December 6, 2005

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From the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded
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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. Yes, well, one of the two of us is here, one of us is not here, but that's okay, because half of us is better than none of us, and welcome to The Dividing Line, a little late, which is why we don't do this on a network, because then the network would have been having a cow at that particular point in time, but hey, it doesn't really matter.
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So we're here anyways, and the phone lines hopefully work, and you can call in at 877 -753 -3341.
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And that includes those who are so tremendously brave behind the keyboard, who are in their early 20s someplace, including a fellow by the name of Josh S.
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I believe Josh S. is a student at a, I think he's, if I had something more in dial -up, this would come up a whole lot faster than 21 point something
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K, but it's just sitting there spinning, staring at me right now. The Lord will provide in time.
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Yeah, yeah. Well, it ain't helping me right now, because it's just sitting there. There we go. Let me see, a grad student in math, okay, at the
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University of Kentucky, a fellow by the name of Josh S. It was the one
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I was talking about when I talked about the Infanto -Lutherans, because I wouldn't have ever guessed he was actually a graduate student by the way he behaves and writes.
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Some of you may recall that I responded to a childish, inaccurate, strawman posting of a silly poem.
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I mean, if a poem is supposed to have some meaning, it needs to have accuracy in what it says.
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Humor, if it is really humor, touches on reality and actually represents the position it's critiquing.
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When you can't get it right, when you aren't even close, then it's not funny, and it's not useful.
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And Reverend, since he demands that, Reverend Paul McCain, the head of Concordia Publishing, which still just absolutely shocks me, given the behavior
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I've seen from this man, posted this, along with various and sundry other wild -eyed, swing -the -sword, every -which -direction type attacks on Calvinism, obviously not meant to convince a
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Calvinist, because if you don't actually represent what they're saying with even a skosh and a yoda of fairness, they're going to go, what's with this dude?
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He posted a poem, and I pointed it out,
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I said, you know what? This is not how real dialogue should take place about these issues, and if you really want to discuss these issues, and if you want to actually,
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I mean, the only reason you should be doing this is if you actually think that us Calvinists should embrace your perspectives on things, right?
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I mean, why else would you be doing this other than just simply to make yourself a real pain, and because you enjoy behaving poorly in public?
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And so if you want to actually accomplish something, maybe you should, like, accurately represent what the other side's saying, and then actually have some meaningful discussions about these things.
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Otherwise, you're just simply throwing out your own traditions. Maybe you have no idea what Calvinists actually believe.
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You've just been told by somebody else what Calvinists believe, and so you just keep flailing away on that straw man, thinking you somehow accomplished something,
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I don't know. So I basically said in my response,
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I said, you know, this is not how conversation should take place. Why don't we do something useful?
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For me, the heart and soul of my belief in Calvinism comes to me from the exegesis of the text of Scripture.
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It comes to me from God's spoken word. I take seriously what God has said, what he has said in his word, what he has said in the
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Incarnation, and so let's listen to what Jesus said.
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I mean, one of the things that's just, over the past week or so, as I have been listening, for some odd reason, there's just been this explosion of Lutheran anti -Calvinism, and maybe it's just always been there.
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I know it's always been there. I've seen, in various Ascended publications, this rabid form of Lutheran anti -Calvinism, but I don't run into it a lot.
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Maybe we just don't run in the same circles, you know, I don't know, maybe I just try to ignore it. Maybe it's because I've known some
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Lutherans that didn't behave so poorly as that and actually took the time to learn what we believe, and when they did, it was like, oh, there's a whole lot more here.
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I did read Bon Jovi, sounds a little bit like what he was saying, you know, there's differences, and we've got these liturgical issues over here, but at least we can talk about it, so maybe that's just what
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I've tried to view all Lutherans that way, and been sort of silly in the process, because obviously there are some who just don't come up to that level.
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And so I said, let's listen to the words of Jesus, and what was really odd is you keep hearing over and over and over again, you
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Calvinists don't talk about Jesus. If you talk about sovereignty of God, you write a paper about it, it should just be about Jesus.
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That's all you should ever talk about, just talk about Jesus. And it's like, wow, where did this utter imbalance come from?
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I mean, should we not exegete a text that doesn't have the name of Christ in it? Do you have to start every single sentence or every other sentence with the name
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Jesus to somehow be properly balanced? I mean, it's silly to say that Calvinistic theology is not
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Christocentric, it's silly to say that Christ has no role, and all we talk about is the abstract sovereign
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God, and all the rest of the stuff. Just in case you all really are wanting us to see the truth of what you believe, stop attacking straw men, stop that, it doesn't work, it automatically turns everybody off, because we know you're not listening, and that you don't know what you're talking about, okay?
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And the next time someone says, you just don't talk about Jesus, I'm just going to go, come on, get a life, get an apologetic, get an argument, something here, because that's just silly, absolutely positively ridiculous.
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I can't tell you how many times I have talked about the absolute centrality of Christ, the fact that God saves only in Christ Jesus, that only in union with Christ, I mean, that is just a gross canard, and anyone who uses it obviously has no intention of being taken seriously.
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So, that being said, I invited Reverend McCain to discuss
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John chapter 6 with me. I would like to see how his anti -Calvinism and his mockery of the eternal election of God and things like that fits into the text of Scripture.
