Radio Free Geneva: Shawn McCraney and Eric Hankins

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00:42

A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing.

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I don't like Calvinists because they've chosen to follow John Calvin instead of Jesus Christ. I have a problem with them, they're following men instead of the word of God.

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Our helper he amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing.

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And I'm standing on top of my feet, standing on a stump and crying out,

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He died for all, those who were elected were selected. For still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe.

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His craft and power are great and armed with cruel hate.

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Well, first of all, James, I'm very ignorant of the reformers.

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On earth is not his equal. I think I probably know more about Calvinism than most of the people who call themselves

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Calvinists. Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing.

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But God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever.

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Ladies and gentlemen, James White is a hyper -Calvinist. Now whatever we do in Baptist life, we don't need to be teaming up with hyper -Calvinists.

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You ask who that may be, Christ Jesus it is he.

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But I don't understand the difference between hyper -Calvinism and Calvinism. It seems to me that Calvin was a hyper -Calvinist.

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Right, I don't think there is typically any difference between Calvinism and hyper -Calvinism. Lord Sabaoth his name.

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Read my book. From age to age the same. And he must win the battle.

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And now, from our underground bunker deep beneath Bruton Parker College, where no one would think to look, safe from all those moderate

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Calvinists, Dave Hunt fans, and those who have read and re -read George Bryson's book, we are

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Radio Free Geneva, broadcasting the truth about God's freedom to save for his own eternal glory.

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Somebody told me on Twitter it had been September of last year since we last did a Radio Free Geneva. It's not like we haven't been doing

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Radio Free Geneva topics, we just haven't played the theme. And I guess that makes some people nervous or something.

03:34

Welcome to Radio Free Geneva. Today we are going to be looking at a lecture given by Dr.

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Eric Hankins at the Saving Grace Conference in Mississippi, I believe.

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It was in January of this year. I forgot what the date was. January of this year.

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So it was only a few weeks ago. And as Dr. Hankins seems to be the go -to man now for responding to the subject of Calvinism for non -Reformed

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Southern Baptists, I think it will be useful to interact with that. But before we do that, and I don't know if we're going to be able to show it or not, we couldn't just a few minutes ago, but we can certainly still listen to it.

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It's not as interesting as watching it, but I went and changed computers, and it has thrown...

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That's why we were late and stuff. It has thrown everything into a tizzy. Even though for some reason you can see it, but I guess can't see it or something.

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I don't know what's going on on the other side of the window there. I wanted to start off looking at a brief section of the amazing debate.

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Well, it wasn't a debate, but it was an interaction between Jason Wallace and Sean McCraney this past week up in Salt Lake City.

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Now I haven't kept up with the Sean McCraney saga over the past...

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Oh, I don't know. That was what? March? That was March of last year. Yeah, the reason

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I remember that is I had just started running. I had gotten back from Kiev, and I was running like two kilometers at a time and almost dying.

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So that was a while back. And so... Because I remember listening while running to some of those things.

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And so it's been about 10 months, and every once in a while Jason would drop me a note as to some new development.

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And then a couple weeks ago, he let me know that he was going to be on Sean's program. Well, he was, and I listened to...

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watched the discussion this morning. It started a couple days ago, and then watched it, finished it up this morning.

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And it's relevant to Radio Free Geneva because of how Sean McCraney starts.

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Now realize, Sean has denied the Trinity, eternal conscious punishment.

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He's a hyper -preterist. There is no church today. There is, since Christ returned in AD 70, there's no

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Lord's Supper, there's no baptism. Unless you want to, if you feel like it, you know. Christianity is just a subjective experience.

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There's no objective element to it any longer, except what he thinks is objective. It's just complete meltdown, complete mess.

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And so Jason has asked him some questions, and now

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Sean gets to ask Jason some questions. And it's interesting where he goes, because if it's all just a subjective experience,

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I don't even know why he's bothering to ask these questions personally. But let's take a look or listen or something.

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Is it going to be a listen? It's a listen. Oh, you got it? Oh, all right.

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Well, watch, listen, however it ends up working, to the beginning of the interaction.

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Your faith in me is incredible. Yeah, well, what can I say? To the interaction between Jason Wallace and Sean McCraney.

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Jason, John Calvin said, There are babies a span long in hell. Do you agree with that?

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Can you repeat that, please? John Calvin said, There are babies a span long, that's a long line of babies, in hell.

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Now, did you catch Jason there? He's like, what?

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I don't think it's a long line. I think he's talking about, there are only a span, little babies.

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If it's a quote, I don't even know. I've never heard of it.

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But you immediately go, here's a guy who denies the Trinity. And what's the first thing you do?

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You go for the emotional bomb. You go for the emotional bomb down the field to try to get emotional people.

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Because this is about you. This is about your departure from every semblance of historic

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Christianity. This is about you saying that pastors just want to control their people. This is about you saying there is no visible church.

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And this is about you coming up with all this stuff. This absolutely unique blend of things that no one else has ever thought of.

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Which is amazing. This happens in Utah. Who else did that? Well, anyway. So what do you do?

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You start with babies and hell. Is what you start with.

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That's really incredibly useful. Do you agree with that? The Bible doesn't say whether...

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Now, here's what I would have said. I would have said, well,

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Sean, do you think that abortion is the greatest heaven -filling device in the world?

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And that would have just made him go, eh? And then you'd actually... That buys you the time to then explain that God has just as much freedom in the salvation of infants as he does in the salvation of adults.

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But then I would say, but of course you and I can't really discuss this because you don't actually believe in federal headship.

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You don't believe that we were in Adam. You don't believe that he represents us. I don't think you'd walk through Romans 5 with me and really see what

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Paul's argument there is. And there you've established sort of where you need to go to actually address it.

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That's how I would have responded to it. I think Jason was expecting a completely different approach, actually.

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Our babies in hell. We are all born sinners. God is just to send any of us to hell.

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But I'm not going to speculate. I don't know what Calvin... I haven't seen the context of what Calvin says there.

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I don't follow things because Calvin said them. So you don't agree with it? I'm not actually queer in terms of...

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Are there babies in hell? Is there any baby in hell? Scripture doesn't tell me.

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You know you're really not being forthright here. No, I am being forthright. I think you really do have probably taught somewhere that babies are in hell.

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The Westminster Confession says elect infants dying in infancy go to heaven.

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But it leaves it there. The Westminster Confession purposely leaves it vague. Who are the elect infants?

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I don't know. But we're born sinners. Now I guess there might be some

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Presbyterians that hold that all infants are elect. But the very use of the phrase elect infants would seem to indicate that they are not elect infants.

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With someone like Sean McCraney I'm just going to go straight at him and say challenge the presupposition that he's trying to operate on here and say exactly what does this have to do with your denying the

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Trinity and all the rest of this kind of stuff. But anyway. Or else babies wouldn't die.

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So whether I died at conception or whether I died as an old man,

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I was deserving of hell. But God elects whom he will. So as a follow up then, you do believe that non -elect babies are in hell.

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Yeah, if there are any. If there are any non -elect babies are in hell. Okay, just wanted to know. Simple yes or no.

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Oops, sorry about that. What is the standard the church is governed by,

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Pastor Wallace? The Word of God. Contained in the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.

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Who has the right to add to the Word of God or take away from it? God. No one else? No? You use the word

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Trinity. Is that in the Word of God? Nope. Haven't you added to it? Nope. You use it, don't you? I use

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English. It's not in the Bible either. Don't you use it to describe God? Isn't that something that you got on my case for because I said that it's not in the

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Bible? No, I never got on your case for not using the term Trinity. For rejecting the tenets of the Trinity? That was a total...

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The tenets of the Trinity. The tenets, yes. Yeah, I mean the Bible is very clear. There is one

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God. Yeah, I agree with that. How about the other tenets? The Bible is very clear that the Father is

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God, Jesus is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and yet despite the fact that there is identity there is also there is also differences between them.

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They are not identical. Can we go back and forth to speed it up? Can you tell me what the leaders of your church are called above you?

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There is no one above me. We are... I'm part of a session with other...

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A what? I'm part of a session. Is that in the Bible? No. Where did that come from? It's an

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English term. Haven't you added to the Word of God? You said just now that what's the standard the church is governed by and you said the

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Word of God, Old and New Testament. That's what you said. I gave you the chance. You said this is what it's governed by. And now you're telling me that you have something called a session.

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What is that? Sean, the word Jesus is not in the Bible either, but you use that every day. Yeah, but I would use

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Jesus if I could, but I don't speak the language. But session has no relationship. There's no

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Greek word for session that you use it for. Sorry, Jason, you lost that one. Sean, no, I haven't lost it,

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Sean. Sola fide? Sola scriptura? Baptism of children in the Bible, Jason?

