Finished Comis/Fernandes Debate

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We finished off the Comis/Fernandes debate! Woohoo! Success! Now, as I said at the start, I will be happy to have Dr. Fernandes on to discuss the issues I raised, if he wishes to do so, it is all up to him. I think our review was very fair and very full. I then finished up Abdullah Kunde’s opening statements, did a few seconds with Roger Perkins, and then lapsed into a discussion of whether we should do a seminary level class on the DL on the subject of Christology (yes, I think we will).

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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is the Dividing Line.
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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. Man, I just had a great idea. As the music was starting,
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I had a great idea. And Apologia NM, which I assume is Apologia, New Mexico, just tweeted that there will be an
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Always Be Ready conference at Calvary, Albuquerque, featuring Norm Geisler and Ergen Kanner on November 11th and 12th.
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And my first response was, please ask both Norm and Ergen about Hadith 2425 and how it's relevant to the
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Quran. And then I thought, you know, that's not that far away. You know, it really isn't. And I bet you
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Carla could make me up a great T -shirt that would say something like, Hey Norm and Ergen, what about Hadith 2425, answered to be found in Istanbul for those who actually speak
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Arabic. I think she should put a shirt like that together, make it available, and have everybody start showing up at these conferences where Geisler and Kanner, who just refuse, they're just doing the head -in -the -sand thing.
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We're just going to, we are not going to deal with this. We've lied to you all, but we're not going to admit it, you know.
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Always be ready. Isn't that always ready to give an answer, and yet they won't do that?
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I think it'd be great. I think everybody should just show up wearing these shirts, and that would really get the message across. You know, there's probably some bike races going on over there right about then, huh?
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Wow, you know, and it's great to ride in Albuquerque. Load the bikes up on the truck or something, and just, you know.
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Yep, you're probably right. I bet you there is something going on over there in Albuquerque, or just go over to Santa Fe.
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Actually, now that I think about it, if you actually worked this a little bit, and we just started making announcements, they'd probably cancel the whole thing.
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Especially if you start saying, Hey, we've got 27 people that are going to be going to the Always Ready Conference. We're all signed up, ready to go.
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We've all got our t -shirts, and oh, it's been canceled. What happened? Oh, it would be so much fun to just sit right on the front row with that t -shirt on.
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Just sit there, just smiling. Hi, guys. How you doing? You always ready? Here's the question, right here.
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Here's Always Ready? Well, now it's time to be always ready. I'd like to have an answer. Hadith2425, Norm, tell us all about it.
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Since you think that that's a proper citation of the Hadith literature, you tell me,
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Hadith2425, and what it has to do with the Kanaan. Yeah, that would be a lot of fun.
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Don't put it past me. I mean, Albuquerque is, when I fly over to Albuquerque, they barely get to altitude before they start descending again.
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It's just a hop, skip, and a jump, and poof, you're there, and I can fly standby.
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I know folks in Albuquerque would probably pick me up and give me a ride. I'll bet you there'd be somebody over there to put me up for the evening.
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It might not hardly cost me anything, but that would be a lot of fun.
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The problem is that's also the weekend before I'll tour, and so I'd be heading up to Flagstaff.
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But hey, if I went over to Santa Fe, same thing. It's just as high as Flagstaff. The juices are flowing.
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The juices are definitely flowing, because it's not that long a ride from Santa Fe to Albuquerque.
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That's right. Are you listening to this? We're in trouble.
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That's what happens when you post silliness on the web and expect people to believe it, and then run around talking about how you're a leading apologist and stuff like that.
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Anyways, oh, there's a tweet from Phil Johnson. Flying to Ohio tomorrow for the
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Psalm 119 conference with Todd Friel, R .W. Glenn, and Dr. Oakley 1689, thinking of wearing this.
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All right, let's find out what he's thinking of wearing. TSA, we molest you so your priest doesn't have to.
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That's what it says. Okay, and we get in trouble. Oh, no kidding.
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Well, Phil can, yeah, he's Phil Johnson. But TSA, we molest you so your priest doesn't have to. There you go.
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I'd never seen that one before. I just clicked on it, and I'm just telling you what it says, and I probably just got
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Phil in real trouble for that one. But there you go. You've got to understand,
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Phil Johnson and the TSA. Oh, you haven't seen
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Phil Johnson's tweets on the TSA? He detests the TSA. Oh, he just, no, no, he really, really dislikes
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TSA. And I can understand that. We've given up our liberties.
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No toys about it. Hey, jump into our materials here. Tell you what I'll do.
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Tell you what I'll do. I'll open up the phones at the top of the hour, and if we've got phone calls, we'll take them.
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If we don't, then I will press on with the third debate. What's that?
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No Skype, right. I didn't ask you to bring up Skype. And that's what we'll do. So we'll open up the phone lines toward the top of the hour, and that will determine whether we go into our third debate, whichever one
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I decide that one is, or we won't. So I did see one comment on Twitter about yesterday's program.
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I expected a little bit more than that, honestly, but unfortunately my experience is that programs like I did yesterday do not get listened to.
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They get reported on. And what I mean by that is someone tells somebody else, well, did you hear what
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James White said about Mike Laicona? That James White, he's always attacking our side.
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And instead of listening to what I actually said and hearing the concerns, that then gets reported to somebody else, gets reported to somebody else.
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You wouldn't believe how many times I've gone somewhere and I've gone out to dinner after speaking at a church or something and people start talking and someone finally sort of gets loosened up enough to where they say, well, you know, you're not anything like I expected you to be.
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Well, what did you expect? Well, you know, someone so said this. And I go, well, you know, it's sad that Christians do that, and it's disappointing.
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But, you know, I think of this, I'll never, ever, ever forget back in 2004 during the
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Mark Seifried stuff when I said what many other people had already said and, you know, just was responding to some idiosyncratic, odd, out of the proper mainstream comments by Mark Seifried, who
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I guess still teaches at Southern Seminary. I don't know. I haven't kept track of where he is. And, you know, just the roof caved in.
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I mean, just the reaction was just unbelievable. I'll just never forget this one Southern Baptist editor who told me that he would never work with me again because I had attacked a fellow
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Southern Baptist professor. And I wrote back and asked, have you read anything that I've written on this subject?
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His response was no. And I just learned from that that politics are ugly, and when
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Christians engage in politics, they are the least Christian that they can be. And I don't want anything to do with it.
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And so I'm just really politically incorrect. I call them as I see them. I try to be consistent. And if I see folks on our side that are saying things that are inappropriate or wrong or are illustrative of things that we need to be thinking about, well,
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I'll talk about it. And as a result, you get marginalized. There's just no two ways about it.
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And so our friend in New Mexico just said, if you can't make it,
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I'll try to ask anything on your behalf. Anything written about Cantor to inform pastors here? Well, yeah, you think.
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Just look at my blog from February of 2010 through August of 2010, and you'll find all sorts of stuff with all sorts of links to TurretinFan's blog and everything else, and, of course, my
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YouTube channel. There's lots of YouTube videos that expose, especially the one that Issam and I did on Eric Cantor and his claimed abilities in Arabic.
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Well, and practically all the DLs for the first half of 2010. We'd normally have something about it, yeah.
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There were certain ones where we would go, there's going to be a Cantor -free dividing line today. But, yeah, there were all sorts of stuff like that.
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So lots and lots of stuff, yeah. And it's sad. And there's still so many people who just have no idea, just don't have any idea.
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Total fraud, and he just continues to live in his little world. But, anyway, we press on from there, and I said that we would start the program, not with my wonderful idea of those
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T -shirts. We'll have to see if we can't get ApologiaNM a
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T -shirt like that to wear. What does Hadith2425 say, and how is it relevant?
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Big banner, stand outside, that would be one way of doing it. But you could also wear a raincoat or something like that and just flash it.
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Do they have a balcony? I don't remember. You know how they hang the banners over the football field?
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Ah, yes, yeah, yeah. John 316. Hadith2425. Bingo, yeah, see? Yeah, that would be the way to do it.
