Response to Joseph Chambers on Limited Atonement

Or if you're out of the Metro Phoenix dialing area, it's 1 -888 -550 -1360. That's 1 -888 -550 -1360. And now with today's topic, here's James White.

Limited Atonement, Calvinism, and the Joseph Chambers Broadcast

And good afternoon and welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White and today if you looked at our internet site, you saw that yesterday afternoon I sort of in a rather rushed way put a brief announcement up saying that we are going to be having a debate today between myself and Joseph Chambers on the subject of limited atonement.

And that was based on the fact that I had received an email that indicated that on Joseph Chambers' radio program today, Open Bible Dialogue is the name, and you can access that program by the way. In fact, as I understand it, because I did this just a while ago, you can go on that website at any time and just bring up the program that aired today.

The website is www .pawcreek .org, P-A-W-C-R-E-E-K, pawcreek .org. And if you click on the little doohickey whopper there that says something about the radio program, the internet program, that takes you to a Broadcast America site and you can listen to the program.

And I received an email that indicated that today Dr. Chambers was going to be specifically addressing the doctrines of grace, the doctrines of Calvinism. And in the email, I was informed that of course he was going to be opposing those doctrines.

And so I emailed him and I said, we would very much like to have you on our program. The specific subject I was told he was going to be addressing was limited atonement. It was a little bit broader than that.

Anyone who's familiar with the subject knows that the vast majority of objections to limited atonement are actually objections to unconditional election, but be that as it may. So I emailed Dr. Chambers and I said, look, I would be glad to, if you'd be willing to, I'd be glad to call into your program and talk with you about it from a Reformed perspective and we would be more than happy to have you on our program.

And the email I got back was a positive one. Sure. Call in. Here's our number. I sent him the number for our program that he could call in. We were going to put him on the air, give him equal time to present his objections to limited atonement.

And so this morning at 10 a .m. our time, which would be noon Eastern time, I started trying to connect with the internet and listen to the program. And eventually I was able to hear portions of the program and then call in.

And in fact, if you would like to listen to the program, like I said, it's www .pawcreek .com. And what you can do is you can listen to that. You can either, you can do one of two things. You can either start from the beginning.

And my call comes in about 28 minutes into the program. Or you can just skip past all that and go directly to my call. Though actually I think the caller before me did a very admirable job in attempting to reason with Dr. Chambers on this issue.

And he said a number of things that we'll be talking about today during that call too. But you can listen in to the program at that point. Now you'll notice that by the fact that I don't have anyone on the air with me, Dr. Chambers did indicate when I called him that he wouldn't be calling today, that maybe he'd get back with me and maybe we'd arrange something in the future.

But even though I had gotten the indication yesterday that he would be on, he indicated today that he would not. Of course, if he's changed his mind, we'd be more than happy to have him on the program and to have him participate with us today.

But in his place, or with him not being here, I would like to talk today about what I would call fundamentalism. The fundamentalism that Joseph Chambers represents is a fundamentalism that is a King James only fundamentalism.

Some of you may, I remember yesterday when I put the topic line into our worldwide chat channel and indicated that we were going to be having this, everybody kept saying the same thing. And that was, who's Joseph Chambers?

And I had to keep giving the URL out to their site and explaining that I know Dr. Chambers because we were both on the John Ankerberg show in, I believe it was 1995, yes it was 1995, when we did the eight part King James only series on the John Ankerberg show.

And that particular program, we had invited the leading King James only advocates to be on. John Ankerberg had invited D .A. Waite to be on the program, D .A. Waite of the Bible for Today. Some of you may remember the programs that we did in response to him just recently.

And instead, he didn't come, but Thomas Strauss came and Thomas Strauss represented D .A. Waite's perspective. And we had invited Peter Ruckman to be on. That would have been really interesting. And he didn't come on, but Sam Gipp came on and represented the Peter Ruckman perspective.

