April 12, 2005

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world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded
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Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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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
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United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. Well, good morning or afternoon, wherever it is, wherever you are.
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I'm just sitting here reading more interesting stuff on the web here.
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I hate when people throw URLs up right as I'm getting started because then I, it's like I have to,
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I have to click on it. And then, have you ever tried like reading something and talking all at the same time?
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It's something that professional radio announcers learn to do. And I was one, but I never got overly good at it, especially if someone starts talking to you in your headphones.
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I'm sorry, but the natural human thing to do is to go, you know, what? You can see that whenever they, thanks
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Gary. You know, I, I was, I want to meet Gary someday.
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I really do. Because Gary sounds like he's somewhat of a cross between Archie Bunker and what other people do we know of who are just constantly politically incorrect and, and, you know, they just open their mouth and say the first thing that comes out, you know, something along those lines.
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I have to think about who else that might be, but I don't watch enough TV anymore to really know one way or the other.
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Anyways, we have any way, I'm sorry, we have open lines.
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We have open lines today. I love that cough button. I did that just for Gary and the second one was just for Gary, too.
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Anyway, we have open lines and we have a lot of folks calling with questions about Roman Catholicism, but I want to make sure that everyone understands that I, I definitely want to make sure that we have enough open lines for particular individuals, for, for folks who need to be calling in because we, we need to talk.
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Doug C. from Houston, you know, couldn't call on Thursday, but that sounded like he could call on the previous
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Tuesday. And so I've, I hope Doug knows he can call in and we can talk about, you know, what he, what he said.
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He said he now wants to debate John 6, but that wasn't what he was talking about initially. And there's, there's just so many folks,
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GSCC and Catholic dude. And all these folks on these
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Catholic web boards, I would sort of think if you're going to type it and you're going to post it someplace that maybe what that means is you, you actually believe it.
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And then that would mean that you would then want to defend it. And so who else but, but, but me would say to you, hey, our audience is listening.
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877 -753 -3341 is the phone number. And there you go.
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You can call in. And if you really believe all this nastiness that you post about how stupid
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I am, how often I misrepresent Roman Catholic theology. That's what I'd especially like to hear is the constant guys always misrepresenting us and lying about us.
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I would, you know, here's your chance in front of everybody to, to demonstrate where I've done that.
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I mean, I'm sure you've read my books and I'm sure you've listened to the debate.
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It's hard to say the straight, straight face because the fact of the matter is these folks never have.
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That's that's the whole point of this whole thing is that they don't listen and they don't read and they just go on second and third hand rumors and just repeat stuff.
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It's called rumor mongering. It's a bad thing. And we're trying to help people understand it's a bad thing.
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Anyway, 877 -753 -3341. Gee, we ain't going to.
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Yeah, I know that we ain't going to. We ain't going to get to. I, I guess they're not going to be calling today.
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I. This must be the time, I guess. If you're a Roman Catholic, Tuesday, Tuesday mornings and Thursday evenings are just are just bad.
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Just just wrong time. Anyway. One last time, though, 877 -753 -3341, there's a there's a number you can you can give us a call.
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All right, so let's we do have plenty of callers. Just I don't get the feeling that any of them are none of them have identified themselves as a
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Catholic dude or Doug C. They gave up the dividing line for Lent. Excuse me, but Lent, Lent's over.
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Even extended Lent wouldn't wouldn't go there. That would that would not be a not be a good thing.
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Let's talk to Steven down in Georgia. Hi, Steven. Hello, Dr.
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White. How are you? Well, I was doing just fine until I opened my mouth and I started coughing. So now I sound terrible.
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But anyway, what's up? Well, I didn't expect to be first out of the gate today. Well, you first come first serve.
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You know, watching all the all the events surrounding the death of John Paul and all the commentators on television, radio, et cetera.
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I've just been listening to how many people are saying and not even
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Roman Catholics are referring to the office of the pope as descendant from Peter, as ancient.
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They even had a friend at work who was saying, isn't it great to see all these world leaders honoring the head of Christianity?
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And what do you mean the head of Christianity? Now, this fellow is a Protestant. Well, and in name.
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Yes. Right. Yeah. But but that's how he stopped protesting a long time ago.
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Oh, well, yeah, that's obvious. But but it just shows how our youth now is really starting to get back toward the way some of us use these terms that tends to legitimize these ideas of antiquity and succession and things.
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And what really it had been bouncing around in my head. But what really spurred me to call was listening to a show on the body line show of a guy in California.
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And he was talking about the early writers. Right. And in particular, you had mentioned
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Gregory the Great. Right. And when you said that, you you referred to Pope Gregory.
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Yeah. Now, am I incorrect in that? I thought that the first official uses of that term by.
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The early writers was somewhere in the eight hundred, a thousand to the one thousand eighty.
