June 23, 2005

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. And good afternoon, welcome to The Dividing Line on a Thursday afternoon, 23rd of June.

Believe it or not, the longest day of the year has already passed. Can you believe it?

After this weekend, we'll be getting closer to Christmas than farther away.

I mentioned in Channel, I said, hmm, after the 25th, we're closer to Christmas, when can

I start some Mannheim steamroller in the pre -programmed feed? And everybody suggested we wait just a little while, and of course when it's 107 degrees out here, they don't go together well.

But anyway, 877 -753 -3341, the very mention of anything regarding Christmas is causing a few people in Channel a little bit of anxiety, and that's fully understandable.

Don't worry, don't worry, I was not suggesting that. I realized

I got a little early start last year, but what can I say?

877 -753 -3341, and last time we were on the air,

Ray in San Bernardino had called and said, well, we'll try to catch you on Thursday, so that's what we're going to do.

And unfortunately, I don't have a line in the indication, but I'm going to take a wild guess anyways, and talk to Ray.

Hi, Ray. Hi there. How are you doing? I'm doing well. How are you today? Doing good. Good. I've read your stuff about PC &D, and I heard the interviews with Steve Camp, and so I was concerned when at my church's bookstore

I saw that they had been selling PC &D, and I brought it up to one of the pastors, and he asked me to send him some information, so I sent him the article from the

AOMN website, and he said he'd get back to me, but he hasn't, and it's been about a month now, and then in church a couple of weeks after that, they were singing a

PC &D song during worship, and so I'm like, okay, I guess I've got my answer.

Maybe. I mean, I can't answer for him on that. I would keep asking if he had an opportunity to look at it, and if the answer you've been given is, well, we're not going to worry about it, that's one thing.

It would be nice to be given that in a formal way rather than just leaving you to wonder and to sort of assume things given.

You can't automatically assume that someone necessarily knows the province of where everything came from as far as if that's a

PC &D song or whatever. So, you know, extend as much patience as possible, but keep pressing for a final discussion, because unfortunately the way that most folks have dealt with this is just, well, let's just not talk about it and hope it'll go away and that no one will actually discuss it, and maybe it'll just, you know, poof.

You know, that way we don't actually have to take a stand on it, and we don't have to offend somebody. So, you know, there we go.

So do you think that just singing their songs, I mean, I don't know who writes their songs.

I don't know if Trinitarians write their songs. Right. They sing about them. I know when my church is singing one of their songs, they're not, you know, worshiping a

Unitarian God. So, I mean, where do you think the line is? I mean, should I be concerned that they're singing their songs?

Because I had mentioned to him, you know, some people might look into them and be influenced by them down the wrong path.

Yeah. Well, yeah, that is the question, is if you have individuals who are currently actually reading or,

I'm sorry, teaching falsehood who are being allowed into evangelical churches, then how do you respond to that?

If you'd like, Ray, you could drop us a line, and hopefully it will get through to me and I can forward it to a fellow who, well, to Eric Nielsen who wrote the article on the website and who dealt with this in his own church, and you could correspond with him some as to what his experiences were.

Obviously, in the situation I'm in, this isn't much of an issue in the sense of there's really no danger of this taking place in our church.

But he might have a little more background on that. To me, the main thing, though, is you can't just put it off to the side.

You have to deal with it one way or the other. You have to explain what your position is and basically say, well, we're not going to worry about what the backgrounds of people are.

Because let's face it, I mean, we don't know what the backgrounds were of a bunch of people who wrote a bunch of songs that are in our hymnals.

Right. And, in fact, there are some that are, you know, there's one,

I can never remember what it is. For some reason, there's certain facts in life that my brain has stored on bad sectors of my hard drive.

And no matter how hard I try, I can never remember which one it is. But there's one very well -known hymn that Sky Man and Channel keeps saying was written by someone who was certainly not

Orthodox in their theology, and hence it does put a different spin on what you're reading. And that becomes really the question at that point.

Should we just simply say, well, I'm going to read my own meaning into anything that I'm singing or doing or whatever, or is there something more?

Is there a difference between a hymn written by someone who's been gone forever?

I thought it was Faith of Our Fathers, too, but I don't remember exactly. But anyways, if someone's dead, does that matter?

Or is the fact they're still alive and, in fact, are teaching these things?

Those are all issues that have to be raised. But they need to be raised and answered, not just simply dismissed.

So I would just patiently, because a month isn't a long time. And being an elder in the church,

I always recommend the extension of as much grace as possible to those who are elders in the church, because sometimes we just forget stuff, and all of a sudden somebody will come up to me and say, hey, do you remember when

I talked to you about this or that thing? Remember when I asked you to do this? And I just like, no, I've forgotten, and so on and so forth.

So give them some time. Drop them a little note. Maybe leave a little note in the front office or something.

