Reflections on Recent Temple Outreach and Free Agency Debate with Richard Hopkins

This is the Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded all Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

Your host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha and Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation.

And now with today's topic, here is James White. Well, not everything is always true.

It's only semi -live actually, but be that as it may, this is The Dividing Line and today is

April 7th of the year 2001, which means that if you tried to tune in last week, you discovered that we were doing an impersonation of that so wonderfully famous Bob Larson book,

Dead Air. And that means there was no program last week, but that's understandable because we weren't here and didn't have time to put together a best -of program.

We were in Salt Lake City, Utah. And since today is April 7th, that means we have just begun our work at the

LDS Easter pageant in Mesa, Arizona. This is the first time, at least since I started doing this back in 1983,

I first went out there and saw the pageant. In 1984, I began passing out tracts.

In 1985, we really started hitting it as a ministry. So this is the 16th year of the ministry doing this, the 18th year that I've at least been out there during the course of the pageant for at least some period of time.

The 16th year we've done every evening, when we've been around anyways. And so we have a number of things to catch you up on, give you some reports concerning the events last week in Salt Lake City, which included a debate against Richard Hopkins on the subject of free agency, and also included our temple outreach at the

Salt Lake City Temple, or any more, more our meganacle outreach at the, what do they call that thing, meeting, not meeting hall, whatever it is they call the very, very, very large building that they've built on North Temple in Salt Lake City, which has resulted, interestingly enough, one thing we hadn't thought about,

I think, when we recognized the Mormons were going to be doing what they were doing with the very large building up there, is that it was going to like triple the number of people running around Temple Square in downtown

Salt Lake City during conference. And what that does is create absolute havoc when it comes to trying to get anything to eat down there.

After our outreach at the temple, we had to go a little bit early this year because the guys had to fly back and their flight was about an hour earlier than the normal flights we've taken in the past.

And as a result, we had to go and we went over to the ZCMI Center.

Well, there were two reasons we went over the ZCMI Center. One was it was farther away, which meant we hoped that there would be fewer people there and we might actually be able to get to the cash register to purchase sustenance.

And the other is that there's a taco maker over there now, and it used to be long, long ago, back when we were all young and we drove up to Salt Lake City and stayed overnight and then passed out tracks and then drove back and did things like that rather than doing the flying routine.

It used to be that we had a tradition that helped us to bond together.

It was just a wonderful thing. We ate at a place called Taco Time. And Taco Time has crisp meat burritos.

And I just I love crisp meat burritos. In fact, I love crisp meat burritos so much that Pastor Jason from the

Orthodox Presbyterian Church up there brought me a crisp meat burrito dinner for lunch on Saturday afternoon while we were out there doing that.

That was very nice of him to do that. But anyways, someone, and they will remain nameless because people who bash traditions and things like that just you shouldn't,

I think, name them on the air. But someone started changing that tradition and went against that tradition.

We've lost it. And I don't think we've ever been the same ever since that happened. But the taco maker is similar to Taco Time.

And so I knew there was one over there at ZCMI. So I led the troops over there.

And so I don't remember Mike Beliveau complaining about Taco Time.

I remember someone by the name of, well, whatever. Anyhow, I'm not sure how

I wandered that far off of the beaten the beaten path. But we did manage to get over to the

ZCMI Center and get some sustenance over there. And while I was there,

I picked up a book at Deseret Bookstore, the over 200 page attempted review and rebuttal of Letters to a

Mormon Elder that Farms published. This is dated 1999. It doesn't seem like it was that long ago, but time does go by as you get older and older.

And I had never gotten hold of it. I had heard about it. I was tremendously disappointed to discover that one of the two authors was

Cary Schertz. Now, Mr. Schertz may be a very nice man, but Cary Schertz's main claim to fame is as a defender of the

Book of Abraham, the single most glowing and obvious error of Joseph Smith as an alleged prophet.

And the defenses that Mr. Schertz have offered has, in my mind anyways, completely and totally destroyed his credibility to anyone who knows anything about the

Book of Abraham. And so that he was one of the two respondees just made me ever more amazed at Farms.

I mean, Farms first did a response, I think it was around 93, to Letters to a

Mormon Elder. And it was very poor. L .R. Norwood's response was a was a was a poor response.

It was very poorly argued. We have a response to it on our website. And then the book simply must really be having a huge impact,

Letters to a Mormon Elder, because why in the world 10 years after a book comes out, 11 years?

It came out in 90 or 91. It originally came out, I think, 90, and then Bethany House put out its edition in 93.