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Now, would Gregory have ever referred to himself as Pope or what a contemporary of Gregory has had?
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What have they called him that? Well, yes. Initially, actually, you can the the deacons of Rome referred to Cyprian with the term
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Papa. So that's that's only the middle of the third century. Now, that, interestingly enough, wasn't limited to just the bishop of Rome.
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It is the limitation of that term to the bishop of Rome. That is a later development. But people within the
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Church of Rome would have used that term of their bishop much earlier than a thousand or anything like that.
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I don't know the exact day, the first use of Papa of the bishop of Rome by someone in Rome.
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But like I said, if Cyprian, if it's if it's used by approximately 250, then that gives you some idea of how early that is.
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In fact, Galatias in four ninety five uses Vicar of Christ for himself.
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It is the limitation and consolidation of those terms to where they're only to be used of the bishop of Rome.
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It takes tremendous amount of time, even even Gregory, as I recall. I'm just doing this off top my head. But Gregory, as I recall, when he wrote against the patriarch in Constantinople Byzantium back then, he ripped into him for calling himself bishop of bishops, which, of course, becomes a phrase that's used the bishop of Rome later on.
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So that's the problem with a lot of these resources that you find that have all of these dates listed out.
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This is the first time this happened or this is when this happened. The vast majority of this stuff is a fairly long process.
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It is not something that the church wakes up one morning and says, oh, we're going to do this. It's something that develops over time.
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And it's very difficult then to try to put it at one particular point.
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Yeah, go ahead. So the development of the term Pope as meaning the head of the
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Roman Catholic Church, would that have occurred? Well, obviously would have to have occurred after the split with the
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East. Well, not only well, again, the term Roman Catholic Church, there are
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Roman Catholics who object to even that terminology. Interestingly enough, even though I've heard it being used a lot lately by Roman Catholics, but that's just one of the double standards.
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But that would not be a term that would have been understandable for quite some time. I mean,
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Augustine would have never understood what Roman Catholic meant. I mean, that's actually a bit of an oxymoron, given the concept of the idea of universality being limited to a particular place.
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And so that whole issue, again, becomes very, very technical, because what do you mean by head of the
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Roman Catholic Church? Yes, in the sense of the modern view of the Pope as the head of the church, that's the mother of all other churches, that would be something that was developing.
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That's one of the reasons East and West split was the conflict between the patriarchs in the
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East and the single patriarch, i .e. the Pope in the West. That's one of the main things.
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I mean, when you look at Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy and you look at their form of church government in the
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West, it's monarchical. And in the East, you have much discussion of collegiality, of the sharing of authority amongst the great patriarchs of the apostolic sees.
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Well, where did that come from? Well, if you look at a map and you draw a line down the middle of a map of the early church in the first number of centuries, you'll see that in the
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East you have a number of different apostolic sees. Antioch, eventually Byzantium, Jerusalem, Alexandria.
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And so they all had claims to apostolic authority. In the West, you had one, and that was
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Rome. That was it. And that's because of the politics of the time, wasn't it? Well, it's also a simple geographical thing.
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You had a split in language, especially that it began fairly early, where the West is writing in Latin, the
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East is writing in Greek. There's just a lot of different character differences between them.
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But that was also due to politics, especially once the Roman Empire fell and the
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Bishop of Rome basically ended up taking over the functions of the emperor in Rome, especially when things got really bad.
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But much more of the empire remained in the East until, of course, the Muslim expansion that took place there.
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So, yeah, there's all sorts of historical things. But each one of those historical events led to further development of these particular concepts over time.
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And many times, and this is where Roman Catholic apologists, Roman Catholic lay people especially, make a very, very common error.
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They will read an early church writer. They'll read Augustine, for example, and they will read him with modern eyes.
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They will look at him and they will ignore the context that he was in. They will ignore the meaning of his words in the context in which they're written, and they will read them in light of later developments.
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Now, that's difficult for anyone not to do, but it's especially problematic when you're trying to say that what your beliefs are, are being reflected by Augustine.
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And so Augustine, for example, and I don't have time to go into this today because our lines are completely full, but the various controversies that he engaged in and especially the
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Donatist controversy led to a doctrine of the church that over time would develop into modern
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Roman Catholicism. There's no question about that. But to say that he intended that or that he believed those later developments is where the problem comes in.
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That's where people like Dave Hunt have just fallen off the train because they don't read the historical figures in that way.
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And the ironic thing is, I'm always accused of not reading historical figures that way when
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I've done that for years and years. So all of these things, the development of the papacy, especially if you've had a chance to listen to the debate with Mitchell Pacwa, with Jerry Manitix, these are issues that we can go into the early church fathers and we can argue directly from the early church fathers.
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It's not that the information isn't there. It's just that the best books on the subject are normally out of print.
