Sola Scriptura, Dave Hunt and Charles Spurgeon

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.

Responding to Catholic Answers and the Burden of Proof

And welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White. Don't bother with the phone call, I'm afraid. We are recording this about two hours before we'll be making it available. We hope to have the live broadcasting issues worked out someday, but we don't yet.

And so here we are with the infamous dead cast. Yes, indeed, the dead cast, where I have to imagine that someone's actually listening to me. Other than Rich and Warren, of course, but they don't really count.

Well, they do, but they've got other things to do. They can't really sit there and go, cool, you know, things like that. So anyways, today on the program, responding to two published attacks upon yours truly that are recent.

One I have not yet obtained the photographic evidence of, but I had an individual provide me with a summary thereof. It is in the current This Rock magazine. And James Aikens, senior staff apologist for Catholic Answers.

That is the organization in San Diego that claims to be the largest and most trusted apologetics organization in North America. The largest and most trusted apologetics organization in North America for the Roman Catholic Church, anyways.

And the same organization that has been the recipient of a debate challenge from yours truly. The last time they debated was 1993. And no one who is currently a part of the staff of Catholic Answers has ever debated me outside of James Aiken.

And he did that once on a radio program on KIXL a number of years ago. As I mentioned last week, he has bagged out of two debates that he said he would do. And yet you would think some people might say, well, OK, if they don't do debates, then fine.

Well, they do do debates. They just are very selective as to who they're going to do debates with. And they will not debate with individuals who seemingly can call their bluff, but they will talk about these issues in their publications, which seemingly, to me anyways, gives the indication to the people that they want to support them that they are still involved in these things when in point of fact they are not.

They will not debate those folks who can truly challenge them. And so Mr. Aiken is talking about in the current issue of This Rock magazine, I believe it's the August 5th issue, the debates and debate errors that people make.

And I, when I was informed that he mentions me by name, even predicted exactly what was going to be said. For example, the individual who was telling me about these things said under debater's trick, Aiken talks of a trick often pulled by the debater taking the affirmative is to reject the burden of proof.

And before then he said anti-Catholic apologist. And so from now on James Aiken is an anti-Baptist apologist because, well, because he is. I mean, if they don't have to give a rational reason why they call me that, I don't have to give a rational reason why I call him that.

Anti-Protestant, anti-Reform Baptist apologist James Aiken. That's where he's been known as from now on. Anti-Catholic apologist James White is notorious for this. Notorious for this. Once he was supposed to argue that the Bible teaches solo scriptura.

And before the rest of this quotation was given to me, I wrote, Ah, yes, I can guess this one. I .e., when defending solo scriptura, make the Protestant try to prove a universal negative, even though it is we Roman Catholics who are asserting the existence of a divinely authoritative, non-scriptural source, end quote.

And then after I said that, he went on, but he refused to shoulder the burden of proof saying that he was being asked to prove a universal negative. He argued that to prove this he would have to do something impossible.

So instead he tried to put the Catholic understanding of tradition on trial. Now this goes back, interestingly enough, to the 1993 solo scriptura debate with Patrick Madrid. That was the last debate the Catholic Answers did.

I had to really do the full court press to get them to even do that. And the reason for that was I had challenged them since 1990 to debate. And the only person that would do so was Jerry Matatix. And of course he left Catholic Answers under somewhat of a cloud of dispute.

And when the Pope came to Denver in 1993, I debated Jerry Matatix. And I had written to Catholic Answers and said, I know you're going to be at the World Youth Day in 1993 in Denver. We're going to be there.

Let's debate the issue of the papacy. Well, we don't feel that this is a time for debating when the Holy Father is coming. It's a time for celebration. Why don't you get Jerry Matatix? And so we did. We set up a two-night debate, and you can hear those debates.

I'm not sure if we've MP3'd those yet, but they've been available for quite some time, about seven, seven and a half hours of debate over two nights, the first night at Denver Seminary, the second night at a Presbyterian church in Denver.

And that went very, very well. But then, interestingly enough, as soon as Catholic Answers found out that I was scheduled to debate Jerry Matatix, they then scheduled a debate with Bill Jackson and Ron Nemec at a Baptist church in Denver on the very night that I would be debating Jerry Matatix, the second of the two evenings.

