October 19, 2004

Alpha & Omega Ministries iconAlpha & Omega Ministries

2 views

Comments are disabled.

00:13
Broadcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line.
00:19
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.
00:28
Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
00:34
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
00:43
United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
00:51
James White. And good afternoon. Welcome to The Dividing Line, an unusual
00:56
Tuesday afternoon four o 'clock program, but that's because it was just a couple hours ago that I touched down at Sky Harbor Airport, and so we sort of needed to move things back a little bit.
01:13
We got home from Edmond, Oklahoma, and had a good time there.
01:21
That was, of course, an opportunity to minister to church there, met some really great folks, had some great conversations with people, and it's a beautiful area back there, really.
01:32
I hadn't been there before. Just be very, very careful. Don't get in the way of those folks and football.
01:39
Wow! I landed on Saturday afternoon and every television in the place was on the
01:47
Sooners game. And even when I got my rental car, when
01:52
I got my rental car, it's blasting in the rental car. I mean, it was really odd.
02:00
These people, these people are very, very focused on their football.
02:07
Man, that was really something else. But I told them if they would like to have a semi -professional football team, that we would be glad to pack up the
02:18
Cardinals and ship them on over, because they don't do too well here.
02:26
Maybe they do better someplace else. I don't know. But anyhow. I don't have any idea what that means.
02:40
Who's that? I don't know who that is. Sorry. Anyway, I have hesitated a little bit, but I think it needs to be addressed.
02:52
As most of you know, the controversy with Rob Schlafler and Discerning Reader has come back to haunt us yet once again.
03:04
This time, it started off because last Friday, someone came into channel and posted a
03:14
URL to the description of the God Who Justifies. Now, I think somewhere, and I need to do a little more digging through my files,
03:23
I may have saved the description of the
03:41
God Who Justifies. I'm going to do a little more digging for that. It may be on my laptop instead of my main computer.
03:47
But anyhow, I read the description of the
03:52
God Who Justifies, and it contained the assertion that this book doesn't contain exegesis, it contains this theologizing stuff.
04:03
And anyone who's read the book knows that's just simply ridiculous. You have to redefine exegesis, and Discerning Reader now defines exegesis as what
04:11
N .T. Wright does, which a lot of older folks don't believe that what N .T. Wright is doing is actually that, that he's the one doing the theologizing, so I guess it's just time to redefine terms here.
04:22
But the majority type of complaint that I've gotten about the
04:27
God Who Justifies is that it's too complex. There's too much original language, there's too much exegesis, there's all that kind of stuff.
04:35
And so I responded on my blog. So what I did is I responded to what
04:40
I feel is a gross misrepresentation by someone who until May of this year,
04:46
I thought we were buds. I thought we were on the same page. These are the folks who were pushing the stuff against Dave Hunt, what love is this?
04:57
They were pushing the Potter's Freedom. I thought we were all on the same page. I really did.
05:02
And then come May, Rob writes to me, promotes
05:07
N .T. Wright, I dared not agree. And the response has always been the same kind of response.
05:16
It's always personal. It's never the issues. It's personal, personal, personal. Slap you upside the head, you're lacking discernment, you're wrong about this.
05:26
And eventually what you get to is if you're a Calvinist, you're a mean, terrible, horrible, nasty person. I mean, a lot of folks are starting to get that with with fair regularity.
05:35
And I'm going to read you some stuff today that's going to prove that beyond any, any shadow of a doubt. So all
05:42
I did was said, hey, folks, you know, this is wrong. This is this is a misrepresentation of my book.
05:47
And this is something Rob has been telling people. And by the way, as I mentioned, when we discussed this before,
05:53
I never said anything publicly until Rob, Rob Schlaffer started going after me publicly until he until he took it public.
06:01
I just absorbed it. It was like, well, all right. So much for thinking that this was somebody who was on my side, was a friend or something like that.
06:10
Just chalk that one up. The list grows longer. And it was not until he started making public comments that I then responded.
06:18
That part seems to disappear in people's thinking. And even when I did and you go back and read the blogs, even when
06:26
I did, I've always tried to differentiate between Rob and discerning reader because I and I even said in the blog a couple of days ago,
06:36
I said, I know that there are people there that haven't been caught up in this anti right stuff. And and I've tried to leave open the possibility.
06:44
I don't know how big this company is. I haven't the foggiest idea. But I've tried to leave leave open the possibility.
06:51
There are people there. What in the world was sound like the horn honking someplace?
06:57
Now that happened. And I'm sorry,
07:04
I can't read stuff. I'm getting PMs and stuff. That's really, really, really very distracting.
07:13
But I'm going to click on it and hope the world doesn't blow up in the process. Anyways, I've tried to be nice to discerning reader.
07:21
And even though for years I have heard the discussions and the, you know, the the complaints that you hear about discerning reader.
07:40
I've heard lots of folks who have said things like, you know, I can't get my books.
07:46
We had a folk fell in channel. It took a month to get his books that he ordered back around Christmas. And I heard a lot of complaints for years about discerning reader.
07:55
You know what I said? Whenever anybody would say that, you can go back. People in the chat channel will tell you. I would say, well, you know,
08:01
I've never had a problem with him. And I'd see those things. I go, wow, that's that's odd, you know, and stuff like that.
