Catholic Answers Security

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line.

The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602, or toll -free across the

United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

James White. Hey, good morning, welcome to The Dividing Line. For all of our friends down under, who, it's, well, 4 a .m.

there, so you're probably not listening live anyways, but we'll try to get that itinerary up today if we can on the blog.

We are hearing you yelping and complaining. I'm not, I'm only doing a few things in,

I mean, I'm, I think Sunday night, two things Monday, two things Tuesday, two things Wednesday, then

I go to Brisbane. But there are a couple different places, a lot of them associated with university there, so we'll try to get that stuff up as soon as is humanly possible.

Thank you very much to the folks who have, who are helping to make this trip a possibility.

Still need some assistance along those lines. If you can help to bear some of the ancillary costs in, that goes into these kinds of trips.

Looking forward to the debate with Abdullah Kunda at the University of Sydney on Monday.

Good opportunity to present the gospel, and in a context where Muslims understand it finished my notes, my keynote presentation for that last night, looks real good, happy with that.

Also addressing, for example, on Wednesday, justification and the uniqueness of Jesus, especially in the context of a pluralistic society and things like that, and then flying up to Brisbane and looking forward to the conference up there with the brethren there.

So looking forward to it. It's, I figured out, 32 hours in the air, grand total, 16 out, 16 back, and so I'm charging up all of my extra batteries in case

I can't find any power on the plane. So I can, you know, take a look at that stuff and be doing some work on the plane.

But already trying to shift my schedule toward the Australian, because they're seven hours behind us, actually they're a day, they're 19 hours ahead of us, but just functionally they're seven hours behind us.

And so I figure if I can start moving my sleep schedule that direction and sleep the second half of the flight, not the first half, stay up, stay awake, and then sleep the second half.

That'll help somehow. I still want to make sure that you understand for the first 24 hours after I land, after any flight of 10 hours or longer, for the first 24 hours after I land,

I cannot guarantee the orthodoxy of anything I have to say. All right? So just, I'm putting that out there right now.

That first 24 hours, very, very questionable. Keep that in mind. I wanted to get to one thing here and then we'll go to the phones.

I got an email this morning, I am on the Catholic Answers email list. I've purchased stuff from Catholic Answers.

I actually keep up with what they're saying, or try to anyways on some level. I don't keep up as well as James Swan or others do, and frequently they're directing me to things, but I do get their emails, their fundraising emails generally.

And I got one this morning and I went, something doesn't smell right here.

Catholic Answers website is under attack from anti -Catholic computer hackers who want to silence us. I wonder, how do they know that they're anti -Catholic?

Maybe they're liberal Catholics that don't like Catholic Answers. Maybe they're liberal Catholics that promote homosexual priests, or married priests, or abortion.

How do you know they're not Catholics? How do you know they're anti -Catholics? I love the way that Catholic Answers just uses this big, broad brush called anti -Catholics.

It's us versus the world, say. And so somehow they know who these hackers are.

And they also know their hearts. They hate that our site is such an effective witness of the

Catholic faith. Well, if you know them well enough to know that, then you know who they are and you should have reported them and have them arrested, right?

Or are you just sort of guessing at this? One that is relied upon by millions of individuals all over the world.

I can just see millions of people every day that get on Catholic Answers to go, what am I supposed to believe today?

I don't know. I need to go into the forums and ask people. And so, of course, there's a donate now list.

Won't you please help us protect this crucial resource? And then, a little bit farther down, it says, these hackers hate

Catholic Answers and our important mission. Every month, these cyber criminals try to infiltrate our online forums to make malicious and profane postings that insult, embarrass, and discourage our readers, most of whom are there for guidance and inspiration.

Well, you know what? That's really common all over the web. I mean, why do you think

I don't have comments on my YouTube videos? Because primarily, atheists, which

I guess an atheist is an anti -Catholic too, isn't he? Hmm. I hadn't thought about that.

But atheists just love to fill comm boxes with vile, profane stuff, and you have to spend half your life moving through your comm box.

I have 388 videos up now. Can you imagine how much time it would take me every day to go through and read everything that's been posted and delete all the garbage?

That's all I'd ever do. I mean, that's just all I'd ever do. So that's what happens on the

Internet. Many times I have discussed the fact that a commentary box, a web forum, these are called

Internet Ignorance Aggregators. This is where you aggregate the sum total of the ignorance that is represented by the

Internet, and you concentrate it in one spot so that people can be even more ignorant there than they generally are in the rest of their lives.

So that's how that works. Flood us with 130 ,000 spam emails, 130 ,000 trying to clog our servers.

Well, okay. I have one email address, and I would say it gets about 12 ,000 a month.

I think that's what it's running, 12 ,000 spam, and that's just one. So if they have a bunch of email addresses, they're not getting any more spam than I am.