Hey, have you had a chance to think about this, da -da -da -da. And always make sure that whenever you are dealing with a situation like this that you're extending as much grace as possible, and then go from there.

But drop us a note so I can get you in touch with Eric, okay? Okay, thank you very much. All right, thanks for calling. God bless. 8777, someone just gave me a

URL. Oops, sorry. I can't see that thing over there. I just cannot reach over to it there. But he's on the other line right now.

I just, Coach just, excuse me, dropped this in channel. This is just too funny to not point out.

Sorry, Art, even you will have to laugh at this. And he gives the URL to my blog where we have the

Art Sippo picture. Let's see, I guess it's not at him.

So far no responses from Art Sippo.

But then Sloop John E. looks at the cartoon. I'm talking about the cartoon, the

Art Sippo cartoon on the main page right now. No doubt Sippo would laugh at it.

Not to mention also the reality that someone over at ailman .org needs to get a life. I find it somewhat odd that someone posting on a

Web board would say that someone who has the kind of artistic talent that Angel has needs to get a life.

But anyway, I thought it actually communicated something. I thought it was pretty good. Well, anyways, let's go to Howard in Kansas.

Hi, Howard. Hi, Dr. White. How are you doing? Good. Hey, it was good to meet you at that Wilkin debate, and I thought you did a very good job.

Well, it was, you know, I wish we had the DVD, but that's going to take a while. It's unlike the other

DVD that we're just about to, I guess, have out. It looks like it's up on the Web page.

Yeah, okay, I just saw tomorrow. I guess we're just finishing up. I guess it's a burning issue.

It's not anything else, but that one's going to be really, really challenging. Tomorrow's the release,

I'm told. That's going to be really, really challenging because the only way, and I want to see it get done, obviously.

There's a lot of stuff we need to get done, but that one's going to be really tricky because we have to put the PowerPoints in.

The only way for you really to get the full sense of what took place in that particular encounter is to see planes crashing into the ground and that kind of thing.

See shacks that are about to fall over and prison signs by the roadway.

Did he go look for those signs? Did he get these off the Internet? You sort of wonder.

When you think about the debate preparation, we were both doing the rather different kind of debate preparation.

One guy is running around with a camera looking for pictures to take, and the other guy is trying to put

Biblical passages together. What an odd thing. So, anyway, what's up? Well, I have a question about imputation, and I started to ask you about it in channel the other day, and it's pretty clear that there are some issues that I am ignorant of and would like to gain a better comprehension of.

The doctrine of imputation, and I run the risk of sounding like I might believe in infusion or something like that when

I was talking about the life of Adam versus the life of Christ and those who are in Adam versus those who are in Christ.

When it comes to imputation, it's clear that when Adam sinned, his sin is imputed to us.

Is that correct? Well, again, it is always best to use

Biblical language in these situations. Imputation is a legal and forensic term that is primarily used of the imputation of the righteousness of Christ to those who are in him.

Now, we can use that in a theological discussion to refer to the reasons behind what you have in Romans chapter 5 and the nature of original sin.

These are all theological constructs that are seeking to do justice to Biblical passages, but we need to be careful that you don't take the terminology that comes from theology and read that back into the

Biblical text so that you aren't aware of the fact that imputation is used

Biblically in this way and theologically in this way. This is the Biblical foundation of the theological use.

Many people learn their theology first and just simply read that back into the text and say, well, we believe

X, Y, and Z and therefore I'm going to assume that these terms in Scripture mean this or I'm just going to assume that this terminology is used here and so on and so forth.

When we do that, we end up with apologetic problems and people come along and start questioning our theology.

They start questioning our positions and when they point out our inconsistency in our terminological usage, that can really throw people for a loop.

So, it's just a matter of being careful in how you're utilizing that. It's sort of like when people talk about, well,

God elected men to go to hell. Well, the term election is always used only in a positive fashion in that way in discussion of salvation in Scripture.

So, someone is taking a term and they are using it in an unbiblical way and then they make that parallel, an identical parallel to the positive election of grace.

Well, in the same way, when we talk about the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, we have to look at exactly how the term imputation is used.

In fact, the very phrase imputation of the righteousness of Christ is not used in Scripture. We're talking about the imputation of righteousness on the basis of faith, but it's in the context of, for example,

Romans chapter 5, where those who are in Adam receive from him that which is all he can give.

That is, if you're in Adam, you sin, you're a sinner, you have death. If you're in Christ, you have life, etc.,

etc. And since a parallel exists, then in theology we use that terminology, but we need to be very careful when we use that terminology to be very specific in how we're using it or we end up with problems.

So, Romans 5, starting in verse 12, is the key text in dealing with the particular issue that you are referring to.

You have sin being imputed in verse 13, but that becomes the context there of the use of imputation.

I'm not sure if you have a particular term in mind, but I'm just scrolling down here, just checking the text, and you'll notice that the term that he actually uses later on is made sinners in verse 19.

