Radio Free Geneva: James McCarthy's Sermon on Calvinism

And welcome to another edition of Radio Free Geneva, right here before the

Christmas holiday. It's sort of our gift to you. And probably as I was queuing up the material today, we're going to have to go for a jumbo anyways.

So our gift to all of those rabid Calvinists out there that your heart starts racing when you hear the opening theme of A Mighty Fortress.

But as I mentioned last time, this is not so much because we have a sermon or a talk to review, like so many that are misrepresentational.

I'm not saying it's perfectly representational. But the reason that I decided to address this particular text, this particular sermon, is because the fact there's actually something a little bit different, a little bit out of the ordinary in the approach that is taken by the author

James G. McCarthy, who many of you know, has written on the subject of Roman Catholicism.

And hence, it's a little bit similar to how I began my interview with Dave Hunt many, many, many, many, many, many years ago now.

In the year 2000, right after we all somehow survived Y2K, civilization had returned to normal.

A lot of people had a lot of extra canned goods, but other than that, things gone pretty well. And so a few people moved out of town.

But anyhow, we got back going and I interviewed

Dave Hunt on KPXQ here in Phoenix. I was filling in for Marty Minto.

Yes, the Marty Minto, one of the best known radio talk show hosts and the last radio talk show host we had here in Phoenix.

It was actually interesting to listen to on a Christian radio station. But anyway, we were,

I just, I asked Dave Hunt right at the beginning of the program, you know, you and I both do a lot in response to Roman Catholicism and the

James McCarthy response to Roman Catholicism. And of course, from my perspective, one of the primary issues the

Reformation is brought out in the debate between Martin Luther and Desiderius Erasmus on this very issue.

And to me, it seems monergism and synergism, monergism being the idea that salvation is all the work of God.

It's not a cooperative effort where God tries and man sort of enables him by his actions to accomplish his desire for salvation.

That's a synergistic perspective, not a syncretistic perspective in case George Bryson's listening and is still confused about that subject.

There's a difference between syncretistic and synergistic that is lost on the good George Bryson.

But anyway, monergism, I am a monergist. I believe that regeneration is brought about solely by the act of God.

It is not that it's partly God's effort and then man's effort determines whether God will be successful or not.

It is the work of God. And I see that as absolutely definitional to the best elements of the

Reformation in response to Roman Catholicism, and I believe that the strongest responses to Roman Catholicism are offered by Reformed folks, by monergists, not by synergists.

And so, last year I was directed to a book that had been published by James McCarthy called

John Calvin Goes to Berkeley. And I think,

I'm pretty certain, Algo could tell us exactly what time it was, what the weather was, what

I was wearing, and where the stock market was when I actually did make some comments on the program concerning that particular book.

And I remember, I know it was not actually in 2009, it was in 2010, it was 2009.

Had to have been because I remember when I was listening to it and it was toward the end of the year in 2009.

So anyway, I was directed to this sermon.

And in fact, I'm thinking now, yes, this sermon was actually sent to me in email.

I would have posted a URL so y 'all could have listened to this earlier.

But I even went on iTunes to try to find it, and I couldn't find it. So it was sent to me.

And in fact, it was sent to me from a second party, but that second party got it directly from James McCarthy who said, feel free to send it to James White.

So I listened to it while doing an inside ride, interestingly enough, due to the weather, and decided that it would be well worth our time to go ahead and take a look at it.

I guess let's take a listen to it. Because the fact that first of all, we together stand against Rome, we defend

Sola Scriptura, and so we can go to the scriptures as the foundation for answering the questions that would be raised in this disagreement that we have over this issue of Reformed theology.

And James McCarthy says some very nice things about us at the beginning of the program.

Beginning of the sermon, I should say. In fact, let's take a listen to what he says right here at the beginning of the program.

I'm not a Calvinist, but I'll have to say that within the spectrum of Christians in the world today,

I think I feel most comfortable with those who consider themselves Calvinists.

Because they are people who stand for the inerrancy of God's word. They are people of conviction.

They are people willing to stand up and criticize works salvation.

They are people who have a high view of the person of God and of holiness and separation and many other really very good doctrines.

I really appreciate people like John MacArthur and R .C. Sproul, John Piper.

These are our brothers. Now, I disagree with them very strongly on some issues.

But I want to say within the spectrum of Christians today, at least

I have and I believe most of you have an awful lot in common with those who would declare themselves as Calvinists.

I know that's not the position of this church, so feel free to say that. Even though most of us would not agree with them,

I hope most of us don't see them as our opponent or people who are false teachers and put them in a category where we need to fight against them or something.

The truth be known, the other side of the spectrum, those who are called Arminians, tend to be more of the liberal church.

And there is a reason for that, if you go back to the 16th century, John Calvin was a

Roman Catholic living in France, who was a very young man, a very astute man.

The conversion experience, if you go back in history and try to read about his conversion experience, it's very hard to find.

It's just kind of one of those puzzles of history that probably the greatest teacher of the

Protestant Reformation, it's kind of hard to figure out when he himself got saved.

He got involved in a Bible study at the University of Paris. He was studying for the priesthood originally, and things weren't going well, and he moved to law, and got involved in a

New Testament study that started opening up his mind. Some of the people in that study became very vocal against the

Catholic Church. Some of them got arrested, and John Calvin fled. And within a very short period of time after that, he wrote the

Institutes of the Christian Religion, which became the most influential book of the

Protestant Reformation. I think he was about 26 when he wrote the first edition. So this is a very astute man, and he lived a very disciplined, focused life.

If any of us, none of us really could hold a candle to John Calvin in terms of his studies, his dedication to the

Lord, the kind of holy life he would have led, how hard he worked. But we're not here to exalt men.

And I really think one of the keys to this whole controversy, and it's a huge controversy, it's leading churches, it's separating friends.

I think one of the keys to this is go to the scriptures, don't go to Calvin's Institutes, don't go to the writings of the

Barmenians for your life. Okay, so there's some of the good things at the beginning of the sermon. And I think he probably recognizes that Reformed folks tend to be significantly more focused upon the issues that are most important in regards to Roman Catholicism, and he's very focused upon Roman Catholicism.

We're the first ones to bat in defending sola scriptura, tend to have much more of a view of church history than Arminians do, and hence will dispute

Roman Catholic abuse, anachronistic abuse of the early church, and all those things.

