George Bryson then Calls

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 and 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. Good morning. Welcome to The Dividing Line on a

Tuesday morning. A quick program note. Week from today, we might be here at this time.

We might be here at the afternoon time. It all sort of depends. I'm flying standby starting

Monday, so you never know. I don't expect any issues. I don't expect that we won't be here at 10 o 'clock on what?

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Well, yes. Yes, I'm going to use a laptop today.

Of course I'm going to use a laptop. That's why I'm sitting in front of a laptop today. Anyway, I'm flying standby, and you know how that is these days.

Well, maybe you don't. Flying standby is an adventure. You normally get where you're going eventually, but sometimes you have to go some odd routes.

And so we'll see. And because of that, I don't want to start this next

Tuesday. So right now my plan is next Thursday to start the series that I've mentioned before on textual criticism.

And I'd like to start it Thursday. We'll do a little discussion about textual critical backgrounds.

Some of you, for example, may have seen the. Well, I'm going to be posting a blog article that actually makes reference to it.

But a certain person in the blogosphere who has changed his textual critical perspective to one where the

Byzantine text type becomes the canonical text of the church because of its length of use.

Of course, I would argue that if you're going to make that kind of a move, you actually should stop using

Greek at all and use Latin Vulgate. But anyway, what is the Byzantine text?

What is the Alexandrian text? You know, how does history and why is it absolutely necessary beyond all question to know something about church history, to know something about what has taken place over the past 20 centuries to to have some idea of how the

Bible's been transmitted to us? What about the Latin Vulgate? What about the tremendous impact that has had upon the development of theology, for example, over time?

These are some of the issues we'll be looking at. If you dare put in Alexandrian text into Google or something like that, you'll end up with all these wide eyed, wild eyed, satanic conspiracy theory things running about the

Internet, about how the Alexandrian text denies the deity of Christ and this, that and the other thing.

And let's face it, a lot of folks just don't know much about that. And so we'll discuss some of that.

And then if we can get all that done in one program, which we may or may not be able to do. Got some shorts going on here.

Maybe it's my computer. Don't know. But no, it is a computer.

Is that better? Nope. We really need a new one of these things. Oh, that sounds.

Whoa. Hello. Now I sound completely different and I sound terrible. And having.

Okay. How about now? This is not good.

There's just that. Okay. That's called a short. Okay. Because I just moved a little bit right there and I'm not gonna touch it again.

And now I sound about 14 times louder than I should and distorting in my headphones. So I don't know what what happened there.

But Rich is falling apart in the other room. He's shaking his head going,

I don't know what I did. I touched a button and now everything has blown up. What? It has nothing to do with that.

This is the microphone. Let's see this red thing here. This is the microphone. And it's sounding really odd and strange.

Thank you. Anyway, that's much better. Okay. Sort of. Whatever. Yes. I remember the pastor at the large

Southern Baptist Church I was a member of who was absolutely certain. Don't touch it. You'll break it. That demons inhabit inanimate objects and the soundboard was proof thereof.

And I remember one time I was stuck there alone. I was running sound. And we had a short up in the way up in the

I mean, it's a huge church. So and I'm afraid of heights. There's no way he'd even get up into the spot above the where the choir was where the amplifiers were.

And the low end was low into the high end of the high end amplifiers were shorting out.

So I'd have to crank, you know, everything up to make anything even semi listenable.

And I knew at any moment they were going to pop in. And, you know, you know, it happened if all of a sudden half your amps after you're only running half your amps and another 50 % pop in all at once.

I mean, the sound is incredible. And it happened and it wasn't any fun. But anyway, that's that's neither here nor there.

The second program we're going to do. Thank you for your patience and listening to what's going on here.

The second program will be the discussion of the Nestle Island. Well, we may need to do like like one program on the

UBS text and one program on Nestle Island or something along those lines. Well, we'll start the first Tuesday in February looking at the textual critical

Sigla and start with UBS text. Because I recognize that if you've had any seminary

Greek Bible college Greek, it's more probable that you have the UBS third or fourth Greek text than it is.

You have the Nestle Island text. Now, personally, I would recommend the

Nestle Island text for any type of meaningful textual critical studies of variants and things like that.

I'd have both of them because the UBS text, when it when it mentions the variant is going to give you more information than the

Nestle Island text is. But the Nestle Island text is going to cover a lot more variants. And so we're going to start that a week from Thursday.

For those of you who have been clamoring for that. And I know that some of you are going, oh, great.

I'm not going to get to listen to the buying line for a while. Well, you know, I suppose what

I could do now that I think about it and what I will try to remember to do, though, it's going to be difficult to remember this.

I will try to post a high quality scan of a couple of pages of both texts so that if you do not possess it, then you can download maybe as a

PDF, those PDF or JPEG or something, those pages. So you can follow along yourself so that, you know, if you want to order the text now, it doesn't necessarily have to come in.

