Thanksgiving as a Christian Trait, Free Will, the Decree of God, and Theodore Zachariades

And greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. It is the week before Thanksgiving, just a few days to go, and so I'd like to start off with a little discussion of Thanksgiving.

I know that some people would say, well, you know, we've heard plenty of that at church, and I did an entire sermon on Thanksgiving last

Sunday at Apologia Church, Apologia Church as they say, but I just can't.

I still can't. They all know that I love them, and that's why I say the things that I do and pronounce their name correctly.

Anyway, so I won't be long, but I've often thought to myself just how interesting it is that at the holidays, they seem to come at us faster and faster, and I think as you get older, you have more and more responsibilities to be taken care of, and so they pass so much more quickly, and you have so much less time to really ponder what you're supposed to be pondering.

You're supposed to be saying this aside, this time aside, and we end up with so many things to do and getting things ready for the big meal and all the rest of that stuff that we end up just blowing right past all of it and often without real

Thanksgiving, and of course here in the United States, we have this wonderful opportunity. I like the timing of Thanksgiving before the celebration of the giving of the

Son of God, but it's just such a holiday out of sync with a society that has decided there's nothing to give thanks for or to.

I really wonder how most people even think about it any longer, because it's sort of hard not to know some of the history behind it, and the very use of the term

Thanksgiving requires you to think there's someone or something to give thanks to.

I mean, I don't know how you give thanks to a thing, and so it's just such a

Christian holiday. It is minimally personally theistic.

How about that? I suppose I could see how a Muslim might say, hey, we can do that too.

But it doesn't make any sense in a secularizing world. There's nothing to give thanks to.

There's no transcendent purpose. There's no meaning. It's just the way it is. You did it all yourself.

There's no reason to be giving thanks to anybody but you. And so why even get together and do the turkey and all the rest of that stuff other than just simply as the entrée into the holiday season, which is just now the holiday season.

It's no longer the Christmas season. It's just the holiday season. And you really wonder how long it's going to be before you can't have lights and specifically religious symbols because of offense of this person, that person, whatever else it might be.

Anyway, for Christians, it's, hey, this is our day in a sense.

And if you have, almost all of us have on our phones these days, iPods, iPads, whatever,

Bible programs, and they'll have topical guides. In my Olive Tree Bible software, there is a topical guide to thankfulness.

And if you have the same thing, I've had Olive Tree. Oh my goodness. I got, I got, when I first got Olive Tree, that was back in the, what were those initial, it was even beforehand,

Palm Pilot, the Palm Pilot. I got, I started on Olive Tree with the

Palm Pilot and, well, the first Palm Pilot I got,

I bought from a guy at Bethany House while we were at the Christian Booksellers Association.

Kevin Johnson was his name. And I wonder how he's doing anyway. And yeah,

I eventually got the Handspring Visor and the Tungsten Tee and I've still got them. They're still sitting.

You know, that's, that's why there are boxes everywhere. And you know, that's just how it works.

And hey, it still works. You know, there might be some, might be some day we might, I don't even have the, the, the plugs to be able to plug them in anymore to even charge them back up.

But anyway, yeah, I just, you know, anyway, look up thankfulness in, in the

Olive Tree. Olive Tree software. It's huge. The resultant list of texts broken down by topics really, really quite nice.

I would highly recommend it if you have that. And there are probably other programs that have similar things, but it's almost overwhelming how often, for example, in the

Old Testament to praise and to give thanks are parallel with one another. They're, they're used to, the idea of worshiping a

God to whom you are not thankful is absolutely foreign to the biblical revelation, just foreign.

There is no such thing as Christian spirituality that is not soaked in and defined by thanksgiving and thanks.

It's just not there. You look, you, you go to the book of Revelation, look at the worship of him who sits upon the throne and the lamb, honor, power, glory, thanks, it's right there.

It's just, it's impossible to even begin to have a meaningful discussion of what

Christian spirituality should look like without an in -depth study of a beautiful word that we never use.

It's a beautiful word we never use because we're good Protestants and we're afraid of it and it's

Eucharist, Eucharisteo. And when you take that apart, you, you see what it's made up of, but it's, it's a beautiful word.

It's been stolen from us because of Roman Catholicism and because of the

Reformation, because of an over reaction. It's an imbalanced reaction to the use of the term

Eucharist by Roman Catholicism. And so we've let it, it's been stolen from us and it's, it's crying shame, but that's the reality and it's all through scripture.

So just as an example, in Ephesians chapter five, beginning verse 15,

Paul says, and it's, and it's interesting.

I just glanced over at the numeric standard, numeric standard says, therefore be careful how you walk. It's literally, therefore, see, it's, it's, it's the, the imperative of blepo.

Well, the first, well, the first words you learn in first year

Greek is blepo, but pretty quickly you learn that, yeah,

I can mean to see, but it also has extended, it has a, what's it called? Extended semantic domain as far as the range of meanings that it has.

And so it, it can be accurately translated, be careful how you walk, but it's literally therefore look carefully or accurately, precisely, diligently how you walk.

So there, there needs to be something more than, well, this is sort of what

I see in the church around me. So as long as I'm sort of in the mid, mid range someplace, I'm good. No, there needs to be a very careful, accurate, precise examination of how

I walk, how I live my life. And it then says, not as osafoi alahos safoi.

So you don't want to be osafoi, you want to be safoi. Now, safoi, the sophists, that can be used in a very negative sense.

Someone who professes wisdom, the philosophers. But it also has a very positive aspect as well.

