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

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January 18, 2023

Started off listening to a clip from Dr. Frank Turek with Leighton Flowers wherein Turek opines that many Reformed folks just have not thought through the ramifications of their position. He also held up Chosen But Free by Norman Geisler, so we discussed that as well. Then we moved over to comments made by Dr. David Allen in the fairly new publication titled Calvinism: A Biblical and Theological Critique, specifically on a subject we have gone in depth on before, Romans 8:28ff. Went to "the big board" and let the text speak for itself, the one thing Provisionists never seem to do. Ninety minutes today!

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00:01: I constantly hear people that are
00:15: Calvinist harp on this, God's offering, God's offering, God's offering, God's offering,
00:20: God's offering. They just keep repeating it. And they repeat it so much, you start to think it's a Biblical truth. Jesus stands outside the tomb of Lazarus.
00:35: He says, Lazarus, come out. And Lazarus said, I can't, I'm dead. That's not what he did.
00:41: Lazarus came out. Do you 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.
00:57: 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?
01:15: Um, no. Calvinists, even pastors, very openly smoke pipes and cigars just as they drink beer and wine.
01:28: Even Jesus cannot override your unbelief.
01:49: He's quoting a verse like that to him. You know what it would sound like if he were listening to it? He wouldn't make any sense to him.
01:58: A self -righteous, legalistic, deceived jerk. And you need to realize that he's gone from predeterminism.
02:11: Now he's speaking of some kind of middle knowledge that God now has to.
02:16: I deny and categorically deny middle knowledge. Don't beg the question that would demand me to force you to embrace it.
02:29: You're not always talking about necessarily God choosing something for no apparent reason, but you're choosing that meat because it's a favorable meat.
02:37: There's a reason to have the choice of that meat. The cafeteria at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.
02:52: Safe from all those moderate Calvinists, Dave Hunt fans, and those who have read and re -read
02:57: George Bryson's book, we are Radio Free Geneva! Broadcasting the truth about God's freedom to say for his own eternal glory.
03:08: So I'm told that there's actually going to be a video version coming soon of our world -famous
03:15: 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.
03:23: 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
03:34: TV and get zapped and then clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk to change 13 main channels and then you had all those
03:42: UHF channels. It never ever came in perfectly clear. I don't care what kind of antenna you had.
03:48: They were always a bit on the fuzzy side, but oh, yeah.
03:56: 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.
04:06: We have a lot to get to today. I'm highly tempted to address the minor little controversy today.
04:12: 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.
04:28: I think our first Radio Free Geneva was, wow, it was long, long ago with, oh,
04:37: I can see the guy. I can hear the Southern Baptist guy. Oh, what was that? Adrian Rogers.
04:44: Right, Southern A. Yes, Adrian Rogers. Boy, did we get response to that.
04:52: 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.
05:04: We're going to start with a video clip from crossexamine .org and Dr.
05:10: Frank Turek, who I guess was on with Layton Flowers recently, and there's much to respond to.
05:18: 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
05:31: Calvinism, A Biblical and Theological Critique. Looks like B &H
05:39: 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.
06:03: There are four copies of Chosen But Free here.
06:09: First edition, first printing, first edition, second printing, second edition, third edition.
06:15: 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.
06:24: 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
06:35: 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,
06:44: I've studied the subject of Calvinism, shows they know nothing about Calvinism.
06:51: 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.
07:08: It utilizes language in a completely inconsistent fashion. It doesn't care about how terms have been defined in the past.
07:17: And I'll tell you some background stories, so you can know why that is, because there's a reason for that, unfortunately.
07:24: 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.
07:52: But that's not how it works in the real world. We all know that. So let's dive into Dr.
08:00: Turek with Dr. Leighton Flowers. If the God that's being described by Calvinists is, like you mentioned, more like Allah.
08:11: Okay, didn't get very far, did we? Have to, because that's a
08:16: Geislerism. I heard that from Norm myself, you know, long, long ago.
08:23: 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.
08:39: So if that's what was said earlier, that Reformed theology presents
08:44: God as if he's Allah, again, if it is your intention to try to persuade
08:54: Reformed people, then you need to actually have some idea of what Reformed people believe.
09:01: And I am in a slightly unique position. Certainly, there are many
09:06: 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
09:20: Muslim apologists around the world. And in doing reading in their materials, the alleged connection between a sovereign
09:33: God, the sovereign God of Scripture, who in passages like Daniel 4,
09:39: Psalm 135, 6, and just so many places where God does as he pleases, it is connected to the
09:48: Islamic concept of Qadar, Q -A -D -A -R, Qadar, which is God's predestining power.
09:56: And so certainly, the God of Muhammad, now there are, if you've seen some of the debates
10:03: 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.
10:14: There are many Muslims today that, in the West especially, that want to try to draw back from the strong statements of Muhammad in the
10:24: Hadith, well, both in the Quran and in the Hadith, and really try to hold to a more libertarian perspective.
10:34: But you just can't do it. I mean, real briefly, in Islamic Hadith, you have something called
10:40: 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.
11:06: 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.
11:15: And what is written for them is, you know, 40 days into, 40 days after conception, 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.
11:31: The date of your death is written on your forehead. And there's nothing you can do about it.
11:37: This is Qadr. This is God's expression of his power in his absolute sovereignty.
11:44: And so there are people who go, see, as long as you believe in the sovereign God. The fundamental refutation of any foolish attempt to parallel Allah with the sovereign
12:02: Yahweh has nothing to do with whether God is in control of all things. It's why and how.
12:10: 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 as ministry of death, burial, and resurrection, right?
12:23: 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.
12:38: 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.
12:47: That is something Allah would never do and every Muslim who knows anything about theology knows that.
12:53: And therefore, any Christian who tries to compare Yahweh and his sovereignty with Allah in that way is just showing abysmal ignorance.
13:01: Just abysmal ignorance. Stop it. Just stop it. Learn more about the sovereignty of God.
13:12: 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.
13:28: 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.
13:42: There's lots of other differences as well. The concept of mediation and everything else 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.
14:03: But you'll find a lot of discussion of that at that particular point in time. In a lot of ways.