Big deal. Okay, then make more than 30 ,000 probes and attacks on our website attempting to find weaknesses in our servers that they can use to hijack our site and upload any

Catholic and pornographic content to destroy our site altogether. Now, I'm looking at this,

I'm going, wait a minute. These include DNS attacks, form injections, cross -site scripting,

URL manipulation, session hijacks, address spoofing, and more. And I'm sitting here going, this just sounds like what happens to every site.

And so Catholic Answers gets a wake -up call. This is where it got interesting. To keep our website safe from these malicious and often vile attacks, we have to maintain a high degree of vigilance, use special security systems, and employ a web security team.

Are you ready? A web security team of 17 full and part -time people.

Yes, 17 people. I went, wait one minute, there must be a big number coming here.

And of course, as you can imagine, none of this comes cheap. In fact, keeping our website up, running, and safe from cybercriminals costs us more than $125 ,000 every single year.

Now you can't pay 17 people for $125 ,000 and pay for your site costs and everything else.

So something ain't adding up here. So I went to the channel and I went to our guy.

Now we've got a guy who is sort of, you know, the man as far as our website's concerned.

And, you know, he's one of those guys that eats, breathes, and sleeps, network stuff, and speaks all that language.

And he's a volunteer. His regular job, and I can tell you who or anything like that, but his regular job is in helping to maintain one of the largest websites in the world.

If I told you who it was, you would know immediately. You've seen it on TV. You've heard it on advertising. You'd know exactly which one it is.

And he's vitally important in keeping all that running. It's international, around the world.

And so I played this stuff for him. I put it in channel. He's like, excuse me, but we have like this worldwide website and we have two security guys.

And when we're under a lot of attack, I'll help. Two security guys, all right?

So, and then he said, and you know what? As far as the numbers that they gave out there, that sounds like a day for us.

I'd have to check the numbers, but that sounds like a day for AOMin .org, not a month.

So it seems that maybe the folks, maybe we're, you know, maybe we're doing some community service here.

Maybe the folks over at Catholic Answers need to realize they've got about 16 more people on their payroll than they really need.

If they just get the one guy who knows what he's doing, they wouldn't need the 17. See, that's, oh my.

And all of it is, donate now, click here, donate now, and there you go.

I don't know. Sometimes I wonder just a little bit about the folks over there in California.

But anyway, no, we do not have 17 people to keep our website up.

We have, well, Rich, Rich is over there, and I don't really do anything along those lines.

And we're the only employees we've got, so I had to just chuckle just a little bit when

I saw that because it was like, get everybody all excited and, oh, your really vitally important website might go down if we don't have 17 people that we're paying to protect it, you know, and stuff like that.

All right, well, okay, whatever. Interesting, interesting stuff.

So I wonder what they're doing. What do those people do all day long? I mean, because,

I'm sorry, the amount of attacks they're getting aren't any more than any other website is. What are they doing all day long?

I suppose they're sitting around chatting about theology. So anyway, 877 -753 -3341, there's your millions of dollars going into the budget of Catholic Answers over there in San Diego.

Maybe eventually they'll get the idea that San Diego, while a beautiful place to live, is also about one of the most expensive places on the planet to live, and maybe they'll find another place where it wouldn't be nearly as expensive, you don't have to pay people as much, and it works a lot better that way.

So anyhow, 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number.

Let's talk with Ken. Hi, Ken. Hi, how's it going? Doing good. Excellent.

Hey, I just wanted to ask you briefly about the great apostasy concept in Mormonism. I've kind of studied the issue out,

I've read most of Talmud's The Great Apostasy, and it seems like the date is as fuzzy as can be.

And I talked to Mormons, and they'll give you anywhere between 70, where you still have living apostles, and 325.

And so I'm wondering, how can we better nail them on this concept that's just so blatantly wrong?

Well, yeah, that's just it. You don't have a specifically defined date as far as the

Mormons are concerned. And I think there's today a little more concern on their part.

Obviously, today's Mormons are significantly more knowledgeable about church history than the first few generations were.

And so because of things like BYU and stuff like that, they try to be a little less flagrant in their use of historical facts, though there's certainly lots of folks at BYU that absolutely massacre the early church fathers, as I documented long ago in my responses to Daniel C.

Peterson and Stephen Ricks and William Hamblin and things like that, which is why they won't debate those issues.

But anyway, I actually listened to a BYU fireside chat on MP3 about three or four months ago.

In fact, I think I played something on the air. And you got the same type of sometime after the apostles, and they connected, of course, to the rampant idea amongst their people that there was a corruption due to the insertion of Greek philosophy into the

Christian faith. And so once you've got, you know, and where do you really first start seeing that?

But Justin Martyr primarily. I mean, I've said many times that it seems to me that Justin Martyr was more influenced by Plato than he was by Paul.

And so they look at that and go, oh, there's where it is or something along those lines. And certainly it would have to be within one or two generations because the big issue for the

Mormons is the concept of priesthood. And one of the questions I've always had of the very early date, you know, as soon as the if it's if it's right after the apostles died, then what in the world were the apostles doing to where they could not pass the church on?

