Response to Joseph Chambers on Limited Atonement

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Or if you're out of the Metro Phoenix dialing area, it's 1 -888 -550 -1360, that's 1 -888 -550 -1360.

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And now, with today's topic, here's James White. And good afternoon and welcome to The Dividing Line.

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My name is James White and today, if you looked at our internet site, you saw that yesterday afternoon,

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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.

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And that was based on the fact that I had received an email that indicated that on Joseph Chambers' radio program today,

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Open Bible Dialogue is the name, and you can access that program, by the way.

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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.

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The website is www .pawcreek .org, p -a -w -c -r -e -e -k .org,

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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

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Broadcast America site and you can listen to the program. And I received an email that indicated that today,

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Dr. Chambers was going to be specifically addressing the doctrines of grace, the doctrines of Calvinism.

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And in the email, I was informed that, of course, he was going to be opposing those doctrines.

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And so I emailed him and I said, we would very much like to have you on our program.

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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.

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So I emailed Dr. Chambers and I said, look, I would be glad to, if you'd be willing to,

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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.

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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.

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We were going to put him on the air, give him equal time to present his objections to limited atonement.

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And so this morning at 10 a .m. our time, which would be noon Eastern time,

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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.

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And in fact, if you would like to listen to the program, like I said, it's www .pawcreek .com.

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And what you can do is you can listen to that.

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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.

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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.

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Chambers on this issue. And he said a number of things that we'll be talking about today during that call, too.

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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,

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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.

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But even though I had gotten the indication yesterday that he would be on, he indicated today that he would not.

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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.

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But in his place, or with him not being here,

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I would like to talk today about what I would call fundamentalism.

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The fundamentalism that Joseph Chambers represents is a fundamentalism that is a

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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.

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And that was, who's Joseph Chambers? And I had to keep giving the

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URL out to their site and explaining that I know Dr. Chambers because we were both on the

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John Ankerberg show in, I believe it was 1995, yes it was 1995, when we did the eight part

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King James only series on the John Ankerberg show. And that particular program we had invited the leading

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King James only advocates to be on. John Ankerberg had invited

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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.

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And instead, he didn't come, but Thomas Strauss came and Thomas Strauss represented

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D .A. Waite's perspective. And we had invited Peter Ruckman to be on.

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That would have been really interesting. And he didn't come on, but Sam Gipp came on and represented the

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Peter Ruckman perspective. And we did invite Gail Ripplinger to be on the program, but she wasn't interested in doing that.

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Instead, her representative, the person who represented Gail Ripplinger's perspective was a man by the name of Dr.

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Joseph Chambers. And so Dr. Chambers was the one who defended and represented

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Gail Ripplinger's book, New Age Bible Versions, and her perspective on the

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John Ankerberg series. So Dr. Chambers is a

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King James only advocate and anyone, I think, who has watched the Ankerberg series well knows that and can judge for themselves whether the

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King James only advocates were able to hold their own or whether in point of fact it didn't work out that way.

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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?

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Well, if you go on the pawcreek .org webpage, you will see that this program, this two -hour open

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Bible dialogue program is on a number of radio stations across primarily the southern

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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.

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And I do believe, I do believe very much that this is a very important subject.

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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.

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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.

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Now guys, are we on the internet now? We are on the internet. You did it. Congratulations, Mr.

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Pierce. You are a monster. You are an animal. Were those the terms we were using, Warren? Monster, animal?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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Chambers began his program by discussing something that was said by Tim LaHaye, Dr.

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Tim LaHaye. Now everybody today knows who Tim LaHaye is because you cannot get away from the

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Left Behind series. I filled in Thursday evening here on KPXQ during the

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DriveTime radio program and I don't know how many commercials ran during that program for the

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Tim LaHaye series, but the new ones coming out, The Mark or something like that. Is that what it's called?

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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, 25, 30 million books and all the rest of that stuff.

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Well, I finally did make a comment about it because it's built upon very questionable end time speculations to begin with.

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But it was interesting what Dr. Chambers said. He said that he'd written a little article called

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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.

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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.

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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

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Calvinistic belief and the sovereignty of God and whatsoever takes place in time and history, is paganism.

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It is in fact not at all different in any way, shape, or form from Islam and the

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Islamic belief that whatever Allah wills will take place. And so this came up more than once in Dr.

