September 13, 2005

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The world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is
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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.
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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. And welcome to The Dividing Line on a Tuesday morning, 11 o 'clock here in the desert southwest where the monsoon has left and it is dry and yeah, still be 98 today, but hey, as long as it's in the 70s at night, who cares, right?
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And so that is a indicator of things to come and it was awfully nice to come back from the cool climes of Alaska to a little drier weather here in the valley.
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I know those of you who live in constant humidity are chuckling right now, but hey, what can I say? Lots of stuff to do today at 777 -753 -3341.
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I have not read for one of my email correspondence, I have not read the argumentation that Bethlehem Baptist has used to allow for infant baptism as a valid means of baptism for membership in a
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Baptist church. Haven't read it, so don't know what the argument is personally.
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I think if you're a Presbyterian or someone who believes in infant baptism, then
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I think your church should practice infant baptism and that should be what you do to be a member of that church.
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And if you're a Baptist, I think you should believe in credo baptism and that should mark your church.
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Personally, I think we can work together and there's all sorts of things we can do together, but as far as membership of the church goes, seems to me like that's a sort of important issue.
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It's how you understand the ordinances, or if you're on the other side of things, sacraments.
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And I don't see the purpose of muddying the waters at that point.
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But I haven't read the argumentation, haven't read the paper yet, and I've been busy with lots and lots and lots and lots of other stuff.
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And so, what can I say? But I've heard about it and it sounds interesting, but I, again, just simply don't understand that particular perspective.
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Be that as it may, we have sound clips, eventually we'll have video clips as well.
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But video clips don't do us a whole lot of good on the dividing line anyways, so we're not really worried about that.
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But we do have audio clips. I wanted to play the very first question
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I asked, and I really think that this illustrated what took place during the debate between myself and Dr.
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John Dominick Crossan. My opening statement, my opening presentation, for those of you who have listened already, is in essence that the argumentation used by radical destructive criticism begins with the assumption that the miraculous cannot exist, and that therefore any recording of the existence of the miraculous must be non -historical.
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Now that can then result either in the idea that the people writing it are dishonest, and they're just deceivers, and it's just all, you know, the silliness of religion.
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Or it can result in saying, well, it's a parable, dummy, learn what the parable is, read your meaning into the parable, and that then becomes your religious emphasis, which
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I also asserted in essence has resulted constantly in the reflection of whatever the particular researcher thinks man should be upon Jesus or anyone in the
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New Testament or, you know, Paul's entire perspective becomes a political one and all the rest is stuff, and there really isn't any way of saying
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I'm actually reading the New Testament or I'm allowing the New Testament to speak. All you're doing is allowing your innermost feelings to be expressed in what you will or will not see in the text.
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And so I very strongly emphasize that the argumentation that your children, by the way, that's why
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I keep emphasizing this, that's why I think it's important, we didn't just do this debate so we could go up to Alaska and have a big debate.
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These issues, the claims made by the Jesus Seminar are picked up by pretty much every group that we as a ministry deal with and that you as a believer are going to be dealing with apologetically in an ever more post -Christian, anti -Christian society in the
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West. This is the stuff that even Muslim apologists will take their cue from the
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Jesus Seminar type materials. This is the stuff that's in our secular universities. This stuff is out there.
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We cannot ignore it. We have to deal with it. And the only way to deal with it in its fullest fashion and in its best fashion, which
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I think is what you find in someone like John Dominic Crossan, is to recognize the presuppositions that give rise to the system as a whole.
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And so my opening presentation had been, well, you know, Dr. Crossan begins this idea, the consistency of God, if he's not, if he wasn't doing it in the first century, if he's not doing it today, if he wasn't doing it in the first century, and so if he's not raising people to the dead today, then he's not, he wasn't doing it back then, and so on and so forth.
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And, you know, in his response, he said, no, no, no, I was just examining the data.
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I spent all these years in the 1960s examining the information and reading the
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Gospels, and these are the conclusions I came to. Well, okay, but how you examine the
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Gospels, even he admits, when you make a decision as to the nature of your materials, that's going to determine your methodology.
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And so soon as we got into the cross -examination period, the first question
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I asked him, I think, to me, very clearly illustrated what's going on here. So let's listen to it, then
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I'll stop it and make some comments. So hopefully we've got the computer ready to rock and roll.
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So let's see what happens. Dr. Crossan, given your presuppositions regarding divine consistency and the like, what kind of evidence could possibly exist in antiquity that would prove to you that the events of the
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Gospel story, especially miraculous events such as the virgin birth or the resurrection of Christ from the dead, actually took place in historical context?
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In the context of a pre -Enlightenment world, nothing. In the context of a pre -Enlightenment, sorry, am
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I echoing? In the context of a pre -Enlightenment world, where it is taken for granted that wondrous things can happen, that gods and goddesses can come down from heaven and create divine children, in that context, and granted that's what everyone accepts, the only way
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I can understand the claims of any one of them is what it means.
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Therefore, when Jesus, when I read these claims about Jesus, for example, what is important for me is when
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I read the claims of Jesus from people who believe he could do anything he wanted and has all power, he only does it, for example, to heal.
