Ergun Caner and the Rational Response Squad

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line.

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The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the

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United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

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James White. Good afternoon, welcome to The Dividing Line on a Thursday afternoon, a nice toasty one here in Phoenix, 90 degrees at the beginning of March.

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Well, it's not really the beginning of March anymore, it's sort of more toward the middle of March now, I guess. That's all right.

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I remember riding an Altura to Phoenix, first week in April, back in 1994 and it hit 104 degrees that day.

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It's coming, it's coming. And we get to experience it for such a long period of time here in the

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Valley of the Sun. Well, continuing work on the tomb book, of course, and I am deeply into the

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Meriamne chapter. There really isn't any Meriamne, but hey, what can we say?

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We're into that chapter. And just posted a wonderful email on the blog, just a well thought out presentation of the other side.

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And I knew I couldn't say it with a straight face. But not going to be talking about any of that today, though there certainly is stuff that we could be discussing on that.

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I will leave that for my writing for the rest of the evening. This morning while riding,

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I have been riding and writing. Riding and writing for me seem to go together. I remember during the course of writing the

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Roman Catholic controversy back in 1996, I rode over a thousand miles. And this writing project obviously is much shorter.

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It's the second shortest writing project I've ever had. The shortest, in case you're wondering, was the grieving book, which

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I wrote in four days. But there was obviously no research to be done there in the sense that I had done all that research years earlier as a hospital chaplain.

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And there weren't any reference footnotes. And we just had a book arrive today, a $76 book or so, that was like 140 pages long.

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I wonder what that breaks down to per page, you know, 20 cents a page or something. Anyway, we, you know, this one is a little bit different in the sense that it's taking a whole lot more research and we'll have many, many footnotes and things like that.

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But so far, I've gotten about 140 miles in during the writing project so far.

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And so you've got to take a break once in a while. You can't, you cannot just sit in front of a computer for 12 hours. Stuff starts hurting, the mind slows down.

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You've got to, you've got to keep exercising. So I was listening while writing this morning.

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I did just over 20 miles. These are short ones. I am keeping them short. I haven't been down the South Mountain for a while and I'm missing that.

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But I was listening for a little while this morning, about 45 minutes, to the arrogant canner versus rational response squad.

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That was interesting. And I, you know,

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I didn't really know what to expect. A number of people in channel had been listening to it. And I probably wasn't going into it quite as unbiased as I could have.

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And the portion I listened to eventually got to a point where I just I did stop and turn to music and finish the right that way.

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But. I'll admit that, though we have very different approaches and though we come from a very different understanding of what apologetics is supposed to be.

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In essence, at least the part the part that I heard, arrogant canner didn't say too much that raised an eyebrow.

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It's pretty much what I expected. And he stayed calm, cool and collected, though you could tell that the individuals he was talking to were trying to get a rise out of him.

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He stayed fairly calm, cool and collected. Now, what I wanted to do today, actually, then my focus for the program today will actually be on the rational response squad.

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And I did write to them today and I got a an FAQ back that basically said, if you want to debate us, don't do it.

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Don't tell us through email. Go into one of the forums that we have.

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And, you know, in other words, bash heads, a bunch of atheists. And then maybe we'll think about it.

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So they're probably not even listening. I'll send them a link, but they'll probably never see it. Oh, well, doesn't matter.

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But I did invite them to call in and especially a fellow by the name of Rook, who made some interesting comments.

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We're going to play some of the comments that he made. He is listed on their website as their ancient texts expert.

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Sound like he's about 22 and made some comments about Nag Hammadi and Celsus and the

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Council of Nicaea and things like that. And I would would love to be able to ask him some questions.

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But first, let's just listen to a couple sections here. I found this one most interesting and because we have addressed this before, just in a completely different context.

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I have noted the use by Patrick Madrid, Roman Catholic apologist, of the argument that if Sola Scriptura is true, then why are there so many different churches?

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Well, here is the same argument, except now it's it's being used by atheists against Christianity as a whole.

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Listen, listen to this. OK, all right, well, since the

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Bible is supposed to be now inerrant in your world, why do you think there's so much disagreement between various people who read the

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Bible? Like, wouldn't a perfect book be perfectly understood by anyone who reads it? Yeah, but let me just let me stop it right there.

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Why? You know, I was writing and I heard that and I went, OK, I understand how the

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Roman Catholics use this. They they want to try to get you dependent upon tradition and and there's the underlying assumption that it's

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God's purpose that everyone agree and things like that. But why, if the Bible's word of God would everybody and it was perfect, why would everybody understand it perfectly?

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I mean, I'd like to ask these guys, do you know of any really good textbooks on on DNA?

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Does and they're really they're well -written and they're perfect in their in their in their content and everything else.

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Does everybody understand it when they read it? Does that mean if there's something wrong with the book, if not, everyone understands when they read it?

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I mean, what's what what kind of thinking is that the background of a question like this? Why would that be the case?

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Now, Cantor's response, interestingly enough. I guess I could retranslate his use the term idiocy he's going to use here in a moment into original sin.

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That's what you got to do here is deal with depravity and stuff like that. I mean,

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I'll try to be nice and think that that's what he's actually talking about. But that's not really what ended up coming out. People are idiots.

