A Special Pre-Debate Dividing Line

Well, I was going to say good afternoon, welcome, and then everything just sort of died and I don't have a monitor in here anyways, so I didn't know what was going on.

So hey, it's Friday and Rich only guarantees semi -professional work on two dividing lines a week.

We have caused him to do overtime and therefore no monitor, no sound, you know, whatever.

That's just sort of how it works. Why are we doing a program on a Friday afternoon when everybody is busy doing other things?

Well, this morning I watched a video from Professor Layton Flowers.

I'm wondering if this is the same mosquito that was attacking me Wednesday night. I was telling folks

Wednesday, I cut it out when I posted the sermon online, but I've reached that time in life where I used to wonder why old people looked so spastic to me, but now

I realized what happens is you get these things called floaters in your eyes and you can't tell whether they're mosquitoes or not.

So, oh, oh, well, okay, I was moving fast, that's normally not a floater, you know, you just look really dumb doing that.

But this was actually a mosquito. It was a kamikaze guy. It was going for my eyes. I was like, whoa, okay, wow, that's pretty wild.

We got one in here too. So if I all of a sudden start doing strange things, it's because I saw him against the computer screen or something.

Anyways, I saw a video, a pre -debate message video,

I guess, Layton Flowers took, you know, something

I did in a previous, just back in what, July? I did a pre -debate video before the open theism debate.

So I guess that was the idea here too. And so I don't know how long this is going to be.

I just want to respond to some sections of it. It's an hour long and I listened to it, watched.

It's not all exciting to watch. I have a much prettier background than Layton has, which sort of looks like, well, someone said it looked like a bathroom stall, but thankfully it's not that.

It's some sort of a cardboard something. I don't know. It's hard to say. Anyway, but we both wear the same t -shirts, which is a good thing, which means he shops at Target.

When you buy clothes, it's Target. When you buy eggs, it's Target. That's just how that works in case you were wondering.

Anyway, and there were a lot of things

I wanted to say. Thankfully I didn't take notes. I couldn't take notes. I was doing a horrifically hard ride on my trainer and I'm really just ridiculously so.

And so I didn't have an opportunity to take notes. So I just sort of picked the section that I specifically noted in my mind to look at some sections of it.

Fundamentally, this isn't the case in every debate, but it certainly is the case in this one. We both think the other guy just doesn't get it.

Just, you know, I've read some of the comments of some of the people on his blog or, and, you know,

I just don't get it. I don't understand class selection. I can read all these books and if you don't repeat it exactly like that, then you don't get it.

Well, and that's how they interpret us saying, well, you don't get it. And so, yeah, there's not a whole lot of communication going on and I don't know if the debate's going to change that.

Obviously the debate would be a better debate if there was a lot of communication and clarity.

I don't know if that's going to happen. I, I, you know, one thing

I did learn from this, and I am, I'm putting all of the relevant materials on my iPod.

I'm doing a huge ride up around, topping out around 7 ,000 feet tomorrow and, and in that process,

I'm going to be listening to all sorts of stuff. But one thing that sort of worried me, to be honest with you, was the fact that Leighton Flowers said, well, if you want to know my view of Romans nine, listen to Steve Gregg.

Oh, he didn't know that. Yeah. Rich just fell off his chair in the other room.

Yeah. Steve Gregg? Really? Really? Um, and so I, I asked

Leighton on, uh, on Twitter just a few hours ago, I said, so would you agree with Steve Gregg who said that the apostle

Paul could have said no, uh, that he could have rejected the, um, the call of Christ on the roads of Damascus.

And he said, yes. Now, of course he said, but would you have rejected that call? And so the idea is, oh, but just think how convincing it is to be knocked off your horse.

Well, um, in case you haven't noticed, God knocks people off their horses all the time in the sense that, uh, we, according to the

Bible, live in a world that testifies of the existence of God to the point where man is unapologetus, without an apologetic.

So, um, in light of that man's ability to suppress the knowledge of God is unparalleled.

And unless the spirit of God takes out the heart of stone and gives a heart of flesh, um, yeah, there's going to be continued resistance.

And yes, if God had not changed Paul's heart, um, Paul would have resisted any kind.

I mean, he could come up with reasons. He could have, uh, he could have said, this is, this is demonic. This is against Moses.

I'm going to stand with the fathers. You know, there's all sorts of things you could have done. Um, so obviously we, uh, fundamentally what you're going to see in this debate, um, and, and please pray that, that both sides will be able to be very clear in the expression of their position.

So there'll be a very sharp distinction, uh, what's your, what you're going to see in, in this debate.

Um, I believe the fundamental difference between us is the difference between a theocentric theology and philosophy and an anthropocentric theology and philosophy.

When you define God's freedom in light of your creaturely experience, rather than allowing the scriptures to define the extent and meaning of God's freedom.

And then from that, come to understand what man's responsibilities, man's nature is all the difference in the world, all the difference in the world.

And what you're going to see is how that impacts exegesis.

And obviously from my perspective, the way to see how this debate answers the question is to ask who is consistent in their application of a hermeneutic to the text, in their interpretation of the text of scripture, uh, professor flowers directly in this, in this video said that I, um, am more consistent in my theology at the expense of the text.

I obviously took great offense at that and we'll, would love to have him attempt to prove that.

Um, and that's what this debate is about because obviously from my perspective, that's exactly, uh, what professor flowers does is he has a system of theology that's based upon certain presuppositions that he, um, specifically will say is based in mystery and he'll, he'll say,

I do the same thing. I do not, but he'll say that we'll show the difference, uh, at this point, but he takes that system.

And then what he ends up doing with scripture again, uh, for me, one of the reasons that it's generally my side that's looking for these encounters and the other side that isn't is that I have seen over and over and over and over again.

