'll be fine.

Do you need anything? I'm like, I really don't want to do this. Some reassurance would be great. So then the doctor came in and he was like, hi, I'm Dr. So-and-so. And he said, listen, we've got a couple of things that we're going to get ready.

We're going to just check a couple of things. And then in a couple of minutes, we're going to get the anesthesia process started. I was like, okay.

I was on my couch at home. Literally. It really does happen that fast. It's the craziest thing. Because a lot of times you think about falling asleep and there's sort of this process where you're kind of groggy. I was scared that I was going to lose consciousness and then realize that I was losing consciousness and then fight against it and then feel like I'm drowning and feel like, no, no, I need to stay awake.

But I was being forced into sleep. He was like, we're going to get started in just a couple of minutes. And then I was literally on my couch talking to my dad and I was like... We're going to get here. I thought I was dreaming. I was like, did I leave? He was like, yeah.

Ellie just brought you back maybe 30 minutes ago. I was like, what the world? It was bizarre. It's the weirdest feeling ever.

But it's not awful. It's not scary in the moment. It's just scary kind of leading up to it when you don't know what to expect. But you don't really have time to even realize, oh, I'm going under. It's just like, I'm conscious and then I'm in a different place. Disoriented is the best word.

Because I truly... It was like a time skip. It was like a glitch in a game or a movie where I'm here and now I'm here, but there was no middle. There was no dream where you wake up and you're like, oh, but time has passed. I can tell time has passed. It wasn't like that at all.

That was odd. A lot of pain, but it's manageable because I'm on some good medicine. That's good. You look good. You don't look very swollen. Yeah, no, I feel okay. I don't look super swollen, but they did have to shave bone off of this side because the teeth were so close to a nerve.

So this side is worse than this side. But like I said, the medicine is good and I've been eating soup, cottage cheese and yogurt for like three days and mashed potatoes. No chewing at all. No, no.

None at all. Just swallow straight down. Well, we're continuing to pray for it. I'm glad you're feeling better. It's good to see you in person. You guys haven't missed John on the radio show, but we've missed him in person.

That's the good part about recording in batch episodes. You never have to miss a day. Absolutely. Keep those texts coming. Let John know you're praying for him and give him some recommendations. If you've had your wisdom teeth taken out, what are some soft foods that you don't have to chew? Please don't say soup. Please don't say yogurt. Not soup.

Keep that to yourself. Please don't say cottage cheese. Mashed potatoes are okay. I'm liking the bomb. That's fine. Yeah, mashed potatoes are okay.

You can jazz up mashed potatoes a little bit. We've got a great episode planned for you guys today. We're going to get Dr. Shaw in just a minute. If you have any questions or suggestions for new topics, send us a text to 252-582-5028, or you can visit us online at ClearviewTodayShow.com.

We'll be back after this. Well, good morning, afternoon, evening Clear View Today listeners. My name is John. And I'm David. We just want to take a quick second and let you know about another way that you can keep in touch with Dr. Shaw's work.

That is his weekly podcast series, Sermons, by Avidan Shaw, Ph.D. As a lot of you may know, or maybe some of you don't know. If you don't know, you do now. And if you don't know, then maybe just hop off the podcast. David, I'm just playing. Hop off the podcast.

I'm just playing. Keep listening. Dr. Shaw is actually the lead pastor of Clear View Church in North Carolina. Every single weekend, he preaches expository messages that challenge and inspire us to live God-honoring lives. One of the four core values of Clear View Church is that we're a Bible-believing church. So every sermon is coming directly from scripture, which is great because that guarantees that there are timeless truths that are constantly applicable to our lives. This is a great resource because whether you're driving, whether you're cleaning the house, whether you're working out, you can always benefit from hearing the Word of God spoken into your life. And God's Word is always going to do something new for you every time you hear it.

