Three Debates

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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. Well ignore those silly numbers, here we go with another jumbo DL 90 minutes of biblical, theological apologetics and we press forward, we are going to be hopefully on a,
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I forgot to look at this, but I'm pretty certain next Thursday ain't going to happen because I will be flying back to Ohio for the
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Psalm 119 conference, Phil and Ohio, oh great.
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We have a Buckeyes fan in the audience. Aren't those the guys where they, you know, the corrupt football program and the coaches getting fired and all that kind of stuff?
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Oh, we've got, so we've got Michigan and Ohio in the same, no not Michigan? Miami, oh, well that's the other corrupt one.
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Okay, yeah, all right, so all right, whatever, thought we were going to have a fist fight in the other room just because of football.
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Anyway, I'm heading to the Psalm 119 conference, I was talking about the
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Psalm 119 conference, who cares about Ohio, where it is, doesn't matter, good grief, Phil Johnson will be there and so looking forward to that and so I leave on Thursday because Ohio is a little distance from here and so I guess we'll probably have to do a
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Monday -Wednesday thing as far as the program goes next week, guys, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Tuesday -Wednesday thing as far as the program goes, so if we're going to sneak them in, we'll figure out something along those lines.
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But that's the only travel I have for this month, but boy, come October, not going to get much dividing line done in October, it's going to be, you know, we tried last time
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I was in Australia and it just, 17 -hour differences just don't work, it just,
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I don't think we got a single one in, you know, we might try, but we'll figure it out one way or the other.
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So anyways, Jumbo DL today, 90 minutes, and so let's get started.
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Jump right back into things here, see if maybe we can make a serious dent in finishing up our review of the
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Dr. Fernandez -Mr. Comus debate. We are, by the waveform, a whole lot farther into this one than the others.
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So that means we're getting close to the end. If you may recall last time, we were into the audience questions.
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So let's see, and make sure that this computer's all queued up and ready to go, and let's see where we were.
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I think Van Til put it pretty succinctly when he said that our inability is correlative with our unwillingness to believe.
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By the way, I don't remember if we played that. I certainly agree.
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But when you're in a debate and it's clear that the majority of the audience is not, they are not attending
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Reformed Theological Seminary or Westminster or something like that, they don't even know who Van Til is.
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And while I don't have anything against quoting Van Til, I am very firmly of the opinion that if you want to make an impact on an audience that is non -Reformed and you want to introduce them to the doctrines of grace, you do so from the
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Bible. You do so by demonstrating the consistency of the biblical exegesis that underlies the
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Reformed position. That's how you do it. And you don't do it by quoting some of the great fathers of the
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Reformed faith or something like that, who they don't even know. Why should they care what Van Til said?
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They don't know who Van Til is. They haven't read Van Til. And that's just some practical advice to those seeking to promote the
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Reformed message in those contexts. Yeah, and I would just say that I would agree that if Satan goes through the trouble of blinding non -believers...
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Okay, this is back to 2 Corinthians 4 .4. We discussed this right at the end of the last program as to who the
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God of this world is and what the text actually says, which was misrepresented in the question.
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In their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers. Why is there something wrong with that?
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Remember Paul's teaching. If you do not love the truth, God will cause you to love a lie.
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There is a moral imperative for those who are created in the image of God to love what
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God loves. There is a moral imperative on the part of those, every human being, to love
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God's truth. And that is just as much true and even more so for the believer.
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That's why I am concerned when I encounter people who call themselves believers, but they say, well, you know,
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I just love Jesus. I'm just not into all this doctrine stuff. What is doctrine?
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What is theology? How can you say you love Jesus when you have no interest in growing in the grace and knowledge of the
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Lord Jesus, the Messiah? Can you even explain what those three words mean in regards to Jesus if you're not growing in the grace and knowledge of the
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Lord Jesus Christ? Oh, I just love the Lord Jesus Christ. What does Lord mean? Oh, that's just that theology stuff.
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I've never understood that. I will never understand that attitude. It makes no sense. It's like saying, oh,
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I'm constantly growing in love for my wife. Really when was the last time you talked to her? I haven't talked to her in 20 years.
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It just does not make a lick of sense in any way, shape, or form. But that's what people are saying all the time.
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And they're way out of base. It's because he's trying, he's at war with God, he's trying to prevent them from believing.
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And it doesn't seem to make much sense that Satan would blind people who are already blind and are going to be eternally blind anyway.
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Unless there is a judgment from God that is clearly pronounced, for example, in Isaiah.
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Why did God tell Isaiah to go deliver this message and then tell
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Isaiah, I am going to make sure that nobody listens to that message? Well, not nobody. Because see, if you just understand the concept of the remnant, that is the elect, then you would see what's going on,
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Isaiah, and you'd see what's going on here. But there is a judicial hardening that comes to people who do not love the truth.
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They're caused to love a lie. Do we not see that around us all the time right now? What's one of the primary reasons why we see such a massive paradigm shift in the morals and ethics of our nation right now?
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It is because we have had the light, we have squinted our eyes against the light, we have had the truth, we have rejected the truth, and now we're being caused to love a lie.
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You wonder why you see people who are willing to give their lives and give money for the promotion of godlessness?
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Well, judicial hardening. There it is. Next question. Yes, this one's directed toward Dr.
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Fernandez and towards his position in some sense. If God chooses those he foreknew, if God chooses those he knew who would believe, sorry, those he foreknew that would believe, it seems that human acts inform
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God, which seems to deny his omniscience in some sense and base his election in a man -first, in somewhat of a logical order.
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Could you explain omniscience in regards to kind of a seemingly problem?
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Excellent question, because this is the question that has to be asked of all those who fundamentally deny that God's knowledge of events.
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So you have his natural knowledge and his free knowledge. Natural knowledge is the knowledge that he has of himself.
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His free knowledge is his knowledge of that which flows from his decree, his creation, and everything in creation.
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And of course, middle knowledge is that theoretical type of knowledge that has no reason for existence, which would go between the two, which posits some capacity of knowing what non -decreed individuals would do in any given circumstance, which
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I think is just, it just, it has no biblical basis. It's just, it's incoherent. But be that as it may, how does
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God know the future? Is it a passive taking in of, is it an observational thing?
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He creates time, sees what's going to happen, but since he exists outside of time, then that's how he knows. If the decree does not form the very essence and substance of what takes place in time, then what does?
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And how could God know it? And open theists would argue, this is the fundamental flaw of Arminianism that actually pretends that God can actually know the future.
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Because you cannot know the acts of free beings.
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And if you do, they are no longer free beings. Yeah, if God in his sovereignty freely chose to create a world in which creatures would have genuine free will, then if he's omniscient, if he's all -knowing, he would foreknow whatever choices they would make given whatever circumstances they would be.
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And that's just an assertion, that's not an answer. That's just an assertion. Well, if God chose to do it this way, then he would know.
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The question is, how would he know? And does that not make his actions dependent upon what he sees the creatures doing?
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If there is no decree that determines the very essence of the actions in time, and those actions now become self -caused, they are caused by acting creatures in time, then the question is, how can
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God have knowledge of that if their actions are autonomous? How can
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God have knowledge of that? If he does have knowledge of that, if, you know, right now there's two guys sitting in the control room, okay?
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Now if God knows that the one with the weird -looking shirt with the tarantula on it is going to punch the other guy in the shoulder, okay, see, he did.