Right, that's the verse I was actually questioning. Yeah, but the context starts up in 12.

Therefore, justice through one man, sin into the world, and death through sin. And so death spread to all men because all sin, for until the law of sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed.

That's actually being used there primarily in the forensic or legal concept.

And then you have the discussion of death and life and the contrasts and parallels, verse 15.

The free gift is not like the transgression. In verse 15, the free gift is greater than the transgression, something a lot of people miss at that particular point.

Maybe my question would be clearer, because I've had a discussion with a

Roman Catholic acquaintance who tries to say that Protestants believe that men, or Christians, Protestants are saying that men who are declared righteous go to heaven declared righteous, but all you have is a bunch of wicked sinners who are just merely declared righteous.

And so he's hearing it as merely declared. And so my question is basically looking at, you know, there's something we receive from Adam, and I didn't know if using the term life was a good description or a poor description, and because we have the life of Adam and his sin, even though, and this is where I run the risk of infusion, even though I possess

Adam's life, it's Adam's particular sin that's come down to me. Is that an accurate way to describe it?

Well, what I would say in that context is what Paul is clearly saying here is you have two humanities in Romans 5.

You have the humanity that is in Adam, and you have the humanity that is in Christ. And life is actually limited to being in Christ there.

What you receive from Adam is death. And what you receive from Adam is in the realm of sin and death, whereas you have life and righteousness with Christ.

That's the contrast that's being drawn between the two. And all of us start in Adam, but if you're in Christ, then you receive this other.

So I wouldn't refer to the life of Adam being yours as his descendant so much as I would the spiritual death of Adam as your descendant.

He can only transmit to you through your forebears the spiritual death that was his result of sin.

So in regards to what he's saying, you are right that you have the proper sense that the very phraseology being used by a

Roman Catholic friend is inaccurate. And they're really taught that by their apologists. In essence, because Rome puts together justification and sanctification and confounds them, confuses them, does not see the proper distinctions between them, as a result, they hear what we are saying.

And sadly, I don't know if you've been following the blog, they are almost always getting their understanding of what we believe from their own leaders and frequently those are former

Protestants who somehow completely lose their understanding of their former theology and they become

Roman Catholics for some odd and strange reason. But that's where they're getting their sources. They're not actually listening to R .C.

Sproul. They're not actually listening to John MacArthur preaching on the radio. They're getting this from other people and it's presented to them as this strange dichotomy where you go to heaven as, the way you just put it, as these wretched sinners who haven't been changed at all.

And it's easy to go to scripture and talk about holiness and all the rest of this stuff and you see the balance having been at the

Wilkin debate because that objection pretty much would be true of certain imbalanced viewpoints.

But the Bible is very, very balanced and it recognizes the fact that while you have to distinguish between justification and sanctification, you cannot separate them from one another.

You cannot take them apart and say, well, God's going to do the one but he's not going to do the other.

It's clearly his will that those who are justified based upon the finished work of Christ on their behalf, that's the imputation part, you've got regeneration and you have sanctification going on there.

Sanctification normally in the New Testament is actually positional. It's actually a finished thing. It has very closely related justification at that point.

But then there is this also, this growth in holiness. There is this experience, this being conformed to the image of Christ.

And sometimes the terms... But would they hear, if you were explaining that aspect of sanctification to them, are they going to be hearing infusion and...

You can't worry about that. I mean, there's absolutely nothing you can do about what they're going to hear outside of recognizing the danger of that and making sure that you as clearly as you can distinguish between the idea of an infusion of righteousness that results in their being intrinsically pleasing to God and that's the ground that they're going to heaven and the biblical teaching that the righteousness that I'm clothed in is a perfect righteousness.

My growth in holiness, my experience of holiness does not add anything to that. It is actually the result of that.

It is not a synergistic joining that I'm growing my justification, increasing in my justification.

It's my duty to start off by saying X, Y, and Z. Here's what justification is.

Here's what my standing is before God. It's completely and totally in Jesus Christ. And then... So is it that perfect life then?

That perfect life of Christ that Paul is speaking of in Galatians? Where it's

Christ's life that is being lived through us? You mean in Galatians 2 .20? Correct.

I mean, the life I live, I live by faith. I don't want to give the idea of infusion of righteousness, but is it that perfect righteous life that the

Christian receives, not just in a declaration sense, but in a sense that Paul says it comes to us by faith and that life is lived through us?

I don't think that's proper use of Galatians 2 .20. I don't think it's the point he's making there. The point he's making in Galatians 2 .20

is that he has died with Christ, and even though he has died, the life that he lives, it's a spiritual life.

And it's not that he's trying to make a parallel there between the righteousness of Christ imputed to him and this term life.

He's just making a contrast there between crucified, dead, but I still live, yet even in my living, it is

Christ who is living in me, and that life is only done by faith.

