More on the John 3:16 Conference

Mighty Fortress is our God. A bulwark never failing.

I don't like Calvinists because they've chosen to follow John Calvin instead of Jesus Christ. I have a problem with them. They're following men instead of the Word of God.

Our helper he amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing.

On top of my feet, standing on a stump and crying out, he died for all. Those who elected were selected.

For still our ancient foe does seek to work us woe. His craft and power are great and armed with cruel hate.

Well, first of all, James, I'm very ignorant of the Reformers.

On earth is not his equal.

I think I probably know more about Calvinism than most of the people who call themselves Calvinists.

Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be loosed.

But God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.

Not the right man on our side, the man of God's own choose.

Ladies and gentlemen, James White is a hyper-Calvinist. Now, whatever we do in Baptist life, we don't need to be teaming up with hyper-Calvinists.

You ask who that may be. Christ Jesus, it is he. Lord saw both his name. Read my book. From age to age the same. And he must win the battle.

Radio Free Geneva and the John 3:16 Conference

And now, from our underground bunker, hidden deep beneath Liberty University, where no one would think to look, save from those mutter Calvinists, Dave Hunt fans, and those who have read and re-read George Bryson's book, we are Radio Free Geneva, broadcasting the truth about God's freedom to say to his own eternal glory.

And welcome to Radio Free Geneva, a Ministry of the Dividing Line webcast. On this Tuesday morning, yes, I got out early this morning. It was nice and cold, at least cold for those of us in the Phoenix area, and I listened to more of the John 3 .16 conference, and so I will have those clips to play for you.

There's some troubling things, I must admit, in some of the things that I've heard since I was last with you a week ago today. Of course, we enjoyed our time over Thanksgiving, but I also took time to be listening to the rest of the presentations, and there were some that are just really, really troubling.

For example, Dr. Patterson said the following words in his presentation.

We all have been affected by the sin of Adam. And all the fig leaf solutions, the human solutions in the world, are not going to do anything. Now, what does that mean? Does that mean that we are born guilty before God?

I do not think that can be demonstrated from Scripture. We are born with a sin sickness, a disease that makes it certain that we will sin and rebel against God.

Now, I don't know about you, but I would sort of wonder if one could say that Dr. Patterson actually believes in the concept of original sin. Why do children die if they do not have that guilt of Adam's sin?

I thought the wages of sin was death. Why do children die if they are not guilty of that? It seems that's imputed to them, just as the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us. A little bit troubling there.

And also had, in the same presentation, had this discussion from Romans chapter 5.

However much we want to hear about it, how do we ever get into this kind of situation anyway? Well, in Romans chapter 5 and in verses 15 and 18, we are told,. But the free gift is not like the offense.

For if by the one man's offense many, note that word, many died. Well now, how many died? Because of one man's offense. What does many believe? What does many believe? What does many mean in that text?

Does it not mean everybody? Have you ever known anybody that was born to Adam's race who was not depraved? You ever know anybody that wasn't a sinner? No. For by one man's offense.

Evidently, you can be depraved and that means you're a sinner, but that doesn't mean you're guilty of sin. At least if you put the two together. I'm not really sure how that works, but that wasn't really the point of playing this.

Many died.

Much more, the grace of God and the gift by the grace of one man, Jesus Christ, abounded to, same word, many. Same word. Well, look, what does many mean? Well, find out in verse 18. Therefore, as through one man's offense judgment came to all men, that's what many means, all men, resulting in condemnation, even so, through one man's righteousness and the free gift, through one man's righteous act, the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life.

And so, though we'll talk about it tomorrow, the atonement of Christ is God's way of saving the whole race if the race would receive him as Savior.

Now again, look at Romans 5. That is really very poor handling of that text. I often wonder, you know, I keenly sense the fact that as an apologist, I have concerns that a lot of people don't have. And I recognize that when you work in a particular area, you can become imbalanced in that area.

I recognize that and I try to avoid that. But it does seem to me that most of the people with whom I take difference in these areas are people who don't take their message out into the world against people who have a preexisting faith structure.

