July 25, 2006

The Dividing Line, Technical Setup, and Listener Participation

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.

Hey, good morning. Welcome to The Dividing Line on a Tuesday morning. And it is awfully nice that I'm not having to sit here trying to figure out how to stop that song and then move over to this sound thing and plug this in here and everything else.

And what that means is the grand poobah of all things technical has returned. I don't get the feeling you wanted to, but, you know, there are necessities in life and you do what you got to do. So that means we can take phone calls today at 877 -753 -3341, 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number.

And all mess ups, extraneous sounds and so on and so forth can be blamed on someone else, as they normally are anyway, on the rest of this program. So I appreciate that. I'm much more comfortable in that situation anyway.

But, hey, you got to give us credit. We did manage to keep this thing going even when we were like all alone. And actually Eddie came in. Did you know Eddie came in on Thursday? No, he didn't tell me.

No, he just sort of sat there. In fact, he kept tapping away on the keyboard because I had opened up Merc for him. And I'm wondering, what's he doing? He's totally ignoring you, isn't he? Basically, he's just tapping away on the keyboard.

And I never saw him say anything in channel. And so I finally, you know, the party was all over. I was going, what were you doing, by the way? He said, well, I was making comments, but I just never sent them to channel.

Which I thought was really odd because there's absolutely nobody else in the channel whatsoever that edits themselves. Everybody just sends everything to the channel, whether it makes any sense or not.

So, you know, especially Witness Micah. So, you know, I thought that would wake him up. Anyway, 877 -753 -3341, did you enjoy your time out in the wilderness?

It was wonderful. We did a lot of driving, 2 ,100 miles. That's the cost of money. Yeah, four days of driving. But it was very enjoyable. Stayed up in Yellowstone. And I have a brother-in-law who is a ranger up there.

And we stayed with him. And he showed us all of the wonderful places to go. Yellowstone is a very big place. I wouldn't know. I've never been there. It's enormous and it is glorious. And it's real interesting to listen to what they call the naturalists.

The naturalists are rangers who basically, I guess, their job is to study the park. And, you know, they're wonderful scientists. I don't think the naturalists really are scientists. Hey, Rich. Yeah.

I want to know if you had a good time. I had a great time. I didn't need to travel a lot. Put your pictures away.

I don't want to see them right now. What I was going to drive at here is that all of these naturalists come from a perspective that, you know, after millions of years of unfolding and, you know, we're sitting on this giant supervolcano that erupted 600 ,000 years ago the last time, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.

And you sit there and you look at your son and you go, Son, this is God's creation. He made it this way. And do they hear you saying that? Oh, yeah. I made sure I was nice and loud. You know me. I'm not shy.

Uh-huh. So, you know, and this fellow over here, he won't take God into account into the way he interprets the park.

Interesting way of witnessing. Yeah. See that man over there, son? He's a false prophet. In Moses' day, he would have been stoned. And there's lots of rocks around here. That's right. All right. Don't stand near him.

A tree might fall. Or lightning. I like last night. We saw a little lightning nearby. Anyway, thank you. Thank you very much for that report there. Of course, what I thought was really weird was that you would come into channel or you would do VPN stuff from, like, KOA campgrounds.

I mean, that's just, that ain't camping. You're sitting in your tent doing Internet. What is that? I mean, that's, you know, come on. That's very strange. 877 -753 -3341. Since we didn't take any phone calls last week, that is the number that Gene Bridges keeps citing on Tria Blog, inviting Charles the Liverhearted and Bob Ross.

I haven't come up with a name for Bob Ross. I guess I shouldn't because Bob likes playing with names and things like that. But they're supposed to call in and, you know, back up their tall talk, but I really don't think we need to worry too much about saving too much time for that to happen because that doesn't really Bob the Tomato.

Is there such a thing on VeggieTales? Okay. Yeah, VeggieTales. Yeah. All right. Well, no, he doesn't strike me as that. Bob's just become a mirror image of Pete Rockman. That's all there is to it. He behaves the same way.