Why didn't they weren't they ordaining elders? Weren't they ordaining people in the priesthood?

Weren't they building temples? Weren't they doing the things they were supposed to do? If if if they completely failed to build the next generation of leaders, that doesn't reflect very well on on the apostles at all.

And so I guess you'd have to come up with some idea. Well, you know, they had prophesied that there would be this apostasy, so they didn't bother to do this.

You know, it's all very anachronistic at that point. And so trying to identify the specific time is important because they they want to try to use early church fathers to say many of these early church fathers did believe things that Mormons continue to believe today.

But they're really stuck on a on a the horns of a dilemma at this point, because if they say that the apostasy took place right after the apostles died, then basically anything that they would look at in the early church is reflective of apostates, people who no longer have priesthood authority to speak for God.

And so the best they can do then is saying, well, you know, these temple ritual type things that the

Gnostics had are just sort of a faint echo of what they once had in in in what we believe and so on and so forth, which

I'm sorry, is is not very, very convincing as far as argumentation is concerned.

So they Mormonism is still in flux in many ways.

I mean, let's let's face it. When Mormonism fled out of the middle section of the country and landed in Utah for quite some time, they were extremely insulated out there.

I mean, they were their own little nation and there was very little interaction up until the 1950s,

I'd say, with the outside world. They were very, very locked away.

But sometime in the late 50s, early 60s, it was decided that that couldn't stay that way.

And and the results for Mormonism have been quite interesting. Yeah, there was a period of unprecedented growth from the 70s into the early 90s, but that has slowed considerably.

And even though they're up to about 13 million, that's almost all natural growth now. And so Mormonism as a religion has sort of lost its way.

It's not really sure where it's going. It's uncertain of its identity. And as a result, its scholarship is is widening out in the sense of, you know, you used to know exactly where Mormons are coming from.

Well, not really anymore. And so how they deal with the early church and things like that is evolving and changing as well.

And so you can have this great general concept of, well, we have to believe there is an apostasy because we believe, even though Joseph Smith didn't originally claim this and it wasn't originally a part of the 1833

Book of Commandments, but it was inserted later in the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants, that you have this establishment of the priesthood and first John the

Baptist comes back and you've got the Aaronic priesthood and you have Matthew Mark or Peter James and John for the

Melchizedek priesthood and so on and so forth. And so the apostasy concept is very closely tied in with the priesthood concept and never, ever forget the fact that the

Mormon priesthood is just as much central to their understanding of authority and how their church exists as priesthood is in Roman Catholicism.

And so it's all tied together. And so the vagueness of the point of the apostasy is something that's rather intriguing to recognize in their teachings.

Yeah, I was at one of their seminaries one day and they were talking about how the Apostle John never died.

Yes, right. And was translated, but that he held the priesthood and was still on the earth that whole time.

And so I tried to press them on this issue of, you've got somebody who had the priesthood this entire time.

Why didn't he do something about it? Right. Well, it's not just John. It's not just John, because remember, according to the

Book of Mormon, there is actually four people who continue to hold the priesthood and never lost the priesthood because of the three

Nevites. And so there's actually four. I would assume the LDS, the standard

LDS response, that would probably be something along the lines of it was not God's intention in light of the uniqueness of these particular individuals, that they reestablished the church and the priesthood authority, that it was his intention to to do that through Joseph Smith.

I would assume that would be the response, something along the lines. That's not overly convincing to me either, but I figure that's probably where they would go.

But yeah, you're right. There is this concept of of the priesthood having continued in that in that context, but without these individuals ever passing that priesthood on to somebody else.

And how do we, I mean, it just seems like they've got this concept and they're using it to further their case of Christians were wrong.

You know, this is where they went wrong in the beginning. How do we really counter that with them or to them and to people around them?

Well, the texts that they use, again, especially with Mormonism and with almost any error, the best thing to do is to go directly into the text itself.

And the text, well, interestingly enough, the same issues that I raised with Harold Camping in regards to the nature of the church and the fact that God the

Father will be glorified in the church throughout all ages in Ephesians three are the texts that we go to.

And of course, if you go to the great apostasy texts, there is no reason to take those as being universal in the sense of every single person falls away and there's no longer any church and so on and so forth.

There's just too many indications of the fact that Christ is the one who builds his church. The gates of Hades will not prevail against that.

And by the way, that's not gates keeping Hades out of the church. That Matthew 16 text is clearly the gates of Hades to get the gates of death will be battered down by the church, not the other way around.

A lot of people misunderstand that as if as if the church is being defended against something. That's that's not what it is.

It's the advancement of the church that is promised there. But anyway, there are just so many texts you can go to and very rarely have the

Mormons done anything more than just, well, you know, there's this statement about restitution of all things in Acts three.

And you go to those texts and you exegete them and you demonstrate that they're reading things into them that have no no nothing in the background of the text, nothing that the the author would have ever thought of these things that they're making the author's contradictory themselves.

