Hitchens vs. Dembski, Roger Olson on Arminianism, E-mail Questions

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. It's 602 973 460 to or toll-free across the United States. It's 1 877 7 5 3 3 3 4 1. And now with today's topic here is James white. Thank you. Morning.

Opening Remarks and Upcoming Travel

Welcome to the dividing line on a Tuesday morning. We will be here on Thursday as well. And then we're headed to st. Charles, Missouri Covenant of Grace Church 11th Consecutive year. I need to inform pastor van that According to bylaws of his church anyone who is invited for more than 10 consecutive years to speak there automatically becomes an elder at the church.

They're not aware of that but no 11 11 years now in st. Charles. At least 10 of those have been the first weekend in December. I have not seen the inside of my own church first weekend in December for about a decade now or so and That doesn't look like it's gonna be uber cold there, but it was pretty cold here got down to freezing in my house anyways, so That's that's pretty pretty nippy.

But and then straight from st. Charles to Detroit and we will be on the Aramaic broadcasting network Monday Tuesday and Wednesday in the Jesus or Muhammad marathon. I have noted that I may be on with certain individuals.

That's Whom I have some interesting disagreements. It's gonna be interesting to see what happens In that it could be an interesting conversation. Today on the program I want to start off listening to portions of the Christopher Hitchens William Dempsey debate and Then I've got a comment that I wish to make on The concluding remarks of Roger Olson in his recent article claiming that Arminianism is God-centered and Then we'll probably start taking your phone calls.

Oh And I know that rich has some email questions that he wants to get to As well and then taking your phone calls Toward the end of the hour eight seven seven seven five three three three four one or dividing that line on Skype.

I Listened on Saturday and then listened again yesterday. To the recent debate took place evidently before a younger audience as low as seventh grade so Junior high and high schoolers, I think made up the bulk of the audience.

Which makes the applause quite interesting and listening to this one the debate between William Dempsey and Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens is back on the debating trail. We will see if anything ever comes of our invitation to him to debate again that debate had been canceled due to his His cancer, but that cancer has not in any way slowed him down as far as His debating and certainly has not changed his hatred of the Christian faith in any way shape or form.

This was an interesting debate to listen to in the sense that it when I first heard Dempsey begin his presentation. I was at least a little bit encouraged. He did not seem at all to be Coward by Hitchens and he went after him pretty strongly.

He didn't drop his presentation to the level of his audience. Anyone after him on some areas where he obviously Hello where he obviously has some that was some little extra music we had playing. Oh, hey, you you can preview that stuff man.

You can you can find out there's something there. All right, so I turned the music off. Yeah, that just sounds terrible it just sounds like the ocean roaring in the background whenever we bring that up.

So we got to do something about that the I don't know if the cables bad or just what it is. Anyhow, he started off fairly strongly he went after the areas that he's strong in intelligent design and and things like that then I Just got the feeling and this is something that I've seen happen more than once now Christopher Hitchens sort of changes the order around a bit and Instead of taking audience questions, they take one question and then they start going back and forth and that's when the wheels fell off.

You Have to be ready to go toe-to-toe with Christopher Hitchens. You have to know all about his objections and you have to have a Firm foundation and apologetics take this guy on that's just all there is to it.

We've how many Christopher Hitchens debates do we have to hear? Before we realize the necessity of addressing this man presupposition. It's just absolutely Necessary he is very good at rhetoric. But you have to be prepared to expose the rhetoric for what it is rhetoric and nothing more than rhetoric and in the cross-examination or in the interaction period is when the differences between an evidential approach to apologetics and a presuppositional approach became very very clear and Then the debate ended with a whimper I I'll play it.

I do not know why dr. Dempsey Concluded a debate on the existence and goodness of God with a brief shallow and irrelevant defense of Things that had nothing to do with the debate at all leaving Christopher Hitchens a wide open opportunity To finish the debate with a flourish.

He gets the last word and It was just oh it was one of the worst endings of a debate that I've that I've ever heard and we'll Listen to that painfully, but let's let's start actually after the opening statements in the period of cross-examination I wanted to point out that you can be extremely intelligent and yet really blind to things and There's a little bit of an irony and using the term blind here Hitchens is talking about the eye and I mentioned this in my sermon Sunday night.