And we did invite Gail Ripplinger to be on the program, but she wasn't interested in doing that. Instead, her representative, the person who represented Gail Ripplinger's perspective was a man by the name of Dr. Joseph Chambers.

And so Dr. Chambers was the one who defended and represented Gail Ripplinger's book, New Age Bible Versions, and her perspective on the John Ankerberg series. So Dr. Chambers is a King James only advocate and anyone, I think, who has watched the Ankerberg series well knows that and can judge for themselves whether the King James only advocates were able to hold their own or whether in point of fact it didn't work out that way.

But anyhow, that's how I knew Dr. Chambers and some might say, well, no, wait a minute. James, why would you even try to dialogue in this type of a situation? Well, if you go on the pawcreek .org webpage, you will see that this program, this two hour open Bible dialogue program is on a number of radio stations across primarily the southern United States.

And so that gives an opportunity, if there is an ear to hear, if there is a willingness to dialogue and to talk, that gives an opportunity to discuss something important. And I do believe, I do believe very much that this is a very important subject.

It's a subject that should be discussed and what I would like to do today, I would rather have Dr. Chambers on, but I took notes. I took notes and you can check the accuracy of my notes by listening to the broadcast, but I would like to respond to some of the common things that were said and I would like to do so because I believe it very clearly touched upon the gospel itself.

Tim LaHaye, Calvinism, and the Charge of Paganism

Now, guys, are we on the internet now? We are on the internet. You did it. Congratulations, Mr. Pierce. You are a monster. You are an animal. Were those the terms we were using, Warren? Monster, animal?

Those are the right words? Okay, good. All right. Well, then we welcome all of you who are now joining us via the internet and we would like to encourage your participation today, 602 -274 -1360, 1 -888 -550 -1360 are the phone numbers, 602 -274 -1360, 1 -888 -550 -1360.

And I would like to ask a special favor. There were some of our regulars in our worldwide chat channel and you keep hearing me mention that. You can go on our website, www .aomin .org and click on chat channel or chat room and take it over to follow that link over and you will be able to join our chat room.

And that is a place where there's a lot of good conversation. Sometimes it's just simply silly, but sometimes it's good, important stuff. And there were a few of you who were in the chat channel this morning when I mentioned what was going on.

And you were listening to the discussion that took place on the Dr. Chambers radio program. Maybe you would like to pick up the phone and dial 1 -888 -550 -1360 and give us your impressions of what took place in the few minutes that you heard that particular program.

Now one of the things I think many of you will find very interesting is, and this is fairly common, this is a fairly common objection, but Dr. Chambers began his program by discussing something that was said by Tim LaHaye, Dr. Tim LaHaye.

Now everybody today knows who Tim LaHaye is because you cannot get away from the Left Behind series. I filled in Thursday evening here on KPXQ during the Drive Time radio program and I don't know how many commercials ran during that program for the Tim LaHaye series, but the new ones coming out, The Mark or something like that.

Is that what it's called? The Mark? The Beast? I don't know what it is. Anyways, something's coming out. And big, big media promotion and I guess you can go at midnight and get the new book and all this stuff.

Twenty-five, thirty million books and all the rest of that stuff. Well, I finally did make a comment about it because it's built upon very questionable end time speculations to begin with. But it was interesting what Dr. Chambers said.

He said that he had written a little article called Whosoever Will. Whosoever Will is a very important phrase for Dr. Chambers and we'll be looking at that a little bit more later on. And he said he had gotten a phone call from Tim LaHaye and that Tim LaHaye had loved the article that he wanted to use it in a future book he was going to be writing on this subject.

What was the subject? The subject was Calvinism. And according to Dr. Chambers, Tim LaHaye says that Calvinism, the belief that God elects a certain people unto salvation, that the Calvinistic belief and the sovereignty of God and whatsoever takes place in time and history, is paganism.