I'll use those pages for my example pages, something along those lines. We'll see if we can't do something like that and make that a little bit more accessible to everybody.

It might be the best way to do it. So that's what will be coming up. I have been very negligent in getting back to George Bryson.

If you are wondering if I'm going to be playing any of that outrageous, outlandish, wide eyed, drooling attack on Reformed Baptists by John Modine, the answer is no.

That was one of the hardest things I've ever had to listen to simply because there was absolutely positively nothing of substance to it.

This man is one of the most ignorant men I've ever heard in my life. He couldn't have backed up anything he said for Lovner money.

That's why he'll never call a program like this because he knows that he can't back up what he's saying.

I'm surprised anyone managed to get all the way through it because after about halfway through, you've just thrown your hands up in the air and said, this man does not have a clue what he's saying.

He doesn't care. Just absolutely amazing. It's a shame that kind of stuff ends up on sermonaudio .com.

It'd be nice if there was some kind of a standard there that you'd have some level of truthfulness to what's being said.

But anybody who knows anything about the subject knows that that man doesn't care about knowing anything about the subject.

And therefore, so I'm not not even going to sully the airways playing that one. If you haven't heard it and you heard the

John Modine stuff before, this is three times worse. So that'll give you some indication of just how utterly, utterly worthless the whole thing is.

So, no, not going there. In fact, I guess the one function of John Modine is he makes

George Bryson sound good and fair and everything else.

So I guess that gives you some sort of a spectrum of what's going on there. So let's see if we can make the make the the sound work here.

I may hit this button and everything may explode. Rich's got his seatbelt on and we'll see.

We see what happens here. George Bryson, for those of you who did not hear this before,

George Bryson is one of the leading figures in the Calvary Chapel movement. He does a lot of church planting. He goes to Russia, does stuff like that.

He is also their self -appointed Calvinist killer. And we have been listening to a presentation he made back sometime,

I would estimate, about November of 2003. It was before he and I did the

Bible Answer Man broadcast together. And you can hear that CD. We make it available through Alvin and Megan Ministries if you would like to listen to what happened.

It didn't go quite the way I think George Bryson expected it to. But anyway, I've debated him formally.

I don't remember what year that was over in L .A. on who's in control of salvation,

God or man. So we have already played the first 37 minutes of this presentation.

We've heard some pretty incredible stuff in it, but we continue on. Whatever he wished with regard to every man.

These are all inclusive terms. Notice the terms again. Whatever he wished with regard to every man.

All are not created on equal terms, but some are equal terms. Some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation.

And accordingly, as each has been created for one or other of those ends, we say that he has been predestined to life or to death.

Did you get it? Now, a lot of people say that is so deep. I say that is right on the surface.

Anybody can understand that. What he says here is that from all eternity, God decided to create some people to send them to hell.

And he created some other people to send them to heaven. Now, you'll notice again, just as a reminder, it's been quite some time.

Mr. Bryson, what he just said, for example, some people say it's so deep. Well, actually, it's right on the surface.

Well, actually, it's the deep part that George is missing. What he does is he focuses solely upon the statements that are in regards to the final outcome of everything that God does.

And what he does is he excludes the concept that you can have in the decree of God any activity within time that is relevant.

In fact, for many people, they say, look, if it's a fixed game, if the end is known and the end is a part of God's decree, then what happens in time is irrelevant.

And that's the problem, is that they have a very shallow view of God's decree. God's decree is so deep and so rich that it includes the actions in time and it attaches.

In fact, it is the foundation for attaching tremendous value and meaning to what takes place in time.

You see, if you really have to when you think about this, people people go, well, you know, if you don't have libertarian for what about Satan?

What about what about the enemy of our soul and how he's described and people being enslaved to sin and things like that?

How do you deal with those things? What are their purposes in this world starting to get distorting and stuff again?

Not sure it's just sort of coming up and going down. Not sure what's going on with that. But anyways, if if God's decree did not include a means by which our actions in our activity in time is taken into consideration and is made important, is invested with importance, then why couldn't

Satan just take us over? Why couldn't Satan just rule over us?

Why couldn't powers and authorities outside of ourselves rule over our lives? God has chosen not to allow that to happen.

God has his own purposes. And the idea that, well, if the end is known, then the means of getting there is irrelevant.

That makes no sense. Again, the open theist gets around this by saying

God doesn't know what the ends are. The Arminian is the inconsistent one because he said God does know what the ends are, but the means are all libertarian.

And what we're saying is God has ordained the ends and the means, and he has invested tremendous importance in the means.

And since we can't see what the future is, and since we don't see God's decree and we don't we don't actively determine in any way

God's decree or anything like that, then we have to allow the Bible to define what is truly important, what is not.