Here is Christopher Hitchens demonstrating. He really does not understand the processes of even Darwinian Evolutionary theory let alone what intelligent design entails what the real issues are. He just doesn't get it.

Listen to this.

Hitchens on the Eye and Darwinian Evolution

Let me just take the question of the eye, I think dr. Dempsey said I was obsessed with it. That's absolutely not true. It's simply that Darwin himself doubted at first that the eye could have evolved given its complexity and because the eye is the example most Commonly brought up.

So I thought okay in my book I'll take the most complex and the most difficult and the most well-known example and You can look at my book or you can look at a very brilliant chapter in Richard Dawkins's book climbing mountain probable.

Beautiful short chapter on the 25 different evolutions of the eye and the different ways in which is taking place. I have contributed to this because I'm not a scientist only one small thing, but I'll give it to you.

Anyway, you may have seen you should have seen a wonderful Series made by the British Broadcasting Corporation called planet earth. It's the greatest photography of the natural world. You'll ever see it's absolutely extraordinary.

And in one very fascinating case, they they go to Indonesia and which has the largest caves we know underground On earth which have a whole series of life-forms inside them many of them not fully understood or explored yet.

Including a large number of life-forms that we do already understand that fell in to those caves when they were formed and ceased to live on the earth's surface and in the sunlight and Started to make their lives underground there.

They are more or less exactly the same as they would be. If they were mad they had remained where they were, but I noticed The salamander the beautiful Indonesian lizard everyone's seen one in a zoo there.

It was it had been living for David Attenborough told us in the program X millions of years away from the sunlight. In a cave it had eyes. No, it didn't. It had perfectly I shaped indentations and exactly where the eyes used to be.

Like a little sketch or outline of an eye. But no socket the socket had gone the eye itself had gone. All you could see was the vestigial. It had adapted it had decided to lose its eye. Most of our studies are about how people got hold of eyes.

Dawkins's is the best one. Whatever. Mr. Dempsey made dr Dempsey may say of the different ways in which different creatures got different eyes. But no one until your humble servant because I wrote off to my friends and my enemies and said has anyone noticed this before?

Had thought now how do animals lose their eyes the same way they got them by not needing them anymore. By adapting away if you live underground in the wet in the dark. It's a big hazard to your survival to have a wet useless spot that can't receive any light.

Two of them on your face. It can pick up infection. It can make you vulnerable. You lose it.

It takes millions of years, but you'll lose it that now there's there's the presentation. There's the thinking. Now Dempsey did jump on this and rightly so very briefly. I think he should have done a little bit more but if if you hear that and You heard him say well, how did he lose it's not the same way it gained it.

No, no and triple no. That is so illogical. It is amazing to me that Christopher Hitchens can make such a statement. He clearly is Not thinking through this in any way shape or form. Of course when you're sitting there talking about Dawkins books is beautiful and all the rest of stuff.

I mean, he's he's hardly an unbiased observer, but Just on any basic level. Creating out of nothing through the manipulation of the genetic structure of an animal something as complex as an eye and if you've never studied its structure and all the different kinds of structures there are the glial cells and and all the the the neuron connections and and Need to be able to interpret what the eye sees and and all this incredibly not just complex but Interactive stuff and then you have to remember you can only do that one step at a time because that's how evolution allegedly works.

See, and so you you have to create stuff that has no reason way earlier in the process. So it has a reason later in the process. But you can't have any direction and it has to be completely random and and oh it is just boggles the mind.

That men knowing what we know today can continue to believe these things but all of that aside for a moment. It is something completely different. To create such a thing then having such a thing in existence to get rid of it because certainly if all of a sudden You no longer need something.

Then natural selection would select for those that have smaller and smaller eyes until the eye no longer exists. But that's completely different in getting rid of something than in getting something. That's a simple matter of gene regulation and so on so forth.

It's the same example. He uses of the elephants and the tusks. That elephants with shorter tusks are now beginning to predominate in Africa because one of the longest tux tusks get shot. Yeah, that's called natural selection.

It's a part of the genotype of the end of the of the species to begin with. That's not Darwinian evolution that creates such things. That's a completely different mechanism and he does not know the difference between them and no matter how many people have explained it to him.

Evidently, he is not interested in Hearing these things like I said at some point the Conversation started where they start going. Actually, they were asked one question and then they start going back and forth back and forth they only answered one question and It was that kind of interaction where Hitchens excelled and Dempsey did not and.

