More on George Bryson's Anti-Calvinism

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

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

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

Reading George Bryson on Irresistible Grace and Divine Sovereignty

Good afternoon, welcome to The Dividing Line. I was just sort of sitting here in my brightly colored Coogee sweater today, reading a few sections from The Dark Side of Calvinism, the Calvinist caste system by George Bryson.

And unfortunately, like I said, we have a webcam in case any of you are wondering, and those on channel know about it. It's not really a webcam, it takes a picture every 10 seconds or something. Anyways, for those who see that, it's sort of a velo-bound type thing, Kinko's type binding type thing.

And how many pages is this? It doesn't have 200. That's about one inch thick. Yeah, it's about 279 pages, 621 footnotes. But unfortunately, they're not divided up, so you can't actually find anything very easily in here.

But I was looking at the More on Irresistible Grace, back to chapter 6 of John's Gospel, and I was just looking at some of the stuff that he has to say here. He quoted me, "...Man is incapable of saving faith outside of the enablement of the Father.

He then limits his drawing to the same individuals given by the Father to the Son. The first statement is indeed true. Man is unable, without divine help, even to believe. That is why the Father draws all.".

And I was looking at John 6 there, and of course there isn't anything about all there at all, and you can't even get there. I was just sort of reading through this, but we'll see this in the talk that we're looking at as well, and who knows, maybe we'll get around to looking at that as well.

At some time in the future, 877 -753 -3341, I was on the Iron Sharpens Iron program today with Chris Arnzen, and that was tough. We talked about grieving today, and that's just an exhausting subject to address for me.

It really, really is. I don't know why, other than it's just a hard subject. A good subject to address this time of year, and I'm not going there right now, but it's still a difficult thing to address.

Important around the holidays to be prepared for those things, but anyway, we did that a little while ago, but now we are looking back, having handled some good phone calls on our last program, to the Bryson discussion before we completely lose the context of it.

This is a discussion that George Bryson presented to Calvary Chapel pastors, and I know a number of former Calvary Chapel folks, and it's a shame to have to say that they are former Calvary Chapel folks.

Calvary Chapel folks say they believe that the Bible is the Word of God. They believe that you should study the Bible's Word of God, but sadly it has become quite clear that if you come to the conclusion that that Bible teaches the doctrines of grace, you cannot be a part of that particular movement.

And so we're looking at the mindset represented by George Bryson, who is one of the leaders of the Calvary Chapel movement, and his warning of people regarding this terrible subject of Calvinism. And so we're about 30 minutes into this particular presentation, so we pick up with it.

Oh, you know what? Are you ready for a loud sound? Here it comes, and we do that, and hopefully it sounds good. Oh, good. What on earth was that? That's not the loud sound we were talking about. You're dangerous with toys and switches and buttons and things.

That's a bad thing. The loud sound was supposed to be the plugging in the thing, because it makes terrible noises, but now we'll start with George Bryson.

We have no idea why he wants to save them and not the others. We just know that he wants to save some, and he doesn't others, according to Reformed theology.

And we immediately have to stop, because this is George at high speed. This is Chipmunk George, and when Chipmunk George comes along, Chipmunk George is normally missing the point. And so when we hear the high-speed stuff, you've got to stop it and go, oh, wait a minute, I know you've been claiming to know everything there is to know about Calvinism and everything else, but it's normally in this section that we end up with the bad misrepresentations of Reformed theology.

We know that God wants to save to demonstrate his loving kindness and his mercy and his grace. And we know that he does not choose to save all so as to demonstrate his justice. If he were to save everyone, then his justice would not be seen.

Were he to save no one, then his mercy would not be seen. And so in essence, once again, I would say to Mr. Bryson and to those who follow his line of thinking, where in your system do you give to God the freedom to demonstrate all of his attributes in his eternal decree?

Or do you think that one of the attributes of God is failure and that he tries to save all and that the attribute that is most seen in God's attempt to save is his desire to save, but that then results in the requirement that there be a failure element within it?

God, in making that decision, since God is omnipotent and sovereign, when he makes a decision to do something, it is as good as done. Therefore, nothing else could happen to thwart or contradict or in any way diminish what he's decided to do.

So if he's decided that the sun is going to turn into blue cheese, that decree of God will make that sun turn into blue cheese and nothing could stop it. Nothing could undermine or change or alter that fact.

It's a fact yet to happen, but it's still a fact to be. It's a truth that can't be altered. So God decides to save some, not to save others. Those he decides to save must therefore be saved. Some Calvinists actually argue that no one is ever really lost that is ever going to be saved.

