Radio Free Geneva: James McCarthy's Sermon on Calvinism

Radio Free Geneva and the Purpose of the Review

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 gonna 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 going 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 that 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. It 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.

In fact, I'm thinking now, yes, this sermon was actually sent to me an 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 will 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 let's take a listen to what he says right here at the.

McCarthy's Opening Praise of Calvinists

Beginning of the program. I'm not a Calvinist, but I'll have to say that, you know, 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 work 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 I'm free to feel free to say that, 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's 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, a 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, and some of the people in that study became very vocal against the Catholic Church.

Someone 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 splitting 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 the list.

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? God's predetermined who will be saved and who will not. There's a verse in the Bible that teaches it. I would 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 later on, he says,.

Influence. Now, I 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. And so, 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 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 start 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 concern 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 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 back to ground zero, and so much of the arguments have been answered thoroughly, truthfully, accurately in the past, but because people don't take the time 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 kind of insight could they possibly have? Well, 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 worry about what anyone else has ever thought.

I'm wise enough to figure this out on my own. And then, of course, on the other side, you've got 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 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 Sola Scriptura, and to recognize the fundamental difference in the nature of that which is Theanostas, that which is God-breathed, and anything else.

And 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.

Monergism, Synergism, and the Need for Historical Theology

We'll be safe. 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 Ardaminian. 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 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 I'm certainly not going to partner with and going to put myself with.

The hyper-Calvinists or something like that, despite 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...

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 say so. Depends on 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 understand this matter without knowing anything about Calvinism, Arminianism. 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. See, I cannot even begin to agree with that. That's just not true. 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 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 is raised in 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 to figure out not just how is a person saved, but the whole scope of theology.

That's what Calvin's Institute 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 writings and so on and so forth.

But these folks were not nearly as distracted with things as we are, I'm afraid. 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 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 heading 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 times, like anybody. When I got saved in 1975, I was 23, and I remember there was a young fellow coming to our Bible study who'd been saved four years.

We thought, wow, this guy is so mature as a Christian, you know? And after about a year or two, we kind of felt like, okay, we understand the Bible. Okay, well, a lot of time has 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 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. Now here I think that, would I as a Reformed Baptist say that Calvin was a complete Reformer in that he accomplished the complete Reformation of the faith 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 actually comes from Rome, which 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 with a lack 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 is one of the things that bugs me so much about Dave Hunt, is that he's willing to judge historical individuals 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 imbibes cultural issues. For example, obviously, application of laws 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 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 Catholicism.

Now, 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 Dave Hunt saying Augustine was the first Roman Catholic. And again, 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 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.

Unsubstantiatable 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. He was the first one to take all of Catholic theology and systematize it. 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're going, 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 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 in 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, okay, there were Augustinians, but they were not really the majority. So is he really saying that Thomas was fully Augustinian and that 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 Minnicans and Franciscans and Augustinians are all representing streams of theology that can be traced in the medieval period. It just is sad to hear that.

Clearing the Decks and Returning to Basic Scripture Study

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. Okay, now I 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 that's 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, comes from anything other than 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.

You're going to find that predestination, biblically, and election, biblically, are not the same. 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 praorizo is used in the New Testament or its 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 are only used this many times and very few of them have any... That's not how you do meaningful exegesis or systematic theology.

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 to 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 a 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 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 bad stuff that ended up taking the place. That's what happens. And we've got to be very,.

Very careful about that. They speak of predestination as God's eternal decrees, where he decreed who'd be saved and who'd 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 actually comes way before that. That's really rooted in the creation narratives. And it's really rooted, as I understand, 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, 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.

Election, Predestination, and Ephesians 1

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 gave God predestination, 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 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 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 target easier to shoot at.

It might also represent the fact that for most of the folks, most, I can't comment fully on McCarthy, but certainly when you look at a Dave Hunt or a 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 two very different words with different concepts.