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Yeah, I get that message very clearly. Jesus has the power, for example, if somebody sasses him, to make them drop dead.
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That would not surprise anyone as a story from the ancient world, Jesus never does that. Now let me stop right there, just for a moment.
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Next questions that I'm going to bring up, I have a real issue with the idea, and I kept trying to bring this up, and over and over again
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I would ask a question and I really wouldn't get a direct answer to what I was asking, and maybe that's because of a conflict of worldviews, and maybe
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I just wasn't being clear, I thought I was being as clear as I could be, but I, a number of times, pressed the issue upon Dr.
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Crosses, so in that answer you just heard, the first thing he said is, there couldn't be any, and he said it in a pre -enlightenment world, and I'm not sure, because he then repeated himself,
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I'm not sure if he meant in a post -enlightenment world there couldn't be any, because we don't function on that thing, but he basically said there's no evidence it could exist, and then he went on to say, you know, in the pre -enlightenment world, everybody thought that this type of thing could happen, and I'm going to ask the question later on, because he keeps going back and forth at this point, do you really think that that's what the
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Jews believed? Because look at the examples he used right there, everybody believed the gods and goddesses could come down and create offspring, excuse me,
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Jews believed that? Monotheistic Jews believed in gods and goddesses cohabiting with people?
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No they didn't! And so I found in this debate and in the second debate, over and over again, when it was convenient to emphasize the
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Jewish context of the New Testament and the Jewish background, then it was there, but then when that would completely and totally contradict everything you're saying, such as this point right here,
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I'm sorry, Jews did not believe that gods and goddesses, they didn't believe in gods and goddesses, they didn't believe they could come down and create offspring, so I'm sorry, that doesn't follow if you're going to use a
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Jewish context in the New Testament, pagan Romans, okay, that's fine, but that's not what we're talking about here, because the gospel writers were not pagan
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Romans, and they are quoting from the Old Testament scriptures that do not have gods and goddesses coming down and doing this kind of stuff, and so I would later try to emphasize that, and it just didn't seem to really connect, and so there seems to be a very inconsistent utilization of the historical backgrounds, once again, simply so as to bring about the view of Jesus that the particular researcher has already decided he's going to come up with, and so if a
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Jewish background helps you to come up with the Jesus that you want to come up with, okay, then you use it, if it doesn't, you ignore it, so searching for consistency during the cross -examination period, that's what cross -examination is all about.
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So, that's what's important to me about the miracles of Jesus, they're miracles of healing, how you explain them in the ancient world, whether you're dealing with Asclepius or Jesus, is a totally separate issue for me.
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But it's not, placing healing miracles in the context of pagan
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Rome, and healing miracles in the context of monotheistic Judaism, where you have
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Jesus then saying, go offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded, show yourselves to the priests, but don't tell anybody
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I'm Mashiach, I'm sorry, those are completely different contexts, and to put them together, all the time these folks would be saying, hey, how can you accept the miracles of Jesus, but not accept the miracles of all these other religions?
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Well because, here we're seeing one important element of it, polytheism is in and of itself an irrational philosophy and theology, it makes no sense.
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Polytheism has never been able to command the intellect of man because, well, I would argue because we know better, we know there's only one true
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God who has revealed himself, we know that there is only one creator, there's only one who has revealed his divine power and attributes in the created world, and we're suppressing that knowledge outside of Christ, we know that.
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But that fundamental foundational philosophical difference completely changes the context in which anything like a miracle takes place, and what that miracle means.
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So again, just where we start here, the presuppositions that the two of us are bringing, very very much determine the conclusions that we have.
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I make no difference though between Escalapius and Jesus in terms of reality.
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There, there, there you go, I shouldn't have stopped there. I make no difference. But you have to.
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History certainly has, there's a reason for that, is it just because they were pre -enlightenment and we're post -enlightenment?
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Is that what that's all about? Or is there a vast difference between a polytheistic system and a monotheistic system and the context in which that places the teachings and the activities of Jesus versus anybody else?
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But in a post -enlightenment world, which I'm assuming we're talking about this evening, could there be any kind of evidence whatsoever in antiquity that would cause you to believe that God did intervene in the first century in a way that he's not intervening in now the 21st century?
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Okay, so I needed to redirect because I had heard pre -enlightenment, so I wasn't sure and I felt this was absolutely necessary that people hear this.
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In fact, I, I've been, it's been suggested to me I need to put this material together in a, not overly large, but in a short book format.
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Because the fact that I've, and I've mentioned this, I've been very concerned about the fact that the people who've heard this debate didn't hear all the debate.
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Oh, it's all there. But there is a whole nother level at which the debate was taking place that, because a lot of folks hadn't, either hadn't read the book that I suggested,
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People on the Cruise, I suggested to people they read a particular book by Dr. Croson, it would help them understand where he's coming from, or even if they had.
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You know, I went to a seminary that was way off to the left of me in the spectrum of things it's, it's not all that far off to the left, but I went to seminary where I was exposed to all this, and I, I learned to understand the worldview that these folks were operating in.
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A lot of evangelicals haven't, and because they haven't, quite honestly, they become susceptible to argumentation coming from this, this viewpoint.
