Romans 8:31-34, David Allen’s Article Refuted (Conclusion)

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March 12, 2020

Ninety minutes today (with a few interruptions by a WILD line of thunderstorms that blew in on us) finishing up our response to David Allen’s three blog posts (one 11k long article) on Romans 8:31 -34. More in-depth exegesis along with theology. Enjoy! Visit the store at https://doctrineandlife.co/

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00:32: Greggs, welcome to the Dividing Line. Again, distracted by Twitter. Yesterday, Pensive Tulip had retweeted a statement.
00:45: I'd seen this elsewhere, but basically saying, are you all ready for the 2020, the
00:50: December 2020 baby boom that will result from all the, from all the coronavirus stuff?
01:02: That's nine months from now, is right around my birthday. Bunch of bunch of December babies.
01:09: But so Pensive Tulip said, I love this take so much. And I had said, well, this is really looking for the silver lining.
01:14: Let's hope so. And so guy named Dean Klaus just said, and they shall be called the coroneals.
01:26: The coroneals. I love it. Dean Klaus wins, wins, wins the
01:34: Twitterverse of the day. Very good. The coroneals. Unless he stole from somebody else.
01:40: And then that's, that's okay too. That's, it's, that's perfectly fine. So anyways, well,
01:46: I hope that you all are done watching president Trump and all the rest of that stuff. We're going to get your mind off that.
01:53: Back on another subject. I think a very important subject. And today we get into a lot of the, of the, of the meat of the subject though.
02:00: I would say that last program was fairly meaty as well. But very, very quickly, we are continuing our response to the 11 ,000 word, a three -part article, three articles, three blog articles, or just one article really, by Dr.
02:20: David Allen of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, who is a professor of preaching, but has been pressed over the past 12 years into the role of Southwestern's anti -Calvinist man.
02:34: And part of that job, which I think he inherited after participating in the
02:41: John 316 conference in 2008. Part of that job is to deal with the subject of limited atonement.
02:52: And so he had written a response to a TGC article.
02:58: I had responded to that. I think I actually went back and forth a couple of times before I got his books out.
03:07: I examined very carefully everything he had to say about Romans chapter eight, verses 31 to 34.
03:14: I pointed out the fact and the very fact that he's written 11 ,000 word article demonstrates this was a true observation that there was no exegesis offered of the text in the published works of David Allen until this point.
03:28: And I would still say that what was offered falls far short of meaningful exegesis.
03:34: And we're demonstrating that in this response. So we got into the
03:41: Romans eight material last time, the Romans 831 and beyond. We were really in the golden chain up until this point.
03:50: So 828 through 230, which is fascinatingly disconnected by Allen from what comes afterwards, both in his attempt to explain it as well as his...
04:03: See, I think where Allen fails horribly is he thinks that quoting from commentaries or noting grammatical forms is the same thing as exegesis.
04:15: If exegesis does not clarify the meaning of the author as he would have been understood by his original audience, it's not exegesis.
04:27: But Christian exegesis, if it is going to partake of the highest view of scripture, should likewise clarify how the author's teaching is relevant to Christian truth as a whole.
04:45: Now, that's where you get a lot of division because we need to understand this argument is an argument only amongst a minority of people who call themselves
04:57: Christians because it is an argument that assumes that scripture is consistent with itself.
05:03: And I have to keep telling people over and over and over again that that is a minority view, that the idea that the scriptures are sufficiently clear in and of themselves, that there is a pan -canonical consistency, that it is the intention of the
05:23: Holy Spirit of God to give to us a body of revelation that is sufficient to tell the
05:33: Church what we should be proclaiming and believing, that it is sufficient to define
05:39: Christian theology. That's a minority view. That's a small minority view. You go into Bible colleges and seminaries across the
05:48: Western world, Europe and the United States and elsewhere, and you will discover that that is a minority view.
05:56: Now, I would argue that was the view that gave rise to Christian theology. That was certainly the view of the early
06:03: Church, but it is not the view of the majority of those teaching in seminaries and Bible colleges today.
06:12: That's just simply a fact. And that explains why you can walk into a Christian bookstore and pick up a commentary and start reading and very quickly discover that the author really doesn't believe that the person he's interpreting is either consistent with himself or consistent with other writers in the
06:29: New Testament canon, Old Testament canon, whatever commentary may be on. So, having said all of that, we go back, and what we're doing is we're showing, we've linked to, and we are reading directly from Dr.
06:44: Allen's materials. And I remind you that Dr.
06:49: Allen specifically said on Twitter that my exegesis of the text is indefensible. And so, we're looking very carefully at that reality and seeing if what we've been saying about Romans 8 is indefensible or if, in point of fact,
07:09: Dr. Allen's material is woefully lacking in its intended purposes.
07:16: So, we've come to this point, and this is, I think, where the battle is joined.
07:25: This is one of the most important paragraphs. And as we get into the application part, this is going to become somewhat repetitive, so we might be able to get done in less than two hours this time.
07:42: Quote. Oh, we've got everything cool over there? Okay, because we never checked.
07:48: But you said ever since you did the update that that's not been an issue. It's grabbed it every time. So, good.
07:54: All right. We're all good here now. Yeah, okay. So, whatever. People are going to think you just sit around watching that one movie all day long because it's just that one segment.
08:03: Okay, well, that's a very shallow life. There really is. Really is.
08:08: Anyway, the view that Paul is referring to all the elect qua elect.
08:14: So, the elect as the elect as a group, regardless of their spiritual state.
08:20: Listen very carefully, folks, here. We've already seen in Romans 8 where Paul's doing exactly that.
08:28: We've seen it. Those who are called according to his purpose, the elect of God.
08:35: These are being used by God in this exact way. But Dr. Allen says it can't ever be, and here's why.
08:43: Here's why, folks. The view that Paul is referring to all the elect qua elect, regardless of their spiritual state, is ruled out exegetically and logically for an obvious reason.
08:57: Well, okay, here we go. No one, even one of the elect in Calvinist theology who is not already in vital union with Christ, can expect to receive all things while still in an unregenerate state.
09:13: Okay, folks, this is some of the most shallow argumentation
09:20: I've ever seen in my life. I'm just simply stunned that this kind of material is being put into print.
09:31: Listen to what's being said. Listen to what a professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary has just told us, alright?
09:37: What he's told us is that there is never a time when
09:43: God can speak of the elect as a group because there would be a time since God draws his elect out over the generations, then there's going to be a time when some of the elect have not yet been drawn.
10:04: So God can't even talk about all spiritual blessings in the places, being seated in the heavenly places in Christ.
10:15: He can't talk about what the final wrapping up of all things is going to be until everything's wrapped up.
10:24: Until everything's wrapped up. Because he's saying no one, even one of the elect in Calvinist theology who is not already in vital union with Christ, can expect to receive all things while still in a regenerate state.
10:39: That is a tautology. No, duh. But that is not a limitation on God's ability to describe the elect as the elect.
10:52: Do you understand the price of this kind of thinking, my friends? If this is true, then the promises of the
11:02: New Testament cannot be valid for you because they can only be valid back then someplace.