08:09
And so I I really did everything
08:15
I possibly could to bend over backwards to separate
08:21
Rob from the discerning reader. I never joined the bandwagon saying, hey, you shouldn't order from these folks.
08:28
Nothing like that kind of stuff. So I waited till he came after me to respond to him.
08:35
I tried to respond to the issues, et cetera, et cetera. So finally, back I think in July, I thought things had calmed down.
08:44
Then in September this year, I was up in Canada. And some of you remember the wonderful.
08:56
Oh, hi, Don. Everybody say hi to Don Lord and channel. I tell him explain to Don and channel that I can't talk right now because I'm like doing a program right now.
09:05
But I'll explain that to him, please. Appreciate that. So he doesn't think I'm ignoring him. But I would like to say hi to him.
09:13
He's a former member of our church from Phoenix reformed. I'd like to say hi to him, but I can't do that right now. On September 14th,
09:19
I was up in Canada. And there's one of those situations where I was just trying to find an access number to to get my mail and all the rest, that kind of stuff.
09:28
And unfortunately, one of the emails that I got was from Rob Schlaffer.
09:39
And the email address is Rob Schlaffer at Mac .com, which is his email address. And it's dated
09:45
Tuesday, September 14th, 2004. Quote, you need to drink a little less protein and back off on the testosterone before you overdose on machismo dot, dot, dot, end quote.
09:55
Now, those of you who know should know that that was a quote from our famous insulter of the brethren, the great practitioner of ad hominem,
10:05
Paul Owen, that I had posted on my blog. And below it, we have the following.
10:12
I have to say, James, with much love and respect, that Paul has something to say here. This has been my experience with you.
10:19
And then Rob, non -capitalized. Now, anyone who's gotten some of these loving notes from Rob Schlaffer knows that that's how he signs his name.
10:28
That's his email address. And that's how he talks. No question about it. Why do I say that?
10:33
Well, I ignored it. I didn't respond to it. I just ignored it.
10:39
But I made reference to it on my blog. And Rob now is informing everybody, including on his own blog today, that he never wrote that, that he never sent that to me.
10:49
And even though I quoted it to him and sent it to him, he denies that that came from him.
10:54
Don't know who in the world it came from. Somebody who knows how he signs his name and everything else, but I guess someone hijacked his computer and is sending emails under his name.
11:06
And so on his blog today, he says that, a couple things.
11:13
He says, I have sent no emails to James since my formal apology, nor have I followed his blog. Life is too short.
11:19
So you have the documented evidence, and then you have the claim. It sounds like we're in a political situation here.
11:25
But evidently, he's forgotten about sending it, and even when seeing it, was not reminded of it. But he has chosen not to address that issue one way or the other.
11:35
He claims that that review has been there since late winter 2003. Again, I'll have to take his word for it at this point, unless I can track down the version of it that I saved, back about May or August or so.
11:49
And if I find that it was the same, then I'll say, well, it was the same. And if I say it was different, then
11:55
I'll point out it was different. But the point is, it's a misrepresentation either way. Now notice what then comes next.
12:01
I had said on my blog, now I know that not everyone at DR has jumped onto the Calvinist or Nasty People, We Are Not Reformed, N .T.
12:08
Wright Rocks bandwagon, and I'm thankful for those folks. So here I'm trying to, again, say, I realize that there's other folks who work up there, and I'm differentiating.
12:17
Listen to the response I get. Everyone at the DR is hurting due to the abuse we have suffered from staunch reformers like Dr.
12:24
White, who seem determined to drive us out of business. And we don't look at these matters with such a sophomoric attitude.
12:30
Jesus rocks. Everyone else is a major disappointment. Everything that happens with this man is somebody else's fault.
12:38
I've been seeing these complaints about Discerning Reader for years when I had them linked from my site.
12:46
And yet it's my fault? I've tried to drive them out of business? That is one of the most absurd things
12:52
I have ever heard in my life. It is absolutely ridiculous. I have not even told anyone not to order from them, for crying out loud.
13:03
When you don't deliver books for months on end, and you call people up on the phone and ream them out for not being spiritual because they just want to get their books they ordered from you, and it says on your website it ships in 24 to 48 hours or something,
13:18
I'm to be blamed for that? Wow. I started reading this, and I'm just like, doo -doo -doo -doo -doo -doo -doo.
13:26
I just cannot even begin to believe this. Then he doesn't bother to read what
13:32
I said on my blog. I had said the description had always contained a note that, just as the book says and explains in the text,
13:39
I did not deal with N .P .I .S .M. That is, in the review that I've read, they point out I don't interact with N .T.
13:45
Wright and these other people. And I said, the book says and explains in the text,
13:51
I said in the book this is my audience and this is my area. I'm not dealing with these other areas over here.
13:58
And I said that the book will not deal with any system based upon a fundamental denial of the inerrancy in the ultimate authority of scripture.
14:04
That's what my book says. But Mr. Schlaffer doesn't read it well enough. He says, not true. This is the only note we have ever published about the book.
14:13
Prior to winter 2003, we simply listed the book as one of our essentials. Wait a minute.
14:18
That's not even what I was talking about. I was saying, in my own book, I explained, I wasn't going to be dealing with these things.
14:25
So why fault me for not dealing with things that I said I'm not going to be dealing with? That has been a common element.
