The Briefing with Albert Mohler - Friday, November 7, 2025

Episode Date: November 7, 2025

This is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.On today’s edition of The Briefing, Dr. Mohler discusses the life and legacy of feminist New Testament scholar Phyllis Tribble, and he answers questions about A.I. and the Anti-Christ, ‘due penalty for their sin’ in Romans 1, and reading effectively and efficiently.Part I (00:14 – 09:45)Texts of Terror? The Legacy of the Feminist New Testament Scholar Phyllis Tribble Who Died at 92Phyllis Trible, 92, Dies; Studied the Bible Through a Feminist Lens by The New York Times (Adam Nossiter)Part II (09:45 – 15:20)Could A.I. Be a Sign of the Coming of the Anti-Christ? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters From Listeners of The BriefingPart III (15:20 – 19:28)What is the ‘Due Penalty of Their Sin’ for Homosexuals in Romans 1? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters From Listeners of The BriefingPart IV (19:28 – 27:45)How Can We Read More Effectively and More Efficiently? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters From Listeners of The BriefingSign up to receive The Briefing in your inbox every weekday morning.Follow Dr. Mohler:X | Instagram | Facebook | YouTubeFor more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.For more information on Boyce College, just go to BoyceCollege.com.To write Dr. Mohler or submit a question for The Mailbox, go here.

It's Friday, November 7, 2025. I'm Albert Mueller, and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. Modern liberal approaches to scripture really are very modern. Most of them are dated back to the 19th century. A recent headlines affords us the opportunity to remind ourselves of what happened, why it matters, and what's at stake. Modern liberal approaches to scripture really did emerge in Germany in the 19th century, especially in the context of the German university. Modern biblical criticism, as it was known, was based upon the critique or understanding of scripture that was claimed to come from a scientific perspective, not a believer perspective, not a confessional perspective, not a perspective that saw the Bible

as the word of God, but rather in the name of science, a new approach to scripture that looked to the text of Scripture, both the Old and New Testament, simply as a human text. And what happened from of course, was that early liberal approaches to Scripture, particularly undermined the integrity of the Old Testament. And of course, you see this beginning in the creation accounts that are found in Genesis. Those were taken apart. The Old Testament was subjected, particularly the Pentateauk, to a multi-source theory with J.E., P, and D, the Vellhausen thesis, as it was known. The approach was to turn the scripture into a human book that could be read just like any other human artifact and taken apart the same way that you would take apart any other human text.

And of course, this was also tied to liberal theology, which arose in the same place, at the same time, gaining momentum. So you have Rudmann, for instance, fame New Testament scholar, very liberal. His program was demythologization. And you could just hear that, and by the way, Germans love compound words, demythologization. He meant reading the New Testament with the lens of, taking out all what he called, there were the mythological dimensions. That is, the right reading of scripture was to demythologize it. So basically, out with physical resurrection from the dead,

out with miracles and out with so many other things, Rudolf Bultman, like other liberals, said that this was simply because the conditions of life had changed, the intellectual conditions had changed. And so he said this very clearly. He said, basically, someone who flips the switch and turns on lights doesn't believe the people rise from the dead. And so it was an anti-supernaturalism that was underneath so much of this liberal approach to scripture. Now, you need to understand that that was applied to the Old Testament such that most of the Old Testament was basically rejected and it applied to much of the New Testament, the supernatural elements rejected. And so theological liberalism and these liberal approaches to scripture spread like a virus through denominations,

through theological institutions, and that's one of the reasons why so many of those denominations are now just as liberal as you could imagine, far more liberal than even the liberals could have imagined in the 19th and 20th centuries. The evidence of that is with the rainbow flags flying out front. But it's important to understand that these arguments also changed in the second half of the 20th century. So I want to point to a headline. It's an obituary. The New York Times, just in recent days, Phyllis Tribble, 92 dies, studied the Bible through a feminist lens. Okay, so Phyllis Tribble is one of the big names in liberal approaches to biblical understanding, biblical studies over the course of the last several decades. She was mostly identified with the bastion of theological and biblical liberalism