11:09: Think about it. When Paul said, if he did not spare his own son, but delivered him up for us all, if that's a major statement of the elect as a whole, because that's what he's going to say.
11:31: He's going to identify the us there as the elect. So, he's saying, he gave his son for the elect.
11:39: How shall he not also together with him freely give us, the elect, all things?
11:46: That's the very foundation of why any Christian in any generation can grab hold of Romans chapter 8 and say, this is about me.
11:55: Romans 828 is about me. This application is about me. Generations to come in the future is about me.
12:03: If you buy David Allen's argumentation, you don't get to say it's about you.
12:10: That's done. He's cut it apart just to avoid the one statement that specifically says that David Allen's own position is wrong.
12:20: That is that the son was given in behalf of the elect, which is why no charge can be brought against them.
12:28: That's what it says. So, here we have this idea that, well, Paul could not be referring to the elect as the elect for an obvious reason, and it's not an obvious reason at all.
12:42: It is twisted. This is not logical thinking. It's not even logical thinking from his perspective, because if you take it this way, then the receive all things is going beyond what is specifically stated, and that is he gave his son for us, which he says is for all people, most of whom will never be regenerate or okay, many of whom will never be regenerate.
13:13: We don't know what the numbers are ever going to be. The number of regenerate, the number of the elect, sand is the sea, the sand on the seashore, right?
13:23: So, the point is from his perspective, Christ is actually given for people who will never be regenerate.
13:33: Christ is given for the people who will be in hell. Now, we can talk about why in the world the Father would do that, why in the world the
13:39: Son would do that, why in the world the Spirit would do that, but the point is his own argument is self -defeating, and he is so desperate to find anything to get around the text here that he ends up undercutting his own position.
13:57: What? You keep grabbing that microphone. Are you just holding on out there? Okay, is there an earthquake
14:04: I'm missing or no? Okay, I was just... Am I making you nervous? Yes, you are making me nervous because I'm figuring, okay, the only reason you grab a microphone is because you're going to raise it up and that's your way of saying to me that you want to say something, but it just looked like you were just holding on for dear life.
14:20: So, I don't know. You could be watching... Yeah, you're all fine in here.
14:25: Okay. You were watching that clip again, weren't you? That's what's going on. Such is simply not possible.
14:35: Okay, so what he thinks is rule... that our understanding is ruled out exegetically and logically is utterly fallacious and stands refuted.
14:51: And if you think that he could defend it, then why don't we debate it? Remember, one of us continually makes the offer to get on a plane, fly to Dallas, rent a car, drive to Southwestern, and walk into David Allen's classes and defend this.
15:18: Because I can guarantee you in cross -examination, that assertion would fail badly.
15:29: That's not a threat. That's an observation. That's a factual statement. And I think it's very important.
15:36: All right. Such simply not possible as Paul makes clear in Ephesians 2, 1 through 3, even the unbelieving elect remain under the wrath of God, even as the rest.
15:45: Again, what he tries to do is he tries to... the now and the not yet, he tries to take us back and go, well, you see, since God has to draw his elect over time, then there is a time when they're under the wrath of God until they experience what has been provided for them in eternity past, which
16:07: I guess if you quote that, what you're arguing is that there is no elect, that there is no...
16:18: that everything that Paul said in Ephesians 1, ignore that, go to Ephesians 2, create this temporal problem, and now you've gotten rid of what
16:27: Paul said in Ephesians 1. This is... eisegesis is the nicest term
16:34: I can use. Scripture twisting would probably be a little bit more accurate. Just because they are among the abstract class of the elect in a
16:43: Calvinist system does not mean they are recipients of any spiritual blessings included in the all things and their condition of being apart from Christ.
16:53: So Paul uses the same terminology in Ephesians 1. He's using it similarly here, the all things.
17:01: When were these things granted to us in Ephesians 1? In eternity past. When do we experience these?
17:08: When God infallibly works in our life, brings about regeneration, repentance, faith, but you see what the result of this is?
17:19: You were not in Christ at his death. You weren't.
17:25: If you take this perspective, how could you say that you're in Christ because in this system you only get to be in Christ once you, by your free will act, join yourself to Christ?
17:41: But you're doing that in time, so you weren't in Christ at the time of his death, right?
17:49: I don't know how any of this works. I know that most of us sing on a
17:55: Sunday morning that my name was graven on his hands, right? I don't think
18:03: David Allen can't sing that because it wasn't.
18:09: You engraved it on his hands when you, by your autonomous will, believed. But this is just simply an overarching argument to try to get rid of the very idea that there is a known, chosen, specific elect in God's decree.
18:27: That's all there is to it. Until anyone is in Christ through faith, elect or not, elect or not, one does not and indeed cannot receive the all things
18:40: Paul refers to. So muddled.
18:46: Until anyone's in Christ through faith, elect or not. So, there are non -elect people who are in Christ by faith.
18:57: The point here, of course, one of the major problems here is you again have the man -centeredness,
19:03: Allen's perspective versus the God -centeredness interpretation. And so, he's looking at us being the focus of Romans 8 .31.
19:11: I'm looking at Christ being the center of this material. And therefore, what is actually being asserted is if he did not spare his own son, he's answering this, why can nothing be against us?
19:26: Who can be against us in light of this? And he would not spare his own son, how shall ye not with him freely give us all things, which would include victory over anything that would come against us, the condemnation of our sins and the devil and anything created in height or depth and famine and nakedness and peril and sword and everything else will be fine in there.
19:55: Then he says, Shriner captures the meaning of verse 32 well. The main point of the verse is clear.
20:01: Believers can face a day of judgment with confidence for those whom God has chosen for his own.
20:09: That word just seems to, remember, what Allen has done is he's already suggested that that's shorthand for those who have by their own free will chosen
20:19: God. So, God does, man -centered, God -centered, massive difference.
20:28: Those whom God has chosen for his own will certainly not be accused in the day of judgment. God has declared them to be right in his sight and thus, those who would accuse believers will not successfully establish their case.
20:40: Notice again, Allen's words, notice Shriner says the verse speaks of believers and nowhere imports the idea of the predestined as such.
20:53: Did you read what you quoted? It's right there. No, leave it up. Look, the main point of the verse is clear.
21:02: Believers, now remember, Allen is dragging free will into that, which Shriner's not.
21:09: Believers can face the day of judgment with confidence for those whom
21:14: God has chosen for his own. Where do those words go?
21:22: They get filtered out by tradition. He says it right there, but he doesn't hear it.
21:32: They are believers because God chose them for his own. So, how can you say nowhere imports the idea of the predestined as such?
21:45: The text says those whom God chose for his own. The text says the elect of God.
21:52: It's right there on the papyri, but not in David Allen's mind.
21:59: This is why I simply state to you, Allen failed to the hundredth point in offering any kind of meaningfully textually based interpretation.
22:13: It's stunning. Look at it. It was just on the screen. Stop it.
22:19: Here's Shriner. If you want to go pick it up, it's available from Accordance and Lagos and all the rest of that stuff.
22:25: Get it for yourself. Look at it. Read it. Read the paragraph above. Read the paragraph below and you're going to be left going, where did
22:35: Allen get this stuff? He does it to Shriner. He does it to Mu as well. In fact, virtually all the key exegetical commentaries interpret
22:50: Paul's use of us in Romans 8, for only to believers, whether the time of writing or for all time.