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Once it, once they come to understand it, it breaks through, and they don't, they haven't been building a defense, they haven't been building a foundation that can handle that.
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Someone in Channel pointed us to a, a post by a former
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Southern Baptist who has lost his faith. Of course, I would argue that that would indicate, and in fact, the discussion has been this particular individual never did show much of a concern about biblical exegesis, they were much more concerned about philosophy and things like that to begin with, so that might tell you something to start with, but all the, all the issues that this person's raising now, as to explain why he doesn't believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, not only are issues that I've certainly encountered over and over and over again,
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I've seen many fine responses to, but they again demonstrate that this person never had that grounding.
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That's what concerns me, and that's what, that's what this audience is going to be up against all the time in our society from now on, is that kind of, of argumentation.
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We need to understand it. So I'm refocusing the question, let's see how it turns out. No. Okay, well, there's, there's the answer, no, there, there, there's, there's the answer.
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Let me, let me repeat that just one more time. But in a post -enlightenment world, which I'm assuming we're talking about this evening, could there be any kind of evidence whatsoever in antiquity that would cause you to believe that God did intervene in the first century in a way that he's not intervening in now the 21st century?
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No. Does that not illustrate the presuppositional character of the conflict?
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No, it illustrates my understanding of how God works. Which is presuppositional, there you go.
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I mean, it really seemed to me, honestly, and a number of people on the cruise, as we would sit around and chat about it,
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I just don't think Dr. Crossan had ever been challenged on this level before.
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Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there's, I know, without a doubt, that in the books that I read, these issues were raised.
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Did he not read the responses? I don't know. Did he not have conversation with the authors of those responses?
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I don't know. But it just did seem to me that he did not see the difference.
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You know, he's saying, no, that's not presuppositional. It's how I view how God works. Well, if you start, like I said, with this concept of divine consistency, that God can only do in the past what he's doing today, that God is not free to act at certain times in history for his own purposes.
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If you start with that, the debate is over. The debate's over, because isn't the main message of the
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Gospels, the uniqueness of Jesus Christ? And to take his position would mean that the
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Gospels have to basically keep on going, and you always have to have a Jesus who's doing these miraculous things, and that has to be happening today for it to have happened back then.
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So it's a circular argument, and yet this is the pinnacle of Jesus seminar style argumentation that is being thrown at our young people every day, right now, as we are speaking in junior colleges and community colleges and universities all across the
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United States and the Western world, and sadly even beyond that, as the assured results of scholarship.
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And it's actually just, it's circular reasoning. Which I will admit is a presupposition, but it's a presupposition based on two things.
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I did say divine consistency, and when I read first century texts, if I only read, if I only read the
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Christian texts, I would have to say, there is such extraordinary things happening here that never happened in the rest of the world.
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But two, if I read it in a... Well, let's stop right there. Yeah, yes, that's right.
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God has only entered into his creation once in a unique way in Christ.
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That's the message. It's like, there you go. That's, yeah, that's what they're saying.
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That's correct. And the reason you start with the presupposition that can't be true is...
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The first century context, or even in the history of religions context, I have to see that no, similar claims have been made, not only about Jesus, but about Caesar in that very same context.
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Whoa, not very same context. No, no, no, no, no. Caesar is in a pagan polytheistic context of the gods and goddesses that Dr.
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Crossan does see, but Jesus is not. But the
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Jews don't believe in gods and goddesses that come down and sire children. They're not the same context.
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I'm sorry, but if that's the fundamental... And it is. If any of you have read Dr. Crossan's material, that's where he starts.
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It's in the first chapter, boom, right off the bat, here you got Caesar Augustus and his birth, and here you got
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Jesus, you got the parallels, and blah, blah, blah, blah. If that's wrong, if that's wrong on a fundamental basis, historically, philosophically, presuppositionally, the rest of it is quite honestly a waste of paper it's printed on, as far as it having any truth in it.
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And you might go, oh, that's awfully mean, hey, N .T. Wright, in describing
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Dr. Crossan's theories, talks about how well the book's written, and how cogently it's written, and how intelligent
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Dr. Crossan is, all those things that I said in the debate as well. And then he says, which makes it all the more unfortunate that the book is entirely wrong.
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And that's... It's true. It is. It's entirely wrong. It starts... You know,
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I liken it to Mormonism. You know, I just posted something today on the blog, well actually it was very early this morning, about Mormonism.
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Mormonism starts at the wrong point. It starts at a denial of the eternality and uniqueness of God.
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And if you start there, everything that comes afterwards isn't going to work.
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It's going to be wrong. If you start at the wrong point, you can put all the effort and intelligence and brilliance into the rest of your theory you want.
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But if you start a mathematical formula based upon 1 plus 1 equals 3, the answer's not going to be the right answer, no matter how well you do the rest of the formula.
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That's a fact. And that's what we have going on right here. As I said, it's in all the coins, and therefore, no,
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I don't see anything that would convince me, quite frankly, that Caesar was born of Apollo and a human mother,
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Atsya, or that Jesus was literally born of God and the
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Virgin Mary. Let me stop again. Two totally different contexts.
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In one, you have the expectation of what takes place.