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Now God knew that was going to happen. Is there any opportunity whatsoever that he could not have done that?
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Because if he could not have done that, then that would mean God's foreknowledge could be in error.
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It could be falsified, right? So how does God know?
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And if he does know, then can there be the possibility of doing the opposite?
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That's yeah, Pavlov's dog. I knew as soon as I said that that you were doomed because, well, because I have middle knowledge of him, okay?
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So I just, it was easy. I mean, even I can have middle knowledge of Barry, but the question is some other form of middle knowledge.
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How they would respond, for instance, to his prevenient grace. And so if God eternally knew
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I was going to choose to be here tonight and I was going to be here tonight, if I chose not to be here tonight,
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God would have eternally foreknown that. And I don't think that... The questioner was asking, doesn't that make
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God's foreknowledge dependent upon human actions and therefore his actions in time dependent on human actions?
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Because if the autonomous chooser of whether Phil Fernandez was or was not going to be there is not
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God, it's Phil, then God could not make a plan whereby
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Phil was there. Because if he foreknows that Phil is going to choose not to be there, then there can be no plan that would include his being there.
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Now let's say that because of this series that we have done, and I think this is a perfectly good example.
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Let's say because this series we've done in reviewing this debate, someone is convinced that the doctrines of grace are true, they are so taken with the beauty of God's sovereignty and power that they go into ministry.
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I have talked to many a seminary student where this was the case, not because of this debate, because of others.
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I know of pastors in the pastorate today who are where they are because of the debate
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I did with George Bryson, well the BAM program with George Bryson. That's what started them on the road to reform theology, their pastoring day, they have led people to Christ, therefore
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God could not have a plan whereby someone ends up in ministry because of the review of this debate because of Phil Fernandez's autonomous choice not to attend the debate that night, right?
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So all of God's plans have to depend upon what he foresees human beings doing. So who's in charge?
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That's the question that's being asked and it's not the question that is being answered.
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To me it doesn't lessen God and make him any less infinite to put him in a box and say he really can't create a world of, he can only foreknow future choices because they're not really free choices.
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It has nothing to do with boxes, everybody is putting God in a box and we believe that the box we're putting
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God in is determined by his own self -revelation, okay? If you say this is true about God and this is false about God you're quote -unquote putting
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God in a box, that's an inappropriate objection. If you believe that God has revealed true things about himself and therefore there are false things about God then quote -unquote you're making delimitations and putting him in a box.
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So leave that to the side. The question is who has the right to determine what takes place in time?
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And you can say, well God in his sovereignty chooses to create a world where he doesn't exercise his sovereignty.
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If you want to say that then don't say that God is sovereign in this world.
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Just say God has sovereignly abandoned his sovereignty, if that's what you're saying.
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But as a Mullinist, Dr. Fernandez isn't saying that, in fact he is saying that he practices a level of sovereignty on the nth degree.
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The nth degree. He works everything out to where he knows
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Phil will make the decision to be there because that's what he wants Phil to do and so he will, since he knows what
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Phil will do based on middle knowledge then he creates the circumstances to get Phil to do what he wants him to do. But the question is how does that make
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Phil free at all? It doesn't. It's the Mullinistic shell game where you're so desperate to have an autonomous creature that you will actually come up with this kind of logic and it just doesn't work.
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It promises and does not deliver.
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To me a God who is able to foreknow genuinely free choices has a greater knowledge than a
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God who could only foreknow choices because those choices aren't really free. Now to foreknow, again, this terminology is purely philosophical here.
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It is not biblical. Because you cannot show me any place in the Bible where God foreknows human actions.
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He only foreknows people, persons. And so this is a philosophical question here and it's fine to ask philosophical questions.
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Here's the philosophical question. How can God know what mankind is going to do freely?
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Is it a passive taking in of knowledge? Or does it have any active element at all?
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If it's merely passive then I question how you can say that God should be glorified for what takes place in time.
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Because the only thing you should be able to glorify God for is the stuff he's in control of that is outside the realm of the autonomous decisions of man.
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That's the only thing that you would be able to praise God for. And hence the outcome of history itself and of nations and of men.
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God has nothing to do with that. If he only passively takes in knowledge. It's just, these are the questions that we should be asking and very frequently are not.
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One of the key points, if I might just throw this in, you can both touch this. Does the fact of God foreknowing a man's free choice,
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I think is what the question was, inform God? Do we by our free choices inform
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God even though he sees it foreknowing? Inform God. Very good question.
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That is Rick Walston asking the question and it's a good question. Do we inform
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God? Does God learn whether instantaneously and simultaneously with the decree of creation or subsequently thereto?
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Logically, and leaving Molinism for aside, logically the standard
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Arminian would have to say that when God gives the decree to create there is at best a simultaneous taking in of knowledge of what the result of that decree is going to be.
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And then if you want to posit some kind of temporal experience of God there could be a learning process.
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But either one would be passive. And the determination of the actions in time does not come from God.
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Now the Molinist says, oh, the determination does come from God because he chose to actuate that particular world.
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But in the process you sacrifice any meaningful autonomy on the part of the creatures because they could not do any other.
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The actions in time are fixed in Molinism by the actualization of that particular world.
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In my understanding God foreknows. God has infinite knowledge of every possible world and what free beings would do in every possible world.
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Now that's a standard Molinistic response at that point. This possible world stuff, and God has knowledge of what any free creature that's middle knowledge, that's
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God runs the numbers and comes up with the best possible world, the best possible mixture of saved and non -saved, etc.,
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etc., etc. And then he freely chooses to actualize which of the possible worlds it is that he wants to actualize.
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And so basically my way of looking at it is if God did not want that free choice to come about he could have just actualized a different possible world.
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Now think about that. If God did not want that particular choice to come about, then he actualizes a different world.
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But once he's actualized that world, he's stuck. From the time of the decree to create, he's stuck with whatever he chose at that time, right?
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And so my question, and I've sent a couple emails now, I'm not getting any replies unfortunately, and I feel badly about that.
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I think I have been very fair. I have bent over backwards to be fair, and to be biblical, and to be brotherly, even in saying that Dr.
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Fernandez's presentation does not represent meaningful Reformed theology. It's not a criticism of meaningful
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Reformed theology. I think I've been very fair in how I've handled this. But what
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I would ask Dr. Fernandez, does he agree or disagree with William Lane Craig's answering of the question?
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Well, basically, if you're going to say that God chooses to actualize a possible world, what are his parameters?
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What motivates God to choose this world? What motivated
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God to choose a world with Genghis Khan? What motivated God to choose a world with Adolf Hitler?
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What were the motivations? You see, the Reformed person says, God chose to create in such a way as to glorify himself through the demonstration of his attributes, through the salvation of a particular people in union with Christ Jesus.
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And so it is the way that he has chosen to glorify himself.
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That's not what I get from William Lane Craig. What I get from William Lane Craig is a very utilitarian, looking for the best mixture of saved to non -saved.
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Or even more so, in the Molinistic perspective, you have people who could never be saved in any other situation.
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There are people, I understand them to believe, there are people that God could never save in any possible world.
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And so evidently, the idea is to actualize the world in which you've got the maximum number of them, but the minimum number of the other kind.
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But you see, all of this is not determined by the good pleasure of God's will.