They came to the first night themselves. And it was a wipeout. It was a complete and total wash. The Protestants that were involved should not be debating. They did not know their own theology or Roman Catholic theology with near enough knowledge to be able to do a decent job.

It was a wipeout. Now, the thing is, both Carl Keating and Patrick Madrid, who did that debate, knew they could have never used the arguments they used in that debate against me. They know that. And that's what I can't understand.

I could not do what I do if I used arguments with certain people that I knew I couldn't use with other people. That's dishonest. That's intellectually dishonest. I don't understand how people can think that way.

I really don't. And so it was very upsetting for me to listen to this debate and realize the horrible job not only that the Protestants had done, but that the Catholics had done. And yet they came out smelling like roses, and so I really put the full court press on and said, hey, let's debate this issue.

And so we did in San Diego in 1993. James Aiken was there. Patrick Madrid did the debate. We make that tape available. You can listen to it yourself. My understanding was that we were supposed to limit ourselves solely to does the Bible teach its own sufficiency, and that's what I focused upon.

It was a little different than, for example, the 1997 debate with Jerry Matitix on Sola Scriptura where we had a little bit of a broader basis. I wanted to focus upon Patrick Madrid's constant assertion the Bible never teaches its own sufficiency.

In the process of that debate, I pointed out the common error of Roman Catholic argumentation. There's an article that I wrote, and I wish I had the URL. It might be in our Roman Catholic section now that I think about it.

But I wrote an article for an online journal last year that really hammered away on this very issue in regards to Sola Scriptura and the Roman Catholic argumentation about it, because I don't know about the rest of you, but you may have noticed Rome hasn't come up with anything new on this.

Now, Roman Catholics have been arguing against Sola Scriptura in this new era of Catholic apologetics using the same arguments. Now, we've responded to them, and in fact, we've demonstrated the errors of these, but we don't hear them going to the next level.

We just hear the same old, well, it results in all these denominations, and it's unworkable, and nobody in the early church believed it. And when we disprove each one of these things, what do we hear happening?

The same thing. Have you noticed that we have an open invitation. If James Aiken would like to come on this program, we'll have him on. We'll discuss these things. We'll have Carl Keating on, Patrick Madrid on.

But I've never gotten an invitation from Catholic Answers to be on Catholic Answers Live. And it seems to be that way with all these groups. Remember back when we did the stuff on King James Onlyism? We invited them to be on our program.

We're not invited to be on their program, and they won't come on our program. There's this, obviously from my perspective, if you're going to go into the public realm, if you're going to name names, if you're going to make challenges, then how about, well, stepping up to the plate and taking a swing?

And this is something that Catholic Answers will not do. Since 1993, we have challenged them to debate over and over, and they won't do it. Anyways, back to the 1993 debate. So in the course of that debate, I brought out the fact that it was Mr. Madrid who's making a positive assertion.

He is saying, no, the Bible is not sufficient because there is this tradition. That's a positive assertion. And if you're going to say, well, no, the Bible is indeed a rule of faith, and it is an inspired rule of faith, but it's not the only rule of faith because there's another rule of faith, well, you're making the positive assertion.

And I pointed out, you're trying to put the Protestant in an impossible position of proving a universal negative. That is, you're making the positive, but you don't want to defend the positive. You want to try to win by just making the Protestants say, well, the Bible denies that Roman Catholic tradition is binding.

It denies that Mormon tradition is binding by name. Show me the verse. You hear it over and over. Show me the one verse that mentions indulgences for people infallible. Show me that one verse that denies these things, as if the Bible is meant to have every single possible false teaching that could ever be created by the mind of man listed in it and denied.

That's obviously not the case at all. So, anyways, I just brought this issue out. I was not in any way, shape, or form dodging the affirmative. I was defining it, and it's interesting. After that debate, I specifically made reference in a... I forget what forum it was in.

I still have the specific email from Carl Keating, where I pointed out that the definition of Sola Scriptura that Patrick McTrude is using is not a Protestant definition. It is not an accurate definition at all.

