Radio Free Geneva: Frank Turek, Norm Geisler, David Allen

Radio Free Geneva and the Frank Turek Clip

You constantly hear people that are Calvinist harp on this,.

God's sovereign, God's sovereign, sovereign, sovereign, sovereign.

They just keep repeating it, and they repeat it so much you start to think it's a biblical truth.

Inside the tomb of Lazarus she says, Lazarus, come out. And Lazarus said, I can't, I'm dead. That's not what he did. Lazarus came out. She didn't mean to tell me a dead person can respond to the command of Christ.

And then you take lessons from Judas White and Jeff Durbin. It shows in this kind of sequential format.

Do you really believe that it parallels the method of exegesis that we utilize to demonstrate those other things? Um, no.

New Calvinists, even pastors, very openly smoke pipes and cigars just as they drink beer and wine.

Even Jesus cannot override your unbelief.

A verse like that to him, you know what it would sound like if he were listening to it? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It wouldn't make any sense to him.

A self-righteous, legalistic, deceived jerk.

You need to realize that he's gone from predeterminism. Now he's speaking of some kind of middle knowledge that God now has to...

I deny and categorically deny middle knowledge.

Don't beg the question that would demand me to force you to embrace it.

It's not always talking about necessarily God choosing something for no apparent reason, but you're choosing that meat because it's a favorable meat. There's a reason to have the choice of that meat.

Why Reformed Theology Cannot Be Compared to Allah

From our underground bunker deep beneath the faculty cafeteria at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, safe from all those moderate Calvinists, Dave Hunt fans, and those who have read and re-read George Bryson's book, we are Radio Free Geneva, broadcasting the truth about God's freedom to say for his own eternal glory.

So I'm told that there's actually going to be a video version coming soon of our world-famous Radio Free Geneva opening, so you're all going to want to stay tuned for that one. I'm not sure what stay tuned means anymore.

It had a meaning once, when you had to get up and walk across your green shag carpet and get a bunch of static electricity and then touch the TV and get zapped and then clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk to change 13 main channels, and then you had all those UHF channels.

It never, ever came in perfectly clear. I don't care what kind of antenna you had. They were always a bit on the fuzzy side. But, oh, yeah. That's what teenagers are for. Go get it. Go change channel.

That's the remote control, was your 13-year-old. But anyway, welcome to Radio Free Geneva. We have a lot to get to today. I'm highly tempted to address the minor little controversy today. Well, we won't do that.

We want to stay focused on the issues that come up in Radio Free Geneva, where we deal with the best and the worst of anti-reformed polemics out there. I think our first Radio Free Geneva was, wow, it was long, long ago with, oh, I can see the guy.

I can hear the Southern Baptist guy. Oh, what was that? Adrian Rogers. Right, started with an A. Yes, Adrian Rogers. Boy, did we get a response to that. No one had ever dared tread the waters that we have tread many times in Radio Free Geneva.

But here we are, and we're going back at it again. We're going to start with a video clip from crossexamine .org and Dr. Frank Turek, who I guess was on with Leighton Flowers recently. And there's much to respond to.

It's a fairly short clip, so it won't take too much time. And then we're going to respond to a section from, it's still a relatively new book, called Calvinism, a Biblical and Theological Critique. Looks like B &H Academic really likes putting out anti-Calvinist books.

Many, many trees have died, but not much has been done as far as advancement of the argumentation. And we will notice that as we take a look at it and provide some Biblical response to what is presented therein.

And you'll notice an entire stack of Chosen But Free. There are four copies of Chosen But Free here. First edition, first printing. First edition, second printing. Second edition, third edition. I've had to keep up with these for some strange, odd reason over the years.

And we'll be talking about some of the background there, because Dr. Turek will hold up. He'll say, I've read books on this! At which time he holds up Chosen But Free, which does not tell most Reformed people that you've ever done any serious studying.

Anyone who would, let me just state this right up front, anyone who would hold this book up and say, I've studied the subject of Calvinism, shows they know nothing about Calvinism. That's all there is to it.