14:08: In the way that Allah is described by the Islamic community. If it's really making
14:14: God the author of sin, then how is it that we can say that we have friends who are
14:20: Calvinist and that we get along with them and all these kinds of things? Aren't you saying, therefore, if they believe in this
14:26: God who believes all these things, who 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 of the kingdom?
14:38: 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
14:44: Calvinists? Why don't you call them a heretic that they are and cast them out of the kingdom? I'll pose that question to you.
14:49: Why don't you cast out your Calvinist brothers out of the kingdom and shut them down as being heretics?
14:56: I think Layton's trying to be the nice guy here, even though, again,
15:02: I'm not sure how many times author of sin has been addressed with him. There's no way around it.
15:10: It sounds like 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.
15:18: They're nastier than we are. Since you don't kick them all out, then why is that?
15:24: 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.
15:39: That's truism. Obviously, there are
15:44: Reformed people that have not thought through their faith. Maybe they were raised within it, something like that.
15:51: But in my experience, the vast majority of Reformed people are significantly whiter -red and significantly more aware of the ramifications of their belief than almost any
16:03: Arminian or Synergist I've ever met. Especially any
16:13: Reformed minister, you've had to walk into the sick room, you've had to be in the
16:19: 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.
16:31: My second most popular book is Grieving, Our Path Back to Peace, which came from my working as a hospital chaplain.
16:40: 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.
16:54: 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.
17:04: 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.
17:17: You can't see that and deal with that without thinking through what the ramifications are.
17:25: But of course, my argument would be it's the synergist who has not thought through the ramifications of these things.
17:32: And if Dr. Turk would ever respond to our criticisms of his position,
17:40: 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.
17:48: And we've had people on there. That's where we had, we've had a couple people join us in the studio.
17:56: And we can have conversations. Let's talk about it. But Dr. Turk will not respond to this.
18:04: 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.
18:19: And he just, it's like we're not there. He's not gonna respond to it. He's just gonna let it hang out there. We'd love to have a conversation on these things, because in my opinion,
18:29: 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?
18:40: And if you're not an open theist, how are you not an open theist? 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, exhaust the divine foreknowledge, then when
18:56: God created, he knew every act of evil was going to exist, but he did not have any purpose for those acts of evil.
19:02: But he created them anyway. So how do you answer that? How do you work that out?
19:08: And how do you do it biblically? See, I can go to numerous biblical texts.
19:14: I can show you God restraining man's evil. I can show you God hardening man's heart. I can show you
19:20: God accomplishing his purposes in light of his sovereign decree. Are you gonna try to go the
19:26: Molinism perspective? That would be my guess, but a lot of people don't like going that direction.
19:33: I think I have heard Dr. Turk sort of try to go that way, but I just get the distinct feeling that Dr.
19:39: Turk 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 gonna get pretty ugly, as we've demonstrated numerous times in different contexts.
19:57: But anyway, so we have thought these things through. I remember that series,
20:04: I think it was three programs, hours I did on God's sovereignty and the problem of evil.
20:15: What was that? I didn't do anything. No, uh -uh.
20:21: Because that's still up there, so I don't know what's going on there. Anyway, I think
20:27: Rich hit a button, something like that, but now he's trying to blame me. See, he's typing.
20:34: It was his fault. See how this works? And I'm afraid as we get older, it's not gonna get any better.
20:42: In fact, it's gonna become more common. Anyway, we have thought these things through.
20:48: We have thought these things through very, very deeply, and I would just honestly ask
20:54: Dr. Turk, Dr. Turk, have you read the Institutes of Christian Religion? Have you read them?
21:03: I mean, I just don't get the feelings you have. I really, really don't, and especially when you hold this up.
21:11: When you hold this up and say, see, I've read on this subject, you're telling me I have not even,
21:16: 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.
21:25: That's the concern that I have right there. And boom.
21:32: Right? Just because you might believe something doesn't mean you've thought it all the way through to its logical conclusion.
21:39: 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 gonna arrive here.
21:50: Maybe this belief that I have way back here is wrong, and I need to re -evaluate it.
21:56: It might be. That is, that's wisdom right there. That's the issue.
22:03: That's the problem. I think there's a lot of questions we could ask. And let me just, let me just point something out.
22:13: When we use authorities, and I think Dr. Turek looks to people like William Lane Craig and Norman Geisler as authorities.
22:21: I can tell you right now, Norman Geisler stopped giving any serious thought to Reformed theology 55 years before he died.
22:37: 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.
23:02: 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.
23:09: And that's why Chosen but Free is what Chosen but Free is. That's why, that's why, for example, the title of the book is specifically meant to be a response to R .C.
23:24: 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
23:33: I discovered, yeah, that's exactly what it was. And in fact, Dr. Geisler 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.
23:45: 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?
24:04: You're not dealing with this issue overly well. And so there's the problem.
24:09: If you accept authorities such as Norman Geisler, this is what you end up with, is this kind of, well, you know, maybe
24:20: 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
24:36: Norman Geisler, if they're in error, then you're never going to check out.
24:43: 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.
24:52: 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.
24:58: R .C. Sproul was wrong in his, and because he was wrong on Thomas, in his debate with Greg Bonson.
25:06: So there are a number of things where I can go, nope, loved R .C., loved our conversations, loved our time together.
25:12: We agreed on just so many things. We didn't agree on baptism, but loved what
25:19: 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.
25:33: 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
25:40: 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.
25:48: I don't think I would have gotten my third baptism in the lake, but no,
25:54: I get it. I try to be consistent there.
26:01: These people are brothers and sisters in Christ, and they haven't really gotten into studying this.
26:08: 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.
26:21: Let me just, since we have the screenshot there of him holding the book, I've read books on it.
26:26: 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
26:37: I'm sorry. I just can't believe that your level of study on this is past a very low level.
26:46: That's just the only way I can say that with respect. This was the first copy that I bought.
26:56: It is filled with yellow markings all over the place, exclamation points, circles out in the outside.
27:06: Up in the front, I have just a few little, there was no meaningful, there was no meaningful scripture index here.
27:20: It was very, very, very short. Let's see. The scripture index in the first edition, first printing, was one page.
