December 16, 2004

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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line.
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The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602, or toll free across the
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United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. Well, good afternoon, welcome to The Dividing Line, Thursday afternoon, the 16th of December.
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I'm being geeky today. I was just scanning through new posts using my
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RSS reader program. We have RSS capability on our blog now and so it's like, you know,
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I read all these blogs but it'd be really easier if I caught them as they were posting stuff during the day.
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I know, I know a lot of you folks way ahead of me on this, okay? I understand that.
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I'm just getting caught up. I just put my Logos, my Libronics system on my main system. So now it's running with BibleWorks and I'm just having lots of fun.
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And it is interesting, Eric Svensson has his discussions today on his 4 .5 point
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Calvinism and we may get some calls on that, I have a feeling, somewhere along the line.
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But I've been adding various sundry blogs here. One of them I tried to add and they're going down for maintenance at the moment.
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It doesn't work well when they're not working too well. Anyways, 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number if you would like to participate in the program today.
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I have more, of course, from Dr.
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Patterson that we will be looking at. But I also have in my hand some material that people have been talking about.
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I mentioned this particular article on the Reformed Baptist discussion list and that got a lot of stuff going on as far as that went.
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And there's a lot of discussion that has come up in regards to the subject of Hyper -Calvinism.
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You know that many people identify any Calvinistic belief at all as Hyper -Calvinism.
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For many Evangelicals, Calvinism is believing in once saved, always saved.
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And if you believe anything beyond that, if you believe in divine election, if you believe in total depravity of man, unconditional election, obviously if anybody believes in limited atonement, irresistible grace, you're a
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Hyper -Calvinist. Shouldn't that be a four point Arminian? What? You know, you believe in once saved, always saved.
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I'm just talking about it. For most Evangelicals, that's a
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Calvinist... Well, for example, it's fairly obvious that on the program that we played with Dave Hunt, the host, that's pretty much how he viewed everything, was that if you believe in eternal security, you're a
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Calvinist. And since Dave Hunt believes in a form of it, it's certainly not a biblical form, it's a form that comes from the
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Wilkins non -lordship, got your ticket punched, going to heaven, saving faith, any kind of faith at all type view.
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But still, since Dave Hunt did not believe that you could be saved and lose your salvation and be lost, you could just tell that the host was disappointed and probably would like to have at that point said, well, that means you're a
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Calvinist, which of course it doesn't. But anyway, the term is thrown around and we obviously have to define it, we have to do something with it.
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And in the process of discussing this today, I'd like to also give some insight into a phrase that I've used a number of times.
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And that phrase is, scholarship is as scholarship does.
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That sort of comes from an ironic source, of course. That is, it comes from, well,
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I've got somebody who just sent me an email and wants to know how to listen to the dividing line. How do you respond to that and do the dividing line at the same time?
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That's not an easy thing to do, actually, when you think about it, other than going back to the website and pulling stuff out.
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I'm not sure you may be able to do that. Anyway, scholarship is as scholarship does.
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And what I mean by that is you can claim to be a scholar all you want. If you are one, then you will do things in a certain fashion.
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You will utilize, or you should utilize, or you're misusing your scholarship facts in a certain way, research in a certain way.
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I think for a Christian scholar, there needs to be a certain level of integrity, honesty, things like that.
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So you shouldn't be found regularly misrepresenting other people, especially just simply to promote your own crusade or your own self.
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And so recently, there was a series at monergism .com.
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And I don't spend a lot of time surfing the web. I'm busy with a lot of things, but I'm certainly familiar with monergism .com.
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And I know they have links to a lot of my materials there. In fact, when I logged on, right on the front page were at least two articles that I had written that were linked there directly to our site, and I appreciate that.
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And I have some friends that write for monergism .com, so I'm fairly familiar with it. I don't think this person who's writing this article has anything at monergism .com.
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But anyway, there was a particular article that gave a list of ideas, concepts that may or may not, but may be associated with the idea of hyper -Calvinism.
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And this writer then added a lot of material to what was found at the monergism site, basically to try to take some shots at me personally.
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And if you want to know where it came from, what this person is referring to, evidently
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I greatly offended this individual with the comments that I made on February 17th this past year.
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If you go to the blog, you go down to the bottom, you go to the pre -December 2004 archives, go to February, scroll down to the 17th.
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Remember what was going on last February? It seems like in some ways it seems like yesterday, and in some ways it seems like a long time ago.
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I was going to Atlanta, and my goodness, that seems like it was forever ago. That is really odd.
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But anyway, I was looking at it, and I scrolled back to this. And on the 17th of February, remember the big story at the time?