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Let's go to that which is God -breathed, rather than to some
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Lutheran statement of faith somewhere. Well, his response was, I don't want to take my eyes off Jesus, which
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I found grossly ironic in light of the fact that I wanted to actually listen to what
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Jesus was saying. I guess some people just like to stare at images and not listen to words. Once I saw that kind of response and how utterly serious it was, and lacking in meaning,
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I thought, okay, this isn't worthwhile, this isn't getting us anywhere, let's go back to dealing with Islam and dealing with things that actually matter, because folks who behave like this just aren't worth fighting with.
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And I get back from St. Louis, and one of the first things when I get back is a link to this
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Josh S., and it's sad to see a blog that has as its title,
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Here We Stand, that is just so childish in its behavior and in its writing.
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And someone responded to the stuff that's said here, and I actually, just in mixed company, wouldn't even bother reading some of what's found here.
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These folks like treading on the line and doing things like that. But part of it was just mocking anyone who is a
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Baptist who would call himself Reformed in the first place. You know, if Calvin would have killed you, then you're not really Reformed. So evidently, they don't believe in Semper Reformanda, and they don't care that some of us have really put ourselves out there in defense of Calvinistic soteriology.
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And I don't just mean Calvinistic, but all five points and everything else, and that we've seen a lot of doors slammed in our face because of our willingness to defend those things.
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And they don't really care about that. They just want to go back to, you know, the old days. And so you're not really
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Reformed. Well, okay, that's fine. If this graduate math student in someplace defines what
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Reformed is, okay, I guess I'm not. That's okay. I'm still looking for his books on those subjects, presenting the doctrines of grace and introducing people to those great truths, but I haven't actually found them anywhere on Amazon yet.
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But I'm sure they'll be there eventually, because this Josh S. fellow does define those things.
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And so someone wrote in and said, you know, since you're willing to name names, you know, he's talking about myself and Phil Johnson and others, and doesn't like that we don't have comments on my blog.
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Well, it's people like him that would make comments ridiculous. Someone said, hey, why don't you call in if you're so confident?
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Why don't you call in? You don't call into programs like that when they control the calls.
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Well, you know what? If someone uses profanity or won't actually have a dialogue, yeah, we do control the lines.
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But I've been doing this program now, if I'm guessing at this guy's age since Josh S.
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was born, okay, right about the same year he was born is when we started doing this program.
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And so I've been, I have a long, long history that we can document of how we treat callers to this program.
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And I was dealing with apologetics issues and theological issues when Josh S. was in diapers and was treating people fairly long.
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Well, Josh S. hasn't started doing that yet. So for a long, long time before Josh S.
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learned how to use a keyboard. And as someone has pointed out, we have callers like Pierre.
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I haven't heard from Pierre for a few months. But our semi -regular Mormon caller, I guess we haven't been talking enough about Calvinism to get that.
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And so on and so forth. And so anyway, we have a long, long history.
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And it's possible that these folks actually couldn't hold on to our one rule, which means you actually have to be able to control your tongue and not use profanity and speak as a
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Christian, or at least as a respectful person. I suppose that would be the one thing that would keep them from calling in.
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But to be perfectly honest with you, I think the reason is these people know that when you hide behind a keyboard, you can say lots of things.
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But I have actually experienced the situation where someone was ripping and shredding on me and did not know that I was actually present physically.
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And when I then faced them, oh, my goodness, the personality change was pretty amazing.
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Pretty amazing indeed. And I think that's what the, unfortunately, I think that's what the
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Internet does, is it takes people who otherwise would never say a word because, well, they wouldn't have a chance to, they wouldn't be given the platform to, and so on and so forth.
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It gives them opportunity to be very brave and to spout their stuff out there.
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But they won't face me, even though they cannot demonstrate that I would be unfair to them.
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I would challenge them, and I would challenge them strongly. I would challenge this young man to actually stand behind what he says.
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And I would challenge his logic and his consistency, and I would challenge him biblically. And that's what people find to be mean and nasty, is you actually ask probing questions that demonstrate the inconsistency of a person's position.
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But that's what you're supposed to do. That's how truth is served, is when you demonstrate the inconsistency of what someone is saying.
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And so I, honestly, I do not understand this explosion of infanto -Lutheranism, and I use that term specifically because I have yet to see anything in any of this that demonstrates the first bit of maturity.
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Because, see, if you're going to be mature, if you're going to be a Lutheran, and you're going to attack Calvinism, and you're mature, then you're actually going to represent
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Calvinism correctly and present compelling argumentation against what has to say. You're not going to act like these people act.
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I'm sorry, that's just all there is to it. I cannot respect people who act in this fashion.
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It just makes no sense whatsoever. So, you know, the phone lines are open.
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If you'd like to explain this, I would like to understand it. What is the source of this kind of rabid anti -Calvinism that does not even begin to try to accurately represent what it's trying to respond to?
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I don't understand it. I really don't. And I think what bothers me the most about it is I've had such a higher view of the
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Lutherans with whom I have had dialogue that I am shocked that I don't hear more of them. And maybe they are, if someone would like to direct me to where these people are saying, hey, we agree with you.
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That kind of stuff is absurd. We stand against it.
