William Lane Craig, Kevin Harris, Joseph M. Holden

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is the Dividing Line.

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The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

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Our host is Dr. James White, Director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an Elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the

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United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

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James White. And welcome to Dividing Line on whatever it is.

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It's a day. It's a Thursday. That's what it is. Oh, I've had enough traveling for quite a while personally, but it's good to be back with you all.

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We have a lot to cover today and I'm going to have to really be disciplined to get it all into an hour because as I mentioned on the

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Dividing Line on the blog about the Dividing Line, this is the Dividing Line I mentioned on the blog. I have two clips that I want to play, a

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William Lane Craig clip on Mormonism and then a pastor's perspective clip where I guess they're giving it their best shot at responding to First John 5 -1 and so that makes it useful to respond to that.

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But another thing to note, please, before we get started, regarding next week, starting a week from today on two consecutive

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Thursdays, the 25th of March and the 1st of April has nothing to do with the 1st of April having any other meaning other than it's the first day of the month of April.

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We will be doing a special Dividing Lines. They will be 90 minutes long and Dr.

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Michael Brown will be my guest this time. I was his guest on his program and we discussed

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Reformed Theology and his objections there, too. But let's face it, we have it a little bit easier than Dr.

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Brown does. We can go for 90 minutes and cut out all of our breaks and do 90 minutes worth of conversation.

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The biggest complaint I got about the programs of Dr. Brown was as soon as you guys actually started talking about anything, you took a commercial break and then it takes time to get back into the groove and then another commercial break.

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And it's true. Out of an hour's program, you only get 38 minutes of actual conversation, actually a little bit less than that if you look at the archived copies.

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So yeah, we're going to get almost three times that amount of time in as far as actual conversation.

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But my suggestion was that we suggest particular texts and address those texts.

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And even as it is, now that I'm thinking about it, there are three texts I want to address and he's going to come up with his three texts.

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But even over 90 minutes, that's only half an hour per that you're still only giving six or seven minutes to even interpret any of the key texts.

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So it's still going to be extremely difficult to have any interaction and stuff like that it's going to be challenging.

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But that's what we're going to do. And of course, we do want to do a formal public debate. We've already had one church back in Georgia that has volunteered to host that.

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That would work out fine. But I would also like to contact that church about the possibility of hosting a debate with Anthony Buzzard, because I think that would be really useful to do something along those lines.

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And yes, of course, John Six is one of those that I have asked that we address. So that will be coming up starting a week from today on the 25th.

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But special time because Dr. Brown has to have time to do his program. And his program is pretty much right in the middle of the day.

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And so we will be doing it at 10 a .m. Mountain Standard Time, which is 10 a .m.

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Pacific Daylight Time and 1 p .m. Eastern Daylight Time.

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And someday you all are going to stop playing with your clocks and we won't have this problem anymore.

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But till then, we have to keep doing all this silliness and figuring out what time is what, where and things like that.

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So that's what's coming up. So with that having been said, I want to immediately go to Dr. William Lane Craig and his co -host discussing the subject of Mormonism.

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I don't have time to play the whole thing, but I have time to play enough of it to get a good sense of it. I will be commenting as we go along.

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Let's listen to the comments. Mormon scholars or theologians interact with you on the

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Kalam? Have they written you? A little bit. One of the things that I got to know or understand about Mormonism is that Mormon theology is not very highly developed and sophisticated in the way that Christian theology is.

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Mormonism doesn't have a sort of creedal statement, and so it's very fluid.

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And indeed, in this book, The New Mormon Challenge, one of the offers that we hold out to Mormons is that given the fluidity of their doctrine, why can't they go ahead and embrace orthodox views of God?

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And I just immediately have to jump in here. Of course they have creedal statements. That's just simply not the case.

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They do. Now, Mormonism is unusual in that they have living prophets, obviously, and that's what introduces the fluidity, and there certainly have been changes of emphasis.

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But Roman Catholic apologists, Mormon apologists from the beginning have emphasized the fact that they have the priesthood authority, and therefore that priesthood authority is established through Joseph Smith.

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If you abandon Joseph Smith and you abandon the prophets and apostles who have taught with clarity, not just in small statements, but we're talking about 26 volumes of the early church sermons and the

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Journal of Discourses and things like this, if you can abandon what they have taught over the years, then you have also abandoned any meaningful use of the term truth.

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If you find a way to wiggle out of the King Follett funeral discourse, you no longer have Mormonism. You no longer have any meaningful apologetic for Mormonism.

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It's just obvious. So they do have creedal statements. They do have statements of faith.

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They do have standards. But when you have a living prophet, then the question really becomes the same question you have when you're talking about Roman Catholicism.

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Who gets to interpret your former documents? Well, the problem is, in this case, these documents are so recent that they have a complete context as to what the words meant to the people who said them.

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And so there's no way of reinterpreting them in that way. There really isn't. Not in using any meaningful concept of truth.