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Yes. Baptism of babies? Infants? Yes. Wow. Where is that? Now, what we're going to have to do is we'll have to schedule a debate between me and Jason on that subject so he can say, see, this is how you go to the

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Bible to do this and you don't have to accuse him of all sorts of wild and wacky stuff like that. It was amazing.

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I linked, I'm pretty certain, I'll have to check. I think

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I put it on Facebook. I'll check. I forget where I put it. I didn't put it on the blog, but I know I put it on Twitter.

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But I linked to the file so you can watch this for yourself.

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It gets exceptionally wild when the audience starts getting involved. It gets really insane at that particular point in time.

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Listening to Sean McCraney, it's hard to even recognize anymore any meaningful element of Christian truth left in his theology.

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It's just, it's sad to watch. It really is. And who knows, maybe we'll have some more to say about that kind of stuff in the not -too -distant future.

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But I didn't want to take up too much time with that because I want to get to Eric Hankins because some people might say, well,

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Eric Hankins really isn't, you know, is this the best the other side has to offer?

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Well, Radio Free Geneva isn't always about the best the other side has to offer because the best the other side has to offer isn't always what we end up having to struggle with.

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And in fact, the vast majority of attacks upon Reformed theology come from individuals who really don't know the subject overly well.

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And Eric Hankins is, it's

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Dr. Hankins. He is well -known in the Southern Bapst Convention. His father is even more well -known in the

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Southern Bapst Convention. And the Hankins family are known for being very strongly opposed to Reformed theology.

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And there is a strong rift in the Southern Bapst Convention on this subject. Now, Dr. Hankins makes some statements in this lecture that I appreciated.

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He makes some comments about the new head of the mission board. He says he doesn't believe he should have been elected, but now that he has been, he needs to be supported.

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You know, there was some balance, I thought, in some of the comments that was made in that context.

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But still, this was supposed to be an unconditional election.

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Almost nothing of this lecture was an unconditional election. Almost nothing.

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The whole emphasis of unconditional election, of course, historically, was the reality that while there had been many prior to the

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Reformation who would affirm election, it was conditional. It was conditional upon our fulfilling certain requirements that would then result in our being elected.

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And at the end, we've played it before, and it's just Hankins has this mantra that he does on election where he it's just a assertion after an assertion after an assertion dealing with affirming side truths that don't actually deal with the issue, but basically saying this is all election is.

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So you say, well, the election of Abraham wasn't the exclusion of anyone else. It was the choosing of Abraham to be a blessing to all the nations.

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And so what you do is you look at one result of election, make that the whole purpose of election, then you don't have to deal with the reality that election does involve choosing.

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There are some people that are chosen and there are some people that are not. And he did that in about five minutes at the end and in a big rush and never gave any, there's no way to interact with it because there was no scripture, there was no exegesis, it was just rapid fire assertion without any substance to it.

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So you could just go, well, that's your view, but can't really interact with that because he didn't say why. So what led up to it though, very interestingly enough, was a lengthy diatribe against compatibilism and the direct assertion of libertarianism.

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I don't think he uses the appropriate terms, synergism and monergism and stuff, but he definitely says that Calvinists, if they're compatibilists, and of course he quotes the

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Jerry Walls things, remember the very talk that Jerry Walls gave where no

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Christian theist should ever be a compatibilist? Remember how we interacted with that whole thing? Did what? Two or three programs where we went through the whole

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Jerry Walls thing. Quotes from that, and we'll listen to some of that.

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But basically he says this is the Achilles heel, that compatibilism cannot deal with evil.

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And I'm like, wow. This is, compatibilism is the strongest theistic response to evil.

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I wonder if he's going to put forward a defense of libertarianism, and of course he doesn't. Doesn't even, does not even give the slightest indication that he recognizes that almost every objection he raises to compatibilism is even more valid against his own position.

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We've heard that many times before too, but that's simply what we deal with when dealing with folks who are going against the reformed face.

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This is the kind of material that is important to review because of the fact that it is what people are going to be hearing a lot of.

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So let's dive into it. I'm going to play it at 1 .2, once again letting you know. It's a little bit faster than normal.

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Of course when I was listening to it here, this is how you get it. This is the speed you listen to it when you're running through it to mark blocks for quotes.

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So I'm going to give you some things to write down that you're going to need to go home and if you're young enough you can Google it. If you're old and you need to go to the library and look it up or whatever people do these days when they don't use a computer to do some more thinking about these things.

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Okay, that's fully understandable. You may not enjoy it, but it's fully understandable and it lets you get a lot more stuff done.

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But I won't be doing it at that speed because some of you listen to me at high speed and then it would be.

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You play that at double speed and then it gets lost. So here's let's just dive in here with Dr.

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Hankins. Did you catch that?

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How long has Dr. Hankins been focusing and doing a lot of study on Reformed Theology?

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I've been at writing weight longer than that. Okay, I got to writing weight in 2010.

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So we're coming up in five years. Some of you will remember what I looked like beforehand. That ain't a long time.

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It just strikes me four years I wrote

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The Potter's Freedom in 2000 I think. So that's 15 years.

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God's Sovereign Grace was 94, 5, somewhere around in there, 20 years ago.

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Dr. David Allen, remember what he said? He started getting into this limited and universal atonement stuff in 2008.

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It's sort of like a little late to the ball, shall we say. Most of us have been at this just a little bit longer than that, but there you go.

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A lot of study in four years. There are many things that I admire about Reformed Theology and Reformed guys, and one of them is they're willing to think.

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And think hard. And think long. And be serious. And the truth is, we've seen an advance of Reformed Theology, and I think that's probably the number one reason.

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It's because it communicates a seriousness about these things. I agree a thousand percent.

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And interestingly enough, one of the other sermons that was done at this conference the next day would really be hard to describe as serious.

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I find it hard to describe a sermon on universal atonement.

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Unlimited atonement. That does not show that the person delivering the sermon understands what the key issues are.

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So if you're going to talk about what Paul says to Timothy about praying for all men, kings and those who are in authority, and Jesus giving himself as a ransom for all, there's one

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God, one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. If you're going to do that and not actually deal with what mediation means,

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I don't consider that serious. And the whole time

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I was listening to that one, I'm like I was really hoping for some real interaction and didn't get it.

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Was there something you wished to... Oh no, I just grabbed the mic, but a thought that came to my mind, I mean, even if he's been doing this for just four years, it would be impressive if he came to the table with some tangible legitimate arguments and points of view.

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It's not that you're saying that you can't, you know, you're dismissing him because he's only been at it for a few years, it's that it shows that he hasn't given it serious consideration.

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Yeah, that's the problem. But even then, you know, where are the

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Armenian Southern Baptists who have been doing this for 30 years? They're still repeating each other,

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I'm sorry. Did I say that on cue? They are, and they just, there isn't a whole lot of meaningful interaction with what we have to say.

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Anyway, we press on because I actually would like to try to get through all of this one. Ultimately, eternal destiny has already been settled and eternity passed.

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And so there's a sense in which those people who are spending eternity in hell, they were never destined to spend eternity anywhere else.

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And I said, that's right. Well, how does that go with his passionate plea that it matters that we go and tell.

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If they hear, they can respond. If they don't hear, they can't respond. And so we really need to go. It matters. How does that go together?

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And I said, it doesn't. It doesn't go together. They showed a video of the new president of the

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Southern Baptist Admissions Board. And it was a passionate video, but he's a

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Calvinist. And so someone comes up to him and says, well, does that mean he believes this?

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And so how does he hold all this stuff together? And obviously from Hank's perspective, if you believe that God has chosen to save and elect people, then it doesn't matter what we do.

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We don't matter. In other words, if there is a sovereign decree, if God creates purposefully, if he made this universe with a purpose, and if his act of creation determines the acts within time, then nothing matters, is what he's asserting.

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Now, I wish he would just come out and say that, because then immediately the question would come up, well,

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Dr. Hankins, are you an open theist? And he would say, no, no, no, no, you can't be an open theist and be a

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Southern Baptist. Well, I know. But that's the only consistent way to maintain your objections, is to be an open theist.

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Well, why is that? Well, because from your perspective, when God created, God knew with perfection what the result of his creation was going to be.

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He knew who would be saved and who would not. He knew about every act of violence.

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He knew about every drowning of a child. He knew about every baby that would die in a fire.

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Since those are illustrations he's going to use. And yet he still chose to create.

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Now you can say, well, but he was only passively taking that knowledge in. Well, then that now leaves you having to explain why

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God chose to create a world where there is no purpose for these events. He could have just chosen not to do it.

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But he chose this particular world with these particular acts of evil in them, but if he doesn't have a decree, then they don't have a purpose.