And you, we do not want to be, whenever you put that alpha privative up front, we don't want to be unwise people.

We don't want to be people who in examining our walk, do not do so with wisdom.

We want to be wise. And then the

King James very literally redeeming the time, buying back the time, making the most of your time.

And so there is, I will, I will avoid it for now, but we, we wonder at times how generations in the past accomplished so much without the stuff, the technology that we have now.

And the reason is they were not nearly as distracted by things around them.

And we are to make the most of the time.

We only have so much. And I'm not saying that there isn't room for Thursday and feasting and rejoicing and watching whoever the

Lions are going to play. I think they always play on Thanksgiving, if I recall correctly. Is that right?

Am I recalling that correctly? I don't know, but I probably won't be, but that used to be what we would do.

I'm not sure I want to be confronted with all sorts of leftist communist wackoism, which is what you get when you watch certain sports these days.

But I'm not saying you can't do those things, but there is in our everyday life to be a careful examination of how we're behaving so as to make the most of the time that God has given to us.

Because the days are evil, and it does make me wonder if for some people with certain eschatological perspectives, if they believe that these words would someday not be true of the normative

Christian life, that the days wouldn't be evil. But I think that's indicative of this age and the age to come, and this age, the days are evil.

Age to come, they won't be. I think that reflects Paul's own thinking.

For this reason, do not become, again, without thought so foolish, but understanding what is the will of the

Lord. So to be foolish is to not have as your first and foremost concern an understanding of what the

Lord's will in all of life is.

That's the person who's foolish, is a person who doesn't have knowledge of what the will of the

Lord is. And do not be drunk with wine in which is dissipation, but be filled with the

Spirit. And I know there are some that say, hey, that means you're never to touch alcohol.

Well, actually, it says do not be drunk with wine. In fact, that wouldn't make any sense unless there was the assumption that there would be the consuming of some of it.

The point is control. Do not be drunk with wine in which is dissipation, but be filled with the

Spirit speaking to one another. And I'm not going to get into this argument. Speaking to one another, to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, which

I don't think are just three different categories of hymns. Singing and making melody in your heart, your heart, plural, well, heart is singular, your plural, to the

Lord. And here's the text, 520, Eucharistuntes, always,

Eucharistuntes pontate, always giving thanks, huperponton, for all things, in the name of our

Lord Jesus Christ, to God, even the Father. And so the form that is used here, always, and it's even emphasized by the use of pontate, but it's descriptive of an attitude, it's descriptive of a, it's a way of life.

Always giving thanks for all things. And people said, well, that's not like, you know, you fall down the stairs and you get up and go, well, thank the

Lord, that's over. I'm giving thanks. It is an attitude that recognizes that I'm in the hand of God and therefore

I have reason to be thankful for so many things.

And in our modern day, we are so distracted by the myriad of voices around us.

I mean, I was just distracted a second ago, because as I looked from the camera down to this screen, my eye stopped just for a second on the chat channel and it interrupted my train of thought.

I saw a word that ended up. And so we just, people in past generations didn't have that kind of thing.

Now, that meant, that means that we can do some things faster and better than they could back then. But in general, in general, you look at a collection of, well,

I'll use Calvin as an example, Calvin's writings. Almost nobody today produces that volume of literature, though we could easily, or you might say, oh yes, plenty of people do.

If you put all of our tweets and Facebook posts together, well, that would be worth binding and having on your shelf, huh?

No, and the vast majority of us, we wouldn't want that stuff ever put in one place.

In fact, we wouldn't want anybody to be thinking about it once we were gone, to be quite honest with you.

But the idea of recognizing how often

God's grace has been granted to us, the things that we have that we are told in Scripture we are to recognize have come to us from God's hands.

We are to be thankful. And when we, when we gather on this

Thursday, if you have that opportunity, if that's something that again, you can give thanks for, and you're thinking about what to give thanks for, recognize that it's pretty much not just, it's not stuff.

It's relationships, it's health, it's life. It's the things that are going to matter when you're on your deathbed.

Think about that. Think about what you will truly be thankful for then.

And it'll totally change what it is that you're really considering to be thankful for.

And so let's truly be thankful this coming Thursday, and then

Friday, and then Saturday. And you don't have to wait till Thursday to become thankful. It is simply a part of the description of the

Christian life. We, of course, are thankful for all of you who have kept us here for 34 years now, going into year number 35.

We are thankful for those who have supported the work, even though we are not like the vast majority of ministries out there.

We don't have, we don't have a donor cultivation team.

We don't have people that, you know, call you up in the middle of the day and say, hey, you know, we really appreciate your support.

And is there anything we can do for you? We don't have people to do that.

We are a small ministry and purposely remain that way for numerous reasons.

And so we are thankful for the people who appreciate how odd we are, that we talk about subjects in the program that are sometimes just really way, way out there and just not your normal, your normal thing.

And appreciate the fact that we have remained focused upon the key issues and desire to continue to do that in the future.

So we are thankful for that, to be sure, and thankful for, you know, not only past mercies and all the opportunities we've had, but certainly desirous of continuing that in the future.

We're looking at setting up a debate right now and hopefully have information for you on that in the very, very near future because it's coming up fairly quick.

So I want to make sure everybody is aware of that. So very thankful for many things, ask that you would continue to support us and pray for us, even in the midst of the list, the list of critics is long.

And these days it's just a little surprising some of the people that are part of that list now.

But there you go. What can I say? Anyway, I'm seeing something strange on Twitter here.

Is it worth my while to look at it? Not really? Oh, okay. I'll look at it after the program.

