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The Dividing Line Introduction and the Charge of Misrepresentation

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us.

Get to give that answer with gentleness and reverence. Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. 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 United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is James White.

Good morning. Welcome to Radio Free Geneva, the program that exposes the worst of the worst in anti-Calvinism. Yes, we're doing a special Dividing Line today, not only because we're not going to be able to do one for a while.

And yes, please forget the phone number. Thank you, Gary. Appreciate that deep insight on your part. That will be Gary's sole positive comment on the program today. No phone calls today because we are simply reviewing some of the worst of the worst in sermons preached by men who should know better.

Men who stand before the people of God claim to know much about the Word of God, much about the subject. And yet, for some strange and odd reason, what they say to the people of God is untrue. Today we're going to be reviewing a sermon that I listened to yesterday as I was driving to and from church.

I'm not sure that was overly wise, to be perfectly honest with you. And as my wife and I were driving along, my wife was pointing out the numerous errors in this sermon by a man, a seminary-trained man, who, as you will hear, claims to have spent a great deal of time studying the subject.

But the problem is, and that's what has led me to do this series because there's some really bad stuff out there, and I imagine some folks will be sending me some more bad stuff as we go along. I don't understand the need for dishonesty and misrepresentation in discussing this issue.

If you have to misrepresent your opponent, if you have to lie about your opponent, if you have to try to make the people listening to you think you know a lot about the subject, when in point of fact you know almost nothing about the subject at all, if you will not respond to the best your opponent has to give, then why are you doing it in the first place?

Simple question. I don't think anyone can take offense at my consternation at hearing my beliefs constantly misrepresented, constantly caricatured, constantly turned into straw men. I don't understand that.

There is no reason for that to exist amongst Christians. I'm accustomed to cultists doing that. I'm accustomed to those who believe a lie misrepresenting the truth. But that's not how this conversation should take place.

That's not how it should take place within Baptist churches, and that's normally where this is taking place. I mean, let's face it, if you're a Presbyterian arguing about the doctrines of grace, you've got a problem.

This doesn't take place within Reformed Baptist churches, because the issue is already settled there. It's already a given. However, within Baptist churches, where you have two different streams, you have your general Baptist and your particular Baptist down through history, this conversation should take place on the basis of Scripture, not on the basis of the bully pulpit.

But that's exactly what we have. I want to play you just a little clip. We're going to play the whole thing, but here is a little clip to give you an idea of the caricature, let's try it again, character and tone of the sermon that we will be listening to today by Danny O 'Gwin of the Tower Grove Baptist Church in St. Louis.

I asked him another question. I mean, I have fun with Calvinism. I mean, it's a pet peeve, all right? I could dance up here for a little bit, all right? I have a ball with it. I asked him, I said, now, these elect, that you say they're not, but that you say are elect, do they have to repent?

I said, you know, Jesus said, except you repent, you shall likewise repent. But this unconditional election, those who are elect, do they have to repent? Oh, yes, they have to repent. I said, there's another condition.

It's not unconditional, and they can't do anything with that, okay? That's the way it is with all man-made doctrine. You say, Brother Danny, would you let a Calvinist come in here and explain their view?

No. I expose Mormonism. I'm not going to call a Mormon in here. Let him explain to, I suppose, Jehovah's Witnesses. I'm not going to let a Jehovah's Witness come in here. I'm going to preach the truth from the Bible, the word, keeping the word of God, okay?

I'm not going to let, I don't want a Calvinist preaching about this bull thing, all right? It's false. Unconditional election makes God more than a monster and man less than a robot.

Well, there you go. There is a good indication of the character of this attack upon Reformed theology, and that's what it is. It's a one-sided straw man attack filled with enough logical errors to take up a couple of different classes in a logic class.

It is filled with misrepresentation. It's filled with straw men. And yet, sadly, it is representative of much of what we see being presented as if it is a response, as if it is an answer to Reformed theology.

And so we're going to play this sermon today, and we're going to be responding to it as we go along. We're going to go a little bit long today. We're going to go as far as we can go and still cram it onto one CD.

And we're not going to worry about breaks and things like that. That's what we'll be doing tomorrow on the regular dividing line when the phones are open and you can call in. In fact, obviously, obviously, and this is one difference, as you heard in the clip I just played, Pastor O 'Gwin does not want a Calvinist preaching behind his pulpit, and he does not want a Calvinist to be able to explain his position.