22:58: And again, they're using the term believers as the same as the elect.
23:04: They are not doing Allens. If belief is back here in Romans 4, then that becomes the determining factor of what believers are in Romans 8, even though the term doesn't appear.
23:20: We're going to use that terminology to about those who are in Christ. And as we saw on the last program, he specifically, when quoting from Douglas Mu, skips the next sentence, which is a complete refutation of his own view of this central issue.
23:39: Until you can deal with that, you're using a broken read here. You're using someone who is clearly not dealing with the sources in a fair fashion.
23:51: Okay, verse 33 semantically functions as a specific restatement of the collusion claim, verse 31.
23:57: Believers, quote, the elect, which cannot be charged with any legal accusation that will stick since it is
24:05: God himself who is justified for all time, all believers. We need to, how many times do you use the term believers there?
24:14: A bunch. I'm not sure why that's not popping up. Let's take a look at verse 33.
24:24: Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies.
24:30: Do you find the term believers anywhere? Now, who are God's elect? Will God's elect believe?
24:35: Of course, that's not even an issue. But why can't you use Paul's language? Why can't you recognize that up here in verse 28, those who are called according to his purpose, okay?
24:54: Those who are called according to his purpose. Here it is. Tois, kata, prothesen, kleitos, usen.
25:01: Right there. Those who are called according to his purpose. You can try to turn that upside down and say, well, that just means believers who believe autonomously by free will, etc.,
25:15: etc., and that therefore God calls them because they call themselves or whatever you want to do.
25:23: But you can't use Paul's language. I can just use his language. We're talking about those who are called according to his purpose.
25:29: We're talking about those whom he's foreknown, those he's predestined, those he's called, those he's justified, those he's glorified.
25:34: And we can actually use the term God's elect because that's what the phrase right there.
25:41: Kata, eclekton, theu, the elect of God. God is the one justifying.
25:49: So, but notice what Allen does.
25:56: Verse 33 semantically functions as a specific restatement of the conclusion claim, verse 31.
26:02: Believers, the elect, cannot be charged in any legal accusation that will stick since it is
26:07: God himself who is justified for all time. Who? All believers, not the elect.
26:13: He can't use the language of the text because it will not communicate his narrative. He is the one.
26:19: This is how you determine who is inserting something into a text. Who's doing eisegesis? David Allen is.
26:25: He can't use the language. And he asked it openly as he did on the last program.
26:31: He asked to openly say, well, that's Paul's shorthand for this, all based upon this idea that, hey, if he talked about justification by faith back here in chapters three and four, he can't, in chapter eight, go to a higher, even an eternal level in discussing what the basis of all that was.
26:49: No, no, no, no, no. We will not allow that. This is eisegesis on steroids at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
27:01: Okay? All right. So, believers are secure because God himself has justified them.
27:13: Yes, God's elect whom he chose are secure because he foreknew them, he predestined them, he called them, he justified them, and he glorified them.
27:29: That's why they're secure. Right. Exactly. That's not what you believe.
27:35: Your system cuts that into ribbons, but the elect are secure because God himself has justified them.
27:44: And he also, so as to glorify himself, grants them everything that they need so that his gospel can be fulfilled, which includes faith and repentance.
28:00: One perspective, consistent, uses the language of scripture. One perspective has to jump out and around and spin in circles and everything in the, in between.
28:17: So, where the confusion lies, yes, the confusion, lies on part of some who deduce limited atonement of Romans 8 through 2, is with Paul's use of the word elect.
28:27: Why did he have to do that? Why did he have to talk about the elect?
28:33: Just because that's what he had been talking about in Romans 8, 28 and 29 and 30, why did he have to go and do it here?
28:44: Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies. Well, the reason no accusation will stand is because it is against God's elect, i .e.
28:58: believers, that the accusation is being made. Paul is obviously speaking about believers and not about the abstract class of the elect qua elect, as the term is sometimes used in Reformed theology.
29:11: Are we repeating ourselves? We are repeating ourselves. We didn't yell loud enough the first time, so we're going to try it again.
29:19: Significantly, Calvin applies the meaning of a klektos in verse 33 to believers only and not to the abstract class of the elect qua elect, and nowhere in his commentary on Romans 8, 28, 34 does he suggest the text teaches limited atonement.
29:29: Well, I'm not even going to go there because that's not what he was dealing with, but I am going to point out the circularity of this argumentation.
29:41: Is it not obvious that someone here is trying to get around what the text plainly states?
29:50: Who shall bring a charge against God's elect? Well, that follows after the giving of the
30:00: Son for us all. So, if David Allen was even trying to deal with the text rather than just defend a tradition, he would have to deal with this reality.
30:17: We have in verse 31, who will, right here, verse 31, what shall we say to these things if God is for us?
30:33: Who can be against us? He who does not spare his own son, but deliver to him up, who pair him own pontoon for us all, how will he not also together with him freely give to us all things?
30:56: Who will bring a charge? Cata eclecton theu. Now, Allen has to, at this point, try to break all of this up.
31:07: The power of Reformed theology, in John 6, Ephesians 1,
31:13: Romans 8, Romans 9, is we don't have to break anything up. We don't have to break anything up.
31:23: So, we can follow the text all the way through. And the only, folks, listen to me, even those of you who have a real bias on this, because I know that a bunch of you provisionists are watching this thing, think with me for a moment.
31:40: You have to insert a chasm between 32 and 33, because if you don't, you've got limited atonement and Reformed theology staring you in the face.
31:50: But if there's a chasm, then how can the beautiful law court illustration in verses 33 and 34 explain and function in light of 31 and 32?
32:08: Why is it that God is for us?
32:14: How do we know that? He's the one who justifies. He's the one that's given his Son.
32:20: The Son died, raised again, and is the right hand of God the Father interceding for us.
32:27: That's why no one can be against us. That's why no charge can be brought against the elect of God.
32:34: So, it is without question that the us in 31 and 32 is the elect of God in 33.
32:51: 34. And this ties it all together. This is absolutely, you know,
32:57: Dr. Allen says, my exegesis is indefensible. I say to you, it is without question that the us and the elect of God is consistent over only,
33:14: I mean, depending on how you punctuate this.
33:20: Four sentences? Look what's at the end of verse 34. Who is the one condemning?
33:28: Christ Jesus, the one who died, rather the one who was raised, who also is at the right hand of God, who also is interceding, who per haemon, in our behalf, who will separate us from the love of Christ.
33:55: There is only one consistent way of interpreting these couple of sentences.
34:03: May I suggest to you, if we can't figure out what these sentences are saying, then we can't figure out anything about the
34:09: Trinity, the deity of Christ, the resurrection, or anything else. And the only reason that someone would raise questions about this is because they don't like what it says.
34:19: Their traditions stand in the way. Tradition is the primary reason for exegesis.
34:27: Tradition is the primary reason. But you want consistency? You want consistency?
34:34: Here, look, who per haemon, verse 31, verse 34, who per haemon, it's one section.
34:47: You can't break it up. And so, right in the middle of that, the elect of God identifies who the us is.
