Hitchens/D'Souza/Prager Debate

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 and 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.

Trinity, the Incarnation, and the 12 Days of Christmas

And good afternoon, welcome to The Dividing Line on December 24th, 2009. We're two hours early in getting started because, well, I'm having a Christmas Eve dinner at my son's home this evening. That's when you start realizing you are truly middle aged, is when you go to Christmas Eve dinner at your son's home with his wife and stuff like that.

No kids yet, but who knows? I'm sort of hoping to drag a promise out of him that I'll be a grandpa by 50. I think that would be great. Every time I see my wife holding a baby, I'm just like, yep, she's practicing, she's practicing.

It's time for that next stage of life. Grandma and grandpa will babysit tonight, you bet. That's how it works. I wouldn't mind being a grandpa at 50. That would be great. That would be super. We got started early, so why not?

Welcome to The Dividing Line on a Christmas Eve. Those of you who are Puritans, I'm sorry, but you're just going to have to live with it. That's just all there is to it. I recognize you've got your arguments, but I've got mine too.

So anyway, I wanted to read something from, still, in my opinion, the best writer I have ever read on the subject of the Trinity. I have recommended his works. We have some of his works in our bookstore.

It would be nice if we had all of them, actually. Maybe we could get all of them. Given how often I recommend B .B. Warfield, it would probably be wise if we did have all of them. I love this section.

Listen carefully what B .B. Warfield had to say. The Old Testament may be likened to a chamber richly furnished but dimly lighted. The introduction of light brings into it nothing which was not in it before, but it brings out into clearer view much of what is in it but was only dimly or even not at all perceived before.

The mystery of the Trinity is not revealed in the Old Testament, but the mystery of the Trinity underlies the Old Testament revelation, and here or there almost comes into view. Thus, the Old Testament revelation of God is not corrected by the fuller revelation which follows it, but only perfected, extended, and enlarged.

We cannot speak of the doctrine of the Trinity, therefore, if we study exactness of speech as revealed in the New Testament any more than we speak of it as revealed in the Old Testament. The Old Testament was written before its revelation, the New Testament after the revelation.

The revelation itself was made not in word but in deed. It was made in the incarnation of God the Son and the outpouring of God the Holy Spirit. The relation of the two testaments to this revelation is in the one case that of preparation for it and in the other that of product of it.

Revelation itself is embodied just in Christ and the Holy Spirit. This is as much as to say that the revelation of the Trinity was incidental to and the inevitable effect of the accomplishment of redemption.

It was in the coming of the Son of God in likeness of sinful flesh to offer himself a sacrifice for sin, and the coming of the Holy Spirit to convict the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment, that the Trinity of persons and the unity of the Godhead was once for all revealed to men.

That, once again, is part and parcel of the foundation upon which I have often said that the Gospel is triune. That without a knowledge of the Trinity, your knowledge of the Gospel is going to be much less and vice versa.

They cannot be separated from one another, and it is greatly to the degradation of our worship that many people today are nigh unto illiterate when it comes to the doctrine of the Trinity, especially in putting that doctrine into practice in the worship of the Church.

It has been well said that in a lot of Western Christendom, most hymns and things like that are basically monotheistic but rarely overly Trinitarian. That's one of the things that I like. Again, Puritans, cover your ears.

One of the things I like about Christmas hymns is that some of the most deep theology in regards to the doctrine of the Trinity I've ever heard is in the often not sung verses of Christmas hymns. Now, of course, at the Phoenix Foreign Baptist Church, when we sing any of those hymns, we sing all of the verses, because we always sing all of the verses of every song.

We sing every word plus one.

Amen. Amen. Amen. Wednesday night, those of you who have already looked at the blog, I did a Bible study. I had the Wednesday evening devotional, and I did it on Emmanuel. Toward the end there, I was mentioning that the old church we used to go to, we would do Christmas musicals and things like that.

I said, that would never work here, because we would never be able to put an amen at the end of every song in a Christmas musical. We used to have the red version of the Trinity Hymnal. Thankfully, the Reformed Baptist version came out, and it's the old version of the Trinity Hymnal.

