Bob Enyart's False Accusation of Christological Heresy

Well, it's been an interesting post -debate period. I really had no intentions whatsoever of continuing any discussion on the debate that took place in Denver with Bob Enyart.

We talked a little bit about the debate afterwards, gave a brief report on it, took the time to look at Philippians chapter 2, point out some of the what seems to be

Christological problems in the Enyartian camp. But Bob Enyart was not on the program shortly after the debate.

And so I did not find out until last evening that starting on Monday, and I was traveling on Monday and Tuesday, that Bob Enyart had gone on his radio program.

I sort of expected that. And I expected spin, and I expected damage control, because the debate did not go well by any,

I think, fair accounting for Bob Enyart. And certainly in talking with Bob afterwards, he seemed to indicate that.

But my how time changes things now. Bob is the winner. He is victorious.

Just as he behaved in his debate with Dr. Lamerson, and that last section that he submitted that, that 10th round, which was just reprehensible, it's childish, and worried me a lot.

Once I read that one, it gave me a good idea that this was probably what was going to happen.

And so anyway, I listened this morning to the three programs that have been aired so far.

And I've done a lot of debates over the years. I've seen a number of people try to do damage control, need to do damage control, spin things.

And of course, Enyart is a radio guy. So this definitely ranks right up toward the top of the most outrageous spin jobs

I've ever seen after a debate. When you have to engage in this kind of damage control, you're really admitting that you took a pummeling when you have to.

So far, three programs with ad hominem, dishonesty, misrepresentation, it's really bad.

Really, really bad. So bad that, you know, the first thought crossed my mind was, do

I even bother? But given one of the accusations that was being made, and given that we can utilize this to do some education, especially

Christological education, demonstration of cultic mindset, because Bob Enyart is a cult leader.

He has a little cult going. It's a non -Christian group. It really is. And you know, finite godism has never been a

Christian belief, never will be a Christian belief. It's good to analyze how he can be corrected in things, and in one ear, out the other, no connection whatsoever.

It helps to explain the Joseph Smiths and the Judge Rutherfords and the Russells of the world.

We still have cults being started today, so it's good to be able to recognize that kind of thing.

And so, on the dividing line next week, I will respond to the programs that have been aired so far, and I have a feeling that Bob can't stop, even when he's refuted.

He's just going to keep repeating the same things, and so he's probably going to do some more on his program.

So we may have to respond to things like that. But in this first video, I wanted to respond to the most serious false accusation that Bob Enyar is making against me and against R .C.

Sproul Jr. Then we'll look at, and I will document from the unbelievable radio broadcast, the misrepresentation that I've talked about before, that Enyar just won't accept, he just will not accept correction on.

And that will help us to illustrate this mindset that no one can question me.

I am right about everything, and that's the cultic mindset that we're talking about. So first,

I want to establish the tenor of these programs. I don't want anyone to have to listen to these things, as I've had to listen to them twice now.

So, let me just, one of the things that Enyar has decided to do is to engage in mockery.

And I think he does this primarily, this is sort of the red meat for his followers, but over and over again

I had to point out that Bob Enyar misrepresents and misunderstands, because he does.

He demands that Christian theologians adopt his idiosyncratic, modern, ahistorical, uninformed, the man does not read the biblical languages in any meaningful fashion by his own confession, but he still gets to define all the parameters of the dialogue.

This is, again, common cultic thought. Every cult group that gets started, you just reject the theological vocabulary, the proceedings centuries, because, you know, you've got to come up with some new way of grabbing hold of people, and that's what he's doing here.

And so, there are numerous times, you know, he demands that God be in time. He provides a purely philosophical argument for that, not a biblical one, doesn't even seem to recognize the hypocrisy in doing that.

And then when I'll say, well, you misunderstand, you are forcing me to function within your parameters, as soon as I say that, well, here's how he responds, over and over and over again, listen, and I'm not repeating any of these, this is just,

I just pulled these straight out of the audio of the first three programs of Bob Enyar's radio program, listen to what he says.