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So now you, Dr. Hankins, have to explain why God brought these acts of evil into existence because you believe he's the creator of all things and if you're not an open theist and you believe he knew these things and so he knew with certainty when he created these things would happen.

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You have to explain without the decree, without what we believe, and what the Bible, I think, plainly teaches that God works all things after the counsel of his will, that God does whatever pleases him in the heavens and the earth, and it's all the praise of his glorious grace.

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I mean, evidently you don't believe those things. So, if you don't believe there's a decree, then you've got a

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God that creates, he knows evil's going to exist, but he has no purpose for it. So, your objections are actually far more relevant and strong to your own position.

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But I see no evidence that in the four years of your deep study on the subject where you claim to have read

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Jonathan Edwards, there's no way. Sorry. I mean, do

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I have? Yeah, there they are. Right over there. Right there.

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It's a pointer. Look at that. There's Jonathan Edwards' volumes. It's a musical interlude while we're moving here.

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Now, here's the problem. I can no longer read these volumes. There is no way on God's green earth.

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Well, I can read the titles. But... The font, the font, folks, is...

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Look at that. There are no It's like it's all footnotes. I don't know what the font size in here is.

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I would take... No, no, no. I would say the font size is between five and six.

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Five and six points. It's that bad. Anyway...

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But... I have read. And that's why I can't see anymore. I would have to don these to read this.

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But I'm sorry. You could not have read Edwards on the purpose which

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God created the world. Sermons on Sovereignty. And not realize the conundrum that you face.

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It's not possible. You could not have reflected upon what he says. And not come to the realization that, wow, this is something that any

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Christian theist has to deal with. Any Christian theist has to answer the question of theodicy.

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And the only way out. The only way out is open theism.

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That's the only consistent Arminian position. Is to say

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God didn't know. God didn't know. Um...

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Yeah, I saw that. Certain young fellow who claims to live in London says, if I can't read them,

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I'll take them. They make great backstops, man. And like I said, all I gotta do is put these on and I can still, you know,

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I can still read them. Well, those are dirty. But when you're doing close -up work, the dirty stuff doesn't matter as much anymore.

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Anyhow, I'm sorry. I'm still waiting for the serious

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Arminian because your Arminian philosophy guys generally don't have the highest view of scripture.

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That's not gonna work for the Hankins, Pattersons, Allens, who are absolutely wedded to inerrancy as a part of their very identity.

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So I found it interesting he was quoting from Wals. Would he quote from Olson as well?

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I would hope not. Because most Arminians who are purposeful

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Arminians are not overly conservative. There are some. But they're in the minority. They really are.

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So, anyway, we press on. Dr. Platt believes both of those things at the same time. And what he's going to say is that it's a mystery about how those two things go together.

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How it is that it matters. And he'll speak of God ordaining the means as well as the ends and that sort of thing. But at the end of the day...

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Now catch that. He knows what the actual answer is. He just doesn't take it seriously.

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He won't accept it. He'll talk about God ordaining the means as well as the ends.

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Yeah, that's really important, isn't it? I mean, isn't that the whole idea?

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That God ordains both the ends his ultimate glorification as well as the means by which that's going to happen.

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So, if the means by which he's going to be glorified ultimately is the incarnation and death on the cross and the union of a people with Christ, there's stuff that has to come in here to make that meaningful.

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Which includes the existence of evil, sin, Israel, Egypt, Babylon, all sorts of things like that.

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The ends become and the means. Ends and means, they've got to go together.

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But he... I mean, am I misreading this? And what he's going to say is that it's a mystery about how those two things go together.

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How it is that it matters and he'll speak of God ordaining the means as well as the ends and that sort of thing. But at the end of the day...

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And that sort of thing. See? That's what that's all about. He just doesn't take it seriously.

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He's not taking it seriously. And that's where the problem comes in. Now, I'm not a big fan of the term mystery.

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I'm really not. You don't hear me using it a whole lot. And in fact, the

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New Testament use of mystery doesn't really fit into that category at all. So, I say it's important that we go because God commands us to go.

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And God places it within our hearts to go. And we show our love for God when we go.

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And we show our love for our fellow human beings when we go. And we're being obedient when we go.

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And it matters because God ordains the means. That's not enough?

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See, for them the only ground only ground that you could possibly have that would make going on missions worthwhile is that there's no decree and therefore there would be people who would go to hell if you don't go.

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It's the guilt thing. That's the only reason for missions is the guilt thing.

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That's it. Being used of God the actual motivations of the first missionaries who happened to be reformed

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That's that. No, no, no. It's got to be the guilt thing. If you don't go, people are going to go to hell.

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So, there are people going to hell because you didn't go. No decree. No elect.

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But he still has to deal with the reality that from his perspective as a Southern Baptist because the

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Southern Baptist faith and message specifically decries open theism.

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So, God knows who's going to be saved and who isn't. God knew from the start.

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God knew from the start. So, you can say, yeah, but he didn't. He didn't. He didn't decree it, which means he created it without a purpose.

36:17

That doesn't change the fact that it's fixed in God's mind from eternity. So, when he asks questions about, well, is there anybody in hell that could have been anywhere else?

36:27

I have to ask Dr. Hankins a question. Is there anybody in hell that God thought was going to be in heaven and vice versa?

36:36

Has God been wrong? Can God's foreknowledge be wrong? If you just believe in simple foreknowledge, can that foreknowledge be in error?

36:48

So, can God from eternity past know that such and such a person is going to be lost and yet, free will, libertarian will, surprise, surprise, surprise, he ends up in heaven.

37:00

Thus, invalidating God's foreknowledge. Is that a possibility? Don't know. I don't know.

37:07

We'll find out. We'll find out. I mean, he's not going to tell us in this, but we'll find out.

37:14

I know this for a fact because this summer I listened to a panel discussion with Dr. Platt and Dr. Frank Page and some others about the issue of soteriology.

37:21

And Dr. Frank Page, who's the president of the executive committee of the Southern Madness Convention, and you Google this and get this panel discussion, a very interesting and informative panel discussion at the convention.

37:30

Dr. Page asked Dr. Platt, do you believe that anyone who's in hell right now could have been anywhere else?

37:36

Do you believe that anybody who's in hell right now could have been anywhere else? And without much hesitation,

37:42

Dr. Platt said no. No. There really couldn't have been anywhere else. That was their foreordained to be in hell.

37:51

And, Dr. Hankins, if you believe, as Southern Baptists must, in the exhaustive foreknowledge of God, you have to say the exact same thing.

38:00

You just don't get to have a purpose for it. It just happened to be that way. It wasn't under God's control.

38:07

Best he could do. Maybe you're a Molinist? God had to play the cards he was given? Maybe you go to...

38:14

I bet you're a Molinist. I bet you're a Molinist, aren't you? I bet you are.

38:20

So now you've got an even worse problem. I mean, I don't even consider Molinism to be in the ballpark. So if you're a

38:26

Molinist, if you've gone down that road, then it's even worse.

38:34

Because now these people are lost because God couldn't have saved them. Do you go the

38:42

William Lane Craig direction? This is the best possible world God could come up with? Maximum number of people could be saved?

38:49

But God could not save everybody? Beyond his power? Beyond his capacity?

38:55

Beyond the potential worlds? Not just potential, but realistically potential?

39:04

Real worlds that could be created? But now you're stuck with the problem of explaining why it is.

39:13

You know, who's the card dealer? Who made it this way?

39:20

Who put it in this order? That's a question we keep asking our

39:25

Molinist friends. He believes that it's necessary for us to go, that if we don't go, that affects the outcome.

39:33

If we don't go, people won't hear, and if they don't hear, they'll spend eternity in hell. Okay? He just believes something else at the exact same time.

39:41

Okay? He believes something else at the exact same time.

39:46

What he's saying here is that there is a fundamental contradiction. And as we've demonstrated, there's not a fundamental contradiction.

39:54

You have to ignore the reality of means. You have to ignore motivations of obedience and love and union with Christ.

40:02

It's just, it does not show a meaningful understanding of the

40:07

Reformed perspective at this point. And that really lies at the heart of Reformed theology, is what we're often told is that Reformed theology is very internally consistent.

40:16

It's very logical. And John Piper, when he teaches on the attractiveness of Reformed theology, he'll speak of it being so intellectually satisfying, so internally consistent, except that it isn't.

40:28

It's fundamentally contradictory. Logically contradictory. It affirms two things. It's not paradoxical.

40:35

Paradox is things that appear to be contradictory, but actually aren't. When something's logically contradictory, so write down logically contradictory.

40:42

Okay? And go look that up later. That means it's self -defeating. Two things trying to be true at the same time, and that's to me, from my perspective,

40:53

God, there's no such, there's no ability for something to be self -contradictory. It's the law of non -contradiction.

