January 13, 2005

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us.

Yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence. Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation.

If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602. Or toll free across the United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is James White.

And good morning, welcome to The Dividing Line, morning edition here on Thursday because of a teaching schedule conflict with me. Actually, I only teach through tomorrow in this Jan term class, so next week should be on regular schedule.

If I can drag myself away from the fact I have a major article due on the 20th, which that's a week away. And not really started yet, know what I need to do, just need to sit down and do it. And the best way to do that is to turn off my email, turn off the RSS reader.

I couldn't help but read an article Eric Svensson just put up. More fun with Dave Armstrong. A couple of days ago I asked the question, is Dave Armstrong finally coming out of hiding with regard to his published exegesis of Luke 1 to 28?

The answer is a resounding nope. But here's the really good news. Dave Armstrong has decided to follow his resolution of ceasing interaction with anti-Catholics. And that should be an easy task for Dave Armstrong because he's had so much practice ceasing the interaction.

He's a lot like the guy who says quitting smoking is easy, I do it all the time.

Sorry.

That was just so good.

It's true because he goes through and he documents, he goes back to 2001. I remember this. I put it on my hard drive. I kept this thing. And yes, okay, you know, this is true. I need to do this. Tex Presby has requested this.

And before I go on with this, I should have done this, and I apologize. I should have started off, make sure that...

The Spanish Inquisition. I am usually referred to as the master.

There are some who call me Tim.

I will now turn my sounds off since I didn't play that. I was trying to put it up, but I put Wave instead of MP3. I was retyping it as somebody else played it. That's the Dave Armstrong theme song. And, hey, he's got all sorts of, all you've got to do is, oh, you shouldn't do that.

Actually, just go to his website, and you'll discover he writes songs for me. That has been the deepest response he's offered so far to the review of his published text of Jesus. It's to write songs based upon the Beach Boys.

I, Dave Armstrong, do hereby resolve to cease and desist even from mention of Dr. James White and Tim Enloe. That was in March 14, 2001. Can you believe we're coming up on four years? Oh, my goodness.

2001 doesn't seem that long ago, does it? Anyway, four years, four years ago. You can read this thing, and it's just, it's truly, truly funny to read this thing, and it ends with this talking about he ought to be utterly ignored now.

I'm just now realizing that late in the game. I hope others follow suit. And he finishes off, Starting immediately, I resolve to neither interact with, nor to even mention at all, James White and Tim Enloe.

Isn't that ironic? They don't deserve any further attention. Notoriety, I urge all of the Catholics, especially Catholic apologists, to do the same. Though, of course, I have no real authority to compel anyone to do anything.

I can only suggest. This is consistent with many biblical injunctions urging us to avoid those who cause divisions and slanderers and to avoid senseless, stupid controversies, vain conversation, etc. Furthermore, I am through with debating all anti-Catholics, i .e. those who deny the Christian status of Catholicism, from this moment.

And he does provide some exceptions. How long is this thing? If you think I can't keep this resolved because of the supposed obsession you think I have, then watch me. You'll be in for a big surprise.

Remember, this is March of 2001.

I'm sorry.

I just...

That is just... That needs to be reposted every once in a while. Just simply to keep me happy. Anyway, welcome back to the dividing line. That RSS reader thing is bad. It's just bad. It allows you to keep up with stuff way too fast.

Four pages, 2200 words. And people said I was being unkind to say that he would respond with these big, long things. But anyway, we'll eventually get back to the Catholic verses on the blog. But right now I'm responding to some other stuff that came up in the explosion of comments on Armstrong's blog when he decided to stop responding.

Or at least responding with words. Now he's responding with songs. I'm going to sing my response.

That's what he's going to do.

Oh, you've got to laugh sometimes because if you don't, you'll... Your face will freeze in a frown. Isn't that what your mother told you? That's what my mother told me. And you always remember and believe whatever your mother tells you.

Remember how you make a face and say, You better be careful. Your face will freeze like that. Maybe modern kids don't hear that. But I did. And if you're old enough to remember your mother saying that, then you're probably in my generation.