He's just as irrational. He's just as outlandish as Pete Rockman. He just isn't King James only. So, you know, that's how that works. Anyway, that's, however, 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number that Patrick in Colorado has dialed.

So let's talk to him. Hi, Patrick. Hey, how are you doing, Dr. Wayne?

Sola Scriptura, the Canon, and the Limits of Catholic Cross-Examination

Doing good. I've got a question here. In your debate with Patrick Keating on Sola Scriptura. Back up the truck who? Keating? I've never debated anyone named Keating. Oh, I must have the wrong name then.

You mean Patrick Madrid? Madrid. Am I? I must be mixing up. Okay, Patrick Madrid. Yeah, this is the only time that we've debated twice. We did one, Sola Scriptura. From Catholic Answers? Yeah, he at the time was Vice President of Catholic Answers.

That was in San Diego in 93, and then we did another debate on Saints and Images, Veneration of Saints and Images, and that was 2000. Do you remember when that was? It would have been 2002 because it was after the Barry Lynn thing.

We know it was after the Barry Lynn thing. We are well aware of the fact that it was after the Barry Lynn thing because of what happened during it. So anyway, one was in San Diego and one was in New York.

So we've done a coast-to-coast thing.

Yeah, on Sola Scriptura. Okay, Patrick Madrid then. I messed up the name.

He wouldn't appreciate that, by the way. Since he's now Envoy Magazine and Carl Keating. So what you've done is you've put Carl Keating and Patrick Madrid together in one body, and that would be scary.

So anyway, yes, 93. It was in an un-air-conditioned Presbyterian church during an El…. Not an El Nino. What's the…. When the wind blows from the west over in San Diego, it gets really hot. What do they call that?

Santa Ana winds. During the Santa Ana winds, it was so stinking hot in there that everyone was about to melt. It was a very unpleasant evening. Okay.

Let's see. You raised an…. Or an issue was raised on the canon. Yeah.

That's what Catholic Answers always does in Sola Scriptura debates. They wait until…. A red herring. Well, no. It's not a red herring, but the problem is what they do, and they've done it so many times that it's clearly something they decided to do a long time ago, is they break the rules of debate by instead of raising the issue during the period of time when you'd actually have enough time to address it in a meaningful fashion, they raise it during the….

Well, they raise it during the cross-examination where you're supposed to be very brief, and they know there's no possible way you could meaningfully lay a foundation to discuss the issue of the canon and to demonstrate that just because Roman Catholicism says, well, we have the authority to determine the canon, and we're the ones to determine the canon, and when you get into that, like I did with….

What was that fellow's name? Oh, my goodness. I debated him on the Apocrypha on Long Island three years ago, two years ago. Huh? No, no, no, no. Peter Stravinskis was purgatory. Anyways, big guy, big tall guy.

Yeah, Gary Machuda. Thank you. In that debate, you have time to lay a foundation, cite early church fathers, give facts, but they've decided a long time ago to use this tactic of throwing the issue of the canon out during the cross-examination, so you don't have time to actually lay a foundation, and that's what happened.

I think that wasn't the first time. Jerry Matitix did it before Patrick Madrid did it.

I noticed that because I listen to him when I'm running, and I'm actually looking forward to the Q &A or the cross-examination, and then they bring up the canon at the very end, and the whole cross-examination is about the canon.

It completely neglected any of the Timothy 316. Right.

Yeah, and one thing to keep in mind also, let me give you some background so you can contextualize. You know, someday what I'm going to have to do, I think when I get to like 75 debates, I'm going to have to write a booklet that gives you contextual background to the previous 75 debates because sometimes if people don't have that, and what is that, 13 years ago now? I keep forgetting the fact that people continue to listen to these, and they may not have the background.