35:02: Did David Allen provide any argumentation in article that refutes that? Not a shred and any honest exegete, even on the other side, has to admit.
35:14: All he did is assert it. He never even got close to any level of meaningful exegetical proof.
35:23: That tweet and a statement we're going to see later on in this article is Dr. Allen.
35:32: Is that what I think that was? Just heard a big crash of thunder outside, folks, so we may disappear all of a sudden.
35:39: Hopefully not from that. The water comes in and we Arizonans aren't good at swimming.
35:49: I'm looking over here at my radar. Oh, there it is. Yeah, look at that.
35:55: That's orange. There might be even a little bit of red there. So here we go.
36:02: Dr. Allen's language in saying that my exegesis is indefensible is
36:10: Dr. Allen whistling as he walks by the graveyard. You familiar with that terminology? I'm not afraid.
36:21: That's what he's doing. Because Dr. Allen knows if he had to stand on a debate stage with sufficient time of cross -examination with the
36:34: Greek text on the screen, he's not going to be able to defend this. He knows it. He knows.
36:40: Dr. Allen, you know it. That's the only reason you won't debate it. You know you can't defend this.
36:49: It can be done. People with strong beliefs can still debate in a meaningful fashion.
36:59: I stand ready. I stand ready. It's not going to happen. It's not going to happen.
37:06: Please prove me wrong. That would be great. Okay. So we have seen that my exegesis has been defended.
37:18: We have demonstrated it. No argument has been made against it of any kind at all. We've seen misrepresentation of Shriner and Mu.
37:26: And there's another one. There's more. We're in notes here.
37:33: I'm going through and I understand why this was. He published it in three different parts. So the notes ended up in the middle of things when you put it all together.
37:41: And the numeration, the numbering, was from the original.
37:48: So you couldn't just put them all down at the bottom with all the numeration. We've gotten messed up. So that's fully understandable. Not a complaint.
37:55: I'm just saying that's why we have to go through all these notes. I did mark this.
38:07: Notice that Shriner, Mu, and other Calvinist commentators do not say only for all believers, though Shriner certainly...
38:14: I'm not going to... Here we go. Here's where I wanted to go. It's sort of hard to see.
38:24: I shouldn't have used red on red here. But anyways, note number 32.
38:30: This would be on the second article. Notice how Mu refers to the elect here as believers.
38:39: In a sense, then, this manner of designating Christians in the question itself is the only answer required.
38:45: Now, I was like, what? Mu refers to the elect here as believers.
38:52: Now, why would he even say that? So we went looking for it, and here it is.
39:06: So, okay, let me... In a sense, then, this manner of designating
39:13: Christians in the question itself is the only answer required. Let's go read it itself. Here it is.
39:21: Here's the paragraph. Bring a charge is the first of explicitly judicial terms in this context.
39:28: So Mu is talking about the incredible heavenly courtroom scene that is, whether we like it or not, central to Paul's explanation to us of how we have peace with God and must be understood.
39:45: It must be understood, and that's what we have here in Romans 8. The future tense of the verb focuses attention on the last judgment.
39:53: Who will stand and accuse us at that time? To be sure, Satan, the accuser, may seek to do so.
39:59: So may our enemies, and perhaps most persuasively of all, our own sins. But no accusation will be effective because it is against God's elect that the accusation is being made.
40:11: And as Paul has shown in verses 20 to 30, those who are God's elect ones by virtue of his calling and purpose are assured of glory.
40:20: In a sense, then, this manner of designating Christians in the question itself is the only answer required.
40:27: But it is natural to view the following sentence as a further basis for the ultimate failure of any accusations against us.
40:34: It is God who is justifying. Now, is
40:39: Moo's paragraph completely in harmony with my interpretation and presentation?
40:48: Obviously. Is it in harmony with Alan's understanding of any of this? It is not. Were the term
40:55: Christians appear in there? It didn't. So, I honestly had to wonder, what on earth is he talking about?
41:07: Moo refers to the elect here as believers. Well, that, again, has nothing to do with free will or anything else.
41:14: And then, in a sense, then, this manner of designating Christians in the question itself is the only answer required.
41:21: And I think I might have figured it out, but I had to go to the, well,
41:29: I guess I could scroll back, but it's easier in the paper here, because it's sort of printed in such a way.
41:40: It's at the top of the page, the believers security celebrated. It's just talking about Romans 8, 31 to 39.
41:48: It's chapter heading, subheading, yeah. That's David Allen using scholarly resources.
42:01: You all download it too. Did you notice that? More notes here.
42:10: Okay. Then theological analysis and implications. This is where we were not given an exegesis of the text.
42:22: We were told what it couldn't mean. We had repetitive insertions of extraneous material, stuff unfounded in the lexical sources or commentary sources being used.
42:36: Basically, we had provisionism crammed in to try to get around. But what we didn't have is what we have provided numerous times in this program, what are provided in print as well, and that is an actual exegesis that actually tells you what
42:50: Paul was communicating to his audience at that time, how they would have understood it, and then application thereto to the overall teaching of scripture.
42:59: We did not get that from David Allen. And so his accusation that my exegesis is indefensible has therefore been refuted completely.
43:09: Once we get to the theological analysis and implications, things are actually get more shallow. Because he mentions people who, like me, represent
43:21: C, Romans 8, 32, actually it should be 31 to 34. It should be Romans 8, 28 through 34.
43:30: And he mentions John Owen, John Gill, John Frame, Michael Horton, Tom Nettles, and Jonathan Gibson.
43:35: Gibson was one of the primary writers in, I think it was all the way back in 2011 now.
43:41: I didn't grab it. I'm sorry, Jonathan. But From Heaven He Came and Sought Her, the long work on limited atonement.
43:50: And a number of people there took various shots at Allen's materials.
43:56: He has felt, I think, slighted that most of them have ignored his attempted responses. But I think we've seen now why.
44:04: When you're using sources the way that David Allen uses sources, only people like me invest our time in responding.
44:15: So he presents Gibson's understanding, which is great, which is the same as mine.
44:24: And so here, Gibson's analysis in several points, he has made the same logical mistakes that Owen made.
44:30: I just, by the way, John Owen, David Allen, John Owen, David Allen.
44:40: What? No, founders. No, that's a ship founders upon rocks.
44:53: First, nothing in the atonement secures its own application. Where is this in the text or any text?
45:01: And I want you to understand what this means.
45:09: Nothing in the atonement secures its own application. Now, if what you mean by that is that the atonement does not exist in a vacuum separate from the purpose of the
45:29: Father and the purpose of the Son and the purpose of the Spirit, it does not exist disconnected from God's sovereign decree, his choice of an elect people.
45:43: All of that would be true. That's not the issue here. The Reformed understanding,
45:55: Paul's understanding of what he says in Romans 8 is that everything he's said up to this point, all of the stuff on justification, the righteousness of God, faith in Jesus Christ, why is all of this true?
46:18: Because of what God has done. So, when he talks about the Spirit interceding for us and everything at the beginning of Romans chapter 8, now he gets to the pinnacle and he's taken us into the law court and he says, you want to know the foundation of all of this?
46:34: Do you want to know what happened in heaven that allows your faith to bring you the righteousness of Christ?