It is in fact not at all different in any way, shape, or form from Islam and the Islamic belief that whatever Allah wills will take place. And so this came up more than once in Dr. Chambers' presentation today and I found that most interesting because of the fact that the scriptures themselves tell us that we are to say if the Lord wills and that's in the book of James and we read in Ephesians 1 .11 that God is the one who works all things after the counsel of his will and Dr. Chambers himself said well I just take the Bible literally, if it says all it means all, well he works all things after the counsel of his will is what Ephesians 1 .11 says.

And so I'm not really sure how that works, I would very much like to have some clarification on that to be certain. But twice he brought up the issue of Tim LaHaye, once in his own presentation and then when the first caller called in he said well what do you think about the fact that Dr. Tim LaHaye believes that limited atonement is nothing but paganism, it's the same thing the Muslims believe.

Deadness in Sin, the Bondage of the Will, and the Charge of Intellectualism

Now the first caller that did get in, I appreciated him, I don't know who he is, I don't know if he's listening today, if you'd like to call in if he is that would be fine. But he was doing the best you possibly can to present the Reformed perspective from a biblical perspective, a biblical basis and in the process something was said that truly caught my attention, I was on hold at that point, and that was that Dr. Chambers referred to the idea that God perniciously determined a people to send to hell.

Perniciously! The decree of election was described as being pernicious. Now one thing that was obvious throughout the discussion is that Dr. Chambers has not the foggiest idea what Reformed people believe concerning the deadness of man and sin.

The bondage of the will, the fact that man is a slave to sin, that God is sovereign over all things, man is dead in sin, man is the enemy of God, all these things, none of that ever entered into any of the responses that were offered to any of the verses that were directed to him.

Instead you had, and this is what many of us encounter when we attempt to explain the biblical doctrine of grace, when we attempt to explain to people why we believe that God is sovereign over all things, these are the kind of reactions that we get.

And what is interesting to me is that when the first caller and myself, when we both would try to correct Dr. Chambers, one of two things would happen, either we'd just simply get cut off, we would get overrun with a response that would go to a different passage that wouldn't deal with what we were saying.

Or something that was said twice, both to the first caller and to myself, had to do with the intellectualism of Calvinism. In point of fact, the first caller was attempting to provide a response when the man says, well you know, Dr. Chambers says, well you know, if you look at these passages you just have to twist it around with your intellectual ways of dealing with things.

When I was talking with Dr. Chambers I said to him, well Dr. Chambers we need to look at this passage, when I said that he said, now stop talking down to me now James, don't talk down to me. When we were on the Ankerberg show I thought you folks just talked down to us King James only believers the whole time, so don't talk down, let's be friendly.

And so calling him Dr. Chambers somehow indicated that I was talking down to him and it made me a very bad, terrible, horrible person. But there is this attitude in much of what we would call, not just King James only fundamentalism, but the fundamentalism that fears the examination of its beliefs.

Tradition, Sola Scriptura, and Roman Catholic Parallels

Now why do I say that? Well I asked Dr. Chambers at the end of our conversation, well Dr. Chambers could we do a debate on your program? Would you be willing to have someone on and we discuss this? No, no I'm not going to do that.

And I said, well you're welcome to come on our program, we'll do it, we'll put you on, we'll talk about it. Nope, nope, not going to do that. I'm not going to have you on our program, you can do what you want, but we're not going to promote false teaching.

And it's one thing to not promote false teaching, it's another thing to remain in willful ignorance of anyone else's viewpoint. And you see what results when you do that, and what we have in much of quote unquote fundamentalism today, is the absolute authority of tradition.

The absolute authority of tradition amongst those who would very quickly say that Roman Catholicism is wrong because it violates the Bible and it has its traditions and all these other things, and yet the thing that is amazing, and someone in the chat channel mentioned this when I was calling in or after I had been on the program briefly.