Sometimes on Twitter, you have to just, you really have to read it to figure out what is the context here and do a lot of clicking around.

I want to read to you a very short chapter from the

London Baptist Confession of Faith. It says the following, chapter nine of free will.

God and I'm going to, I'm reading the old original. We're going to skip the modern language and throw a few these and thousand for the fun of it.

God hath endued the will of man with that natural liberty and power of acting upon choice that it is neither forced nor by any necessity of nature determined to do good or evil.

Number two, man in his state of innocency had freedom and power to will and to do that which was good and well -pleasing to God, but yet was unstable so that he might fall from it.

Number three, man by his fall into a state of sin hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation.

So as a natural man being altogether averse from that good and dead in sin is not able by his own strength to convert himself or to prepare himself thereunto.

Paragraph four, when God converts a sinner and translates him in the state of grace, he freeth him from his natural bondage under sin and by his grace alone enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good.

Yet so as that by reason of his remaining corruptions, he doth not perfectly nor only will that which is good, but doth also will that which is evil.

Number five, this will of man is made perfectly and immutably free to good alone in the state of glory alone.

Now as you can see, there is a progression. First of all, you have a general statement in the first section, and the first section in essence says that the will of man as created was endued with that natural liberty and power of acting upon choice that is neither forced nor by any necessity of nature determined to do good or evil.

So that's the very definition of freedom of action, and it's the assertion that the created order was such that the will of man was not created in a state that we see it now in its fallen nature, and it raises the issue of by any necessity of nature determined to do good or evil.

So necessity of nature, by its nature as created, it is not forced by its nature to do a certain thing.

This is not addressing the issue of the decree of God or anything else.

It's talking about what is the biblical teaching concerning the nature of man's capacity and ability, and it recognizes in the second paragraph, man in his state of innocency, so that brief period of time.

Well, we don't know how long it was, but from a biblical perspective, the brief period of time, had freedom and power to do that which was good and well -pleasing to God, but yet was unstable so that he might fall from it.

Now, we have to ask, were those real decisions on the part of Adam? And there are those within the

Reformed community today that are saying it was just a script because God has a sovereign decree and he's working out that decree, then everything that takes place in time is nothing more than just doing what the script says you're supposed to do.

And one of my real concerns is that not only—and see, when

I am concerned about theological movements and conclusions of theological issues,

I learned a long time ago not to spend much time on, well, someone might understand it this way, and so that's a bad thing.

Any divine truth will be twisted by man, any divine truth.

And so, you can proclaim any divine truth and someone come along and say, oh, but someone might think you're saying

X, Y, or Z. Well, you know what? Someone will, especially on the internet, especially on Twitter. Someone will misread it and will twist it, and there is absolutely positively nothing that you can possibly do about that.

And so, don't even waste your time trying to find a way of expressing truths so that people will not be able to twist them.

Mankind is an absolute expert at the twisting of anything, and if a person wants to twist

God's truth, your meaning, your intention, they'll do it. Nothing you can do about it.

Just give up even trying, give up even trying to worry about it. But when we talk about man's will and the idea of God's decree,

I am concerned when people say, well, look, God has ordained whatsoever comes to pass.

I absolutely believe it. But as I said on the last program, there is an imbalanced way of viewing this biblically and a balanced way of viewing this biblically.

And when I say a balanced way, I do not mean for a second that you try to make the sovereign decree of God and the will of man equal to one another.

It's painfully obvious to me that you begin with God, you begin with his freedom, you begin with his power, you begin with his purpose.

No question about it. You cannot start with the creature.

When you start with man and reason outward from man to God, you're always going to end up with an idol that is amazingly like man.

And are there Christians who do that, who have not been properly taught and have not been given proper biblical orientation, who start with man and as a result end up with a sadly sub -biblical view of God?

No question about it. You better believe it. But having said all that, does it follow that once you accept the decree of God, that events in time and the actions of man in time simply become a script, that we're just actors, that there is no real meaning to what is taking place in time?

And when God calls upon us to make choices and to use our wills, is this all just playing a game or is there a purpose, is there a meaning to all of this?

When we consider a balanced view, we must start with God and his purpose, no question about it.

And it's God's purpose to create a universe that matters, filled with beings that matter.

Herod mattered, Pontius Pilate mattered, the

Jewish leaders mattered, the Romans mattered. And when we consider that great redemptive action of Calvary and we learn from the deep wisdom of the early church in her prayer in Acts chapter 4, that Herod and Pontius Pilate and the

Gentiles and the Jews, they all did what God's hand and purpose had predetermined would take place.

Was that the early church saying, well, we're all just puppets on a string and God's decree was fixed and we just, everybody did just whatever they were fixed to do.

There's no more, there's nothing more to it than that. I think

Herod's decisions were meaningful and important.

I think there's much to be learned from looking at Pilate and seeing a political leader who recognizes the innocence of a man, but for the sake of the empire, sacrifices him.

And I believe that Pilate will be held accountable by God and he'll be held accountable by God because God has made him in his image and as an image bearer, he followed the desires of his heart, which led him to cowardice in the matter of an innocent man.

He will not be judged on the basis of having knowledge of the divine decree, which he did not have knowledge of.

This explains why reformed theologians down through the ages have spoken to the ages through the centuries, have spoken of the prescriptive will of God and the decretive will of God.

The fact that God has made us in such a way, he has testified in our creation to his law.

And therefore, when we violate that law, when we twist that law, when we ignore that law, there is a reason, a basis, a foundation for condemnation.

And it's a just condemnation. It is not a, the final judgment is not going to be just simply part of the script.