You're just going through the formality, because once God decided to save some from eternity past, those people are going to be saved no matter what. They can never really be risking anything.

Now notice, again, once you get into the chipmunk stage, once he gets into this stuff, this is what he really, really, really believes. And he really, really, really thinks you need to grasp. And so he's going to say it as fast as possible.

And that's normally where he has, in essence, come up with what I would call a monochrome presentation. And he's emphasizing only one aspect. And maybe he knows he's only emphasizing one aspect. Maybe that's why he tries to talk so quickly.

I don't know. Maybe that's just his personality. He gets really excited and talks fast at a certain point. I don't know. But the point is that what we've just heard is, well, if you recognize the eternal reality that, in fact, from the point of creation itself, the end of God's purposes was known to him in finality, then all of it's irrelevant.

All of it doesn't matter. The fact that there is going to be all this human experience and there is going to be everything between creation and the end, all of that just became irrelevant. It was just all flattened out.

Now, again, this is not an objection to Calvinism. This is an objection to simple Christian theism. And though at least one person was very upset with me for even bothering to ask Mr. Bryce in this question, his objection would only be relevant if he were, in fact, an open theist and that God didn't know.

God was unaware of what was going to be happening in the future, and it was all the great cosmic roll of the dice, et cetera, et cetera. Then his objection would have a foundation. But since he professes not to be an open theist, then it would follow that from the beginning, when God created, he knew who was going to be saved and who was not.

And so it's a done deal from his perspective as well. Now, he may not want to deal with this eternal decree, but if he opts for the free will, passively taking in knowledge, throw the cosmic dice, as long as he affirms that God does know, he may want to adopt the, well, but the end result is because God observes what's going to happen in time.

The fact still is that from the time he created, that's it. He knows what the end is going to be and he knows who's going to be saved and who isn't. So on his own grounds, the result is the same and the objection is the same in either one of these situations.

And so what the substance of the objection, therefore, is in light of his own professed theology. But then again, isn't that the issue? Isn't that what we heard when we began listening to this? Yeah, we Calvary Chapel folks, we're really not into this theology stuff.

So you can end up with a theology of God that is inconsistent with your theology of salvation. And as long as you don't get so theologically oriented as to drag these two things, kicking and screaming, next to one another to find out if they're consistent, then just live with the inconsistency.

Don't worry about it. Don't think about these things. This evidently seems to be the perspective that is being promoted.

There's no danger for the elect because the elect from all eternity are going to be saved. Therefore, they'll be saved for all eternity.

And from your perspective, if God knows at creation who's going to be saved, there's no quote unquote danger for them. I mean, once again, same objection, same point, just as valid for him as it is for me.

At least I can say God has a purpose in the elect being an atom and being fallen and living as children of wrath and the whole nine yards. And since I don't know who the identity of the elect is, none of this is relevant to my proclamation of the gospel.

None of this is relevant to the fact that since I don't know and we are not given the identity of the elect in this life, in the sense that here's the census roll, you know, and we can tell exactly who the elect are, then we proclaim the gospel to all people and we warn all people because the danger is real.

We don't have that knowledge. That's what makes the context, our context real in that sense. And it seems like, again, if he is being consistent with himself, that he would have to be raising the very same objections to his own position that he isn't raising to his own position.

And maybe that's why, by the way, I did get an email from someone who listened to the program over on the narrow mind where they had the station manager. And the station manager said it was because he was being rude to callers in not answering the questions as to his own position.

That's what I was. That's what was reported to me anyway. And so, you know, I can't comment on that one way or the other because I haven't listened to that. But that's remember he had said I was on that program and they would they I wouldn't go back on because they wouldn't let me quote Calvin, blah, blah.

You know, my feeling is he I and I've got a little experience here because I tried for three hours, not including commercial breaks, to try to get him to present a cogent, coherent theology of his own perspective and then apply to his perspective the same standards he was trying to apply to my perspective.

And that's what he's not willing to do. That's what he's not able, seemingly, to do.

No danger. And there is no hope for the reprobate, because since they were not chosen to be saved from all eternity, they must be damned or doomed for all eternity.

Again, just as just as much of an objection to his own doctrine of God's knowledge as to anybody else's, except one difference. From his perspective, he can't assign a meaning, a purpose to any of this.

It's just the cosmic roll the dice. At least I can say God had a purpose in each one of these things. Genesis 50 acts for Isaiah 10, you know, all the stuff that we tried to get him to respond to on the program and wouldn't then either.