in the United States. That's Union Theological Seminary in New York City. She's also been associated in the beginning and at the end of her academic careers with Wake Forest University in North Carolina. She was famous for writing two books. The first was entitled God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, published in 1978, the second entitled Text of Terror, Literary Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives, 1984. She also wrote a seminal article that basically set out her platform for redesigning, redefining biblical studies in a feminist lens. By the time her career had ended, words like intersectionality were a part of the common conversation of these scholars. All right. So what would a feminist approach to scripture really look like? Okay, let's summarize

it this way. You would look at scripture in order to say that you can get over the text that you see as patriarchal and oppressive, and you can lean into the text that you think are, or you argue are, liberating to women. The bottom line is you have to read scripture, reread scripture, take it apart, and then argue about which parts you see as salvageable, and which parts have to be corrected by a feminist critique. All right, let's just say the problem start with the book of Genesis. And so you have feminist rereadings of scripture. You need to know, this took over the academy. The liberal academy has been going headlong into these things. Phyllis Tribal was elected the president of the Society for Biblical Literature. That's the

guild of liberal biblical scholars. And she's been a big name, but just consider those titles of her books. Again, the first one, God and the rhetoric of sexuality. It really presented a feminist understanding of how to read scripture. That 1984 book, I can still remember when it came out, texts of terror, literary feminist readings of biblical narratives. She looked at several of the narratives, especially Old Testament narratives, and said, these are texts that terrorize women. She says they're unredeemable texts. You can't redeem these texts.

You can't find a way to explain these texts. They are simply so terrifying, so patriarchal, so oppressive, they have to be basically just read out loud and grieved over. In that article that really helped to shape her reputation, going back to the back to 1973, Phyllis Tribble wrote, quote, I affirm that the intentionality of biblical faith is neither to create nor to perpetuate patriarchy, but rather to function as salvation for both women and men. Now, let's just note, she identifies as the most basic sin of her concern, what she calls patriarchy. Okay, let's just think for a moment. Could there be a bad form,

a sinful form of patriarchy? Of course there could be. You could have men denying women the dignity that is their due. You could have the abuse of women and all the rest. But you also have to say that a clear reading of scripture means that a certain form of patriarchy is revealed as a part of God's plan for human conduct, human civilization, human society, even in marriage. And so you can only, as an evangelical Christian, holding to a high view of scripture, you can only get so far from patriarchy. I know that's politically inconvenient, but it's just theologically true. Furthermore, if you're going to suggest that the great sin that oppresses women from which the church needs to be liberated is patriarchy,

well, you know, you're going to have to really redefine more than maybe you even intend. Going back to the 1970s and the 1980s, I'm not particularly sure that you could classify Philistribble as, say, pro-LGBQ. That would be anachronistic. The letter. weren't quite known yet, but you know what I mean? In terms of redefining the teachings of Scripture and the Christian moral understanding in favor of homosexual behaviors and the array of gender redefinition and all the rest. But it is clear that by the time this logic works its way out into the 1980s, certainly by the 1990s, well, you can't possibly be a part of one of these liberationist methods of interpreting the scripture. You can't be a part of this kind of

critical theory applied to scripture, you can't go after intersectionality. Intersectionality points to the fact that you have interlacing webs of oppression. And thus from the left, they say, that the oppression of women, it's the same dynamic as what they would define as the oppression of persons based upon their sexual orientation, their gender, or their gender transition. I think it's just important we recognize that we really only have two alternatives before us. You're going to see the Bible as God's revealed word, his inerrant and infallible word. You're going to understand the interpretation of Scripture to be bound by the authority of God's word and the nature of God's word and thus consistent with obedience to God's word,

or you're going to hold to a position in which the Bible is, at least, for the most part, a human book. And there's some good parts in it. There's some liberating parts in it. But you're going to oppose what you will define as the oppressive parts in it. and you're going to say in the name of human liberation, you're going to deny or redefine or revise what you define as the oppressive parts, and you're going to lean into the parts that you say can be redeemed and continued. It's just one of those situations in which the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ has to face the scripture question. There are only two ways to go. Either the Bible is God's

word or it's not. Your answer to that question determines everything. But it's also clear that to the editors of the New York Times, Phyllis Tribble is a lot more interesting than a conservative Bible scholar. This is a big obituary. And that really does send a big statement. All right, let's turn to questions, as always. I appreciate the really interesting and intelligent questions sent in by listeners to the briefing. And I want to start with one that represents, I would say, a large number of questions that have come in. So let me just summarize it. The question is, could artificial intelligence be the Antichrist? Or could it be a sign of the Antichrist? Furthermore, some specific questions. What does it mean that with artificial intelligence and digital currencies and, you know,