So, well, 99. Okay, it was before that then. Anyways, long after the original comes out, almost a decade, you publish a 200 -page response to it when you already responded to it once.

To my knowledge, you've not done that with any other books, which I take as a great compliment. And why not get some of their real people to deal with it?

I really don't think that the people they had working on this, at any point, are top -level people.

Certainly the responses they've offered have not partaken of really good scholarship.

But anyways, pick that up. The outreach at the temple is most interesting. I had been told,

I had not made the October conference last year, but I had been told that there were just constant conversations all through the period of time because they moved over right across from the, right in front of the building, in essence.

And so that's where we were again this time. Well, we didn't have that many conversations this time. I was disappointed. We had more than we had a year ago in April because that was the first day they had the conference center open, and everybody was just completely lost.

They had no idea where in the world they were going, and the last thing they wanted to do was talk to us. But maybe it's just April.

Maybe more people come from out of state in April in comparison to October. I don't know. But I only had a few conversations that I would consider to be really good conversations, but they were good ones.

We had one that somewhat surprised me. We had actually, during the quiet time between about 2 .30

and 3 .30 in the afternoon, I had sat down and was just sort of relaxing my knees sitting on a wooden wall, not a wooden, a stone wall outside the building.

And we were basically sort of having a little discussion there. People, local people there from the

Salt Lake area who were working with us, were asking questions about all sorts of things, about the potter's freedom, and about Jehovah's Witnesses, and the

Trinity, and everything else. When this fellow came walking up to us, and he wasn't dressed like a Mormon in the sense that he wasn't wearing a suit and tie or anything like that,

I assumed he was a local person, maybe one of the people from Salt Lake.

I really didn't know until I heard some of the conversation with somebody who was talking to him and discovered he was

LDS. And so I took over the conversation and talked with him, and he actually just sat down and just was asking his questions and was not argumentative or anything like that, and ended up leaving not only with a number of tracts, but Don Kramer gave up his last copy of Letters to a

Mormon Elder. So he took that, and hoping that we will hear from him because we had a very good conversation with him.

So there were a couple of instances like that, and it was interesting to watch the reaction of the folks coming out when a group of fundamentalist,

Baptist, King James -only type folks showed up outside the temple during the big rush hours with the big old signs and started doing street preaching.

And they really didn't say anything that I took any notice of as being particularly wrong or anything like that.

It was pretty solid teaching. It was focused solely upon the gospel. They really didn't go into the nature of God at all, which

I would have suggested, surely. But they focused upon not trusting in your works and things like that, and that was good.

But it was interesting to sort of watch the looks on people's faces, especially when they'd break into song and start marching around with their signs singing songs.

It was always interesting to sort of watch the folks when that was happening. So I unwisely did not grab the sunscreen that was offered when we got out of the car and pay for that the next day, especially since I looked very much like the proverbial redneck at that particular point in time.

So anyways, that was fundamentally what happened on Saturday, but I was up there as early as Thursday afternoon, actually, because Friday evening there was a debate organized by the

Orthodox Presbyterian Church. It's Christ Presbyterian Church in Salt Lake City. And this is the second debate.

A year ago we did a debate with a gentleman, a Mr. Schaefer, as I recall, who is the

RCIA instructor up there in Salt Lake City, who is a former conservative Baptist. And we were supposed to be discussing justification.

Mr. Schaefer proved to be so widely ecumenical that it really wasn't much of a debate, really.

And so this time around, Jason, the pastor up there, decided to contact the

Mormons and see if the Mormons would be interested in doing a debate. I really wasn't sure what would develop because Mormons generally don't do debates.

Now, at this period of time, obviously in the early history of the

LDS Church, they did. In fact, the early LDS missionaries would go out and they would look for opportunities to engage in debate and to debate with Protestant ministers.

And obviously it was to their advantage because who knew anything about Mormonism at the time?

Nobody knew anything about the Book of Mormon or something. So you could whip out a Book of Mormon and you could quote something.

Your opponent would have no idea. They wouldn't have their own copy. They wouldn't be able to point out the contradictions and the changes and all the rest of that stuff.

And so they would do debates frequently and had the advantage in so doing. So back then it was different than it is today where the public image movement within the

LDS Church has certainly changed things around a whole lot. So I didn't know what would take place as far as who would be contacted.

Jason contacted Farms and no one there was willing to do so.

In fact, he was informed that that I had burned too many bridges. I had burned too many bridges.

