Today on the Dividing Line: Open Phones

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

Yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence. Our host is Dr. James White, Director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an Elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation.

If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602. Or toll free across the United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is James White.

Open Phones and Upcoming Travel to North Carolina

Open phones this afternoon on The Dividing Line, 877 -753 -3341, 877 -753 -3341. We've had a number of folks who've called in. We had someone who called in last week and then dropped off right as I was about to go to them.

And had a couple other people who've called in with various questions. And since we were talking about other things, or they got scared to death because I was melting down, because I was reading absurd stuff on the internet, whatever the reasons were.

Or because I was playing a section of something, you know, whatever. Now is your opportunity to call in, 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number there. I've been investing a fair amount of time in the blog of late.

There have been some very interesting, at least I think very interesting, discussions there concerning Islam. There is a lot of stuff appearing on the web now. Not only the stuff concerning issues regarding the Muslim, well the situation in New Jersey.

Whatever that situation was, we don't know yet. But the situation there with the murders of the family, the Coptic Christian family. And the responses, at the very least the responses of many that have been documented on the internet to those murders.

Tells you a lot about the religion of peace anyways, as people rather ironically identify it. And so there is a lot of stuff out there if you know where to look. And eventually, even I'm smart enough to figure that out.

Most folks find it a lot faster. And then we had Omar Bakri Mohammed's material that I posted yesterday. Islam is the final revelation, therefore those believing in it submit to Allah. The only one worthy of obedience in every sphere of life.

To understand 9 -11 we must go back to Tawheed. The exclusive worship of God in every sphere, religious, political, social, etc. Every human action must relate to this. 9 -11 was undoubtedly an unpleasant moment for its targets or their relatives.

Talk about an unpleasant moment. Muslims and non-Muslims, but those committing it acted as a result of the predestined divine decree. Although God does give man free will. Okay, whatever in the world that means.

But it's a lot of stuff out there if you know where to look. And sometimes you don't really want to look. But it is available. So all sorts of stuff. Obviously I recognize that people who defend some of the positions that I address on the blog or in writing or on the program.

I recognize that you may not want to expose yourself to calling into this radio program. I do not necessarily call into very many radio programs myself. The simple fact that the person on the other end has their finger on the button.

By the way, I don't. I think I'm actually going to have that capability in the not too distant future. If the equipment sitting over on those books over there is any indication. But up to this point in time I have not had a button that I could use to cut somebody off even if I wanted to.

That's somebody else's job. I'm just sitting here with a computer in front of me and a microphone and we just go from there. But if you happen to believe that I have gone over the deep end in responding to Dave Hunt, I'd like to hear from you.

I'd like to hear someone defend what Dave Hunt has done in refusing to take responsibility for his own actions. In refusing to take responsibility for his errors, his documented, gross, repeated errors of ignorance.

I'd like to hear someone say, you know what, there isn't any higher standard for a Christian. There is no higher standard for someone who is involved in Christian apologetics. Therefore, you should cut him a break.

He's a nice elderly man and he tells nice stories and we should all just be nice to Dave. Let Dave do whatever Dave wants to do. Dave can publish all the books he wants and he can make stuff up and use the most absurd argumentation on the planet.

But it's okay. Because once it's documented that he's wrong, we just misunderstood him. When he said that Spurgeon unequivocally denied limited atonement, he didn't mean unequivocally. He meant unequivocally in the sense of equivocally.

And that should have been obvious to all of us. And when he said that the best translation of Acts 13 .48 was,. And that's what the New World Translation says. And that's the only committee, if you can call it a committee, translated, published English translation.

I know that uses that as its main translation of the text. He didn't mean to use the NWT. He just didn't know what the NWT said. And, okay, so he doesn't actually translate Greek. So he couldn't really say it's the best one.

But, you know, look, it's Dave. We can just let Dave do that. That's okay. And when he makes up mythical Hebrew texts based upon mythical references in the Dead Sea Scrolls and mythical early church fathers and mythical translations by mythical scholars that ends up with a mythical translation that just happens to be contrary to what the text actually means, it's okay because he didn't mean it seriously.