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Wow. Including me. There's a difference. There's a difference between the nature of the

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Bible, which I believe it's perfect and my living out of it or my assimilation to it or my system in believing it.

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We're always going to have a difference in interpretation because interpretation ends up filtering through a human's grid.

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I believe the Bible in its nature is inerrant. I believe I am way far from it.

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And so I'm not only willing to admit, I know that there are times and places where my interpretation of scripture is wrong, where I've got to fix it.

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And hopefully that takes place in what we call proper hermeneutics, proper

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Bible study, where you're reading it in the context and you're trying to take the author's intent and et cetera.

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Now, would you say theologians who interpret the Bible differently than you are idiots? Or I guess we're just to kind of say, take that on face value because you yourself say you're an idiot.

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I'll say it this way. Every human being has idiocy in them. OK. Every single one of us.

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The problem is every single one of us come to a juncture where we refuse to admit that it may be just our interpretation.

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And dude, you're in my world now. This is the Christian world. We have splits over the smallest subclause interpretation of a tiny verse and entire movements are born out of that.

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And what happens is that you end up having people fighting over preference, how they interpret the word music, how they interpret the word, let things be decently done in order.

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And that's idiocy. That's why I think it's valid. One of the great statements that one of the one of the videos said is that if Christianity is true, why are

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Christians so splintered and why? Yes, that's brilliant, because that's absolutely that's that's our huge failing, because we constantly say, yes, we believe that Jesus alone is

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Lord. And then the next thing we do in our next breath is we point to a guy and go, and I can't fellowship with him.

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You know, because he doesn't wear robes in choir or he doesn't take my interpretation of, you know, whatever ethical issues.

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I think I'm not only do I think it's fair, but if there are Christians who are listening, I think we're every single one of us is guilty.

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Now, I am OK, not sure that this is quite the context in which to be discussing the fact that Christians do tend to be rather judgmental within certain contexts.

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You're hardly going to have the time to then discuss the fact that there are things that should be divided over and things that should be and fellowship and so on and so forth.

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And but that wasn't the issue anyway. The issue was, if the Bible's perfect, why do people interpret it differently?

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And there are all sorts of good, solid answers to that. This goes to what

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I've addressed in the scripture alone book, and you could have raised issues about the corruption of the mind of man and the effect of sin and the fact that men bring their own traditions to the text and all sorts of things you could have said rather than turning the canons on Christians and saying, well, you know, if we were just all more united, that doesn't actually address divisions between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism or Mormonism or issues like that.

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I really wondered what the whole point of that one was, to be honest with you, that that seemed a little bit a little bit odd.

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But anyway. After just a little bit after that, this this fellow, he wasn't the one main one doing the interview, but I believe his name is

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Rook got involved in the conversation and sort of started asking some of the questions.

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Obviously, they had labored long and hard to prepare for for Ergin Cantor, and he started off with a question about hate.

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Now, it went on forever, and so I can play the whole thing. It would take up most of the program.

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But here's here's the first part of it. And then I'll play you the other clips as we as we go along here.

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Hey, this is Rook Hawkins. I just have a question for you real fast. Now, you had said that you believe that the nature of the

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Bible is is true and perfect. And I was just curious what sort of morality we can derive from 1426, where Jesus is talking about hating everybody before him and only after you hate everybody, including yourself.

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Can you can you be I'm sorry, I'm having trouble hearing you, bro. I heard I heard like 26. I heard a verse, but I didn't hear a chapter or book.

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I'm sorry, it's I'm sorry I'm coming in too low. It's Luke 1426.

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OK, I'll turn there. Is it that our volume is too low or distorted? No, it seems to skip you guys. It seems to skip.

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OK. All right. My general question was what sort of morality can be derived from a book, which, again,

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I'm assuming that, again, you say that you claim this book to be the the nature of it to be perfect.

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So I want to know what your interpretation of Luke 1426 is, where the word he uses is missio in Greek, which, as you know, means hate.

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And it can only be translated as hate. So I was curious what your interpretation of that is like in terms of moral sense.

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Oh, there's there's another great citation. If you want to use something on a Christian and you want to see this use of the exact same word, same

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Greek term, it's in Romans chapter nine where God it's God speaking. The citation of God speaking from the

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Old Testament says Esau, have I hated? Well, wait a minute. So it's not just me supposing to hate my father and mother, but apparently

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God hates Esau. And that goes against what I said earlier about God being omnipotent, benevolent or all loving.

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You've got one or two options here and you can pick either a God really does call us to hate other people.

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But then you've got a real contradiction in Scripture, because then the whole book of First John says that we're based on our love for our enemy and our love for each other.

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So then you say there's a contradiction, which means it wouldn't be inerrant. So that's the first option. Second option, though, is that he's talking in a term of nation national sense.

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But that doesn't fit this text, you know, like, oh, he hated that country because they stood against Israel. Right. That doesn't that doesn't fit this context.

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This context says you must take your father and mother and follow me. Now, another time, Jesus said, you know, leave the dead to bury the dead, which seems sort of calloused, you know, follow me and leave the corpse on the ground.

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So either it means you're supposed to hate them or which I take the comparative view that he's saying in comparison to the term is absolutely right.