Yeah, he's the, he started out the debate saying I'm misrepresented, James White is the most misrepresented man in America, James White is the

Rodney King of theology, can't we just all understand what I'm saying? It's also disingenuous to claim that we're misrepresenting him,

James White, the most misrepresented man in America, the Rodney King of theology, if only we could all understand me, then everything would be fine.

Dr. James White is the most misunderstood man in America, he's the Rodney King of theology, if only everyone understood me, then we would have no disagreements.

So James White says, again, you misunderstand, right, James White is the most misunderstood man in America, he is the

Rodney King of theology, if only, if only everyone could understand me, then we'd have no disagreement. I realize

James White is the most misunderstood man in America, James White is the most misunderstood man in America, James White is the most misunderstood man in America, James White is the most misunderstood man in America, I'm not repeating that, he's the

Rodney King of theology, if only, if only everyone would understand me, then they'd all agree, then we'd all agree, if only everyone would understand me.

Stop the tape, stop the tape, James White is the most misunderstood man in America, James White is the most misunderstood man in America, he is the

Rodney King of theology, if only, if only everyone could understand me, we would all agree.

So he clearly had this written out, this was purposeful on his part, that each time I pointed out that he had misunderstood something, he was misrepresenting, he was going to use this, the only reason to do this is to stop thought, mockery does not advance thinking, it is to stop thinking, so he seems to know his followers and knows that they are going to feed on this and that's going to help and assist him, evidently.

First time I've run into that one, but there are other debaters in the past who have used somewhat similar types of things.

So this is the kind of ad hominem filled, mockery filled programs that Bob Enyart has produced and they're reprehensible on any serious level,

Bob Enyart has completely disqualified himself from ever engaging anyone in a meaningful fashion by his behavior, not only during the debate, but also now afterwards, it's sad.

So anyway, as I said, the main thing that I want to get to in this video is the accusation that he is making, and by the way,

I'm playing this stuff at 1 .2 just to get it through faster. He's making an accusation against myself and R .C.

Sproul, as I point out in the debate, there are serious Christological problems in Enyart's position, he is not

Orthodox in that area at all, he's not Orthodox in doctrine of God, doctrine of Christology, so on and so forth.

But he seems to be intent upon just grossly misrepresenting me and R .C.

Sproul Jr. He also seems to think that we're buds or something, R .C. Sproul Jr. and I have never met,

I know his father, but I've, to my knowledge, I've never met R .C. Sproul Jr.

We've never talked to each other. He wrote a foreword for a single book,

Enyart says he writes the forewords for my books. He wrote one that I'm aware of, and that was a book that had like 27 endorsements on it or something like that.

But anyway, R .C. Sproul Jr. had commented on,

I think, OpenTheism .org or something, about the Son, specifically the second person of the

Trinity, not having a divine nature. He wasn't denying the Incarnation, he was saying that the Son, as the

Son, always remains the Son, and that the nature of the hypostatic union and the

Incarnation is not such that the divine person becomes intermixed or intermingled with the divine nature, so that the one person ends up with two natures.

When we talk about one person with two natures, we're talking about Jesus of Nazareth. We're talking about post -Incarnation, and we are not confusing the divine person with the human nature.

We're not saying that there is a mixture. Enyart just does not understand the hypostatic union, or maybe he does and rejects it.

That's probably even more probable, given his utter disrespect for the history of the trash can anyways, which, by the way, the

Reformers never did, but that's another issue. So he completely misunderstands this and ends up taking a

Eutychian position. I don't know how you could avoid the conclusion that what he is, in essence, saying is that you have a mixture of the divine and the human, that the actual divine nature takes on a human nature, so you have a mixture of the natures, rather than recognizing what

Christianity has always taught, and that is that the person of Jesus of Nazareth was one person with two natures.

He also seems to be confused, a number of times I've heard him confuse Son of God and Son of Man, as if he thinks

Son of Man has something to do with the human nature and Son of God, the divine nature, and that's just simply biblically indefensible.