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Yeah, you're right. It's the film that is, what is it, the seventh now, biggest grossing film?
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Maybe even higher than that. Maybe somebody on the channel will know where it is right now. But The Passion of the Christ was coming out.
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And it hadn't come out yet. And there was all this stuff going on in the media about the
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Christ story. And all sorts of things like that.
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And there was all this stuff about who killed Jesus. Well, is the film anti -Semitic because it says that the
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Jews did this? Or was it the Romans? And who killed Jesus?
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And nowhere in all of this did you get any meaningful biblical discussion of the overarching purpose in the cross.
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And so, though I have addressed the issue of the atonement in writing, and a scholar, of course, would address what a person has published, first and foremost.
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An unscholarly person who abuses scholarship for their own personal means would ignore what a person has published and just go with other sources and brief little snippets and things like that because they're just trying to promote their own little crusade.
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So, there's a little discussion on the blog. Obviously, I have discussed the atonement in full in other places.
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And I've discussed the issue of compatibilism. I've discussed the relationship between the will of God, the decree of God, the will of man, the fact that men do what they do freely because they desire to do so, the fact that God holds men accountable, that God calls all men everywhere to repent, and that we are to preach the gospel to every creature because of the fact that we do not possess the content of God's secret decree.
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We do not know who the elect are, so we preach the gospel to all men. And we've discussed the fact that that has taken us to places that our minions won't go.
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And I've mentioned the fact that this particular individual who likes to write against me, I've never seen him out there. I don't see him doing this kind of stuff.
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But anyway, on the 17th of February, I wrote the following. Isn't it amazing?
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The title was, Who Killed Jesus? Isn't it amazing? This is the big question today because of the
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Gibson film. And isn't it even more amazing that the early church, long before the first gospel was written or the first epistle penned, knew the answer?
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And isn't it just sad that most evangelicals don't even believe what the Bible says about it anymore and refuse to consider what it really means?
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Here's the answer, folks, for anyone who wants to know. And I gave a citation from Scripture.
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And the Scripture passage is Acts 4, verses 27 -28. For truly in this city they were gathered together against your holy servant
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Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pius, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your purpose predestined to occur.
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Answer to the question? God did it. It's no mystery. The early Christians had bothered to listen to what
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God had inspired seven centuries earlier. In Isaiah 53, verse 4, Surely our griefs he himself bore, and our sorrows he carried.
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Yet we ourselves esteemed him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. Smitten of God.
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There's the truth. Let's start telling folks. God had his son nailed to a tree. And no, it wasn't so that you could decide if you'd like him to be your savior.
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He did so to redeem his people. And if you do not repent and believe, you will not be among those people.
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But do not be mistaken if you continue in your hard -heartedness. Your unbelief will not cause his failure.
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All that the Father has entrusted to the Son will receive eternal life. The great question is not what will you do with Christ Jesus, my friend.
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It is what will Christ do with you. Now, of course, some of you have probably heard
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R .C. Sproul use that very phrase. The first person that I ever heard use that phrase, that last phrase there, that the great question is not what will you do with Jesus Christ.
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It is what will Christ do with you. Emphasizing, of course, the sovereignty of the
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Savior, the power of the Savior, to save his people, that passage we think of in Matthew 1 this time of year.
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Why was his name called what it was? Why is he a savior?
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Why is he Yeshua? Because he will save his people from their sins. Not he will try.
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Not he will make the best effort possible, but that he will save his people from their sins.
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And so I remember very clearly hearing, especially in that wonderful R .C.
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Sproulian voice, that statement. The obvious implication of it is that the tendency of evangelicalism is to so limit
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God. You've all heard it. You've all heard the explanation of election. God has voted for you, the devils vote against you, and you're the one that gets to cast the tie -breaking vote.
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You've heard the presentation. You've seen the pictures of Jesus standing at the heart's door, and there's no knob on the outside, and he's meekly knocking, and he wants to come in, but he can't.
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He's powerless. He has no authority in, well, he can have authority in heaven and earth, just as long as it's not in my life.
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We want to limit him in that way. And that's what I'm referring to here, of course. And these are common beliefs that Reformed people have shared for a long time, that Christ is a powerful savior and that he will not fail in the task that has been given to him.
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I quoted from John chapter 6, of course, that he will, all that the
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Father has entrusted to the Son will receive eternal life. That's John 6, 38 and 39. And so I present a biblical material.
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There's a lot behind this. In my written materials, I have affirmed compatibilism and the responsibility of men in light of God's sovereign decree.
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I have affirmed the existence of secondary sources, secondary means by which this decree is accomplished and the culpability thereof, et cetera, et cetera.