Sometimes it's conviction and sometimes it's encouragement. But know that every time you listen to God's Word, you're inviting the Holy Spirit to move and work in your life. You guys can check out the Sermons by Abbadon Shaw, Ph.D. podcast. First and foremost, check it out on our church app. That's the Clear View app. You can get that in the Google Play Store. You can get that on iTunes. But you can also find the podcast on the Apple Podcast app or on our website at ClearViewBC.org. And listen, if you've got a little extra time on your hands, you just want to do some further reading, you can also read the transcripts of those sermons.

Those are available on Dr. Shaw's website, AbbadonShaw.com. And we're going to leave you guys a little link in the description so you can follow it. But for right now, David, let's hop back in. All right. Welcome back to Clear View Today with Dr. Abbadon Shaw, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

You can visit us online at ClearViewTodayShow.com. If you have any questions or suggestions for new topics, I'm sorry. Is she okay? I made myself laugh. Why? What's funny? Because I shushed him, and you laughed, and it made me want to laugh. Keep going.

Keep going. Welcome back to Clear View Today with Dr. Abbadon Shaw, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. You can visit us online at ClearViewTodayShow.com. If you have any questions or suggestions for new topics, send us a text at 252-582-5028.

That's right. And if today's your first time ever on the Clear View Today Show, we want to welcome you, let you know exactly who's talking to you today. Dr. Abbadon Shaw is a Ph.D. in New Testament textual criticism, professor at Carolina University, author, full-time pastor, and the host of today's show.

You can find all of his work on his website. That's AbbadonShaw.com. Why are you standing like a Greek? Why are you laughing? Like a statue like that. That's right here. That's a weird looking... Yeah.

I like to sit sideways, but it does feel weird, because I've got my back completely to them. I can give you a name like Antonios Sotonios Galantis. I would be honored. Antonios Mertius Galantis.

I am Antonios. Oh, man. Well, today, Dr. Shaw, we want to continue the conversation that we started yesterday. We dove into this topic of canon, and there's so much there to explore.

There's so much to dive into. But just as a quick recap for our listening audience, we started talking yesterday about the religion of Buddhism and what it is that they believe, and how that differentiates between Christianity. A lot of times we think about the Buddhist Bible. You've heard people say stuff like that, or their sacred writings, or the canon of Buddhism. But we're taking Christian concepts, and we're applying them where they don't need to be.

We're misapplying those terms. Often people say, the Buddhists have their Bible. What they're saying is, just the way we believers, Christians, have the old New Testament, other religions have their holy books too.

Now, yes, there are some who have their books, and maybe we can cover those at another time, like Quran or whatever. But I just want to compare the biblical canon with the Buddhist canon. What does that mean?

What does that mean for them? Not just Western scholastic, super-imposition of our categories on these Eastern religions and saying, well, the Buddhist religious books and the Bible. But that's not really what's going on. And so last time, if you remember, we talked about Buddha. The main character of Buddhism is Buddha. The main character of Christianity or the Bible is Jesus.

So I want to continue that conversation a little bit more before we talk about how these canons are different. So I talked a little bit about the Eightfold Path, the Art Marg. But now, what happened to Buddha? Well, he gained some disciples and began preaching his way to enlightenment.

What does it mean to be enlightened? And basically, his teachings were rooted in Hinduism, Jainism, and ancient religions. So, there is some Hinduism and other religions in Buddhism?

Yes, of course. A lot of focus on suffering, meditation, and following wise teachers. These things are part of Hinduism-Jainism, and it showed up in Buddhism. It seems almost like what we've seen people do today, where they pick and choose from different religious backgrounds and different systems of belief. Like, I like this from this, but I like this from this.

And it's like buffet style. Yeah. And karma was against importance. We call it karma. That's bad karma. Like, where in the world is karma San Diego? That's somewhat different.

That's very different. But anyways, so karma was against importance, and the goal was to progress through reincarnation cycles and escape to Nirvana. Unlike Hinduism, which focuses on coming back in the next life, Buddhism focuses on the continuation of pure karma from one life to another. So you take that karma into the next life, so you start the next life with a little bit of advantage, and eventually you escape. I see.

I see. And it was not just that one Buddha, right? Or Buddha. There were many, and their common teachings are the Buddha Vakana, or the word of the Buddha. It's really Buddha Vachana.