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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

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Lord wills and that's in the book of James and we read in Ephesians 111 that God is the one who works all things after the counsel of his will and Dr.

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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

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Ephesians 111 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.

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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.

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Tim LaHaye believes that limited atonement is nothing but paganism it's the same thing the

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Muslims believe. Now the first caller that did get in I appreciated him I don't know who he is

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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.

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And in the process something was said that truly caught my attention

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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.

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Perniciously. The decree of election was described as being pernicious.

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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.

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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

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Dr. Chambers one of two things would happen either we just simply get cut off we would get overrun with a response that would go to a different passage wouldn't deal 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 was attempting to provide a response when when the man says well you know

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Dr. Chambers says well you know if you look at these passages you just have to twist it around with your your intellectual ways of dealing with things and when

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I was talking with Dr. Chambers I said to him what well Dr. Chambers we need to look at this passage when I said that he said now stop talking down to me now

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James don't talk don't talk down to me when we were on the Ankerberg show I thought you folks just talked down to us

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King James only believers the whole time so don't talk down let's be friendly and so calling him

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Dr. Chambers somehow indicated that was talking down to him it made me a very bad terrible horrible person but there is this 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 and why do

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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 could would you be willing to have someone on and we discuss this no no

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I'm not going to do that and I said well you're welcome to come on our program we'll we'll do it we'll put you on we'll talk about it nope nope not gonna do that I'm not gonna have you on our program you can do what you want but we're not gonna 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

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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

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I was calling in a 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

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Roman Catholic and you know what they're exactly right the the fundamentalist can be just as much in violation of Sola Scriptura as the

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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

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Roman Catholic who openly embraces traditions that override the teaching of Scripture at least you can deal with the fact that the

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Roman Catholic is open about it and 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 oh you're you're just being intellectual and you're attacking the truth and that's a doctrine of demons and 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

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I attempted to get into a discussion with Dr. Chambers on biblical passages every single time that's what happened when

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I would ask him we we looked at John 644 and I said well you know he said well whosoever will

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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

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Father sent me draws him and he says well gee 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 me why you think they're different hymns 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

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I wanted to ask where do you find the phrase receive the drawing in point of fact the amazing thing was

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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 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

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Arminian perspective except maybe on foreseen faith and then that makes that the 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

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John 316 whoever whosoever believes and I tried but was unsuccessful to get him to say no no wait a minute

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Dr. Chambers you could 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 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

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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

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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 6 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

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God isn't free and what Jesus is saying here is whosoever in the 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

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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

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Dr. Chambers would agree with me that Roman Catholicism is false teaching it's false religion and yet Dr.

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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

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God is no respecter of persons and you may have heard people urge that phrase as an objection to the reformed position well

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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 that's the majority of the students uh the studio audience here didn't know we had a studio audience you're rich no and 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

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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

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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 its meaning is

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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

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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 that's so because I'm smarter stronger more brilliant or whatever it is then

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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

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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

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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

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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

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God's choice is completely independent of the creature and is based solely upon what

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God's mercy and grace determines is 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 actually work through the issue we discover that the objection of the

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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.

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Chambers and to his listeners in the way of going back and forth and having a meaningful dialogue and discussion about it 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

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Phoenix dialing area it was very interesting when Dr.

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Chambers said he said you know the difference between you and I and he was talking to the previous caller you know the difference between us is you serve

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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

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I chose to serve him it wasn't his grace that changed me first I chose how can he not say then

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God is a respecter of persons because you see he standing before the throne of God someday as a saved person 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

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I chose now the scriptures say not only did

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God choose and then my coming to him as 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 you chose

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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

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God well of course it would have been contradictions right and left 602 -274 -1361 -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 and welcome back to dividing line we have lots of interesting callers online

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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

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I'm seeing here on the screen our super professional high -powered call screener

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Warren tells me that you listened to the Chambers show is that the case no I didn't listen to the show

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I was just listening to you describing the show on the internet a little bit ago all righty then so what's your what's your comment well my comment was was the last thing you said regarding Dr.

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Chambers was saying that you serve God see how was that you said that because you you have to he said he he said to the caller he said to the reformed person he said you serve

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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.

