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A mighty fortress is our God. A bulwark never failing.
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I don't like Calvinists because they've chosen to follow John Calvin instead of Jesus Christ. I have a problem with them.
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They're following men instead of the word of God. Our helper he amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing.
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On top of my feet, standing on a stump and crying out,
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He died for all. Those who elected were selected. For still our ancient foe does seek to work us woe.
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His craft and power are great and armed with cruel hate.
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Well, first of all, James, I'm very ignorant of the Reformers.
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On earth is not his equal. I think
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I probably know more about Calvinism than most of the people who call themselves Calvinists.
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Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing?
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But God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever were not the right man on our side, the man of God's own choosing.
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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.
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You ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is me.
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Lord, swallow his name. Read my book. From age to age the same, and he must win the battle.
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And now, from our underground bunker, hidden deep beneath Liberty University, where no one would think to look, save from those moderate
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Calvinists, Dave Hunt fans, and those who have read and re -read George Bryson's book, we are
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Radio Free Geneva, broadcasting the truth about God's freedom to say to his own eternal glory.
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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.
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But before we do that, I am attempting, just to let everybody know, I am attempting to arrange some programs next week.
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And Tuesday evening, right before I had class with my
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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
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King James -only advocates, and they were attempting to respond to my book.
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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.
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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
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I heard were very circular in their nature, and would be very easily exposed as such.
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In fact, I don't think I heard a single argument that I could not have applied to the Geneva Bible, rather than the
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King James. And, you know, it's a Psalm 12 stuff, ignore the context, turn this into some type of a promise about a
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Bible in a language that doesn't exist yet, when Psalm 12 is written, and that type of a thing.
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And, again, would be very, I think, useful to hear both sides, and illustrate what the issues really are.
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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.
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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.
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And, of course, next week, I do want to encourage you to tune in next week, Tuesday night, 5 o 'clock
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Pacific Coast time, right here on the Covenant, it's called the American Voice Radio. Tune in, because I've got somebody that's going to be on the air.
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I will not be on the air for Tuesday night, but I've asked to come on, and do a rebuttal to James White's book,
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The King James Only Controversy. Now, James White is a Calvinist. He is a
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Bible corrector, and he resides within Phoenix, Arizona. He has done a lot of work in destroying the
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Word of God. He makes it his life's work to debate those that believe in a final authority.
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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.
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He has offered a challenge to those that lift up James White in such a way, almost to the point of godhood.
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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.
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He's going to come back on for the next Tuesday evening, so that you can call in with your challenges.
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So, folks, put this down in your books. You don't want to miss this. This should be a very interesting show.
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Yeah, well, lift me up almost to the position of – I actually typed that out.
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Let's see. To almost to the point of godhood. Yeah, well,
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I hadn't heard that one before. I've been called lots of things before.
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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,
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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
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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.
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And if they'd like me to come on their program, I'd be happy to do that too. If they come on mine,
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I can go on theirs. That would be great. In fact, we could simulcast while they're on.
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We could simulcast on the web. I mean, there's things we can do. Technology exists. We can do it.
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So, anyway, so hopefully that's for next week. Now, as most of you know, we, a couple of weeks ago, began reviewing some of the statements made at the
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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.
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He basically took the information from folks like David Ponter and Tony Byrne, and that became the substance, the essence of his presentation.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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And so when I found out that Turrington Fan had already a lot of experience in dealing with these folks,
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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.
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So, Brother Turrington Fan, welcome to The Dividing Line. Thanks very much, Dr. Wade. It's good to have you on.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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Okay. All right. Now, as you listened to my playing David Allen, did the thought cross your mind fairly quickly?
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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 would suppose
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Mr. Allen would also be opposed to sort of a four -point
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Calvinist or Amaraldian position. So I wouldn't necessarily associate him automatically with them.
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Right. Well, definitely not. But even the chart that he used and he passed out and so on and so forth,
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Tony Byrne had created. So there was a lot of reliance there. Let's back up for everybody.
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We have a lot of folks that listen to the program that maybe don't have as wide a background as others.
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The issue is that of the atonement. Now, you're coming from the Presbyterian perspective.
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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
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Westminster Standards and what is found as well in the London Baptist Confession of Faith. So if you would like,
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I know that you have written on and produced some material in regards to where the
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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
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Westminster Confession of Faith. And so where does Westminster come down on issues like that?
