April 26, 2005

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

Our host is Dr. James White, Director of Alpha and Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341.

And now with today's topic, here is James White.

Debate Format, Cross-Examination, and the Hope For Long Island Controversy

And welcome to The Dividing Line on the 26th of April. I'm not sure where April went. I have an entire book review due tomorrow to a well-known journal, and I'm not done with the book yet. I had to proofread an article for that journal by yesterday.

I got done about 11 o 'clock at night. And as I look at the calendar here, I see that I leave for Italy in exactly two weeks from today. And when I come back, I only have exactly one week back before I head back east, and that will give me exactly two weeks and a day prior to the Hope For debate on Long Island.

I say Hope For because, well, I'll just be straight up front here. My Roman Catholic opponent is asking for more time to make a presentation in the debate than has ever been given to any Roman Catholic opponent in any debate I've ever done, with the possible exception of the two-part debate, seven and a half hours to Gerry Matiticks, but that was two parts, that was two nights.

As far as a single debate, I think he's asking for more time than anyone has ever been given on a subject that doesn't take that long to explain anyways, and has basically said if we don't agree, he's not going to do it.

And this is what, how many weeks before the debate? The flyers have already been printed, and just very disappointing that anyone would do this. And so I haven't heard back from him since I wrote back.

What they don't want is the cross-examination period. They want to cut back the cross-examination period. And most people realize that's where the debate takes place, and I think, to be perfectly honest with you, I think the Roman Catholics, especially Roman Catholic apologists out there, know that's where the debate takes place.

They know that that is the heart and soul, and that it's fairly easy to, in essence, give speeches, competing speeches. It's something very, very different to engage in cross-examination and answering questions, because that's where the consistency or inconsistency of the position can be analyzed and demonstrated.

And it's not that they're saying there shouldn't be any. They just don't think there should be as much as there is, and that that should all be turned into just presentation time. In fact, at one point, the request was for a 20-minute closing statement.

And if any of you have listened to debates, can you imagine a 20-minute closing statement? I've never heard of any such thing, personally. That's just if you haven't made your point I mean, a closing statement, a debate, is just simply to summarize what you've already presented, right?

Why would you need 20 minutes when you had a 25-minute opening statement? That's 45 minutes just in and of itself of presentation. No one's coming to a debate for that. It just leaves me absolutely boggled that this is going on and that it's happening this close to the debate where and I'm just throwing it out on the table here.

My opponent hasn't invested a dime in this debate. The people who support the debates back on Long Island have invested thousands of dollars in this debate already. So to say, I'm going to pick up my barbels and go home, this is an individual who six times wrote to the people back on Long Island asking to be involved.

That means they've got to have known what the format of the debate was. This is the format we used last year. This is the format that we used with Mitchell Pacwa. Father Mitchell Pacwa didn't need to have a 20-minute closing statement.

He didn't need to cut back the cross-examination, et cetera, et cetera, did he? And so to know what the format was very clearly, you don't send six emails asking to be a part of such and such a debate series if you don't know what the debate series is about.

And then to wait until like six weeks before the debate and say, well, you know what? If you don't change the format to fit what I want it to be, I'm not going to show up. Knowing that it's next to impossible to try to arrange any meaningful opponent in that period of time, obviously.

And so it's very disappointing that that's going on. I am hoping that the compromise, I don't think we were under any moral obligation to compromise. But at the same time, I don't want to see people out literally thousands of dollars for something to where nothing's going to happen or we just have a presentation and, you know, what do you do?

We've already put money down on the room and printing and so on and so forth. It's really just I just can't imagine behaving this way. But that's, you know, oh, yeah, no question. Someone just said, yeah, that's going to reflect on any future participation of this fellow.

Yeah, there's no no question about it. So definitely not on Long Island. No, no two ways about it. So but then again, it's getting next to impossible. The Roman Catholics are starting to become like the Mormons of BYU.

You can't find folks to debate anymore. You know, they'll debate other folks. You know, Jerry Matatixel. Either they've become so way out in non island that it's not worth debating because they don't represent Orthodox Roman Catholicism anymore.