Anyways, he was just suggesting that for further study. So we just need to have a different standard because Dave's Dave. And so if you'd like to defend that perspective, the phone lines are open. Now's your opportunity.

877 -753 -3341. We had a King James only advocate come into channel. And we tried reasoning with him some. And he first was asking, it's sort of like, you know how, for example, the locust has a certain number of year cycle?

Well, it seems that Dan Corner has like a two-year cycle. And like every two years, all of a sudden, he pops his head out of the ground and spits at a few people and then disappears for a while. And so we had a King James only guy come into channel and say, hey, I hear that James White won't debate Dan Corner.

And it's like www .aleman .org slash capital O-S-A-S dot html. I should just have a pop-up that just says that as soon as Dan Corner's name appears anywhere. And there's a file that you can listen to over at Straightgate where I go through all of this stuff and document it all.

And it's very, very complete. But anyway, he, of course, as a King James only advocate, was likewise very anti-reformed. And as we tried to talk with him, things got warmer and warmer. And finally, the second day, he just lost it and got himself kick-banned.

And so he started coming in, trying to break the ban. And that White runs a tight ship on his radio program because he doesn't want anyone to expose his lies. Well, you know, I'd challenge that King James only advocate to give us a call.

Let's find out. Let's see if that's really the case. Because like I said, I don't have a button here. That's somebody else's job. And, you know, obviously, you start getting nasty or something. Somebody will take care of you.

But that's not something I do. I could actually use a little more volume because I sort of disappear. And I'm gone. And I think it's because I'm right at the edge of the suppressor, compressor, tongue depressor thing, whatever it is that we've got over there.

I've got all this rack of electronic equipment stuff. And I keep getting told that the newest thing, this will make it sound really, really good. And then the newest thing is going to make it sound even, even better.

And pretty soon I should sound like Pavarotti or something. So that just would make people unhappy. Oh, and before I start going to our phone calls, they're just flooding in. Actually, we have one. We've got plenty of lines open.

Before we go to our phone calls, this weekend, tomorrow, in fact, I head out to North Carolina. And I honestly don't I've not completely zeroed in on exactly where I am. I know I'm in Rocky Mount. At least that's where I'm speaking.

But I'm not exactly sure where I'm staying. I know where I'm flying into. And there's just I don't know about all this stuff. But anyway, on Saturday afternoon, I'm going to be addressing the DaVinci Code stuff.

And I was putting together a PowerPoint on it yesterday. And I realized I had I would have to spend what did I figure out that it was? I had less than two minutes per slide in the time frame allotted.

And that ain't going to work. Believe me, I'm going to go way over on that. But anyway, we have the DaVinci Code and the Emergent Church Movement on Saturday afternoon. And I'm doing all the services on Sunday at Grace Reformed Baptist Church in Rocky Mount.

And we'll be seeing you folks there, hopefully. And I look forward to that. And then I'm actually getting a chance after that to do an interview with the folks who did the a lot of you have heard of.

I haven't gotten it yet. But there is a DVD out on the history of Calvinism that everyone's raving about. And the folks who put that together are putting together another one now on apologetics. And I'll be meeting with them on Monday morning back there to do an interview.

Who knows whether it will be worth having in the DVD or not. But that's what we're going to be doing. So a little visit to the Cooler Climbs back in North Carolina over this weekend if you're in that area.

We would look forward to seeing you either on Saturday afternoon or in the Sunday services there in Rocky Mount. And please do not ask me where it is. I haven't a clue. Once I get off the plane in Raleigh, someone's driving me from there and that's pretty much it.

So at least I hope that's what's going to happen. I just realized, hmm, there's something about a rental car. But, hmm, hopefully I'm not going to have to drive someplace because I have no idea where in the world I would be going.

That would be rather intriguing. I'm sort of watching the channel here for a moment just simply because last week that's when all the stuff appeared. And we ended up completely changing the direction of where we were going last week.