Okay. Me Vachan means word or message. So Buddha Vachana, word of the Buddha. This is the essence of the eternal Dharma. Dharma is religion or teaching. And I'm going to come back to the writings in a few moments.

Okay? So we're just kind of focusing on Buddha and what he tried to do and who he was and where he got his teachings. How about Christianity?

Well, let's just quickly go through this from start to finish. The Bible is about Jesus. He is the main character.

Right, right. It's much more than just suffering or God eternal or how did the creation come to be? I mean, all that is great, but ultimately it's about God's plan of redemption through his son, Jesus Christ. And Hebrews tells us of that in chapter one, verse two, he says, God has in these last days spoken to us by his son whom he has appointed heir of all things through whom also he made the worlds, who being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person and upholding all things by the word of his power. This is certainly the focal point of the person of Jesus Christ.

Yes. And that's when Jesus began his ministry, he said in Matthew 5, 17, do not think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I did not come to destroy, but to fulfill.

Right. And he, after he rose from the grave, he met some of the disciples on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24, 25. And he said to them, I mean, listen to what he said. He said, Oh, foolish ones and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken, art not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory.

And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them in all the scriptures, the things concerning himself. Yeah. I love that it says that because we, there are people who think that, you know, looking for Christ in the old Testament, that's just kind of an off branch. That's something that people, that Christians do, but Jesus himself did it.

You know what I mean? It was like an afterthought. Yeah. No, no, no. Even the Jewish people before the coming of Jesus Christ.

Okay. They were waiting for the Messiah. They saw the Messiah in the old Testament. They knew there was someone coming. It's always that sense of there's someone coming, someone coming.

Everybody knew that someone is coming. There's direction and there's forward motion. And I think that's something that the other religions fail to do is to project that, uh, that momentum and that forward motion towards this ultimate redemption. Right. Now, when it comes to the writings, let's just focus on that for a moment.

Okay. Now that we've looked at, uh, the Buddhist main character being Buddha, the enlightened one, and there are many of them, and then there's the ways, the eight marks and all that stuff and how to progress through life cycles through karma and taking the pure karma to the next side and all that stuff. And then we looked at how the Bible is about one person, which is the second person of the Godhead, Jesus Christ, and how he was going to come and die on the cross for our sins.

I mean, that promise was given away in the beginning and then fleshed out to the prophets. Um, and then when Jesus came, he said, I'm the one. And then Paul explains it and John explains it and Peter, all that is we've explained that. But now I want us to focus on the Canon. I want to focus on the writings of these two different canons. Buddhism on one side, Christianity on the other. So Buddhist religious books, basically there are three canons and they're all supposedly authoritative. They're all like be canon based on three main traditions. Now let's not quickly be jubilant and say, that's right. See, we, we have our several canons as well.

We'll come to that in a moment, but just keep in mind, big difference. So three main traditions are the Theravada, the Mahayana and the Tibetan Buddhism. So these canons, these three canons are based on Theravada, which is the way of the elders. It claims to be the earliest and closest to the early Buddhist community and the way of the elders.

That's one of the traditions that, that one of the canons is based on. Right. Okay. Okay. Okay. It's found in Sri Lanka, which is the South of India, directly South.

It's found in the Southeast Asian, Asian countries like Burma, Thailand, Laos, Kampuchea. This is where you find the Theravada. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Next is the Mahayana. Mahayana Buddhism began around the time of Christ.

So it's about 2000 years old and it's spread from India to China, Korea, and Japan. It claims to be superior to Theravada. And unlike the Indian focus on Nirvana, the Chinese and Japanese focus more on enlightenment.

Okay. What's the, what's the reason for that claim to be superior to the Theravada? Well, I mean, they just feel like their ideas and their understanding of truth is better. Because it's more enlightened.

We're just a better, we're just a better canon. More enlightened. Okay. By the way, Buddha was Indian. Yeah. That's the thing I was, I was kind of working out in my mind because I always imagined Buddhism as a Chinese, Asian sort of thing, but it's not.