What had happened, and this might help you to listen to it with a little more understanding. In fact, sometimes what it does is it allows you to hear what someone's actually saying and find out that what you thought they were emphasizing, they really weren't.

For quite some time prior to this, I had been having a discussion back then in the AOL chat channels, if you can believe that. This was, you know, when I first got into the Internet. And I had been talking with Patrick Madrid and Robert St. Genes about the subject of solo scriptura.

And I had demonstrated that much of what Catholic Answers says against solo scriptura is based upon a misunderstanding of it. I had cited the Westminster Confession of Faith, the London Baptist Confession of Faith.

It demonstrated what the doctrine really does say and what it doesn't say and how much of what Carl Keating argues in his book, Catholicism and Fundamentalism, which at the time was the primary book that they were using and distributing and things like that, really is addressed at a straw man, as something that is not representative of what we believe.

For example, when he cites from John 21, there are other things that Jesus said and did. If all the things he said and did were written, the world could not contain the books to be written. As if somehow that's relevant to the doctrine of solo scriptura.

It's not, because the doctrine of solo scriptura does not say that the Bible is an exhaustive compendium of every single word, every single action, every single deed Jesus ever did. That's not a part of the claim of solo scriptura to begin with.

So to raise those is to raise red herrings. Well, that had been going on for quite some time. And then a couple things happened. First of all, the Pope came to Denver. And Rich Pierce and I went up there.

And months before that, I had challenged Carl Keating and Patrick Madrid to debate me on the subject of papacy during the papal visit in Denver in 1993. And their response was, well, no, we don't want to do that because the Holy Father is coming and we don't think that's a good time for debating and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Didn't they debate some Baptist ministers?

Ah, I'm getting to that. But see, I'm giving you the background so you can see, you can hear a little better here. See, they said, we don't want to do that. Why don't you debate Gerry Matiticks? Okay, so we contacted Gerry Matiticks.

And that's when we did the two-part, nearly seven-and-a-half-hour debate on the papacy, the first night at Denver Seminary and the second night at a Presbyterian church up there, which ironically was also the Presbyterian church where John Denver's funeral would be held years later.

Anyways, I'm not sure why I mentioned that, but I do find that somewhat ironic. So as soon as we announced that I was going to be debating Gerry Matiticks twice in Denver, all of a sudden we find out that Carl Keating and Pat Madrid are debating Bill Jackson and Ron Nemec at a Baptist church in Denver, and guess what?

They schedule it for the second night of my debate. So I cannot possibly be there. They know there is no chance that I will be at that debate. Now, I found that rather ironic and somewhat double-faced personally.

Now, as soon as I got back from the outreach up in Denver, people started contacting me about what had happened when Keating and Madrid had debated the two Baptists at the Baptist church, and it was a disaster.

I mean, no question about it, they wiped the floor with these two gentlemen. Bill Jackson wasn't a young man at the time. They were not prepared to debate. They did not know what Catholics would be saying.

I don't know why, because they certainly should have been able to know if they had listened to previous debates. But, I mean, it was so bad that Keating and Madrid were saying things like, how do you know Matthew wrote Matthew?

And their response would be, well, it says right here in my Bible, the Gospel according to Matthew. And that's not really a good response. In fact, it went so poorly that the Catholics had what might be called an altar call in the parking lot of the church afterwards to invite people who used to be Catholics to come back to the Catholic church.

It almost split the church. It was a disaster. And I was rather angry about this, because they never would have gotten away with the claims they were making if they were debating me. And they know that.

They know that. So why they would use those kind of claims with people they know they can get away with it, but they know those are not valid arguments. It was rather bad. And one of the primary things that they emphasized, that Patrick Madrid emphasized in that debate was, you can't show me where the Bible says that it is sufficient to do these things.

And they didn't, unfortunately, show them that. And that's why, if you listen to that debate, over against, say, the Sola Scriptura debate with Jerry Matitix from 97 on Long Island, you'll hear a different emphasis in my presentation.

