Debate: What is Accomplished in the Atonement? (White vs Potter)

Alpha & Omega Ministries

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

Comments are disabled.

00:01

The following presentation is a production of Alpha and Omega Ministries, Inc. and is protected by copyright laws of the

00:07

United States and its international treaties. Copying or distribution of this production without the expressed written permission of Alpha and Omega Ministries, Inc.

00:16

is prohibited. The subject that we have before us this evening is the

00:22

Atonement of Jesus Christ. The specific statement is, does the atonement perfect those to whom it is applied?

00:31

What is accomplished in the atonement? Our two speakers are very distinguished.

00:37

We have first on my left, to your right, Dr. James White. Dr. White is the author of roughly 20 books.

00:46

He has written books that include Letters to a Mormon Elder, The Roman Catholic Controversy, The Potter's Freedom, and The God Who Justifies.

00:55

He is a Protestant apologist with Alpha and Omega Ministries in Phoenix, Arizona. He has done several debates for us in the past, and our hope is to have all our previous debates on our website in approximately one week.

01:11

So if you have not been able to participate before, you'll be able to go there and just click on the debates and listen to them in real audio.

01:18

We also have with us Dr. Dennis Potter. Dr. Potter is professor of philosophy at Utah Valley State College.

01:27

He has a Ph .D. from Notre Dame University. He has been published in the

01:33

Farms Review of Books and Dialogue, a journal of Mormon thought. He is the managing editor of Element, an e -journal of Mormon philosophy and theology.

01:44

And when you look at some of the editors that participate in that publication, it is an impressive list of LDS apologists including

01:52

Daniel Peterson and a number of others from down south of the border in Utah County. Oh, one from northern

02:01

Utah. But as I said, the debate here this evening is on the atonement.

02:07

We will have opening statements of 20 minutes each, followed by 10 minute rebuttals and then we'll take a break.

02:13

We'll come back from that and have questions between the speakers and then closing statements of 5 minutes each and then we'll take your questions.

02:22

If you have questions, if you were not able to get a card, you can go ahead and write them on just a scrap of paper. We'll take some of those during the break and then we'll take some of them quickly up at the end of the closing arguments so that we can get as many questions in as possible.

02:37

We will start with Dr. White. Good evening.

02:53

It's good to be with you this evening. Thank you for coming out. We have an incredibly important subject to address this evening, that being the subject of the atonement of the

03:04

Lord Jesus Christ. There can be few subjects that would bear as much importance not only historically, but for any person who claims any kind of faith in the

03:16

Lord Jesus than what it was that he intended to do and what he accomplished in his atoning death upon the cross.

03:25

It is my belief, my very firm belief, that the Lord Jesus Christ took the place of his people, that it was his intention by dying upon the cross, through what the

03:39

Bible teaches as substitutionary atonement, to bear in his body their sins, becoming a curse in their place upon the tree, so that, as Paul expresses it in 2

03:51

Corinthians chapter 5, he who knew no sin was made to be sin in our behalf, so that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

04:00

We cannot be made righteous. We cannot stand before the throne of a holy God without the work of Jesus Christ, without his perfect righteousness being imputed to us.

04:13

I believe this is the biblical teaching, this is the inspired revelation of God, and since obviously when we discuss the atonement we are discussing a matter of revealed religion, we are talking about something upon which there has been revelation given by God, then that revelation must determine the categories of our discussion.

04:34

And so the majority of my time will be given over to the biblical exegesis that demonstrates this, but then

04:40

I would like to try, and I'm not very good at doing this, but I will try to reserve some of my brief opening statement to address some of the issues that I believe come up when the

04:50

LDS position encounters the biblical revelation, especially in regards to other forms of revelation, and also address very briefly the relationship of divine revelation to human philosophy.

05:02

But first, I hope you have your Bibles with you this evening, because the Bible speaks much of the subject of the atonement of the

05:10

Lord Jesus Christ. Let's look at a few key passages, and as we do so, I would like to mention to you, turning as you would please to 2

05:18

Corinthians 5 21, which I just mentioned, I would like to mention to you the fact that the scriptures were written, the

05:25

New Testament scriptures, were written in what is called Koine Greek, the common Greek language of the day.

05:31

And that language is very specific, and it uses specific prepositions to indicate certain meanings to us.

05:40

And this evening, one of the terms that we are going to discuss is the Greek term hupēr. Hupēr is a preposition that refers to taking the place of someone else.

05:51

Now, it can have other meanings as well, depending on how it's used and the context in which it is used, but in the passages that we will be examining, we will specifically see that this particular

06:02

Greek word is used of substitution, of the Lord Jesus taking the place of someone else, specifically his people.

06:10

If we look at 2 Corinthians 5 21, he made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

06:25

This is referring specifically initially to the Father. He made him who knew no sin.

06:31

This would be the Son. This is the perfect, spotless Lamb of God who lived a life without sin, who was not under the guilt of sin.

06:41

And it is the Father who made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf.

06:48

Now, it's very important to think about what that means. Does that mean that the Father caused Jesus' nature to change, or that the

06:55

Father caused Jesus to become something that he wasn't before? Or do we have a clue in the text exactly what's being referred to here in the second half that says, so that, with the purpose that, this was

07:09

God's purpose in treating Christ in this way, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

07:16

Now, don't be thrown off by that word, might. That's not saying, well, this is doubtful, or it's a hesitating affirmation.

07:24

This is simply a purpose clause. The purpose of the Father treating the

07:29

Son in this way was so that he might treat us in a particular way. And what is that way?

07:35

Well, we have here that tremendous transaction, the imputation of our sins to Christ.

07:41

We won't have time to develop all this this evening, but when you have opportunity, look at Romans chapter 4, the first nine verses, the tremendous discussion of the imputation of righteousness, the imputation of sin, etc.,

07:52

etc. But he imputes our sins to Christ. Christ bears them so that we might become the righteousness of God, not on our own, not in of ourselves, but only in union with Jesus Christ himself.

08:07

It is in Christ. All the blessings of God in the New Testament teaching are to be found in Christ and in him alone.

08:16

And so we see Paul's concept here very clearly laid out. God the

08:21

Father, God the Son, they are involved in this redemptive work, and it involves, as we see here, the treating of the

08:29

Son as he is the one who bears sin, so that we who are the sinners might become the righteousness of God in him.

08:38

Is that not also what we read in 1 Peter chapter 3, verse 18? 1 Peter 3, 18, for Christ also died for sins once for all.

08:47

And that is not a term that's to be understood distributively. That term, once for all, is a temporal adverb.

08:54

One time, Jesus Christ dies one time, once for all, the just for the unjust.

09:01

He was just, and he dies in the place of the unjust, so that he might bring us to God.

09:11

Again, there is a purpose in what the Lord Jesus does. He dies for sins once for all.

09:20

He is the just one. He takes the place of the unjust ones for a purpose, for a reason, so that he might bring us to God.

09:30

There is a separation that exists between God and man, and the death of Jesus Christ is the

09:36

God -ordained means of healing that rift, of bringing men into fellowship with God.

09:44

This becomes very personal in a passage that many of you probably find to be tremendously helpful in your own private life, and for any believer in Christ, it is a tremendous passage.

09:56

Galatians 2 .20, Galatians 2 .20, the Apostle Paul says, I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer

10:05

I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh,

10:11

I live by faith in the Son of God, who did what? Who loved me and gave himself up for me in my place.

10:20

Hupere is the term that is used yet once again. So here you see the personal aspect.

10:27

The atonement of Christ was not merely in behalf of some nameless, faceless group.

10:33

Paul could say, I have been crucified with Christ. How can he say that? He was not there, but in God's economy, he most definitely was there, and the fact that he had been united with Christ, and when we are united with Christ, then his death becomes our death, his burial our burial, his resurrection our resurrection.

10:55

That is the nature of the intimate union of the believer with the Lord Jesus Christ.

11:01

But notice, the Lord Jesus gives himself in my place for me.

11:09

Well, this idea of the union of God's people with Christ in his death then comes to full expression in the

11:16

Apostle Paul's words in Romans chapter 8, beginning at verse 28. Listen carefully as we read a section here.

11:24

Romans chapter 8 verse 28, and we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love

11:31

God, to those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to become conformed to the image of his

11:40

Son, so that he would be the firstborn among many brethren. And these whom he predestined, he also called.

11:48

And these whom he called, he also justified. And these whom he justified, he also glorified.

11:55

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us?

12:02

He who did not spare his own Son, but here's the same imagery as before, but delivered him over for us all, how will he not also with him freely give us all things?

12:16

Who is this us? Verse 33, who will bring a charge against God's elect?

12:22

God is the one who justifies, who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is he who died, yes rather, who was raised, who was at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.

12:35

That work of intercession, the continuing work of the high priest, not in addition to his sacrifice, but the high priest would always intercede for those for whom he has offered that sacrifice.

12:49

So again, we have the very same language that has been used before. And specifically when

12:54

Paul talks about the golden chain of redemption in verses 29 and 30, this work that is all of God, he then says, what shall we say to these things?

13:05

If God is for us, if this is God's divine work, then who can possibly be against us?

13:10

And he will at the end of chapter 8 expand this into saying, nothing can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus.

13:19

But then he describes the father as the one who did not hold back or spare his own son, but did what?

13:26

In behalf of us, he gave him over. And that Greek term, paradidomi, is used of the giving up of the sacrifices in the

13:35

Old Testament. It is used of the giving up of Christ to go to the cross.

13:41

The son gave him over in our behalf. And who is the behalf that is spoken of here?

13:48

But in the text itself, who will bring a charge against God's elect? That is the teaching of the scriptures in this passage.

13:57

Well, what then does this giving of him over accomplish? Well, we see it right here.

14:04

Who will bring a charge against God's elect? How can they not be perfected? It's a rhetorical question.

14:11

Who can bring a charge against God's elect that will cause them to fail to receive the promised inheritance?

14:17

And the answer is, no one can. No one can come into the celestial courtroom where God the

14:22

Father has been the one who has declared his people just in Christ Jesus. Christ Jesus is the one who intercedes for them, always before the

14:30

Father, showing his all -sufficient death in their place. Who can bring a charge against them?

14:36

No one can. Therefore, they are obviously perfected by that work. And that's exactly what the writer to the

14:41

Hebrews likewise said in Hebrews 10. I read to you very briefly, verses 10 through 14.

14:48

By this will, or this testament, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

14:55

Again, that's a temporal adverb, one offering. Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices which can never take away sins.

15:06

But he, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time onward until his enemies be made a footstool for his feet.

15:15

For by one offering, he has done what? He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.

15:25

His work is what perfects them. Not any addition that we can add to it.

15:30

His work perfects those who are sanctified.

15:37

And so what have we seen just in this very brief review? We've seen that the scriptures teach the concept of substitutionary atonement.

15:45

That our sins are laid upon our perfect substitute. That his righteousness is then imputed to us.

15:53

That he bears in his body our sins upon the cross. And that as a result, we are perfected.

15:59

That no one can bring a charge against those who are in union with Christ in his death.

16:07

Well, someone might say, that's very nice. That's a nice biblical presentation.