I mean, just look at Daniel's description of the Son of Man, look at Jesus' own use of the term Son of Man, look at the high priest responding to Jesus' use of the term

Son of Man in his trial in Mark. Again, Enyart's never gone out and defended these things against world religions and stuff like that, so he can come up with idiosyncratic ways and toot his own horn and get his little followers and stuff like that.

The problem is that he then has the gall to accuse people who have done so much more work in the area than he has of heresy out of his own ignorance, and that's why

I felt it was worthwhile addressing this, because he seems to completely misunderstand the hypostatic union and is willing to sacrifice it in the pursuit of his finite godism, and that's where there's a real problem.

So here, listen, here's toward the beginning of his program,

I think this was, this may have been for the first program, but anyways, and then there's a much more, there's a fuller development of it from the third program, so here's what he has to say.

There is aftermath of the debate that is somewhat startling. At OpenTheism .org, you can click on selected comments about the debate, and there are comments from R .C.

Sproul Jr. and James White, and they are startling. What they're trying to do is defend the omnis and the ems, we call them, the

Greek and Latin philosophical attributes of God that philosophers have claimed this is what

God must be like, like immutability and impassibility. God doesn't experience emotions, God cannot change, and if God cannot change, then how did

God the Son become flesh? How did he take on a human nature? How is it that God the

Son today is the man Jesus Christ? R .C. Sproul Jr. and James White, they were a bit distressed that in the debate,

I had three... By the way, I am, I'm a human being, and I get tired of certain things.

Bob, you don't know me. You know nothing about me. You're utterly ignorant of me.

So please, stop trying to mind -read me. You've done a very bad job of it already, and it's offensive and childish.

Stop it. You don't know my heart, you don't know my past, you don't know my intentions, quit pretending that you do.

Biblical arguments showing that the future cannot be settled, but it must be open, because God is free, because the attributes of God, the biblical attributes, show that he must change, and because the incarnation shows that he changed from God the

Son with a divine nature to two natures. He now has a fully divine nature and a fully human nature.

That presents a big difficulty to the settled view, and to theologians who advocate the omnis and the ems as God's primary attributes.

And so... You notice just the mantra -like character of this? Those of you who've worked in apologetics, you've run into this before.

Just keep repeating the same thing. Doesn't matter how many times it's beaten down, doesn't matter how many times it's been demonstrated to be inaccurate, you just keep repeating the mantra.

Those omnis and the ems, omni, you're, you're, omnis and the ems, I'm off in the Hebrew or the

Greek. Omnis and ems, omnis and ems. It's scary. I'm trying to do a spin control after the debate,

R .C. Sproul, Jr., interrupt. Spin control after the debate? I've had that much contact with R .C.

Sproul, Jr. about this debate, none. And what was I, the only thing

I was trying to control after the debate was the six descents of very steep mountains in Colorado on the back of a bike, trying to avoid the other few thousand people that were doing the same thing, and a few elk that decided to join in for the fun of it, but that's another issue.

That's all I was trying to control. He wants to, he wants to present this idea like we were, we were sitting around, we were talking to each other, oh, what are we going to do?

Bob Benyar was so good. Actually, I was riding a bicycle for two days and then had to drive all the way back from Colorado.

So there was no spin, no aftermath. He's just making all of this up as part of the damage control for what really happened.

We're acting with the debate organizer from OpenTheism .org. The debate organizer is

Will Duffy, and he wrote to Will Duffy and posted this on Will Duffy's webpage.

He wrote, God the Son did not have a human nature. Speaking of God through the incarnation, that's what they're talking about.

He's not saying an eternal past. He's saying God the Son did not go from one nature to two.

God the Son didn't have a human nature. Jesus did. And that was shocking to us because Jesus did.

So in the incarnation, the person Jesus of Nazareth is one person with two natures, divine and human.

The Son, the divine element, the divine person who's eternally existed, is the one who takes on a human nature, but that does not involve a mixture, a violation of the hypostatic union.