I found out last night that I'm actually in the baby boomer generation. I didn't think I was in the baby boomer. They extend it to 64, so I slide into that one. Hey, what in the world am I doing here?

Calvinism, Southern Baptists, and Romans 9

We need to continue our discussion, our review of the audio that we started last time. We've had a lot of folks who have written and said they appreciated that. And so we're going to go back. This is Dr. Revis from Florida.

And you may recall, if you listened last time, that Dr. Revis has some concerns about Calvinism coming into Southern Baptist churches. You know, the one thing that wasn't noted here for some odd reason was there was no discussion of people like Boyce and the historic Southern Baptists who were clearly Calvinistic in their theology.

There was no discussion of that for some odd reason, because you would think that if you address that part of it, then you'd have to say, you know, Southern Baptists have believed this, and therefore there needs to be room for it and so on.

So you could then say, no, I disagree with it, and here's why. But there's no discussion of that. So I found that rather interesting. But we pick up last time. In fact, I'm going to go back just a little bit to get a little context here.

You may recall Romans chapter 9 had started. And so let's just roll it back here and see if we're in the right general area here.

I tried to suck them out of the youth group to get them involved in this. We got some of the college and career confused about this. It's dividing seminary campuses. It's dividing Christian college campuses.

It's even dividing the BCMs, the Baptist Campus Ministries, on some of our secular college campuses. And so I'm going to stay there tonight and tell you what I believe that this is all about. The Bible says, now listen, in Romans 9, verse 22, what if God, willing to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with longsuffering...

Now listen to this, the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction. Oh, there it is, preacher. He prepared those people for hell. That's not what it says in the Greek New Testament. The verb there where it says fitted to destruction, the verb is in what Greek grammarians call the middle voice, making it a reflexive action verb.

And this is what it literally says in the Greek New Testament. The vessels, the lost people, fitted themselves, prepared themselves to destruction. How did the vessels prepare themselves for destruction?

By rejecting Jesus Christ as their personal Savior.

Well, despite the staff member seated very close to the pulpit for some reason who says that's right, that isn't right. And it's interesting, I was looking at Lenski's commentary because I remembered I'd written an article in response to Lenski's attempt to get around Romans chapter 9.

And Lenski correctly identifies this as a passive, this is a passive participle if you're looking at this. And we started to get into this at the end of the program, ran out of time. And some of you may have been somewhat surprised that I didn't dive into this immediately.

Instead, I went to the context and talked about the fact that if you follow the context through. The reason I did that was fairly simple. Sometimes when you start talking about, like, Katartidzo, and it being in the perfect passive participial form, you immediately start seeing eyes glazing over because there's sort of a filter in people's minds that say, ah, there goes the Greek stuff, I'll tune in when he's done.

And you can't do that for a number of reasons. First of all, you can't do that given that he's standing up there saying, well, it's in the middle and it's reflexive and that means they prepared themselves and so on and so forth.

So you can't, you know, if the person you're responding to or the position you're responding to uses that kind of information, well, you can't just sit back and ignore that. You have to respond to it in some way, shape, or form.

So you have to be prepared to look at these things. But what's more than that, the reason I approached it the way I did initially is to demonstrate that you don't necessarily have to immediately be able to identify the voice and the mode and so on and so forth of a participle or a finite verb in the Greek language to be able to recognize when somebody's basically selling you a bill of goods.

Because there's nothing in the context leading up to this that would lead you to come to that conclusion. The context itself argues against that, okay? And so I wanted to start from that perspective before going back and saying now, since we have more time to do it now, no, that's not the case.

And in fact, even Lenski recognizes this as a passive. It is translated as a passive. The middle was passing away at the koine period. This is not a reflexive. You say, well, the form could be a middle passive.

Yeah, but when is katartidzo ever used that way? Look at the other uses of katartidzo in Paul or in the New Testament. And when someone comes up and says, this is a middle reflexive, that is the least possible way of looking at the text.

And so if you're going to argue for the least possible way of looking at the text, then you have to find something within the context that would argue for this. And we went back in the context and demonstrated there's nothing there.

