Radio Free Geneva: Shawn McCraney and Eric Hankins

Mighty Fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing.

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.

Our helper, he amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing.

And I, he, God, we're selected!

For still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe. His craft and power are great, and armed with cruel hate.

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

On earth is not his equal.

I think I probably know more about Calvinism than most of the people who call themselves Calvinists.

Did we in our own strength confide. Our striving would be losing?

But God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. That who?

Were not the right man on our side the man of God's own choosing?

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.

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

But I don't understand the difference between hyper-Calvinism and Calvinism. It seems to me that Calvin was a hyper-Calvinist. Right, I don't think there is typically any difference between Calvinism and hyper-Calvinism.

Lord, sabbath his name.

Read my book.

From age to age the same. And he must win the battle. And now, from our underground bunker deep beneath Bruton-Parker College, where no one would think to look, safe from all those moderate Calvinists, Dave Hunt fans, and those who have read and re-read George Bryson's book, we are Radio Free Geneva, broadcasting the truth about God's freedom to save for his own eternal glory.

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

Jason Wallace and Sean McCraney on Babies, Hell, and the Trinity

Welcome to Radio Free Geneva. Today we are going to be looking at a lecture given by Dr. Eric Hankins at the Saving Grace Conference in Mississippi, I believe. It was in January of this year. I forgot what the date was.

January of this year. 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 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. It's not as interesting as watching it.

But I went and changed computers. And 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. I don't know what's going on on the other side of the window there.

But I wanted to start off looking at a brief section of the amazing debate. 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.

Now, I haven't kept up with the Sean McCraney saga over the past, oh, I don't know. That was, what, March? That was March of last year. Yeah, the reason I remember that is I just started running. I had gotten back from Kiev, and I was running like two kilometers at a time and almost dying.

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

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

And it's relevant to Radio Free Geneva because of how Sean McCraney starts. Now realize, Sean has denied the Trinity, eternal conscious punishment, he's a hyper-preterist, there is no church today. There is, since Christ returned in AD 70, there's no Lord's Supper, there's no baptism.

Unless you want to, if you feel like it, you know. Christianity is just a subjective experience. There's no objective element to it any longer, except what he thinks is objective. It's just complete meltdown, complete mess.

And so Jason has asked him some questions, and now Sean gets to ask Jason some questions. And it's interesting where he goes. Because if it's all just a subjective experience, I don't even know why he's bothering to ask these questions personally.

But let's take a look or listen or something. Is it going to be a listen? It's a listen. Oh, you got it? Oh, alright. Well, watch, listen, however it ends up working, to the beginning of the interaction.

Your faith in me is incredible.

Yeah, well, what can I say? To the interaction between Jason Wallace and Sean McCraney.

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

Can you repeat that, please?

John Calvin said, there are babies a span long, that's a long line of babies, in hell.

Now, I love, did you catch Jason there? He's like, what? I don't think it's a long line. I think he's talking about, there are only a span, little babies. If it's a quote, I don't even know. I had never heard of it.

But you immediately go, here's a guy who denies the Trinity. And what's the first thing you do? You go for the emotional bomb. You go for the emotional bomb down the field to try to get emotional people.

Because this is about you. This is about your departure from every semblance of historic Christianity. This is about you saying that pastors just want to control their people. And this is about you saying there is no visible church.

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. Which is amazing this happens in Utah. Who else did that? Anyway, so what do you do?

You start with babies in hell is what you start with. That's really incredibly useful.

Do you agree with that?

Bible doesn't say whether.

Now, here's what I would have said. I would have said, well, Sean, do you think that abortion is the greatest heaven-filling device in the world? 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.

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. 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 Paul's argument there is. And there you've established sort of where you need to go to actually address it. That's how I would have responded to it.

I think Jason was expecting a completely different approach, actually.

Our baby's in hell. We are all born sinners. God is just to send any of us to hell. But I'm not going to speculate. I don't know what Calvin, I mean, I haven't seen the context of what Calvin says there.

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

Are there babies in hell? Are there babies in hell? Is there any baby in hell?