14:30
And it's just like, listen, read the book. Look at the book and the book says, here's what
14:35
I'm going to do. And then people say, oh, that's a bad book because it doesn't do this, this, and this. But it does do everything that it said it was going to do, right?
14:44
And yeah, okay, anyway. I then talked about exegesis and he says, we disagree.
14:49
And if it is so, then there is little hope for anyone to be, oh, I need to read the context. Listen to what I had written. I still happen to believe that what we have taught about justification is very much the heart of the gospel, and unless someone knows that first, the dangers of these other views will seem like nothing more than nitpicking by theologians with way too much time on their hands.
15:08
Listen to the response. We disagree, and if it is so, then there is little hope for anyone to be saved outside the
15:16
Reformed tradition. Do you hear that? Do you hear that?
15:21
If you actually believe that these issues of justification are central, then that's now what Rob is saying in response to you.
15:30
Then he again takes on the idea of what exegesis is, and this was the nice part.
15:39
That was the nice section. Now, the stuff he sent me in email wasn't nice at all yesterday in any way, shape, or form, and I really can't read a lot of that, but I can mention most of what just came in this afternoon, and that is
16:01
I received an email from the Discerning Reader. The email address is contact at discerningreader .info.
16:11
It is signed by Julie Barrett, Customer Care Manager, the Discerning Reader. The subject is,
16:19
James White is just a major jerk, duh. Let me read portions of this to you.
16:25
I can't read all of it because it would be against FCC rules, and in fact I would lose points in the
16:31
NASCAR race if I did. This is Julie at the DR, Dr. White. You are responsible for so many of the lies spread about the
16:39
DR as a few selective people have gotten your ear. Ann Phil Johnson.
16:44
You write that the DR has developed the most incredible reputation for making deliveries four months after an order is placed.
16:51
We have over the years been the only USA work that has actively promoted books from Scotland's Christian focus.
16:57
CFP's USA distributor went under in January, and we have all been dealing with terrible backorder problems ever since.
17:02
Our good, promoting a little, no, I think should be known, reformed bookseller has been talked evil of, and who is doing the talking?
17:09
Something nice Calvinist like you. Jerks. All the ladies concur. You are the biggest jerk of all,
17:14
James. Okay. This is the first time, Julie, that I ever, ever, ever said anything about this, and this was after your boss wrote to me and said,
17:29
I'm the reason that DR is going out of business. First time.
17:36
So this all happened in the past 48 hours? I saw these complaints years ago, not just since January.
17:45
I saw these years ago. Hmm. A little bit of a truth problem here.
17:51
You say, I am responsible for the numerous reviews that have been sent out to me wherein people document your calling them and reaming them out because they wanted their books faster than a month or two after ordering.
18:01
This was something that I had written to Rob Schlaffer because he was blaming me, and I'm saying, wait a minute.
18:07
I've been seeing these reviews online forever, and I am somehow responsible for these things, and Julie responds.
18:15
Rob has responded to people who have threatened us. Period. Now folks,
18:20
I have seen numerous, and I do mean numerous, different websites that have been posted on our channel, have been sent to me, people from all sorts of different walks of life who have talked about what happened when they contacted the discerning reader and said, where's my stuff?
18:40
So evidently, if you contact them and say, where's my stuff, that's threatening them. His point has always been that Christians do not threaten.
18:51
And we have, listen to this, like the Reformed Baptist pastor who reported us as a fraudulent business to the
18:57
State Attorney General because we accidentally sent him one copy of your debating book instead of two. It shames
19:02
Jesus. Well, you know what? We've had folks who've done stupid things to us, too. We have folks who do stupid things and order stuff from us, and we've had people contact us and say,
19:13
I'm going to contact the Better Business Bureau because you said you were going to send me this, that, and the other thing and we don't have any record of it whatsoever and we have to check all this stuff out and all that kind of stuff.
19:27
But the fact of the matter is I've never talked about any of this. This is the first time I've ever even mentioned it.
19:34
Yeah, you can chime in here if you want to. I don't care. That's all right. It'll help me calm down, I guess. I hope so.
19:40
Goodness gracious. As you pointed out, it shouldn't surprise anybody that we've gotten complaints, too.
19:48
We've had people call up and say, you know, just over the Sola Scriptura book or the Scripture Alone book.
19:54
We had a ton of pre -orders and folks call up and they're upset because, hey, three weeks ago you put on your website we're not talking droves here, but a handful of people have called up and said,
20:07
I haven't received my book yet and your website said three weeks ago you were sending it out. The first thing
20:13
I do is I put my hat in my hand and I apologize. And then
20:22
I go find the invoice find out what happened while I've got the person on the phone explain to them that our server had a hiccup and some invoices didn't get invoiced at that time.
20:36
We thought we got them all but there were a handful that we obviously didn't get and that I'm sending it out right now.
20:44
Right now. To me, when somebody calls you up and they're upset because they haven't gotten the kind of customer service that they are accustomed to getting you want to make it right.
21:00
You want to do whatever you can to make it right. And you know what? If it ultimately comes down to the fact that you cannot take care of that person and their needs and their orders you at least refund their money.
21:13
You do something. You at least say, you know what? Can we do this or can we do that? You try to work something out and ultimately if it just doesn't come down to it you've got an impasse and you're not able to work things out you refund their money.
