GracePointe Collapse, Bruce Jenner Believes a Lie, and Leighton Flowers Reduces Compatibilism

Greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. What is it? Tuesday, sometime in February, I guess.

Yes, it is the 10th already of February 2015.

I saw an article. I'm going to tie all this together, believe it or not.

I'm going to tie all of this together today, make it all one consistent ...

Why did you do that? Oh, that's because I still don't have that working yet. Someday we might get that working again.

Then again, maybe not. I don't know. Maybe Mac broke it forever.

I don't know. But it was nice to have while we had it. Saw an article on the

Grace Point, Tennessee collapse, I guess is what we can call it.

A church of some non -denominational stripe, I guess, I think, in Tennessee joined the what will eventually be majority perspective,

I think, of people abandoning biblical standards of ethics and morality in regards to church membership.

I know. I've read the books. I've read more books than almost anybody else I know other than Michael Brown.

With all the letter to my congregation and all the Matthew Vine stuff,

I've read it. I know. I know. And we've responded to them. And so I have got a basis for being able to say this is simply an abandonment.

And when you listen to the language, you can tell. You can tell when people are trying to come up with words to not say what really needs to be said.

This particular church, Stan Mitchell, one of the pastors of the

Grace Point Church in Franklin, Tennessee, and I listened to the video.

I'm not going to play the video. I don't have time for that today. But our position that these siblings of ours, other than heterosexual, cannot have the full privileges of membership, but only partial membership has changed.

Full privileges are extended now to you with the same, now listen, the same expectations of faithfulness, sobriety, holiness, wholeness, fidelity, godliness, skill, and willingness.

That is expected of all. Full membership means being able to serve in leadership and give all of your gifts and to receive all the sacraments, not only communion and baptism, but child dedication and marriage.

I guess they have an interesting view of quote unquote sacraments. We were thrust, he says,

I believe by a divine wind into a prayerful, painful, invigorating, careful, and hopeful conversation regarding sexual orientation and gender identity.

He said, remarking that quote, the art of conversation is a holy calling.

This has been at the least painful and at times devastating.

As I listened, you start becoming accustomed to the,

I don't know, the language, the terminology.

We've engaged in a conversation, and basically what that means is we've taken a lot of time to talk about changing biblical standards of morality, and it almost always involves starting with certain presuppositions, the presupposition that there is such a thing as a practicing homosexual

Christian, not a Christian who struggles with same -sex attractions.

No, that's, no one would argue that that's not a situation, though again, not all homosexuals are homosexuals simply because they have a same -sex attraction.

We're supposed to just believe that, but there are homosexuals who are homosexuals because of abuse that they've received and things that's happened in their lives and simple rank choice to rebel against what they know is true.

And then there are those, I don't know what the percentage is. No one knows what the percentage is. No one can possibly know what the percentage is.

There are those who simply experience and have always, by their testimony, experienced same -sex attraction.

Okay. You start with the assumption then, obviously all this started with the assumption that there are

Christians who can properly practice same -sex attraction, the results of same -sex attraction.

Once you've made that decision, the rest of it's just simply a matter of time. It's coming up with enough excuses to get around the biblical position that, you know, to pretend that you're still holding on to some type of biblical hermeneutic while finding a way around that.

And I think for a lot of these folks, they know that the hermeneutics they're using now to substantiate this perspective would cause them to have to abandon everything else.

They'd have to abandon, you know, if they hold to a strong pro -life perspective, they'd have to abandon that because the hermeneutics they're using,

I mean, they're now embracing the culture of death over here, it's sort of hard to hold the culture of life, the culture of death all at the same time.

The Trinity, the deity of Christ, all of that kind of stuff would require a view of Scripture and the perspicuity of Scripture, relevance of Scripture, interpretation of Scripture, that now they're having to abandon and replace with personal experience.

And I think they know somewhere back in their, in the back of their mind, that creating

Christian theology on the basis of conversation with individuals would eventually result in the utter destruction of Christian theology because Christian theology is, it's revelatory, it's revealed by God.

It's something that we have to be conformed to, not that we conform to us, but once you start going that direction, there's no stopping line, there's no place to stop.

They seem to know this, they seem to understand this. And I think it's what causes all this turmoil and all the rest of that stuff.

So this phraseology, full privileges are extended now to you with the same expectations of faithfulness.

To what? Sobriety. Holiness. How is that defined?