It still has the amens and things like that on it. But the red version of the Trinity Hymnal had El Shaddai in it, the song. I only remember I know it wasn't Amy Grant that wrote it or anything like that.

It was the other guy, but I forget who it was. Was that Michael Card that wrote that? Maybe it was Michael Card. I don't know. Anyway, it had El Shaddai in it. Some of the young people would request El Shaddai.

As good Reformed Baptists, at the end of every rendition of El Shaddai, we would sing the amen. I think that may be the only time that El Shaddai has ever been sung with an amen at the end of it, is in a Reformed Baptist church.

Anyway, 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number today. I just wanted to share that thought with you as we consider the Incarnation or begin doing so. I suppose I should mention, you've heard of the 12 days of Christmas, and you've probably wondered, what in the world is that?

Well, historically, the Eastern Orthodox celebrate Christmas on January 6th, and there happens to be 12 days between December 25th and January 6th. It was not just a single day. It was a season of celebration, feasting, rejoicing, going through to January 6th.

For those of you who have bought into the, well, there's just not a ghost of a chance that Jesus was born at this time of year argument, I would recommend to you a very interesting article written by Roger Beckwith on the subject of the service of the priests in the temples.

He goes through Zechariah's family and actually demonstrates that especially the January 6th date has a very solid foundation in that particular area. That kind of stuff never gets any play. The news and everybody else is going to talk about things like that.

But anyway, that's what the 12 days is. It has nothing to do with lords leaping and ladies dancing and five golden rings and stuff like that. It was a season of celebration, and it does seem like, especially in the Western nations, that limiting these things to one day seems to have really cheapened things.

But hey, it's a secular world we're living in. I guess we shouldn't be overly surprised. But as it may, it's 777 -533 -441. We are getting some phone calls in. Before we get to those, I wanted to briefly cover what I said I was going to cover.

Hitchens, D'Souza, and Prager on the Holocaust, Atheism, and the Trinity

I was listening to a debate that took place, I guess, in 2008. I'm not sure why I was unaware of it. But it was a debate that took place between Christopher Hitchens, Dinesh D'Souza, and Mr. Prager, Dennis Prager.

That is an atheist, a liberal Roman Catholic, and a sort of middle-of-the-road Jew. Which means the distinctly biblical and Christian worldview was not represented in this particular debate. And that is a sad thing, and that's a frustrating thing to listen to.

I had never heard Christopher Hitchens get quite this nasty in a debate, especially toward a Jewish person on the subject of the Holocaust. I found that amazing that he would do that, but I don't think Christopher Hitchens really cares about where anybody is.

So let me just play the first part where Hitchens I don't know about you, but I can just tell that the pH level here is extremely low. Is that low? Yeah, low. High would be base, low would be acidic.

He's just dripping acid here. Listen to what Hitchens has to say.

How about if we give Christopher just a minute to respond, and then Dennis can ask me a question, and then we'll move on.

Well, you only have to read Primo Levi. At least he'd be the one I think I would probably suggest first to find out that there's nothing hypothetical about the question that was just asked to me. We know, because so many Jewish people did have to wonder who they could turn to in that moment, and we know exactly what happened when they turned.

Well, that's great. So the microphone doesn't work either now. There's nothing hypothetical about the last question I was asked, when it finally came to a question, because it was the fate of many, many Jewish people in Europe to have to wonder to whom they could turn.

In their time of extremity, and I'll tell you the place they didn't turn, which was to the churches that had made the official concordat with Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. The churches that had told their parties to vote for him in the Reichstag, the church that had told, especially the Catholic church, that had told its bishops to celebrate Adolf Hitler's birthday every year from the pulpit, which they did until April 1945, which had preached the anti-Semitism on which the Nazi party based itself, which in many cases violated the seal of the confessional to turn over resistors, and in all cases turned over the birth records of the parishes of Bavaria and the rest of Germany, so that the Nuremberg Laws could be enforced and everyone with even a particle of Jewish blood could be identified, set aside for deportation and persecution.