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Chambers does then you would have reason to glorify yourself because you did something which

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I think the Bible clearly indicates that our salvation is 100 % of God yes and that we glorify him because of that well and that is a constant theme of the

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Apostle Paul in first Corinthians chapter 1 verses 29 and following he specifically says if anyone's going to boast let him boast in the

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Lord why because it is by his doing that you're in Christ Jesus right and one of the main concerns that Paul has in Romans and Galatians is cutting out any ground the the

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Greek term is Caucasus it is it is boasting it is 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.

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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

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New Testament so that's that's quite true and and I picked up on that very quickly when he made those comments yeah that I also wanted to mention

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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 blessed me a lot and in understanding these different doctrines well great

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I appreciate that Dan I appreciate the fact that you picked up that book and taking 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

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I'm fine um not so not so thrilled though with some of the things

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I'm hearing on your program today all righty um I'd kind of like to say that you know there is both well

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I'll say first I'm a strong practicing Catholic um and we

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Catholics believe it or not um if we believe what our teaches do believe in predestination and we also believe in free will

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I know that will come as a shock to many people um but it's it's another mystery you know there is um

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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

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God and man a lot of people back in history um 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

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I would say it's semi -pelagianism which is the technical phrase that is used to describe the Roman Catholic system of course

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I would identify semi -pelagianism as a heresy in the sense that it's in essence makes

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God's grace dependent upon the function of the will of man for its final outcome and you're right there have been

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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 of the will of man 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

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Western theological tradition by Tertullian and it takes its place in the

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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

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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

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Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Access 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 uh there's a funny my comparison is between you know getting you know as a human being um you're under the impression that any human being within his lifetime within his own lifetime because each human is his own scripture interpreter um is going to somehow be fully capable of understanding all that God has to say to us well you know all that there is to know about God well there's there's a confusion there

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Patrick there's there's no yeah yeah there is you're you're confusing two things you're confusing an infallible and exhaustive knowledge with a sufficient knowledge and the

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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 that is a a canard it's a it's a false argument

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I am saying that the scriptures are plenty clear enough to communicate to us who

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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

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Bible can you uh explain why that's not so the case well can you explain why you can why can you explain why

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Athanasius the great archbishop of Alexandria said the scriptures are sufficient for the proclamation of the truth why many of the early church fathers all said that the the scriptures themselves are sufficient to lead us to a knowledge of God and that they are the very things that give us the the bulwark against heresy and false teaching and why

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Peter himself said that they all the untaught and unstable distort the things that the apostle

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Paul teaches their own destruction well I would say that I'm speaking of the very nature of protestantism well people resting you know twisting the scripture and distorting the scripture well who would do their own destruction

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Patrick Patrick who would listen 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 it's a

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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

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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 to where and where do you where do you get that in scripture in fact let me let me ask where do you get scripture scripture comes from the from the very mouth of God is called that which is they honest us it is

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God speaking its origin 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

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Roman Catholic Church that's not true that is completely and totally untrue what no it's not a historical fact and it's and it's very easily disproven how did the

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Roman Catholic Church how did Patrick listen to me how did the

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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

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Roman Catholic Church before a period of time long after that well the

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Catholic Church is an expansion of God's ongoing covenant with people of this earth oh so the

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Jews were the Roman Catholic Church of that day well the Jews were the people of God's covenant of that and so so they were the ones who then had

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God's authority to determine the canon of scripture yes at that time they did okay then why did the

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Jews reject your canon of scripture well the Jews rejected the deuterocanonical books at the

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Council of Jamnia about the year 100 when they also rejected whatever was in vogue at that time of the

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New Testament that's a that's a very common misconception but not only was there not a Council of Jamnia to begin with but secondly when we look at the books that the

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Jews laid up in the temple as men as long as a century before the time the Lord Jesus Christ they did not include those books the

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Jews never accepted the books of the Council of Trent in 1546 made canonical and in point of fact

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Athanasius rejected them Jerome rejected them Melito Sardis rejected them

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Pope Gregory the Great rejected them and all the way up to the time of the Reformation Cardinal Cayetan who interviewed

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Luther likewise rejected them and and and Luther rejected Revelation and James another very common misconception that you really need to need to get back into your history and find out what what really went on there since he did not reject them and did not he did not believe he did not believe he had the authority to determine the canon