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Hadith2425, what does it say? Right as Cantor starts to speak. That would be the end of that. Get that man out of there!
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That would be funny. Anyway. Oh, sad, very sad.
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Yes, yes, they are talking about it right now. Okay, we've got to close the balconies and check everybody's shirts as they're coming in.
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Oh, brother, it's sad. All right, I said we would start off with this, and we've already gotten 11 minutes in and haven't continued on with it.
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I'd like to try to press through and finish off the Fernandez -Comas debate. That would be one thing to get done.
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And that would be... Geisler and Kirner will have all those attending fill out a questionnaire.
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One of the questions will be, have you ever heard of James White? And everyone who answers yes will be escorted from the building. Well, that's, you know, he's only...
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What's funny about that is that that's very close to exactly what happened with Marty Minto and Norm Geisler. Do you know
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James White? If I'm going to be on your program, then you have to have him on first, and you have to record it, and you have to send me the tapes.
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And I'll only be on two weeks after that. And if you even mention the name James White, I'll hang up. Yeah, that was Norm back in 2000.
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So, doesn't... Did Kanner cite a Hadith 2425 in his book? No. Oh, come on,
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Farshad. That's one of my... I've posted that video like four times on my blog now. And so we are going to have to...
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Farshad is now for penance. He must go to the blog, and he must watch the video where I ask three questions of Norm and Geisler, Ergun and Emir Kanner.
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And the third question is, what is Hadith 2425? Since they say you don't...
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You don't have to say Sahih al -Bukhari. You don't have to... You don't have to say Jamia At -Tirmidhi or Muslim or Sunnah Abu Dawud.
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Actually, it's Abi Dawud. I was listening. Believe it or not, as I was driving all the way back from Wilcox this weekend,
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I once again listened to Yasir Qadhi's class on Hadith sciences and what a Hasan Hadith is and a
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Sahih Hadith is and all the subcategories and narrators and their memories and all this stuff.
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And one of the things he mentioned is that technically it's not Sunnah Abu Dawud, even though I think that's even what's on the book.
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It's Sunnah Abi Dawud. So it's just something you got to remember. Anyway, their whole argument is that you can cite a
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Hadith merely by a number, and that's okay. And that's what the
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Kanners do in their books about a third of the time, a third to a half time. I think we forgot the exact proportion at one point, at least their most popular book.
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And that's like citing the Bible as Bible 316.
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You can't find Bible 316. There are lots of books in the Bible that have a third chapter and a 16th verse.
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You have to give more information than that. And Norman Geisler has actually defended this absurd form of citation on his website.
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It's still there the last time I checked. And so I have asked a simple question.
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And the question is, of Norman Geisler, Ergin and Ymir Kanner, since they have defended this citation, what is
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Hadith 2425 and how is it relevant to the Quran? Now, there is a Hadith 2425, but you can't find it using that citation methodology, the very citation methodology that Geisler and Kanner have defended on their websites.
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You can't find it. There's no answer to the question. Now, I have a specific Hadith in mind. I can tell you where it is.
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But you see, I'd have to give you more information. I have to cite it correctly. I'd have to tell you which collection it's in.
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That's the only way you can know. You could guess, but there's more than one.
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So you couldn't guess with certainty. And so it's just a question that it exposes the absolute dishonesty and absurdity of the excuses that have been offered by Norman Geisler and Ergin Kanner.
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And folks, if you're going to an apologetics conference, do you want to go to an apologetics conference with people who tell you to always be ready, but they themselves won't do it?
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And they're not ready. That's what I just did. It's a simple question. Simple question.
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The cover -up continues on. And as long as they continue the cover -up, they are convicted of dishonesty.
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When they want to repent and admit the truth of these issues, great, fine, wonderful.
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Until then, I think we should show up at their conferences and say, you're a hypocrite, because you are.
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That's all there is to it. Facts are facts. That's how it is.
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Okay. Where were we? Oh, yes. Shifting. I've got to stop reading the channel, because people keep making interesting comments in the channel.
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And we need to move on. The feminist comments debate. We need to finish this up.
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We have been listening to it for quite some time now. The debate took place this last summer. And we have responded to many, many, many issues in the process.
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But we are also seeing the problematic element of federal visionism, how it complicates the defense of the reformed faith, and, in fact, provides different answers to very important elements of objections to the reformed faith.
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We continue right back where we were. Sure. I'll tackle that one. Since that is part and parcel of, you know, what—
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By the way, this was—the questioner had just quoted Hebrews chapter 6. And, as always, the warning passages from Hebrews were quoted without a context.
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And having preached through almost all of Hebrews now, I'm halfway through chapter 10.
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We're getting into the last big, huge warning passage. I am absolutely convinced that the only way to meaningfully address any of the warning passages in Hebrews is to address the message of Hebrews as a whole.
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And the message of Hebrews is the answer for all of the warning passages.
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And what makes the warning passages real is because of what
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God has done in Jesus Christ. This heated debate that's been going on in our Reformed Presbyterian circles for the last 10 years revolves around a lot of these warning passages of apostasy.
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And so I would argue that, again, covenantally, it's completely legit to think of the decreedly reprobate as partaking of God's grace in some way, shape, or form.
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I think, you know, the Westminster Confession, I think, hits on this. And was it on the—in the chapter 10 on the doctrine of the sexual calling where it talks about the
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Holy Spirit having common operations with the decreedly reprobate.
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That is, the Holy Spirit gets down dirty and wrestles with those who are going to be in hell for all eternity.
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And how does he do it? Well, he gives them—he enlightens them, he gives them a taste of the heavenly gift, and they partake of the
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Holy Spirit in some way, shape, or form. I would argue it's a covenantal partaking. It's not an eternal, decreedly partaking because, obviously, these people don't persevere.
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You know, there are people who come into the church, who taste the heavenly gifts, hear the Word of God, you know, commune with the saints and do all those things, but then end up falling away.
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So what status are they in God's redemptive plan? Well, they aren't eternally elect, they aren't decreedly elect, but they are covenantally elect.
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All right. Phil? Now, again, the audience left completely sitting there going, wow, and we thought this was a
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Bible -based discussion. And that's one of the biggest problems is, you know, someone said, well, but, you know, he's got to lay out his position.
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Well, yeah, but that's not what the debate was about. And if you're going to take an unusual perspective, a minority perspective, and it is a minority perspective on these issues, well, then you better be prepared to lay it out and give the biblical basis, and none was given.
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You know, just to run off to the Westminster Confession of Faith is just confirming in the minds of everybody in this audience that this
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Calvinism stuff is just so far removed from the Bible that it's downright cultic.
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And, you know, that's exactly how a lot of people probably look at it. And that's the problem.
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Now, what you have here is you have, well, you know, these are the covenantally elect, but not the, you know, they're in the new covenant, but they're not actually regenerate.
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And so they partake of grace in some way. And, of course, that's why we debated
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Mr. Wilson on that particular subject. And you can listen to what we had to say about that.
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And that comes up in our debates with our Presbyterian brothers. We'll let the Presbyterians fight it out amongst themselves as to who's consistent on that point.
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But the point is that that kind of response in this context where you're dealing with someone who clearly, and this guy's asking the question, he is to the far side of your opponent.
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And what was he just given? Was he given a biblical answer? Was he given something that was derived from the book of Hebrews or anything like that?
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Now, of course, Phil Fernandez, I don't think, has a leg to stand on to believe in eternal security or whatever form that he takes at this point.
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But still, it'd be nice to have had some kind of response to this from a historically reformed perspective rather than a federal visionist perspective.
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Yeah, and it's really interesting because we had a really good talk about stuff like this.
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Now, on this particular point, his view of the covenantal elect, he actually comes closer to Arminius than I do.
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He's the Calvinist and I'm the non -Calvinist. Closer to Calvin than most people. Well, when
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I mentioned what Arminius believed, you said something like he's pretty close to Calvinism there.
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And I think he's been so misrepresented. But with all those things in Hebrews 6, verse 9, talking about all those things, those people, the author says,
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But, beloved, we are confident of better things concerning you. Yes, things that accompany salvation, though we speak in this manner.