46:46: It's because of the heavenly law court. It is because you have God justifying.
46:52: You have Jesus dying and being raised to the right hand of the Father interceding for the elect of God.
47:01: And so, no condemnation can come to them, so the Holy Spirit can come and intercede for them with groanings that cannot be uttered, which is right before Romans 8 .28.
47:10: Even though he's the Holy Spirit of God, he can be in a sinful people because of what happened up there in heaven, because of what happened in the heavenly law court.
47:22: That's the foundation. Alan says, you can't talk about that. You have to define everything that comes after chapters 3 and 4 only on that level.
47:32: You can't go into eternity past. You can't go into what God's purposes were, the foundation of all this. No, no, you can't do any of that.
47:37: No. So, there is a sense wherein the atonement secures its own application because there was an intentionality in the atonement.
47:56: What was God's intention in giving his son? David Allen says it was to make salvation possible if mankind will cooperate.
48:09: The Bible says it was the triune God's purpose to glorify himself, the redemption of a specific people in Jesus Christ, Titus chapter 2.
48:22: So, you have tradition versus the biblical text. Just all there is to that. It's just a fact.
48:29: So, the atonement does secure its own application because the son sends the father.
48:35: The son comes voluntarily. The son is empowered by the Spirit of God and in the resurrection, for example, the father raises the son, the son receives life back in himself.
48:46: The Spirit raises the son as well to try an action. And so, the atonement, likewise, as part of that divine decree cannot fail but to bring about the redemption of those for whom it's made.
49:03: So, it does secure its own application because it is a part of the entire work of God.
49:09: Now, it doesn't secure its application in the sense of applying it right at that point in time.
49:16: But it does secure its own application. Secondly, an application of the atonement is the purview of the
49:24: Holy Spirit even from a Calvinistic perspective when he sovereignly regenerates an individual and then gives the faith, gives the gift of faith such that the individual believes and is justified.
49:33: Well, Dr. Allen does know we believe about that. The application of the atonement is the purview of Holy Spirit.
49:41: But the Spirit works in absolute harmony with the father and the son.
49:47: And so, the Spirit makes application of the accomplishment of the son to all those who have been chosen by the father.
49:56: Trinitarian harmony in the gospel. Isn't it beautiful? It truly is.
50:03: Whether faith can be described as a purchase gift only for the elect or not changes nothing. No, it changes everything. Of course, it changes everything because in the golden chain, those who are called are justified.
50:15: We're justified by faith. Therefore, the calling must bring that which will bring about the justification. So, yeah, it means everything.
50:23: It's the difference between synergism and monergism. He just dismisses it.
50:29: He can't, but that's what he does. The atonement unapplied saves no one, as Charles Hodge rightly noted.
50:36: Duh! Duh! But the atonement is a divine accomplishment and therefore, its application is as certain as the decree of the triune
50:50: God that brought it about. That's maybe not the case in a synergistic universe where things could have been different or who knows?
50:59: I don't know. But anyway, the only application of the atonement, according to Paul in Romans, is in response to faith.
51:08: Well, again, now he wants to talk about the temporal aspect of the application of the atonement and that follows regeneration and the granting of the gifts of faith and repentance.
51:28: Yeah, okay. Then we have more on the negative inference fallacy.
51:37: The proof of a proposition does not disprove its converse. Alan's failure to understand what this is adequately founders upon the consideration that Christians are supposed to believe what is positively taught in scripture.
51:54: So, in scripture, positively teaches that the atonement, well, that the elect of God are those for whom the
52:03: Son was given. To try to use some fancy logical way around to say, well, it may say that, but it doesn't mean it's only that, is the stuff of cultism.
52:15: That's what we run into when we talk to Mormon missionaries or Jehovah's Witnesses or anything else. They don't function on the idea that what we need to believe is positively stated for us scripture.
52:29: They don't function upon that. Well, it might mean something. There might be a, you know, maybe, you know, they don't believe in solo scripture.
52:35: We do. I don't think David Allen has thought through his massive over -reliance upon this particular concept.
52:47: For example, he says, where does Paul say redemption accomplished is equivalent in extent as the other moments of salvation in the golden chain?
52:55: He doesn't. So, another moment in the golden chain is justification.
53:05: How can anyone be justified apart from the perfection of the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ? I mean, this is just so obvious.
53:14: It's simplistic. I don't, I don't, it is astonishing what tradition can do.
53:21: It really is. Third, as demonstrated in the exegesis of the text above, I missed that part, so did everybody else.
53:28: Gibson is equivocating on the term us when he attempts to make it apply to all the elect as an abstract class, a hermeneutical and exegetical false move, which we have demonstrated is the fundamental error that David Allen has put in print in his books and now doubles down on here.
53:45: We've taken it apart logically, exegetically, linguistically, theologically, and every other way you could possibly do it.
53:53: Um, the us is identified as the elect of God for whom the son was given.
54:01: That's an established fact and he has not given us any reason, any reason whatsoever to believe otherwise.
54:12: Now, what's interesting is then the name David Ponter appears.
54:18: And that's why I believe this last section was primarily written by, at least thoroughly edited by, but probably originally written by somebody else, someone named
54:32: Tony. Uh, because the material hearkens back to, um, there was a, there was a tremendous amount of discussion of these various issues going on 2007, 2008, 2009.
54:48: Um, it was online. It was back back then. It was much not, it wasn't Facebook.
54:53: It was like that. It was blogs. Um, but there was a lot of back and forth going on, especially around the time of the
55:01: John three 16 conference. And a fellow by the name of Tony was, uh,
55:06: I think a student of, uh, of Allen. Um, and it very, very clear to me that much of this material comes from outside of Allen's own expertise in his own study.
55:22: Um, and so we've, we've covered a lot of this before. There were a couple of things I wanted to, uh, get to here as well.
55:32: There is no valid micro contextual or Mike macro contextual exegesis connecting text to demonstrate limited atonement.
55:44: It's just false entire books. We've provided it right here. The attempt to deduce limited atonement from disparate texts combined with theological deductions fails from the start.
55:55: And especially so in light of the many clear texts that assert unlimited atonement. This is a paragraph that is the reverse of reality.
56:03: And we've demonstrated the unlimited atonement advocates go to texts that are not talking about the atonement.
56:14: First John two, two, uh, second Timothy two, uh, not even talking about it.
56:20: That's not its subject. It's talking about other things, but they take that and they imply from that.
56:26: Well, that must mean this we're looking at multiple sentences, sometimes multiple paragraphs, sometimes multiple challenges, uh, chapters,
56:35: Hebrews seven, eight, nine, 10 Romans eight, going into Romans nine, we're looking at lengthy discussions.
56:44: So this is both micro and macro contextual exegesis. So this statement I would say is 100 % false.
56:51: It is the reverse of the truth. It's the reverse of the truth, whoever wrote it, but it's the reverse of the truth.
56:59: Um, again, a lot of this stuff is, is repetition of stuff.
57:07: Then there's addendum James white and Romans eight, 31, 34. Notice addendum. I thought that's what this was about.
57:15: This other stuff has come from other materials. That's why I don't think, I don't think Alan wrote most of the third section came from other sources by now.