27:31: Okay, not even a full page when you think about it. So, I mean, there are only three references from the
27:38: Old Testament. Page 2526. I've told the story before.
27:44: What I had to do, Amazon had come into existence, and so what I would do is
27:50: I would buy people $20 Amazon gift certificates. At the time,
27:55: Amazon was pretty much just a book service before they took over everything.
28:04: And I would give this to someone in our chat channel. I'd give them a gift certificate, and then they had to have
28:14: 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.
28:21: And I remember especially, I need every reference, John 6, 35 through 45, in the entire book.
28:32: 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
28:41: Potter's Freedom by that point. And the reason being that Dr.
28:49: Geisler did not feel it was necessary to provide any kind of consistent exegetical argumentation.
29:01: And I had written to Dr. Geisler. We had had a very positive relationship up to this point.
29:08: I remember very clearly. He and I were being driven to the airport after speaking at a conference together.
29:14: 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.
29:23: And in the car, he said, he told me about the fact that he was writing
29:29: Chosen But Free. It was also around the same time that he said, I'm 65 now, so I can write my systematic theology.
29:40: And I said, you have to be 65? Oh, yeah, nobody who's under 65 can possibly know enough to write a systematic theology.
29:48: So I said, you must not have much room for Grudem's work. Oh, waste of paper, OK? I learned from personal conversation with Dr.
29:59: Geisler that he did not believe he could learn anything from anyone younger than himself. He was very clear on that, very clear.
30:08: 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.
30:15: 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.
30:30: And so I sent him my books after that trip.
30:37: A little note, I don't recall hearing anything back. I might have gotten a postcard or something thanks to the books or something.
30:46: At one point, I wrote to Dr. Geisler, and I said, could you point me to where you have provided a full exegesis of John chapter 6, verses 37 through 44?
30:59: It's in the book. And so I wrote back. I said, these are all the references in the book. There is no exegesis offered in all of these references.
31:09: And there wasn't. And in fact, that section, which, of course, is a tightly argued section in the
31:16: 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,
31:25: I will respond. That was it. 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.
31:45: In the second edition, there is an appendix responding to the Potter's Freedom.
31:51: I am absolutely convinced, and no one can argue otherwise, Dr. Geisler never read the Potter's Freedom.
31:58: He told Marty Minto that he gave the
32:05: Potter's Freedom to his freshman students, freshman logic students,
32:13: I think it was, and let them tear it apart. Now, Bethany House recognized, thankfully.
32:25: I tore that appendix apart. It was horrible. Wrong page numbers.
32:31: The most inane, childish argumentation I've ever seen. Complete misunderstanding of what all the issues were.
32:36: It was horrible. It was worse than the text itself, which was bad enough. But it was really bad.
32:44: And I tore it apart. And we were in the midst of a series of dividing lines, where we,
32:58: I said series of dividing lines. See that? I did. Thank you very much.
33:03: Appreciate that. I have it on silent, but it doesn't matter. I'm using it to hold a book open at the moment, so that's sort of how that works.
33:13: Thank you very much, ma 'am. We were in a series of dividing lines.
33:20: Don't do it. Where I was taking that appendix apart, paragraph by paragraph.
33:29: It was embarrassing. And there was a death in Dr. Geisler's family.
33:35: If I recall correctly, it was a child. If I recall correctly, it was a suicide. And so we made the decision.
33:42: 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.
33:54: And Bethany House, see here's third edition. No appendix. It's gone.
34:01: The folks at Bethany House realized. I was noticing that there was a reference to the potter's freedom in here.
34:12: And in fact, it's just really interesting. This is part of the expanded one.
34:23: 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
34:36: Calvinists. So remember, in his world, he's a moderate Calvinist. In the rest of the world, he's an
34:41: Arminian. So Calvinists are extreme Calvinists. And I walked through Matthew 23, 37 in the potter's freedom rather clearly.
34:53: 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.
35:02: First, even if it was the Jewish leaders in view, their stubborn will resists God's desire to save all.
35:09: 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.
35:19: And no one with even a basic reading capability who read what I wrote on Matthew 23, 37 would come to that conclusion.
35:27: 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.
35:42: And let me tell you one other story about it that is really funny. In that appendix, at one point,
35:50: I'm attacked because when I cited
35:55: Geisler, and I remember this day, in fact, I could probably find the marking in here fairly easily.
36:12: I'm really close to the section where it was.
36:20: But I found a section where these verses support, and it specifically said, limited atonement.
36:41: So the first printing said, limited atonement. And you have to remember, this is published by Bethany House Publishers.
36:49: I was a Bethany House author. They had Roman Catholic controversy, letters from a
36:55: Mormon elder, King James only controversy, et cetera, et cetera. So I knew who the editors were, because I worked with them.
37:03: And so I contacted the main editor, who
37:08: I'd known for years and years and years, and I said, hey, do you have a copy of Chosen But Free at hand?
37:14: He goes, yeah. And so I took him to the page, and I said, this says these verses teach limited atonement.
37:26: And he says, I said, I think that's supposed to be unlimited atonement, isn't it? And I can hear him reading through it.
37:35: 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.
37:47: So I had to quote that in the Potter's Freedom. When I wrote the Potter's Freedom, that was all that was out.
37:55: Then the second printing comes out. So it's still the first edition, but it's second printing.
38:01: And I had found that typographical error and I let Bethany House know about it, and they fixed it before the second printing.
38:12: So when the second edition comes out in the appendix,
38:19: I am criticized for mis -citing 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.
38:36: And so I get criticized for mis -citing 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.
38:50: 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.
38:58: 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.
39:08: 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.
39:20: Put it away. Get something that's going to be significantly more accurate in its perspective.
39:27: 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
39:38: 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.
39:44: 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, and so they believe in all the essentials of the faith, but the implications of Calvinism prevents them from,
40:00: 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
40:13: 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 because I believe the exact opposite, but I've actually given those answers that Dr.
40:30: 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.
40:42: 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.
40:58: I really do, and I think it is anyone who would take whatever perspective it is you have, especially if it's a
41:05: 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.