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And that has to be taken into consideration. That's one of the primary issues that I point to.
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The context itself makes this clear. I agree with Dr. Phil here.
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There's nothing about prevenient grace or anything else. But upon what basis, given everything else that he's said, can he adopt this position?
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I'm glad he does. But I would just ask him, if you really do see that Jesus is a perfect Savior, follow that line of thought.
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Follow it to its logical conclusion. And you'll see what we've been talking about all along. Take that to be that you could have those things and not have salvation.
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He feels confident, the author feels confident that they have salvation. So these are people that their lives have been reformed.
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They've somehow experienced the Holy Spirit, but they're not really regenerated, and that they could fall away. But I think the key verse in Hebrews about the warning passages is
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Hebrews 3, verse 14, where the author says, For we have become partakers of Christ. So we have now become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end.
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So if you are now a true believer, you will persevere to the end. All right. Next questioner.
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Now, listen to what was just said. If you are now a true believer, you'll persevere to the end.
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Why? Why? I have to ask Dr. Phil, and I'm really sad that I have not gotten any responses from any of the emails
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I've sent. I've sent them multiple times, and it's just like, I'm not going to talk to you anymore. And I'm sad about that, because I think
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I've been absolutely fair in reviewing this debate. I have criticized both sides, and as I've said, fully open to having
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Dr. Phil on to answer anything, any of the objections that I've raised. So I think
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I have bent over backwards at that point. I really do. But be that as it may, the question that has to be asked is, how can you say what was just said?
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What is it about that faith that will endure?
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Because you see, from the perspective that he has taken, if it's all a matter of prevenient grace, if it's all a matter of this grace trying to save everybody, then the reason a person is saved is not because they have been given a special work of grace that creates saving faith.
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So why will it endure? Why can't it stop enduring? Why can't it cease? These are questions that simply have to be asked of the person who is,
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I think, inconsistently, on the one hand, saying Christ cannot save of himself perfectly without man's cooperation, but then saying once you are saved, then that's it.
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You've got your ticket punched, you're on your way to heaven. They don't fit. I'm sorry, this doesn't work together.
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Hi, I'm kind of nervous. Two questions, quickly. And this is on responsibility.
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Dr. Fernandez said that man can't be held responsible. Hopefully I'm quoting you correctly or the gist of it.
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That man can't be held responsible for believing in Christ if he is unable to do so.
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Is that correct? That man can't be held responsible to believe in Christ if he has the inability to believe in Christ.
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Yeah, I think if God commands something and then empowers man to obey that command and man says no, then man's responsible.
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Now, I do believe that the non -elect are responsible for their sin and deserve the flames of hell, but so do we.
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Why would God unconditionally elect us and then unconditionally just...
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I just don't see God's justice there. That's what I'm trying to comment on. Speaking from a Calvinistic worldview, that man is unable to believe in Christ unless he is regenerated.
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I believe you stated that. Therefore, man is not responsible to believe in Christ because he is unable.
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Yeah, yeah. Is that correct? Total inability is another way of saying total depravity, and I would agree with the
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Calvinist on that point, but then I think God adds prevenient grace, which sets the will free, though the
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Calvinist just believes that the only way God sets the will free is through regeneration. So if God doesn't regenerate you, your will has never been set free.
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So prevenient grace sets everyone's will free. So there's no one who is under bondage to sin.
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Everyone has a free will because of prevenient grace.
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So I don't know who the Bible is addressing in all those texts that talk about man's inability and incapacity and all that sort of stuff, and I've never found the phrase prevenient grace anywhere in the
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Bible, nor have I found the concept anywhere in the Bible. I've certainly found the grace of God that brings about regeneration, and I certainly understand that there can be a process whereby
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God does that, but that's not the same thing as a peanut butter grace that God just slaps all over everybody and everyone's freed from slavery to sin.
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Where is that? It was never challenged. I don't know how a debate like this could go on with that phrase just being thrown in, thrown in, thrown in, thrown in, and never once challenged.
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Just absolutely amazing to me. No. Okay, Chris? Yeah, no.
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Calvinists have always held to a general free will of all men without exception. I mean, just read the
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Westminster Confession of Faith, which is pretty much the standard Calvinistic confession. There's a whole chapter in there just on free will and how all men have free will without exception, not just those who've been regenerated by God.
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So it really is a misunderstanding and I think a pretty common misunderstanding that Armenians accuse
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Calvinists of denying general free will. Now, there's also a special kind of free will that only
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God gives to his decreedly elect, and that's the kind of free will that allows us to worship
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God in beauty and holiness and obey God and obey his commands and fellowship with his people and all that.
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I'm sorry, your next question? Well, that didn't explain it. What does that mean?
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If the term free will is being used as a synonym for autonomous will, that is the creaturely will operating outside of divine decree, when a
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Calvinist talks about free will, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about creaturely free will, free will to act upon the impulses of our hearts, not free from the decree of God.
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And so the two sides are using free will in completely different ways. And when you throw Molinism in, who knows how many different ways it's being used.
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But the point is, if you don't make those things clear, then debates can be nights of muddling the mind rather than clarifying the issue.
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And I'm afraid that's what happened in this one. Well, I actually didn't get my first one out, because the actual is that man does not have the ability to believe in Christ.
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And you stated that man can't be held responsible for that because he is unable to do.
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So maybe I must understand you, because my question is this, because in the Bible command does not imply ability.
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For instance, God commands man to keep the Ten Commandments, but only one man in all of history has kept the
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Ten Commandments. Yeah, and I addressed it just about two minutes ago, sir. So I said that God commands us to obey him.
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We don't have the ability to do so. He gives us his prevenient grace, which then frees the will.
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But you still have the ability to resist. So yeah, I'm in agreement with what you're saying, except for this debate really, when it comes down to total depravity, is not is man totally depraved?
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Does total depravity also come with prevenient grace? The Calvinist says no, the
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Arminian says yes. I'm sorry. Where has even the first attempt been made to establish the existence of this wonderfully mythical thing?
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It's just, hey, any consistent with my position, I just patch it up with prevenient grace.
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Just throw it in there. I don't have to show you where it is in the Bible. I don't have to give you any consistent explanation of it.
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It's just, that's prevenient grace. That must be, that's prevenient grace there too. And the error here of ought implies can is an excellent point.
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But unfortunately, since once you get to this point, if Mr. Comus has not expressed his disagreement with this concept of prevenient grace and forced
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Dr. Phil to defend it, it's too late. Once you get to the audience questions, too late, man.
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It's over with. If you didn't challenge that, it's, you know, that's it. Sorry, I'm going to have to stop you because there's a line behind you.
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We're running out of time. And that question was like three parts. My question is about how would you explain the apparent tension between the concept of total depravity and being created in the image of God and also along with the passage of Romans 2, 14, and 15 that says that even the unbeliever has in the format of his soul the program of morality.
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All right, who would like to go first? So, okay, your first question was what do
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I think of man being created in the image and likeness of God? I'm sorry.
31:52
I really wasn't certain why all through the last half of the debate,
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Mr. Comus just didn't seem to understand the questions that were being asked, wasn't tracking with where the audience was coming from.
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I don't know what it is. Maybe it's just a personal thing. Maybe it's not recognizing the context. I don't know.
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But many, many times someone asks a question. He's like, are you asking about something over here?
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And I'm like, I don't enjoy audience questions. They're my least favorite part.
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They rarely shed light on anything. But at least if you're going to do them, listen to what the guy is saying and figure out where he's coming from.
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And sometimes people ask questions that just don't make a whit of sense. But then there are other times where that wasn't what was going on here.
32:37
Your question was how does depravity? The question is considering the apparent tension between being totally depraved at the same time being created in the image of God and having in our souls, even in the soul of the unbeliever, the format of human morality, per Romans 2, 14 and 15.
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Well, when God created us in his image and likeness, that implies some form of free will, the ability to choose, the ability to think and reason.
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And that wasn't annihilated at the fall, but it was marred. So even those who will be in hell for all eternity, they're going to be non -human in the sense that they won't have some kind of free will, some kind of ability to think and choose and all that.