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If you'd like to point me to that, I'd like to see where these responses are. For some reason, no one has been referring me to that kind of information.
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I just don't see it. So if you'd like, let me know where that is, 877 -753 -3341.
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And, you know, if you, and again, if Josh S. is out there, the fact of the matter is it's a toll -free number.
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And if he really, you know, would like to be able to back up saying that I was somehow whining about what
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Paul McCain said. If you'd like to explain, for example, why it is that a discussion of John 6 would somehow be a, would involve
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Paul McCain taking his eyes off Jesus. Why can't we continue to look to Jesus while listening to what he taught?
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I'd like to hear how that works. Phone lines are open. And there it is.
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I, it does, the contrast to me was a little bit odd. Because right at the same time
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I get this, again, infantile type of a post against me.
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At the same time I'm getting from someone else links to the
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Muslims who are finally trying to respond to a few of the things that I've said in the rather lengthy blog series
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I've done in regards to Saiful and Azmi's material on, well, the big long quote of material on the subject of textual criticism.
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And it just seems to me such an odd thing that we have so much work to be doing in those areas and then you've got this kind of silliness.
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You know, it just, I don't, I don't know. This, this argumentation, though one last time because evidently someone doesn't understand it.
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The argumentation that I have heard to shut down all discussion is, for example,
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I saw it on Paul McCain. He quoted someone's discussion of the sovereignty of God and said, there's nothing about Jesus in here.
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Well, you know what, the sovereignty of God is behind everything in Jesus's life and ministry. It's the sovereignty of God that made
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Jesus the lamb slain from the foundation of the earth. Everything that God has sovereignly decreed to do in this world is tied up in the incarnation and the cross and the resurrection and God's self -glorification by his redeeming a people in Christ Jesus.
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I mean, there's no way to separate these things, but you don't have to pronounce the name Jesus in every other sentence for you to be accurately representing the word of God because the word of God doesn't do that.
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So, I'm sorry, shutting down any and all rational conversation by demanding that you say the name
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Jesus every 14 or 15 seconds, it only demonstrates you don't have a theological or biblical leg to stand on.
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That's, that's what I just can't even begin to understand that. When I see people saying, well, you know, we speak different languages, we're
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Christocentric and you're just based upon abstract view of God. I'm sorry, but that is absurd.
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That is absurd on its face. Why I don't understand how
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Christians can use that kind of horrific argumentation. And maybe, again, maybe it's just, maybe
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I'm just being absolutely silly and thinking that, you know, in my mind, maybe it's just because of my respect for Luther and being silly and just transferring that off to others.
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But I expected that someone who would be a Lutheran and a theologically aware
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Lutheran would have a higher standard of dialogue and discussion and representation and truth.
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Maybe I was wrong. Maybe there's absolutely no difference between these individuals and Dave Hunt and their, their dogged, blind commitment to tradition.
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Maybe I'm, I'm just naive. Maybe I just have had way too high a view and I need to adjust that and recognize there's a whole lot wider spectrum than I thought there was and, and go from there.
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You know, maybe that's, that would help me to just dismiss all this stuff and go, there's, you know, because I do dismiss that when
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I see someone just blindly repeating Dave Hunt stuff. You know, whenever I see someone repeating the
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Spurgeon quote, you know what I'm talking about? The, the one that Hunt sniped from, from somebody else,
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Samuel Fiske, and didn't check it out where, where you quote this quote from Spurgeon and say,
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See, he denied particular redemption. He died limited atonement. And it's actually from a sermon on limited atonement and how it's a, the
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Christian doctrine of the atonement and, and stuff like that. Whenever I see someone doing that, okay, immediate credibility crash.
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There's no credibility left whatsoever in what that person has to say because they haven't checked their sources.
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They're just repeating things. Okay, fine. Maybe that's what I need to do here. As soon as I see someone repeating these, these canards, these, this silly stuff,
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I, you know, I don't know. It's absolutely amazing. So phone lines are open.
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And if you actually, you know, I have a hard time thinking that if Luther lived today and he was saying the same things, these people were saying that he wouldn't have, that he wouldn't have picked up that phone, have a hard time.
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But hey, like I said, the keyboard makes people brave. The phone actually, you have to reason and goes two ways that way.
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And it's funny to complain about my not having comments when I have a toll -free phone number and at about two hours a week where anybody can call in.
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Yeah, okay, there you go. I'm the one hiding. Yeah, all righty there. There you go.
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That's, that's pretty, that's pretty odd. I was looking through some, some clips while we wait for these brave folks to pick up the phone.
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I, I was looking through some, some clips in my sound subdirectories.
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I was looking for a particular one, couldn't find it. But I did find this, I was looking for something by Scott Hahn, and I saw something on the
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Canon from Catholic Answers from a couple years ago. So I fired it up before we started the, the pre -feed.
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And I listened. This, this fellow called in. He's not a Catholic. He had an excellent question.
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It was, it was basically the same question that I had asked Jerry Matitix. And I haven't mentioned this for a long time.
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So I, I wish I had the, well, I don't think, we do not have the sound.
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Well, I wish we did. From the WEZE program that I did with Jerry Matitix after the debates at Boston College.
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Well, I wish we did. Because that was where I asked Jerry what has become known as the white question.