I didn't know I was a bridge arsonist. But I think what that means is that unlike a small number of individuals who are willing to be used by Farms to promote the mainstreaming of LDS scholarship,

I instead have responded directly to the claims of the

LDS Church and specifically of Farms and have refuted the assertions of Farms scholars.

And in the book Is the Mormon My Brother, I specifically documented the errors of Farms scholars in misrepresenting the teachings of the early church, specifically

Irenaeus and things like that. And so I guess that's what is meant by burning bridges.

I don't know. But anyways, I've burned too many bridges and can't get to Farms.

And so they suggested some other folks and those folks weren't overly interested.

And eventually they suggested a fellow by the name of Richard Hopkins.

Now, I've been on the air with Mr. Hopkins before and had discussed his book

Biblical Mormonism with him at that particular point in time.

And Mr. Hopkins was a trial attorney for, I think, about 23 years or so.

And Mr. Hopkins agreed to the request. Those in the control room, if you could look at the message screen, please.

Thank you very much. If Mr. Hopkins agreed to engage in a debate on the subject of free agency.

And I mentioned that in the chat channel once and there were actually people who were confused as to why we would be debating a sports topic.

I'm not really sure what the...they didn't know what free agency was. I can understand why people wouldn't be able to discuss that particular issue.

So Mr. Hopkins agreed to do the debate on free agency. And the term itself is not one that is familiar to a lot of folks.

That is the LDS way of referring to the autonomous human will of man.

And it is analogous, in most ways anyways, to the

Armenian use of the phrase free will. It's not identical. There are differences.

We discussed some of this last week. But he took up the challenge and that debate was supposed to begin at 7 o 'clock in community room one at the

West Valley Community Center, I think is what it was called. And I got there, as I normally do, way early.

I was the first one. It was sort of humorous. I saw which room we were in and I put my stuff in there.

And then I noticed that there was a group of folks gathering in the room next door.

Now this is actually just one big room with those big old dividing walls, you know, like you have in large churches where you can pull these dividing walls out and divide it off and make different rooms.

Well, I noticed in the room next door that they were bringing in all sorts of drinks and chips and they were going to have themselves a party right next door to where we were going to be having the debate.

And about half an hour or so, a little bit more, before we were supposed to start at 7 o 'clock, the music started.

And we're not talking Bach or Segovia or something here, okay? We're talking Shake Your Booty and Macho Man, all right?

This is the musical background that we have going on next door.

So when the pastor arrived, he just sort of looked at the wall and he's just like, oh, no.

And so anyways, we had this great musical background going on.

And so it's about five minutes to seven and Mr.

Hopkins isn't there yet. Now what had happened last year was it was about two minutes till seven when

Mr. Hopkins was there. So about five minutes till, Jason and I were sitting there and I leaned over to him last year and I said, so Jason, do you know how to role play a

Catholic? And so at about five minutes to seven,

I leaned over to Jason this time and said, so do you know how to role play a Mormon? And about five minutes after seven,

I leaned over to him and said, so I was really serious about that. And we actually decided that if we didn't have somebody by 20 minutes after, then

I would just start a presentation on the subject and we'd take questions because, you know, what else are we going to do?

Well, at almost exactly 20 minutes past seven, Mr. Hopkins came running in and it was supposed to start at seven.

So we got started just a tad bit late, but it was a fairly short debate.

Mr. Hopkins did not want long presentations, 15 minute opening statements. I believe it was seven minute rebuttals, 12 minutes cross -examination and five or seven minute closing statements, as I recall, was what it worked out to being, which is about half, maybe a little bit more than half the normal length of one of our programs, one of our debates that we have.

And so we got into it and very quickly, Mr. Hopkins, and I knew this would happen because I had read his book, really doesn't know a lot about Calvinism.

He doesn't know a lot about Reformed theology. And so it didn't take very long for his presentation.

He never really did give a specific definition of what free will is or free agency is or anything like that, but it wasn't long before passages like Matthew 23, 37 and 2

Peter 3, 9, 1 Timothy 2, 4, those of you who've read the Potter's Freedom, know those that's in the chapter

I called the big three, the three, the three main passages that are always cited by folks as if they're somehow contradictory with the

Reformed position. These were the substance of the presentation he was making. So it wasn't going to end up simply being on the subject of free agency or the will of man or something like that.

It became the whole realm of election, predestination, things like that. Well, I tried, of course, to be as focused as I could be in my in my opening statements, but it eventually, you know, you had to respond to some of the things that were being said.

Cross -examination went pretty well, except I'd say that the biggest drawback was that when you have an opponent who doesn't know what your position actually states, some of the things that happened will happen.