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I'm talking about Augustus. If you wanted to consolidate power, if you wanted to make it in such a way, if you wanted to consolidate power, if you wanted to make your political base stronger, then there was nothing wrong with making these types of claims.
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There's nothing wrong with making the kind of assertions that they were making.
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Did anybody really, really believe that? Well, I suppose some people could. But you see, the
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Incarnation was not what the Jewish people were expecting. Oh, yeah, we can see in Isaiah, but you read the intertestamental material, there's a lot of confusion given the
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Messiah as victor, the Messiah as servant, all the rest of these things, and there was no agenda to be fulfilled by the
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Messiah coming in human form. In fact, that's the exact opposite of what people expected in the suffering servant.
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What is the cross? Is it something that was clearly designed to attract
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Jews to the movement? See, there's your conflict, there's your contradiction between Augustus, he's the
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Son of God, we make up the story about Apollo, polytheistic context, as to solidify a political base.
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Okay, that's one thing. Jesus comes as the suffering servant, born of a lowly virgin, and what's that designed to do?
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Why would someone make that up? What's to be gained there?
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Where's the agenda? You'd have to depend upon, hmm, the Holy Spirit changing someone's heart to believe that.
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Because the Jew, it's a scandal on, a stumbling block, to the
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Gentiles, foolishness, not just the virgin birth, but the idea of the suffering Messiah, the incarnate
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Lord. So the contexts are not the same, and so we can see,
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I think, again, the presuppositional nature of the argument and the fact that it simply doesn't hold. But I see those as radically different claims about the meaning of life.
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To accept Caesar as divine is not to accept Jesus as divine. Is it your understanding that,
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Matt, let me mention what he's talking about there. He's not saying what I just said. He's talking about the
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Kingdom of God concept, what would the world look like if God was on the throne and not Caesar? And in the second debate, it just kept coming back to Rome, Rome, Rome, Rome, Rome is the only context, and really, as I pointed out, that viewpoint limits the
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Gospel, and it limits the proclamation of the Gospel, to a very narrow spectrum, and it really defies, it denies to the
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Gospel the ability to cross out of that historical context and to really have any kind of authoritative meaning in any other context, in any other culture, in any other time, really.
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All you can do is look back and go, well, power needs to be bottom -up instead of top -down.
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That's pretty much all you've got in this story. That's it. And the Gospel's much more than that.
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Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, whoever they would have been, it's my understanding that you wouldn't believe that those were eyewitnesses or anything like that, correct?
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Now, why am I saying that? It's sort of a duh statement, but again, I've got an audience of about 400 people sitting in front of me, and Dr.
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Crossman really hasn't fleshed out a lot of those conclusions in his opening statement. So I can't just assume that everyone sitting in front of me knows exactly where he's coming from.
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So I'm trying, in the form of the questions, to get a little bit more information out so that people will have an idea of what's really going on.
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I think the word that Luke uses is not eyewitnesses, it is marchers, it is witnesses.
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Luke does talk about witnesses of the word, but we translate as eyewitness. The Greek is martyris, as far as I remember.
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That actually was wrong, and during the rest of this, let's see, we're three minutes and fifty -one seconds in.
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So for about the next five and a half minutes, for those of you who don't get to watch this or will watch it later,
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I don't know if you'll be able to see this, but for the next five and a half minutes, you've got to picture this.
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This is behind the scenes at the debate. My questions are in a program called
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Note Studio on my Palm Tungsten T5, and I've mentioned this on the blog.
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Great little program, pretty pricey, but great little program, works real well, very easy to use. And so I've got these hyperlinks, basically, and I've got all these questions laid out, and as I'm listening to him,
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I can sort of just look at a list of questions, and the whole question isn't there, it's just a hyperlink. It gives me the idea of what each question's about.
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And listening to his response, I can then very quickly just tap on the next question
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I want to ask, and there's the whole question right in front of me, and then just go back to then see the whole list again.
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Just perfect. I was looking for... Actually, what I was looking for wouldn't have been as good as this, yes.
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Yeah, someone just said, so I need to find a way to put you in a little window scurrying around trying to find the Greek while he is speaking. Yeah, basically, if you can.
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So, what I'm doing is, I'm listening to him, I'm jumping out of Note Studio into my
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Greek program, into my Olive Tree Greek program on my pump.
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I'm going over to Luke, I'm opening up the passage in Luke, and then
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I'm opening up the Gram Chord window just to double check, because, you know, in a debate like this, you don't want to go, actually, the term is this, and then discover that because you're just barely even able to focus on it, you're looking at the wrong word.
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And so, everybody in the channel is going, who said that, it was a little voice in my ear.
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Actually, it's a private message, but anyway, so it took about five minutes.
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The conversation keeps going on, I keep asking questions, I'm going back and forth between the programs on my palm while I'm doing this, you'll see me, you know, tapping away a little bit, and still asking the questions, still interacting, until I was able to find the exact verse
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I needed, the term, and then at the very end of the cross -examination period, I said, now, by the way, it isn't the term martyr or witness at all, and would you like to amend your statement?
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He said, well, if that's the term, and then didn't amend the statement at that point. So, actually, Luke does say eyewitnesses.