No. In fact, Buddhism really caught on in those, those, those Chinese, Japanese, Korean type cultures. Right. But he was Indian. Its origin is in India. In India. Yeah.

Yeah. In India it didn't catch on as much because of Hinduism. Hinduism kind of had a strong hold. There's not really a, there's not really a strong Buddhist influence in India today. Oh, there is. Okay.

Now there is. But in the early stages, it was more of a missionary religion that really grew in China, Japan, Korea, other, those, those kinds of places. It's so strange for me to think about other religions kind of growing and beginning around the time of Christ. I know that that's difficult for me to reconcile in my mind. Sure is. And that's the thing.

That's what the enemy does. You know, there is a truth and the truth has always been one truth. And the truth is this, the one eternal triune God has made this universe and the second person that God had more specifically made this world and he made Adam out of the dust of the earth. He made Eve through Adam, put them in the garden to work and gave them command over the whole creation, animals, life, whatever. And then they disobeyed God. And in that disobedience, sin came in because of the enemy who came to deceive because of Satan who rebelled against God and he came to deceive. And God knew the whole time this was going to happen. This was not something that took God by surprise. And the second person, the one who made the heavens and the earth, the one who made Adam, the one who made Eve was already the lamb slain from the foundation of the world means the decision was already made that we're going to make this, but you're going to have to go and give your life for them because there's no other way they can come out of this.

Okay. Now I know theologians get into the lapsarianism theology. Was it sub-lapsarianism?

Was it infra or is it supra? I'm not getting into all that. All I'm saying is God knew that when they sinned, when he created that plan of redemption has to be included in there. Right. So I'd say all that to say, you know, when you compare that with all these other religions, there's no life. There's nothing there.

Yeah. It's empty. It's hollow. Well, and I mean, even just talking about this, the whole goal of Buddhism is nirvana, right? For like mainline mainstream Buddhism that we're talking about, the whole goal is nirvana escape. But nirvana is what? It's nothingness. It's just ceasing to exist. Like you're just not anymore. And that's what you're striving for is just escape this world.

Yeah. Just a cessation of everything. You don't exist anymore. Everything is bad by default. By default, everything is suffering.

Everything is bad. Your only hope is to not live in it. My hope is not for good, for hope, for joy. My hope is for just, I just want to just stop. I just want to just cease. This is too much, too painful.

And guess what? They're right about the suffering part. I agree. This world is full of suffering. I know this all is full of joy, but so much suffering, whether you talk about physical suffering, health problems, or you talk about mental suffering that people struggle with, emotional sufferings, relational sufferings.

I mean, most of our lives, we struggle with relationships, whether it's family relationships, friends relationships, you know, misunderstandings, miscommunications, selfishness, bitterness, unforgiveness, making the same ugly choices again and again and hurting people. I mean, all this is part of suffering. But where they say that suffering comes from just desiring. We would say that suffering comes from separation from God and His will and His provision.

It's being part of the sinful world. And whether you're a Christian or you're a lost person, suffering is part of life. So it reminds us, this is why Jesus came to give us life, not only for our sins, to take God's punishment of sin upon Himself.

Remember, Jesus took God's wrath upon Himself and to pay our penalty of sins, but also He came to once and for all deal with death, the ultimate suffering. But as we live through this life, that we live through Him and with His power and with Him in us, that's how we are able to withstand suffering. Not that we are able to avoid suffering. You're not going to be able to avoid suffering. Jesus Himself said in this life, you will have trials and tribulations.

So He never said, I'm going to take you out of these things. No, you're going to go through this, but as I am in you and through you, we are one just as I am the Father and the Father in me, we're going to be one. Then when you're one with Christ, you're able to withstand those sufferings and get through this life. On the other side, all that is put to rest. So suffering, I agree with Buddhism. Yeah, that's true. You got that right. But your solution, God had told you a solution. You rejected that solution.

I don't have time to get into the history of ancient India. Maybe another show will do that. You will realize very quickly how much truth has been suppressed. Before we end this show, do you want to hit that third form of candy?