So I think he sees that. But at the same time, you also have comments being made in this sermon, which is what draws us to it, such as this.

Where does scripture teach? The gods predetermine who will be saved and who will not. There's a verse in the

Bible that teaches that. I'd propose to you that there isn't even a verse that says he's chosen anybody for salvation anywhere.

In fact, if you take the strongest verses of Calvinism, I'd propose to you that every one of them is taken out of context.

Every single one, every single verse that we've brought up, according to James McCarthy, has been taken out of context.

That's a pretty amazing statement, and then a little bit later on he says... Now, I'd propose to you, if you start looking at verses in context, you're going to find there isn't a single verse that teaches what the five -point

Calvinists say they teach. They've got great proof texts, but once you put them back in context, they disappear.

Well, pretty hard to substantiate that in light of the books that have been written that are primarily exegetical and contextual in nature.

But that's where we're going here. That's what the whole reason for doing Radio Free Geneva is here.

If there wasn't any disagreement, then we wouldn't be doing the program at all anyways. All of our texts are out of context.

Well, how can that be? This wasn't all that long of a sermon. It's barely a little over an hour long, and given that there's a lot of stuff at the beginning, there's only a few texts that are actually dealt with to any depth.

But, one of them is John 6, and one of the primary reasons that caught my attention, of course, is

I have sort of made it a hobby over the years to collect various interesting interpretations of John chapter 6.

And so, having done that, we have listened to what

Brother McCarthy has to say and want to respond to it contextually on the basis of the original languages.

And that's what we'll be doing in the program today. I hope it is edifying to you and helpful to you as well.

So let's dive into this. About 12 minutes into the program, into,

I'm sorry, into the sermon, we started getting into at least some of the theology that Mr.

McCarthy is presenting as being biblical theology. Now, one of the things that, and he did say it right toward the end, he's going to say it a little bit later on as well, one of the things that concerned me a little bit, and I did sort of warn you all about this, is that there is an element of dispensationalism in Mr.

McCarthy's approach. And one of the mechanisms that he uses to get around what have been classically understood as Reformed texts is to rely upon a dispensational hermeneutic that I think is very foreign to the text, and we'll have to address that when it, when it comes up.

But that also seems to be tied into, it seems to be very common for dispensationalists to likewise say, look, you just need to lay aside what everyone has said beforehand, just go to the

Bible. Well, no one can do that. That's not, and I don't consider that to be wise.

That is jumping down off of the backs of the giants that have gone before us and basically saying, well, let's start all anew.

Let's ignore the collected wisdom of all of everyone who's come before. Now, I'm not saying that that collected wisdom needs to be added to Scripture.

But the fact of the matter is that so much of what we have to do on Radio Free Geneva is undoing ignorance on the part of those who oppose

Reformed theology because they won't take the time to find out what preceding generations have done. And so, it's, it's back to ground zero.

And so much of the, of the arguments have been answered thoroughly, truthfully, accurately in the past, but because people don't take the time to, to look at that and somehow feel like, well, you know, those people in the past, they didn't have iPads and they didn't have iPhones and they didn't have computers, they didn't have accordance or Bible works or whatever.

What can they, what kind of insight could they possibly have? Well, there is a, there is a balance that needs to be kept here.

And the me and my Bible underneath the tree, no creed but Christ thing over on the one side where you just go, hey,

I don't need to, I don't need to worry about what anyone else has ever thought. I'm, I'm wise enough to figure this out on my own. And then, of course, on the other side, you've got the, you know, the

Roman Catholics and their, you know, the church in the midst of time and the danger of you reading the scriptures.

And there is a, there is a balance that has to be struck. And it is a balance that I think we can maintain as long as we are very quick to defend solo scriptura and to recognize the, the fundamental difference in the nature of that which is the which is

God breathed and anything else. And is it, is it something that we are constantly having to be looking at and examining and making sure we're maintaining our balance?

Yes, it is. It's not an easy thing to do, but it is, I think, an important thing to do.

So with that said, let's dive into what Brother McCarthy had to say.

We'll be saved. And if you go away with one thing today, I hope it's this. You don't have to be a

Calvinist. You don't have to be an Ardominian. You don't have to be opposed to either of them.

There are other options. In fact. And this is why

I suggest the terminology of monergism versus synergism. Because that really wraps things up.

There's, there's a ton of variety in the synergistic camp, but the dividing line is between monergism and synergism.

Now, are there differences amongst monergists? Well, not nearly as many, not nearly as many.

There are some. There are monergists that, that I, I'm certainly not going to partner with and going to put myself with.

You know, the hyper -Calvinists or something like that, despite, you know, the lies of folks down South that I am one.

But other than those odd folks, there's not a whole lot of difference on the monergistic side.

But boy, are there, there's a huge spectrum on the synergistic side.

But that's really the dividing line. That really is the dividing line in this issue is between monergism and synergism.

And so if you want to say, well, there's other options other than Arminianism, well, if you, if you say so, depends on what you're, what you're talking about, how you define things.

It eventually boils down to asking the question, does God save freely to his own glory?

Or does God try to save and the determining factor is supplied by the will of man?

That really is the issue. That really is the question. You can, you can understand this matter without knowing anything about Calvinism, Arminianism.

And I mean, that may sound a little bit radical. In fact, I would go so far as to say, the less you know about them, the better chance you're going to have of understanding.

You see, I cannot even begin to agree with that. That's just not true. That, that's basically looking back at the past and saying nobody ever had anything meaningful to say here.

And I, in utter ignorance of everything that's been said before, can come to a better conclusion in my ignorance than if I was, than if I was actually informed.

Now, there can be an overabundance of information and not everyone in the past who's commented on the subject, not everyone's opinion is equally valid or worthwhile.

I mean, you can be overwhelmed with all the different viewpoints as well. So a balance has to be struck.

But I don't think ignorance is the best balance to look for. Because as much as I can tell you, we should respect both men.

Having come from a Catholic background myself, I'm a little suspect of anybody who has raised

Roman Catholicism, like John Calvin, who doesn't have virtually anybody to study under, doesn't have a single good commoner to reach for, who at the age of 26 has had to figure out not just how is a person saved, but the whole scope of theology.