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But it'll be severely marred to the point of, you know, you may not even be able to recognize that they are human, that they're creating the image and likeness of God.
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I'm not making my question clear. I'm sorry. Did you understand the question,
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Phil? I think I did, but I think my response would be along the same lines of Chris, that we were created in the image of God, morally perfect, and then once we fell, we're totally depraved, all the man's faculties, yet so it marred
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God's image, as Chris said. So we still have knowledge of right and wrong deep down within our hearts, but because we're depraved, we like to suppress that.
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So we're free to choose. We could add one plus one and still get two. We can get some things right, but the thing we can't do,
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Jesus said, apart from you, you can do nothing. We're not able to please God. Chris and I are in agreement.
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Is repentance and faith pleasing to God? Isn't that what Romans 8 tells us, is that those in the flesh cannot please
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God? And yet, isn't it, Dr. Phil, that tells us we can do that on our own with this prevenient grace?
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I'm sorry, no consistency on that part. We're in agreement with that. In the flesh, no one can please
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God. We're in agreement on that. The difference is, with total depravity, does
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God give prevenient grace to all men, which then sets the will free, before regeneration or not?
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So I think it's prevenient, God monergistically gives prevenient grace, then some choose to believe because their will has been set free, and then
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God monergistically regenerates and justifies. Again, given how central to the position this concept of prevenient grace is,
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I cannot understand, A, the lack of challenge to it by Mr. Comus, and B, the lack of giving any foundation for it by Phil Fernandes.
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That, to me, I mean, if Phil's going to go so far as to say, that's what this debate's about, okay then,
35:35
I want to go back and go, and you established this where? I mean, you asserted it six, seven times in your opening statement, and at least six, seven times since then.
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We hear all about it, but where did we find this anywhere in Scripture?
35:51
I've not found it. All right, it's up to what I was asking. Sorry. You've evoked a lot of thought, though.
35:59
Two questions. One, did God desire to covenant from a salvific standpoint with other peoples in the
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Old Testament, the Philistines, the Canaanites, and why did he covenant only with a group of people in the
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Old Testament and not the Canaanites and the Jebusites and so forth? So that's question one? Yeah. All right, let's go ahead and answer that.
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Yeah, I think that's a great example of how God picks and chooses who he's going to have a relationship with.
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And in the older covenant, it was with a very particular people. It wasn't with all men yet.
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That didn't come until Pentecost when God puts his grace out for everyone.
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So, yeah, I think that's a great example of selective, particular grace.
36:53
I think it's a great question, but the Scriptures are clear that God blessed
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Israel. See, when things got so rotten that only one family was walking with the
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Lord, God flooded the earth. Well, things were starting to get that rotten again, I think, and so God blessed
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Israel to be a blessing to all nations. He blessed Israel to be a light to all nations.
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So I agree, things got really bad, but I don't, you know, there are entire civilizations that reject
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God and would not accept God's prevenient grace. No, no, no, no, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's not what the question is,
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Dr. Phil. What the man's saying is he could have entered into a relationship with many other peoples.
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He chose not to. And what's Dr. Phil's response? Well, you know, prevenient grace, they chose to reject it.
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How did the Amorite high priest reject God's prevenient grace? Could someone show me the prevenient grace that took away the heart of stone of the
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Amorite high priest who's offering children upon the altar? I mean, seriously,
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I mean, this is really where the rubber meets the road and this peanut butter prevenient grace stuff just evaporates.
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You seriously telling me that by prevenient grace, the Amorite high priest was freed from the effects of his sin so that he had a free will to follow after God but chose not to do so, even though God didn't send any prophets to him in the first place?
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Really? Yeah, that's not an answer to—the question exposed something and didn't get an answer there.
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My understanding. Second question? The question is related to that question.
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So if God desires all men to be saved, is it possible that he desires all men without distinction as opposed to exception?
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Because if he desired all men to be saved, could that distinction be the fact that he's talking about exception of all people or their distinction of tribe, tongue, and nation?
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Unfortunately, the question didn't come across really clearly, but what he's asking is when you talk about all men to be saved, maybe all men means men from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation.
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That's what we believe. That's the consistent understanding. That's how you harmonize Scripture. That's how you allow
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Scripture to speak for itself and for its own categories. And you look at Revelation 5 and John 11, and you put it all together, and yeah, that's what it's talking about.
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All kinds of men, men in authority, men who do not have authority, women and single men and married men and the whole nine yards.
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That's what all men means. And, of course, Jeremian takes that to mean every single individual human being, and it was just demonstrated by the question regarding other peoples that if God desired the salvation of the
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Amorites, he really went about it in a very strange way. Yeah, it's not time to take over that land because their transgression is not yet full.
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But when that time comes, I'm going to send you in and wipe them out, man, woman, and child. Yeah, that's how you do evangelism.
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Hello? Isn't there something clearly going on here? Yeah, and I would disagree.
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The first Timothy 2, 1 to 6, Paul tells very early in the history of the church to pray for kings and people in positions of authority and to pray for all mankind.
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And you trace how he's talking. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Dr. Phil, think. Think with us here.
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To pray for kings. What are kings? Why didn't he give a specific name,
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Dr. Phil? Why didn't he give Caesar's name? Or some puppet king underneath him like a
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Herod or somebody like that? He said to pray for kings and for those in authority.
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Those are kinds of men.
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Kinds of men. Men that Christians might be tempted not to pray for because they tend to be the ones who persecute us and mistreat us.
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And so he's talking specifically about kinds of men.
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And then Phil jumps from that to all of humanity. So how do you jump from praying, making sure that the church prays for all kinds of men?
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Because if you're praying for men, then you're going to be likely to what? To witness to them. You're going to be likely much more.
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If you're not praying for kings, then you're probably keep your mouth shut if you have the opportunity of testifying to kings.
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See? How do you jump from that to the idea that what Paul was really telling
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Timothy to do was to break out the Ephesian phone book and start with the alphas and start praying to the omegas?
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And when you're done with that, then you bring in the Thessalonian phone book and then you bring in the Philippian phone book. And you just have really long prayer meetings because you're supposed to pray for every single individual who has ever lived or ever will live.
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Is that really what all men meant? No, of course it's not. And yet that's what
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Norm Geisler and Dave Hunt and everybody just throw it out there. And though it's an absurd interpretation, you just throw it out there and you just repeat it enough times you hope everybody believes it.
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There you go. Talking about all men, Jesus gave his life a ransom for all and God desires that all be saved.
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So, no. I think if you first embrace
42:38
Calvinism and then that becomes the theological lenses through which you interpret the Bible, then all of a sudden all men would become people from every tribe.
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But I don't think it would... People from every tribe, tongue, people and nation is
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Revelation chapter 5. That's not Calvin. That's Revelation chapter 5.
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That's the Bible. So here we see the lens. There is a lens here.
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There is definitely a lens here. It's a lens of prevenient grace and a lens of this and a lens of that.
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There's a lens here. But the lens is Dr. Phil's, not ours. I don't think it's that way from good exegesis.
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Calvin and his institutes... Good exegesis? Really? Really?
43:28
It's good exegesis to not see Revelation chapter 5? It's good exegesis not to see that Paul is talking about kinds of people in 1st
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Timothy? It's not good exegesis to recognize that if you're going to say every single human being then you believe Jesus is the mediator for every single human being?
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So, Dr. Phil, what is the effect of Jesus' mediation for every single human being who has ever lived? Why is
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Jesus interceding before the Father for the Amorite high priest that God had Joshua run through with a sword?
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Can you answer that for me? What does his intercession avail in that situation?
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That's what I'd like to know. His commentaries in Galatians and 1 John chapter 2 talks about Jesus dying for all mankind so he didn't even hold the limited atonement himself.
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Yeah, I agree. Calvin didn't explicitly spell limited atonement.
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But I think you can get it from him by good and necessary consequence in some ways. But with regards to your question, again,
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I would just go back to the covenantal -decretal distinction that I think is so key to interpreting the whole
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Bible. Notice the difference there. Notice the difference there. When I went to Dr.