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...orthodox views of Christ and the Trinity. And so there aren't very many Mormon scholars, per se,

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Mormon philosophers, Mormon theologians with whom one can interact. But what Karl Masser and Frank Beckwith, who edited this book, wanted us to do...

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There's a combination. Karl Masser and Frank Beckwith. Well, before he went back to being a

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Roman Catholic, anyway. ...is to not offer the sort of superficial, dismissive refutations of Mormonism that you often find in counter -cult books.

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They said, we want you to read the best of Mormon scholarship on this topic, and to interact with it in a substantive, charitable, and responsible way.

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And so you'll find in the article that Paul and I did on Creation Out of Nothing, that I interact with some

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Mormon astronomers and cosmologists who have thought about this question of the beginning of the universe.

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Mormon theologians and philosophers are really as scarce as hen's teeth, and they don't tend to talk about these subjects.

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But there are a few Mormon astronomers and scientists who have touched on this.

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And so I do interact with their views in this article. There's also a Mormon lawyer, his name is

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Blake Ostler, and he has responded to the cosmological argument.

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Now he's just an attorney, but he is a sort of self -appointed Mormon apologist, and he has interacted with the

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Kalam argument and tried to refute it as well. So... I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't ever remember in my addressing

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LDS apologists over the years sounding quite so dismissive. They're just attorneys.

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I don't remember when I debated Martin Tanner, yeah,

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Martin Tanner, my going, well, he's just an attorney. I don't remember doing that.

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I guess there's a little ivory towerism coming out there. But I found that really... I can't imagine the guys at Farms, formerly called

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Farms, would really appreciate that content. What was Van Hale? Van Hale's just Van Hale.

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I'd love to hear Van Hale go at it with William Lane Craig. Yeah, that would be very interesting. That would be...

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Who gets to nail the jello to the wall first? Live on KTKK, that would be sort of fun, yeah. So it has occasioned some reaction from the

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Mormon side of the equation. Being that Mormon theology is so underdeveloped and fluid and all over the place, the best you can do is just try to point to influential or important Mormons, spokespeople and scholars and founders and so on.

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Now, again, I just don't get the idea that our friends here have spent much time on Mormon authority beliefs and the doctrine of authority in Mormonism, which is why

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I spent an entire chapter on the subject, and is more my brother, going through the levels of authority and the structure of the church.

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All that is just completely lost on these folks, because basically their perspective, and I'm talking about a whole group of people here, but it was involved with this book and the

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Mosser -Owen group and the rest of that stuff. They just dismiss LDS leadership as irrelevant people, and the guys at BYU, they're all that matters.

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Now, there's no question that BYU is important. There's no question that over time, BYU has an impact.

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But they seem to forget that that's a two -way street, and the leadership has had quite the impact on BYU as well.

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But they seem to feel like, well, we just got to look at these scholars, they're the future of Mormonism.

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Maybe, maybe not. I don't claim to be a prophet nor a son of a prophet, so I don't know what the future is going to hold.

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But I can tell you one thing. I know who the official representatives of Mormonism are, and I know what their official doctrines are, and I think dismissing those things is a little bit silly and somewhat disrespectful.

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So on, you quote in this article B .H. Roberts, well, he's an important LDS theologian.

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He was also a member of the First Council of the Seventy, and he declared...

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That makes him a general authority, which means that his words have more weight than, well, anybody at BYU.

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Creation ex nihilo, out of nothing, is...

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Someone sounds a little tired. Creation ex nihilo assumes that God is transcendent of the universe, and he doesn't believe that.

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No, he doesn't. God is an imminent object in the universe. It's quite astonishing. I mean, really,

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Kevin, this is like Roman and Greek polytheism in many ways. Now, I love that comment.

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It is exactly like Roman and Greek polytheism in many ways, except that's the very thing that many of the

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LDS apologists throw our direction, is that the Trinity is a Greek philosophical construction and all the rest of this stuff.

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I just would love to see some of these guys who... There's some pot shots at alleged anti -Catholics, anti -Mormons.

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So many different groups, it's hard to keep them straight anymore. Anti -Mormons that come out in this, and they don't get specific.

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And sure, there's some really lousy material out there on the subject of Mormonism. No one's going to question that.

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I've pointed that out many times myself, but I'd love to see some of these guys actually go up there and do apologetics in Salt Lake City.

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They like to get together with all the scholars and do their little scholarly thing. How about going out on the streets, actually talking to, well, you know, regular

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Mormons? And of course, this view is very difficult to reconcile with modern cosmology because the universe is expanding, which means that sometime in the past, it was contracted down to a super dense, hot state.

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Well, what happened to all of these deities if you go back in time and contract down? Did they all get squished down?

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Okay, well, many, many, many moons ago, I had an online debate with a

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Mormon on that subject, and that's why he emphasized that there is an unlimited number of gods and an unlimited number of universes.

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That's why they use the plural of universes. And so I don't think that this would exactly hit a home run as far as an argument, as far as those

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Mormons are concerned. To nothingness? Or are they like ball bearings in a loaf of bread that are just sort of stuck in there?