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I've addressed this in conferences, at the Founders Conference, speaking on panels with men like Bruce Ware and scholars of that rank.
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But evidently, for some people, the use of sources and accurately representing things just isn't a part of what they consider scholarship.
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And so as you read through these things, you encounter these additions. For example, in going back to monergism .com,
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some of the things about Hyper -Calvinism, they say that God is the author of sin and evil.
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And so they will say a Hyper -Calvinist would say God is the author of sin and evil.
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That is, they do not make the effort to discuss the role of the secondary means.
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They will not do what the London Baptist Confession, which I as a former Baptist elder present, discuss those things.
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But then there is placed in parentheses these little comments that are not at monergism .com.
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They are from this author. And it's very... Yes, I know that Bruce Ware does not hold limited atonement.
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Congratulations for discovering that. Good grief. That God is the author of sin and evil.
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Then there's a parentheses. For example, who murdered Jesus? God did it. It's that simple. There's no mystery about it at all.
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Now that's supposed to be a shot at what I said on my blog. Now any person with a high school education knows that that's not how you handle information.
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That's not how you handle what someone said. I cited scripture and I had a context and I talked about all these other things.
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And yet here you have someone who thinks that scholarship is exemplified by these petty little shots that are completely out of context.
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Second one, that men have no will of their own and secondary causes are of no effect. Well, certainly that wouldn't describe me in any way, shape, or form.
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But then there's parentheses. In other words, secondary causes are only occasions in which God's efficiency is exerted.
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We are nothing more than clay in the hands of the potter. Hmm, potter. Hmm, I wonder what that might be in reference to.
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I wonder if someone has a problem with Romans 9. Don't know. Then modern Judaism said that the number of the elected at any time may be known by men.
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Well, how many times, of course, have I said that we don't know who the elect are? But then listen to this twisted parenthetical insertion.
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Usually exerts itself in the following manner. You know who the elect are by the purity of their doctrine.
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Really? That's interesting. I guess we're not supposed to be concerned about purity of doctrine, but I don't remember making the connection there.
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Anyway, that it is wrong to evangelize. Wow, there's certainly not a point we could be criticized on.
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Oh, but we are in the robust sense of actually telling people that God loves them and desires their salvation and offering the benefits of Christ's death to them.
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Many people think they are doing evangelism just because they hand out literature and tell people that God commands sinners to repent.
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So, in other words, you have to do it in a particular fashion. And, of course, this particular individual has determined that if you are not an infralapsarian, unless you are a conscious infralapsarian, if you are a superlapsarian of any kind, you are automatically a hypercalvinist.
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And so that just sort of fits into the whole idea here. Monergism said that men who have once sincerely professed belief are saved regardless of what they do.
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Now, that's sort of odd when you think about it, that men who have once sincerely professed belief are saved regardless of what they do.
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I know some hypercalvinists that would not say that. I'm not really sure if I agree that that would even be relevant.
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But then in the parentheses, equating saving faith with correct doctrinal assent. Now, I don't even see any connection to that, first of all.
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And, secondly, does saving faith have to have a proper object? Or is this writer saying that you can have saving faith without having faith in the one who saves?
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That would be a question that I would ask. This is interesting.
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That the sacraments are not means of grace but obstacles to salvation by faith alone. Notice, hmm, sounds like some internet apologist who insists that sacraments are only outward signs of salvation that we receive by faith alone apart from the sacraments, and who think that Lutherans compromise the gospel by believing in baptismal regeneration.
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These folks will sometimes insist that baptism and the Lord's Supper are only ordinances, not sacraments, since they do not actually convey grace.
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In other words, all Baptists just became hypercalvinists. Isn't that brilliant? This is scholarship?
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This is insanity. All Baptists automatically, if you do not hold to a form of sacramentalism where grace is automatically conferred, and you prefer the use of the term ordinance, as I do, that automatically makes you a hypercalvinist.
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Brilliant thinking. It's no wonder that people like this would never show their face in public to where they actually had an equal time to have to defend this kind of stuff, because they know, in their heart of hearts, they would absolutely be run over like a freight train.
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That the true church is only invisible, and salvation is not connected with the visible church, hence equating the true church with the elect.
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Now it sounds to me, again, I see no connection here to hypercalvinism whatsoever.
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It sounds to me like that's a veiled reference to the idea that, and I would certainly believe, that the elect and those who are truly in the
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New Covenant, and hence are saved, that that's a co -equal number in our day, but it doesn't expand beyond that, so it's really hard to say exactly what it's referring to.
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That the scriptures are intended to be interpreted by individuals only, and not by the church, also called solo scriptura, a view held by most
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American evangelicals, especially common amongst Reformed Baptists and too many Presbyterians as well.