There are a number of times when a question would be asked, both during the questions and answers from the audience afterwards, as well as during the cross -examination, where he would say, well,

I don't think we disagree on that, when in point of fact, we disagreed 180 degrees. And in fact, in his closing statement, he said, this is mainly semantic.

These really aren't these big, major issues. And what he was saying was the difference between monergism and synergism is not really all that big an issue.

And of course, it is. It is a very, very major and important issue.

And so it was a little bit disappointing on that level, simply because when one of the two debaters just doesn't know the other side, then communication is very difficult.

There was one point, Mr. Hopkins brought along a lexicon.

And lexicons are dangerous things. They make people who don't know biblical languages think that they do.

And he presented his understanding of First Timothy 2 .4.

And in my responses, I gave a brief summary of the argumentation that I had presented in the

Potter's Freedom on that particular passage. And he then, in responding later on, and if you don't have a

Bible in front of you, it says, God desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

And of course, his focus was on all men. And that means, as he put it in his opening statements, if God had his druthers, all men would be saved.

But God doesn't have his druthers because man has free agency and so on and so forth. And that's a typical

Arminian viewpoint, a typical Roman Catholic viewpoint, a typical Mormon viewpoint, a typical

Jehovah's Witness viewpoint. I think you start seeing the pattern there. And in my response,

I pointed out the context and all men meaning all kinds of men and so on and so forth. For some reason, he thought that I was denying that all meant all.

All does mean all, but it has to be interpreted in its context. And so, during the questions and answers at the end of the debate, he made the wisecrack, and it was a wisecrack.

He said, well, Dr. White shouldn't depend so much upon his memory because it's failing him a number of times in remembering what the meaning of various words are from the lexicon.

And so, I just interrupted him and I said, would you like to give us an example? He says, yeah, well, I looked up the word all.

Pontos in 1 Timothy 2 .4 means all. And I said, sir, what's the lexical form of Pontos?

And I'll never forget the look on his face as he looked at me, and it just got deathly quiet, the lexical form.

He didn't know what a lexical form was. And I said, do you read language?

He says, are you making a point? I felt like saying, yeah, I already did, actually.

But I said, sir, let me ask you, let me put it this way. When it says that all Jerusalem went out to John to be baptized, of him, does that mean that every single individual person in Jerusalem left

Jerusalem? The only people left, the only things left were the doggies and the kitties. Everybody left Jerusalem and went out in that passage.

Is that what it means? And he honestly said, well, no, it's not. I said, so the word then is defined in its context, is it not?

And I was fairly straightforward about that, because I didn't like being accused of having made errors when, in point of fact, none had been made.

And I did have the opportunity of then restating the truth about 1 Timothy 2 .4 and the contextual meaning and so on and so forth.

So that was an interesting debate. We don't have the tapes yet. The pastor of the church will be sending them to me.

Well, at the earliest, it'll probably be at least a month because he's going away for a while and he didn't get them sent out before he left.

So it's going to be a little while, but we will make note on the web page when they are available.

We do certainly hope to have them available prior to the next debate we do in Salt Lake City, which we are planning and hoping for one over of this year for the general conference.

At that time, we hope to have things set up to be able to do a debate, possibly on justification.

At that point, my book, The God Who Justifies, would be out at that particular time, and we'd be able to go from there.

So anyways, there's a brief rundown on that. I'd like to go ahead and get ready to take our first break.

Basically, the only break we'll be taking today is a shortened version of the program because we have certain technical difficulties going on.

And then we come back from the break. I'd like to give you a little rundown on what took place last evening out at the

Mesa Easter pageant, and we're thankful for what took place then. So you're listening to The Dividing Line, and we will be right back.

The book brings a relational approach to material usually presented in textbook style. James White draws from his extensive apologetics ministry to thousands of Mormons in presenting the truth of Christianity.

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.org. Well, welcome back to Dividing Line.

My name is James White. Struggling to speak today, I wonder, is like seven -year -old butterscotch lozenges safe?

Not that it really matters now. I've got one going. I had to have something going to get this throat of mine working, because I want to cough, and I want to do all sorts of other things you're not supposed to be doing while you're talking.

But the only thing I could find was an old glass bottle of butterscotch lozenges in a drawer over here, and they're at least seven years old.

Seven years old. Tastes good. Tastes good. I'm not sure if it can, you know, like, decay, and if I'm going to die from this or just what, but it tastes alright.

Good stuff, butterscotch. Anyways, um, hey, we might as well discuss everything.