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They're in libraries. This isn't the stuff that sadly most, quote unquote, evangelical publishers want to be putting out.
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One problem with those that I've had, I've listened to the Pacwa debate over and over.
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It's a really excellent series that you have done in these debates. And when the early writers are referenced, it's hard to go and find some kind of original source document on it, say,
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Irenaeus or Justin Martyr or John Chrysostom. Well, you know those are all online.
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You know those are all online. Yeah, I go and, for instance, I looked up the references to John Chrysostom in regards to Matthew 16, 18.
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Right. And I had to, I went, actually I went to the Vatican site, linked over to church fathers, went down to him and just by time searched through his sermons until I found it.
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Right. So there's nothing, I can't find anything out there that's a really good source that says, you know, go here to this document, to this, to look this up.
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There's a couple of things there. First of all, yeah, searching online can be a little bit difficult if you don't know exactly what you're what you're looking for.
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And if you don't dial up, I won't mock you for that. But but yeah, especially if you're on dial up.
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But obviously, like the ages library CD -ROMs, when I'm looking for something in Calvin, I'm looking for something in Spurgeon, I open up those index files and my that's that's a wonderful, wonderful thing.
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It's much faster. The Libronics search engine and the and the things are available for that.
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All the early church fathers, at least, and keep this in mind, the 38 volume Erdman set is not only over 100 years old, but it's also extremely incomplete.
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There's new stuff coming out all the time and it's it's coming out in volumes that are extremely expensive.
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I mean, there's a couple of times I've purchased some brand new volumes of Augustine in preparation for a debate.
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And sometimes they're 80, 90, over 100 dollars, sometimes up to 150 dollars just for a single volume. And so those are not yet available electronically and won't be for a while.
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And therefore, sometimes things that are cited are admittedly difficult to find. Sometimes I have the
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TLG CD -ROM. It's in Greek. Sometimes I'll cite something and I translate it myself. It's not available in English yet.
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There's there's still early church writings that haven't even been translated into English yet. So mainly because there just isn't it's it's a matter of money.
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I mean, if people were clamoring for this stuff, then it would be it'd be there. But who is, you know, pretty much nobody.
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So that's one of the things to keep in mind as well. There's still much more of those writings that we possess, but they have not yet appeared in English.
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And that's another reason why it's somewhat problematic to claim, you know, the universal viewpoints of early church writers when we don't even you can't do that.
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There may be a whole sermon someplace where John Chrysostom directly contradicts the reading that someone has had of him.
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You know, you just don't know. That's why those things can never become your final authority. And when they do, really, you're becoming the final authority at that particular point.
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Right. That's why I always try to keep my discussions just limited to the Bible. And I don't use early writings very often just because of that.
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They're not as authoritative. Well, they're not as authoritative. But I mean, certainly if you're debating what the early church believed, that's what you that's what you have to be dealing.
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And you can do it that way. You really you really can't do it. Hey, honestly, I see an entire board full of blinking lights looking at me.
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So thank you very much. Thank you very much for calling in today. God bless you. Let's go to well,
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I won't say where, because there's so few Christians there. Let's talk to Jeff. Hi, Jeff. How are you doing, Dr.
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White? I'm doing all right. Um, I could understand you're getting your druthers up in the last couple of weeks, because myself,
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I, I've been involved with Jewish evangelism for a long, long time. And in besides adding faith or works to faith, this previous pope has,
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I think, also abandoned the gospel by basically saying nonbelievers could quite possibly be saved by Christ.
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Oh, there's there's no question that he did. Yes. Yeah. And yeah, he's done that.
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And my guess, I guess my question would be for you, or if you could pick the mind of the more conservative
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Catholics would be that is so to me, clearly, not just against biblical principles, but there's no way, say, you know,
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Unum Sanctum or Trentine popes or pretty much all previous popes would have ever said anything like that.
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And I was wondering how they reconcile people infallibility, because I think that's made it into the catechism, right?
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How they reconcile people infallibility with those comments? Well, keep in mind that the next debate that we have with a
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Roman Catholic is June 9th on Long Island, which isn't too far from you there, relatively speaking, even but unless you get on the
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Garden State Parkway, which is more like the Garden State parking lot, then you'd never get there.
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I'm in the godly part of South Jersey, and I really don't like going to Long Island.
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You have to take a bath and you get back or something like that. But just getting through New York City. I believe me.
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I fully understand. I've driven it myself. But the next debate against a
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Catholic apologist by the name of Bill Rutland, he's defending the thesis that non -Christians can enter into heaven.