And God has defined that what takes place in time is indeed vitally important.

And he judges on the basis of that. And that's the only thing that we can have access to. We do not have access to the eternal decree of God.

We cannot live on the basis of the eternal decree of God. We have God's revealed will as to what is right and what is honest and what is just.

And these are things that we are to do, and it is based upon which we are to pray. I mean, you know,

I mentioned on my blog this past week, spending some time on the voice of the martyrs, the

VOM website, and reading about, I was just reading about, I should have brought the magazine in with me, a young woman who was martyred in China a little while back, beaten by the police.

And you think about what these people are going through. You think about what our brothers and sisters are going through, especially in Islamic countries, where people are attacked and their throats are slit because of what the

Quran says. And you look at those things and you go, how could

God allow these things to happen? And the open theist says, well, God has to allow them to happen to honor libertarian free will, you see.

And God didn't know that these things were going to happen when he created this world. But he wants to make the best to come out of these tragedies.

And I have a really, really, really hard time worshiping a God like that. I really do.

That just doesn't make any sense to me. But then you have the Arminian who says, well,

God knew this was going to happen, but he didn't really have a decree or a plan. That seems to be George Bryson's position, even though he doesn't want to actually face up to the ramifications of his position.

He wants to say that the God had exhaustive knowledge of future events, but he didn't decree what those events were going to be.

And so he's the he's the person. He is the God who looks through the looking glass.

He looks through the glass and he sees what's what's going on. And he sees, you know, the the events in time and he's just an observer.

And I'm not sure why he's supposed to be glorified for what takes place in time, but he's just the observer.

And he takes in passive knowledge and and he just happens to come out in the end somehow that he wins.

But you can't really glorify him for having done that because, well, he didn't decree it. But then you can have the decree of God that attaches the most incredible purpose to all of suffering in human existence, and especially amongst those who are called to suffer for the name of Jesus Christ.

And that's that decree then provides an irrefutable foundation for asserting that, well, this sounds scriptural.

God causes all things to work for the good for them or the call for them who love

God, the elect. My goodness, maybe it's a biblical thing. Yeah, it's a biblical thing.

So you see, George, just all George does is is what a lot of these folks do is they separate out one element of the truth.

And then by separating it from the other elements of biblical truth to which the Bible itself connects it.

They try to make a parody of it, try to make a caricature of it and attack it rather than seeing it in harmony with the rest of the revelation.

Yes, God has ordained the ends. And in a in a bland, bald statement, when

God created. Yes, there were those who at creation to you, you know, to use

Hank Hanegraaff's favorite term from from John Calvin, completely imbalanced use of it, but his favorite term doomed from the womb.

But if you're not an open theist, you have to say the same thing. You have to say the same thing.

When you were born, did God know when you were going to die? When you were born, did God know what your decisions were going to be?

Unless you're an open theist, you're saying the exact same thing. Now the question goes into, OK, and what else are you saying about his purposes?

Does his purpose include the sin of man? Does his purpose include judgment? Does his purpose include the demonstration of his righteousness, his holiness, his mercy, his love, et cetera, et cetera?

That's what you have to get into. And by divorcing all that, George Bryson is again presenting a straw man. I have lost my connection.

I'm playing sounds and you're not hearing sounds. They don't go to hell for any other reason. No sinner goes to hell.

Because he's a sinner. No sinner goes to hell because he refuses Christ. No sinner goes to hell, according to Reformed theology, because of unbelief.

Again, completely in error. That's untrue. Notice, perfect illustration.

I didn't remember that this was exactly what came after it, but completely wrong.

That's taking, again, the eternal final view of the purposes and ignoring the means by which you get there.

It makes the decree relevant only to the end and not to the means by which this is accomplished that shows the glory of God, that shows the power of God, that shows the holiness of God, that shows the mercy of God, that shows the grace of God.

You cut all that out and to call that an explanation of Reformed theology is a gross caricature.

It's a gross straw man. It makes no sense whatsoever, but that's all that these folks can do.

They have nothing else. They've got no place else to go. They can't go into the text with us because they know what the result is.

George Bryson knows exactly what the result of that is. I've got a blog article. I wanted to have it up this morning.

I'm almost done with it, showing the exact same issue with Paul Owen and his new, well, it's just a

Roman Catholic reading of John 6. It's sacramentalism and how he tries to get around the clear evidence of God's decree and salvation in John 6.

It's the same thing. He doesn't hardly even touch the text. It's a hop, skip, jump methodology, throw in a little church history, this, that, all through a traditional lens.

That way you get around John 6. They can't go to the text and they cannot accurately represent what we're saying because when they do, then their objections fall apart.

All of those things are consequences. They're the result. We'll get into this in a moment, but even the fall of Adam, the first sin of the first man, according to Calvin.