When you get the two sides in the room at the same time, like we did with George Bryson, then the difference in exegesis and consistency in handling the text becomes very striking, becomes very, very striking.

So the, the topic of course is Romans chapter nine and that's got to be the central focus, but there will be a portion in the debate where, um, there will be a little broader discussion,

I would imagine. And certainly the audience questions, as few as they may be, I, you know,

I looked at schedule and uh, uh,

I don't care how much a moderator cracks the whip. Uh, I've never seen a debate really stay on schedule.

Uh, it just, it just, it's just really not possible to do. And so we'll, we'll see how much comes as far as questions at the end.

But the way to, to look at this debate is to ask the question, who's being consistent?

And in light of that, my hope is that we'll be able to see the difference between a very much, uh, free will, autonomous will, um, man centeredness and a focus that starts with God's free will the nature of God and does not circumscribe him on the basis of, well, he can't do these things because then it would mean this.

And therefore our, our, we won't allow that. I think professor flowers probably agrees with Roger Olson's fundamental assertion.

At least Roger Olson's wide open with it, where he says, if God is like the

God of Calvin, this isn't, and by the way, this isn't Roger Olson. I, uh, one of the things I've really wanted to do and I, and I hope, you know, hope to find time.

There's just, there's just so many things, um, is I want to review Wesley's sermon, uh, against Calvinism that so offended

Whitfield. And that was really the foundation of the division between John, uh,

Wesley and, and, and Whitfield, uh, back in those, those early days, uh, of the origins of Methodism.

And because what Olson is saying is really not much different than what

John Wesley was saying. And what Roger Olson basically says is if, if God turned out to be as the

Calvinist say he is, um, I, I would not worship him. I would not worship him.

Um, and that, that seems to be the essence of this argumentation and that is, well,

God cannot be culpable, therefore these things cannot be true. And as I've explained many, many times what

Professor Flowers does and what many of the individuals in the Southern Baptist Convention who are attempting vainly,

I would suggest, uh, to stem the tide of a knowledge of these things amongst, especially amongst the younger generation of ministers, uh, is they will, they will fundamentally dismiss the meaningfulness and weight of the means that God has chosen to use.

They just go straight to the decree, ignore the means and say, well, if God decreed it, skip all this stuff here where he is glorified and his attributes are demonstrated and incarnation takes place, put all that stuff out of the side cause

I didn't realize it matter. And you go straight to the final question and that means he has no ground to condemn anybody.

And of course I've said over and over again, and he seems to, I'll play in here in a second, seems to not have heard me that that's the problem that, you know,

I, I don't know how many times I can say it, but the incarnation proves and demonstrates that the means that God has chosen to bring about his own glorification is vitally important to God and therefore should be to us.

And so when you just move it out of the way and go from, well, if there is a decree, therefore he can't judge, then you've missed all that biblical teaching about the nature of man, image bearing the very grounds upon which

God defines culpability for man, Isaiah chapter 10.

I mean, let, let me just point out to, um, if I could find my, uh, well, this is, this is nice.

Oh, there we go. Um, my, uh, cursor is stuck on the other computer.

Teleport has just gone blah, uh, but, um, if I could just point out, uh, something, uh, here, uh, well, it's not going to let me point out something here because I, uh,

I can't, uh, enter any, uh, I do wish they would fix that little, little thing.

It's a wonderful thing to have when it works, uh, when you have two computers, but, uh, when you, when you don't have them, uh, working together anymore, uh, it's sort of, uh,

Oh, can you go back over here now? Let's go back here and back over to this computer.

Watch out, watch how this works. Uh, the date, the date, the day. Well, I would really hate to do this.

It would be sort of funny if I, if I ended up having to do it that way. Uh, now

I refuse to reach down there for the LDS quad. That's no, no, no, no.

I can't, I can't, I cannot do this. Uh, it is, uh, it is inappropriate to do that. Uh, it just, uh, it would, it would, it would cause me,

I would cause me some kind of hives or something like that. Not to use the new world translation either.

That's, that's inappropriate too. Uh, so we'll just go over to this computer and, uh, uh, turn.

I wish I could turn the teleport off, but, uh, it will not, it will not do so. It is in a full state of rebellion.

First time that's ever happened. Um, Isaiah chapter 10, I would like to ask some questions as to how this text can be understood.

If the idea of autonomy, and I would point out that, what does, what does autonomous will mean?

Uh, what, what, what does that communicate? Because that is a term that, uh,

Professor Flowers is going to use. He's going to use the term autonomy and autonomous will. What does autonomy mean?

Um, it, it, it means self -law, autos and namos, self -rule, self -law.

And if that's, if that's the kind of, of understanding we are to have, then please, please explain to me what's going on in Isaiah chapter 10.

Because we know that God brings the king of Assyria against Samaria and Jerusalem.

Uh, as my hand has reached the kingdoms of the idols whose carved images were greater than those of Jerusalem and Samaria, shall

I not do to Jerusalem and her idols as I have done to Samaria and her images? Okay? Um, when the

Lord has finished all his work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, he will punish the speech of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria and the boastful look in his eyes.

So, God brings Assyria against Israel and punishes

Israel according to the very law that he had given in Deuteronomy 28 and 29.

Have you ever noticed there's more about the curses? In Deuteronomy 28 and 29 there is about blessings.

He used Assyria and then he turns around and he punishes

Assyria. And this is prophetic. I will do this. Not, well, you know,

I just didn't know this was going to happen. I brought Assyria and Assyria looked like a good instrument to use.

And so I brought Assyria against Israel and lo and behold, Assyria starts acting and does so sinfully.

What would you expect? They're pagans. Um, and so now I will punish them.

That's not, that makes no sense. This is prophetic. This is what he's going to do. And then he says he knows what the motivations of the heart of the king of Assyria is going to be and he is going to punish them on the basis of the motivations of their heart.