They said, you know, it's no easier to talk to these individuals than it is to talk to a staunch conservative traditionalist Roman Catholic. And you know what, they're exactly right. The fundamentalist can be just as much in violation of Sola Scriptura as the Roman Catholic who knowingly denies Sola Scriptura.

If you cannot allow your traditions to even be thought about, let alone examined in a fair and open way, if you cannot, if you fear in your own heart the examination of your traditional interpretations of Scripture, well what is the difference between you and the Roman Catholic who openly embraces traditions that override the teaching of Scripture?

At least you can deal with the fact that the Roman Catholic is open about it and saying, oh yeah, I deny Sola Scriptura, I believe in the necessity of tradition. You cannot deal with someone who will not separate their tradition from the text of Scripture itself.

So that as soon as you even begin to question their traditional interpretation, oh, you're just being intellectual and you're attacking the truth and that's a doctrine of demons and da-da-da-da-da-da, you cannot reason with such a person and such a person is not reasoning on the basis of Scripture itself.

When I attempted to get into a discussion with Dr. Chambers on biblical passages, every single time, that's what happened. When I would ask him, we looked at John 644, and I said, well, you know, he said, well whosoever will, and I said, well, we believe whosoever will, the question is, who will?

And Jesus said in John 644 that no one is able to come to him unless the Father who sent me draws him. And he says, well, God draws everybody. And I said, well, let's look at John 644, it says that all who are drawn are raised up on the last day.

He will raise him up on the last day, unless he draws him, they're the same him, can you explain to me why you think they're different hims? And the response was, well, you're just dismissing, you're eliminating out of the context any responsibility on the part of man to receive the drawing.

I wanted to ask, where do you find the phrase, receive the drawing? In point of fact, the amazing thing was, I kept, and this is where I got accused of talking down to him, I said, Dr. Chambers, you have to look at a passage of scripture and interpret it in its own context before you go to any other passage of scripture.

And he would not allow that to happen. The context of John 644 is the Son perfectly doing the will of the Father, the Father says, my will for you is that you lose none of those that I give to you. Well, there is no giving by the Father to the Son in an Arminian perspective, except maybe on foreseen faith, and then that makes that the action of man, not the action of God.

And so, there were these passages, he says, well, you see, you just don't believe whosoever will. You don't believe John 316, whosoever believes, and I tried, but was unsuccessful, to get him to say, no, wait a minute, Dr. Chambers, you look at John 316 again, and see that's what fundamentalism will not allow.

You can't look at John 316 again, because the traditional interpretation is a tradition, and if you question it, you're questioning the word, because the two are put together. The simple fact of the matter is, if you look at the text of John 316, there is no word in there that says whosoever.

It says, all the believing ones, all the ones who believe receive eternal life. Now, the only reason that English uses the term whosoever, is to try to communicate the underlying Greek text, which is telling us that every single one who believes, doesn't matter who they are, it doesn't matter if they're, if they're Jew or Greek, if they're male or female, bond or free, doesn't matter, whoever believes will have eternal life.

But you see, the traditional belief is that there's something in that phrase that communicates an ability to every single individual. And by not allowing us to examine that, or to even think about that, sola scriptura and the teaching of scripture is corrupted and overthrown.

You see, you have to be willing to answer the question. You believe this about John 316? Okay, let's look at the text and let's see if maybe, just possibly, you've heard it interpreted a certain way so many times, that you've come to accept that, not because the text says it, but just because of repeated exposure.

There's a huge difference between what the text actually says, and that is every person who is believing, that's a present tense participle by the way, same participle used in John chapter six, which describes the result of the giving of the Father to the Son, every single person believing will receive eternal life, whosoever they are.

There's a huge leap from going from there to the statement that, well, what's actually being said here is that there's no election. God isn't free. And what Jesus is saying here is whosoever, in the sense of every single human being, is by nature given the ability to believe.