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Again, unlike this particular individual, I've actually published in this area, and have addressed this issue of solo scriptura, and the terminology utilized thereby, and have, since this person was still in school, been defending solo scriptura against Roman Catholic apologists, and from the very beginning have emphasized that in reality, one of the main problems, in fact
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I was just discussing this on a radio program, what's today, Thursday, Tuesday afternoon,
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I was doing a radio program, and one of the things I mentioned was the fact that there is this concept that Roman Catholic apologists like to try to, they try to define the debate, and force evangelicals to defend something that they actually themselves do not hold to.
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And I'm sorry, Frank, I'm sorry that you had to run off, we did have a caller, and that opens up all our lines at 877 -753 -3341.
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I was unaware that there was a time frame involved with that, but there's something we can do about that. They try to make a
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Protestant defend the idea that either you've got the Pope on one side, and the church tradition, and infallible interpreters, or it's you and your
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Bible alone in the woods. Now I've taught on this many, many times. It is so easy to demonstrate that,
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I have addressed this consistently in every context for years, so to have someone make this kind of allegation just again demonstrates that they have no concern for truth, they have no knowledge of self -discipline as far as truth is concerned.
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That the grace of God does not work for the betterment of all men, i .e. the denial of common grace, I've defended that numerous times.
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And that only Calvinists are Christians, or in a slightly more nuanced form, that Arminians who happen to be true Christians will eventually find their way to Calvinism.
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Those are not the same things. Those are not the same things, and I wouldn't even agree with that.
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I would agree that there is a tendency to be Arminian at your conversion, and then as you study the scriptures to begin more and more to see who was truly the one who brought you to himself.
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I would defend that easily. But these inserted comments, and this was in the process, by the way, of attacking
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Dr. Nettles and accusing him of being a hyper -Calvinist. The irony was that the monergism article, if you went down below that, linked to Dr.
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Nettles talking about hyper -Calvinism. I tell you, there is truly a rabies theologorum, the rabid attitude of the theologians, and you can really lose balance.
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You really, really can when you just sort of live in the hallowed halls, and you don't seem to really do anything with all that great learning that is yours.
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You eventually just sort of lose your mind, I guess. Anyway, I have here, goodness,
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I got an entire blast worth of stuff in the mail all at one time, and I can't look at it right now, and I'm sorry
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I wasn't able to get that person into the program on time too. 877 -753 -3341.
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We began looking at Dr. Paige Patterson's comments on Calvinism at New Orleans Baptist Seminary back in October.
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We played a few segments, and then we moved from there, and I forgot about it, and so last week we went back to it.
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We finished the first presentation. You spoke in three chapels, about 35 minutes apiece, and so we're moving to the second section of the comments that Dr.
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Patterson makes, and here's where he's going to explain to us how you put all this stuff together. So Mr.
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SuperDuperSoundManGuy, I'm about to play some audio again, so here we go.
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Exactly 8, 19 a .m. in the morning in a flat in Cambridge in England.
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This caused no end of consternation to those who knew him and loved him, among whom was a famous Anglican bishop by the name of James A.
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Pike, Sr. James Pike, Sr. became so concerned about why on earth his son would have done this kind of thing that together with his secretary and his personal chaplain,
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David Barr, they made the journey to Cambridge and they actually took up residence in the flat where Jim had taken his life.
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And while they were there, an unusual series of things began to take place. For example, at exactly 8, 19 a .m.,
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when Jim had taken his life, the alarm clock would go off every day, even when they had set it at a totally different time.
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In addition to that, Jim Pike never approved of the bangs in the hairdo of Bishop Pike's secretary, and so on one morning when she awakened, there was the smell of smoke in the room, there were lighted matches that had been extinguished now lying on the floor, and her bangs had all been singed off.
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And all kinds of unusual other things began to happen, such as books lying on the floor open to a passage with a marker there, indicating where someone wanted
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Bishop Pike to read, and it inevitably had to do with something that Jim had been interested in.
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And at least Bishop Pike did not know what on earth to do, so on February the 25th, he went to consult with Canon John Pierce Higgins, one of the leading
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Anglican clergymen of all of England at the time. He, after hearing the entire thing, suggested one or two approaches to the problem.
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One, he suggested the possibility of consulting a Ouija board, which seems to me to be what you could expect from any archbishop to give that kind of advice, and in addition to that, he said if that does not seem to work or appeal to you, why not try a necromancer, try someone who is a medium and could possibly get in touch with your son
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Jim. Well, Bishop Pike decided on the latter, and so on March the 1st, 1966, he entered into a seance with Ina Twigg, and sure enough,
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Ina Twigg was able to call up Jim from the dead, and they began to converse through the medium, and Bishop Pike said to his son,
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Jim, are you in heaven? And there was a pause, and Ina Twigg was manifestly uncomfortable, and the bishop said, tell me what on earth he is saying, and at length she finally said, well, actually he says that where he is is more like hell.