So it does require a positive presentation of the nature of the church.

And a lot of people, unfortunately, a lot of Protestants never even think about that. And that's why this is one area that just doesn't get discussed a whole lot in Christian Mormon dialogue.

But it is a, I think, a good direction to go. It and the priesthood together, you really undercut the authority claims of Salt Lake when you demonstrate what the

Bible really does teach on these particular issues. Yeah, I mean, in talking and all the missionaries that I've talked to about it, it seems to be such a weak point in something that they're just kind of like, oh, that's what they say.

So that's the way it's going to go. Well, yeah, well, that that is true. More and more, it's always been this way that you'll encounter

LDS missionaries who are just all they can do is give you the party line. They've never really given any particular critical thought to what they're teaching or saying themselves.

That's all they've ever known. And they're just repeating the party line. Now, there are missionaries that you'll encounter who have thought some of these things through.

I remember one afternoon at Rich's house. Remember this one, Rich? We had two missionaries came over and we were talking to them and I was sitting on the edge of my couch and this other guy is sitting on the edge of his couch.

And we're just going back and forth and back and forth. And all of a sudden there was a brief lull and we heard, and we looked over and the other missionary had fallen asleep on the other end of the couch.

He was so bored with our theological discussion that he was out cold and we bored him into unconsciousness.

So you have your missionaries that are quite interested and have actually done some reading.

But then most of them are just fulfilling their time. You know, they really are. They're just they're just trying to get through those two years so they can be a bishop and get the prettiest girls.

And that's all there is to it. I've been meeting with a couple of Mormons and they actually came to the church and watched the

John Dominic Crossan debate that you did. Yes. And they agreed to come back and watch your debate with Martin Tanner.

Ah, Martin Tanner. Well, they're not going to be overly excited about that. Brother Tanner was not overly, let's just put it this way,

Martin Tanner was significantly more aggressive when he controlled the microphone on the radio station than he was when he actually had to stop speaking at times, which is called that's what a debate is.

So it was it was interesting. There were many times during the cross examination. He just you can just tell he wanted to be any place other than where he was.

So there's also another debate with Dennis Potter, but Dennis Potter might scare them because even though he's an

LDS PhD in religious studies, he has an earring and a backpack that says no war in Iraq.

So he's a little bit of an interesting one. But it was that was an interesting debate as well. OK. All right.

Again, thank you for your time and we look forward to seeing you out here pretty soon. That's right. In September for the debate with Dan Barker.

Yes. Looking forward to it. Thank you, sir. Thank you. All right. God bless. Bye bye. Eight, seven, seven, seven, five, three, three, three, three, four, one.

I'll never forget that missionary. Maybe he just had a you know, it's tiring riding around Phoenix on a bicycle, you know,

I can understand that. He had just been totally silent the whole time.

He had put his head in his hand and then he was gone. And it was not like a light.

OK, let's talk with Bruce. Hi, Bruce. Hi, Dr. White. Yes, sir. The reason for this call is that I hope you can help me get a better understanding of something.

Which doctrine is more biblically sound, incarnational sonship or eternal sonship? Let me explain my position.

It's kind of brief. Well, kind of long, but I believe that God is a complex unit. God, I believe that Jesus is the son of God.

But I do not believe that he was the son from all eternity. Sounds like sounds like Harold Camping's position. Yeah.

It's like I believe the incarnational sonship. Please explain how the word of God could be the son from all eternity past.

Nowhere from what I've seen in the Old Testament is a God referred to as the God, the father. And I'm not trying to take a defender one standpoint either.

But there is a scripture. So you're not a Trinitarian then? Yeah, I am a Trinitarian. Oh, you are a Trinitarian. So you believe that the second the second person is

Trinity has eternally existed? Yes, but not as the son, but as the word of God.

I don't believe that. But as the word of God? Yes. I see. OK. And the spirit and the spirit has eternally existed as well?

Yes. OK. Proverbs 34 makes me think a little bit, if I'm not mistaken, towards the eternal sonship.

But all scripture, you know, is in harmony for what I've seen. It must be looked at as a whole.

With that said, I won't play upon that one verse to prove to say it proves or disproves eternal sonship. There are many verses, references to the triune nature of God in the

Old Testament. But within those texts, I never see God as being referred to as the father or the son.

But the Holy Spirit is referenced in both Old and New Testaments. God is referenced to as a father in the

Old Testament, though, only in relation to creation. My point, doesn't the word son imply beginning a father, a mother, conception?

Now, with respect to the angels. Yeah, that's exactly what the Muslims say. That's correct. Yeah. Now, it was in doesn't the word and son imply father?

No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't. No, sir. Doesn't. Now, like I said, that's what the

Muslims say. And the Mormons and various other heretical groups. But I don't think you want to be using their argumentation and ignoring how

Christians have understood this down to the centuries and also how the Bible presents it. Can I just ask really quickly, did you get this from Harold Camping?

Really? No, I'm new to, you know, just studying about this, though. But do you listen to Harold Camping?