Upon what basis in the text does that come from? It doesn't come from the text, it comes from tra-di-tion, tradition. And that's what keeps Joseph Chambers, and sadly, many, many people like him, from hearing what it is we're saying, and seeing the incredible inconsistency in their own position.

Because I'm sure Dr. Chambers would agree with me that Roman Catholicism is false teaching, it's false religion, and yet Dr. Chambers agrees with Rome against the Reformers on this very issue. And I'll bet you he's not even aware of it.

Not even aware of it. It's not something he's chosen in any way, shape, or form. He, again, made reference to the phrase, God is no respecter of persons. And you may have heard people urge that phrase as an objection to the Reformed position.

Well, God's no respecter of persons, there can be no election, because God's no respecter of persons. If God chooses a certain people, then he's a respecter of persons. How many of you have heard that?

Put your hands up. Okay, that's the majority of the students, the studio audience here. Didn't know we had a studio audience, did you Rich? No, he's not listening to me anyways. No one. No one's listening to me.

Why don't you just all call 602 -274 -1360, or 1 -888 -550 -1360 and let's talk about it. No. Seriously, how many people in the audience, you've heard that? You've heard people say, see, you're making God a respecter of persons.

It's actually the exact opposite if, again, you will examine your tradition. You may have a traditional interpretation of the phrase, God is no respecter of persons. But are you willing to examine the meaning of the phrase?

What does it mean to be a respecter of persons? Well, when you go back and you look at the way that phrase is used, what it's meaning is God does not do anything on the basis of being impressed by or moved by the actions of man.

There is no one who is better than someone else, someone who impresses God more, who is so important in and of themselves. There are no people who are more important than other people so that God is impressed by them rather than by somebody else and so because I'm smarter, stronger, more brilliant, or whatever it is, then I'm going to receive something from God.

That's what it means to be a respecter of persons. Well, I would say to you that's exactly what Arminianism teaches. If you move the basis of why one person is saved and another person is lost out of the realm of God's free mercy and grace and into the realm of the decisions of men, you're making God a respecter of persons.

Why is it in the Arminian scheme that one person exercises their free will to believe when another person does not? Allegedly, the Holy Spirit is wooing and convicting both evenly, so does it not then follow that the one who believes was in some way, shape, or form more sensitive on the spiritual level?

More willing to believe, more able to do spiritual things, whatever the situation might be? That makes God a respecter of persons. But when we say, as the Reformed person says, following the Biblical teaching, that God elects solely on the basis of his mercy and grace and not due to anything in the creature, not because of how much money you have or give to the church, not because of who you are, where you live, anything else, God's choice is completely independent of the creature and is based solely upon what God's mercy and grace determines, his right to bring about his own glory, then there is no respect of persons because the choice is not made on the basis of the persons.

So when we think about it, we actually work through the issue, we discover that the objection of the Arminian against the gospel of grace at that point, based upon the phrase, God is no respecter of persons, is an invalid objection.

And yet, it was very clear in the radio program today that there was no possibility of actually communicating that particular information to Dr. Chambers and to his listeners in the way of going back and forth and having a meaningful dialogue and discussion about it.

Free Will, Predestination, and the Authority of Scripture

Now we have two phone lines left open, we have two phone lines with people waiting, we'll get to you in just a moment, 602 -274 -1360 here locally, 1 -888 -550 -1360 is the phone number if you're outside the Phoenix dialing area.

It was very interesting when Dr. Chambers said, he said, you know what the difference between you and I are? And he was talking to the previous caller, you know what the difference between us is? You serve God because you have to because He chose you, I do it because I freely chose to serve Him.

Now again, there is absolutely positively nothing in the Reformed system, nothing at all to give that kind of a basis. No basis for that at all. And yet, do you hear the emphasis there and that is, I chose to serve Him.

It wasn't His grace that changed me first, I chose. How can He not say that God is a respecter of persons? Because you see, He standing before the throne of God someday as a saved person and another person in hell, they made different choices and His was the good one and that's why He gets to go to heaven.