And I remember very clearly Carl Keating's response. He doesn't have to use your definition. Now, I'm the one making the affirmative. I'm the Protestant, but he doesn't have to use my definition. In other words, turn it around.

If I was debating Patrick McTrude or Carl Keating or James Aiken on the Immaculate Conception, I can define that any way I want to. I don't have to use their definition. Well, of course I have to use their definition.

So it was an amazing thing, and that's what he was making reference to. Now, if you want to read more about this debate, that is the debate that prompted the big hit piece in This Rock magazine against me, that I responded to.

I couldn't believe I came back from the debate. I really didn't give it much thought, and that was in September. So in December, this big, long article that just grossly misrepresented the debate and grossly misrepresented what was argued in the debate appears in This Rock magazine.

And so there's a link that you have to sort of scroll down to the bottom list, because it's a little bit old now, getting toward what? I would have posted that in late 1993. My goodness, we're going to be seeing the 10-year anniversary of some of these things in the not-too-distant future.

And a very long article just going through each and every assertion made in This Rock magazine and taking those things apart. In fact, you may have noticed there are numerous articles in the Roman Catholic section on our website that refute Catholic Answers articles.

You're not going to get a whole lot of that kind of response from them, but there are certainly plenty of those. Yeah, 20-year anniversary of Alpha and Omega Ministries next year. Wow, that's true. I hadn't even thought about that.

Goodness gracious. Well, we're all getting old. Anyways, well, that's my response to Mr. Aiken. Mr. Aiken, let's debate. Mr. Aiken, let's debate these. Let's do some stuff no one else will do. It's been a long time since I've done anything on Mary, and Mary is the test case for Roman Catholic authority.

It is the test case for the very functioning of tradition within Roman Catholicism. If you want to say that you go with Scripture and tradition, then let's look at Mary and see the dogmas you've defined at the base of that.

Let's debate that. Everyone listening to this, James Aiken has a standing debate. I will come to San Diego. You name the place. It can be next door to your house if you'd like. You can run a string to your house, a wire to your house.

You can have a speaker system so you can hear what's going on at your house if you want to. You don't have to go anywhere. You can wear your slippers if you want to. I don't care. We can debate these issues there in San Diego, and we will see if the senior staff apologist of Catholic Answers will be able to defend those things rather than picking and choosing the people he will debate.

Dave Hunt, Spurgeon, and Limited Atonement

Speaking of the second of our interesting discussions here, everybody's contacting us because Dave Hunt is at it again. I thought Dave was going to let this issue lie for a while because we're writing this book.

I'm almost done with my opening presentations. I've got a number of them done this week. I've got a couple more to go. I will be done this week. Lord willing, I have to be done very soon. In the current brie and call that was just posted, and you can read this online, under the Q &A you have the following section.

Question.

James White has caught you red-handed misrepresenting Spurgeon in your book. You claim that Spurgeon rejected limited atonement. You support that assertion with a quote of rejection of any limit to the merit of the blood of Jesus.

Yet you admitted clear statements in the very section from which you quote, that quote, the intent of the divine purpose fixes the application of the infinite offering. We do not believe that Christ made any effectual atonement for those who are forever damned.

End quote.

Anyone who knows anything about Spurgeon knows that he taught limited atonement. How much longer do we have to wait to see in print your admission of your inexcusable misrepresentation of Spurgeon? Now that's a fairly decent question.

What I wish was pointed out here was, Dave didn't just misrepresent Spurgeon. He said Spurgeon unequivocally denied limited atonement. Now what does that word mean? That means without confusion, without hesitation.

And yet ever since I've pointed this out, his entire defense has been based upon trying to make Spurgeon's statements equivocal. He's the one who said unequivocally,.

I didn't.

That's right there in the book. Go get Dave Hunt's book. Look at the page. You will see. This is in the open letter. It's still the main page article on our website. I'm sorry. I'll try to get something up there eventually.

I've been very, very busy with other things. It's right there. He makes a statement that Spurgeon unequivocally denies limited atonement. Well, how does he respond to this? The only honest way would be to say, yep, you're right.

I blew it.

I didn't read it. It would have really helped. And I may add this to future discussions of this. Do you know what the chapter is titled? The chapter from which this quotation that Dave takes is titled?