That's what Calvin's Institutes covers. Well, small corrective here, a couple correctives, maybe not even a small corrective, major corrective.

It sounds a little bit to me like Brother McCarthy has fallen into the there was nothing good before the

Reformation trap. And there was. Even in the medieval period, there were people who had meaningful insights and certainly in the early church there were as well.

And Calvin knew them very, very well. It amazes some of us to think of how much the man knew at a young age and how wide his learning was in classical learning, in the early, early writings and so on and so forth.

But these folks were not nearly as distracted with things as we are, I'm afraid. So and secondly, the edition of the

Institutes that Calvin first wrote was not nearly the size of the 1559 edition that most people would be familiar with today.

Certainly the the outlines are there and in no way am I attempting to take away anything from what

Calvin accomplished at a very young age. But it did grow over time.

And the edition of the Institutes that you'd be reading today is substantially larger, fuller and more mature than the original

Institutes as they were originally written. He kept adding to them. And what you're reading today primarily is a translation of the 1559

Latin edition of Calvin's Institutes. I believe, if I recall correctly, it's been a while since I've checked this.

If I recall correctly, he put out a French edition after 1559, before his death in 1564, which is frequently referenced in footnotes, as I recall.

It's a systematic theology of everything. Now, how does a 26 -year -old do that?

I mean, he was obviously had his shoulders over me and probably most of you. But I mean, he's still a man.

And he was still taught all kinds of wrong things. It's all he knew.

He was a man of his time like anybody. I know when I got saved in 1975,

I was 23. And I remember there was a young fellow coming to our Bible study, but saved four years.

We thought, this guy is so mature as a Christian, you know. And after about a year or two, we kind of felt like,

OK, we understand the Bible. OK, well, a lot of times gone by since then. And I'm still trying to figure things out.

I'm only, you know how it is, though, the more you learn. Let me just mention, I think that's one of the reasons why you need, why you if you are a part of a church that is a mature church and has mature believers and mature leadership, there's a good reason to be thankful for that.

Because you get to have a model, you get to have, you get to draw insights from those individuals on a regular basis.

If you're just part of a quote unquote Bible study in somebody's home. Well, God bless you. I'm glad you've got that.

But I think you can realize from the comment that was just made there that there's there's better to be had.

And if you've got that to be very, very thankful for it. The more you realize how little you knew. And I'm glad I didn't write a commentary of the whole

Christian faith when I was 26 years old. I was saved three years at that time. I mean, because I'd have to be

I'd be having to edit the whole thing. I'd have to be disclaiming the whole thing by now because it takes it's so hard to learn everything.

So what John Calvin did is what anybody would do. He took virtually everything he'd been taught as a

Catholic and he put it down and gave it Bible verses and a few things like salvation by works.

He just blasted them for it. But he kept the rest. Kept the rest.

Here, I think that would I as a

Reformed Baptist say that that Calvin was a complete reformer in that he accomplished the complete reformation of the faith and and managed to work through everything.

Well, no, I would not say that, obviously. But the idea of keeping the rest,

I think, is way too sweeping, way too sweeping. And the irony here is that Brother McCarthy is basically going to say that Calvin's emphasis upon the sovereignty of God and salvation is actually comes from Rome, which

I I just anyone who reads Trent and sees its constant synergism, anybody who reads the modern catechism of the

Catholic Church, the universal catechism, and sees its constant emphasis upon God's universal salvific will in the

Arminian context of that would have a hard time thinking that Calvin was just simply repeating in with a lack of of critical analysis, just everything else.

Calvin, you know, in teaching church history over the years, one of the things I've emphasized is it's so this one thing that bugs me so much about Dave Hunt is that he's willing to judge historical individuals on a on a just a completely unfair, grossly unfair and shallow basis, just does not show any meaningful reason and balance in his historical understanding of things.

And we can criticize Calvin when he when he imbibes cultural issues, for example, obviously, the the application of laws in in Geneva would be one of those issues.

But at the same time, we have to see how far he went in light of the the materials that were available to him.

He kept concepts like infant baptism and their views of prophecy and the end of the world and the role of the church over civil society and on and on and on.

It's just Catholicism. And the truth be known, you won't hear this too often. If you look at Catholic theology of Calvin's day and you look at his teachings on predestination, it's it's

Catholicism. Now, I that one's pretty hard to swallow because evidently,

Brother McCarthy is not recognizing the difference between well, after the

Reformation, you had these very distinct groups. The Franciscans had their viewpoint and the

Dominicans had their viewpoint. But the days of Luther, you had the Augustinians and the

Augustinians went back to Augustine and St. Augustine, as I like to say it.

And there are some very substantial differences in understanding concerning these subjects when you go back to Augustine.

And that's why you have you have Dave Hunt saying Augustine was the first Roman Catholic. And again, it's just it's just historically naive, grossly historically naive.

And my concern is that people who oppose Roman Catholicism tend to fall into this trap of anything after the

Council of Nicaea is that's Roman, that's Romanism, that's Roman Catholicism.

And it's not. Did things start developing at that time? Yeah, but there wasn't a single

Roman Catholic at the Council of Nicaea in the modern definition of that term. Not a one.

So when you when you look at Augustine, are there things that we disagree with? Of course, there are things we disagree with.

Does that mean that, you know, you throw him out? There's this really naive view of church history, unfortunately, that does seem to be prevalent amongst people, a certain strife of people who respond to Roman Catholicism.

I'm hoping that's not what's here. But that particular comment, really,

I found very troubling and unsubstantiated from any meaningful perspective.

It's not Protestant Reformationism. I know that might shock you because it's not what the

Catholic Church teaches today. John Calvin studied at the University of Paris about three centuries before him, 13th century.

Thomas Aquinas was a professor there. Thomas Aquinas was the most influential theologian in Catholic history, was the first one to take all of Catholic theology and systematize it.

And he wrote the Summa Theologica, which is like five volumes, which he dictated. And it's presented in a very kind of philosophical

Greek philosophical approach. And if you read what Aquinas teaches on predestination and then you read the

Institutes, you go, wait a second, this is exactly the same. No, it's not exactly the same.

Aquinas certainly had differences of emphasis and so on and so forth from modern Roman Catholicism.