They don't have to demonstrate the consistency of their own faith over against somebody else's. They don't even gauge those folks. They're not taking on the Shabir Ali's of the world, or the Zulfiqar Shah's, or the Bart Ehrman's, or the John Shelby Spong's, or the John Dominic Crosson's.

They're not going anywhere near those people. And so, they don't have to seemingly worry that their theological system is an incoherent mess. And that they cannot point their finger at a Jehovah's Witness, or a Mormon, or anybody else, and say, look, your position's wrong because you are not applying a consistent hermeneutic to your interpretation of the Bible.

They can't do that because they don't do that. They don't see any reason to do that. They don't mind the mess that is their view of Christian theology. One of my main problems this whole John 3 .16 conference was, there was no discussion of the issue of the nature of God.

And I heard briefly this morning while writing, I heard some discussion of open theism. I don't know how these folks would defend themselves against open theism. I've debated that subject, again, because we seek to be consistent and see that it is a tremendous blight upon the evangelical view of God, the biblical view of God.

And so, coming back to Romans 5, this kind of interpretation that was just presented would be just so wonderful for the Universalists to grab. Did you see all the baggage that was being imported into the text?

The Universalists go, well, wait a minute, where did you get this if you will but receive thing? There's nothing about that in here, and there isn't. Because what Dr. Patterson has missed from the very start is the fact that Romans 5 is presenting to us two humanities, one in Adam and one in Christ.

And so the justification of life to all men is all men in Christ, not all men individually. If you try to turn this into a proof text against limited atonement, the only possible result of that is Universalism.

But you see, Universalism isn't a threat in the majority of the Southern Baptist Convention, so we don't have to worry if our exegesis is so out of whack that it results in the promotion of a position that really we don't find to be overly an issue anyways.

So I don't want to go into depth on some of these. I just want to play some of these and go, man, there's some really troubling things that I've heard. And I haven't heard a lot of people going, wow, is this really what we should be hearing people saying?

Does this not demonstrate some level of pulling too hard the other direction, hence losing some balance? I think that might well be the case. I'm not sure exactly which one to start with here. There's so many.

I think I'll go to this one first. In the Q &A, I have done two videos, but I know that we have separate audiences. I know a lot of people in the audience now watch the videos and vice versa. But for some odd reason, there are people who listen to VyingLine that don't really get into YouTube videos and vice versa.

And so I can't assume just because I did a YouTube video on something that everyone has necessarily seen that. And so the Q &A section, the question and answer section, which evidently is not part of the transcript, the Q &A section, that sounds much better, it sounded really bad there for a while, gave us some interesting insights into the positions of the individuals.

And a Calvinist finally got up and asked Dr. Allen, since, Dr. Allen, you sort of skipped past a lot of the biblical and theological stuff, the vast majority of his presentation was nothing more than warmed over, ponder, and burn, then could you explain your problems with the double payment argument?

And that is the argument that's been used by many that if, and of course it's never presented overly well in the conference, but it's one certainly that I have echoed because I believe it goes back to the issue of Jesus as high priest.

It is a biblical argument on that level. The form that it takes in the modern context is not specifically biblical, but that's because the Bible isn't dealing with the particular viewpoints of modern people who try to hold together an incoherent view of the atonement.

That is, trying to hold together the beauty of substitutionary atonement with some kind of universalism without resulting in universal salvation. That is the incoherent position that is trying to be maintained by individuals for various reasons.

You know, there are people who believe in election, people who don't believe in election, and they will argue the issue, etc., etc. So, the double payment argument is very simple. If you have an individual, Tom Smith, that God knows, and we don't even have to get into the issue of how God knows this right now, that will be an issue we address in regards to Richard Land's interesting presentation that he made there that I really don't think almost anybody else at the conference believed his own position.

I think he was a bit too Calvinistic for the rest of them, even though he's not a Calvinist. But that was interesting to listen to. He didn't have enough time to really develop it, and it was interesting.

We'll get to it later on. Anyway, if Tom Smith, God knows in his eternal foreknowledge, is never going to be saved, then why would God place the sins of Tom Smith upon Jesus Christ, pour his wrath out in perfection upon his own son in the place of an individual that he knows, he is then going to pour his wrath out in perfection upon him for eternity?