So election is determinative. God decides, God decrees. It is therefore going to happen. So whatever else God does. So the four point Calvinist says, on one hand, God elects to save them, then sends or elects not to save them, I should say, talking about the reprobate.

He elects not to save some just as he elects to save some.

Well, again, and we've tried to. This is the same trying to make this purely an equal sign between the two. Not recognizing and really by by taking only a part of the truth, by taking only a portion of the truth, you end up creating this this this skewed reality.

And interestingly enough, he's coming from making election the only thing. And it's interesting how these these enemies of the reformed faith, they all think they've come up with the one answer. The one way to slay the beast of Calvinism and for for Bryson, you need to understand it's all about election.

It's all about this particular issue. And so you end up getting rid of the depravity of man and sin and you get you get rid of the fact that man loves his sin. And you just you just make it into a mechanistic type of a concept.

I was looking at a criticism of Calvinism online earlier today by a, quote, unquote, former Calvinist. And this individual, his entry point is this is the big thing is you need to understand the way to understand Calvinism to see what's wrong is the issue of total depravity and man's incapacities.

And you attack it from there, see. And so you end up rather than just taking the system as a whole and going the only direction you can. And that is to the texts upon which we stand, upon which we say, look, you consistently apply the same hermeneutic to these texts.

And while we're willing to go to second Peter, three, nine and first Timothy, two, four, Matthew, 23, 37 and all your texts, you won't go to John six. And you won't go to Ephesians one. You won't won't go to Romans nine and apply the same hermeneutic that we all would share, hopefully, in defending the resurrection of the deity of Christ.

You go to those. They won't do that. They will. I'm just going to go at this one point and attack it this way.

That's that's an interesting observation that I have. But since he elects not to, that's his decree and that's going to happen. Then he sends Christ to die for them. How could he send Christ to die for them?

There can be no what chapter of my book is this nothing but the blood for the elect, nothing in the blood for the not elect. How can he possibly do anything of a saving nature for those people he has no saving interest in and made no saving decision for?

It's impossible logically. So Calvinists call us to consistency. You can be consistent wrong, which can't be inconsistent, right? That's impossible. They're consistent on this point. True Calvinists are, but they are dead wrong because their premise is all off.

In fact, I'm going to say something that will shock some of you, and this will save you a lot of time trying to reconcile election with these other issues. Election is a concoction. There's no such thing as the Calvinist version of election as an exist.

Never did. I've read everything that's ever been written that I know of in the English language on an explanation of an affirmations of the doctrine of election.

I always stop. And so I've read everything exists that I know of in the English language. As soon as I hear somebody say that, I just go, OK, all right, we're just about to get an argument from authority here rather than an argument from any kind of meaningful citation.

You know what? Why does anybody do that? I mean, I guess it's just to pump yourself up or something. I hear people doing this on all sides of the fence. I read everything in the English language on this subject.

And I'm like, well, OK, that's that's that's wonderful. But normally what I what that is, is a means to avoid actually you're going to say something that, you know, is is actually very challengeable. And so you want to try to head off the challenges by just pumping yourself up to the, you know, and sort of like the puffer fish.

You know, don't attack me because I'm so big type of a type of situation, you know. And there's some cartoon thing where that thing is, you know, you know, wasn't that in Finding Nemo or something, the puffer fish?

And I don't know. But that's that's we're getting here is the puffer fish.

There is no such thing in the Bible. The Bible never makes any references to anything like the Calvinist version of election. The Bible talks about election a great deal. And I believe there are people we can legitimately call the elect.

But we also can call them believers or Christians.

So you notice basically saying is is believers is the equivalent of the elect. So you just, again, flatten out the order that you find in Scripture, flatten out the priority of God's action. You find Scripture in that way.

You can insert man into it in the way that his man centered theology would do so.

There are no elect unbelievers. There are elect believers.

No, you believe because you're chosen from eternity. And that's. Yeah. But anyway, that requires to once again, go back through texts exegetically. And we've already discovered that's not the best way of that.

That's not really something that Mr. Bryson is just, you know, I really had to bring up. We really had to find. In fact. Now, this is where you could prove yourself to be a tremendous net guy here. Rich is is you you find the wave file or the MP3 of my debate with Bryson.

And you somehow, while I'm still talking and working, find a way to let me know how to how to bring it up during the break so that I can play the cross examination portion. Let's see. And and that would just be tremendous.