41:00

So, are we violating the law of non -contradiction? Of course not. I'm sorry, Dr. Hankins, but you're not even in the ballpark on this one.

41:11

By ignoring the reality that God's decree is what gives shape to time, and gives meaning to the actions in time, and by insisting that the only possible way there could be meaning to actions is if there is no divine decree, not only are you left with the problems we've already raised, but by ignoring that, you're also ignoring the meaningful answer that we give.

41:38

It's not contradictory, because we don't believe that meaningfulness requires libertarianism on the part of creatures.

41:48

It requires libertarianism on the part of the creator, which you don't have.

41:55

Thought about that? Dr. Hankins? You know what the cost of your libertarianism is?

42:01

You don't have a libertarian creator. Ever thought about that? You don't have a libertarian creator.

42:10

He has to limit himself so as to leave room for the libertarian creatures.

42:19

And so, the only way that he can be truly free is in making the choice to not be sovereign over the events of time.

42:32

That's his free choice, not to do that, and now all the results are up to what man does.

42:38

But then again, if you're a Molinist, that's a given anyways, because the god of Molinism strikes me as much more of a big, huge computer than being one that's overly concerned about libertarianism in the first place.

42:54

And I think when we say things like, reformed people don't care about missions, they don't care about evangelism, they don't care about lost people, it's not true, and it's not helpful, and it's not really even historically accurate.

43:03

Now... That's good, I'm glad to hear that. And I bet that it's not historically accurate part is your recognition that reformed folks have been the forefront of missions in the past.

43:16

There are dangers. Now, listen to this. This is interesting.

43:24

Remember back in 2008 when David Allen identified me as a Hyper -Calvinist, on the basis of Tony Brin's misunderstanding of these things.

43:33

Listen to the description that Eric Hankins gives of Hyper -Calvinism, and ask yourself a simple question.

43:46

Does it describe me? And you'll discover that Eric Hankins well knows that David Allen's description of me was false.

43:56

Listen. There are dangers. And there is this, albeit small, but very real little thread of history of Hyper -Calvinism.

44:05

There really is such a thing as Hyper -Calvinism, and it's really anti -missions, it really is, we shouldn't preach the gospel to everyone because the destiny of people has already been sealed.

44:13

You don't want people to think that they're elect when they're not.

44:19

A false conversion, you don't want your churches filled with unconverted people who are not elect, and so you don't preach the gospel to everyone.

44:25

That really does happen. And it really does need to be guarded against, and so it's okay for you to say to Calvinists now, we're not talking about not preaching the gospel to everybody, are we?

44:35

Did you hear that? Anybody in the audience ever follow us on Facebook or Twitter or read the blog and see pictures and videos of what we do?

44:52

Did you see me in the Juma Masjid going, now I don't want to proclaim the gospel to all of you.

44:59

I'm trying to determine which of you look like you're of the elect. No. No.

45:08

Take that description that he just used, which is a pretty good description, and apply it to me, and then take that to David Allen and say,

45:17

I think it's time that you said, you know what? I was wrong. I was wrong about that.

45:25

Because that's a pretty good description, and it doesn't describe me by any stretch of the imagination.

45:31

So I did appreciate that and found it rather interesting. I don't even know anybody that I know, but it happens, and it's really important to Southern Baptists to be able to say three things.

45:42

We believe God loves everybody. We believe Christ died for everybody. And we believe that God wants to save everybody.

45:49

So, that's what it means to be a Southern Baptist? Is that God's love is lesser than man's love, because man can have different kinds of love and God can't.

46:01

Jesus' death makes men savable, but saves nobody. What was the last one here?

46:09

We believe Christ died for everybody. And we believe that God wants to save everybody. Oh, okay. And God wants, but cannot accomplish

46:18

His greatest desire, which is to save everybody. So that's what it means to be a Southern Baptist, is to have a

46:23

God with a lesser love than man, a sacrifice that saves nobody, but only makes men savable, and a

46:29

God who desires to do what He seemingly can't accomplish what He wants to do. That's what being a

46:34

Southern Baptist is? This is something you derive from biblical exegesis?

46:43

Okay. Alrighty. Just pointing that out. You know,

46:49

I know these guys don't like having it pointed out, but what they're saying is, when you talk about Atonement, what they're saying is,

46:57

Christ's death saves no one. It makes men savable. Remember we were listening to David Allen?

47:03

We'll get back to that. Saying that Christ's death makes men savable and saying that Christ's death saves are two very, very, very different things.

47:14

And I think most of us know that. Keep asking those questions. Are we really believing that we can look anyone in the face and say to them,

47:23

God loves you and died for you? Show an apostle who did it and then I'll repeat it.

47:29

Now, we've looked, we've started, well, have we gotten there yet? I don't think we've gotten there yet.

47:34

At least David Allen's tried to come up with this. I think it does not work, but he's tried in two texts with an incredibly unique interpretation to come up with something similar to that statement.

47:52

Not really exactly, but close. But the reality is that's not the apostolic message.

48:01

That's like saying, well, we just need to tell everybody, you just need to accept Jesus into your heart. Well, I keep looking for that one in scripture too.

48:08

I know what it means, but that's not the scriptural terminology, is it?

48:14

If it can be made to accurately represent biblical categories, repentance, faith, acknowledging the lordship of Christ, okay, we can do that, but let's try to stick with some

48:30

Bible here. To me, this fundamental contradiction rests in a concept called compatibilism.

48:38

Here is something else for you to write down. Okay? Compatibilism. I'm not going to spell it, but it's got an

48:44

O and then it's all I's after that and the vowels. Okay? Compatibilism. Now, yeah, believe me,

48:55

I'm not even playing all of it. Almost every single time that Dr.

49:00

Hankins mentioned any polysyllabic word, that's what he did.

49:06

Now, y 'all just write this down, you look it up on Google when you get home, you know, and you think about it, and I'm just left going, who are you talking to?

49:16

It's got an O and a bunch of I's after it, and you can fill in all the consonants. Do I need to spell consonant for you?

49:25

Thanks, Rich. Any complaints about that particular comment need to be addressed to Rich Pierce, not to me.

49:33

But, I wasn't going to make a big deal out of it, but it really put me off.

49:40

I just, how do you treat an audience that way? What's it like to sit in an audience where the speaker is constantly going, now

49:48

I know that's a big word, now you just look it up and you go home and you look it up and you think about it. I was like, who were you talking to?

50:00

It was offensive, okay? I was offended by it. But, some other people might say, well,

50:07

I'm glad he did that. Okay, alright. Whatever. It is a view of the nature of freedom, and to me what separates

50:14

Calvinists from non -Calvinists is this issue. Now, here's something to learn and to benefit from learning.

50:22

Dr. Hankins says, this is the big issue. The big issue between Calvinists and non -Calvinists is the issue of freedom.

50:33

And in the sense that we have a completely different understanding of freedom, he is correct, it is a fundamental difference.

50:39

But, here's the problem. This is where he starts. He will eventually talk about superlapsarianism and infralapsarianism.

50:53

But, I see no evidence that he understands that the essence of Reformed theology is that it is

51:02

God -centered. And the essence of his synergism is that it is man -centered. For him, the most important thing is the freedom of man and the definition of that freedom.

51:13

For the Reformed person, that's secondary. That flows from, what? The freedom of God.

51:19

And there's not even a recognition of that. Even more to the point, when he does get to superlapsarianism, he calls it superlapsarianism.

51:30

It's not super, it's supra. Four years isn't a long time.

51:37

But, you'd think folks would notice that. It is a view of the nature of freedom. And to me, what separates

51:43

Calvinists from non -Calvinists is this issue. It's a philosophical presupposition. And frankly, a post -biblical discussion.

51:50

The Bible is not going to settle the matter of the metaphysical Catch this.

51:56

The man who was saying that Dr. Pratt has to fall back on mystery is here going to fall back on mystery.

52:06

Listen to what he says. Listen to what he says. ...discussion. The Bible is not going to settle the matter of the metaphysical interactions of the nature of human freedom.

52:17

Okay? The Bible just doesn't, it doesn't give us something that's completely and totally explanatory of some of these questions that we have about the nature of freedom.

52:28

What does it mean to be free? Well, that's interesting. It sounded like he was criticizing

52:37

Dr. Pratt for relying on mystery. But now we're being told that the

52:45

Bible really doesn't answer questions about the nature of freedom. Well, I think it most certainly does.

52:50

If you start from the nature of God.

52:58

If you start with God as the center, and then define mankind, his creature, in light of him, then you have your answers.

53:14

But if you won't start with God, and you start with man, evidently the Bible's not enough to actually answer this question.