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There's this other force out there, and it seems to be impersonal, but it's what gives rise to middle knowledge.
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And it's what determines what non -decreed beings will do in any given circumstance.
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And that, ultimately, is what constrains God's choices.
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And I would say to you, if there is a power that can constrain God's choices, that power is
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God. So we've got a God above God, evidently.
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That's not what they're saying, but I can't get anybody to answer the question. Who determines if God knows what a creature is going to do via middle knowledge, and that creature has not yet been decreed to be what the decree makes that creature, then those choices are outside of God's realm.
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And if it's outside of God's realm, and that's what constrains and limits the big calculator in the sky who's running all the possible worlds, the big divine blue.
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How's that? Remember that big blue? Now you've got the big divine blue. But all he can do is constrain and determine by middle knowledge.
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He can't do anything other than that. What's the basis upon which
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Dr. Fernandez believes God makes these choices? I think that's an absolutely fair question, meaningful question, important question.
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Okay, so God isn't informed by man's free choice, in your opinion? Yeah, I think that's exactly what happens if we believe in God's exhaustive foreknowledge, and he foreknows what men will freely choose, but he doesn't determine what they will freely choose.
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That's basically classical Arminianism. Then, yeah, our free choice ends up determining
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God's choice. God looks down the corridor of time, watches the movie ahead of time, or whatever you want to say, sees what we're going to do, freely do, and then chooses based on that choice.
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So I don't think it just informs God's choices. I think it actually determines God's choices, and that's why
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I think Arminianism is a slippery slope to humanism, polytheistic humanism.
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All right, next question. I'm not sure where that slope comes from, either, to be perfectly honest with you, but at least
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I would agree that he sees that, in the Arminian perspective, man is controlling
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God. I don't know too many Arminians that reason that out to a polytheistic humanism, but anyway.
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I have two questions. I didn't contemplate this first one, but I'll throw it out there, based on the question on 2
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Corinthians 4 that was just raised, verse 4. So if the point of this passage is that ultimately the
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God of this world has the ability to blind me such that I can't believe, then how do I not end up thanking myself for having the strength to resist the
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God of this world, or how do I end up not thanking Satan for not blinding me for my salvation, ultimately, instead of thanking
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God? Hard to follow that one, wasn't asked well, but it's a good question.
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Because in light of prevenient grace, and again, we've had no defense of it, we've had no questioning of it, that was one of the major failures of Mr.
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Comus, is when your opponent has based everything on this constantly repeated reference to prevenient grace.
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And if you're Reformed, sometimes we'll use that terminology of the first movements of grace that bring about salvation, but that's not how he's using it.
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He's using it in a peanut butter sense, where God, with this prevenient grace, brings everybody to this moral neutral point, blah blah blah blah.
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Since he's not challenged it, then that's one of the major failures of the debate.
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But what the guy is asking is, if there is this prevenient grace, God's trying to save everybody equally, and I get saved, then why can
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I not thank myself for being strong enough to have, I've resisted the blinding of the
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God of this world. I've resisted the powers that came against my soul. God did his best, the devil did his best,
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I mean, it's the old, you know, how do we understand election? Well, God's voted for you, and the devil voted against you, and you've got the tie -breaking vote.
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Well, if I'm the tie -breaking vote, why can't I pat myself on the back for the tie -breaking vote? That's basically what is being asked.
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Is that too obscure? I'm not sure, you said not thanking
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Satan for blinding me, not thanking God? Okay, so if the point of this passage is to teach that there is this group of people who are able to believe, yet the
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God of this world, in this case interpreting that as Satan, is able to blind them from not believing, then wouldn't it seem logical that for me to read this and then still feel secure in my own salvation,
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I'd either have to thank myself for resisting the God of this world, in which case I get to pat myself on the back, or that I would be in the very weird position of thanking
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Satan for not happening upon me so as to blind me, if that is what this passage means. It just seems to me, like many
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Calvinists do, there's the attempt to distance themselves from hyper -Calvinism, where a man has no free will at all, and then any time an
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Arminian or a non -Calvinist talks about freedom, the
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Calvinist who said he wasn't a hyper -Calvinist, who said he believed in some free choices, cries foul when the
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Arminian says that that was a free choice, because now all of a sudden, wow, so that made God know that event.
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With me, I believe God had the final say, even of our free choices, because he could have chosen to prevent those free choices from being actualized.
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By creating a completely different world. Okay, that's your Molinistic two -step.
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Doesn't answer the question, but it sounds real good, and most people don't challenge that. But that's not an answer to the question.
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And it's not even based upon a meaningful discussion of quote -unquote hyper -Calvinism, which has really nothing to do with the will at that point.
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The issue of autonomous will. We use the term free will.
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Anybody read Jonathan Edwards recently? But we have a completely different understanding of what that means. Those things haven't even been brought up or discussed at that point.
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But the question just isn't getting an answer here, because for any synergistic person, fundamentally, if God has been trying to save everybody equally, and I get saved, the only answer to why me and not somebody else is in me.
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And that's what they desperately want to avoid admitting, but that's the reality. Chris? Well, yeah, getting back to, you're referring back to 2
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Corinthians 4 .4, right? Yeah. It doesn't appear to me, when Paul says, whose mind has gone to the stages of blindness, who do not believe, that he's making one or the other based on the other.
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It's not like one logically has to precede the other. One has to temporally precede the other. It just seems like Paul's kind of throwing them both in the mix there, saying, look, those who have been blinded do not believe.
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Well, okay. No, it's saying he's blinded the minds of unbelievers.
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They are unbelievers. They have refused to believe the revelations in front of me, and so there is a judicial hardening and blinding of them that goes even beyond their unbelief, so much so that they are caused to love a lie, as Paul puts it elsewhere in 2
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Thessalonians. Seems rather straightforward. All right, question two? All right. I was just wondering if you both could give your comment, interpretation of just a short little section of Scripture, just because we've talked about it a lot, but I haven't heard any exegetic, so it would just be good to hear you both comment on Romans 9.
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Romans 9. Versus— Now, let me skip this because the guy read all of Romans 9, basically.
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It's just sort of like, okay, that's nice, but that's a little long for a question. Maybe you could just focus upon a couple of phrases or something like that.
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So I'm going to try to skip ahead a little bit here and see where we can get to the end of it. God is there, may it never be, for he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom
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I will have mercy, and I will have compassion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Molded, say to the molder, why did you make me like this?
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Or does not the potter have the power over the clay to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?
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What if God, although willing to demonstrate his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?
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And he did so to make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy which he prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom he called, not from the
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Jews only, but also from among the Gentiles. All right, from now on there will be no more long passage reading. Chris, let's begin with you.
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I just say amen, Paul is a Calvinist. Thanks. That was great. And I'd say that I...
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Okay, again, if you're going to try to do
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Doug Wilson, then you've got to do it better, or at least as well as Doug Wilson.
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There is, and I made this mistake once. There was some question,
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I think it was in a Pat Madrid debate once. It was asked of me, and I gave a very pithy response.
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And you can't do that. If you're being given a certain amount of time, the pithy response may sound great, but now you're leaving the door open for the other guy to just twist everything in that text, and you're going to have no opportunity of correcting it at all.
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So just on a practical level, here's this wonderful opportunity to spend a minute or two, make application, expand on points, use it to respond to previous questions because it's addressed specific things that came up in previous...
