February 1, 2005

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

Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the United States.

It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is James White. Just picture this situation. I'm going to have a child and I'm going to bring that child into a loving family, but I know at the very beginning that that child may get killed in a car accident or that child may contract cancer or that child eventually is going to die, that child is going to suffer.

I know that going into the process. What if you could prevent it as a father, wouldn't you? But I can't prevent it as a human father and I could as a heavenly father, but if I prevented evil or the potential for evil as a heavenly father, then I would eradicate freedom of choice.

And I would say it's better to love and lose than to never love at all.

And there you have a section of a phone call that we'll be looking at today because it raises a fascinating issue, an important issue, that is the issue of theodicy, the issue of the problem of evil and how it is answered.

And there are some very fundamental differences in regards to how that particular subject needs to be addressed, how it needs to be answered. My name is James White. This is The Dividing Line. Thanks for joining us again today.

If you're looking for it, it's better to love and lose than to have never loved at all. In your concordance, in Strong's, you're not going to find that one there. I'm not exactly certain what to say about that, but we'll get to that.

Because the reason I want to play this one, A, again, and everybody says, you're picking on Hank again. No, I'm not. We have the same audience, the same people listen to both of us, and we're giving very different answers on these issues any longer.

And that's too bad, but that's the way it is. And so people are hearing. And in this one, in essence, what happened, and this is the whole reason. It wasn't a whole lot new here. You had the cosmic rapist puppet stuff and all the stuff that we've refuted thoroughly many, many times before.

But what we heard this time, which truly concerned me, was in essence the assertion that there are only certain ways of answering the problem of evil, and the way you answer it in Christian theism is to posit libertarian free will.

And that almost sounds like the Reformed understanding, and I would say the Biblical understanding derived from Genesis 50 -20, Isaiah 10, Acts 4, those three passages that I kept trying to get discussed on the Bible Amnesty Man broadcast in December of 2003, and never did I get anyone to address them.

The Biblical answer has, it sounds to me, and we'll listen, has been defined out of the realm of Christian theism. And that's not a good thing, because that is the Biblical response. I wanted to read, however, I normally don't do this, I really don't, but I wanted to read someone else on this topic.

I wanted to let someone else speak. And so I'm going to be reading, and I'm not going to mention who it is until the end, not because that's overly relevant, just so that maybe if you'd like to be guessing and thinking about who this might be, it'll be interesting to see if anyone knows.

I want to read a section from a Reformed writer on this particular issue. If God has decreed all that comes to pass, and if God, by His most holy, wise, and powerful providence, governs all His creatures and all their actions in order to accomplish His holy ends, how is one to understand all this so that God is not made the author of sin, and man is left responsible?

If we are to be Biblical, it is important at the outset to affirm with no equivocation that God has ordained whatever comes to pass. As the Westminster Confession of Faith declares, God is the sole, ultimate, first cause of all things.

With Calvin, we must confess that God's will is, and rightly ought to be, the cause of all things that are. But God is neither the author of sin, nor the chargeable cause of sin. And we must insist upon this for three reasons.

The first is simply this. The Bible teaches that God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all, 1 John 1 .5. And that He tempts no one to sin, James 1 .13. The second reason is this. While He certainly decreed all things, God decreed that all things would come to pass according to the nature of second causes.

Either one, necessarily, as in the case of planets moving in their orbits. Two, freely, that is, voluntarily, with no violence being done to the will of the creature. Or three, contingently, that is, with due regard to the contingencies of future events, as in His informing David what Saul and the citizens of Kilah would do if they remained in the city of Kilah, 1 Samuel 23 .9 -13.

Therefore, whatever sinfulness ensues proceeds only from men and angels, and not from God. Warfield observes in this connection, quote, that anything good or evil that occurs in God's universe finds its account in His positive ordering and active concurrence.

While the moral quality of the deed, considered in itself, is rooted in the moral character of the subordinate agent, acting in the circumstances and under the motives operative in each instance, thus all things find their unity in His eternal plan, and not their unity merely, but their justification as well.

Even the evil, though retaining its quality as evil and hateful to the holy God, and certain to be dealt with as hateful, yet does not occur apart from His provision, or against His will, but appears in the world which He has made only as the instrument by which He works the higher good.