It's not that my added works are going to somehow add to what Christ has done or that these added works that I'm going to do now somehow make me more justified because his conclusion is if righteousness could come by the law, then

Christ died needlessly, and obviously his opponents would have found that to be a compelling argument.

That is, they were not saying that Christ died needlessly. They were not saying that the atoning death of Christ was irrelevant.

They said it was relevant, but it wasn't enough in and of itself. So you can't be overly concerned about what someone's going to hear in the sense of, well,

I don't want to say that, even though it's biblical, because they might hear me saying this. No, you keep that in mind.

You try to, in a dialogue, see if they are misinterpreting you. You try to express yourself as clearly as you can beforehand because of what they're saying, but you can't, you never want to avoid using the proper biblical terminology just because someone, because there is no

Christian doctrine that has not been perverted by someone. See you later. Did we just, still there?

Nope. I think that's what happens when a cell phone battery dies. Either that or the very same twister that appeared in The Wizard of Oz just hit

Kansas again, and Howard there will wake up someplace else and say to Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore.

So anyways, thanks for the call, Howard. You just went poof -oh there, and we will, yeah, he fell into the ocean from Kansas, yes.

Fell off the mountain in Kansas. Yeah, that was a little bit odd.

So anyways, yes, that was the sort of tornado that just pulled him up.

That's interesting. Crimson Catholic, who is someone we know well, just chimed in on the envoy message board and says, ah yes,

I recall his tasteful portrayal of our esteemed host as a worshiper of the Golden Calf, and that's a picture of Patrick Madrid.

And if he keeps it up, maybe one day he'll be as funny as Jack Chick's Death Cookie tracks. On behalf of Catholics, I can sincerely say we're not laughing with you, we're laughing at you.

Well, thank you, Crimson Catholic. Of course, so far everyone has managed to miss the real obvious point, and that is

Art Sippo is a man who uses ad hominem argumentation, and he likes to try to bully people, and that's sort of what it was all about.

Anyhow, we'll see if any more, I'll just keep refreshing this thing during the course of the program. 877 -753 -3341 is, we're getting a lot of calls today.

I did want to mention, by the way, I do have more of the

Adrian Rogers discussion queued up. Someone wrote to us and said, hey, you shouldn't discuss Adrian Rogers, because it's been announced in his retirement that he also has some form of cancer.

I think it was colon cancer. And I said, you know, as soon as someone said that, I'm like, well, first of all, we would certainly pray that the

Lord would be merciful to Adrian Rogers, but if you think we shouldn't discuss this because Adrian Rogers has colon cancer, that is the very attitude that I just can't begin to understand.

That's the very attitude that when I heard that Norman Geisler had said to a radio talk show host that I should not have written

The Potter's Freedom because this was between him and R .C. Sproul, I'm like, what are you talking about?

Theology isn't between anybody. I'm not reviewing

Adrian Rogers as a man. This isn't personal.

This is about the truth. It's not about me and it's not about him.

It isn't personal. It's about what we're going to teach in the church.

It is about how we are going to present the gospel. It's not personal.

How many times do I have to say that? It isn't personal. It's not about Adrian Rogers.

It's not about Patterson. And it's not about Rivas. And it's not about any of the others that we have played comments from and responded to.

It's not personal. So why would we stop dealing with something that has been said in a context like that?

It's not personal. It's about what we're teaching and preaching.

So that's not going to stop me. Once we clear the lines, and, of course, we're hoping, if you've been looking at the blog, we haven't heard from Ryan L.

yet, and that may just simply mean that Ryan L.'s wife is having a little

Ryan or something like that, and certainly we would hope that everything goes well there if we're not hearing from him.

But he indicated that he might, in fact, be willing to call in today. If you haven't been following the blog, then you know that Ryan had had some statements to make concerning me and identifying me as an anti -Catholic and various and sundry other things like that, and actually said this morning that he might call in if he would be available to do so in light of,

I guess, the fact that his wife is about ready to give birth. And so I gave him the,

I think, very sage advice that if, in point of fact, she's going into labor, don't call.

Okay? That's just, you know, that's not a good thing. You do not want your wife to remember the rest of your life, that you missed the birth of a child because you were out doing something.

What on earth is that? Someone just said that I am the

Sean Hannity of Calvinism. I'm not sure that that's a good, I would much rather be the Rush Limbaugh of Calvinism.

Personally, if you don't mind, I mean, I do sometimes shake paper, and I've got

Angel, and I think Angel is fairly close to some of the parodies that Rush does, and I'm not sure that I want to be the

Sean Hannity of Calvinism. But then he posted that horrific picture that Dave Armstrong created.

Sorry, just playing around a bit. I saw that on Dave Armstrong's blog, and so I'm not sure who this is, but I'll take a look at it later on.

There's some weird stuff out there on the Internet. It's an odd place. Before we take, you know,

I'm looking at the time. It wouldn't be fair to put somebody on and then take a break. So we're going to go ahead and take a break and then come back, and we will talk with David and then move on with Adrian Rogers, or take your phone, call 877 -753 -3341.