21:27
And you say, I'm sorry we couldn't work it out. And you go on. Yeah, and we're obviously a considerably smaller organization.
21:36
And we're mean. I don't understand how that comes together. You're a nice guy. I'm the mean one.
21:43
Right after we read It Shames Jesus Do you know how many hundreds of copies of the
21:48
Potter's Freedom book we gave away to people, Dr. White? You seem to have a short memory. That's why
21:55
I thought we were on the same page, Julie. Until your boss handed me my head on a platter and started insulting me in public
22:02
I thought we were on the same page. That's why I was referring people to. That's why I did not repeat the complaints that I did hear about you.
22:13
Until you sent me this email anyways. You say Rob needs to stop blaming others for his woes.
22:19
I've had nothing to do with your problems. And that's why I told Rob. When Rob tells me it's because of me that DR is going down that's just, that to me, this is someone who's not connected with reality.
22:32
I've got nothing to do with it. Nothing at all. Julie says this is a lie,
22:38
Dr. White. Your blog has been spread all over the place and I have scores of nasty emails from your supporters. They even quote it.
22:44
It is cited on internet complaint stations, put there by your loyal followers. You give people the impression that we are crooks.
22:51
You have destroyed the work God was doing through this ministry. How shameful of someone who was supposed to shepherd the flock. God will destroy you,
22:57
Dr. White. Along with Phil Johnson and Steve Camp, you have slandered us terribly. So much for your doctrines of grace, all capitals.
23:06
I find it interesting that someone so into defending justification can be so condemnatory. Now that is irony.
23:14
All I'm going to ask you to do is read what I said in the blog and then compare that and we've got a bunker mentality going on up there that has very little connection to the truth at all and it's sad.
23:29
Absolutely sad. I had said to Rob I decided to go public in your criticism of me.
23:36
I simply refuted them. That is, Rob criticized me. I simply refuted what he said. I wasn't attacking him.
23:42
If I'm responding to criticism of my work, how can that be an attack upon him? And it seems that Julie has no idea what the context is here because she responds and says,
23:53
Rob responded to some questions of the dialogue box fairly. The guy who asked them sent the answers along to you in order to put
23:59
Rob in the crossfire. After all, the proud Dr. White has to take on anyone who doesn't take his narrow stand.
24:06
You said we were not on the true Christian path because Rob would not agree to your witch hunt against N .T.
24:12
Wright. Quote, that pretty boy Wright, end quote, which is a misquote of a conversation that Rob had with the voice you just heard.
24:21
And I was talking about, of course, in this last instance where I was responding to the misrepresentation of the
24:26
God who justifies you. Julie, a representing, discerning reader, continues,
24:32
I pity you, Dr. White, in addition to being a royal jerk. You are just a sad example of a human being.
24:37
Your Christianity sucks, big time. You tell Rob to please get some assistance since you seem to have a majorly hard time accepting responsibility for your own actions, which
24:48
I did. And her response is, please develop a heart and some compassion, but oh, that's right, they're not qualifications for eldership and reformed
24:57
Baptist churches. Just got to have the right doctrine. Then, in all capitals, we have a word that I cannot repeat on the air.
25:05
And, in fact, when I posted this in the channel, our profanity script kicked me out for so doing, and rightly so.
25:10
Julie Barrett, customer care manager, the discerning reader. Folks, real simple now. If someone who works for that company can send out this kind of email that is so disconnected from the truth, it contains profanity, and has that kind of attitude, now
25:26
I will finally say it. If I am going to be accused of doing this, then
25:32
I might as well now go ahead and do it. Don't buy from the discerning reader, because they have no discernment.
25:40
Period. End of discussion. Now I've said it. It took this kind of in -your -face nastiness to finally force me to say it, but now
25:50
I'm going to say it. Folks, don't get it from the discerning reader. How's that? Does that make everything happy now?
25:57
Is that good? I just can't believe this.
26:05
It's just like, wow! The only thing it reminds me of is listening to John Kerry.
26:13
That's what it reminds me of. No connection to rationality or logic at all. Just zero.
26:21
It's unbelievable. Come home and having had a good weekend and, you know, talking to neat folks and things like that, and what do you run into?
26:34
You run into this kind of silliness. And for what do I get all this? Because I dared to point out that saying the
26:43
God who justifies is theologizing rather than exegesis is just simply silly.
26:50
And it is. And so when you say that, you are a big jerk. And so now we have it all out in the open and I have now officially said don't buy it from the discerning reader.
27:02
There you go. If that's what you wanted me to do, fine. There's where it goes.
27:12
Why can't people deal with facts? Why can't somebody just respond to that and go, well, actually, let's look at the chapter on James 2 and let's see if we can find exegesis.
27:25
That's what was missing in all the political debates and stuff like that. No one ever answers a question.
27:31
No one wants to deal with issues. People wonder why I like to have cross -examination where I can stop a person, not just simply where I've got 30 seconds to ask a question and the other person can go on for like 2 minutes.
27:45
One of the main reasons is right here. It's this kind of thing because once someone starts babbling on like politicians do,
27:56
I can stop them and say, wait a minute, that's not what I asked. Back to the point. That's what you have to have in a debate.
28:06
Well, I'm going to go ahead and we're going to, can we take our break? I'll take a nice deep breath.
28:13
We'll listen to Steve Camp who just got dissed by Julie as well and then we have calls.