57:27: It should be clear that for dr. White to sustain his argument, he must make the us all of Romans eight 32, all the elect qua elect in order to get as limited as home argument to work in the context.
57:37: And we have done that. We've established it. We have, we have looked and here for those of you who didn't see it, let me just point out to you again.
57:48: Who pair? Hey, moan, verse 31, right? Verse 34.
57:55: Who pair? Hey, moan. It's like bookends and smack dab in the middle. This is one section, one audience.
58:05: The only way to understand the audience in this section is to see it consistently.
58:12: Dr. Allen gave us no reason, made no attempt to overthrow that reality.
58:18: And he knows that's key issue. That's, that's what's, that's what's right here. As is often his habit.
58:25: He is equivocating on the term elect and contrary to biblical usage is assigning the meaning. All those appointed to eternal life as the reference.
58:32: Isn't it funny that that's acts 1348, which is biblical.
58:39: Um, but I didn't say that acts 1348 is a reference. I said that the exegesis of Romans 8 31 through 34 means that us all and the elect of God are identical.
58:54: And if he's going to even begin to finally provide a response, he has to break that.
59:01: He has to go into that text and demonstrate. Nope. This is one group over here. This is a show me from the text.
59:07: Can't be done. Can't be done, but I'm willing to be shown.
59:13: I just like to be shown at Southwestern Baptist theological seminary. We'll do that.
59:20: Uh, white seems to think that if Paul speaks of all the predestined as such in Romans 8 29 to 30, as he does, then it must fall that us all in eight 32 is all the elect qua elect.
59:32: Well, that is consistent. That's consistent.
59:37: I mean, they are only a few sentences apart. And if you're going to say the audience has changed, then you have to demonstrate that from the text itself, right?
59:47: Which have you done that? No, you have not. This is his major hermeneutical, exegetical, logical, and theological mistake.
59:56: Catch that guys. Here's, here's the summary right here. If you can read
01:00:04: Romans 8 28 through 34 and see it as all referring to the same group, love
01:00:12: God called according to his purpose for known, predestined, called, justified, glorified, who can be against us?
01:00:23: Give his son in behalf of us all give us all freely, all things the elect of God.
01:00:30: And he's interceding for us. That is one consistent interpretation.
01:00:37: And if you do that, you're making major hermeneutical, exegetical, logical, and theological mistakes.
01:00:44: Can anyone honestly read what David Allen produced and say, yep, he demonstrated that.
01:00:52: Or is this more sand throwing red meat to the followers whistling as you're walking by the graveyard type stuff?
01:01:00: It's exactly what it is. It's exactly what it is. So, White's exegesis of Romans 8 31 through 34 is thin.
01:01:09: Well, thank you very much. I am trying to lose weight. Lacks nuance. Ah, yes, it lacks nuance.
01:01:15: Is contextually flawed and is system driven. Did he provide any evidence of any of that? No. I say
01:01:22: David Allen's exegesis is laughably thin, misrepresents the sources he attempted to use, is completely disconnected from the context, and is 1000 % system driven.
01:01:37: Now, which one of us provide the evidence for what we say? I did. I did.
01:01:45: White should ask himself how many modern exegetical commentaries on Romans interpret Romans 8 31 to 34 as he does.
01:01:52: The ones you quoted from did. You just misrepresented them.
01:01:58: You only see what your system allows you to see on the page. How many modern
01:02:05: Calvinist authors of exegetical commentaries treat Romans 8 31 as he does? Charles Hodge does not, Moo does not, Schreiner does not, nor do most others.
01:02:11: This is for the audience. This is to make his audience feel better when they encounter these discussions.
01:02:20: I'm thinking that we're into the notes here. Oh, nope. Nope. Oh yeah. Okay. It's really coming down out there, ain't it?
01:02:32: Do we still have leaks in here? We'll find out soon enough.
01:02:41: We got thunder and we got all sorts of stuff going on here.
01:02:48: Here, since I have this up, there's what we got going on right now.
01:02:55: See that? We are about right here, I would say. So there goes the fact there was a little bit of purple in there and there's some purple coming.
01:03:05: That can be hail. Great. And our cars are parked out there. Huh? Yay.
01:03:11: We may be swimming to our cars if there's anything left by the time we get to them. Yay. Yeah.
01:03:17: So current weather information provided you on the dividing line.
01:03:24: I personally think it's really cool that you can do that. I don't know how many radar apps
01:03:30: I have on this thing, but it's too many. Some of them are really, really good though. I think it's just, that's so cool to be able to look at that stuff.
01:03:40: Anyway. What? Inspector gadget. Is that what you said? I can barely hear you now because everything's coming down on the roof out there.
01:03:53: Um, this is, let me, let me see how much there is here. And there's, there's a fair amount.
01:04:03: Um, again, I don't think this is Alan primarily. It does raise another issue that I'll just,
01:04:11: I'm going to try to be brief on this as best I can, because it actually sort of takes us away from what the real issue is.
01:04:17: Um, in White's recent second response to Mike Winger, he again, used the union with Christ idea to refer to all the elect as such being united to Christ in his death.
01:04:28: Now listen to this. So that's what you have in, um, well, how many times have you heard someone say
01:04:39: Christ's death is our death. His barrels are barely, his resurrection is our resurrection. Um, yes,
01:04:44: I believe in personal atonement. I do not believe that Jesus gives himself for a nameless, faceless group.
01:04:55: Yes, the elect are united with Christ in his death. This amounts to decretalizing union with Christ.
01:05:06: Well, if you mean that God's decree includes the identity of the elect and that the elect are united with Christ in his death, yeah, yeah.
01:05:24: When the biblical phrase is never used of anyone other than those who are in a vital living union with Christ by virtue of salvation, absolutely, positively irrelevant, 1000 % irrelevant.
01:05:42: This, these, these people are the death of meaningful systematic theology.
01:05:50: Are you seriously, are you looking at the, at the, at the cameras?
01:05:55: Are you seeing hail? Not yet. It's coming down.
01:06:02: Good. Okay, great. We had a, we had a hail storm and what, what was that?
01:06:08: 2000 and was that 2008 as well? I remember,
01:06:14: I just remember that, uh, I got caught in it, in the versa. And I thought for certain that windshield was going to be shattering everywhere.
01:06:21: I had never experienced that kind of, I was, it was, it was wild.
01:06:28: Anyways, we'll see when we get out there. Um, we may need a boat to get out there.
01:06:34: Great. Wonderful. Uh, it's live here folks. And, uh, uh, what?
01:06:41: Yo Noah. Yeah. I mean the lights could go any second. So I'm glad we've pretty much covered the subject.
01:06:47: Cause you know, uh, maybe, I don't know, would YouTube still have what was sent up?
01:06:53: Uh, that's good. Okay. All right. I'm sorry. Uh, you, you should just hear the roar going on here.
01:07:01: I'm sure the microphone doesn't pick it up quite as much as my ears are. Uh, when the biblical phrase is never used of anyone other than those who are in vital living union with Christ by virtue of salvation, all that God decrees shall come to pass.
01:07:26: So why is someone in Christ Jesus? What they're saying is, well, you can never even ask the question about how that happens, what its foundation is.