Anyone who doesn't know this doesn't know anything about it. Not only that, not one person was excommunicated or threatened with excommunication by the church for taking part in the final solution. Paul Johnson, a Roman Catholic historian, estimates that 40 -50 of the Waffen-SS were confessing, communicating Roman Catholics.

Not one of them was ever threatened with the smallest punishment for what they did, or were doing. But, no, let's give up. It doesn't mean that there's no relationship between Christianity and morality in this dark hour.

Joseph Goebbels was expelled, was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church. He was. Why? Do you know why? For marrying a Protestant. Magda Goebbels was a Protestant and a divorcee. Joseph Goebbels had the sacraments withdrawn from him.

That's the only case I know of a Nazi being threatened with discipline by the Roman Catholic Church. To dare to ask me that question in that tone of voice in this audience, I think, shows something really like moral irresponsibility.

But that's my reply, and that's the short version. Try me on this again, and on the relationship between faith and totalitarianism, and I'll have a lot more for you. So just keep trying.

All righty, then. Thank you, Christopher. Remember, that's directed at Dennis Prager, a Jew who had just made the assertion, basically. He had talked about some Jewish historian, or some historian of the Holocaust, something that had said, if you were a Jewish person at that time, whose door would you knock on?

That of a doctor, a lawyer, or a priest? And they said, oh, without a question, priest. Well, that was Hitchens' response. And if you watch the video, I mean, he's angry. He's exceptionally angry at that point.

And Prager said nothing in response. Instead, he turned to Dinesh D'Souza. Now, Prager had been going back and forth with Hitchens. He had first asked Hitchens, do you ever doubt your atheism? And Hitchens said, I do not.

I try, but I fail. And so they had gone back and forth, and it had sort of broken down, gotten a little silly there for a while. And then, just to be fair, Prager asks Dinesh D'Souza a question, which is coming right up here.

It's right there. Come on, you can do it. It's supposed to be. Is it not running?

Do you believe that Jews who definitionally do not accept Jesus as their Savior or the Trinity or any specifically Christian doctrine are saved?

I believe the answer to that is yes, although I would have to explain. But I'll answer in short form, yes.

Okay.

And in fact, by the way, my evidence for this is in the Bible, because there is a scene in the Bible where Abraham, who clearly came before Jesus, didn't know Jesus, didn't accept Jesus, is described as being in heaven.

So quite clearly, there has to be a mode of salvation applicable to the Old Testament before Jesus that doesn't include Jesus.

It's not fair, but I'm just curious, given that your wife is an evangelical, would she agree with you on that?

I think so, although this calls for further discussion.

Well, that's very nice. But this is another reason why Dinesh D'Souza should stick to writing books on politics and stay out of theology, because there isn't anything about it, unfortunately. Very bright man and says some nice things, but if you push at all past the surface level, his theology collapses into an unbiblical mess.

And here's an opportunity to give testimony to the Messiahship of Jesus, to affirm that Yahweh, the covenant God of Israel, has revealed himself as Father, Son, Holy Spirit, that there is salvation to be found in none other.

To follow in the apostolic footprints of calling all the children of Abraham to faith in the same God that Abraham believed in, who has now revealed himself as Father, Son, Holy Spirit. But, of course, you get the universalistic collapse of the modern postmodernist, oh, of course, the Jews are saved.

But then the reason given is absurdly naive biblically. Oh, well, Abraham is in Abraham's bosom, and so he never knew Jesus. Well, let's not talk about that little thing in John 8, where Jesus himself taught that Abraham rejoiced to see his day and saw it and was glad.

Let alone the fact this is pre-incarnation, we're talking about today. And obviously Prager was talking about today, he was talking about himself. And basically what Dinesh D'Souza said, ah, you can reject the Trinity, the deity of Christ, cross, resurrection, ah, you're good, no worries.

That's why listening to, that's why again, remember, this was the man that was chosen to debate Christopher Hitchens at the Southern Evangelical Seminary's National Apologetics Conference, folks. I just, you know, sit here and shake my head and go, why?

Why? It's extremely frustrating. Well, anyways, there was a Q &A section that I wanted to review, and then we'll get to our calls since our lines are already filled up. Here is the Q &A section. I'll be stopping and starting, but I just want to go through about five or six minutes of this.