53:24

Interesting. Very, very interesting. But Calvinists have a view of freedom called compatibilistic freedom.

53:32

Alright, I'm going to slow it down here for just a second. Calvinists have a view of freedom called compatibilistic freedom.

53:37

Now, what is compatible on that view? What's compatible on that view is they believe that determinism, write that down, okay?

53:47

Determinism. I'm going to tell you what that is in just a moment. That determinism is compatible with real human freedom.

53:55

Okay? They believe that determinism, and here's what determinism talks about how God functions, and freedom in this conversation is about how we function.

54:04

Okay? Here's what determinism is, or theistic determinism, or soft determinism.

54:09

You can write all these things down and look them up later. Okay? But determinism teaches that God meticulously foreordains, either directly or by secondary causes, everything that comes to pass, he ordains it.

54:23

He's the cause, the primary or the secondary cause of everything that comes to pass. So, God has a sovereign decree.

54:32

He has a purpose in creation, and that decree is exhaustive. It gives rise to the very fabric of time itself.

54:40

That's why all things work together for the good of those who love God, for those who are called according to his purpose.

54:45

He is described as the one who works all things after the counsel of his will. Um, yeah.

54:51

Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel chapter 4. Remember? You know, no one can warn off his hand or say, why have you done these things?

54:57

The God of Isaiah 43 -48, that God. Very clear, that God. Okay. That's, um, yep, that's, that's what we believe.

55:06

Let me, let me position it against what I believe about freedom, and what I believe most people believe about freedom, and what

55:11

I believe most Baptists believe about freedom. Um, most people are wrong about God.

55:16

I just thought I'd mention that in passing. And, um, majority, majority elections, um, not, not good for, for, for theology.

55:26

What we believe about freedom is called libertarian freedom. Write that down. I'd look it up later. Libertarian freedom.

55:34

Libertarian freedom means this. It means I am free to choose A or B. I'm able to choose between two distinct options that are, that are mediated to me.

55:45

Well, we, we do know what libertarianism means, and he, and he will admit that he can't go and play basketball to Grizzlies, and, and that there's limitation here, but, but he gives a pretty standard definition of libertarian freedom.

55:58

Uh, which, of course, you know, I just go slave to sin, dead to sin, cannot do what is right,

56:05

Romans chapter 8, uh, but will those be answered? But when two decisions come to me,

56:13

I am actually able to do either A or B. In fact, I'm not free if I'm not able to choose

56:19

A or B. Someone's holding a gun to my head, then I'm not really responsible for a decision that I make. It has to be mine.

56:25

It has to be, has to be caused by me, my decisions. That's libertarian freedom. The ability to choose between two options.

56:33

Okay, so there's his definition of libertarianism, and we press forward here.

56:39

Okay. So, since out of the mass of humanity, no one can respond to God, at all.

56:44

They're going to refer to Ephesians 2 and being dead and that sort of thing. Since now the ability to desire to respond to God is gone for everybody, then

56:55

God chooses a special group of people to whom he's going to give that desire by grace. Okay?

57:02

And so, they're free to respond to the gospel, but they're only free because God gives them the desire to respond to the gospel.

57:09

Well, I would appreciate if he would be a little bit more straightforward. God regenerates them.

57:15

He gives them, he takes out a heart of stone, gives a heart of flesh, the wind blowing across the valley of dry bones, regeneration, being born again, etc.,

57:24

etc., etc., makes a person a new creature in Christ, that slavery to sin, which means that a person cannot do what is pleasing to God, Romans chapter 8, is taken away, and that is why that person then clings to Christ.

57:42

That is quite true. You're starting to whirl about a little bit, okay? This is where you can get wobbly. You're going to have to write this down, just go sit down and think about it for a while.

57:50

But that's how they get where they, that's how Reformed theology gets where it gets. And let me tell you, there are big thick books arguing for this.

57:57

Really combatabilistic freedom. By the way, it really begins with Augustine, if you want to write down Augustine, and really gets drilled down by Jonathan Edwards.

58:07

And so if you have a lot of time on your hands and want to read big thick books, Augustine and Edwards, they'll give you plenty to think about and do.

58:13

Okay, but that's where that sort of comes from. But, here's my point, the point I'm trying to make now, is the discussion, the whole division between Reformed and Non -Reformed is over the issue of what is the nature of freedom.

58:28

No, it's over what is the nature of God. And God's freedom, not man's freedom.

58:34

And just as Dr. Allen misses it by going to extent of atonement before intention of atonement, and mechanism of atonement, by the way, before you get to extent and application.

58:49

Here, you're not going to get a meaningful biblical answer to the subject of the nature of human freedom until you deal with God's nature.

59:00

And I would be really interested, I should have asked, but I didn't. I did email Dr. Hankins, let him know

59:05

I was going to be doing this. And I hope he responds, because I'd like to ask him, are you a Molinist? Do you embrace the

59:12

Keithley thesis? What kind of a Molinist? Because every time we criticize

59:17

Molinism, the Molinists go, well that's not my view. I don't necessarily agree with William and Craig on that.

59:23

But what kind of Molinist? And have you ever defended it?

59:29

Have you ever put out anything that would explain the origin of middle knowledge?

59:38

In the sense that if God knows what person X will do in any given circumstance before decreeing to create person

59:48

X, then who assigned the properties to person X that determine his actions?

59:54

Since it can't be God. Because that's middle knowledge. My definition. Which is why

01:00:01

Craig, honestly, and much to the chagrin of many of his contemporaries, said, well,

01:00:09

God's got to deal with the cards he's been dealt. Who dealt the cards? What's the source of this information?

01:00:17

I'd be interested in knowing that. Since no one else seems to be aware of that. The problem with compatibilistic freedom is that it cannot logically deal with the problem of evil.

01:00:30

On that view, God ultimately is the cause of evil. Now, if you're Reformed, you're already getting mad if you're here today.

01:00:37

And if I say that, it makes Reformed people very angry because they do not believe that. There's not a Reformed person in this room.

01:00:42

There are Reformed people. Dr. Hangen, that's not why we get upset. What we get upset about is the fact that we've answered this 10 ,000 times before, and y 'all just won't listen.

01:00:53

Y 'all just won't listen. It's just like, what is it about means that you don't get?

01:01:02

You just brush that aside before as if it's irrelevant. But it's not irrelevant.

01:01:08

Well, they're superlapsarian. Write that word down. We're not going to do superlapsarian today. Did you catch that? I mean,

01:01:13

I suppose, maybe it's just playing too fast, we slow it down some more, it would be supra. It sounds like superlapsarian to me.

01:01:20

They believe that God is the cause of all things, including evil. And that's just the way it is. So, R .C. Sproul Jr., and some other guys like that, they tend to be hypercalvinists.

01:01:29

But most. I haven't written to R .C. Jr. to ask him about this, but I was thinking about doing it.

01:01:36

I think he'd just sort of chuckle about it, but I was thinking about writing to R .C. Jr. and saying, Do you hear

01:01:42

Hankins? He's decided that you're a superlapsarian hypercalvinist. Just thought you might want to be aware of that.

01:01:50

The vast majority of reformed people absolutely deny that God is the cause of evil. In fact, it's in the

01:01:55

Westminster Confession. Some of the greatest reformed confessions written absolutely deny that God is the cause of evil. But it's a mystery as to why that is on their view.

01:02:04

They don't know why God is not the cause of evil. He's just not because he can't be because the Bible says he can't be. Okay, that probably of the whole thing was the place where I went,

01:02:13

Okay, four years was not enough. Dr. Hankins, seriously, that's so disrespectful.

01:02:21

You claim who read this? Really? PhD? Systematic Theology? You read this and you can summarize it that way?

01:02:30

Dr. Hankins, in my opinion, the greatest demonstration of scholarship is the ability to take a wide amount of study and learning and accurately communicate it to non -specialists.

01:02:44

You did not do that there. Crash and burn. Face palm. I'll face plant for you.

01:02:52

Face palm for me. I'm sorry, but let's... But it's a mystery as to why that is on their view.

01:02:59

They don't know why God is not the cause of evil. He's just not because he can't be because the Bible says he can't be. So, when

01:03:07

I wrote The Father's Freedom down here, and why don't

01:03:12

I have the new version? Oh, there it is. So, whole chapter on God and evil in here.

01:03:24

Where did I appeal to mystery? I didn't.

01:03:31

I didn't because there's plenty of direct biblical revelation on this topic.

01:03:39

I mean, you have. And if somewhere in here,

01:03:47

Dr. Hankins, you had bothered to give a coherent, meaningful defense of whatever your explanation is, whether it's

01:03:58

Molinism or simple foreknowledge or whatever it is, then

01:04:06

I... You know, I might be able to overlook something like this, but you didn't.