We'll be right back. Such a rarity today.

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Holy Scriptures been so viciously attacked by those outside the pale of orthodoxy and within the walls of traditional evangelicalism itself.

Join us August 27, 2005 at the Sea -Tac Marriott for an historic debate between Evangelical Christian apologist

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Your phone calls today, and we'll be getting to a little bit more of the

Adrian Rogers thing. I'd at least like to get to the section where it sounds so bad. Get to the part where it actually sounds good.

We're fairly close. We'll get there. But let's talk with David in Texas.

Hi, David. Hey, James. Hi. How's it going? It's going. Yeah. A little bit cooler here than it is there,

I think. It's been a little toasty recently. Well, whenever I feel hot, because it's in the 90s here,

I listen to you on channel, or watch you on channel, say it's 114 or something like that, and I feel a little cooler. There you go. Well, yeah, but you guys have a little more humidity than we do.

That's true. So I'm not sure there's a whole lot of advantage. And again, you are in Texas, and you're stuck with the cowboys.

So what can I say? Well, I need some sort of personal refrigeration device for my utility belt. Yes. Oh, yes.

You know, utility belts are so, they're very special, don't you think? They are. I'm glad.

I need one. You know, I could use one during the debates. Exactly. I really could. Oh, yeah, you could have your…

Gizmo. Your Palm Pilot. My Gizmo. Your Gizmos, right. My Gizmo, right there on the utility belt, and we could have other electronic

Gizmos that would be relevant to the debate. So I think that would be good, yes. Exactly. Exactly. I can't be a superhero without one.

Exactly. I don't think so. You know, no one has a clue what in the world we are babbling about, but the people in channel do.

Anyway. I'm not on my computer, but if I haven't been kicked out by a certain Spidey geek by now,

I'm surprised. I'm even in danger of getting kicked out by a certain Spidey geek right now.

Anyways. Hey, I've been doing some online discussions with a certain group of people.

I seem to be a magnet, you know, for this type of group, Church of Christ. Yes. And I think the last three years

I've been dealing online with two or three different individuals, and I didn't want to get back in. I guess you had these moments where you didn't want to get involved, but then something is said, and you just got to respond.

Yes, I hear you. Yes. And this had to do with Acts 238, which is one of their,

I guess, their big three passages, big four passages. And the comment was made by this person that the preposition ice found this passage meant unto, which is their assertion, and that it always means unto, without exception.

And I couldn't really let that one go, so I went in and I actually posted several passages in English that contain that word and said that these are not used that way.

And he said, well, that word's not found in those passages. So I actually found out that he was using strong.

Yes. Nothing unusual about that. It takes a while to do a meaningful study of 2 ,112 appearances in the

New Testament of ice. I just pulled them up in Bible works just like that. And I gave him two passages.

I gave him the one from... By the way, you were just kicked. I just wanted you to know that. Okay. Great.

You'll reciprocate when you get back. I just find it hard to kick her sometimes.

I've done it many times. It doesn't hurt at all. Okay, anyway. And by the way, my son's about to have a meltdown.

Oh, okay. But 1132 where it talks about how they repented at the preaching of Jonah.

Obviously it does not mean unto the preaching of Jonah or into. Now what was the reference on that?

1132, Luke 1132. Oh, Luke. I thought you said Acts. I'm seeing it going Acts, Acts, Acts. Okay. And, of course, his first assertion was the word that was not found in there.

And then when I posted the Greek, it showed him that it was. But my question is not really about that. My question has to do with the fact that you had mentioned at one point in channel, and this was just in passing, that Acts 238, there may be some historical significance to that passage that maybe we're overlooking when we're looking at just the preposition there, that maybe there was some historical...

Well, there's always a danger, especially with a group like the Church of Christ, that when you have one verse, some people might say all of John 6 that same way for me, but it's not.

I mean, I could do Romans 8 and Romans 9 and Ephesians 1, and there's all sorts of places you can go. They really don't have any place else to go outside of just a very small number of passages.

They have to make their case here, and that's what leads to an overemphasis, and as a result, the kind of statements that you were encountering in regards to Aeson and its translation.

But I think, and I don't know the context, but I think probably what

I was referring to was the fact that you have here not only the first preaching of the

Gospel under the ministry of the Holy Spirit, post -resurrection, there in Jerusalem, you've got all the things about the

Jews and Gentiles, you've got all the things about all the different languages and different peoples that are there, but I think you also have, and this is missed not just by Church of Christ folks, but by a wide range of people, you have election in verse 39.

You have God calling people unto himself. You have that used as a delimiter there within the context of a wide variety of people, and this is being proclaimed to Jews, and we know that one of the biggest problems they're going to be facing through the first 15 chapters of Acts is going to be, what do we do about Gentiles?