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Well, both the Westminster Confession of Faith and the London Baptist Confession of Faith, which, as you know, is largely derived from the
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Westminster Confession of Faith, they both address the topic in Chapter 8, Paragraph 8.
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The Westminster Confession says, To all those for whom Christ has purchased redemption, he does certainly and effectually apply and communicate the same, making intercession for them and revealing unto them, in and by the
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Word, the mysteries of salvation, effectually persuading them by his
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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.
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And the London Baptist Confession has a very similar wording. There's a few words taken out and a little bit additional added.
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For example, the London Baptist Confession ends with those same words and then adds,
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And all of free and absolute grace, without any condition foreseen in them to procure it.
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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.
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And it's interesting to me and it's important to me that a couple of things, one of the main sources for the
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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It's all very pragmatic rather than very biblical in its orientation. And it seems to me that the
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Westminster Divines and the London Baptists were going into a very, very deep biblical area and that is how does
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Christ act as mediator? Upon what grounds does he mediate? I'm just looking through the sections here.
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I should have put the Westminster here and I think I've got it right here. Hardback edition by the way.
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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.
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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.
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So going back to the very eternal covenant of redemption grounding the atonement and Christ's offices in the
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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.
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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 of the eternal spirit.
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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
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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.
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And then six, the price of redemption and if you don't mind
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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.
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This was accomplished by the promises of 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.
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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.
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And then there's actually two more sections in the London Baptist Confession of Faith anyways. Christ and Christ alone is fitted to be mediator between God and man.
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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.
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All of this comes together in this beautiful presentation of what
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Christ has done. It's the work of the triune God. It's eternal. It's to God's glory.
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The reason for the incarnation is brought in. This is just tremendously compelling truth that is found in scripture.
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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.
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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
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I will never lose that excitement that I got when I saw that many years ago. Do you have any comment on that?
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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
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John 5 .19, which says, "...the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the
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Father, for what things soever He doeth, these also doeth the
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Son likewise." There's a unity in the Trinity, and some views of the
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Atonement essentially divide the Son from the Father, or the Son from the Spirit, so that the
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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.
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Or the Spirit is trying to save everyone, but the Father knows who are His, and has given those ones to Jesus.
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So you see, some of these views tend to divide up the Trinity and place the persons of the
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Trinity against each other, which is contrary not just to these Reformed documents, but to the
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Bible itself. Well, not only that, but I'll just give folks the background. You were actually speaking with a
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Muslim in channel, and were discussing what John chapter 5 has to say about the unity that exists between the
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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,
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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
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Trinity, where the various persons of the Trinity are at odds with one another as to what they're seeking to accomplish.
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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
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God sound, I don't know, fuzzy and warm and lovable, rather than being the
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God who has revealed Himself in the pages of Scripture, and to set the Father at odds with the Son, to have the
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Son interceding in behalf of people the Father has not decreed to save, or the
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Father and the Son not providing the foundation for the Spirit to bring salvation to bear.
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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
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Reformed theology are the very same people who are not taking that message into the arenas that I take that message into.
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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.
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And if they were forced to do that, then the inconsistencies that they're presenting would be very, very clearly demonstrated thereby.
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Yes, and I think it's important to note that sometimes we have a picture, we have a picture of what goes on in the blogosphere, on the
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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
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Internet. But I think in addition, you brought up the issue of Muslims, 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.
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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.
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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.
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And that raises all sorts of questions about the holiness of God, and God's law, and God's purposes, and things like that.
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But certainly there is not only, and it's interesting, not only is there no sacrifice for sins, but there's also no mediator.
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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.
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And they recognize that the system doesn't provide it, but there is still this deep, deep desire to have a mediator.
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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
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God of something outside of ourselves. And so when we talk about Christ, I think it's important to emphasize that a couple of things.
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First of all, we are talking about a substitutionary atonement when we speak of his work.
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And it's fascinating to me that so many today want to use that terminology while denying where it came from historically.
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Substitutionary atonement is a reformed concept. It was rejected by the historical
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Arminians for the obvious reason that they recognized that if Christ's death was substitutionary, then that in and of itself would bring about salvation.
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And since they had a general atonement concept, then that would bring about universalism.
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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?
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Well, it's very difficult because the idea, there immediately arises the 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.
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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?
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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.
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And it creates a number of dilemmas. The double payment concept is one of those dilemmas.
