February 28, 2006

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the United States.

It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is James White.

Travel Fatigue, the Upcoming Calvinism Debate, and Why the Clip Matters

Hey, good morning. Welcome to The Dividing Line. Hey, not overly healthy James White here, unfortunately. Just hopefully on the far side of that wonderful thing that you get whenever you seal yourself in a metal cylinder for 11, 12 hours.

And, of course, everybody likes to take those trips while they're sick and then cough while everybody else. And that's what happens. And even though we managed to get over there without getting ill, especially since the flight over from Chicago to Heathrow only had about 55 people on a Boeing 777, that was helpful.

On the way back, there were more people on the plane, still comfortable. But I heard two people coughing. I almost put my I had surgical masks with me. I don't care what it looks like next time I'm going to put them on because this is just not an enjoyable thing to travel.

And then three days after you get back or arrive where you're going, you're in the midst of this. So, anyways, we're going to do the best we can and play lots of other stuff today or take your phone calls or whatever it will take to not put quite as much pressure on me.

I will be clearing my throat a lot because I do not want to cough because coughing will result in about a five-minute break in the program while I attempt to recover from the resulting muscle spasms that come with it.

So it's just one of those one of those things, the weakness of the flesh. Be that as it may, I do have a section of a sermon to play. I played a few portions of this, I don't know, at least about a year or so ago.

And judging from the way people were responding to it while I was playing portions of it during the pre-show, the half hour beforehand where we do the feed just to make sure it's working and so on and so forth, no one seemed to recall it.

Evidently, it hadn't made a real big impression the first time around or it was in the midst of various and sundry other things. And it was around the same time that I had been playing Dr. Patterson's series of sermons from down in Orleans on Calvinism and just a number of different folks.

It was Dr. Davis's DVD. He is big in the homeschooling movement entitled Why I'm Not a Five-Point Calvinist. And one of the reasons to play this other than just allowing my voice to not have to be doing the entire hour on its own, one of the reasons I do this is because the debate coming up on April 21st in Sedalia will be that's the one where the high school attempted to find someone to debate the subject of Calvinism.

The students had over the past two years done two debates, had sponsored, put on two debates, attended by about 800 people each on the subject of creation evolution. This year, at the beginning of the year, they chose the Calvinism-Arminianism debate.

And so I first heard about this. I was contacted by them asking if I would debate Norman Geisler in this debate. And, of course, I immediately contacted them and said, let me take a wild, wild guess here.

You actually haven't talked to Norman Geisler yet, right? Because I couldn't believe that after all of the opportunities that Norman Geisler has had to engage this subject, that all of a sudden he had decided to change his mind and do so.

And I was told, well, yeah, you're right. We actually haven't talked to him yet. I mean, that's not going to be a problem, is it? And I'm like, well, let me start filling you in on what's going to happen here.

And you're going to find a whole spectrum of people who are very, very, very much interested in blasting Calvinism, but who do not possess the courage of their convictions to actually then engage the subject.

I mean, that's just all there is to it. I said, I started listing off the people. And it was like, oh, come on. No, that's not the case. I said, well, go ahead. Knock yourself out. I'll be waiting. And so the emails started coming back.

Well, Dr. Geisler is not willing to do that. So I'm contacting Dave Hunt. Who else would you suggest? So I started giving lists of people, names of people who have preached against Calvinism, pretty much the entire staff of Liberty University and all sorts of folks, including Dave Hunt, of course.

And, of course, Dave Hunt declined. And it's just this long, long, long list of people who would not debate. And so they were getting desperate. I mean, they were literally getting to the point where they're going to have to give up because it was taking so much time and the school year was grinding along.

And even though it started early, this rejection after rejection after rejection after rejection, people who were more than happy to blast Calvinism in particular venues. But then when it comes to actually facing someone and having to do that in an exegetical format, well, that's when everything starts changing.

And so what ended up happening is I had just gotten this DVD. And I said, well, you know, this guy is a pretty good speaker. He's dependent upon Dave Hunt, which means the information is really going to be bad.

It's going to be a straw man view of Calvinism. And, you know, obviously he doesn't really know the system very well. But possibility. I mean, he speaks at various conferences. He he's obviously comfortable doing public speaking and the like.