41:24: You're just simply saying, well, we're not really making as much of an assertion as the Bible does on these matters.
41:32: 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,
41:44: 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.
41:54: Open invitation. I think it would be of benefit to people. Many people on both sides would agree with me.
42:02: 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.
42:14: 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.
42:27: All right. So let's take that down, and let's bring our
42:36: Bible program up and make it nice and big so everybody can see what we're looking at here.
42:46: Rich will tell you it took me some time today to find these books.
42:56: I did link. I apologize once again. Yesterday on the program,
43:02: I said I was going to put the link into the description of yesterday's program of the
43:13: Divine Line material that we did responding to David Allen. Here's David Allen's The Extent of the
43:22: Atonement, a Historical and Critical Review. This is 820 pages long, beastie book.
43:34: All right. Very large. And then we have David Allen, The Atonement, a
43:40: Biblical, Theological, and Historical Study of the Cross of Christ. Again, these are all B &H.
43:46: This one's over 300 pages long. And Dr.
43:55: Allen and I have sparred without his engaging directly with me, despite our repeated invitations to do so.
44:04: And again, let me point out, I don't know where Dr. Allen is these days. He was dismissed from Southwestern.
44:10: And by the way, I publicly made it known, it seemed to me that he was done wrong. I can disagree with the man.
44:18: I can say that the man's position on this subject is very easily dealt with from a reformed perspective.
44:27: 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.
44:38: 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,
44:48: I'm going through Texas all the time anymore. And not like the way I used to.
44:54: 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.
45:07: But now I'm driving through Texas, either through Houston or through the
45:12: Dallas area or up north through Oklahoma, Amarillo across the 40, to the north part there.
45:22: I'm in that general area all the time. And there are plenty of RV parks.
45:30: 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.
45:40: We'll come into your classroom. I will debate this subject with you with nothing but a
45:49: Greek New Testament. I will walk into Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary just my
45:54: Greek New Testament. Let's debate. And, of course, nothing has ever come of that. And so that invitation is open as well.
46:09: And I'm sort of thankful in a way that it's become somewhat focused on Romans chapter eight because Dr.
46:19: Allen attempted. Now, it's interesting to me. He does include in the new book a
46:25: URL reference to his article, a blog article that he wrote. It was that article that we took apart.
46:36: I checked each of the commentary citations that he used. I found a number of them to be exceptionally substandard.
46:45: I'm sorry, I've got to be honest. If I were grading that article as a fellow professor, if he was a student,
46:56: I would be talking to the student about misunderstanding the context of the commentary that he was dealing with.
47:08: And so you can go back. I tweeted out the
47:13: URL just less than an hour ago. Well, yeah, right at an hour ago of the dividing line where he went through that stuff.
47:23: I believe there was a program before that as well. If you put Allen with an E -A -L -L -E -N into the search,
47:31: I think it'll pull up each of the dividing lines we've done in response to him. And you will see that one side, our side, has very fully engaged the arguments of the other, looked up their references, engaged with those citations, and has provided a thoroughgoing text -based refutation from the original languages of Scripture.
48:07: The other side has not done that. You take all three of these books and the thousands of trees that have died to produce them, and you will not find an exegetical defense of a non -particular atonement in Romans chapter 8.
48:26: You won't find it. It's not there. And this again leads us to a recognition of something.
48:36: The reason that Reformed theology will always be there and will always attract people is because we can open up the pages of Scripture or put the inspired words of Scripture on the big screen and walk through John 6,
49:00: Ephesians 1, Romans 8, Romans 9. We can walk through these texts.
49:09: Start at the beginning. Follow the argument through. Use the exact same form of exegesis, hermeneutics that we use to defend the resurrection, the deity of Christ, whatever it might be.
49:24: We can walk through the text and let the text speak for itself. The other side simply can't do it.
49:31: They can't. How many times have we taken the time to look at latent flowers, trying to do something with John 6 or Ephesians 1 and just discover face -plantingly bad hermeneutics and exegesis?
49:58: We've done it for years. So, a new book comes out.
50:06: A new book comes out. Big book.
50:13: Hardback. Over 500 pages long. All sorts of people involved, though.
50:21: It's interesting. Edited by David Allen and Steve Lemke. But you've got some real interesting people in here.
50:31: Of course, you've got Brian Abbasiano on Romans 9, that whole thing. Ben Witherington III, not exactly your conservative type person.
50:40: And, of course, you've got Kenneth Wilson. You've got the duped.
50:47: If you know what duped is, you weren't around in 2020 during the lockdowns. With his absolutely astonishingly amazing ahistorical historicism.
51:02: Trying to turn Calvinism into Manichaeism. That was an interesting number of months where we had to explain to people how the elect could poop out light.
51:23: And that Manichaeism, according to him, is actually the source of Calvinism.
51:29: But anyway, so it's a wide variety of perspectives expressed in this book.
51:38: And there are a number of books coming out. You know, I've got a book over there, Why We Preach from the Received Text. I want to get into that.
51:44: It's been out for a while. And there's lots of things I want to be doing, but it just seems the older I get, the slower
51:50: I go. Or the older I get, the more stuff I'm involved in. Which requires listening to just, and reading, just a lot of stuff.
52:02: And so I popped open the new book on Calvinism, and I happened upon a critique of Limited Atonement.
52:13: And of course, it's David Allen's chapter. So my thought was, all right, I went back to the
52:18: Scripture Index. Let's see, this has come out since, obviously, it was written after we did a rather full, thorough refutation.
52:31: Of his best attempt. We did his books. I had both those, those very two books, sitting on the table in the other studios before this one was made.
52:46: And we went through it. And so if you're going to continue writing on that subject, in a big old honking book like this, then you're going to take into consideration a full refutation of what you've already said.
53:01: And you're going to try to, hopefully, answer and repair the rather large -sized holes that have been blown through the bow of your ship, if that's your highest priority.
53:19: If your highest priority is keeping a certain group of people happy, then maybe you don't want to do that at all, because you don't want them going and listening to stuff and reading to stuff they shouldn't be listening and reading.
53:34: And so I want to respond to what is found in this section of the book.