01:04:12

So, when you don't apply your objections to your own position and demonstrate how they don't defeat your own position, and then you give that kind of...

01:04:23

Ah, they just say it's a mystery. They don't know. It's just a mystery. God can't... When we have invested such tremendous effort to be very careful in our speech to distinguish, for example, between discussions of theodicy that are post -fall and pre -fall.

01:04:44

He's going to get into Adam and Eve here and not seemingly recognize the vast difference that exists between the question of the origin of evil in Adam's experience and then anyone on post -fall, because those are obviously two completely different situations.

01:05:02

We've got entire chapters of Revelation on post -fall man, because that's where we all are.

01:05:13

We have entire phrases, maybe a sentence in regards to Adam.

01:05:22

Um... But there's been tremendous work done on that, and that phrase, that sentence does not even begin to do justice to any of that.

01:05:33

Any of that. That was...

01:05:38

What's the term I used for it? Off -putting. Very off -putting. The knock -down statement about that is where did

01:05:45

Adam's desire to sin come from? Where did Adam and Eve's desire to sin come from? If freedom is only the ability to do what you desire most, but not the ability to choose your desires, then the only person left to cause and determine

01:06:02

Adam's sinfulness is God. Alright. Um... Dr. Hankins, how do you answer the question?

01:06:14

When God created, He knew Adam was going to fall. Was God under any compulsion to create, knowing that Adam would fall?

01:06:22

So if He was under no compulsion to create, knowing that Adam would fall, then God created knowing

01:06:27

Adam would fall, and therefore God is responsible for that, right? But if God did not decree the fall, then where did that evil come from?

01:06:37

I'm just asking you. Because if it doesn't come from God, ultimately in His decree, using means, you don't get to do that.

01:06:46

You don't get to have means. You don't get to go to Genesis 50, where compatibilism is taught.

01:06:54

And you have clear biblical revelation that in one act, God's purpose is pure, man's purpose is impure.

01:07:00

God intended it to happen. You can't go to Isaiah chapter 10 and talk about the judgment of the king of Assyria. You can't go to Acts chapter 4 and talk about the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

01:07:08

You've already thrown all that out because you don't believe in a divine decree. So where are you going to go? You've got a

01:07:14

God that creates a universe where evil exists for no purpose, and now you can't even tell us where it came from.

01:07:23

And you're saying this is better? This is more defensible? This is more biblical? No, I think he's saying it's your problem, not mine.

01:07:34

Seems to be. Seems to be. That's your problem, not mine.

01:07:40

Well, I think that's why we have a hard time getting these folks to debate.

01:07:46

I'm sorry. Saying, well, I don't want to get into debates because you know, he's just so mean.

01:07:56

Look, that train left the station 130 debates ago.

01:08:03

Okay? If I can have meaningful debates with a

01:08:11

Muslim in front of a Muslim audience in a mosque in another country, I can have a meaningful debate with a professor from Southern Baptist Seminary in a church.

01:08:25

Okay? So, that is not even, for any honest rational person, that's not even an issue.

01:08:36

I think the reason we have trouble getting these debates organized and get them started is because this stuff does not handle cross -examination real well.

01:08:46

It's real easy to take shots at the other side. But the problem is, the shots you're taking blow your position up.

01:08:55

And if there's somebody else in a debate, they'll point that out. Hmm. That's why monologues work better for weak positions.

01:09:05

That's why we're confident to enter into these debates, but I don't see a lot of confidence on Dr.

01:09:11

Hankins. Believe me. What would be wonderful, honestly,

01:09:17

Dr. Hankins, think about this. I want to go to Memphis. You know why

01:09:23

I want to go to Memphis? Has nothing to do with you. Sorry. Um. Huh?

01:09:34

Ignore that brief interruption to the program from the other side of the wall. I won't even mention what was said.

01:09:41

Hear the cackling? Okay. The reason I want to go to Memphis is because I really, really, really want to engage in a dialogue with Sheikh Yasir Qadhi.

01:09:52

I have great respect for Yasir Qadhi, and I really think that a dialogue between he and I on key issues regarding Islam would be incredibly valuable.

01:10:07

But obviously, as with the trip we've got coming up to Florida, and there was an announcement made,

01:10:13

Red Grace Media on Twitter put out stuff about the upcoming stuff there, and also, yeah.

01:10:23

No. That's the Texas one. Texas one. That's Texas. Red Grace Media is the one in Texas.

01:10:28

That's in May. The next one is in Florida. I have banners I have to get put up. They're all in line.

01:10:34

We've got to put Micah to work, because I need a banner ad on my teaching apologetics for Phoenix Seminary, too.

01:10:42

We've got a lot of stuff lined up. Earth calling Hasim, son of Ramallah, king of graphics.

01:10:48

We have work for thee. Very quickly, please, sir. Report for duty, sir. Anyway, generally, what happens is we try to make it easier on churches that are bringing me in and stuff by doing more than one thing.

01:11:06

So I'm going to be doing two dialogues with Imam Musri in Florida, and then a few days later, the

01:11:19

Reformed brethren down there want to debate on paedo -baptism. We're going to do a debate on paedo -baptism.

01:11:25

So we combine stuff together. And since Dr. Khadi is in Memphis, it would work perfectly to arrange a trip where and it would all be dependent primarily upon Dr.

01:11:44

Khadi's schedule, but to where I could dialogue with him and then in the neighborhood, how about you and I?

01:11:55

Let's talk about what the central issues are. Let's talk about the nature of God. Let's talk about your view of how

01:12:01

God God's freedom. Let's talk about how

01:12:07

God has knowledge of the future. I think the Bible is very full of revelation on these subjects.

01:12:14

Because that is the foundation. You said the foundation is human freedom. Well, I think I can make a strong argument that there is something even more basic than that, and that is

01:12:24

God's freedom. God's nature. Let's do it. I'm open to it.

01:12:30

I think that that will be extremely valuable, and again there is no question there is no question on the part of any person who has at least taken the time to inquire as to our ability to arrange these debates and to engage in them in a meaningful and fair fashion.

01:12:49

Many, many, many hours of evidence of that on YouTube for anyone willing to listen. I want to give you a little quote that kind of spells out

01:12:56

Jerry Walls, who is one of my favorite Christian philosophers, says this Okay, just listen, but let this kind of absorb

01:13:02

This is in an article called Why no classical theist, let alone orthodox Christian should ever be a compatibilist.

01:13:08

Okay, now, I only played that to point out if you want to hear a complete refutation of this entire next section we already did that, and we did it with Jerry Walls' direct presentation.

01:13:20

And we let Jerry Walls know about that, and Jerry Walls listened to the program. Remember we talked about that on Twitter?

01:13:26

He mentioned appreciate your passion and so on and so forth. So, been there, done that, got the t -shirt, nothing new.

01:13:34

As often, the Reformed folks already know what the Arminians are saying about us, and generally don't know about what the

01:13:41

Reformed folks are saying about in response. And that's not an unorthodox position, but that is not what

01:13:48

I believe. Okay? And I don't think that's what most Southern Baptists believe, and so, public communities just need to know that.

01:13:54

They believe in two kinds of will. That's what John Piper thinks, and John MacArthur thinks. That God has two wills. The will in which he wants to save everyone, and the will in which he doesn't want to save everyone.

01:14:01

Now, if that was an attempted description of God's prescriptive and decretal wills, that's not a very accurate way of doing it, sir.

01:14:09

Not even close. Do you... Again, I'll ask

01:14:15

Dr. Hankins. Does God's law represent God's will?

01:14:23

Did God will for Assyria to trample people in the streets under their feet in Isaiah chapter 10?

01:14:35

The only way, Dr. Hankins, you're going to be able to answer those two questions is to recognize the difference between God's prescriptive will and his decretal will.

01:14:43

Either that, or you're just going to have to throw your hands up in despair and say, mystery! There you go.

01:14:50

Okay, here's what Walls means. On compatibilism, if you accept the reformed view of freedom,

01:14:58

God could have determined that everyone desired to respond to him. Now, we've already...

01:15:05

Again, we've dealt with Jerry Walls before, but if you didn't hear that before, Walls' argument basically is God is a moral monster because he could have saved everybody, he could have caused everyone to freely believe, but he did not.

01:15:17

Now, Dr. Hankins claims to have read Edwards and read

01:15:22

Piper, and from a reformed perspective, what's the answer to this alleged conundrum?

01:15:30

Well, God is under no obligation because all have fallen at him, so God could simply bring his wrath to bear upon all people.

01:15:38

The fraudulent assumption of the argument is that grace can be demanded, and secondly, it leaves

01:15:46

God without any freedom in the demonstration of his attributes.

