TurretinFan

A mighty fortress is our God. A bulwark never failing.

I don't like Calvinists because they've chosen to follow John Calvin instead of Jesus Christ. I have a problem with them. They're following men instead of the Word of God.

Our helper he amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing.

On top of my feet, standing on a stump and crying out, He died for all. Those who elected were selected.

For still our ancient foe does seek to work us woe. His craft and power are great and armed with cruel hate.

Opening Remarks on Calvinism and the Atonement

Well, first of all, James, I'm very ignorant of the Reformers.

On earth is not his equal.

I think I probably know more about Calvinism than most of the people who call themselves Calvinists.

Did we in our own strength confide? Our striving would be loosed.

But God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.

We're not the right man on our side, the man of God's own choose.

Ladies and gentlemen, James White is a hyper-Calvinist. Now, whatever we do in Baptist life, we don't need to be teaming up with hyper-Calvinists.

You ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is he. Read my book.

Radio Free Geneva, Upcoming Programs, and the John 3:16 Conference

And now, from our underground bunker, hidden deep beneath Liberty University, where no one would think to look, safe from those moderate Calvinists, Dave Hunt fans, and those who have read and re-read George Bryson's book, we are Radio Free Geneva, broadcasting the truth about God's freedom to say, to his own eternal glory.

And good afternoon, welcome to The Dividing Line on a Thursday afternoon, a special edition of Radio Free Geneva, discussing the issue of the atonement of Christ today. But before we do that, I am attempting, just to let everybody know, I'm attempting to arrange some programs next week.

And Tuesday evening, right before I had class with my Arabic tutor, I was listening to a program that actually originated from here in the state of Arizona, a radio program that was also live on the web, of some folks that are King James only advocates.

And they were attempting to respond to my book. And I happened to go into their chat channel, because they mentioned it, and was responding to things, and invited them to be on the program. I think it would be very useful to have both sides represented, have some give and take.

I really believe that the vast majority of the arguments I heard were very circular in their nature, and would be very easily exposed as such. In fact, I don't think I heard a single argument that I could not have applied to the Geneva Bible, rather than the King James.

And, you know, it's a Psalm 12 stuff, ignore the context, turn this into some type of a promise about a Bible in a language that doesn't exist yet, when Psalm 12 is written, and that type of a thing. And again, it would be very useful to hear both sides, and illustrate what the issues really are.

So, before we go to our Radio Free Geneva topic, I just wanted to give you an example. This was the announcement of that upcoming program. So, this will give you an idea of why I'd like to see this program come off, and I hope the folks that are part of it, that were on it, will be on the program next week.

Of course, next week, I do want to encourage you to tune in next week, Tuesday night, 5 o 'clock Pacific Coast time, right here on the Covenanters, called the American Voice Radio. Tune in, because I've got somebody that's going to be on the air.

I will not be on the air for Tuesday night, but I've asked to do a rebuttal to James White's book, The King James Only Controversy. Now, James White is a Calvinist. He is a Bible corrector, and he resides within Phoenix, Arizona.

He has done a lot of work in destroying the Word of God. He makes it his life's work to debate those that believe in a final authority. And so, we have asked a young man in our church, he is a teacher, he is a scholar, and so we've asked him to come on the air and do a rebuttal.

He has offered a challenge to those that lift up James White in such a way, almost to the point of godhood. He has offered a challenge to me, and just to hear the other side of the opinion. And then he's going to stay on the next week.

He's going to come back on for the next Tuesday evening, so that you can call in with your challenges. So folks, put this down in your books. You don't want to miss this. This should be a very interesting show.

Yeah, well, lift me up almost to the position of, I actually typed that out, let's see, to almost to the point of godhood. Yeah, well, I hadn't heard that one before. I've been called lots of things before.

That one was a new one. So anyway, and the weird thing was, they were trying to compare me to Bart Ehrman, who, of course, I'm debating in January and defending the inspiration of the text of Scripture.

And I just don't know that I'd want to hear Bart Ehrman debating a King James only advocate. That would be a little bit painful to listen to. But anyway, we're going to try to work that out for next week, and I'd be more than happy to do it.