16:13

But how do you relate that to all the questions that can be asked concerning God's sovereignty,

16:20

God's power, the nature of man? Well, I would remind you of the words of the

16:26

Apostle Paul when he wrote to the Colossians. There are many passages that would be useful to look at, but I just remind you of his words in chapter 2, verse 8.

16:37

He was concerned that the Colossians could be drawn away from the simplicity of the gospel.

16:43

And he says, see to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.

16:57

For in him, that is in Jesus Christ, all the fullness of deity, that which makes

17:04

God, God, dwells in bodily form. And so we have the assertion of the

17:09

Apostle Paul that our fundamental starting point must be

17:14

Jesus Christ. He is described to him as the one who created all things and for whom all things were created.

17:22

And so if we wish to develop a Christian philosophy, a philosophia

17:27

Christiana, then we must start with the Dei Verbum, the word of God, the word of Christ.

17:34

We must define our parameters not according to what secular man might find to be interesting or acceptable.

17:43

If we seek to honor him, then we must begin with acknowledging who he is, that he is the creator of all things.

17:52

Paul had described him in Colossians chapter 1 as the one by whom all things were made, whether in heaven or on earth, visible or invisible, the principalities, powers, dominions, or authorities, all things created by him and for him, and he is before all things.

18:05

In him all things hold together. Any philosophy that does not start with the creator himself and recognize his omnipotent power as the creator of all things will be a philosophy that cannot possibly call itself biblical and cannot possibly call itself

18:22

Christ -honoring. So we start with what's important and when we build any type of theology or philosophy, we do so on the basis of recognizing the centrality of the

18:35

Lord Jesus Christ. And so when we address this issue then this evening, we're going to encounter,

18:41

I think, some difficulties. We're going to encounter some difficulties, for example, in considering the issue of the atonement of Christ.

18:52

I appreciated the fact that in one of the papers that Dr. Potter has posted on his website, he was discussing what he views as the

19:00

Anselmian view of the atonement, and one of the questions that was raised had to do with sins against an omnipotent or unlimited being.

19:13

And one of the footnotes, footnote number five, for those of you who'd like to look at it, says the following.

19:19

One might think that this was talking about the debt that sin incurs. One might think that it is large because sinning against God is sinning against an infinite being, and so the debt must be infinite.

19:30

I do not think this will work for Mormons since God is not infinite in the requisite sense.

19:36

I do not know what reason could stand in its place. Now that introduces us to,

19:41

I think, some of the important issues that will undoubtedly, at least I hope, be clearly exemplified this evening.

19:49

And that is, I do not believe, as you have seen in the previous debates we've done, that the

19:55

God who was behind the book of Romans or Hebrews or Galatians or Colossians is a finite being.

20:02

I do not believe that he is an exalted man, and therefore there is a fundamental foundational difference between us in our view of God, and hence a fundamental foundational different view in our interpretation of the scriptures as well.

20:17

Now this, I think, will come up as we examine the issue of the atonement, because as I, again, appreciated in another individual with whom

20:26

I was having this discussion a number of years ago here on radio in Salt Lake City, Mr. Van Hale, I don't know if he's here this evening, we were talking about election and things like that, and I was reading from Romans chapter 9, and Mr.

20:40

Hale said on that program, well, if I believe what you believe about the Bible that is inspired and inerrant in everything that says, and if I started with your presuppositions, then your position makes sense.

20:52

I just don't start there. Well, again, the issue is going to be where do we start? Do we start with allowing the

20:59

Bible to tell us who God is? Do we start with the God of the Bible? And if not, then how can we make heads or tails out of what the scriptures teach to us concerning the atonement?

21:11

You see, to say that God accomplished perfectly his intention in sending

21:17

Christ to the cross means God must have a sovereign will, he must be the king of the universe, he must have a purpose that he is accomplishing, and as Ephesians chapter 1, verse 11 says, he must work all things after the counsel of his will.

21:33

And if your philosophical view of God or theological view of God is not big enough to fit those parameters, then

21:40

I would suggest to you, you need to get a bigger set of theological and philosophical parameters.

21:46

Because the God of the scriptures says that he accomplishes his will in the heavens and the earth and the seas and all their deeps in Psalm 135, verse 6.

21:56

It is that God who says, when I stretch forth my hand, who can stop me? Well, no one can do so, of course.

22:04

And so the issue tonight will be from where do we draw our fundamental definitions and authority?

22:12

And especially as we discuss the very work of Jesus Christ, that issue will become center stage.

22:20

I hope that you will listen carefully and I again thank you very much for being here this evening. Thank you.

22:33

We will now have an opening statement from Dr. Potter. To begin,

22:54

I must offer several important caveats to my remarks.

23:02

Obviously, I speak for myself and not the LDS Church. I'm sure they wouldn't pick me as their spokesperson.

23:08

Additionally, I'm a philosopher and not a scriptural theologian. So the bulk of my comments will be about philosophical issues.

23:16

Nevertheless, I should say something about my position regarding scripture, since the latter is central to the

23:22

Christian tradition. I have serious philosophical concerns about the role that scripture plays in formulating theological belief.

23:30

First, I think that Professor White will agree with me that there's no room for proof texting in a serious debate about theology.

23:36

This is where a particular passage is understood out of its context and in terms of an assumed theological framework.

23:43

Second, I believe that the primary purpose of scripture is performative and not propositional.

23:49

By performative, I mean that scriptures are intended to be practical and cannot be understood independent of their practical setting.

23:57

By not propositional, I mean that scriptures are not intended to give us sophisticated philosophical and theological claims about God and salvation.

24:05

I won't argue for this perspective, at least for right now, on scripture except to say that if scriptures were meant to be philosophical and theological, then the average believer would not really understand them.

24:18

Finally, as far as I'm concerned, the purpose of this debate is scholarly dialogue and not evangelism. I seriously doubt that anything

24:23

I will say will convince any reformed Christians in the room or that anything Professor White says will convince any of the

24:29

Mormons. I believe that considering our respective differences in the context of scholarly argument will be mutually beneficial and perhaps a bit fun.

24:38

If I didn't think this, I wouldn't participate. That said, in order to answer our question, which

24:45

I think is a philosophical question, does Christ's sacrifice perfect those for whom it is made, we must first answer what it means to say that x perfects y, something perfects something else, and we must be clear about the phrase for for whom it is made.

25:02

On the latter question, it should be clear that Dr. White and myself disagree. Dr. White is a Calvinist and I'm not.

25:08

He believes in limited atonement, that is the doctrine that atonement was performed for a limited number of people who are predestined to have it affect their lives.

25:15

This point is important because it is logically dependent on the view that the atonement's effectiveness is independent of anything that we do.

25:24

That is because according to the Calvinist, Christ's atonement alone perfects the elect. My position is that our perfection depends on us as well as on Christ.

25:33

I will argue that the Calvinist claims about the atonement are either logically incoherent or undefined, that they contradict what we know about God and man from the scriptures, and that they contradict our intuitions about the nature of morality.

25:52

So the Calvinist claim that the atonement is alone sufficient for perfection does not give us an adequate response to this question.

26:03

Importantly, I am not arguing for Pelagianism or Semi -Pelagianism rather than Arminianism.

26:09

In fact, what I'm arguing for is just the minimal view that the majority of Christians hold in common.

26:15

Mormons, Greek Orthodox, Catholics, and most liberal mainline Protestants. Even a lot of evangelical

26:23

Protestants that I know. I take it that the gaining of justification is one part of perfection and the gaining of sanctification is another part.

26:35

For the purposes of this section of the paper, it doesn't matter which one we are discussing. Calvinist claims seem to indicate that we should understand what it is for X to perfect Y in terms of the notion of some things being necessary for the justification or sanctification of someone.

26:54

The use of the notion of necessity is clear in the statement of faith on the Alpha and Omega Ministries webpage which states,

27:00

I'm quoting from this statement here, I'll put the whole statement up, good works are a necessary result of faith but are not to be considered necessary to the gaining of salvation.

27:17

Calvinists seem to make at least four claims about necessity in the atonement. Firstly, in the above quote,

27:24

Calvinist claims that good works are are a necessary result of being elected, which is what gives us faith.

27:31

However, secondly, good works are not to be considered necessary to the gaining of justification.

27:38

Additionally, given the doctrine of perseverance, Calvinists claim that the elect necessarily will be perfected.

27:44

And finally, total depravity entails that one cannot do good works without being elect.

27:51

So, I'm going to put these four claims in a form that makes their logical structure perspicuous. You're going to have to forgive me for this.

27:59

I'm actually a philosophical logician. That's my area of expertise. I can't help but do this. So, suppose that S is some particular person.

28:16

Then let the letter E represent S is elect.

28:22

W represents S performs good works. We can say that God performs good works through S, which amounts to the same thing for the

28:29

Calvinist. And then J represents S is justified. Given this, the four propositions entailed by the

28:37

Calvinist view have the following logical form. This is one through four here. First, it is necessary that if E then

28:47

W. Second, it is not the case that it is necessary that if W then

28:53

J. Third, it is necessary that if E then

29:00

J. And fourth, it is necessary that it is not the case that W and not

29:06

E. By the rules of logic, we can draw the following inferences from one and four.

29:18

Okay, first I'm going to suppose that W is true, which is just to suppose that someone is elect, at least one person.

29:29

Six, E follows from five and four. Seven, but then

29:40

J follows from six and three. So, if we suppose that W then, if we suppose that if W then,

29:50

I'm sorry. So, if we suppose W, then J follows by rules of logic and necessary truths.

29:58

So, it is necessary that if W then J. But that contradicts two.

30:06

The four Calvinist claims are logically inconsistent. The last claim is this.

30:12

It is necessary that if S performs good works, then S is justified.

30:20

The claims are logically inconsistent. I imagine now, and you can go through that, check it with your logic textbooks, which

30:27

I'm sure you all have with you. It's a logically valid argument, right? I imagine the

30:33

Calvinist responding with the claim that the term necessity is not used in quite this way in her text. Indeed, she might say that although good works are a necessary consequence of being elected, and being elected is a necessary and sufficient for salvation, good works are not the cause of salvation, but a result of being elected to salvation.

30:52

From a philosophical point of view then, the problem is causation. But what does it mean to say that X must precede

30:59

Y, and yet X is not part of the cause of Y? This is what the

31:05

Calvinist is committed to. She says that works necessarily precede salvation, and yet works are not part of the cause of salvation.

31:11

In and of itself, this seems incoherent. Or otherwise, she needs to give us a philosophical account of causation that is entirely different than all the traditional accounts.

31:21

A different response is that although good works are a necessary consequence of being elect in some sense, they're not a logically necessary consequence of it.

31:28

If not, then we might say that being elect is logically necessary and sufficient for salvation, and doing good works is not.

31:36

However, a proposition is a logical necessity if and only if its opposite is a contradiction, and there's no logical contradiction in saying that S is saved on the basis of good works alone.

31:46

Indeed, in an article in Faith and Philosophy that's coming out this month, I argue specifically that it's morally incoherent to say that we cannot do what is right.