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And then she paused for a moment, and she said he also says that Paul Tillich is there with him and has something to say to us, to nobody's surprise.
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Well, anyway, what are we to make of an incident like that? Do all of these things that happen to Bishop Pike, with all of this scripted in eternity past, did
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God foreordain that these things should happen? If he chose those that are to be saved in him, and he did not choose others, but actually created them, as some of the scripture we read yesterday seemed to indicate, he created them for no other reason except to show his power and his justice and his wrath in them, then did
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Bishop Pike really have any choice in all of this? Should we hold him in any sense seriously responsible that he simply carried out what
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God had planned for him? The issues are very profound indeed, and as we wrestle with them to try to understand where human responsibility begins and where God's electing providence should be seen as limited or should it be all pervasive, men have struggled now for some 2 ,000 years with that question.
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Okay. Yeah. Wow. I preferred the
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Waffle House, personally. Yeah, first time
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I'd ever heard that particular passage, that particular story tied in there.
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But if you're wondering what does that have to do with Calvinism, I don't know either, other than the attempted connection there, and that is, well, should we hold
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Bishop Pike accountable for consulting a medium, and I would say yes, just like Pilate and the
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Jews are accountable in the betrayal of Jesus, and just as the brothers of Joseph were accountable in the sale of Joseph into slavery, and yet what they did was intent—I mean, isn't this there?
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Isn't that right there in Scripture? Seems to be, but I'm just sort of listening along with you.
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Well, there are some who come to a position that is commonly called compatibilism.
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Yeah, there we go. These are people that want to argue that libertarian free will can be asserted for man on one hand, and on the other hand we can still hold somehow to the electing providences of God, even the supraluxarian electing providences of God.
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Let's define a few of those things there. No, the very term libertarian there in its normal usage would not fit with compatibilism.
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Free will at that point would be defined as compatibilistic free will, not libertarian, because the very concept of libertarian is that there is the possibility of doing the other, there is no sovereign decree, so I wouldn't utilize that terminology, and you did just hear supraluxarian fly by there.
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It went by real quick, so that was an interesting point to just throw in there.
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I'm not following the connections overly well either. I'm doing my best to follow along with you, but we'll continue on.
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And that the two are somehow compatible and can exist together.
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Well, unquestionably, there is certain truth in this, for if both doctrines are somehow taught in God's word, then we must conclude that they are compatible.
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And yet I suggest to you that compatibilism as a general philosophy is in my estimation quite flawed.
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It's illusory. It does not really ultimately answer the question.
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I'm hoping we're going to find out why, and I'm hoping that we're also going to get some discussion of the key passages.
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I remember somebody about a year ago, like today, on a national radio program, someone kept trying to get people to address
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Acts 427 -28 and Genesis 50 -20 and Isaiah 10. Remember that? That was a year ago today.
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Yep, that's when it happened. Seems like a lot longer ago than that. We are, if we adopt the view of five -point
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Calvinism, for example, ultimately pushed to some conclusions that are very uncomfortable.
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One of those is a fatalistic conclusion. If it's all been decided in eternity past, if every act of man has been scripted of God, then in effect we have no say in it, and it is impossible to avoid a fatalistic end.
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Well, there we have the misuse, the term fatalism, because the fact that it ignores the reality of the personal element of the decree of God, and also ignores the difference between the creature's knowledge, which does not include the decree, and hence he is culpable for what he acts upon, his desires in relationship to the law of God, and the sovereign decree of God, and his eternal perspective.
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And I'm wondering, this is at a seminary. Aren't there a number of students sitting there that are supposed to be reading books about this type of stuff, and hence would recognize that there's a whole lot of stuff just not really getting discussed here?
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It also is a problem for theodicy, for a justification of the goodness of God, because ultimately it makes
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God the author of sin, when the Bible explicitly says that he is not the author of sin.
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Wow. Okay. We thought maybe, possibly, that given the presentation in the previous section, which seemed to show some knowledge of the key passages, that there would be a fair analysis, including the biblical passages used to substantiate that.
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Doesn't look like we're going to get that. Oh my goodness, with all of this running through our heads and minds and hearts, and 2 ,000 years of effort of Christians to resolve it, that often resulted in more disunity in the body of Christ, what on earth are we to say?