And if they'd like me to come on their program, I'd be happy to do that too. If they come on mine, I can go on theirs. That would be great. In fact, we could simulcast while they're on. We could simulcast on the web.

I mean, there's things we can do. Technology exists. We can do it. So anyway, so hopefully that's for next week. Now, as most of you know, we, a couple weeks ago, began reviewing some of the statements made at the John 316 conference.

And we were dealing with especially Dr. David Allen's presentation, wherein he accused me of being a hyper-Calvinist. And his was on the subject of the atonement, and specifically in response to limited atonement.

He basically took the information from folks like David Ponter, Tony Byrne, and that became the substance, the essence of his presentation. Tony Byrne was a student of his. And so I discovered that one of our highly trained and professional bloggers on Team Apologeon, and they have to go through a lot of training.

I'm going to tell you something. They have to. I mean, it's just years and years worth of stuff to become a blogger on the blog. I tried to say it with a straight face, but I couldn't really pull it off.

But anyway, that one of our bloggers had been spending a fair amount of time, actually, interacting with Tony Byrne and the people associated with him. There is a term that is used of them that I'm not going to use because David Ponter asked me not to use it.

But a whole group of folks that are putting this material out there. And so when I found out that TurretinFan had already a lot of experience in dealing with these folks, I thought I would invite him to join me on the program today so we can address some of these issues, hopefully to your edification.

So, Brother TurretinFan, welcome to the Dividing Line. Thanks very much, Dr. White. It's good to have you on. I did notice that you've written a lot of articles in response to these folks and I guess have had some interaction with them in the comm boxes and things like that, would that be an accurate description of some of your encounters?

Yes, that would. I've had a number of times back and forth. One of their newer associates and I had a brief and incomplete debate on the Atonement for a while and Mr. Ponter and Mr. Byrne got into the action a little bit in the comm box in that debate and I've watched with some curiosity some of their comments in other places throughout the blogosphere.

Okay.

All right. Now, as you listened to my playing David Allen, did the thought cross your mind fairly quickly? I think I know where he got a lot of his notes.

Well, you know, I had a guess that it might be from that group, although considering that I suppose Mr. Allen would also be opposed to sort of a four-point Calvinist or Amaraldian position, so I wouldn't necessarily associate him automatically with them.

Right. Well, definitely not, but even the chart that he used and he passed out and so on and so forth, Tony Byrne had created, so there was a lot of reliance there. Let's back up for everybody. We have a lot of folks that listen to the program that maybe don't have as wide a background as others.

The issue is that of the atonement. Now, you're coming from the Presbyterian perspective. I'm coming from the Reformed Baptist perspective, and yet on this particular issue, there isn't a whole lot of difference between what was believed by in the Westminster Standards and what is found as well in the London Baptist Confession of Faith.

So if you would like, I know that you have written on and produced some material in regards to where the Westminster Standards come down on this issue, and that, of course, is important because many of the names that Tony Byrne and others like to throw out there were people who subscribed to the Westminster Confession of Faith.

And so where does Westminster come down on issues like that?

Well, both the Westminster Confession of Faith and the London Baptist Confession of Faith, which, as you know, is largely derived from the Westminster Confession of Faith, they both address the topic in Chapter 8, Paragraph 8.

The Westminster Confession says, To all those for whom Christ has purchased redemption, he doth certainly and effectually apply and communicate the same, making intercession for them and revealing unto them, in and by the Word, the mysteries of salvation, effectually persuading them by his Spirit to believe and obey, and governing their hearts by his Word and Spirit, overcoming all their enemies by his almighty power and wisdom, in such manner and ways as are most consonant to his wonderful and unsearchable dispensation.

And the London Baptist Confession has a very similar wording. There's a few words taken out and a little bit additional added. For example, the London Baptist Confession ends with those same words and all of free and absolute grace without any condition foreseen in them to procure it.

Right, right.

I'm looking at the modern language translation of the 1689. All these things are carried out in his free and sovereign grace and unconditionally nothing of merit being foreseen by him in the elect. And it's interesting to me and it's important to me that a couple of things, one of the main sources for the London Baptist Confession is the Savoy Declaration and of course that goes back to Owen.