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Awesome opportunities completely passed over. All you end up with is just the reading of the text, and then no counter response to any type of misapplication of the text
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I had a feeling he was going to stop at verse 24, and that's why
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I gave an overview of the whole passage. I gave the context of the passage. I remember, and we criticized
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Dr. Fernandez's interpretation because he jumps to the end of the chapter, comes to an unwarranted conclusion there, and then reads it backwards.
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And we mentioned that this is a common failing of our Arminian brethren.
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He pointed out Norman Geisler going to John 6 .45 to interpret
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John 6 .37, reading things backwards and things like that, and we already addressed that over the preceding number of weeks.
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...of Romans 9, and the context is he's trying to answer the question about the Jews who have rejected
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Jesus as the Messiah. How can they be God's chosen nation, yet they're turning from Jesus? How could the gospel, salvation through faith in Jesus be true?
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And so Paul answers the questions using several things, and he says, first of all, not all physical
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Israel is saved. He documents that from the Old Testament. Then he says, you know,
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God's the potter, we're the clay, we have no right to talk back to him. He's just saying God is sovereign. He's the one who makes the choice.
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He says that God is righteous, God is just. Any good Jew would agree with that.
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And he says the Jews shouldn't be surprised, verses 25 -29, that so many of their brethren are lost, because the
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Old Testament predicted that. But then it comes to verses 30 -33. Now notice, we've already skipped over where the objections are raised.
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Is there any unfairness with God? May it never be. And then he talks about God's sovereignty over the same lump of clay to make vessels of honor and dishonor.
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And so we've just skipped all over that, and now we try to run to the end to find a way around that, and we will have to pick up with that next time, because we are already at 11 .06,
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and we only have 52 minutes left in the program, so we have two other debates to get to.
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And so I will continue on and switch on over to our friends down under, where I'll be heading in a little over a month, down to Sydney and Brisbane.
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And no, no, we're not taking a break today. And let's get back to the
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Kunda Green debate. This is the one with the not -so -excellent quality of sound, but I've been repeating the points that are being made, so at least hopefully the commentary is understandable.
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He doesn't have control over his power, but he doesn't even know who takes it from him. So where would
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I suggest that the Trinity comes from? Because obviously about 2 billion Christians agree on most points of the
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Trinity. Well, I'd say that basically it comes from ignoring the explicit and the metaphorical.
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So there's Abdullah's assertion that the Trinity comes from ignoring the explicit and believing the metaphorical.
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And so we would have to view Abdullah Kunda as an expert, basically, in identification of metaphorical language in the
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Bible. So metaphorically, Thomas says,
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My Lord and my God. And metaphorically, Jesus does not rebuke him for identifying him as God, but instead metaphorically identifies it as a statement of faith.
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And metaphorically, the Apostle Paul refers to Jesus as God in Titus 2 .13, and Peter does so in 2 Peter 1 .1.
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These are all just metaphors. And what they are metaphors for, we don't know. But they're just metaphors.
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And the literal, which is Abdullah's reading of Jesus allegedly being ignorant of power going out from him, he doesn't really know who touched him, and he's standing there going,
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Gee, who touched me? Rather than the obvious reading of the text, being that Jesus turns around specifically to bring forth the confession of faith from the woman and to minister to her, and the men come from Jairus' house, and you have the whole story there in Mark and all that kind of stuff.
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Really, that's not really, I think, a good way of going. So if we consider what
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I think is an explicit verse, I go to the Father, this is Jesus speaking, the Father is greater than I, John 14 .28.
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Okay, so there's a literal verse, a literal verse,
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John 14 .28. And so I will want
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Abdullah to be consistent. Do you agree with everything else in John 14? If John 14 .28
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has been passed down to us without corruption, how about the rest of the Gospel of John?
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It has the same textual history to it. And what does
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John 14 .28 say? You heard me say to you, I am going away and I will come to you. If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the
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Father, for the Father is greater than I. So what does that prove? Now, in Mr.
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Kunda's mind, that proves a difference between the Father and the Son, which the doctrine of the Trinity is based upon.
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We don't believe that the Father became incarnate. We're going to be dealing with a oneness perspective on that very thing, where they say it was the
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Father who became incarnate. If you want to go debate them on that subject, you go ahead and do so. But you would have to realize that the vast majority of Christians do not see oneness theology as an expression of Christian theology.
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In fact, Sabellianism and Modalism was condemned in the early church before Arianism was.
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Even before the debates over the deity of Christ, that viewpoint was condemned.
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And so, what do you have in John 14 .28? You have a distinction between the
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Father and the Son. You have the incarnate one saying he is going back to the Father. He is going to a higher place.
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And that is the... I would ask, what does Midzone mean over against Crito? Has Abdullah Kunda looked into that?
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Does he recognize that Midzone can fit perfectly in Trinitarian theology?
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That the Son has taken a different position than the Father. That the Father is positionally superior to the
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Son. That this is a voluntary humiliation that Jesus has undertaken. All of these things. None of this is contrary to the doctrine of the
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Trinity, yet this is a literal text. But John 17 .5
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is metaphorical, because it talks about Jesus' eternal glory before the world was. Or John 20 .28 is metaphorical.
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Or John 1 .1 is metaphorical. Or John 5 is metaphorical. Which sounds like you'd have to have some kind of consistent standard by which to make the decisions.
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And may I suggest that Abdullah Kunda's consistent standard there is called the Quran. Which was not written at the time of the writing of the
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New Testament. Of course, a Muslim would say it's been written from all of eternity. But that is a different debate.
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That would be used as proof of the Trinity. That verse might be used as proof of the Trinity.
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No, I use John 14 .28 as proof of the Trinity. Because if you listen to all of it,
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I am going away and I will come to you. I am going to the Father. What do you mean he's going to the Father?
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Ascension. Standing at the right hand of the Father. Intercession. Being worshipped and prayed to by his people.
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Not in the second level of heaven. Below people like Aaron and Moses.
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As in the Hadith. Oh yeah. Go to the Hadith. Listen to the narration of Muhammad's visit to the seven heavens.
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You know where Jesus is? Second heaven. Second heaven. Moses, Aaron, higher heavens than Jesus is.
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That doesn't fit. Why quote John 14 .28 if it is in fact contradictory to the
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Hadith? And say this is a literal verse. Again, just looking for that consistency thing.
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John 10 .30. Why is John 10 .30
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an evidence, one of the things that is taken into consideration in the formulation of the doctrine of the
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Trinity? Because you have Jesus as a man saying that he can give eternal life and that God's people, the people who experience salvation and receive forgiveness and eternal life are in his hand and that he and the
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Father are saving the exact same people in perfect unity. That he is giving his life to save these individuals and that therefore he and the
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Father, we, plural pronoun, esmen, we, I'm sorry plural verb, we are one.
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What man can say that he and the Father are one in exercising the specific salvific functions of Yahweh in the
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Old Testament? No mere prophet can make those claims. That is why this is a reference to the deity of Christ and to the
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Trinity. Now, I'm sorry, I just don't get the idea that at this point in time,
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Abdullah Kunda had looked at John 10 .30 to that depth at all.
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But I would say that this is metaphorical. What's my evidence for that? Well, the Gospel according to John itself. Because Jesus is also reported to have said while praying to God, I've given them the glory that you gave them so that they may be one just as we are one.