There's much more than that. There are those interesting statements in scripture that says that in that final day, the wisdom of God is going to be demonstrated.

Well, how can that be if it's all just a simple script?

That script, that decree of God includes the making of time and space and the investing of the actions of mankind in that time and space with eternal significance.

And this is seen most clearly in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus was not a puppet on a string.

He wasn't simply doing the script. And if that's what you've boiled it down to,

I personally see no difference between the Calvinist that boils it down to that and the other extreme that goes the other way and completely ignores, and the person who's sitting there saying,

God has sovereignly decreed not to be sovereign. They are both born of a simplistic, rationalistic, sub -biblical desire to simplify what the

Bible doesn't simplify and to make easy what scripture does not make easy.

Sometimes apologists are tempted to embrace positions that make their job easier.

One of the arguments that Unitarians use, for example, is the name of that one book from Anthony Buzzard, The Trinity, Christianity's Self -Inflicted

Wound. So it'd be so much easier to talk to the Muslims if you're a

Unitarian, that's because you'd agree with them. It makes it easier with everybody, doesn't it? I suppose it'd be easier to talk to atheists if I didn't believe there was a

God. But hey, that sort of misses the point. It might be easier to get rid of the hard questions one has to face when one affirms all that scripture says, but scripture affirms that Jesus had a will and that his decisions in time were meaningful.

If you can't look at Gethsemane and realize there's something more here than just simply living out a script, this is not a puppet on a string.

This is not an automaton. Not my will, but thine be done.

What does that mean? Isn't there something meaningful about the will here? And so,

Reformed theology has affirmed that man is enslaved to sin, but his will does not cease to exist, and he is still accountable for his sin because he continues to function on that basis of doing what he desires to do, even when that is going against what

God's prescriptive will, which he has knowledge of, would tell him to do.

So man in his innocency, ability to do good, but was unstable, that he might fall from it.

He does fall, and God, it's part of God's decree, it's part of God's decree that does not change the meaningfulness in the demonstration of God's goodness and glory in that final day, in the entirety of time that follows from that fall, and everything that comes out from it.

If you don't, if it's all just a script, then I don't see how you come up with the demonstration of His glorious grace and the ages to come and everything else.

There is so much more that you're just flattening it out. You're flattening it out.

Man by his fall in the state of sin hath wholly lost all ability of will to, and now please note this, to do anything that would be considered morally good, no, of course not, it doesn't say that.

It says of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation.

Now, that's a specific realm. Since we're rebels, unless our rebellion is dealt with, then we will not do that which is spiritually good unto salvation, including repentance and all the other things that accompany him.

He will not do that good, nor by his own strength to convert himself or to prepare himself thereunto. This is specifically limited to the spiritual realm of submission to God.

There are all sorts of situations you can think of where men will do good and even noble things for their own purposes, but not out of submission to God's will.

And so we confess God has to act in power.

It can't be a synergistic cooperation of a dead enslaved will.

When God converts a sinner and translates him into the state of grace, he freeth him from his natural bondage under sin.

And so we confess there is a natural bondage under sin, and by his grace alone enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good in the spiritual realm.

This understanding that we can still act totally according to the will of man and the meaningfulness of the will of man.

Well, that is a departure from the best insights that Reformed theology has to provide to us today.

And so it was quite interesting yesterday afternoon,

November 19th, to read a challenge directed to me.

This is at reformingamericaministries .com, written by Dr.

Theodore Zachariades, and do not let water sit for a few days.

You'd think I'd learn that from having watched Signs, but you know, there you go. I'm not expecting to use it on any aliens.

Consistent Theological Determinism, a Challenge to James White, November 19th.

James White ridiculed my perspective on his podcast slash broadcasts.

Sentence ends. Nothing about what I said, nothing about why

I said it, and in fact, there's really nothing in this article that shows any understanding of what my concerns were, since my concerns were primarily focused upon methodology, why you do debates, application of biblical norms for Christian behavior, use of the tongue, discipline in using the tongue, issues along those lines.

All I get is James White ridiculed my perspective on his podcast and broadcasts. No, I disagreed with it.

And by the way, I saw this initially as it was posted at Pulpit and Pen, which has dropped all semblance of brotherly remonstrance and is just simply attacking the brother in right, left, and center now.

And just recently, again, when I responded to the outrageous context in which this original challenge was announced on Pulpit and Pen, I mean, it was just, it was posted on Pulpit and Pen with just such nastiness.

And anybody who looks at it can see just how nasty it is, but you get all these personal attacks.

For example, two hours ago, prideful men are predictable, speaking of me. And then a little bit farther down from that, you've got, say what you want about Mr.

James White, and I know why they're doing that. Everybody knows why they're doing that. Y 'all can stop now.

You've made your point. He's predictable. Please note the first two predictions came to pass.

The reason why men like Dr. William Lane Craig and other noteworthy scholars won't debate Mr. White is because of his tone.

He really has no right to complain about the tone of Dr. Theodore Zachariadis. Well, coming from Pulpit and Pen, I don't even know where to start.

It's astounding. But when they announced, when they first posted this, here's the context in which it was placed.

Let's see if James White responded to this debate challenge from Dr. Zachariadis. Of course, he will respond to this challenge since this prideful man craves opportunities to boast about himself.

How will he respond? Anyone that follows James knows that he will do one of the following. Now watch.

If you listen really carefully, no matter what I do, I will be condemned by the following statement.