No, I haven't really read or heard anything about, you know, I've seen a lot of your debates on YouTube, though.

Yeah, but that doesn't have anything to do with Harold Camping. So, you know, you don't know Harold Camping. All right.

Well, the fact of the matter is the reason that we believe that the relationship between the father and the son is not one that simply began at the incarnation is due to the fact that the relationships between the divine persons are revealed to us in the incarnation and the outpouring of the spirit.

It's not an Old Testament revelation. While the Old Testament gives to us indications of these things, the actual revelation of the doctrine of the

Trinity takes place between the Old and New Testament in the coming of Jesus Christ and the outpouring of the

Holy Spirit, both of which these events take place before any word of the New Testament was ever written.

And so you have that revelation taking place. And when we listen to what the

Lord Jesus himself says concerning his relationship to the father, he talks about this being a relationship that was eternal.

That is that in John chapter 17, where the son is praying to the father, the incarnate son is praying to the non -incarnate father.

He talks about the glory which he had in the father's presence before the world began.

And he asks for that glory to be given back to him, that he might have it once again.

And so this one speaking clearly knows and recognizes that he existed as a divine person prior to his incarnation and that there was an intimate relationship that existed between the father and the son.

The same thing is true in John 1 .1, when this Logos, this word, the one that reveals the father, is described as having an eternal relationship with the father and that he is the one who reveals the father.

John 1 .18, no one has seen God at any time. The monogamous Theos, the unique God or the only

God who is the son, he has revealed him. And so that revelation comes to us from the incarnation.

So in time, we see the distinction of father and son in the incarnation, but the error is to think that because we see it in time is that that's when it began.

That's where the problem is. When Paul talks about the pre -incarnate

Christ, he talks about the kingdom of his beloved son in Colossians 1 .13,

and then goes on to talk about how it is the son who created all things, calling him the firstborn of all creation, for by him were all things created, etc.,

etc. Obviously, that was long before the incarnation. And yet he is referred to in the same kind of relationship language that you have with the father.

And so when you say, doesn't that refer to a creation or a time or something like that, that ignores the relationship of the father and son, which has been eternal.

That's taking the creative element of those things. Since I have a son and I exist in time and I'm limited, then my son must come after me and my son must have a point, an origin point of time.

To use that argument means you should never use either father or son, because it would go both directions.

I became a father at a point in time as well, and yet God is clearly called father. Did he become father at the incarnation?

No. You're right to point out, by the way, that generally the term father is used of God as creator in the

Old Testament. It is used once of the son as the creator of time in Isaiah chapter nine.

When he is called Aviad, the father of eternity, I think that's connected with Colossians chapter one.

But when you talk about the relationship of father and son and the one who has been sent forth by God, the father,

Christians have always understood this to be an eternal relationship, not one that is limited by time.

And so it's talking about the relationship of father and son, not some kind of positional situation where one gives rise to the other one in time itself or something like that.

It's difficult for us to get outside of the concept of time, because for us, everything is a linear progression.

Our entire language is based upon past, present and future. Every verb we use is based upon those types of things.

And so for us, the grave danger is always to take creaturely categories and to read them back in the divine essence and as in doing so apply creaturely limitations to God.

That is, there's nothing we can do about that because God has chosen to reveal himself to us in human language, and therefore we have to deal with those issues.

And there are going to be people who are going to go off on one direction and go off on another direction. But when

Christians have talked about the relationship of father, son and spirit, especially once the full deity of Christ was being defended and understood from scripture, then the question became, well, if he's truly

God, could he have ever been anything less than truly God? Did he truly participate in the divine nature?

And before creation, was there any distinction between the father, son, the spirit?

In other words, was there anything by which we could identify the divine persons before the creation itself began?

And it seems that the relationship of father, son and spirit, the relationship of son to the father, the father and the son together sending the spirit, the spirit coming forth in what is it,

John 14, when Jesus describes this, that these are things that the individual persons do that distinguish themselves from one another.

Otherwise, you'd basically be left with the idea that, well, once these undifferentiated persons decide to create, they decide to,

I don't know, take on a name so that we might be able to distinguish them or something like that.

And I think that there's a real problem in thinking that the actual distinctions between father, son and spirit are actually just things that we can't come up with in reference to creation itself.

That would cause, I think, some real problems to say that, well, these aren't really eternal relationships that we're describing here.

These are just so that you can differentiate between us. We'll call him Bob and we'll call him

Bill. We'll call him Tom. I think there's a much more intimate relationship that is represented by the terms father and spirit.

And when we take it outside the realm of time, then that idea that, like I said, every time

I speak with Muslims, this is something I have to explain to them, too. Of course, their problem is the

Qur 'an presents the idea that Jesus is actually the offspring of Allah and Mary, which has very physical elements to it.

But I try to say, look, we don't believe that there is ever a time when the son was not the son.

We don't believe that he became something. Now, is he shown to be the son of God in the incarnation? In the same way he's shown to be the son of God in the resurrection?