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You're absolutely right on the Greek. It is hatred. So could it be that by comparison, I hate one in comparison to the love that I have for another?

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Now, here's now he goes on to give, I thought, an appropriate illustration.

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He talked about saying, I love my shirt and saying, I love my wife.

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And obviously, you're using a term in two different contexts. And the context is different between the two.

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And context determines these things. And he didn't go into this in the context of Luke.

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And, of course, both Matthew and Mark also have parallel passages. But in Luke 14, 26,

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I didn't hear him say Luke the first time around. I just heard 14, 26, as if you're just supposed to know which one that is.

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But maybe you did. And it just skipped out. I don't know. But Luke says there are are crowds around Jesus, according to Luke 14, 25.

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And he says, if anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes.

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And even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.

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And then he tells the story for which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down, calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it.

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Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him, saying this man began to build and was not able to finish.

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And he talks about the king and whether he'll be able to fight the battle. So on and so forth, then says, so then none of you can be my disciple who does not give up all his own possessions.

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This is the context we are familiar with it. We probably I anyways, and have preached on the side of the section of Mark 8, where Jesus calls the crowds to himself and says, you must deny yourself and take up your cross and follow after me.

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And so this is the context in which this is being used. And Cantor is right. He gave the right response.

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And that is within this context, the context of the the highest dedication must be to me to take up the cross would obviously mean to give up one's life.

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Everyone knew what the cross was in that context to literally take up your crosses to join the death march.

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I've preached on this at PRBC in the past. Join the death march. Now, he didn't mean that literally, obviously, that he did not have a pile of of lumber next to him.

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And you're supposed to come up and and pick up your cross and go nail yourself to it and stuff like that.

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But what we're going to discover as we listen to this, this Rook fellow attempt to press what obviously he believes is a contradiction here.

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He believes this is one of his this is one of his big arguments against Christianity in the Bible is

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Luke 14. Twenty six. As we hear how he attempts to press this, we start getting an idea that I'm not really sure why these folks have gotten the kind of press coverage they have outside of the uniqueness of using

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YouTube to to post these blasphemy challenge videos based upon an ignorant misreading of of a certain text of scripture.

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Thanks to Brian Fleming. I mean, that's that's really all it is. But as I was listening to these folks,

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I was I was expecting a whole lot more. I was expecting some research to be done, some some level of knowledge of linguistics or history or something.

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And that's that's that's not what you get here. So Cantor gives his response and and then the

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Rook fellow responds. OK, so I'm sorry. I don't really understand that answers my question.

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I was really kind of curious exactly what the the morality there would be derived from that quote.

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I understand what you're saying, where, you know, you either take it interpretive interpretively or you take it literally. But even even interpretively, even interpretively,

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I take it as a comparative. Now, wait a minute. What do you mean? You either take it interpretively or literally those that the young man is confused as to basic fundamental terminology in regards to interpretation of anything.

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I mean, let's let's leave aside the Bible here. If this guy was in a sophomore level college class on how to read

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Goethe's Faust and he turned in a paper where he uses categories like interpretively or literally as if they were two different categories, the same thing, he would be failed or at least should be,

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I suppose, in some places. That's not how you do education anymore. But he's confusing categories and doesn't even seem to understand that literal interpretation is one thing.

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Metaphorical interpretation is another thing. But interpretively versus literally that's a confusion of categories.

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Meaningless doesn't doesn't make any sense. What Dr. Kanner was trying to say was you interpret

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Jesus's words here within the context in which they were used when he's talking about taking up your cross, giving up your life, hating your own soul.

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What he's saying is in comparison to your dedication to me as my disciple, every other human relationship, even the relationship you have to yourself in this world, it has to be altered, has to be changed in comparison to your love for me.

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So what's so difficult about putting it in a context like that? What's so what's so hard about that?

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Except that this young man evidently is absolutely certain that this is immoral for Jesus to say what he said.

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Now, of course, he divorces this from the entirety of everything else that Jesus said and our duties toward our families and the

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Old Testament law. You can cut it all up and do whatever you want with it. He's ignoring all that stuff. We understand that.

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But the point is, he doesn't even seem to understand the basics of linguistic analysis.

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Yes, sir, I understand that. My question, though, is, you know, the text says missio, it doesn't say, it doesn't use any of the words for love, even though you're right that in Greek there is five words for love and none of them are even close to resembling missio.

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So I was curious if the verse says to hate, why are you interpreting it to mean love or love less?

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And again, it's missio, by the way, but be that as it may, the reason is that every word and this is, you know, sadly,

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I hear Christians doing the same thing. They will look up a word in Strong's and they will force a certain meaning they find in Strong's into every context.

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I would recommend to to Rook Hawkins that he pick up Moises Silva's biblical words and their meaning that I think that title has changed, but and in fact, to all

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Christians, at least who are interested in in lexical semantics, pick up Moises Silva's work on biblical words and their meanings and discover that words have what's called a semantic range.

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And it is their use in a clause, sentence or paragraph that determines where in that semantic range we are to translate the meaning of the author at that particular point in time.

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That's what context is all about. And evidently, Mr. Hawkins doesn't understand any of that because Dr.