How does self -law, how does autonomy function in a context like that?

That's what I'd like to know. That I think is important to understand.

Those are, that's one of the, one of the main questions. All right. Uh, there also is a, well,

I'm trying to get, uh, trying to get anything to work on this thing right now. And, uh, unfortunately it is not cooperating with anything whatsoever.

Uh, so you do the control alt delete in the Mac version and, uh, restart it.

That's the only way, only way to do it. It lost all, all input. So I couldn't even, I couldn't even start the video.

It never happens. It has never happened before. Never happened. How many, how many years, how many years of, have

I been using one of these and that's never happened before? Never happened. But, but I should be honest. Let's be honest. That's not a

Mac program. That's somebody's hack. And unfortunately, obviously.

Huh? Macs are invincible. Sorry. No, not if you hack them. They're not. Excuse me.

How many, how many times have we had to reset this beast and started late and things like that?

Because you got the, uh, what do they call that? So, so. The blue screen of death. Is that BSD? Blue screen of death.

Is that what it's called? Has Wirecast run on a Mac? Uh. Has Sam Broadcaster run on a Mac? It doesn't.

No, they probably have significantly more advanced things than that. That's just our.

No, they just don't have it. Anyway. Oh, I'm sure. Trust me. I'm sure they do. Anyway.

So, issues of autonomy, I think, are going to maybe come up. I don't know where the debate's going to go because it's supposed to be focused upon the text until the last section where we allow other text to come in.

Maybe, briefly, some of those things come up at that point. It's really hard to predict.

It's hard to, it's hard to know. And like I said, the audience questions come after, if I'm recalling correctly,

I looked at it just this morning. The audience questions come right at the end after the closing statements. And, you know, sometimes you can't avoid that, to be perfectly honest with you.

But the audience questions will often take you far, far, far away from where you wanted to be or where you thought you'd be or where you planned to be, whatever else it might be along those lines.

And audience questions, especially on this topic, are probably not going to be focused on what we're actually talking about.

They'll be focused upon a wide variety of other things.

And that's just the way it is. Well, we're not going to get very far if we don't actually play. I think, if I recall correctly,

I put it at about 10 minutes worth of stuff here.

I'm going to have to go back here to where I was approximately.

And that means I'm going to probably be starting in the middle of a sentence or something like that. So I apologize for that.

But that's just what happens when you have to reset it. Do you have the window? You got it?

All right. Let's see. It's all plugged in. Let's try it. Contracasual choice or libertarian free will, which is the ability to refrain or not refrain from any given moral action, to select between two available options.

And both options have to actually be available for you to select them. And so I still don't know how you would define choice, the word choice, to fit compatibilistic understanding of…

Well, again, Leighton, you said you were a Calvinist. That's one of the things that you've probably thought that I'm just pretty nasty to you and stuff like that.

Look, when someone comes along and says, I was a Calvinist, and the first things I saw from you were,

I'm a former Calvinist, and now I know it's all wrong. And then you listen to things, you look at stuff, and you go, any

Calvinist would know how to answer that question. I mean, when you became a

Calvinist, you didn't think about these things? These are the issues that cross my mind. Obviously, I just simply come back and say,

I define choice based upon biblical parameters. Did Herod exercise a choice?

Answer, yes. Was Herod held accountable for the choice he made?

Answer, yes. Is it clear from Acts chapter 4 that what

Herod did was a part of God's eternal decree? Answer, yes. Now, you have to reject some biblical aspect of the revelation to ignore, to come up with this idea of autonomy.

That Herod's namas was above God's namas,

God's decree. Could Herod have done other than what he did in regards to the betrayal of Jesus?

Pilate? Judas? The Jewish leaders? Could Jesus have had to come more than once because someone chose to do things differently and ended up undercutting the sacrificial giving of the

Son of God? So, could he have had to have been reborn of a virgin at some other later time because he could not accomplish that which was foiled by even the good intentions of man?

You see, Leighton, you want to say, oh, I just like to stick with the text. I want to try to avoid philosophy. But you have all sorts of philosophical underpinnings.

And if you simply say, well, the Bible doesn't answer those questions, you, therefore, are saying,

I am going to come to biblical conclusions based upon presuppositions I say the Bible doesn't give me. And so you are putting the

Bible under an external authority. You are coming to conclusions.

You're saying Calvinism is wrong. It can't be that, whatever else it is. And yet, when

I try to go, well, and you discussed it here, what's the relationship between God's knowledge and what takes place in time?

I mean, Steve Gregg is playing around with open theism from his perspective.

And I noticed a couple of people in Twitter who were saying basically the same thing about you.

They were saying he's an open theist and he doesn't realize he's an open theist. He just hasn't gotten there yet.

Because people are saying that if you were pressed for consistency and latent, if you were going outside of the boundaries of what your ministry is right now, you would be pressed on those issues for consistency.

And if you were, I think you would have to you'd have to choose to go one way or the other. And so I just, anyway.

Choice. What is a compatibilistic choice? And be specific if you could. Creaturely freedom.

You use that terminology instead of free will or something of that nature. And, you know,

I avoid the word free will, too, because I think it has the wrong connotations because our will is not as free as it could be, obviously.

And it's not as free as God's, obviously. We have limitations no matter how much I may want to. No, wait a minute.

There is a fundamental difference in the nature of God's will versus man's will.

Wouldn't you agree with that? Ours is derivative from his.

But when you are by nature absolutely unique and independent from the created order, isn't the nature of your will going to be fundamentally different than the creatures?

It's not just that he is more free. It's that the very nature of God's will as an absolute and the only absolute being.

Again, the nature of God determines our conclusions on these other things.

We don't start from man and reason back to God and then put strictures upon him in light of our experience as human beings.