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It's very, very strange. If you held that they were spiritual beings, there wouldn't be any problem with that.

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But they don't hold that. They hold that they are, in fact, material, and so they wouldn't be subject to physical law.

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Yes, that's right, and all of the problems of thermodynamics and the expansion of the universe would affect these beings.

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Now what's interesting about Mormon theology is that, given its fluidity, a number of Mormons have been coming over to a more orthodox view of God and starting to enunciate views of God as being a transcendent being.

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Now again, we've got a fundamental difference here. The fluidity of Mormon theology is due to the fact that you have living prophets, not due to the fact that you have living professors.

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There's a difference than having living prophets and apostles and have living professors.

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But this perspective says, no, no, no, you don't have to worry about all those prophets and apostles. They're just going to do whatever

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BYU tells them to do. That seems to be the mindset that a lot of these folks have. And this is a trend that the editors of this book and as well as ourselves really want to welcome and to encourage.

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I understand that a lot of Mormon theologians at BYU and elsewhere are very deeply appreciative of C .S.

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Lewis, for example, and are deeply influenced by Lewis's view of God. So there is some real hope here that just as the

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Church of God, the Garner -Ted Armstrong cult eventually embraced

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Trinitarian doctrine and became orthodox, that the hope would be that perhaps the LDS Church could abandon its heretical aberrations and become orthodox.

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Now a couple things here. We've addressed this many, many times in the past, but we may be doing more talking about Mormonism again in the not -too -distant future if Mitt Romney runs for the presidency.

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Well, that's why we talked about it last time, is because it raises it and there's a massive, huge amount of ignorance amongst evangelical

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Christians about Mormonism. And I agree that just simply going, well, it's a cult, you know, don't want to vote for a cultist is really stupid because pagans are pagans and the vast majority of people in our government are them.

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And so there's a tremendous amount of bigotry involved in all that, too.

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But what you just heard is this idea, well, you know, the role my church got became orthodox.

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So why can't Mormonism? Don't get me wrong. I would love to see that happen.

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But the fact the matter is, you have to realize not only did the

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Royal Church of God shrink by about 80 percent in that process, spinning off all sorts of non -orthodox groups in the process of so doing.

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But likewise, Mormonism is significantly larger and has existed for a significantly longer period of time.

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We're talking about a group that only had a couple of generations involved in it. Mormonism as Mormonism could not possibly change.

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You would have to have a repudiation of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young and, well, everybody up to the current prophet.

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You would have to say that all of them had taught a false God because words have meaning.

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Documents exist. There's, you know, there's audio recordings and video recordings for many, many years now of the leaders of the

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Mormon Church presenting the very kind of bare bones polytheism that Dr.

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Craig has already talked about. And so for someone to embrace the orthodox faith, for Mormonism to embrace the orthodox faith would require the repudiation of everything they've ever believed from the nature of God to the nature of man to the nature of the

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Mormon temple, the nature of salvation, everything. Now, you might find a few folks at BYU willing to go there, maybe because they got their doctorates someplace else and they've been exposed to, you know, certain things and they don't want to have to defend a lot of the weirdness that Joseph Smith very clearly proclaimed, especially from 1838 till his death.

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But let me tell you something, there is, if you've ever driven through northern

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Arizona and southern Utah, ever talked with folks in that area, Manti, places like that, you want to see splintering, you want to see an explosion of all sorts of groups, that's what you're talking about.

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And I don't see that happening. And what's more, what you're going to hear here now is the fundamental issue.

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And the fundamental issue is, do you call heretics and heresy to be somewhat less heretical, or do you call them to repent and believe?

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This group seems to be, let's encourage them to be a little less heretical. You know,

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I mean, moving a little bit toward the truth is a good thing, right? No, it's not, as long as you remain in falsehood.

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Mormonism has a false god and a false gospel, and that's the direct statement that needs to be made.

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It's not a matter of, well, you have a, could we get you to embrace a slightly less false gospel or a slightly less idolatrous god?

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That seems to be the mindset of many people in academia today. Wouldn't that be great?

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It would be absolutely revolutionary if this were to happen, because this is a very, very large church.

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We see glimmers of it every once in a while. But if that were to happen, boy, you sure would have to get rid of a lot of things that Joseph Smith said and taught and Brigham Young taught.

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Well, yes, and we talk about this a little bit in the chapter that Paul and I wrote. We try to make it easy as possible for the

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Mormon theologian to distance himself from these early authors.

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And there are ways to finesse this by saying that these early authors maybe really didn't mean what they appeared to say, you know.

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And you can try to kind of nuance their views in such a way as to allow the contemporary

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Mormon to adopt an orthodox view. Absolutely, positively false.

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I can't believe a Christian is suggesting that. Shame on you, Dr. Craig, shame on you.

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Words have meanings. Are you really suggesting?

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Well, we try to make it a little bit easier for them to basically lie about Joseph Smith and Brigham Young and Orson Pratt and everybody else and sort of finesse these things.