There's no question about that. But this is unfortunately showing, I think, a substantial element of ignorance concerning the interrelatedness, the harmony, interdependence, unity of Reformed theology, especially as it has to do with the decrees of God, the purposes of God, the actions of God in the incarnation and the cross,

His intention in the atonement, the nature of atonement, the relationship of God's law, all of these things, which is brought into its most perfect harmony,

I think, in the person of Christ, in his roles as prophet, priest and king, as has so commonly been the language used to describe this.

And so to not see how Aquinas' doctrine has fundamental differences in regards to the nature of grace, for example,

I think demonstrates a real problem in the depth of Brother McCarthy's understanding of this particular subject.

So don't think like Calvin had some new insight. He just took what the Catholic Church had been teaching, which he himself would say the

Catholic Church was wrong and corrupt on so many things. But on this topic, he just copied what

Aquinas and others had said. I think the sound you hear coming from Geneva is

Calvin himself spinning in his grave because that's,

I'm sorry, that's just a naive and simplistic view that I don't really believe does justice to Calvin's actual own statements on the subject.

After the Reformation, because of the influence of Luther and Calvin, the Catholic Church moved away from the concept of God's sovereign control over who's saved and who's not.

And today, you wouldn't hear that at all in the Roman Catholic Church. But in Calvin's day, you would.

So, again, I would just caution before we end. So we actually had, OK, there were

Augustinians, but they were not really the majority. So is he really saying that Thomas was fully

Augustinian and that they were, that was all that Rome had? And so under the influence of the

Reformation, the Counter -Reformation, the Jesuits finally moved them away. I mean, it's just, again, it's historically naive not to recognize that Minicans and Franciscans and Augustinians are all representing streams of theology that can be traced in the medieval period.

It's just, it's sad to hear that. Embrace any man to step back and say, is there a better way to do this?

I think you all know there is. And what I would suggest is, I mean, this is going to be really hard, especially for those of you who are really into this controversy.

OK, now, you know, ladies, I can speak for most of you. You've heard enough of this thing. You're so sick and tired of Bible studies of the young men wanting to debate

Calvinism. You wonder, do they have lives? Is there anything else important to them?

Do they really think this is the most important thing? But I know there's guys here who are, maybe some gals too, but whose minds are just so wrapped up in this topic and find it so fascinating and so intriguing that it really is a captivating topic.

And I would suggest, if you can, to disengage from the whole controversy, disengage from the theology and take a different approach.

Take an inductive, biblical approach to it and just clear the deck completely and start back at basics and say, what do the scriptures say?

So here again is this, let's approach this in ignorance of everything that's been said up to this point.

Type of a perspective that I just, I can't see is, comes from anything other than this, this mindset that does not see the value of church history and does not see the value of the generations that have come before as if, well, they never said anything worthwhile.

Let's just forget all that. Let's just go with the Bible. Well, can the Bible answer these questions? Of course it can answer these questions.

But are there people who've had better understandings of the Bible? There sure have been. And so do they have meaningful things to say?

Yeah, I think they do. And I think you're still going to find there's some very difficult scriptures. But I think you're going to find it's not as difficult as we've made it out to be.

I'll tell you a couple things you're going to find it. You're going to find that predestination, biblically, and election, biblically, are not the same.

And in theology books, they use those terms interchangeably. So in other words, we have developed a theological vocabulary to help us to deal with issues that have already been dealt with.

That's quite true. And if you attempt to build a systematic theology using what

I would call the Strong's methodology, you're not going to get there. You're going to end up with something much less than a full orbed biblical presentation.

You just are. Because if you think that predestination is only defined by how many times proerizo is used in the

New Testament or it's cognates in the Old Testament. If you think that clatois or the verbal forms in the

New Testament are the only terms to look at, you're going to be missing a major portion of the biblical teaching on these subjects.

You really are. And unfortunately, that's what people do. Well, the terms only use this many times and very few of them have any.

That's not how you do meaningful exegesis or systematic theology. It just it just isn't.

It will always lead you to a truncated. In fact, the danger here. Do you remember?

I forget when it was. It was about two months ago, maybe a little less. We did a Radio Free Geneva and I played you some of the statements of the independent fundamentalist

Baptist landmark King James only guys. Okay. And they ended up coming up with some really bad theology.

I mean, almost the point of plagianism. And why did that happen? Is it because they literally know church history and they want to pursue that?

No. What happens is when you take this kind of truncated approach to biblical study, when you don't look at what has been said before and you don't do exegesis in the proper way, something's got to come in to take up the slack.

Something's the vacuum. You know, nature abhors a vacuum. And so something's going to take its place. And generally, it's going to be something bad.

And we saw that. We saw that in the in the fact that these men who can't read the

Greek language and really mock people who can, something had to come in.

And what was it? It was heresy. It was it was bad stuff that that ended up taking the place. That's what happens.

And we've got to be very, very careful about that. They they they speak of predestination as God's eternal decrees, where he decreed who would be saved and who would be the elect.

Well, let me stop there. You have to back up. We're talking about theology books here.

We're talking about God's decree and the extent of God's decree. And is that actually derived from just looking at Proerizo in the

New Testament? No, it's actually comes way before that. That's really rooted in the creation narratives.

And it's really rooted, as I understand it, at least in my understanding of biblical theology.

And where I see reformed theology being just absolutely necessary is it is rooted in God's own revelation of his relationship between himself, creation and time.

That flows out of especially for me, Isaiah 40 through 48, also Jeremiah, but especially

Isaiah 40 through 48. That to me is the foundational aspect of why

I would hold to an extensive view of God's decree, which includes the subject of human salvation.

It doesn't exclude it, but it's even larger than that. I would say that in light of the incarnation, the salvation of an elect people is the primary mechanism whereby

God demonstrates his attributes of loving kindness and mercy and so on and so forth.

So, yeah, that's the primary means by which he glorifies himself. So, that's very central, but that is a subset of a larger set that flows from a solid biblical theology of God's relationship to time and creation.

So, if you just go, well, you know, they just they talk about predestination in this way. There's a reason for that.

And do we have to use the term predestination? Does the term predestination as a word have to appear in Isaiah 40 through 48 for it to be an appropriate thing for us to make those connections?

I don't believe so at all. And so, I really doubt that James McCarthy rejects the systematic theology, the conclusions of systematic theology.