And yet that's really the essence of synergism. It is the essence of the various efforts that man has made to restrict and to control the grace of God and place it under the control of the autonomous will of man.

That's what synergism really is all about. ...arms right now and try to fly,

I can't do it because I have physical limitations. My will is bound to certain things.

And I think we would all agree with that. So when I say free will, I probably mean something distinct from what some people may mean when they say we have free will.

And so you use the term creaturely freedom, which I assume has meant from based upon previous discussions, means compatibilistic freedom, which

John Henrichs on monergism .com, I tried to copy -paste and use his definitions, but it obviously failed in doing that.

What he's referring to there was the failed attempt, and I do believe it was a failed attempt because it ignored the very nature of the subject that was being addressed.

The failed attempt to say that we cannot address the subject of homosexuality as Calvinist.

And it was a very poor attempt, and it did fail badly.

Again, creaturely freedom refers to the fact that we are created as God's creatures, and therefore he gives us certain abilities as image bearers of his.

They are limited by the way he has made us, and we are held accountable for what we do with creaturely freedom.

For example, I do not know the content of the decree of God. I do not know what

God has decreed to take place tomorrow. I cannot be held accountable for that.

My freedom is circumscribed by my finiteness, by my ignorance, by my nature as a creature, by my level of intelligence.

The fact of the matter is that God holds me accountable within the context that he has made me and placed me.

God is under no such limitation in regards to his freedom.

And the point of all this, Professor Flowers, is that the biblical teaching is that God holds men accountable for their actions within the sphere he has placed them.

You keep trying to raise questions about how man could not be held accountable within a completely different context, within a context of knowing

God's sovereign decree.

In essence, to have infallible knowledge. We do not have infallible knowledge. We are not held accountable for those things.

The men who crucified Jesus, the actual Roman soldiers, will be held accountable for their actions in the context in which they were placed.

Pilate will have a different nature of accountability because he had greater light.

Herod will have another kind of accountability because he was a little bit on the loopy side. The Jewish leaders will have the greatest culpability because they had the greatest light.

They possessed the very word of God and yet crucified the Lord of Glory. So creaturely freedom flows from the fact that we are creatures.

It has never been autonomous freedom. It could not be autonomous freedom because multiple autonomous creatures is a logical impossibility.

You either can have one ultimately free will or if you have two ultimately free wills, they will always clash against one another.

Unless, I suppose the only exception to that rule, the only exception to that rule would be within the

Godhead itself and you have to have divine unity at that point.

And that's what brings about the one perfect will of God even though you have Father, Son, Holy Spirit. So that actually would substantiate my assertion that you're talking about a situation of almost multiple gods when you have multiple autonomous creatures.

But we're straying from getting this actually done sometime today. It's already after 2 .30,

my time. To hear your explanation, if you could get as detailed at least as John Hendricks was in his article, that would be really helpful so that I could at least understand where the diamond multidimensional aspects, what you mean by those.

Can you explain those multidimensional aspects or is that an appeal to mystery? And if it is, as I know

John MacArthur appeals to mystery on that point, John Calvin appeals to mystery on that point and most Calvinists... What do you mean appeals to mystery on that point?

You say that, but I don't think... You keep saying that, but I don't think the words mean what you think they mean.

If what you mean by that is that God has not revealed to us the content of his divine decree, of course.

If what you mean by that is we can't know what the Bible says on the subject of God being sovereign over all events in time, of course not.

I mean, the Westminster Confession of Faith, the London Baptist Confession of Faith, they all say the same things.

I mean, the words are pretty straightforward. It's not overly difficult to understand what it's saying and it's pretty straightforward in the assertions that what it says and what it means is we're not just going, well, it's just all mystery.

God, who in infinite power and wisdom has created all things, upholds, directs, controls, and governs them, both animate and inanimate, great and small.

This is the modern language. I want to just grab it off the shelf here. By a providence supremely wise and holy, in accordance with his infallible foreknowledge and the free and immutable decisions of his will, he fulfills the purposes for which he created them, so that his wisdom, power, and justice, together with his infinite goodness and mercy, might be praised and glorified.

Nothing happens by chance or outside the sphere of God's providence. It's pretty straightforward.

So when you say, well, they appeal to mystery, if what you mean by that is they recognize that the exact contents of God's decree are not known to man, of course, no one would argue with that.

What I've said is the Bible is sufficient, sir, to tell us that God has a sovereign decree, that he does whatever pleases him in heaven or in earth, and that no one can resist his hand, and that he is accomplishing, he is working all things after the counsel of his will.

And to say that that's mystery in the sense that, well, we don't know, I say, no, we do know.

And so I will not appeal to mystery. I will appeal to the direct text of Scripture, which makes these statements.

Nowhere in Scripture are we told that man does whatever man pleases. We are told the exact opposite of that in the 33rd

Psalm. Man schemes, man plots, man plans.

God frustrates all of them. But everything that God plans, he accomplishes. Who has an autonomous will?

In light of Psalm 33, who has an autonomous will? Man or God? The answer is,

I think, unquestionable. Absolutely unquestionable. And only the adoption of an external philosophy, of libertarianism, autonomy, can overthrow the clarity of those things.

Brad appeals to mystery on that question. But I would love to hear your perspective on that and know how you define creaturely freedom and choice in the compatibilistic worldview.

Next, I can define for you, in response, my definition of freedom or what

I would call, I prefer the term moral responsibility. And responsibility, as you've probably heard me say,

I believe literally means response -able. That person is able to respond to God.

That's an interesting definition of responsible. God held the king of Assyria responsible for acting upon the attitudes of his heart.

Are you telling me that what that means is the unregenerate pagan king of Assyria had the capacity of doing what is right in God's sight in that context of being brought down against the people of Israel.