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I'm sorry, words have meanings. What kind of foundation are you actually laying for these people to have a true and biblical faith?

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Are you calling these people to true faith in Christ or are you calling them to finesse their background so that they can be a little more orthodox but still call themselves

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Mormons? It's absolutely shocking to hear a

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Christian leader saying, well, we'd like them to maybe lie about their own background.

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That's what we just heard. Absolutely amazed me when I heard that. Absolutely amazed me.

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Without having to sort of renounce all of his Mormon heritage and so forth. So the hope would be that members of the

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LDS church would be able to— stop, cease and desist.

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Can you imagine any of the prophets of old doing this?

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Well, you know, Baal isn't really all that bad. Maybe there's a way to see Baal in somewhat of a

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Yahwistic fashion. We can finesse the worship of Baal.

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We're not really asking you Philistines to abandon your

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Philistine heritage and worship of Baal. That would be radical.

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So we want to find a way for you to continue to be able to have, you know, a little

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Baalism with your Yahwism. That's what we're talking about here, isn't it?

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I'm left speechless. Paul, write into the Galatians. Once you worshipped those which were not really

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God— Well, but we don't want— That sounds a little harsh. I'm sorry. You worshipped those which, you know, we've grown a little bit in our understanding.

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They were gods, but not completely gods. And you've gotten a little more— No, he said you worshipped once those gods were not even gods, but now you know the one true

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God. That's the apostolic. That's the Christian way. This is the academic way.

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Well, they're not always the same thing. And those people who worship academics—

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Here's the result. Just absolutely amazing. To Embraerian, orthodox doctrine of God as a transcendent being, creator of time and space, and even though they might still call themselves

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Mormon or LDS, nevertheless the church would change and would adopt new doctrine.

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And as I say, they have no doctrinal confession or statement. So this isn't impossible.

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Yes, they do. Oh, it's just as frustrating as reading how wide the divide was.

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It's just like, you guys, you just think you can just come bopping into an area, and well, we are scholars, therefore we can—

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Oh, it is just so sad. And it would be a trickle -down effect, wouldn't it? If the Mormon leadership were to embrace more orthodox views, the hope would be that then the congregation would follow.

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That would be the easiest way, because then the leadership would spirit the movement. I think it's highly unlikely that the prophet, the so -called head of the church, will do this.

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But I think it's not impossible that, for example, theologians at BYU could begin to teach and enunciate more orthodox views of God.

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Yeah, and their jobs would be very secure, sure, yeah. Who runs

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BYU again? I have seen glimmers of that in my own reading, that there are some

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BYU professors that last several years have kind of stirred things up a little bit in their move away from some of the traditional things

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Mormonism has done. Yes, you may remember that book, How Wide the Divide, that Craig Blomberg was involved in with a

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Mormon theologian. Yes, we do remember that disaster. When Craig would say, well, Mormons believe this and this, and it's unorthodox, his

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Mormon respondent would say, well, I don't believe those things. That's not my view. And it was very clear that this

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Mormon theologian felt quite free to disagree with the Mormon tradition and to break free of it and enunciate views that were more orthodox.

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And so we're challenging more— More orthodox. Keep hearing that. They weren't orthodox, but they're maybe less heretical?

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And this is a good thing? That's what we're hearing? Amazing. Mormons to think in that direction of having a more orthodox and,

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I think, more plausible and defensible worldview. I think that— How about just calling them to abandon

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Mormonism and believe in Jesus? I know that's really backwards and doesn't go over well in academia, but I think it might be the apostolic way of doing it.

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You brought up a good point earlier, Bill, and that is most Mormon material, educating

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Christians on Mormons, is highly inflammatory, very sensationalistic, and anti -Mormon, what the

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Mormons would call obnoxious or Mormon bashing. You know, if you're going to say that, name who you're talking about.

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He's right, there is material like that. But painting with this broad brush paints everybody who works with Mormons at all but doesn't embrace their slow, creeping, incrementalism toward orthodoxy perspective as being non -apostolic and unbiblical.

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So name the names. You're not going to find my material on Mormonism to fall into those categories, but without naming names, then you're just broad brushing everybody.

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While a lot of it may be true as well, I like the tone of the book in that let's really get to the philosophical and the theological and the biblical issues.

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Notice the order? Philosophical first, biblical last. And not just talk about you guys and your polygamy, your unfortunate background.

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Yeah, that's all we ever talk about is polygamy. And the unsavory character of Joseph Smith in a lot of ways. We beat them over the head so much with that.

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Let's get down to some issues. I think that's right, and it's to Karl Masser's credit, the editor of this book, that he insisted on this sort of approach where one would take

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Mormon scholars seriously as scholars and not just engage in Mormon bashing.

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At the same time, I think we need to be as aggressive and assertive as we can be in that there are some things that just really need to be straightened out.

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Right, you can't compromise. They don't need to be straightened out, Mr. Harris.

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They need to be repented of. See the difference? There's a difference between straightening something out and repenting of it.