End quote. Far from God's decree violating the will of the creature, or taking away His liberty or contingency, God's decree established that what they would do, they would normally do freely. The occurrence of the word freely here may surprise some readers.

How can the Reformed Christian speak of man's freedom, if God has decreed His every thought and action? The solution is to be found in the meaning of the word. Reformed theology does not deny that men have wills, that is, choosing minds, or that men exercise their wills countless times a day.

To the contrary, Reformed theology happily affirms both of these propositions. What Reformed theology denies is that a man's will is ever free from God's decree, his own intellection, limitations, parental training, habits, and in this life, the power of sin.

In sum, there is no such thing as the liberty of indifference. That is, no one's will is an island unto itself, undetermined or unaffected by anything. Furthermore, Reformed theology is not opposed to speaking of man's free will, freedom, or free agency.

The phrases may be found in the Westminster Confession of Faith, and the writings, for example, of A. A. Hodge, John Murray, and Gordon Clark, whose Reformed convictions are unquestioned, provided the Arminian construction of free will as the liberty of indifference is not placed upon the phrases.

According to Reformed theology, if an act is done voluntarily, that is, if it is done spontaneously, with no violence being done to the man's will, then that act is a free act. This is happily acknowledged in order to preclude the conclusions of a Hobbesian or Skinnerian determinism that would insist that man's will is mechanistically, genetically, or chemically forced or determined to good or evil by an absolute necessity of nature.

What all this means is this. If at the moment of willing, the man wanted to do the thing being considered for reasons sufficient to him, then Reformed theology declares that he acted freely. There is, Reformed theology would affirm, in other words, a liberty of spontaneity.

It is in this sense that I used the term freely earlier to illustrate. Was Adam aware of God's prohibition or warning respecting the tree of knowledge of good and evil at the moment he ate its fruit? Reformed theology says yes.

Did Adam have the capacity and power to do God's preceptive will, respecting the fruit? Reformed theology says yes. Did Adam, for reasons sufficient to him, come to the place cognitively where he wanted to eat the fruit?

Reformed theology says yes again. Reformed theology would also insist this point over against Arminianism, precisely because Adam had his reasons that he was not exercising an indifferent will. Was Adam forced to eat the fruit against his will?

Reformed theology would say no. Therefore, because Adam acted knowingly, willingly, spontaneously, for reasons sufficient for him, with no violence being done to his will, Reformed theology insists that he was a free agent in his transgression.

But if someone should ask, was Adam totally free from God's eternal decree? Reformed theology would say, of course not. Could Adam have done differently? Again, from the viewpoint of the divine decree, the answer is no.

To answer these questions any other way is simply to nullify the scripture's teaching to the effect that God, who works everything in conformity with his eternal purpose, purposed before the foundation of the world to save a multitude of sinners who had fallen at him.

Henry Staub says this succinctly and superbly, The will is not free, i .e., with no extra-volitional vantage point from which the will can determine itself. Man's will responds to his nature, which is what it is by sin or by the sovereign decree of God, all of which leaves responsibility fully grounded, for nothing more is required for holding a man accountable than his acting with the consent of his will, however much this may be determined.

Thus, because God decreed that all things would come to pass according to the nature of second causes, which means that in the case of men they would act freely and spontaneously, whatever sin they commit proceeds from them and not from God.

He does not sin, nor is he the author of sin. Only self-conscious, self-determining, rational second causes sin. For yet a third reason it is clear that God is not the chargeable cause of sin and that man alone is responsible for his sin.

This may be shown by a careful analysis of the meaning of and necessary condition of responsibility, a word which every theologian uses but whose meaning very few bother to think about. As the main element of the word suggests, responsibility has referenced the obligation to give a response or an account of one's actions to a law-giver.

To illustrate, when a judge hears a case concerning an auto accident involving two cars, he attempts to determine who is responsible, that is, which one of the two drivers bears the obligation arising from a traffic violation to give an account to the traffic court.

In short, a man is a responsible moral agent if he can and will be required to give an account to a law-giver for any and all infractions he commits against the law imposed upon him by the law-giver.

Whether or not he has free will in the Arminian sense of the term, the liberty of indifference, is irrelevant to the question of responsibility. To insist that without free will a man cannot lawfully be held responsible for his sin completely fails to apprehend the meaning of the word.