I, of course, would be more than happy to dialogue with Pastor O 'Gwin. In fact, I'd be more than happy to travel to St. Louis and, on quote-unquote neutral ground, discuss exegetically the doctrines of grace with Pastor O 'Gwin.

And there are many questions I would like to ask him because I can honestly say, having listened to the entirety of his sermon, that he never once raised a single issue that demonstrated either a serious examination of Reformed theology, nor an objection that has not been answered over and over and over and over again.

What we got was tradition, not the Scriptures. And I would be happy to dialogue on that subject, would he be willing to do so as well. So, with that, this sermon started off the first seven and a half minutes, why every Christian ought to be a soul winner.

And if you've ever sat in a Southern Baptist church, you've heard those seven and a half minutes numerous times before. And then, all of a sudden, the sermon took a hard left, never came back to the subject really, just went that direction.

At seven and one half minutes into the program, Pastor O 'Gwin began his attack upon Calvinism. And that's what we're going to be listening to beginning right here.

Calvinism Defined as a Hindrance to Evangelism

Right here, before we go any further and look at the other points, I'm going to come back in just a moment and share those points with you. And I'm going to share with you something right now that is causing a great deal of division in the church and in Christendom today.

And it is also a hindrance to evangelism. It is a hindrance to soul winning. And it is a teaching called Calvinism. It's called Calvinism. Now, before I go any further, let me share with you what I'm talking about.

Now, there is a precious doctrine that is taught in the Bible, and it is the doctrine of election, and I believe in election. But, I do not believe in the Calvinistic interpretation of election because that's false.

There's a precious doctrine in the Bible called predestination. I'm a strong believer in predestination. I do not believe in the Calvinistic interpretation of predestination.

I just stopped just for a moment to note the fact that for some odd reason, not only are these anti-Calvinists unwilling to utilize terms that describe their own beliefs accurately, and this is going to become a major portion of Pastor O 'Gwynn's presentation.

He is going to spend much time talking about how Calvinists, if they use that term, are followers of men, and he, of course, is just a follower of God in the Bible. The old, well, if you use a term to describe your theological beliefs, that's somehow an error.

There are terms that describe Pastor O 'Gwynn's theological beliefs. Whether he's willing to use them or not is sort of irrelevant as to their accuracy or the application of them to his position. But, why is it that anti-Reform people don't want to use words to describe their theology?

They don't want to allow their theology to be examined on the same basis as that of John Calvin or Spurgeon or Edwards or B .B. Warfield or whoever? This inconsistency, seemingly coupled together with the vitriolic means of denunciation, is meant to stifle discussion within their congregations of this issue.

And we need to recognize that's exactly what the desire here is. There is a tremendous fear on the part of pastors like Pastor O 'Gwynn of Reform theology taking root within their fellowship. That's very, very clear.

Very, very clear. He's going to say that it's always, and this really goes back to another section we're going to be playing in future episodes of Radio Free Geneva, comments made by Paige Patterson. When John Piper spoke at his school and the students had many questions afterwards, one of the reasons that he lists for opposing these movements, opposing the Founders Movement, things like that, is that it's detrimental to evangelism.

And of course they have a very specific, very narrow, and in most cases very unbiblical definition of what quote-unquote evangelism is. But this becomes the modus operandi. There is a fear of this theology, and therefore by attacking it vociferously, you try to keep it from being discussed.

If someone raises a question in a Bible study class after listening to this sermon, automatically eyes will turn to that person, and people will tell other people, and staff people will talk to you after service, and so on and so forth.

But fear of discussing the biblical truth of the sovereign freedom of God in the matter of salvation. Fear that their traditions will be overthrown because they are unwilling to honestly examine what the issues really are.

I'm a strong believer in the sovereignty of God, and in the providence of God. Election, predestination, sovereignty, providence of God, precious truths that are taught in the word of God. And I am a strong believer in those truths.

Except, of course, when they are defined historically, when they are defined according to the meanings of the original language of the scripture. In other words, they recognize these words are there. You can't read Ephesians 1, you can't read Romans 9, without seeing these things.

But one thing that is utterly absent from this sermon is any exegetical attempt to actually interact with any of the key passages. And so to try to head that off, what you do is you say you believe all those things, but you just leave it undefined as to exactly what it is you believe in the first place.

But we reject the false teaching and the false interpretation of Calvinism.

Now, notice already Calvinism has been said to be false at least twice, maybe three different times, and it has yet to even be defined. There has not even been a single definition offered, but the people in the pew know one thing.