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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 ones, in this sense of for we can appreciate the fact that it's a substitute.
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In other aspects we can also appreciate that he's our substitute in the relationship of a federal head.
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Just as Adam is the federal head of humanity and represented and stood in the place of all humanity when he sinned,
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Christ in his righteousness and in his death stood in the place of the elect.
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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
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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.
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And they don't seem to see that there's two humanities being presented there and that the only consistent way to read
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Romans chapter 5 the way they do is to embrace universalism because it results in justification of life for all.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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Pauline belief. That phrase or variance thereof appears 10 times in the first 13 verses in Ephesians chapter 1.
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And this idea of union with Christ, they will end up having to put on the level of, well, you're united with Christ only because you exercise saving faith.
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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.
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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
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New Testament, really becomes more of an amorphous, impersonal, well, you know, it's sort of like a club.
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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.
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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,
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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.
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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.
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Yes, and you raise the New Testament. It's not unique, of course, to the New Testament. In fact, the
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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.
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In fact, the general concept of a person bringing a sacrifice in place of that person to receive punishment in place of the person.
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If 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.
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And it's so thoroughly ingrained into the Old Testament that it's almost unable to be missed by the first audience.
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And so you see it in the book of Hebrews constantly, the concept of Christ as the high priest,
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Christ as the sacrifice as well, and the fact that Christ is offering himself on behalf of someone and taking the place of someone.
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Well, in fact, I think that's one of the major problems here. As I've bemoaned many times, many evangelicals today are woefully deficient in their understanding and knowledge of the
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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.
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And so terms like propitiation, helosmos, the place of covering, yom kippur, all these issues that are just assumed in the
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New Testament discussion that flow directly out of the Old Testament context are just lost on most people.
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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.
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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 anew.
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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.
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Yes, indeed. And at the same time, when we're talking about the familiarity with the
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Old Testament, it's interesting to see how the Reformers, hitting the increase in knowledge of the
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Hebrew language and the increase in emphasis on learning the biblical languages and finding out where the
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Vulgate varied from the original Hebrew. At the same time, you see an explosion in understanding of the
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Bible and an interest in finding out what not only does the New Testament say, but also what does the
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Old Testament say. So it's not any surprise that you start to see a more thorough understanding, expressed at least, during the
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Reformation period. But one of the things that they didn't give us immediately during the
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Reformation period was this term, limited atonement. In fact, it seems to have been picked largely to make the
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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There was a limited target for whom that sacrifice was offered.
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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.
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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.
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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
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God to actually save substitutionarily those that are joined to Christ in his death.
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That is a severe limitation, not of the intention of the atonement, but of the actual effect of the atonement.
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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.
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I am usually greeted by surprise when I speak to an Arminian and I tell them that they actually have a limited atonement.
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They look at me in shock, and when I go further and point out that the limitation that they have, the principle limitation that they have, is far more serious, they are really aghast.
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They haven't seen that the limitation they've placed on the atonement is that it doesn't accomplish its aim.
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It doesn't save people without something added by the person, which is the same problem that the reformers saw with the
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Roman Catholic soteriology of their day. Right, right. And that's because they haven't been forced to think about those things.
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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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Hello, everyone.
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This is Rich Pierce. In a day and age where the Gospel is being twisted into a man -centered, self -help program, the need for a no -nonsense presentation of the
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Gospel has never been greater. I am convinced that a great many go to church every Sunday, yet they have never been confronted with the need for a no -nonsense presentation of the
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Thank you. Before we get back to our discussion today,
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I was asked by the powers that be to respond to a question that someone had.
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We, of course, have been offering the New Testament text and translation commentary by Philip Comfort.
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It is a Tyndale publication. Someone wrote in and said, Look, I'm a fairly new Christian, and if this thing is just a bunch of Greek and Hebrew and Syriac and Ugaritic, then
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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.
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Well, obviously, this is an advanced piece of literature in that sense. But one thing
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I really appreciate about this particular work, I just happened to open up to John 20, 23.
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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.
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And so there's three variants here. The sins have been forgiven, the sins are forgiven, or the sins will be forgiven.
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And then below it, it not only gives you the manuscripts that it's found in, and of course there's tables that tell you all about those, but then it also gives you the
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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.
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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.
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So that's part of the reason it's almost 900 pages long, I believe.
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Was it 800 and 899? Yeah, 900 pages long is because that takes up some space.