28:20
We have calls online and hopefully they're on different issues and I can take a deep breath and we'll move on from there.
28:29
... such a rarity today... Convictions once held and died for among Bible -believing
28:44
Protestants are now being reconsidered with the advent of the recent Auburn Avenue movement. Is there currently a common basis for dialogue between Roman Catholics and Protestants?
28:55
Were the signers of ECT correct in their ecumenical efforts and all of the Reformed scholars who opposed them in error?
29:01
Does Trinitarian Baptism make one a member of the New Covenant? Are Roman Catholics our brothers and sisters in Christ?
29:09
Join us in Los Angeles, California on November 5th 2004 for a full three hours of moderated debate between Dr.
29:17
James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries and Douglas Wilson of the Auburn Avenue Movement and New St.
29:22
Andrews College as these topics are debated between two of the most respected representatives of the opposing viewpoints.
29:29
Additional information and tickets can be ordered at aomin .org that's www .aomin .org
29:37
www .aomin .org www .aomin .org www .aomin .org www .aomin .org www .aomin .org www .aomin
29:48
.org www .aomin .org
30:18
www .aomin .org www .aomin .org www .aomin
30:30
.org www .aomin .org www .aomin
30:35
.org www .aomin .org www .aomin .org
30:41
www .aomin .org www .aomin .org www .aomin .org www .aomin .org www .aomin .org www .aomin .org www .aomin
30:48
.org www .aomin .org www .aomin
31:15
.org www .aomin .org www .aomin .org www .aomin .org www .aomin
31:26
.org www .aomin .org www .aomin
31:32
.org www .aomin
31:46
.org www .aomin .org www .aomin .org your tickets now at AOMIN .org. That's www .AOMIN
31:53
.org. It's good to take a few deep breaths.
32:28
I just go to, huh? I don't even have that listed as a caller.
32:35
That's interesting. We have, I guess, someone named Steve. I haven't been informed of this.
32:40
No, Jeff. Oh, how about Bill, Bob, Paul, Peter, Ed, Fred.
32:47
That was who it was. We're just going to, okay, from now on, everybody who calls is named
32:52
Fred, all right? So we're going to take the first Fred, who's actually named
32:58
Jeff. And so if your name is Jeff, I'm going to call you Fred, but we're going to talk to Jeff anyways.
33:04
How's that? Okay, Jeff, wherever you are. Hi, Jeff. I'm sitting here going,
33:12
Steve, where's Steve? It says right on my screen, go to Steve first. I'm looking around for Steve.
33:17
There is no Steve. All right, hi, Jeff. Dr. White? How are you, sir? I'm very confused.
33:23
I'm sorry. No problem. You know, the weird thing is, is someone in InterVarsity would always call me
33:28
Fred, even though they knew I was named Jeff. There you go. Maybe you're the only caller we ever have, and you just are like that guy that does the radio program where he does different voices and stuff.
33:40
Oh, if you need a pick -me -up, by the way. A pick -me -up? I could use a pick -me -up. Go to regularguysforbush .org.
33:48
You'll see the funniest commercial of the season. Okay, all right.
33:54
You'll have to trust me. See if I do that right now, it'll destroy our streams. Okay, you can do it afterwards, and then you have to comment on it in the next show.
34:03
It's a Philly thing, but you'll love it. All righty, man. What can I do for you? Okay, I was out to lunch today with a friend who is going to a
34:14
Reformed Baptist church. Yes. And he started talking about King James stuff, and then inside I'm thinking, uh -oh.
34:24
And you couldn't break into the conversation too much, and it started getting kind of weird. And one of the things
34:30
I was able to ask him and try to ascertain where he's coming from, and he's coming from a
34:39
King James only advocate position. And one of the things he mentioned was that when
34:47
I asked about Erasmus collating different manuscript traditions together and so on and so forth, he basically said that was a rumor for an urban legend or something like that.
35:02
It was undoubtedly promulgated by the Internet. Well, bring that portion of the lunch.
35:09
It's kind of like in a political debate. You know enough to know something's wrong, but there just keeps spouting things at you, and you just don't know where to start spinning.
35:23
All right. You know, this manuscript and this, this, and this, and this, and it's like, I don't have my notes with me.
35:30
You know, that kind of thing. Right, I understand. So, but I know since you wrote a book on the controversy,
35:38
I was wondering if you could mention kind of, not go over the whole thing, but at least explain what
35:45
Erasmus' role was in the new
35:50
King James, the Texas Receptive. Well, there are some
35:56
Reformed Baptists who are into the, either Texas Receptive or Ecclesiastical Text type movement, and I've probably not preached in some places because I wrote that book, even though it's truly amazing how unwilling most of those folks are to actually engage a discussion of it on a factual basis.
36:21
It's just very, very, very, very odd indeed. It is, yeah.
36:27
So, and as far as that goes, Erasmus' work really, there were five editions of his work that came out during his life, and those together with the work of Stephanus in 1555 and then the 1598 work of Beza were the primary resources that the
36:56
King James translators had access to. And so what's generally called the
37:02
King James or the Texas Receptive is normally, at least as far as the little blue case bound version that people run around with, is normally actually scriveners going back to the
37:17
King James New Testament, seeing what textual choices they made, and then creating the
37:24
Greek text based upon those particular decisions.