What do we do about people who are not Jewish? What's the relationship between Jew and Gentile in this new covenant?

And right at the beginning, in the very, you know, the first time someone says, well, what do we do?

You have election right then and there, and you have this promise is to you and to your children and to all who are afar off, as many as the

Lord our God shall call. And you really have in that the answer to what's going to come out in Acts 15 eventually.

It just, between the 13 chapters in between, you see the fact that, you know,

God normally doesn't just send an angel down with a decree that says, here's how you're going to understand this, go with this.

You see the, you know, the work of the

Spirit introducing these truths, and it takes place over time, just like it did in the

Old Testament in essence. So maybe what I was talking about was the fact that we do need to understand the context there and the fact that it's extremely important to see what was going on within the historical context that time and the relationship to that election.

That's the only thing I can think of off the top of my head. Oh yeah, it was like a couple of years ago. Oh yeah, and I remember everything

I say in general from many years ago. What amazes me is, you know, before I became exposed to Church of Christ, at least on a discussion level,

I had no idea Pelagianism was still alive. I'm serious, at least on this level.

I would rather talk to Roman Catholics than to deal, because at least with Roman Catholics you have, even though you obviously have differences on your ideas of grace and how grace is bestowed, they have no concept of grace.

None. Well, let's be clear here. We're talking about the old style baptismal regeneration.

Yeah, exactly. When I say Church of Christ, I know there are different groups, you know, and some have splintered off.

Max Lucado's group has sort of splintered off that group, and he's sort of considered a heretic now among those types.

Those types, yes. Yeah, mainly because he uses music in worship, I think, more than anything else. But, you know, there's no concept of the indwelling of the

Holy Spirit. It's obedience. You hear the word and you're obedient to it.

There's no regeneration. There's no change upon the heart. And I asked the man who I was talking with, and he couldn't give a response, what is the advantage of the

New Testament over the old in your view? Because I don't see an advantage. You know,

I don't see a new covenant. Yeah, no, no. You're asking, that's not the kind of stuff that specifically is going to be the substance of the discussion of most of the teaching in those contexts.

But, yeah, Pelagianism does live, and the sad thing is people would call them a

Protestant denomination, which, again, illustrates why we have to define our terms.

And I think after a while, the guy I was talking to, it wasn't so much about him as it was the other people who were reading the post. Right. You probably can identify with that to some degree.

Oh, yes, yes, yes. It's not so much the person you're talking with, but maybe the people who are reading this will see and understand. Well, it's not the person I'm debating.

It's the people who are watching. Exactly. Oh, yeah, big time. But that was my concern. I appreciate your answer.

I kind of want to hear the Adrian Rogers things, too, so I think I'll let you go and let you get to that. All right, thanks a lot. Thanks, Dave. All right,

God bless. Bye -bye. All right, hey, you know, I am learning to multitask, a little bit anyways, and someone just dropped some

URLs and channel. One of them was to the Southern Baptist Convention. We'll get to that in a moment, if we get to the

Adrian Rogers stuff. There's a new thread on the Catholic Answers website, the forums there, and Deb1 says that the purpose of this thread is not to bash

James White. Far from it. I have the most charitable intentions in my heart. Recently, Dr. White posted an article about one of the threads on his forum, and here's a link to the site, and there's a link to,

I'm not sure which of the, there's a number of them that I've discussed on the blog of late. I finally came to the conclusion that the best response is not to call into his radio show, as he suggests, but instead to ask all the

Catholics on this website to pray a rosary for his and his family's conversion to Catholicism. Perhaps we could even pick a date that we would all commit ourselves to saying the rosary for his conversion.

What do you all think? If God could convert Saul, then surely Dr. White will be no problem. Now, isn't it amazing? The rosary will convert me.

Bob St. Genes wants to debate my belief that God can convert anyone based upon his sovereign power over against the free will of man, and I've never understood how

Roman Catholics try to put these two things together. You have to maintain this free will idea, and so could

God actually convert me to Roman Catholicism? In the Roman Catholic sense?

I don't know. It's odd to hear this kind of thing. It's also odd that the reason

I've invited these folks to call in is not to bash them, but to give them an opportunity to talk to this audience, this audience of people who listen to me, and not everybody who listens likes me, but let's just say that 85 -90 % of the people who are listening live right now or will listen on the archive, and I travel now,

I've had the opportunity of literally traveling all over the world, and people all over the place listen to the archives of the

Dividing Line. There are a number of people in my church that listen to the

Dividing Line. So if I'm this terrible, horrible person, this nasty anti -Catholic that does spiritual beheadings, as John 6

JMJ said a couple days ago on the Envoy website, or as Ryan and Jedi Master and these people on the

Catholic Answers forums want to accuse me of all this stuff, generally using a double standard, but they want to do it anyways, then this is the audience that needs to hear that, right?