You can't define any of this anymore. Wholeness. What? What wholeness?

The wholeness just defined in Matthew chapter 19, man, woman, marriage, leave father and mother, cling to wife, can't have that there.

That wholeness is not there. So it's a whole, it's a whole new wholeness. It's a redefined wholeness.

Fidelity. To what? Why haven't you had the conversation with the polyamorous folks yet?

And once you're done with the polyamorous folks, then you got to have the conversation with the polyamorous homosexuals, which are the majority, by the way, big, big, big majority, you know, 95 % minimum majority.

So go have your conversation because that's your ultimate authority now, right? Um, skill and willingness.

You just, you start getting used to seeing this kind of plethora of, of words strung together and it's, it's all just meant to hide the fact that, that you're fundamentally standing, standing in a

Christian church and denying the very heart and soul of the

Christian faith. And, but you got to find something to say in the process. And so to say that they were thrust by a divine wind, oh, well, divine wind.

All right. I would call it, uh, living, uh, somewhere near Nashville or something, um, where there's, you know, all this cultural stuff, uh,

I, I, I wouldn't call it a divine wind. I'd call that a cultural wind. Um, so there you go.

What? I, I listened to that and I just think, well, wait a minute. If we're going to look past this, which

I, I don't know, maybe I'm missing the point, but I would probably put it into the category of chastity sort of.

Well, no, I don't see anything here about that. No, I know. But I'm saying if you're going to compromise here, then why sobriety?

Why require sobriety? Why requires fidelity? Why require any of these other things that they require when they have totally sold out on this issue?

I don't see any consistency here at all. Well, no, there can't be a consistency. Uh, it's, it's a, it's now become, you know, we have, we feel, you know, here's, here's my thought before we, we move on from this, uh, we're staying on the same subject, but before we move into another area, here's my thought,

I don't know who would be able to have the time to do this, um, or the energy or whatever.

Track these churches, track these churches, uh, track the Southern Baptist Church from last year, um, in Southern California and, uh, find out where they are five years from now and 10 years from now, um, there's only two choices.

I would say to you, 99 % of the time you will find these churches falling into the same malaise and capitulation as the mainstream liberal denominations that they may not have been a part of, but are now walking the same, the same road.

Um, you'll, you'll just, and in fact, the one thing I did appreciate about this article though, uh, which was interesting, according to time,

Mitchell's congregation continues to shrink since he first made the announcement two years ago that he was going to open a listening, a listening period over the issue, listening to what

God's already spoken on this matter. Two years ago, grace point had an average of 800 to a thousand members in attendance.

And after he announced full inclusion for homosexuals this month, attendance went down to six 73 last week and stood at four 82.

Now I think that is wonderful thing. It's wonderful. And I'll tell you why

I think it's wonderful. Um, you don't want the sheep of Christ in a flock where they're being fed poison.

Now the world says, Oh, you shouldn't, you shouldn't think that's what I think. It's wonderful. I think it's wonderful that mainline liberal process denominations are dying.

That's good. That's a good thing. Nominal Christianity is our enemy.

It is not our friend. We should not apologize when false shepherds are left with tiny flocks.

Should we know that should be something that we are thankful to see. Um, and there you go.

Um, now could you see diminishment of attendance in faithful congregations?

Hey, you know what? He probably thinks the same thing that we would say. And that is, well, you know, um, this is what you get for being faithful to your calling.

Probably what he thinks, probably what he thinks. Um, now this happens to be the same church

Carrie Underwood goes to. And we know that a couple of years ago she, you know, did the star thing and, uh, you know, that's how everyone's supposed to be the same and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

That allows me to, um, move on. I was going to say transition, not a good term, uh, to a story that I saw first.

I don't know. Sometime last week I thought about getting to it. Everyone else is now, uh, beating, beating me to it, but to the

Bruce Jenner story, I don't know anything about the car accident, paparazzi, whatever.

I don't know. Not, not relevant. Uh, 1976

Olympics triathlon shattered the records.

I'm old enough to very clearly remember cause 76 that was, uh, between my, but seventh and eighth grade year or something like that, somewhere around there.

Um, and I remember very clearly the, um,

Bruce Jenner Wheaties, uh, boxes, you know, uh, flag over his head and you know, man's man

Bruce Jenner. Well, I did not know that pretty much as from what

I've read, that was the last time he did anything like that. In fact, my understanding is he left his pole vaults there at the stadium.