The reason being, I'm responding to and answering the rather clear and sometimes mocking challenges that Madrid had made in a debate just, when was the papal visit? Was that June, July? It was 93, I know, but it was during the summer of 93.

So this was September 93. So it was only a matter of a couple months had passed since they had done that debate, yeah, July to September. And so I'm focusing on answering the very challenges that he himself had made in that debate against the two Baptist gentlemen up there in Denver.

And so that's why it was focused upon that. We didn't go into early church fathers or anything like that. I was focusing upon the biblical presentation of its own sufficiency. And so that's the background as to where that debate came from.

And there's also some interesting things that took place during the course of the debate as well. But that gives you some of the background information.

Okay. Well, before I take up all your time, let me... Oh, no, that's fine.

There's only one other caller, and Frederick's in Yuma. So Frederick is accustomed to really suffering in life. So I'm sure he's a very patient man.

Oh, one quick thing, too. I thought this was off the subject of my question. But one quick thing I thought I'd bring up is, you know, Patrick Madrid, when he answered you, when you were continually using the Greek, he continually brought up, you know, a genetic fallacy saying that just because these scholars are Protestant means that their opinion doesn't matter.

Right, right, right. It was getting kind of frustrating that he would, I'm reading the Bible.

Well, I think at that point Patrick was feeling somewhat challenged in the sense that he, at that time, and to my knowledge still doesn't, but he recognized that he is not trained in that subject. And I didn't feel any guilt in challenging him on those things for the fact that he had only three months earlier been in a reverse situation and had gleefully pounded away on people that he knew could not answer his questions.

So, you know, I'm like, all right, fine. You know, if you're going to do that kind of thing and you're going to do it in the way you did it, that is, duck me, take them on, throw out arguments at them that you're not even using tonight and you wouldn't use tonight because you know they're not valid arguments.

I'm not going to feel overly, you know, sad that you've gotten yourself in a situation where you can't respond to this stuff because you don't know the languages. You know, if you're going to put yourself in that position, you know, what can I say?

Right, I think that's the point. Well, and Catholic theologians and scholars say the same thing. I mean, it is interesting to note that, and it's true on both sides of the tiber, but Catholic apologists tend to be conservative in their theology.

I mean, if you're a liberal on either side of the Tiber River, why are you going to worry about apologetics to begin with? But in this situation, the Catholic apologist has real difficulty because the theology and scholarship that is being promoted by the Vatican itself today is not conservative.

And so to find meaningful conservative Catholic scholarship today is not easily done. At least we still have, you know, conservative scholars in various sundry quarters, even though the vast majority of our theological education has been infected by liberalism as well.

But at least, you know, we're consistent and we will draw from scholars that have our same worldview. They really have to struggle at that point because there's a discontinuity between the kind of scholarship being promoted even by the current Pope and what you see in Catholic apologetics, which tends to harken back to a much earlier age.

It is interesting, if you saw my blog, I think, I tried to remember to link to James Swan's blog article where he had gone and listened to Gerry Matitick's last week. And as you know, Gerry has jumped ship in essence and does not believe that there have been any valid ordinations of priests and hence of bishops and so on and so forth since Vatican II.

And so he's really completely embraced the Sedevacantist perspective, the hyper-traditionalist perspective, and he's, you know, way out there in Nanaland now. And I would just love to have a chance to ask Gerry, you know, in light of things he's said in the past, you know, he really in essence is saying we as the layman have to save the Church.

We can't trust in Popes and bishops to do it anymore. Is he still in the Catholic Church? Well, he would say he's in the remnants of the Catholic Church. But he wouldn't be considered, I don't think he would be considered to be, I think he'd be considered to be a schismatic, honestly.

And this is recently? Oh, this is, well, see the Gerry Matitick saga is a long one. Carl Keating, the folks at Catholic Answers, would tell you that he was really here a decade ago or more. But he argued that he was not.