This is the audience that I'm bamboozling, to use Art Sippo's term, and aren't these,

I'm sorry, that was Robert's and Genesis' term, not Art Sippo's term. He may have used it in the past, but I couldn't document it off the top of my head, so aren't these the people who need to hear it?

And if you say that these things are true, then you wouldn't have any problem.

I mean, let's give an example. I have, there are numerous articles on our website where I have pointed out errors made by Carl Keating, Patrick Madrid, people like this,

Jimmy Akin, on my website. If Catholic Answers said, hey, we challenge

James White to call in and to defend what he said here, do you think I wouldn't?

I'd be there in a second. If they want me on their radio program, all they've got...

Yeah, wouldn't that be nice? We'd be on in a second. But for some reason, when

I say, hey, folks, if you're going to say all these things about me, why don't you just call in?

And you might find out that the foundation of everything you've thought about me doesn't exist.

It's lies, straw men, half -truths. And that's why

I ask. And so, you know, of course, from my perspective, what

I believe very firmly is that praying rosaries for me is idolatrous.

To pray to anyone but to God and to pray to Mary, Hail Mary, full of grace, these are idolatrous things.

They're false teachings. They're based upon falsehoods. People have defended these things in debate. You can listen to them.

And so there's no one listening to this as far as it actually accomplishing anything. So it's just repetitive prayers that go nowhere.

But that's fascinating to read this.

Ryan L. today at 241s, this was just very recently, said as one of those specifically called out on his blog.

Called out, I just mentioned the names of the people who had said the things they said. I am still undecided as to whether or not to poke the rabid dog with a stick on his radio show.

Well, thank you. Ryan, don't you hear that,

Ryan? Can you imagine if I used that kind of language of Carl Keating or Scott Hahn or Jimmy Akin on a regular basis?

That's why I asked the questions I did on my blog today. Ryan, have you ever read one of my books?

I mean, there are a couple of Roman Catholic apologists that I might use that terminology for, but I have suffered their slings and arrows for years.

I have read all their material, I've debated them, and I've got their private emails ripping my lips off collected in archives.

I don't know Ryan, and Ryan does not know me. He says,

I'm afraid that I may not be able to stay humble. Well, Ryan, talking about me as a rabid dog wasn't humble in the first place, so we actually need to take a few steps back to get there.

And would end up joining JW in the sins of haughty belligerence and intellectual snobbery. So you can only do that on the phone, you can't do that with a keyboard,

Ryan? I don't know that I'm willing to offend God for anyone, even JW, who is most in need of being called home for the

Supper of the Lamb. Either way, I will pray for him as well. I applaud your intentions and respect your decision. Well, Ryan hasn't, you know,

I don't know if Ryan is called. There's a light blinking, number two, we could hope. Not like we have much time left, just a couple of minutes.

Ryan, when you refer to me as a rabid dog and then talk about my needing to be humble, it could be that's not

Ryan. He needs to recognize that some questions take time to look things up.

I'm just scrolling down here. Well, that's nice.

Someone says he does work pretty hard promoting his beliefs and his conviction is commendable. Well, that's nice.

I appreciate that. Someone earlier had said that I don't preach my own faith.

I have Catholicism, but oh well. Here's someone who says, what a wonderful idea.

What date should we pick and should we use the luminous mysteries? So now we're talking about what kind of rosary here.

I always pray the rosary for the conversion of sinners, but I will specifically mention Mr. White for his intentions. That's someone else later on.

I'll refresh this and see if anyone has added anything to it at the bottom. But it reminds me a little bit of the mass card that was sent to me a number of years ago.

Someone had requested that a mass be said in my behalf. Since it was anonymous, there wasn't anything

I could say other than to post an article. This was pre -blog days. Obviously, today it would have immediately appeared on the blog.

But back then, the front page article, this was before anybody had the idea.

You know, if you did them short and you did them, people would come in more often. And we'd do like, what, six a year maybe, if we were really lucky.

But that one resulted in a front page article fairly quickly. And we eventually found out who it was.

And if I recall correctly, it's been a number of years now. It had something to do with, there was a connection to Catholic answers somehow.

I don't remember exactly what it was. Anyhow, all right, well, this is somewhat related.

I guess we're not going to get to Adrian Rogers today since I took the time to discuss that. But we will eventually do so.

Let's go ahead and talk with Johnny real quick. Hey, Johnny. How are you doing, James? Johnny, is this one of those questions where you're going to ask me off the top of my head to do something that no one could possibly do unless they spent about 14 hours in research first?

I hope not. Oh, okay. All right. You do tend to ask questions like that. You do realize that.

Yes, I do. Oh, okay. All right. And without any heads up that it's coming or anything like that, right? No, other than what

I tell Rich. I don't know. Maybe you can, maybe you can't.

But one thing I wanted to ask you, I've seen Star Wars three times. Did you love it? Four times. Did you love it or not?