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Now, so what's he done? He has focused upon the nature of unity and instead of understanding what that unity is in John chapter 10, he just takes a surface level, and I will admit that there are many
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Christians who take a surface level view of John 10 .30. They say, I and the Father are one.
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They just read into that some type of ontological oneness without thinking seriously about the context itself.
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And now he's jumped from chapter 10 to chapter 17 to say, ah, this is the same oneness, except that's not the same discussion, is it?
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Now you have discussion of Jesus's desire for the unity of his people and that that unity is brought about via, since chapters 14 and 16 come immediately before 17, you follow the thought all the way through, how is it that the
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Father and the Son make their abode with believers but by the
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Holy Spirit of God? So the unity that is going to be ours is going to be the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.
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We will be made one supernaturally by that indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. It's a completely different subject than the unity of the
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Father and the Son in doing what? In bringing about the salvation of God's people. And this is why
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I am concerned, honestly, my friends, when you hear well -known
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Christian apologists standing in front of groups of young men saying, if you want to be a good
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Christian apologist, you need to read less theology and more philosophy. No, friends, if you want to be a good
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Christian apologist, you need to know the Word of God. And you need to know how to do the exegesis of the
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Word of God and to recognize when someone has not done exegesis.
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That is, in my opinion, the most important skill that anyone can have is to be able to rightly handle the
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Word of God. So to make that whole argument simple, the thing is, we've got verses in the
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New Testament which give a literal name, verses which give a metaphorical name. And my proposal is that the
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Christians are focusing on the metaphorical meaning versus... I'm sorry, but to say, well, you've just built the entire
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Trinity on metaphorical verses and the literal ones contradict you. In light of the examples given,
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Mr. Kunda has completely failed to make his case. Certainly to me, and I think we have explained that in providing not only a much more textually -based counter -exegesis of the texts that have been raised, but in just demonstrating the inconsistency of the argument.
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I believe there's some of those in the last couple of slides. But wait, I know what
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I'll be protesting with this. The Jews were going to stone Jesus in that passage that I've written. I know
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I haven't followed that along. So I've got a story to bless for me. They hacked my site, but that wasn't the meaning that was intended.
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Now, I've got to give Abdullah Kunda applause and thanks for this attempted response.
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Because the fact of the matter is, the vast majority of Muslims with whom I've had interaction would not even be concerned to think about this.
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I mean, that's just my experience. I'm sorry. Maybe what you're saying to me is, well, hey, you're always running around with the wrong
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Muslims. I don't know. And certainly I have debated some Muslims that just should not debate.
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Just should not even seek to represent their religion.
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They are not a positive... There is no positive element to their dawah.
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I could name some names, and that would be... Everybody knows which ones
49:57
I'm talking about. But I do want to say
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I am thankful for Abdullah Kunda realizing, you know what?
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There is a possible objection to my statement there, and therefore
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I need to provide some kind of response to that. Now, does he provide an accurate response to that?
50:26
That is another issue. But at least he's trying. And to me, that is very, very important and unfortunately very, very unusual amongst many of the people with whom
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I have interaction. I can name just a small number of apologists on the...
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What's the term I keep? Dawahgandists? Givers of dawah on the
50:52
Islamic side that would actually even take the time to even do this. And so I'm thankful for that.
51:00
Jesus actually responds to this suggestion that they are going to stone him and explains himself.
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He says, Is it not written, I said you are gods. If I'm not doing the works of my father, then do not believe me.
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And what is Jesus referring to? He's referring to Psalm 82 verse 6. It's in the Old Testament where it's reported that God said,
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You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you. And who is God referring to? Those that support orphans, the weak and the needy.
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Psalm 82 is pretty small. You can read it for yourselves. But basically what Jesus is saying is this son of God, this relationship that he has with God is about being righteous.
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So what he does is he goes to Psalm 82, which is where you need to go.
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Everybody has heard my debate with Greg Stafford or my debate with Mormons. This text comes up in debates with Muslims.
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How long ago was it now? Nine months to a year, somewhere around there.
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I'd have to look it up. But maybe a little over a year now. I wrote a lengthy article, and Turrett and Fan also submitted an article where we were responding to one of the guys that works at Lagos who's big into his particular views on Psalm 82.
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And I would just highly recommend that you take the time to read those articles and know what
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Psalm 82 is about. Psalm 82 is about the judges of Israel.
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And you can try to say this is some heavenly council and all the rest is silliness.
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If you want to say that, you go ahead and do that if you want to. I ain't following you down that road. Because it specifically calls forth judgment upon those who are not giving justice in Israel to the widows and the orphans and the poor of the land and so on and so forth.
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Justice is being perverted. Whose responsibility was that? It was the judges in Israel who stood in the very place of God and were responsible for bringing forth the judgment of God.
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And that is a tremendous power. And folks, if you want to see how the world is corrupted and changed, look at what's going on in our world when judges give forth unrighteous judgment.
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The perversion of judgment always results in the advancement of evil and the punishment of good.
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And so Psalm 82, you have unrighteous judges who are making unrighteous decisions.
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The very next verse, Psalm 82 7 says, but you shall die like the sons of men.
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Don't you realize? You are briefly in this world and you're going to die like anyone else.
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You need to understand what your real nature is. And in light of that, what is going on?
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Jesus is identifying his accusers as false judges.
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The same unrighteous judges who perverted justice in the past are perverting justice now. Is it not the constant theme of Jesus to point out that his accusers stand the same line of those who killed the prophets?
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Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who did what? Killed the prophets, stoned those that were sent to you.
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This is part of the judgment upon these individuals. And so for Abdullah Kunda to say, well,
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Jesus is just simply saying that he's a righteous man. The nature of his sonship is just that a righteous man is to not only miss what's going on in Psalm 82, but to miss the application that Jesus makes in John 10.
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And to see that he is not de -escalating the situation, he's escalating it by identifying his accusers as false judges, as engaging in the very same kind of false judgment that their fathers did.
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If God is in a trinity, all actions and attributes of the personages, in the case of the
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Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, must be acts and attributes of God, singular. Now, the argument here gets very slippery and does not follow.
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The acts of any one of the persons has to be the acts of God? Well, what's that supposed to mean?
56:26
Be careful, once again, of the presupposition of Unitarianism, and with Muslims, always the presupposition, always the presupposition, there can be no true incarnation.
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There can be no true incarnation. That is always a part of the assumption.
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And so when Jesus is tired, when Jesus is hungry, these are not actions that are to be attributed to the
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Father or the Spirit. And so I'm not sure exactly why the argument is being formulated the way that it is, and I certainly would not necessarily agree with it.
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The Father cannot act independently of the
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Son. If by what you mean there, is the language that is used by Jesus when he says the
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Son does nothing af healtu, of himself, in separation from or contrary to the
57:37
Father, then I would agree the Father does nothing in separation from or contrary to the
57:43
Son or the Spirit. But if you mean that in the sense that the Father cannot act in such a way as to be distinguished from the
57:54
Son, then I say no. Because if that were the case, we wouldn't be able to recognize the distinctions between the persons of the
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Father, Son, and Spirit. They have taken different roles in the economic trinity, and that flows from the eternal decree of salvation, the eternal covenant of redemption,
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I'm sorry, that delineates those roles. So, one must be careful in the formulation of one's statements.