Free will has nothing to do with the establishment of responsibility. What makes a person responsible is whether there is a law-giver over him who has declared that he will require that person to give an account to him for his thoughts, words, and actions.

Hence, if the divine law-giver determined that he would require every human being to give a personal account to him for his thoughts, words, and actions, then every human being is a responsible agent whether free in the Arminian sense or not.

In other words, far from God's sovereignty making human responsibility impossible, it is just because God is their absolute sovereign that men are accountable to him. If the sovereign God has determined that men shall answer to him for their thoughts, words, and actions, then that determination makes them responsible to him for their thoughts, words, and actions.

A full biblical treatment of all the grounds of human responsibility would also include treatments of 1. man's innate knowledge of God's law, and 2. the doctrine of original sin. Men are chargeable causes of the sins they commit if they know to do the good but do not do it, even if they are unable to do it, Luke 12, 47, Romans 8, 7.

God has also determined that men are responsible for Adam's sin by the principle of representative headship and legal imputation, Romans 5, 12 -19. Clearly, free will is in no sense the precondition of responsibility for imputed sin, but accountable to God for Adam's sin, men are nonetheless, Paul teaches.

Thus, free will in the Arminian sense is not the necessary precondition of a man's responsibility for his sins, a lawgiver is the necessary precondition of responsibility. Now, that is the beginning section of, this is called, Why God is Not the Author or Chargeable Cause of Sin.

I could continue on with a biblical theodicy as well, and this is all from, of course, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith by Dr. Robert Raymond, published by Nelson. And so, we may, who knows, since we have a number of other, shall we say, sections to listen to, in regard to, regarding to the Bible Answer Man broadcast, trying to read what's in channel at the same time as talk about this, and they're two completely different things.

I just was informed, and this will probably take up the Thursday evening dividing line, that the Dave Hunt excuse-a-thon for talking about the Dead Sea Scrolls and early Church Fathers and mythical Hebrew originals, et cetera, et cetera, let me, someone just put this in channel, let me just read this before we go to the Bible Answer Man clip.

I offer no footnotes for this brief paragraph because the source or sources are not important. The phrases were probably written and some scholars claim show that I am not presenting my own opinion gathered from personal research.

I am only stating as something of possible interest for anyone who may wish to pursue it further. That certain people believe this idea. I'm sorry, that is so lame. Even I didn't predict that level of lameness.

Oh my goodness, how on, when is someone going to hold this man accountable? I mean, am I the only one who wrote to this man and said, you should not write this book? Am I the only one who wrote to him and said, as a Christian leader, you have a responsibility for what you put in print?

Can you imagine if some, if I wrote something like that whacked out paragraph about the Dead Sea Scrolls talking about the authorship of Acts, which is a clear historical anachronism, and someone, and I use that as an argument against Rome, can you imagine what the Roman Catholic apologists would do?

And if I responded by saying, well I didn't put any footnotes because it really doesn't matter, and besides, it's somebody else's opinion, not mine, oh my goodness, I would close the doors, turn off the lights, and go work in a tire shop.

I just, is that, is that really what it says? It was not wise to include this brief speculative statement and it will be deleted from the next printing. Yeah, yeah baby. Oh my goodness. It is rather sad that James White has spent so much time refuting a casual statement upon which I place no essential importance while avoiding the major scriptures and arguments I set forth.

I can't believe this. I'm sorry, you can tell that I'm absolutely amazed. I have avoided his scriptural arguments and this is how he is getting, why doesn't he just come out and say, you know what folks, somebody threw this at me, T .A. McMahon said it sounded good, it's against Calvinism, so we threw it in there.

Folks, we're throwing the kitchen sink at this stuff. We hate Calvinism. We will use any argument no matter how absolutely positively absurd it is. Just be honest, Dave. Come on. I just talk about a complete and total meltdown.

A complete and total meltdown. Wow. Unbelievable. I didn't expect that. I did not expect that. I expected what we got with Spurgeon. Well, yeah, I said he unequivocally denied particular redemption, but what I meant was he contradicted himself.