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Kanner had sufficiently at this point explained the issue of context and had properly identified the context.

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And there really wasn't any reason to continue with this. But it went on for a long period of time.

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Hate the other. He doesn't say that, though. He says specifically that you must hate all those, your mother, your brothers, your sisters and even yourself in order to be my disciple.

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He doesn't even say, you know, to attain salvation or to love God. He says before you can be my disciple, before you can follow me, you must hate everyone else, including yourself.

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And again, the word is hate, not love less. So I'm trying to determine how you're interpreting.

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How do you define love and how do you define hatred? That's irrelevant. No, it isn't.

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I keep telling you that to hate in comparison to what

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I love. It doesn't mean that it is actual visceral. This is a false dichotomy.

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I take the comparison. I take the comparison. Now, Kanner's right. He's, you know, give the man props.

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He's he's also restraining himself. You can tell because this, you know, what you want to say is, dude, you're clueless.

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You know what? What do you do and do in this kind of program when you haven't done your homework?

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You don't know what you're talking about here. And he's restraining himself. But the guy says it's a false dichotomy.

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So, again, evidently you can't put Maseo in any context that would allow it to be used comparatively in regards to relationships.

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I guess that's what he would have to prove. And no one's ever going to put in a position of having to prove that, I guess.

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But that's that's that's what he's doing, I suppose. Amazing.

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Narrative interpretation. I understand that. But but let me ask you, OK, so you want to take the let's go that route.

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How how do you determine what is, you know, quote unquote, you know, interpretation?

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What what do you take interpretively and what do you take literally? I want to know where you draw the line because. OK, again, it's it's it's it's hard to know how to respond to someone when they don't understand the categories they're using.

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And this is the ancient texts expert. So if this is the kind of of critical thinking he's brought to the ancient texts like Nag Hammadi or something along those lines, then we can understand why there's some some confusion on these these young men's parts.

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There's no no toys about it. But so they they went on from there and discussed some other things.

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And so eventually. They brought up some objections and and Cantor starts listing this is this one was odd, he starts listing what he considers to be tough questions for Christians and a couple of the first one,

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I was like, that's not even a good objection. Not sure why that one's tough. And and, you know, he did the free will evil thing and stuff like that.

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Then he went to the cannon. Now, and by the way, if you'd like to comment on this, eight, seven, seven, seven, five, three, three, three, four, one, eight, seven, seven, seven, five, three, three, three, four, one is the phone number for you to get involved with the program today.

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But some of you know that I have invested a fair amount of effort into discussing.

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Oh, and by the way, I just saw on channel that Moises Silva's book is still called Biblical Words and Their Meanings available on Amazon.

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And so I appreciate that information. I thought another edition of it had come out or something like that. It was a book that I'd read a number of years ago, but very useful to have.

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And anyway, many of you know, I've invested a fair amount of time in studying and writing on the subject of the canon of scripture.

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And I have attempted to explain how it is that we approach the text and the subject of the canon of scripture in the wrong way in the vast majority of books that are out there, that if we view the canon as the 28th book of the

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New Testament, if you have an inspired and infallible index that is itself an object of revelation, you are putting yourself in a position where you will never be able to consistently believe in Sola Scriptura because you are in essence placing revelation outside of the canon of scripture.

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You have to either make it an object of revelation or you have to give revelatory functions or infallibility to individuals, councils, etc.,

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etc., to come up with that kind of a canon. So I've discussed the nature of the canon. I've discussed it from a theological perspective.

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What is the nature of the canon from a theological perspective? And I've emphasized that the canon is an artifact of revelation.

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It is not an object of revelation. It is a necessary result of the fact that God has inspired at least one book, but not all books, that the canon, canon one, as I call it in my book, comes into existence as soon as God inspires anything and that it is known infallibly to him and that canon two then is our knowledge of that which

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God leads us to because he has a purpose in giving scripture to the church. And that theological approach to the canon, that theological understanding of the necessity of the canon and God's role in regards to the canon, things like that, that is a part of what

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I've written in scripture alone. And I think it's a very important distinction to make. I've addressed it in a number of churches.

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Well, we're going to be taking a break here in a moment. And so I'm not sure. I think I can probably sneak this in before the break.

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Let's listen to to Ergen Kanner talk a little bit of the canon as an objection to Christianity that he says he doesn't really have any good answers to.

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He's the one who brought this up. And you can tell the guys are left going, I never thought about that before. But here's here's what he said.

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What's the one area where we usually try to shuffle it under the rug? The issue of putting together the 66 book.

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The earliest citation we have of all 66 books is Athanasius in 367, that's 367 years after the date, the common date of Christ's birth.

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So the question somebody can ask is, well, wait a minute, were they or was Athanasius as inspired as the authors?

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To pick the 27 New Testament and 39 Old Testament books. So there there he goes.

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And he says he doesn't have any good answer to all that. And I certainly haven't swept it under the rug.

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I mean, there's all sorts of folks in the listening audience from various churches that I've been at where they've gone, man, why did you spend so much time on that?

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I don't sweep it under the rug. I actually address it. I've addressed it at PRBC. So we're a little bit odd at that point.

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But he's right in the sense that almost no one ever talks about it. Almost no one ever preaches on the can or things like that.