We're having technical difficulties, and you'll notice I haven't given a phone number because it really wouldn't matter if you called it if you're listening to this, because you're not listening to it live anyway, so, you know, it's just sort of how things work.

Anyhow, uh, we do have a caller online, which I'll get to in a moment. He can probably hear me right now, and, uh, but I just want to give you a quick rundown last night out the, uh, temple, and then

I want to help St. Joseph's Communications out. In fact,

I'll do this first. I got an ad, advertisement in the mail, and, uh, it was the

St. Joseph's Communicator, and, um, there was some great stuff in here. Uh, one of them here.

Do I sound like Rush Limbaugh doing this? There, does that sound good? Um, on the, on the, uh,

St. Joseph's Communicator, we have the, uh, advertised, the

Rocky Marciano School of Apologetics is now in session. And, uh, there's a, a block along the right -hand side of the advertisement, and it says,

Jabs, Hooks, and Right Crosses, hear evidence for the

Catholic position from such notable non -Catholics as Time Magazine, Life Magazine, and even

Ann Landers. Well, that's where I want my religion to be approved. Mm -hmm. Um, stuff like, you know that our first Pope, Peter, is in the

Bible, but did you know that Paul also mentions two more popes in the Bible? Well, that's assuming that's, of course, that Clement was a pope, but anyways, um, the whole thing is, uh,

Jesse and Rocky. Tim, Jesse, and Rocky are your trainers for this. Um, and it was really funny, but anyhow, the, the most interesting thing was, uh, spend time, this is a, a single -page flyer, spend time among Mary's special places.

Another great adventure, Mary's Magnificat Pilgrimage, Marian Shrines of Portugal, Spain, and France, explore holy sites with nationally renowned

Catholic apologist, Tim Staples, Father Terrence Staples, and Father Ronald Escalante.

Well, you could visit the Marian Shrines of Fatima, Avila, Lourdes, Avignon, um, and a few others

I can't even pronounce. A round -trip international air transportation, uh, superior tourist -class hotel accommodations, breakfast and dinner daily, touring by private air -conditioned motor coach, daily mass, there you go, professional local tour guide, all transfers and baggage handling included, and here's the one that almost made me go for it, 10

Talks by Tim Staples, Father Staples, and Father Escalante, 10

Talks. Now, uh, if you fly out from Baltimore, it's only $2 ,399, and if you fly from L .A.,

it's $2 ,599. Well, I'm gonna,

I'm gonna see if I can't hit up the, hit up the, uh, the big bank account we got around here.

2 ,600 bucks, huh? Could you imagine if I went on this? Can you imagine having me sitting in the back of the bus for every one of them talks?

That'd be so much fun. Well, anyways, I'm sorry. Let's go ahead and take our caller, because I can't talk anymore.

Johnny, are you there? Johnny? Can you hear me? I can hear you, Johnny. Are you going on the, uh, you going on this?

Am I what? Are you going on the Mary's Magnificat pilgrimage? Oh, no way. I'm not spending that much money to go see

Tim. 2 ,600 bucks, man. Think about it, 10 Talks by Tim Staples, Tim Staples' brother, and Father Escalante.

Now, come on, man. Tim Staples' brother speaking to him? Yeah, Father Terrence Staples, that's

Tim's brother. Oh, I see. Yep. No, uh, well, Tim and I don't like each other very much.

Oh, come on now. Yeah, through our emails, we have gotten into a tone that should not be discussed on the air.

Oh, you mean sort of like the tone of the debate? Uh, I think, I don't know, it's a little different.

I think he's really talked down to me. Well, believe me, I've been there, too. Oh, my

God. I get talked down to, too. Anyways, well, that, you know, I thought this, you know, I got this advertisement and I just,

I just don't have the money, but boy, I'll tell you, it would, uh, it would be great. Anyhow, you didn't call about that, though, did you?

No, uh, but, uh, I did want to say that, um, that you haven't listened to any of the broadcasts that they did on the, the, uh,

School of Rocky Marciano Apologetics? No, uh -uh, uh -uh. Because they were doing a few radio programs where they were asking, uh, tough questions to non -Catholics, and I did call in about a couple of the broadcasts, and, uh, they were defending

Pope Honorius on how Pope Honorius never taught the Monothelite heresy, and I, um,

I don't know if you've received your, uh... No, I haven't gotten it yet. You haven't, you haven't gotten yours yet? No, uh, someone here locally is photocopying it and sending it to me.