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Patrick that's that's just not the case no he did not he wanted he wanted those books out of there did he remove them it's common knowledge well common knowledge when we when we don't have any facts to back is that we call it common knowledge

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Patrick you've got to stop reading this rock and envoy and start reading some really scholarly stuff that actually deals with the issues but let's go back to what saying about sola scriptura council of carthage ad 397 what we know as the roman catholic church bishops you know people with the title of bishops people presiding over priests they got together and they decided which 27 books would make up what we know as the new testament that's a historical fact it is a historical fact that the councils of carthage and hippo a new testament canon was promulgated it is not a historical fact that a that was the first time and point of fact athanasius himself had promulgated the same canon many years earlier in his 39th festal letter in 369 he also in the same 39th festal letter rejected the deuterocanonical books beyond that carthage and hippo in your own theology are not ecumenical councils and your own no they were not no roman catholic theologian anywhere will tell you that carthage and hippo were ecumenical councils they are not considered by the roman catholic church to be universal councils and if you will look at your own theologians they will tell you that the first dogmatic infallible decree concerning the canon of scripture is from the council of trent in 1546 look it up man it's a simple fact listen to the debate that i did with jerry matatix at boston college in front of a group of priests and monks and they all agreed with that maybe you just haven't been looking at the right information my friend the fact remains whether it was ecumenical or not it was the catholic church that put together the canon of the new testament which is you know you got the bible from us no we did not yes you did no well let me let me ask you let me ask you if that's the tie onto your head patrick if that's the case then why did pope gregory the great reject the apocryphal books i don't know that he did yes well that's that is admitted that again that again is admitted by roman catholic historians look at the new catholic encyclopedia it admits this is a fact of history he obviously did not believe carthage and hippo were infallible and i do not believe that those individuals at carthage and hippo were quote unquote roman catholics they would never have understood the phrase and you know why they would never understood the phrase because they were led by a man by the name of augustine remember him i remember him very well and augustine said these words whether they the donatus hold the church they must show by the canonical books of the divine scriptures alone for we do not say that we must be believed because we are in the church of christ because optatus of malevi or ambrose of milan or innumerable other bishops of our communion commended that church to which we belong or because it is extolled by the councils of our colleagues or because through the whole world and the holy places with those of our communion frequent such wonderful answers to prayers or cures happen whatever things of this kind take place in the catholic church are therefore to be approved of because they take place in the but it is not proved to be the catholic church because these things happen in it the lord jesus himself when he had risen from the dead judged that his disciples were to be convinced by the testimonies of the law and the prophets and the psalms these are the proofs these the foundations these the supports for our cause he goes to scripture to prove the catholic church of his day and that was not the roman catholic church because this very same bishop of the church in north africa rejected the demands of zosimus the bishop of rome to reinstate pelagius and celestius as heretics now would a bishop today when the pope in rome commanding on the basis of his position as the apostolic successor of peter would a bishop today be a bishop of the roman catholic church if he rejected what the pope said when he made that kind of claim yes or no sadly enough we do we do find some bishops who you know get a little out of line so was augustine a little bit i want augustine also said he would not i can't remember the exact quote but he did say something to the effect he would not believe the gospel were there not the church there and and he said whoever will not have the church for his mother does not have god for his father and patrick if you will read those passages in their context as i have and it's quite evidently you have not if you would read them in their context it would not be supportive of modern roman catholic teaching the simple fact the matter is the church in those days the church of nicaea go to our website we did a debate on this on the website the church of nicaea is not the roman catholic church it is all of history says that you know whatever christianity is you know it's the roman catholic church that is a statement of faith not of fact my friend cardinal newman said you know to be deep in history is to cease to be protestant and that and isn't it fascinating and isn't it fascinating patrick that the very same cardinal newman opposed the definition of papal infallibility at the vatican council and that the very same cardinal newman after that definition was given had to go back and rewrite everything he had written concerning bishop honorius the pope of rome who was condemned as a heretic by the sixth ecumenical council to go deep into history is to cease to believe the modern fairy tales that rome has dogmatized this you're quoting a man and you don't even know the background of the statement that he was making why if he was right about that did he have to go back and rewrite his own works about history to make them fit with the new dogma can you tell me that i'm not i'm not familiar with that i'm not going to comment on something that i'm not aware of but you just quote you just quoted newman and you have no idea what context he was speaking in do you he was speaking in the context of his conversion to the catholic church did he write that before after vatican one you have no no no knowledge that do you i've just heard it so you just heard okay patrick i would really really encourage you you need to listen to both sides you've only heard one side you haven't heard the other side i read books by protestants all the time what what books have you read because there's lousy patrick let me tell you something just as there is lousy lousy writing from roman catholics there is lousy writing from protestants yeah people like r .c.