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It's the difference between truth and error. The truth, but you can speak the truth in love. In that the Mormon church, the

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LDS, they have a horrific PR problem, and they know it. And so they're always launching multi -million dollar campaigns to try to shore up the image of Mormons and Mormonism, and they even wanted to get rid of the term

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Mormon in a lot of the PR campaigns. Which is why you can go to www .mormon

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.org. And go toward Latter -day Saints or Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day

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Saints, which sounds a lot more Christian. Yes, oh it does. And this represents a very, very significant change from traditional historic

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Mormonism. Traditionally, Mormons have emphasized that they are not

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Christians. That Christianity is what Joseph Smith called the great apostasy.

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That for centuries the church has existed in this apostate state of rebellion against God until Joseph Smith came along and reclaimed the original revelation.

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And so Mormons have traditionally sought to distance themselves from Christianity and say how they are not part of these apostate denominations and churches.

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But now you'll notice the PR campaign is very different. Now Mormonism is cast as just another

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Christian denomination akin to Methodists or Presbyterians.

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And what have I called this for quite some time now? Described it in Is Amor My Brother?

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The mainstreaming of Mormonism. I would never say is just another denomination. But there's no question that ever since Hinckley there's been this desire to be viewed as a

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Christian church. But that then becomes grounds for proselytizing once you have that door opened, of course, from the

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Mormon perspective. Or Episcopalians or Baptists. Mormons or members of the

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LDS are simply another Christian denomination and therefore have a place at the table.

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So it's a very different self -description and self -understanding that contemporary

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Mormons have. My own recent observation is Mormon missionaries trying to downplay or soften what's been thrown at them so much.

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And that is the view that all of you, that is the view that all of us, Mormons in particular, have an opportunity to become gods ourselves and so on.

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And what they're saying now, at least in this latest PR campaign that's on websites, major websites all across the country, is, no, we believe that we can become like God, more like God, rather than become

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God. Yes, and that can sound very innocuous, doesn't it? Because we're supposed to be more like Christ and God is conformist to the image of Christ and so on.

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But that's wholly different than becoming gods ourselves and the God that we worship actually starting out as a man and then growing to become like God.

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But that's what traditional Mormonism has taught. Yes, that was Joseph Smith's view is that... That wasn't just Joseph Smith's view.

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That is the view that's still presented in the Mormon temple where the temple Mormon is going to the temple. That's not just Joseph Smith's view.

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See, they're even helping with the mainstreaming here by claiming this is, you know, that was then.

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Well, that's still Orthodox Mormonism. Yes, there has been a de -emphasis in the proclamation of that openly.

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And as a result, the Mormon church's growth rate has plummeted. Keep that in mind.

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God, Yahweh, or Jehovah was once a human being and was elevated to the position of being

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God of this universe. Now, did you notice Dr. Craig doesn't understand Mormon theology?

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He doesn't understand the difference between Elohim and Jehovah. Elohim being the God of this world and his first begotten son being

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Jehovah. Uh, that's one of the problems I think you have when you don't actually study the official teachings of the

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Mormon church, because Karl Mosser told you that that's not really what matters. You need to study what the scholars say.

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And you end up not really representing what the current position of the church, even in official documents.

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Again, they don't have any creeds, but the first presidency did put out a statement on the relationship of Elohim and Jehovah at the beginning of the last century and sort of clarifies those things.

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And that someday you and I, if we obey good Mormon teaching and are married in the temple and do all the other cities, we'll become

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God over our own universe. And we will be God of that world and we'll be worshipped by the people in that world.

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So it is a polytheistic view that even involves the apotheosis or the divinization of human beings into becoming gods.

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Many saw it as a really positive move for understanding among Christians and Mormons when Ravi Zacharias was invited to speak there in Salt Lake City and that got some press.

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You had two reactions. You had those who write a bunch of anti -Mormon material that said he wasn't strong enough and he should have gone gone after him after all.

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Isn't it amazing to hear Christians using the very same argumentation terminology that Mormons have always used?

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Why do you call it anti -Mormon material? What defines anti -Mormon material?

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I mean, from a Mormon perspective, the book that William Lane Craig, what William Lane Craig said at the beginning of this interview would have been very anti -Mormon, would it have not?

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So it just amazes me, falling into that trap the way that Kevin Harris did here.

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Polytheism and their heretical views, he should have gotten after him more. And others who said no, he was very gracious and opened up doors that need to be opened up, perhaps.

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So I'm for the latter approach in that there's plenty of publications out there that point out the idiosyncrasies of Mormon theology.

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Now maybe we need to, again, get down to some nitty -gritty. Right. If Ravi— Did you catch that?

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There's nothing about the nitty -gritty in all that other stuff, allegedly. Well, of course there is.

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But again, by being just so nebulous about this anti -Mormon stuff, you don't even know who you're talking about.

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But the problem is, it wasn't what Ravi Zacharias said that was the issue. It was what everybody else said that was the issue, especially

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Richard Mao, apologizing for Christians having been evangelizing

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Mormons all this time and misrepresenting them and everything else. If you're going to talk about what happened at the

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Temple, you've got to talk about that. And what has happened since then? Has there been some great rapprochement that has taken place since then?