Salvation, the Prodigal Son, and the Limits of Evidentialism

Question from Mr. Hitchens. You state that you don't want God, or God as you define him, to exist. But what if it turned out that this God, unlike many of his flawed followers, were full of mercy and love towards those who suffer?

The God of the prodigal son, be it the parable, the painting, or the book. Would that be a God you could accept? Um, no, because, um, let me say what I think about the underlay of that question, which is people try to design the sort of God they would like.

This is part of the religious cafeteria of which I'm so critical. The God, if he exists, does not owe me an explanation. It would be idle, it seems to me, and trivial to say, well, if you exist, why are you cruel?

It's boring and self-pitting to talk like that. Pascal says...

I just want to stop there. Isn't it amazing how many times Hitchens is right as an atheist? That Christians don't get. He sees things that Christians in their traditions don't see. He nailed Frank Turek when he jumped from plain deism to Christian theism.

He saw the leap. He recognized the limits of evidentialism that the Norman Geisler School does not see, and just glosses over. He saw that and nailed it. Remember, we played that on here. And here he recognizes, you know, if God is God, then we don't really need to be pandering to him.

God can be God and do what God wants to do. And, of course, he's exactly right. It's just that Christopher Hitchens hates him for that. That's the issue. Christopher Hitchens is just a glowing example of the unregenerate creature who is in absolute, unbridled rebellion against his creator.

He hates God. He just hates him with a passion, and he gives vent to that passion. And that's what takes a lot of people back.

Well, what have you got to lose? If he does exist, you may find yourself tremendously fortunate if you make the right propitiations and if you agree with his existence. And if he doesn't, well, then you haven't lost a thing.

Now, I regard that as another example of the essential immorality of religious preachment. That seems to me a hucksterish thing to be saying on Pascal's part. My reply to it would be, Bertrand Russell's reply to this, by the way, was if he was confronted with God on the day he died, what would he say?

He said, O Lord, you did not give us enough evidence. A bit dry. I think I would say, if I had my chance at Pascal's bat, I would say, well, if your reputation, sir, because it appears to be a sir or a lord, is as I understand it to be, it might be that you would look more kindly upon someone who would not pretend to believe you in the hope of a reward or the fear of a punishment.

Someone who would rather try and lead an ethical life without that bribe, without that inducement. And that I might in that way perhaps earn the credit of this very dubious character. But you see, even to talk like this is surely to make ourselves realise that no grown-up can really allow themselves to think this way.

We are responsible ourselves for how we treat others. We are responsible ourselves for human solidarity and we will suffer when those solidarities break down. And we have a great interest as well as a great need to keep human dignity and decency alive for its own sake.

Not because we fear heaven, excuse me, not because we fear hell or wish for heaven or desire any of these other sorts of primitive fear or inducement.

May I have a brief response? God is in the Abrahamic tradition and in fact I think for all the major religions an immaterial being. And there is something inherently ridiculous in demanding a material proof of an immaterial being.

You have to ask what is the kind of evidence that would convince me? So for example, gravity is immaterial. Now not the effects of gravity, if I jump out of a tall tower I plummet to the ground. But that's me.

Gravity is the law describing what I did. Where do we find gravity? We infer it from its effects. So the question is we have here a universe. It had a beginning, presumably it didn't create itself. Who created it?

Or what created it? That what can't be natural, the universe includes everything, all of nature. It has to be non-natural, let us say supernatural. It has to be pretty powerful, maybe not all powerful but close to it.

That we call God.

That's where you see so glaringly the limitation of this kind of argumentation. I agree with everything that's been said. But as my apologetics professor said long, long ago, when talking about these kinds of proofs, they prove the wrong God.

That's not the Christian God. The Christian God is not merely just a supernatural creator of all things who's just got a lot of power. You can only go so far. And to think that you can make the leap beyond that on the same basis, that's where the problem in the apologetic method comes up.

One of my debates with the atheist Michael Shermer, I told him, I said, what kind of proof would convince you that God exists? What if you found a planet that had emblazoned on it, that Yahweh made this?