Owen was very, very important in that. And hence the inclusion of this discussion in Chapter 8, the title at least in the London Baptist Confession is Christ the Mediator. And I have always argued that, from my perspective anyways, the strongest argument, the strongest necessity of recognizing the nature of the Atonement as Reformed theology has expressed it, is due to the intimate relationship that exists between Christ's role as high priest and his role as mediator or intercessor.

And I keep presenting this to folks. I keep presenting these types of arguments and I just honestly don't get much in the way of response other than obfuscation and moving off into other areas. And in this area especially, one of the chief arguments I keep hearing people say is, well if you believe that then you're not going to be able to do this or you're not going to be able to preach in this way.

It's all very pragmatic rather than very biblical in its orientation. And it seems to me that the Westminster Divines and the London Baptists were going into a very, very deep biblical area and that is how does Christ act as mediator?

Upon what grounds does he mediate? I'm just looking through the sections here. I should have put the Westminster here and I think I've got it right here. Hardback edition by the way. I just want to make sure everybody knew that.

But just looking at the sections here, you have the eternal purpose of God in section one. Here's just a quote from here. From all eternity God had given to his son those who were to be his progeny and the son engaged in time as distinct from eternity to redeem, call, justify, sanctify and glorify them.

So going back to the very eternal covenant of redemption, grounding the atonement and Christ offices in the Trinity and in the triune purposes of God. I think that's extremely wise to do. And the same thing found in section two, which emphasizes the nature of Christ, the two natures of Christ, which becomes necessary for both his being the proper mediator and the act of atonement itself.

Section three is the same. Section four, the fact that he perfectly fulfills the law of God, he does so willingly through the sacrifice of Christ, his death by crucifixion, by his perfect obedience to God's law and by a once for all offering up of himself to God as a sacrifice to the eternal spirit.

The Lord Jesus fully satisfied all the claims of divine justice. He has brought about reconciliation and purchased an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven for all those given to him by his Father.

Section five. So again, the unity of all this. That's what's so beautiful to me about the gospel, is the unity that is to be seen in the scriptural testimony to these things. And then six, the price of redemption.

And if you don't mind, I'm going to go ahead and read this. The price of redemption was not actually paid by Christ until after his birth in this world, but the value, efficacy, and benefits of his redemptive work availed for his elect in all ages successfully from the beginning of the world.

This was accomplished by the promises, the types, and the sacrifices to which he was revealed, and which signified him to be the woman's seed, offspring, who should bruise the head of the serpent, the devil, also the lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

As Christ, he is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And then you have his work as mediator, and then the section that you had read, and that is section eight, which very clearly makes the fact that he is doing this, and he does so perfectly, in behalf of the elect.

And then there's actually two more sections in the London Baptist Confession of Faith, anyways. Christ, in Christ alone, is fitted to be mediator between God and man. He is the prophet, priest, and king of the church of God.

His office as mediator cannot be transferred from him to any other, either in whole or in part. All of this comes together in this beautiful presentation of what Christ has done. It's the work of the triune God.

It's eternal. It's to God's glory. The reason for the incarnation is brought in. This is just tremendously compelling truth that is found in Scripture. And I hope people understand that the reason that we hold these things is not simply because we want to argue with folks, but because once you begin to collapse on these points, the role of mediator, intercessor, all these things are interconnected.

I don't know about you, but I very clearly remember when I began to see the beauty of Christ's work in its fullness in Scripture, and I just hope and pray I will never lose that excitement that I got when I saw that many years ago.

Do you have any comment on that? Well, yes. I think we had actually been chatting in channel briefly before this program, and someone had raised a verse that speaks right to the same issue, and that's John 5, 19, which says, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father, for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.

There's a unity in the Trinity, and some views of the Atonement essentially divide the Son from the Father, or the Son from the Spirit, so that the Spirit is going out there and changing the hearts of the elect, but the Son died for everyone, regardless, and is trying to save everyone.