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sprawl i suppose no not at all james white and people like that yeah those are the books i read okay and what have you read can you name them uh not by faith alone by r .c.

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sprawl okay i'm looking at my bookshelf now i've got and have you listened almost positive i've got something of yours on this shelf somewhere among have you listened to any of the debates have you listened to the yeah i've listened to i've listened to you beaten in a debate with um catholics yes who i've i've written oh here's a book sola scriptura the protestant position on the bible i have one chapter in there yes you do um and i can you can you refute uh the citations i provided there well okay not instantly on the air i can't flip the book open and read the book and refute right what's in it who was who was who is this catholic who is this catholic patrick who allegedly defeated me um and what was the subject i believe i've got to grab the tape but i mean i've heard you know you don't even remember what the subject was the bible answer man debate that wasn't a debate i've never had a debate on there james aiken tim staples twice those weren't even debates have you listened to any debate where both sides have the same amount of time if you listen to debate with the seven and a half hour debate with jerry and i know what's happened in history and i've when here's what's really you know what's really revealing is when i read books by former protestants who've become catholic what they say about protestantism turns out to be what protestantism says about itself when i read books by protestants refuting or trying to refute catholicism what they say about catholicism is you know misperceptions and misunderstandings about what the catholic church teaches well that's it that's a very vague accusation can you be specific um i mean so far so far patrick you've got to admit all the protestant writers i've read say the catholics believe in salvation by works or some merit -based works you know catholics believe catholics believe that the death of jesus christ merits grace that justification takes place the labor of justification according to the council of trend and that you are justified when you enter into the state of grace through baptism that this grace is infused into that causes you to be pleasing toward god and you can do good works in the state of grace that are then meritorious in god's sight if you commit a mortal sin you lose the grace of justification must go through the sacrament of penance to receive the remission of the eternal punishment of your sin as well as good works that you can do to receive the remission of the temporal punishments of your sin if you commit a venial sin the grace of justification is not destroyed but instead you collect the temporal punishments of sin which is why there needs to be a purgatory and where you go through sadas passio to receive the remission of those sins if you had read any of my books on the subject you would know that some of us bend over backwards to accurately represent what the roman catholic church teaches and patrick it has been self -evident in this conversation that a the quote unquote facts you present you've heard in some context you don't know where they came from you don't know what their contexts are and you have never listened you've never taken the time to listen to what the other side says in response to it and patrick since i am consistent in saying to protestants that they need to examine their traditions and they need to use good arguments then i'm on really good ground to say to you patrick you need to do the same thing you have accepted bad argumentation i don't believe you have heard any of the formal debates you can't tell me who they were with you can't tell what the context was a radio program is not a formal debate i would invite you to listen to the seven and a half hour debate with jerry maditax on the papacy the three and a half hour debate with mitchell paqua on the papacy listen to the two debates we just did with timothy staples and robert singenis on the subject of papal infallibility contact us let us send them to you because they're very very important subjects patrick thank you very much we had you on for a long long time and i apologize to our other callers we did not have an opportunity to get to you the music in the background tells me we are out of time but i felt that was important to discuss it because in reality if you believe in sola scriptura you will believe in predestination election because it is the only the only possible result of exegeting all of scripture and only scripture and so in that situation with roman catholicism it goes back to the authority of scripture itself uh dennis sorry we didn't get to you pierre johnny hey we're back again next week please uh keep your questions ready be willing to participate one more time and i appreciate all of you who were listening today i hope the discussion was useful to you and i pray that you will understand why we believe in the scriptures alone if you'd like to contact us call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at p .o

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that's aomin .org where you'll find a complete listing of james white's books tapes debates and tracks join us again next saturday afternoon at 2 p .m