cryptocurrency and all the rest, here's the question, are we headed towards a global currency? Are we headed towards a one-world currency? And then you look at biblical teachings and you understand, you know, the power of the evil forces, even to track and to know what we buy and sell and furthermore to prevent those without a certain mark, let's just say, from buying or selling, you know, all that becomes conceivable, all that becomes conceivable when you consider the juxtaposition of cryptocurrency, global currency, especially in terms of the digital forms, and other new developments, and AI is certainly a part of that. So all of this is more than we can take in the scope of this question, but it does raise an issue I want to come back to, and that is, you know,

Christians have been rightly concerned about these matters for a very long time. But we've also kind of found a way to live with them for a very long time. So I'm in my seventh decade of life, okay? I'm 66 years old. And I can remember when credit cards were a new innovation, at least families didn't use them, and they didn't use them the way they used them now. But the big issue was that when you got a credit card, all of a sudden they were now national entities that could track you're spending. And there were Christians at the time who said, you know, maybe that's not a good idea. But, you know, it is interesting. I think most Christians got over that in terms of, especially the development of banking on a national scale. And, you know, at this point,

given the digital technology, I started working in a grocery store back when you had to hit every number for every item. And now everything scanned, such that by the time you put in your customer number and your preferred customer benefit, number to the grocery store. The next thing you know, they can predict exactly how much butter you're going to buy of a certain brand over the course of the next several weeks, and that affects their ordering and marketing and advertising and all the rest, even the coupons that will appear rather mysteriously in your email. So all of that, just a reminder that this has happened. And of course, you also had the development of other global entities such as the World Wide Web.

I can remember when some Christians said anything called a World Wide Web shouldn't have Christians on it. Many of those preachers now have a web page. That's just a sign of the way this kind of thing goes. Now, the question is, when you look at cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, and all the rest, is there a difference?

And I want to say, I think at least in one sense there is a difference. And we don't know everything about how all these things are going to happen. In fact, no one does, but we do know that the plans of many are to create a global currency that will replace national currencies. Okay, that's a big deal.

I think even without eschatological concerns, that's a big deal. You also have the reality that with artificial intelligence and other technologies, the predictability and the, let's just say, the trackability of an individual and the ability even to conduct commerce. How long is it going to be before you don't have even a digital credit card, you just have some kind of a microchip or just some kind of a, I don't think we can even understand the technology yet, which will mean you don't even carry cards in your wallet and you don't even have to have credit cards on your smartphone. You know, that's another thing.

How many Christians said they would never do anything like that, and now they're doing it without even thinking about it. All I'm going to say is it's hard to know how these technologies will eventually show themselves to be promise or threat. but we do know this. All of that power concentrated in just a few international global corporations, all of that trackable and traceable. All of that creates a situation that has never before existed in human history. Nothing like this has ever been possible in human history. Bankers, even in the 20th century, had some understanding of your financial life. They did not know exactly how long you had subscribed to a certain magazine. They didn't know what they now know, which is an abundance of information, which is far beyond what marketers and government controllers in the past could

ever have imagined. What I want to say honestly to Christians is, I have no particular insight into the eschatological meaning of this, or what eschatological significance may be revealed in this. I do know that there is a very clear threat represented in a global, entity that can track and control every one of your transactions. And the very fact that we can now envision how that could be done and done very soon ought to be a rather humbling realization to us all. There is no way that any government, any international entity, any great power can have that information about us without eventually threatening to use it against us. We need to keep that very much in mind. Okay, I also have a question coming in from a young man. He's studying for the

ministry. He's taking a class on Romans. And he says, in covering chapter one, his professor says that what Paul refers to as the due penalty of their sin, referring to homosexualities, receiving in their own bodies, the due penalty of their sin. This professor says that verse 27 refers to the fact that homosexuals are unable to have their own children, which renders them incapable of reproducing the image of God in themselves. Okay, so let me just say, I think that probably has something to do with it, but I think the simplest understanding of what Paul's doing there is to say that when you seek to undo creation order by your sexual behaviors, you really undermine creation order even in your own body.