32:01

It is impossible for us to do what is right. This is because it is incoherent to hold someone morally accountable for something over which she has no control.

32:10

There might be something else that Calvinists mean when they say that works are a necessary result of being elect, but not necessary for salvation.

32:15

However, what they mean is not at all clear to me. So I must conclude that either the proposition is meaningless, or it is logically incoherent.

32:23

Okay, now the three people who followed that can verify the extent to which the argument works.

32:29

I understand that that was a little bit over the top. These arguments are easier. I had to make the first argument because it's my central reason for rejecting

32:37

Calvinism. But let's suppose that the Calvinist claim actually does make sense.

32:43

It's logically coherent, which I don't think it is. In that case, I argue that it is inconsistent with the fact that God gives us commands or imperatives.

32:50

Indeed, since a moral person who gives an imperative assumes that it could be obeyed, it follows that God's commands can be obeyed.

32:59

To begin, I think it is very clear from the scriptures that God gives imperatives. Examples include the Ten Commandments, God's Abraham to sacrifice

33:06

Isaac, and Jesus's imperatives from the Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon on the Plain. God tells us to do things.

33:13

Now, when A tells B to do S, it is a presupposition of the discourse that B can do

33:21

S. For example, I say to my daughter, get out of the bathtub. In my case, this is an appropriate imperative because Cicely is quite mobile.

33:32

She's not physically challenged. But suppose that she were. Then it would be immoral of me to command her to get out of the tub.

33:41

This would be analogous to the Calvinist claim that we can do no good even though God commands us to do good. One might respond with the claim that God doesn't just command us to do things, but he also provides a way for us to do it.

33:55

God enables us to do good. Of course, Calvinists, unlike Arminians, claim that God enables only the elect to do good.

34:04

The commands are presumably universal to all humanity. Nothing else would explain the

34:09

Calvinist evangelical zeal to condemn sin in the world. This means that the commands apply to everyone, but God only enables some to accomplish them.

34:19

This is like my saying to Cicely and Chloe, my other daughter, get out of the tub when they are both physically challenged, and I decide to help

34:27

Cicely alone. Clearly, this would be morally wrong. Thus, this is a very difficult problem for the

34:34

Calvinist position. Not only are Calvinist claims about our inability to do good works on our own inconsistent with morality, they're inconsistent with the very logic of grammatical imperatives.

34:46

We can reason with imperatives. For example, I can say, be on time for your airplane. To be on time, you must be there two hours before your flight, so be there two hours before your flight.

34:55

This type of argument once posed a significant problem for philosophical logicians since the logical validity of an argument is traditionally explained in terms of the possibilities regarding the truth of the statement.

35:05

That is, an argument is valid just in case if the premises are true, then the conclusion must be true. However, an imperative is not the kind of statement that can be true or false, so what should we do with arguments that involve imperatives?

35:16

The late Oxford philosopher Richard Harris solved this problem by developing a logic for imperatives. The basis of the logic is that each imperative, to each imperative, there is associated a propositional claim that can be true or false.

35:26

So, for example, be there two hours before your flight is associated with you arrive two hours before the flight.

35:34

The imperative only makes sense if it is possible that it be obtained, according to that logic.

35:42

It would not be just to hold someone accountable for something that they could not avoid doing. So, for example, if a tornado comes along and sweeps me into Mrs.

35:50

Fraser's flowerbed, I cannot be held accountable for the destruction of her property. On the other hand, if I am walking by her flowerbed and decide that I hate her flowers and stomp on them and destroy them, then

36:02

I can be held accountable for this action. The reason that I can be held accountable in the latter case is that I could have refrained from the erroneous action.

36:11

The principle that I should not be held accountable for actions over which I do not have control is central to our notion of a just legal system.

36:21

But Calvinism states that we can be held accountable for what we do not have control over, for it states that we're totally depraved because of Adam's sin.

36:30

This sin is in the past and thus outside our control. Nevertheless, it implies that we can do no good on our own.

36:36

If so, then supposing that we are not elect, for example, we're depraved Mormons and thus not good Christians, we are held morally accountable for something outside our control.

36:47

This is inconsistent with our intuitions about moral accountability and with our view that God is good. Okay, so what should

36:54

I do with Paul? Paul has some writings that Calvinists really like. Traditionally, Mormons tend to not like them as much, although with increasing frequency,

37:03

Mormons are taking Paul's writings more seriously. Stephen Robinson, Robert Millet, James Faulkner, Professor White no doubt has some arguments in favor of Calvinist doctrines about the atonement on the basis of Paulian texts, which we've already heard.

37:16

So what should I say in response to these? One approach that is quite rational and which you're not going to like is the following.

37:25

Mormons believe in continuing revelation and this implies the denial of the doctrine of inerrancy. It is logically consistent with continuing revelation that past revelation is wrong.

37:34

Suppose that Professor White's interpretation of Paul is correct. It follows from this and my arguments above that some of Paul's views about salvation are just wrong.

37:42

This wouldn't bother me too much. A better approach for this audience, at least, and actually for almost all

37:48

LDS audiences, which would not accept what I just said, that's one of the ways in which I'm more liberal, notes that there are many interpretations of Paul including those of those of the liberal scholars, those of the open theists, those of Arminians.

38:03

The latter two, there's evangelicals that are open theists and Arminians. Now I've argued that the

38:08

Calvinist view is one, logically inconsistent, two, inconsistent with the fact that God issues imperatives, and three, inconsistent with some of our most basic moral intuitions.

38:19

This then gives us a strong textually independent reason to think that one of these other interpretations of Paul is more plausible than the

38:26

Calvinist interpretation. Otherwise, we need to just conclude that Paul's position is illogical.

38:33

I think I would rather choose the view that Paul's position is not so irrational. This leads me to think that the

38:38

Arminian or the open theist interpretation of Paul is more plausible. I emphasize again that I'm not a scriptural scholar and so I can add nothing to that textual debate.

38:48

There are plenty of other people who have done so and I would just be repeating what they've already said if I got into that.

38:56

But what I can say is that we better hope that the textual debate does come out and doesn't come out in favor of the Calvinists, since that would entail that rationally we should reject

39:04

Paul's theology and hence Christianity. Professor White, or I'm sorry,

39:09

Dr. White. Are you a professor somewhere? Professor White. I was using doctor throughout and that was a typo.

39:16

Sorry about that. Professor White claims that if I said that Christ died substitutionarily in the place of every single man and woman in all the world, then

39:25

I would be forced to either say that everyone will be saved or the death of Christ is insufficient to save without additional works.

39:34

I've already given arguments that two is true. But I also want to point out the problem with the central assumption of White's conditional claim.

39:42

The notion of a substitutionary atonement is itself very problematic. Now I'm only talking about one version of substitutionary atonement.

39:50

It says that Christ is punished in our place for our sins. But innocent people can't be punished for other sins.

39:58

Punishing Christ for what we've done is not just. Moreover, it is even more unjust if Christ only suffers for some people's sins.

40:06

That is arbitrary and hence fundamentally unjust. I've argued that it is not rational to claim that our perfection is independent of anything we do.

40:14

It follows from this that it is more rational to claim that our perfection is at least partially dependent on what we do.

40:21

Both Arminians and semi -Pelagians claim that this is the case. And Mormons can be either.

40:27

Jesus commands us to be perfect. Commands presuppose that we can satisfy them. This doesn't mean that we can go at it on our own.

40:35

Certainly God must help us in some way, whether by enabling us or making up for what we lack. This is precisely the role for grace.

40:43

But grace without works is illogical. It contradicts the very notion of a just God. We know this not because scriptures make precise philosophical or theological claims.

40:54

That's the real mingling of philosophy with scripture. But because precise and rigorous analysis of Calvinist philosophical claims shows them to be illogical.

41:05

One might respond similar to Tertullian by saying, I believe because it is illogical. I can say nothing in response to this except to say that such a position logically leads to a rejection of all discussion or debate, including this debate.

41:19

The very act of debating assumes the centrality of offering reasons for one's beliefs.

41:25

So this objection seems to present us with this choice. Accept Calvinism and reject the need for reasoning, and hence not participate in debates like this.

41:34

Or accept reason and reject Calvinism. As for me, I choose reason. Thank you very much.

41:59

It said that the scriptures are not propositional in nature. And if what that means is they're not written in such a way as to fulfill certain desires for a systematic theology textbook, that's true.

42:12

However, I would point out that you cannot make heads or tails out of Colossians, Philippians, Galatians, the

42:17

Gospel of John, recognizing that specific propositions concerning truth are laid out for us there, especially concerning who

42:26

Christ is, and interestingly enough, concerning his work. This evening we have indeed seen the battle between what's called monergism and synergism.

42:34

We can go ahead and turn that off. Between monergism and synergism, between that belief that says that there is only one power that can save and can save completely, that is

42:45

God's power, and synergism, which postulates the idea of a union between divine power and human power that is dependent upon both.

42:54

And since we would assume the divine power would not fail, then the final decision concerning salvation becomes a very human one.

43:02

And we had presented to us, and I teach philosophy of religion, have since 96 for Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, and things like that.

43:11

It was difficult to follow the presentation, mainly because the definitions were on one slide, and then the discussion was on the second, and it was very, very hard for me to follow that.

43:19

But if I understood what was being presented, I would say that Dr. Potter will not disagree with me that logical syllogisms require that propositions be stated in the same senses and categories.

43:34

The use of equivocation can turn even the most clear truth on its head through the use of forms of logical argumentation.

43:45

The presentation was made from our website, Confused Categories, and it may be because Dr.

43:52

Potter is not familiar with Reformed Theology or whatever it might be, I don't know, but it confused categories. The one was the assertion that good works cannot be made a condition of gaining justification, and then the other proposition was when

44:06

God regenerates an individual and gives that individual saving faith, that work of regeneration will always be accompanied by all other saving graces.

44:16

And as a result, that individual will be conformed to the image of Christ, and good works will then become the natural result of the fact that they've been a new creation.

44:24

They've been made a new creation in Jesus Christ. And so part of the argument had to do with God's eternal decree.

44:31

One had to do with the experience of God's decree interfacing with time. One has to do with the outworking of God's purpose, which transcends merely justification.

44:41

And so I don't find the argumentation compelling because it does not use the terms in the context in which they were even authored on the website, and I can guarantee you that I understand that because I wrote our statement of faith.

44:54

And so I know what I meant, and I think I'm using those terms in historically consistent ways.

45:00

I think if you look at the Westminster Larger and Shorter Catechisms, discussion on James 2, etc., etc., I was using the terminology in a very similar fashion.

45:09

Now, Dr. Potter addressed the issue of total depravity. I'm not sure if he's familiar with the Reformed perspective on total depravity.

45:16

Notre Dame is not known for its plethora of Calvinists on campus, but it's a

45:22

Roman Catholic institution, of course, but total depravity does not mean that we are as evil as we can be.

45:29

It means that we are incapable of doing spiritual good in God's sight. And I would just simply point you to various passages of Scripture that teach this.

45:37

For example, Romans chapter 8, verses 7 through 8 in the Scriptures, very clearly Paul says, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God, for it does not subject itself to the law of God.