Didn't even take him with him when he left. Just left him there because he figured I could do that ever again.

I've won it. There's no reason to continue doing it. And immediately went in, went for the box, went for the money, went for the clothing lines and the, the commentator stuff and, and you know,

Hollywood all the way type stuff, you know, meet all the beautiful people.

Cause up until the Olympics, no one had any earthly idea who in the world he was. And then some

Russian guy, uh, which was the case back then. Well, that's strange.

Uh, the, uh, the alarm's going off. Why the alarm's going off? I have no earthly idea. I hope, hope there's not a fire going on anywhere or anything.

Okay. Uh, I'll be the last one to know, uh, as the smoke comes pouring in or something, we'll, we'll, um, we'll just say so long.

Nice to have known you anyway. Um, some Russian guy, which back in the seventies, the

Russians were supposed to win everything. Uh, y 'all saw Rocky four, you know why that was, you know?

Um, but you know, Jenner pulled it off and, um, I think,

I think I recall. I think I watched that last thing. What?

He alarmed it while we're here. Oh, okay. All right.

Forgot to turn it off. Okay. All right. Gotcha. All right. Well, as long as it's not our side, that's a, you know, that's, that's the important part.

So didn't have to shoot anybody. That's good. That's if you had returned that quickly after having shot somebody,

I really, really been much more, um, worried about that anyway. Anyway. So I, I didn't know what happened to him.

I, in fact, to be honest with you, I'll this, this is how bad a cultural commentator

I am. I had to look up cause I had seen some stuff about it, but I had to look up and figure out what's the relationship between Bruce Jenner, Kim Kardashian and Kanye West.

I didn't know. Yeah. You sadly know. Well, I'm sad to know now too, but I, I do know now.

So that's, that's enough to be a part of that family is enough to make anybody messed up.

Um, there's a dead lawyer. Really? I didn't know anything. I don't even know. I want to know.

Oh, I'm sure there's more. Oh, believe me. I'm sure there's a lot more. Um, but anyway, uh, the, the point is if you haven't heard about,

I don't know how you could not have heard about it. I was walking through target last night and, um, you know, two of the magazines and the stands and the checkout thing were all about Bruce Jenner and his transitioning to becoming a woman.

And, um, you know, when I first saw the pictures, I was just like, and you know, that's why

I had to find out what, you know, what the background was. And, um, because I'm like, what, especially at this age that he's at, um, what, what on earth is going on here?

I don't know what all the stories are, all the, all the things are, but here's, here's the point. Um, we are expected in our society now to accept as moral and good and brave and something to be proud of.

Every form of sexual debauchery, every form of sexual confusion we're just expected to.

That's now considered moral. And this is reinforced by the fact that the

Academy, for example, if you, I could never, ever get a job, never get a job at a secular university, never impossible.

Wouldn't matter if I was the most, uh, prepared studied expert in an area.

Doesn't matter. You're a homophobe. There is no inclusive concept.

There is no freedom of thought. The, the Academy is locked down solid and we all know it.

We all know it. Uh, it is, it is the very essence of hypocrisy for anyone in the

Academy to say that we should be open -minded and we're open -minded and we're for freedom of expression.

No, the Academy is filled with narrow minded bigots who control the whole thing.

Let's just, let's just be honest about it. All right. And so because that then they're the ones that produce the teachers that produce the, you know, the administrators and the schools and, and so, oh yeah, let me just mention this one.

Um, where was this? Of course it was in California. The, uh, Pacific Justice Institute, uh, mentioned the fact that, uh,

I have no idea how to pronounce this. A C A L A N E S. Akelanas High School in Lafayette, California.

Um, the Queer Straight Alliance. Students reported that on January 29th, members of the school's

Queer Straight Alliance took over all freshmen English classes to grill students about their beliefs and their parents' beliefs on LGBT issues.

Pacific Justice said that the QSA had students step forward to demonstrate where they believe that being gay was a choice and where their parents would be accepting if they came out as gay.

Students who did not step forward ridiculed and humiliated. This is the educational system in the

United States. You are now, uh, the Queer Straight Alliance gets to take over classes and do stuff like this.

Just, um, there, there's, there's, there's no end to it. Uh, the, the, the hypocrisy and evil of it is off the scale, completely off the scale.

It's completely out in the open and they don't care. They, they don't care that we know, uh, because they figure it's, it's over.