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And that's based upon those very sections of the catechism that you're just making reference to. And so I think if you're familiar with the massive amount of discussion and debate going on between traditionalists and you're more still conservative, but not traditionalist
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Roman Catholics, you know that they're having debates between each other. It's funny to see people that I have debated now debating each other over issues related to the nature of the new mass and the papacy and all these issues, because as anyone can see,
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I think it is purely fallacious on the part of mainstream Catholic apologists to try to say that what the church meant at the
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Council of Florence or what the church meant at Trent or what the papal syllabus of errors is talking about or what
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Boniface meant was not exactly what they said. That is, they said there is no salvation outside the church.
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Extraclesium nulla salus. And they meant they defined the church very clearly there. And they defined who they meant.
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Jews, schismatics, and heretics will not inherit the kingdom of God. So to try to redefine that in light of the rise of inclusivism and inclusivistic theology within the magisterium,
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I'm sorry, it just doesn't work. And that's what I have meant when I have said that what happens if maybe not the next pope but the pope after that, he goes ahead and makes doctrinally and dogmatically acceptable the concepts that John Paul enunciated in his sermons.
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He takes it to the next level. He accepts that this is the mind of the magisterium.
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And I would argue that the majority of Catholic theologians in the world would take an inclusivistic viewpoint these days.
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And if that then becomes the papal interpretation, what do they do then?
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They're stuck. I mean, they now have such a clear contradiction between the historical meaning of words and their current position that it will not be possible for Roman Catholics to do apologetics.
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But then again, once you're an inclusivist, who cares? I mean, seriously, once you're an inclusivist, is there any reason to do apologetics?
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I mean, if everybody gets to go to heaven except those who've explicitly rejected Christ, we all need to keep our mouths shut anyways, in essence.
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So right now, that is a major area of struggle. And that's why you see schismatics and you see people saying, you know, set a vacancy, saying there is no valid pope right now because they're standing against tradition and so on and so forth.
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So it is a big area. And it's something we're sort of watching the Roman Catholic Church in the same way we're watching the
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Mormon Church. Which direction are they going to go? The next 20 years are going to really answer those questions,
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I think. And they're going to indicate the direction that they are going to go. And that's going to then determine the direction that we go in responding to them.
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Yeah, I agree. And that's why I would say that you can't really hold that view. You can hold that view, but infallibility sort of goes out the window.
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Functionally, yeah. I mean, but let's be honest. How many Roman Catholics today, worshipping
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Roman Catholics, believing Roman Catholics, actually believe in infallibility anyways in any meaningful fashion?
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I mean, if you ask them to define... Very little. Very few. I mean, if you ask them to define an infallibly defined dogma, what are they going to say?
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I mean, they don't... They just stare at you with this blank look because it may be taught, but that doesn't mean that it actually has any real meaning for them.
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So, you know, can they live with that? Yeah, especially given the fact the vast majority of Roman Catholics are
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Roman Catholics because that's their cultural bent to be Roman Catholics, and it's not a matter of actual personal faith.
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So that probably runs into it. Do you have any contact with the hardcore traditionalists?
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Like, say, hey, maybe you should become Protestant? Um, well, you know, that's an interesting question, and what
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I'm going to do here is I'm going to answer that, then we're going to, if the guy next door can do it, I want to take a break because line six is going to be a long answer, and so I don't want to get into it, stop, and then continue on.
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But here's the quandary I'm up against at this particular point in time.
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For example, there is a traditionalist who is a volunteer or a part of a traditionalist apostolate, quote -unquote, who has responded to some comments that I made in my book on justification.
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Now, it's not that these are overly challenging comments, it's not that they're overly difficult comments to respond to, but the problem is a lot of these real small apostolates, especially the traditionalist type, they only exist when people will pay attention to them.
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And so if I invest the time to respond to this particular individual, not only do they want me to do that, that's their bread and butter, that's how they prove to their very few followers that they're very dependent upon that they're doing something wonderful and great.
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But not only that, any time I spend and invest in responding to them, the mainline
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Roman Catholic folks will say, big deal, they don't represent us anyways, they're off on their own, they're out denying the authority of the current pope or whoever the next pope is and so on and so forth, so who cares?
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So I haven't responded, and the reason I haven't responded is A, I don't want to help them stay in existence, and B, if I do invest that time, the others are going to say that's irrelevant to what we're actually talking about.
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So I was just looking at a blog today of one of the biggest mainline Catholic apologists, and he makes some comments, soteriologically speaking, that I wanted to respond to, and I would figure that investing that time in that is significantly better than the others.
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But no, those guys don't, at least with the traditionalist, yeah, it's a matter of truth, error, so on and so forth, but there also tends to be, quite honestly, a level of fanaticism there.
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That makes meaningful dialogue and conversation pretty difficult, no two ways about it.