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Phil's position, where did I go? Scripture, scripture, and more scripture. My examples were scriptural examples.
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My texts were scriptural texts. When Mr. Commas responds to Phil Fernandes, well, we've got to go back to this federal visionism thing and this covenantal thing and you've got this new covenant and it's a mixed covenant just like the old covenant was and all the rest of that stuff.
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Again, you wonder why people would have walked out of here going, I don't really know what I just watched this evening, but I'm pretty certain
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I don't want to go that direction. Again, Deuteronomy 29, 29, Sometimes secret things belong to the
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Lord, but things revealed belong to us and to our children. Passages like 1
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Timothy, I think, are good examples of that. God desires all men to be saved. Is that a decretal desire?
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We don't know. Ah! We don't know? We don't know?
45:34
Mr. Commas, what about intercession? I mean, if you're really a
45:40
Calvinist, if you're really Reformed, you look at that and go, we have one mediator between God and man, the man
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Christ Jesus. And you go and ask the question, what does mediation accomplish?
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What is mediation? For whom does Christ mediate? No meaningful
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Reformed response from a Biblical perspective was offered to this question. None. Zero.
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Nada. And I think, ultimately, we have to say no, because not all men are going to be saved.
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Is it a covenantal desire? I would say yes. Covenantally, God desires all, not just all kinds of men, but all men without,
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I would argue, without exception, and yet that same desire has a dual effect.
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See, even I don't understand that. Covenantally, God desires all men without exception.
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So, covenantally, God desired the salvation of the Amorite high priest. I thought that Federal Visionism was, you know, how does that relate to the
46:51
Doug Wilson argument that in evangelizing Roman Catholics, who are our brothers and sisters in Christ, by the way, but they're unregenerate brothers and sisters in Christ, that we grab them by their baptism.
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It's their baptism that puts them in that covenant, isn't it? The Amorite high priest wasn't in the covenant, was he?
47:09
So, I will admit, at that point, I go, what? Even I don't, I can't follow that.
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Just like Christ's atonement has a dual effect, and that is to either eternally, you know, save or to eternally damn.
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I think, you know, I would argue that the second death isn't predicated upon Adam and his fall, but upon Christ and his death on the cross.
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I think hell is Christ's territory. He owns it. He's the king of hell. Next question.
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For grace you have been saved in faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.
47:49
Well, if I freely, for my free will, choose God, choose
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Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, does that not give me the ability to boast before the person who does not make that choice?
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Now, listen, listen to what the actual question is, and what the response will be.
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Because I just don't think Dr. Phil can hear what is being said here, because this is something Mr. Comus has even said.
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And that is, if you have peanut butter, prevenient grace, everybody's gotten it, so everybody's back to this moral neutral point.
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Don't know where that comes from in the Bible, but everyone's back to moral neutral point. If that's the case, then the reason
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I accept, and my next door neighbor doesn't, must be found in me.
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Where else is it going to be found in? I'm more intelligent, I'm more spiritually sensitive, I'm a better person, something.
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But if prevenient grace brings us all back to the same point, now, if you're going to allow for distinctions in how well prevenient grace works, then you can answer this a different way.
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But now that's raising all sorts of different issues, because now you have to go, well, why didn't God give sufficient grace to bring this person to the point where they would certainly be saved?
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But if you say prevenient grace brings you back to this moral neutral point, unknown in Scripture, but that's, unfortunately, by this point, the time for challenging that, well, well past.
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But if that's the case, then the question that has to be addressed is, why me, not the guy next to me, it all comes down to me.
49:35
That's what the question is. Now let's see if that's what gets heard in response.
49:41
Well, it's just like, how many people took one of my free books?
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Yeah, I gave it by grace. Did you earn it? Has nothing, nothing to do with the question.
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Because the question was not whether grace can be earned. The question was, if salvation is by grace, and you've used this prevenient grace thing to get everybody back to a moral neutral point, but God can't go any farther than that, if it's all up to my freed will due to prevenient grace, then what it comes down to is me.
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I'm the one that chooses to be in front of the throne, rather than on the parapets of hell, screaming out my hatred to God.
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It all comes down to me, my spirituality, my sensitivity, my intelligence. Something makes me to differ, not grace.
50:37
Because how many times has Dr. Phil said over and over again, everyone's gotten the same grace, right?
50:46
That's what the question is. Not whether you earn grace, because giving away free books.
50:53
And the amazing thing is Mr. Comis is going to say, that's a pretty good illustration, but not quite. And I just want to go, oh, oh, no, no, no, no.
51:03
By the way, there's a silence here for a while. Let that one sink in.
51:09
We'll open the phone lines, 877 -753 -3341, 877 -753 -3341.
51:15
If there are calls, we'll take them. If there are not, we will continue on with the next debate. But we press on.
51:24
Chris? Yeah, the analogy is an okay one that Phil just gave, but all analogies break down ultimately with God.
51:36
With God and salvation, God gives grace to believe, and if he doesn't give the grace, then we're not going to believe.
51:47
And if someone can stand before God and say, look, my faith is something I trumped up within myself,
51:53
I produced it within myself somehow, some way, well, then they have something to boast of. They have something to brag about in themselves that they were able to produce within themselves before God.
52:03
Here, here's my good work, God. And so, you know, I think what Paul was wrestling with in Romans 9 were the self -righteous good works of the
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Pharisees. Well, we have the same kind of thing going on in our day. They're just self -righteous faith of Arminianism.
52:17
I mean, I'll just tell you flat out what I think. Next questioner. Thanks, gentlemen. My two questions first is, do either of you have children?
52:26
Five. Two with a baby. Two children. Three grandsons. My second question is, based on your positions here, how do you motivate and exhort your children to share the gospel to the world today?
52:45
I don't know what that had to do with the debate topic either. And, you know, honestly, I think we've gone far enough.
52:51
I think we've gone. I don't think there was anything else to the questions. I don't recall. Maybe I'm wrong.
52:57
It's been a while since I listened to it. I don't recall anything in the last just a few minutes left. I think there was approximately 11 minutes left, and part of that was saying goodnight and all the rest of that stuff.
53:09
So I think we've covered it pretty well. The reason, once again, and I said when
53:15
I started this, be happy to have Dr. Phil on. There's lots of questions we've asked. I haven't gotten any responses to any of my last emails.
53:22
I'll try again to, you know, reestablish contact.
53:28
But I felt that especially the interaction here at the end was illustrative of how it is that those of us who oppose federal visionism give a significantly clearer and more biblical defense of Reformed theology than those who promote federal visionism.
53:50
I stand behind that. I'll defend that. I think it's very clear. Just in listening to my debates on this subject, listen to this debate on this subject.
53:59
Just compare them. I really think that federal visionism is a dangerous perspective.
54:06
That's why we've debated it in the past, and we have dealt with it, and I think it needs to be continued to be identified as a dangerous perspective.
54:16
I think that it's very much in error there. 877 -753 -3341.
54:22
I don't have any calls right now, so I'm going to press on. If I see some come in, maybe toward the end of the program or something like that.
54:28
But we will see. I would like to at least get finished with Abdullah Kunduz's opening statement because we're getting real close to it.
54:38
And so it would be some nice break points here because I'm going to be gone until next week. As I said, no dividing lines tomorrow or on Friday.
54:46
I'm going to be at the Psalm 119 Conference with Todd Friel and Phil Johnson and R .W.
54:52
Glenn and others in Ohio. And that means sorry, LaShawn.
54:57
LaShawn's been listening live again today. She was very happy to have caught it live. I'm not sure what it's like to have always listened to the dividing lines as dead casts, but it's sort of nice to get to know that people are listening as it's going on.
55:10
And tomorrow I am going to be finally getting to meet the great
55:16
Ralph, who, like me, is hair -challenged, follicly challenged. And we both like purple, so there's probably going to be a purple explosion at the airport.
55:28
And looking forward to a fun weekend and hopefully a good preaching weekend.