Would you convert on the spot? And he said, no. He said, I can think of no evidence, whatever, that would convince me. In a sense, I guess what we're getting at...

And there is the perfect example of presuppositionalism. If you don't deal with that moral rebellion against the obvious to start with, you don't deal with the heart first, all the evidence in the world isn't going to make any difference.

These guys keep running into that. I've even heard William Lane Craig make comments that they see that there are these foundational issues, but they don't have the theological foundation to then address those foundational issues.

That's the problem.

There is here, I think, not only, and I think on the part of Russell too, a refusal to believe, but an atheism that has explanations other than simply the absence of evidence. In some senses, Christopher got close to it earlier in this debate where he said, to me, God is a bit like a celestial despot.

Heaven is sort of like celestial North Korea. I don't want to stand there handing out garlands for eternity. I don't want to go to that kind of place. So it's not as if God is grabbing the unbeliever and flinging him into hell.

God is making heaven available to everyone, and the atheist of his free will is saying, I don't want to go there.

He revealed himself to his people. Today, folks, including Richard Dawkins, ask, why doesn't God just reveal himself again and end the argument about his existence once and for all? Do you think there's any chance he might?

There is a chance he might. I've asked this question often. What is it Woody Allen has said in one of his movies? If just God would sneeze, I would be happy. All I just want is a sneeze, and that would be sufficient.

My belief is that if God did some spectacular miracle, the heavens lit up all over the world, and in hundreds of languages, clouds formed the words, I am God, you better take care of each other, it would have an impact for approximately three days.

For some people, forever. But immediately there would be explanations of cloud formations that scientists would come up with. It wouldn't matter. That's the brilliance of the story, to my mind at any rate, in the Bible, where the Jews are shown all these miracles and then end up building a golden calf anyway.

Shortly after, the sea was split, and they still built a golden calf. That is human nature, because we always ask, what did you do for me today? We are children in many ways, and God is this paternalistic figure, and just as our children don't walk around saying, my God, you diapered me all those years?

Wow.

I mean, how many babies say, you know, I prevented my parents from having intimacy for the last three months. I'm going to shut up tonight. It just doesn't happen. The human is not built in with gratitude, and so the same thing with God.

It's what did you do for me lately? So I don't think it would work if God did make some revelation. And finally, I don't think there's anything for God to reveal. There's nothing new to be said. It's been said.

There's nothing new to be said. It is our task. This is an instruction manual that I believe in, and if you follow it, generally speaking, people are kinder. And if you don't follow it, or you pervert it, then obviously bad happens.

But I don't know, what is God going to add today? What exactly? Don't abuse children? Don't build gas chambers? What? What hasn't been said? It's been said. It's our task to say either I will live by it or not.

But that's my answer to that question.

Actually, there is nothing against child abuse or genocide in the Ten Commandments, since you happen to mention this today.

Well, there is. There's do not murder.

Yeah, immediately. Prager's right there, and it's absurd beyond all measure for Hitchens to even make such an outlandish statement that there's nothing against child abuse or genocide. But listen to where Prager stumbles here, and it would just be so easy to respond to him with a home run here, but it doesn't happen.

That's why it's so frustrating to listen to these where there's no biblically sound representative in the debate.

There is. Murder means the immoral killing of an innocent. So there is, in fact, a prescription.

There's nothing for child abuse and nothing against genocide. Genocide is about to be recommended against the Amalekites only a few pages later.

Yes, against the Amalekites. It is one exception because of a horrific evil. It never happened, but it is prescribed. I have no answer to it, just as I cannot tell you that people say, Well, what if God told you to sacrifice your child like he told Abraham?

No condemnation of slavery or child abuse. But of poverty, yes. Of envy, yes. Of ambition, yes. This is obviously man-made, and man-made at a time of stone-age morality. There's no divine presence or inspiration in it at all.

Surely that must be plain.

Oh, well, that is a matter of opinion. My opinion is that the break with everything preceding the Old Testament, specifically the first five books, is so enormous that you have to either explain its authors as supermen or some divine authorship involved.