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I actually heard a fellow call into a Catholic radio program and call it the white question.
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What had happened was we had done two debates at Boston College.
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One on justification and one on the apocrypha. And this was
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May? Oh no, no, it couldn't have been
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May. Maybe it was April. It was, it was, I know it was 1993.
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And as I'm thinking now, I remember snow on the ground. So May probably wouldn't be, well, again, it is
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Boston, but May probably wouldn't be. Anyways, it was, it was first half of 1993. Matitix and I did two debates.
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This was the one that I mentioned in the book on Mary where we were doing a WEZE radio program.
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And that was where I read the Marian prayer, the one that I included at the beginning of that book.
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And I've included most of my discussions on the subject of Mary.
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And it is the Marian prayer that goes, Oh mother of perpetual help, thou art the dispenser of all the goods which
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God grants to us miserable sinners. If this reason he has made thee so powerful, so rich and so bountiful, thou mayst help us in our misery.
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Thou art the advocate of the most wretched and abandoned sinners who have recourse to thee. Come then to my help, dearest mother, for I recommend myself to thee.
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In thy hands I place my eternal salvation. And to thee do I entrust my soul.
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Count me among thy most devoted servants. Take me under thy protection, and it is enough for me.
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For if thou protect me, dear mother, I fear nothing, not from my sins. Notice the three things here. Not from my sins, because thou would obtain for me the pardon of them.
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Nor from the devils, because thou art more powerful than all hell together. Nor even from Jesus, my judge himself, because by one prayer from thee he will be appeased.
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So sins, devils, and Jesus. Those are the three things this person is afraid of. But one thing
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I fear, that in the hour of temptation I may neglect, call on thee, and thus perish miserably. Call on thee is addressed to Mary, of course.
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Obtain for me then the pardon of my sins, love for Jesus, final perseverance, and grace always to have recourse to thee, oh mother of perpetual help.
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Now I had found this prayer in a booklet that had been stuck in a seat in the chapel at the hospital where I was working as a chaplain.
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And I had picked it up and I was reading it and I read this thing and I was like, at that time, 1993,
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Mary was not the real focus of my studies of Roman Catholicism. I had been mainly debating issues about justification and sola scriptura.
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And I think Luther would have agreed with most of what I had to say about that. Now that I think about it. Anyway, and so I thought, you know, knowing people like Jerry Matatix and Carl Keating and James Aiken at that time, now it's
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Jimmy Aiken and Patrick Madrid. I sort of thought, that's got to be way off out in left field someplace.
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This can't be representative of orthodox Roman Catholicism.
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And so I brought this with me to the radio program.
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I'll never forget this. Some things in your memory just stay very, very fresh. And for some reason,
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I remember exactly what the radio studio looked like. The window was behind me, so the light was coming from behind me.
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Jerry was across from me. The host, the Janine Graf, was to my right.
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There were all sorts of, well, sort of like what I've got right now, an arm holding this microphone in front of me.
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There were like four or five of them. It frequently looks like some sort of a spider or something like that coming out of one central area where the microphones are.
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And I read this, and I could tell that Janine Graf was taken aback by what
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I just read. And so she turns to Jerry, and there's this, you know how on radio, dead air is bigger than it is in real life.
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And he looked at me across that table. And I was expecting, you know,
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I tried to sort of go, all right, what would a
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Catholic answers type response to this be? And I assumed that I was going to get the rolling of the eyes,
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Mr. White, Mr. White, Mr. White. Why don't you represent things accurately?
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Why don't you present main lines out wide? And, you know, let's go look at what was said in Vatican II and so on and so forth.
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It's not what I got. Jerry Mattox looked across that table.
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You got to give Jerry Mattox one thing. He'll look you in the eye when he talks to you. And he wasn't looking down.
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He wasn't looking away. And he looked right at me and said,
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Mr. White, I pray for the day when you would be able to pray that prayer with me. Now, here was a guy who only a few years earlier had been a doctoral student at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.
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I think he was ABD. At least that's what he told me. He was all but dissertation. In fact, sometime in,
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I think it was January of, January?
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No, it couldn't have been January of 91. Well, at some point I was over at the Catholic Answers offices when
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Jerry was still on staff. Because he left right around that period of time. He left very shortly after the debate that I had with him at the
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Catholic community, City of the Lord over in Tempe on the papacy that Scott Hahn got all mad at.
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He was all angry and he's the one who moderated it. He was off staff very shortly after that. And so sometime before then, we were over in San Diego.
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And he was still there at that time. And, you know, I just expected, it just took me aback.
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He had told me at that time when I was at the studios he was all but dissertation. So I take him at his word at that point. Anyways, here's a man who was a graduate of Gordon Conwell saying, yes, not only do
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I pray that. That was my first indication of just how deep this type of Marian piety, quote -unquote.
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If we can use that terminology, it means something different to me. But that kind of Marian piety was. And I have used that in debates ever since then.
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He has never once criticized me for so doing. Because that is very much representative of his belief.
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It was very much representative of John Paul II's belief as well. I came to understand over time.
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Anyway, that was the trip to Boston College. And I know that I seem to be waxing long here.
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I don't know if we have any break material set up. Oh, good. There we go. Since we're running, are we going to go a little bit late too?