It's false, whatever it is, it's false. And our pastor is very exercised about the fact that it's false. And the result of that is an unwillingness on the part of those who view this man as their ultimate spiritual authority on earth today, to actually seriously interact with any of the doctrines of grace themselves.

You know what Calvinism teaches, now listen to me carefully, I'm going to give you five brief points in just a moment or two, and then we're going to move on with things that are important. You say, why are you addressing this?

Because it causes division in the body of Christ. I have over 50 volumes, over 50 volumes on Calvinism in my library.

Now how many times have we heard that? You may recall when I reviewed a sermon offered by Pastor Revis down in Florida, that there was much discussion of how many volumes he had in his library. Remember Dave Hunt?

Dave Hunt talked about reading all these books, and his library being filled with books on Calvinism, and he knows more about Calvinism than 90 of the Calvinists do. And we encounter this over and over again, the assertion on the part of these individuals, I've talked with Calvinists all over the place.

Well, the problem is, and he's about to even expand upon this, he's claiming to have spent an entire year studying this issue, wanting to become a Calvinist. Eventually, I'm not sure if he meant to say this, but he's going to say God told him that this is false.

The problem is, of course, that's why I'm doing this special edition of The Dividing Line. What are we going to do with that claim? You have to do one of two things. Either you have to reject it and say, I'm sorry, you're being dishonest, you didn't do that, you may have 50 volumes in your library, but it doesn't mean you've read them, it doesn't mean you've studied them, it doesn't mean that you've examined them with any kind of meaningful academic scholarship at all.

Or, if we accept the statement, then we have to say you are dishonest. You're dishonest because the definitions that are going to be offered, the arguments that are going to be offered, are misrepresentations of the position under discussion.

So it's one of the two. Either you didn't read the books you claimed to have read, or you read them and now you are purposefully, willfully misrepresent. There's only one of two ways of doing it. Well, okay, I guess there's a third.

He read the books and cannot understand them, is incapable of following basic argumentation. There's three options. Either dishonesty in reading them, dishonesty in misrepresenting them, or a lack of ability to understand what the issues are.

But none of those are positive things. None of those are positive things. So this is the kind of thing that truly bothers me deeply. That individuals, I think if I stand before the people of God and I say to them, I have done this, I need to have done it.

I have a responsibility. My feelings are irrelevant. Utterly irrelevant. People say, you know, you might offend someone. I think we need to be more concerned about God being offended and his word being offended in its misuse.

And I think we should be offended when people stand before God and they don't argue properly. That should be offensive to us. When someone stands before the people of God and says, I'm a man of God and I'm going to use the worst possible argumentation I possibly can on something as important as whether God is free in the matter of salvation.

That should be offensive. It isn't to most people. The idea in our society is, well, you know, you may disagree with them, but everybody's got to be nice now. You know, some of these that we're going to review, you could have a nice conversation with some of these folks.

I think I could have a nice conversation with Paige Patterson. I really do. But this fellow, as you're going to hear, is going to get downright nasty and he's going to do so. And at one point, he is simply going to repeat an error that we've heard over and over again, and there is no excuse for it.

None.

But he's going to repeat it anyways.

A Year of Study, Seminary Training, and the Appeal to Augustine

When I graduated from seminary, I wanted to be a Calvinist. When I graduated from seminary, I set out to be a Calvinist, and I started studying. And my wife, she was in the early service. If you were in here, she testified to this.

I would get up at 4 o 'clock every morning. I did that for almost a year. I'd get up at 4 o 'clock every morning. Listen carefully now. I gave my quiet time to the study of election, predestination, sovereignty of God, and Calvinism.

And it was there, that quiet time in the wee hours of the morning, when God caused me to see the fallacies of Calvinism and the fact that although election is true and a precious doctrine, predestination is true, it is a precious doctrine, yet the Calvinistic interpretation of it is false.

And it's called division. J. Dwight Pentecost.

And before we listen to J. Dwight, I thought it was Dwight, but it was J. Dwight Pentecost, notice what's said. Almost a whole year, 50 volumes, graduate. This is a seminary graduate. This is a man with a graduate degree, a master's degree in theology, maybe a master's of divinity.

I don't know. But a year's worth of study on the doctrine of election and predestination. Now, if you're going to stand in front of people, make that claim, then aren't there certain minimums that could be expected here?

Aren't there going to be certain minimum levels of honesty, certain minimum levels of accuracy in your representation of others?

Yes?