45:49

Listen to this phrase, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh not will not, but the term is cannot please

46:00

God. Now, that is Paul's statement, and there are many who do not like Paul's statement.

46:05

There is no question about that, but if we are going to establish at least what the biblical presentation is, then

46:11

I suppose if there are those who say, well, I reject that. I reject Paul's perspective.

46:16

Then I think we're getting somewhere in seeing what the true sources of the various positions are this evening.

46:23

John chapter 8, verse 43, Jesus asks those, and this isn't Paul by the way, this is the Lord Jesus, asks those who are seeking to persecute him, why can you not hear my words?

46:33

It's because you are not able to do so. There was a specific inability on their part.

46:41

It was spiritually deaf. They were incapable of hearing the word of Christ.

46:48

Look at John 6, 44. Look at Romans chapter 3, verses 10 through 11, for example, and the lengthy discussion there of man's depravity, the fact there's none who seeks

46:58

God, there's no fear of God before their eyes, etc., etc., and Paul himself says that that is an indictment of all human beings.

47:06

You see, we had a perfect man who represented us in the garden, and his name was

47:13

Adam. Federal headship is not something that is very popular amongst most Mormons with whom I have spoken, but it is very clearly the teaching of Romans chapter 5, and I do not believe you can make heads or tails out of Paul's theology unless you recognize that teaching of the federal headship of Adam, and then the headship of Christ.

47:32

Adam being the head of a humanity, and all he can give to his offspring is death. Christ being the head of a new humanity, and what he gives them is life,

47:42

Romans chapter 5. Then we had a discussion of the impossibility from a philosophical context of the reformed understanding of man's nature, and especially as total depravity applies itself.

47:57

I would just simply point you to the biblical testimony. It's interesting

48:02

Dr. Potter raised the issue of open theism and seemed to have some affinities toward the open theistic position.

48:08

I would direct you to a debate that took place the first weekend of November of last year between myself and Dr.

48:14

John Sanders at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida, on this very issue, and I believe

48:19

I can state with great accuracy and fairness that when it came to the exegesis of key scriptural passages such as Genesis chapter 50 verse 20,

48:29

Isaiah chapter 10, Acts 4, 27 to 28, which very clearly demonstrate the interface of God's sovereign decree and man's responsibility and the desires of his heart, the open theistic position represented by one of the three major leaders of that perspective that is being published today, was not able to give a defense from a biblical standpoint.

48:52

I would refer you to those scriptures. Look at Joseph's dealing with his brothers in that act of selling him into slavery.

48:58

Joseph said you meant it for evil, God meant it for good. Direct parallel in the

49:04

Hebrew text, God intended that action, they intended evil, God holds them accountable on the basis of the intentions of their hearts, and yet what they do is in conformance with God's eternal decree.

49:16

That is found in the scriptures in a number of different places. We heard a good bit about Pauline texts, and well, you know, maybe just Paul's wrong.

49:25

Well, the Lord Jesus in John chapter 10 taught the same thing that Paul did regarding the atonement. He said he lays down his life for his sheep, and then a few verses later tells the

49:35

Jews standing in front of him, you are not of my sheep. That's in the red letters, that's not in the Pauline section.

49:41

And so we can't simply dismiss that and say, well, you know, Paul is Paul. Well, wasn't it

49:48

Peter who recognized the inspiration of Paul's words?

49:54

He even says, as Paul, our brother, has written to you, and he talks about as in other scriptures, he recognizes

50:00

Paul's writings as being scriptural? It certainly is. And so I would again basically say, well, if basically what we say is, well, all those verses are wrong, this is going to be a fairly short debate, it's not really going to get us anywhere, because we can just as simply say, well, those passages are irrelevant because they're wrong from my perspective.

50:18

I've had that happen. I will never forget when I return more a missionary upon my three times reading

50:23

Ephesians 1 -11 that talked about God's eternal predestination, reached over my Bible, tapped his finger on page 11, says, that's wrong, and I feel good saying it.

50:34

Now, I have a critical edition of the Greek New Testament right over there. If there's any of these texts that are disputed,

50:39

I'll be glad to look at the textual data, but this doctrine is not based upon anything that would even be slightly challenged in that area.

50:48

We just heard toward the end this idea of God's election,

50:56

Jesus dying on behalf of his people, his elect people, that it's not just.

51:02

You better believe it. It's merciful. If you want strict categories of justice, my friend, you are in deep trouble.

51:12

Because the strict justice of God says, you break my law, the penalty is severe, and it must be exacted.

51:22

You see, the cross is a matter of grace. Yes, God's justice is fulfilled because the substitutionary atonement of Christ, but you see, grace and mercy are not categories of justice.

51:34

And I, for one, am very thankful that they are not. Thank you very much.

51:49

We'll now have a 10 -minute rebuttal from Dr. Potter. Okay, there's one sense in which

52:11

I'm not a very good choice for this debate. The sense in which I'm not is that I am not, again,

52:17

I'm going to repeat, I'm not a scriptural theologian. I don't know Greek, so I can't get involved in a scriptural or textual debate about what those texts mean.

52:28

This is really important for me to sort of admit that I'm not going to get into that because, frankly,

52:37

Professor White knows more about that than I do, right? But why am

52:43

I not convinced then by his arguments? I mean, shouldn't I be convinced? After all,

52:48

I believe that God revealed his word to us, right? And I believe that his revealed word is in the

52:55

Bible and some other scriptures that you might know about. And so I should at least take those texts, prima facie for granted, and build any view of the nature of God, the nature of the atonement on the basis of those, right?

53:13

So why don't I believe Professor White? Well, I, like you, read a lot of this stuff.

53:21

And for every position that Professor White takes on these texts, they are disputable.

53:30

It's not the case that everyone's agreeing with him. In fact, he spends most of his time in his essays talking about all of those people out there who claim to be

53:39

Christians but really aren't because they don't actually believe the Bible. Well, they don't believe the way he understands it. So these are disputed things, right?

53:48

The textual interpretation is disputed, and I'm sure you've heard in the other debates all sorts of textual reasons on the other side of this, right?

54:02

I'm not going to give any of those, but I am going to argue on the basis of intuitions about morality, that those interpretations, if we have to pick between two interpretations from two scholars of Greek in the

54:20

New Testament of what Paul is saying, and both of them, from our perspective as laypersons, as non -scriptural theologians, seem to be giving reasons based on the text, seem to be giving reasons based on their understanding of Greek, then we're going to have to pick on the basis of other criterion.

54:41

Either that or we're all going to have to become scriptural theologians in order to just believe Christianity. I don't believe the latter.

54:49

I think that there are a lot of Christians out there who are not scriptural theologians, and so we're going to have to come up with independent things.

54:56

We're going to have to see what seems to make sense, right? Now, how precise are the claims in texts, in these scriptural texts?

55:11

I wrote a note one time on my refrigerator saying, it says, gone to N .D.

55:19

This is a note to my wife telling her that I'd gone up to Notre Dame, but we have a friend named

55:27

Norman Davis. She misunderstood me, and I'm her husband.

55:35

She knows me, right? And she knows I'm a student at Notre Dame. It's possible to misunderstand texts, and think about the texts.

55:43

When these texts were written, they were written a long time ago, in a different culture, by people who had radically different ways of seeing things than we do in the modern culture.

55:53

Hold on. And in a different language, by people who were not trained in theology or philosophy.

56:05

There is no way that they were thinking the precise philosophical claims that Arminians make, or that semi -Pelagians make, or that Calvinists make.

56:16

They were making claims that were much more ambiguous, and much more practical in nature.

56:21

They are not making precise philosophical claims. Okay, another important point here.

56:32

Mercy versus justice. It might seem I'm being really demanding here, saying that God should be just.

56:38

But let's think about what, according to the Calvinist, mercy means. According to the

56:45

Calvinist, this is mercy. A child takes some toys and decides that a group of, or some toy soldiers, sorry, decides that a group of the toy soldiers are the good guys, and the other group are the bad guys.

57:01

Then the child plays the game, you know, with the, and there's a war, and one side wins, the other side loses.

57:09

Whoever does anything bad, which the child decides, goes to prison, right?

57:15

Whoever does anything good doesn't. That's the Calvinist God. The Calvinist God is one that predestines people.

57:25

You are made either good or bad by the Calvinist God. The Calvinist God is like me if I tell my children to get out of the tub, and I only help one of them.

57:37

Now, maybe that's merciful to Cicely, but it sure as hell isn't merciful to Chloe. That's immoral.

57:47

I shouldn't do that. I shouldn't ask someone to do something they can't do. Demand that of someone, and then not do anything to help them?

57:54

That's arbitrary. Now, it's one thing to say that God would do this.

58:00

He would demand a high standard of us all, and we would all fall short of that.

58:08

We would all fall short of that high standard, and according to justice, we would have to be punished for that, for not living up to that high standard.

58:17

According to justice, we should all go down, but God decides to make up for what we didn't do.

58:26

God decides to help us either that, or he decides to help us then meet the standard.

58:32

He enables us to do that. He enables anyone who's willing to do that. If I help

58:39

Chloe out of the bathtub as well as Cicely, I am not only merciful, but I'm just.

58:44

There is no contradiction between the two, and because of that, because there's no contradiction, we should opt for the position that allows

58:53

God to be both just, moral, and good, and also merciful. Mafia, people in the mafia are merciful, sometimes to people that they like, and if you have a

59:05

God who only picks certain people, that God is arbitrary. That God is no better than the kingpin of the organized crime.

59:26

We're now going to have questions of 15 minutes each between the speakers. That'll be followed by five -minute closing statements, and then we're going to have the questions from the audience, and then we'll conclude.

59:38

We're going to start with Dr. White having questions for Dr. Potter. Thank you very much,

59:48

Pastor Wallace. Oh, you want me up there.

59:53

All right. I thought that's why I had a microphone on the table there.

01:00:01

Let's reset this thing here, but now I can't see him. He's behind me. That's scary. I'll be behind you, too.

01:00:10

All right. Dr. Potter, you were just utilizing and have utilized,

01:00:20

I think, more than once what will now forever be known as the bathtub example in all future philosophical discussions.

01:00:29

You're going to want to aim that, get right into it there so folks can hear you. In the bathtub example, both of those that you tell to get out of the tub are alive and capable of doing so, correct?

01:00:51

Can I answer that now? Yeah. There's actually two different possible examples that you can imagine here that I talked about.

01:00:56

One is where Cicely's there alone, and she's physically capable. That's actually the case.

01:01:01

I don't have physically challenged children. But the other example is one... Actually, there were three

01:01:07

I talked about. The other example is one where Cicely is incapable of getting out on her own.

01:01:13

I tell her to get out of the bathtub, and I help her, or I enable her to do that.

01:01:19

The last example is one where both Chloe and Cicely are in there, and they are both physically incapable of getting out of the tub on their own, and I only enable one of them to get out.

01:01:33

I leave the other in, even though I command both of them to get out. So would you agree that in this example, getting out of the tub is a good thing because you command it?

01:01:44

Well, yeah, I guess... In the... Yeah, I mean, it's supposed to be analogous to that.