We control everything. We're in control. So we'll do whatever we want to do. So getting back to Bruce Jenner, we are expected, uh, his mother, his 80, was it 88?

What was, what was that? Was that the, um, let me see. Uh, maybe this wasn't, uh,

I think I, I can't find it in here right now. I didn't mark it. So, uh, I, I think said she was around 88 degrees, 88 degrees, a very low temperature, uh, 88 years of age.

I've never been more proud of, of Bruce than now. I thought it couldn't be more proud than when, uh, you know what he did in 1976, but, um, couldn't be more proud.

At 88, here's the point.

There is no such thing as transitioning. There is mutilation of the body.

There is chemical alteration of the body. There is a cosmetic alteration of the body.

But if you're born a male, you will always be a male. If you're born a female, you'll always be a female.

If you're born a male, you will never bear a child. If you're born a female, you will never sire a child.

Now, I suppose someday if we keep going, we might mess with nature enough to somehow, well, be honest with you.

What, what would be proper would be if we ever went so far as to try to change that to somehow take a woman's egg and turn it into a sperm or something like that.

Um, I think we deserve the walking dead. Okay. Uh, cause I think that's what happened. You know, somebody was messing around.

Isn't that always what all the movies are is, you know, somebody was messing around with genetics. What was it?

I am, I am hero. What was it? What was that one with Will Smith in it?

I am, I am legend. I am legend. Yeah. And that's what had happened there is they were messing around with genetics and, um,

I, I think that would be the appropriate punishment. Um, if we show ourselves so arrogant and so out of control that we would do something like that.

Um, but even if that were to happen, it would take such complicated perversion of nature that it would only prove the point.

You can't transition. Now I'm, I'm well aware of the fact that there is all sorts of documentation right now.

There are, there are medical facilities that will no longer do these operations because they have been convinced by the psychological analysis of the people that they have done this for, that this is bad for people, that it increases suicide, that it is, that is horrible.

It's wrong. It's stupid. It's insane. It's, it's immoral on all those. It's just simply evil. But you can't say that.

You can't say it out loud. And the fact is to Bruce Jenner and anybody else, there's no such thing as transitioning.

There's mutilation. There's self -destruction. There's the embracing of death because it's the culture of death, but there's no transitioning.

It's a myth. It's a lie. It's a fraud. It promises you something you, it will not deliver.

And once you realize, once you go through the nightmare of all of that and then realize it changed nothing, that's why it increases.

What was the percentage increase? Fourfold percentage increases, suicide, something like that. It's huge. It's huge.

Bruce Jenner, I don't have any earthly idea. Why a man who accomplished what you did in 1976 would 40 years later show such incredible confusion.

What's happened in your life? I don't know. I don't know. I can only tell you one thing. True life is not going to be found in mutilating your body and cosmetically dressing as someone you're not.

Your issue has to do between you and God. And all the doctors in the world and all the surgeries in the world and all their hormones in the world will not change that fundamentally broken relationship.

Won't change. Won't change. And when our society is so self -deceived, so blind that it defines as loving, lying to people and calling this lie of transitioning something that's good and to be celebrated.

Wow. Our society deserves whatever comes to it.

Because that is not love. That is hatred. That is the very culture of death.

Self -destruction. That's what it is. That's what Bruce Jenner is doing. And evidently there's the only reactions

I've read and I'm not a part of that. You know, like I said, I had to Google what the relationship of these people was.

But from what I've read, I didn't. I saw that there were some people in his family that aren't happy about it. But not for the right reasons.

Not happy about because they're embarrassed. Or not happy about because of stuff that's happened in the past.

Not Bruce, you're destroying yourself. Yeah, your entire reputation.

Out the window. I mean, at your age? Really? Seriously? Wow.

But the real issue is, this is an embracing of death. It is abjectly self -centered.

Abjectly self -centered. This is narcissism to the nth degree. But so is homosexuality.

So is homosexuality. So what are we supposed to say?

It is an amazing thing. Now, I want to talk about that. And then do so in light of an article.

Or I guess it was a webcast too. That I saw,

I think, last Thursday, if I recall. From Leighton Flowers.

Now, Leighton Flowers is a professor at Dallas Baptist University. And I first became aware of him a few months ago.

Because he was popping up on Twitter, promoting himself to me. And I'll be brutally honest.

You can go and read the long tweets. We've used TweetShorts. So, you know, four, five, six thousand character long email versions that we do via Twitter.