And so let let here he is. So I got him in touch with excuse me. I put the cough button down where I could get to it. I got him in touch with with Dr. Davis and make a long story short, Dr. Davis would not engage the topic.

However. A an attorney in his church said that he would be willing to engage the subject. And so. There you go. That's who I'm going to be debating on April 21st in Sedalia is a Christian attorney who is a member of Dr. Davis's church.

And that's why I will thought I would play some portions of Dr. Davis's presentation. Respond to it and let's let my future opponent know that I have done this. So because from my perspective, the the only thing that could make this encounter completely useless is if I have to spend the entirety of my time.

Constantly correcting the regular straw man arguments that are part and parcel of what you find in Dave Hunt's writings. If I have to spend the whole evening going, well, again, that's that's not what Calvinists believe.

And no, Calvinists do believe that man has a will and that no, God didn't force anybody to do anything. It's not like you've got some innocent person that God is forcing to be evil. And, you know, all these constant misrepresentations that are part and parcel of this kind of this kind of material.

Then you were never going to be able to get into the biblical text. We're never going to be able to actually discuss the issue in any meaningful fashion. And so that is my motivation for doing that. And we'll do that in just a moment.

Caller on the Biola Debate and Calvinist Misrepresentation

But first, we have a phone caller. So I'll let someone else talk for a few moments and talk with Mike. Hi, Mike. Hey, James. How you doing? I'm here.

My question was to ask you, you having a debate coming up at Biola? Yes. What time is it?

I honestly don't know. I would assume around 7-ish. We've had problems with the scheduling. It had to be moved to May 7th. I have to put something up on the blog about this because they had something with the Pops musical presentation that was already using the gymnasium on Saturday night.

We can't push it any later because that gets into the finals week and people leaving. And so though it was certainly not my choice to do so, I didn't see that there was any option. But to go with the May 7th date, I would assume 6 -30, 7 o 'clock.

I just don't have those details yet. I don't know.

But you'll put them up on your blog when you get them. Yeah, I will. Perfect. My question is dealing with Calvinism since you're talking about it. I finished watching your debate with George Bryson, the DVD that you did.

I guess my first comment would be that I must give it to Mr. Bryson for having the guts to debate it, unlike Dave Hunt and Dr. Geisler.

Well, yeah. And then he, even after that, did the Bible Ant-Man broadcast. And then we did try to get him to debate in Salt Lake City in April of this year. But the only way to do that is we didn't have cross-examination anymore.

In the debate, Bryson just kept on talking about, he kept on making comments about how Calvinism practically, this is Calvinism from his understanding, makes the call of evangelism and what have you kind of obsolete.

And he kept on making this comment about how we would treat the non-elect, if you will. As if we knew who they were, yeah. As if we knew who he was. He kept on just making it. I'm thinking to myself, I'd just tear my hair out if I had to.

Yeah, well, me too.

Well, yeah, but that is, if you've read any of George Bryson's materials, if you read The Five Points of Calvinism, Wait and Found Wanting, if you read now The Dark Side of Calvinism, that's his fundamental argument is to seek to poison the mind through emotions and saying, well, look, if this is true, then you don't know if your mother's elect or your sister's elect or your brother's elect.

And, of course, I said, well, actually we don't know who is elect. And the fact of the matter is the only option that you're offering is that God cannot make that determination. God is already doing the best he can to save that person.

There's no reason for you to be praying for anyone, because if God's already putting out 100 effort, what good is your praying going to do? It doesn't make any sense. But generally, and this has been our experience repeatedly over and over again, generally these folks only present these kinds of arguments within the context of a monologue.

They don't work in a dialogue as we saw in that particular debate. It works well when you've got the microphone and no one's going to be cross-examining you and no one's going to be pointing out the other side.

That's the only way that this type of thing works. But sadly, so many of these organizations, we've heard more than one person, as they were preaching, say, I would never let a Calvinist in this pulpit.

I would never allow dialogue to take place. Well, I think that pretty well says it all, personally, as to why that is. And so, yeah, it is highly effective for people who don't know how to think really, really well and haven't been trained to think logically and rationally.