I'll probably have it Monday or something. There's not much I can do about it right now. I'm editing The God Who Justifies Routan Mesa every night tonight, and then

Tuesday through Saturday next week. That's about seven hours a day doing that. So I, what

I may end up having to do is, uh, next week, if we can, uh, get the broadcast working right, uh, do a response to it on the air.

That may be the best way that I can provide a response, and then link to it. Uh, what we're talking about, folks, those of you listening, is, uh,

This Rock. The, uh, which edition is it? Uh, I don't have it in front of me, but it's the latest one.

Uh, what would that be? May, maybe, 2000? Something like that? I don't know. I think so. April, May, something like that. Uh, the most recent edition of This Rock magazine has an article,

Stephen O 'Reilly, who I've, I don't know, how many, how many rebuttals do I have of him? About three of them on our website?

Something like that. He's been doing stuff on the, on the papacy, and he's been trying to respond to, uh, the

Roman Catholic controversy. And, uh... But he was dealing with the William Webster first, wasn't he?

I, he may have, I'm not really sure, but he's been doing brief responses to, uh, the

Roman Catholic controversy. And, uh, I've been responding to him on our website. I've never heard back from him. I've always dropped him an email, said, we've responded to you, and such.

He's never even written back to me, never said, hi, how are you, nothing like that. Okay. So anyhow, um, he has attempted to respond to, uh, the discussion of Honorius, and, uh, my rebuttal of his article.

So that's, um, maybe, uh, next week we'll, uh, have an opportunity to respond to that. Yeah, it's April, uh, 2000, and the,

I don't remember, I'm holding the magazine right here in my hand. Yeah. Oh, but my question, uh, today has to do with the issue of predestination.

Yes, sir. And, uh, the reason why I'm calling is that, uh, uh, of course you're very familiar with, uh, uh,

Dr. Norman Geisler's book, Chosen to Free. Uh, I've... You might have read it. Might have read it, might have, might have indexed the crazy thing, actually.

Well, anyway, it's, uh, oh, by the way, it's on, it starts on page 26 of the magazine I'm holding in my hand. Okay. And by the way,

I should say, at least this rock gave the URL to the website.

Oh, yeah, they got a big picture on page 27 of your website. And the amazing thing about that is, as you know, uh, at least in Envoy magazine, it is their editorial policy to try to avoid as much as possible giving any quote -unquote free advertising.

Yeah. Well, my question has to do with the issue of, uh, one of the things that I've heard from, uh, from guys like Geisler.

In his book, he pinpoints, uh, Thomas Aquinas as a person that, uh, viewed grace as resistible.

Mm -hmm. And, uh, the reason why it got a little confusing for me, he does provide some quotes, but the reason why it got a little confusing to me is

I was listening to this, uh, video, uh, series, uh, entitled Chosen by God by R .C. Sproul, where he believes that, uh,

Thomas Aquinas belongs in the reformed or in the, in the, well, maybe not reformed, but in the position of holding to the irresistible grace column, the, the

Augustinian view. Mm -hmm. And I'd like to know where you, what your take is on this. Would you disagree with Dr.

Sproul? Well, A, I, I do not claim to be a Thomistic scholar in any way, shape, or form.

I, I really, um, uh, don't spend a whole lot of time with, uh, with, uh,

Thomas Aquinas, but on this particular issue, looks like they're coming to get you, Johnny. Um, I can hear the sirens in the background.

Taking a drink there, it's sort of hard to do. Um, on this issue, my gut feeling would be probably, uh, to have to disagree with Dr.

Sproul, because, um, Aquinas' views of the sacraments and the efficacy of the sacraments

I can't see fitting with, uh, quote -unquote irresistible grace. Well, the reason why he says it, and this is what

I was asking you, is because I haven't read Thomas Aquinas. I've only heard of him. I've heard that he was a scholar. I, I've heard that he even taught

Sola Scriptura. I'm not sure, though. Well, he, he used the phrase once, uh, scripture alone, and he certainly didn't hold to the, um, full -blown position of the

Council of Trent on that, but, uh, I think to be fair with Aquinas, he certainly, uh, did hold to a role of tradition that would violate

Sola Scriptura. Oh, okay. Well, uh, he, the reason why he held to that position, being

Dr. Sproul, is that he said that Thomas Aquinas, uh, said that he owed most of his learning to Augustine, and because of that,

Dr. R .C. Sproul said that he feels that Thomas Aquinas should be on the, because he has a list of the five greatest minds of the

Church, and I'm sure you've probably seen it. Yeah, well, certainly, um, there are a number of people, interestingly enough, both

Geisler and Sproul, uh, are great fans of Thomas Aquinas. Um, I personally am not, simply because Thomas Aquinas was very clearly, um, uh, the

Council of Trent referred to him as the standard. Uh, he was a scholastic, uh, and I really believe that, uh, a fair reading of his

Summa would, uh, uh, lead you to have to, uh, believe in, um, sacramental forgiveness and, and all sorts of things.