Yes, of course. So here's a, we have the Tibetan Buddhism or Vajrayana. This came about in the seventh century to Tibet and it's found in India, Nepal, and Bhutan. And it is more focused on Indian tantric practices. Tantric is kind of like witchcraft.

But it's more than that. When we think witchcraft, we immediately think voodoo. Like a witch doctor. I'm thinking of that Lilo and Stitch where she puts all the spoons and then shakes it up.

No, not like sitting there with a needle and a doll. No, tantric is kind of like somewhere between meditative meditations, transcendental meditation, you know, things like that and kind of entering the other realm. And so these include mudras, which are physical postures or mantras, which are magical phrases calling on ghosts and demons and territorial spirits.

This is, this is a little bit of the tribal world of India, Nepal, and Bhutan merging with Buddhism. Wow. That makes sense. Yeah, I think so. These are, this is sort of more of the hands-on.

This is like when we think of these, it's difficult to even put into words. Did you see people like this growing up? Like if you really, yeah. Are these the people that your dad had an experience with in the, in the mountains or with the Himalayas? No, those were Hindus. Okay. Yeah.

Those were the Sadhus. But this is more of like the hands-on here in the real world. I guess, um, yeah. Putting like putting money where your mouth is sort of, maybe rather than this is, this is tribalism coming, trying to apply Buddhism. It seems, it seems less focused on like the enlightenment side of things and much more focused on like mysticism. I think that's what I was trying to get at.

Like you're at, like you said, it's more application, I guess using it for something. It's a little primitive way of dealing with, since we cannot get to that enlightenment side. Let's just conjure up some ancient spirits. Oh no, I don't want to. Don't do that.

No, no, no. So their leader is the Dalai Lama. Oh, this is where the Dalai Lama comes in.

So not all Buddhists will agree with him, but definitely the Tibetan, the Nepalese and many, you know, Indians will agree with Dalai Lama, who is considered to be the reincarnation of the previous 13 Dalai Lama and is believed to be connected to Buddha. Hmm. Huh? Yep.

No, no. We, those are the three canons of Buddhism. Are those three traditions or traditions are the canons, are they textual or they're tests? So then there is a textual part. Okay. Okay.

So with Theravada, I remember Theravada, we talked about the way of the elder Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia. All right. For them, it is the Pali Canon. Okay.

Okay. Pali. It was a language at one time, which has the Tripitaka, which is the three baskets containing Buddha's teachings, monastic codes and philosophical analysis. And they were passed down orally and finally pinned 400 years later and agreed upon 500 more years later. Wow. So like a 900 year period for that text. This is much larger than the Bible. It's like 11 times larger. Wow. Good gracious. It's that big.

Just writings as words and thoughts and ideas and principles and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 900 years ago. Wow. Yeah.

You know, I mean, not 900 years ago, but over the course of 900 years. Oh yeah. That's what, yeah, yeah, yeah. I see.

I see. And you know, I grew up near the Ajanta caves. Maybe we can talk about that in our next show. Yeah, let's do it. Al can already see we're not going to finish this.

Yeah, we are running short, but we can get it. So I grew up about maybe 45 minutes from the Ajanta caves. We've been there many times.

And, um, this, the people who were there were the Theravada Buddhists and they, they cut out this entire temple with many, many rooms of this monastery out of this one single rock. And you've been there. Oh, many times. Wow. Wow. So incredible. Yeah. That's amazing. Just to think about these different expressions and these different, um, you know, canons that are represented, but to see the discrepancy there and, and so much disagreement and so little hope, so little, so little joy to strive for.

I mean, that just, it should confirm for us that much more about what the Bible has to offer. We're going to talk about some more in the next episode, but if you guys have any questions or suggestions for new topics, send us a text at two five two five eight two five zero two eight, or you can visit us online at clearviewtodayshow.com. Click that donate button and partner with us financially. Let us know that gift is coming from Clearview today from the Clearview Today show. We love you guys. We'll see you next time on Clear View Today.