It doesn't matter what I do. Run to his social media diary to receive consolation likes for either playing victim, mock

Theodore, or to incite his fanboys who are already acting like Democrats when Hillary lost the election just because Theodore calls

Arminianism heresy. You either have to smile or cry because you would think these are serious things.

But anymore, reading Pulpit and Pen, you just figure some 12 -year -old has hijacked the feed, and a badly behaved 12 -year -old, actually.

He will most likely reject the debate challenge because he will whine that Dr. Zachariadis does not use the tone of voice that he likes, and will desperately use the hyper -Calvinist strawman fallacy as he will have an excuse not to debate.

You see all the—I'm sure you're catching all the buzzwords, all the subtle little insults and things like that.

I mean, talk about poisoning the well. He will devote an entire DL on Theodore's debate challenge to defend his pride and excessively boast.

While sitting behind his computer, he will subtly declare himself to have refuted Theodore's debate challenge.

Fanboys will go wild, but again, anyone can sit behind a computer and refute every argument they want when no one else is debating them.

Now, do you notice something? If I mention how many debates

I've done, I'm prideful. If I don't engage in another debate, I'm prideful. It's, doesn't matter what you do, doesn't matter what you do, we gotcha.

Because we're Pulpit and Pen, and we've gotcha. So this is the context in which this was placed.

It's like, okay. And so it starts off, James White ridiculed my perspective as a podcast and broadcast.

Well, it would be nice if there was a meaningful interaction with what

I actually said concerning debate methodology, other than, well, you're just prideful.

That's not a response. Let's say I am. Put that aside. Now deal with what I actually said.

Can't do that. Mr. White, here is my answer. Thank you,

Dr. Zachariadis. God is a planning agent, capital

A. God has ordered the world and its events according to his own will.

God's covenantal commitment to redeem a people for his son is founded before creation, if indeed, we can use the modifiers before the creation of time to show why things occur as they do.

John 17, known as the high priesthood prayer of Jesus, reveals to us something of the eternal pact or covenant of redemption.

This pre -temporal plan is summed up by the psalmist, the counsel of Yahweh standeth forever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations.

Psalm 3311. I just stopped for a moment. How many times over three and a half decades now have

I spent time walking through Psalm 33 in response to those denying these very things?

Over and over, Van Generen states, creation and providence are timely operations of God's purposes.

Nothing will thwart his plans, which he has purposed for the encouragement of the godly. Elsewhere I read, forever,

O Yahweh, thy word is settled in heaven. Psalm 11989. The New Testament echoes these sentiments as it speaks of believers predestinated from eternity past, that clumsy way of speaking again, according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love, having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself according to good pleasure of his will,

Ephesians 1, 4 -5. Also Paul says, be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our

Lord, nor of me as prisoner, but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God, who has saved us and called us to holy calling, not according to our own works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began.

God's purpose is the foundation of all things that come to pass. The will of God that cannot be thwarted is so because the eternal decree of God whereby he has foreordained everything that comes to pass.

Both the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Heidelberg Catechism affirm this comprehensive plan to the smallest detail.

God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass,

WCF chapter 3. And what dost thou mean by the providence of God, the almighty and everywhere present power of God, whereby as it were by his hand he upholds and governs heaven, earth, and all creatures, so that herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meat and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, yea, and all things come not by chance but by his fatherly hand,

Heidelberg Catechism, question and answer 27. This is standard reformed thinking on the matter of God's decree.

This is why I like to say God's will will be done. This is born of God, there is none like him.

But as advocates of theological determinism, we adhere to the truth that God's decree renders all things that come to pass as theologically necessary or certain.

The philosophical distinction between necessity and certainty is sometimes helpful. Some theologians make much of this and declare that we cannot embrace any form of necessary outcomes.

However, I hold this because of God's decree. I believe that a consistent understanding of God's unconditional decree inevitably results in time what

God has planned from eternity. I confess that all that God decrees will of necessity come to pass as a reality in the experience of mankind.

As such, the decree does not take prior account of secondary causes, as if in a vacuum.

It is not that God utilizes, okay, the word here is theses, but it should be these, these secondary agents' thoughts and actions after the fact, devoid of his control or influence, and thereby brings about good after we as secondary agents have acted.

The very idea that we are secondary agents speaks volumes in and of itself. We only act as agents in time after God has eternally decreed.

Again, the Westminster Confession affirms, although God knows whatsoever may or can come to pass upon all supposed conditions, yet has he not decreed anything because he foresaw it as future, or is that which would come to pass upon such conditions?

WCF 311 or 2, depending on how it's typed. Anyway, also, we act in time as governed by his meticulous providence.

God is the prime actor in all events. Of course, all that has transpired is already a part of that decree, unless one wishes to speculate about God changing the past.

I prefer to leave the past precisely where it is. So I see God as the prime actor in all that transpires.

This includes sins, such as David numbering the people, God as the instigator, 2 Samuel 24 1.

In another passage, Satan is the agent of influence, 1 Chronicles 21 1. But David is the one punished for his sin.

Also, when Shimei cursed and threw rocks at David, it is acknowledged that God has commanded him to do so, 2 Samuel 16 10.

Also in Psalm 139, when describing the intricacies of the way God forms humans, it is said that he fashions the days before there was one of them.

Not only are our days numbered, Psalm 31, but the content of our lives is predetermined. This surely includes all transpires in a life, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Free will is thereby an illusion, as our lives have been scripted and planned before by God.

A man's steps are ordered the Lord, Proverbs 20 24, including filling men with drunkenness, then dashing them in judgment,

Jeremiah 13 13 -14. The most significant event in all of scripture surely is the crucifixion of Christ, Acts 2 23 4 27 -28.