So there's a number of things I want to listen to here. I will try to keep it as brief as possible but this is the main thing I wanted to do today then I do want to look at the Roger Olson thing and then and get to the Email questions as well.

We'll just see how much we can cram into the hour only a few verses later than the Ten Commandments.

God instructs the children of Israel to kill everyone of the other tribe the Amalekites the Midianites Everybody all the men all the children and to leave only the manageable women alive.

Now this is obviously one of Hitchens favorite examples. He has used it over and over and over again and It would it would strike me that if someone were to be debating him on these subjects It might be a good idea to know that and to maybe head off some of his favorite examples at the past.

Shall we say? Certainly if we were to debate is the New Testament evil or is the Bible evil? I would certainly want to try to head off a number of these objections in my opening statements, but be that as it may.

Here is his objection. If you make any reference to the law of God and specifically the Ten Commandments, he's gonna do two things. He's gonna say well, you know in the same section you have the command to genocide.

No. You don't you have the command for God's wrath against a sinful people to be brought to bear By other sinful people who are at least called to follow after God's law. You see for some reason and I don't know why the vast well I do know why I'll take that back the vast majority of Christopher Hitchens opponents will not publicly affirm the wrath of God.

It might be right there in Romans 1 it might be right the wrath of God is being revealed. It might be right there, but we are so afraid of talking about the wrath of God and affirming the wrath of God.

That we won't talk about won't affirm it won't say anything about it. That's gonna come up here. Because now he's raising specific issues biblical issues and this is where theology matters and determines your apologetic and this is like I said where the wheels came off because You have to have a firm foundation upon which to respond to these types of things.

That's it. That is. That's an instruction is very frequently repeated by the way and invariably carried out. When Thomas Paine pointed that out in the age of reason a couple of centuries ago There was a Welsh bishop who wrote in complaining to him saying the Bible does not say those women were kept for immoral purposes.

You're free to believe that if you wish if you're going to bring up rape and evolution and the way that humanity actually behaves Under divine instruction. I'm pointing out here. You must stop saying what I meant to correct you from saying earlier that what I attack is what people do in the name of Religion.

No, they don't mistake religion when they obey commandments like this. What I object to is what's in the original Instructions and these are instructions for rape.

Genocide and slavery they are instruction manuals for it and also how they are not instruction manuals for rape genocide of slavery. They're instruction manuals for how to live in God's light in God's law and what happens when you do not.

He will not address the behavior of these people because for him for his perspective That can't be a part of the Old Testament Revelation. Those those people just weren't advanced enough to even recognize a moral system.

They were just these these. These individuals who were slaves and he hates the concept of slavery to God. That's all Christopher Hitchens is when you boil it all down is a hatred of God's sovereignty God's control of his life.

He knows and his current condition has reiterated to his mind That he is not in control of his own destiny and he hates it how to behave like a slave yourself just to come I.

Want to be careful here because I mean the the topic of the debate was the existence and goodness of God I mean we weren't talking about.

Christian theism, but I mean now there you go right there the debate is about the Existence and goodness of God, but we're not talking about Christian theism. You can't do that. There's only one God who exists and it's the Christian God and if you're gonna be a Christian, you can't make that distinction.

I'm sorry, you can't do it. It's impossible. You just gave up the debate. It is impossible for a Christian on Biblical grounds to defend a God other than the God of the Bible. How can you do that? I've never understood it.

I mean, I hear people trying to do it all the time, but I I don't get it and I think here we are.

Obviously a Christian Church. So let's talk a little bit about this. I mean certainly if we're going to do this, we have to get into a little bit of Christian theology. One thing that's very clear is that in Christian theology is that this is a broken fallen world.

And in a broken fallen world There are often no good no optimal solutions. I think we can see this in even in human context. The dropping of the a-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Difficult decision.

Do we do it? We did it. Not to do it means meant probably losing hundreds of thousands of American lives. So there was there was the the problem is that in a fallen world there is no perfect optimization strategy.

And it seems to me that God in dealing with a fallen world is often confronted with a Trying to get the the best of some bad options.

That there's again where theology matters. If you've got a God who's just you know trying to work through the best of the bad options. You don't have a decree. He's not accomplishing his purpose. His wrath has really no basis now.