So He was somehow better, wasn't He? I chose. Now the scriptures say, not only did God choose and then my coming to Him is the result of that, but what does He do with passages that talk about the fact that God has to take out our heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh?

When did that happen? Was it His stony heart that chose God? That's not what Paul says in Romans chapter 8 when he says, those who are at enmity with God, those who are in the flesh, cannot do what is pleasing to God.

Was it pleasing for God when He chose Him, chose God? Well, of course it would have been. Contradictions right and left. 602 -274 -1360, 1 -888 -550 -1360. We need to take our break and we'll be right back with Dennis, Patrick, and the rest of you right after these words.

A Reformed Response to a Roman Catholic Caller on Predestination and the Canon

And welcome back to Dividing Line. We have lots of interesting callers online, I'm looking forward to each one but I'd like to get to, try to keep a little bit of a consistency on the topic you're going for a moment anyways.

Talk to Dan in Rock Valley, Iowa. Dan, as I understand from what I'm seeing here on the screen, our super professional, high powered call screener, Warren, tells me that you listened to the Chamber's show.

Is that the case?

No, I didn't listen to the show. I was just listening to you describing the show on the internet just a little bit ago.

Alrighty then, so what's your comment?

My comment was, the last thing you said regarding Dr. Chambers was saying that you serve God, how was it that you said that, because you have to?

He said to the caller, he said to the Reformed person, he said, you serve God because you have to, because He chose you. I do it because I chose to serve Him. That's what he said to the caller.

Right, and my comment would be that if you take that standpoint, as Dr. Chambers does, then you would have reason to glorify yourself, because you did something, which I think the Bible clearly indicates that our salvation is 100 of God, and that we glorify Him because of that.

Well, and that is a constant theme of the Apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, verses 29 and following, he specifically says, if anyone's going to boast, let them boast in the Lord. Why? Because it is by His doing that you're in Christ Jesus.

And one of the main concerns that Paul has in Romans and Galatians is cutting out any ground, the Greek term is kalkasis, it is boasting. It is in any way, shape, or form bragging about what it is that we have accomplished.

There is no basis for boasting because the fact that salvation is completely and totally of grace. And Dr. Chambers would say, of course it's of grace, but he doesn't seem to realize that once you mix in the will of man in that way, you make grace dependent upon man's will, and that's not the saving, powerful grace that we have in the New Testament.

So that's quite true, and I picked up on that very quickly when he made those comments.

Yeah, I also wanted to mention, I've got the book The Potter's Freedom, and I've read that, and I just wanted to thank you for that, it's really blessed me a lot in understanding these different doctrines.

Well great, I appreciate that. Dan, I appreciate the fact that you've picked up that book and taken the opportunity to read it, it's doing real well right now, it's really getting out, and I would love to see some more discussions and dialogues take place as a result of that.

Thank you very much for being with us today on the program, and with that, let's go to Patrick in Tempe.

Patrick, how are you? I'm fine, not so thrilled though with some of the things I'm hearing on your program today. Alrighty. I'd kind of like to say that, you know, there is both...well, I'll say first, I'm a strong practicing Catholic, and we Catholics, believe it or not, if we believe what our Church teaches, do believe in predestination, and we also believe in free will.

I know that will come as a shock to many people, but it's another mystery. You know, there is God's omnipotent power operating throughout the universe and all that is, and there is also our free will, and by some mystery which we cannot understand, our free will, the choices we freely make, are somehow incorporated into God's perfect plan.

Now, to deny that would be just like denying that Jesus is God and man. A lot of people back in history decided that Jesus could only be one, but not the other, and every time somebody tried to pull that little stunt, they fell into, you know, the ash heap of history, tagged as one sort of a heretic or another.

Now, when you try to split free will and predestination, and not accept that we cannot understand all there is about God, and you try to separate the two, you end up falling into some kind of heresy.