So Dr. Evis can stand before his people and turn the volume up so high that you start getting distortion and yell this as loudly as he wants to. That doesn't make it a middle reflexive form. Even Lenski, who really is strongly anti-reformed as a Lutheran, recognizes it's a passive.

Now, by the way, just in passing, if you'd like to know, how does he then handle it? He says, now notice that while it's a passive, that is, vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, the agent of the preparation is not mentioned and therefore the agent is Satan.

So Satan is the one who prepared the vessels of wrath for destruction, not God. The problem, of course, is you immediately, if again, if you're just following the context, just letting the context speak for itself, what are you going to see?

Well, the answer that is being given here is to an objection. Verse 19. And the objection is, why does he still find fault for who resists his will? If the agent was Satan, then the answer would be, oh, you've missed it.

You don't understand. There's more than one will involved here. There's God's will and there's Satan's will. And the objection is all wrong because it's Satan who's to blame here, not God. Which, of course, is not what Paul says, is it?

No.

The answer is, on the contrary, who are you, oh man, who answers back to God, the thing molded will not say the molder, why'd you make me like this, will it? And so here's your context. The context is the molder and the thing molded.

The molder is God. The thing molded is man. Is that not the context? Am I making something? Is this not clear? It seems very, very clear. To me, I don't see how that can be missed. Because the very next verse says, or does not the potter, that's the molder, have right over the clay the thing molded to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?

So who is the one person who is from the same lump because he has it right over the clay making one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? Is there more than one person involved here? Or is there one potter making one vessel for honorable use and one vessel for common use?

Isn't that what we have here? Isn't that the context of verse 21? Yes, that's the context of verse 21. So verse 22 then says, what if God, so God then becomes who? The potter, although willing to demonstrate his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction.

Now the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction is parallel to what? The dishonorable use vessels. Then verse 23, and he did so to make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy which he prepared beforehand for glory.

So the only escape that Lenski is trying to find is that since you have in verse 23 the idea of he prepared them for glory, that is God, but it doesn't say he prepared the vessels of wrath for destruction using the exact same word, then that must mean that's where we can slide Satan in there.

Why does Lenski have to do that? Because Lenski doesn't believe what Romans 9, 22 -23 says.

And you go, oh, no he doesn't.

He doesn't because of his tradition. How many times have we discussed that? He doesn't because of his tradition. This is one of those places where he has to violate his own standards, his own hermeneutics, because his tradition runs counter to the scripture.

But at least he recognizes, at least he doesn't go with the bad, the worst possible explanation. That's a middle reflexive. No, it's not a middle reflexive. There's nothing in the context that would cause us to take this in anything other than the default way, and I don't think anyone would argue about this.

When you see a middle passive form in a participle in Paul, I haven't run the numbers, but I think I'm fairly close here, and some day I should just run the numbers just for the fun of it. The default is the passive 98 of the time minimally.

And remember, folks, even if something is a middle, that doesn't mean it's a middle reflexive.

There are different ways of taking the middle,.

And the reflexive is not the most common. So you're talking about someone here who, you're talking about an assertion here that is the least possible choice in the grammar that has nothing in the context that drives you to it.

So how do you make up for that? Not evidently with volume. If you say something loud enough and you say it with enough conviction,.

People are going to amen you,.

Even if they're not really certain what in the world it is you just said anyways. I mean, let's face it. How many people that you just heard amening that have a clue what a reflexive middle is in Greek anyways?

It's just like, that sounds good, pastor, preach it. And that's exactly what happened there, isn't it? Let's be honest. That would happen in almost any congregation. I get up in front of my congregation.

If I pushed it loud enough, I might actually, nah, my congregation, I don't care how loudly I went at it,.

I would not get an amen.

That doesn't happen. But anyway, so I'm sorry, but there is just no reason to accept that kind of assertion in the context. And of course, if you had interaction, maybe if we had discussions of these things where both sides had equal amount of time and you could present your case, that would be clearly seen.

But unfortunately, only one side seems to want to be able to do that.