Scripture doesn't tell me.

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.

Okay, go ahead. The Westminster Confession says elect infants dying and infants go to heaven. But it leaves it there. Westminster Confession purposely leaves it vague. Who are the elect infants? I don't know.

But children, we're born sinners.

Now, I guess there might be some 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. You know, with someone like Sean McCraney, I'm just going to go straight at him and say, you know, challenge the presupposition that he's trying to operate on here and say exactly what does this have to do with your denying the Trinity and all the rest of this kind of stuff.

But anyway.

Or else babies wouldn't die. So whether I died at conception or whether I died as an old man, 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?

Yeah, if there are any.

If there are any non-elect babies are in hell. Okay, just wanted to know. I mean, simple yes or no. I think what it would have...

I don't... Oops, sorry about that.

...seem to have all the answers.

What is the standard the church is governed by, Pastor Wallace?

The Word of God.

The Word of God.

Contained in the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.

Okay, 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 trinity. Is that in the Word of God?

Nope.

Haven't you added to it?

Nope.

You use it, don't you?

I use 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 Bible?

No, I never got on your case for not using the term trinity. That was...

For rejecting the tenets of the trinity?

That was a total... The tenets of the trinity.

The tenets, yes.

Yeah, I mean, the Bible is very clear. There is one God.

Yeah, I agree with that. How about the other tenets?

The Bible is very clear that the Father is God, Jesus is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and yet, despite the fact that there is identity, there's also differences between them. They're 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?

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

A what?

I'm part of a session.

Is that in the Bible?

No.

Where did that come from?

It's an 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 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. What is that?

Sean, the word Jesus is not in the Bible either, but you use that every day.

Yeah, but I would use Jesus if I could, but I don't speak the language. But session has no relationship. There's no Greek word for session that you use it for.

Sorry, Jason, you lost that one.

Sean, no, I haven't lost it, Sean.

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

Yes.

Baptism of babies, infants?

Yes.

Wow.

Where is that?

I don't...

Now, what we're going to have to do is we're going to have to schedule a debate between me and Jason on that subject so we can say, see, this is how you go to the 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. I linked, I'm pretty certain... I'll have to check. I think I put it on Facebook. I'll check. I forget where I put it. I didn't put it on the blog, but I put it... I know I put it in Twitter, but I linked to the file so you can watch this for yourself.

It gets exceptionally wild when the audience starts getting involved. It gets really insane at that particular point in time. But, you know, listening to Sean McCraney, it's hard to even recognize any more, any meaningful element of Christian truth left in his theology.

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. 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, Eric Hankins really isn't... Is this the best the other side has to offer? 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.

And in fact, the vast majority of attacks upon Reformed theology come from individuals who really don't know the subject overly well. And Eric Hankins is... It's Dr. Hankins. He is well-known in the Southern Baptist Convention.

His father is even more well-known in the Southern Baptist Convention. And the Hankins family are known for being very strongly opposed to Reformed theology. And there is a strong rift in the Southern Baptist Convention on this subject.

Now, Dr. Hankins makes some statements in this lecture that I appreciated. 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.

There was some balance, I thought, in some of the comments that was made in that context. But still, this was supposed to be an unconditional election. Almost nothing of this lecture was on unconditional election.

Almost nothing. The whole emphasis of unconditional election, of course, historically, was the reality that while there had been many, prior to the Reformation, who would affirm election, it was conditional.

It was conditional upon our fulfilling certain requirements that would then result in our being elected. And at the end, we've played it before, and it's just Hankins has this mantra that he does on election, where it's just an 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.

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. 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.

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.

So you could just go, well, that's your view, but you 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.

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 Jerry Walls things. Remember the very talk that Jerry Walls gave, where no 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 Jerry Walls thing. Quotes from that, and we'll listen to some of that. But basically he says this is the Achilles heel, that compatibilism cannot deal with evil.

And I'm like, wow, compatibilism is the strongest theistic response to evil. I wonder if he's going to put forward a defense of libertarianism. And of course he doesn't. 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.