I mean, he, he really gave form to what eventually became Tridentine Orthodoxy of the

Council of Trent. So, uh, I have a hard time, certainly while he was brilliant, he was brilliant as a scholastic, and when you look into the scholastics, uh, their, their methodology was not based upon biblical exegesis.

Um, and so I, I have a problem with, um, with the exaltation of, uh,

Aquinas that is, uh, done by many today. Would you say that there were any of the

Church Fathers, uh, I know Augustine, I read, uh, because I remember, uh, I was hearing, uh,

Tim Staples, uh, denying on the Bible Answer Man that Augustine never taught the Irresistible Grace Doctrine until I actually read the writings of the

Predestination of the Saints on the first book, um, against Prosper and Hillary, and, uh, it was very clear to me that he did not believe in, in the, um, semi -Pelagian or Arminian concept of free will.

But prior to him, would you say, I, and I've read also Clement's Letter to the Corinthians where he does, uh, seem to imply that, but would you say to anyone else, would you say maybe

Athanasius or, or any other Church Father besides Augustine and Clement would believe in the

Reformed, uh, understanding of Irresistible Grace? Um, as far as, again, defining

Irresistible Grace as the, the work of God in causing a person to be born again, uh, there is, um, there are some really interesting quotations that have been provided to me only recently by a friend of mine, uh, from a commentary on Paul's writings that is, is called

The Work of Ambrosiaster. We don't know who wrote it, actually. Ambrosiaster is a name that Erasmus came up with in the 16th century.

And, um, he, a number of times, says things that sound very, very thoroughly, uh,

Reformed in their viewpoint. Uh, for example, in commenting on 1 Corinthians 1 .4,

he says, uh, God has decreed that a person who believes in Christ can be saved without works.

By faith alone, he receives the forgiveness of sins. He said those words? Yes. Wow. And, in fact, if you want to look that up, that's in, uh,

Gerald Bray, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, New Testament, Volume 7, 1 Corinthians.

And, uh, commenting on Romans 3 .24. That wouldn't be on Shaf's 38 Volume 7? No, no, it's not.

Uh, in fact, that's just it. Ambrosiaster's entire work is not yet translated into English. It's only available in, uh, the, uh,

Pratulogia Latina. Uh, commenting on Romans 3 .24, he says, They are justified freely because they have not done anything nor given anything in return, but by faith alone, they have been made holy by the gift of God.

And, in commenting on Romans 4 .5, which, of course, is a tremendously strong passage, he says, uh, whoever

Ambrosiaster is, says, How then can the Jews think that they have been justified by the works of the law in the same way as Abraham, when they see that Abraham was not justified by the works of the law, but by faith alone?

Therefore, there is no need of the law when the ungodly is justified before God by faith alone.

So, if, uh, for, for nothing else than to demonstrate that those who say that Luther made up faith alone, sola fide, uh, there's,

I don't know how many different uses of, uh, sola fide, uh, right there in the writings of Ambrosiaster, and this is somewhere around 366 to 384.

So, you're, when you're giving me those quotations, or referring me to, you're translating them?

No, these are, these appear, uh, some of those things have been translated in the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, uh, and that's edited by Gerald Bray, and those are available at Amazon .com.

But the whole work of Ambrosiaster is, uh, not yet in English. Oh, wow.

I gotta get my hands on it. So, has any, have you comment, have you made this, uh, comment to any Roman Catholic apologist saying, look, here you go, you asked me for faith alone prior to Augustine and, and, and,

I'm sorry, faith alone prior to Luther and Calvin? I mean, uh, in the debate with Bob St.

Genes, I, uh, read, uh, both Clement's, uh, and the, um, uh, comments of, uh,

Matthaeus, as he wrote to Diognetius, uh, who likewise very clearly presents a, um, a view of justification that is not consistent with the

Roman Catholic viewpoint. And, uh, basically the only response you get in situations like that is, oh, that can't possibly be the case.

That's, that's basically the only response you really get. Okay, sir. All righty, sir.

Thank you very much for calling in today. All right. God bless you. Oh, by the way, I was asked to, uh, uh, ask you a question.

Um, we have, we have heard of this, uh, tremendous open letter, uh, refuting, uh, me from, um, uh, by Mr.