01:15:53

God has to be redemptively loving, gracious, and merciful to every single person.

01:16:03

Forced grace is no grace at all, and it leaves you with a God who cannot demonstrate his power and his wrath and his justice, even though Romans 9, what if, desiring to show his power...

01:16:22

That's a Bible version, not a philosopher's verse. Powerful enough to do it, it'd be right for him to do that, he could make a way through the work of Christ to provide that.

01:16:34

Yes? Yes. But he doesn't.

01:16:42

And a reformed person has no idea why. Why that's not evil. A reformed person has no idea why that's not evil.

01:16:50

Really? That's as bad as the thing we looked at up above. It is not evil for God to be free, sir, he does not, he is not under a situation where his grace can be demanded by anyone.

01:17:06

You've not talked to anybody that would explain that? You've not read that? In these four long years of study, you've not read that?

01:17:16

That's frightening to me. It does not... You sat in a room with Al Mohler, writing that statement for the

01:17:22

Southern Mass Convention, and you didn't catch that? I'm sorry, I'm sure it's been explained to you.

01:17:29

So don't say none of us know, when you know we know. And you know we have an answer that you just don't want to deal with.

01:17:37

That really bothered me. That bothered me a lot. If you're sitting on the side of a lake, and you see someone drowning 15 feet away from you, and you can swim, and it's a little person, and you would judge very quickly, you're well able to go and rescue that person, and if you sit there and let them die, you're morally responsible for that death.

01:17:56

You're able to do so, and we have laws to prosecute people, but God would go to jail on our legal system.

01:18:03

God would go to jail on our legal system. When God created

01:18:12

Dr. Hankins, He knew every little child that would drown when

01:18:17

He created, didn't He? Didn't He? And yet He chose to do so.

01:18:24

Why? Are you ready to put your God in jail yet, sir? See, I can say

01:18:30

He had a purpose. There's no meaningless evil in Yahweh's world.

01:18:40

You cannot say that. So, if you are a Molinist, then you have to go, best

01:18:48

God could do with the cards He was dealt. Couldn't do anything about it. So, He doesn't get to go to jail because He's judged guiltless by incompetence.

01:19:02

Oh, that helps. Um, Dr.

01:19:20

Hankins, have you read D .A. Carson's book on the love of God? Again, I just don't understand.

01:19:31

I'm sorry. I guess there's a lot of books to get to. Four years isn't a long time. But we recognize something called redemptive love.

01:19:45

Common grace. God has the ability to have even more kinds of pure love than we have as His creatures.

01:19:54

Why keep going here and saying stuff like this? I don't understand. I don't get it. The mystery of how

01:20:00

God's not evil for that. And that's in all of their confessions. It's in their statements, and that's what they truly believe.

01:20:05

What I'm telling you is, there is no logical reason to believe that. And so if you follow Reformed logic,

01:20:11

God is a moral monster. God is not moral. Wow. Uh, big words given that basic study of the foundations of the system would disabuse you.

01:20:26

It's different if you just don't want to believe it. But you're describing a system, and you're not describing it accurately.

01:20:32

Even though you say you must do that. That's what I don't get. You say you must do that, and then you don't do it.

01:20:40

That strikes me as odd. Just a few other things here, and we'll wrap this up.

01:20:46

We'll get right out of jumbo size I think today. Just a few more clips here. Reformed people are

01:20:53

Reformed people because they've adopted the idea from Augustine, not Paul. And from Jonathan Edwards, not Paul.

01:20:59

That freedom is the ability to do what you desire most. All of us lost the ability, desire to do good when Adam died, or when

01:21:05

Adam sinned. And then God chooses a special group of people to whom he's going to give the desire to respond to him.

01:21:12

From Augustine, Edwards, and not Paul. Sure would be nice to hear these guys actually try to exegete

01:21:19

Romans 8 for following. Those who are according to flesh cannot do what is pleasing to God.

01:21:28

Is repentance pleasing to God, Dr. Hankins? Is faith pleasing to God? And those who are according to flesh cannot do that, right?

01:21:36

So are you telling me that a heart of stone will voluntarily become a heart of flesh? Are you telling me that dry bones can put themselves together?

01:21:47

Are you telling me that slaves to sin can just simply unlock the chains? That Lazarus could roll the stone away by himself?

01:21:58

What are you telling us? You said it wasn't Paul, but Paul said exactly that in Romans 8.

01:22:05

But then you don't deal with it. Maybe you have someplace else, I don't know, but you didn't hear, and that's a shame.

01:22:14

Yeah, but he did what he desired the most. That's typically in my experience how the conversation goes. So Adam couldn't have done otherwise, no.

01:22:20

But he's still responsible for his sin, yes. That doesn't work for me. Because it's a massive logical problem that creates a massive problem for the issue of the cause of evil.

01:22:32

That doesn't work for me. Dr. Hankins, we need to hear your exegesis of Genesis 50.

01:22:39

We need to understand the parallelism in the Hebrew between God intended this for good, you intended it for evil.

01:22:45

Same act, intended by God, pure motivations, man, evil motivations, man's judged, God isn't.

01:22:51

That doesn't work for you? That doesn't work for you? How about the king of Assyria?

01:22:57

God brings the king of Assyria against the people of Israel as a judgment, fulfilling the curses of Deuteronomy 28 -29.

01:23:05

And then he judges the king of Assyria for his haughty heart. He judges the attitude of the heart.

01:23:12

One action, God intends it, just for God, holy for God, man, his intentions are evil, he's judged.

01:23:20

Doesn't work for you? How about the cross? Pontius Pilate, the

01:23:26

Jews, the Romans, all sorts of different motivations, but God decreed the cross from time immemorial.

01:23:34

One act, you don't think Pontius Pilate could be held accountable for what he did? How about the Jews? Yeah, yeah.

01:23:42

Doesn't work for you? Dr. Hankins, I don't care what doesn't work for you. What I do care about is being consistent with the entire council of God.

01:23:53

And you're not being consistent with the entire council of God, and that's a rather cavalier doesn't work for me statement.

01:24:00

But because of federal theology, because Adam fell, his guilt and his spiritual deadness is now imputed to the rest of us.

01:24:14

That's from a misreading of Romans 5? It's from a misreading of Romans 5. We still haven't found that dividing line.

01:24:23

I have a very clear recollection. No, uh -uh.

01:24:29

It was not a ScreenFlow video. I have a very clear recollection of this stuff over here.

01:24:39

And this stuff, not the way it is right now, but looking at this stuff, because I had

01:24:44

Romans 5 on this unit, so I know it was a dividing line. And we went through Romans chapter 5, and I remember people afterwards specifically commenting on Twitter, I've never understood that text before today.

01:25:03

So I don't know how we're going to find it. Evidently we didn't tag it with Romans 5 when we put it up.

01:25:10

But we did it. I know we did it. Yeah, Razor's Kiss is going, yeah, doc did a

01:25:16

Romans 5 DL. Okay, Razor's Kiss, you get to find it. Now that you remember it. And Algo.

01:25:23

See, they remember it. So guys, in the channel. We got two volunteers. Yep. I see that hand.

01:25:30

Let's do a Southern Baptist thing. I see that hand. I see that hand. I see that hand. Go ahead, that's yours.

01:25:35

You take it. So you guys, you get to find it.

01:25:43

Because we need to post that. We need to put that up somehow. And yeah, notice what

01:25:52

Theo says. I have such a visual memory. I do. It's true. Still this day, if I ride up South Mountain, which

01:26:01

I can't right now. Did you know the Summit Road's been closed since last September? Those big storms?

01:26:08

Big landslides closed the road. That's terrible, but when it gets back open again

01:26:16

I'll ride that thing and I'll go around a corner and I'll see a rock. I'll see a tree. And I'll hear Shabir Ali in my head.

01:26:22

That's how visual I am with my memory. It's weird. I can't remember what to get at the grocery store, but I can't remember that.

01:26:30

So anyway, we will There it is.

01:26:35

There it is. Algo wins again. What's the date? May 7th of 2013.

01:26:47

You just found the same one? Sure you did. Yeah, sure. Oh, yeah. There it is.

01:26:59

There you go. Who can find it?

01:27:04

Algo and Rich all at the same time. May 7th 2013. Alright, there it is. Someone make sure

01:27:10

I have that. I will try to link it to the last dividing line description and to this one. And if you're listening to this, then go to the

01:27:18

May 7th 2013 Well, that is there a Bring that back up.

01:27:26

Scroll down. Is there a video? Well, just tell me one way or the other.

01:27:34

What did you do? Crash yourself? In other words

01:27:41

In other words if someone No video. So what we're going to have to somehow do is because we made so much reference to it, we need to get that MP3 available.