And so let me just say there are consequences to that. And remember that the Christian worldview makes very very... clear that even as we make a theological distinction, and we understand this, between the body and the soul or spirit, we also understand that it's a psychosomatic unity. God has created us as the unity, the psychosomatic unity of body and soul in such a way that we cannot sin in such a way that it affects only our soul. It will affect also our bodies. And especially when you think about the sin that is so close to the bone, so to speak, in creation order, it will come with consequences.

I do think the inability to reproduce image bearers is one of those consequences, but I think we also know the consequences are more, well, consequential and comprehensive than that. But, you know, the student adds an interesting angle to this, asking about new reproductive technologies. I reported on the briefing about the claim that some have created human eggs out of skin cells. It's not applicable yet to reproduction in terms of medical practice. But nonetheless, it tells you where many people want to take this in terms of these assisted reproductive technologies that, by the way, in their own form, directly subvert creation order.

But the important thing for us to recognize here is that, you know, even when, even when, let's just say, it's perhaps technologically possible to take two homosexual men or just two men in a homosexual relationship and use their skin cells to produce, well, let's just say eggs. And then you could also have, of course, the sperm come from within that context. And you could say that they have a baby, but of course they haven't had a baby in any organic or genuine or honest sense. It requires a surrogate mother. The whole thing is artificial. And so, you know, that opens a can of worms. But at the very least, I think there's simply no way around what the Apostle Paul is talking about in Romans chapter one. And that is that if indeed you exchange the worship of God for the worship of the creature, you will end up doing things like homosexuals do, and that will end up with consequences that will show up even in the body, and there's just no other way around it. And that includes the fact that no matter what they say, two men are never going to be able to have a baby. Of course, the most important issue we face in Romans chapter one is the universal condemnation of human sin. In Romans chapter one, the Apostle Paul points to certain illustrative sins that should be,

so obvious, they're contrary to nature, he says, mentioning both male and female homosexuality. But we need to keep in mind that Romans 323 will tell us that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And we are certainly also told that the wages of sin is death. So keeping that all in mind, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Those who commit certain sins are in a very graphic way, illustrative of that pattern of sin as a rebellion even against creation order. And the penalty, I believe, in Romans chapter one, is pointing to an earthly consequence, but ultimately the consequence is the verdict which comes on the day of judgment. All right. Another good question came in from a listener, and she's asking about the Christian

condemnation of anti-Semitism. I think that's one of the most important things we can talk about these days. But then she asked, what about Martin Luther? How does one reconcile his Christianity and his anti-Semitism. Well, all right. Well, as I say, these are questions you shouldn't run from, you should run towards. And when you look at Martin Luther, you're looking at a 16th century German man. And if you look at 16th century German culture, regrettably, it is extremely anti-Semitic, sometimes very crudely so. Martin Luther, to some extent, demonstrated that anti-Semitism. He also demonstrated the fact that he believed that Jewish persons could come to faith in Christ and be brothers and sisters in Christ. He had a Jewish professor, even in his school,

who had come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. He wanted to see the conversion of the Jews, but he also saw the Jews in the Bible portrayed as a stiff-necked people. So he was demonstrating all kinds of things. There in what's the town church in Wittenberg, there is a plaque called the Udenzau on the side of the church. It's a horrifying anti-Semitic plaque. It shows a rabbi being forced to have contact with a pig. And let's just say that's one of the greatest insults that could be directed towards the Jewish people. Martin Luther didn't put that up. It was there for centuries before Martin Luther was born. But the point is not to absolve Martin Luther responsibility. It is to say we have to learn as Christians from every previous generation

where we see even some of our forefathers and foremothers in the faith, even someone as important to our theological understanding as Martin Luther, not beyond criticism. And so we need to criticize Martin Luther where that is appropriate. And that's true for all leaders in Christian history. And that's an important thing for Christians to understand. And it's also one of the reasons why Protestant evangelicals need to, just remind ourselves, this is why we do not have a cult of the saints. This is one of the reasons why we do not hold certain human beings up as exemplars in a way that it can come around and embarrass us.