I mean, there were some in church history, there have been people who say it said that Jesus became the son of God, the baptism, adoptionists.

There are some who said that the incarnation demonstrated. There are some who said that the resurrection said. The reality is all three gave evidence of the reality that existed in the incarnation itself.

But we must recognize in Philippians chapter 2, when Jesus, as we know him with his human name, did not give consideration to holding on to desperately the equality he had with the father, but he humiliated himself.

He made himself of no reputation by taking on the form of a servant. This is a divine person before the incarnation, doing what he does, choosing to do these actions as a divine person.

And the result of his so choosing certainly helps us to see these relationships and his teaching then expands upon these things.

But I really believe that we have to emphasize strongly that father and son is telling us something more than just, well, the same thing that Bob or Tom would have told us.

There's something more of the relationship that is being revealed in that. So I'm not ready to, you know, there have been some people who have very stridently argued for the idea of incarnational sonship without denying the

Trinity, without saying the second person of the Trinity, you know, came into existence in your incarnation, oneness, all the rest of that stuff.

And it's not like you're trying to avoid that. I'm not ready to kick those people out of the kingdom or something like that.

But I think it's a sub -biblical position to hold because it's going to end up causing far more questions than it actually answers.

And you end up going, well, why then is the son described the way the son?

Why does Paul in Colossians 1 have the willingness to use the language that he uses there?

And some might say, well, you know, he's writing after the incarnation. So, you know, we can just sort of toss all that stuff up in the air.

I just, I think it ends up really emptying the meaning of father and son.

I came forth from him, Jesus says. I think in John especially, if you were to ask

John, is the term son merely incarnational?

Is this merely something that 50 years before the incarnation would not have been a proper way of seeing the relationship of the first person of the

Trinity and the second person of the Trinity? He would have lectured for quite some time on why that wasn't the case.

Because he has such a rich fullness in his discussion of the relationship of the father and the son.

So I went way, way, way, way, way past my break time there. But hopefully that was helpful to you,

Bruce. Thank you very much. Thank you, Bruce. Have a good day. You still want to try to not keep going?

Oh, thanks. Fine. I talked the whole time. And you guys just sitting there, you know, it's easy for you to say.

We don't, you've got your diet Pepsi. You're ready to go. Fine.

We'll just press on here as slave drivers in the other room, I tell you. 877 -753 -3341.

Let's go back to the East Coast. And let's talk with George. Hi, George. Hi, how are you doing,

Dr. White? Doing good. Yeah, I had a question in reference to Romans 518.

I'm a Calvinist. And I've been talking about this to a friend of mine. And it seems like he's pretty much convinced.

And then we were on YouTube. And we were watching some Arminian YouTube clip.

And they were saying that this verse, you know, this one verse destroys

Calvinism. Romans 518, where it says, so then as though one transgression, no,

I'm sorry. So then as through one transgression, there resulted condemnation to all men.

Even so, through one act of righteousness, there resulted justification of life to all men.

Yeah, well, obviously, if these individuals in YouTube video are good universalists, then they might have a case.

Because if they're taking it to mean they're ignoring the two humanities, the one in Adam and the one in Christ, then if they're saying that this all men in 518 is every single individual, then the only way to understand this consistently, since the first part of the verse is applied to all men, because all men die, then the second half has to be as well, and you have universalism.

But actually, Romans chapter 5 is very frequently misunderstood by lots of folks.

And if you just go back to where it starts in verse 12, therefore, just as sin came to the world through one man and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all sinned.

Well, who is the one man? We're talking about Adam here. And what do you get if you're an Adam? You can only get from Adam what

Adam can give to you. And that is death. Sin came into the world through one man. For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given.

But sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was the type of the one who was to come.

So without spending a whole lot of time on it, the idea is that sin is universal.

And it came into the world through Adam. And even before the law came, sin's effect was still seen in the fact that people continue to die from Adam until Moses.

Moses brings the law. The law reveals our sin to us. But this sin issue is related to our relationship with Adam.

And so we have this transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one who was to come.

Verse 15. But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by that grace of that one man,

Jesus Christ, abounded for many. And so the only way to understand Romans 5 and to understand it consistently with Paul's theology and his argument in Romans, is to recognize that he is positing for us here two humanities.

We have the humanity that is in Adam. And if you're in Adam, what you receive from Adam is death.

But then there is this other one. This other one who has come. And it says the free gift is not like the trespass.

There is a distinction. There's similarity. Because both are the heads of their own humanity.

Their own followers, shall we say. But the free gift is not like the trespass.

For if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man,

Jesus Christ, abounded for many. And so you have those in Adam. They die as a result of their relationship with Adam.

But those who are in Christ, what do they receive? Well, they receive the grace of God and the free gift by that grace.

The one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for many. And the free gift, verse 16, is not like the result of that one man's sin.

For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification.

So again, if you don't make a distinction, the only way to make Romans 5 work is to become a universalist.