I affirmed that the Son of God, who is the Son of Man, both are titles of deity by the way, that Jesus Christ was the

Son of God. But I also affirm that he had not eternally had a human nature, that he took on a human nature.

This was not a subtraction. This was an addition. That's what the nature of kenosis was at that point.

But there is no intermixture, there is no violation of the hypostatic union involved here.

That's what we're talking about. I'm sorry if Bob Enyart doesn't get that or isn't willing to allow for historical orthodox understandings of things, but that's the reality.

All of Christianity affirms that Jesus is God the Son, like Jesus is not the fourth person of the

Trinity, he's God the Son. Will Duffy asked him to clarify, he said he's never heard anything like that, and R .C.

Sproul Jr. clarified it and he said, God the Son does not now, nor has he ever had two natures.

That was startling, absolutely startling. Pure orthodoxy, if you allow it to have a context, which, that's the problem.

Bob Enyart decides what the context for others is going to be, and it's his little idiosyncratic cultic view, rather than going, well, what would

R .C. Sproul Jr. mean by that? Oh, okay, he's talking about standard Chalcedonian orthodoxy over time, and from a biblical historical orthodox understanding, what he's saying is the

Son, as the divine person, is the one who takes on a human nature, that's a voluntary act in his part, it's the hypostatic union, the result is

Jesus of Nazareth, who is one person with two natures, there's no intermingling, so the

Son himself is not one who is changed by that, so that the human nature somehow, you've got this

Eutychian type of a situation, but I'm starting to think, honestly,

Bob may just embrace Eutychianism and go, yeah, yeah, there it is, there was a change, there was, because he keeps pushing change, right?

So there was no hypostatic union, there is actually an intermingling, you know, maybe he does,

I don't know, he just isn't overly concerned about doing anything but promoting his finite godism, and anything else, well, if it gets sort of sacrificed in the path, that's life.

Since the Bible says, God sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and God was manifested in the flesh, and the

Word was God, and the Word became flesh, so the Word changed, the Word now has two natures, where he always had one, and in the debate,

James White, I asked him, when God the Son went from having one nature, divine nature, to two natures, the divine and the human nature, was that a change, and James White said, no, it's not.

Because the divine nature does not change, that's what immutability is about,

Enyart's entire argument is that, well, God can't act. If there's an act, there's a change, because he shoves

God into time, God's got to be just like us, he's really a rationalist when you think about it, because when you listen to his arguments against God existing outside of time, they're purely rational arguments.

We just can't talk about these things, because we're human beings, and our language is time -based. Well, God can't be bigger than that, that's what he's saying.

That's what he's saying, that's the problem. And Christian theologians have just never been willing to basically say, well, if God's bigger than us, then we'll just have to cut him down to our size, but Enyart is willing to do that.

So after R .C. Sproul, Jr. denied that God the Son has two natures, which the

Bible affirms repeatedly... You know, we all know what R .C. was talking about, right? He's not denying that Jesus had two natures, that the

God -man had two natures. He's saying that the Son, the divine person, always remains the divine person, and there's no intermingling of natures in the

Son. The Son remains divine. We understand that? Those of us who want to understand, understand that.

That's what I was saying, and I know that's what R .C. Sproul, Jr. was saying, though I've had no contact with him. I can at least, you know,

I know he's orthodox, and I know Enyart isn't. So that's pretty simple.

But... Then, James White, in solidarity with R .C. Sproul, Jr., who writes the forewords to James White's books...

Oh, yeah. Writes the forewords. One out of 24 writes the forewords.

White wrote, also to Will Duffy, the debate organizer from OpenTheism .org, he wrote this.

God the Son does not have two natures. Jesus had two natures.

Catch the distinction there? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Caught the distinction there.

Yeah. For most folks, would that be enough? Yeah. Why isn't it for Bob Enyart? I'll let you think about that one for yourself.

These comments from these two reformed theologians, they hit me so hard, I felt like I was punched in the gut.

To hear Christian leaders say that God the Son did not take on humanity, does not have a human nature.