But you almost have to sort of undercut the foundations of it to make the kind of system that he's going to be presenting really work.

And who would be the reprobate, those who would be sent to hell, that God predetermined the number, and that number cannot be changed.

Calvin taught that. That's called double predestination. He, God predestined not only who would be saved, but who would be lost, and the number cannot be changed.

And we need to, once again, we always have new folks tuning in. It's important to do this.

And I know if you've heard this before, please give me a few moments to just make the statement because I think it happens to be very, very important.

We must distinguish appropriately between the positive extension of the power, mercy, grace, and love of God in the salvation of not just undeserving people, but negatively deserving people, people who deserve

God's wrath. We need to differentiate between that act of divine grace and the act that was here, just simply, he predestined some, he predestined others, as if there is equal ultimacy.

I reject equal ultimacy. I have to reject equal ultimacy because I am told that the action by which

God brings about the salvation of his elect people is fundamentally different than the action that brings his justice to bear upon the reprobate.

Now, maybe they're just sort of looking at God like he's a big human being and he's just sort of making simple, simple choices in light of the information available to him.

But I think we have to be very, very careful in recognizing that there is a substantial difference in the act of God that brings about salvation and the act of God that brings about justice.

That has to be emphasized. I think it is not simply, it's not a weasel action, okay?

Some people are like, well, you're weaseling out of something that you don't like. I think that this goes to the fact that in my experience, the majority of those who deal with Reformed theology from a negative perspective try to flatten it out into a, into a system rather than seeing it for the multifaceted, beautiful, interrelated, deep, and yeah, in some ways complex in the sense that, complex in seeing the different levels and relationships between different truths that it represents.

They don't want to deal with that. They want to flatten it out so that you have an easier target. I mean, most targets, you go to a shooting range, most targets are just plain flat.

And if they're a three -dimensional, it would change everything. It would change everything in your sight picture. Everything that you do would have to change if you're shooting at something that has three dimensions rather than just two.

And so I think it just makes the, I think it just makes the target easier to shoot at. It might also represent the fact that for most of the folks, most,

I can't comment fully on Brother McCarthy, but certainly when you look at a

Dave Hunt or George Bryson or a Michael Coate, you're talking about folks who just do not understand the system that they are deriving.

And so the flattening out is a natural reaction to the fact that they just don't understand what they're doing.

But rare is the person who's actually responding to Reformed theology as a whole. And in discussions, predestination, election, those terms are just used interchangeably.

But they're not used interchangeably in Scripture. They're the two very different words with different concepts.

And if you even get that much clear from Scripture, just go. Well, let me mention something. Certainly there are uses of predestined and uses of called that do not have necessarily in -depth soteriological meaning.

I mean, there's callings within the church. There's, you know, there's, you have to examine the specific utilization of these texts to come up with the proper context.

And so, yeah. But hopefully we're not falling into the trap of, well, every word has one meaning, and we can just sort of apply those meanings all across the way.

That hopefully is not what we're dealing with here, because Mr. McCarthy would know in dealing with sharp

Roman Catholic apologists that that's just, that's downright dangerous. It ain't gonna work. Just going back and look at, if you want to get to the bottom of this,

I would suggest you do this. Get a good concordance and make a list of every time the word predestination appears in the

Scriptures. Do you know how often it appears in the Old Testament? Zero. But that does not mean that the concept of predestination, the sovereignty of God's decree, the interaction of God's sovereign will in time is not part and partial.

Of the New Testament revelation and forms the very background against which we need to define the

New Testament use of predestination. So, this again, there's everything right in using a concordance or a

Bible program to look up the use of words. But if you think, well, that's all there is to it.

You know, Sunday morning, Christmas morning, I'm going to be preaching on Emanuel. Emanuel.

And interestingly enough, I'm not sure why this happened. But when I searched on that phrase in accordance, depending on which database

I chose, a different number of hits came up, which was interesting to me. Probably had something to do with an editor's choice.

But it's not an often used phrase at all.

That doesn't mean that it's not very, very important, obviously, because it is cited in the

New Testament. But the point is, as I'm going to present in the sermon, and most of you aren't going to be there.

So, it doesn't matter if I sort of give things away here. We can look at Emanuel as it appears in Isaiah 7 and Isaiah 8.

And we can, we can derive some great insights from that.

Some really, really wonderful insights from that. But, but, there's much more to Isaiah's testimony as to who

Emanuel is and who this one that Isaiah is foreseeing is that doesn't use the term

Emanuel. It doesn't use the term Emanuel. Ralph and Channel is saying, but we will be listening.

And I bet you, Ralph will be listening. Well, then again, the probe is not around. So, I have to remember, actually,

I put a jump drive into my bag. So, I need to remember to grab the jump drive after the sermon and bring it home with me.

So, even on Christmas Day, so that Ralph can listen to the sermon on Christmas Day.

Because I don't think Ralph will ever forgive me if I don't do that. But I'm going to have a lot of things on my mind.

So, I'm concerned. I am concerned. So, Ralph, I'm going to do my best to get that up there.

But, yeah, notice someone in Channel just did that. They just, they just asked our bot to search for Emanuel.

And you got two of them. Now, for the folks in Channel, look at Isaiah 8 10. And you'll find there is a third.

That may just be a translational issue. I was, of course, was searching the Hebrew databases. But that's, that's rather interesting.

Yeah, there's, see, see that? Notice how the, I'm not, so you did NASB. But the

King James has O Emmanuel at the end of 8 8. But it's the exact same Hebrew phrase at the end of 8 10.

Emanuel. Yeah, God is with us. But it's Emanuel, only two verses earlier. Isn't that interesting?

Um, which wouldn't explain why the, it didn't come up in the Hebrew databases.

Because it's the same thing. But anyways, I'm getting way off course here. Sorry about that. I just find it interesting.

And I'm sort of excited about the sermon on Sunday morning. And hopefully everybody else will be. Of course,

I am, I am actually concerned. There have been times in my experience where I was really jazzed about a sermon topic.

And it just fell flat as a pancake. It has got to, the

Lord has to, I just, I just got a Twitter. The Probie is listening live.

Just watch me delay uploading by a day just to tweak. Ralph, I will make sure that doesn't happen.