Because if we're all talking about just one mass of humanity, so that the judgment brings condemnation, and everyone's in Adam, so that's true.

But then everyone's in Christ, so the free gift following many trespasses brought justification, then everybody's justified.

That's the only way to be consistent. If you're not going to see that Paul is thinking of two groups here.

Now, everyone in the one group who are in Christ were also in Adam.

But not everyone who's in Adam is also in Christ. Because by the time you get to Romans chapter 5, what has already been discussed?

Well, you've already had Romans 3 and 4. And what is Romans 3 and 4 told us? It's told us that if you're in Christ, it's because of faith.

It's because of grace. It's already talked about all of that stuff. And so he doesn't have to repeat all of that.

He's already talked about having been justified by grace through faith. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

And all those things have already been very clearly spelled out. And normally people jump into this text and they ignore that.

They ignore what's come before. So they can create new paradigms and new issues and use it as a bully pulpit and stuff like that.

It's not exegesis, it's eisegesis. And that's what Arminianism is all about anyway. So what's being said here is you have these two humanities.

And those who are in Adam and are only in Adam receive from him all that they can, and that is condemnation.

But those who are in Christ receive the free gift following many trespasses has brought justification.

For if because of one man's trespass, verse 17, death reigned through that one man for his humanity, much more will those who receive, and that's not everybody, it's those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man

Jesus Christ. So clearly there's two groups here. And that then, once you get to verse 18, demonstrates the misapplication of the individual in U2.

Therefore as by the offense of one judgment came upon all men to... I'm sorry, what?

I skipped down to King James there. In conclusion, just as through one transgression condemnation came upon all, so through one righteous act acquittal of life came to all.

All who? All those in Adam, all those in Christ. And so if you don't have the two, if you don't see the distinction, then

Paul is making a mishmash of everything he says before and after. As long as you see the distinction, he's consistent with himself.

And my point has always been that if you're going to interpret someone in such a way as to make them contradict themselves, you're probably the one with the interpretational problem, not the original writer.

And so Romans 5 .18 has been well known to Reformed writers all along.

And if they just took the time to maybe read some meaningful commentaries and do some research, but let's face it, the vast majority of folks posting on YouTube these days are demonstrating that, once again, anything in the

Internet can be used to aggregate the sum total of the ignorance of the populace on any particular subject and put it on the

Internet. So, you know, that's what you have. So all that are in Christ, yeah. I guess the same could be used in, they say that Christ suffered for all men in Hebrews.

I think it's kind of like the same thing. Well, actually there is a, if you're watching

YouTube videos, I posted just yesterday, reposted my sermon on Hebrews 2 .8

and 9 from the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. And Hebrews 2 is a tremendous text.

But if you simply read from 2 .8 to the end of the chapter, there is no way that you can miss the reality of the fact that to read into every man of verse 9, a modern

Western individual universalism is not the way that people back then thought, and it is not the argument that is being made.

So in each one of these instances, you know, sometimes people are looking for a magic bullet that very simply, quickly, and easily refutes the

Arminian. I don't think that magic bullets exist. I think that what we do is if you can find someone who's honest about the

Word of God, then you sit down and you work through the text following sound rules of exegesis.

And I have seen that the people that I have seen who have embraced the Reformed faith and remain firm in it, and they're not the ones always having to run to somebody else and, well, what about this?

Well, what about that? Are the people who, in their introduction to the Reformed faith, were taught how to do meaningful exegesis.

And when you do meaningful exegesis, then you are able to walk through these texts, and you're only more convinced by your regular study of the

Word of God, of the consistency of the testimony of Scripture on these matters. Thank you, Dr. Wynne. I just wanted to say that I read your book,

The Pot is Freedom, and I thought it was absolutely awesome. It really grounded me in Reformed theology.

It was a really fantastic work, and I appreciate it. Thanks a lot. I appreciate your calling. Thanks a lot,

George. Take care. All right. God bless. Bye -bye. 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number, and I think it is, you know, both questions, very, very good questions, and very, very good callers.

Seemed to be a willingness. I was a little concerned with our first caller. I had a feeling there was some, you know, we haven't had a whole lot of, oh, by the way, that reminds me.

Oh, I have heard, Chris Arnzen has heard that Family Radio will air the debate on the

Family Radio network. Now, I have a feeling that will probably happen while I'm in Australia, and so I would love if some folks would be willing to watch the website.

Who knows if they'll even announce it, but it would be very useful if somebody out there could take the time to record the debate as it's aired for one simple reason, and get mad at me for doing this if you want.

I just want to make sure it's all there, okay? I just want to make sure that it all appears.

Yeah, 2 a .m., yeah, well, hey, but 2 a .m. here is middle of the day someplace else, you know?

We can't be Americans when it comes to that. He's got listeners everywhere, so if someone could possibly keep an eye out on that, maybe let us know if they hear something.