Because it's not a part of his purpose. It's not a part of a redemptive history. See theology matters. If you don't have a biblical theology, you're gonna end up.

Defending the indefensible. And I think one thing, you know, it's funny that the the Amalekites keep coming up. The Jews decimated or Annihilated them but the thing is the Jews also turned against themselves.

They probably fought as much against themselves as they fought against other people.

Irrelevant irrelevant. Irrelevant to the objection that was raised irrelevant to the biblical context irrelevant in Toto and I think the young people sitting in front of him can tell he's now backpedaling up to this point at least in The first give-and-takes where he had prepared statements.

He was on the attack. Now Hitchens is on the attack and he is backpedaling big time and sometimes in in divine judgments.

When the concubine and judges was dismembered. Because of this the the Benjamites Benjaminites The the almost the entire tribe of Benjamin was destroyed. God is a just God and in a sense He's not bound by the same rules that we are.

He makes the rules. And the fact is we all die and this is this is a decision by God. I mean the the way the world is structured. Why do we have this death? Why is it a broken and fallen world. Ultimately Christian theology teaches that this is as a result of human rebellion against God?

So you've got this whole system of theology now. Christopher Hitchens.

You see if you do not have God's sovereignty then human rebellion against God becomes something that God either Didn't see coming or couldn't do anything about. It somehow becomes an authority above him and Hitchens is gonna mock this and I think appropriately so.

Again theology matters looks at that. He's aware of it and you know, he's not going to have a part of it but there is the whole system that that you that that comes to you and it does the alternatives it seems.

If you're not going to go with a theistic position a Christian theistic position or some other Position maybe you don't find that one. But then it seems that you're confronted that with an atheistic position.

Which has its own problems, I think the indignation and That that Christopher Hitchens feels and you know. The thing is I applaud probably 80 90 percent of his book that I share the the hypocrisies the problems that he finds.

You know, no question about that. But on what basis does he do that and I don't think he can do it on an atheist.

I think often one gets the seat there. He's trying to be a presupposition list. But as theologians isn't sufficient to substantiate His recognition that he needs to address this presupposition ly nor does his apologetics the sense that you know.

He comes in. It's hit-and-run all these faults that he can find. Problems that he can find with religion. But he has an atheistic worldview and that has problems of itself in a fallen world. No worldview is going to be perfect.

It's not no world is view is going to be perfect. How about the worldview that God himself reveals in Scripture? Maybe that's going to at least be accurate to our experience that that also blew me away because in essence Demski Said to this audience.

Well, you know, we've got a lot of problems. I mean, there's there's there's it's a mess everywhere and and we're the we're the problem and I'm like, well, yeah. That's that's really not the best way to end a debate not going to cover things.

I mean, that's that's that's that's the problem. And so we do have a problem of evil. We have a problem with good. We have lots of problems.

We have lots of problems. There's that's really I would not suggest. That's how you want to finish your Presentation before someone else gets to continue on is say well, we all got lots of problems. Like I said at this point that that's where the the wheels fell off.

Well in an evolutionary mammalian world also quite obviously there is no perfect solution either as I've said. That's that would I hardly need to say it once you've described that that's what we are imperfectly evolved mammals on a short-lived planet.

People now object to that though. It's true and there's all the evidence is in its favor. We are poorly evolved mammals on a short-lived rather endangered planet.

People by the way, the very phrase poorly evolved is ridiculous within a neo-derwinian micro mutational evolutionary theory. There's no such thing as poorly evolved. But he's he's using it he cannot help.

But borrow from a theistic worldview to identify this as poorly evolved. In other words. Not not as perfect as we would like in comparison to what? Because remember evolution cannot have it cannot be teleological.

It cannot have a direction. It has to be random by very nature. And so the very the very essence of that statement is a little bit silly will say well if you believe that that's depressing nihilistic.

Of makes things seem so random and capricious and so. Well, yes, but is it true or not. And what is true of your view? What is true of your view, sir? Well, you've just said that God invents makes a human species Takes a brief look at it and decides it's in rebellion against me say.

Hitchens can see this stuff. He can see when people are are inconsistent in their theology.

It doesn't know how it's done this but that's his verdict. You're in rebellion against me for one thing. You've broken the rule. I gave you. Don't think for yourselves. Yeah, right. You dead. You deliberately went to look for knowledge.