01:01:49

Okay. Um, what part of this analogy applies to Reformed theology in light of the fact that we believe that man is dead in sin, and...

01:02:01

Or does any of it apply to the Reformed position, or is it more applicable to someone who believes that we're only sort of sick in sin or something like that?

01:02:13

I'm not sure exactly what you mean. Well, since you were saying this is the Calvinist God, and we're using that as part of your example, and Calvinists believe that men are dead in sin,

01:02:25

Ephesians chapter 2, you being dead in trespasses and sins. What part of your analogy then takes into consideration our belief of man's deadness and sin, or do you just reject what we are?

01:02:36

Obviously, dead in sin is some sort of metaphor, and I need to know what it means literally before I can respond to that.

01:02:42

Okay, so... What does it mean literally about whether we're able to do things, like do good works or whatever?

01:02:50

Okay, well, in light of the Reformed understanding that, for example, in Jesus' words, give you an example in John 6, 44, no one is able to come to me unless the

01:02:59

Father who sent me draws him, and I'll raise him up on the last day. That inability on man's part. My point to the question is, does your analogy address that deadness of man in sin,

01:03:12

A, and B, the justness that we at least assert, because we're talking about rebel sinners here, not just cute little kids in a tub.

01:03:23

Yeah, well, the deadness of the sin is the fact that they're physically incapable of getting out, in that case.

01:03:29

That's what's supposed to be analogous to that. Now, notice what you just said is no one can come to me unless...

01:03:35

The Father who sent me draws him. Yeah, unless there's an enabling, and that's perfectly consistent with the position that I'm advocating.

01:03:42

Okay, would you then say that your position is consistent with the fact that in John 6, 44, that enablement is limited to those who are given by the

01:03:52

Father to the Son, or would you reject that? That that enablement is limited to those...

01:03:59

In John 6, when he says, no one is able to come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day, if you follow the context, the him that is being spoken of is the one who's drawn by the

01:04:10

Father, given by the Father to the Son, etc., etc. It's a specific group. In fact, Jesus is explaining the unbelief of the

01:04:17

Jews. Would you say that you're actually saying that, or did you reject that? See, now, here is where it's not clear to me what it means to be given to the

01:04:24

Father by the Son, right? I mean, this is the language that you get in scriptures, at least in the

01:04:31

English version of this, right, is not very precise about what it means, and there's all sorts of more precise philosophical claims that would be consistent with that language.

01:04:41

I mean, there's all over in the New Testament, in this particular case, there will be ambiguities with respect to...

01:04:49

Because there are so many metaphors used, with respect to what it's supposed to...

01:04:55

Literally, what does this mean for our lives, right? Literally, what does it mean? So is it your assertion that the words of Jesus, if we begin, just look at John chapter 6, and we make a conscious, clear effort to follow grammar and syntax and context, that the words of Jesus in John chapter 6 would be less or more clear than your presentation on logical syllogism that we saw in your presentation?

01:05:22

I actually think that the words that were written in those... That are in those texts, those

01:05:29

Greek texts, which I believe are written by people often who were witnesses of Jesus, but I question the idea that they got the words exactly right.

01:05:42

I don't know if you've ever watched a... I'm sure you have. That's a negative way of putting it, but I'm sure you've watched testimony in a courtroom, and people don't get things exactly the same.

01:05:55

So we're not talking about the words of Jesus. We're talking about the words that people remember Jesus having said, first of all.

01:06:02

That's important. But the second point is that I don't think that these people had precise philosophical or theological claims that they were making.

01:06:13

I think they were making much more pragmatic, everyday kinds of claims that you you hear in the

01:06:20

LDS faith all the time, but I hear it all the time in... I attend a Presbyterian USA church pretty much every

01:06:26

Sunday as well as an LDS church, because I have a friend who's a minister there, and I just like to hear his sermons. And I hear the same kinds of claims made there, where these claims are claims like this.

01:06:37

We need Jesus. We need Jesus in our life. Or they're claims like, we should respond to the call.

01:06:46

We should hearken to the gospel, to the good word. Those kinds of claims are not philosophical or theological claims, and those claims are central to Christianity.

01:06:58

When we turn them into some sort of philosophical or theological doctrine, that's fine. That's what

01:07:03

I do. I actually consider different philosophical theological doctrines, but we're going beyond what's essential to Christianity when we do that.

01:07:09

And in addition, not only are we going on beyond what's essential to Christianity, but then we put ourselves in a position where we need to make sure that what we say is philosophically rational.

01:07:20

And I'm arguing that for every passage that you're talking about, there's an Arminian interpretation of it.

01:07:27

And in other words, those passages, at face value, I'll accept those passages and I'll say that those things are true.

01:07:37

But as soon as you make the precise philosophical claim that is like a

01:07:43

Calvinist claim or an Arminian claim, I'm going to say, okay, now we're doing philosophy. We're no longer talking about the essentials of Christianity anymore.

01:07:49

We're just doing philosophy. And there, in order for me to accept that claim as the right translation and interpretation of that, not only do

01:07:56

I have to see that it fits well with the text, but I also have to see that it is philosophically reasonable.

01:08:02

And I don't see that about Calvinism. Well, when everything you just said was based upon, for example, these are not the words of Jesus.

01:08:10

They're someone's recollection. What did Paul say when he said, what did Paul mean when he said to Timothy, all scripture is theanoustos.

01:08:18

It is God -breathed. What did Paul mean by that? And would you not agree that his view was consistent with every other scripture writer's view of the nature of scripture?

01:08:30

I don't think God thinks in Greek. And so when it says God -breathed, I mean that what

01:08:35

I think it means is that the overall, I mean, this is just a conjecture. I'm not certain about this because, again,

01:08:40

I'm not a scriptural theologian. But what it means by God -breathed is that this text, the way it is, what makes this text a revealed document from God is the way it will affect the people who read it, the way it will motivate them, and not because it gives them answers to really difficult scholarly and academic questions.

01:09:05

But sir, if you say that God does not think in Greek, are you saying God can't speak Greek? I'm sure he can speak

01:09:11

Greek, but I don't think he thinks in Greek. So I think that to say that these are

01:09:16

God's words, this is God -breathed, is to limit God, or to limit his thought in that sense.

01:09:22

But are you saying that theanoustos does not mean God -breathed? Or are you just saying that from your perspective, you would not hold that view?

01:09:29

Okay, obviously, God -breathed is a metaphor. And metaphors are very, very—you can't put metaphors into a precise philosophical or theological statement.

01:09:41

Metaphors are metaphorical, and as soon as you start interpreting them in some particular literal way, you've gone beyond—you've made it possible for someone to come along and say, well, no, that's not what the intention of the metaphor was.

01:09:53

Here's another different literal interpretation. And there's always going to be that. There's always going to be another interpretation.

01:09:58

Well, so is it your assertion that all interpretations of Scripture are equally valid? No, it's not my assertion that all scriptural—

01:10:06

What would make a scriptural interpretation more valid than another? Well, I think that you have to pay careful attention to the language like you do and like I'm unable to do.

01:10:16

I think you have to pay careful attention to the language. I think that you have to pay careful attention to the social context. I think you have to also take a broad understanding of the

01:10:26

Scriptures as a whole and interpret them in a very—in a broad way that takes into account all of the things that are said and not just focus on a specific passage in a specific place and think that you can interpret that independent of all the other passages.

01:10:42

And then I also think something—I also think this in addition to that, that we'll learn probably more about the way

01:10:52

God is and the nature of the atonement and these sorts of theological claims.

01:11:00

If we look at the way God acts in the Scriptures and we look at the way he interacts with people rather than attempt to insert precise philosophical claims into what people like Paul and other writers of the

01:11:15

New Testament have written who were not philosophers, but importantly, they were ministers and not philosophers.

01:11:23

If, hypothetically, if Paul's statement in 2

01:11:29

Timothy 3, 16 -17 is true and that it is Scripture, not the Scripture writers, but the result of their writing that is

01:11:35

God -breathed, would it not follow that if the author is God that the philosophical foundation of what is said would transcend anything that a non -inspired writing could ever even approach to being able to present?

01:11:53

I don't think that—it's not my view of God that it would matter to God what kinds of precise philosophical positions we hold.

01:12:03

What would matter is whether we are willing to affirm Jesus as our Savior and Lord or not. What would matter is whether when we pass someone on the street who's a beggar, if we stop to help or not.

01:12:14

What would matter is if we're willing to accept the good news and to have hope for salvation and redemption in the end.

01:12:24

Those are the kinds of things that matter. Whether we're Arminians or Calvinists or LDS theologians, it seems to me that that doesn't matter.

01:12:33

And I think that that's—I don't want—again, I don't want to present myself as representing the LDS position, but I think that this is the central reason why the

01:12:42

LDS Church is non -creedal and you will not find official statements of doctrine because I think that we emphasize the fact that it doesn't—the precise philosophical content of belief does not matter as much as the way that those beliefs function in constructing a community of Christ.

01:13:03

Dr. Potter, you said in one of the papers on your website, Finitism and the

01:13:09

Problem of Evil, I don't know what to say about redemptive sovereignty. I'm inclined to think that God is redemptively sovereign, but I am also tempted by the idea that God's plan is like James says it is, a wonderful one with great results should it succeed, but also a risky one with a real chance for failure if we do not cooperate.

01:13:25

You recognize those? Yeah. Okay. Could you, in the closing moment that we have here, comment in light of assuming—if you assume that this is the case—assuming that the presentation that I made in regards to the statements from Scripture, that it was

01:13:44

God's intention to bring us to God, God's intention that we have the righteousness of Christ because of the sacrifice of Christ, those are

01:13:53

Hinnok clauses in the Greek. If that is in fact true, then could you comment on what seems to be a major contradiction between what you said there about our need for—it could fail without our cooperation and the stated intention that the sacrifice of Christ was indeed to bring us into the presence of God?

01:14:17

Yeah, well, this is, I think, a really interesting philosophical issue and I can't do justice to it in just a couple of minutes, but I'll just try to say something about it.

01:14:25

Even 45 seconds is even worse. Okay, but, you know,

01:14:31

I think that it's—the point of my—that part of that paper was to argue, actually, that the idea that God will be—God's plan will be successful is consistent with the

01:14:42

Mormon view that God is not omnipotent in the classical sense, and I mean by that only that God can't—it is not the case that God can do anything that is logically possible.

01:14:52

God is certainly all -powerful in a broader sense, but I think that it is perfectly consistent with the

01:15:03

LDS position to say that we—or God's plan will succeed.

01:15:09

However, I have to admit, in my own views, a certain temptation by the idea that it really does matter what we do.

01:15:22

It really is, in the end, up to us, and after all, if it is, then we could all just decide not to accept it.

01:15:31

And I think that—I don't think that's necessarily a— there's nothing contradictory in being willing to entertain two different possible positions.

01:15:47

We'll now have questions from Dr. Potter to Dr. White. This is going to be the hard part for me.