There are certain people out there or if they still are a part of the center group. It's almost like they've, you know, rallied the rag to the wagons and have decided to get all together and make these types of demands and, you know, all that kind of stuff.

So anyway, we'll see what happens. I don't know what what's going to happen because I'm not I have offered to cut the cross examination down by a third, a complete third. And that's it. Not going to do anymore.

And if if my opponent, Bill Rutland, says, nope, not going to do that, then we're going to say, nice talking to you and see what see what we can work out. You know, that's the best that we can do. And but that's the situation.

Of course, we can document all that. So anyways, it's sad. I guess we're going to have to start doing, you know, we didn't have to do this in the past. It was sort of a gentleman's thing. But we're going to start doing is not only do we have to do contracts now as far as videotaping.

We've had to do that ever since the Barry Lynn situation. But we're going to have to start contracts for these debates, too. So if people are going to be investing money in putting these debates together and they are expensive, I mean, you've got to rent rooms.

And if you're going to be doing printing and radio advertising, it takes a lot of money. And we're going to have to before someone says I'm going to be involved or we before we put somebody's name out there on that on that flyer, they're going to sign something.

It says this is the format. I agree to the format, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, and I guess you just have to do it that way. You can't do it any other way. It's sad, but that's that's how it's how it's done.

Eight, seven, seven, seven, five, three, three, three, four, one. The blogosphere remains an odd, odd place. I was I was noticing over there's this one blog site, a couple of blog sites that are related to one another where I guess my name is not allowed.

So I am the name deleted person. And so on this unnamed area of of the Internet, you have somebody who if you say that they're they're not they're not Calvinistic and they they don't think like Calvinist and they're they're compromising Calvinistic beliefs and they don't apply Calvinism consistently.

They just get all emotional and, oh, you're attacking me. And they shut their blogs down, stuff like that. And then like a week later, they post stuff about how they're not a Calvinist. It's I, I, I look at this stuff and I just I just.

I read it and I just go, man, what? That basically on this this particular money and channel just said, love that picture of your last debate. Reminds me of the pictures of Jimmy Carter when Billy Carter was around.

Yep, that's that's sort of that's what I was thinking. That's good.

Very good.

I like that. Anyway, what was I saying? I don't remember what I was saying.

That's funny.

Oh, goodness. That's good. Anyhow, I guess. These folks are operating the idea that they can say anything they want. And if you respond, then then you're hateful and they're going to. It's almost like if you talk about me, I'm going to stab myself and I'm going to blame you.

And we got it to believe me that this guy's followers sent us some of the nastiest emails I've ever seen. It's just unbelievable. So you just you just wonder what to do. You just I guess I should just probably take that stuff off of my RSS feed so that I just don't even see it because it's just too weird all the way around.

And then I got an email. I got an email from my brother in my my English brother in London, and he's gonna be calling me today. He said called eleven thirty my time right after my wife did, which is, of course, in the middle of the program here.

Slight reference to the fact that that my dear wife does not keep the schedule of the dividing line. First and foremost, in her thoughts on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which I think is just is wonderful and lovely and so on and so forth.

Anyway, it's seven, seven, seven, five, three, three, four. I was saying the blogosphere is just as odd as can be. Did you see the Salazar thing and the molar thing and this Justice Sunday thing? I didn't see it because I go to church on Sundays.

I I'm not sure why anyone did this on the Lord's Day. You know, that that sort of made me go. Maybe that's the only time that they can get anybody to go to church or something. I don't know, but couldn't have been done on a Monday.

Oh, well, 24 is on a Monday, so you can't do it. Then couldn't have been done on a Tuesday. Something I don't know. That was sort of, I don't know, odd and strange. And and I'm not sure that I I like that.

But anyway, the Salazar thing was amazing. Did you see that? Did you read the Democratic senator from from Colorado first term? And he was writing to James Dobson. And, of course, Dobson, you know, he's out there.