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Well, at least they're consistent. Yeah, that's for sure. Hey, thanks for calling. All right, thanks. All right, God bless. 877 -753 -3341, we now have a couple lines open for all of our, for Doug C and GSEC and Catholic dude,
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I was about to say Calvin dude, but he's on our side. All those folks who have just been so quick to be ready with a word of discouragement, now's your time, 877 -753 -3341.
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We're going to take a break here at the bottom of the hour, and then we'll be back with your calls. We'll be right back.
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Answering those who claim that only the King James Version is the word of God, James White, in his book,
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And welcome back to Dividing Line. We are taking your phone calls today at 877 -753 -3341.
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We have invited Doug C and a Catholic dude and all those guys, but they are just so busy with, well, they're just busy.
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Oh, yeah, they're on the way to Rome for the conclave. They're going to be, they are leading candidates for the next, yeah, right.
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Anyway, 877 -753 -3341. Let's go to the
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Uber special line and talk with Brett. Hi, Brett. Hey, Dr. White. How are you doing? I'm doing okay. Great.
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Appreciate you taking my call today. Yes, sir. Well, the question is the same one as last week.
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It's on Hebrews chapter 11, verse 8, which speaks of Abraham's faith back in Genesis 12.
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Yeah. And I know in your book, The God Who Justifies, you've got a section on that. Your argument is that he was actually justified in Genesis 15.
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And so that's explicitly stated by Paul in Romans 4. And therefore, Hebrews 11, 8 can't be saying that he had,
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I would say, saving faith back in Genesis 12. Can you just, can you go a little further on that and explain what
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Hebrews 11 is saying then? And why it can't be the case that he had saving faith back in Genesis 12?
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Well, you know, if he had saving faith in Genesis 12, then that's when he would be justified.
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And Paul's entire argument concerning the chronological relationship of faith and law and works would collapse in Romans 4.
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So when I look at Romans chapter 11, I ask myself the question, is this a discussion, as Paul is offering, of what we would call something that's relevant to the ordo salutis, something that is going to specifically have that kind of chronological connection?
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Is that what is even being discussed here? Is how Abraham in Hebrews 11 was made right before God?
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And the answer is no. This is a description of what people did on the basis of faith.
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And I think we're importing an issue into Hebrews 11 that is not the point of the apologetic argument of whoever the author might be,
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Paul translated by Luke, whatever. And that's where we come into the problem, is that when we try to make
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Hebrews 11 a corollary to, on the same plane as discussing the same subject as Romans chapter 4, there's no way to fit the two together.
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You just can't do so. And when you look at the fact that, and I think this is something that Paul was trying to point out, the first use of the term believe in the
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Old Testament is Genesis 15. So whatever is being discussed in Hebrews 11 is not the same thing as being discussed in Romans 4.
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And what is being discussed in Hebrews 11 is what people do for example, the very next verse says, by faith he became a sojourner in the land of promise.
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Well, we're talking here about obedience. We're not talking about the faith that is being discussed there.
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We're talking about what faith does and how it acts. And when you look at Sarah, I mean, it's pretty difficult to read the
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Genesis narrative and come up with the concept of a saving faith model when you say by faith even
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Sarah herself received power to conceive seed. You know, I don't see that.
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I see by obedience. I see by acceptance of the existence and power of God, but I don't see that going the other direction.
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And when you go all the way through Hebrews 11, it very much follows very much along the same lines in talking about the nature of faith.
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By faith, Isaac blessed Jacob at Esau, verse 20. Well, that's not the first time Isaac believed very clearly.
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This is something later on in life. This is application. So I think it's the mixture of what you have in Romans 4, which clearly
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Paul in verse 9 says, now, when did he do this? Time frame, time frame, time frame.
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He brings that at that point. That's not a part of Hebrews 11. He's talking about character. He's talking about obedience.
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And I don't see how the two can be put together because they're not talking about the same things.
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They may use the term faith, but let's face it. There's a number of different utilizations of a lot of those words, faith, grace.
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All of those terms can have a very different meaning depending upon the context in which they are being applied.
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So that is one of the debates. I know people who would disagree, but I honestly think that it's impossible to come up with a meaningful exegesis or understanding of Paul's argument in Romans 4 without the temporal element.
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And I don't think that the temporal element is brought out in Hebrews at all in regards to even trying to discuss the subject of the relationship between faith, justification, works, law.
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Just completely different contexts, similar to some of the issues that have to come up in looking at James chapter 2 and what the actual purpose of the writer is at that particular point in time.
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In Romans chapter 4, could you not read it as the argument going, when was it credited?
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Because I know there's a difference between... We can't separate justification from the imputation of Christ's righteousness.
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That's definitely part of it. But in Romans 4, it seems like he says that there's two accounts of Abraham being credited.
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You know, he's got the Genesis 15, 6. You know, Abraham believed God and it was credited or reckoned to him as righteousness.