This is a prime example of wicked men doing that which God decreed, predestined, and safeguarded by moving the specific details, so it can be said,

God gave his son. God crushed or bruised his son, Isaiah 53. It is a given in scripture that God is an actor in the drama of life, but he is not bound by time, is not locked in, as it were, and thereby is only a re -acting agent.

God has predetermined all things. Surely if one thing is foreordained, then it is a necessary consequence that all things are predetermined.

The connective nature of prior causes renders this so. For example, if Jesus was to die, then he was to be betrayed, so the betrayer had to be born and come to that point in his life where he would turn against Christ.

It is inconceivable to imagine that any factor might have been different, say that Judas's parents were childless, or that Judas would die in childhood.

God has decreed these ends, and necessitates that God has decreed the ends to those ends.

Of course, there is no necessity upon God to create or do anything, as if he could do no other, but God's eternal decree renders the actual world necessary due to his will.

God's will logically precedes everything. Also from the Old Testament, the Joseph narrative is particularly helpful.

Joseph said, His words that claimed of his brothers, you did not send me but God, speak of a primary agency without intending to deny secondary agency.

The point is to highlight the design of God and his working through events. The events are the very same ones, including all the wickedness done to Joseph by brothers with evil intent.

But it is God that is seen by Joseph as the primary and first cause.

We'll probably come back to that a little bit later on. It doesn't taste any better the second time around, just in case you were wondering.

Time will fail me to mention evil spirit from the Lord to torment Saul for Samuel 16, 14. Destruction that befalls the city and hath the

Lord has not done it, Amos 3. God creating peace and evil,

Ra in Hebrew, Isaiah 45, 8. Including moral evil, making things crooked that men cannot straighten,

Ecclesiastes 7, 3. God's Assyrian rod of indignation, Isaiah 10. The elevation of Cyrus prophesied 100 years prior to his birth,

Isaiah 45, 1. The making of all things, including the wick of the day of judgment, Proverbs 16, 4. God bringing evil to Job as both

Job and God profess, Job 2, 10, 42, 11. Out of God's mouth proceed not both good and evil,

Lamentations 3, 38. In Psalm 105, 25 and Revelation 17, 17,

God puts it in the heart of evil men to do evil. Indeed, God does as he pleases in every sphere,

Psalm 135, 6. His people have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will,

Ephesians 1, 11. God plans and God acts, we act only because he has planned. The predestination is true and it cannot be doubted and faces so much evidence, it must follow that free will is false.

There is no free will in a universe directed and upheld by the Lord God Almighty. There are those who wish to maintain a semi -Calvinist or hypo -Calvinist view that asserts that free will is compatible with determinism.

That still leaves one as a determinist, an inconsistent one, however. I prefer to stress theological hard determinism.

You only prefer or have you been determined? I'm sorry. Take the fall of Adam. Was it a free action or was it determined?

I believe you cannot have it both ways. If determined, then was Adam truly free? The problem has a long history.

I side with God's decree, including the fall of Adam, indeed even the fall of Lucifer. Free will in a compatibilist determinist worldview is only free in name.

Libertarians of all stripes renounce these arguments by compatibilists and thereby they win the argument by the definition.

If free will is compatible with determinism, why not claim that libertarian free will is compatible with determinism?

The reason one cannot is a determinism side weighs too heavily and truly precludes libertarian or true free will.

Compatibilists like to use the language of free will without having the substance. It is more consistent to affirm that free will is an intuition of our fallen nature, but is unreal, unneeded, and unhelpful when dealing with the deep concepts of God and his ways.

The confessions speak of natural liberty, intending to argue we are human beings, not rocks or machines.

Natural liberty, then, is our human way of existing as image bearers. We do not act like animals from natural instinct.

We do act spontaneously as far as our perception can determine, but we are completely unaware of a myriad of possible sources of influence that are decisive in inclining our decisions definitively.

No matter how much Calvinists echo these affirmations of free will, they persuade no one from the other side.

I'll have to come back to that. I have not met an Arminian that concedes this compatibilist view of freedom. To them, only libertarian freedom is real.

I tend to agree. Yet libertarian or contra -causal freedom cannot be maintained without jettisoning the strong deterministic language of Scripture.

What is the point of using Arminian arguments about supposed freedom to plead for Calvinist conclusions?

James White has done this, saying we have creaturely freedom, and he even tried to ridicule my perspective.

Yet compatibilist determinism has no advantage over non -compatibilist determinism.

It merely shows that we are clutching at straws to try to pacify men when they scream foul.

God does not need lawyers to justify His ways. He merely asks that we boldly proclaim His truth.

The whole tenor of Scripture is against free will. At the end of the day, we live out a script that God has decreed.

He asked no counselor took anything into consideration but His own will in this eternal decree. Meticulous providence rules out free will.

Calvinists that affirm their truncated version of free will do so to maintain human responsibility.

But the Bible does not use free will as an explanatory category to sustain human responsibility.

We are responsible or accountable because we are created beings. God's character, as indicated in His prescriptive law for humans, is the standard by which human behavior will be judged.

The criteria for judgment is knowledge and that based on the explicit prescriptive will of God.

Keep that in mind. Mankind has made its foreordained and inevitable choice in Adam, Romans 5 .12.

We are now bound in the death grip of our sins and transgressions. We are kept in bondage to do the bidding of Satan and the perverted will of our carnal selves.

Ephesians reminds us that outside of Christ, all that we will is the carnal desire of flesh and of the mind.