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I don't see it. Ravi had gone into that situation and treated it as though he were speaking in just another

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Christian church. I think that would have been a mistake. That would have been detrimental, because that would have given the

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Mormon church the authentication that it so desperately craves.

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But I don't think Ravi did that. I remember reading his speech, and it was very, I thought, very strong on Orthodox, Trinitarian— It was.

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And therefore, it was really a talk that was very much in -your -face, so to speak.

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And I thought that was good that he did that. There were no signs of compromise. No, not at all.

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As you say, gracious but uncompromising in his proclamation of the gospel.

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Of the gospel. Well, okay, but there was compromise on the part of Richard Mao, and that's the problem, the president of Fuller Seminary.

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There was compromise in some of the prayers that were offered. And, you know, anyway, we addressed that.

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I've even added material to the new edition of Isamor, my brother, to address that particular issue in its reprinting.

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So you can look at that. But there's, again, an amazing example of, let's get the heretics to be just a little bit less radical.

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Let's not call them to repent. Abandon the falsehood that they have been given by a false prophet.

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Let's even help them continue to believe in a false prophet, just not what the false prophet taught.

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That's the apostolic example. Here's what happens, folks, when your methodology of apologetics is determined by philosophy and not by the holy scriptures.

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Perfect example. I don't think you get any clearer than what we just heard. Now, completely shifting gears in the last 20 minutes of the program here to the

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Pastors Perspective Program. And as you know, we have responded to a number of statements that have been made on that program.

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And my name keeps coming up. And my name came up in this phone call as well. It turns out that Joseph M.

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Holden, who is the individual that has been on with Brian in at least one of the other programs that I've reviewed, is actually the president of Veritas Seminary, which sort of began after the big split took place between Norman Geisler and Southern Evangelical Seminary.

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And it was found on the other end of the nation. And Geisler is involved with this new seminary,

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Veritas Seminary, over in California. And so he is the president of that seminary.

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And so this is about as close as we've come so far to a meaningful attempt to respond to what

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I've said about 1 John 5 .1, 1 John 2 .29, 1 John 4 .7. And I presented that in video form and on the blog, which gets referenced here.

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I want you to listen very carefully. First of all, President Holden does not give the same interpretation that Brian Broderson gave when the first person called in about 1

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John 5 .1. He comes up with a new perspective. We're going to be told by Mr.

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Holden that what John's actually talking about is how we can recognize Christians.

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We should be able to recognize Christians by looking at them. That's what he's going to say.

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And that, in fact, while the answer before this had been, no, this shows us that faith results in regeneration, now we're going to be told, really, this doesn't have anything to do with it at all.

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So it's only a four -minute clip. Actually, it says five minutes here. Five -minute clip. Let's listen to the question and the answer and then interact with it.

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From the pastor's perspective, this was March 2, 2010.

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And or Acts 16 .31 that says, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.

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And I'm hitting pause, and it does not want to pause for some reason. Those are initial sentences.

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Thank you very much. Let's go back to right there and try this again and hope it works this time.

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Oh, it doesn't want to do it at all. I don't know why. Let's try double -clicking here. No, it's not going to do that either.

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I'm not sure why. Double -click, double -click. Well, it does not want to go back to the beginning for some strange reason.

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I don't know why. There we go. Now I got the little thingy and the big thingy. And all the little thingies are happy now.

40:32

So let's see if we can start from the beginning. Hi, guys. I just want to say I love your program.

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Thank you. And I was online looking at a blog of this guy named

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James White and his entrance for 1 John 5 .1. And what I believe to understand was he was saying that we are born again before we believe.

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And it's really confused me. And he got into something about Greek. And I don't understand Greek. So if you could just please explain 1

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John 5 .1 to me, I'll hang up so I can listen. OK, Rachel, thanks for your call. That's a great question.

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And Joe, I know that you would love to explain that. And this is something that's now kind of come up.

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We had a call, Cheryl and I did, a couple of weeks back where somebody pointed to 1 John 5 .1

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as one of those proof texts for regeneration before faith.

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And yet it doesn't seem to me that that's really what the text is talking about, is it? No, it's not.

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Actually, I think the Reformed stance on this, I think they spoke a little bit too soon when it goes to show you're born again or born of God.

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And then the faith comes after. So let's just read the first half of the verse. So everybody knows what we're talking about.

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It says, whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. And when you look at the

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Greek text, it implies that being born is actually in a perfect tense.

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That simply means that it's a past completed action with abiding results into the present.

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But when you look at the word believes, it is in the present tense. It's a present participle, literally.

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So the Reformed scholar would say that because belief is in the present and it says you have been born of God completely in the past, that this somehow shows that faith follows from being born again in a salvific way.

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But that does not come out of the Greek text here. And this might be a classic example of trying to read the text with too much of your own theological system as part of it.

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Born again definitely means that or born of God means you have been completely saved or born of him in the past.