Or the Spirit's trying to save everyone, but the Father knows who are His and has given those ones to Jesus. So you see, some of these views tend to divide up the Trinity and place the persons of the Trinity against each other, which is contrary not just to these Reformed documents, but to the Bible itself.

Well, not only that, but I'll just give folks the background. You were actually speaking with a Muslim in channel, and were discussing what John 5 has to say about the unity that exists between the Father and the Son, and I was spoken to the same Muslim in channel on that subject, but it was about six or eight months ago, and it is very true what you just said, that many people, unwittingly, I would like to believe, though I don't know that we can necessarily lay at the feet of those who profess to be professors of systematic theology, but I would think, at least for most, they do unwittingly present an idea of the Trinity, where the various persons of the Trinity are at odds with one another as to what they're seeking to accomplish.

And it does seem to me that we do need to emphasize, and we should emphasize properly, the fact that we cannot present an incoherent view of God to the world that is not only unbiblical, but likewise is only incoherent, because we have this great and deep concern to make God sound, I don't know, fuzzy and warm and lovable, rather than being the God who has revealed himself in the pages of Scripture, and to set the Father at odds with the Son, to have the Son interceding in behalf of people the Father has not decreed to save, or the Father and the Son not providing the foundation for the Spirit to bring salvation to bear.

These are the things that truly concern me, and it is interesting to me that many of those that I see who are the most virulent critics of consistent Reformed theology are the very same people who are not taking that message into the arenas that I take that message into.

They're not being forced to be consistent in their theology by being apologists on the world stage of dealing with world religions and the issues like that. And if they were forced to do that, then the inconsistencies that they're presenting would be very, very clearly demonstrated thereby.

Yes, and I think it's important to note that sometimes we have a picture of what goes on in the blogosphere, on the Internet, and it's not necessarily the whole picture. So it may be that some of the people who have been ardent advocates against the doctrine of particular atonement, of particular redemption, may in fact have a very active ministry in real life that we haven't seen, or that they just simply don't talk about because they choose not to do so on the Internet.

But I think in addition, you brought up the issue of Muslim, and the atonement is a very important doctrine to understand when one is dealing with Muslims, because of the importance of Christ as a sacrifice.

From my understanding, and you obviously understand Islam more than I do, my understanding is that there's not an appreciation of the need for a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice. Exactly.

Well, not only that, from the Islamic perspective, God can simply forgive sin without any payment being made, without any reference being made whatsoever to the issue of justice. And that raises all sorts of questions about the holiness of God and God's law and God's purposes and things like that.

But certainly there is not only, and it's interesting, not only is there no sacrifice for sins, but there's also no mediator. And in my experience, and especially listening to Muslims discussing the various kinds of shirk and things like that, there has developed in Islam over the centuries this insatiable desire for some kind of a mediator.

And they recognize that the system doesn't provide it, but there is still this deep, deep desire to have a mediator. And I think that goes back to the fact that we're all made in the image of God. And as such, we recognize the need that we have before a holy God of something outside of ourselves.

And so when we talk about Christ, I think it's important to emphasize a couple things. First of all, we are talking about a substitutionary atonement when we speak of his work. And it's fascinating to me that so many today want to use that terminology while denying where it came from historically.

Substitutionary atonement is a reformed concept. It was rejected by the historical Arminians for the obvious reason that they recognize that if Christ's death was substitutionary, then that in and of itself would bring about salvation.

And since they had a general atonement concept, then that would bring about universalism. And the original Arminians were not universalists, though many of their children certainly have gone that direction.

This idea of substitution, do you see a universal atonement perspective as having any means of being consistent with the idea of substitution?

Well, it's very difficult because the idea, there immediately arises a question of in what way is he a substitute if there is punishment both of the substitute and of the person who is substituted for.

So immediately one wonders when it says that in his death Christ died for a person, how is it now that the person himself is dying for his own sin? And with that, there is a problem. Now, of course, many folks will claim that they believe in a substitutionary atonement even while asserting that the atonement is universal.

And it creates a number of dilemmas. The double payment concept is one of those dilemmas. The double jeopardy is the same general concept. If we understand this sense of for, that Christ died in the place of the elect, in the place of all the believing, in this sense of for, we can appreciate the fact that it's a substitute.