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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 and things like that, it's just extremely useful.
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Metzger's commentary is useful. This is extremely useful. This is much fuller than Metzger's commentary is, as far as the number of variants addressed and the information presented in it.
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So hopefully that is an answer for you. Today on The Dividing Line Radio Free Geneva, we are talking with Turretin Fan, one of the bloggers on my team.
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I'm very thankful for all the gentlemen and the one young lady who assist in keeping that blog active and submit articles to that.
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We are talking about the subject of the Atonement. We've been talking about substitution. We were just, as I realized time was going by us too quickly, had just been talking about the limitations placed upon the
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Atonement by those who try to make it somewhat, they make it universal in its scope but limit its effect.
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And that most people, I have said this many, many times, I believe most evangelicals have a very fluffy, warm, traditional view of the
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Atonement, not a biblical one. That's why they're not comfortable in Hebrews. They're not comfortable with the discussion there.
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They're not comfortable with the idea of wrath. They don't mind weak translations of propitiation because propitiation speaks of removing wrath.
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And we're seeing the results of this in the emergent movement today, is what I would argue.
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And so these things are extremely important. But one of the things I had mentioned we're going to get to, and I apologize that we haven't yet but we're going to try to get to now, is the subject of those that people like Tony Byrne and David Ponter and others say did not believe in the subject of limited
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Atonement and held some type of universal Atonement. Now I've addressed the issue of Calvin in The Potter's Freedom.
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I produced mainly the arguments of Dr. Nicole at that point. I think that there is an issue of consistency here and so on and so forth.
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But some of the other names that were mentioned, in particular that of Charles Hodge, I think caught a lot of people's attention when
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David Allen was going through this list, which again, I could be wrong, but it seemed to me that he was just basically going with what
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Tony Byrne said and was not really looking at what others had said in response to that. But what especially got me interested in having
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Brother Turreton fan on was the fact that you had it specifically addressed, that exact issue.
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I believe, was that March or May? I think it started with an M. I forget which month it was.
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But sometime earlier this year, you actually addressed this specific issue in regards to Charles and A .A.
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Hodge on the subject of the Atonement. Is that correct? That's correct. I don't recall which month it was either.
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And occasionally the dates of posts fluctuate in order to keep things at the top of the blog and this sort of thing.
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But in any event, yes, one of the problems we see occasionally is that authors can get sort of quote mind.
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And we're not proof from doing the same thing ourselves. We have to be careful not to sort of start looking and when we find something that sounds like what we'd like to hear, we just stop looking and underline that portion.
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And we see it a number of times. And so you'll see things like Charles Hodge making a comment about the universal effect of the
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Atonement or something like this. And at first, it may appear as though actually some of the accusations are correct and that he has rejected the doctrine of particular redemption and has sort of gone off in another corner.
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But part of the complexity is the section that Charles Hodge has in his systematic theology on the
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Atonement is at least tens if not hundreds of pages long. You mean he wasn't really good at writing short books?
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He wasn't fond of writing short books, but he was writing these books specifically to train ministers in seminary.
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He was writing a scholarly book with the expectation that his readers are going to sit and carefully read through page by page in order and figure out what he had to say.
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And I think perhaps the most compelling argument against Professor Hodge departing into the realm of universal redemption would be the fact that his hero is
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Turretin. Not me, of course, but the real Turretin. And it was his curriculum.
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And if you look at Tony's chart, you won't find Turretin listed as one of these classical -slash -moderate
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Calvinists. If you find him in there, you'll find him under one of the other categories depending on which particular topic or buzzword is being addressed.
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But we actually see Charles Hodge explaining the same principles we've just explained.
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So I'll read you a section, and obviously it's potentially subject to the same quote -mining charges that I've just mentioned above.
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Here's a quick discussion. He says, Therefore, as we were condemned for the disobedience of Adam, speaking here now about that federal relationship, so we are justified for the obedience of Christ.
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As in Adam all died, so in Christ are all made alive. Hence Christ's death is said to be our death, and we are said to rise with him, to live with him, and to be exalted in our measure in his exaltation.
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He is the head, and we are the body. The acts of the head are the acts of the whole mystical person.
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The ideas, therefore, of legal substitution, of vicarious obedience and punishment, of the satisfaction of justice by one for all, underlie and pervade the whole scheme of redemption.
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There can no more be separated from that scheme than the warp can be separated from the wolf without destroying the whole texture.