You know, once you start using the terms brothers and sisters of people who hold to a different gospel than you do, your position is compromised. What can you say? It's it's pretty much over with. And looking for consistency after that's sort of silly.

And so someone went back to 2000. I had 2002 on the brain last night when I wrote something. I've fixed that. But they went back to 2000. They found some statements on Larry King from Al Mohler saying what Protestants have said since the Reformation.

I mean, wow. He said something like Martin Luther. He said something like John Calvin. Wow. What an amazing thing. And what he said was that Rome is a false church, the false gospel, and the pope possesses an unbiblical office.

Well, hello. There's a completely shocking thing for a Protestant to say. Isn't it amazing that Fox News and all, you know, for the past who knows how long all we've heard is is is pope news, you know, and when John Paul's dying and John Paul has died, you know, everything's about 2000 year old traditions.

Well, there aren't a 2000 year old traditions about the papacy. I'm sorry. That's just not true. You can't. You know, let's we've debated this issue more than once. Go listen to the debate with Mitch Packard.

Go listen to the seven and a half hour debate with Jerry Maddix. Listen to these debates we've done. Find out for yourself. I mean, we put him out there. Listen to listen to the facts. It's just this this constant repetition.

That's fine. You can claim that that he sits in the chair of Peter and all the rest of stuff. But if you dare say, um, no, it's not 2000 years old. Rome is not the true church. Wrong gospel. And the pope is not the vicar of Christ on Earth.

That's the Holy Spirit of God, by the way, and not the Holy Father. That's the father, by the way, is not all these things is not the bishop of bishops is not the pontifix Maximus. That was the chief pagan priest of the Roman religions was used as an insult by Tertullian.

And it was would have been considered a grossly terrible thing to call somebody that for the first number of hundreds years, the Christian Christian church, all that stuff. Then you are you need to be repudiated, according to a member of the United States Senate.

And you need to distance yourself from such a person who would hold those viewpoints. How utterly amazing, but shouldn't really shock us too much, because Salazar then went on to point out that one of his senator friends is a Mormon who is also a member of the body of Christ, which I don't think I don't think the Roman Catholics believe that.

So I don't either. And I'm not sure. Just amazing. As long as as long as somebody says Jesus, they're part of the body. These are the folks who make our laws. Remember, the founding fathers of this this nation, the religious ones, the Christian ones would have held the same viewpoints that Al Mohler does.

And I can guarantee you that can be documented quite easily. There were a number of strong Presbyterians involved in the drafting the Constitution. And if you haven't read the Westminster Confession of Faith lately, it's not exactly friendly toward the politically correct position.

So these are the folks who make laws. And I've said many times before, Earth to Christian church. Once you start once we we abandoned the rule of law with the idea of hate crimes, that somehow you can discern the intention.

It's it's not just breaking the law. The law is no longer breaking. That's no longer worthy of punishment. Now it's the attitude that you had when doing it. Once we went over that that hill and, you know, that hill is already past us.

That's that's over with. There's people sitting in jail this day who have been convicted of and their convictions are based upon these hate crimes laws. Once we went there, this door was was kicked wide open.

What door? The application of hate crimes. We see this in the European Union. We're seeing this in England. We're seeing this in Australia, in Canada. Once you have a judiciary that is made up of fundamentalist secularists, and that's what they are.

They are as as as close minded in their secularism, in their humanism as the worst quote unquote fundamentalist you can think of. And I'm using that in the negative term, not the historical way, but the negative way it's understood today of a fundamentalist Christian.

The guy that, you know, wouldn't know wouldn't know where to find Jeremiah and his Bible of his life depended on it, but he's quick to condemn everybody else. The worst fundamentalist Christian you can find, these secularists are just as much that kind of fundamentalist except in humanism.

They now are on the judiciary benches. They now are ensconced there. And if you dare question them, you're getting ready to overthrow the government or something. And they now get to talk about hate crimes and they get to identify things as hate crimes.

And what might they identify as a hate crime? Maybe the very thing that Senator Salazar says we should repudiate, which is historic Protestant theology.

Hmm.