But it seems to me that one of the reasons Gerry left Catholic Answers in January of 92 was, I'm sorry, January of 91 was because of what had happened in my debate against him in December of 90 in Tempe.

And clearly there were differences between Matiticks and Keating at that point. And I think Keating probably has a case that Matiticks was going super conservative even back then. I just don't think Matiticks was fully aware of how super conservative he was going to end up going.

And he's a former PCA, right? Yes. Oh, wow. Oh, yeah. He's a fascinating fella. I mean, James Swan said, you know, at least there are some things in life that don't change. He comes running into this discussion at a Holiday Inn last week, or the week before last, 20 minutes late.

And he was 20 minutes late for our debate at Northwest Community Church in December of 1990. So after 16 years, he still can't get anywhere on time. He's still the single most disorganized man I've ever encountered in my life.

I mean, just completely. And he comes running in with boxes, and he ends up with notepads all over the place. And it's like, yep, that's Jerry. No two ways about it. So anyway, so there you go. Probably got a little more background information than you were looking for.

The Canon, Divine Sovereignty, and the Sufficiency of Scripture

My real quick question here is, well, I should probably know real quick. On the issue of the canon, Catholics claim the inspiration of the canon based on the infallibility of the church. And then, of course, as you pointed out, it needs to be recognized that they supposedly gained their infallibility through the scriptures that they made inspired.

It turns into a circular argument. Basically, they decided something was inspired with infallible authority, and they gained their infallibility from that inspired text. Well, let me back that up.

I don't know that, I mean, if the Catholic answers Jerry Medetich's back-then -93 argument was, we can demonstrate all these things from the scriptures. But the official, well, official, who can define that anymore?

But the historic Roman Catholic claim is that the church does not derive its authority from the scriptures. Oh, really? Yeah, the contradiction here is that when they claim that the church is under the authority of scripture and tradition, how can she be under the authority of scripture and tradition when she herself defines both the content of scripture that is the canon and the meaning, the interpretation, and the content of what is and what is not tradition and what it means?

You can't be under the authority of an authority that you define both as to its extent as well as to its meaning. So that's the inherent contradiction. But I think a sharp, conservative Roman Catholic apologist would say, no, we do not derive our authority from the scriptures.

The scriptures derive their authority from the church. And that's one of the fundamental differences between Catholics and Protestants, is that a Protestant would say, no, the church, while it is the body of Christ, drives its proclamational authority.

That is, how do we know what we are to be proclaiming? What is the source of our teaching and our doctrine and so on and so forth? That comes from scripture. And so there is a subservient role of the church at that point.

They would say, no, that does not exist.

Okay. What I was trying to see here, in your discussion between canon one and canon two and scripture alone, you discussed basically, and I haven't finished the book yet, actually. I just started, picked it up last week.

But I've listened to your discussion with Stander Reason on the canon. And as far as I understand, correct me if I'm wrong, but you are saying that you can be sure of the completeness of the canon by resting in the sovereignty of God?

And the purposes that God himself has stated in giving scripture. You put the two together, you've got a sovereign God who does what he pleases in the heavens and the earth, and he has a purpose that he has revealed.

And that purpose is that the church is to have the scriptures to be her guide and to be her guard. Well, if that's his purpose, then he's going to accomplish his purpose. If you don't have a sovereign God, if you have a God who can be frustrated by human activity, or if you don't have a revelation in scripture as to why God would give us scripture in the first place, then that doesn't work.

But I think you have both, and that's where I would place my foundation.

Right. It almost seems to me, though, and this is what I'm seeing when I... Now, I agree with your teachings. I'm actually trying to incorporate it into a Sunday school that I'm teaching on the canon.

And I'm trying to get away from... It seems circular to say that we derive our assuredness on the completeness of the canon and the sovereignty of God, but we gain the teaching on the sovereignty of God from the scriptures.