My feeling that I got initially, and I have yet to get any reason to not view it this way.

Is that Professor Flowers is a one -string banjo.

And what's a one -string banjo? Well, it's only got one note. Doesn't have much variation. And as I look at his listing under Soteriology 101 for his podcast.

I don't see anything, for example. It's all about Calvinism.

It's all anti -Calvinism stuff. There's nothing else. I don't see anything helping out

Muslims, or Jehovah's Witnesses, or Mormons. Or dealing with homosexuality, or just sound biblical hermeneutics, resurrection.

Nothing. All I see is... Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

Just one note. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. I struggle to want to invest a lot of effort with one -note banjos.

Because I've never had any success at getting one -string banjos to do anything other than play one string.

In other words, I haven't really been good at stringing other strings on one -string banjos. And so, for a while,

I just blocked him. It just seemed to me he was trying to get an audience by constantly responding to me.

Oh, hey, listen to what I had to say about what I said. Oh, listen to what... Well, there's other folks, actually. I mean,

I'm one of the primary people here. But he goes after John Piper. And he just recently went after Jeff Durbin.

And has some David Platt stuff here. And has talked about the Austin Fisher discussion. Wayne Grudem is here.

And Piper does get a lot of stuff. J .D.

Hall. Bill Johnson got some stuff down here. But it's all about Calvinism.

That's all I see. Well, he put out a post.

And this was February 5th. God made me this way. Did God determine homosexuality?

Calvinists, compatibilists, deny the Bible teaches that man has a free will. That's exactly right. The Bible clearly teaches that we do not.

Man is not able to do what is pleasing to God. Whatever you do with that, I don't know.

I'm sorry, Professor Flowers. He's finishing up his PhD. Professor Flowers, but despite all of our conversations,

I still don't know what you believe. He says he believes the position of Boethius, C .S.

Lewis, and Thomas Aquinas. Okay, so an early medieval philosopher, a

Roman Catholic, and an Anglican. Okay, that's going to define Baptist soteriology. Right, all right.

I still don't even know what that means. And in fact, one of the perspectives, one of the answers, he gave me one

Boethius quote. Are you ready for this? I'm going to ask you to interpret this for me, okay?

Ready? I thought it looked like you were getting a little bored. Maybe a little distracted. I may be ready for this because I've already tangled with a couple of his followers on Facebook.

Oh, okay, all right. Play the string. But we have a bat cam now, so we can show you as you...

The cave? The cave cam. The cave cam, yes. There's the cave cam. There's the cave cam. We weren't using it for me, so we turned it around the other direction.

So it's not as pretty because we don't have lights and stuff. All right, ready? So you get the pretty studio and I get the dungeon.

Well, see, and look at that. I can even wave. I can poke you in the eye. Okay, we can do that.

Back to that. That's the reflection in the glass. Okay, ready?

All right, here. Now, the cause of the mistake of determinism is this, that men think that all knowledge is cognized purely by the nature and efficacy of the thing known, whereas the case is the very reverse.

All that is known is grasped not conforably to its own efficacy, but rather conforably to the faculty of the knower.

Everything that is known is cognized not in accordance with its own nature, but in accordance with the nature of the faculty that comprehends it.

Okay, let me interpret that. It doesn't really matter what I say, only what you hear.

Close enough for me. Did I nail it? I mean, a lot of fancy words to just put that out there,

I think. Yeah. No, the argument is not a biblical one, but the argument is that the, and no one would argue that the nature of God's knowing is different than how man knows.

That's not the issue. I have said to Professor Flowers, he continues to dodge the real issue.

And when we first went back and forth, he very quickly went to mystery.

And if you want to go, well, it's a mystery. All I know is you're wrong, but if you're going to ask me what's right, it's a mystery.

I don't have time for you. Sorry. I mean, that might work while you're sitting around with fellow philosophers on the campus and you're all wearing your

Birkenstocks and stuff, but it doesn't do any good in a mosque. Doesn't work much with Bart Ehrman or David Silverman, that kind of stuff.

I sort of have to have something that actually functions in the real world, so I just don't really invest much time in all of that.

And I'm still trying to figure out what is it that Boethius and Thomas Aquinas and C .S. Lewis have in common.

I know what they have different, but what do they have in common? I haven't been told that yet.

I haven't been able to figure this out, and so it's a little confusing to me.

But anyway, going back to the article, here's what he had to say, and I'm taking too much time here.