I'm just... I am stunned. Stunned. I'm sickened to my stomach. And I hope and pray that they will reconsider.

Well, thank you, Bob, for your deep concern. Then, a little bit later on, you had this brief statement.

After the debate, even though in the debate James White admitted six times that God the

Son took on a human nature and God the Son now has two natures, after the debate, he and R .C.

Sproul, Jr. said God the Son does not have a human nature. He never did. He never will.

And James White added, I never said in the debate that God the Son has a human nature. It's almost beyond explanation.

It's not beyond explanation, because we think we could psychoanalyze what happened there.

Yeah, you do believe you can psychoanalyze almost anything, don't you? Yeah. And Joseph Smith thought he could translate

Golden Plates, too. But it's very clear. God the

Son was the one who became incarnate. He did so by taking on a human nature.

There was no intermingling. There was no admixture. The hypostatic union is real.

We affirm it. We defend it. And that's all I was saying.

And I'm sorry if you don't believe that. And I'm sorry that your 30 years of arguing that any action in time by God limits

God to time would allow you to engage in this kind of absurd behavior and false accusation.

I have defended the incarnation against all comers. I have hours of video debate against Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Muslims on this subject.

So to even pretend like this is such a wild act of desperation.

It truly is. That it's really, really sad. But I haven't gotten to the main part yet.

And this is going long. So let's get to it. Now, remember that James White denied, and this is devastating, in the aftermath of this debate, desperately trying to win the debate after the debate, when he realized...

Oh yeah, I'm desperately trying to win the debate after the debate. I let the debate speak for itself.

For I think any rational and honest person, it spoke for itself. Like I said, we did one dividing line, and I played some of the comments from Michael Sugar and some, the other lady, nice little lady, who were confused, because they didn't seem to understand what kenosis meant.

And so we went through Philippians chapter 2. I was trying to win the debate. No. And in fact, if, if Bob had just slightly, fairly listened to the comments that I made in that, all this stuff would have been cleared up.

No one else has made this accusation. Reason's pretty obvious, because there's great bias involved here.

...that if God the Son went from one nature to two natures, that's a change. It's a big change. Imagine taking on a human nature.

That's pretty big. Did God always have a human nature? No. He took on one. It's big. So now he's the

Son of Man. He realized if God the Son took on... Catch that? Now he's the Son of Man.

Does it mean he's not the Son of God? This guy's got serious Christological problems.

Jesus is the Son of God. He's the Son of Man. One is not referring to the divine nature, and the other is human nature. That is a common error that could never be substantiated biblically.

Could never be substantiated biblically. ...on a human nature, that's a change, and that means timelessness can't be true, and immutability can't be true.

So after the debate, James White and his good friend, R .C. Sproul Jr., they both said...

Now, I wish that R .C. Sproul Jr. and I were good friends. We've never talked.

We've never spoken at the same place. We've never had any communication.

In fact, even the forward he did, someone else arranged that. Someone else did all the contact on that. I would be shocked if I even have an email anywhere.

I wouldn't even know how to get hold of him. I'd have to contact somebody else to ask me to get in touch with him. But Bob Enyart, he can look into the heart and the mind.

God the Son did not have a human nature, R .C. Sproul. God the Son did not have a human nature,

R .C. Sproul Jr. The senior would be devastated to hear what the son wrote, would be devastated.

The senior has written condemning this kind of heresy where you're splitting up the trinity and claiming that God the

Son is not the one who became flesh. Which of course is not what he was saying.

He was trying to address a subject that obviously Bob Enyart does not understand or his cultic commitment to his finite godism precludes him from ever understanding.

Don't know, but this is an ancient, this is a neo -Nestorian heresy.

This is an adoptionist kind of heresy. Adoptionist heresy.

So now if you say, if you try to defend the hypostatic union against Eutychianism, against the idea that there was a substantival alteration of the second person of the trinity so that this human nature is intermixed in some fashion with that divine person, you're now an adoptionist.

That's really confusing ancient terminology, isn't it? If you know anything about adoptionism or Nestorianism.