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How do we resolve the problem? I'd like to suggest to you this morning that maybe we've been asking the wrong question all along.
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Maybe the difficulty we have with all of this is because we've been asking the what question or the how question instead of asking the why question.
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Maybe we've been trying to somehow get our arms around the mind of God, and explain how all of this is compatible, when we should have been asking a different question altogether.
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Maybe we should have been saying, Lord, why did you put a doctrine like that in the
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Bible anyway? I mean, stop and think about it for a moment. Even if the doctrine of election means everything our
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Calvinistic brethren say that it means, why would there be any real necessity of placing it in the
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Bible? After all, it's all settled in eternity past, and later on when we can understand it, maybe
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God can explain it to us, but here below with our physical and mental limitations, we will never adequately comprehend it.
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So why on earth even put it in the book anyway? Think about that one for just a second.
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Think about the revelation of the Trinity, intention of the atonement, stuff like that. Put that in the same category, think about that for a moment, and you'll see why
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I don't find this perspective to be overly compelling. That is a legitimate question. Why are these doctrines in the
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Bible? Now when we ask that question, I believe that we will begin to discover some remarkable answers.
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Yesterday we read from Romans chapter 8, and I want to take you once again to Paul's solution to the problem, which is to answer the why question rather than the how question.
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Instead of deciding how it all works, which nobody has done for 2 ,000 years, to anybody else's satisfaction, instead let's ask why the doctrine is there.
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Well, you know, I have to wonder, given that I try to extend as much charity as I can, but why is it that I consistently, you know,
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I've played a lot of different folks. You've got to admit, you look over, we've been doing the dividing line on and off since the 1980s.
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For some of you that's a long time ago, doesn't seem that long to me, but continuously we've been doing the program.
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What did we start again, 97, 98, I think it was 98, we started on KPXQ. So we've been doing it for quite a while now, six years, and I have played what other people say, and the list of people that we've presented has been pretty large.
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And over time you start seeing this consistent pattern of not accurately representing
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Reformed theology, of the straw man, and when you have to use straw man argumentation, that really means that you're not, you have not been brought to the point where you've had to struggle with the truth in this particular area.
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That's the kind way of putting it. For some people, using straw man argumentation is because you know you're wrong and you want to remain in your error, and there are some people like that.
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But here, well, no one's ever going to figure this out. Well, you know what? I haven't been given any feeling here that the speaker has actually seriously listened to the answers that have been offered.
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Really don't. And so I can't accept this statement of, well, you know, no one really knows.
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Just because there continues to be disagreement doesn't mean anything. There's always been disagreement, for example, on the topics of Romans and Galatians.
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There was in the day in which they were written. That is indeed why they were written. That doesn't mean that God's truth is unclear on those things, and it's only in a postmodern context that people would think that disagreement means we can't know.
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When we ask that question, I believe we will begin to unravel some marvelous truths.
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First of all, notice in Romans 8, verses 29 and 30, for whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son.
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Now let me stop right here. Maybe, possibly because of the context here, this is
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Dr. Patterson speaking before a seminary audience.
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I sort of think in that context, if you're going to speak about things like this, then you need to fairly deal with the language itself that is being utilized.
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What does foreknow mean? What's the difference between foreknowledge and foreknowing?
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When God is the one who foreknows in the New Testament, is there something consistent about the objects of that verbal action?
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Is it merely a passive taking in of knowledge? Is there something active going on here?
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Et cetera, et cetera. I'm hoping that that's what we're going to hear, because I would think that would be necessary within the context of the presentation, right?
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I mean, you would think, you know, we're not standing in front of a high school Sunday school class here.
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We are standing in front of seminarians doing graduate, supposed to be doing graduate -level work.
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And so there's nothing wrong in getting to that level of the text, dealing with the doctrine on that level, just simply emphasizing words like whosoever or foreknow without making sure that your emphasis reflects what's there in the text itself.
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That shouldn't be what we have in the context of a seminary situation, at least we would hope.
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That he might be the firstborn among many brethren, moreover whom he predestined these he also called, and whom he called these he also justified, and whom he justified these he also glorified.
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Now, in any summary reading of that passage, who stands out as important?
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It's pretty obviously true, isn't it? Amen. That pronoun, he, representing our
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God. And in each one of those actions, it is a divine action. This is
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God's doing from first to last, and I hope that that's what we're about to hear.
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Our God is the one who has done the whole thing. And so the first great answer to the question, why is the doctrine of election in the
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Bible to begin with, is that as long as the doctrine of election is in God's holy word, it puts salvation totally in the hands of God, and makes it forever a matter of his grace.
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Excellent. Agree a thousand percent. Now, whether there is going to be a consistent application is different.