Well, you know what? Unequivocally and contradicting yourself are sort of like antonyms, okay? Those are different things, Dave. They don't, words have meaning. That's what I was expecting. I was expecting.

You know what I did? We're going to get to the Bible Answer Man clip, okay? If you have to just fast forward to it later on, what can I say? We'll get to it. But this is just beyond. This is called live webcasting, folks, because MDH came and channeled.

I almost looked at the Berean call half an hour before the program. I almost looked, but I had an ad. I'd probably get it in the e-mail first and da-da-da-da-da. We've been sovereignly redirected, yes.

You know what happened when I saw that paragraph? First of all, the first thing that crossed my mind was, you've got to be kidding. But then this is what I did. And my fellow elder at Phoenix Reformed can confirm this.

I immediately said, wow, that does not sound right. But I stopped and I said, you know, I need to research it. I've never heard anything like this. I've never heard anything like this at all. But you know what?

I'm going to check it out. And I invested hours. I went through my Libronics library and all the commentaries contained therein. I searched the theological journals library for relevant keywords and current scholarly articles on the subject.

I checked all of my printed commentaries in my library. I contacted my fellow elder and said, I've seen some footnote references to discussions of Hebraisms or Aramaic references to sources Luke may have used in the first 12 chapters.

I saw a reference to an Auland, I think it was, no, it was a Nestle article. Do you have these commentaries in your library? And he brought a bag of commentaries to church. And after evening service one night, I went over to the copy machine and I ran all the relevant pages that had anything in regards to any discussion of an Aramaic or Hebrew, a use of Aramaic or Hebrew sources by Luke in writing Acts.

Now, I collected all of that stuff and satisfied myself that I had fairly looked at the scholarly literature and was aware of the fact that certain scholars see, especially in the first 12, not 13, 12 chapters of Acts, the possibility that Luke is utilizing foreign language sources.

Now remember, Luke says in Luke chapter 1, he researched, he gathered sources, he interviewed people, he did the work of a historian. And what's the context of the first 12 chapters of Acts? It's primarily amongst people who would be speaking Hebrew or Aramaic, right?

And so when you're quoting sermons that were delivered in a Jewish synagogue to Jewish people in a Jewish context, then it's not overly shocking or surprising that there would be Hebraisms, that is, Greek translations of phrases that were originally spoken in Aramaic, right?

Okay, that has, none of those commentaries though, none of them at all said that Luke had written the first 15 or 12 chapters of the book of Acts in Hebrew. None of them. But you see, before I then went out on a limb and discussed those things, I took the time to look at it.

And now, we see how Dave Hunt does things. And folks, this is how Dave Hunt treats Mormons and Roman Catholics and anybody who holds to a non-premillennial dispensational pre-trib rapture theory too.

This is why he has for a long time been accused of seeing on a page only what he wants to see on a page and taking no responsibility for what he says. When we spoke at the conference in St. Louis, after he spoke and went after certain churches, I had members of those churches come up to me and say, he only told half the story.

And now, having seen how he treats my writings, and now when he puts in print one of the most absurd paragraphs I've ever seen, that undercuts believers' belief in scripture and the canonization of scripture and the accuracy of scripture and all the rest of this.

He simply does not have the integrity to say, I was wrong. Folks, this is why apologetics is supposed to be done within the church. I don't think there's anyone in an ecclesiastical setting that can sit Dave Hunt down and say, Dave, apologize.

Admit you were wrong. Admit that you will use any argument, no matter how crazy it is, against Calvinism because you're on a crusade. You've been convicted. The evidence is right there. But you see, I don't think Dave Hunt is in a single church often enough in a year for anyone to do anything like that.

And that's one of the biggest problems with apologetics. That's one of the biggest problems with apologetics, is it's normally done by people who are not serving within the church. And that's how they become imbalanced.

That's how they end up going off on crusades because they don't have the corrective of the God-ordained ministry within the body of Christ. That's the problem. Oh, my goodness. There will be a third edition.

Yay. Wahoo. Did I not say there'd be a third edition? I think I did. I think I predicted that. Let's just review before we take our break here and I catch my breath. Let's just review the history here.

In the first encounter between Dave Hunt and I, he says, I've never read the Reformers. Don't know anything about them. The first manuscript of What Love Is This starts circulating 90 days later. In the first edition, Acts 13 .48, what does he do?