Not only has this book been refuted by yours truly, but a large number of Arminians admitted, this is one of the most confused books out there. It utilizes language in a completely inconsistent fashion.

It doesn't care about how terms have been defined in the past. And I'll tell you some background stories so you can know why that is. Because there's a reason for that, unfortunately. And we'll get into that.

So let's go ahead and jump into... Now, once again, all of this worked just a few moments ago. But everyone who knows anything about running sound in a church, or having things set up, ready to go for a webcast, knows that the fact that it worked 20 minutes ago, by the laws of physics means it should work now.

But that's not how it works in the real world. We all know that. So let's dive into Dr. Turek with Dr. Leighton Flowers.

If the God that's being described by Calvinists is, like you mentioned, more like Allah...

Okay, didn't get very far, did we? Have to, because that's a Geislerism. I heard that from Norm myself, you know, long, long ago. It's in his books. He made that assertion many times. And once again, all due respect, anyone who says that clearly knows nothing about Reformed theology and nothing about Islamic theology either.

So if that's what was said earlier, that Reformed theology presents God as if he's Allah, again, if it is your intention to try to persuade Reformed people, then you need to actually have some idea of what Reformed people believe.

And I am in a slightly unique position. Certainly there are many Reformed people that know much about Islam, but not too many people have engaged in quite as much discussion over the years as I have at least since 2006 with a number of the leading Muslim apologists around the world.

And in doing reading in their materials, the alleged connection between the sovereign God of Scripture, who in passages like Daniel 4, Psalm 135, 6, and just so many places where God does as he pleases, it is connected to the Islamic concept of Qadar, which is God's predestining power.

And so certainly the God of Muhammad, if you've seen some of the debates I've done, like I did a debate in Durban, South Africa, a number of years ago now, that really was focused upon the nature of Qadar, there are many Muslims today, in the West especially, that want to try to draw back from the strong statements of Muhammad in the Hadith, well, both in the Quran and in the Hadith, and really try to hold to a more libertarian perspective.

But you just can't do it. I mean, real briefly, in Islamic Hadith, you have something called Mutawatir Hadith, which are universally accepted Hadith. And there is one that is well, well known, where Muhammad taught that there are people who do the deeds of the people of heaven until there are a hand's breadth from entering in, and then what is written for them overcomes them, and they go into hell.

And then there are those who do the deeds of hell, their entire life, until there are a hand's breadth from entering in, when what is written for them overcomes them, and they go into paradise. And what is written for them is, you know, 40 days after conception, it's written down for you, male, female, we know that's not true, but male, female, successful, going to heaven, going to hell, whole nine yards, it's predestined.

The date of your death is written on your forehead. And there's nothing you can do about it. This is Qadr. This is God's expression of his power in his absolute sovereignty. And so there are people who go, see, as long as you believe in the sovereign God.

Now, the fundamental refutation of any foolish attempt to parallel Allah with the sovereign Yahweh has nothing to do with whether God is in control of all things. It's why and how. And that is the greatest illustration of God's sovereignty, I would say, is in the fact that we all agree there are prophecies of the coming of Christ.

His ministry is death, burial, and resurrection, right? I mean, that's the most fundamental Christian belief there is. Read Luke 24 and try not to get rebuked by Jesus for not believing what the prophets have said.

That means God is sovereign over history and bringing Jesus into this world. And that means that God in the person of his son entered into time. That is something Allah would never do and every Muslim who knows anything about theology knows that.

And therefore, any Christian who tries to compare Yahweh and his sovereignty with Allah in that way is just showing abysmal ignorance. Just abysmal ignorance. Stop it. Just stop it. Learn more about the sovereignty of God.

You know, maybe Dr. Turk would like to attend the G3 conference in Atlanta in September where the subject is the sovereignty of God and I will be speaking on that subject from the pages of scripture, as needs to be done.