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But, completely 100%, amen on that one. Indeed, may I suggest to you, that this is the continental divide of all human thinking.
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Over there on one side, you have the Buddhist. Over there with him is the
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Muslim. Over there with both of them is the Hindu. Oh, we understand what you're doing.
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You're putting all the religions of the world over on one side of the continental divide, and Christianity over on the other.
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Oh no, friend. Over there with that Muslim, and with that Hindu, and with that Buddhist, most of the folks who claim to be
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Christians are over there too. You're one of those narrow -minded old Baptists, aren't you? You're going to put them all over there, and just put the
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Baptists over here. No, I wish I could do that. But unfortunately, a vast number of lost
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Baptists are right over there with the Hindu, and the Buddhist, and all the others.
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Because you see, about 98 % of our world's population is unalterably convinced that there is something they can do to make themselves acceptable to a holy
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God. They have very different paths down which they would go, and different holy books that inform them, but on this one issue they agree 100 % salvation is bound up in something
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I do to make myself acceptable to God. And I would want to go just a little beyond that to ask as well, is the dividing line there with the phrase to make myself acceptable, or is it there in the synergistic concept of there's all those people on that side of the line that say it is a cooperation of God's grace plus, and then this side being the monergistic side, it is all of God's grace and will, and man's will is not what determines whether God's will is going to succeed, man's will follows upon the activity of God's sovereign grace.
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That would be the question at that particular point in time. Over against that is biblical
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Christianity. It is totally different from all of that, because in biblical
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Christianity, salvation is by grace through faith alone.
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It is the grace of God. It is God's plan of redemption. It is
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God's operation of redemption. It is God's purchase of redemption.
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It is God from the beginning to the end. It is not about what we do.
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It's about what God has done. And as long as the doctrine of election is in the
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Bible, it forever states that salvation is God's doing from beginning to end by his grace alone.
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I agree 100%. Let's see if it's consistently applied. Now, I have already told you that we need to ask the why question rather than the how question, but let me just point out one thing to you where I think when we get to heaven we may discover the resolution of the how question just to the fun of it.
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Okay? Look at those verses I just read one more time. Whom he foreknew, then he did predestinate.
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Whom he predestinated, then he also called. Whom he called, then he also justified.
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Whom he justified, then he also glorified. Speaking of the future salvation of our bodies, our glorification, as though it had already taken place because it is so certain.
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Now, let me ask you a question this morning. How many of you here were glorified before you were justified?
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That's what I thought. How many of you were justified before you were called?
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Well, that's what I thought. You see, there is a sequence of salvific events unfolding here, isn't there?
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What he's referring to, of course, is the ordo salutis, which has both logical and temporal aspects to it.
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Some of the order in the ordo salutis is logical only, and then that which is experienced by us becomes temporal in our experience of it.
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I'm not sure if he's going to use that terminology, but that's what he's trying to refer to. Obviously, the golden chain in Romans 8 is not an extensive ordo salutis, but it is one of the clearest examples of an ordo salutis in the
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New Testament. And if there is a sequence of salvation events, where does it begin?
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It begins with the foreknowledge of God, whom he foreknew, then he predestined.
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Now, immediately, I want to say it begins with the foreknowing of God, not the foreknowledge of God.
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Now, someone might say, well, you're splitting hairs there. Frequently, a noun and a verb are so closely related, they have the same referent, so on and so forth.
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But God can have foreknowledge, and the question based upon how he can have foreknowledge is something else.
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But he can have foreknowledge, but to foreknow, even Dr. Patterson has pointed out that there is a chain here.
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There are parallel constructions. These are divine actions. These are things God does.
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And he's exactly right. But to foreknow is something that God does, and it's just as clear, and it's just as distinct, and has the same audience as predestine and call and justify and glorify.
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Is that going to be the consistent application? And it's not the only time the
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Bible says that, for in 1 Peter 1, Peter says, elect according to the foreknowledge of God.
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Hopefully, you all have just caught where the problem is, right? There is an unfounded assumption being made, and that is that the noun form and the verb form are interchangeable in the golden chain.
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Now, think for just a moment. Is it the same thing to say that God, in his action of justifying, that when
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God justifies someone, that that is something you can just simply interchange with justification as an entire concept?
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How about calling? How about predestination? To predestine and predestination.
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Are there not contexts in which there would be a difference in the emphasis in the verb form rather than in the noun form?
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And there doesn't seem, at this point anyways, to be a recognition of those differences, and it is that lack of clarity that causes so much of the problem in a discussion of what foreknowledge and foreknowing means.
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So that foreknowledge, in some sense of the word, precedes election or predestination, which also precedes calling, which also precedes justification, which also precedes clarification.