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But then again, in verse 22 in Romans 4, it's speaking of a later point in time. When he had faith. And then at that point in time, it says it was credited to him as righteousness, that faith then.
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Which is later in 20, 21 and 22. And now I've listened to Dr.
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John Piper's message on harmonizing with James chapter 2 and Romans 3 and 4.
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And his argument was, well, God can look at Abraham's faith. And then in the first instance of his faith, there's all the following instances of faith.
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It's like an acorn in the tree example. And he says that God can look at any point on that tree and say that faith right there,
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I credit that faith as righteousness. So can you say something about how it is that there's three different periods of time during Abraham's life where God credits his faith as righteousness?
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Well, I didn't hear three. I only heard two. I'm referring to James chapter 2.
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Oh, I see. Yeah, I obviously do not agree that James chapter 2 is addressing the same issue that Paul is in Romans chapter 4.
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I rather fully explicated that in the chapter on James chapter 2. So, and I don't agree.
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And I read just yesterday the citation from Dr.
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Piper's ministry, and I noted the date on it was 1985. And I even made a comment in our channel that I wonder, especially in light of the controversies that have developed since then, if there isn't a forthcoming emendation or something of the statement on the
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Desiring God website that utilizes that terminology.
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In fact, I think I might, let me see if I still have that hiding someplace here.
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There is a specific citation. Yeah, there it is. Let me pull it up here if I don't knock us off the broadcast in the process.
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There is a specific citation that really concerned me and it was in that same section where what you were just citing from or at least something in relationship to that.
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Yeah, I was the one from 1985. I actually have the lecture he gave. And was that the same time period?
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Yes, it was. Well, he's done two of the harmonizing Romans and James chapter 2 and one of them he did back in,
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I think, 85. Yeah, God justifies us in the first genuine act of saving faith.
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But in doing so, he has a view to all subsequent acts of faith contained, as it were, like a seed in that first act is the citation that is given there.
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Nevertheless, we must also own up to the fact that our final salvation is made contingent upon the subsequent obedience which comes from faith.
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The way these two truths fit together is we are justified on the basis of our first act of faith because God sees in it like he can see the tree in an acorn, the embryo of a life of faith.
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This is why those who do not lead a life of faith with its inevitable obedience simply bear witness to the fact that their first act of faith was not genuine.
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I find that extremely problematic because I simply do not agree that nevertheless we must also own up to the fact that our final salvation is made contingent upon the subsequent obedience which comes from faith.
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No, my salvation is made contingent solely upon the obedience that is imputed to me, and that is the obedience of Jesus Christ.
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And that is why I wonder, there seems to have been a period of time there where what we would call some sort of proto -New
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Perspectivism, Dunn -style view of righteousness was represented in some of these writings.
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And in light of Dr. Piper's defense of the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, I wonder,
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I don't know, I've actually never spoken with Dr. Piper, but I wonder if there wouldn't be a realignment or a rephrasing of some of these things because I don't see that, if I had to defend that in a debate,
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I don't know how I would. I mean, when I look at the end of Romans chapter 4, he's summarizing these things here, and I have a problem with saying, well, see, there's a later crediting of righteousness because Paul doesn't cite any passages there.
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When he talks about, whenever he uses legitimi, look down to 4 .22. It says, that is why his faith was counted him as righteous.
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That's the exact language of 15 .6. And I have a hard time going, talking about acorns and all these other specific aspects,
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I just don't see that in what his argument is. And I like to try to believe that Paul had not only thought through these things, but he had also debated this issue numerous times.
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There seems to be good biblical evidence that he did so with the Jews more than once. And I can't believe that we, 2 ,000 years later, would come up with arguments against his position that he hadn't run into in his own day and time that were valid.
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And so I have a problem with the seed issue because I don't see where it comes from.
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And I have a real problem with saying that my salvation is made contingent upon the subsequent obedience.
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If that's my obedience, then I have a real problem with that. And I'm not, I mean, from listening to Dr. Piper's, at least his lecture, it didn't come across to me that he was saying that.
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I understood him to be saying that saving faith will necessarily produce obedience. And if you don't have that obedience, then you don't have the saving faith.
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Yeah, there's no question. Yeah, there's no question about that. I'll agree with you. Yeah, but I'm reading, that was directly off the website, what
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I was just reading there. When it uses that specific terminology, our final salvation is made contingent upon the subsequent obedience, which comes from faith.
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That, as I would imagine, sounds like you're well -read, you know, could be found in done or right today.
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And that's where there's not a sufficient, again, here's a good example of what
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I was talking to an earlier caller about. We read early church fathers and we don't read them in a chronological, properly way.
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That's a horrible way of speaking English too. But same thing here. There was no, quote unquote, new perspectivism in 1985, not by that name.
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Sanders had written, Dunn had written, Wright was not yet really all that well -known outside of certain circles.