37:30
And so, in other words, the little blue case bound Texas Receptive that people run around with, no manuscript in the world actually reads that way.
37:37
And in fact, there had never been a Greek New Testament that read exactly that way until the publication of the
37:45
King James version in English, and that's actually a Greek text based upon an English translation, which is rather odd and most people don't know that.
37:53
Now, the fact of the matter is that the New King James, a lot of people are not aware of this, the
38:00
New King James does not use the majority text.
38:06
It uses the same Greek text the King James used, which is what's generally called the
38:13
TR. And so that's what it's based upon, and that's why it has the same odd textual material in it, the unique readings, the
38:24
TR, that are not representative of the earliest manuscripts of the New Testament. And so some of those readings would be found in Beza, over against Stephanus and Erasmus.
38:36
Some would be found in Erasmus over against Stephanus, but in agreement with Beza, etc. etc.
38:42
So there's differences between the five editions of Erasmus, Stephanus, and Beza, but there are some that are just directly
38:49
Erasmian, especially the end of the Book of Revelation, where for some extremely odd reason, the bad job in the
39:02
Book of Revelation that Erasmus did stays in his editions and isn't corrected by Stephanus and Beza, and becomes the basis of what we have in the
39:13
King James and New King James versions of the Bible, including words in Revelation chapter 22 that never appeared in any
39:19
Greek manuscript ever known to man, and yet they remain there. And how anyone can say that is what we should adopt is absolutely positively amazing to me.
39:33
I know the ecclesiastical text arguments and things like that, and maybe someone from a
39:39
Reformed Baptist perspective could buy into some of that. I don't know. But that's just a brief summary of those things.
39:48
And again, I went over it in the King James Only Controversy. We have a presentation that we present in various churches about the role of Erasmus and things like that, and it is interesting to find folks who hold that view but do not hold that view in the
40:04
Peter Ruckman sense, the Gail Ripplinger sense. At least I hope this person would not hold those perspectives.
40:10
His main problem was with, you know, basically he thinks the textual variations that some other translations leave out basically denigrate
40:23
Christ. Yes, that's just not true. I mean, that's just... Chapter 8 in the
40:30
King James Only Controversy goes over that very issue because I would be extremely sensitive to that particular issue especially, and I demonstrate that that just simply isn't true.
40:40
And maybe if you get him to call in and try to substantiate that, ask him to read the book.
40:49
Some people aren't willing to do that, but I would hope a Reformed Baptist would be willing at least to read the book and to try to address the issues and try to address the fact that it's rather well documented.
41:04
Yeah, he's coming from a... I forget what the
41:10
Presbyterian denomination is called, like a free Presbyterian or so? I thought you said
41:15
Reformed Baptist. Well, he's going to Reformed Baptist Church now. So I'm not sure exactly what his views on, you know, covenant versus, you know, new covenant versus old covenant are, or baptism.
41:30
He is in the general kind of Reformed area. I hope you'll read the book, but at the same time, there doesn't seem like there's a way to get a word in edgewise kind of thing.
41:44
Yeah, well, you know what... And he's like trying to stare at you. I was getting stared down a little. He's a good guy, but I'm like...
41:52
How about them Yankees? Yeah, not much you can... Oh, don't even say that. Not much you can do, you know, if someone's not willing to look at the information.
42:00
There really isn't. So that's the best we can do there, Jeff, Fred, Steve, whatever your name is.
42:08
Regularguyforbush .org. Okay, thanks, man. Talk to you later. All right, God bless. Let's go up to Paul in Wisconsin.
42:14
Hi, Paul. Hi, Dr. White. How are you? Doing good. Good. I read your blog last week about the
42:20
Catholic callers to Dr. Meyer on Hank's show. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I actually caught a couple familiar voices from the callers, too.
42:31
Yeah, that sounded to me like somebody had sent an e -mail out and coordinated that effort.
42:38
Yeah. The first guy was... Did you ever have a chance to hear Bill Webster when he was interviewed last year?
42:46
Yes, I did. On BAM, you mean? Yeah, right. Right. Yeah, it was a two -day program.
42:51
And the second day, there was a guy that called in who was a prosecutor from Memphis. I don't remember the details.
42:59
Yeah, they just went round and round. And the guy was so angry that I think he hung up on them. Ah, okay.
43:04
And then a couple weeks later, well, shortly after that, they had like a commemoration week where people were, you know, grateful callers were calling in saying how much
43:13
Hank had blessed them. And this guy calls in saying how he listens to them every day. And he was one of the callers to Dr.
43:19
Meyer as well. Ah, I see. Well, you know, the specific ones that I mentioned sounded like I had heard them calling in to Catholic answers and things like that in the past.
43:31
And it just sounded way too fishy to have just simply sort of happened.
43:38
So I don't know. But anyhow, was that the only thing?
43:45
Yeah, actually, I thought the guy you were referring to was your friend Jimmy Joe. No, no, no, no.
43:53
Don't get me saying those. I could say something right now that I would probably rue later on. So, no, that wasn't him.
44:00
All right. I did want to say that I've been so happy with the service I've gotten from Rich. And just to let you know that I think you guys do an excellent job.
44:08
Well, you know, given how small we are and our facilities, we make every penny scream.
44:16
And we streamline the system like you just wouldn't believe. And I don't do any of it. He does all that.