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Or are we just going to, I'm just going to have to listen to music since we got a little bit of a late start too. But we,
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I'll finish the. We were only like 30 seconds late. No, we were over a minute late.
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Oh, okay. Well, we can go a minute long. Well, if someone ever for some reason buys this
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CD so they can listen to the Sounds of Silence, where the brave Infanto Lutherans didn't call, they might want the entire 60 minutes of the
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Sounds of Silence. You don't want to be gypped of time. No. In fact, we want to make sure we give them the full time. Because, you know, 877 -753 -3341 is a long number.
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And so it might take a little while to dial it. So that's why we're going to go the whole way.
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Just to make sure they have that opportunity. Meanwhile, in fact, maybe they're just so fascinated by what
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I'm saying, the story, that we need to take a break so that during the break they can do that. So why don't we take a break. I'll finish the story about Boston College, and we'll be right back.
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In December of 1990, number 432 on the
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Papacy, the City of the Lord, and this was in a Catholic context and it was moderated by Scott Hahn against Jerry Matitick.
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This was the first time, you've got to understand, you've got to back up here and realize what was going on.
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For a number of years, Catholic answers ran roughshod over individuals in debates.
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They were looking for pastors who would dare to say something about Roman Catholicism.
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These guys were prepared. They were ready to go. Sadly, most pastors have not studied anything about church history and their knowledge of Roman Catholic theology is rarely from Roman Catholic documents.
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And so I sadly got to listen to a number of radio programs and debates featuring
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Jerry Matitick and others where they just ran over these people and it was embarrassing. And Catholic answers even put out a tract that said, hey, when you hear somebody out there and they are saying something about Roman Catholicism, then what you need to do is you need to invite them to do a debate and you can contact
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Catholic Answers and we will debate them.
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They don't put that tract out anymore. And one of the reasons is, I very seriously believe, because we have put them in a situation where they can't do that and there are a number of topics they don't want to address.
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And so I had listened to both Hahn and Matitick speaking about the papacy and presenting their materials.
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And so I was ready. I mean, I knew they were going to use Isaiah chapter 22. I had a rather full response to Isaiah chapter 22.
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So you've got to understand, Scott Hahn was a little bit upset because he didn't get to say anything. He's just moderating the debate. And Jerry Matitick is sitting there presenting all of Scott Hahn's stuff and I'm refuting that stuff.
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And they had never had anybody do that. They had never had anyone respond and say, wait a minute, you just threw out
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Isaiah chapter 22 verse 22. The problem is you think that's connected to Matthew chapter 16, but why haven't you ever mentioned to anyone in any of your talks that this passage is cited, but it's cited in Revelation 3, 7 on the lips of Jesus.
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He's the one with that key. There's the difference between key and keys and there's all this stuff. I started to think no one had ever done that.
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And so by the end of this program, Scott Hahn is not a happy camper. And as soon as the debate was over, that's why you can't hear this.
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As soon as the debate was over, Scott Hahn comes up and Matitick and I are standing there.
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People are starting to come forward. The debate had gone very well for our side. There had been Catholics getting up and walking out during this entire thing.
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And the Protestants, the audience, they're all coming to talk to Jerry. And Hahn looks at me and he says, you blew it because you brought up papal infallibility and that wasn't the topic of the debate.
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As if you can just come. I wasn't debating papal infallibility. I raised the issue to point out how high the
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Catholic view of the papacy is. But that's not what I had been debating. I had been debating the existence of papacy. He was wrong.
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It's silly to say that I can't even mention that Rome has defined the Pope as being infallible as part of the presentation.
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But then, then he turns to Jerry in front of all these
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Protestants. His good bud Jerry, his friend who came into Rome with him and evidently there was obviously already strains developing here.
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Jerry going toward a more traditional perspective. Which he's gone all the way now to a Seti Vakens perspective.
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But he looks at Jerry in front of everybody and says, and you blew it because you used the
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Bible as your only source of authority and you can't do that. Turned around and stalked out of the room and never came back.
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Leaving Jerry alone in a sea of gleeful happy Protestants.
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And never came back. Never, never came back. Unfortunately, that's not videotaped. That's not audiotaped.
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I mean the debate was. But, you know, so that's what I was talking about at that particular point in time.
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Then we had another interesting encounter with Scott Hahn a month later when I debated
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PACWA on justification and the mass in San Diego. Those took place afterwards.
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And that's where I challenged Scott Hahn, standing outside one of the largest Roman Catholic churches in San Diego in El Cajon.
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I challenged him in front of a group of at least 30 people to debate. And that challenge has now stood for 15 years.
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And we still stand ready to do that. But Scott Hahn has offered a number of different reasons over the years.
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But the current one, basically, is he just doesn't do that. Now something tells me that if R .C.
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Sproul or someone like that said they would, that might change. But that's the situation as it stands right now.
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So that was the background of that. And that's why, you know, I'd certainly recommend you could listen to it.
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But you're not going to catch that portion where Scott Hahn is, you know, doing those things at the end.
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So I just thought you might want to be aware of that particular fact. So very quickly, because we do have a phone call.
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I'll get to it in just a moment. Let me finish the story. We were at Boston College. And after the apocrypha debate ended up being really interesting.