It'd just be it'd just be awesome. Why are you looking at him? He's not going to do it. You want him rummaging around through the innards of our of our network here? No, no, no, no. That'd be great, because I would just like to play the portion where I'm asking him questions because my questions were biblically oriented.

All his questions were philosophically oriented. The contrast was great. But but his his attempted responses on a biblical level were somewhat. Let's just say they didn't quite substantiate the attitude he's presenting of himself at this particular point in time.

Remember, that debate was before this. So, oh, well, that's the cheap and cheesy way of doing it. But that would I don't know that I could access that. I don't know that I could pull that up on my my end over here.

Maybe I could if I stuck in my in my drive. That's a possibility. We'll see.

In fact, I would say the word elect is a synonym, a synonym for the word believer. Now, it's not an elect person. I'll show you a believer.

So what about the elect person prior to his believing? What about the elect person prior to his birth? You see, this is all of this is just a way to steal or rob from God the ability to make a choice.

And why would you do that? Because you believe in autonomous free will, the creature around the autonomous free will of God. But keep that in mind, folks, this man does not believe God can have an autonomous free will.

So you have a man. So you have creatures who have an ability that God does not have for himself.

You show me an unbeliever. I'll show you a non-elect person. He's not been elected.

Now, the Calvinists have. I would love to challenge him. Could you show me some some lexical resources that would substantiate your assertion at that point? And you'll get a lot of hemming and hawing.

And you're an elitist because you use Greek and blah, blah, blah.

The real problem with this issue. But they nevertheless make that affirmation. Now, people say, ah, but George, true Calvinism holds to what's called an autonomy. We believe God can elect some, but not necessarily damn others.

I'm saying that's logically incoherent.

Wait a minute. OK, I understand. Maybe he's trying or thinks in his own mind that he's trying to address the issue of soft Calvinism versus hard Calvinism or reprobation, et cetera, et cetera. But once again, I would just love to run into somebody who accepts the reality that a choice to exercise grace must of necessity differ in nature from a choice not to exercise grace, but instead to exercise justice.

I would actually stop in my tracks and go, wow, someone who maybe I mean, not necessarily, but maybe might have something meaningful to say. But until someone's at least willing to recognize the rather logical and obvious difference between those two things, they don't really have anything worthwhile to say, do they?

And they say, well, you know, God's thoughts are not our thoughts. Yeah, but he's told us what his thoughts are on this.

You know, it's funny to hear someone actually trying to say that the Calvinists who who flee to mystery on this issue, isn't it? Once again, listening to the to the Bible Answer Man debates or the the debate in Los Angeles, who who who was someone flee to mystery at that point?

I don't seem to remember that.

Calvinists Calvinists are always saying, you know, they make all these incredible statements. They lay out everything out on the table and then you start to pick it apart. Don't talk about that is sacred.

That's a mystery. And you don't want to pry into the things that, you know, that's a mystery.

You know, I'm wondering who he's talking about. That didn't happen in his debate with me. That didn't happen. The Bible Answer Man broadcast in any way, shape or form. So I who's who's he trying to impress?

You can't explore into that.

That's why you bring it up. You know, if it's such a mystery, how did you know about it? You see, a mystery is what you don't know.

Revelation is what you do know. If it's a mystery, we don't know. So actually, that's not even the New Testament use of mysterion. A mystery is that which was unknown in the past, but revealed in the present.

So that's not even a proper example there. Maybe some of his eschatology is getting away at that point. I don't know. But in any way, shape or form, this is not the argumentation that he himself has encountered.

And so I have no way of even beginning to respond to any of this because where has he ever encountered this? He doesn't bother to tell us. He instead is is is probably just this is what happens when you're in your your home court.

OK, when you're when you're amongst your own folks and they start laughing at what you're saying. This is a little bit, to be honest with you, a little bit like what happened to Dr. Canner. You know, once your audience starts laughing and your audience starts enjoying what you're doing, the tendency is to keep going the direction that's getting you the laughs.

Tell me. But if you're going to tell me about this doctrine of election, then you're going to have to explain it in light of what Scripture says. But when they see the conflict between election and the truth of Scripture on many, many important issues, they simply say it's a mystery.

See, they're allowed to talk about it. We're not.

Again, this is just wrong. It's just it's just this is just misleading these people. I I would I would love to challenge him to document this from from noticers. Notice there's no citations here. We hear lots and lots of citations, other points, nothing here.

And there's a reason for that. He's he's blowing smoke at this point.