And if we don't get too many phone calls, I may go ahead and go back and pick up the clip that we were playing. In fact, I'll fire up my program here and load that one up just in case we end up going back to that one.

We'll see when we get there. 877 -753 -3341. Let's go ahead and start declaring the board. And let's talk with Adam. Hi, Adam. Hello, sir. How are you? I'm doing all right. Oh, over the Reformation Sunday weekend.

Mm-hmm.

And thank you for your help. Oh, good.

Means of Grace, Sacramentalism, and Lutheran Differences

Well, now let me ask you. So Chuck did a program with Dave alone. Right. I did not. I'm going to have to go back through the archives and grab that one because my understanding of this program was going to be on.

We were going to discuss specifically the perseverance of the saints. And we ended up just going back to the subject of Calvinism as a whole. We had sent in the Potter's Freedom. And unfortunately, he did not have the opportunity of reading it.

And so that didn't really help too much because I had to constantly be saying, Nope, that's not what we believe either. And nope, not. That's another misapprehension. And just had to keep going over that and over that again and again and again.

And that's a little bit on the. Genius? Well, yeah, some of those.

And what are the two called the means of grace?

Well, yeah, there's all sorts of different perspectives within Lutheranism. And there is clearly a what we would call a sacramental perspective on the means by which grace is communicated through the sacraments.

And the means of grace is a term the Reformed Baptists use. But when we refer to the means of grace, we're talking about those things that God has ordained that through the church, through the preaching of the word, we would include both the Lord's Supper and baptism, the teaching of the word, the fellowship of the saints, all of those things as, quote, unquote, means of grace.

But where we disagree is the idea of of almost an opera operato form of sacramentalism, where you have the idea that by the mere action of the sacrament, grace is communicated. And certainly when you come to the issue of salvation itself, there would be there would be no way that we speaking as a Reformed Baptist here would use the term means of grace to refer to the grace of salvation being communicated in a sacramental fashion through baptism, the Lord's Supper, things like that.

And so I don't know anyone, quite honestly, who who really understand. I don't think it's possibly put this way. I don't think it's possible for anyone to actually present a consistent viewpoint of what Luther taught because Luther's teachings changed over time.

His emphases changed over time and the context in which he was in changed over time. And obviously what motivated him before 1525 became less important than what motivated him after 1525, which, if you're not familiar, this history is the Peasants' Revolt.

And it seems to me that he was very, very deeply impacted by that. The Zwickau prophets likewise resulted in a major, I think, a major shift in in the directions he was going at that point in time. And and so, you know, unfortunately, I think different strands of Lutheranism, not only due to the the impact of Philip Melanchthon, but but even going back to Luther himself, I think different strands of Lutheranism emphasize different elements.

And as a result, you have some fairly major differences between monergistic Lutherans and synergistic Lutherans. And you have very anti-Calvinistic Lutherans. And then you have other Lutherans that are not nearly as anti-Calvinistic as the other strand are.

And so all sorts of different perspectives that are that are represented there. So clearly, from the Lutheran viewpoint, the idea of particular redemption is is I don't know of any Lutherans. Honestly, I could be wrong about this because I've actually read a few statements from Luther that seemed to actually have a limiting effect upon the scope of the atonement.

So, I mean, you can find those, but I don't see that has as having really communicated much with most of the strands of Lutheranism itself. And so you do have, you know, just a very different perspective at that point because of the the sacramentology and the viewpoint that comes from from Luther on those issues.

And so we come from a different perspective at that point. Lutherans tend to think that that, you know, they like to say that Lutheran theology is focused upon Christ while Calvinistic theology, both whether it be Presbyterian or that which I would hold is focused upon the sovereignty of God.

And I don't I don't think that that's an accurate statement. I don't think you can you can chop things up like that. Certainly the freedom of God and salvation is central to reform theology as in Calvinistic theology.