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And so it's real easy for people to grab hold of something like this and read it in the modern context of new perspectivism.
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I'm trying not to do that, but I'm also trying to look at it and go, okay, I understand what the argument is here.
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I just, because it goes to the very next paragraph. I don't know if we're looking at the same URL. This is Doctrines of Grace, the tulip explanation on DesiringGod .com.
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But I'm sorry, DesiringGod .org. But the very next paragraph says exactly what you've said.
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I mean, James, Romans 4, 19 to 22, Romans 4, 9,
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I mean, the three, it's exactly what was the basis. I don't know which came first, the lecture or this particular page, but that is the foundation of it.
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There's no question about it. And so, you know, I find that problematic. I find that a difficult perspective to endorse or to defend.
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Are you saying then in 4 .22 that therefore isn't linking back to what he said about Abraham's believing the promise?
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Well, I think the whole thing is a description of the fact that Abraham had a saving faith.
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The question is, is that saving faith imputed as righteousness to him at multiple times in his life?
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Or is the fact that he continued in that faith from 4 .16
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onward and that this is recorded for us, the demonstration that the faith that he had in 15 .6,
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which is the citation in 22. 22 is in fact, if you look at the numeric standard,
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I know it's editorial, but I think they're right. They recognize that the usage of the exact same terminology as the substance rendering of Genesis 15 .6
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is he's going back to that. Now, if he was, you know, again, if he was doing that on the street corner in Ephesus, with the expert teachers on the law, would they not, quote unquote, catch him on that if his application was what's being suggested?
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That is, that there is this later imputation, or is he summarizing at this point and saying, therefore, it was also credited him as righteousness.
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That is, this is saving faith. The only, he doesn't use a chronological argument there. He doesn't say, and this was before, actually that was after.
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That was after the giving of the law. That was after the giving of circumcision. Well, which was specific.
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No, that would still be before. All of this would be before the giving of that particular law.
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That is his whole point, is that chronologically, Abraham possessed righteousness from God before the means for possessing it that was being taught by his opponents existed.
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There's the chronological argument. And I know, you know, new perspectivists argue about what that would mean.
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And, you know, you go read Sanders and you end up drooling and up and, you know, curled up in a fetal position somewhere.
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But the point that I think that people have been correct in reading this all along is that he's demonstrating that the means of being right before God, that is common in his enemies.
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And I happen to think it's important to define the Jews, not on the basis of pseudepigrapher writings, but I think
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Matthew, Mark and Luke should be allowed to speak, which you probably realize today they're not. Once you allow them to speak, his whole argument there is that, no, your own scriptures demonstrate that that is not how a man has ever been made right before God.
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You've gotten the cart before the horse and that's the argumentation he's providing. So when
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I read Romans 4, it never says that he was justified more than once. And I don't think Dr. Piper would say he was justified.
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No, no, no. Although I'm not saying he was. When I'm talking about multiple justifications, that's actually a
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Roman Catholic argument. Right, right. That's the whole point. And I mean, I completely agree that the way Paul uses dikaio is it's a legal forensic term.
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It's a once for all declaration of not guilty. But I know that's different than imputation.
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But, you know, it's based upon imputation. The first time, I just don't understand why there would be something inherently problematic about saying that God can continue to consider his faith as righteousness.
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And he can do that at any point in his life, wherever he sees that saving faith. He says that that saving faith right there,
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I credit that as righteousness. And that's not saying that he's justified again, because he was justified in the first instance that he had that saving faith.
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But then God can look at any point in his life and he can look at any instance of Abraham, you know, demonstrating his saving faith and say that faith right there,
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I count that as righteousness. I don't see why he couldn't do that, you know, multiple times.
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Well, that's why I would read 422 that way. And that's why
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I could read James chapter 2 to be saying whenever Abraham demonstrates his faith, the faith is credited as righteous there also.
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Not that he's being justified again, because he's already been justified. But that whenever God sees that faith,
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I credit that faith right there as righteousness. Well, I'm not sure what any of that means, to be honest with you, because the idea of imputation being separated from righteousness and justification being separated from righteousness, which that last phrase would require you to do,
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I don't understand that kind of terminology. I don't see that kind of terminology being used.
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I don't think there is anything wrong in the fact that saving faith is ongoing and saving faith is what it is.
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It's the work of the Holy Spirit in a person's life. But I don't see that what follows from that is that we can talk about imputation of righteousness in multiple ways.
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Well, God continues to credit you. I mean, in every second of your life when you have saving faith,
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God continues to count that as righteousness. Well, that's an interesting observation.
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But is a person, do they have the righteousness of Christ as their particular...
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I'm sitting here trying to deal with an important issue and folks on the channel are playing games. Very distracting.