Am I asking too much there? I don't think so. That's not what these folks are going to get. That's not what they're going to hear. And it's amazing when you recognize that these individuals are standing before the people of God, and what they say in a sermon is so much different than what they say in, you know, well, for example, listening to Paige Patterson speaking to the students, and listening to Paige Patterson speaking at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, two different things, a little more fire and a little more honesty.

I'm the same way. I'm the same way. I get rolling when I'm talking to folks, and I'm probably less guarded at that point than I would be in other situations. I fully understand all of that. It's in the sermon, however, that we hear what a person really is thinking.

So here's a man, graduate of seminary, wanted to become a Calvinist. Notice, God led him to realize that Calvinism is wrong. He's later going to put that in more blunt terms, probably about 15, 20 minutes into the sermon.

But there's the assertions that are being made.

And his volume is one of the over 50 volumes I've got on Calvinism in my library built for this subject. J .Y. Pentecost, who is, by the way, a partial Calvinist, not a high Calvinist, but he said, as I approach this subject, he said, and I quote to you, he said, I must admit that this subject has caused more division in the body of Christ than anything else I can think of.

I'm going to tell you something, dear friend.

Let me address that. More division in the body of Christ than anything else. Well, you know what? Evidently, that's supposed to mean that Calvinism is wrong. That what you've got is the body of Christ, and Calvinism is coming in and causing division.

Of course, assuming then, the non-reformed position, which he never addresses, is very much in line with Rome's view of the will and the grace of God, that becomes the default position. That's the default position.

So, if something causes division, for example, in the first centuries of the Christian church, the first centuries of the Christian church, there was great division. And it wasn't about Calvinism, was it?

No, it was over the deity of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity. So, could it have been a valid argument back then? This doctrine has caused much division in the body of Christ. Therefore, you shouldn't talk about it.

Therefore, it's not important. Therefore, we shouldn't even think that we can come to conclusions about it, right? Here's one of the dangers, folks, of having no functional recognition of your place in the history of the church.

This is a problem that afflicts many Baptists. Baptist history lasts about 50 years. And many of the mistakes that Baptists make is because they have no sense of history whatsoever. And they don't take their statements and plug them in someplace else.

And go, hmm, that wouldn't make much sense, would it? And why does Calvinism, quote unquote, create division? Well, in this situation, it's because we have a pastor who detests and misunderstands Calvinism, who has decided that this tradition that he holds, an unbiblical tradition, I would argue, and could demonstrate, is going to be allowed to stand in his church without question, without challenge.

Well, that's going to cause division, right? So, whose fault is it that it causes division? Doesn't the biblical exegesis of the text cause division when there are unbiblical traditions being held by people?

Now, he's going to say it's Calvinism that's unbiblical. Well, how do you discover that? Not by simply squashing all conversation. If he truly thought, if he truly believed, that biblical exegesis would demonstrate the errors of Calvinism, as he clearly indicates he does, then what would he have to fear from it?

Well, not a whole lot at all. That isn't the case, however, as we will see as he goes on.

It's hard for me to believe that God would be the originator of something that would cause division in the body of Christ, and cause the body of Christ to get all cracked as far as reaching souls for the honor and the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Apply that to the early centuries of the church, and what do you have? They shouldn't have been arguing about the Trinity back then.

I was talking with Dr. Larry Lewis here some time ago, and he said, Denny, he said, I've just moved to San Diego, and he said, all of my works and my materials are packed up. But he said, I'm going to send you a paper by Dr. Cal Guy, one of our seminary professors at New Orleans Seminary.

And he said, I'm going to send you a paper, and he said, it's the best work I've ever seen on Calvinism. And he said, in that paper, he said, Dr. Cal Guy just refers to Calvinism as a cult. He said he calls it a cult all the way through.

Now, let's make sure you're understanding that, because, you know, the quality isn't the best. And as I was driving listening to this, I had to stop and go, what did he say? Yes, he's using the word cult.

Calvinism is a cult. Well, you know, I know a little something about cults. In fact, I have a feeling I know a little bit more about cults than Pastor O 'Guinn does. And he's going to mention Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses.

I know a little something about those movements. And to make that kind of a comparison is, of course, utterly ahistorical and absurd. Ahistorical and absurd. That's the best that can be said about it.

The only reason to raise such an assertion in light of the true definition of a cult, given the fact that the greatest defenses of the doctrine of the Trinity, deity of Christ, justification by faith, have been written by Calvinists, not by Arminians, is to say that it's being used to create emotional demonization and emotional response to the very term Calvinism.