Amazing thing to consider, isn't it? Yep, sure is. 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number that a number of people called. I guess I'm not going to have to be searching for any sound files today. After the program or maybe even during the break.

It sort of depends. I might not want to do it during the break. Well, I could do it during the break. It's not going to take up much more bandwidth. I've got something to post on my blog that you've got to see.

It's funny. It's funny. Okay, I'm trying to keep everything on my screen here open.

Oh.

I hate when things oh, okay, there it is. But we've got so many folks online. I've got to make my screen much larger here just to keep up with everybody. All righty, so let's get started on the phone calls.

The Nature of Pseudo-Evangelicalism and the Gospel

Let's talk with Alan in Norman, Oklahoma. Hi, Alan.

Hey, Dr. White. How are you doing?

Doing good.

Hey, long-time caller, first-time listener. I was at the debate with Dr. Wilkin on Friday night in Oklahoma City.

Can you prove that? What color shirt was I wearing?

It was some god-awful yellow color, something like that. Is that right?

Oh, I'm sorry, Alan. We seem to have lost you. Thank you.

No, I'm kidding. You were stunning in it, really.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. Out of the abundance of the heart.

It looked almost as good as that shack that was at the end of his first presentation.

Okay, all right. I'm trying to regain composure here. We should be professional.

I'm sorry.

You were certainly there, yes. You were there. And who was taking pictures of the crowd, by the way?

Your opponent, wasn't he?

Yes.

I was right in his line of fire.

Did he ask you to sign a release to use your face in his promotional stuff?

No, he didn't do that, but he didn't even want to talk to us very much.

Oh, okay, all right.

Actually, I wanted to talk to you about what he said. Interestingly, the thing that I was noticing towards the end of his presentation, he used a phrase, something like, he wasn't sure if he was saved under your system, and he called you a veritable apostate.

Yeah.

And then at the end of that, my friend Kyle and I went up there to talk to him, and my question was, to him, what do you consider Christian enough to not go around calling people apostates? I thought we were all working more or less together.

I understand that you have differences, and a lot of them kind of hinge around the gospel, but still I would consider both of you more or less Christian ministers. So I guess I wanted your comments on that, and also kind of what constitutes unity within the body of Christ, within the true body of Christ, according to the true gospel.

Does that make sense? We have all these conflicts with Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox and Mormons for the purity of the faith. What do we do between each other who call each other evangelicals?

Yeah.

Well, I've been using a particular term recently in the blog referring to pseudo-evangelicals. Anyone who is willing to throw the gospel under the bus for the sake of ecumenical unity, I would call a pseudo-evangelical.

And unfortunately, I think these situations are highlighting the fact that when you start compromising on particular elements of the gospel, and it's always trying to find the balance, the balance between being so particular that you demand agreement on every single element all the way down to the particulars of your eschatology.

You've seen people like that. I've seen people that debate between mid-tribbers and pre-tribbers where they were anathematizing each other and saying that they were denying the gospel and stuff like that, and you just sit there going, whoa, that's pretty weird, all the way to the other side where today you have vast panoramas of allegedly evangelical people who haven't any longer any confidence that we actually can know what the gospel says regarding anything at all.

So there's got to be a middle ground someplace, and trying to find it and be biblical in it is the trick. I was very interested in what he had to say because I hadn't raised the issue myself. I had expected it to come up at some point, and actually it was only a few days before the debate that I actually looked at the outline enough to realize there was no cross-examination, so I wasn't sure if it would be audience questions or exactly what it would be.

I can hardly believe that I was at a James Clyde debate without cross-examination.

I'll accept the blame for that one because I had been sent the outline, but I've just been so busy I simply did not have time to look at it until it was too late to do anything about it. So we had a lot of problems getting Dr. Wilkin on board as far as any type of arrangement at all, so I just sort of put it aside and let the people who were arranging it worry about it, and I figured I'll just go with what they get, but it never crossed my mind that it wouldn't include cross-examination, so I found that very disappointing.