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In other words, what he's doing is he's saying, although he mentions other places about the infinite sufficiency of Christ's death and how
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Christ's death is able to take away the legal barriers that would stop anyone from coming, and without those legal barriers anyone could come, nevertheless he points out the particular intention of the atonement, the fact that it was for particular people, it was for this body that's united with him.
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And if we expand that body to include all of humanity, the only logical conclusion is that there are no reprobates.
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And, of course, Professor Hodge never intended that type of interpretation of his work.
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Perhaps it's also reflected in the works of his son, A. A. Hodge, who's sort of the other Hodge.
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And I found a similar discussion, perhaps a little bit more explicit. He's talking about the fact that Christ has fully satisfied all the demands of divine justice upon those whom he represents.
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And he explains as the conclusion of what this proves, namely that Christ did not die simply to make the salvation of those for whom he died possible, that is, to remove legal obstructions to their salvation, but that he died with the design and effect of actually securing their salvation and of endowing them gratuitously with an inalienable title to heaven.
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It proves, in the second place, that the vicarious sufferings of Christ must have been, in design and effect, personal and definite as to their object.
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Salvation must be applied to all those for whom it was purchased, since not the possibility or opportunity for reconciliation, but actual reconciliation itself, was purchased.
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Since not only reconciliation, but a title to an eternal inheritance was purchased, it follows, first, that to all those for whom
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Christ has purchased redemption, he does certainly and effectually apply and communicate the same, there he's quoting from the
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Confession, and that, second of all, he who never receives the inheritance and to whom the purchased grace is never applied is not one of the persons for whom it was purchased.
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And he goes on afterwards to get back into our standards, which he's referring there to the
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Westminster Standards. But you see, there's a very strong emphasis on the particular work of Christ, and it's dangerous to read a small quotation pulled somewhere that mentions something about the word all, or for all humanity, or all mankind, and to arrive at a conclusion that these men rejected what the standards teach.
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You know, it would seem to me to be much more dangerous and much more likely to read someone, and in light of the fact that we use universal language in regards to the
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Gospel, that is, that Christ's death is for all men, in the sense of it's not limited to Jews, it's not limited to one ethnic group or anything like that, but that men from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation are saved through that work of Christ, according to Revelation chapter 5.
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It would seem that it would be far more likely that you could find universalistic language and then read into that an assumption about someone's viewpoint, but when you find extremely particular language that ties the intention of Christ directly in to the electing grace of God, and union with Christ, and substitution, and all these other things, it is that particular language that is going to define the issues for us, not the general language that may not have any reference to the actual subject, and that is, was it
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God the Father's intention by the death of Christ to bring about the redemption, or at least try to bring about the redemption of every single individual, or to make men savable upon some other act of theirs, whether it's faith, repentance, faith, repentance, and a whole long line of works, righteousness, whatever else it might be.
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It seems to me that that's just a rather obvious way of approaching this particular subject.
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Yes, yes. And part of the result of that is that, unfortunately, what we're faced with in some cases is websites that are filled with quotations, including underlines not in the original, and selected carefully for a particular purpose, and it can be somewhat misleading, especially to someone who's come there, doesn't have time to carefully read the context, and try to figure out what the author meant, but just sees the underlined part that says, he died for the sins of all mankind, a term like that.
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The author may be referring, for example, to the fact that in the case of some of the very early
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Reformers, they would be talking about the fact that he didn't die just for the sins of the Old Testament Jews, because there was a problem at that time where some people were trying to argue that Christ died only for the people who already lived, or didn't die for the people who already lived.
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They would try to limit the atonement in other ways, and you'd see these Roman Catholic arguments that you have to have issues, you have to have sacraments, in order to sort of fill up what's deficient in Christ's sacrifice.
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Now, of course, they wouldn't say usually that the sacrifice was deficient, but in effect, that was the result.
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And so the Reformers sometimes used very strong, universalistic -sounding terminology without having any idea in mind that someone's going to misinterpret that as denying that Christ died for a particular people.
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Well, it's interesting. You sent me a quote that you had found from Jonathan Edwards that seemed very odd and out of place.
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Edwards was placed firmly in the anti -particular redemption camp.