And honestly, we need to be clear that we could learn and need to learn from the errors of Christians who've gone before us, lest we will present future generations of Christians with challenges they have to explain about us. Now, I also want to turn around and say, theological liberals are absolutely certain that our grandchildren are going to repudiate our understanding of homosexuality. But here's where we have to say, no, we have nowhere to go but the clear teachings of Scripture. And that's also true of the critique of anti-Semitism. It is contrary to Scripture. We need to be corrected by Scripture. We don't need to worry so much about what a future generation is going to think of us. We need to be concerned about how we will give an answer to God for all of our actions,

all of our thoughts, all of our words. And we need to measure all of that in this life by the clear teachings of Scripture. Okay, final question for the day. it's sent in by a seriously-minded Christian about a serious issue, and that's reading, and how to profit most from reading. And he says, I'm a pastor blessed with a congregation of God's people who are students of his word and avid readers. When our elders make reading recommendations to our people, they actually read what we

recommend. Well, let me just say, that's a good thing on both ends. I'm thankful for elders who recommend good books. I'm thankful for Christians who read what elders recommend. He then says, what counsel or encouragement would you give to readers who, as they read theological works, often stop to make annotations and record quotes, and as a result, believe, they're spending less time reading and don't get through more books. They have a growing backlog.

And this is the question, are there ways that pastors can help are reading people to read more efficiently? That's a great question. I just tell you, I get it from students all the time. And efficient reading is a good goal. Of course, the most effective and efficient reading is what we're hoping for. and that means retention and thinking about what we're reading in such a way that we are really reading all these things and reading them through a biblical lens and reading them through the Christian worldview.

And we're reading them in such a way that we want to retain the most we can out of the best books we can read. And I appreciate the fact that there are people who are making marks in their books. I got to tell you, I do that. I read best with my trusty red pin in my hand. And I'm not saying that this is in any way the way other people should read. I'm just telling you, this is the way I read most effectively. I make marks in books, but I don't make notes in books at any length whatsoever, because otherwise I'm never going to get through the book. So my trusty PIN and I make marks. I make marks. I use slash marks of a certain sort just to be able to direct my eyes almost immediately to something. I make marks where a bracket material that I want to see as a whole. I want to be able to go back to that. I'll draw an arrow. I will draw at times multiple arrows to certain sections in the book. I will connect paragraphs sometime, but I do that very quickly, and I keep going in the book.

Now, those marks allow me and help me to go back to that same text and read it, and I'm picking up what I've already read. I'm looking at what I've already marked. I'm able to see what I thought was most important. I'm able to zero in on that. Let me tell you the other interesting thing with someone my age. I can pick up a book that I read this way and made those kind of marks in, well, almost a half century ago. And I can understand what I was thinking at that time, what was important to me at that time. It's very interesting to me sometimes to go back and look at those marks and recognize, well, that's where I heard that. That's where I read that. That's where that entered in my mind.

I now remember why this book was important to me. So I'm just saying, you can develop your own system. I don't, by the way, write in an Aquarian books. In other words, I'm talking about writing in books that I have bought for the reading and the processing, that I'm going to use that book. And honestly, I mark them up in all kinds of ways to make them most useful. Someone else reading that book in years later, they may not get out of it, what I got out of it. But, you know, it's my stewardship to get out of it, what I can get out of it right now.

and to put it in my bank for useful ministry and work in the future. So first of all, I'm just so thankful to hear from a pastor who recommends books to his people and to know that the people in this church want to read books. And so I'll just say, mark them up to the glory of God. Make up your own system and just keep reading. And if you get, by the way, the one thing that confuses me a little bit in this is that they're taking notes in the book. Look, the book is the notes.

So just use minimal marks to get yourself to the book. If it prompts a thought, then write that quickly in the margin and just keep reading. Just understand something. Let's take an example. The Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin. Two volumes in most printings, massive book. But you know what? It is very readable.

And the best way to read it is to know, I've marked it this way. I'm going to read some other things. One day I can come back to this, and I will get even more out of it the next time. The markings, in my experience, actually helped that process. I hope that's helpful to you, helpful to your church members. I'm glad to get questions, and listeners send in some of the most incredible questions. I consider it a privilege to receive them and to deal with them. You can send yours by writing me at mail at albertmoher.com.

Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my website at albertmolar.com. You can follow me on Twitter or X by going to X.com forward slash Albert Moller. For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbtsb.edu. For information on Boyce College, just go to boyscology.com. Today I'm in Madrid, Spain, and I'll meet you again on Monday for the briefing.