And the other side does not want to.

So we continue on.

Nowhere in that book does the Bible say that God predestined anybody else. You say, well, Brother Herb, that's...

Notice the improper switching of terms, which may just be due to the fact that right now the speaker is in high gear and this may not be purposeful, but he's switching from reprobation to active predestination to hell.

That's not the same thing. We mentioned that last week. That's a misrepresentation.

That's a caricature.

That's a straw man. But if you're going to end up using straw man argumentation, it's normally when you start really rolling.

You know?

You got the people going, amen, amen, amen. You start rolling and rolling and rolling. That's when you end up doing that kind of thing.

It's logic. Listen, I'm not going according to human logic. I'm going according to divine revelation. And when the Bible's silent, I don't have to know, folks. But I know this. God doesn't predestinate anybody to go to hell.

Now, he was slowed down there, so that would seem to indicate a misunderstanding on the speaker's part regarding the difference between reprobation and active predestination of someone to hell. So maybe that's just something that in those books that if you didn't hear last time, you need to go back and listen last time because the context is there.

The books that he says he listened to or that he listened to, that he read, well, he could have the audiobooks, I guess.

A lot of people do that today.

But the books that he said that he had studied so long ago at Moody Bible Institute and has on his shelf and so on and so forth would have explained the differences there. But anyway.

We got told in private. We got an unconditional election. Now, if you embrace that, what I'm getting ready to say is it's going to shock you.

Aha! Aha!

What do you think that might be? I tell you, every time I hear somebody heading toward limited atonement, particularly redemption, you can just tell. And, you know, I'll do it in reverse. I'll honestly do it in reverse sometimes because I will try to get people to think and I will try to get people to realize, you know what, I'm sick and tired of always being on the defensive here when I'm defending a perfect atonement over against, you know, the...

In fact, I got an e-mail. I need to mention this. I got an e-mail from the pastor that sent this to me letting me know that after this sermon, guess what book they were passing out at the church. Anyone want to guess?

Yeah, you're right. Chosen But Free by Norman Geisler. And it's in Chosen But Free that we have the assertion that Christ's death saved no one. It simply made all men savable. So, you know what? You know, I go back to Charles Spurgeon and his comments on this subject and when he talked about this savable stuff, Christ's death makes men savable, he said, you can have your atonement.

I'll keep mine. And that's exactly what I think about it. So you can hear it coming, can't you?

You're going to be shocked, folks.

You know, that's what Bryson does. That's what Hunt does.

If you embrace the doctrine of reprobation along with the doctrine of unconditional election and completely take human responsibility, we have no choice.

Again, hopefully by now, after all these years, of course, we have new people who listen all the time, so I can't assume that. But we have addressed this so many times as we've listened to so many different people preaching away against Calvinism.

Folks, the point is, you will always make the wrong choice when your nature is corrupted and you are in slavery to sin. The choice is yours. The responsibility is yours. But your nature is corrupt. And so until God takes out that heart of stone and gives you a heart of flesh, that heart of stone is always going to lead you to the wrong conclusion and the wrong actions and the wrong choices.

It's just, he who commits sin is the slave of sin, is he not? Well, it's just because he chooses to be. Yep, he does, but he's still a slave, isn't he? Can he un-choose?

No, he cannot.

That's the whole point.

No choice. It's no human decision at all involved in getting saved.

I believed in Jesus. But the only reason that I did was because Jesus is a perfect and powerful Savior who, by the exercise of His sovereign power in concert with the Father and the Spirit, freed me from slavery to sin.

That's why all the honor and glory goes to God and not to me.

Then some babies go to hell.

Oh, here we go. I forgot about this. Before we get to limited atonement. Before I get to... You know, I was sitting there. Remember, I mentioned last time the context of this. I was sitting at a pretty good Mexican restaurant and I had my MP3 player with me.

So I've got earphones sitting in my ears and I'm listening. I probably looked a little goofy. But I'm sitting there munching away on my chips and salsa. And what did I get? Yeah, I just got a couple tacos and rice.

Or something.