01:15:57

I'm not used to doing this. I feel like a lawyer or something. The only—I ask—well, most

01:16:06

LDS—I don't know if you noticed, but a lot of LDS theologians are lawyers, right? Blake Osler and—I'm sorry.

01:16:15

Oh, yeah, sorry. Probably the first question

01:16:21

I would have is this. What is it—if you don't mean what

01:16:29

I said you mean by the claim that works are a necessary result of being elect—I mean, they follow necessarily.

01:16:41

If you are elect, you will do good works. If you don't mean that, what I claimed

01:16:46

I mean by that, and you don't mean what I claimed you mean by the claim that they are not necessary to the gaining of salvation—those are quotes from the text, right?

01:16:58

Could you maybe explain the precise philosophical claim that you're making there? Sure. In fact, that was—during the break, someone brought over your paper so I could look at it a little bit more carefully, and I think that was one of the equivocations that I noticed there, is that you seem to confuse the statement that works are a necessary result of saving faith with the idea of works being a necessary grounds of justification.

01:17:30

Those are two very different things, at least as I define them, and that was my statement of faith, so let me explain what the difference is.

01:17:37

The one is a denial of the idea that God's forensic declaration, which

01:17:42

I believe is what justification is, God's forensic declaration that I am right with him based upon the merits of Jesus Christ, upon his atonement in my place, that that declaration on the part of God cannot be based upon anything that I do in and of myself.

01:18:00

It cannot be based upon any merits that I have, anything that I bring. The terminology we frequently use is we bring the empty hand of faith, and only the empty hand of faith can fit into the hand of God's grace.

01:18:12

The other statement that I made, however, was that since saving faith is the gift of God, that it is described in scripture—Philippians 1 .29—it

01:18:20

has been granted to you to believe. Since it's described as the gift of God, then one of the things that differentiates saving faith from non -saving faith or hypocrisy, those who, as in Jesus's parable, the soils that spring up, but there is no ground in them, etc.,

01:18:39

etc. One of the things that separates those kinds of faith is that saving faith is a part of the whole work of God in the life, which includes, obviously, first regeneration, bringing a spiritual life, sanctification, the whole nine yards, and as a result, as James teaches, it will result in the fact that we are new creatures in Christ and, as Paul put it in Ephesians 2 .10,

01:19:01

since we are created by Christ Jesus unto good works. And so it becomes as natural for the

01:19:08

Christian to do good works once justified, regenerated by God, given saving faith, justified in peace with God, it becomes as natural for that person to do good works as it is for, as my good friend

01:19:23

Wally Tope used to say, you don't go ba -ba to become a sheep, you go ba -ba because you are a sheep. A sheep goes ba -ba because it's its nature to do so.

01:19:31

A Christian does good works because it's his nature to do so. Not that that becomes the ground of what

01:19:38

God did, but the result. So the difference is as fundamental as the difference between, which you would certainly recognize in any propositional statement, there's a difference between the grounds of an action and the result of that action.

01:19:52

And so I think it was just a matter of misconstruing the relationship between the two statements that results in the equivocation.

01:20:00

Okay, so a follow -up question on the first question then. Let me paint two pictures and tell me which or what the practical difference would be between these.

01:20:13

On the one hand, the Calvinist says that we are elect if, well for Christians, I'm not obviously, but...

01:20:24

Oh don't, don't, don't, don't second -guess me. Yeah, maybe later, right? You're young, sir,

01:20:31

God has plenty of time. We're elect. Some people are elect, and those people who are elect will do the right thing.

01:20:42

And the Arminian position that says, well, or let's even just make it more extreme because people were questioning my ability as a

01:20:52

Mormon to defend an Arminian position, saying that's not orthodox LDS theology. It's funny how every people who are non -LDS are always telling me what is orthodox

01:21:00

LDS theology, but I'll go with the semi -Pelagian position. This is a position that says that those who are in the end saved are going to, are ones that do good works.

01:21:13

And on the one hand, the Calvinist says, well, those works have nothing to do with whether you make it. And on the other hand, the semi -Pelagian says those works have something to do with whether you make it or not.

01:21:23

Now, what is the practical or actual difference in our lives between those two positions?

01:21:30

An incredible difference because fundamentally it speaks to the very purposes whereby we do anything.

01:21:40

You see, in the first one, and I would want to correct a little bit of the painting of the picture here, you said the elect will do the right thing.

01:21:47

If what you mean by that is that they will believe, that would be one thing, but if you mean they will do the right thing in the doing of good works, which

01:21:54

I assumed you meant, is that what you mean by doing good works? They will only do so having been regenerated by the sovereign act of God.

01:22:04

And hence, all grounds of boasting will be cut out from underneath them. As it says in 1 Corinthians 1, verse 30, it is by his doing that you are in Christ Jesus.

01:22:13

The second view sounds like it is by his doing and your doing that you are in Christ Jesus, and hence the very foundation of why we do what we do becomes different.

01:22:24

In the first position, we do good works out of thankfulness to God, not to gain something from him, not to have merit in his sight.

01:22:31

In the second position, that becomes the very ground of our salvation. And secondly, the result is completely different.

01:22:38

One is to the glory of God and to him alone. The other divides that glory between God and the redeemed.

01:22:46

And so you have, I think, a tremendous difference between those two perspectives. And you might say, well, is that a practical difference?

01:22:54

As one who has worked in the church for a number of years in a pastoral element, yeah, it's a very practical difference, a very practical difference.

01:23:02

But the point is that even the Arminian or the semi -Pelagian believes that God tells you not to say that you are responsible or that you merit or deserve these things, because after all, you can't do it on your own.

01:23:16

You're doing it with the work of someone else as well. And so you're never in a position to boast. And so the true

01:23:23

Arminian or the true semi -Pelagian is not going to boast either. And so the true Arminian, true semi -Pelagian is going to look just like the

01:23:30

Calvinist. No, I would never attempt to defend the consistency of either Arminianism nor semi -Pelagianism.

01:23:36

That's why I'm not either one of them. Yes, you're right. The statement is made that no one can boast.

01:23:43

The problem is, and I think you can appreciate this, when you apply the same strict standards of thought that you seek to apply, when it gets down to the final analysis of why in eternity there are those who stand before the throne of God, enthralled in worship of him, and their hearts truly love him, and there are those who stand upon the parapets of hell, screaming out their hatred at God.

01:24:12

In these two perspectives, there's a very different reason as to why those two groups are what they are.

01:24:18

You see, from the Reformed perspective, the only thing that separates those two groups is the five -letter word called grace.

01:24:25

And in the Arminian or semi -Pelagian, no matter how you boil it down, they may say you cannot boast.

01:24:31

But the fact is, if the difference between those groups is that you were, what, more spiritually sensitive?

01:24:38

If you have two people right here in America, equal access to the proclamation of the gospel, one gets saved and the other one does not, and it's something in them.

01:24:47

Well, what was it? Were they more spiritually sensitive? Were they smarter? Were they more insightful? Were they able to follow philosophical argumentation better?

01:24:55

Something in them is what explains why they're over there and not over there. And it's not the grace of God.

01:25:01

The grace of God seemingly equally tried to save both, and it succeeded with one, failed with the other, and the only difference is that that person was in some sense better.

01:25:11

And so I would suggest to you, it's been one of my consistent criticisms of Arminianism and semi -Pelagianism, which on this issue basically walk hand in hand, is that there is a ground of boasting that is provided that does denigrate the ultimate glorification of God's grace.

01:25:31

That's been an argument that is very deep in Reformed writing, has been for a long, long time.

01:25:37

In fact, even before the Reformation, you will find individuals who raise that very same issue. Let me ask you this question then.

01:25:43

Suppose there were some people who were in a house that was burning down, and these people were incapacitated for the most part to get themselves out of the house.

01:25:57

And a fireman comes in, fire person, I guess, firefighter, firefighter, firefighter comes in and goes to, you know, to help these people out.

01:26:14

Now, it might very well turn out that if these people resist that in any way, that he won't be able to help them out, right?

01:26:23

Those who don't resist it, I have no idea why someone might resist it, but it's conceivable that a suicidal person would, could be in a fire, right?

01:26:32

But the point is, is that it would seem to me that in that case, it would not actually be justifiable for the person who was rescued by the fireman, even though she had to contribute some to the rescue, it would not be justifiable for her to boast.

01:26:52

And so it doesn't follow from the fact that we do something that we are in any way justified in our boasting.

01:27:02

So what do you say to that? I'm sorry, I know my comments are to questions, and then what do you say? Yeah, that's fine. Well, again, there would be two issues.

01:27:09

First of all, I couldn't accept the thesis simply in light of the fact that, well, a number of issues, spiritual deadness, the fact that we're rebels against God, that we would be resisting.

01:27:22

In fact, that's an analogy I have used many times, that what God does is, is we're not just simply innocent people who need help.

01:27:29

We are rebels inside the king's castle. We have attacked his family, we're burning down his castle, and he sends his son to bring his people out, and knowing that that's going to cause the death of his son in doing it.

01:27:42

That, I think, is a much more applicable analogy to the all of salvation. But I think you're applying it specifically to, well, there still wouldn't be grounds of boasting if that person had to have some help.

01:27:53

I would again disagree, because again, taking it to the final situation of standing before God, if the only difference between those who end up outside the house and saved, and those who die in the fire, is that the firemen gave the exact same help to both, but the firemen failed with them because they didn't get enough help, and succeed with them because they did get enough help,

01:28:17

I again would say that the glory due to God, to bring it back to salvation, would be divided because the fundamental question of whether they were saved or not is left in their hands, and their work becomes simply something that is necessary, but not sufficient.

01:28:35

This was the issue of the Reformation. The issue of the Reformation has never been whether grace is necessary.

01:28:41

I mean, even Second Nephi 25 -23 says, is by grace we're saved after all we can do. Moroni 10 -32, you must free yourself all in godliness, love the

01:28:48

Lord your God with our heart, mind, and strength, then is the grace of Christ sufficient for you. The Book of Mormon speaks of grace.

01:28:54

The issue is not the necessity of grace. The Council of Trent condemned anyone who said you could be saved apart from grace.

01:29:00

That was never the issue. The issue was then, and I think continues to this day, even with some who would call themselves

01:29:06

Protestants, the sufficiency of grace. Whether grace alone, sola gratia, and I don't believe sola gratia, grace alone can be applied to the illustration that you just used, because it is dependent upon a human component for its ultimate fruition.

01:29:25

And that's where I would say that that is not a biblical teaching, and I do not find it philosophically satisfying either, to use that term.

01:29:31

But the example that I just gave, even if it does turn out that in that case there is a difference between the people who are saved, internal difference to them, between the people who are saved and the people who aren't, right, it still follows they are not in a position to say anything boastful about it.

01:29:55

And so as a matter of empirical fact, given that, given that Arminians and semi -Pelagians can't say anything boastful about their salvation, as a matter of empirical fact, we wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a universe that is a

01:30:09

Calvinistic or a universe that is Arminian, because there would be no empirical data to base it on.

01:30:16

There would be no practice on the part of the person to base it on. And so there would be no practical difference. This is why

01:30:22

I think that the whole, as soon as we go to a philosophical debate, we get away from actually what matters.