01:07:39: You can't deal with the eternal realities. You just, you just have to go away.
01:07:44: We don't know. We don't know. We, we can only use, uh, words in, in a, in a context or found the
01:07:50: Bible. Well, they don't do that. They don't do that at all, but they want to try to hold us to that.
01:07:58: The elect are unified with their savior.
01:08:05: That is where eternal life is found is only in Christ. The synergist wants
01:08:10: Jesus to be alone until we come to accompany him. In other words, continuing on, it is only believers who are properly in union with Christ.
01:08:22: The unbelieving elect are never described in this way in scripture, the unbelieving elect whom we do not know who they are, and they are never addressed separately from the elect as the elect.
01:08:39: So this is, I don't even, I'll be honest with you. This is how you make up arguments when you aren't willing to actually deal with what the text of scripture is actually teaching.
01:08:53: Decretalizing union with Christ. Yes. I believe that God predestines whatsoever comes to pass.
01:09:02: I believe that God is accomplishing his purposes and that he will accomplish his purpose in all things.
01:09:10: And that includes the identity of the elect, their union with Christ, and the fact that they are in Christ and his death, burial and resurrection.
01:09:20: We don't know that or experience that until the actualization of our redemption in this life.
01:09:32: But to say that because we temporally experience it, that it has no eternal ground destroys all aspects of any kind of divine initiative in salvation and limits
01:09:47: God's accomplishment of gospel to time itself. So forget about being seated in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
01:09:57: How are we seated in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, guys? Huh? How are we?
01:10:03: I mean, the Bible does say that. You do accept that reality, right?
01:10:10: I mean, hmm, there it is.
01:10:18: And raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Was Paul in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus right now?
01:10:27: No. Was his audience? No. But it says he raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
01:10:39: If that's not decretalizing union with Christ, what is? I don't know.
01:10:49: I don't know. Moreover, why do you interpret the children of God who are scattered abroad in John 11 -2 as all the elect is an abstract class, when it is absurd and patently unbiblical to call non -existent people or unbelievers children of God?
01:11:04: Man, this is bad argumentation. This is bad argumentation. So who are these children of God?
01:11:10: Is this where your Pelagianism comes from? That they're already children of God scattered abroad? I mean, from your perspective, this doesn't have anything to do with us or anybody who would be born the next day or the month or the next year after these words were written.
01:11:27: Who are these children of God who are scattered abroad? Yes. This is not patently unbiblical or absurd.
01:11:35: I would say your argument is patently unbiblical and absurd, and I will allow people to recognize that for themselves.
01:11:45: When White speaks of all the elect as being in union with Christ, say, of the cross and are the children of God before they believe, he does not seem to realize and certainly never acknowledges just how close he is to opening the door to eternal justification.
01:11:55: Absolutely absurd again. That's why, again, I sort of doubt, I really don't think this is,
01:12:01: Alan, this is, I'm recognizing language here from some other people. I have been consistent for decades, consistent.
01:12:12: We can go back to the 90s to demonstrate without any question that I have always identified eternal justice.
01:12:20: In fact, we did a program on KPXQ on eternal justification once against eternal justification.
01:12:26: I remember it. I remember it. We may not still have it, but we did do that. I've always been against eternal justification.
01:12:34: I have always recognized that the eternal decree of God includes actions in time and therefore the application, the time of our regeneration, all of those things are determined by God's sovereign decree, and it's only the person who wants to rob from God his eternal nature and his ability to have an eternal decree that can ever come up with this kind of fallacious, shallow, ridiculous argumentation, and it is.
01:13:02: Decretalizing the sense of those words was the pattern of the antinomians and hypercalvinists in the 1800s.
01:13:08: Oh, let's get out the hypercalvinists, because remember when David Allen called me hypercalvinist, he did it because Tony Burton told him to.
01:13:15: That's where this lie is coming from. It's from Tony. If you want to see where this is coming from, this is Tony. Has demonstrated and documented in Kurt Daniels' excellent work
01:13:24: Hypercalvinism and John Gill. So anything a hypercalvinist ever said is wrong, and so since they believe in resurrection, we shouldn't believe in resurrection.
01:13:30: Well, this is stupidity. Then he says,
01:13:36: I didn't understand the issues of the free offer of the gospel that Winger was raising. Well, of course,
01:13:41: I do and did, and this raises the whole issue of do you have to believe?
01:13:47: This is one of the big, this is the one argument. I'm telling you, there is purple over us right now.
01:13:58: There's purple over us right now. So my car's floating on the street.
01:14:05: Thanks. Appreciate it. Not going to mention, that'd be distracting.
01:14:11: That would be distracting. Yeah, yeah. Wow, look at that thing. That is,
01:14:18: I don't know I've ever heard that. That's where we are right now.
01:14:26: And we are about right there. Well, okay. Right around there.
01:14:32: Yeah. We are getting pounded. I wonder what the per minute downpour rate is right now.
01:14:41: It's I'm sorry, those of you who live in places that you get rained on all the time.
01:14:48: We live in a desert. This is pretty freaky. This is pretty wild. So forgive us for being all excited about it.
01:14:58: So then there's a big long section on the whole topic of free offer and well -meant offer.
01:15:12: I'll be brief. We've talked about it before. We've done entire programs on it in the past. The argument of the other side is that unless Jesus has paid for the sins of all people, we cannot preach the gospel to all people.
01:15:37: Because if they were to repent and believe on a limited atonement foundation, they can't be saved because Jesus didn't atone for their sins.
01:15:48: So Jesus has to pay the penalty for their sins, even though they agree that God knows that they're never going to be saved.
01:15:59: See, it's an argument once again, man -centered, God -centered. It's an argument from down here. It's an argument that says we have to have
01:16:08: X amount of knowledge to have a genuine offer of the gospel.
01:16:17: And so we have to be able to say your sins have really have been forgiven.
01:16:29: But then you have to make it a potential thing and say they will be forgiven.
01:16:34: But actually what you would actually have to proclaim if you really believe this is they have been forgiven. And the only thing that you need to do is to believe in that.
01:16:45: But they've already been forgiven, which would allow someone to ask, well, they've already been forgiven. What's the issue?
01:16:52: And that is the question. But the idea is if you proclaim the gospel promiscuously, that is proclaim it to everybody, which
01:17:03: I've taught all my life. When you proclaim it, you don't look for signs of regeneration. You don't do what the hyper -Calvinists do.
01:17:10: You don't do what some of the Calvinists do in places like the
01:17:15: Netherlands and get angry for people who say to anyone, as I've said over and over again, there has never been anyone who has turned in true repentance and faith.
01:17:27: Jesus Christ was founded to be anything other than a powerful and perfect savior. That's absolutely true.
01:17:34: How then do you put all this together? The reformed person says you put it all together in recognizing God's eternal purposes.
01:17:41: And so God commands us to go out and preach the gospel of repentance.
01:17:47: He commands us. Men and women everywhere repent and believe the gospel. That is the message we are called to deliver.
01:17:56: It is not, and you need to believe in Jesus because he did such a wonderful, nice thing for you.
01:18:04: That's not the message. The message is not because Jesus has done this for you, you need to do something for him.