The notion that there is an invisible God who prefers goodness to evil was unknown in the world. The idea that this life is to be celebrated. Remember, Judaism arose out of Egypt. In Egypt, the Book of the Dead was the Bible.

The pyramids were the great works of art, and they were tombs. The Egyptians celebrated death. And it was that Torah coming out of Egypt that said, I have put before you life and death, and you shall choose life.

It is an utterly life-centered idea in the midst of a death-centered world. Ironically, Israel is to this day, 2008, still in a death-centered world.

Now, okay, that's all fine and dandy. But why? Oh, why? When Hitchens said, oh, well, there's going to be genocide, the Amalekites, the answer is right there on the surface of the text. And he had even mentioned it before about the Amorites and the Amalekites offering their children to Moloch.

But these people are so afraid of even mentioning the wrath of God, the justice of God, they won't mention it. And, of course, neither will Dinesh D'Souza. So, no biblical presentation in the debate at all.

You get little snatches here and there, but you don't ever, and it was extremely frustrating. But sad, because at one point, Dinesh D'Souza did specifically say, and you better start hearing this phrase.

He says, well, I am sort of into the mere Christianity view. And that is coming out in the Manhattan Declaration. That's coming out. This is a whole movement that, in essence, seeks to build a Christianity that has no gospel.

And a lot of people are getting on board. We are not. 877 -753 -3341. We're going to take our phone calls right after our break. We'll be right back.

Hebrews, Apostasy, and the Warning Passages

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Thank you.

I see, okay.

I don't know.

All I know is the list popped up and it wasn't there.

Sure.

It's always been there before, but today it wasn't there.

It took it off of the holiday. All right, 877 -753 -3341. Victor has been waiting patiently for half an hour. Hi, Victor.

Hi, how are you doing?

Doing good.

Thanks. He's fallen away. He's speaking to a group of people, and then you read more for you. Are these two groups of people, people who fall away and then the ones that have the better things, are they the same group?

Well, you might find the sermon I preached on this a number of years ago, which is at prbc .org, to be useful in going into more depth in the whole section. It's in the sermons area. But, in fact, we probably should take that.

I just realized we ought to take all those real audiophiles and stick them up on the YouTube page so they can be more accessible to folks. I'll need to work on that. Anyways, but in brief, the key to understanding the warning passages in the book of Hebrews is to remember the context.

The writer is writing to a group of Hebrew Christians who are under tremendous pressure to go back to the old ways. That's why I think that Hebrews is written before AD 70, before the destruction of the temple.

And they are being pressured to go back to Judaism and to offer sacrifice. And by so doing and offering sacrifice, reject Christ and say that Christ was not the final sacrifice for sins, etc., etc. And so what you have in Hebrews chapter 6 is a recognition that there had been people who had gone back.

There are apostates. We see people who have been in the Christian congregation. They've been in the church. They've sat next to us in the pews. They've partaken of the Lord's Supper with us. And today they're not there.

That is a reality. We could easily just skip over to 1 John chapter 2 and have the description of those people. They went out from us, so it might be demonstrated they're not truly of us. But it's a reality that there are people who have made profession of faith but have then, for various reasons, whether it be family pressure or just love of the world or whatever else it might be, are no longer there.

Well, what does that mean about these people? Well, if you examine carefully what is said in the beginning of chapter 6, this is descriptive of the people who are in the congregation. They're all things that we can observe within the fellowship of the church.

There are benefits that take place for a person who's in the fellowship of the church. But verse 9, as you've pointed out, says, But, beloved, we are convinced of better things concerning you, things that accompany salvation, though we are speaking in this way.

So when you speak to the church and you're seeking to encourage the church, I, as a minister, cannot look into the hearts of the people that are seated before me. I have to take their profession of faith on face value.

But I can't see into their hearts. And so there has to be a balance struck. And the book of Hebrews is always finding that balance in giving warnings that the Spirit can use in two ways. To the person who is a true believer and is experiencing these pressures, those warnings become the means by which they withstand those pressures.

For the person who is not truly in Christ, those warnings will fall upon deaf ears and in some instances only increase the condemnation of the person who would, as Hebrews chapter 10 says, basically do despite to the Son of God.