And this from a man who has no respect for the Chalcedonian definition in the first place.

They were all just following after Plato and Aristotle anyways, right? I mean, why bother, given what he's already said?

And then James Wyatt wrote this. He said, in the aftermath of the debate, to the debate organizer,

Will Duffy, with opentheism .org, he wrote, James Wyatt, to Will Duffy, whose email is godsfreewill at gmail .com.

God has free will, right? And will is God's free will. I love it. So James Wyatt wrote this.

It's devastating though. He said, God the Son does not have two natures. I did not admit that he did, that he does, that he will.

This is startling. It's not startling, because the person who had two natures was

Jesus of Nazareth, right? So we're talking post -incarnation, and we believe in the hypostatic union.

All that's being said here, no intermixture. Hello? Romans says

God sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. That's God's own Son. Yep. Timothy says

God was manifest in the flesh. God was manifest in the flesh. Depends on the textual variant. John 1, the

Word was God, and the Word became flesh. The humanity didn't become humanity. True. God became human.

Yep. So, wow. By doing what? Taking on the human nature, which is why the one thing that we did on the dividing line after the debate was to go to Philippians chapter 2, try to turn it into a teaching moment, and talk about what the nature of the incarnation was, and that the humiliation, the making himself of no reputation, was by taking positive actions in taking on the form of a servant.

But he missed that. This is devastating. Now that's worse than simply saying from going to one nature to two natures is not a change.

I mean, that's a really absurd, that's a temper tantrum. That's an intellectual temper tantrum to say when

God goes from one nature to two natures, that's not a change. That's just a temper tantrum. And that's admitting that I'm losing the debate if I answer truthfully.

That's what that is. How is that a response? How is that an argument? It's a temper tantrum on my part to point out that the assumption of your argument is that God cannot act in time without changing?

That the assumption of your argument is to demand God exist temporally? Did I not say in the debate that my

God's a lot bigger than yours, Bob? That he creates time and he creates his interaction with his creatures in time?

See, you just won't accept that, and so if I stay consistent with my position, then

I'm throwing a temper tantrum. You, who do the Rodney King thing six times in three programs.

Who's really throwing the temper tantrum here, Bob? But saying that God does not have two natures, that God the

Son does not have two natures, that's heresy. James White has debated scores of heretics.

Now listen. This week, in the aftermath of the debate, James White became the heretic.

Claiming that God the Son does not have two natures. And I think it was six times in the debate he agreed and he affirmed, he stated, that God the

Son had two natures. That he took on a human nature. Six times. How can it possibly be, after the debate, that he says,

God the Son does not have two natures. I did not admit that he did. I did not admit that he does. I didn't admit that he will.

Well, I think we've laid this one to rest. We've demonstrated very clearly that Bob Enyart just doesn't know what he's talking about.

And is engaging in Eutychianism, denying the hypostatic union, mixing the divine, the human, and Christ, and simply ignoring the careful distinctions that theologians have made for a very long time in regards to the person of Christ.

That I have defended the Incarnation, the reality of the Incarnation. Unlike Bob Enyart, I've stood inside mosques to defend these things.

And I am very thankful that he has not. And I hope that he never will. That would be a bad, bad thing.

But this was the most serious accusation. In the next video, when I get a chance to do it, maybe today, we'll see.

Depends on processor speed. In the next video, I want to document the issue in regards to Andy Fisher, according to Bob Enyart.

Austin Fisher is his actual name. And what I was talking about when

I talked about the fact that Calvinists have one set of questions that they have to answer.

And open theists have a completely different set of questions that they have to answer. That's a given, but Bob Enyart doesn't seem to understand that.

That'll be a shorter video, I promise you that. But thank you for watching. Hopefully this has clarified this particular false accusation from Bob Enyart.

And we can certainly hope that as he finishes up his review, i .e.

damage control, that maybe he'll show some restraint. Who knows? Maybe there'll be an apology for the mockery, ad hominems, misrepresentation, but I'm not holding my breath.