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But you can see from what he just said that if he had the approach that I have presented, then he wouldn't be exactly bringing that type of an objection up.

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But that's the context in which we have the last clip I'm going to play from from Rook Hawkins, from the conversation with Ergin Kanner today.

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But we'll be doing that. We come back from our break and taking earphone calls at 877 -753 -3341.

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We'll be right back. How the

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Pilgrim's Progress is not an easy way. It's a journey to the sun day by day.

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OK, that's that, I guess, is what happens when a computer dies.

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You think it's you think it's going to stay back? Well, OK, we can try it, but.

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OK, all right, well, just just go ahead. But I'll be rebooting in here while you do the program.

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OK, why don't you? That's obviously not the computer we use to to broadcast with. No, that's this one.

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OK, good. When I point at that one and I do the shivering thing, I mean, it's froze up. It's locked down and it's going,

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I am not going to do that. We might want to reset that more often, huh? It's well, we'll be back in just a moment.

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All right. Well, I'm not going to bother with playing, playing around with trying to do a commercial or anything at that particular point in time.

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That would be sort of silly and we won't we won't do that. So we'll just continue on with the program and maybe eventually at some point in time, that other computer will come back and will be nice to us and we'll be able to.

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Well, we're not going to bother with a break after this anyway. So eight, seven, seven, seven, five, three, three, three, four, one is the phone number.

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And so I'm just going to during the break, I was going to be doing something other than what

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I'm doing now, but I've got it ready to go here. So go back to our program here. Let's listen to the last clip that I had put together briefly in regards to the discussion with the rational response squad squad squad and Ergen Kanner.

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And right after Kanner makes this statement about the council of the canon, there's there's a little bit of a pause and evidently some confusion.

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And then Rook Hawkins says that, you know, that's, you know, three twenty five, of course,

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Council of Nicaea. And you're well aware of that. And, you know, there was, of course,

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I'm I'm I'm very studied on the on the commodity works. That's one of my favorite my my my favorite things to study on.

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And what I think is most interesting is that the, you know, reckoned hundreds of various works that could have been picked.

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Like you said, sixty six were chosen for the canon. And I think that's interesting in light of the fact that, you know, just just two hundred years earlier in the time of Celsus, for example, you know, he documented cases of there being hundreds of sects of Christians.

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And the fact that not only were there hundreds of sects, but they all disagreed on every single issue, just like today, as a matter of fact, and that the only thing they had in common was the name

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Christian. I'm curious, how do you reconcile the fact that, you know, this is the case even back then?

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And then all of a sudden they brought together the, you know, brought this together and basically said that.

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What do you think? Basically said that I'm not sure what they said. I would like, you know, if for some odd reason my email got through to Mr.

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Hawkins, I would invite him to call toll free at eight seven seven seven five three three three four one, because I would like to ask him, what in the world are you talking about?

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He mentions the Council of Nicaea and Ergen -Kahn goes, yep. OK, and it sounds to me the only way that I can understand this, given the context, is that he is making the assertion that the

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Council of Nicaea chose the canon of scripture. Now, it doesn't make any sense at all.

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He just heard Cantor say that the the he's making reference to Athanasius' 39th

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Festal Letter, and that's long after Nicaea. Nicaea had nothing to do with the canon of scripture.

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Now, if this is their ancient text expert, then what is he doing being that confused on something as basic as what the

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Council of Nicaea was relevant to? He says that there were these there were these hundreds of documents from which to choose.

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That sounds like one of the claims out of the Da Vinci Code. There were not hundreds of documents from which to choose.

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The Gnostic writings of the second century would not even be in the running because they weren't associated with the first century and the people who actually knew

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Jesus or were it was an apostle or issues like that. So so what's he what's he alleging here that the

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Council of Nicaea sat around and had all these books and threw out the ones they didn't want and kept the ones they did?

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Or it's very difficult to understand what's being said here and what's being claimed here in this in this context.

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Then he goes to Celsus. Now, again, most Christians have never heard of Celsus. Celsus was a was a second century critic, third century critic, actually, sorry, of the

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Christian movement origin wrote in response to him against him. And with a nasty fellow, not exactly overly accurate in his assertions and his arguments against the

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Christian faith, but and it would be ridiculous to assert that there were literally hundreds of sects of Christians at this particular point in time.

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That's about as as decent scholarship as you have when Roman Catholics say they're twenty eight thousand or thirty three thousand or thirty eight thousand or forty thousand.

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A number gets bigger and bigger and bigger with the passage of time. Protestant denominations, what they're doing when they even come up with a few thousand, is they're they're counting individual churches as entire denominations and things like that.

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And the things that they would agree or disagree on to say it, every single one of them disagree at every single point is, again, absurd.

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It's just that's just ridiculous. It isn't true. But you really have to wonder where these folks are getting their information and who they're dialoguing with.

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Now, obviously, if most of their information about Christianity comes from arguing with people on the

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Internet in chat, not only in chat channels, but web boards and Yahoo lists and stuff like that.

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Man, if my theology came from that, I'd be I'd be awfully confused, too. There are very, very few chat channels like Prosepolis and that's for sure where you actually can can get sound theology and meaningful responses and things like that.