So, man, fallen man, this is where again, Romans 5, fallen

Adam, you don't believe that, I guess, if you're a quote -unquote traditionalist, which is a complete abuse of that term, but that's how it's being used these days.

You don't really believe in that. You don't believe that man fell an Adam in that sense of that absolute corruption of nature.

Federal headship, which raises all sorts of questions. But anyway, so man has the capacity, in and of himself, to do what is pleasing to God, right?

You know what Romans 4 says about that. Again, text after text after text comes into mind at this point.

And it just, I'm sure it'll come up in the debate, but... When we talk about autonomous will, by the way, please understand this.

I believe it was Robert Surginis' debate, if I'm pronouncing his name right, hopefully. He talks about how he does not affirm autonomous will.

And it got me thinking about why he was making the distinction. And I want to be clear on this point. I believe man's will is autonomous in that it makes a choice to sin, the will makes a choice to sin, autonomously of God's will.

In other words, separate from. That's what I mean by autonomous, separate from, distinct from. And there is a separation between our will and God's will when we make a choice to do evil.

Okay, so what does that mean then to Joseph and his brothers?

Evidently, Joseph's brothers autonomously chose to chuck him in a pit.

Well, they tried to autonomously choose to kill him too, but God sort of thwarted that.

And then they autonomously chose to deceive their father. And yet, did

God just come along afterwards and sort of go, oh, wow, Joseph's in Egypt.

Let me see if I can come up with something to do here with Joseph that'll make for some great Sunday school stories.

Because I don't know about you, but I've always thought the coat of many colors is really cool. I mean, everybody knows I love Coogee sweaters.

That must be where it came from, was the coat of many colors. That's just my coat of many colors is a Coogee. Maybe that's how it works.

I don't know. I mean, it's just, I'm sorry, sir, but it's just so obvious. That this is, do you recognize, sir, that that is a philosophical conclusion, not an exegetical conclusion.

I mean, given the Bible directly teaches that he who is according to flesh cannot do what is pleasing to God, cannot, is not able.

So much for autonomy, but is not able. And we have multiple examples given to us of where in the sin of man,

God's specific prophetically prophesied will is being fulfilled in the crucifixion, in the giving of the dreams to Joseph, in the words of the prophets regarding the coming and the destruction of Jerusalem and Israel, that you have sinful actions of man that clearly without question are a part of the decree of God.

How do you deal with that? Now you want to say, well, it's separate from the will.

God does not will that anyone commit evil. And what you mean by that is the prescriptive will in his law.

He says, you shall not, you shall honor your father and mother. And Joseph's brothers did not do that.

They violated the prescriptive will of God. It's a given. That's why you have to recognize the difference between the prescriptive will of God revealed in his law and the secret will of God, his decretive will, by which he intended

Joseph to go to Egypt in the exact way that he went.

That process of betrayal and Potiphar's wife and the interpretation of dreams was the very process that God intended to make

Joseph the man that he needed to be in that place to save many people alive.

How can you affirm any of that? How can you affirm any of that? Because I don't see any room for a decree in your theology.

I can see the decree of man. I can't see the decree of God. How do you do that?

I need a Bluetooth headset. We were going to do that, remember? I've just about pulled this thing out about three times so far.

My ears are going to come off. So put on the list. Need Bluetooth. In fact, you said you had one.

You had a dongle or something like that we were going to get. So let's do it. This thing's going to hang me up and I'm going to end up bleeding all over my computer.

Because I'm doing this stuff too much. And, you know, yeah, that would not be good. All right.

That was a good little break there. Let's press on. So when a creature, Satan or ourselves or anyone else, makes a choice to do something evil,

I believe he is making that autonomously of God. And that's in line with his holiness.

That's the positive way of saying autonomous free will. Autonomously separate from God.

So God sends Isaiah with a message of condemnation and in the very establishment of Isaiah's role as prophet.

What does he say? I will harden their hearts. I will make their ears fat. Lest they turn.

So where's autonomy here? By the way, that's not really the historic use of the term autonomy.

When we're talking about an autonomous will, we're talking about a will that acts outside of any other namas than itself.

In other words, it's a fundamental denial of the sovereign decree of God. And that's why when we hear you saying these things,

A, we'd assume that you'd know this being a quote -unquote former Calvinist. And so you can't blame us for interpreting your words in the context you provided to us.

But then it becomes very clearly you don't think like a Calvinist could ever think, even as a convert from Calvinism, which would lead most of us to think that you, like other people, may have flirted with certain surface -level doctrines.

But let me tell you something. Five points is not enough. That's not what makes you Reformed. It's important.

It's a part of it. But there's an underlying recognition of the nature of God there that if you don't have it, you're not really a

Calvinist. Not really a Calvinist. But, again, when you're talking about autonomy, you're talking about creatures that exist outside of God's sovereign decree, that act outside of God's sovereign decree.

And hence, there is no sovereign decree. God created and went, Hey, snake eyes!

And that's what raises the issues about what your theology is, positively, biblically, exegetically, in regards to God's knowledge and His purpose in creation.

And just simply going back and go, Well, there's been lots of Christians that didn't. Sure. There's been lots of Christians who have been sub -biblical in everything and have been inconsistent in everything.

There's lots of Christians who've never had to take the Christian message outside of Christianity to world religions.

But you know what? Why should we follow them in their ignorance? We don't have that luxury anymore.

We've got to be consistent. We've got to be consistent. We've got to deal with these things. To say divine holiness, because divine holiness is separation.

It is separate from that which is evil. And thus, the choices that we make that are evil, or the origin of evil, for example, all of those things are autonomous in my perspective.

And thus, man is response -able. They're able to respond. And they're the only ones culpable for more evil.