I'm not asking people necessarily to listen to Family Radio, but there are some folks out there that already do monitor it, and if you hear anything about that,

I would very much like to know when it is so that we can make sure that it gets recorded, because I think that would be very useful, very, very important.

So anyway, I want to make sure to get that mentioned as well. But those are excellent questions, and in each one, you know, on each subject, if someone wants to continue to argue, and they don't want to, they're not just looking for a solid answer, then they'll continue to argue.

And one thing that I've mentioned this many times before, but I'll mention it now because of the nature of the program today, don't feel like the effort you put into teaching the

Word of God or answering questions about God's truth, don't think that that effort is dependent upon some surface -level results -oriented examination.

There are people out there, more and more people showing up on YouTube, and the only reason they're there is to snipe at me, and to attack me, and to say

I'm a terrible, horrible, nasty person, and I'm wrong about this, and I'm wrong about that. And once in a while, we take the time, if it's educational, to go through some of the things they say, demonstrate their error, do so consistently, do so factually.

But some folks have the feeling that, well, we should just be able to just blow anything away very simply, just there should be a magic bullet, there should be a quick fix to any particular text.

Look, the reality is, if I'm going to respond to Hebrews 2 .9, sure, I can say something quickly.

Anybody can say anything about any text quickly. I mean, I was thinking about that Cervetus, the evangelical guy, and his tract, and it's just all very surface -level.

Anybody can say something very briefly, and I can give a very brief response, but it just seems to me that in our society anymore, that's all we do.

Theological discussion has become soundbites, and God's truth cannot be reduced to soundbites.

You know, it's sort of like Twitter. You know, it's next to impossible to say anything meaningful in 140 characters.

I didn't know that Twitter was designed for anything meaningful. Well, that's just it.

And yeah, it might be an exercise in succinctness to try to put out those 139 -character insightful statements, but the fact is,

I can't address Hebrews 2 .9 in a meaningful way on Twitter, and it sort of does reflect the attitude of many people today.

Give me something shallow and stickly sweet, and I will be happy with that.

But don't make me sit for any lengthy period of time and really have to exercise my brain.

And that's scary, because it's at this very period of time where you have so many shallow attacks upon Christianity from every which direction that we as believers need to be ever deeper in our faith with more understanding, not less, not a surface -level type situation.

And so I did appreciate the calls, and it is interesting to note, and I understand why this is.

People are busy today. But I post a 30 - or 40 -minute sermon, and I get 200 or 300 views.

I post a five -minute video, and I get 3 ,000. That's just the way it is.

I'll listen to something for five minutes. Well, okay, great. Hopefully the five minutes will be helpful. But I can't do in five minutes what

I can do in 30, 35 minutes, 40 minutes in a sermon. And that's why

I really hope, if I've not said this in a while, I really hope that no one listening to this uses the dividing line or anything else that we do as a substitute for the regular, consistent exposure to the proclamation of the

Word of God in the gathered people of God. That means going to church. This is never meant to be a replacement.

It's not even an aid in that sense. We have a specific field in which we labor.

There are questions you can call up here, and I'll say, I don't know. But this is not meant to be a replacement for the constant exposure to the

Word of God, that part of Christian discipline of being in the people of God, praising

God, praying together, seeing together, and then worshiping God by coming with an obedient heart and desiring to hear his truth at the regularly stated meetings of the people of God.

Now, there may be some of you out there, I'm so thankful, you know, I've heard of folks in Afghanistan, troops in Afghanistan, where this program on the iPod was something that helped to get them through.

Great. That's not talking about you. But I am saying that if you have that opportunity to be in the church, and don't give me the, yeah, but they're just a bunch of hypocrites.

Well, so are you. And church is filled with people that aren't perfected yet.

That's one of the ways you get changed and you get sanctified. But the reality is that if you have that opportunity, don't you dare be using this as an excuse.

Well, I'll listen to the vying line. This isn't a sermon. I may break into some sermons once in a while, and you may learn some things about the word of God.

But I truly believe that the means by which we show worship to God and the gathered by the church is when we come with obedient hearts and we want to hear from God.

And he meets with us in his word, by his spirit and instructs us and gives us a heart of wisdom as a result.

So if I haven't said that for a while, I wanted to say that now, because this is not meant to be a replacement at our church.

On the old tapes we had, and I imagine it's on the CDs now, recorded sermons are not meant to be a replacement for regular attendance in Sunday services and so on and so forth.

Because I know a lot of people that do that. Because their sanctification is such that they don't like other people.

And it's real easy to say, I love the brethren from your easy chair. It's a little bit different in reality.

So anyway, thanks for the phone calls today. We will be back on Thursday. But then after that,

I don't know what's going to happen. And I really sort of doubt anything will. Internet's expensive from Australia.

And the time zones are all messed up. So I really don't know.

Maybe we'll be able to work something out. Hard to say. But do pray for us. Support the trip to Australia.

Lord willing to the UK early next year as well. We'll see you on Thursday here on The Dividing Line.

God bless. The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.

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