But anyway, he brought it up, and my recollection of his statements, and the tapes will get here Thursday, I believe, my recollection of his statement was, in essence, if I'm right, if James White is right, then Bob Wilkin is preaching a false gospel.

And if he's right, at least I have a chance that, I think the terminology he used was, in my pendulum swing into this works righteousness he accuses me of teaching, that I may have, at one point, believed the truth.

I may have believed what he believes, and therefore I would have eternal life, even though I'm now preaching a false gospel. So preachers of false gospels can be saved, Mormons can be saved, Buddhists can be saved, all these people can be saved by Christ without ever actually really knowing him or speaking the truth about him or anything like that, except for just one moment in their existence.

Well, praise God. Yeah, wonderful. And all the stuff that he was saying about me, not compromising imputation, and all the rest of the stuff.

Boy, he really missed that bad.

Oh man, talk about falling flat on your face. But the fact of the matter is, did he ever cite, I've been asking the people that were there, since I don't have the tapes yet, you were there, you saw his presentation, did he ever cite one of my published books?

No.

I never heard it either. All I heard were citations from the free debates, I don't even think they bothered to spend the three bucks on an MP3. I think they're only the free debates on Straightgate. Honestly, I think that's all that was cited, was either a statement of faith on our website, or snippets from free debates on Straightgate.

And that's just absolutely amazing to me. At least I bought his book, which was not easy to find, because it's self-published in essence. And I read the thing, and I accurately cited it. He never said that I misrepresented him about that.

So anyway, obviously there are different levels within this group of people. Charles Ryrie is not as out there as either Zane Hodges or Robert Wilken. I would say Wilken and Hodges are pretty much on the exact same page.

I would be really surprised to see Wilken disagreeing with Hodges on too many issues at all. Hodges has gotten so far of late as to say that saving faith in Christ does not even have to include knowledge of what the cross is about, why it took place, anything like that at all.

And up until this debate, my assertion would have been that this is a sub-biblical presentation. But I have to admit, listening to what was said, and then the attack upon my position as being work salvation, stuff like that.

John said, let no one deceive you. By this we know the children of God and the children of the devil. And that entire concept is just completely overthrown by Robert Wilken. And so, when you get to the point of telling someone that the cross and the purpose of the cross, sin, repentance, all of that is irrelevant.

When you not only leave that out of your presentation, but you say it's not a part of the presentation, that's where I think you go from being sub-biblical to being anti-biblical. And I really honestly, I do try to think the best of folks until they just absolutely beat me over the head with a stick until I see otherwise.

And I really honestly, I apologized to my host because I'm the one that suggested Dr. Wilken. There was someone on our channel who was pushing to put a debate together with this gentleman. And a friend of mine, I mentioned him twice in the debate.

C. Ryan Jenkins had done his master's thesis at Master's Seminary on his theology. And I was talking with him about this stuff. And I really expected more. I expected a presentation that wasn't just designed for his own people.

Because honestly, he wasn't trying to impress the people who were not already his followers. Because he didn't even try to lay out a coherent presentation of his own position. He just assumed that and went after mine.

And that would work for your fans, but it's not going to work for someone who... I mean, there's a bunch of folks sitting there that if I hadn't read those few quotes from his book, would have had no earthly idea what on earth he was arguing for, for at least the first half of that debate.

They wouldn't have had any way of knowing. And so I wanted to believe better. But listening to what was said and the way in which it was said and the substance of it, I would have to identify it not as sub-biblical, but as anti-biblical.

And just as people go, this would be libertinism. This would be, I think, one of the greatest examples of antinomianism. And not just cheap grace. This isn't just cheap grace. This is empty grace. I would call it a grace that does absolutely positively nothing whatsoever.

Even in Titus 2, the grace by which we're saved, which I didn't hear much of a response to, by the way. I'm not sure if you did. But likewise is turned into something that just has no substance at all.

So it's sad, but the fact of the matter is, I don't know if you heard the program I did in 1996, Bible Answer Man broadcast with Tim Staples. But I asked Tim on that program, I said, if you and I were standing outside an abortion clinic together and someone walked up to us and said, what must I do to be saved, would you not agree with me that you and I would answer in a different way?