Learn more about the sovereignty of God and then learn more about Allah and the concept of Qadr and Allah's utter transcendence and the fact he would never ever enter into his own creation. There's lots of other differences as well.

The concept of mediation and everything else that enters into that. Go back to 2006 or 2009 and you will find a lot of dividing lines where we went into more detail than probably most of the people in our audience wanted us to.

But you'll find a lot of discussion of that at that particular point in time.

In a lot of ways. In the way Allah is described by the Islamic community. If it's really making God the author of sin then how is it that we can say that we have friends who are Calvinist and that we get along with them and all these kinds of things.

Aren't you saying therefore if they believe in this God who believes all these things and does all these things therefore they must not be a Christian therefore we can't really fellowship with them therefore we need to get angry with them more and we need to shout them out and throw them out the kingdom which obviously neither one of you or I do.

This is one of the reasons this question is brought to me quite often. Why aren't you meaner with the Calvinists? Why don't you call them a heretic that they are and cast them out of the kingdom? And so I'll pose that question to you.

Why don't you cast out your Calvinist brothers out of the kingdom and shout them down as being heretics? Yeah.

So I think Layton's trying to be the nice guy here. Even though again I'm not sure how many times author of sin has been addressed with him. It's just, you know, there's no way around it. But it sounds like, you know, we're the nice guys.

The Calvinists are the mean nasty guys. But we've got some people on our side too that are too nasty. They're nastier than we are. And so since you don't kick them all out then why is that? It's Dr. Turek's response though that is very troubling.

Because I think that not every person that believes in Calvinism recognizes its long-term implications. That's truism.

Obviously there are Reformed people that have not thought through their faith. Maybe they were raised within it, something like that. But in my experience the vast majority of Reformed people are significantly wider-read and significantly more aware of the ramifications of their belief than almost any Arminian or Synergist I've ever met.

So, you know, especially any Reformed minister, you've had to walk into the sick room. You've had to be in the ICU. You've had to do the funerals. You've had to think through what your theology means in the face of death and suffering.

My second most popular book is Grieving, Our Path Back to Peace, which came from my working as a hospital chaplain. And I was fully Reformed when I did that work. I had to think through what it meant to deal with believers and unbelievers in the face of death and sickness.

Visiting, I just very clearly remember there was a particular wing at the hospital where I was a chaplain that was where the cancer patients were. And there was a special smell to it. There was. And I remember a 16-year-old boy with an aggressive form of stomach cancer, 16 years old.

You can't see that and deal with that without thinking through what the ramifications are. But, of course, my argument would be it's the Synergist who has not thought through the ramifications of these things.

And if Dr. Turk would ever respond to our criticisms of his position, I mean, I would be happy to have him on this program. We have an entire screen right there. There's a screen right next to the one you can see.

And we've had people on there. That's where we had a couple people join us in the studio. We can have conversations. Let's talk about it. But Dr. Turk will not respond to this. I would love to be proven wrong on this one, but over and over again, we've especially responded to him on Reformed Theology and on the subject of yeah, there's the other screen, on the subject of Roman Catholicism.

And he just, it's like we're not there. He's not going to respond to it. He's just going to let it hang out there. We'd love to have a conversation on these things because, in my opinion, I would like to ask Dr. Turk, okay, if you do not believe that God has a specific decree, then are you an open theist?

And if you're not an open theist, how are you not an open theist? How are you, if you believe that God, when he created, knew what the outcome was going to be, so you're not an open theist, you affirm exhausted divine foreknowledge, then when God created, he knew every act of evil was going to exist, but he did not have any purpose for those acts of evil.

But he created them anyway. So how do you answer that? How do you work that out? And how do you do it biblically? See, I can go to numerous biblical texts. I can show you God restraining man's evil. I can show you God hardening man's heart.

I can show you God accomplishing his purposes in light of his sovereign decree. Are you going to try to go with a Molinism perspective? That would be my guess, but a lot of people don't like going that direction.