And that's a large portion of our society and, therefore, a large portion of the church today. As it comes in, we don't hardly press the issue of a Christian worldview, press the issue of consistency, truth, the fact that we can know what truth is because we have a worldview that provides a foundation for it, a creator who has created consistently, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So it's certainly an advantage to their side at that point as far as the people they want to influence. I can't help someone who does not understand what truth is. I can't help someone in a debate who is coming into that debate with a grossly deformed worldview in regards to logic and rationality.

There's nothing I can do about someone like that. I can hope and pray that God will do something for them, but they're not the ones I'm debating for. I'm debating for the people who want to hear what the Word of God has to say.

They want to hear a consistent answer. They want to see someone who honors truth in the way that they debate and the way that they present their beliefs. And that's a pretty small group that I'm debating for.

I recognize that, but I think they're the ones that God would have me to be focused upon.

Now, let me ask you. I'll cut you off here. I want to have you. In the philosophical sense, God foresees, and they'll choose, and all that.

Now, let me just mention for those who haven't heard it, he used a very non-standard, non-historical definition of not only that, but especially of monergism and synergism. And so I had to waste a fair amount of time just pointing out that he was using terms in a way that no theologian had ever used them in the past.

Right, right.

Dave Hunt, whoever, who uses the whole issue of foreseeing the future and all that, the way they say it, the way that's put out normally, you know, God foresees their faith, it seems like God doesn't determine the future, the way they say it.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, they'll say that. In fact, we'll play a clip eventually here from Dr. Davis where they will say, of course God knows the future, of course God knows what's going to happen, but it doesn't mean blah, blah, blah.

And when you press them as to how they make those things fit, well, you've seen what's happened. When I was on the Bible Ants Van broadcast, I tried and tried and tried to get both George Bryson and Hank Hanegraaff to answer the question.

All right, if you affirm exhaustive foreknowledge, then please explain, in light of that, your objections to Calvinism on these levels. If you're going to object to the belief in the sovereignty of God, the decrees of God, etc., etc., then please, if God created knowing what the result of His creation was going to be, what is the advantage from your perspective of saying God had no purpose in any of that?

And anyone who's heard it, I'm not sure if you've had an opportunity to hear it, but anyone who's heard it knows I've got no answers. I kept going to the text of Scripture, I went to Genesis 50, I went to Isaiah 10, I went to Acts 4, and I was the only person on the Bible Ants Van broadcast really using the Bible in that particular situation.

Everybody else was using the same kind of argumentation. So, again, that's one of the reasons I pursue these debates, is because while there are going to be those who are very ensconced in their tradition, who no matter what I say are going to continue to believe what they're believing, there are others, and I've had many who have contacted me, having listened to the Bible Ants Van broadcast, who were very angry at me when they heard that program.

They were angry at Hank, because Hank was representing their position. They're like, well, wait a minute, why can't you refute this stuff? Why aren't you going to the Bible to refute this stuff? And that began a journey on their part that resulted in their embracing Reformed theology.

So, sorry about that. I actually don't feel that bad, just the voice isn't working overly well. So, that's why I want to see these things take place. I actually am holding back today on some really big news about a future debate.

I'm really holding back because I want to be able to give everything all at once, but there could be something coming in the pretty near future, like before June-ish, I would say, that is going to get a lot of attention, let's put it that way.

So, just thought I'd mention that. Just make it short. No, in fact, I'm going to give one hint, because people in my chat channel already know what it is, but I'll give one hint, it would be in Virginia.

That should be enough to tell everybody actually what's possibly going to be happening. But, anyhow, I appreciate your call, brother. You too, God bless. Thank you, bye-bye. 877 -753 -3341. I'll leave it at that.

All you got to do is think about what's in Virginia and what cities are in Virginia, and you can figure it out from there, I think. But not everything is completely in place yet, so that's why I'm not saying anything more about that.

877 -753 -3341. Don't let the fact that all of a sudden I disappear. I've got a cough button here, and when I cough, I try to use it, but sometimes right now you don't necessarily see it coming, you know?

You don't feel it coming. It just sneaks up on you and wha! And so I'll do my best to get around it. I feel okay. Well, okay, I don't feel okay. But I feel better than I did yesterday. How's that? I'm just trying to look at it on the bright side.