That's why I think God rightly holds us punishable for our evil. And so, oftentimes, a

Calvinist will throw out the word responsible, but they really mean that they're culpable or they're punishable even though they can't respond.

That's what most Calvinists mean there. What do you mean even though they can't respond? They always respond. They cannot respond positively

They cannot do what is good because of their fallen nature. That's where anthropology comes back in once again.

And that then becomes the basis of why grace is absolutely necessary. Which, if you abandon that, leads to semi -Pelagianism and to what you've got in Roman Catholicism and the idea of prevenient grace and all the rest of the mess that comes from that.

Which, again, do I just need to say is really not to be found anywhere in Scripture?

Unable to respond, but yet God holds them punishable. He punishes them for what God has decreed for them to do.

Okay, he punishes them for what God has decreed for them to do. Once again, the assumption here is the only way for God to be holy is if God has no decree.

God has no purpose in creation outside of some vague well, it's all going to work out in the end.

It'll work out in the end and we can be happy about that. But there can be no decree because every person has to be autonomous to be held accountable.

And again, how are we going to judge that statement?

Well, in the text of Scripture, do we find people being held accountable by God for their actions where it is specifically stated that God was accomplishing

His will in their actions? The answer is yes. Now, if you don't have

Scripture as a final authority, okay, then you'll... It's all a your philosophy versus my philosophy type thing.

We're not really going to get anywhere. But for the person who says God's word is sufficient to answer these questions, the question's pretty well answered.

And God is just in doing so. That's what most Calvinists mean when they use the word responsible. And that's convoluting it,

I think. I think that for the average person listening in who doesn't know Calvinism, it gets a lot of confusion because they hear the word responsible and they say, oh,

I thought you meant that we weren't able to respond and respond to God's appeals to be reconciled and hear

His message and I thought you believed that. And they go, well, no, yeah, we do believe total inability.

But you just now said you believe in responsibility. How does that... So people get real confused. And again, talk past each other. If you don't clearly spell out what you mean when you say,

I believe a man is responsible, what you really mean is I believe it's just of God to punish a man who was born totally unable to respond even to God's appeals and God's revelation that he was born by God's decree to be unable to respond.

If you define that, then I think people would understand where you stand. Now, see, and of course, why don't we put it that way?

Because it is so blastedly simplistic and imbalanced, of course.

Let's follow that through. That is, of course, an argument.

That is an argument saying that it is unjust for God to hold us accountable as fallen creatures if he has a sovereign decree.

What follows from that is it is just as unjust for God to allow the righteousness of Christ to be imputed to someone by faith in Christ.

How do you get around this? I mean, if you say that God is unjust for viewing us in Adam, federal headship, then you have to say that God is unjust for viewing us in Christ so that his righteousness becomes ours.

That's why we keep coming back to Romans 5. That's why we keep coming back to the fundamental exegetical nightmare of the traditionalist

Southern Baptists in Romans 5. That's why they can't walk through it. They cannot walk through that text and make any sense out of it at all.

They have to stop at the beginning, talk about Augustine, and then head for the hills. Because if you go past that, their whole thing collapses.

But here you have this idea. And I just think at this point the thought process shuts down.

It can't be that, and therefore, I'm just not going to listen to anything more. It just seems like that's where it shuts down for a lot of people.

And maybe even for Professor Flowers. And I'm pretty sure you don't want to hide that from people.

And I'm pretty sure Calvinists don't want to be disingenuous with people in any way by hiding what they really mean.

Y 'all have heard this before, right? Remember Jerry Walls? That's exactly what Jerry Walls said.

Jerry Walls just was more straightforward and said, no, this is what they're doing. This is exactly what they're doing. That they're hiding the real meaning.

And what we're saying is, you will not allow, you want to focus on the negative aspect and disassociate it from the positive aspect and hold to the positive aspect.

You still want to hold to the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, but you don't want to see the negative aspect of it.

You don't want to hold both of them together. You just want to focus on the one, not the other. The Bible doesn't allow that. When they say responsible.

And so I'm just trying to give more clarity to the word. What do you mean by responsibility when you use it?

And helping people when they hear that word to understand it from the Calvinistic perspective. The word predestination,

I think that needs to be distinct from election. Some people just put those two things together. I think there's a distinction between God's choice to use

Israel to bring the word to the world. I think there's a distinction between God's choice to send the message first to the

Jew and then to the Gentile. That's another choice that he makes in his election, in his redemptive plan.

I think there's a distinction between God's choice in his election to save whosoever believes that he doesn't have to do that.

He's not obligated to, just as the prodigal son's father is not obligated to take the son back when he comes. He could punish him.

He could banish him from his home. But he could choose to receive him if he wants to.

It's his choice to do that. I think that's an example of election. I think predestination's different.

I think predestination has to do with the same thing that Stephen Gregg says in his explanation, I think y 'all went over Ephesians, that God predestines those who are in him, the church, those who are in Christ, he predestines to become holy and blameless, which is sanctification, and to be adopted as sons, which is glorification, when our bodies are taken up to take residence with the one who has adopted us.

That's when our adoption is made complete. So I believe predestination is perseverance. And that's where Stephen Gregg and I would disagree, because I believe that's what predestination's all about, is that we have been sealed with the promised

Holy Spirit when we believed, and that's what's our guarantee that we will be saved, because God does regenerate us.

Now, we believe in faith and then regeneration, but we still believe in the effects of regeneration. We believe regeneration. Now, to catch that just in passing, we believe in faith and then regeneration.

So, those who are dead in sin, who have a heart of stone, are able to do what is pleasing to God, that is, have saving faith and repentance toward Christ.

There you go. Again, what you believe about man is very, very, very important.

The Bible says they're incapable, or as the flower says, fully capable. There you go.