Let me stop that. Notice he said they're the result. No, they're the means. If you can't, if you can't even accurately understand the difference between the means that goes to the end and then the result, if you can't see the relationship there, then why?

It's not that it's overly difficult to do. It's that you don't want to. This is, this is how he keeps, this is, this is why he said earlier,

I can't get somebody back out of Calvinism, but if you give me a chance to poison their mind, that's not the terminology he used, but that's what he meant.

If you give me a chance to poison their mind, I can keep them from going in, but once they're in, I can't get them back out. You know why he can't get them back out?

Because he's not accurately representing the position. Once they're in, they know what the position is, and his arguments become as, as, well, as fallacious as they are.

Calvinism was not a fall. After all, it was a push from God, and here's Calvin's reasoning. It wasn't a fall, it was a push from God, and again, all, all of the objections, you know, when

I think about how Norman Geisler focuses upon looking at Adam, all of the objections that these folks raise to Adam, unless they're open theists, they have to answer the same questions, and they can't, and they won't.

And remember, at the beginning of this talk, he was talking about how basically non -theological Calvary chapel people are, and, well, we're

Biblicists, you know, we don't do much about theology. If you just read the Bible, you're not going to become a theologian. Remember that?

Yeah, that's actually, honestly, what he said. You can go back and listen, we've been playing it. And so they could go to Adam, they could go to someone about whom we have two chapters of Revelation, and none of which actually addresses this particular issue, and instead of looking at where we are today, and the clear biblical teaching on that, they're going to go back to Adam with no revelatory foundation for doing so, come up with certain conclusions, then read that back into his fallen children, as if somehow that's normative for us.

That's the mechanism that these folks like to use. Calvin said, sinners do sinful things, and that's all sinners can do, is sinful things.

Non -sinners do non -sinful things, and that's all they can do, is non -sinful things. So Adam was created, according to Calvin, and he's right about this, sinless, right?

Since Adam was sinless, how can we account for the sin of Adam? He wasn't a sinner.

You only commit sins if you're a sinner. There's no choice that allows you to do things contrary to your nature in Calvinism.

Again, here we cannot help but chuckle just a little bit at the man who claims to know the system so well that he doesn't even understand the categories that are so common in Reformed theology about able to sin, not able to sin, able to fall, not able to fall, the issues regarding Adam and Christ, and Augustine's discussion of these things.

You would think that that would be first and foremost in the presentation, but it isn't. In Calvinism, you can only do according to your nature.

You can't do contrary to your nature. You can't rise above your nature. Adam was created a sinner. He could only choose, or sinless, he could only choose to do sinless things.

That does not follow. That, of course, is not Calvin's position.

That's just a canard made up by George Bryson. But we know from the record that God said

Adam sinned. So if Adam sinned, but we have no explanation for sin in Adam, where are we going to find the explanation?

In God. So Calvinists would say, we don't make God the author of sin, we just make him the author of the sinner.

In other words, what we do is we make God make man sin.

Well, again, this is facile and simplistic, but it's the best

George has to offer, and the relationship between Adam's will and God's will in the issue of the fall is one that, as Dr.

Gerstner mentioned when reviewing Edwards' attempts,

Jonathan Edwards' attempts to plumb the depths of that relationship without divine revelation.

Edwards didn't choose to follow Calvin's advice at this point. Calvin's advice, obviously, was we should make an end of speaking when

God makes an end of speaking. We should not seek to go past what God has revealed, and if God has not revealed the mechanisms, then there are going to be questions that simply cannot be answered outside of divine revelation.

And when God chooses to make an end of speaking, so should we. The great

Edwards tried to go past that, and as even Gerstner, who was a great admirer of Edwards, obviously admitted, the great

Edwards mired himself in a mess of self -contradiction in the process. You just can't go there.

And so if a person believes God must answer every question we can possibly ask, including about people who,

A, no longer exist, and B, none of us today have their character or nature, then you're going to have a basis upon which to reject all of divine revelation,

I guess. But if you recognize the arrogance of taking that stand, then you're really not going to have any point of objection.

But what Bryson is saying here is completely unfounded and unwarranted. The decree of God. There's two ways to interpret scripture in Reformed theology.

They'll never admit this, but I guarantee you it's a fact. There's two ways. The superficial, what they call the phenomenological truth, things appear to be one way, the sun rises, sun sets, but in reality it's really the earth revolving around the sun, right?

The newscaster or the weatherman on TV will tell you the sun's going to rise and set. That's phenomenological. That's the way it appears.

But in reality it's not really that way. Behind the scenes it's something else. In Genesis it says Adam sinned.

But if you know the deeper truths, if you know the hidden things of God, you know that God made

Adam sin. It's the same way on the other end when you get to conversion. It appears every one of you who know

Christ today, you thought you made a decision to believe. What you don't know, according to Reformed theology, is that God made you a believer.