01:30:32

I'm not sure how to respond to that last statement, but I would say that in response to the previous portion of that, I would still disagree, simply because part of the issue with the illustration is that it's only talking about a saving of a person, does not speak of their guilt or their innocence, but saving a person from a fire.

01:30:49

We're talking about not just that, but the positive imputation of righteousness and salvation, and all the things that come along with that.

01:30:57

And as such, I do believe that they would have a ground of boasting before God, because what made them to differ was something that they did.

01:31:06

God's grace failed with the one, succeeded with the other, and the reason is what man contributed.

01:31:12

That would be the ground that I would see, and it would make a very big practical difference. We will now have a five -minute closing statement from Dr.

01:31:21

White. If you have questions, please be prepared at the closing statement of Dr.

01:31:27

Potter when he's finished, to bring this up as quickly as possible so we can get through those. Now, Dr.

01:31:33

White. Again, I would like to thank you all for being here this evening.

01:31:47

I would like to thank Dr. Potter for being here this evening. Thank you, sir. I appreciate your interaction this evening.

01:31:53

For all those who worked to make this available, Rich Pierce and Warren Smith out there who work so hard, we would not be able to do the things we do without the folks who are supportive of us.

01:32:07

The debate this evening, as I understood it, had to do with the nature of the atonement of Jesus Christ, and I would be a little bit surprised if Dr.

01:32:19

Potter would say that the biblical presentation that I made of the substitutionary atonement of Christ has been in any way refuted.

01:32:29

I think the issue has primarily been, well, given that there are other views, upon what basis can we analyze these things and come to know?

01:32:41

I have heard this statement many, many times. I have heard many people say, well, you know, that's just your interpretation.

01:32:48

And you see, the problem is the biblical writers seem to believe that what was found in scripture was more than clear and more than sufficient upon which to know the truths of God.

01:33:01

Isaiah chapter 8 verse 20 says, to the law and to the testimony, if they do not speak in accordance with these things, there is no light in them.

01:33:09

Well, you must be able to understand what the law and the testimony says for that verse to make any sense.

01:33:15

The Lord Jesus held men accountable to what the scriptures said. And none of them said, well, you know, that's just your interpretation.

01:33:24

You know, we don't know. I mean, yeah, the passage says honor your father and your mother, and yeah, so we're not doing that.

01:33:29

But, you know, we didn't understand that's what it meant. They never said that. The scriptures are clear.

01:33:36

They are perspicuous. They are sufficient. And they teach the substitutionary atonement of the

01:33:43

Lord Jesus Christ. Now, if your theology cannot have room for that, then

01:33:49

I would suggest to you that you are holding to traditions that nullify the word of God. And according to Matthew chapter 15, when the

01:33:56

Lord Jesus dealt with individuals who had traditions that nullified the word of God, Jesus held them accountable and he called them hypocrites.

01:34:05

Now, those are hard words, but the Lord Jesus recognized that to have the word of God in your hand and to read the word of God, but to place between you and those inspired words, a filter of whatever kind, traditional, ideological, philosophical, that no longer allows you to hear what

01:34:30

God is saying to you. And in Matthew chapter 22, the Lord Jesus, quoting from the book of Exodus, said, have you not read what

01:34:40

God spoke to you saying? And he quoted from something that had been written 1400 years earlier.

01:34:47

God's word is alive. It is not merely something that was written thousands of years ago and we really can't figure it out.

01:34:55

God's word is alive. It is clear in what it teaches and God will hold every one of us who carries it around with us accountable for what it says.

01:35:07

And it tells us that outside of the finished work of Jesus Christ upon the cross of Calvary, there is no hope.

01:35:18

And it also tells us that if we come to him with anything in our hand, if we come to him thinking that our works and our actions and our merits can in some way, shape, or form, add to what

01:35:34

Christ has done or effectuate what Christ has done. Well, Paul said in Galatians chapter 5 to those who sought to add just one thing to the gospel, he said,

01:35:46

Christ will be of no benefit to you. Harsh words, but they're vital words because you see,

01:35:57

Jesus Christ will not be a co -savior. He will not share his glory with anyone.

01:36:06

And if we are going to experience his perfect work of salvation, that work of salvation is only for the person who has stopped making excuses, has stopped talking about self -righteousness, has accepted the verdict of the word of God that I am guilty and punishable by death.

01:36:24

That person is then ready to see that a

01:36:29

Savior, a perfect sinless Savior, died that I might live.

01:36:35

That I believe is the clear message of the God -breathed scriptures. Thank you very much. We're now going to have a five -minute closing statement by Dr.

01:36:52

Potter. Please have your questions ready. We will have questions from the audience following his presentation.

01:37:03

Well, this has been fun. I'm used to giving academic papers at conferences like the

01:37:08

Society of Christian Philosophers or the American Philosophical Association, and there we go through these arguments.

01:37:14

We sometimes talk about scriptures. A lot of the sessions do deal with these kinds of things, but it's very cold and rational.

01:37:25

It's not impassioned in the way that preachers and ministers are, and I really appreciate that about Professor White's closing remarks.

01:37:38

I'm not going to be able to be as impassioned because that's just not the way

01:37:45

I approach thinking about these things. What I can say is this.

01:37:52

I disagree about what the central issue of this debate has been. I don't think it's a debate about whether we're going to accept the scriptures or not.

01:38:01

I accept the scriptures, despite my caveat about maybe being willing to reject

01:38:07

Paul at some point. I accept the scriptures prima facie. I will take them to be the word of God, and I will use them in my life.

01:38:19

I will allow them to have effect on the way I act. But see, the important thing here is that in doing that,

01:38:26

I'm not being a philosopher. I'm not being a theologian. In doing that,

01:38:32

I'm being a Christian. I'm acting in accordance with what

01:38:38

I see to be Jesus telling me to do in the Sermon on the Plain and the Sermon on the Mount.

01:38:45

I think that maybe the difference here is a difference on what we understand to be mingling philosophy with scripture.

01:38:57

I want to keep the philosophy separate from scripture. Philosophical theories are separate from scripture.

01:39:03

The scriptural meaning is plain, just like it is plain to you what you mean when you say, this is a chair, but then go take your introduction to philosophy class and see what the philosophy professor does to that.

01:39:17

As soon as you start doing philosophy, it no longer becomes plain.

01:39:23

We need to stick to the practical implications of the scriptures, and that is their fundamental purpose, and not to make strange philosophical claims like Calvinism and Arminianism do that do not have any implications for how we would actually act differently.

01:39:45

They say nothing about what I should do rather than what I am doing.

01:39:53

I'm not allowed to boast, even from the semi -Pelagian or Arminian side. I'm told that I can't boast, and it wouldn't make any sense for the child who has been saved by a firefighter to boast.

01:40:10

But then think about the firefighter for a minute. If the firefighter is a true hero, is the firefighter going to come out and say,

01:40:20

I saved this child. I want all the glory to myself for this.

01:40:26

This child did nothing to be saved. I need all that glory. Is that your image of a hero?

01:40:32

Is that your image of a moral person? And if it is, I mean, if it's not, then why would you apply that to God?

01:40:42

How could you possibly think that a moral and just God would say, I want all the glory.

01:40:49

I want to be the one to be recognized to have done everything. So why should that motivate you to think that Calvinism is correct?

01:40:56

If only Calvinism can say that it's entirely up to God, why should that motivate you?

01:41:05

Right now, notice another important point, I think, is this. If it's all up to God and it's not up to us, it doesn't even make sense for us to be here.

01:41:18

Why should I be trying to convince you? After all, whether you're convinced or not just depends on whether you're already elect.

01:41:25

If you are convinced by anything I say, if you're convinced by any dialogue that I say, then that means you weren't elect and you were predestined to be that way.

01:41:34

It's not up to you in any way. Reasoning itself presupposes the act of reasoning, the act of commanding, the act of saying,

01:41:44

I will do this. All of those acts presuppose that we can, that we actually have free will and that in some sense it's up to us whether we believe this or not.

01:41:56

So you can ask yourselves, is it up to me? Does anyone have any other questions?

01:42:35

I'll see what I can do. I should have asked for checks.

01:42:57

All right, we're going to get as many of these in as possible. I'm going to ask the speakers to try to give brief responses.

01:43:04

I understand that there are limitations in that, but hopefully it'll be in the context of the overall discussion.

01:43:14

The question for both presenters, we'll start with Dr. White. Saddam Hussein sincerely seeks

01:43:23

Christian redemption. What guidance would you offer? Well, I'd need to offer it very quickly,

01:43:29

I think. Or it's too late. Well, a person who asked that question reminds me of the

01:43:41

Philippian jailer who said to Paul and Silas, what must I do to be saved? And their response was, believe in the

01:43:46

Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. Now, obviously, that presupposes the fact that someone is going to proclaim to him who

01:43:54

Jesus Christ is, and that this jailer had already had some understanding in light of his interaction with Paul and Silas of what it was he was asking.

01:44:03

But if Saddam Hussein is seeking redemption in that way, then I would point him to the only one who can provide that redemption, and that is by placing his faith and trust solely in Jesus Christ, who is the

01:44:17

Savior of sinners. Same question for you, Dr. Potter. What can

01:44:22

Saddam Hussein do to be saved? Saddam Hussein sincerely seeks Christian redemption. What guidance would you offer?

01:44:32

Well, if I could talk to him, I suppose I would say that he ought to read the

01:44:38

Scriptures, he ought to read things like the Sermon on the Mount, the Sermon on the Plain, and he ought to respond to those imperatives.

01:44:47

And unless he responds to those imperatives, which he doesn't do, obviously, then in no sense could he be said to accept

01:44:58

Jesus. Okay, Dr. White, another question for you.

01:45:03

Can you explain predestination? Yes, the thirty -second version.

01:45:17

Ephesians 1 .11, God works all things after the counsel of his will. As the creator of all things, he is working all things so that he will be glorified in the end result, even when we as his creatures do not see how that's going to finally work out.

01:45:30

And we are told in Ephesians chapter one that that involves the salvation of a specific people, that they are saved in Christ and in Christ only, and that that salvation is to his honor and his glory only.

01:45:42

It is not based upon anything in ourselves, and despite what was just said in the closing statements,

01:45:49

God ordains the ends as well as the means. That is, God ordained that this debate take place this evening,

01:45:56

God ordained that you be here, that there be people who bring a message to you, and if God is pleased to honor himself by drawing anyone to himself this evening, he used those means to do so.

01:46:08

That is part and parcel of what the Bible teaches. Dr. Potter, the God of the Old Testament drowns every baby in the world.

01:46:15

He kills all the firstborn of Egypt and commands the killing of all the men, women, children, and suckling infants of the

01:46:20

Amalekites. How does this fit with your intuitive sense of justice? That's a really, really good question.

01:46:30

And I think it's a fundamental question that we have to ask about God, and that is, how is it that there can be this benevolent being who is very powerful, if not omnipotent in the classical sense, and yet there be evil in the world?

01:46:54

And in some cases, it looks like he even commands these evil acts or apparently evil acts.