Page 180 of the Autobiography of Spurgeon, Chapter 16. You know what it's called? Defense of Calvinism. Defense of Calvinism. Dave doesn't mention that. But here's the answer that Dave offers. Spurgeon was torn between what he called hyper-Calvinism and the Word of God.

Let me stop right there. No, he wasn't. Spurgeon rejected hyper-Calvinism. Hyper-Calvinism and Calvinism are not the same thing, Dave. I continue. In the quote I give, he very clearly says, In Christ's finished work I see an ocean of merit.

My plummet finds no bottom. My eye discovers no shore. Once admitted finity into the matter and limit is out of the question.

End quote.

He then goes on to deny that the blood of Christ was ever shed with the intention of saving those whom God foreknew never could be saved and some of whom were even in hell when Christ, according to some men's account, died to save them.

The intent of the divine purpose fixes the application of the infinite offering but does not change it into a finite work. End quote. Spurgeon seems to be contradicting himself. And I'm going to stop right there.

No, he's not, Dave. He's perfectly consistent. It is only your misreading of him that makes him contradictory. It's only in your mind. None of the rest of us see any contradiction. I continue. How could the merit of the atonement be unlimited unless Christ died for all?

If he paid the penalty only for the sins of the elect, then the merit of his death is finite, being confined to a definite number. What did he really mean? I think I have good reason to believe that this is just another case of what one historian explained as, the old Calvinistic phrases were often on Spurgeon's lips, but the genuine Calvinistic meaning had gone out of them.

I think we find the key to Spurgeon's real beliefs in his opposition to what he called hyper-Calvinism. His preaching sparked the duty-faith controversy in which he was accused of holding Arminianism.

The controversy raged in England for some years and took its name from Spurgeon's teaching that it was the duty of every person to have faith in Christ. If Spurgeon believed in particular redemption, as the quote above seemed to indicate.

Oh, it seemed to indicate that? I thought it unequivocally denied it, Dave! As the quote above seemed to indicate, it was a peculiar kind. Yeah, the Calvinistic kind, Dave. That's your problem. He pressed this upon all his hearers, the duty of believing the gospel.

Read, write, print, shout. Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. Great Savior, I thank thee for this text. Help thou me so as to preach from it, that many may come to thee and find eternal life.

End quote. Well, Dave, that's what we all do. Spurgeon claimed, I have all the Puritans with me without a single exception. Even the synod of Dort had declared, as many as are called by the gospel are unfaintedly called.

God seriously promises eternal life and rest to as many as shall come to him and believe on him. That hardly sounds like the particular redemption elsewhere taught by Dort. No, that's your misunderstanding of it, Mr. Hunt.

The one that many people have tried to help you with over and over and over and over and over again, and you refuse to listen to anyone? Such are the contradictions inherent within Calvinism, which tries to maintain that God offers salvation to all, even those whom he has predestined to eternal doom.

But the contradictions were more apparent than Spurgeon's preaching. Contradictions which were regarded among many of the particular Baptists as symptoms of defection from Calvinism. His chief opponent was James Wells, referred to privately by Spurgeon as King James, who for 30 years had been the most popular and powerful particular Baptist pastor south of the Thames until the arrival of Spurgeon at New Park Street.

He pressed his attack to prove that Spurgeon was an Arminian with such damning quotes as this from his sermon, Future Bliss. Oh, dear souls, if you believe in your Christ, you are elect. Whosoever puts himself on the mercy of Jesus shall have mercy if he come for it.

Wells argued that such words quietly set election aside and rest the whole matter with the creature. That is simply untrue. That is untrue. Wells was wrong. Spurgeon refuted all that. But, of course, Dave doesn't know that.

So here is the final answer from Dave Hunt. Am I caught red-handed misrepresenting Spurgeon? I don't think so. This truly amazes me. And so what I'm going to do today is I'm going to read you chapter 16.

Yeah, that's going to take a little while. But some of you don't have it. I'm going to let you ask yourself, has Dave Hunt done his homework? Or is Dave Hunt absolutely, without a doubt, unwilling to admit an error?

I make errors. Everybody makes errors. But Dave Hunt doesn't seemingly make errors. And are we to believe that the same man who told me on the air in August of 2000 he'd never read any of the Reformers is an expert on Charles Haddon Spurge?