01:18:11: No. You're to repent and believe. And we know, biblically speaking, that those who suppress the knowledge of God, who are not able to do what the law of God commands, that those individuals will never repent and believe.
01:18:28: But we don't know who they are. We don't know who they are. So what the other side says is, well, what you have to say is that God wants in the exact same way, and this is the key issue, you can't talk about the prescriptive will of God and the decretive will of God.
01:18:48: You're not allowed to make that distinction, even though the Bible does. So what you have to say is that in the decree of God and the prescriptive will of God, there is an equal desire for the salvation of every individual.
01:18:59: So you have to say that God desired to save the Amorite high priest sacrificing babies that he never sent a prophet to in the exact same way that he wanted to save Moses or Paul or anybody else.
01:19:14: Otherwise, then it's not a real offer. And that's absurd. That's absurd.
01:19:20: It completely ignores the difference between the decree of God and the prescriptive will of God.
01:19:26: We don't know who the elect are. That is not a part of our knowledge. And so we cannot act on the basis of that.
01:19:35: What we can say to any individual is if you will repent and believe, you will find Jesus Christ to be a perfect savior, because we know those who repent and believe are those for whom
01:19:45: Christ atoned, they are the elect. And so it is a perfectly valid statement because we are not claiming to have any knowledge.
01:19:54: And we are not saying to the person, because God in Jesus has done this for you, then you need to do something for him.
01:20:02: No. Repent and believe is the message of the gospel.
01:20:08: Now, this isn't even getting into a whole other area where you can talk about the effects of the atonement that are not specifically redemptive or soteriological, and there are results.
01:20:27: Think about it. The son creator of all these vast universes enters into his own creation.
01:20:37: You don't think that's going to have cosmic implications? When you think of the final judgment day, when
01:20:48: God is vindicated for everything that he has done, you don't think there won't be some element of the fact of the level of his condescension of even entering into human flesh that will be a part of that demonstration of his righteousness that doesn't have anything to do with the union of the elect with Christ or anything else?
01:21:09: Of course there will be. That's a different issue. We're not talking about Christ being the high priest in behalf of all creation.
01:21:19: He is high priest on behalf of the elect of God. But there is a demonstration of God's deep intentionality in the incarnation that would be relevant to such things as reconciliation in regards to the punishment of the wicked.
01:21:39: That's why there are those who have pointed out that of necessity conditionalists end up having to go another route and deal with certain aspects of the person of Christ.
01:21:51: But that takes us way, way, way, way beyond. We're in footnotes here anyways, as I recall, where we are there.
01:22:00: Yeah, that was right at the end. So we have put, we have spent, how many, four, two hours, three and a half hours, because it was 10 minutes.
01:22:17: Right now, three and a half hours, putting David Allen's and others' words on the screen and then going to the text.
01:22:30: What have we demonstrated? We have demonstrated that there has been absolutely no refutation of the exegesis that we have provided.
01:22:41: There has been misuse of sources. There has been ignoring of context. And there has been the repeated insertion of traditional axioms.
01:23:00: Axiom number one, God can't talk about the elect as the elect. Just can't do it. Therefore, in Romans 8, the elect of God can't be the us all for whom the
01:23:13: Son is given. So you have axiomatic theology versus theology derived from Scripture.
01:23:21: Theology derives from Scripture. And so, once again, despite the fact that David Allen complains about how mean
01:23:32: I am to him on the dividing line, and then he turns around and tweets the things that he tweets, hey, I'm willing to put all of that aside.
01:23:40: I think David Allen is my brother in the Lord. And so I've debated
01:23:45: Michael Brown on this subject. I'll debate
01:23:50: David Allen on this subject. So once again, so people know, if you want the final, final word here, who is really confident of what they're saying?
01:24:00: Let me repeat it again. We will pay to fly me to Dallas. We will pay to put me up.
01:24:07: There's actually a few people in Dallas, not many, who would actually be seeing me in public. A few of them have actually let me stay at their house, so that's not really a big deal.
01:24:14: Anyway, but we can actually afford a hotel too. I will come to Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
01:24:21: I will come to whatever church in Dallas you would like to do. I only ask that the debate be a minimum of three full hours long between you and I before we get to audience questions, so that there can be minimally, minimally an hour and 20 minutes of textually based cross -examination.
01:24:47: In fact, what I'd want to do, and I said before, I'll say it again, if you want.
01:24:54: Now, I know it's unfair because I have Jeffrey Rice rebounds, but we'll stick with just the
01:25:00: Greek New Testament, but what we can really do, what would be really useful in light of the seminary, this is after the corona stuff, and you know, we don't want to have just one person per pew, but let's put accordance up on the screen.
01:25:15: Let's put the Greek text up on the screen of Romans 8, 28 through 34.
01:25:23: Let's put it up there so we both can laser. I'll bring one of my lasers even for you if you don't have a really, because I've got some really cool lasers.
01:25:30: I have to be careful which laser to bring because we don't want to leave a hole when we do it up there, but we'll, I'll bring you a little wimpy laser, but it'll still work.
01:25:40: Anyways, and we can we can use the common text up on the screen.
01:25:45: How does that sound? And we'll debate your assertions. We'll debate this text.
01:25:53: I will do an exegesis. You give your exegesis. Then we'll do cross examination.
01:25:59: How about 45 minutes each, and then closing statements. Just think how valuable that would be.
01:26:08: I mean, I mean, from your perspective, you said my exegesis is indefensible.
01:26:20: It seems really clear to me, really clear to me. It's getting louder out there,
01:26:25: Rich. Did you, did you notice that? Yeah, I know. The waves crashing again.
01:26:36: Still looks fairly dry in here. Wow. I'm just, I'm to be very honest with you.
01:26:42: I'm stunned. We're still, we're still broadcasting. I'm stunned. I am absolutely stunned that that poor cable out there has survived because we've had, we've had it just dribble and die.
01:26:59: This is a flood and it's, and it's, I mean, it's the flood. This is some of the heaviest rain
01:27:05: I've seen in Phoenix probably in six years. Yeah. Yeah. As big anyways, what the arc is fully on now.
01:27:14: So the arc's fully on now. We need to pull the plug on this and get going. Well, we don't want to pull the plug yet.
01:27:20: That's a bad, bad analogy, bad, bad terminology. Anyways, thanks for, uh, taking a few taking look for 90 minutes.
01:27:29: You didn't think about that other stuff. So that's, that's good for us.
01:27:34: We need to need to get away from that stuff. And am I, am
01:27:39: I very much focused upon this?
01:27:45: Yes. Because one last thing, the exegesis interpretation hermeneutics that I just used once again, to look at the text,
01:27:56: Romans eight is the same exegesis that I use in debates with Muslims on the deity of Christ. Remember the radio free
01:28:05: Geneva thing. Remember what I asked Layton flowers is the exegesis that you used about that.
01:28:12: The same that you would use in regards to, no, that's the whole point folks.
01:28:18: You have to be consistent. You have to be consistent. Gotta be. Thanks for watching.
01:28:24: We'll see you the next time on the dividing line sometime next week, wild stuff going on.
01:28:29: I'm going to get to Idaho one way or the other, but that may impact how we do the dividing line next, next week.