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What this text is simply telling you, and it's in concert with the theology of John in First John, it's in concert with discovering who are genuine

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Christians. So when you are born of God, that person can look at another person and tell whether they are actually in the faith.

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So the fact that belief is present tense simply means that the one born of God will characterize belief in their life.

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It has nothing to do with the initial salvation of the individual, but it has everything to do with a demonstration of salvation that comes from one who is born of God.

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And we see this throughout the theology of John. In fact, if you go up to First John four, seven, it says here, beloved, let us love one another for love is of God.

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And everyone who loves is born of God. It's the same grammatical construction, present tense love with perfect tense born of God.

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So that simply means that love is going to characterize in the present moment and on that person who has already been born again.

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In fact, back in Chapter two again, John is talking all about practicing righteousness, and he uses the same construction born of him or born of God.

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And that means that the practicing of righteous is something that's a natural byproduct of being born of God.

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It has nothing to do with initial salvation. It has everything to do with discovering which people are actually saved.

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And you can see this all through the gospel of John and John. First John chapter four. It talks about the spirit of Antichrist, and we need to make a distinction between doctrine and about how

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Christ is viewed. And then when you get to First John three, it talks about those who are manifest, who are the children of the devil or who are children of God.

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How do you know? Well, you have to look at what follows from their born of born again position. So the theology of John here in the context is understanding who indeed are in the faith.

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It's not talking about how you come to faith. If you want that, you have to go to like Romans five one that says that somebody is justified by faith and or act 1631 that says, believe on the

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Lord Jesus Christ and you and your household will be saved. Those are initial salvation passages.

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These are simply distinguishing who's in the faith and who's out. Excellent answer, Joe. And I think just again to simplify it, what you said there, the last point, it's really the context.

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What is John wanting to communicate at this point? He's not talking about how one is born again.

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That is not the topic of discussion here in First John five one, is it? No. Right.

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Okay, great. Was it Rachel? I think it was Rachel that called. Anyway, I hope that answered it for you.

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And thanks. That's a great question. And I think I'm just glad Joe had a good opportunity to answer that because there has been a lot of controversy over that over the past couple of weeks.

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So I think Joe's done a good job of just kind of setting the record straight here. So the record has been set straight and everything we've said has now been refuted.

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Well, not quite. Watching comments and channel, a lot of folks are just sitting there going, what?

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What was that? Well, let's see if we can we can understand at least what he was trying to say. Basically, the argument is this doesn't have anything to do.

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This doesn't tell us anything about the relationship of faith and regeneration. Despite the fact that both words appear in the same verse, and there are almost no other verses in the

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Bible where they do, we can't actually learn anything. About the relationship of faith and regeneration from looking at these words.

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And in fact, you notice the two texts that were given. Well, yeah, these are initial salvation texts. These answer the question.

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Neither one of them contained the word what? Regeneration or being born again. Notice that Romans 5 .1

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confuses justification with regeneration. And Acts 16 .31 uses the broad term saved.

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Neither one actually address what comes first, regeneration or faith and do not address the issues, for example, of whether the heart of stone can have true saving faith and then become a heart of flesh.

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And all that stuff has remained unanswered. Instead, there has been a retrenchment. There's been a stepping back a little bit and saying, well, actually, 1

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John 5 .1 doesn't have anything to do with what we've been talking about anyway. Actually, 1

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John 5 .1 is about how you can identify real Christians. Now, allegedly, this is identifying who are genuine

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Christians. Well, there's truth to that. The text directly says whoever is believing that Jesus is the

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Christ has been born of God. And so, yeah, if you reject that Jesus is the

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Christ, then you're not born of God. No question about that. There's truth in that statement.

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But that doesn't change the fact that it's making a statement that, while true in the later

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Christian life in the synergist perspective, looking at someone who's been a Christian for five years, it's saying, see, that person is continuing to believe that Jesus Christ because in the past they've been born of God.

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That's true. But here's the question for the synergists like Mr. Holden and Brian Broderson.

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Here's the question. Would 1 John 5 .1 be true even at the point of initial faith?

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And they'd have to say no because they insist that the unregenerate heart, the person dead in sin, where the

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Bible says they can't even submit themselves to the law of God, actually can submit themselves to the law of God, can do spiritual acts such as repenting and believing, resulting in regeneration.

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But for that initial point, the person who is believing that Jesus is the

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Christ, at that initial point, 1 John 5 .1 is wrong because at that initial point, whosoever believes that Jesus Christ has not yet been born of God, but because they are believing will be born of God.

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See? So they've now come up with an interpretation of 1 John 5 .1 that actually is untrue at a certain point in the

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Christian life and then becomes true afterwards. That's why this text is relevant.

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Because you see, what John is telling us is that that being born of God is the foundation of what true saving faith is all about.

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If you are believing that Jesus is the Christ, it's because you've been born of God. If you are loving God, it's because you've been born of God.