Now, I'm sure he's got a way to say, well, Romans 8 really doesn't mean that. I mean, we saw, you know,

John 6. That doesn't have anything to do with us today. That was just the apostles. See, we don't, no man's able to come to me is just in those days.

Not today. So, maybe there's some way. Boy, it'd be scary, though, to think about for a second.

Romans 8, if Romans 8 isn't about today, God causes all things were good for people long ago.

Wow. You do wonder what's left for today at that point, but I won't speculate as to where we go from there.

He does change the heart and does begin a good work in us and he is faithful to complete that good work.

Now, just in passing, obviously, no one is confused about what the focus of the debate's going to be.

At least, I hope not. If the calling of Romans 9, if what we're talking about here is the privilege of being used as the means of communicating the message, is all

Romans 9 is talking about. That this has been taken away from Israel and now has been given to the

Gentiles and the message is going to go into all the world and so on and so forth. And again, the number of ways around Romans 9 are myriad.

Steve Gregg's is a weird way. I mean, it's a very odd way. It's not normative by any stretch of the imagination.

More normative is what Norm Geisler does with it. And the idea that this is talking about nations and this is the national privilege and so on and so forth, but if you want to talk about election unto service, go ahead and talk about it.

Because it's completely irrelevant to Romans 9. Because the real question is, why is

Paul addressing this here? And we know why. We know why.

He has just walked through the golden chain of redemption. He's talked about and there, calling, by the way, in the immediate context, the end of Romans chapter 8 is about salvation.

Those who are called, he then what? What's the next one? Justified. Justification is not salvific language.

Of course it is. Called, justified, glorified. Then you have the law court who will bring a charge against God's elect.

It is God who justifies. This is justification. This is election. This is 100 % soteriology.

Christ died, rose again, intercedes for them. Soteriology, soteriology, soteriology, all the way down the line.

And then, the question arises. Well, Paul, that's wonderful.

That's wonderful. Nothing can separate us from the love of God, which is in Jesus Christ. Wonderful. And what does

Paul say? First few verses. I am telling the truth in Christ. I am not lying. My conscience testifies to me in the

Holy Spirit that I have great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart. Why? For the national privileges of Israel?

For I can wish that I myself, I myself, were accursed, separated from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen, according to the flesh.

Hmm. So, has the soteriological context left? Right there, isn't it?

Who are Israelites, to whom belongs the adoption of sons, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the temple service, and the promises whose are the fathers, and from whom is the

Christ, according to the flesh, who is over all God, blessed forever. Amen. So, great privileges to his brethren, even the incarnation of God himself in the

Messiah, Jesus. And Paul says,

I have unceasing grief in my heart. I could wish to be cut off from Christ myself for their sakes.

And then he asks the real question. And people say, You're going to tell him exactly what you're going to say.

Yeah, might as well, because there's no way around this. I mean, you can come up with all sorts of...

I have absolute confidence in the clarity of the word of God, in the hearts and minds of God's people. So, I can send him my outline, if I had one yet, and it would be just fine.

But it is not as though the word of God has failed. We know exactly what the problem was.

Paul says, Look at all these things God has done in Jesus Christ. And he's got people who go,

Yeah, well, Paul, if it's all that great, how come only a small minority, in fact,

I'll use a term that he himself will use in Romans chapter 11, a small remnant, are embracing

Jesus as Messiah, the vast majority. It sounds,

Paul, like you're saying the word of God has failed. And Paul gives an answer.

And it's not about national privileges. It's not about Paul to be used by God in spreading the message.

Straightforward. For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel. What do you mean,

Paul? Paul's point is, well, look at the history of Israel.

God has always been free when it comes to the matter of grace.

He's always been free. He's never been constricted or limited by genetic relationship, by man's activities.

They're not all Israel who are descended from Israel. Nor are they all children because they're Abraham's descendants.

But through Isaac, your descendants will be named. Oh, well, is that fair?

Ah, see? Because we know what the climax here is going to be.

The objector is going to keep throwing objections until finally it's like, well,

God's unjust. Well, what's that all about? Would the objector really? And by the way,

Steve Gregg's understanding of the objector thing is about as idiosyncratic and weird as anything else

I've ever heard Steve Gregg say. So I'm really concerned. I was going to say, if folks want to listen to that debate in the store, it's number 517 or if they search 517 or search

Gregg, G -R -E -G -G, they'll be able to find all the entire thing put together.

So if he wants to say, I think like Steve Gregg does, then go there and hear the whole thing because it is quite the eye -opener.

I had to keep from throwing things. Well, especially the stuff on Romans 9. It was just extremely idiosyncratic.

Very, very odd. Way off the wall. Real quickly, because I just realized we're past 3 o 'clock.

I was not going to go this long. I apologize. No, I got stuff to do. That's why I say that. I wasn't going to do this today.

I have things I need to be writing. Anyway. By the way, real quickly, if you're in the

Southern California area, actually, I've not planned to be over there, but it looks like I will be in May.

We'll give you more information. Nor are they all children because they're

Abraham's descendants, but through Isaac your descendants will be called. That is, it is not the children of the flesh or the children of God, but the children of the promise are regarded as descendants.

So he's bringing something out that they themselves should have recognized. It's not a disputable point.

That is that God had the right to determine the path through which the promise and its fulfillment would go.

It wasn't dependent upon what human beings did. For this the word of promise, at this time

I will come and Sarah will have a son. None of this, but there is Rebecca also when she conceived twins by one man, our father

Isaac. I don't know how more clear I can get in this, but for though the twins were not yet born.

This has nothing to do with nations and calling to be used in the sense of evangelization.

It's just so obvious what it's about. That's why it's like, I can just, I just got to get out of the way of this text and let it just speak it clearly and it'll do its thing.

For though the twins were not yet born and had not done anything good or bad.