This is all designed to stop biblical and critical thinking. It's designed to stop sound thinking and simply replace that with emotion. That is what you're listening to going on here in the Tower Grove Baptist Church in St. Louis.

And he said, when I was at the whole mission board... How many of you remember Larry Lewis, former pastor here? He started the Christian school. He said, when I was at the whole mission board, he said, I had to deal with this all the time because of our interfaith department, so on and so forth.

And he said, I told people, I said, look, I'm not a Calvinist. On the other end of the spectrum is Arminianism. And that's false, too, okay? You know why? Because both of those doctrines, listen to me carefully, folks, they're man-made doctrines.

They even bear the name of men.

Think about that one for just a moment. The only logical way that that kind of argument can have validity is if a truth in the Word of God could never be described by or attached to the name of a man.

And so Pelagianism must be wrong simply because you can call it Pelagianism. Is that logical or rational thinking? Of course not. It's utterly irrational. There's no logical argumentation that can be mustered to defend such an assertion, but you don't hear too many people objecting in the background.

I'm going to tell you something. You stay away from man-made doctrines. You get hooked up and lined up with Jesus, and you stay with Him, and you don't let Calvin, Arminian, Ogwin, or anyone else deter you.

Amen?

That's right. You need to stay focused on Jesus Christ.

So if I identified his theology as Ogwinian, then by definition it's wrong, right?

The Son of God. I have people say, well, what did they do before Calvinism? And they don't know what they did.

Excuse me?

You ask Calvinists about their belief before Calvin, and what is it they say? They say nothing? They have no response?

Excuse me?

Pastor Ogwin, if the Calvinists you've talked to have no response to that, I'm volunteering my services. I would be very glad to help you and to disabuse you of the many straw men that you have picked up from these extremely ignorant Calvinists that you've been talking to.

Because we're going to, you know, as you know, actually before that we would trace the dialogue and discussion all the way back to the centuries. You know, you can sort of take a stop off there around the turn of the millennium, a little bit beforehand with Gottschalk, and you can go back to the Council of Orange, you can go back to Augustine and Pelagius, and you can go back to discussions even before that.

And of course we like to go to the Bible personally. We like to go to Romans 8 and 9, and we like to go to John 6, passages that you didn't go to, and we like to go to those issues. These Calvinists you've been talking to, I don't know who they are.

I've not met them. It's an odd thing.

So I said, well, now 1 ,000 years, 1 ,000 years before Calvin lived, Augustine lived.

Yes, he did.

And I was looking at the early works of Augustine the other day. I have part of those and the latter works of Augustine, and he changed his views so often. I thought, my goodness, if they're based on the Bible, you don't have to change your views.

Wow.

Think about that one for just a moment. Think about that one for just a moment. Augustine, one of those few folks that you can look back upon in history, who were so towering in their intellect, and yet the mature Augustine could look back upon his earlier writings, and he had the temerity and the humility to go, you know what?

I was wrong. I was wrong. I wrote this, and as I have matured over time, I have come to understand that there's a better way of seeing that. I was in error. I retract what I said before. I really appreciate that.

You know, the people who don't do that are called the infallible popes and some Southern Baptists. Isn't that odd? Isn't that strange? I'd like a little consistency, just a little consistency in the application of the standards here.

We don't get much of that.

But that's what happens when you follow man. Augustine's conversion experience was vague. He was awful in baptism. He was awful in the church. He was awful in the Lord's Supper. He was awful in many cardinal doctrines.

Why would anyone follow him today? And let me just stop right there.

You know, I really, really wonder if Pastor O 'Gwynn is suggesting here that he would be able to offer a meaningful, exegetical critique of Augustine on these issues, or if he's just simply going with what somebody told him once.

That's what I really wonder. What we have here is Pastor O 'Gwynn's tradition versus Augustine. And it's real easy to preach that way. It's real easy to get people all excited that way. And obviously, I disagree with Augustine on numerous issues.

But at least when I do so, I can recognize that I'm standing on the shoulders of giants. I have many advantages that Augustine did not have. And this man doesn't even seem to begin to recognize that. It's not a good attitude to have.

You don't learn much from history in that way.

Augustine, Infant Salvation, and the Misreading of Double Predestination

I had some fun with him, okay? This is where I had some fun. It's not funny, but I couldn't help but chuckle as I studied this. In the area of, of course, Calvinism believes that God elected certain people to go to heaven before the foundation of the world, and he elected certain people to go to hell.