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He doesn't say martyrs or witnesses at that point, which can be moved on to a later period of time.
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Which is a witness, but you witness to Jesus, you witness to the truth and authenticity of Jesus by dying for him, not by quoting him.
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Well, and that's not what Luke was saying, and anyway, so there's some idea what we had during the cross -examination.
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It actually started moving more fluidly, I think, especially when he was supposed to be asking me questions, and then he just sort of started making statements, and so I started asking him questions, and it went really, we really got into the subject during the cross -examination, and if you listen carefully, if you start and stop, and I'd listen to the whole thing all the way through, then go back and sort of start and stop and look stuff up.
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That would probably be the best way to do it, because, again, what he's saying is not what most evangelicals are accustomed to hearing, and so that would be a good thing to do.
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877 -753 -3341, the MP3s are up, the CDs are up, hope to have the DVDs up later.
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Did I see somewhere that the conference stuff is available yet? Yes, no, maybe? Is the conference around?
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Maybe? Hopefully? Well, nobody is there to answer, I guess. Okay, not yet, soon.
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Okay. I saw something about that. We're going to be taking our break, 877 -753 -3341.
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We have one call on hold, and we'll take your calls as well. Here on The Dividing Line, we'll be right back. There's nothing less to be blessed than trying to save your soul from death.
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It's all works righteousness, you know. Can I manupate you?
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Mass, purgatorian indulgences, and Marian doctrine. James White points out the crucial differences that remain regarding the
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Christian life and the heart of the Gospel itself that cannot be ignored. Order your copy of The Roman Catholic Controversy by going to our website at aomin .org.
34:15
It's odd that Carl Keating's e -newsletter frequently arrives right in the middle of the dividing line.
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So, I'm scanning through stuff about ecumenism and la -de -la -de -la -de -la -da, stuff like that.
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And nothing really important in this one, so it goes down into the Roman Catholic folder, and there we go, which pulls up a note from a
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Molinist. Oh well. Anyhow, 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number.
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Let's start taking some phone calls. I just realized I did not make the window with all of this information a unique thing, so I'd either have to scroll back through, there we go, or I can just do what we just did.
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All right, let's talk to Michael. Hi, Michael. Hi. How you doing? I'm good, you? Doing all right.
35:07
I have actually a couple questions, but my first one is, we had met in January when you did the
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Master's Series at Hope Chapel. Okay, yes, uh -huh.
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You did a talk on the Sola Scriptura. Right. And you mentioned something about the
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Emergent Church, and I wanted to know if you were going to write something or do a radio show about the
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Emergent Church. We've discussed it a few times. I don't see that as an area where there aren't people who are properly addressing the issue from a sound
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Biblical perspective. I don't like to try to repeat what other people are doing just because it's popular to do it.
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D .A. Carson's put out a book becoming conversant with the Emergent Church, and there's stuff out there, so I have not felt any need to add that to the repertoire at all.
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So probably not, I mean outside of the normal comments concerning the fact that a degraded ecclesiology results in degraded worship and degraded proclamation, and the fact that I believe postmodern thinking is antithetical to Christian thinking and that that is important in all sorts of areas,
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I don't see myself spending a whole lot of time on the Emergent Church issue as a particular emphasis.
36:39
No, uh -uh. Okay. My other questions are mainly concerning Calvinism, but one of them was
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I remember listening to your debate between George Bryson and William and the Bible Answer Man.
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Yes, uh -huh. The debate between myself, George Bryson, and Hank Hanegraaff, yeah. Right. And even though myself,
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I was not a Calvinist at that time, I thought it was kind of unfair. I thought it was like two on one. Well, you know, it still went all right.
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Read my book. I wanted to ask you, have you ever thought about debating
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Hank on this issue? Because I know he's not a Calvinist, so. Well, yeah, we sort of did that, and I would certainly be more than open to a discussion with Hank on the subject because, as we have documented numerous times in the program, he has come to the point now where he is starting to use terminology, and, in fact,
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I, you know, I, boy, I remember recording a statement that he made at one point, and I don't ever remember if I played it on the dividing line, but there was a time within the past,
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I'd say, four months or so where I was listening to the program, and, in essence, a statement was made where libertarianism was made definitional of orthodoxy.
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And so if you did not hold to a libertarian perspective, the entire answer was based upon the idea that to provide a meaningful, that the
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Christian response to the issue of evil, for example, was based upon libertarianism, and I don't remember if I actually ended up playing that on the program or not because all
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I can remember was recording it, but I don't remember if I played it. So I apologize for that.
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That's what happens when you've been traveling as much as I have been traveling of late and was really focused upon other things than I should have been.
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But, well, no, I should have been focused on what I was focused on. Anyway, so I would love to be able to do that.
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In fact, if you don't mind here, I just happened, while doing this, to scan through my stuff.
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Nice talking to you. Want to go to Jeff in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania next? Let's see if this is it. Hold on. Hi, Hank.
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It's a great pleasure talking to you. Nice talking to you. Thank you. I had a question. I was rummaging around your
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Internet broadcast archives, and I was listening to your interview with Paul Kopin.