Because I do know how to upload. You may not want me to upload Probie. Because then I, I don't necessarily get things the way you like it.

And it would be better if you do it. Because since you're doing it all the time, it would be more consistent. But I will make sure it is available.

And in fact, if worse comes to worse. Since I'll have the file, I could just simply transfer it to Ralph. But then there might be others, there might be two other people on the planet.

That on Christmas Day would actually like to listen to a sermon by me. Other than the poor people of Phoenix Foreign Baptist Church. Which will be forced to listen to a sermon by me.

But anyways, we will, we will make sure that that, that works. But anyhow, I, getting back to the subject here.

I apologize for the wandering off into the, into the, the bulrushes there.

I used to have a professor that would go whenever you do that. He'd go to try to get back in it. So Moses was in the bulrushes every single time.

He'd go back to Moses and bulrushes. And that's how it, that's how it worked. So anyhow, my point that I was attempting to make is.

Concordances are wonderful. Bible programs are wonderful. But haven't we learned from the discussions of these things in the past?

That that's not enough. You're not getting the full testimony of the word of God. If all you're doing is looking words up in a, in a concordance.

How many times appears in the New Testament? I think it's six. I mean, you can manage that. The word for, to predetermine something.

Okay. Now we're not in the business of predetermining things. I mean, we, we can't, can't, you know, declare what time we're going to get out of bed in the morning.

You know, everything's, everything's up for grabs. Isn't it? We're not very good at predetermining, but God has predetermined certain things.

But you know what? There's a verse in the Bible that says he's predetermined who will be saved and who will be lost.

There's a verse that says that. Now there's, there's another term, the term for election, the word election has the idea.

Don't worry. We'll, we'll be responding to that because obviously we disagree thoroughly, but it's just an assertion being made right now.

The question is, can you back that up exegetically? Once you start looking at the texts. To choose or to select.

And it appears as a verb and an adjective and a noun. And, and you put them all together. It's about 54 occurrences, something like that.

So that's a little, that's gonna take a little bit more work. And some of them are used like an adjective. He talks like, like a Rufus, who was a choice man, which, which just means kind of a man of excellence.

Like, you know, we have, we have that, like, hey, you go into the store or the Safeway, they have Safeway select.

Okay. That's their brand, isn't it? And, and he's, he's exactly right. None of these terms, every term has a meaning in its context.

The question is, when we talk, when we look at election in Ephesians 1, and that's what we're gonna be getting into here pretty quickly.

What does it mean there? What does it mean in Romans 9? What does it mean in Romans 8? What about the golden chain of redemption?

What about John chapter 6? I mean, in John chapter 6, you have election laid out beautifully without ever using the term election.

All that the Father gives me will come to me. What is that? Well, if you allow scripture to speak as a whole, then that has a meaning.

If you don't, well, then that's, that's a bit of a problem. What that means is this is the choice stuff.

This is, you know, we've selected supposedly the best products or whatever. So the scripture uses it that way.

This is, where the scripture, in the scripture speak of the Lord Jesus as the chosen of the

Father. What does that mean? It doesn't mean there was like six candidates for Messiah and, you know, the son of God.

He's like, I choose this one. It just means he's this, he's the perfect and excellent son of God.

He's the object of God's special affections. So, so you start working out a lot of those.

A lot of the verses you're going to find, if you go through all 54 or something like that, you're going to find a lot of them don't tell you anything.

About election. About the soteriological doctrine of election.

They will tell you a lot about the other uses of that particular term. I mean, it is not an argument against reformed theology that these terms have specific meanings within a specific context.

That's not an argument against reformed theology at all, because we don't say otherwise. They talk about, you know, in times, at times of the tribulation, those days will be shortened for the sake of the elect.

Okay, well, that's good, but it doesn't really tell you how election works. It just tells you that we are the elect.

How do we get to be the elect? Now, this is where it gets a little more difficult.

You start working your way down and you're going to end up with about five verses that are left that actually say something.

In fact, there's only one verse that says very much at all about election. That's Ephesians 1, 4.

Maybe we could turn over there. Ah, we get to the Bible. Ephesians 1, 4. In fact, I don't know, this might be an overstatement.

I get myself in trouble here. Ephesians 1, 4 may say more than all the rest put together. That's only one verse.

Let's start at verse 3. Ephesians 1, 3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.

In love, he predestined us to adoption of sons through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the kind intention of his will, to the praise of his glory, of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the beloved.

Now, if you're steeped in John Piper and John Calvin and John MacArthur, the

Johns, on this topic, when you read this, you go, Amen? This is Calvinism?

I mean, why can't you see that? Well, back off a little bit, you know, take a deep breath and say, this is the

Apostle Paul speaking, this trumps what I say, what everybody else says, right?

What did he just say? What did he actually just say? Let's look at it.

He begins by blessing the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and here's why he blesses in the name of God, because he has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.

In other words... Well, let's actually stop there just a moment. Actually, this is a description.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Then you have, Ha eulogesos, hamos, the one who blessed us.

So, it's a further description. It's in a positive description of God the

Father. He is the one who blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

So, this is a further description of the Father. And certainly, it is the term to bless that is found there.

Certainly, that participial phrase that is used there involves an action on his part.

Salvation originates in the Father. But it's not like, well, we thank him because of this.

It's actually saying, God the Father is blessed because he's the one who blessed, if that makes any sense to you.

And all of this, all the way through here, all the way through to, if I recall correctly, verse 13, the person doing the actions is

God. It's divine activity that is taking place here. That's very, very important to recognize.

Because of who we are in Christ, God has poured out upon us every blessing that God has.

Not because of who we are in Christ. Every blessing that we have is ours only in Christ.

The range or realm of the blessing of God is in Christo.

It's always in Christ. That phrase in Christ, in him, in the beloved, if I recall correctly, 10 times in 13 verses.

The realm of that blessing is delimited by Christ. He is the limitation of the salvific realm.

Okay, very important. He hasn't held back anything. Why? Because we're such nice people, because we're such good people.

Because we're better than other people. Is that what it says? What's the reason given there in verse 3 for why

God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places? Christ. Okay, I don't think that is a reason.

That is the sphere. And Christo is the sphere, not the reason.

It's not saying who's blessed is every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places because of Christ, but in Christ.