Now, there you see it again. I see that this is probably the single most consistent. I get the feeling when you see a particular area, a particular error, repeated with the very same words over and over and over again, it's probably due to the fact that these individuals are not doing any original thinking themselves.

They are borrowing from one another. They're just simply repeating what other people have said. They've not thought about themselves, and they're just running with it. It is constant, absolutely constant, to hear people assume that if you believe in double predestination, or they like to throw out, sometimes like one particular author misunderstanding it, they like to throw out superlapsarianism.

And everybody goes, ooh, superlapsarianism, wow, you're smart. They throw it out there, and what they want to do is they want to make election and reprobation equivalent terms. And so you just heard it.

He said some are elected to heaven, the rest are elected to hell. That is not true. That's not true. There is no equality between the two actions. Election is always unto salvation. Election is gracious.

Election is free. Election is merciful. Reprobation is not the equivalent. It is not the other thing on the other side of an equal sign with election. Election is positive. Reprobation is not. It does not take a positive action of God to reprobate.

It does not take an extension of grace to reprobate. Reprobation involves the exercise of justice and holiness. Election to salvation involves the exercise of mercy and grace. They are not equivalent terms.

But O 'Gwen, Patterson, Rogers, all these people just want to throw it out there, misrepresent it, for the sake of the impact that it has. And you are going to hear this over and over again. Now in those 50 volumes, didn't somebody say this?

Didn't somebody bring this out? Isn't this a logical understanding of what the issues are? So why misrepresent it? What is gained by that? Emotional confusion is gained by that, not the truth.

If that's true, it's not. But if it is, there are people in this world who have no chance, no opportunity, if you don't want to use the word chance, of going to heaven whatsoever. But that's what some Calvinists believe, not all.

In Calvinism, you have what is called single predestination. Single predestination is where God just elected certain people to go to heaven, and He didn't elect the others to go to hell. But for the fact that He didn't elect them to go to heaven, they automatically go to hell.

Double predestination in Calvinism is where God elected certain people to go to heaven and certain people to go to hell.

Notice again the error of equating the two. Again, I just throw my hands up and go, I don't know why these people don't know what they're talking about. I don't know what motivates a person to stand in front of people and make this kind of false accusation when they've also stood there and said, I've studied, I've studied, I've studied, I've studied.

I don't understand it. It makes no sense to me. But it is what we have to deal with all the time.

And so the question came up, well what about infants? Now here's where it gets juicy and funny. Augustine, the originator, now Calvin came along.

Juicy and funny? When you get to the issue of infants?

Excuse me?

He picked up his words and revised them. He didn't have enough sense to do that. But Augustine, in his words, said that all infants went to hell if they died in infancy. Can you believe that? Can you believe that people would follow someone that stupid and ignorant?

To say that Pastor O 'Gwynn's reading of Augustine is less than nuanced might be a tad bit nice on my part. But, you know, I don't remember. Something sort of tells me that 1600 years from now, no one will be reading the works of Danny O 'Gwynn.

But 1600 years later, people are still reading the works of Augustine. Now, there's a reason for that. The reason being that there are so many of them. And there's significantly more to Augustine's view in regards to infants that it is very clear to me that Pastor O 'Gwynn has no concept of.

No idea. Humility would require Pastor O 'Gwynn to say what I would say. I am not an expert on Augustine's doctrine of infants. I know a good bit about Augustine's doctrine of the sacraments of the church, his argumentation with Pelagius, the contradictions created by his argument with the Donatists, and the resultant sacramental theology he developed.

But at least I've taken the time to listen to the man. I really doubt that Pastor O 'Gwynn would want to be treated the way that he just treated Augustine.

I can't. Don't mind calling. Now, hear my heart. I'm speaking in love, but I'm going to tell you something, dear friends. When I reveal something that's false, I get excited about it, if it's not in keeping with the word of God.

But Augustine, Augustine, and like I said, I've got his early writings, his latter writings, and Augustine said that every time that an infant died, that infant went straight to hell. Now, because people, a thousand years later, when John Calvin came along, and by the way, listen to this now.

Have you noticed it's a little bit hard to follow this sermon? That's about the tenth partial sentence that started going one direction and then stops and goes a completely different direction. Right?

That's okay. I do that. That's understandable. But it does make it a little bit difficult to respond to all the different directions that people go. I'm sorry. At this point, I started laughing. Calvin was born in 1509 and died in 1564.

So we're a hundred years off here. Something tells me that probably one of those 50 volumes actually contained this information, but somehow it didn't make it to the pulpit that morning.