So 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 faith. So 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.

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. 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.

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.

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. 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.

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

The Journey into Reformed Theology and the Limits of Four Years of Study

I'm going to be speaking to you some out of my journey. And a lot of my journey over the last four years in speaking up about Reformed Theology is the fruit of a whole lot of study.

Did you catch that? How long has Dr. Hankins been focusing and doing a lot of study on Reformed Theology? I've been at riding weight longer than that. I got to riding weight in 2010. So we're coming up in five years.

Some of you will remember what I looked like beforehand. That ain't a long time. And it just strikes me. Four years. I wrote The Potter's Freedom in 2000, I think. That's 15 years. God's Sovereign Grace was 94, 5, somewhere around in there, 20 years ago.

Dr. David Allen, remember what he said? He started getting into this limited and universal atonement stuff in 2008. 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. A whole 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, 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, is because it communicates a seriousness about these things.

I agree 1 ,000%. 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. I find it hard to describe a sermon on universal atonement, unlimited atonement, that does not show that the person delivering the sermon understands what the key issues are.

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 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, I don't consider that serious. And the whole time I was listening to that one, I'm like, I was really hoping for some real interaction, and I didn't get it.

Was there something you wish to...

Oh, no, I just grabbed the mic, but a thought that came to my mind, 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.

It's not that you're saying that you can't... 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.

Yeah, that's the problem. But even then, where are the Armenian Southern Baptists who have been doing this for 30 years?

They're still repeating each other. I'm sorry. Did I say that on cue?

They are, and there isn't a whole lot of meaningful interaction with what we have to say. 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. 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.

And I said, that's right. Well, how does that go with his passionate plea that it matters that we go and tell? If they hear, they can respond, but if they don't hear, they can't respond. And so we really need to go.

It matters. How does that go together? And I said, it doesn't. It doesn't go together.

Now, this was, they showed a video of the new president of the Southern Baptist Missions Board. And it was a passionate video, but he's a Calvinist. And so someone comes up to him and says, well, does that mean he believes this?

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

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.

Now, I wish he would just come out and say that. Because then immediately the question would come up, well, 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 Southern Baptist.

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

He knew who would be saved and who would not. He knew about every act of violence. He knew about every drowning of a child. He knew about every baby that would die in a fire, since those are illustrations he's going to use.

And yet, he still chose to create. Now, you could say, well, but he was only passively taking that knowledge in. Well, then that now leaves you having to explain why God chose to create a world where there is no purpose for these events.

He could have just chosen not to do it. 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. 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. 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. I mean, evidently, you don't believe those things.

So if you don't believe there's a decree, then you've got a God that creates. He knows evil is going to exist, but he has no purpose for it. So your objections are actually far more relevant and strong to your own position.

But I see no evidence that in the four years of your deep study on the subject, where you claim to have read Jonathan Edwards, there's no way. I'm sorry. I mean, do I have... Yeah, there they are. Right over there.

Yeah, I'm pointing. Right there. It's a pointer. Look at that. There's Jonathan Edwards volumes. That's a musical interlude while we're moving here. Now, here's the problem. I can no longer read these volumes.

There is no way on God's green earth. Well, I can read the titles.

But...

The font, folks, is... Look at that. It's all footnotes. I don't know what the font size in here is. I would take... No, no, no. I would say the font size is between 5 and 6. 5 and 6 points. Yeah. It's that bad.

Anyway.

But I have read. And that's why I can't see anymore. No, I can't see anymore. I would have to don these to read this. But I'm sorry. You could not have read Edwards on the purpose which God created the world.

Sermons on Sovereignty. And not realize the conundrum that you face. 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 Christian theist has to deal with.

Any Christian theist has to answer the question of theodicy. And the only way out. The only way out is open theism. That's the only consistent Arminian position. Is to say God didn't know. God didn't know.

Yeah, I saw that. Certain young fellow who claims to live in London says, if I can't read them, I'll take them. They make great backstops, man. And like I said, all I gotta do is put these on. 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. Anyhow, I'm sorry. I'm still waiting for the serious Arminian. Because your Arminian philosophy guys generally don't have the highest view of Scripture.