Did you hear that program?

I'm not sure if I did.

Yeah.

And he admitted we would answer in a different way. Well, the fact of the matter is, so would Bob Bolkin and I. We would answer in a substantively different way.

Yours would be longer.

Mine would be a little bit longer, but I think significantly more biblical. And so it definitely has caused me to consider that particular aspect of the issue. And that is, is this just a slight aberration, a slight imbalance, or does it go beyond that?

And what we heard Friday night I thought went well beyond merely a slight imbalance, because it identified the apostolic message as a heresy. And it is, I think, indicative of our ministry, that on the one end we're dealing with Roman Catholic apologists and their aberrations in regards to adding to the gospel, but at the same time, if you're going to be balanced, you can't just close your eyes to the existence of this kind of thing within the allegedly evangelical camp.

And one last thing before we take a break, and we've got a bunch of other phone callers. He himself, in his response regarding what Sola Fide was and the fact that Sola Fide has never been defined by Protestant believers in the way that he defines it, I think illustrated something very, very important.

His response was, well, I don't care. I believe in Sola Scriptura. That wasn't my point. My point was, that's not what the Reformers were teaching. It was not his gospel that broke the back of Rome in Europe.

It was not his presentation that did that. In fact, he would have to say that the gospel preached by Calvin and by the Westminster Divines and by Spurgeon and by Warfield, since that was the Warfield lectures, was in fact a heretical gospel, just as he identified mine as.

So I was glad those two things came up. And in essence, he's the one who raised them and made those assertions himself. It wasn't me just trying to sort of read that in. So I appreciate you being there, despite the fact that, honestly, you did not like my shirt, but it's okay.

I am confident in myself enough not to worry about people's tastes and colors.

I'll just buy the MP3s rather than DVDs from now on.

You go ahead and do that. We'll live. God bless. Thanks a lot. We're going to take our break and then come back with your phone calls and Steve and Scott and Todd and so on and so forth. We'll be right back.

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Billy Graham, Roman Catholicism, and the Gospel in Evangelicalism

And welcome back to The Dividing Line. I just threw that thing up on the blog for those of you who are interested. Let's go ahead and get back to our phone callers and talk with Steve in New Jersey. Hi, Steve.

How are you doing, James?

Doing good.

I've got a question about the Billy Graham crusade.

Okay.

It's coming up in June to New York.

Oh, really?

Yeah, and a lot of evangelical churches here are really pushing it big time. I don't know if you're familiar with some of the things he's said as far as...

Yeah.

Well, there's nothing new about the fact that the Graham organization has cooperated with and stood alongside Roman Catholic churches for quite some time now that the individuals who do the counseling on people who quote unquote come forward that they are told not to direct people away from the Catholic churches that they're a part of, but they're to go back to those churches.

And so, obviously, the idea that there is... In essence, what we have illustrated here is what we've been seeing ever since the issue with John Paul II and whether he went to heaven or not, and that is the vast majority of people who call themselves evangelicals today.

And this includes, sadly, a large portion of my tradition, and I use that term broadly there in regards to Baptists as a whole. This certainly would not be true of Reformed Baptists, but of Baptists as a whole, many of the non-denominational churches, the Calvary chapels, those type of churches.

Many of these organizations believe that while there are certain elements of the gospel that need to be there, that adding to those things that are requirements for salvation does not destroy the gospel, it's just something that we can quote unquote disagree on.

It is interesting to note that, and this is why I want folks to note, and in fact I linked on the important articles section of my blog, my mentioning the article by Paul Owen that was hosted on Timothy Enloe's site, where he in essence is saying that the reading of the vast majority of Protestant scholarship since time of the Reformation regarding the Book of Galatians, he has been able to correct this and understand it better than anyone else ever has, and that the error of the Judaizers in Galatia is not at all relevant to the errors that Rome makes in regards to the gospel, and that Rome's gospel is a true and saving gospel.