And I... Well, of course, I would say it's semi-Pelagianism, which is the technical phrase that is used to describe the Roman Catholic system. Of course, I would identify semi-Pelagianism as a heresy, in the sense that it, in essence, makes God's grace dependent upon the function of the will of man for its final outcome.

And you're right, there have been Roman Catholics in history who have come down on both sides of the issue. Rome has never finally decided the exact nature of predestination, the exact nature of the will of man in regards to predestination, so on and so forth, though, allegedly, they could do so.

Though it is interesting, here you have a term, free will, that's introduced into the Western theological tradition by Tertullian, and it takes its place in the Western tradition after the time of the Apostles.

And that becomes, basically, a dogmatic belief, even though it's not a phrase, do you find, coming from the Apostles themselves.

Let me ask you this, have you ever bought a piece of computer software? All the time. Have you ever fully understood how to use it on the first day that you got it? Sure. You have? Sure. Have you ever bought Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Access and used it, and understood it completely.

The first day you got it? The problem is, A, there is no one who actually does understand either of those products fully, and B, we dare not parallel God with Bill Gates. There's a...

No, I wasn't doing that. My comparison is between, you know, getting, you know, as a human being, you're under the impression that any human being within his lifetime, within his own lifetime, because each human is his own scripture interpreter, is going to somehow be fully capable of understanding all that God has to say to us, and all that there is to know about God.

Well, there's a confusion there, Patrick, there's... No, there's no confusion. Yeah, yeah, there is. You're confusing two things. You're confusing an infallible and exhaustive knowledge with a sufficient knowledge, and the Bible is very clear in revealing to us the nature of the gospel.

You do not have to know everything there is to know about God, down to the minutest aspect of it. To know what the gospel is, that is a canard, it's a false argument. I am saying that the scriptures are plenty clear enough to communicate to us who God is and what salvation is.

It does not follow that I am saying that I or anyone else has perfect knowledge of everything that there is to know concerning the teaching of the Bible. Can you explain why that's not the case? Can you explain why Athanasius, the great bishop of Alexandria, said the scriptures are sufficient for the proclamation of the truth?

Why many of the early church fathers all said that the scriptures themselves are sufficient to lead us to a knowledge of God, and that they are the very things that give us the bulwark against heresy and false teaching, and why Peter himself said that the untaught and unstable distort the things that the Apostle Paul teaches to their own destruction?

Well, I would say that I'm speaking to somebody—forgive me for saying so—but I would say that that is the very nature of Protestantism, is people resting, twisting the scripture and distorting the scripture to their own destruction.

Well, Patrick, listen to the point that I'm making. If the untaught and unstable do that, then what can a taught and stable person do with the scriptures? Can they not preach them consistently? Can they not teach the scriptures in such a way as the elder in the church of God is able to bring the word of God to the people?

Of course, that's Peter's whole point. And so we don't need to have the bishop in Rome, we don't need to have a magisterium, we don't need to have some alleged tradition that teaches things as dogmas that are totally and completely unknown to any of the apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ or to him himself.

No, we do need to interpret the scripture in light of the continuous teaching of the church.

And where do you get that in scripture?

In fact, let me ask, where do you get scripture?

Scripture comes from the very mouth of God. It is called that which is the anustos, it is God speaking. Its origin and its source is God himself. And I would agree.

But from the origin to the destination, which is our eyes and our ears, it had to pass through some physical channel, and that channel is what we know as the Roman Catholic Church. That's not true.

That is completely and totally untrue. It's a historical fact. No, it's not a historical fact. And it's very easily disproven. How did the Roman Catholic Church... It's not easily disproven. How did Patrick...

It is a fact. Patrick, listen to me. How did the Roman Catholic Church bring to me the book of Isaiah, so that it was canonical scripture in the days of Jesus Christ, when there was no Roman Catholic Church, before a period of time long after that?