44:22
That's all him. That's all the guy on the other side. And that's why we can forgive him when he can't remember people's names. You know, when he calls
44:27
Jeff Steve and Steve Fred. And we can let it slide because he's probably sitting there figuring out how he can burn more
44:35
CDs more efficiently or something like that. That's probably what's going on. Yeah, thanks a lot. All right,
44:40
God bless. Thanks a lot. All right, 877 -753 -3341. Let's talk to Adam in Wisconsin.
44:49
Hi, Adam. Hi, Dr. White. How is it? I know you're not doing too well with the descending reader thing.
44:55
Well, I'm sorry. I should probably apologize for being so animated. But to me, you know, if Alpha Omega Ministries was going down or something like that, it would never cross my mind to blame someone with whom
45:08
I've had hardly any real contact at all, and that only in the past number of months.
45:14
I mean, I just, it leaves me just, if I had hair, I'd be pulling it out.
45:19
Where's the logic here? Well, actually, one of my friends said, I actually went through a tough situation because I said that someone in another school that I was at was,
45:30
I said, you know, this person was doing really mean things to me, and I criticized him for it. And the next thing
45:36
I know, I'm in the head office because somebody went and filed a police report against me.
45:44
Oh, goodness. And, I mean, it was just totally, it was just completely biased, and actually it was a girl, and our lawyer said that all a woman has to do anymore is go to the police to get a restraining order.
45:58
So they hand them out like candy, and if a guy says something to you you don't like, even if it's true, you can go and you can ruin someone's reputation entirely.
46:06
Well, all I know is right now someone who's really high up in the public eye on a certain news channel that has three letters in its names is in the middle of a lawsuit that has caught public attention, and it truly is amazing what goes on in our nation these days.
46:30
But anyway, that's neither here nor there. Actually, I had a question. I'm attending a Lutheran university, and I'm doing, for my theology class,
46:40
I'm doing a paper on John Chapter 6, and I have two questions.
46:45
If you could recommend to me some scholarly sources on that work.
46:50
I mean, really, we're talking like John Piper, Justification of God Scholarly, because it has to be pretty thick.
46:59
And also, I have a section of our textbook I have to respond to, and I was wondering if I could read it to you and get your comments.
47:10
It's not very long. Was that Lansky? No, it's Robert Klob. Okay. It says,
47:17
John Calvin, who tried to follow Luther's teaching, missed the context of his understanding of God's choice of believers to be his own.
47:23
Calvin separated the doctrine of election from the proper distinction of law and gospel. Thus, he taught a doctrine of double predestination.
47:31
He believed that God had fashioned some human vessels to receive mercy, as his children and other human vessels to be destroyed in hell.
47:38
Without a strong doctrine of the means of grace, this approach fails to give some of the assurance that they were among the elect.
47:44
God wants all to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth, 1 Timothy 2 .4. He gave Christ to be an expiation for the sins of the whole world, 1
47:51
John 2 .2. A double predestination adjusts the logic of the matter, but it fails to deal with the tension involved in the mystery of evil in the presence of a gracious, omnipotent
48:01
God. It makes it difficult to deal sensitively and properly with the difference between secure and unbroken sinners.
48:10
Thus, it not only leaves itself open to offer scrutiny to arrogant sinners who count on election to cover their willful sins, as does every proclamation of grace, it leaves itself open to crush despairing sinners who cannot determine whether they are chosen or damned by God's horrible decree.
48:26
And such sinners generally tend to use the doctrine only to deepen their own despair.
48:33
Well, that's a fairly common way of those
48:39
Lutherans who reject the Reformed doctrine of election.
48:44
That's the common way that they would phrase it. Trying to find a consistent position in Luther's own writings is very difficult because I think that you see a lot of development and change in him over time, but certainly in his earlier writings he had a very strong doctrine regarding that.
49:03
You'll hear words like mystery and things like that, and of course the constant law, gospel, absolute, you have to accept this particular perspective, and this is our hermeneutic, and this is how you do it, and that's very prevalent in what was just said.
49:19
And the final comments that were made upon it, because nothing there really deals with the issue in the sense of providing any type of exegesis or anything like that.
49:31
Instead, it's almost a pragmatic critique by saying, well, it could be taken this way, and a person could take it this way.
49:39
Well, you can take the Lutheran perspective on all sorts of things and say, well, it could be taken this way and it could be taken that way, and that's not a substantive criticism of the position that you're actually attempting to critique.
49:54
Any position can be taken out of its context. The question is, is that abuse a proper representation of what is actually believed by the system that you're examining?
50:08
And it's not. I mean, the idea of it providing a foundation for something like arrogance and pride, well, that's just ridiculous.
50:19
I mean, the whole doctrine itself rips any basis whatsoever for that out from underneath the person.
50:28
You can't say, I'm somehow better than someone else. I was elected because I did this, or I was elected because I went through these sacraments and I used these means of grace and other people don't.
50:40
The whole concept of unconditional election destroys all of that. So when
50:45
I hear that kind of thing, I just anymore roll my eyes and just go, well, here we go again.
50:52
We're back to the let's just keep restating the same things over and over and over again and not listen to what's said in response and not really be serious in our examination of what's being said.