In other aspects, we can also appreciate that he's our substitute in the relationship of a federal head. Just as Adam is the federal head of humanity and represented and stood in the place of all humanity when he sinned, Christ, in his righteousness and in his death, stood in the place of the elect.

All those in Christ died with him and will be raised with him.

That was frightening to me, though, to listen to that issue raised at the John 316 conference and yet the interpretation of Romans 5, which becomes the foundation of the federal headship concept, that interpretation was presented, was used to argue against particular redemption and assert a universal atonement by saying that all were in Adam and all are in Christ, in the sense of he dies for all.

And they don't seem to see that there's two humanities being presented there and that the only consistent way to read Romans chapter 5 the way they do is to embrace universalism because it results in justification of life for all.

If they don't see the two humanities, and again, that's why I say so many of these individuals do not go outside of the realm of their particular theology so as to bump up against other perspectives and hence their inconsistencies are not pointed out or not seen.

As long as you stay within just the realm of your own experience and your own fellowship or something like that, you may not be challenged the way that you would be otherwise to see where your problems are arising in your theology.

And before we move too far beyond this point, I think it's very, very important to point out that the idea of substitution involves, biblically, the idea of the existence of the elect. In other words, who is going to be united with Christ?

This idea of union with Christ, which again, many of these folks will recognize union with Christ is a clear Pauline belief. That phrase or variance thereof appears 10 times in the first 13 verses in Ephesians chapter 1.

And this idea of union with Christ, they will end up having to put on the level of, well, you unite with Christ only because you exercise saving faith. You unite yourself to Christ rather than this idea of the Father uniting a people with Christ so that his death becomes their death, his burial their burial, his resurrection their resurrection.

This union with Christ, which is such a beautiful concept, which we see in Jesus' words in John 6, we see it in Ephesians 1, we see it throughout the New Testament, really becomes more of a amorphous, impersonal, well, you know, it's sort of like a club.

If you join up, then you get to be a part of it, but, you know, it's all up to you to join up type thing. And the personal level of election, the personal level of substitution is lost at that point. And they can't emphasize it because there's just no ground left to do so.

And that to me is another indication of why it's so important to seek to be consistent in our theological belief because, you know, when people say, oh, I believe in substitutionary atonement, but I don't believe that the elect are personally known to God outside of some passive foreknowledge or something like that.

It's not his choice to have elected a people and joined them to Christ. I just don't know how you end up preaching that and teaching that with any level of consistency at all.

Yes, and you raise the New Testament. It's not unique, of course, to the New Testament. In fact, the Old Testament fills with types and shadows of the atonement in not just the, strictly speaking, the atonement sacrifice, but many of the other sacrifices as well.

In fact, the general concept of a person bringing a sacrifice in place of that person to receive punishment in place of the person. Someone brings a lamb and offers it to God, and the lamb is standing in the place receiving death and being burnt with fire, and the person is living and surviving.

And it's so thoroughly ingrained into the Old Testament that it's almost unable to be missed by the first audience. And so you see it in the book of Hebrews constantly, the concept of Christ as the high priest, Christ as the sacrifice as well, and the fact that Christ is offering himself on behalf of someone and taking the place of someone.

Well, in fact, I think that's one of the major problems here is, as I've bemoaned many times, many evangelicals today are woefully deficient in their understanding and knowledge of the Old Testament, especially sacrificial laws, temple worship, etc., etc.

And hence, the book of Hebrews becomes a closed book to them because it assumes that level of familiarity. And so terms like propitiation, helosmos, the place of covering, yom kippur, all these issues that are just assumed in the New Testament discussion that flow directly out of the Old Testament context are just lost on most people.

Most people don't know what these words are, and so when modern people come along, I'm not even referring here to necessarily the people that we're talking about, but let's say modern heretics, individuals who want to get rid of certain elements of biblical teaching.

They can redefine terms right and left, and people don't recognize how blatantly wrong these things are, again, because of the fact that they don't have that firm knowledge of Old Testament types and shadows that become fulfilled in the work of Christ in the New.