55:35
Todd just threw out a curve at us about sort of changing a little something at the conference, and so I've got to sort of do some thinking about that on the flight out as to how
55:46
I'm going to do things and stuff. But, hey, I'm pretty easy.
55:51
It's changing things and doing things like that, so that's not a problem. So looking forward to it this weekend in Worcester.
56:03
I'm going to be staying in Worcester, Ohio, and I'm looking at the
56:09
Worcester weather forecast right now on screen. It's currently 63 with light rain, and the forecast highs are 71, 73, and 71 with the lows in the upper 50s.
56:23
I'm actually looking forward to that. After August here, what? What?
56:29
It's not going to rain? It's not dry? Oh, no, it's not dry, but it's at 58. Who cares if it's dry?
56:35
I mean, it's at 58 degrees. The humidity is irrelevant at that point. So I'm really looking forward to that.
56:44
Apple Creek is for the conference, yeah, but I'm going to be staying in Worcester. And so Saturday, 71 for the high, 57 for the low.
56:52
I'm looking forward to that. I mean, I have not walked outside of a building and felt a temperature in the 70s since I was in Alaska.
57:00
And you haven't since you're in Colorado. Yeah, okay, all right. So it's going to be nice to get a chance to do that.
57:09
All right, let's get back with Abdullah Kunde here. We're, let's see here, very close to the end of his opening statement.
57:18
And so I want to have a nice, clean breaking point at that point. And so I might get to his opening statement and then get back to Roger Perkins in this last half hour of the program.
57:30
Another jumbo DL. Some of you are getting so accustomed to this. So accustomed to this that you just, you take it for granted.
57:38
You better be careful. We could have mini DLs of 45 minutes. We could have micro
57:43
DLs of 30 minutes. So don't get accustomed to that. But what's that?
57:51
Vignettes? Yes, the five -minute DL vignette. Well, actually one of the things that we have to do at these conferences is
57:58
Friel makes you do these pastor potluck things. And I think you have 30 seconds in which you have to say something meaningful.
58:08
30 seconds. I mean, it's like Twitter on video. And it is.
58:13
It's Twitter on video. But I think that's just as long as his attention span is. He's a little
58:19
ADHD most of the time. So, you know, I did ten of those last time.
58:24
I did ten this time. It's just part of your purgatorial experience when you go and do one of these things. You do these pastor potluck.
58:30
It's even hard to say pastor potluck. You spit on the camera in the process. And I said everything
58:36
I knew the last time. So I don't know why they want me to do it again. But that's what we're going to have to do. So anyhow, back to Abdullah Kunda.
58:46
The concept can be reduced to the absurd.
58:58
He's talking about the concept of God not being able to touch his creation, which has nothing to do with Christianity at all.
59:06
I mean, it's just the exact opposite of what the Incarnation is. And, in fact, Abdullah and I have agreed on the topic for the debate is the
59:14
Incarnation. And can God become a man? A Christian -Muslim dialogue on the
59:19
Incarnation of Jesus, I think is what we're going to call it. And the location is being lined out right now.
59:27
And as soon as we get it, hopefully we can get a banner ad up on it and stuff for all of our friends in the Sydney area for when the debate will be taking place and stuff like that.
59:35
And I'm looking forward to meeting everybody. But I'm just saying to Abdullah, who, by the way, was not listening because of Ramadan, hadn't even thought about Ramadan, but was not listening, but is catching up.
59:50
So I'm sure I am absolutely certain that by the time
59:55
I get on a plane for the long journey down to Sydney that he will have completely caught up with all of my comments.
01:00:03
And my comment on this is that has nothing to do, that is not a part of the origin of Christianity and our concept at all.
01:00:10
That's not where the Logos came from. That's not a part of the Old Testament. And if it is, well, it's just Greek philosophy.
01:00:18
Well, that's why the Logos of John is so fundamentally different than the
01:00:26
Logos of Greek philosophy. So here, the argument here is, well, if an incarnation takes place, then
01:00:46
God has changed. No, God in his essential attributes does not change and cannot change. But I would argue that this kind of philosophical argument means that God cannot act in time.
01:00:56
And since Allah acts in time, and since Allah does things in time, then you could argue, given this kind of argumentation, that he has changed.
01:01:06
So did he go before his action in time, was he perfect and then became imperfect? Or was he imperfect and then became perfect after his action in time?
01:01:14
This is standard argumentation used by atheists against the whole idea of God having any type of meaningful interaction with the temporal realm, especially in the role of creator.
01:01:24
And it goes both directions. And again, Abdullah has to use the same standards in the defense of Allah as creator of the universe as he does in attacking
01:01:35
Christianity. And at this point, I don't think that he's doing so. It immediately implies this theological problem.
01:01:43
Now, are these just Islamic interpretations? No, they're not. In fact, those quotes that I've given there are from the
01:01:49
Hebrew Bible, from the Old Testament. Job, from the Psalms, and from the Prophets. We do have similar verses in the
01:01:57
Qur 'an, but I just wanted to point out that it's pretty clear that we're not just making this up.
01:02:03
So how does Talbid fare? Well, I'm going to go a minute over time, but that's a lot of what he subtracted from my statement.
01:02:09
Now, I find this interesting. I'm not sure if he's going to ask the question in Sydney.
01:02:17
But basically, the way they arrange this is if you go over in your opening, it's taken off of your rebuttal time.
01:02:25
So if you have a 20 -minute opening statement, he's going to go two and a half minutes open over his opening statement.
01:02:30
So it's a 10 -minute rebuttal time, so you only got seven and a half minutes rebuttal. I would really highly recommend that we don't do that because there's a reason why you have time frames.
01:02:45
It still all evens out, I suppose. But what it's saying is what
01:02:51
I'm doing now is more important than what I'm going to be doing later, which is where the interaction is. So I'm glad at least they stuck to it and took the time off and he didn't have time to rebut.
01:03:01
But I just found that sort of odd. So what he's doing here is he's going to assert al -Ikhlas, the purity or the sincerity, and putting it forward as many
01:03:41
Muslims would. And I would agree, at least in the Quran, it's probably the clearest statement of Islamic monotheism.
01:03:47
That's why I've done entire lectures, videos, and so on and so forth on surah al -Ikhlas and try to help
01:03:53
Christians understand where we agree and where we disagree. And remember, one of the main reasons
01:04:02
I bring up this particular text is this, you know,
01:04:08
Muhammad, according to the hadith, said that quoting surah al -Ikhlas is the equivalent of quoting a third of the
01:04:14
Quran. And if that is the case, then, and given that it's as close as you can get to a creedal statement in the
01:04:25
Quran itself, I mean, it doesn't have the la ilaha illallah, it doesn't have the shahadah, but it's close.
01:04:33
The uniqueness, the ahad, oneness of God is there.
01:04:40
But one quarter, it's only four lines long, as he says, one quarter of that surah is a denial of Christian belief.
01:04:57
And I'll have to ask Abdullah if he agrees with this, but I've spoken with imams.
01:05:04
I took my class to the mosque in Tempe when I taught last for Golden Gate, and we observed the prayers.
01:05:14
And I asked the imam afterwards, I said, would you agree with me that the third ayah of surah al -Ikhlas, is specifically in reference to a denial of Christian belief?
01:05:30
And he said, oh, there's no question about it. I'm not sure that Abdullah would agree with that, actually. We've been discussing some of these issues, so I'm not sure if he would agree with that.
01:05:38
But it is certainly a popular understanding. And so here, the reason
01:05:46
I bring this up is that here in one of the most important surahs in the Quran, Islam's self -identification, its self -definition of its own perspective involves a denial of the
01:06:02
Christian faith. And you have to understand that if you're going to understand how
01:06:07
Islam and Christianity relate to one another. Or, The other way that it's used is as a total negative.
01:06:43
So I could say, There was nobody in the masjid, or nobody in the mosque.
01:06:50
But if I were to substitute wahid in that sentence, if I said, There's no one in the masjid, in the mosque.
01:06:58
That might imply that there's two, or three, or four more. So it's only used grammatically in these two senses.