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But. If that's where it's coming from, I guess I can understand why they would never have run into someone who would give them a meaningful answer, but still, if they're going to put themselves out there, you stick your mug on Nightline and the national media.

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Well, guess what? You might want to know what in the world you're talking about. Then again,

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Simcha Yakubovich and James Cameron can get two hours on the

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Discovery Channel without really knowing what you're talking about either. So maybe it's just they want to go the same direction.

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I don't know. But 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number.

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And if you would like to discuss the rational response squad and the blasphemy challenge, that's fine.

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Otherwise, we will continue on. Press forward in trying to finally get around and concluding listening to the

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George Bryson material. I was going to cue up Shabir Ali as well, but I didn't get a break to do it with.

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So we'll have to start that computer on a regimen of clearing its brains a little more often than once every three months or something like that.

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Well, actually, though, if our systems were reset, maybe there is a power spike or something down here last night.

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And so maybe it was confused it already. I don't know. That's a possibility. I don't know. I don't know.

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Who knows what goes on? Will Simcha ever get another deal? Yeah, something tells me he probably will, but probably not in that particular area.

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Somebody is asking that in the chat channel. 877 -753 -3341. Let's pick up.

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You may recall that George Bryson has completed his scintillating and fact filled, fun filled presentation on Calvinism and is now taking questions from the audience here at the

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Calvary Chapel Pastors Conference back in 2003, October, November, somewhere around in that time frame.

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I would assume November because he made reference to our upcoming Bible Answer Man debate.

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And I don't think I knew I was going to be doing that more than just a month or two ahead of time.

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So if he knew about it, then that's probably the time frame we're looking at.

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And we have the questions being asked of George Bryson. Where he chose us, and I use this term in an important biblical sense.

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He chose us, we're told, in him. I want to ask you a question.

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Ah, yes. OK, I had forgotten what the question was. The question that has been asked is about Ephesians chapter one.

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And doesn't the Bible talk about election? Doesn't it talk about God choosing? And I predicted.

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Now, I know I heard this, but I could have predicted without having heard it exactly where he was going to go, because it's a very, very popular, facile means of getting around the meaning of Ephesians chapter one.

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And that is, you talk about the location of the choice.

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The location is in Christ. And that's true. No one is going to argue otherwise.

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But then what you do is instead of recognizing that the direct object of the verb, those who he predestined, those who he chose, he chose a specific people.

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They are the direct object of the choice. Christ isn't the direct object. You will hear some fairly well -known people who will, in a very simplistic manner, just simply dismiss the entirety of the discussion of election by saying, well, we know

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Christ is the chosen one. We know Christ is the elect one. And since Christ is the elect one, then we are chosen in him.

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And when we, by faith, join ourselves to him, then we have salvation.

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And that's how you put together God's choosing. So in essence, and that's basically what Norman Geisler says, is that God has chosen to save those who believe in Jesus.

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So he hasn't chosen the direct object isn't a people. It isn't personal.

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It is a plan. In this case, God has chosen to save those who believe in Jesus.

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So Christ becomes the direct object. But the fact is, the text doesn't say that.

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The text has as a direct object of choosing individuals.

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Now, he chooses them in Christ. That's true. And he chooses them unto sanctification, unto holiness and everything else.

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That's true, too. But those are things that people experience, not plans. That's why

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I had to emphasize these things in reference to Norman Geisler in his assertions on these subjects in Chosen but Free.

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Can you be in Christ and an unbeliever? And my argument is absolutely no.

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And the context of this passage will make it very clear. He's talking about us as believers.

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Now, Calvinists will often use the word us to get around clear statements of a universal atonement.

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You know, they'll say that Jesus died not only for us, but, you know, for the whole world.

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They'll try to use that to say somehow that he's only talking about us, the elect. But in this context, clearly the us that he's referring to are

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Christians, believers. He says he chose us believers in him. He chose us in him,

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I believe, as believers, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world. But what did he choose us for?

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Now, you've got to catch that because it's sort of a little quirk with George. He chose us as believers.

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I think that's his corridors of time, who's going to believe thing, sort of.

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That's really the only way I can understand that. But he chose us as believers because remember that in the debate, he tried to develop this idea that I was saying that God chose us as unbelievers.

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And, of course, that all that demonstrates is, again, the difference between a human centered view and a

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God centered view, because from the God centered perspective, his choice is what will make me a believer.

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I'm an unbeliever in the current head of my humanity, which is Adam. And by mercy, he takes me out of that and puts me in Christ, and therefore

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I become a believer. But if you approach this from the underside, if you approach this from a focus on man rather than God, then the result is you end up with this perspective that whether you're a believer or unbeliever determines what

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God's choice can be. You see the preeminence that is given to man in that situation rather than the

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God centeredness of the biblical presentation. Does he choose us to save us? No, if we're in him, we're saved.

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If you're out of him, you're lost. If you're in him, you're saved. Now, notice this. Just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy without blame before him in love.

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What is this? What is this election for this choice? He chose us. Then he gives us the reason for this choice.

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The choice isn't to save us here. The choice here is that we might be holy and without blame in love.

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Now, of course, I just go. And so we just had sanctification and the results of sanctification somehow separated from.