51:04
So that was a fairly long quote, and I couldn't catch all of it. But that is your standard
51:11
Lutheran perspective, and I don't see how the Lutheran perspective, if they're taking the viewpoint of baptism, bringing about regeneration, things like that, how that somehow is either more biblical or answers the questions that are allegedly being presented.
51:28
But the funny thing is they present that as if it's truth. They know with certainty, and it's so hard when you're in the middle of a class and they're presenting it with such certainty.
51:38
They say, hold on a second here. You're not even beginning to execute some of these passages.
51:44
No, but you've got to realize, especially for many of the really anti -Calvinistic
51:51
Lutherans, it's not even a debate that you want to engage any longer. That was already decided a long, long time ago from their perspective, and therefore you would not expect to hear a fair representation because there really isn't much in the way of interaction going on there for those folks anyhow.
52:12
And so a lot of folks are not aware you've got monergistic Lutherans who tend to be more favorable or more amenable to Luther's early works and on the bondage of the will and things like that.
52:25
But then you have a very strong stream of Lutheranism that is exceptionally anti -Calvinistic.
52:35
And there are websites put out by some fairly well -known apologists out there who happen to be
52:41
Lutherans that are very anti -reformed. And there are some Lutherans that ironically are very supportive of Dave Hunt, even though their perspective would be quite different than his.
52:56
So yeah, they're out there, and they're very strongly anti -Calvinistic.
53:02
But generally it's very frustrating for people to try to talk with them because eventually what you'll get to is, well, and another place where you
53:12
Calvinists are all wrong, is you've been unwilling to deal with the issue of mystery. You try to answer all the questions but leave these things in mystery.
53:21
And you go, wait a minute, John 6 doesn't say this is a mystery.
53:29
And the words have meaning, and there's something called grammar here. And when you try to dig into it, well, you know.
53:36
It's also maddening about Lenski when I was looking through his commentary. I mean, he went through and he put the grammar that I mean absolutely just demolished his own position.
53:46
And then he says, but it's nothing but theological or something biased to read into the idea that God has a set number elected to heaven.
53:54
And I'm like, wait a second here. So if certain people are selected to heaven, wouldn't the rest that can't come be selected to hell?
54:00
Well, I have read Lenski on the subject because it has been recommended to me.
54:07
And I think we even may have discussed, I may have gone through some of his statements. And it is the classical example of a person who, and once again, when you see someone who uses a certain hermeneutic method when dealing with John 1 .1
54:27
and dealing with the deity of Christ, dealing with the miracles of Christ, at the end of John, he's used a certain hermeneutic method about the resurrection.
54:35
And there's consistency and there's agreement between this particular person and pretty much all other commentators on John.
54:44
And then you get to one subject and all of a sudden, this person who has clearly shown their ability to engage in exegesis and to consistently exegete the text of Scripture, all of a sudden they adopt a completely different hermeneutic.
55:01
That is your greatest warning sign of a tradition. Their tradition has collided with the text of Scripture.
55:10
And so they adopt a different hermeneutic to protect their tradition against the text.
55:16
And so when you see that happen, and it happens pretty much to all of us, but when you see that happen, that is the great red flag that says, here you've got a problem.
55:26
And you can see that so plainly in Lenski, because what you see in the text and then what he says it means takes place.
55:36
Is he commenting on the same exegesis that he just did above? Exactly. There's a left -hand turn and you can just tell he does not want to follow the text to its conclusion.
55:47
And you see this in the Marston Forster book on Arminianism, the very same kind of eisegetical attempt to escape the clarity of the text of Scripture.
56:03
And really that can be very, very frustrating, but when you get someone, and this came out,
56:09
I think, very clearly last year when I debated George Bryson on the
56:14
Bible Ants Van broadcast, his attempt to deal with John 6, when you can actually let both sides address the issue and present their perspectives and their interpretation, wow, the contrast is very, very, very, very strong.
56:36
As far as commentaries, I have the standard commentaries on John.
56:44
Off the top of my head, the vast majority of the stuff that I have read has been attempts to get around John 6 from various and sundry groups, including
56:55
Lenski and the others that I mentioned. And so I haven't spent all that much time on good stuff on John 6, and so I don't know off the top of my head that I can give you anything to look into.
57:08
I mean, obviously you can look at the Theological Library's CD -ROM like anybody else can.
57:15
The problem is I don't find a lot of the current journals and things like that,
57:24
I don't find them doing a lot of really in -depth articles like that. But they're generally, because of the idea that you're always trying to come up with something new, you've got to come up with some new angle, that very frequently short -circuits dealing with text in a quote -unquote traditional way.
57:44
And hence, it's almost like traditional means it can't possibly be publishable, and it's not going to be interesting to anybody, and that kind of thing.
57:53
But you can do the same searches for theological journals that I can, and see if there's anything that's recent on it that might be of use to you.
58:05
Outside of that, just the standard Hodge and Bruce and Morris and all the other commentaries on John wouldn't have anything
58:14
I would direct you to off the top of my head. Sorry about that. Thanks for your call today. And God bless you as you press on in your education up there.
58:25
We will be back on Thursday afternoon, Lord willing, at regular time, 4 o 'clock. I know that the time change is coming, but it's not quite yet.
58:33
So 4 o 'clock our time will still be 7 o 'clock Eastern Daylight Time. We'll see you then.
58:39
God bless. We need a new