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In fact, Jerry Mattox and I had been worried that we would have to pass out no -dos during the apocrypha debate because, let's face it, you have to talk about all sorts of stuff and cite this scholar against that scholar.
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And we figured the justification debate would be far more interesting. In reality, the apocrypha debate ended up being very, very interesting and rather divisive as far as that goes.
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And at that debate, my side, George Bonneau was my host at that point.
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He and I were told by people from the radio station, or it was communicated to us in some way.
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I forget who it was that told us. Though we were supposed to be on, I think, the next Monday.
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I think this was Saturday, so it was supposed to be Monday. We were supposed to be on with Janine Graf again, but that had been canceled. That program wasn't going to go on.
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So we're like, okay, whatever. That's fine. And so the next
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Monday, I'm out driving around with George out in Southbridge, Massachusetts, which is not exactly a suburb of Boston.
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And we just happened to pop on the radio just to see if we could pick it up. We're so far away from Boston, we didn't even know if we could pick it up. Here's the
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Janine Graf show, and Jerry Maddix is on, and they're wondering where I am. So we went scooting back to his house, and we called in, and we did the program.
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And obviously not the rest of it. He got lots of time I didn't get, but that's life.
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We did what we could do. And it was in that situation, I remember exactly where I was sitting, I was sitting on the side of the bed in the guest room, and I – wow, okay.
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Thank you. Anyways, I asked him a question. He was still in debate mode. He was absolutely still in debate mode.
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And he was talking about the canon of scripture, because that was the last thing we were dealing with.
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And so – I'm sorry, I'm getting a little information here. I need to pass on to those in charge who need to be aware of it.
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Okay. Anyways, we – I'm getting – yeah, that's – yeah.
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Anyways, he was still going after the canon issue. And so I had not prepared this, realized
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I just jumped out of a car and ran to the house, picked up the phone. And out of the blue, I asked him this question.
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I said, Jerry, how did the believing Jew know that Isaiah and 2
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Chronicles were scripture 50 years before Christ? And it became just as quiet as it just did.
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Silence. No one had ever – I had never thought of it, but all of a sudden it popped in my mind, okay,
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Jerry's just gotten done doing a debate with me where he openly admitted, you have to have the authority of Rome to know.
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All right. There was no authority of Rome 50 years before Christ. So if you – you're stuck.
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I mean, what kind of answers can you give? And over the years, I've gotten various answers. They couldn't know. Well, then Jesus couldn't have held anybody accountable to what the scripture said, because they couldn't know what the canon was.
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And obviously he did. So that doesn't work. Another good one was they could go to the high priest and cast the divine dice, the
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Urim and the Thummim. That one, I just sort of let people say that one so that the laughter doesn't get in the way of refuting itself.
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And then the other one was, well, you had the – you had an infallible magisterium in the Jewish people. Really? They never accepted the apocryphal.
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Why do you do? Why do you accept it? And so it's a really difficult question for these folks to answer, and that's where it came from, was out of the blue, just – and, in fact, when
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I asked the question, Jerry just went silent. And so you hear this quiet, and then
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Janine Graff has to speak up, and she goes, well, that's really interesting. We'll continue this conversation on the other side.
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And so they took a break, which gave him enough time to try to come up with something, but he still couldn't answer on the other side.
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I kept pushing it. And, unfortunately, that was – I don't know. As I recall, there was about 20 minutes left in the program, so I didn't have a whole lot of time to really push the issue.
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But that's where it came from. This caller to Catholic Answers was asking the same question. I listened to Scott Hahn's answer.
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I think the answer was about eight minutes long, and he didn't get to anything that was even slightly about it until the last 30 seconds, and it was still just basically authority of Rome, authority of Rome, authority of Rome.
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That's basically all it was to it. So just happened to run across that, and it reminded me of, you know, we've been doing this for a long time now.
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A decade and a half. Our first debate was in August of 1990 against Jerry Matitix at a
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Roman Catholic church in Long Beach, and we've gone over 15 years now.
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And the landscape has changed immensely.
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And while Catholic Answers is a multimillion -dollar operation, you've got
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Envoy magazine and stuff like that, and we're still these little guys out there in Phoenix, but, boy, has the landscape changed as we attempt to find people who will be willing to debate those issues and now we look back on the whole series we've done with Mitch Pacwa and the debates we've done with Jerry Matitix and all these individuals, and isn't it interesting how the
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Catholic apologists have changed in the same amount of time? What's gone on with people like St.
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Janice and Matitix and the people that used to be allies, and now they're not allies anymore, and it is truly fascinating.
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877 -753 -3341. Let's go to the phone lines, and let's talk to Charlie.
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Hi, Charlie. Welcome to the program. Hi. Hi, how are you doing? Very good. I'm a
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Lutheran, and I've never listened to your program before. One of my friends pointed out what you were talking about today, so I listened for a while.
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And I did participate a little bit in Pastor McCain's discussion and lost my temper a little bit, and I have to say that I am not proud of the fact that I did lose my temper.
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I'm sorry, when you mean the discussion, do you mean like in the comments section or something? In the comments section on his blog.
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Oh, okay. To be honest with you, I only read a few of those, and I primarily scanned for names that I knew, so I don't know what the comments might have been, but maybe you can help me to understand the mindset that I was talking about, which is if I posted, let me just put it this way,
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Charlie, it would never, ever cross my mind to post a poem about Lutheranism, of the character that Paul McCain posted about my faith.