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Salvation as a whole. So you can you can meaningfully address adoption of sons and holiness and spotlessness, you can meaningfully address those things outside of salvation somehow that this does not include the union with Christ that brings these things about.

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You know, I just I can't help but go back to what he said at the beginning that, you know, just reading the

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Bible doesn't make you a theologian. And that this sort of the Calvary Chapel way, you know, we don't get it.

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We don't get into all that theology stuff. Well, you know what? There's a reason that theology stuff, it's so you don't make silly statements and contradict yourself.

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That's the importance of theology. Can you can you get can you get an overemphasis on that?

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You know, they sometimes go, well, I've known people that, you know, they knew all their systematic theology, but they were unloving.

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Well, you know, that's not relevant to what we're talking about here. That may be quite true, but the abuse of a truth is not the same as refutation of a truth.

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OK, so. Here's where, you know, the rubber meets the road, and this is where the problem comes in when you when you, in essence, adopt a.

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A perspective that is anti intellectual, in a sense, and say, hey, you know, we don't need to worry about that stuff, we don't we don't develop our own theology and stuff like that.

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We we don't need to consider that kind of stuff. We can just read the Bible and everything's going to be

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OK. You end up contradicting yourself. You end up making category errors and that kind of thing.

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And that's what we're hearing. Then he goes on having predestined us, who the believers, those he chose.

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Having predestined us to adoption by sons to Jesus Christ himself, according to the pleasure of his will.

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So he takes Christians and predestined them. Now, did you catch that? He takes

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Christians and predestined them. So what he's saying is none of this, even though this choice was was before time itself.

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The choice to salvation is ours. Not God's. And that all that Paul's talking about here is, well,

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I'm going to predestine that those who become Christians will be sanctified. That's the whole thing.

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That's that that's all that this is about is that it has nothing to do with with the actual entrance into a relationship with God.

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I am going to predestine that those who do this are going to be sanctified.

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They are going to experience blamelessness, et cetera, et cetera. He takes believers or he takes those in Christ and predestined them to eternal glory.

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Adoption is never the initiation of life, not in the sense that Romans uses or Ephesians.

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Adoption is not the initiation of the Christian life. It's the consummation. It's not regeneration.

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It's manifestation. Adoption is about the inheritance, what we're going to get. If you look at this whole context, that's what he's talking about.

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He's telling believers what they have to look forward to as believers. He's not telling unbelievers that it was all rigged from all eternity and he chose to save some of you and he didn't choose to save the others.

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He's saying as a Christian, there are a couple of things I can tell you. One, he chose you to be holy and without blame.

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So if you're not living holy and without blame, you're not living in according to his calling or choice for you.

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Now, again, the argument evidently is that there's really nothing here about what

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God chose eternally in reference to salvation. It is only, well, isn't it wonderful that God eternally chose that for those who will breathe out their own salvation through their free will, act of faith in God, that he has chosen that they will be adopted as sons and things like that.

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Now, of course, the problem is that again ignores the meaning of choice.

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He chose you in him before the foundation of the world. That's getting lost here, because now what he's saying is he chose what was going to happen to you if you do something in him before the foundation of the world.

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It's somewhat subtle, but the results are rather a major shift in the emphasis of what the text is actually saying.

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And so when he talks about, well, adoption is never regeneration, no one's arguing that it is, no one has ever argued that adoption is regeneration or that that is necessary to a reformed understanding of the text.

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But what he's trying to say is, see, this doesn't have anything to do with the initial entering end.

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So, in other words, if Paul were to discuss this, he would have to use those specific terms in this context for it to be relevant, even though Paul is going to talk about, for example, being dead in sins, dead in trespasses and sins, all the rest of this stuff, in Ephesians 2, harkening back to what he was talking about in Ephesians 1.

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It's sort of all in the same book. It isn't interesting just in passing that none of this conversation would even be taking place in many circles, because, for example, amongst the

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New Perspective folks, because Paul didn't write Ephesians, the whole discussion would be somewhat irrelevant outside of the, well, you know, we grant some authority to this book because of the church or tradition and stuff like that, but he didn't really write it, didn't write

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Colossians. And so we can't say Paul said this, it's not really an apostle who said whoever wrote this, this is what they believed.

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Can't exactly develop much in the way of theology when you have that viewpoint of scripture. He chose you for this reason, that you'd be holy without blame.

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Now, are there Christians who are living unholy? Yeah, of course they are.

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So they're not living in accordance with their calling. That's why we're called and told to walk worthy of our calling.

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God called us or chose us to be holy without blame. That's sanctification. That's the life we're supposed to live.

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Christianity in the truest sense of the word manifest is what ought to be for every believer.

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He chose us in him to be holy without blame, but he predestined us.

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This is another issue predestined. You know, you can be chosen for something. You know, somebody might choose you because you're a really good ballplayer.

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You get on the court and you mess up. You didn't live up to your the expectations of you.

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Christians don't always live up to their expectations. So we don't always live in accordance with God's. Call for our life.

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If we did, the Bible wouldn't urge us all the time to live according to our call, to walk worthy of the calling wherewith we're called.