I think I have heard Dr. Turek sort of try to go that way, but I just get the distinct feeling Dr. Turek himself would not wish to be pressed on the subject of Molinism, because I think he realizes if you try to get biblical there, it's going to get pretty ugly, as we've demonstrated numerous times in different contexts.

But anyway, so we have thought these things through. I remember that series, I think it was three programs, hours I did, on God's sovereignty and the problem of evil. What was that? I didn't do anything.

No, uh-uh. Because that's still up there, so I don't know what's going on there. Anyway, I think Rich hit a button, something like that, but now he's trying to blame me. See, he's typing. It was his fault.

See how this works? And I'm afraid as we get older, it's not going to get any better. In fact, it's going to become more common. Anyway, we have thought these things through. We have thought these things through very, very deeply, and I would just honestly ask Dr. Turk, have you read the Institutes of Christian Religion?

Have you read them? I mean, I just don't get the feelings you have. I really, really don't. And especially when you hold this up. When you hold this up and say, see, I've read on this subject, you're telling me I have not even tried hard enough in this area to recognize that the sources I'm using are actually really bad sources, and they're secondary all the way.

That's the concern that I have right there.

And boom. Right. Just because you might believe something doesn't mean you've thought it all the way through to its logical conclusion. I mean, there may be some beliefs I have that I haven't thought all the way through, and then I back up and I go, wow, yeah, if I believe this, then if you continue down that logical road, you're going to arrive here.

Maybe this belief that I have way back here is wrong, and I need to reevaluate it.

That's wisdom right there. That's the issue. That's the problem. I think there's a lot of questions we could ask. And let me just point something out. When we use authorities, and I think Dr. Turek looks to people like William Lane Craig and Norman Geisler as authorities, I can tell you right now, Norman Geisler stopped giving any serious thought to Reformed theology 55 years before he died.

I'll just never forget having the few conversations I had with him. And when you would raise the question, when you would raise anything even related to it, that and presuppositional apologetics, it was like a curtain just come down, and you'd get the same response.

There was no interaction. There was no interest. It was, I've already made my decisions on that thing, and I'm not even going to think about it. I'm not even going to give a second thought. And that's why Chosen but Free is what Chosen but Free is.

That's why, for example, the title of the book is specifically meant to be a response to R .C. Sproul's Chosen by God. Now, I had considered that as a possibility. I thought it was a little bit childish, and so I dismissed it until later I discovered, yeah, that's exactly what it was.

And in fact, Dr. Geister told one radio individual that I had stuck my nose into something that was none of my business because this was between him and R .C. Sproul. Now, if you can think that the entire discussion of God's sovereignty, procrastination and election, deadness of man and sin, is between you and anybody else, man, those are big britches you're wearing, okay?

You're not dealing with this issue overly well. And so there's the problem. If you accept authorities such as Norman Geisler, this is what you end up with, is this kind of, well, you know, maybe I've missed something, but you really don't seem to be open to correction if your ultimate authorities, which is not scripture, but individuals in whom you invest that kind of authority, like a Norman Geisler, if they're in error, then you're never going to check out.

You're not even leaving a spot open for there to be a foundation for you to check out what has become your traditions at that point. And so I said, well, you do the same thing with R .C. Sproul. No, I don't.

R .C. Sproul was wrong about Thomas. R .C. Sproul was wrong in his, and because he was wrong on Thomas, in his debate with Greg Bonson. So there are a number of things where I can go, nope, loved R .C., loved our conversations, loved our time together.

We agreed on just so many things. We didn't agree on baptism, but loved what R .C. did, and I learned so much from him. I still think The Holiness of God is one of the best books I've ever written, no question about it.

But I can also go, but man, he left a stinker there, especially on Thomas, and we're dealing with the results of that now. So no, I don't do that, and I don't recommend that we do that with anybody. Oh, but man, you just really love Calvin.

I do, but I also know he would have driven me out of Geneva at best. You know, I don't think he would have zwinglied me. I don't think I would have gotten my third baptism in the lake, but no, I get it.