Calvinists deny the Bible teaches that man has a free will. They believe, rather, that God ordains all things that come to pass, including the homosexual's choices, yet the homosexual is still culpable for his choices.

Now, generally true, but the fundamental argument here is that there cannot be a divine decree.

Events and happenings in time must, the term he likes is contra -causally free, must arise from some other source than God having a divine decree.

What this involves, and I've talked about this many times in the past, is the squishing down of the three -dimensional beauty of the diamond of God's sovereignty.

And it's really four -dimensional because you've got time in there, but three -dimensional, you know, when you look at a diamond, so much of its beauty is seen by seeing it from different perspectives.

These folks don't allow for that. They want to limit the decree to a two -dimensional this, this, this, this, and this is going to happen.

The interaction of God in time, thrown out. Doesn't matter,

I'm not going to think about it, I'm not going to, no, I don't care if you think that's important, it's irrelevant.

Even though it's so much of the biblical, or if anything, they'll take that and make it the only thing to get rid of the decree.

Well, see, God was interacting in time and therefore he was responding to us and we're the ones driving things and then he does this and we do that and he determines to do these things, but then he leaves this stuff alone.

And you can't, from their perspective, we can't have God interacting in time.

From our perspective, that's a part of his decree. It's personal, it's intimate, it's what the incarnation was all about.

It's vital, but no, no, no, no. It's either this or that, they can't deal with the both and.

And when you really push as to why, mystery, mystery, mystery, no, no, mystery, makes things difficult.

Compatibilism held by most Calvinistic scholars is a form of determinism and it should be noted that this position is no less deterministic than hard determinism, according to John Hendricks of myerjism .com,

Phil Johnson, and James White, to name a few. This simply means that God's predetermination and meticulous providence is compatible with voluntary choice.

They do not believe homosexuals' choices are coerced, i .e. the gay man does not choose against what he wants or desires, yet no gay man ever makes choices contrary to God's sovereign decree.

What God determines will always come to pass, according to this system, which would include the homosexuals' same -sex desire and choice to act upon that desire.

So notice again the flattening out. Notice how in this language you put the human actions on the very same level as the divine decree.

You can't allow for the fullness, you can't allow for the interactivity, you cannot allow God to say,

I'm going to judge you in this realm. I'm still going to accomplish. In fact, I'm going to bring out of every action my honor and glory.

It's all to the glory of my grace. It's all Ephesians 1, etc., etc. No, no, no. That's too complex.

We want to flatten it out. Everything's on the same level. That's what you've got here. According to compatibilism, a homosexual's choices are exercised voluntarily, but his desires, temptations, and circumstances that bring about these sexual choices occur through divine determinism.

Now, that's so simplistic. That is so robot puppet -ish.

I'm used to that from the old -line Southern Baptists that have never given this type of stuff a second thought.

Yeah, I'm used to that from them. But if you're going to be doing podcasts, you've got to get beyond this kind of simplicity.

Oh, it's just, well, you know, God determined that he was going to do this, and so he really can't do anything other than that, and so it's just a puppet.

You can't see that the choices that a person makes at 14 to act upon their desires in rebellion against their parents might have something to do with their sexuality four years later.

You can't see that. Oh, but that's a level of complexity that doesn't fit into my mystery.

Sorry, but my experience is that philosophers tend to sit around thinking that they've just got everything right there, you know?

So, according to Calvinism, I'm not going to get through this if I don't stop stopping, which would mean

I need to keep going, which would be not stopping. After that Boethius quote,

I'm pretty much fried. I don't know about you. So, according to Calvinism, God determined and ordained that every homosexual activity will take place.

Stop. Well, I just said I'm going to have to stop stopping, and I stopped.

Totally out of control. What's this an objection to?

There cannot be a divine decree. Even if the divine decree is clearly placed within the matrix of God's holiness, justice, law, demonstration of his attributes, wrath, and very clearly that same scripture reveals

God's detestation of those activities that are a part of his decree.

Oh, I can't be. On this level, if this is all you've got, it can't be. It's deeper than that.

It's bigger than that. And if you've never actually sat around and looked at Psalm 90 verse 2 and tried to think through before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou'st formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art

God. If you've never taken time to just get quiet, turn the music off, and just think about that, let alone what that then means as to God's interaction with his own creation in time, you haven't even started the process.