Old Testament Canon, Septuagint, and the Book of Mormon

Let's go up to Cliff in Salt Lake City. Hi, Cliff. Hi, Dr. White. How are you? Well, everybody keeps asking me that, and not overly well, but we're surviving. At least in this means I can't communicate anything to you via the Internet, so that's a good thing.

All right, well, what I have in front of me is your King James. Only book, which I know with interest is Geisler.

Oh, yeah. That was before The Potter's Freedom. I've said many times that I would like to believe, in light of the subject matter, that he would still endorse that book despite differences in Reformed theology, but that's a whole other issue.

Well, I'm calling specifically, I love the book, Gether. The point they did say, just before the Septuagint translation took place.

That's a much more difficult thing to answer because you said on layman's terms, and honestly about the only thing in my library that's specifically on that subject is a rather technical work on Old Testament textual criticism, which is very deeply involved also in the discussion of the Greek Septuagint and things like that, and tends to require a fair amount of both historical and original language information.

It's a completely different process than with the New Testament, especially given the huge amount of time that we're talking about here, whereas in the New Testament we're really talking about maybe anywhere from 40 to 70 years as far as the amount of time over which it's written.

You're looking at 1 ,000 years for the Old Testament, and so you have portions of the Old Testament or the Tanakh that are well established as scripture before the writing of other scripture, and though you only have a little bit of that, you do have, for example, Paul recognizing Luke's writings, or at least the inclusion in Luke's gospel of a statement from the Lord Jesus anyways.

You have just a little bit of that there. You clearly have in the Psalter and in the Prophets a recognition of the Pentateuch and the law and so on and so forth. So not only do you have those canonical issues where you have a much longer period of development and you have certain segments that have been established for a long, long time while others are still being written, but then you also have a very different means of transmission of the text over time, while Christians wanted the New Testament documents to be distributed all across the Roman world in a very, very quick period of time.

In codex form. Well, the papyri manuscripts give evidence of the fact that when a believer would be traveling in another city and would encounter, for example, apostolic writings in the church there when he came to worship that they did not have in his church, that he would be allowed, if it was his desire to do so, to copy that and to take it with him back to his church.

And so you've got a willingness for even non-professionals, especially under the period of time where you have persecution going on, you have a willingness for those scriptures to be copied and distributed very freely.

That's not the case with the Old Testament scriptures, at least initially, in the sense that they are primarily under the control and for the utilization of the Jewish people as a nation and as a religio-ethnic group.

And so that changes the dynamics of the transmission of the text over time. And then you then have to deal with the reality of translations. And, of course, the biggest thing for me, and this is an area that I...

There's lots of areas like this. There's lots of scholarly areas. I really wish I had the time to delve far more into depth in particular areas. When you're an apologist and you deal with as wide a variety of things as I do, you always feel a desire to go more in-depth in certain areas and you always feel like you're just not able to do that because of time.

But the Septuagint, the use of the Septuagint by the New Testament writers, very, very vital. That's a big issue today in translation, too, as to what resources you utilize in the translation of the Old Testament and the various weights, the weights that you give to the Septuagint over against the Hebrew text.

Didn't the Masoretic text have the Septuagint?

Yes, yes. I mentioned a few weeks ago on the program that, for example, in Psalm 110, the Masoretic text, which you can primarily locate 500 to 900 years after the time of Christ, as far as its genesis and organization and coming into its final form, is clearly influenced by the conflict between the Christian church and the Jewish congregation.

And so you have issues in regards to vowel pointing and things like that that come in there. So, yeah, while the Septuagint had been used by the Jews, it was very quickly abandoned once it became, in essence, a Christianized text.

Can we say, then, in general, the Torah, the first five books?

Well, yeah. Remember, the chronological order of the writing of the books, certainly the order of the canon is not representative of those things. In general, there are some. But, obviously, the historical books span larger periods of time.

And we don't have the same kind of specificity in regards to authorship and dating of many of the Old Testament books that we have, of course, for the New. I remember almost chuckling, if it hadn't been said, at the fact that one man that I knew who converted from Christianity to agnosticism, in essence, one of the things that he found compelling in the arguments of this is where you shouldn't use your brain when you're sick Thomas Paine, who I found just laughable in his argumentation, was that there are anonymous Old Testament books.