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They cannot be joined together in one lecture and then be independent in action. Now, this is an implication of some
58:30
Christian theologians that in fact, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit do not act independently of one another.
58:36
But the New Testament makes it quite clear that that's not the case. And I've quoted here a section from Luke 3, verses 21 to 22, which is repeated and pervaded in Mark and Matthew, which says that after Jesus was baptized, he was praying.
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Now, I put that in blue because that's what Jesus was doing. The Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove.
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So, now it's the Holy Spirit doing something separate. The Holy Spirit's appeared in the form of a dove. Remember that Jesus is already appeared in the form of man.
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And then a voice came from heaven saying, You are my Son whom I love. With you I am all pleased. Which is the voice of the
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Father. So, we have the Son, the Spirit, and the Father acting independently of one another in mutually exclusive ways.
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The Father does what the Father does, and the Son does what the Son does, and the Spirit does what the Spirit does, and they're all accomplishing the one divine will.
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But this is assuming, this is classical equivocation on the idea of independent, acting independently.
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The persons act differently from one another, but in perfect unity with one another.
01:00:06
Perfect unity with one another does not mean they're doing the exact same thing. Okay, so that,
01:00:11
I'm sorry, this is not a meaningful argument. It's making it clear.
01:00:29
Yes, it is making it clear. And again, these are, I mean, Luke 3, the baptism of Jesus is one of the key texts upon which, what doctrine was based?
01:00:39
The Trinity! Because there is a clear distinction between the Father, the
01:00:44
Son, and the Spirit in this text. And Jesus was not a ventriloquist. He was not throwing his voice and doing a bird trick or anything else.
01:00:53
You don't have one person here. You have three persons. Their roles and activities are distinguishable from one another, and yet you only have one true
01:01:04
God. That's why we believe in the doctrine of the Trinity, is because we don't prioritize one set of text over another set of text.
01:01:12
We seek to harmonize all of them because we believe in all of divine revelation, not just in parts of it.
01:01:24
And that's why he says, that's why we say Christians are saying there's three distinct gods. No, we're not.
01:01:29
There is one God, Yahweh. And if Abdullah were to... I would just challenge
01:01:35
Abdullah, read the chapter in my book on the identification of Jesus as Yahweh. Because we fully believe the
01:01:44
Spirit is the Spirit of Yahweh. We fully believe that the Father is Yahweh, because Isaiah 53 says,
01:01:51
Yahweh laid our sins upon Him, the Messiah. And yet the New Testament writers identify
01:01:56
Jesus as Yahweh. How do you understand that? I mean, are you really willing to say that these
01:02:04
New Testament writers soaked in the old covenant scriptures far more than you are, were just ignorantly, willy -nilly applying this text here and that text there?
01:02:19
Or were they not giving expression to their fundamental conviction that Jesus of Nazareth, the
01:02:29
Jesus they had walked with and talked with, was Yahweh in human flesh?
01:02:36
That son given, that child that was born. It's right there.
01:02:43
You can't just take one part of the scriptures and ignore the rest.
01:02:49
You have to hear all of it. And I know that Abdullah would agree if I were saying you have to take...
01:02:56
You can't take one part of the Quran and place it against another part of the Quran. But when it comes to the
01:03:02
New Testament, all of a sudden, well, that seems to be fair game. We say
01:03:23
God is not a man, God is not a part of creation. And, of course, so do we. We say that God's nature is uncreated and eternal, that He is the origin and source of all things.
01:03:38
But how does it follow from the fact that we affirm that God is uncreated and eternal, that if God chose to do so for His own purposes, and specifically for the redemption of a particular people in Christ Jesus, that He could not enter into His own creation?
01:03:58
No one is saying that humanity has eternally been a part of God's being.
01:04:07
No one has said that in any way, shape, or form. And so to say, well, the
01:04:12
Bible says God is not a man, therefore God can't become man. You see the difference between the two statements?
01:04:21
This is the presupposition, the assumption on the part of the
01:04:26
Muslim there can be no incarnation. It just can't happen.
01:04:33
And that's what has to be challenged. And that, hopefully, is what we will be discussing in Australia.
01:04:42
That's what we need to be working on. Did you need to go, Little Barry? I'll write out a hall pass for you.
01:04:49
I'm being distracted by now three people in the other room who sit out there and make faces and do things like that.
01:05:09
Is that really?
01:05:19
Are those actually equivalent statements? To say that God could become a man, a perfect, sinless man, is the same thing as saying
01:05:29
God could die or God could lie. Really? I would like to hear some expansion upon the logic of that statement.
01:05:38
Why is that an equivalent statement? Unless you are assuming that dying means ceasing to exist, which even
01:05:46
Muslims don't believe, and that to be the perfect man means you have to lie.
01:05:55
And yet, many Muslims I know don't believe that Jesus sinned. So that can't be a constituent part of the nature of being a true human, can it?
01:06:06
So that may be what Muslims are hearing, but I would go, where do you get that logically?
01:06:11
Fill in the gaps there, because there's big gaps. There may not be on the Muslim side of things. There's big gaps on my side of things when
01:06:17
I hear somebody saying that. Why are you saying that? Where did that come from? Yes.
01:06:26
Okay. We will move on to the next debate. It's a shame that y 'all can't do this, but see,
01:06:37
I, gentlemen, am a professional radio announcer. I worked as a professional radio announcer back when the rookie there was in diapers.
01:06:49
Not when you were in diapers. You're getting old enough to be getting back to that now. But anyway, we would practice trying to break each other up while somebody else was doing the news.
01:07:06
And there was always, we would have these windows, and when I was on KWAO, anybody can look this up,
01:07:12
KWAO FM 106 .3, the home of the great entertainers, we'd have a window in front of us. And so what we'd do is, my favorite thing to do was to walk by and then make it look like I was going down steps.
01:07:27
So I'd get a little bit lower, a little bit, but there's no staircase out there. And then I'd come back the other direction, and then
01:07:32
I'd come up the steps, see. And that was normally very effective. It was normally very effective.
01:07:39
But actually coming into the studio while someone was doing the news and then slowly pulling the chair out from underneath, and not immediately because that would break all the rules, but just slowly.
01:07:49
So they're having to keep reading while slowly backing out and keeping their mouth near.
01:07:55
That was another very, very effective means. So you guys have got to come up a little bit more because I'm a pro.
01:08:04
Been there, done that, got the T -shirt. Well, we just assumed that we're all Reformed Baptists here, so we should assume we're all
01:08:10
Reformed Baptists. Look like Reformed Baptists? Look, yeah. Okay, all right, yeah. So what happened is all three of them adopted this completely deadpan look and just all sat there without moving, staring at me.
01:08:20
Well, I'm trying to help all the believers in the audience to be better apologists. And they go, what are you guys doing?
01:08:26
You're staring at me. So what can I say? Just so you people know the things I have to go through, that I have to put up with to try to help you all.
01:08:35
That's what it's all about. Yep, there's three of them. There's three of them. Katie Bow is asking about how many there are.
01:08:43
It's the three Mouseketeers out there right now. And I'm going to press on despite their best efforts.
01:08:49
I truly am. Okay, that was a break, actually, because I was moving from one debate to the other, so that actually works out.
01:08:59
But we're not going to have a whole lot of time then for this last one, about 18 minutes. Going back to the debate between Mr.