But, you know, that that's an area of there's a lot of discussion in regards to Lutheranism. And and obviously I don't believe that because because I believe in the union of the elect with Christ. And this has been an issue that we've been discussing on on the blog.

And I would refer folks to John Murray's book, Redemption Accomplished and Applied to the chapter on union with Christ, because I believe in substitutionary atonement and that the elect were joined to Christ in his death.

So his death and resurrection is their death and resurrection. And and that that is a a a union that Christ was aware of and and it was purposeful in his death. I believe Christ knew the identity of the elect in his death and he died specifically in their place.

That part doesn't seem to be there in Lutheranism. And hence the whole view that we would have of the atonement at that point and the idea of a hypothetical atonement over against purposeful atonement.

That's where we would we would part paths at that particular point.

It's confusing because I mean, well, yeah, yeah.

Well, that's that's also how they they would explain the issue of specifically of how people might not receive the the work of Christ and why they might be lost. It that's really how you end up with the idea or allowing for an idea of a non-sovereign decree of God in the sense of salvation.

You end up by saying, well, yeah, God did all these things. However, you still have to access these things through the through the sacraments. And that's where you end up running into some some major issues as you have as you have discovered yourself.

OK, well, thanks, Adam. All right. God bless. Bye bye. 877 -753 -3341. Let's go over to the left coast and talk with James. Hi, James. Hi, James.

Translation Philosophy and the TNIV Controversy

To comment or two questions for you for you to comment on the TNIV. Comment on that translation or the. And then I was listening a few days ago to. And I tell you, my night and he's older or something.

But I tell you, when he couldn't. The things he said about the wrath of God and he didn't even preach it. That that shocked me. But, you know, I kind of know where he's at on some. Yeah, I comment on those two.

OK, well, thanks for calling, James. As far as the last one, my heart went out to Mike Horton, not to not to Robert Shuler. For those of you haven't heard it, I don't know if they still have this going on.

But last week, sometime, if you made any donation, a dollar or whatever to the White Horse Inn, you could download the tape of the program from the White Horse Inn from a number of years ago. I don't remember how long ago it was.

I remember I had gotten the tape way back then. And the very use of the term tape tells you something. And I remember having been amazed listening to it then. But I was even more amazed now because I could put myself in the position of Mike Horton and the way that Shuler treated him and just went after him.

And and this is terrible that she would ask me these difficult questions and all the rest of stuff. And it's like, what did you think you were going to you're going to go on the air? And and these people are going to ask you questions about what you've what you've put in print.

It was absolutely amazing. And so that's still available and I would recommend it to you. I put it on the on the blog so that people could take a look at that and listen to it. It is rather fascinating to hear that many years after it after it was recorded, of course.

But I don't believe that Robert Shuler was that old of a man at that time to to make a claim that, well, it's late at night and stuff like, oh, come on, you knew what you were. You know what you were getting into and you went in there and you just.

Anyways, so that was that was interesting. As far as TNIV goes. Sadly. I'm going to have to disappoint a lot of folks here and say that I think the vast majority of that entire argument is. Well, it's it's politics.

Sorry, but but it is. Do I support what the TNIV is doing? There's some real problem renderings, primarily in the book of Hebrews. But realize that. Pretty much any modern translation. Has, quote unquote, gender neutral translations and what's gender neutral.

If you're not aware of this, let me back up a second or this isn't going to make any sense to you at all. In the languages from which the Bible is translated. The general cultural usage. In. The time of the writing was to utilize a masculine pronoun.

In the vast majority of instances, when you're simply making reference to someone, you would say he you would not say she unless you had a specific female in mind. But a generic usage would be to use he.

And of course, when I grew up, that was the same in English, was it not? When you were making a generic reference, you would use the masculine pronoun he. Well, there has been, for better or for worse, a movement within the English language originating primarily in Europe.

But it certainly exists in the United States to not go to a neutral rendering in the sense of it, a neutered rendering. But actually to trade off, to switch back and forth between he and she. Which is to me just incredibly distracting, just incredibly distracting.