01:27:57

Maybe even pull the Romans 5 section and make it something that somebody can click on like the Romans 9 thing.

01:28:04

Because that is a vital text. Because otherwise they're going to have to buy it. Right? Okay, yeah.

01:28:17

That was beforehand. I mean, I guess if you want I can always just put a zero price in the shopping cart and the thing is going to be linked to it.

01:28:30

Let's pull the section on Romans 5 and make it a standalone. Because I think it's that important.

01:28:36

Very good. People found it helpful and so it would be good to Alright, let's finish this up.

01:28:43

Inability now to have any sensitivity whatsoever to the call of God is just turned off.

01:28:50

That is imputed to the rest of us. That was the deal that God had struck. When did God strike that deal?

01:28:56

That's not in the Bible. We'll get to that in just a second. That is one odd God struck a deal?

01:29:05

I guess federalism is how God chooses to deal with his people. Remember Achan?

01:29:11

His family? Rocks, you know? Romans 5 Real clear.

01:29:18

In Adam, you get what only Adam can give you. Death. In Christ, you get what only Christ can give you. Life. It's very clear.

01:29:26

It's not that the ability is turned off. We're enemies of God. Dead in our sin, in love with our own lusts

01:29:36

We do react to God. Negatively. But Paul said, those who are according to flesh can what?

01:29:42

Can not do what is pleasing to God. Right? But that leads us back to this moral problem.

01:29:48

If God has the ability to make every dead person alive and he does. He could have just said, you're all dead because of Adam and now you're all alive because of Christ.

01:29:56

Which frankly is the way the logic is structured if you're going to be insistent about their reading of Romans 5. All died in Adam, all made alive in Christ.

01:30:03

No sir. All who are in Adam and all who are in Christ. We are all in Adam.

01:30:10

We are transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light. We are in Adam. We get what

01:30:16

Adam gives. We are put into Christ. We have what Christ gives. Two different humanities in view there, sir.

01:30:23

It's your unwillingness to allow all to have different meanings by context that causes your misreading of Romans chapter 5.

01:30:32

Except what? We're not universalists. I don't believe everybody. So it's just a misreading of Romans 5 at that point. Well, I'd be interested in how you avoid universalism.

01:30:42

But anyway. But on their view, God has the ability to save everyone. He just doesn't.

01:30:50

And that's an insurmountable moral problem for God. Insurmountable moral problem for God.

01:30:56

Well, I want to know your theology that allows you to surmount it. Are you saying

01:31:02

God couldn't? I mean, Amola just said that there is no possible world in which all people are saved.

01:31:10

But now you've got a God who just has to deal with possible worlds. I wish

01:31:15

I could do this, but I really can't because I'm limited by these possible world things. If you want to talk about that, that's cool.

01:31:22

We'll go there. We'll talk about that. That would be well worth discussing. It's central to Reformed theology.

01:31:29

The covenant of works. And when you read about it, when you get the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, just look up Federal theology and read it.

01:31:36

Reformed people will just say, you know, the covenant of works. And my deal is, like many of you, where in the world does that come from?

01:31:47

In my study, there isn't even an attempt to offer a text. It is out of thin air.

01:31:56

Really? Covenant of obedience. You don't see that?

01:32:02

You don't see something about do it and you'll live? You don't see that by breaking that covenant, there were...

01:32:12

It was death? I mean, that's all it's really about. I don't get that.

01:32:18

He obviously doesn't like any form of covenant theology whatsoever. Okay. So, unconditional election.

01:32:25

Now, I am 45 minutes into an hour, and he just now got to unconditional election, which is what his topic is supposed to be.

01:32:35

It was interesting. View means this. Since we're totally depraved, no one is going to respond.

01:32:40

You can get before depraved people who are in an unregenerate state and preach the gospel to them all day long with unbelievable passion.

01:32:47

No one is going to respond. Yeah. Salvation is of the

01:32:54

Lord. It's a spiritual thing. Holy Spirit. You got it. You got it. If you're objecting to that, then you better not object to being called a semi -Pelagian.

01:33:04

Because if you can say someone can respond without the Spirit, you're going to say, oh, he makes first move.

01:33:11

But do you hear what you're saying here? What you're criticizing is what makes the rest of us go, what are you saying?

01:33:19

That's... But besides that, unconditional election, the name sort of describes it. There are no conditions.

01:33:25

Election is not based upon what we do. And so God has decided that a group is going to be made alive so that when they hear the gospel, they're going to be made alive, given the ability to respond in faith and come to faith.

01:33:42

And that's what it means to be elect. All right? Unconditional means that God's not a respecter of persons in that.

01:33:49

Anything in you merits that election if God just chooses to do so. Yeah, there are no conditions.

01:33:56

There are no conditions. That we must fulfill. The whole point was the issue of conditions that had to be fulfilled, which sort of got lost in your description there.

01:34:05

So if you'll notice, Dr. Moeller and I, we wrote this statement, and the Calvinism Advisory Committee affirmed it, but the last statement has to do with the fate of infants, and it's the one that's different from all the others.

01:34:15

It says most Southern Baptists believe that when babies die, they go to heaven. The reason we had to make that little adjustment on that last thing is because there are some guys on the committee that couldn't affirm that all

01:34:25

Southern Baptists believe that when babies die, they go to heaven. Because a couple of those guys were just being very, very, very consistent in their

01:34:31

Calvinism. But I'm not going to have a guy on staff with me who's going to go into the hospital, into a room where a woman's just experienced a stillbirth, and I've had to do this as a pastor, and those parents look at me and what do those parents want to know?

01:34:45

They're holding a dead infant in their arms. What do they want to know? What is this baby?

01:34:52

And the answer is yes. You're going to see this baby again if you know the Lord. The baby's safe in the arms of God. I'm not going to have a guy on staff with me that's just going to say to somebody,

01:34:59

I don't know. So, Dr. Hankins, you believe abortion is the greatest heaven -filling device ever devised by man.

01:35:12

Do you take that outside the abortion clinic? This is what pragmatism gets you.

01:35:20

This is what determining your theology based upon what's going to make it easiest for you gets you.

01:35:28

I know exactly the pressure that is upon that person. I was a hospital chaplain. I know exactly what those parents want to hear.

01:35:37

Dr. Hankins, it's our job to tell them the truth, not what they want to hear. Yes? May I point out that your, what, second best -selling book?

01:35:49

Yeah. The whole impetus that started that book was a baby that died.

01:35:56

And how to communicate to those parents. Oh, I know. But the simplicity of simply giving everybody a pass into heaven.

01:36:06

Hey, look, what if it was a 20 -year -old? What if it was a 30 -year -old? I know what the issues are.

01:36:16

And that's why, at the beginning, we played that little clip from Jason Wallace and Sean McCraney and talked about it there.

01:36:26

God has just as much freedom in the salvation of infants as he does in adults. But the assumption, and he's saying on my staff, your assumption must be

01:36:39

God has no freedom in this matter even though the child dies, and that means that sin's involved, that they're fallen or otherwise they wouldn't die.

01:36:50

I demand that you believe that there is a universal application of the merits of Christ. I can't prove it from the

01:36:56

Bible, and you can't disprove it, but you better believe it or you're not going to be on my staff. That's what he just said. That's pragmatism.

01:37:04

Pragmatism to the nth degree. Choices, human libertarian choices, because God doesn't want a world full of robots.

01:37:10

That's a discussion for a different day, but I think what Calvinism gives you is a world full of pre -programmed robots. So that was the last one.

01:37:15

I just wanted to give you, you know, toward the end he's hurrying a little bit and so he's not quite as careful with his terminology, and he believes that Calvinism gives you a world full of pre -programmed robots.

01:37:28

And once again, evidently four years just is not long enough. Because as common as that accusation is, it is born out of abject ignorance.

01:37:44

It is offensive to us for the simple reason that God entered into this world in the person of Jesus Christ.

01:37:52

If the Incarnation doesn't prove that this is not a world of robots, nothing else could! But we've said that a million times before, but you all just don't seem to want to listen.

01:38:02

And sometimes, to be honest with you, when people claim to have become experts on what

01:38:08

I believe, and then they keep making statements like this where they're clearly not, and you'll notice it's our program that plays the other side.

01:38:21

The other side very often won't even listen to what we have to say. So that tells you a lot right there.

01:38:29

So there you go! Radio Free Geneva, those of you who were just weeping that it's been since September of last year, since you got to hear that beautiful opening, and all those wonderful quotes.

01:38:44

There we go. We finally got our first Radio Free Geneva of the new year in. And who knows, maybe we'll have to do some more because there was a few other sermons in this one that were pretty bad too.

01:38:55

So anyways, thanks for listening to the program today. We'll see you again next Tuesday, Lord willing. God bless.