01:09:09
Reeves and Mr. Perkins, and that means the quality of the sound will now come back up, which means
01:09:15
I won't have to repeat everything that was said. It's funny, because I listen to these debates while writing, and it must be,
01:09:23
I don't know what it is. Good old Ralph bought me a pair of not the noise -canceling, but the noise -isolating ear sets, ear things
01:09:34
I use while writing. And evidently things just sound a whole lot better in those than the ones
01:09:42
I'm wearing right now, because I could listen to the Kunda Green debate while going downhill at 35 miles an hour.
01:09:49
So I'm not sure why the quality doesn't sound quite as good. But anyways, let us press forward with wherever it is we are in Mr.
01:09:58
Perkins' opening statement. Don't worry, I'm going to deal with the arguments here in a minute. My opponent's position is that the first divine person, individual in the
01:10:06
Godhead, who was God but not the same as the others, loved humanity enough that he forced the second divine individual to come down here to be beat, to be spit upon, to be nailed to a tree, and then turned his back on his boy when he cried,
01:10:23
Now, that's a good way to start, isn't it? That woke you all up, didn't it? Yes, it did. This is called emotional rhetoric.
01:10:34
This is called, I am going to try to paint the other side in the worst possible light. And unfortunately,
01:10:42
Mr. Perkins, I can't stop you from making this kind of presentation.
01:10:48
There is a part of me that says, oh, please repeat this. Please do this for me.
01:10:54
Because that is like, remember out in the playground back when we would play softball?
01:11:03
But instead what we would do is, I played Little League, man. I went to the All -Star game when
01:11:08
I was, yeah, that's right. But to make it more exciting, instead of having the other team have the pitcher who's trying to strike you out, you'd put your own pitcher out there.
01:11:18
So they're trying to give you moon balls that you can hit as far as you can possibly hit. Remember playing like that? That's especially when you've got gals playing.
01:11:28
It's best to have your own pitcher out there. Anyway, boy, I just made myself really unpopular. How many hate mails will we get from that one?
01:11:35
At least I didn't say Russian gals. That was your mistake, wasn't it?
01:11:41
Yes, I think that was your mistake, yeah. Anyway, no, it would be the Russian gals that pounded him over the,
01:11:47
East German gals. They pounded him right out of the park. Whee! Never find that ball again.
01:11:54
But anyway, Mr. Perkins, this is called a moon ball. This is called tossing one up there and just begging for it to be knocked right out of the park.
01:12:06
Because that is not what we believe. And it's so easy to demonstrate that's not what we believe.
01:12:15
When we get into the Carmen Christi, Philippians chapter 2. Or we can go to John because it's there too.
01:12:22
But especially the Carmen Christi, you're not going to be able to avoid this.
01:12:29
You're not going to be able to avoid this. The second word in Greek of verse 7.
01:12:41
What is it, Mr. Perkins? What's the word? Alla heoutan ekenosen.
01:12:51
Heoutan. It's a reflexive pronoun, sir. Reflexive pronoun.
01:12:58
But he made himself of no reputation.
01:13:05
Literally emptied, but Paul never uses kana 'o in a literal sense. If you want to see the proper discussion of metaphorical usage in light of Abdullah Kunda's comments.
01:13:20
I would say ekenosen is being used metaphorically here because that's how
01:13:25
Paul always uses it. And I've actually looked at every time Paul uses kana 'o. And therefore you'd have a basis for saying in this author, here's the other places where he uses it this way.
01:13:38
But the point is, he made himself.
01:13:45
He humbled himself as well. What's the second word,
01:13:52
Mr. Perkins, of the 8th verse? Etapainosen heoutan.
01:14:00
He humbled himself. This idea of the first person forcing the second person down is a canard.
01:14:15
And it's unworthy of you. It's unworthy of you. Like I said, there's a part of me, oh go ahead, please set me up for this.
01:14:24
But since what we want is a debate where the truth is the focus. And accuracy of presentation is the mechanism whereby you demonstrate your concern for the truth.
01:14:35
Then you just can't go here. This is not a meaningful presentation.
01:14:42
Because what Mr. Reeves believes and what I believe. Is that the
01:14:49
Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. In perfect unity in eternity, passed, agreed, in love with one another.
01:15:06
Concerning the mechanism of salvation and the roles that each person would take in that work of salvation.
01:15:15
And so the idea that the Father forced his boy down.
01:15:20
And then ignored him when he cried out, Daddy. Isn't even a meaningful utilization of Jesus' citation of the beginning of Psalm 22.
01:15:37
That's not even, I think, a meaningful recognition of what's going on there. In Jesus' utilization of the
01:15:45
Psalm at that point. So, I've been waiting for this.
01:15:50
And I think, I think we're about to get the
01:15:57
Merv Griffin citation. That's my opponent's position. Now, John 7 and 42 and 842.
01:16:03
Before he says, no, Jesus willfully self -imposed the limitations. Well, you're going to have to deal with the words of Jesus.
01:16:09
When Jesus said, I did not come of myself, but he sent me. I did not come of myself does not mean
01:16:16
I did not come voluntarily. It means he's not the sending agent. He's distinguishing himself from the
01:16:22
Father. And how is any of this relevant to the oneness perspective? Because the Son didn't come from anywhere.
01:16:28
He came into existence at his birth in Bethlehem. So, if this is the human nature talking, he's babbling.
01:16:36
He's not saying anything meaningful here. You have to harmonize.
01:16:42
You have to allow the text to define these things. Not make them contradictory to each other. The Greek verb sent is apostello.
01:16:50
And it means to order one to go to a place. So, according to my opponent's position, the first divine individual ordered the second divine individual to come to this earth, to be beat, to be spit on, to be marred and nailed to a tree.
01:17:02
It's like what the late talk show host Merv Griffin said. He said that, and I didn't,
01:17:08
I didn't hear it, but I've heard about it. He said, I would serve the Trinitarians or rather the Christian's God.
01:17:13
He said, but I cannot serve a God that sent his boy to do his own dirty work. Now, that's my opponent's position.
01:17:22
Now, Mr. Reid. There you go. Merv Griffin as a theological source.
01:17:30
Well, Merv Griffin was ignorant of the doctrine of the Trinity and ignorant of Christian theology.
01:17:35
He misrepresented, used a straw man and therefore was dishonest. Now, if he was ignorant, then he wasn't dishonest.
01:17:41
Mr. Perkins, you've got no excuses. Because we've already listened.
01:17:48
And Mr. Reid's got up and corrected you on this. I've corrected you on this. So, there's no reason for you to repeat this ever again in the future.
01:17:54
Don't stand in front of an audience and say, this is my opponent's position. When you know it is not.
01:18:03
The son was sent. The father sent him. But he came voluntarily out of love.
01:18:16
The father and the son send the spirit? How does that work in your theology since the father is the spirit?
01:18:25
But if you're going to represent the other side, at least seek to do so with some level of accuracy.
01:18:37
And Merv Griffin was not a theologian. He was wrong in his understanding.
01:18:45
Let's let that ignorance die with Merv Griffin. And not continue it beyond that.
01:18:53
Reid and him, and his cohorts rather, are fond of the expression that they speak where the scriptures speak and are silent where the scriptures are silent.
01:19:01
Yet the scriptures are deafeningly silent of three persons in the Godhead. It sounds good, but it's just rhetoric and there's no practical value to it whatsoever.