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Can you help me understand why someone would post something like that when they, does he not know that it is grossly inaccurate?
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I mean, I just don't understand. Maybe you can help me understand. Can you help me understand that? I think what it might be is that though there are many things to be admired in Luther, there is one thing that is not to be admired in him, but it's something that a lot of Lutherans kind of follow, and that is that when he responded emotionally to something, he would go whole hog and really say some things that, if he looked back on it in clearer moments, probably would not have liked, as he's in heaven now, probably doesn't like at all.
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And I think a lot of Lutherans tend to do that, especially when they've been in a discussion for a while about things that they really do disagree with.
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There will come that moment when there's some sort of breaking point, and, you know, you post something like that, and it is not something to be proud of, but it's something that our sinful nature gets a hold of us in a particularly strong way at that moment, and we end up doing it.
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Well, Charlie, I fully understand that, and that is one of the drawbacks, I'm sure you would agree, with the
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Internet is that it allows us to give vent to those feelings far faster than older methodologies of communication allowed us to do so, and there's no question about that.
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We all fall into that trap, but I don't think, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but has
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Reverend McCain pulled that article and apologized for what he posted there?
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And I don't get the feeling that that's actually what took place, and, in fact, it almost sounds like the only response so far has been,
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I'm a whiner for pointing out its inaccuracies, rather than, okay, you know, I got upset because a
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Calvinist said X, Y, or Z to me, or a Calvinist misrepresented what I believed, or something like that. Is that what has happened, or is that still, the last time
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I looked, anyways, that poem is still there, and it's still being defended as an appropriate means of theological communication and discussion?
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I think it's still there. I haven't looked at the blog today, so I'm not totally sure about that.
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But I think what it might be is, and I think that maybe the reason why
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Pastor McCain is not removing it is because he believes that it does reflect an accurate view of Calvinism, and it probably, at the very least, does reflect the ways that Lutherans usually express concerns about Calvinism.
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I mean, not in the viciousness of it, not in that, but some of the criticisms that it points out are some of the criticisms that most
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Lutherans do believe are legitimate when we're discussing what
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Calvinism teaches. Well, you know something, Charlie? I've had people come into my channel.
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In fact, I'll give you another example. I was at a church in September, and I had a woman come up to me.
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She's a former Roman Catholic, and she came up to me after a talk that I gave on justification, and she mentioned to me a relative who was a
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Lutheran and asked me, in essence, should I assume that she's just as lost as the people you were just describing?
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And I had to stand there, and I did this. I stood there, and I tried to explain as fairly as I could the various brands of Lutheranism and the differences between a
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Lutheran perspective and a Roman Catholic perspective, and I invested my time and my effort to try to accurately represent what
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Lutheranism today, and there's not just one. There's liberal
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Lutherans and conservative Lutherans and certain Lutherans who there's monergistic Lutherans and other
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Lutherans that aren't quite as strong on that, and there's all these different things. I tried to explain what those issues were as accurately as my study would allow me to do so.
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Why doesn't Paul McCain hold to the same perspective that I do, which involves accuracy in representation of what others are saying?
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Even if it's what... Okay, let's say that's common for Lutherans to say that. Would you agree with me that it's wrong if it's inaccurate?
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I mean, isn't this just a basic viewpoint of truth?
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I think there might be a little bit of difference in what you were doing in that situation and what
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Pastor McCain is doing on his blog. When you were talking to that woman, what it sounds like you were trying to do is describe
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Lutherans as they would describe themselves. Right. But if you were writing an article that was giving a
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Calvinistic critique of Lutheran theology, it's likely that it would be a little bit different.
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I mean, I know that you would still endeavor to try to describe Lutheranism as accurately as you could, but it wouldn't be you describing
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Lutherans as Lutherans describe themselves. It would also be you saying, this is why
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I believe that Lutheranism is wrong on these points.
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And a Lutheran could look at what you were writing there and perhaps say, well, he's not getting it right.
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He's not understanding what we actually teach there. And I think that some of that is probably going on in this recent conversation that's been happening on Pastor McCain's blog.
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He's taking a more polemical approach than what you just described. Well, I understand that, but as a person who has engaged in numerous debates,
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I believe that the only way to really honor he who was the truth incarnate is to accurately represent what the other person is saying.
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And in fact, from my perspective, the most compelling argumentation I can present against someone's position is when
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I have, in fact, not only accurately represented it, but when I can express it with more clarity than even they can.
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That is where I have seen my debates have the greatest impact is when
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I know their position and express it in their own language. I could give you numerous examples of this.
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But to me, if I were to write on Lutheranism, I would quote from the leading
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Lutheran authors, and I would bend over backwards to, in fact, try to interpret them in the best possible light so that when
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I do finally make my point about whatever the issue might be, my point is absolutely firmly established and cannot be dismissed on the basis of, well, you misunderstand this, you misunderstand that.