That's not what she was doing at all. A gross misreading of of the Genesis text now.

You're in rebellion now, you're gonna suffer Now there's nothing that won't happen to you. I made you and I can break you and I will I'll flood you. You know, what is this this is like being a terrible insect or rodent in the in the laboratory of a cruel and stupid Person and what could be more?

What is more nihilistic? What's more nihilistic and alienating than that? It's all summarized in one line if you wish To believe what dr. Dempsey believes in his co-thinkers believe you have to consider yourself created incurably sick and Then ordered on pain of death and eternal torture to be well.

Now that's really what Christopher Hitchens believes and no matter how many times it has been explained to him that that is not the case. In any way shape or form. That it is completely misunderstanding the centrality of God and salvation.

It's completely misunderstanding the federal headship of Adam the federal headship of Christ. He doesn't care about any of those things. He's going to keep repeating that until his dying day unless of course God has mercy upon him, but Again, you have to have a sound biblical consistent theology to respond firmly to such an as a an assertion.

This is not morality.

We had actually the first question that was asked is the most important question. We could do this question only couldn't we but I think we probably should have another one.

Dr. Dempsey, would you like to respond before we move on to another question or we'll save that for the closing?

Well, I think again we have on dive in the there's a mirror that's that's at play here. I mean what poisons everything. Is it religion? I would say get a mirror and look at it. We all poison everything.

We're sick. Yes, but I would say not incurably. So in fact, the cure is there according to Christianity in Jesus Christ, so it's so it's not. And it's interesting I mean in a lot of these discussions Christopher has not brought brought this up.

But I mean he has a real problem with the vicarious atonement as he calls it or substitutionary view of the atonement. But what's what's interesting it seems it seems that he always omits That in God becoming human in Jesus Christ that God has established solidarity with the human Condition.

This was actually in my own conversion the thing that was the turning point.

I mean I was raised in a largely secular home and let me skip over the rest of that and get to Hitchens response to that from a distance.

Missionaries who live in glad. And in in and in and in and in and in and a chance. But what about visiting with the one who created Shakespeare? I mean.

There's going to be we'll get there eventually here.

Here we go. Which it's not unfortunately for you and the other the reason it'll never triumph insists on shackling. It's I Missed it. Come on itself.

To the tip. Come on. It's right there. I can see it. We'll have to listen to a little bit more of Demski before we get to him.

Yes, I mean, he's the creator of everything. So, I mean wouldn't you want to visit with Shakespeare if you could get a chance? But what about visiting with the one who created Shakespeare? I mean There's going to be no Boredom in heaven because we're a deal.

I mean if the earth is exciting how much more exciting is the one who created everything? So this is the Christian perspective. I think yeah, you there there is harshness there in the scriptures. There are Malachite's and a lot of things but what would you like?

Would you like a sanitized Bible in which there was? Nothing like this in which we eliminated all this because all the carnage that we see in the scripture is there today. And it's done in the name of religion and it's done in the name of secular atheistic principles as well.

Now to catch that there's there's harshness in the name of religion. I'm not sure if I'm gonna find this part but you know, he talks about you know, he doesn't really like the idea of hell and and there's you know, exclusivity in Christ doesn't like those things and that's Demski speaking and I'm just like you don't.

You you don't like the idea that that God has actually provided one way of salvation. Jesus Christ I mean, he's under obligation to provide many ways. Is that the idea? I mean, there's just it it just got worse and worse as time went by and but I wanted I wanted to get to Hitchens statements here because we're created sick.

But I mean look at some of you may or may not know in the early Christian years. There were many Leaders of the church who thought that Christianity should be a new religion. Which it's not unfortunately for you.

And the other the reason it'll never triumph is because it insists on shackling itself to the terrible books of the Jewish Old Testament. Now great Christian thinkers like Martian was the best known. There were Martian night churches all over the Middle East now.

I hope you hear what him what he's saying here. He he does not have any concept of how intimately connected all the New Testament documents are with the Old Testament. He clearly just doesn't care or doesn't realize those the earliest documents or so.

He's saying these great Christian leaders who were the Gnostics. Yes, the the great enemies the Christian faith the Gnostics. He's now identifying as the great Christian leaders who want a whole new religion that was had no connection to these terrible horrible Old Testament books.