I enjoyed it. I'm not a huge Star Wars guy. I mean, I saw the original Star Wars 11 times in 1977, but that's because there just wasn't really, there had never been anything like it.

You know, I mean, since then there's been a lot of stuff similar to it, and so the special effects and all the rest of the stuff.

And, in fact, did you know where they blew the original Death Star up? No. You don't know where that was done?

No. That was done in the Coliseum, the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix, Arizona. Really?

That's where they shot the original. And I think they replaced that, didn't they, in the digitized version or something?

They did a new version of it or something. But the original explosion of the Death Star at the end of the first Star Wars was done right here in Phoenix.

But, anyway, so I enjoyed it because I liked all the battle scenes and stuff.

Obviously, you know, no one's really asked me to talk about only the Sith deal in absolutes and, you know, silliness like that.

But, you know, it's not like you didn't know where this one was going. You knew they had to get where they were going, and they got there, and it tied up all the loose ends, and it was fun to see the very same ship that's getting shot at the beginning of Episode 4, right at the end of Episode 3.

And that was all neat to do 20 -some -odd years later. But, you know, that was the last movie

I saw. Think of how many blockbusters have come out since then. So I'm just not the biggest movie guy around because I'm just so busy.

To be honest with you, the reason I haven't, like, seen Batman yet, which I've heard is quite good, is because I've got so much preparation to do.

I'm teaching in Mill Valley on Monday and Tuesday. That's 8 a .m. to 5 p .m. for two days in a row.

And I've got so many writing projects right now, it is not even funny. It's just they're all over the place, and I just feel like I'm falling way behind.

So I can't enjoy the movie because I feel like I should be doing something else. And that's probably why

I haven't had an actual non -working vacation since 1988. So that's how it is.

Well, I would say that I was very happy with the Star Wars movie. Batman, however, I really enjoyed it.

And the one thing I enjoyed the most about it is that it's not a prequel to the Batman movies that were coming out. This is a whole new thing that's coming out.

I'm very happy. It has no connection to the other Batmans with Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, and George Clooney.

Well, my Batman expert said it was just wonderful.

And so I'm like, OK, well, all right, whatever. But that's not what you called about, was it? No. I just wanted to ask you how early on, and if you can't answer it with the time we have left, then

I'll probably pick it up some other time. How early on in church history can we trace back prayers to Mary?

Good question. You can find them very early. You see Marian piety developing,

I would say, by the beginning of the third century, probably around the same time as the

Council of Nicaea. But you also have that in reference to, in the context of communion of the saints with the martyrs.

You do not have, and this is, again, one of the biggest problems that people have today, looking back at church history, is they look at it in light of the later developments and then read the later developments back into it.

There was not a highly developed Mariology until much, much later. You've got to remember that someone who talks about praying to Mary in the year 400, for example, does not have the largest portion of the dogmatic definitions that Rome uses regarding Mary today.

The concept of Queen of Heaven, the concept of bodily assumption, immaculate conception, even perpetual virginity is being debated this time.

There's people arguing about it. Jerome is not going to be arguing about people. It was a universally held viewpoint at that time.

All that stuff had not yet, some of it hadn't even been thought of, hadn't even come into existence yet.

And so Mary is seen, you just can't look at Mary the same way, looking back, that you could at that particular point in time.

Again, it's unfortunate that people don't realize that. The initial prayers, and really the fourth century is a century of a tremendous increase in Marian piety, primarily due to the rise of monasticism and the concept of virginity, a,

I would say, unbiblical viewpoint of sexuality and marriage. These things all come together and Mary becomes the model, the picture, and hence really vaults into a much higher place.

You see in Ambrose, especially, a tremendous explosion from what has come before, but still, in comparison to what you have in the medieval period, and in comparison to what you have in Liguria and things like that today, nothing in comparison to that, but in comparison to what had been in the previous centuries, you have a real expansion at that particular point in time.

I was reading in a Roman Catholic historian, I think it's one on the

Church of the Ancient Council, it might be a book, that one, or it might be another one, where he talks specifically about the usage of images, which is closely related to the issue of Mary and the other saints.

And he was talking about how, if I remember reading this properly, he said that the usage of images by Christian leaders was really in opposition for the first 200 -300 years, and it was even with a lot of fighting that the churches started using them, and it was originally only for educational purposes, and then later on, in generations, they started to use them for more sacramental purposes.

Yes, that would be exactly true. It's nice to hear him say that. And what's more than that, listen to the exchange between myself and Patrick Madrid on that subject, and his statement that a council, a local council that spoke against images, the only reason was because the people in that area had a particular problem with idolatry, as if that's somehow not a problem with everybody.

Hey, we're out of time. Thanks for the call, Johnny. And we will be back Tuesday morning, here on The Dividing Line, 11 a .m.

Mountain Standard Time, 2 p .m. Eastern Daily Time. We'll see you then. God bless. We need a new

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