To speak of free will in the face of such realities is to muddy the waters and to bring confusion. In addition, to speak of free will is to give false hope to sinners that they have some capacity for pleasing

God. The flesh cannot please God. The flesh cannot submit to God's law. By man's will, sin alone is accomplished.

What we ought to emphasize is free grace, not free will. I challenge anyone, including you, Mr. James White, to sustain these false notions of free will and make sense of them in the face of God's eternal decree of absolute predestination.

And then, very importantly, there is an insight that helps us to understand a few things in footnote number five.

Both Westminster Confession and the Second Linden Bapst Confession contain a section, chapter nine, entitled, Of Free Will. I believe, he says, the best explanation of these notions comes from Gordon Clark.

Well, should have seen that one coming. Long history of dealing with Clarkians.

And one thing that I have discovered of Clarkians that has been very consistent over time is this same aggressiveness.

What? Yeah, that would—

There was a vote in YouTube chat. I need real water. I was going to leave you with stale water.

I blame them. They decided— Much better. Much better. Thank you. I believe the best explanation of these notions comes from Gordon Clark in his detailed commentary on the

Westminster Confession. What do Presbyterians believe? Also see Clark's views expressly—similarly expressed in predestination, the combined addition of biblical predestination and the

Old Testament. Clark makes a distinction between pre -fall Adam and his posterity. This sort of came out in the debate.

This much seems necessary to allow for a difference in innocence prior to the fall and enslavement after. Clark consistently refuses to allow for free will, however, of the confession.

Clark said in another volume, now the Westminster Confession indeed speaks to the natural liberty of man's will. The first paragraph, chapter 9, is,

God doesn't do the will of man with natural liberty that is neither forced nor by any absolute necessity of nature determined to good or evil.

These phrases could seem to be accommodations to the theory of free will, but they seem so only because the meaning of the phrase absolute necessity of nature has been mistaken.

The Reformation Principles as part of the Standards of the Reformed Presbyterian Church makes a clearer statement, when it condemns as an error the view that man is necessarily impelled to choose or act as an unconscious machine.

Even the earlier 17th century phrases must have seemed unambiguous when they were written, for they were chosen against the background of a century of discussion.

They are certainly to be taken in a sense consistent with the Confessions chapter on the Divine Decree. Here again, the

Reformation Principles is quite clear for the immediately following error denounces that is, quote, that he can will or act independently of the purpose of the providence of God, end quote.

If the meaning of these phrases has been forgotten by some present -day writers, the remedy lies in reading the discussion of the 17th and 18th century.

And that comes from, of course, the Trinity Foundation, which we have had to deal with many times in the past.

So, how do you even define what this challenge is?

The vast majority of what I just read is drawn from texts that you, those of you who have followed this program or followed the debates over the years, know we have brought out over and over and over and over again in discussion of the absolute sovereign decree of God.

It seems that the challenge is to establish that there is anything meaningful in the actions of secondary causes.

So, he'll use all the right language, but it's all to basically say, hey, when you boil it all down, there is no compatibilism.

And he's saying that you're just trying to mollify man, you're just trying to, you know,

God doesn't need a lawyer to justify his actions, et cetera, et cetera. No, I think there is a vitally important biblical concept here.

It really seems that what Dr. Zachariadis is saying here is that man will be judged.

He talks about the prescriptive will, but it's not based upon acting upon the desires of his heart at all.

It seems to me, just put that aside, I don't, I'll be honest, I don't see how he grounds the just punishment of man in this perspective.

I don't get it. He's recently published a book and I may take the time to work through it to see if there's a better explanation.

But it sounds to me like this whole challenge has to do with, well, we're the real

Calvinists and you modern guys like R .C. Sproul and, well, pretty much everybody that I knew, at least up until recently, you all have, have compromised.

You need to go back to the days when, you know, people were burning other people at stake and things like that.

That was the better time as far as theological discussion was concerned than the, than the wimpy days of, of today and need to go from there.

So if what I'm being challenged to do is to defend the reality that man's actions in time are meaningful and that there is something more than merely following a script.

If I'm being asked to defend the idea that the decree actually creates the temporal realm and the importance and therefore invests importance in the actions of man and the motivations of man and the will of man, okay, be happy to do that because without it, you're left with an incarnation that is a, nothing but an act and a play.

But that's what I would have to focus on because the vast majority of what was said was not even disputable.

That's what's sort of sad about this. Here we have a situation where not the, not the, the way it was expressed and there were certain conclusions that I would question, but the texts and the assertions and the theology, we believe the same thing.

So why the, the behavior of one side?

You know, I've, you know, to say I ridiculed, I didn't ridicule anybody. I disagreed with the methodology.

I disagreed that this is the best means by which you can adorn the gospel of Jesus Christ.

You can communicate within certain contexts. I certainly disagreed with the idea of pretending that you can read the hearts and minds of others and condemning them as heretics on the basis of things that are not laid out as being definitional of the gospel.

You're extending, you're getting rid of the adiaphora and you're extending it all out there to where basically,

I think if you were consistent, you'd, you'd have to limit the fellowship of the saints to a very narrow portion of the

Reformed church. Maybe that's what you believe. I don't know. But I did criticize all those things, but I just,

I leave it to God's people and the Lord as to why there is such vitriol, just hatred coming from only one side in this situation.

I would think that especially this topic would need to be addressed in a very different fashion so as to be able to even get down to the key subjects, the key issues in a fair and meaningful, fair and meaningful way.

So I'm not a hundred percent sure exactly what this challenge is about.