See, because you were an unbeliever. This is Calvinism's argument. You were an unbeliever.

Unbelievers have an unbelieving nature. Based on your unbelieving nature, you didn't believe. So to become a believer, you don't make a choice as an unbeliever to believe.

That would be contrary to your nature. Calvinists say you must become a believer to believe.

We say you must believe to become a believer. Now, of course, notice the equivocation and the tremendous misdefinition of terms inherent in everything he's saying.

First of all, there's no parallel between the relationship of Adam's will and God's will in the fall and the issue of how it is that a dead sinner is raised to spiritual life.

It is not that you are made a believer to be a believer. It is that you are regenerated and given the gifts of faith and repentance.

Those are not the same things. And there's a much equivocation being used by Bryson at this particular point that, of course, leads to all sorts of what sound like silly contradictions.

But that's a very common ploy, not only of people who attack Reformed theology. That's also a common ploy of the cults to attack the doctrine of the

Trinity, for example, to equivocate on terms person and being and make it sound like it's sheer lunacy to believe any of this when, in point of fact, they're just simply using terms to create a confusion that is actually not there at all.

We'll continue with George Bryson after we take our break. Here on The Dividing Line, 877 -753 -3341.

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And welcome back to The Dividing Line on a Tuesday morning looking at George Bryson.

And we're almost done with the first portion of this. There's only two. So we're making progress today for the first time in,

I don't know, about five weeks or so so we can go back to what he is saying. They don't believe in this thing we call choice.

They don't believe in anything that's even remotely close to what we call the will of man. The will of man.

Actually, we do. And in fact, we have a much deeper, fuller, richer doctrine of it. And since you eschew being theological anyways, what doctrine do you have?

Do you have a doctrine similar to Edwards? I mean, how do you know? It's difficult to respond to stuff like this, but again, it's a canard, a straw man, to say that man's will is not active.

The point, of course, is the fact that man's will is enslaved to sin and therefore is incapable of doing that which is pleasing to God, as we read in Romans chapter 8.

And an operable will. So, in other words, if you act according to your nature, you're an unbeliever, right?

Before you're a Christian, you're an unbeliever. Even if you say you believe you're still an unbeliever, unbelievers only not believe.

Believers only believe. So God makes you a believer. That's what they call regeneration. When you're born again, you're made into a believer.

I'm sorry, but, you know, George is a nice guy, but he just reminds me of one of these folks that has come to his conclusions and now it's this rat -a -tat -tat type thing.

In fact, one of our channel denizens has been listening to him.

He said, I had to chuckle greatly because right as I was going to break, he said, he was commenting on how fast

Bryson speaks. And he says, the man could hardly sound more rushed were he drowning in the ocean and addressing his posterity with his last words.

It's true. I mean, and he sounds like he's just so excited about this stuff.

And I guess he gets everybody else excited about it. But what he's saying, it's just so facile, so simplistic.

It doesn't fly well when you've got somebody on the other side of the podium who actually knows what they're talking about and can debate you on it.

It's sort of humorous at times, if it weren't so sad, that he actually believes that what he's saying is true.

So you don't ever come to believe in God as a matter of choice. God changes you into a believer.

And as a believer, well, that's what believers do, is believe. So, in other words, God frees you from slavery to sin and he gives you a new nature.

He causes you to be born again, have spiritual life.

And of course, the person who is made spiritually alive and renewed in the image of Christ is given the gifts of faith and repentance.

And as John 6 says, is a person who is looking to Christ, present tense, believing in Christ, present tense, coming to Christ, present tense.

And that sort of, I guess, you know, the heart of stone is taken out, the heart of flesh is given, the wind blows across the bones, they become living.

All of these biblical things are being swept aside, and instead, God turns you into a believer so you believe.

You know, again, this is why monologues work much better for these folks than dialogues, because then the other side can come along and say, actually, this is what we say, and they're all biblical phrases, where are we wrong?

And then you have to change the subject and start talking about something else, which is normally about Servetus, by the way.

Didn't believe as unbelievers, so he takes unbelievers and makes them believers. That's the argument of Calvinism, and we're going to actually see a quote on that.

I know I'm moving past here, but one more time, listen to this. According to John Calvin, if we cannot assign any reason for his bestowing mercy on his people, but just that it so pleases him, neither can we have any reason for his reprobating others but his will.

When God has said to visit in mercy or harden whom he will, men are reminded they are not to seek for any clouds beyond his will.

In other words, why is God merciful to some? Do they accept his gracious gift of eternal life?

No way, says the Calvinists. Now, no, again, the sound that you hear coming from Geneva is

John Calvin spinning in his grave at the, once again, the complete ignoring of everything else that he's had to say, specifically in regards to, in this particular context, what he is referring to is the unconditional nature of election and the freeness of God's will.