01:47:01

Now, I think that it's important to remember that just as my perspective on what is wrong or right will be different than my children's perspective on that, something that might appear to my daughter to be evil or unjust, painful, or suffering won't, from my perspective, be that way.

01:47:24

And from God's perspective, what might appear to be evil to us might turn out not to be evil.

01:47:31

And although that doesn't fit with our intuitions about—although a lot of the actions, for example, in the

01:47:39

Old Testament, some children are teasing a prophet and God sends she bears to devour them—these actions don't appear to be, in the long term, to be good, but to us.

01:47:56

And we have a limited understanding of God, and it's very possible that, from God's perspective, they are good.

01:48:03

Dr. White, I'm going to paraphrase some of these to try to bring—there are some that are very similar.

01:48:10

I'm going to try to bring some of them together. Since your God picked out the ones who were going to be saved before creation, they were destined for heaven, so what effect does the atonement of Christ have on them, especially since the atonement of Christ does nothing for the unsaved?

01:48:26

Well, again, A, I would dispute that there is absolutely nothing that Christ's life or death does in regards to the unsaved, at least as far as Revelation is concerned.

01:48:36

But if you're speaking of the fact that it is Christ's intention to save His people and only

01:48:42

His people by the atonement, again, as I said in the last response, God ordains the ends as well as the means.

01:48:50

And so the means by which God is gathering that people, that Titus chapter 2 says, a special people in Christ Jesus, the means that He uses to redeem them from being the fallen sons of Adam under the curse of the law is the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

01:49:08

And so it is not an issue where this is just some sort of ancillary thing that God just goes through for the fun of it.

01:49:16

This is the means that He uses just as the preaching of the gospel becomes the immediate means by which

01:49:22

He brings that message into the life of each individual and brings them into Christ as well.

01:49:28

Dr. Potter, do you believe the atonement took place on the cross or at Gethsemane? I believe that the… okay, that's… it's important from the

01:49:37

LDS perspective to understand that the atonement functions in two ways. One is it serves to make it possible for us to overcome physical death, and the other is that it serves to make it possible for us to overcome spiritual death.

01:49:53

And the dying on the cross was necessary in order for Jesus to make it possible for us to overcome physical death, dying on the cross and then resurrecting.

01:50:04

But I believe, along with, I think, most LDS people, but I don't want to speak, again, for the church.

01:50:10

I believe that the overcoming of spiritual death is something that Jesus performed in Gethsemane and not on the cross.

01:50:20

I mean, that's just… I think that's… I think that's generally the LDS view, but I don't want to speak for the whole church. Dr. White, your

01:50:25

God drowns the world, commands the killing of babies, and sends people to hell forever. How could this God not be a monster?

01:50:31

Well, again, interestingly enough, we would have to agree on one of the statements that was made earlier in regards to the fact that such a person seemingly assumes that they in and of themselves can have a basis for determining moral evil outside of God.

01:50:50

It is God who has given his law, and it's interesting. I just opened my text to this very passage.

01:51:01

When Paul talks about the hardening of Pharaoh's heart and the destruction of Pharaoh and the resulting glorification of God, he specifically raises the objection to his position after he says, therefore, whom he wills, he mercies, and whom he wills, he hardens.

01:51:24

You will therefore say to me, why does he still find fault for who is able to resist his will?

01:51:31

And Paul's answer, the inspired answer is, who are you, oh man, to answer back to God? So the thing formed, say to the one who made it, why did you make me like this?

01:51:40

That is, the questioner seems to be assuming something about their nature that is untrue, and they are assuming an ability to judge

01:51:51

God's purposes that we simply do not have. And in fact, there is a far greater distance between, and I've had the,

01:52:00

I think, a similar experience with Dr. Potter. When my daughter was very young, I had to have her in, and we've all heard this before, have tubes put in her ears, and she was so little, and she did not understand why daddy would allow these strange people to take her and to make her feel so strange.

01:52:18

But we did it for her own good. There is far more of a chasm that exists between our understanding of ultimate purposes and God's purposes than exists between even my young daughter and myself.

01:52:30

I think we need to keep that in mind. Dr. Potter, one of the questions actually quotes the passage just read by Dr.

01:52:36

White about God being the potter with power over the clay.

01:52:42

He was predestined. Can you, Dr. Potter, comment on that passage, that God has mercy on whom

01:52:52

He will, and whom He will as He hardens? That was Romans 9. I'm sorry, that God has.

01:52:58

The whole question says, Romans 9 says, God has mercy on whom He will, and whom He will as He hardens. You will say to me, how does, how can

01:53:06

He still find fault for who has resisted His will? No, but who are you, O man, to reply against God? Does not the potter have power over the clay?

01:53:15

Yeah, I don't know what to,

01:53:22

I mean, I don't know how to interpret that scripture in a precise, as a precise philosophical claim about the nature of our role or lack thereof in our salvation.

01:53:37

It seems to me that that is, I mean, the fact you're using an analogy between us and pottery makes the passage quite ambiguous.

01:53:50

In some sense, when you're, I mean, obviously we're not literally clay.

01:53:59

So, if the statement is metaphorical, then that means that there's some likely, there's some characteristics in this metaphor that are supposed to be similar to the characteristics in our lives and in our relationship to God.

01:54:18

But the question is, which characteristics to pick out and which ones not? And I think that the Calvinist answer to that picks out a certain set of characteristics and the

01:54:27

Arminian answer would pick out a different set of characteristics. And I don't see why we have to pick out the Calvinist ones. And in fact,

01:54:33

I think I've given very strong arguments, philosophical arguments that show that the Calvinist way of understanding things is logically incoherent.

01:54:42

We shouldn't pick out those characteristics. We should find another way of interpreting. Dr. White, since according to philosophical

01:54:48

Christianity, angels are in heaven by God's decision and not because of the atonement of Christ, why didn't the evangelical

01:54:55

God create all men like angels and destined that all creation be like God, perfectly heavenly and good with no propensity to do sin or evil?

01:55:05

Because that would not allow God to exemplify and to illustrate

01:55:10

His grace, His mercy, His justice, and His holiness. When you think about, there are three options.

01:55:18

Either God can save everyone, God can save no one, or God can save a certain people.

01:55:24

In only one of those three options does God have any freedom as to how He acts. In the other, everything's just basically already determined.

01:55:34

Certainly, if God had chosen to do so, God could have done whatever He wanted to. But according to Revelation, He chose to demonstrate the glory of His grace in redeeming a people in Christ Jesus, and that's exactly what

01:55:47

He has done. Dr. Potter, if God's revelation is progressive and also erroneous, how can there be any truth at any time, and how do we know when we have it?

01:55:57

Well, that question conflates epistemology with metaphysics. It is one thing to say that it is, in principle, possible for there to be, in other words, that Revelation is fallible.

01:56:12

It's possible for there to be error in Revelation. And quite another thing to say that truth changes.

01:56:19

We are in a position where we don't, what, in other words, another way of putting this is this.

01:56:27

Although what we think is true may change, what really turns out to be true doesn't.

01:56:34

And we see through a glass darkly. We do not understand things very well, and that is why it is necessary that there be continuing revelation, because the more and more we try to interpret

01:56:46

Scriptures with philosophical or theological baggage, the more we get away from the original intent of an understanding of the

01:56:57

Scriptures. Dr. White, how would you describe the nature of unregenerate human beings?

01:57:06

I would describe the nature of unregenerate human beings in the same way the Apostle Paul does in Romans 1, 2 through 3, 19, whereby he demonstrates that unregenerate men have twisted the creator -creation distinction, that it is a part of the rebellion of man to deny that God is our creator in the fullest sense and to engage in idolatry.

01:57:27

Now, that idolatry may be religious idolatry. It may be the gross idolatry of the back country of Australia, or it may be the intellectual idolatry of the classroom, where man's abilities and man's wisdom is exalted above God's.

01:57:43

But the point is that, according to Paul, the unregenerate man suppresses the truth of God, Romans 1, 18.

01:57:51

He twists the creator -creation relationship, and as a result, in Romans 3, verses 10 through 18, the conviction is laid against him that he is without the fear of God, none does good, none understands, none seeks after God.

01:58:05

This is the nature of man outside of the grace of God, the nature of the unregenerate man.

01:58:12

Dr. Potter, what works will get us into the kingdom of God? I think

01:58:17

Jesus tells us. He tells us in the Sermon on the Mount that we ought to turn the other cheek.

01:58:25

He tells us in the Sermon on the Plain, same essential thing. He says, if you're rich, you're not going to get there.

01:58:33

And so, in the Book of Mormon, King Benjamin says, if you pass a beggar, you got to give your wealth to him.

01:58:41

And in the Doctrine and Covenants, it says explicitly, if you have any abundance and you do not impart it to the poor, then you will be looking up from hell.

01:58:53

So, I think these are the kinds of works. It's the works of taking care of our fellow human beings, making sure that people aren't impoverished, making sure that they're not hurt.

01:59:04

And when we're attacked by someone, we respond not with evil or with other attacks, but we respond with kindness.

01:59:14

Brief question for each speaker, starting with Dr. White. What are the benefits derived from the atonement?

01:59:23

Well, that would defy the description of grief, but fundamentally,

01:59:30

I think the important thing to see in regards to the atonement is that Jesus Christ, by the self -sacrifice of himself, redeems a special people unto himself who are zealous for good deeds,

01:59:41

Titus chapter 2, verses 11 through 14. That is, the benefit of the atonement is because of that, what

01:59:48

I spoke of before, the union of the elect with Christ. His death becomes their death.

01:59:53

His life, his righteousness imputed to them. That the first and fundamental fruit of the atonement is the redemption of a people to God's own glory.

02:00:02

And I think there are many other benefits that come from the atonement in the sense of general things that could be said.

02:00:09

But when we talk about the intention of God and what he intends to come forth from that, that must be safeguarded first before anything else.

02:00:18

Dr. Potter, same question. What are the benefits derived from the atonement? Well, there's probably two different possible answers to this from the

02:00:29

LDS perspective. One answer would be that what the atonement does is, if we accept it into our lives, it then enables us to act in a way in accordance with the commands that God gives us.

02:00:44

And because of sin that we have committed, because of the fall, we are unable to do that without the accepting the atonement and having the atonement enable us to do that.

02:00:55

That's, I think, that's what I understand to be basically the Arminian position, and there are LDS people who advocate that position.

02:01:01

And the more, maybe the more traditional LDS position would be that we can do some on our own, but not very much.

02:01:11

And so, in order to become the kinds of persons that we really have to be,

02:01:18

God has to work with us, or Jesus has to work with us to make us better people.

02:01:24

But it takes an effort on our part, and it's an effort that we do, in a sense, on our own.

02:01:31

And now I'm describing the semi -Pelagian position. I think both of them are completely consistent with the LDS perspective.

02:01:37

There will be a debate tomorrow night at seven o 'clock in the same room between Dr. White and Robert St.

02:01:43

Genes, one of the top Roman Catholic apologists in the country. Our church, like Dr. White, holds to the sovereignty of God and salvation.

02:01:50

There's information in the back. Both of our speakers have been very gracious to appear this evening at no cost.