They're allowed to bring it up. And then we're supposed to just be reverent and quiet and polite. And I'm saying, no way, folks, if you're going to lay it out on the table, let's talk about it. It's not they always say, well, we just don't have enough information when we get to heaven.

We'll know a lot more. No, the problem is we got too much information. The problem is I already know. It's like when I get to heaven, I can find out God is a hater, not a lover. Oh, I'm not going to find out if he's already told me he loves me.

I'm not going to find out when I get to heaven that he really hated me. But I just didn't have enough information. Problem is, problem is I got too much information. He tells me about a thousand times in the New Testament, a thousand ways that he loves me.

Right. So the problem here with election isn't that we don't know enough. If we knew enough, if we could probe the depths of the knowledge of God and understand these great deep truths, then we could reconcile.

But we aren't God, so we can't. But God, who is God, who understands how much we can understand, told us in understandable terms lots of things about this issue.

The irony is what he's saying is normally what we are objecting to, because we're the ones who keep pointing out that people are avoiding dealing with a particular text or with a particular group of texts simply due to the fact that they appeal to mystery.

So without being given examples of people doing exactly what he's saying, it's pretty difficult to respond to the specifics of his assertion. We will continue with George Bryson on the other side of the break.

We'll be right back.

Ministry Announcements and a Call-In Question on Sola Scriptura and Islamic Revelation

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And welcome back to The Dividing Line. Yes, technology is a wonderful thing. Let's see if George Bryson was just sort of schmoozing with the bros there for a while, and whether he can pick apart what Calvinists have to say.

Sorry about that. Sorry about that. Had to plug it back in. Hey, there's no way to queue it up as long as it's, you know, what can I say? Professional webcasting here illustrated. Whenever you see me reaching for this thing, man, you got to turn it down.

That's just how they do it. Let's see how well this came off in real life. Mr. Bryson, I would like to ask you, in light of what I just said concerning John 6, verse 44, all the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who, I'm sorry, no one is able to come to me unless the Father has sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.

Is it your position that the one who is raised up at the last day in John 6, verse 44, is different than the one who is drawn?

It is my position that there are two things required. You must come to him, that's one, and to come to him, you must be drawn. It's my position that Scripture clearly, John 6, verse 44, and all of that context, so you're talking a lot about the need to look at things in context, if you take all of that in connection, there are two things that happen.

One, you have to see, and another, you have to believe, if you go on earlier in that very chapter. But the point here is that you cannot come, you are not able to come unless he draws you. But being able to come and actually coming to him in faith are not exactly the same thing.

He enables you to come. And if you come to him and are drawn, and you can't come to him unless you're drawn, then he will raise you up. But he doesn't raise people up unless they come to him. But the ability to come, he gives.

But making you able to come doesn't make you come.

I'm sorry, but I'll just do what everybody else is doing. What? Again, this is what happens when you've got your tradition, and you run into a text of Scripture that just simply doesn't teach what you want it to teach.

And if you could make heads or tails out of what was just thrown at you there, you're doing a whole lot better than I am. Verse 44 says, No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day.

Are you saying those two hims are different people?

No, I'm saying those two people there, that one person does two things. One, he comes to him, but he comes to him only because he is able to do so.

Where did you get that from in verse 44? Two things. No one can come to me.

Come to me. That's the one thing. The other thing he says is that that person who comes to him has to be enabled by the Father drawing him. No one can unless he's enabled. So he has to come to him, and he has to be drawn.

But if he is drawn and doesn't come to him, then in fact he will not be raised up on the last day. Just as it earlier says, he must see and believe.

So you believe that the two hims here are different. Because you just said you can be drawn and not raised up.

No, I'm capable as one person of doing more than one thing, and God is capable of doing something while I'm doing something, and what he does here is enable me to come. What I do is come. I come in faith.

As a matter of fact, let me just say that even Calvin suggested that coming is a metaphor for believing.

There's no question about that, but where does the word enable appear in verse 44?

Can come. In fact, I remember in your book you point this out.

No one is able to come. That's right. But it does not say he is enabled. It says, unless the Father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up on the last day. The drawing results in being enabled.

That is not what it says. It says that no one can come to me, and almost all Calvinist commentaries say the can is enabling. It is not inevitable that you will come. It's an enabling.

Could you name one that confuses ability with enablement?

Ability and enablement is the same. You mentioned my own book. I never said anything about enablement. Okay, enablement. Calvin has the ability. Ability and enablement, unless you have a different definition, when somebody is able to do something, or if somebody has been enabled to do something, they are now able to do it.