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And that's why I've tried to say, if Pastor McCain, if he's so passionate about these beliefs and is concerned enough about me that he thinks
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I should be passionate about these beliefs and I should join him in holding these beliefs, which
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I would hope would be his only motivation for doing what he does, that's why I do what I do, then
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I would think that at least his response to my invitation to dialogue on John 6 and to debate
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John 6 exegetically would have taken a considerably different tack than it did, and there would be much more concern about accuracy and representation.
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And in fact, if, as you said, within the Lutheran community there is a traditional straw man representation of Calvinism, then if he wants me to listen to what he's saying, he should be the first one to say, hey, you know what, that's wrong, and we actually need to listen to what these people are saying, and before we accuse them of having a defective
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Christology or anything else, we might want to maybe double -check and make sure that we're actually accurately representing what they really believe.
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And that's not what I'm seeing, and it just strikes me that that's basic standard operating procedure for any
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Christian in any context. Would you agree that we have to honor the truth in that way?
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Well, the thing that you were just saying that kind of struck my ear a bit oddly was
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I guess I'm not completely sure that everything or even most of what has been presented on these blogs is a straw man, because there are certainly some rather significant differences in Lutheran and Calvinistic Christology, and the one that I remember coming up several times in this recent discussion is whether or not the human nature of Christ can be present outside of Heaven, which in my reading of the
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Institutes, Calvin is very clear that Christ is in Heaven, and he may be spiritually present on Earth, but not in terms of his human nature.
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And this is one of the issues that I think has come up, and I think that we need to acknowledge that there are some rather significant differences in Christology and how that plays out, especially in our understanding of the
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Lord's Supper when it comes to those issues. So I think that it is just as problematic to describe everything that has been going on as a straw man as it is for me as a
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Lutheran to not acknowledge that there probably have been some inaccuracies there. Well, for example,
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Jesus loves me, this I know, predestination tells me so, well, sovereign God loves me so well, but he may want you in Hell.
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Yes, Jesus loves me, well, maybe he loves me, I sure hope he loves me, I guess I'll never know. I can only describe that as infantile and childish.
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It does not even begin to represent... If he wants to say, well, we ground assurance on a different basis, great, let's talk about it, let's take that to the
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Word of God. But why use straw men? Jesus loves me,
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I will win, cannot fall away by sin, can't resist his grace, it's true, died for me but not for you.
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Where can you ever find in Reformed writings the ability on the part of man to know who the elect are to be able to say those words?
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You can't. Everybody knows that. And so if I were to put those words in reverse in a limerick about Lutheranism, I would be violating the most basic canons of truthfulness that a
01:00:09
Christian should follow. I don't care, I'm a polemicist, I engage in polemics, but there's Christian polemics and there's non -Christian polemics.
01:00:16
And non -Christian polemics would be marked by misrepresentation, I believe they would be marked by a violation of Biblical standards in regards to the use of the tongue and the words we use, etc.
01:00:28
etc. How does... that's what I was talking about. If someone wants to say, well, Lutherans and Calvinists need to discuss the nature of Christ's post -resurrection body and the interrelationship of that to the
01:00:40
Church. Great, fine, let's go with the Word of God. But how can that even be discussed when it's presented within the context of an in -your -face mocking type presentation that simply doesn't deserve to see the light of day?
01:00:56
Again, I would say that when it comes to things like the poem that you just recited,
01:01:05
I think that what's happening there is something that, when we
01:01:11
Lutherans do it, we need to repent of. Okay. Because really, one concern
01:01:20
I had about calling into your show is that I can respond very, very strongly in a very emotional way when
01:01:29
I am talking to Calvinists. And I was thinking, God, please don't let it happen when
01:01:35
I'm talking to Dr. White. Because I know that that's in me.
01:01:41
I know it's there. And it's a constant battle to not let it happen. I understand.
01:01:47
But it does happen. I understand. Charlie, I think we've had a fine conversation. It didn't happen.
01:01:53
I thank you for that. I appreciate your insights on it.
01:01:58
I appreciate your calling. I just wish that the attitude that we've been able to have and hopefully been able to model for others would be the type of attitude that would allow us, with our differences, to go to the
01:02:14
Word of God and to test our traditions, all of our traditions, and not put it above the
01:02:20
Word of God. And I think that would allow for discussion. Even if we continue to disagree, I just don't understand.
01:02:28
I have had kind relationships with Lutherans in the past. And I just don't understand what's going on there.
01:02:36
But I appreciate, at least you and I have been able to have a conversation without it going in that direction.
01:02:41
And I really appreciate your call. And I appreciate the insights that you've provided.
01:02:47
So thank you very much, sir. Thank you. Thank you. God bless. Bye -bye. All right. See, folks, it can be done.
01:02:54
Well, I'm awful thankful for that. We can go ahead and fire that up there, Mr. Control Man.
01:03:00
We went a little bit longer than normal. That's because we started a little bit late, and we wanted to give Charlie all the time that we could.
01:03:05
Thank you, sir, for your call. Thanks to those of you who listened today. Who knows, maybe next time we'll have a nice conversation with some of those folks that are writing some of those things.
01:03:14
Maybe that will happen. I don't know. Maybe not. I like to be positive about things. Difficult to do sometimes.
01:03:21
Anyway, thanks for listening to Divine Line. We will not have a program on Thursday. I'm traveling. But Lord willing, be back again a week from today.
01:03:28
See you then. God bless. We need a new rep.
01:04:33
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