I think there's a difference there. He has done this in Christ. Now, that term in Christ, we've got to struggle with that a little bit because when

Paul wrote it, it was absolutely clear to him. But what does it mean for God to bless us in Christ?

Now, that word in has its primary meaning has to do with location.

We are now in Fairhaven Bible Chapel. When they put this building up, they didn't call it

Fairhaven Bible Church because biblically the church is the people. They call it chapel because a chapel is a building, right?

So we're actually in the building. We're not in the church. We are the church, but we're in the chapel.

So we are right now, protected from the weather, in the chapel. We're in nice chairs in the chapel.

And our blessings from the Father are in Christ in the same sense. Now, it's not a location, a physical location.

It's a logical sphere, if you will. It's kind of what defines why we are receiving these blessings and how we receive them because all the blessings of God have their yes and amen in Christ.

You take Christ apart from us, we have no blessings to God, zero. It's all in him, isn't it?

Give you an analogy. I have a good friend. I grew up with him. He's just one of these guys to be just as happy, dirty old sleeping bag, you know, out in the woods.

Now, he's going to go on for a long time here. And I mean a really long time. This guy's father is really rich.

And so he has all his blessings because of his relationship to his father, in essence, is what he gets into at this point.

And I don't know that we need to listen to all of us. It's him. It's all about him. And in him, in the

Lord Jesus Christ, we have every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. That's where verse three says. Verse four, just as he,

God the Father, chose us, selected us in him. Before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.

So here's an omniscient God. God knew. Now, let me just stop for a second.

Where's the term omniscient in Ephesians 1? Where is God knew in Ephesians 1?

It's not there. And if we want to let the Bible speak, we certainly need to let, well, the

Bible speak. It says, Kathos exalexata hamas.

Now, en alto is there, in him. It's right there. But hamas is an accusative.

And exalexata is a verb. And it is the type of verb that takes a direct object.

Remember sixth, seventh grade English? Direct objects and finite verbs and things like that.

And so, the one chosen is not Christ. The direct object of the choosing is us.

And may I make a suggestion to you? All those, and this is very popular, all those who present class election and say

God has chosen not individuals, but a class.

Well, certainly. Hamas is plural. Hamas is plural.

It does not say you and then put our name in.

Hamas is plural. So, there is a class here. However, if you're going to start down the road of class election,

I hope you realize what the fundamental cost of it is. Because many of the pronouns used in Hebrews in regards to participation in the atoning work of Christ are plurals as well.

And what do I mean by that? Folks, I think there is a massive difference between a gospel message that is, that recognizes the full spectrum of biblical revelation.

Recognizes that it's all and only in Christ. There's no pluralism here.

There is no incipient inclusivism here. God has the right to channel

His grace solely and only in Christ, in the incarnate one.

That's there. But I think there's all the difference in recognizing the personal nature of God's choice and the personal nature of union with Christ.

The personal nature of the intention of the atonement. The fact that a specific people, not a nameless group that's up to us to fill in, but a specific people were united to Christ in His death,

His burial, and His resurrection. I think there's all the difference between that and a, well, what

Christ's sacrifice actually accomplishes, what God's talking about in Ephesians 1 is just creating an opening, a door, a nameless, faceless group, and we fill in the identity and it's all up to us.

One is personal. The other is impersonal. And when

Ephesians 1 -4 says, either that hamas is personal, and hence it's not just a matter of God knowing who's going to choose

Him. That's not what the text is talking about. It does not say, we chose Him, therefore He chose us.

If Paul had wanted to say that, he could have said that. He didn't say that. The kathos takes us back to these blessings that come from God that we are simply the recipients of.

We're not the ones that determine this. We're not the ones that, that God is dependent upon to find out whether, well, can

I bless this person? Well, it's sort of up to Him. Just as He chose us in Him, the realm of His choice is only in Christ.

Because it is to union with Christ. It is to sonship. It is to holiness. It is to all of salvation.

And the amazing thing is, Mr. McCarthy is going to tell us, nowhere does the Bible say that we are elected unto salvation.

And yet right here it says, He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world. For what? That we might be holy and blameless before Him.

How can you be holy and blameless before Him if you are not the recipient of salvation? It's impossible.

Can't be. So, it's right there in front of us. He chose us.

And everybody who tries to do the, well, you know, Jesus is the one who was chosen and all the rest of this stuff, that's not what

Paul is talking about here. If words have meaning, the words here say,

He chose us. And everything else comes after that.

Because He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world. So, you either have to go with the impersonal, well, actually

God chose a plan. Turn us into a plan. A plan that's in Christ.

He chose before the foundation of the world. And if we join in the plan, then we can be holy and blameless before Him in love.

Now, that is not what the text says. The text is clear.

And we have to allow it to say what it says. From all eternity, who would be

His son? I mean, it wasn't like the day I got saved. He goes, oh, wow. I didn't know that. I didn't know Frank Blaise was going to,

I didn't know, you know. No, God knows it all. And God has loved you,

I'm speaking to you as Christians, God has loved you and His son from all eternity.

From all eternity, He loves you. In His son. In His son. So, my question for James McCarthy is, how is that love different in Christ than for those who are not in His son?

If God knows, and again, how does God know this? Does God, at some point at the time of creation, passively take in knowledge of what's going to happen in time?

Because again, this all brings us back. That's why I say, someday, we're going to make it happen.

We're going to have the debate with Michael Brown and myself.

It's got to happen someday. Both of us are very busy defending the faith in other realms, and that takes priority, but it's going to happen someday.

And I'm just going to say right up front, Michael, what we've got to start with.

And I would say we should do multiple debates, actually, over a couple nights or something.

But what we've got to start with is this issue, and that is

God's knowledge of future events. What is it based upon? Does God passively take in knowledge of future events?

Did He toss the cosmic dice and go, hey, look, I win. Therefore, take in knowledge of what's going to happen.

Therefore, praise Him. Is that how God has knowledge of these things?

Is it just some passive foreknowledge type idea? Or is

God's sovereign decree the foundation of the very knowledge that He has of these things?

I am thankful that James McCarthy recognizes the error of open theism. Yay, that's good.

But to acknowledge the error of open theism is not the same thing as to escape the practical ramifications of open theism.

Because if you're not going to deal with these issues, you're not going to answer these questions, you might as well be an open theist.