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Now, somebody says, and correctly so, hold everything there, Patterson. Have you forgotten that time is endemic to human beings, not to God?
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God is the creator of time. He stands outside of and above and transcendent to time.
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Time is His own creation. God experiences everything in the eternal now.
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There is no yesterday or tomorrow for God. He is God, and so He is a timeless being.
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So therefore, if God foreknows something to be true, then there is no way that...
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Okay, stop right there, because here, again, this is where you have to, if you really want to get anywhere, and there are not a lot of folks today that have such a dedication to accuracy in their dialoguing and their speaking and their thinking to even give you the opportunity of doing these things, but did you hear the use of foreknowing there?
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There's been another shift in the biblical use of the term. When God foreknows,
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He foreknows persons. The object of the divine action of foreknowing, not foreknowledge, not the content of the noun, but the object of the verb, is personal.
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But the gist here was done. You had not the personal aspect.
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You've now had smuggled in the idea of foreknowing events and actions and things like that, which in reality takes us from an active action, which is what this verb is, of foreknowing, resulting in predestination and so forth, to the passive taking in of knowledge, not the active act of foreknowing.
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Now, this is at the point where on a practical level, let's face it, people in most churches who get nothing but the four spiritual laws microwaved for them on Sundays, their eyes glaze over, their eyes roll into the back of their heads, and they look at you and go, you must be a part of a cult because the gospel is so simple.
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Well, remember, Dr. Patterson is dealing with the text here just not accurately enough.
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He's the one that has gone into these things. He's the one that's trying to make points on these things, and so we're just trying to hold him to being accurate to what the text actually says, and that's where you run into a lot of problems, and that's where a lot of the conversations break down.
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But we just saw smuggled into the text something that is actually not there. It's never going to be any other way except how he foreknew it to be, and in God's mind, foreknowledge, justification, calling, glorification, all happen at the same moment because God is living in the eternal now.
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Okay, that might explain the consistency of the verb tenses, the certainty of it.
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Okay, but that's not really the point. That's not really the real issue here. And unfortunately, by sort of taking the flashlight and flashing it over on this thing, we're getting these things smuggled in without actually dealing with the issue itself.
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Don't you know that, Dr. Patterson? Yes, I'm well aware of that approach, and I am quite confident that God is the creator of time.
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I don't know exactly how it's all going to work itself out, but I suspect that when we get to eternity, we're going to discover that there is something about God's relationship to time that we have never completely understood.
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I agree. In fact, those folks who know me and know my presentations that I did back in the 80s at a large
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Baptist church on these subjects know that I even had constructed It's still got it.
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It's sitting up in the corner of my office. I need to get it down, and that's the thing. I had someone build for me what we call the predestination box.
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And it was meant to seek to illustrate, and there's no way I could, don't even ask me to try to describe it.
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It can't be done. It was meant to seek to illustrate this relationship and the fact that, yes,
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God's relationship to time is beyond anything we can understand. Our very language is time -bound language.
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Tenses are obviously intended to communicate temporality, and the idea of total being in simultaneous existence, of course, is beyond us.
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There's no question about that. But that doesn't change the fact that this is a verb, not a noun, and its objects are personal when
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God does it, and that's really what we should be talking about. And that, therefore, we can be right and have been right in affirming that the electing providences of God are not just arbitrary on the part of a supraluxurian
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God who chose to create some to damn them and some to save them, but rather, somehow,
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His electing providences are bound up in His foreknowledge. What?
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Okay, we just, I'm sorry. There's probably something more there, and it just didn't get expressed well.
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But what's this supraluxurian God thing? What is that all about? Isn't supraluxurianism and infraluxurianism a discussion of the logical order of the decrees in God's mind, which, of course, has to be logical, not temporal, anyways?
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What do you mean a supraluxurian God? And the only reason to damn them, at least before, there was an accuracy in stating demonstration of His power, etc.,
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etc., that sort of slipped at this particular point. That didn't come across real well at that point at all.
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So I think that's a good place to stop at the 15 minutes and 33 seconds into this particular second
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MP3. That means we're about almost halfway through in the presentation, and that will allow us to pick it up.
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And some people asked, are we going to continue with the dividing line all the way up to Christmas and then between Christmas and New Year's, and I don't see a reason why not to.
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We ain't going any place, and so we'll continue discussing important things and having you call once in a while as we continue on with the dividing line.
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Thanks for listening today. God bless. And while we have the chance, we want to wish Dr. White a happy birthday, ladies and gentlemen.
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That's right, 42 today. Happy birthday, Doc. Oops, that's tomorrow.
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