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One thing he said I kind of had questions about, and I think I had a disagreement with him.
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He was uncomfortable with saying that God ordains all things because that, to him, was too close to saying that God is the author of evil.
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Right. I know in a lot of classical Christian thought, in Westminster, for example, they say
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God ordains all things, but in such a way where he is not the author of evil. I've heard you on a number of occasions mention that God creates the potentiality for evil.
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Right. I just kind of wanted a clarification, because in a lot of places in the Bible, like with Judas and Joseph going down to Egypt, it seems like a straight exegetical reading would be that God ordains all things.
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I think I would agree with the Westminster Confession in such a way where he isn't the author of evil, but I was just kind of wondering what your views on the matter are and how you view this issue.
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Yes, well, I certainly, as you point out, I do not believe that God ordains sin or that God is the author of evil.
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I think that you have to preserve the justice of God and the sovereignty of God as well as genuine human responsibility in these issues.
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But I believe that God created the potential for evil, and certainly
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Adam and Eve actualized that potential when they fell into a life of constant sin, terminated by death.
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But I do not want to get into the idea that God actually ordained that Adam would sin or decreed that Adam would sin in some kind of fatalistic determinism.
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Because the moment you do that, then you have God being the author of evil, and the way it has been explained by some
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Calvinist theologians, for example, in Gruden's systematic theology. Okay, I'll stop right there.
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I don't think that's what I was looking for. It's the same stuff. This has become the standard argumentation that Hank's been using.
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And yes, I would be more than happy, but I already tried. I mean, when you listen to the
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Bible Answer Man debate, how would I respond to that? Everybody listening to this program, unless you're brand new to it, knows exactly what
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I would say at this point, and they know exactly which verses I would go to. I'd have to go back to Genesis 50.
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I'd have to go back to Isaiah 10. I'd have to go back to Acts 4. And I would have to challenge
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Hank's entire view of divine knowledge. And during the breaks, and I mentioned this back in December of 2003 when
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I got back and I talked about what happened. During the breaks, I didn't so much talk with Hank as I talked with his assistant,
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Stephen. And Stephen's a full -blown, self -professed Molinist. He's into middle knowledge.
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Now, I've not heard Hank utilize that terminology. Maybe he does in another way.
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I don't know. But that's where everything would have to turn. And when
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I tried to get into biblical texts, I got a real cold shoulder.
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And so, you know, if you can't do that, I just don't know that you're going to get anywhere. But certainly,
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I would be open to it. But let me tell you something. I've mentioned this before. There's a group back in the
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Midwest. They've just now finally got this arranged for April of next year. I need to look at my calendar as to when it is.
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But April of next year, I'm going to be doing a debate against an attorney on the issue of Calvinism. We went through everybody.
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I mean, you know, Dave Hunt has now been challenged to debate this subject against me by at least a dozen different groups.
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I mean, Calvary chapels, people that have brought him in to speak, have asked him, have begged him, please.
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There's a situation I know in one area where a staff member has become a
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Calvinist. And so they are just jumping on Calvinism like anything. But guess who will not go there to debate the issue against me?
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Dave Hunt. Their biggest champion won't do it. He knows.
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Dave Hunt knows without a shadow of a doubt he would lose that debate and it would be so bad that he would,
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I mean, he could not allow it to be taped. He knows that and that's why he won't do this.
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And so we went through Dave Hunt and Norman Geisler and the entire staff of Liberty University.
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We tried to get Ergen Kainer, who is supposed to be an excellent speaker, a former Muslim, supposed to be a very charismatic speaker.
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He makes really wild statements about Calvinism, about how there are cultic elements into it, stuff like that.
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You would think that someone like that, who is willing to debate something like Islam, will not debate
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Calvinism. You would think if they are so confident that this is so bad and so unbiblical, that they would be willing to debate it.
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This poor guy could write a book now about all the different excuses. You know, I have to floss my cat that weekend.
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And all sorts of just silliness as to why people won't engage this debate. They want to be able to blast
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Calvinists, but they won't debate the subject. So, you know, I don't see it happening. It could be done well.
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Obviously, Hank and I have proven our ability over the years to be able to address certain subjects in such a way as to be focused and to not get into personal stuff.
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And so I would love to have it happen. I'd certainly jump on a plane tomorrow. Well, actually, boy, it's not as easy to jump on a plane to get there anymore, is it?
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But I'd do it in a second. But it ain't going to happen. In fact, back when this discussion was still in -house at CRI, I was ready to jump on a plane and come over to have a discussion on the subject of monergism versus synergism.
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And then it was canceled. So I've been open about this for a long, long time.
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And everybody knows that if CRI were to call me today and say, Hey, what's your schedule look like?
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Why don't you come out and we'll have you on with William Lane Craig. We'll have you on with whoever. They know that I'd do it in a second.
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Let me say, I've read The Potter's Freedom, which I thought was excellent, even though at the time
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I was not a Calvinist. Oh, well. And I read John Piper's book, The Pleasures of God.
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And also another comment off -site, something you made the night we met. Your friend
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Eddie Delcor, at the time I hadn't met him. We had been emailing each other. He told me that he was quite huge if I ever met him.