Well, it's circular in the sense that scripture is the ultimate authority and the ultimate way by which we can know God's truth. I mean, if there was some higher authority that we could appeal to, but once you come to the issue of ultimate authorities, how can, for example, is it circular for God to swear by himself because there is nothing greater by which to swear?

Well, I guess, but any ultimate authority, by definition, is going to become circular. All I'm saying, it's not circular in the sense that it is a one-to-one correspondence, but what I'm saying is the only way that we can know both that God is completely sovereign over human affairs, that he has not simply done the deist thing, got the top spinning, he's gone on vacation to the Bahamas, is through what the scriptures reveal to us of God.

And secondly, the only way we can know that he has a purpose in giving us the scriptures is in what he's revealed. I mean, we can't look up at the stars and figure this stuff out. It's not a part of natural revelation.

It has to be a part of the specific revelation that God has given to us. And so it's not that this proves this and this proves this. What it is is God has revealed himself. He's revealed to us that he's sovereign.

He's revealed to us he has a purpose. And that then becomes the foundation upon which we can understand that, yes, he has given us his word, and there is no reason for us to be looking to some other authority for defying the canon and things like that because we see this is consistent with God's nature and God's purposes in this world.

And if we didn't have that, then we would be thrashing around looking for something else. We'd have to look outside of scripture. We'd need an infallible church or something like that. But God has revealed his purposes to us in that way.

It's not like I'm saying A is a fact, B is a fact, therefore this results in C. What I'm saying is A and B have been revealed to us by God, and that demonstrates the consistency of C, which is illustrated in how God's people in the Old Testament revered the word of God, again, without having to create some external authority that defined it for them.

Same thing with the New Testament. So, yeah, in a sense, when you come to ultimate authorities, you cannot avoid, I mean, as soon as you cite something other than the ultimate authority, is it any longer an ultimate authority?

What would you say of using, say, external that are valid to show that God is sovereign and that God will do what he wills to do?

Fulfilled prophecy, the consistency of scripture over time are all things that resonate in the heart of the redeemed. But let's face it. It depends on who you're talking to. If you're talking to, I don't believe that the point of contact with the unbeliever can be found in those things.

Those are things you can present. They're classical apologetic things. But the fact of the matter is individuals who remain in rebellion against God, who are suppressing the knowledge of God already, will continue to suppress the knowledge of God.

And those things, this is a presuppositional issue. This is a question of whether you deal with the presuppositions that people bring to the table or not. If you're talking to a Bible study class, you can reference those things.

But the question is, are you now moving the ground of authority to supposedly fulfilled prophecy? How do you then demonstrate that? What kind of a God can give you prophecy? You're still having to deal with the issue of ultimate authorities in regards to where your real epistemological warrant is coming from, to use that kind of a terminology.

So, yes, Christian believers find such things very convincing. And they are convincing if man were an unbiased individual. The problem is man isn't. And you're either in submission to your creator, or you in essence are pictured by scripture as a pot that is busily trying to cover up its made-by stamp on its bottom, all the time saying, no, no, no, I'm not made by anyone.

In fact, I can judge whether my maker actually exists, and so on and so forth, which is a ridiculous picture, but that's exactly what man is in rebelling against God. And so it comes down to an epistemological issue at that point.

So you would say additional apologetic?

Well, I don't see on an epistemological level how, if the Christian faith is true, then God defines all knowledge. That is, anything that is a fact is a fact because God created it to be the fact that it is.

And so I don't see how, looking at the radical claims of the Christian faith, that God is our creator, that there is no true knowledge apart from him, that you are either in submission to him or you're in rebellion against him.

And if you're in rebellion against him, you can have all sorts of knowledge about his creation, but it can never be true and consistent to your own being made in the image of God until you're in submission to him.

I don't see how we can step outside of that radical worldview onto a secular worldview and say, well, let's all stand on this morally neutral ground and try to reason from here the existence of the Christian God.