Because if your God is just passively taking in knowledge of what happens in the future, then it's still what happens in the future is determined outside of His will.

And it's still the actions of human beings that end up determining the actions of God, even though foreseen.

Got to keep that in mind. And He's chosen you for Himself.

This is a, the verb there is a middle, it has a voice, in Greek it has a reflexive concept where God has taken you for Himself.

But please, don't leave Christ out of this, because with no Christ, no you, you and a holy

God, you have nothing to do, it's like if I showed up at Bill... By the way, I'd want to challenge a little bit of that, because the lexical form is eklegamai, and hence you cannot just assume a deponent meaning, a middle meaning when you've got a deponent verb like that.

I'd be a little careful of pushing that too far. Let's just say you got to be a little careful about going that far when you have the

Greek that's there, but we won't go too far off on that. Bill's house, I put my, I mean Bill grew up in a house over in San Francisco, I think actually the former police chief used to live there way back when, really nice house.

You know, it's one of these houses, you know, you step down into the living room, there's a huge grand piano, there's one of these things you pull on the wall, the butler comes.

You know, what if I showed up there one day, knocked on the door, I said, you know, Martin I'm here, I'm Bill's friend,

I understand you've got a lot of money, I'd like a part of that. You know, one of those buildings, would you mind?

I mean, Bill doesn't want it, and his sister, she's going to have enough. He'd look at me like, who are you?

I'm Bill's friend. I mean, his parents have passed away,

I didn't get a nickel. Okay, I didn't get a nickel. Why?

Because I'm not connected, I'm not in that family. Okay, I'm outside.

Now, if I'd been inside, all right, but outside, nothing.

So, how is it that the Father has chosen me, a sinner like me, a sinner like you, from before the foundation of the world?

Bill tells us there, verse 4, he chose us in Christ. In other words, God from...

Have you noticed how this works? Because this is not the first time we've heard this. We've heard this so many times over the many years, not just of Radio Free Geneva's, but of doing the dividing line.

You see, you can read this text, and I'm not saying these are two equally valid ways of doing it, because it's not.

But when I read it, I read it just as he chose us in him.

But the synergist reads it, he chose us in him. Now, can the entire meaning change in that way?

No, because in the original language, the direct object, the verb is us. And en auto is providing that logical, spiritual sphere in which the action of the main verb is taking place.

And the relationship between exalexata and hemos cannot be taken away.

It's there. He chose us. But what you're getting by emphasis is a depersonalization of the hemos, the us.

It's subtle, but it's there. And that's not coming from the text.

That's not flowing out of the text. That's coming from an external tradition. And I know

Brother McCarthy is not going to like that, because I get the feeling that he would say, I don't have any traditions.

I would hope he recognizes he does. And this is one of them. It's a

Arminian or at least synergistic tradition that is driving the exegesis of the text at this point.

From all eternity, newest in his son, never apart from his son. Now, I'll give you an analogy.

You know, my children grew up here at Fairhaven. Is Elizabeth here? Elizabeth and her husband are coming up,

I think. This is an interesting analogy. That's why I'm going to let it play out. My daughter Grace is going down to Cornelia today.

We now have a foster daughter who's going to camp. We don't have any grandchildren.

She and I are getting up in age, but our two younger daughters haven't married. Our older daughter doesn't have children.

Maybe I let this one play out, because I don't have any grandchildren yet either. I know that my son sometimes listens to the program.

So, Josh, do you want me to end up like this fella? He's older than me, but he still doesn't have any grandkids either.

I wouldn't mind being a grandpa by 50. That would be fun. You know what? Gene is already making dresses for our granddaughters.

Now, my wife's not making dresses for granddaughters or shorts for grandsons, but we do have discussions once a while as to what will be appropriate terminology for grandma.

Um, and I don't care what they call me, but she's a little bit concerned about having an appropriately young sounding phrase for grandma.

She likes to sew. She has some beautiful dress. Okay. Not answering. She's already made quilts for them.

But you don't even have children. Grandchildren. I know. But she's projecting this.

She believes this is going to happen. She already loves those children. Now, already loves those children.

Making provision for those children. They're not even there yet. That's what God did in Jesus. Made provision.

They're not even there yet. The problem is, while the relationship will be very personal once those children are born, right now it doesn't exist.

Because they're not there. And now you've made it impersonal.

It's a love of grandchildren in general. Rather than that specific grandchild.

Let me tell you something. I'm going to love my grandchildren in a very different way than anybody else's grandchildren.

And that's where I think this illustration actually does illustrate something, but not exactly what

I think Brother McCarthy wanted to illustrate. Now, she loves children, but she doesn't love children the way she loves her grandchildren, who she doesn't even know.

There you go. Why? Why does she love her unknown grandchildren? She's already preparing for them.

Why? Why? I know you men are brain dead. Ladies, why are you thinking about your grandchildren?

Why do you love those? You don't go into the maternity ward at the hospital and just start giving out gifts to all the babies because you love babies.

There's some you love particularly. Why do you love? In other words, there's a personal connection. But it starts, believe me, let me tell you something.

And I hate to, I hate, I really honestly hate to, I'm going to run out of time here. Maybe I'll stop there. But I honestly hate to ruin this for some of you young parents.

But when you see that little bundle of joy that's only a few weeks old and it smiles up at you, that normally means it's destroying its diaper.

That's all that means. It has nothing to do with you. I'm sorry. The fact is the love and the connection starts from one direction at that age.

And those little things, if you don't feed them, they will torture you. They have no love for you yet.

That's something that grows over time. I hate to ruin your whole thought there.

But that's just the way it is. In fact, it's been well said that we are born as absolutely dedicated selfish individuals.

And it's life that drives that out of us. In fact, it's kids that drive that out of us, primarily as we're young adults too.

So anyways, we will continue on with this at some point in the future, obviously.

And who knows, maybe we'll have to do some uber mega long programs and throw it in there so we don't completely lose the other series that we've been doing.

Because I've got other stuff that I want to be doing down the road as well. But thanks for listening to Radio Free Geneva. I do pray.

Oh, I was going to say, I do pray and we didn't grab my Bible study.

We were going to put that Bible study up and play it on the thing. But oh well, maybe next year. Thanks for listening, folks.