And he found that to be a compelling argument. I'm like, who didn't already know that? But I guess that's just the way it was. We don't have quite the same kind of level of specificity on those things as to be able to know exactly what would be available in any one area.

The interesting thing is, however, that someone like Ezra, since you do have a centralization of the religion at that time, probably would have access to everything that the people of God over the centuries had viewed to be the Word of God.

It wouldn't be a situation where you had the same kind of canonical discussions that took place in the New Testament, where someone in Rome had the books that they're familiar with, but someone in Alexandria, they had the books they're familiar with, and when Revelation arrives, everybody scratches their head and goes, eh, what?

The geographical issue wouldn't be the same in the development of the Old Testament canon and the manuscripts of the Old Testament that you have in the New Testament. So it is a completely different field.

And like I said, there are books in Old Testament textual criticism, but they are not, let's put it this way, they're not a fun read. You've really got to want to dig through them. I at least tried to make the King James Only controversy understandable and readable.

Not much effort has been put into making these things understandable and readable. Let's put it that way. Well, yeah, except there's a vast difference when you compare the Tanakh to the Book of Mormon in the sense that, as we know, there were various eccentric criticisms of the Old Testament, especially historically, in regards to the peoples that it made reference to.

And as more and more archaeological research has been undertaken, the Hittite nations and these other nations that 150, 200 years ago there was no evidence of their existence, now they're able to find these things.

The problem is, if you're familiar with the work of Farms and people like Daniel C. Peterson and the people who are speaking out in defense of the Book of Mormon, you know what the trend there is, and that is the ever-shrinking Book of Mormon geography.

That is, instead of what, I don't know, if you've read as much Joseph Smith as I have, it seems painfully obvious to me that Joseph Smith intended the story of the Book of Mormon to be placed in a very wide, all-of-North-America-type situation.

I mean, the very idea that all of this took place in, in essence, a 40-square-mile area hidden somewhere in Mesoamerica, and yet these golden plates ended up on the Hill Cumorah is, to me, an implicit recognition of the fact that the Book of Mormon is not a historical document.

I mean, that's all there is to it, but as you know...

There's even controversy now as to where the Hill Cumorah is.

Oh yeah, I mean, come on, once you've got to have angels doing FedEx delivery on golden plates, you've got a problem, you know. Let's face it, but the point is, and not everybody knows what we're talking about, but the point is, in modern Mormon apologetics writings, the tendency is to keep squishing the area where the Book of Mormon took place smaller and smaller and smaller, so as to be able to explain the lack of physical evidence.

Because, let's face it, the Book of Mormon talks about a lot of physical evidence. If you've got horses, and you've got chariots, and you've got swords, and you've got limbnaz and shimnaz, and they're made of gold and silver, that's the kind of enduring artifact that we can trace back everywhere else in the world, in other cultures, for thousands and thousands of years.

None of that stuff exists in Mesoamerica.

So, that's what we're talking about. The point is, it's an inspiration to me, and you even mention it in your King James Only controversy, that there's a very... I believe... Oh yeah. And in the same sense, there's even a greater amount of us that would be unaware of the steps taken to bring the Old Testament together.

So, it just seems incumbent... Well, that's true, and I think that's true on every level.

It's not just apologetics to Mormonism, but we live in an anti-Christian society, and, you know, I just got back from the UK, where you can't even talk about religious things in the media the way we can here.

They look at us as if this is Beulah Land. This is the Promised Land, because we're soaked in religion over here, and it's such a secular society there. So, we do need to know these things. Of course, the one thing, and I don't know if we need to take a break, but the one thing that is different in regards to the Old Testament and the New Testament is we do have the... on a theological level, in dialogue with Mormons anyways, on a theological level, we do have the words of the Lord Jesus establishing the authority, consistency, inspiration of the Old Testament.

At least at that point, they have to agree. Clearly, Jesus has an agreed-upon Old Testament text that he's citing from in the debates with his opponents at that time. So, if we... at least the Mormons, they believe Jesus Christ is a God, at the very least, the Son of Elohim, Jehovah.