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And you're right. Well, huge in a good way. It's all muscle. There's no fat.
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It's a sad thing. Right, right. He ripped a phone book from me. But I attend a
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Sunday school now. Oh, really? And so with his help and your book and The Pleasures of God, I've become a
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Calvinist. The unwilling Calvinist. Now let me ask you, I'm refinishing the book between you and Dave Hunt.
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I'm sorry. I was saying I was finishing up the book. No, no. And I was saying, I'm sorry. Right, right.
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So you have a lot of patience. Believe me, my wife can tell you, I remember very clearly receiving his,
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I think his 2 ,000 -word essays once. And I loaded them on my palm, and she and I were flying somewhere.
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I forget where it was now. We got stuck in the tarmac, and I was sitting there reading his stuff. And she will tell you that I was not sitting there as a saint, piously.
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I was going, oh, oh, oh, you know, I mean, no. I had to be very careful in my responses because this stuff gets read 50 years later.
47:27
But still, at the same time, I was very disturbed by the fact that, you know, despite their best efforts, the publishers could not keep him on one subject.
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And that's why when I say I'm sorry, what I mean by that is I told them, I told them the first day they called me and raised the issue.
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I said, Dave Hunt cannot stay on a single topic.
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He has never finished a talk on the same subject that he began the talk on. And unless you guys are really actively involved, this book is going to fly all over the place.
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And because it's all these different topics, you're going to keep hitting the same thing over and over and over again, and it's going to be very confusing.
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And, of course, between the fact that the book was sold from Loyal to Multnomah halfway through the project, and the fact that Dave Hunt, in essence, won't allow editing of his material, the result was exactly what
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I expected. So when I say I'm sorry, what I mean by that is, you know, between the two books, there's a lot more text in The Potter's Freedom, but it's a whole lot easier to follow.
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It really is. And I'm accurately representing Geisler, despite all his best efforts to say otherwise.
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I've documented that every attempt he's made to say otherwise is in error, which is why he won't debate either.
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But it's a whole lot easier to follow than to have the same subject come up in 10 out of 14 chapters.
48:57
That's exactly what I was going to say. I noticed that it's so repetitive. He keeps saying the same thing.
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I'm like, I mean, even if I was still an Arminian, I would still sit there and say,
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I mean, some of these arguments are just bad. He's not listening. No, no, no. And he didn't even listen at that point.
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As I documented on the blog recently, he's repeated in his newsletter as of two weeks ago, argumentation that I put in footnote,
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I point out, Dave Hunt has misunderstood both John Calvin and myself at this point, because he says in Ephesians chapter 2, we are saying that the only word referred to by the gift of God is faith.
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I've never said that. John Calvin never said that. And so to represent us as if that's what we're saying is a misrepresentation.
49:46
There's a footnote on it. It's in the text. So what does he do in his most recent newsletter? He goes back after the exact same issues all over again.
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Honestly, I don't understand how someone can handle
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God's truth in such a cavalier fashion. I would tremble if I knew something was wrong.
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I mean, that's why I disappoint a lot of folks, because people call in, and they'll call in on a certain subject, and I'll just sort of go, to be honest with you, don't know much about it.
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It's not my area. I haven't done much reading on it. And so this is what I think, but you just can't give that a whole lot of weight, because I just haven't really gotten into that area.
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And people expect you, if you're going to be an apologist, that you have studied everything there is to study.
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Well, let me tell you something. That's not possible. And there are a few people out there who will remain nameless who do claim to have, in essence, studied everything there is to study.
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And I'm sorry, that is not possible any longer. The ancient Renaissance man,
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I think Erasmus, was the last one. There's just too much for any one human being to do anymore, even if that's all you could do.
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And so I don't do that, and I do not understand the mindset of a person who can be so cavalier with the truth of God.
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And that's why I've said over and over again, Dave Hunt is the perfect example of slavery to tradition.
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When you turn tradition into the word of God, this is what happens. And you can't refute it.
51:18
You cannot argue. He will not listen. And yeah, it's frustrating to me, because I've got to deal with this man as a fellow believer, and yet he's not acting like a fellow believer.
51:28
And so it's extremely frustrating. Okay. Obviously, yeah, I know throughout the whole book.
51:35
But one thing with his view of foreknowledge, because he keeps talking about, you know,
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Calvinists make the few, and he's pushing this whole thing about being a small group, that's what he kind of implies.
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Isn't his view of foreknowledge, the way he looks at it most, I mean, to look at it where God foresees the future, and based on the fact that people will accept
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Christ or not, so he elects them, yada, yada, yada. But isn't that in some way limiting the elect anyway, even if it was based on their will?
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Yeah, it does. I mean, the elect, though, the key for him, though, is that since we determine who the elect is, then
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God's love is defended in the sense that he has an equal love for those that he's going to damn for eternity and those that are going to, by their choice, be with him.
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And the number, though, wouldn't be different. You're exactly right. The number would be the same one way or the other.
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And so to just constantly, the only reason he harps on that term few is because he then falsely keeps repeating this idea that, well, and their view of love is that, you know, he doesn't.