Chapter 16, The Defense of Calvinism, starts with a quotation from Spurgeon someplace else. We've heard this one many times. Many of us use it. The old truth that Calvin preached, that Augustine preached, that Paul preached, is the truth that I must preach today, or else be false to my conscience and my God.

I cannot shape the truth. I know of no such thing as paring off the rough edges of a doctrine. John Knox's gospel is my gospel. That which thundered through Scotland must thunder through England again.

That's the quotation that begins the chapter. I don't want to have to break this up, so I'm going to go ahead and we're going to take our break and then come back with chapter 16, Spurgeon's Defense of Calvinism.

Did he unequivocally deny particular redemption? Did he contradict himself? Or should Dave Charles Haddon Hunt admit his error? That's what we'll find out right after this.

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Spurgeon's Defense of Calvinism

And welcome back to Dividing Line. We are listening to, or about to listen to, the words of Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Allow him to speak for himself. Dave Hunt has attempted to besmirch the great preacher by accusing him of constant, how shall we put it, lack of consistency, constant self-contradiction in regards to this issue because Spurgeon preached.

Well, Dave, we all do. And I know you don't understand that. It's not that you can make a decent argument against it. You just don't understand it. You refuse to. I mean, I've listened to you on the air so many times.

I've explained it to you. I've listened to other people explain it to you. It's not just me. It's everybody. We've all tried. But you think that's contradiction. Well, it isn't. And I think everyone should listen to what Calvin actually, Calvin, Spurgeon actually said about himself and about his beliefs.

And so this is chapter 16, Defense of Calvinism. It is a great thing to begin the Christian life by believing good, solid doctrine. Some people have received 20 different gospels in as many years. How many more they will accept before they get to their journey's end, it would be difficult to predict.

I thank God that he early taught me the gospel, and I have been so perfectly satisfied with it that I do not want to know any other. Constant change of creed is sure loss. If a tree has to be taken up two or three times a year, you will not need to build a very large loft in which to store the apples.

When people are always shifting their doctrinal principles, they are not likely to bring forth much fruit to the glory of God. It is good for young believers to begin with a firm hold upon those great fundamental truths which the Lord has taught in his word.

Why, if I believed what some preach about the temporary, trumpery salvation which only lasts for a time, I would scarcely be at all grateful for it. But when I know that those whom God saves, he saves an everlasting salvation, when I know that he gives to them an everlasting righteousness, when I know that he settles them on an everlasting foundation of everlasting love, and that he will bring them to his everlasting kingdom, oh, then I do wonder, and I am astonished, that such a blessing as this should ever have been given to me.

Pause, my soul, adore and wonder. Ask, oh, why such love to me? Grace hath put me in the number of the Savior's family. Hallelujah! Thanks, eternal thanks, to thee. I suppose there are some persons whose minds naturally incline towards the doctrine of free will.

I can always say that mine inclines as naturally towards the doctrines of sovereign grace. Sometimes when I see some of the worst characters in the street, I feel as if my heart must burst forth in tears of gratitude that God has never let me act as they have done.

I have thought, if God had left me alone and had not touched me by his grace, what a great sinner I should have been. I should have run to the utmost lengths of sin, dived into the very depths of evil, nor should I have stopped at any vice or folly if God had not restrained me.

I feel that I should have been a very king of sinners if God had let me alone. I cannot understand the reason why I am saved except upon the ground that God would have it so. I cannot, if I look ever so earnestly, discover any kind of reason in myself why I should be a partaker of divine grace.

If I am not at this moment without Christ, it is only because Christ Jesus would have his will with me, and that will was that I should be with him where he is and should share his glory. I can put the crown nowhere but upon the head of him whose mighty grace has saved me from going down to the pit.

Looking back on my past life, I can see that the dawning of it all was of God, of God effectively. I took no torch with which to light the sun, but the sun enlightened me. I did not commence my spiritual life, no.

I rather kicked and struggled against the things of the Spirit when he drew me. For a time I did not run after him. There was a natural hatred in my soul of everything holy and good. Wooings were lost upon me, warnings were cast to the wind, thunders were despised.