You've got no grounds to be standing on. None. So, when we talk about God determining and ordaining all that takes place in time, that is the reason that we can say that there is no such thing as meaningless evil, which, in whatever

Boethian, Aquinian, Louisian concoction of mysteries we have here, which

I don't know, sounds like they would have to believe they do believe in all sorts.

Well, let me take a wild guess. There's no such thing as purposeless evil in their system either because it was

God's choice to create free creatures, and so that fulfills his choice to create free creatures, which is not really an answer to the question because it still means that that resultant evil is purposeless in the sense of it as an act has no purpose other than, well, evil as evil has a purpose,

I guess. I don't know. I'll leave it up to the Boethian, Louisian, Aquinian mystery stuff to answer that.

Yet homosexuals act voluntarily, making the evil choice that brings it to pass, which means the sin is imputed to homosexuals, their wicked activities, and God remains blameless.

The point is that God judges us for doing what we desire to do, not judging us on the basis of having knowledge of his sovereign decree.

In both of these cases, according to this view, it could be said that God ordains homosexual sin sinlessly. No homosexual desire act occurs apart from his sovereign good pleasure according to the claims of this system.

Please understand that neither compatibilism nor hard determinism affirms that any homosexual has a free will.

Let's make that autonomous will, as obviously has a creaturely will. Those who believe homosexuals have a free will are not compatibilists but should rather be called inconsistent.

The homosexual choices are their choices because they are voluntary, not coerced. Homosexuals do not choose sodomy contrary to their desire or nature, nor separately from God's meticulous providence.

Again, very simplistic. Ignores the complexity that actually is very clearly present.

In fact, that I had mentioned before we even got to this, and that is that there are homosexuals who are engaged in homosexuality because of their rebellion against their parents at a young age, not because of some preexistent desire that fills their hearts.

I think that's just an obvious given. Anyway, furthermore, compatibilism is directly contrary to contracausal free will, or I prefer autonomous free will.

Therefore, a voluntary choice does not mean the homosexual had the ability to choose otherwise. Remember, the contracausal, so all that's saying is there is no decree.

There is no decree. Now, how God has knowledge, perfect knowledge of these future things,

I don't know, it might be a mystery. I'll have to ask Boethius and Aquinas and Lewis, who

I think will give me three different answers, but that's a mystery too. Whatever. Voluntary does mean, however, the ability of the gay man to choose what he most wants or desires according to his inborn disposition or inclination, which are likewise ordained by God.

Well, everything is, and again, put on the same level, and then you can make mishmash out of it.

This is the easy way to do it. According to compatibilism, the homosexual's will is never free, in any sense, from God's eternal decree.

Well, according to compatibilism, nothing in this universe is free from God's eternal decree.

When compatibilists use such phrases as compatibilistic freedom, they are more often than not using it to mean voluntary choice, but are not referring to freedom from God's decree or absolute sovereignty.

There, actually, slipped out the real issue. What really gets these guys going is, we have to be able to be free from God.

If we can't be free from God, we cannot be held accountable to God. That's all there is to it. God has to have his area of authority.

We have to have our area of authority. Again, the only way to make this work consistently, without going, mystery, mystery, is to be an open theist.

I mean, if we didn't know this guy wasn't an open theist, it would be like, hmm, sounds like an open theist.

Well, can't be one of them and be a Southern Baptist, but you can stop being a Southern Baptist and become consistent.

James White claims to be compatibilistic, yet in this podcast exchange, he affirms contra -causal libertarian choice.

Oh, I did? Let's find out what I said. Now, notice, what I'm going to say doesn't do this.

It allows for the depth and the relationship of decree and time.

Can't have that, so you interpret me outside of what I actually be. If I have a desire toward arrogance, if I have a desire toward boasting and I act upon those desires, then

I am acting upon the desires of my heart, and that is what I'm judged for. Since I am made in the image of God, I do not have to act upon these things.

That is what makes us human beings over against just animals. So, if I say that, well, let's use an example from this morning, and this is going to get me in trouble with somebody.

I don't remember where I found it, but somewhere

I found a list of quotes from Kanye West.

Have you ever seen anything like this? Don't get those confused with the bohemian, whatever his name is.

Boise, no. Yeah, because they could go together. No, no, no. Well, okay, there are multi -syllabic words involved with the other guy.

Well, no, no, no. I don't want to go there. One of them was, I'm too busy making history to read about history.

The term arrogance combined with ignorance is way too mild to describe what you've got with this guy.