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Right. The Bible urges us to do what it knows we might not do so that we'll do it. But in this particular case, he predestines us to himself, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ.

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What I'm again suggesting here is that adoption is when we receive our inheritance. And if you look both in Ephesians and Romans, you'll see this reference to adoption.

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In fact, you'll see it in reference to the resurrection. Now, if he's trying to say that this is all future and I've caught

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Hunt sort of playing around with that idea as well, just try to get around some issues regarding salvation. But if he's saying it's all future, excuse me, this is the same guy who wrote

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Romans and we have been adopted. We we cry out,

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Abba, Father, and I understand adoption is the now and the not yet. We have been adopted. We are the sons of God. And yet we await our adoption.

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I understand the now and the not yet part. But is that is he saying that this this adoption of sons here is the not yet part?

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Why would he why would he go there in light of the context? To wit, he says,

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I believe in the King James Version, to wit the redemption of our body. It's all about first Corinthians 15 is talking about everything.

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The the manifestations of the sons of God, everything, the whole creation is groaning and prevailing.

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We're looking forward to the externalization of what happened internally. We we don't know what it's going to be like, but we know when we see him, we're going to be like him.

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There is an inner transformation that took place, a conversion. You know, is it is it just me or can you sort of tell when he's uncomfortable with the question by the fact that it sounds like he's just rushing so hard to try to get something done and he's never finishing a sentence, never finishing a thought.

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And it's sort of hard to listen to. It sounded a lot like when I was asking him questions during the cross -examination didn't it?

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I just just spinning in tight circles now. It seems like what we're hearing is this is just all, you know, it's it's adoption and this this holy and blameless before him and all the rest of that stuff.

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But isn't this the same text that says in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished on us?

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Isn't isn't that the same thing here? And wouldn't he at least accept that redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses is, shall we say, initiatory?

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In the sense that it's foundational to everything else that takes place. Is he going to somehow dismiss justification from all of this?

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The calling, you know, remember this is the same apostle, the golden chain of redemption, you know, for new, predestined, called, justified, glorified.

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That's, you know, they're all part of the same thing here. And it seems like he's desperately trying to chop this stuff up so as to avoid having to admit that here you have an eternal choice directly relevant to salvation right in the text of scripture itself.

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But there's an external transformation that will take place at the resurrection of the just. But in between, we're supposed to be acting in accordance with what we are and what we're going to be so that our lives are more and more conformed.

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That's a process. But we are now in Christ, his children, and as children, we've been predestined to be adopted, to receive the inheritance.

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As children, as children, we've been predestined to be adopted.

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I think, isn't that what we just heard? I think that's what we just heard. It reminds me a little bit of when

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I asked Peter Stravinskas, who's the blessed man? That's Jesus. And you go, the blessed man is the blessed blessing upon the man to whom

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God will not impute sin is Jesus. And then later, so who's the blessed man?

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Well, I hope to be. I hope to be. I think George might want a second shot at that particular phraseology.

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We're his children, looking forward to adoption. I guess that's what he's doing is that we're children now and the adoption is all eschatological.

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It's all at the end. I don't know. Who knows? Inheritance is a very different thing in scripture than salvation.

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At least it's not the beginning of salvation. Yeah. OK. Inheritance is not the beginning of salvation.

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But why do you why do you have to keep chopping it up there, big guy? I haven't received all that's mine. I'm a joint heir with Christ.

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I've got a lot to look forward to as believers. We've been predestined. I happen to believe in predestination.

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I believe that every believer is predestined to glory. In fact, in Romans, Paul put it this way.

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Paul said, if you're justified, you're glorified. Now, why is that? Those he justified, he also glorified.

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They talk, Calvin's call that their chain of redemption. I would agree. If you're justified, you're glorified because this is these things are a hook together.

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I wish it were true. What I really wish were true, if God would ask me some advice, because I know myself,

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I would wish that he also said those that he justified, he sanctified and glorified in the same sentence.

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In other words, I wish I could live in accordance with what I am and what I'm going to be. I wish

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I did always. I don't. But that's the whole purpose. We have each other to encourage one another.

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So we have God's word. We have the Holy Spirit to live the kind of life he wants us to live. But again, the point is, if you find the word predestined or predestination, you'll always find it in reference to believers.

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Unbelievers are not predestined to heaven or hell. Believers are predestined to glory. Glorification is an absolute certainty for those who are justified.

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Now, did you catch what I just caught? And again, I'm trying to listen as carefully as I can here.

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And you may not believe this, but trying to be fair in what

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I'm saying and so on and so forth. But didn't he just say something along the lines of admitting that there is a connection between justified and glorified?

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So if there is a connection between all those who are justified will be glorified, then what if he starts following that back, all who are called or justified, that has to be effectual call.

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And what goes before the calling? Isn't that predestination? And doesn't that undercut everything he just said?

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Sounds like it to me. Well, we'll keep going with good old Brother George, see if we can straighten him out somewhere along the lines and maybe straighten out a few other folks that are a little bit confused on the whole subject here on The Dividing Line.

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We'll be back again Tuesday, Lord willing. God bless. The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.

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If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O.

59:40

Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the

59:45

World Wide Web at AOMIN .org, that's A -O -M -I -N .org, where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates and tracks.