It's not just that God would be unjust. That is a part of the argument. But it goes beyond that. It goes to the irrationality of the action of God to knowingly punish Christ in behalf of an individual that he knows he is also going to punish for the same sin.

That's the question. Why do people want to believe that? What is the biblical basis for asserting that it was the intention of Christ knowing that he was going to fail in the effort to attempt to save those that he knew were not going to be saved?

That's the question. And obviously a lot of this, almost all of the issues in regards to particular redemption, limited atonement, actually go back to the issue of election. The vast majority of those who reject particular redemption actually reject unconditional election.

And watch those who this day argue the most strongly against particular redemption. See where they are 5 or 10, 15 years from now on unconditional election. See which direction they're going. Just keep an eye on them.

I'm not saying that there are not people who stay in that one spot, but just keep an eye out. It might be interesting to know. Anyway, so that was the question. You'll hear the questioner and you'll hear the answer.

And I want you to listen to Dr. Allen's response. Because Dr. Allen is going to introduce us to the idea of different kinds of debt. And he's going to introduce us to the idea that Jesus bears the penal debt, the penalty of law.

But it sounds like, and I will confess, I don't know where he's coming from on here. You would think that one of the first things that would have happened in this conference is that each speaker would have provided a positive biblical defense of their actual position.

They didn't do that. They didn't do that. You're left wondering exactly where in the world they're coming from. It's sort of like, well, our position is the default, so we don't even have to define that.

Let's just talk about Calvinism. I don't know what Dr. Allen's view of atonement is. He talks about substitutionary atonement. But then it sounds to me, sounds to me like what he's saying is that the atonement, that the fact that Christ dies for all creates a moral debt on behalf of each individual.

Let's put it this way. The illustration he uses forces us to this conclusion. Whether he then takes this illustration as a logical conclusion, I don't know. I can't tell. I mean, I'm sorry, but I just compare this with some of the conferences I've heard with people like a Mark Dever or a Tom Askell or an R .C. Sproul or a John MacArthur, and the level of clarity is so massively different between the two.

The level of biblical exegesis is just, it's huge, the difference between the two. And so it makes it frustrating to try to interact because you can't really exactly tell. But the illustration he uses of the king and the army and joining the army seems to indicate that what he's saying is that the death of Christ creates a moral debt and that our faith is the payment of the moral debt.

Now, do I even need to point out that that's about as biblical as Mormonism is? I mean, seriously, where in the world do you get that? For people to sit around and say, well, this Calvinism isn't biblical, and then to buy something like that makes me go, what?

What? But again, let's just listen to it and see for ourselves.

A layperson at North Central Baptist Church in Gainesville, Florida. Calvin Carr. Yes, Pastor Calvin. I am a five-point Calvinist. One thing I was really hoping to hear answered was the double payment argument.

I thank you that you give me a reference to read on. I was really hoping if you could just speak to that for a little bit. Yeah, I'll be happy to.

The key argument that is made theologically for limited atonement is the double payment argument. It's historically argued by John Owen in his famous book, The Death of Death and the Death of Christ. It is important first to note that John Calvin did not use the double payment argument.

Never in his writings does he use it. It's because Calvin didn't hold a limited atonement, is why. But nonetheless, secondly, it's important to note the double payment argument is not found in Scripture.

All right? No biblical author argues the double payment argument. Now, here's the double payment argument in a nutshell. If Jesus died sufficiently for the sins of the whole world and then people go to hell, God is unjust.

He's punishing them twice. He punished their sins on Christ and he punished their sins by sending them to hell, and therefore God is unjust. Now, I've already mentioned two of the problems with it. Here are the other two.

The double payment argument fails to differentiate. And I'm going to use terms here, and then I'll try to explain them. But these are the terms that are used by the Calvinists who reject the double payment argument.

Dabney is a name you will recognize. A .A. Hodge. Charles Hodge. John Davenant. And I could go on and on and on. Albert Barnes. These are Calvinists who, in their writings and in their systematic theologies, said Owen was wrong on the double payment argument because he failed to distinguish between commercial payment, which is pecuniary, and commercialism in terms of debt.