And as for the whispers of his love, they were rejected as being less than nothing in vanity. But sure I am, I can now say, speaking on behalf of myself, he only is my salvation. It was he who turned my heart and brought me down on my knees before him.

I can, in very deed, say with doddrage and toplity, grace taught my soul to pray and made my eyes o 'erflow. And coming to this moment, I can add, tis grace has kept me to this day and will not let me go.

Well can I remember the manner in which I learned the doctrines of grace in a single instant. Born, as all of us are by nature, an Arminian, I still believed the old things I had heard continually from the pulpit and did not see the grace of God.

When I was coming to Christ, I thought I was doing it all myself. And though I sought the Lord earnestly, I had no idea the Lord was seeking me. I do not think the young convert is at first aware of this.

I can recall the very day and hour when first I received those truths into my own soul. When they were, as John Bunyan says, burnt into my heart as with a hot iron, and I can recollect how I felt that I had grown on a sudden from a babe into a man.

That I had made progress in scriptural knowledge through having found once for all the clue to the truth of God. One weeknight, when I was sitting in the house of God, I was not thinking much about the preacher's sermon, for I did not believe it.

The thought struck me, how did you come to be a Christian? I sought the Lord. But how did you come to seek the Lord? The truth flashed across my mind in a moment. I should not have sought him unless, unless there had been some previous influence in my mind to make me seek him.

I prayed, thought I, but then I asked myself, how came I to pray? I was induced to pray by reading the scriptures. How came I to read the scriptures? I did read them, but what led me to do so? Then in a moment, I saw that God was at the bottom of it all.

That he was the author of my faith. And so the whole doctrine of grace opened up to me, and from that doctrine, I have not departed to this day. And I desire to make this my constant confession, I ascribe my change wholly to God.

I once attended a service where the text happened to be, he shall choose our inheritance for us. And the good man who occupied the pulpit was more than a little of an Arminian. Therefore, when he commenced, he said, this passage refers entirely to our temporal inheritance.

It has nothing whatever to do with our everlasting destiny. For, said he, we do not want Christ to choose for us in the matter of heaven or hell. It is so plain and easy that every man who has a grain of common sense will choose heaven, and any person would know better than to choose hell.

We have no need of any superior intelligence or any greater being to choose heaven or hell for us. It is left to our free will, and we have enough wisdom given us sufficiently correct means to judge for ourselves.

And therefore, as he very logically inferred, there was no necessity for Jesus Christ or anyone to make a choice for us. We could choose the inheritance for ourselves without any assistance. Ah, I thought, but my good brother, it may be very true that we could, but I think we should want something more than common sense before we should choose a right.

First, let me ask, must we not all of us admit an overruling providence in the appointment of Jehovah's hand as to the means whereby we came into this world? Those men who think that afterwards we are left to our own free will to choose this one or the other to direct our steps must admit that our entrance into the world was not of our own will, but that God had then to choose for us.

What circumstances were those in our power which led us to elect certain persons to be our parents? Had we anything to do with it? Did not God himself appoint our parents native place and friends? Could he not have caused me to be born with the skin of the Hottentot, brought forth by a filthy mother who would nurse me in her crawl and teach me to bow down to pagan gods quite as easily as to have given me a pious mother who would each morning and night bend her knee in prayer on my behalf?

Or might he not, if he had pleased, have given me some profligate to have been my parent from whose lips I might have early heard fearful, filthy, and obscene language? Might he not have placed me where I should have had a drunken father who would have immured me in a very dungeon of ignorance and brought me up in the chains of crime?

Was it not God's providence that I had so happy a lot that both my parents were his children and endeavored to train me up in the fear of the Lord? John Newton used to tell a whimsical story and laugh at it too, of a good woman who said in order to prove the doctrine of election, Ah, sir, the Lord must have loved me before I was born, or else he would have not seen anything in me to love afterwards.

I am sure it is true in my case. I believe the doctrine of election because I am quite certain that if God had not chosen me, I should never have chosen him, and I am sure he chose me before I was born or else he never would have chosen me afterwards, and he must have elected me for reasons unknown to me, for I never could find any reason in myself why he should have looked upon me with special love.