Why say this? Because the objector thinks that righteousness comes in a different way.

That it comes through one's lineal relationship with Abraham and that if Paul is right about this

Jesus thing then God's word has become void and Paul is saying no, no, no, that very word shows very plainly that God has always functioned this way.

That God has always had a remnant people and elect people and he chose and it had nothing to do with who they were.

Nothing to do at all. Though they were not yet born and had not done anything good or bad so that God's purpose according to his choice, his election might stand not because of works but because of him who calls.

Here you have all the phrases. Not of works. Is that not soteriological?

Professor Flowers? Are you really going to say well this is just God choosing he's electing unto service, he's electing unto being used to the proclamation of the gospel.

Do you really think that's what he's saying when he says not of works? But because of him who calls it was said to her the older will serve the younger just as written

Jacob I love but Esau I hated. Do you really do you really think that that language is about that kind of election?

The objector to Paul didn't think so because the very next line is there is no injustice with God is there?

Are they going to bring up issues of injustice about who gets to proclaim stuff? About privileges like that?

Is the rest of the language about hardening and mercying going to be used?

None of that could go through the whole thing. I don't have time. I'm out of time. I've gone far longer than I wanted to. I wanted to play more.

Sorry I had a computer problem. Let me just say this.

I'm looking forward to it. Now Professor Flowers I'll be perfectly honest with you.

You know I chuckled at the picture that somebody sent to you. Did you see the picture that was

I chuckled on one side. The other side I'm going hey yeah come on I'm not even when

I was not even in 2004 2005 was I that big? I mean come on.

And by the way I do want to announce I did challenge Professor Flowers to a metric century bike race in Dallas and he ran for the hills.

And he's 12 years younger than I am. So just thought I'd mention it in passing.

Okay you know just for whatever it's worth. Obviously just having a little fun there. I do intend

Lord willing if weather allows to get at least a couple metric centuries in there. So if any of you in the

Dallas area have some recommendations for some you know people will send you some bike paths.

I'm not looking for bike paths. When you're when I'm riding I'm riding about 20 between 20 and 22 miles per hour on the flats.

So you don't do that on a bike path where you're dodging people with chihuahuas. Hit a chihuahua and it's gone.

It's all over with. You don't even know that you hit it. Oh sorry about that. No that's you don't want people.

No. I'm talking about decent roads you know that have a shoulder and stuff like that.

Anyways sorry got off topic there. But my focus next week when

I go to Dallas is the truth and love conference and the speaking that I'm doing especially on the subject of homosexuality.

Yeah the debate's important. I don't do debates if I don't think they're important. But Professor Flowers I've debated this before with a wide variety of people.

It is not arrogant to have confidence. I've just seen how many times over the decades of my ministry just letting the word of God letting it go.

Letting it do its thing. I'm absolutely confident of what the results are going to be.

I want it to be clear. I want it to be useful. The George Bryson debate has been useful for many years.

And I want you to speak with clarity. I want your position to be clear.

But obviously I believe my prayer is that God will bless that time and that the truth of what

Romans 9 is saying will be made clear to even a larger number of people. But it's not my primary focus for that trip.

I'll just be perfectly honest with you. I think what we're facing in regards to the loss of our liberties and our freedom and the persecution that will soon be coming our way about standing strong in regards to homosexuality is a significantly more important thing.

So my focus is going to be much more on that. I'll be perfectly honest with you. But I do believe that what we'll be debating is directly relevant to that as well.

It drives me nuts when I see people on Twitter all the time saying I love your stuff. Just love your apologetic stuff.

That Calvinism stuff I can just leave it off the side. And I just go huh? You cannot see that absolutely central to everything

I do including to how I respond in regards to the subject of homosexuality is my reformed theology?

That's the bedrock? I don't get it. You're missing me if you think you can separate out my belief in God's absolute sovereignty from everything else that I do.

You're missing it. And it makes me wonder what you're hearing me say to be honest with you. I'm not talking about you,

Professor Fawkes, but people who make that kind of a thing. So I'm looking forward to it. I hope it's very well attended.

I have a feeling it will be. It's going to go quickly.

We are not going to answer every question that people are going to want to have asked and answered within that context.

But at the same time in light of the fact that you claim to be a former

Calvinist I think that one of the things that will be dealt with is definitions, what's really being said, and who's being consistent and balanced.

If that is brought out with clarity that's what's important to me. Now, I hope you will not play much because it won't work much on the you've done nearly 150 debates, this is my first debate type of a thing.

Yeah, Jerry Matitick's tried that. Very Matitick's did. All my books are still packed because I moved recently and all

I've had is a diet Pepsi while driving here and scribbling notes at stoplights on a yellow pad of paper saying, didn't work.

Didn't work. Not going to go there. So I'm looking forward to it.

Sorry I didn't get to more of the actual stuff. But went a lot longer than expected to.

Anyways, I hope it was useful to you. My plan is next week I am hold on a second,

I am I'm doing a radio program here locally on Monday.

I'm filling in for Michael Brown on Tuesday, the line of fire. So I'm actually sort of thinking about the only shot

I'm going to have here is to do like a mega program on Wednesday to continue the response.

We're at three hours right now. Maybe I can try to be, I can try to control myself enough to get two hours worth in on Wednesday in response to Dr.

Gushy who unfortunately said on Twitter this morning he does not have time to interact with us.

To which I responded, you know, I've got relatives in Atlanta. Macon isn't all that far south.

Rental car, easy. Let's do something to Mercer. I'll come to you. We'll see if my phone is ringing off the hook with the invitation for that.

But we will continue that one way or the other. And hopefully try to get it done so it will be five hours. Seems to be a nice round.

Five, Calvinist works. Tulips, hey, you know. We'll try to If I go to six hours we can just simply, you know, it's the stulip.