Which which again somebody needs to say to him sir your ignorance of this is astounding. How can you how can you make such a statement when the when the New Testament books themselves the earliest books?

We have by any stretch the imagination long before any of these Gnostic works are intimately connected With the Old Testament themselves the Old Testament texts themselves. There's there's no possible way To come up with the the Gnostic worldview from the writings of the Apostles the Lord Jesus Christ, it's not possible.

It's not there. But he doesn't get challenged on that either.

Just for the study and worship of the message of the Nazarene. But he was decided no the whole Nazarene story had to prove had to reverse engineer and prove the truth of the Old Testament books as well and.

With this insufferable burden you've saddled yourself with an unbelievable and wicked religion. Unbelievable and we are sometimes thing. But I think there are deformities to the pure Christian religion too.

And he mentioned the name I give to one of them a Doctrine that I think is strictly immoral the idea of vicarious redemption. Now though I say I don't think there's any historical definite proof of this person's Existence because all the accounts of him are so discrepant there are so many of them that it's enough to persuade me that there must have been some such figure and It's not that unlikely that there'd be a charismatic rabbi Wandering in a region that was hungry for messiahs and kept on hoping to find them.

It's not at all unlikely that there was one or that he would have got in trouble with the Romans and being as people. Were who get in trouble with the Romans very harshly treated. This does not prove it doesn't even suggest That his birth was divine or that his father was God or that his mother was a virgin.

None of these things are remotely provable. They're not even really arguable. They can only be.

Asserted but of course just on a logical basis. He just went from historical existence to the existence of miracles. And of course, he precludes any evidence of the miraculous into the historical process and therefore you couldn't prove any miracles in history anyway.

So it's somewhat of a you know, a charade to even use this type of argument. I suppose they are.

I'd then have to be told that the torture and human sacrifice of somebody.

Which if I'd been present it would have been my duty to try and prevent now to catch that the torture and human sacrifice of somebody. Nothing about the voluntariness of it. Nothing about the fact that Jesus said is necessary.

Nothing about the fact that he made himself of no reputation that that that he gave himself for it. No, no No, we we will not represent the New Testament accurately. No, no No, we will have to twist it because we are twisted ourselves that that is the essence here, which I did not ask for.

Which I over which I have no control that took place thousands of years according to some before I was born. Commits me.

And I have no choice in the matter. No, it does not commit you to anything. You were committed by the fact that you were created by God you were committed to God's law. But the fact that you are created in his image.

That's what he misses here because he's gonna say that well and if I reject this I'm gonna go to hell. No, you're going to hell. Anyway, sir. You are under the wrath of God. The commitment is in your creatureliness.

That's where the commitment is. And that my sins are forgiven by this human sacrifice. Now what. No your sins are not forgiven by that human sacrifice. Your sins have not been forgiven. Because you have not believed in the Lord Jesus Christ.

The message of the New Testament is if you have not believed in Lord Jesus Christ. The wrath of God abides upon you. Your sins have not been forgiven. In any way shape or form sir. The and it's not just a quote-unquote human sacrifice.

It was the self giving of the God man. Very different thing because human sacrifice that's happened many many times. It's someone sacrificing someone else. This is self giving on the part of God himself.

What's wrong with that?

If I like you enough or love you enough, I can pay your debt. I say there was a folly on your part. But I'll pay it for you. In extreme cases people have been known to volunteer to take other people's place in prison or even One of two very famous cases on the scaffold.

They'll say I'll do that for you I'll do it for love or I'll do it for suffering humanity, but that's the most they can do. And it's not bad. What they can't do is take away your sins. Why?

He will never answer that. Because to answer that would be to have to address who Jesus was and he rejects who Jesus was but then Tries to provide an internal critique Ignoring the assertion of who Jesus was and why he came.

Because that would be to take away your responsibility. I know it would not be to take away your responsibility. Your responsibility is there. You're already under the wrath of God. It would be to graciously as the judge against whom the sin has been Committed.

Showing mercy and grace. That's what it is. I can't say you didn't steal or lose that money that I'm having to pay now. I can't say that this course of folly didn't get you into prison.

It and nobody is saying that you didn't commit sin. What they are saying is there was a great exchange that took place where my sin is imputed to him. His righteousness is imputed to me and since he is the judge against whom the sins were committed.