01:07:05
However, God uses it positively to describe himself in the Quran. Why? Because it affirms a unique oneness.
01:07:11
It cannot be applied to an individual human being, to an individual experience, to an individual aspect of creation. It implies no second, no affiliate, no competitor.
01:07:19
The absolute one. That's what it means when it's used in this grammatical sense. And it's only ever used in that way in the
01:07:28
Quran to describe God. Not even other Arabic, non -Islamic literature uses that structure.
01:07:35
And indeed, the chapter goes on to say, And indeed, only God is independent. Only he doesn't have an origin.
01:07:41
Only he doesn't need anything else. He doesn't come from something else.
01:07:51
Fifteen words, four lines. Absolutely makes it clear we believe in our God. Mathematically it works.
01:07:57
Historically it works because we're not coming from Greek philosophy. We're not coming from Persian philosophy.
01:08:03
We have an independent, unique understanding of God. Now, just hold on just a second there.
01:08:13
Let's be honest. And once again, I would call for some consistency on Abdullah's part at this point.
01:08:20
And that is, if you're going to use the kind of scholarship that would uncritically say that Philo is the source of John's use of Lagos terminology, then you have to use that same scholarship that is going to identify all sorts of pre -existing sources that end up in the
01:08:44
Quran and the Hadith. Because it's the same mindset. The same mindset that looks around and says,
01:08:51
Ah, well here is a pre -existing belief in another people group that ends up in a later religious writing.
01:08:57
So that must be where it came from. Now, I happen to disagree with, and think it's sort of ridiculous, the lengths to which that is taken by many people today.
01:09:09
But again, if you're going to use that kind of stuff against Christianity, then you have to accept its usage against your own faith as well.
01:09:16
You can't just go, oh, I'm going to quote these liberals who say this about Christianity. But I'm not going to apply that to my religion.
01:09:24
Even though there's all sorts of scholarship that would identify pre -existing religious concepts that end up being reflected in the
01:09:33
Quran. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. You've got to be consistent in these matters.
01:09:39
And likewise, textually, if anything, our understanding of God is better maintained by the
01:09:45
Christian and Hebrew scriptures than the Christian understanding is. And having said that, I think it's quite clear that the
01:09:52
Christian understanding of mathematics is problematic, but historically it certainly asks a few questions, and textually it also asks a few questions.
01:10:00
Thank you very much. Okay, so I think we responded to each of the assertions.
01:10:09
And hopefully that response, and we'll get into the interaction and the other stuff over the next few weeks, but I hope that response will help in the clarification of the issues before the debate so that the presentation that is made will be very straightforward along that.
01:10:29
Speaking of which, we unfortunately are nowhere near the end of Roger Perkins' opening statement because we haven't been going fast enough, but at least the quality of the audio will be significantly greater here in the last 18 minutes of the program as we press forward.
01:10:51
So if I don't do a lot of interruption, we might actually make some progress on it, but you know me,
01:10:58
I end up having to feel like I respond to each one of these things. If I've already responded to it before,
01:11:03
I may just stop long enough to say, remember we responded to that before. But here we go. Now we heard tonight from my opponent that my opponent teaches that deity, listen, as deity, that's important.
01:11:16
Now if you want to say God died in his human existence, I agree with you. But regardless, it's still the human.
01:11:22
And ladies and gentlemen, he is not only a human being, but he is the one
01:11:27
Old Testament God manifest in the flesh, 1 Timothy 3 .16, but he is not a second of three divine individuals, each who have their own mind, but they're not the same as the other.
01:11:38
If deity can die, literal deity, and I'll tell you, we teach that it is improper to say that literal invisible deity as deity suffered and died.
01:11:50
I'd like to know, what does death mean, Mr. Perkins? What does death mean?
01:11:56
It sounds like what you're saying is that deity cannot voluntarily give up life.
01:12:07
Not in the sense, however, of annihilation and ceasing to exist. So why is that?
01:12:13
It sounds like, and Mr. Reeves picked up on this, it sounds like you're arguing for annihilation, cease to exist.
01:12:21
Well, of course, God cannot cease to exist. God cannot just simply choose to not exist any longer.
01:12:29
But that's not what we're talking about. Tonight, for my opponent, if he believes that the humanity of Christ, I started to add this in my questions, but if the humanity of Christ is literally divine,
01:12:41
I'd like for him to deal with that when he comes back up here. The humanity of Christ is literally divine?
01:12:48
Sounds like he's asking if he's a Eutychian or something like that. I've been thinking it might be really worthwhile to schedule a jumbo
01:13:01
DL for the not -too -distant future, where instead of reviewing any debates or anything like it,
01:13:14
I wonder how, hey, I wonder if a Turretin fan is listening.
01:13:21
You know, I just realized that there's, I do not think that any of Turretin's Elenctic theology is available online.
01:13:31
If it is, I'd be interested in knowing. I was listening to Scott Oliphant's Westminster lectures on Christology while writing recently, and one of their textbooks is
01:13:45
Turretin's Institutes of Elenctic Theology. And I'm going to have to put some thought into how we could find a way to, for those who would want to do it, and I realize many people would not want to do it, but there are many, we have a very interesting audience.
01:14:03
And for those who would want to, find an online free resource.
01:14:10
Maybe see if Boyce has a good enough discussion of Christology, and especially the issues relating to such things as Arianism, Nestorianism, Eutychianism, Apollinarianism, all these terms and what they have reference to.
01:14:36
Find a way of getting that in PDF or finding a link to it or something along those lines.
01:14:42
And say, okay, here's your reading material, and on such and such a day, what we're going to do for a jumbo
01:14:50
DL, 90 minutes, is a 90 -minute seminary -level lecture on Christology.
01:15:01
Going through all this stuff on the same level you'd get in seminary. And open the phones for questions so that you actually would be able to interact.
01:15:16
We could use Twitter, we could use the chat channel for interaction, just like a class.
01:15:27
And I think that would be really useful and very unusual.
01:15:32
Very unusual indeed. So I'll have to think about doing that once I get back from this, well, yeah, hopefully before going to Australia.
01:15:45
I think that would be a good thing to do, because that's where I've been doing some of the reading and stuff like that.
01:15:51
Main thing would be finding the reading resource, because between the channel and Twitter we've got enough ability for feedback there, as well as the phone lines and stuff like that.
01:16:02
DL University, DLU, yeah. The Dividing Line University. But yeah,
01:16:09
I'm serious. Like you would get in seminary. But hopefully so much so that you would actually be able to understand it.
01:16:19
That's what I always try to do in my lectures, is to make it actually understandable and useful to folks in the process.
01:16:28
But anyhow, okay, we continue. Does, that's a form of divine flesh which John and Paul wrote against.
01:16:35
If deity, ladies and gentlemen, can die. I'm not sure where John and Paul wrote against divine flesh, whatever he thinks that means.
01:16:45
And it sounds like he's asking if Mr. Reeves believes in some type of divinized flesh in the
01:16:53
Eutychian concept, I guess. A mixture or something like that. In fact, what I want to do in that one, it might end up being a mega
01:17:01
DL if it went long enough. What I would want to do is I would want to go over, phrase by phrase, the
01:17:11
Chalcedonian definition of who Christ is. I'd probably do the
01:17:16
Athanasian Creed first and then the Chalcedonian definition. So we'd be doing church history and Christology, ginormous.
01:17:24
It may end up being, we might actually end up having to do it like, do a jumbo, take a 15 break.
01:17:32
Because I'd need to take a break and everybody else, and then come back and do another hour or something like that. That may be the way to do it.
01:17:39
We could use those early shows that are real short as the gaps. So we'll just keep dropping the
01:17:45
Josh and Summer show in between those, right? No, no, we don't want to do that.
01:17:51
The Uber DLU, yeah, okay. That would be well worthwhile. So yeah, the main thing,
01:18:00
I'll see if I can do some running around online, would be to get the reading material and have people read beforehand.
01:18:09
Because if you don't do the reading beforehand, it might be very, very difficult to follow. But if you've got in front of you the
01:18:16
Athanasian Creed, you've got in front of you the Chalcedonian definition, then I can give the historical background first, and then we can discuss the issues from there.