Then he has established the Old Testament authority in his utilization of it in the New Testament, and, well, for that matter, I guess it would have to follow the 1769 Blaney revision of the King James Version, the Book of Mormon.

But that's a whole other issue that we can't get into right now. But at least on that level there, you would have that. Thank you so much. Thank you. God bless. Bye-bye. 877 -753 -3341. We're going to take a break.

Be right back.

Trinity, Roman Catholicism, and the Show's Sponsorship Reads

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And welcome back to The Dividing Line. What's left of the host of The Dividing Line, anyway. Fighting on here. Let's go ahead. We've got plenty of calls today, thankfully. Let's go ahead and talk to Michael.

Hi, Michael. How are you doing? I'm doing very well. And I appreciate you're not asking me how I'm doing, because I don't have to explain it again.

Questions About Calvinism, Monergism, and Exhaustive Foreknowledge

Okay. Well, last Thursday I was in Canada. Right. So I have about five or six children. Okay. I did not die on the inside. Yeah. I shall always stand for the biblical exegesis.

Yeah. I'm not sure what his sources are, but to be honest with you, given his references to Dr. Dave Hunt, despite being correct on that many times, my assumption would be his primary sources are chosen but free.

What love is this? And then, obviously, and this has been pointed out to me by many people, and something I had pointed out myself, and that is, as a former Muslim, my assumption would be that he has accepted a false view of what Reformed theology is.

That sounds like a rather distorted view of a hyper-covenantal view that he's really trying to present there. And he's connected that with Islamic fatalism and puts the two of them together. So it's a hodgepodge mixture of things, and I would like to think that there would be a willingness to listen to the other side, to let the other side define their own terms and parameters and things like that.

That's what scholars do. They listen to the other side, let them define their terms, and then approach it from there. But, yeah, I think you're right. There's definitely a need to identify what the sources are, but I haven't been able to track down enough information where Dr. Kainor is addressing this issue outside of rather brief comments, and I'm a little bit hesitant to make a whole lot of commentary just based on that.

What do you mean? Bible. Oh, right, yeah. You know. Right. Exactly. Well, I've not seen any serious exegetical presentation on any subject whatsoever in the blog entries and the like. No, I haven't. Right.

Well, you know, the ironic thing is people who've seen that have sent me quotes from both of the Kainor's websites that basically said the difference between confidence and arrogance is arrogance points to the person and confidence points to the Lord.

And I have a hard time with the arrogance charge when I look at certain people's websites, and I go, you know, it seems like someone's claiming to, without fail, without fear, and without flinching, address these things.

And then when you actually want to do so, that's the kind of response you get. You know, that seems a little bit odd to me, but like I said, there are things developing in the future. We'll see what they are.

Okay.

It was almost like an appeal to, you know, like I pity the people who challenge me. You know, don't make me bust you up, James.

Well, unfortunately, we do look like twin brothers, so I'm not sure exactly how that would turn out.

And then another thought that I had was, like, for example, if I was to say, James, would you mind telling me Proverbs 9 -8?

Yeah, I remember that, you know, it was Greg Bonson who quoted that section from, what is it, Proverbs 24, I think, just off the top of my head, where you have two statements about responding to the fool, and one says, do it, and the other says, don't do it, and both have different responses, different reactions.

In other words, there are times and there are ways in which you have to respond and there are times and ways in which you don't, and it is determining that issue that is difficult and requires a certain level of maturity and introspection.

I have written to Dr. Koehner in material that hasn't been posted, and I have done so in such a fashion as to seek to appeal to him as a brother in Christ, seek to appeal to him to engage these subjects in a Christian manner with me for the benefit of the people of God.

And we are not yet to a point of saying that that's not going to happen. There is a possibility that it will.

Okay, and just to be clear.

Yeah, well, I hadn't really thought of it along those lines, of course. Maybe that's too extreme. Yeah, well, you know, of course, from my perspective, my response to that was, why even use that terminology?

I mean, that's biblical terminology. Paul said he endured all things for the sake of the elect. That's got to have some meaning to it, and a facile, simplistic reduction of the term to people who choose themselves just isn't going to work.