01:19:09
Yet, when we listen in the next day's debate to Mr.
01:19:15
Reeves giving a positive presentation, he uses all sorts of unbiblical language to define his position.
01:19:24
You have to. You have to. You have to answer the questions that are asked and the
01:19:32
Bible is not meant to be some 47 volume set that you have to lug around on a cart to answer every single question in every possible linguistic formulation.
01:19:45
To accurately represent the teaching of the Bible is to answer questions asked of it in the language that is asked.
01:19:54
So it is unfair to make this kind of statement when Mr. Perkins doesn't live up to his own standards.
01:20:04
He's willing to answer questions and talk about Jesus and his nature.
01:20:11
That's not biblical language. But you say, well, but I'm giving you the biblical position.
01:20:16
Well, that's what we're saying. So let's try for ignoring all this extra stuff that is not relevant to the debate.
01:20:26
Focus on the real issue. Did the son as a divine person pre -exist his birth in Bethlehem?
01:20:34
If that's true, that the son, as distinguished from the father, pre -exists his birth in Bethlehem, then oneness theology is false.
01:20:47
Period. End of discussion. That's where the focus has to be.
01:20:54
And I'll tell you at the outset that Mr. Reeves has absolutely no scripture that explicitly states his position.
01:21:00
He must import his own definitions into a text that never states the same. Thus, he is adding to the
01:21:06
Word of God. Adding to the Word of God, of course, would be what the Mormons do with the
01:21:11
Book of Mormon, Doctrine, Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. Mr. Perkins could have gotten up in the second portion of this debate and repeated exactly what
01:21:21
Mr. Perkins just said. Did I say Perkins could have gotten up? Okay. See, I caught myself anyways.
01:21:27
Mr. Reeves could have gotten up in the second portion of this debate and just simply repeated what Mr. Perkins just said and taken out his name, put in Perkins' name, and say, there you go!
01:21:37
Everything you just heard about Jesus and persons and co -mingling and all the rest of that, where is that?
01:21:43
Where is that explicitly stated? And I'm tired of hearing this explicitly stated stuff.
01:21:50
You know, the Muslims come along and say, well, where did Jesus specifically say, I am
01:21:55
God, worship me? You know, the fact that he accepts worship, the fact that he accepts being called
01:22:01
God, we need to have these specific words or we will not believe.
01:22:07
Well, that is not really logical or coherent thinking. Most of us learned that when we were kids.
01:22:15
The first time we thought we'd get wise and mom and dad told us to clean our rooms by such and such a time or we wouldn't get dinner.
01:22:26
And we decided to get smart and say, well, you didn't define exactly which room you meant.
01:22:34
And I actually did clean this little room over here, though my bedroom is a mess.
01:22:42
We learned real quickly that that's dumb. That's turkey boo dumb.
01:22:51
Okay, if you want to use turkey boo and you ain't sober enough to be here.
01:22:57
Those are arguments we're actually going to hear from Mr. Perkins. But we learned that when we were kids, that that don't fly, that there is an intention and a meaning in the expression of language.
01:23:14
And when you're a kid, it's dad and mom's intention that you need to be worried about.
01:23:20
Okay, well, in this situation, it's God's intention in his word you need to be worried about.
01:23:27
And don't give me this. Well, you will not find the explicit words that say this. Well, if the language communicates it, that is going to be a pretty lame excuse when you stand before God and he asks you, why did you deny my truth?
01:23:41
You just got to understand that in the discipline of critical thinking. And I'm getting to his to his arguments here.
01:23:49
But in the discipline of critical thinking, we have in the discipline of critical thinking.
01:23:54
I appreciate the language. We just need to make application of the discipline of critical thinking.
01:24:01
We have formal logical fallacies on a reference to the ultimate argument. Number one, we have the fallacy of the assumption it's where you assume what you cannot demonstrate.
01:24:11
Number two, we have hypotheses contrary to the facts. It's where you speculate what you fail to demonstrate contrary to the raw data.
01:24:19
My opponent and those that adhere to three divine persons necessarily commit both fallacies as well as others.
01:24:27
And if you're going to make that kind of assertion, you better be able to back it up. So far, in I don't know how many hours now of review,
01:24:37
I can safely say we have not heard one factual substantiation of those assertions from Mr.
01:24:44
Perkins. Not once. Can anyone think of one? Have we skipped over anything?
01:24:50
Someone might say, well, you skipped over the rest of the slick debate. That's because we couldn't hear it. We actually got through the opening statement pretty much.
01:24:57
But are we skipping anything here? Are we passing over anything here? Nope, we're playing it all and letting everybody hear and I think being very fair in airing these things.
01:25:09
I mean, who else does this kind of thing? Not too many people would allow this kind of full expression of the other side in giving a response.
01:25:20
Again, they must assume and speculate what they cannot demonstrate from the text itself.
01:25:26
And of course, my assertion has been what? That fundamentally, Muslims and oneness
01:25:32
Pentecostals assume Unitarianism. They never prove Unitarianism. Now in the second debate, he's going to try to do that.
01:25:42
He's actually going to start talking about persons and stuff. He's going to say there are certain lexicons that define, that say
01:25:48
God is one person. We'll discover the lexicons actually don't say what he said they said, but we'll get to that.
01:25:54
He's going to try. But the fundamental argumentative presupposition of oneness theologians and Muslims is not monotheism.
01:26:07
It is Unitarianism. Frequently, they will just simply say, well, we just cannot distinguish between the two.
01:26:16
But that in and of itself is an admission of where the problem lies. Now, as I said,
01:26:22
I'm obligated by the rules of polemic dexterity to deal with Mr. Reeves's arguments, and I'm going to demonstrate right here that my opponent must read his presuppositions into the text that never states the same.
01:26:34
I saw that he referenced Deuteronomy 6 .4, and I would assume, and this is me, he can correct this if it's wrong, but I would assume, he's done it in other debates, that he would interpret
01:26:46
Deuteronomy 6 .4, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. He would interpret that term one, which is a cod, to mean a united plurality, and I'm going to just wait to see if he does that, but when he does,
01:26:59
I will gladly deal with that argument. Now, in the second debate, the
01:27:05
Tuesday evening debate, Mr. Reeves went through numerous uses of a cod that is used in a united plural.
01:27:17
One nation made up of individuals, and one tribe made up of numerous people, and so on and so forth.
01:27:22
He demonstrated that a cod is not a solid foundation for the implicit assumption of Unitarianism.
01:27:36
For some reason, he didn't go into it there. I guess that was sort of a preemptive strike or something. I don't know, but Mr.
01:27:42
Reeves did include that information on the nature of a cod in the second portion of this particular debate.
01:27:49
Well, it looks like we are just about out of time. Like I said, right now, as I'm looking at it, we're probably looking at a
01:27:57
Tuesday -Wednesday situation next week because I'm heading back to the
01:28:03
Psalm 119 Conference, which is Friday and Saturday in Ohio, and I already know a number of you are planning on coming.
01:28:11
Looking forward to seeing you and spending time with Phil Johnson and the other speakers, including the freakishly tall
01:28:19
Todd Friel. So that's always a lot of fun. We'll look forward to seeing all of you that are going to be there.
01:28:25
Thanks for listening today on The Dividing Line. God bless. The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.
01:29:20
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