Now, I heard what he did over the weekend, again, but this guy, to say that he has given in to an internal desire towards self -promotion and arrogance would be to so vastly understate things as to make a mockery of the

English language, okay? So, there's an example.

Now, in my opinion, this is a guy who is incredibly arrogant for no reason at all.

But, let's look at athletes. There are some really good athletes.

I mean, there are some people that just excel. They have incredible capacities.

Some give in. Now, I would say every single one of them, as a creature, therefore, experiences a temptation toward boasting, arrogance, a

God -dishonoring self -centeredness, and to some degree or another, we all give in to that.

But, there is a huge difference between David Robinson, Robinson or Robertson, Spurs, retired,

Robinson, David Robinson, and Shaquille O 'Neal, right?

I mean, David Robinson, the Admiral, struck me as a humble, self -controlled guy.

Or, some of the NFL quarterbacks that do really, really well, some of them make sure you know about it, and some of them leave it to what they do on the field, and in real life, are regular people, or at least as far as we can see.

And, other people tell us there are some that really, really are. They're thankful for what they've got. They know that one blindside hit tomorrow could end the whole thing.

They know that they have been really blessed to get where they are. The point is, as human beings, we experience common temptations.

But, because we're human beings, we don't have to act on them. We have the ability to say, no.

We have the ability to discipline ourselves. We have the ability to order our priorities.

I am not affirming libertarian free will, but since I don't know what

God's decree is, I can only act based upon the prescriptive will of God.

And, God's prescriptive will says, be thankful in all things. Do not be boastful.

Recognize that everything you have is a gift from God. And so, it is foolishness to think that a compatibilist would say to a homosexual, oh, nothing

I can say to you because, you know, God gave you those desires. He made those desires the strongest desires.

And so, that's how he controls you. As if that's the mechanism. We've never said that's a mechanism. Not once.

Not once. We've talked about the clear biblical revelation as to how

God will hold you accountable and what basis he does that on. We have clear biblical revelation on that.

But, as to the mechanism of the interface between that decree and what takes place in time, you're making big, big assumptions.

And so, it really, really bothers me when someone will say to me, you know what?

I can't tell you what the truth is because it's a mystery. But, I know it ain't what you believe.

And, you can talk all you want, James White. About homosexuality.

But, your own theology undercuts what you're saying. You need to come up with something significantly more than a bunch of hoo -ha mystery talk to substantiate something like that.

He says, thus he fails to reply to Dr. Stephen Gaines' argument in a consistent manner. Dr. White affirms voluntary choice defined above, but he does not affirm contra -causal choice, the ability to refrain or not refrain from any given moral action.

He must explain his inconsistency here. The inconsistency is completely in your incapacity or unwillingness to allow the position that you're critiquing on the basis of mystery to be as full as it actually is.

God gives us his prescriptive will. If you knew anything about meaningful

Calvinistic preaching, you know that we press that upon people. That we are made in the image of God.

God will hold me accountable for doing what my heart desires, but he's revealed his perfect will in his law.

And his law says, a man shall not lie with a man as he lies with a woman. It is a detestable act.

Now, there might be people who do that because they have an insatiable desire to do so.

And there might be people who do that because they are rebelling against God. And they want to express their rebellion to the perversion of their sexual nature.

And there might be people who have both going on at the same time. But that's the reality.

That's the reality. So, I'm still hoping to get some type of clear revelation from Professor Flowers as to the specifics.

Problem is, most of the people I've encountered that, you know, flee to mystery very quickly, they're not big on the specifics part.

That's the problem. They can be very specific in their criticism of others. But, you know, when you actually have to, you know, put out your own position, it's a little bit different at that particular point in time, unfortunately.

So, what does all this have to do? Well, it was actually all one big topic there.

It was all one substantial subject. And that is, we can say to the

Bruce Jenners, there's no such thing as transitioning. It's a lie. It will never satisfy you.

It only brings you death. Am I inconsistent to say that? As a believer in what the

Bible teaches about God's sovereign decree that he works all things after the counsel of his will? Not just soteriological things?

No, I am not inconsistent at all. So, there's our subject for today.

Who knows what will come up between now and Thursday. But there's some stuff on, we need to talk about ISIS, what's happened there, and the sad news that came in today about that.

But again, our world is thinking, well, like a fallen world will.

Even about subjects like that. And we'll be certainly on that come Thursday.