53:44: And so I'm going to read it to you. So you can read the whole thing. Yeah, because there ain't much.
53:53: It's a shame. There should be. But if you're looking for what you can find in Reformed material, that is, exegetical presentations derived from the text itself, here's what it says.
54:14: Some Calvinists interpret Romans 5, 8 through 10 and Romans 8, 32 to imply limited atonement. Now, immediately, why link them together?
54:23: We don't link them together. My assertion is
54:29: Romans chapter 8, verses 28 through the end of the chapter is one huge, long, well, it's the pinnacle of the entire epistle, and it requires
54:43: Reformed theology to even understand it. It does not make sense outside of Reformed theology. It is one long, in -depth presentation of the central aspects of what we believe in God's sovereignty.
54:58: He is the source of salvation. He has an elect people. It's all right there. The argument proceeds as follows.
55:07: Now, I mentioned, if you go back and listen to the preceding dividing line from a couple years ago, there was a certain form of argumentation that was being used to try to dismiss the whole text.
55:20: It fails miserably when you go to the text. And so you'll note, that's what we have here, too, but it's now taken a new form.
55:31: The argument proceeds as follows. There is an intrinsic effectiveness within the atonement itself such that for all whom it is made receive the efficacious benefits of it, in other words, salvation.
55:44: Now, that's a true statement. That is a true statement. There is an intrinsic effectiveness within the atonement itself.
55:52: That's right, because the atonement is that action where Father, Son, and Spirit together accomplish the central aspect of God's self -glorifying act in all of creation.
56:10: Remember what I've talked about. Trinitarian harmony in the atonement. Father, Son, and Spirit all accomplishing the same thing, not having different purposes, but one purpose.
56:24: And our argument has been, yeah, you know what? Most evangelicals have primarily an emotional view of the cross, not a biblical view of the cross.
56:34: And that's what appeals to people today. But if you want to have a biblical understanding of the cross, then you need to see how the
56:42: Father, Son, and Spirit are in perfect harmony in the accomplishment.
56:49: Now, I'll be honest with you, I don't understand how the Thomists can actually deal with this.
56:57: I know, all you gotta do is introduce new language and no one understands what it means to get around it. But so very clearly, you have harmony and unity.
57:09: But very clearly, you have diversity in what the Father, Son, and Spirit are doing.
57:15: It's not the Father on the cross. It's not the Spirit on the cross. That's the Son. That's the
57:21: Son who's being sent. There are specific, beautiful, and important and definitional roles that Father, Son, and Spirit take in the accomplishment.
57:32: And that takes us back to the pactum salutis. That takes us back to the beauty of the fact that it's the
57:38: Son who chooses to make Himself of no reputation. The Father doesn't choose that for the
57:44: Son. And yet there are some people today that are just so wedded to a
57:49: Greek metaphysical construct that they want to diminish those things and make it next to impossible for us to actually explain these things to our children without their getting a
57:59: PhD in Aristotle before they get to it. Anyways, sorry. I continue.
58:07: The argument attempts to construct a logical link between atonement accomplished and atonement applied.
58:15: It's not just a logical link. It is a biblical link. It's an exegetical link.
58:21: It flows directly from the text of Scripture. This isn't just, well, we have theologians and they're trying to put together a system.
58:30: No. As we will see in Romans 8, it comes from the text of Scripture. That's why it'll always be there, because you can't get away with it.
58:37: As long as you've got the text of Scripture, it's going to teach you what it teaches. The argument is derived via logical deduction.
58:44: No, it's derived via exegesis. Number one, the atonement is self -effectively applied to all for whom
58:52: Christ has delivered up to die. Self -effectively applied?
58:58: No. You have the decree of the Father, the accomplishment of the
59:04: Son on behalf of His people who are united to Him, specifically, so the atonement is personal, not impersonal, and application by the
59:11: Holy Spirit. So it's triune, with each of the divine persons taking a different role in that accomplishment.
59:18: It's not self -effectively applied. It is done so by God, and in a specific way.
59:27: Number two, the atonement is not applied to some people, correct? Because they're not united with Christ, and they're not of the elect.
59:36: Number three, therefore, Christ was not delivered up to die for some people. Well, that actually comes from other perspectives.
59:43: This is not meant to be some type of deductive, logical argument. And so, again, the force of the
59:50: Reformed perspective is not even recognized by Dr. Allen at this point. Robert Sum of Cambridge published a tract in 1596 listing arguments for limited atonement.
01:00:00: One of his texts is Romans 833 -34. I can almost guarantee you I know where Dr.
01:00:07: Allen got that little tidbit that has nothing to do with anything, but it's thrown in for the fun of it. Before we consider the syllogism above, note that both passages in Romans employ biconditionals.
01:00:18: This may be why he tries to connect Romans 5 -8 to Romans 8 -32, even though they're separated by a fair amount of real estate.
01:00:29: If A and B, then C. In other words, if Christ died for us and we have believed, then we shall be saved.
01:00:38: This construction is biblical and valid logically. The error limitarians, people who quote -unquote limit the atonement, the error limitarians make is the false inference logically that if someone is not saved, then
01:00:51: Christ did not make an atonement for their sins. Well, actually, the
01:00:56: Reformed perspective is if someone is not saved, it's because all deserve to be condemned, and the only person who will be saved are those who receive the grace of God, which results in their believing.
01:01:11: The valid inference is that either Christ did not die for them, or they have not believed. Since we have already eliminated the possibility that Christ did not die for them, it follows that the reason someone is not saved is because that person has not believed.
01:01:23: So see, you completely dismiss the sovereign decree of God, the doctrine of election, the deadness of man and sin.
01:01:32: You assert that all men are capable of believing, and that's how you make your argument.
01:01:39: That's how they're doing it. Whereas the biconditionals are overtly stated in Romans 5, 8 through 10, the key to Romans 8, 32, here it is, is wrapped up in the meaning of us.
01:01:51: Who are the us? Now let me stop for a moment, and let's take a look at this, because we're going long here.
01:01:58: I knew we would, but I want you to see what the us is here, okay?
01:02:04: So here it is in Romans 8. Before Romans 8, at this point, you have the golden chain of redemption, okay?