He claims to translate Greek. He claims to tell us what the best Greek translation is. And what was it? It just happened to be the same as the New World Translation of Jehovah's Witnesses. When I point that out, what happens?

In debating Calvinism, he doesn't use that particular translation. In the first edition and the second edition, that particular translation disappears, even though we were told it was the best. So here you've got Dave Hunt, out of ignorance, using the New World Translation, coming up with the New World Translation.

He finds out, oops, I better not do that. Does he apologize? Does he put a footnote in saying, ah, man, you know, folks, I'm really sorry. Wow. That's pretty dangerous when you start telling folks, this is the best translation.

And in reality, you can't translate Greek. You don't know. The best translation is what it is, simply because you don't believe what the Bible says in this passage. That's the problem. Someone on the channel just said, third edition forward, misspelled forward, but the third edition forward by Dan Rather.

Yeah, that's sort of what we're looking at here. It's the same, you know, Christians will get upset about that within the secular media. Why do I seem to be the only one going, excuse me, excuse me, is it just because you've been doing this for a long time, and you've spoken at every Calvary chapel on the planet, that you get a free pass when you tell God's people that all they've really got in the first 15 chapters of Acts is an errant Greek translation of a Hebrew original that no one knows where the Hebrew original is, or anything like it?

You get a free pass, and then you go, well, I didn't footnote because the sources aren't really important, and it really isn't a big issue, and I'll take it out. But, oh, please, this is absolutely beyond imagination.

And since it is so far beyond imagination, I have gone so far beyond the time for a break. So we're going to take a break. This dividing line has flown off of the tracks. It's a runaway freight train in a neighborhood someplace, but we're going to take a break and a phone call, and who knows what we're going to do after that, but we'll be back after this.

...all works righteousness, you know. I should grace myself tonight in some religious place by weeping hard.

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I turned on some nice calm music. I tried to remember that guy on PBS or something who's very friendly and all and tried to put on a nice Mr. Rogers type sweater. But then I opened it up in PDF and now I can't.

I offer no footnotes for this brief paragraph because the sources are sources are not important. First line is a lie. It's a lie. Can you imagine someone writing something about Dave Hunt? Saying that Dave Hunt grossly misrepresents everybody he addresses.

No footnotes. And Dave Hunt says, do you think you'd be kind enough maybe to give me some examples? Oh, they're not important. Sources are sources are not important. I really I didn't put much emphasis upon that.

It's not important. The phrases were probably written in some scholars claim show that I am not presenting my own opinion gathered from personal research. I am only stating as something of possible interest for anyone who may wish to pursue it further that certain people believe this idea.

Yeah, the editor of his book believed that idea. Maybe he's maybe that's where it came from. And Dave just is throwing himself upon the funeral pyre rather than his editor. I don't know. My argument, however, is in no way dependent upon such opinions.

Was your argument dependent upon your use of the New World translation in the first edition, Dave? Yet James White. Thank you. Thank you. Treats this paragraph as of major importance and has even attempted to recruit critics to confront me about this in my meetings.

Yes, I have. And I am very I'm very open to say, yes, I have. That's me. I did it. I did it right here. James White asked people to ask him, you know why? Because whether Dave Hunt wants to admit it or not, that paragraph is of major importance.

It's of major importance to his own lack of integrity on this issue. But it's also of major importance for another reason. And this is what people don't seem to understand. Dave Hunt put a paragraph in his book to try to get around Acts 1348, which he had failed on repeatedly, that told his readers.

Now, remember some folks. One of the reasons I did debating Calvinism is because Dave Hunt has a core of readers who would never read anything I would write otherwise. They'd never do it. Dave Hunt is their leader.

He is their source of all information. And they're going to read the second edition of What Love Is This? And they're going to hear that what they read in Acts 1 -15 is inerrant, inaccurate, may not even begin to represent the original intention of the original author, translation of the original writings that no Bible known to man is based upon.

They're going to be told that Dead Sea Scrolls talked about the authorship of Acts. What if those people actually run into some critic who knows what he's talking about? And go, excuse me, but the Dead Sea Scrolls were written before Acts?