What he's arguing against is the idea of a contingent God whose actions in time are forced upon him by the actions of creatures.

That's what he's addressing. Does he not elsewhere address the culpability of man and man's love of his sin and all the rest of these things?

Of course he does. So why not allow that to enter in? Because it would make

George Bryson's presentation self -contradictory, so he can't do that, so he doesn't. Why does God condemn some?

It's because they're sinners? No way, says Calvin. People go to hell for reasons we don't know, except this is what

God wants. It's according to his pleasure. Which, of course, he did not say. And, again, this would be like my taking, you know, four or five sentences from George Bryson and turning into some sort of raving heretic while ignoring everything else he says on a particular topic.

And it works real well. Again, and, you know, if George would take the time to listen to this program,

I'll explain something to him. George, why can't you get Calvinists to get out? It's not because we've become mind -numbed robots.

It's because you don't accurately represent what we believe. Your arguments are shallow and fallacious and require people to be ignorant of the original source documents.

The reason that you can keep people from becoming Calvinists is because you poison their minds with false information.

And that, obviously, I would like to argue, if the two of us actually talked to a person at the same time, we could at least make sure,

I could at least make sure that the information they were getting becomes balanced with the rest of what the sources say.

But be that as it may, this is why. The reason for the incapacity of getting people out is because you're only presenting one portion out of context and applying it in a completely different context.

It's called misrepresentation, straw man, caricature, etc., etc., etc. We always have to appeal to the will of God, which is independent of any factors.

There is nothing about you, nothing related to you, that accounts for your salvation or your damnation.

Now, again, mainstream Calvinists would say that's a distortion of Calvinism. Yes, yes it is. But I would say they're distorting

Calvin by not simply accepting what he said. And, of course, what that means is, remember that a little while back in this particular discussion, he had made reference to the fact that he, that is,

George Bryson, is one of the few people he knows who's actually read the Institutes. Well, he only read a single portion.

Or he's just not handling the material in a fair and appropriate fashion.

This is another quote from Calvin. Since the arrangement of all things is in the hand of God, since to him belongs the disposal of life and death, he arranges all things...

And that is the end of the first portion, and it goes on to the second portion. Listen, he arranges all things by sovereign counsel in such a way that individuals are born who are doomed from the womb.

There it is. There it is, folks. Doomed from the womb. Doomed from the womb .mp3.

Is that? No, I don't have a doom from the womb .mp3. Oh, well. We kept hearing all about that in a certain program that we listened to and that we did on the

Bible Answering Broadcast. Doomed from the womb. But again, as I said only a few moments ago, is it not the case that any single individual who does not hold open theism believes that a person's death, for example, is fixed?

That God knows when his saints are going to die. God knows the date of anyone's death. Yes or no? Does God know?

I mean, even looking down the corridors of time routine, does God know? If you've never even thought about how

God knows or what that means, then you really shouldn't be running around using this kind of argument at all in your presentation.

Are you with me there? Now, actually, that's just a point that we can reference the doomed.

The truth is they're doomed from all eternity and to all eternity, according to Talmudism. But listen to this. Since to him belongs the disposal of life and death, he arranges all things by a sovereign counsel in such a way that individuals are born who are doomed from the womb to certain death and are to glorify him by their destruction.

He foresees the things which are to happen simply because he has decreed that they are so to happen.

It is clear that all events take place by a sovereign appointment. Are you with me on this? In other words,

God doesn't look down the corner of time as an omniscient being and see what's going to take place, and therefore it takes place, consistent with what he could see happening.

God makes it happen, and he sees it happening because he makes it so. So when he sees rape, when he sees murder, and I put this to James White in an open public debate.

I said, James, it sounds like to me what you're saying, what Calvinism is saying, what Calvin said, is that every rape, every murder ultimately and finally is caused by God.

He's the ultimate cause of all that occurs. Because there is no choice on the part of man,

God is the only one that has any say about anything. He can dispose of life and death.

He doesn't just look into the future and see what's going to happen based on all kinds of factors, but he makes what happens happen.

Since he makes it happen, he sees it happening. How could he not see what he's going to cause to happen?

So if God's going to cause it to happen, and no one can stop him from doing what he wants to do, then he sees rape, murder, he's therefore the responsible agent in all activities.

And of course, that's where George Bryson, I challenged him just a few weeks after this on the program, and I took him to Genesis 50.

I took him to Isaiah chapter 10. I took him to Acts chapter 4.

And everyone who's listened to those encounters knows exactly what happened.

George Bryson has no responses. George Bryson has little more than read my book, but his book doesn't address those issues in any meaningful fashion at all.

He simply is incapable of answering questions about what he just said.

He will keep repeating himself. He'll keep saying, oh, God, say, what is... And I'll go, okay, so what you're saying is that men are innocent.