01:02:18: And so let's just remind ourselves of what is here. We know that for those who love
01:02:24: God, all things work together for good. To those who are called according to his purpose.
01:02:30: All right, let's... Oh, it's right down here. That's... Okay, so...
01:02:41: Stop with the notes already. God causes all things to work together for good for those who love
01:02:48: God. To choice, play choice, the called according to purpose, who are the ones who are according to purpose.
01:03:00: So you have the chosen one, the called one, right? Right there. And these are the ones for whom
01:03:09: God makes all things work together for good. Because those whom he foreknew...
01:03:17: Okay, who is it he foreknew? Those who are the called. Foreknew is a finite verb.
01:03:26: This is something God does. This is not God having knowledge of future events.
01:03:32: That's what... Well, that's what foreknow means. This is something God does. This is a action on God's part.
01:03:43: You want to talk about not thinking things through. Those whom he foreknew...
01:03:49: Again, Old Testament backgrounds. Yadah, God knew Israel. Only Israel of all the nations did he know.
01:03:57: He knew about all the other nations. That's simple intellectual knowledge. This is choice to enter into.
01:04:04: Those whom he foreknew, he predestined to be conformed to the image of his son.
01:04:14: So there is a choosing, active verb on God's part, which results in their predestination and the entirety of their salvation.
01:04:25: What do you mean the entirety of their salvation? Well, think about it. What does it mean to be conformed to the image of his son?
01:04:36: That requires forgiveness. That requires holiness. That requires sanctification. All that is provided for us is involved in making us more like Christ.
01:04:48: So this predestination is to being made like Christ so that...
01:04:54: Aistad with the infinitive right here. Very common Pauline form. Aistad with the infinitive.
01:04:59: So that he might be the prototokon, the firstborn amongst many brothers.
01:05:05: So it was God's purpose from the beginning. Those whom he foreknew, he predestined to be made like Christ so that he would be, he, the son, would be the firstborn among many brothers.
01:05:23: So all of our salvation is included in the intention of God, which is clearly seen in the beginning of verse 28.
01:05:31: And then you have the golden chain. The golden chain. So those whom he predestined, these he also called.
01:05:44: And those whom he called, these he also justified.
01:05:51: And those whom he justified, these he also glorified.
01:06:00: Finite verbs. God's doing the action. There is nothing in here about man being able to interrupt this.
01:06:08: This is all what God does, and all of the golden chain is to accomplish the purpose up here that he,
01:06:15: Christ, may be the firstborn amongst many brothers. So it's all about the centrality of God glorifying himself in Christ.
01:06:24: It's all about Christ, just like Ephesians 1. In him, in him, in the beloved, in the son, all the way through.
01:06:30: All the way through. So it's all about God and what
01:06:36: God is accomplishing. All right, so there's the golden chain.
01:06:43: That's a reformed context big time. So when you say all of that, what then shall we say to these things?
01:06:58: And here's our us. All right. If God, who per haemon, is for us, who can be against us?
01:07:17: All right. He who did not spare his own son, but, who per haemon, notice, identical, but in our behalf, gave him up, paradidomi, sacrificial language.
01:07:40: How shall he not also together with him, karisetai, freely give us all things.
01:07:51: You say, well, that looks different than the other ones. Different case, it's still us. Who, kata eclectone, enkalesai, who will bring, this is a, we've found this term over and over and over again in the papyri.
01:08:15: These are documents that have been discovered over the past century and a half.
01:08:22: Legal documents. Just standard, you know, legal briefs.
01:08:28: Remember when the Twin Towers fell? The rain of paper that came out of those buildings?
01:08:35: Well, lots of law firms in there, okay? So we have, we know to bring a charge.
01:08:43: It's just a standard legal phraseology. Who will bring a charge against the elect of God?
01:08:54: Who is us? The elect of God. Who is us?
01:09:02: The elect of God. Who will bring a charge against the elect of God? Who is the one who condemns?
01:09:09: So if you bring a charge, you're looking to condemn. But Christ Jesus, the one who died, rather indeed who was raised, who is also at the right hand of God, also intercedes,
01:09:21: I'm gonna have to move that out of the way, is also interceding, Huperhamon, Huperhamon, Huperhamon, Huperhamon, elect of God.
01:09:36: You cannot escape this. This is why provisionists don't walk through texts like this.
01:09:43: They don't put this up on the screen and go, oh look, here's this, here's this, it goes there, there's consistency all the way.
01:09:50: Look at how consistent Paul is. Who is us?
01:09:55: The elect of God. That's what Romans 8 says. And Romans 8 says that we have at the right hand of God one who is interceding.
01:10:11: For whom? And this is where general atonement, unlimited atonement, nonspecific redemption, however you want to describe it, this is where it falls apart.
01:10:24: This is where it falls apart. Because in the Bible, intercession and atonement are inextricably linked and every one of you in this audience knows
01:10:36: Jesus is not standing before the Father trying to save people who are gonna be lost forever. You know it and I know it.
01:10:43: You know it and I know it. And the greatest hope that you should ever have when you are on your deathbed, when
01:10:52: I am on my deathbed, I hope and pray that my focus is not going to be on me.
01:11:00: My focus is going to be on my Savior who is my anchor in the holy place.
01:11:07: Hebrews chapter 6. My hope is in the perfect work of Christ at the right hand of the
01:11:14: Father in my stead and not in my faith and not in anything else.
01:11:22: And I think most Christians get that. I think most Christians understand that. They really do. Intercession, it's right there.
01:11:31: It's right there. So we ran out of space. See, I'm trying to keep the...
01:11:37: I'd like to say I'm trying to keep the font big enough for all of you but actually I'm trying to keep it big enough for me. So, let's scroll up here.
01:11:48: Good, this will give us the whole... Yeah, this will give us the whole thing so we can do a little bit more with it here.
01:11:57: Because we ain't done. I would love to find a way to turn that note. That is a waste of space and time.
01:12:08: All right, so we know that God is the one who justifies.
01:12:15: And who is he justifying? Us. Now you say, see there's faith because you're justified by faith.