I forget what it was. Anyway, and he gets this part.

And he just goes on and on and on.

About infants who die in infancy. And I'm just rolling my eyes going, wow, this is a real argument. Because you know that Reformed people argue about this subject themselves. I mean, there are those. Zwingli said all those who die in infancy, all those lacking mental capacity, they're all of the elect.

Stallers to it.

I can't prove it. You can't disprove it.

Let's move on from there.

And you have others. You have a whole spectrum of belief amongst Reformed people on this particular issue. You have people who say all elect, you know, all babies who are elect. But does that mean that all babies are elect?

And you have other people say, hey, wait a minute. If you just simply go that direction, if you just simply do the blank, the blank. All children who die.

And then, you know,.

Generally Reformed folks don't get into the age of accountability stuff. But they will say if you do that, then you are not only removing from God his freedom, but you're likewise turning abortion into the greatest heaven-filling device ever designed by man.

And it also runs into a situation I encountered years and years ago. I was debating an atheist on the dividing line. This was back, good grief, this was in the 80s. That's how long we've been doing this now.

And this individual was arguing against the goodness of God. And he was saying, look, what if you, you know, why couldn't God, knowing the future, have caused Adolf Hitler to have a heart attack and die before he brought about the Holocaust?

And brought about all of World War II and all the millions of people who died, not just in concentration camps, but combat deaths and bombings of Dresden and Hiroshima and Nagasaki and all the rest of that stuff.

If he had just simply had Hitler die of a heart attack, you know, when he was younger, then it never would have happened. And then just a little bit later, he's using another illustration. He's saying, we don't call a person good who is walking down a street and he sees a fire and he sees through a window that there's a baby in a bassinet in this house.

And he could probably, it might be dangerous, but he could probably get through that window and get that baby. But he doesn't. He doesn't. He lets the baby die. We don't allow that that person would be called good.

And I remember looking,.

This is an in-studio debate over to KHEP. This is back when KHEP was still a Christian station. I think, what are they now? I forget what they are now. I don't think they're even English language, but they may not even be Spanish.

I forget what they are now. But anyways, they're something different. But anyways, we were at the studio. This guy was in the studio with me and I looked across the studio at him and I just rather drolly said, how do you know that baby wasn't Hitler?

And it was just meant to illustrate the fact you can't second guess an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent creator. He had just illustrated why both of his arguments don't work and that they're based upon the finitude of our own perspective in this particular issue.

But the point is, here comes the babies who die in infancy stuff and couldn't the point be that a person, no baby could ever go to hell? Well, what if this, isn't there something in scripture about people storing up wrath for themselves?

And wouldn't it actually be more merciful in some context for God to take a person out of the world in their youth than to allow them to store up for themselves all the wrath that they do by being hard-hearted throughout their entire lives and knowing the truth, sitting against it constantly?

These things just don't seem to click with people. And so anyways, we get to hear Dr. Revis talking about babies here for a while.

You say, well, where do you get that? Well, if God in eternity past has written down the names of the elect and they're the only ones going to get saved, the Bible says the road to hell is wide and the road to heaven is narrow and more people are going to go to hell than are going to go to heaven.

So of all the babies in the world that die, some of the ones according to that doctrine that die would be non-elect, which means that baby of non-elect would die and go to hell because it doesn't involve human responsibility.

Same for the mentally challenged. You have a mentally challenged person here. They have the mentality of a 2-year-old and if they're not one of the elect and they die, they go to hell according to the doctrine of reprobation and divine unconditional election.

Actually, Dr. Revis, that would be according to the doctrine of original sin and Romans 5. If you don't like that, fine. Just identify the right doctrine that we're not liking here.

Now, that didn't set. Well, so some modern 5-point Calvinists say this, well, you only go to hell on the basis of the fact that you rejected Christ. Well, I thought we didn't have human responsibility in this.

Well, maybe that's where you're wrong.

So this is what they say. Now listen to this. They say now that since God is not going to send somebody to hell unless they're a Christ rejecter, and the babies haven't had an opportunity to receive Christ, that the only, now listen to this, the only babies that God allows to die are babies that are elect.