That's not going to work for the Hankins, Pattersons, Allens who are absolutely wedded to inerrancy as a part of their very identity. So I found it interesting he was quoting from Wolles. Would he quote from Olson as well?

I would hope not. Because most Arminians who are purposeful Arminians are not overly conservative. There are some, but they're in the minority. They're in the minority. They really are. Anyway, we press on.

Compatibilism, Libertarian Freedom, and the Problem of Evil

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. 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.

Now catch that. He knows what the actual answer is. He just doesn't take it seriously. He won't accept it. He'll talk about God ordaining the means as well as the ends. Yeah, that's really important, isn't it?

I mean, isn't that the whole idea? That God ordains both the ends his ultimate glorification as well as the means by which that's going to happen. 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, which includes the existence of evil, sin, Israel, Egypt, Babylon, all sorts of things like that.

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

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

I'm really not. You don't hear me using it a whole lot. And in fact, the 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 and God places it within our hearts to go and we show our love for God when we go and we show our love for our fellow human beings when we go and we're being obedient when we go and it matters because God ordains the means.

That's not enough. For them, the 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. It's the guilt thing. That's the only reason for missions is the guilt thing.

That's it. Being used of God, the actual motivations of the first missionaries who happened to be reformed. No, no, no. It's got to be the guilt thing. If you don't go, people are going to go to hell.

So there are people going to hell because you didn't go. No decree. No elect, but he still has to deal with the reality that from his perspective, as a Southern Baptist, because the Southern Baptist faith and message specifically decries open theism.

So God knows who's going to be saved and who isn't. God knew from the start. God knew from the start. So you can say, yeah, but he didn't. He didn't decree it, which means he created it without a purpose, but doesn't change the fact that it's fixed in God's mind from eternity.

So when he asked questions about, well, is there anybody in hell that could have been anywhere else? I have to ask Dr. Hankins the question. Is there anybody in hell that God thought was going to be in heaven and vice versa?

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

Thus invalidating God's foreknowledge. Is that a possibility? Don't know. I don't know. We'll find out. We'll find out. I mean, he's not going to tell us in this, but we'll find out.

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

Dr. Page asked Dr. Platt, do you believe that anyone who's in hell right now could have been anywhere else? Do you believe that anybody who's in hell right now could have been anywhere else? And without much hesitation, Dr. Platt said, no, no.

There really couldn't have been anywhere else that was there. There were foreordained to be in hell.

And Dr. Hankins, if you believe as Southern Baptists must in the exhaustive foreknowledge of God, you have to say the exact same thing. 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. Best he could do. Maybe you're a Molinist? God had to play the cards he was given? I bet you're a Molinist. I bet you're a Molinist, aren't you? I bet you are. 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 Molinist, if you've gone down that road, then it's even worse. Because now these people are lost because God couldn't have saved them.

Do you go the William Lane Craig direction? This is the best possible world God could come up with? Maximum number of people could be saved? But God could not save everybody? Beyond his power? Beyond his capacity?

Beyond the potential worlds that not just potential, but realistically potential? Real worlds that could be created? But now you're stuck with the problem of explaining why it is. Who's the card dealer?

Who made it this way? Who put it in this order? That's a question we keep asking our Molinist friends.

He believes that it's necessary for us to go, that if we don't go that affects the outcome. If we don't go, people won't hear, and if they don't hear they'll spend eternity in hell. He just believes something else at the exact same time.

He believes something else at the exact same time. What he's saying here is that there is a fundamental contradiction. And as we've demonstrated, there's not a fundamental contradiction. You have to ignore the reality of means, you have to ignore motivations of obedience and love and union with Christ.

It does not show a meaningful understanding of the Reformed perspective at this point.

And that really lies at the heart of Reformed theology. What we're often told is that Reformed theology is very internally consistent. It's very logical. John Piper, when he teaches on the attractiveness of Reformed theology, he'll speak of it being so intellectually satisfying, so internally consistent.