They do not love their sin. God is not restraining them. He's actually forcing innocent people who are just robots to do evil things.

Is that what you're actually saying we're saying? When God knew that sin and rape would take place when he created, at the moment of his creation, did he know those things would happen?

Why then did he create? George, can you answer this? Well, we need to take a commercial break. You know, I mean, this was...

We never, ever got an answer. And I can't tell you how many people I've talked to since then who heard that, who were tremendously troubled, tremendously troubled by what

I was saying. But one of the main things they were tremendously troubled about was the fact that the other side wasn't responding and wasn't answering what

I was saying. And once they did dig in, they discovered, you know what? These folks can't answer their own questions.

These folks can't even begin to provide a meaningful response. And so I need to dig deeper because the word of God is saying these things.

I need to say what it's saying. And when they do, they then discover the truth of God's sovereignty and salvation.

And so we will continue listening to the George Bryson presentation, pointing out the errors therein.

But we have... Let's start with Aaron in California on Ephesians 2 .8.

Hello, Aaron. Hi, Dr. White. Thanks for taking my call. Yes, sir. I just had a question for you on the

Greek, really, on Ephesians 2 .8, which, as myself coming from a

Reformed perspective, as far as proof text goes, seems like something of a slam dunk as far as total inability.

But in reading it and looking at my footnotes in my NAS, you know, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.

And there's a footnote on that which says, i .e.,

that salvation, making the that refer to the salvation rather than the faith. And I was just wondering if there's anything in how that reads in the

Greek, if there'd be a good way of knowing which that referred to, the salvation or the faith?

Yeah, I've addressed that in The Sovereignty of God and Salvation, The Potter's Freedom, Debating Calvinism with Dave Hunt, because it is a common question, is that what does that refer to?

And I don't have in my

NAS a footnote like that, but maybe it's just a particular version that you have or something along those lines.

The that is tuta in the

Greek, which is a neuter demonstrative pronoun. There are no neuter nouns in the preceding phrase.

Grace is a feminine. Sessus menoi, to be saved, is a masculine participle.

And pistos, likewise, is feminine. And so you cannot attach tuta to a single word and say, that means faith or that means salvation or that means grace.

The fact of the matter is, what's going on here is that Paul utilizes neuter demonstratives like tuta to wrap up at the entirety of a phrase.

And so the that not of yourselves is a gift of God refers to the entirety of the beginning phrase, that is, by grace you have been saved through faith.

So there is nothing in the beginning of Ephesians 2 .8 that can be said to be ex humone, that is, from yourself.

Everything in the beginning phrase has to be the theuta doron, has to be the gift of God.

Nothing in that beginning phrase can be described to be ex ergone, out of one's own works, because if there was anything that was ex ergone, then it would be the grounds of boasting in Ephesians 2 .9.

So the that you will hear on one side, you will sometimes hear

Reformed people erroneously say that that refers only to faith. Even John Calvin said it does not refer only to faith, it refers to the completeness of that preceding phrase.

And then you'll have less than honest Arminians who will also quote that, but then forget to quote the rest of what he was actually saying.

And will say, we'll see it can't be faith because it's neuter and faith is feminine.

But then they won't also tell you there's actually nothing in that phrase, that if you're going to try to just match things up based upon genders, that that would have anything to do with anything at all.

So it is touta, the neuter demonstrative, is wrapping up the entirety of the preceding phrase.

And the point is there is nothing ex humone of ourselves, nothing ex ergone from our own works that is the foundation upon which we stand before God.

So having said all that, then faith would be part of that, which is the gift of God, as would be the grace, as would be the entirety of salvation.

Okay, great. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate your time. Okay. Thank you. God bless. Thank you. 877 -753 -3341.

Let's talk with Richard. Hi, Richard. Hi. How are you? Oh, I guess I'm okay for an old man.

It's a great privilege to talk to you, Dr. White. I've not talked to a theologian in a long time.

Okay. Actually, I have a feeling, Richard, I think I may have written you some letters back in the mid -1980s, as I recall.

Really? I believe so, about 22 years ago or so. A fellow gave me a number of addresses of people to write to.

Wow. And I'm pretty certain that if I look back in my old, old, old, old, old files, that I had written to you at that particular point in time.

Well, you've got a real good memory. I appreciate that. I can't say that I remember it, but I certainly appreciate you mentioning it.

Yes, sir. The question I had was about an ancient orthodox doctrine from original

Christianity. It's called Communicato I Amatem. And I'm wondering what you understand that to be.

Well, when you say original orthodox Christianity, maybe you could define that for me?

Well, let's say from the year 325 on. Okay, well...

Athanasius, you know. Well, yeah, I mean, but there's a whole lot of theological development and things like that that goes on after 325.

And there's a lot of people who have very, very, very different terms and theologies at that particular point in time.