52:52
It was interesting to me, I don't know if you caught this, and I even tried to suggest in the book that there's a certain way to read the book differently than starting at page one, going to the end.
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If you'd actually read the first and second portions straight across, it would be easier to follow, then go back and catch the rebuttal part.
53:10
But if you read the section where he raised the issue of love, I spent my entire 2 ,000 -word portion pointing out that, in essence, he has a view of divine love that is less than human love.
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He has this undifferentiated, there can be no redemptive love, you know, the whole nine yards.
53:27
And you can tell in his response, he just didn't know how to respond to that. He, well, of course, we
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God can do that. And yet, if that were the case, then 99 % of the rest of his argumentation, the rest of the book would fall apart.
53:41
And, in fact, you go to the next chapter and you find him arguing that God can't have a differentiation of his love.
53:47
So, you know, if you're looking for consistency, it ain't going to happen. And if you're looking for consistency in his understanding of the elect,
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I don't think he gave hardly any thought whatsoever to that subject until that May of, was it 2000?
54:04
2001? I forget now which year it was. And we had that, I guess it was 2000, when we had that radio program and he started working on this book.
54:12
And August of 2000, that's right. And in May of 2000 is when he wrote the newsletter article that started this whole mess that I responded to on the dividing line, send him the tape, all the rest of that stuff.
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So, I just don't, you know, this is a situation where you've got a guy who's decided to address an issue.
54:30
He decided to address it before he studied it. Right. And his ego is refusing to allow him to go, you know what,
54:37
I need to sort of retract everything I've done for the past five years and start all over again.
54:42
He won't do that. And because he won't do that, he just keeps getting pushed off. And to be honest with you, I've seen him say things at Calvary Chapel that were absolutely
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Pelagian in perspective. I mean, he's honestly gone to the point where he's denying in Romans 1 and 3 that man is completely dead in sin, that there's nothing that he can do that's pleasing to God.
55:04
Oh, no, no, no, no, no. There's all these people in the Old Testament that were pleasing to God and all the rest of this stuff.
55:10
It's amazing that he's been allowed to say that kind of thing in the pulpits. But then again, he was wearing a
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Hawaiian shirt with a sport jacket over it. So I guess you can say whatever you want when you're wearing a Hawaiian shirt with a sport jacket over it. But he's been allowed to get away with this kind of stuff.
55:25
And he's not accountable to any elders anywhere. And so you can just go on and keep doing whatever you want to do when you're in that situation.
55:35
That's why I think, of course, that you need to do apologetics and you need to do stuff within the confines of the church where you have that kind of accountability.
55:45
And he simply doesn't have it. So that's where he's gone, the direction he's gone. But you're right. I have two more questions.
55:51
You've only got time for about one of them, probably. Okay. Here we go. Do you know what happened to Greg Stafford?
55:57
What happened to his website? How come it's gone? I heard he was just changing it. In fact, someone posted something in Channel just recently about that.
56:10
I don't think that he's pulling it down or anything. My understanding was that he was going to a different format or a different web server or something.
56:19
I could be wrong about that, but that's just what I heard or something along those lines.
56:25
And someone just recently posted something in our channel about where he is right now.
56:31
And as far as I could tell, it sounds like he's sort of in the same limbo, not to use that in its
56:40
Roman Catholic context, but that he was at the time of our debate. That is, at the time of our debate, he was not attending the
56:45
Kingdom Hall, but had not been formally disfellowshipped. There were people who were sort of protecting him, but he and his family just met as a family.
56:56
They don't have any fellowship outside of their family with Jehovah's Witnesses. So they've got to do something someday.
57:04
I can't believe that they would just allow this to go on and on and on.
57:09
It really does, I think, say a lot about where things are right now in Brooklyn. Because let's face it, if anyone knows
57:17
Jehovah's Witnesses, if this was 1975, this would have been taken care of a long time ago.
57:23
So I don't know. You've got about 30 seconds. Okay, that's it. Thank you. That's it? Oh, I was going to say you could throw the other one out if you wanted to real quick.
57:30
That was a lot longer. And I'm not going to be able to get to it before the music starts. Hey, thanks a lot for your call, brother.
57:36
No problem. All right, God bless. Bye -bye. All right, I'm not going to bother repeating the phone number for obvious reasons, because we're about out of time.
57:42
That was a great call. Excellent topics. You've got to admit, we had an eclectic show today.
57:48
Numbers of different topics. Where else, what other webcast can you listen to? Where in the course of one hour you will hear a discussion of a debate on the
57:55
Jesus Seminar, Historicity of the Gospels, the Bible as a Man broadcast, Calvinism, Greg Stafford, and Jehovah's Witnesses, and the brief mention of the emergent church as we go by.
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That makes it a little bit on the unique side, just like our closing music, which is now playing in the background, courtesy of our brother
58:16
Steve Camp. Hey, we'll be back on, Lord willing, on Thursday afternoon, evening, four o 'clock my time, seven o 'clock for those of you on the
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East Coast. And we will see you then on the Dividing Line. God bless. ...been
59:41
brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries. If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602, or write us at P .O.
59:48
Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the
59:53
World Wide Web at aomin .org, that's A -O -M -I -N dot O -R -G, where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.