01:12:22: Yes, we're justified by faith. Now, notice there's nothing in here. Nowhere in the golden chain is that made dependent upon faith.
01:12:30: Nowhere in here. The last reference to faith was in Romans chapter five. But you see, the synergists have to try to shoehorn it in here someplace so that they can maintain control.
01:12:44: If you just read Romans eight, God is the one who saves and he saves perfectly. Now, does that mean faith's irrelevant?
01:12:51: No, but faith is the result of what God does not what causes God to do what
01:12:56: God does. Okay? So God is the one justifying.
01:13:01: No one can condemn because Jesus Christ who died rather who was raised, so he's defeated death.
01:13:11: He is at the right hand of God. And he also intercedes, is interceding for us.
01:13:26: Simple question is, does Christ accomplish what he wants to accomplish in that action?
01:13:36: What does Christ want to accomplish in intercession? Dr. Turk, you say, we don't think these issues through.
01:13:44: I'm asking you. Have you ever thought through this? Have you ever thought this through?
01:13:51: Why is Christ interceding before the father? On what basis is he interceding before the father?
01:13:59: Well, right here. Died, raised. His sacrificial actions.
01:14:08: His self -giving. And he intercedes for us, who is the elect.
01:14:17: So the intercession flows from death and resurrection.
01:14:22: What's the death? That's the atoning death. What's the result of that intercession? Intercession is for the elect of God.
01:14:31: There is limited atonement, whether you like it or not, whether you want it or not, it's right there.
01:14:37: And Dr. Allen, until you stand in front of a board and put this text up there and explain why that isn't the case, you will have never dealt with this issue.
01:14:50: Never. And the more you try to come up with some new term and some new argument and some smoke and mirrors, the more people are gonna go, well,
01:15:03: I've listened to both sides and only one side's actually going to the Bible and actually letting the
01:15:09: Bible speak. And the other side's doing all this, you know, stuff like this, trying to make it look like they're dealing with, but they're not.
01:15:17: What you gotta do, sir? What you gotta do? So when it says, who will separate us from the love of Christ?
01:15:30: Who is the us? The elect of God.
01:15:36: Those called according to his purpose. And so what the synergist, the person who wants to make salvation a cooperative effort of man and God, with man in ultimate control,
01:15:50: God does most of it, but man's in ultimate control as to whether it's gonna happen. What the synergist has to do is, this text is not their friend.
01:16:00: So they have to bring something else in. And that's what got me going over here. Here's what it says.
01:16:11: Whereas the biconditionals are overtly stated in Romans 5 through 10, the key to Romans 8 .32, got 8 .33
01:16:18: up there, but it's wrapped up in the meaning of us. Who are the us? Contextually from Paul's standpoint, clearly, and I'm reading it exactly.
01:16:31: You know what? This is so important, because you're gonna go, you're not telling us the whole story.
01:16:45: We want to make sure that everything is active. So guess what?
01:16:57: Let's see if we can. That's as large as it gets.
01:17:05: Oh no, here. Oh, line spacing, nevermind. Line spacing is fine.
01:17:12: There we go. That's nice of me. I can tell
01:17:18: I wasn't planning on doing this. Okay, now it's getting confused.
01:17:26: I'm just kindled, I'm confused. There it is, okay.
01:17:32: Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. I got it now. Whereas the biconditionals are overtly stated in Romans 5 through 10, the key to Romans 8 .32
01:17:42: is wrapped up in the meaning of us. Who are the us? Contextually from Paul's standpoint. Wait, notice this.
01:17:48: Contextually. Okay, what's gonna define the context of Romans 8?
01:17:54: That would be Romans 8. And then the next step would be the section you are in Romans and eventually
01:18:02: Romans as a whole, right? Contextually from Paul's standpoint, clearly the us references we who have believed
01:18:11: Hebrews 4 .3. I thought it was a typo.
01:18:21: I thought that was a typo. It's not. It's not a typo.
01:18:28: He's literally saying that the contextual...
01:18:38: I've got to be able to see that little text box down there to pull this up for you.
01:18:45: See, the big guys would have people writing this for them. That's all right.
01:18:53: Life will go on. Here it is. For we who have believed enter that rest, just as he said, as I swore on my wrath, they shall not enter my rest.
01:19:04: So you find in another book, hopefully still by Paul, sort of maybe, we're not sure, possible, but you find in another book, in another context, talking about another topic, the phrase for we who have believed and you just pick it up and drop it in the middle of Romans chapter 8.
01:19:31: I don't know how better to define eisegesis. I really don't. I mean, you don't want to let
01:19:40: Romans 8 say what Romans 8 says, so you just, let's go over to Hebrews 4.
01:19:48: And that doesn't work really well. Paul's argument in Romans 8 .32
01:19:54: is enthemomatic, enthemomatic. So that's our new word for today is we all get to come home and tell our kids about enthemomatic phraseology.
01:20:14: And enthememe is a particular means of expressing a syllogistic argument that has one proposition, usually a premise, left unstated.
01:20:24: Most syllogistic arguments in ordinary oral or written language are enthemomatic. So overt, find my cursor here.
01:20:35: Overt expression of each premise and conclusion would be rhetorically pedantic as one would be staying the obvious.
01:20:41: Romans 8 .32, unlike Romans 5 .8 -10, Paul's premise of the intervening conditional of faith is left unstated.
01:20:50: The us, the us references those who have believed.
01:20:57: The us can be interpreted to mean all the elect of all time, including the unborn and unbelieving elect.
01:21:02: Why that would matter, I don't know. Has no exegetical grounds.
01:21:09: It is a purely theological move grounded in Reformed dogmatics, not careful exegesis of the text.
01:21:19: That is the exact opposite of the truth. What Dr. Allen is doing here is, has no exegetical grounds and is not careful exegesis of the text.
01:21:32: He didn't give us any exegesis, didn't pretend to even try. Didn't even pretend to try, because he can't.
01:21:40: And by now, Dr. Allen, you know this. You know this. Who gave you exegesis?
01:21:51: We did. Who gave you enthemomatic expressions? Dr. Allen did.
01:21:57: When you've got to introduce some fancy $10 word that no one ever uses and then conclude like this and rush off to the next text, you know.