And so I'm not one of those folks who believes that there was one orthodoxy on almost anything outside of...

I think you could probably demonstrate that monotheism, at least, was something that everyone shared together.

I think. But I don't think that you could identify a whole lot more where...

I mean, there's just a lot of writers at that period of time that aren't all that good. So if you're talking about how a particular individual uses a phrase, that would be one meaningful thing.

I mean, how did Augustine use something? How did Athanasius use something? Cyril, whatever.

But I'm still not really tracking on the orthodox, ancient orthodox church type of a concept.

Because you wouldn't have anyone who could define at that point in time a particular phrase in such a way that everyone would use it in the exact same way.

For example, you're talking about a Latin phrase and the very term orthodox would normally refer to the

Eastern orthodox. And one of the major problems in studying patristic theology is the language barrier that existed between those two sides of things.

And the fact that very frequently their arguments were really over the fact that they couldn't get the same terms to be translated in the same way.

So the East goes a very different perspective using Greek as its primary theological language.

And you're using something in Latin that the orthodox, for example, might not even know how to render into their own perspective.

So when you use that, you're referring to something that goes back to the idea that Cyril utilized.

Let me help the audience have an idea of what we're talking about here. Because this actually comes from the argument about the nature of Christ and the conflict between Cyril, the

Bishop of Alexandria, who dies in 444, and Nestorius. And Nestorianism becoming an entire movement that especially goes down into Saudi Arabia, places like that, and is relevant to my current studies in Islam.

But let me just give a summary here from Robert Raymond on this particular issue.

Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria, who was to become Nestorius' chief antagonist, declared that one must not hesitate to refer to Mary as theotokos, that is,

God -bearer, concerned for the unity of Christ's person. He argued that because the personal subject of the

God -man, the logos, was one and the same in relation to both natures, and that because neither nature expressed itself except in the union and in conjunction with the other, it was not only appropriate but also essential to regard

Mary as God -bearer, which is what theotokos means. In fact, they believe she was the fourth member of the

Trinity for a while. Well, no, Cyril, certainly I don't know of anyone, if you could mention anyone near the

Church who ever made reference to Mary as the fourth member of the Trinity, I'm unaware of anyone.

They did that for about 50 years. Where? I could send you some quotes on it if you wanted.

Well, I'd be interested in seeing that, but I can assure you that even today, when

Roman Catholicism is considering the concept of defining Mary as the co -mediatrix and co -redemptrix and advocate for the people of God, even then, their chief people promulgating that concept are very, very, very clear to make sure that there is no discussion of Mary as being deity in that context.

Well, as you said, it's a different kind of a context, and I agree with you totally on that.

So, to get to your communicatio idiomatum, here's where the definition comes up. Nestorius understood

Cyril as saying that Christ, being one person, possessed only one nature, the result of the fusion of his deity and humanity, which fusion could only mean the truncation of both the divine and human natures, and understanding that gains credence in the fact that Cyril both spoke of one nature after the union, and resorted to the notion of the communicatio idiomatum, the transfer of properties between the two natures, as one means to secure the union of the two natures.

And so, there is at least the historical utilization of that terminology in history, but then later on in church history, enters into a discussion of Lutheranism, and I realize we're probably not going to get all this done, but Lutheranism and its issue of the

Lord's Supper, that same term, communicatio idiomatum, comes up, the communication of attributes, in regards to the ubiquity of the body of Christ and the concept of the

Lord's Supper. So, I don't know if you're referring only to the Cyril -Nestorius utilization, or if you're referring to the later

Lutheran discussion, and the ubiquity of the body of Christ, things like that. Well, it's interesting history, and you relate it very good.

And if I understand what you read there correctly, it means that attributes are communicated from the divine, from God, to man, at some point.

For example, Athanasius said that it was done when you were baptized. That's when they were communicated, from one to the other.

Others said, no, it was at death. Others said, no, no, it was at the resurrection. Well, really, really briefly,

I think we need to make it very, very clear, and I mentioned this in my debate with Martin Tanner, in regards to the doctrine of theosis, that what is communicated never changes man from being a creature, even in the context in which you were just referring to, such as with Athanasius.

And so it's not a communication of a divine nature in the sense of taking man from being a creature to an unlimited person.

Instead, it is union with Christ, and the divine nature in the sense of freedom from sin, and participation in divine life.

Hey, I'm really sorry that we're out of time. We'll put you on hold here just a moment. And thanks for listening. We hopefully, well, we will be with you

Thursday afternoon here on The Dividing Line. See you then. We must contend for the faith above is fought for.

We need a new Reformation day. It's a sign of the times.

The truth is being trampled in and doing paradigms. Faith, religion, it's time to make some noise.

I stand up for the truth. Won't you lift up hell and all the wicked birds?

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