He failed to distinguish the notions of commercial debt and penal debt. And the two are totally different. Illustrate it this way. In a commercial debt, if Dr. Lemke and I are over here at the Crystal's or the Long John Silver's or wherever, and he discovers he doesn't have enough money, and so I pay for his meal, all right?

From the perspective of the proprietor of the restaurant, his debt's paid. All it is is a commercial transaction, and as long as I pay it, he owes nothing. It's covered. That's what we call pecuniary and commercial debt.

Now, penal debt, legal situations are totally different from that because there is not only a debt involved. There's a moral issue that is involved as well.

Now, just catch that. What he's saying is this isn't just simply a transaction. Of course, by the way, to boil Owen's argument down to this level of simplicity, I'm sorry, but I have to question whether Dr. Allen has actually really dealt with Owen.

I'm hearing, and there are people on the channel right now verifying this, I'm hearing a lot of Bern in this, Tony Bern. I think Tony Bern was one of his students. A lot of the people he's quoting, many people would argue that Bern has misunderstood even the people he's quoting.

I really think a lot of this is coming down to one guy here that Dr. Allen has just said, he's the standard of all things. He's certainly the standard of what hyper-Calvinism is now. Not sure how he got that status, but that's somehow how he pulled it off, but that's how you do it.

And the idea that Owen's is this simplistic, really it's hard for someone who's actually read Owen to buy this idea that that's an accurate representation of him. But anyway, catch this idea of this moral debt idea as being beyond here he says it's part of the legal debt.

Let's see if he remains consistent with that. And in the legal debt, in that situation, if you let me illustrate it this way. If you let's say that we have six men here who are in prison, and the king of the country comes and says that I am willing for all six of you to be released from prison.

My son is going to pay the price for your release, and the condition is you join my army and you are free to be released. And then the son pays the price for all six to be released, but only three of the six meet the condition they are willing to join the army.

The other three say, I'm sorry, I'm not willing to join the army. There is no legal court on earth that would say, well, I'm sorry, that's unjust. Their penalty has been paid. No, their legal debt has been paid.

Their moral debt has not been paid. And the condition of the covenant is I will save you, I will redeem you, or I will release you, I will pay the penalty, and you join my army. And see, this is what the scripture teaches.

God, through Christ, has paid the penal debt through a penal substitutionary atonement. He has paid the debt for every human being. But the reception of that debt is conditioned on their faith. And this is stated a hundred times in the New Testament.

It is never stated to be on condition of their election.

Now, it is never stated in the New Testament that reception of this is... Certainly, faith is the passive means by which we receive God's salvation. But the idea that... Man, there's just so many errors here.

I'm impressed that so many can be packed into such a small space. There is just so much here. So many, first of all, red herrings and misunderstandings and just fundamental category errors. Remember, Dr. Allen is a professor of Systematic Theology, folks.

Keep that in mind. Professor of Systematic Theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, the largest Southern Baptist Seminary in the green world created by God. And I'm just left stuttering at some of this, to be perfectly honest with you.

First of all, there's a complete lack of clarity. There's so many problems with the illustration that was just used here. Where did substitution go? Where did union with Christ go? I mean, this is what happens when you chop theology up into little pieces, and you don't have to be consistent and bring things together.

It's all gone, and so you can just come up with something that really makes absolutely positive no sense. And then you first say that this moral debt is a part of the penal debt, but then you differentiate later on and say, well, Jesus pays the penalty.

Well, what was that payment, folks? Not once in this entire conference did anyone define the word atonement. Not one time. I'm shocked at even pretending to use the term biblical for this conference. There wasn't enough biblical in there for a Sunday school class of third graders.

I'm sorry, I know that people are going to be offended by that, but listen to it and see if I'm not telling you the truth. I've been listening. I want to hear. I get quoted. I play the thing from Steve Lemke.

I've been quoted or referred to by at least two of these speakers, and I think obliquely by some others. Not one single text that I exegeted is touched upon by these men, and if they don't come to understand that that's the power of the Reformed faith, then all they're going to do is continue to help to promote it.