And so many of those terms, just redemption and propitiation and sacrifice, are just lost on so many today because of a lack of familiarity with that Old Testament text.

Yes, indeed. And at the same time, when we're talking about the familiarity with the Old Testament, it's interesting to see how the Reformers, hitting the increase in knowledge of the Hebrew language and an increase in emphasis on learning the biblical languages and finding out where the Vulgate varied from the original Hebrew.

At the same time, you see an explosion in understanding of the Bible and an interest in finding out what not only does the New Testament say, but also what does the Old Testament say. So it's not any surprise that you start to see a more thorough understanding expressed, at least, during the Reformation period.

But one of the things that they didn't give us immediately during the Reformation period was this term, limited atonement. In fact, it seems to have been picked largely to make the TULIP acronym work.

And it can be a little bit confusing to people who seem to think that what we're saying is that the value of Christ's death was limited. Of course, we're not saying that. We're saying that if God had wished, he could have saved by Christ's death either a single person or more people than we could possibly imagine.

So it has nothing to do with the fact that the power of Christ's death or the value of Christ's death is somehow limited. It's not that Christ's death is only worth so much in a cosmic scale, but that Christ's death was intended for a limited group.

There was a limited target for whom that sacrifice was offered.

And that limitation is actually a gracious limitation based upon the gracious decree of election, and all of this being undeserved from its very start because there is no person who deserves the grace of God that is expressed through election, through union with Christ, through his substitution, through adoption, all the other gracious things that God does for us.

That limitation is based upon the gracious intention of God over against the kind of limitation that is necessary for those who do not believe in limited atonement. They still limit the effect of the work of Christ by in essence arguing that Christ's death makes all men savable, but that it was not the intention of the triune God to actually save substitutionarily those that are joined to Christ in his death.

That is a severe limitation, not of the intention of the atonement, but of the actual effect of the atonement. And that is something that I don't know about you, but I rarely hear those who are preaching against limited atonement admit their own limitation of the actual effect of the atonement at all.

Yes, I think I'm usually greeted by surprise when I speak to an Arminian and I tell them that they actually have a limited atonement. They look at me in shock, and when I go further and point out that the limitation that they have, the principal limitation that they have, is far more serious, they're really aghast.

They haven't seen that the limitation they've placed on the atonement is that it doesn't accomplish its aim. It doesn't save people without something added by the person, which is the same problem that the reformers saw with the Roman Catholic soteriology of their day.

Right, right. And that's because they haven't been forced to think about those things. I did not see the time going by. We're going to need to take a break. I'm going to put you on hold, brother. And we're going to be right back right after this.

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Textual Criticism, Commentaries, and the Atonement Debate

Before we get back to our discussion today, I was asked by the powers that be to respond to a question that someone had. We, of course, have been offering the New Testament text and translation commentary by Philip Comfort.

It is a Tyndale publication. And someone that wrote in said, look, I'm a fairly new Christian, and if this thing is just a bunch of Greek and Hebrew and Syriac and Ugaritic, and I think I probably went beyond the languages he mentioned, but hey, you get the idea.

That's not really going to be much use to me. Well, obviously, this is an advanced piece of literature in that sense. But one thing I really appreciate about this particular work, I just happened to open up to John 20, 23.

And yes, there's Greek here. But what they've done, and this is what really increases the audience as far as its worth goes, is they have translated what each variant is in English. And so there's three variants here.

The sins have been forgiven, the sins are forgiven, or the sins will be forgiven. And then below it, it not only gives you the manuscripts that's found in, and of course there's tables that tell you all about those, but then it also gives you the English translations that render it that way.

So you can look at where your own translation or translations you're looking at fall into that. And then there's a discussion, primarily in English, immediately following thereafter, discussing the variant and why certain ones would, why you'd accept this reading or that reading or something like that.

So that's part of the reason it's almost 900 pages long, I believe. Was it 800 and, 899, yeah, 900 pages long, is because that takes up some space. But hopefully that would be helpful if the person wrote in.

Again, for a person who is doing apologetic study and yet has not had the opportunity of being trained in textual criticism, things like that, it's just extremely useful. Metzger's commentary is useful.