Unless the fundamental assertion being made is that we, that we should not affirm that secondary causes are truly by God's design, meaningful in the working out of God's decree.

I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I would think it would be even more useful.

I mean, I think this is an important aspect and I think we should discuss compatibilism that there, that, that, how, and see,

I don't agree with the definition that he gave of compatibilism at all. It's not just simply trying to, this whole issue of free will, man as constituted by God as a moral creature with creaturely will, not autonomous will, there's, there's, if God decreed whatsoever takes place in time, therefore there is no such thing as autonomous will.

There's no question about that. Only God has autonomous will. Man does not have autonomous will. We agree.

Can God create creatures that have meaningful creaturely will that function under and as, and as defined by his decree to his honor and glory so that they are responsible creatures before God?

Yes or no? I'm not sure what his answer to that is. I can't tell. And I'm sure

I'll be criticized for this, but I'm sorry. Dr. Zachariadis does not seem to be very good at clarifying his positions.

He certainly wasn't in the debate. And in fact, at times he seemed to just be annoyed that the other side would even ask the questions they were asking.

And I think, I don't, I don't care even if the other side is trying to obfuscate.

When you use their attempt to obfuscate to clarify for the audience, which you all forgot was there, then you're accomplishing something.

And they will put together some type of a video about how I'm bragging for daring to even say that.

I mean, the, the absolute lack of even a semblance of balance from the pulp and pen people has been astounding, but people see that.

People see that. It's, they're, they're going down a one -way road there.

Anyway, so it's a, it is a very important issue, but I'll, I'll be honest with you.

I'm a little, I am not just a little bit, I'm very concerned, not only about the end of meaningful interaction with others on these topics, and I mean non -reformed people, within any type of context of graciousness, but I'm very concerned that there are,

I'm very concerned about maintaining the balance of the two words in the, of the two main words in the three -word phrase, doctrines of grace.

Doctrine vitally important, grace vitally important.

And I can really see this perspective, you know, they called it the hyper -Calvinist straw man.

Well, once you, if you combine a rejection of compatibilism with the assertion that Arminians are of necessity, not just heretics, because there's different forms of heresy, but seemingly because you would not call them brothers, damnable heretics, or as J .D.

Hall said, Layton Flowers is a God -hater. Now, there are certain people,

Charlie Manson was a God -hater, okay? That was pretty obvious, right?

There are certain people that, it's pretty, pretty clear, you can, you can make those types of statements.

But when you're talking about a person who is a ordained minister in an evangelical church, and you say that man is a

God -hater, he might be, but you ain't the

Holy Spirit and you ain't God the Father. And you will be held accountable for making that determination when you weren't told to do so.

And if you want something that's prideful and arrogant, that's prideful and arrogant. I'm concerned that there will be encouragement to young Reformed people to think that this is, this is how they should be pursuing the promulgation of Reformed theology.

It's pretty obvious there is a division here, a very strong division, and we can leave it to the

Lord to do with that as He wills. But I will,

I will await some clarification to see, to understand exactly what it is that is being asserted here.

And maybe, maybe if I could ask the questions such as, fundamentally, do we, does

Dr. Zachariadis believe that moral culpability on the part of man is solely a matter of their knowledge of the prescriptive will of God?

Or is it a, is it based upon their choosing to act in rebellion against that will of God?

In the incarnation, in the incarnation, was Jesus Christ, did

Jesus Christ truly have a will? What is the nature of that will?

These are some of the questions, I think, need to be fleshed out to understand why the natural reading of chapter 9 of the

Westminster and the London Baptist Confessions, there's slight differences between the two, seems to be rejected for a very strange, convoluted

Clarkian understanding that tries to sort of get around.

Unfortunately, a lot of it goes back to the same circular mess that came up in the debate, which could have been avoided, and that is definitions.

Are we talking about, are you talking about an autonomous will? Are you talking about a creaturely will that acts based upon the strongest desires presented to it?

And hence, it's the fallen nature that results in the bondage of the will.

And hence, when that nature is changed in regeneration, there is a resultant change in the freedom of that will.

Again, it all seems to come back to the tendency from the Layton Flowers group. The fascinating thing about this debate is you had two different groups, and they are fighting it out, doing the exact same thing in mirror image, flattening out the much more complex, much more,

I think, beautiful, biblical reality of the meaningfulness of actions in time, flattening that out in such a way that it becomes a, well, it becomes some sub -biblical and two -dimensional rather than the beautiful thing that God has created it to be.

I don't believe that simply working out a script is what is going to glorify

God's grace in eternity. There's much more to it than that. Much more to it than that.

So I would welcome a meaningful discussion of this. I'd like to see some other people get involved because I know

I am not the only Reformed theologian and elder that upon hearing those words went, eh?

Most of the rest of them are, of course, not interested in dealing with the 12 -year -olds at a certain website who would just throw the kind of stuff out they do with all the nastiness and just embarrassing.

It's just embarrassing. The type of language is just, wow.

These topics need to be dealt with in a much significantly more mature and formal manner than they are at the moment.

So we'll see what will come of all of that. And so we'll go ahead and start wrapping her up.

Again, I hope you have a wonderful time with your families. If you have the opportunity, you may not have that opportunity this year, but hopefully have a wonderful time with your families on Thursday.

And back again, St. Charles Trip, Covenant of Grace Church, we'll be talking about the doctrines of grace, and this year emphasizing talking about the doctrines of grace graciously, which seems to be a good thing, sort of consistent to do.

So we appreciate your listening or watching the program today. We'll see you next time.