I mean, look at what Chosen but Free did. Chosen but Free has created more Calvinists than any other book I can imagine, and so will the John 316 conference. If these guys don't get the message that you can't just lightly dance over these things, you've got to go in depth.

You've got to deal with the scriptures as a whole, and they don't do it. They never define atonement. So here you have an illustration. It doesn't deal with substitution. It doesn't deal with the eternal decree of God.

It doesn't deal with the union of the elect with Christ. It doesn't deal with any of those things. It doesn't even deal with the argument it's supposed to be dealing with here, which, again, may I remind you what it is?

God's wrath is propitiated. Can we define propitiation, please? It's an atoning sacrifice that removes the reason for the wrath of God as well as the guilt. Is that what Jesus does? If that is the case, if that guilt has been removed, the wrath of God has been poured out upon the substitute, not just the son comes along and pays a big bunch of money out of his wallet, but the wrath of God has been satisfied in the substitute, then please tell me how the wrath of God can come against the same person for the same sins.

They don't even seem to understand the argument well enough to create a coherent response to it. Why is it only one side takes the time to learn what the other side is saying? The other side just simply refuses to do so.

Just refuses to do so. That is evidence, to us anyways, of what the real situation is in this context. Anyway, so once he says that this moral debt is a part of the penal debt, but now he says he's paid the penal debt, but he hasn't paid the moral debt.

It sounds to me like the only way you pay the moral debt, at least in this illustration, in this analogy, is by faith. So faith, instead of being sola fide, the empty hand of faith that demands nothing from God, now you have undercut the entire Reformation by turning the act of faith into a payment of moral debt.

Why weren't there pastors standing up in that conference going, wait one minute, sir, because that's not what you do in the Southern Baptist Convention. And that much I knew. See, what bothers these folks is, well, he's not a Southern Baptist.

Well, I'm not in a Southern Baptist church, that's right. I've only taught in a Southern Baptist seminary since 1995. Graduated from a Southern Baptist school called Grand Canyon University, Grand Canyon College back then.

Licensed and ordained in the Southern Baptist church. Member there from 1978 to 1989. Served on the staff of a major Southern Baptist church. I was a Southern Baptist for 11 years. I know a little bit about the politics and I know how it works.

When you get to a certain point, you just don't open your mouth and question these folks. And that's a bad thing. Bad thing. And that's why no one stood up and said, but wait, you're undercutting justification by faith here.

Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I believe in justification by faith. It's the inconsistency, the incoherence of the resultant systematic theology that guts this system of having any ability to commend itself to the young minds who've been taught that God's word is true.

And that's why this stuff. I'm not bothered by the John 316 conference in the sense that I think it's going to somehow stop people from finding the truth of anything. Hey, keep talking about it, because the more you do it, the more the inconsistency of your position will be demonstrated.

So I'm not even done with this particular question. I have a feeling it might go a few minutes longer. But anyways, we do need to take our break. And we'll continue on with Dr. Allen and the rest of the fine folks at the John 316 conference right after this.

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Thank you.

If you want to have what I consider to be the single best volume to carry with you apologetically, to answer the widest range of the attacks upon the faith that are used today, then I could not recommend anything more highly than this.

I'm going to try to find the time. I don't think I'm going to have the time this week. I'll try to do it next week. But if you go back through some of the pictures that I posted, some of the videos I posted from London, if you look through the YouTube videos that I put up at that time, you will see an orange volume in every one of them.

You'll see it as I'm going up to the podium. You'll see it as I'm sitting at my desk. You'll see it in each one of the debates. And that is my NET Diglot. And it is what I carry. It is what I had in the studio at the premier radio program, Unbelievable, with Justin Brierley.

And the reason is, obviously, when you're traveling, you can't carry an entire library with you. But this book is a library. I've always loved the NA -27, and the NA -28 is coming out eventually. I'm sure they'll team up with that too.

But the NA -27 is a library. What do I mean by that? Once you learn, and what I have to do is go back to the dividing lines we did when we explained this. Once you learn how to read the textual datum, it is a library of books.