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If you are doing righteousness, it's because you've been born of God. It's all of God. It's God's activity that marks the true

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Christian church. So there is a truth statement in that John does want us to be able to recognize who true believers are and who are not.

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But the problem is, to maintain their human tradition, to maintain their dedication to synergism, to maintain their dedication to the autonomous will of man, all completely unbiblical concepts, they have had to gut the text of what it's really saying.

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The reason that we can know who true believers are, not just by looking at them. You know, this statement that a person can look at another person and tell where they are in the faith.

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That's not what John's talking about. What John is saying is, if your faith is ongoing, you're doing of good deeds is ongoing, if your love is ongoing, it's because God has changed you.

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That's what marks the Christian fellowship. It's all of God. But when you say that person can look at another person, tell where they're in the faith, that's consistent with First John.

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Really? How about the First John text that says they went out from us so that it might be demonstrated they're not truly of us?

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Well, wait a minute. If all you got to do is look at somebody, see whether they're Christian, how come we couldn't tell that they weren't

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Christians when they were in the fellowship? Why'd they have to go out so that it might be demonstrated they were not truly believers?

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Oops. See what happens when you insert your human traditions into your pretended exegesis?

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You end up making a royal mess. So when you say, well, actually, this has nothing to do with the initial salvation of individuals.

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It is a demonstration of salvation. No, it's a demonstration of the fact that God's action of causing us to be born, of regenerating us, is prior to everything else in the

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Christian life and is the ground and foundation thereof. That's what it's about. That's why he can so easily say everyone who believes

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Jesus Christ has been born of God. Everyone who's doing real works of righteousness, born of God.

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Everyone who's loving, born of God. Flows naturally. Very consistent.

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So we are told that love is going to characterize the one who's been born again. That's true. Same thing with First John 2, 29.

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Faith characterizes those who are born of God. First John 5, 1. So what gives rise to what?

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He would say, well, it doesn't answer that question except for asking application.

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If you're going to say that that's what this means, then at the actual initial point of salvation is

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First John 5, 1 true. Whoever is believing that Jesus Christ has been born of God.

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No, because from their perspective, there has to be a time where the one who is believing in Jesus Christ is the

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Jesus Christ. Has not yet been born of God. That belief results in.

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They're being born of God. The issue really is not so much timing as it is logical precedence.

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What gives rise to the other? And fundamentally, these men are synergists and they believe God's trying to save.

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Remember, Norman Geisler is the primary mover in the founding of that seminary. Remember his statement, the death of Jesus Christ saved no one.

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It made all men savable. Saveable. There is all the difference in the world between Christ saving.

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And Christ making savable. Massive difference.

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Huge difference. That's why a week from today, Dr. Brown and I will address these issues. Once again, hopefully going to the text and allowing you, the listeners to judge for yourself.

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Who is consistent in their exegesis? Who is consistent in their use of context, use of language?

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And who gives the greatest evidence of an external traditional authority interpreting their own use of the text of scripture?

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So this was a whole lot better than when the fellow called in about Ezekiel 36 and they didn't even touch the text.

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So let's give kudos for kudos. But it still wasn't an exegetically accurate, meaningful response.

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It still does not address the issue. And so I'm not calling on people to be calling the pastor's perspective and say, um, okay, going back to what you said, now what about the initial point?

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But what we are demonstrating, and I think have now demonstrated rather clearly, is that the largest non -denominational denomination in the

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United States is encrusted with tradition. But most of its people, and this is frightening, think that their tradition is the same thing as the

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Bible, the word of God. And that takes us back to that day 10 years ago now on KPXQ here in Phoenix, Dave Hunt has just finished massacring

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John Six, twisting it into a pretzel, engaging in gross exegesis.

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And I said to Dave Hunt, Dave, that's your tradition speaking. And his response to me was,

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James, I have no traditions. James, I have no traditions.

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And how many times have I had to say it? The man who thinks he has no traditions is in fact the slave of his traditions.

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What happens is those traditions then become equated with the word of God.

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And if you challenge those traditions, then you're attacking the word of God. But the most dangerous part of that is you cannot then examine critically those traditions.

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You can't bring them to the light of the word of God once you've confused them with the word of God. And that then becomes the real problem.

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And so I'm thankful for the attempted response. But once again, when we actually go to the text, we find out that as long as you're defending synergism, you will never accurately handle the word of God.

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The word of God presents the absolute freedom of the divine king of the universe to glorify himself, the triune majesty to glorify himself in the way that he chooses to do so and he does so freely.

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Every synergistic system will eventually founder on the rock of the clear exegesis of the text scripture.

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That's what we see. That's what is proven over and over again every time people attempt to defend those unbiblical traditions.

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So Lord Willen will be here at our regular time on the 23rd Tuesday morning. And then remember the 25th, an hour earlier than the

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Tuesday time for the first part of the 90 minute portion of the debate with Michael Brown on these very issues.

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See you then. God bless. The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.

59:17

If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O.

59:22

Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the

59:28

World Wide Web at aomin .org. That's A -O -M -I -N dot O -R -G. Where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.