I've told the story before that I turned in the text to one of my books to a publisher who will remain nameless. And the manuscript came back and I'm starting to read it and all of a sudden I run across she.

And immediately I stop and start looking for the antecedent. I start looking for where did I refer to a woman? Why does it say she? And that's when I realized that they had randomly replaced the generic use of he with she throughout the text of the book.

And I just simply circled every one and I said, no, not in my work. I don't agree that this is necessary. This is distracting. This is simply political correctness run amok. There's just no reason for this.

And I struck them all out. So that is the idea of trying to be, you know, any type of politically correct emphasis to this stuff. I just go, sorry, not worth it. There's no reason for this. But there are passages where the masculine is used in the original and yet the application is made to everyone.

For example, when Paul talks about the Lord's Supper, he says, let a man examine himself in regards to Lord's Supper. Well, doesn't that mean let everyone? Our women who partake, our sisters in the Lord who partake Lord's Supper, not under the teaching of the apostle that they are to examine themselves and have the exact same attitude that men have when they partake Lord's Supper.

Well, I would think that they would. And so the idea of a gender neutral translation, or at least applying some level, because if you want to see a truly gender neutral translation, go see the Oxford Monstrosity.

That's what I call it. It came out in 95. The Oxford Monstrosity. It's based on the NRSV. But then, for example, you don't have Father God. You have Mother Father God. And you don't have the Son of God.

You have the Child of God. That is gender neutrality taken to its absolute nth degree. That's not what the TNIV is doing. It doesn't say Father Mother God. It doesn't say the Child of God and things like that.

But there are places where in addressing brothers it becomes brothers and sisters. Well, they're not the first translation to do that. But especially when we get into the book of Hebrews. And see, when it gets into those passages where male and female roles are distinguished, or at least you could make the theological case that they're distinguished, that's where the real argument should be.

Unfortunately, the real argument rarely gets to that point, at least as far as most people are concerned. Most of the time, the real argument is just, these people are evil because they want to do this, and those people are evil because they don't want us to do this.

And sadly, you end up having people lining up on both sides. And I wish the lines were not influenced by the fact that these major translations cost money. And there is literally millions, in fact, I think I'd be safe to say tens of millions, and probably hundreds of millions of dollars at stake in regards to new translations of the Bible in English.

It shouldn't be that way. We have enough. We don't need new ones. We don't need new translations of the Bible in English. All the money that's going into that stuff should be put into providing translations in foreign languages, and especially in languages that don't yet have complete or good or accurate translations of the Bible.

But that's what's happening. I've gone past the time to break. I will continue the comments on the other side, and continue taking your phone calls at 877 -753 -3341. We'll be right back.

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And welcome back to Dividing Line. There goes Steve Camp. We usher him out right as he gets that line every week. If you'd like to hear him finish that song, listen to his entire album. Anyway, commenting on the TNIV, I've written a set of articles for the CRI journal on Bible translations, and I think folks will be a little bit surprised because basically what I said was, you know what, there are a whole lot more good translations than there are bad translations.

And what we really need, what really gets people going, is that for some reason we have accepted this idea that we should only have one. That we as English-speaking people, you need to grab hold of your one and defend it at all costs.

So anybody else uses another translation, you're evil, horrible, and bad, and you question the person's theology and spirituality and everything else. And actually I think you should have, if you're not going to take the time to learn your original languages, which it's easier to do so today than it's ever been in the past, but if you're not going to do that, then you're going to want to have available to you multiple translations.

Now that doesn't mean you can't have a base translation that you memorize from, that maybe is the one that's primarily used at your church or something like that, and certainly in a church it's good to have a consistent translation so people know what to expect.

And so that you can maybe even have public readings and so on and so forth, and that's fine. But in your personal study, if you're not going to be studying the original languages, then utilize the resources that are available to you.

I'm watching what's going on on the channel right now, and it's interesting to watch what people are saying. Everybody's saying, I'm NASB, I'm ESV. Well, I've many times said the ESV is the NASB minus semicolons, and there's a lot of truth to that, unfortunately.