I try to be consistent there.

These people are brothers and sisters in Christ, and they haven't really gotten into studying this. You know, I've read books on it.

Well, there you go. They really haven't gotten into studying this, but I've read books on it, and you pick up Chosen But Free. Let me just, since we have the screenshot there of him holding the book, I've read books on it.

Okay, all right. Anyone who reads Chosen But Free on either side should immediately recognize how poor a book it is, and if you're using that as your example, then I'm sorry, I just can't believe that your level of study on this is past a very low level.

That's just the only way I can say that with respect. This was the first copy that I bought. It is filled with yellow markings all over the place, exclamation points, circles out in the outside. Up in the front, I have just a few little, there was no meaningful scripture index here.

It was very, very, very short. Let's see. The scripture index in the first edition, first printing was one page. Okay, not even a full page when you think about it. So, I mean, there are only three references in the Old Testament, page 2526.

I've told this story before. What I had to do, Amazon had come into existence, and so what I would do is I would buy people $20 Amazon gift certificates. At the time, Amazon was pretty much just a book service before they took over everything.

And I would give this to someone in our chat channel. I'd give them a gift certificate, and then they had to have chosen but free, and I may have even bought a few copies for people, now that I think about it.

They didn't have it, if they were willing to do this. And I remember especially, I need every reference, John 6, 35 through 45 in the entire book. And I did that with a number of other texts, because there was no exhaustive, in the second edition, that expanded a lot, but I had already written Potter's Freedom by that point.

And the reason being that Dr. Geisser did not feel it was necessary to provide any kind of consistent exegetical argumentation. And I had written to Dr. Geisser. We had had a very positive relationship up to this point.

I remember very clearly, he and I were being driven to the airport after speaking at a conference together. It was a conference that he had specifically said to me he would not have come to if I had not been there.

That's what he said. And in the car, he said, he told me about the fact that he was writing Chosen but Free. It was also around the same time that he said, I'm 65 now, so I can write my systematic theology.

And I said, you have to be 65? Oh yeah, nobody under 65 can possibly know enough to write a systematic theology. So I said, you must not have much room for Grudem's work. Oh, waste of paper, okay? I learned from personal conversation with Dr. Geisser that he did not believe he could learn anything from anyone younger than himself.

He was very clear on that, very clear on that. He could not learn from anyone younger than himself. He did not have respect for people younger than himself as far as disagreeing with him on anything. He would be very encouraging to people younger than himself as long as you were on his side, as long as you were faithful to his perspectives.

And so I sent him my books after that trip. A little note, I don't recall hearing anything back. I might have gotten a postcard or something thanks to the books or something. At one point, I wrote to Dr. Eisler and I said, could you point me to where you have provided a full exegesis of John chapter 6, verses 37 through 44?

It's in the book. And so I wrote back, said, these are all the references in the book. There is no exegesis offered in all of these references. And there wasn't. And in fact, that section, which of course is a tightly argued section in the Gospel of John, you'd have one verse over here and one verse over here, not even in order.

And his only response was, if you publish, I will respond. That was it. A little postcard type thing. That was the last time I ever heard one. So I am absolutely convinced that this is the first printing, second printing, first edition.

In the second edition, there is an appendix responding to the Potter's Freedom. I am absolutely convinced. No one can argue otherwise. Dr. Eisler never read the Potter's Freedom. He told Marty Minto that he gave the Potter's Freedom to his freshman students, freshman logic students, I think it was, and let them tear it apart.

Now, Bethany House recognized, thankfully. I tore that appendix apart. It was horrible. Wrong page numbers, the most inane, childish argumentation I'd ever seen, complete misunderstanding of what all the issues were.

It was horrible. It was worse than the text itself, which was bad enough. But it was really bad. And I tore it apart. And we were in the midst of a series of dividing lines where we, I said series of dividing lines.

See that? I did. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. I have it on silent, but it doesn't matter. It'll still, I'm using it to hold a book open at the moment. So that's sort of how that works. Thank you very much, ma 'am.