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Is imputation something that gives us the righteousness of Christ and it is our present possession, which is what makes us being in Christ?
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Or is it something that happens repeatedly? Well, if God wasn't continually considering you to be righteous based upon the work of Christ through the instrument of faith, if he wasn't continually considering you to be that, then you wouldn't be right with God.
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God has to continually consider you to be righteous based upon the instrument of faith.
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He has to see that faith, and obviously that's the work of the Holy Spirit and the life of the believer. So he continues to perfect your faith, but he continues to consider you to be righteous.
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He never makes you righteous. Every time he considers you to be righteous, it's not like you're moving from unrighteousness to righteousness.
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He continues to consider you that. Because if he stopped considering you to be that, you'd be what you were before you were regenerated.
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Well, there's no question that God continues to view us as righteous.
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I don't see that, however, as either an iterative or ongoing imputation.
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I see imputation as something that is foundational to what it means to be justified.
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And if one ceased to have the righteousness of Christ, one would cease to be justified. They're part and parcel of the same thing.
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I just don't see that fitting into Paul's argument in Romans 4 as far as what he's saying to the
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Jews. I just don't see a foundation for it. We'll have to leave it at that because we've still got other callers to get to in a few minutes.
53:35
Hey, thanks for calling in. God bless. Bye -bye. All right, I'm sort of flying blind here.
53:42
I haven't any idea who I'm talking to, but hi, how are you? Hello? Hello.
53:48
All right, what's up? Hi. My question is about creation ex nihilo. Okay. I was listening to your discussion with Richard Hopkins on a radio program, and he was talking about how he had written a book called
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How Greek Philosophy Corrupted the Christian Concept of God. And he was basically saying that the idea of a
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God that was outside of space and time and that he created out of nothing, ex nihilo, was a concept that had developed, of course, in Greek philosophy and things like that.
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And the question that I have for you is, are there any extent writings from people in the
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Jewish concept from the time of the rabbinic sources in Old Testament times or in the
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Second Temple era that explicitly stated this outside of the Bible?
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Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny. I tell you, you know, answer? Nope, haven't a clue.
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That's the kind of thing that requires research. It requires preparation. And sitting off the top of my head, haven't the foggiest idea.
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There is a good article on the subject in the book that had
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Frank Beckwith associated with it. There's an entire chapter in there. In defense of creatio ex nihilo,
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I believe, if I recall correctly, that it went into the various views because there were various views.
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But the problem is, of course, that Jewish thought and Greek thought are two different things at that point.
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And where do you draw the line in seeing the relationship between the
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Greek writings in the New Testament and their Hebraic background and all the concepts related to that?
55:54
But for specifics, I confess heartily and openly to everyone.
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A, I'm alone in my office. I don't have anyone sitting around who's rummaging through my library to hand me resources, which a lot of folks who do this kind of thing do have.
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And secondly, I do not keep that kind of a reference in my mind because it's not something that I deal with very, very often.
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So I think you would find your answers in that chapter. Let me turn around here.
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The New Mormon Challenge book, there is, as I said, a fairly lengthy chapter in there on creatio ex nihilo from an evangelical scholar that is responding to those concerns that would be expressed probably a little bit more formally by BYU professors than they are by some of the more popular
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LDS apologists. But outside of that, that's the best I can do for you. All right.
56:54
Well, thank you very much. All right. Thanks, Charlie. Do you sit around thinking of these things all the time?
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You know, I've heard studies and stuff. I've listened to some of your debates. Things come up that sometimes aren't addressed to my satisfaction.
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I got to call and ask. That's all I got to say. I can just see you because I know where you used to work.
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I can just see you standing in a certain place where you used to work and someone, you know, is poking you going, excuse me, excuse me, sir, sir.
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And you're staring off going creatio ex nihilo. You know, you don't keep jobs very long that way, you know.
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It's not a good thing. Love you, Johnny. Thanks for... At that former job where you...
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It was too fast -paced not to do that anyway. All right. A couple of other questions, but there's no time today.
57:42
Hey, we are out of time. Hey, thanks a lot. God bless, guy. Oh, my.
57:52
Yeah, in case you're new to the program, let me just mention something. I am sitting at my regular desk, which is one of those corner units.
58:00
I've got lots of books and CDs around me. And I've got two computer screens in front of me, which is just one computer, big desktop.
58:06
And that's it. This is all off top of my rather cleanly shaven head.
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So when you want really specific information, that's a little bit difficult, unless I got some time to look it up.
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So anyhow, we missed Doug C. We missed Catholic dude. Man, I'm sorry, guys.
58:28
Maybe someday you'll have the courage of your convictions and you'll call in. Otherwise, Thursday evening, we'll be back again on The Dividing Line.
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Thanks for listening. God bless. We've been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.
59:35
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59:40
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59:45
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