Well, I just got one question. I want one of you who believe that to come up here after the service and show me that in the Word of God.

As if this whole subject is in the Word of God.

I believe in the age of accountability.

There's the age of accountability.

You say, well, Brother Herb, where do you get that? Let me tell you where babies go.

If you've had a baby die,.

I want to comfort you. If you've had a little child die, I want to comfort you. David, when his baby died...

I want to comfort you so you'll never become a Calvinist seems to be the argument here.

The Bible says he wept and cried, and when they told him, your baby's dead, he said, well, I'm going to get up. I'm going to go on with life. My baby cannot come back to me, but someday I will go to him.

Now, where was David going? The 23rd Psalm, the last verse says that David said, I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Not the strongest exegesis you've ever heard,.

But let's not pick on it.

You say, but what about that age of accountability, preacher? That thing y 'all teach that says there's a time when kids don't know good from evil. That's not in the Bible. Well, what about this verse?

Deuteronomy chapter 1, verse 39. Speaking of the children of the Israelites. Listen to what it says. Moreover, your little ones, who you said should be a prey or a victim, and your children who in that day had no knowledge between good and evil.

Wait a minute, let me go back to that. And your children who in that day had no knowledge between good and evil, they shall go in there. That tells me there's a time in the life of a child when they have no knowledge of good and evil, and I believe the grace of God accommodates that, and I believe that a little baby...

By the way, isn't that grace of God accommodates that? Isn't that the point, not the other part? I mean, no one's arguing that an infant in the arms doesn't know that, but aren't we talking about age of accountability here?

I'm sorry.

When they die, I believe they go to heaven, and if you want to believe babies go to hell, that's your prerogative, but you're not going to teach it here, and you're not going to push it here, and I'll tell you right now, I wouldn't go to a church, and I wouldn't go to a Bible study, and I wouldn't sit around with a bunch of little guys that have just found out the doctrine of election and think they know what people have been arguing about for over 2 ,000 years and saying that babies are going to hell.

Now, if you think you can grow listening to that kind of stuff, friend,.

Help yourself.

Now, right there, that's probably the low point, I would say. I mean, that's just absurd. That is not... You know, my father's a graduate of Moody Bible Institute himself in the 1950s, and the systematic theology text they use in the 1950s is written by a Presbyterian,.

P .B. Fitzwater.

And that, I'm sorry,.

That's just...

That is not worthy of that institution, and that's just not worthy of response in the sense of...

That's...

Look, the man has every right to say that in his church. This is what's going to be taught. But if you're going to do that, then you need to be responsible and accurately representing, first of all, the other side, accurately handling the text, and accurately representing this is not specifically, in and of itself, a strictly Calvinistic, non-Calvinistic argument to begin with.

I mean, if you're going to make.

That kind of statement... But what really bothered me about that was probably not the part that bothered most people. But what really bothered me about that was the incipient agnosticism in what was said.

Did you hear what he said? You think you've figured out what people have been arguing about for 2 ,000 years. In other words, no one does. Well, or does he? Is he saying he hasn't been able to figure it out?

Sounds pretty confident to me. But for some reason, this side likes to throw out, well, you know, a lot of good men have disagreed about that.

Well, you know what?

So what? Does that make these passages unclear? Does that excuse the outrageous misuse of argumentation we just heard? Does that excuse the unfounded assertion that contartizzo in the perfect passive participle is actually a middle reflexive?

I don't think so. You know, I try to... I really do try to be fair. I really try to bend over backwards a little bit here. You know, this is this man's church and he can say what he wants to say. But the fact of the matter is when you stand before the people of God and claim to be dealing with the word of God, then let's try to be a little more accurate.

Let's not use this kind of argumentation. This is unworthy of the subject at hand.

I mean, I said it's going to be real reasonable about this and not get worked up, so I'm going to get back in my reasonable tone of voice.

There we go.

That bothers me to say babies are going to hell. That bothers me. It bothers me saying that God has predestinated people to go to hell.