We were in a series of dividing lines, don't do it, where I was taking that appendix apart, paragraph by paragraph. It was embarrassing. And there was a death in Dr. Geisler's family. If I recall correctly, it was a child.

If I recall correctly, it was a suicide. And so we made the decision. I don't know if you remember this. We made a decision just to stop. We had already demonstrated the fact that the appendix in the second edition was bad.

And Bethany House, see here's third edition. No appendix. It's gone. The folks at Bethany House realized. Now, I was noticing that there was a reference to the Potter's Freedom in here. And in fact, it's just really interesting.

This is part of the expanded one. Did an entire chapter on the big three, Matthew 23, 37 being one of them. And it says, the plain meaning of Matthew 23, 37, then implausible interpretation by extreme Calvinists.

So remember, in his world, he's a moderate Calvinist. In the rest of the world, he's an Arminian. So Calvinists are extreme Calvinists. And I walked through Matthew 23, 37 in the Potter's Freedom rather clearly.

And so there was an addition. Further, the proposal by others that it was Jewish rulers, not the people who are unwilling to be gathered in by Christ, does not really help the matter for a couple reasons.

First, even if it was the Jewish leaders in view, their stubborn will resists God's desire to save all. I mean, that shows me that whoever wrote that did not read the Potter's Freedom. They're hearing someone else saying, well, he said this, because that was never my argument.

And no one with even a basic reading capability who read what I wrote on Matthew 23, 37 would come to that conclusion. So there were a number of places where they pulled the appendix, but they tried to respond to a few things, and just stumbled and fumbled and collapsed in the process.

So let me tell you one other story about it that is really funny. In that appendix, at one point, I'm attacked because when I cited Geisler, and I remember this day. In fact, I could probably find the marking in here fairly easily.

I didn't. Yeah. I'm really close to the section where it was. But I found a section where these verses support, and it specifically said, limited atonement. So the first printing said, limited atonement.

And you have to remember, this is published by Bethany House Publishers. I was a Bethany House author. Roman Catholic controversy, Letters from a Mormon Elder, King James Only controversy, et cetera, et cetera.

So I knew who the editors were, because I worked with them. And so I contacted the main editor, who I'd known for years and years and years. And I said, hey, do you have a copy of Chosen but Free at hand?

He goes, yeah. And so I took him to the page, and I said, this says these verses teach limited atonement. I said, I think that's supposed to be unlimited atonement, isn't it? And I can hear him, and he goes, you know, reading through it.

He goes, yep, you're right. I'm making a note of it. And so he made a note of a typographical error in the first printing of the first edition. So I had to quote that in the Potter's Freedom. And when I wrote the Potter's Freedom, that was all that was out.

Then the second printing comes out. So it's still the first edition, but it's second printing. And I had found that typographical error, and I let Bethany House know about it, and they fixed it before the second printing.

So when the second edition comes out in the appendix, I am criticized for misciting that text, because whoever wrote the appendix is now using the second printing, which has the fix from my reporting the typographical error to Bethany House Publishers.

And so I get criticized for misciting when I was the one that actually found the typographical error. That's the kind of fun stuff you experience in dealing with the publishing industry. Things may have changed now because everything's done electronically, and you can just make a change, boom, boom, boom, which is a bit of a problem in some ways.

But that was just one of the more humorous aspects of all this stuff. So anyway, if you're holding up Chosen But Free, let me just be honest with you. That means you've not read reform material at all with an open mind, and you're reading some of the worst of the other side, and you're accepting it uncritically.

Put it away. Get something that's going to be significantly more accurate in its perspective.

Many people haven't, and so maybe they haven't thought of the logical implications of it. And so I'm not going to separate from them because they're still out there being brothers and sisters in the Lord.

They still believe in sin. They still believe in the essentials of the faith. There is a God. You are not him. You're fallen. You need to accept Christ. He's the Savior. You're saved by grace, not by works.