01:18:27
But I've taught church history in the past. I would love to have the opportunity of doing it again.
01:18:32
I've been playing around with possibly doing it after the Synoptic Gospels at PRBC again. Because that was over a decade ago that I did that.
01:18:39
I really like this idea. In fact, on the website, you know where you've got Why Am I a Christian?
01:18:44
You've got that recording that you did. We could probably just drop those in there and just make them freebies, because,
01:18:50
I mean, these are great topics that a lot of people are totally unaware of.
01:18:56
It's not stuff that we don't address. It's just that we do it in the context of other things, and sometimes it's difficult for people to go, well, if I want to address, yeah,
01:19:03
I think it would be useful. And the folks on the channel are definitely saying, yeah, that's definitely something we want to do.
01:19:11
So it would be very easy to find the Chalcedonian definition and Athanasian Creed online.
01:19:17
The question is can we find other things, either Turretin's discussion,
01:19:24
Boyce's discussion, somebody's systematic theology section specifically on Christology that would have good definitions of laying out the historical backgrounds in regards to Apollinarianism.
01:19:36
And what I would have to decide is how much effort
01:19:42
I then invest in the historical stuff, because what bothers people, and it bothers me, is the farther you go into church history, the less confidence the historical context gives you concerning the how of the discussion.
01:20:04
It's one thing for us to have the discussion and talk about, well, for example, huge amounts of political intrigue and infighting in regards to what happened with Nestorius.
01:20:21
In fact, I don't even know if we can really figure out what Nestorius actually ended up believing at the end of everything.
01:20:26
But the concept of, and it comes up in this debate,
01:20:33
Mr. Perkins throws out the phrase Theotokos, Mother of God. And Nestorius's rejection of Theotokos, and you end up with the fight between Cyril and all this stuff.
01:20:50
And you get groups of monks coming together at councils and beating the snot out of each other, which does not exactly cause you to go, ooh,
01:21:01
I want to invest a whole lot of weight into the creedal decisions of councils that start off with monks beating the snot out of each other.
01:21:11
Okay? You know, one side bringing in their group of monks and they run out the other side, and then the other side comes in with more monks and runs them out and that kind of thing.
01:21:21
When people know the, yeah, no PDF version of Turretin planned,
01:21:28
I mean, okay, yeah, unless you want the Latin version. Yeah, I really don't think reading Turretin in the Latin would be overly useful to most of the people, though we will assign that to Turretin himself.
01:21:38
He will need to read all the Christology sections in Latin prior to that particular dividing line.
01:21:45
I think it's just by his name, his nick, it is a requirement for him to do that. Anyway, how much time do we spend on the historical context at that point?
01:21:56
Because sometimes the systematic theology discussion does get pretty much just disconnected from the historical part.
01:22:04
And people find the historical part fascinating but troubling all at the same time.
01:22:10
I like to cover it for that very reason, not that I like to trouble people, but that if you don't cover it and all you cover is the systematic theology, then someone comes along and says, well, yeah, did you know what was going on at that time?
01:22:25
And you're left going, well, why wasn't I told about that beforehand? And I love teaching church history because the fact that we look around in our day and sometimes we go, man, what a mess.
01:22:42
And the temptation is to think, man, God's lost control. He's not in control anymore. He's not accomplishing his purposes, but he is.
01:22:51
And if we knew something about church history, then we would know our generation isn't all that unlike generations before us.
01:23:00
And that means that for me it's very encouraging. If God could use the generations before us, he can use us as well.
01:23:07
And that's very, very important. But anyways, for those who are wondering, in this debate, it's going to be thrown out.
01:23:17
Mr. Perkins is going to clearly demonstrate not only historical ignorance of the early church situation, but also the genetic fallacy, saying, if you believe in the mother of God, then you can just go over and shake the hands of those
01:23:30
Romanist priests. That's just red meat for those who have a form of bigotry toward Roman Catholicism.
01:23:38
I think Rome is the whore of Babylon, but that doesn't mean that I don't understand history and can make clear distinctions between categories.
01:23:47
I have an entire chapter in my little book on Mary, which is still in print. It's actually not in print print.
01:23:53
It's in electronic print. Is it PC Study Bible? I think
01:23:59
PC Study Bible. Is it on Kindle now, too? Okay, it's in Kindle and PC Study Bible. It's not in print print.
01:24:04
You can't get it in paper anymore. No, we haven't been able to get it in paper for a long, long time. But as I recall, about a year and a half ago,
01:24:11
Baker put it into Kindle. Kindle, yeah, that's good. So it's available on Amazon. In fact,
01:24:17
I believe we have it linked at our Amazon store. Amazon .amn .org. Right, okay.
01:24:23
There's a whole chapter in there where I defend the historic use of the term theotokos, because there was a historic use.
01:24:33
Now, if Nestorius could see the danger coming down the road of what
01:24:40
Mother of God would be turned into, and there is no question that the Roman Catholic use of the term Mother of God today is grossly idolatrous.
01:24:47
It is an exaltation of Mary to a position that she never, ever, ever is given in Scripture. There's no question about that.
01:24:53
That's obvious. But that's not what it originally meant. What originally—that was a
01:25:00
Christological title. That means it said nothing about Mary. It said everything about Jesus. And what it said about Jesus was that the one who was born was not adopted later and became the
01:25:11
Son of God, or was not just a human nature that then becomes indwelt by a divine nature, or something along those lines.
01:25:20
To affirm theotokos is to say that Jesus Christ was truly the God -man, and that the one born of Mary was the
01:25:29
God -man. He didn't become the God -man sometime later in life. That's what it was originally about.
01:25:35
To change that into what Rome has changed it into, this exaltation of Mary to where Mary, in essence, becomes the maternal force in the
01:25:46
Godhead, and gracious, and all the garbage that you read in Liguria and all these other sources.
01:25:58
That's way down the road from what it originally meant. And when
01:26:04
Nestorius is accused of denying that, then the question is, well, what did he believe
01:26:11
Jesus was at his birth? And was his concern much more about the possible misuse of the phrase than it was the positive use of the phrase?
01:26:24
Those are some of the questions that one must enter into in a discussion of that particular issue.
01:26:35
So I'm not sure when it comes up. It is in this debate. I don't remember if it was on the Monday or the Tuesday. It'll come up at some point.
01:26:42
We may not then have to deal with it. I may just say, go back to where I've already addressed this. But you will hear
01:26:48
Roger Perkins throw that out there, and it's a clear example of a genetic fallacy. That is, well, you believe something that the
01:26:56
Roman Catholics believe. So you just go over there and shake the hand of that Roman Catholic priest because you believe in the same thing he does.
01:27:03
Excuse me, but the Roman Catholic happens to believe there's one true God and believes in the resurrection of Christ and that Jesus did miracles.
01:27:10
And you better go over and shake that priest's hand, too, because you believe that, too, Roger Perkins. Again, that's not even meaningful argumentation in any way, shape, or form.
01:27:20
It's not logical. It's not rational. He talks about the rules of debate and reason and things like that.
01:27:26
Well, then follow them and don't use that kind of argumentation because it doesn't carry any weight whatsoever.
01:27:33
All right, so with all that having been said, I'm not going to press on anymore with that. We will pick up with these things next
01:27:41
Tuesday, Lord willing, here on The Dividing Line. Looking forward to seeing all my friends in the
01:27:48
Ohio area for the Psalm 119 conference coming up. Well, it starts on Friday.
01:27:54
That means tomorrow's a fairly long day of travel for myself. Early, early flight out of Sky Harbor.
01:28:01
But hey, that means we get back there. And for those who will be picking me up, please realize something.
01:28:06
I'm sitting in coach. I won't have even gotten peanuts. So that means I will have skipped lunch and I'll be hungry when
01:28:14
I get there. And I know it will be dinnertime, but it will be lunchtime for me. So please be merciful.
01:28:19
We'll see you then. God bless. Bye -bye. The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.
01:29:12
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