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And yet, I had had a few quotes sent to me, for example, quoting
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Edwards, This is certain that God did not intend to save those by the death of Christ, that He certainly knew from all eternity
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He should not save by His death. Wherefore, it is certain that if He intended to save any by the death of Christ, He intended to save those whom
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He certainly knew He should save by His death. This is all that was ever pleaded for. And likewise, another citation,
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Now, can we suppose that Christ came down from heaven and went through all this upon uncertainties, not knowing what purchase
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He should get, how great or how small? Did He die only upon probabilities without absolute certainty, who or how many, or whether any should be redeemed by what
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He did and suffered? These are both from the works of Jonathan Edwards. And then, I myself ran across one today that I found rather interesting.
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This is from chapter 5 of one of the Miscellanies, concerning the necessity and reasonableness of the
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Christian doctrine of satisfaction for sin, which is interesting, especially in light of Islam. Section 10 says,
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Christ's love and pity to the elect, that His offering up Himself on the cross was the greatest act and fruit of, and consequently which
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He was then in the highest exercise of, was one source of His suffering. A strong exercise of love excites a lively idea of the object beloved, and a strong exercise of pity excites a lively idea of the misery under which
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He pities them. Christ's love then brought His elect infinitely near to Him in that great act and suffering wherein
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He especially stood for them. Notice especially. And was substituted in their stead.
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And His love and pity fixed the idea of them in His mind, as if He had really been they, and fixed their calamity in His mind, as though it really was
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His. A very strong and lively love and pity towards the miserable tends to make their case ours, as in other respects.
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So in this in particular, as a death in our idea, place us in their stead, under their misery, with the most lively feeling sense of that misery, as if we're feeling it for them, actually suffering it in their stead by strong sympathy.
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So I found that to be an interesting expression of the relationship of Christ with His elect, for whom
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He intercedes. In that kind of an assertion too. So just simply throwing these names out, based upon singular citations, that are not given a context, especially the one that David Allen threw out from Edwards, from the
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Freedom of the Will, if you read the page, and of course we're talking about the two volume micro print edition of the works of Jonathan Edwards there, but if you actually read the page that that citation was taken from, and that was on Tony Byrne's blog, that's where David Allen got it, but if you actually read that whole page, it is so clear that this is said within the context of particularism, and the electing grace of God, and all the threads that come together, to use the quote you used, the warp and the woof of the fabric of redemption, that to misread it, as I believe
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Tony did, because even as you said, by using italics and underline and bold and so on and so forth,
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I'm reminded of Norman Geisler, italicizing, underlining and bold stuff, that completely missed the point of what he was quoting from John Calvin, for example.
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It simply misleads people, because they're looking for something, that they want to be able to find, that just really isn't there.
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That's what I've been running across. Yes, and I believe there's a similar, there's another quotation you might find from Edwards, in these miscellaneous, in which there's a line where it says, he did die for all in this then, to past all contradiction.
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That's the sentence, and if you put an underline under that, it looks like Edwards is saying that he died for all, and how are you going to possibly get past that?
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But if you read the whole quotation, it starts off, universal redemption must be denied, in the very sense of Calvinists themselves, whether predestination is acknowledged or no.
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And his point, he goes on to explain, but his point is, just because God knows who's going to be saved, makes it nonsensical for Jesus to try to save people
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He knows it's utterly hopeless and pointless and ineffective to try to save. Right, there he was discussing the irrationality of attributing to God, basically trying to defeat his own self and his own intentions and purposes.
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So in other words, people need to look a little bit more closely at the sources, than to just simply throw them out there as if they are single citations, provide all these things.
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Unfortunately, we've run out of time. I would very much like to thank you, brother, for your contribution to the program today, your contribution to the blog, and I hope you'll keep up the good work, because I need all the help that I can get.
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Thanks very much for having me on. I very much appreciate you being with us today, and I'm sure everyone else appreciates that as well.
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Thank you for joining with us, and thank you for listening to The Dividing Line today, everybody. We will be back next week, hopefully, to have a discussion over the allegations that were made of me.
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I didn't know that anyone had ever exalted me to the status of godhood, but I thought that was a little bit hyperbolic, maybe, in its application, but who knows?
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We'll see what happens next week, and if not, there's always something to be talking about, because I'll tell you what, you look at the news today, and you have a theological mind, you see a lot of theological things going on.
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So we'll be doing that here on The Dividing Line. Thanks. God bless. The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.
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If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602, or write us at P .O.
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Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the
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World Wide Web at aomin .org, that's A -O -M -I -N dot O -R -G, where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.