Staples, uh, that was supposedly finished, uh, quite some time ago. Have you heard anything more about it? No, I actually haven't, uh, contacted

St. Joseph's Communications lately. I'll probably be doing that in the next week or so, because, uh, they were advertising some

Dodger tickets. So they're signing up for 10 bucks a pop, and I bought, bought four of them.

I'm gonna take my uncle and, uh, a friend, a friend and his wife from the church. Uh, but other than that, uh, all

I heard was, uh, because I thought... Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Dodger's tickets? Yeah. Well, I mean, it's to raise funds.

I don't know, I don't know if, uh, Rich told you, but they're moving, I don't remember exactly what city though, but they're not going to be in Pasadena anymore.

Oh, okay. So they found somebody at the Dodgers to, uh, to, uh, donate tickets then.

Yeah, I think so. I don't know all the details of how it went, but they were selling them 10 bucks a pop. But anyway, uh, before that,

I do remember I was speaking to Jesse Romero on the phone, and he said to me that, uh, Tim had already finished the letter, and it was about 120 to 121 pages long.

And that Jesse told him, you know what, why don't you just make it a book? And, uh, Tim said, no, I'll just leave it as a letter.

That's, that's from all from what Jesse was telling me. And he said that the letter was just ready to go.

And he said that they were going to post it on the, I don't know if it was St. Joseph's Communications website or the

Coming Home Network, or I don't know exactly how it was going to go. And I, that's why I called up Bridge and asked him if, uh, you guys had received the letters.

And he said, no, I haven't received a thing. Haven't heard a thing, but I'm normally the last one to find out about these things anyways.

Well, I'll call him up on Monday and then I'll call Rich up and let him know what's up. Okay.

Sounds good. All right. God bless you guys. Thank you, sir. Normally at this point, I would repeat the phone number and say, feel free to join in, but there wouldn't be a reason to do that unless the guys across the wall would want to call in, which is really sort of silly, but Hey, maybe we can hit up the

Diamondbacks for, uh, for tickets and they can donate them and we can sell them for 10 bucks a piece.

I mean, they do it. Maybe that's a good reason why we shouldn't do it. Yeah, we can sell them out the

Easter patch. Yeah, that's a, that's a really good idea.

Really good thing to do. Anyways, uh, let me see if my voice is going to last long enough to give you a brief, uh, report on last evening and then we're going to wrap this baby up because, um, it's getting harder and harder and harder to speak very well at this particular point in time.

So last evening, um, last year, uh, at the pageant, uh, last

April was a tough, a tough month. Um, it was tough in the sense that, um, at the pageant, uh,

I sensed and I, I continue to believe that there was a very strong concerted effort, uh, to keep people from talking to us.

Uh, the past two years now, they started doing it again last night. They dress guys up who obviously have to be a minimum of six feet tall and taller if possible as Roman centurions and they, uh, send them out to the corners and, uh, excuse me.

They, uh, basically try to get in our way and last night they really weren't, but last year they did. And even on Friday and Saturday night last year, when normally there are

Googles of teenagers running around going to get stuff to eat because they've seen this presentation 14 ,000 times before there was nobody.

I mean, they did not want anyone talking with us. And I think maybe a note was sent out something.

I don't know. So the result of that is that we had more good conversations and conversations in general last night than we pretty much had all last year.

It were most of them, not all of them, but most of them were calm and collected, things like that.

But, um, uh, there were some that were weird. We've got some, um, interesting people, uh, that's a visited with us last night.

We'll get into those folks a little bit more next week, I think maybe. Um, but, um, we had a number of really excellent opportunities to share with folks.

So I'm really excited about that. I'm excited about the work that is coming up. And if you do hear this during that period of time, please pray for us, pray for me that I'll be able to talk tonight.

Uh, I didn't expect this to happen and, uh, pray for the tracks as they're distributed, the people that we've talked to, even the, um, the big

Roman soldiers, uh, who are hearing what we're saying, uh, but not necessarily responding to what we're saying.

Uh, we know they were listening very closely last night during one particular period of time. So, uh, pray for us about, uh, the work that we're going to be doing.

Well, we're going to, uh, have to wrap up a little early today because I can't talk anymore.

So next week, hopefully a response to, uh, Mr. O 'Reilly on the subject of, uh, the, uh, this rock article and, uh, a little bit more of a report on what's going on in, uh,

Mesa. And we hope to be live so you can call in next week. Uh, but thanks for listening.

We'll talk to you later. Bye. The dividing line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.

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