01:22:07: You know, and this is why you'll never debate it. Because we debate this, and I'm gonna put that on the screen, and during cross -examination,
01:22:16: I'm gonna say, Dr. Allen, look. Look. Here is the us. Here is it going all the way through.
01:22:23: It's consistent all the way. It flows from the text. You don't need any enthemomatic theories.
01:22:34: Right there. It is frustrating.
01:22:44: It is very, very frustrating to see the clarity of Scripture and then to see man's traditions, because this kind of synergistic concept is a human tradition.
01:23:02: It's not derived from Scripture. And when you encounter a passage that lays out with clarity the particularity and perfection of the atoning work of Christ, His perfect unity with the
01:23:18: Father, His intercessory work, it's all right there, right on the page.
01:23:26: And you come up with stuff like this and actually turn it on its head. It's just grounded in Reformed dogmatic, not careful exegesis of the text.
01:23:34: And you didn't even pretend to give exegesis of the text. Didn't even pretend. Didn't even pretend.
01:23:43: I think, if I recall correctly... Right. Ignore the...
01:23:54: Get that out of the way. So here's the...
01:24:00: No. See my full treatment of Romans 8 .32 here. David Allen, Romans 8 .31 -34 again, responding to James White.
01:24:07: That's the article we took apart years ago. We refuted it. We went into every commentary he used and demonstrated that what they were saying was not his application.
01:24:19: We took it apart. And yet that's...
01:24:25: That's what you're given. That's what you're given. I don't believe Dr. Allen can go beyond it.
01:24:31: I think that's as far as he can go. Oh, I can't do it that way. I just don't think he can go any farther.
01:24:43: So, look at that.
01:24:51: That's a lot of paper. That's a lot of man's traditions.
01:24:58: A lot of man's traditions. And there are few of man's traditions that are more deeply embedded in our thinking than the defense of our supposed sovereignty and free will.
01:25:14: And my, the amount of energy that has been devoted to a defense of those things.
01:25:24: But, I said to somebody on Twitter this morning, they were commenting about a leftist guy that I was talking about.
01:25:35: And I said, yeah, it's so frustrating. I said, you know, I understand that, but it shouldn't be frustrating. We should not express frustration.
01:25:43: We feel it. But you've got to understand, when this came out, when
01:26:01: I knew that Dr. Geisser was redefining all the historical terms. He was...
01:26:07: I mean, there really is an astonishing level of arrogance when you can decide you're just going to redefine over 1 ,000, 1 ,500 years worth of Christian theology.
01:26:20: And you've got the power to redefine all that terminology. Wow, okay, probably not good.
01:26:30: And, I mean, literally changing the meaning of words. It's one thing to go, yeah, I think the tradition's gone in the wrong direction. I mean,
01:26:35: I'm doing that right now with a lot of stuff that's being thrown around. But to literally redefine terms, it was...
01:26:44: I felt frustration. I felt like there was going to be people who were going to be misled.
01:26:50: And so that's why I wrote the book. That's why I started work on the book. And that's why I showed Dr. Geisser the respect
01:26:56: I showed him. By the way, I showed him an incredible amount of respect. I bought all of his old books.
01:27:02: I dug through used bookstores. I tried to understand his very strange terminology he developed over the years in trying to deal with this issue.
01:27:12: And I accurately represented him. I did. No one has ever shown me once where I did not.
01:27:19: And he didn't even bother to try, because, like I said, that would violate his own principles to even read what
01:27:24: I had to say. But there was a sense of frustration.
01:27:31: And then over the decades, decades, because I think
01:27:38: Potter's Freedom came out in 01, if I recall. So it's been over 20 years. I know of entire churches that exist today because of that book.
01:27:50: I've lost track of the number of people who have come up to me, especially Calvary Chapel people, and have said, oh, man,
01:27:59: I thought Geisser just had it all. And then I read the Potter's Freedom. And I was absolutely blown away. Absolutely blown away.
01:28:11: What, you know, Norm's book ended up creating more Reformed people than he could have ever.
01:28:23: And I just have to keep that in mind. You have to keep that in mind when you encounter stuff like what we just saw from Dr.
01:28:30: Allen, where his conclusion, what he's accusing us of doing, is exactly what we just documented he did.
01:28:39: It's projection. And man, if you've learned anything listening to the left today in Western society, that's all they know how to do.
01:28:46: They accuse us of doing everything they themselves are doing. And I remember the first really, really big example
01:28:54: I had was Sue Weidemark. Oh, my goodness. Remember that? She was the biggest projectionist on the planet.
01:29:02: I mean, in one sentence, she would do something, and the next sentence, she'd accuse you of doing what she just did.
01:29:09: It was wild. I mean, this was back in the 80s sometime. Late 80s.
01:29:16: And that frustration can end up making you do things you should not be doing.
01:29:23: Abandoning a clear focus. Abandoning pursuing your goals. Leave it to God.
01:29:30: He's going to take care of it. I'm looking back on my ministry, and man, there is an example where I stuck to my guns.
01:29:41: I risked taking Norm Geisler on. A lot of people looked at me like, well, so much for your promising future.
01:29:51: And did it cost us? Of course it did. But in hindsight, it's just one of the many things where we took a stand and said, no, we're not going there.
01:30:02: And the Lord blessed that. I think we're in the exact same situation right now in other issues, in other matters.
01:30:11: But leave the frustration aside. God's going to accomplish His purpose in His time.
01:30:18: You don't know what 20 years from now is going to look like. You just got to leave it in His hands. You got to leave it in His hands.
01:30:24: So, anyway, there you go. Radio Free Geneva, a quick response to Dr.
01:30:30: Allen in the new Calvinism book. And from Brodman Holman, academic, that really doesn't like Reformed people for some reason.
01:30:41: Thanks for watching the program. We are going to be back tomorrow morning. We're looking at 9 o 'clock.
01:30:47: 9 o 'clock our time, which is 11 o 'clock Eastern time. Going to be responding to Andy. Good old brother
01:30:53: Andy is now unhitched from the entire Bible. We'll be looking at that tomorrow on the program.