It's huge. And combine that then with the NET and its translator notes, the translator notes and textual critical notes that are found in them, plus the many pages of textual critical discussion provided primarily by Dan Wallace in the back.

And you have a library in one hand. And what are the vast majority of the arguments being presented against the faith today based on attacks upon textual critical and consistency and harmonization issues in the New Testament?

And so I began asking Rich a couple weeks ago, we need to see if we can carry the NET, NA -27 diaglot. And they came in this morning. I have one of them in my hands here, of course. Don't worry if you end up with this one.

It is in plastic shrink wrap. But we have it available in two forms. One is this sort of dark, tan, brown hardcover. The other is the black leather version. And I know it's, quote, unquote, that time of year.

For the apologist in your family, especially for elders and others, excellent, excellent volume to get. And, of course, when you get it from us, you help us to continue doing the work that we do through Alpha Omega Ministries.

So the NET, NA -27 diaglot, available at aomin .org. And look them up there. They're very, very, very useful. So going back to Radio Free Geneva, listening to Dr. Allen's response to a question, troubling answer because it raises, honestly, one of my biggest observations I've made now listening to the John 316 conference is that it has raised far more questions than it answered.

Because of the many inconsistencies, because there was not even an effort made to present a positive case for a non-reformed, consistent hermeneutic or anything of the kind. And I will never, ever name names.

But I have received correspondence from students at Southern Baptist Seminaries, at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminaries, that said, we would love to see a debate on this subject between yourself and Dr. Allen.

But we know it's never going to happen. Just like you said, it's not going to happen. Yeah, I know. But it would be so useful because it is in that context of confrontation, controlled, purposeful confrontation, that inconsistency is most clearly demonstrated.

And that's why it will never happen. We can pray that it will happen. We can hope it will happen. I'm certainly willing to have it happen. But I just don't see it happening. Let's continue on with his response.

Now, I'll be happy to furnish you.

I just didn't get to this. But I can give you Calvinist after Calvinist after Calvinist after Calvinist to defeat that argument. That argument is easily defeated.

Well, it certainly wasn't defeated by introducing a whole new category of debt that Jesus doesn't atone for. That's for certain. And, again, he's just given you the David Ponder, Tony Byrne routine there.

And I'm sorry they really have not convinced the vast majority of Calvinist scholars that they're on the right track there at that point. Anyways, but that's just what he's giving you. Now, this next commentary, well, just listen to it for yourself.

David, do you mind if I just add up one point? That is a legal argument and not a scriptural one. And the Supreme Court has already answered. In 1833, there was a man named George Wilson who received a pardon from Andrew Jackson.

He was guilty of robbing the federal mail and was condemned to death. And for whatever reason, Andrew Jackson issued him a pardon. And Wilson rejected it. He would not receive the pardon. So they were going to execute him.

His lawyers took it all the way to the Supreme Court saying you cannot execute a man who's been pardoned. And the Supreme Court Justice Marshall said a pardon unreceived is a pardon unaffected. And he said it has been provided, but it has not been received.

And Wilson was executed. So the double jeopardy argument has already been answered by legal scholars. Well, there you go. There's a hermeneutic for you. I'm sorry. It's either laugh or cry, one of the two.

I mean, how do you take that seriously? I just have to believe that these men are going solely on secondary information. They actually haven't read Owen. They haven't delved into the book of Hebrews. They haven't dealt with the concept of substitution, the concept of the wrath of God.

Answer the question. On what grounds will God's wrath be poured out twice for the same sins? Tell me how God is rational in knowing that that sin is going to go to the grave with that sinner, and yet he punishes his own son in behalf of those that he will not save.

Answer the question. But they can't. And instead, you end up with the Supreme Court as the eisegetical hermeneutic to answer that question. I'm just left stuttering at such things.

You know, I'm going to step into the Wayback Machine with you just for a moment here. We used to have in our old offices in a building down on 16th Street that doesn't exist anymore, a cartoon that was hung on the wall.

I think you might have clipped it out. It was something that was called the Wittenberg Door back then. It was somewhat tongue-in-cheek. But it had a picture of a bunch of guys sitting around a table.