We all believe in that Christ is going to come back. So they believe in all the essentials of the faith, but the implications of Calvinism prevents them from, I think, answering some of the hardest questions about the faith.

That's one of the problems, and it might be that they never get questions, or it might be that they have to stop short of a real robust answer because of the implications of their Calvinism.

I would love to know what these questions are because I have all sorts of questions that I don't believe the Synergists can even begin to give an answer for. I believe the exact opposite, but I've actually given those answers that Dr. Turek doesn't even seem to be aware of.

And Frank, you know the one time we met at SES, I gave you answers to every question you asked me, every one of them. You know that. You know that. So I don't know how you can sit there and say this kind of thing because I just don't have any evidence that you have taken seriously what you need, the amount of work you need to do to make the statements that you're making.

I really do. And I think it is anyone who would take whatever perspective it is you have, especially if it's a Molinistic one. Hey, Molinism just simply utilizes philosophical categories that are inconsistent with themselves to get around the real tough questions, to try to have the cake and eat it too.

But you're not actually answering those tough questions. You're just simply saying, well, we're not really making as much of an assertion as the Bible does on these matters. So this is the kind of stuff that's out there.

I fully understand why people struggle with this stuff when this is the kind of material they're encountering. But I would really, again, Dr. Turek, open invitation. Open invitation. I'd like to hear the questions that you think we can't answer.

And I'd like to hear your answer. Open invitation. I think it would be of benefit to people. Many people on both sides would agree with me. It would be highly beneficial to have this conversation. And we can do it at any point in time because we have the technology to do it right now.

So of course, I've extended that invitation repeatedly over and over and over again. And it hasn't been accepted. But there you go. All right, so let's take that down. And let's bring our Bible program up and make it nice and big so everybody can see what we're looking at here.

Rich will tell you it took me some time today to find these books. I did link. I apologize once again. Yesterday on the program, I said I was going to put the link into the description of yesterday's program of the Divine Line material that we did responding to David Allen.

Here's David Allen's The Extent of the Atonement, a historical and critical review. This is 820 pages long, beastie book, all right? Very large. And then we have David Allen, The Atonement, A Biblical, Theological, and Historical Study of the Cross of Christ.

Again, these are all B &H. This one's over 300 pages long. And Dr. Allen and I have sparred without his engaging directly with me, despite our repeated invitations to do so. And again, let me point out, I don't know where Dr. Allen is these days.

He was dismissed from Southwestern. And by the way, I publicly made it known, it seemed to me that he was done wrong. I can disagree with the man. I can say that the man's position on this subject is very easily dealt with from a reformed perspective.

But it seems to me that he really invested himself in that school. And so to be dismissed the way he was seemed really wrong to me. I don't know if he's still in the same area. I would assume he probably is.

I just don't know. But if he is, I'm going through Texas all the time anymore. And not like the way I used to. The way I used to go through Texas was through DFW. But that doesn't really mean you're actually able to get anywhere without leaving that big, massive airport.

But now I'm driving through Texas, either through Houston or through the Dallas area or up north through Oklahoma, Amarillo across the 40 to the north part there. I'm in that general area all the time.

And there are plenty of RV parks. So I have said for a long, long time when Dr. Allen was teaching at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, let's set up a debate. We'll come into your classroom. I will debate this subject with you with nothing but a Greek New Testament.

I will walk into Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary just my Greek New Testament. Let's debate. And of course, nothing has ever come of that. And so that invitation is open as well. And I'm sort of thankful in a way that it's become somewhat focused on Romans chapter 8.

Because Dr. Allen attempted. Now, it's interesting to me. He does include in the new book a URL reference to his article, a blog article that he wrote. It was that article that we took apart. I checked each of the commentary citations that he used.

I found a number of them to be exceptionally substandard. I'm sorry. I've got to be honest. If I were grading that article as a fellow professor, if he was a student, I would be talking to the student about misunderstanding the context of the commentary that he was dealing with.