They're told early church fathers said this. What if they ran into someone who actually knows something about the early church fathers? This is important, folks. That's why we do what we do. That's why you actually take the time to research what you're saying.

You don't just throw stuff out there. Not when people listen to you and not when people look to you as having done some homework, done something to earn the trust, the fact that people will listen to what you're saying.

Do your homework for crying out loud. You know, people are always asking me questions about stuff. It's a joke in our channel. Last night, somebody asked me what I thought about Michael Jackson. The Michael Jackson case.

And I said, why on earth would anyone care what I think about Michael Jackson? I don't keep up with any of that stuff. I'm just a plain old guy. Why would anyone care what I think about Michael Jackson?

And people are always saying, you should write about this. And I respond, not going to happen. Well, why not? It's not my area. I'm not the brightest bulb in the constellation. There's only so much I can do and do well, folks.

I don't claim to be the smartest man on the planet. There's so many people who think that, well, if you're an apologist, you need to be able to answer every question that's ever asked. You need to be an expert in all things.

No one's an expert in all things. And it is not indicative that if I express an opinion, for example, and I really feel a great deal of weight upon myself to not express opinions on stuff these days. I really try to back myself off because people think that if you express an opinion about topic X, that if you're wrong about that, if you're proven wrong about that, let's just say someone calls in, we're just chatting away, and I say something about some historical figure, and I'm wrong.

I get the year wrong, or it was somebody else. I say Calvin said something, it was Bayes that said it. There are actually people who are so muddled in their thinking that they think that if you're wrong about that, then you must be wrong about everything.

You have to have an absolute 100 record or you have a 0 record. There's nothing in between. And that's ridiculous. People who think soundly don't think that way. And you know what? Conservative, bright-minded people make the same mistake.

I was listening to a very well-known scholar over the past couple of days, lecturing on a particular subject, and I couldn't help but think, I know people who would not listen to what this man has to say because they don't like what he believes in a completely different area.

Completely different area. They disagree with him over there, and since he's wrong about that, then I'm not going to listen to anything he says about anything. That is a problem, folks, that even we conservatives have.

You know, someone came into the channel and asked me about, oh, liberal as the day is long, what's his name? Oh, I had to read one of his books for a college course. Oh, man. Now I can't remember what the name was.

Anyway, he'll come to me eventually. And I said, well, the guy says liberal as the day is long. He's downright heretical in some areas. But you know what? I gleaned some interesting insights. And so I went to a liberal seminary for my first master's degree, and I had to read all sorts of liberals.

I had to read Karl Barth. And you know what? Karl Barth was not 100 wrong about everything. On certain issues, he was smack on. But because he was really dangerously wrong in others, we tend to go, oh, well, I'll never listen to a word that person has to say.

That's where we sometimes lose the balance. And so if you're sitting there going, wow, you sure are agitated today, I am because here is a man. I warned this man years ago, don't do this. I saw this coming.

I saw it coming. You know, it's back to the Detective Spooner, iRobot, somehow I told you so doesn't quite say it. I saw this coming. And so at least when I get upset about it, I can go back and I can show you the correspondence.

I said to Dave Hunt and said, Dave, it's irresponsible of you to write this book because you don't know what you're talking about. And when you don't know what you're talking about, you combine that with a big ego, and you're going to end up saying stupid things like this.

And who suffers? Who suffers? The people who read his materials, his books. James White treats this paragraph as of major importance and has even attempted to recruit critics to confront me about this in my meetings.

Certainly any basis for the idea that the first 15 chapters of Acts were originally written in Hebrew is tenuous at best. Well, Dave, why didn't you say that? But that doesn't matter. That's what it says.

I'm reading straight off of it. This is page four of six. Just posted. February Berean Call newsletter. But that doesn't matter. The fact that some people, including some scholars, believe this to be the case is all that I stated.

Who, Dave? Still no name. Still no details. Believe this to be the case is all that I stated, but it is clearly not relevant to my arguments. Which means I included an entire paragraph in my argument that was irrelevant.

Unbelievable. Just beyond belief here. It was not wise to include this brief speculative statement, and it will be deleted from the next printing. The three pages I devote to Acts 13 -48 offer many solid reasons for rejecting this verse as evidence that certain persons are predestined to salvation and the rest of mankind is predestined to eternal torment.