The problem is, comparing the NASB and the ESV isn't going to do you a lot of good. Why? Because there is a spectrum of translation, and on the right-hand side of the spectrum of translation you have formal equivalency.

The most literal translations, and literal I mean by the form of the language, not necessarily the meaning of the language, because a literal rendering of the words may not result in an actual literal rendering of the meaning.

If you literally render an idiom in the original language into the receptor language, which for us is English, then you're actually not translating the meaning. When you encounter an idiom like, to have in the womb, when you say, such and such a woman has in the womb, that's a literal translation, that's a formal equivalency translation, but that's not what it means.

It means she's pregnant. And so, that's one of the issues that comes up here, is you have a spectrum from the most woodenly literal on the right, to the dynamic or functional on the left. And what I did in these articles is I went back to Luke 9 .44, and I put, as I recall, 11, or was it 12, translations.

And I gave their rendering of that passage, and then placed them on a spectrum as to where they fell. And it pretty well tracked with where you'd normally put those, in the spectrum of translations. If you have, as your base translation, as your foundational translation, a more formal equivalency translation, which I would recommend for preaching and teaching.

How many times do you hear a pastor? He will read from the King James, New King James, New American Standard, those more formal equivalency translations, and then he will say, and the Greek here could be understood, and then he'll give a very, what would be called, a functional or dynamic translation.

And no one has a, well, not most people, I guess King James only advocates have a problem with it, but most people don't have a problem when the pastor does that. And one of the things I address is where should interpretation take place?

And I think it should take place right where it does take place, right there, in the proclamation of the word, the elders speaking to the church, so on and so forth. But going back to your own personal study, if you just cluster all the translations you're using down to one side of the spectrum, comparing them isn't going to do you any good.

The only way you can get really any more light upon the passage is to have some translations that are farther down the spectrum than the one you're utilizing, and that especially is going to help you to recognize idiomatic phrases, things that maybe you thought you knew what it meant traditionally, but a more functional or dynamic translation might give you an insight you hadn't had before.

But one last thing here. The problem, you know, I mentioned earlier, the problem that we have is we have so many today. We don't need any more, but there's more that will be coming out. Why have all these translations appeared over the past 10 years, 15 years?

Real simple. Money. Money. When Thomas Nelson became a public entity, and they bought up Word, they forced everybody to put their study Bibles in the New King James Version because they owned the copyright to the New King James Version.

And so if you're going to have a study Bible, it's going to be put out by a company that was owned eventually, in one way or another, by Thomas Nelson. If you wanted to have your study Bible in the NIV, or in the New American Standard, then you would have to pay royalties to those other publishers for the use of their translation.

And Thomas Nelson said, we're not going to do that. So you're going to put it in ours. And so the Geneva Study Bible originally came out in the New King James Version. That's not what it was written for.

The MacArthur Study Bible. John MacArthur doesn't use the New King James Version. But it came out in the New King James Version, rather than the New American Standard, which is what he's used. So why have all these, the Holman Christian Standard Bible, and the ESV, and all these translations that have come out, are owned by particular large publishing companies?

And so now what they can do is they can have their study Bibles, and to be honest with you, no one's asked me on this program, but I'll tell you anyways, I don't like study Bibles. I think study Bibles are a waste of money, and leather, to be honest with you.

But they sell millions and millions and millions of dollars worth. And so now these companies can do their own study Bibles, and they can do them in their own translation, without then having to take a portion of their profit, and ship it off to somebody else.

So that's why they've all come into existence. That's why the New Living Translation, and all these, you'll notice they're from different companies, and millions of dollars have been poured into the promotion of these.

I mean, man, if you want to get free Bibles, it's real easy. Be a seminary student, or go to a Bible college. Because, man, I've seen them passing out freebie everything. You know, when the NET came out, and the NLT, and the ESV, and they're just, you know, you could collect all of them that way.