There is no such thing as a neutral fact in the Christian worldview. If it's a fact, it is a fact because God created it to be that way. And so if I try to play that game and try to step off of the Christian worldview, I'm never going to be able to reason back to a truly solid and biblical Christian worldview.

I think what you might find, I'm not sure if you have the book, but we offer a book called Always Ready by Greg Bonson. And it's a very practical and I think also very edifying book that discusses the lordship of Christ, even in the field of epistemology and knowledge and how we can consistently apply that in apologetics and in explanation of issues like this.

All right. All right. All right. Thanks for your call. Thanks so much. God bless. 877 -753 -3341 is the number and the phone lines are staying lit. So let's go ahead and talk with a man who must be a true saint in the Lord.

This is Frederick in Yuma. And I say that because anyone who can live in Yuma could not possibly be afraid of purgatory or anything else. Hi, Frederick. Hello, Dr. White. When we were at 118 a few days ago, what were you at in Yuma?

118. Oh, really? Yeah. Wow. I thought you'd be like at 124 or something. Oh, no. It is a growing area. I do realize that. You've got to realize back in the 1970s when I moved out here, Yuma was the watchword for one McDonald's and a gas station.

So I know that it has changed since then. What can we do for you?

Bondage of the Will, Free Will, and Reformation Christianity

Well, I read Martin Luther's Deposit of the Will. And one thing that keeps coming back to my mind whenever I think about this issue is if faith, why not the law? If we have enough free will in order to respond to God in that way, I don't see why we couldn't do things which God requires by exerting the exact same effort that we do when we have faith, if that makes any sense.

In other words, what you're saying is if man has an autonomous free will, then what would even be the necessity of any kind of grace at all? Why can't man just fulfill the law completely in and of himself?

Right. And I think, you know, he preferred the Pelagians over Erasmus because at least the Pelagians made it a little bit more difficult. But I don't understand how you can be a Protestant of the Reformation and believe in Sola Fide and still accept this concept.

Am I wrong somewhere?

No, no, no. Obviously, I would agree with you. But you've also got to realize, unfortunately, that by reading Bondage of the Will in and of itself, you have put yourself in a very small, small percentage of, quote unquote, Protestants who have a clue what the Reformation was about, what was going on at the time of the Reformation, what the issues were, what the discussions were.

Sadly, the vast majority of, quote unquote, Protestants, the vast majority of evangelicals would misidentify a question about Martin Luther and make him a black reformer of the 1960s. They really would.

I'm not making that up. I bet you anything that if you ask them when Martin Luther lived, over 50 percent would say that he lived in the 1960s and that he was a civil rights leader. So they just don't know.

And so the tradition that they have imbibed, probably coming primarily from Finney and the revivalism of the last century, actually the century before last now, they're almost never challenged to think through those issues.

And when someone like myself or yourself comes along and says, have you ever thought about what this means, you're looked at as a troublemaker or you're immediately looked at with suspicion. And, well, you know, that's not what Pastor Bob's always told me.

And so, you know, what cult have you gotten into? And it's a sad rarity to actually get folks to the point where they will discuss this with you to any length. Now, my experience has been when you go to the word of God with someone who truly is a child of God, they're going to listen to the word of God.

There may be some resistance at first, but when you really have that opportunity, I've seen many a person troubled for quite some time, no question about it, have lots of questions. But they've never given up that willingness to hear what the word of God says.

But, no, you're not out in left field anywhere. I certainly agree with Luther's arguments against Erasmus. And, sadly, though, Erasmus definitely controls the day as far as those who are non-Catholics today, you know, leaving Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses completely outside the pale, those who would trace themselves back to a Reformation church.

Yeah, Erasmus has won out, not so much by force, well, in fact, not at all by force of argument or by debate, but due to the fact that his arguments are natural to the natural man. It is natural for man to take that kind of a perspective and to put himself in the position of controlling God.