Radio Free Geneva: Kerrigan Skelly Tries to Break the Golden Chain, and Fails

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Kerrigan Skelly’s Golden Chain Argument Against Romans 8

And welcome to The Dividing Line, Radio Free Geneva on a Thursday afternoon. I forget how many months ago it was. Well, it was only posted five months ago, so it must have been within the past five months.

Someone dropped me a link to an amazing video by a fellow by the name of Kerrigan Skelly of Pinpoint Evangelism. And the video was on scopolamine, devil's breath or devil's plant. It was a video about this drug and its effect upon people and how this was relevant to Calvinism.

Well, at that point I put a checkmark in my mind that there are some really odd people on YouTube. Not that I didn't already know that, but I found this particularly reprehensible. So a few days ago when I was directed to a new video titled Breaking the Golden Chain of Redemption, a little alarm bell in the back of my mind sort of went off going, this is the same guy.

But interestingly enough, I took the time, downloaded the video, listened to the audio while I was writing, and decided then that it was such a classic example of eisegesis, such a classic example of numerous common exegetical errors that many people make, that just its educational value just by itself would be more than a good enough reason to review the presentation.

And it wasn't until about five minutes before the program that I actually bothered to look up and find out that yes indeed, the scopolamine video did come from the same guy, which makes me just shake my head.

But thankfully I had done all the work to get all this queued up and ready to go beforehand, so we're going to do it anyways. So we're dealing with Kerrigan Skelly. Now I do not claim to be an expert in everything else Kerrigan Skelly says.

It looks like he's pretty much a full-on Pelagian from just looking through his videos. So there's obviously some serious problems all through here. But as far as this particular presentation, I'm just going to be looking at what he said in the video that was uploaded very, very recently on the subject of breaking the golden chain of redemption, which of course is found in Romans chapter 8 beginning at verse 28.

So I'm going to be looking at what he had to say. Hopefully you will find that analysis to be useful if we have time. Once we wrap up with this, we'll move back to the William Lane Craig Paul Helm discussion, depending on how much time we spend on this.

Man-Centered Interpretation of Romans 8:28-30

So let's jump right into the presentation made by Kerrigan Skelly. The beginning of the presentation, there are a couple of things that are relevant because what you're going to hear as we listen to what Kerrigan Skelly has to say is one of the classic examples of man-centered biblical interpretation.

If you want to see the difference between interpreting the text in a God-centered way versus a man-centered way, this is, I cannot think of a better example, especially in Romans chapter 8, where you have just such obvious and clear focus upon God's accomplishment in Christ, God's glory, God's purpose, God's action.

God is the one who does the actions. Man is the object of the actions. It's just so clear and compelling, and yet people can actually turn that upside down to where God's trying, God's making available, but man is the one who must actuate.

Man is the one who must do these things. And in this case, the primary methodology, aside from completely face-planting and dealing with prognosco, prognosis, prothesis, and various and sundry other Greek terms, it's going to be a study in how not to handle the Greek language.

Aside from that, the amazing thing here is in essence what you get is, well, you see the context here is persecution, and what you have to do is you have to suffer with Jesus. And that's what makes all the rest of this possible, is your suffering with Jesus.

It is missing the point of the entire presentation of the Apostle on the same level as Mormons missing the point in regards to the fact there's only one true God. It's just that bad. It's that upside down.

It is that cataclysmically, chaotically wrong. And yet that's what you have, and that's what happens when you do everything in your power to try to avoid the clear teaching of Scripture in regards to freedom of God and salvation.

So that's what you're going to see here, and so let's pick up at least a couple of the points at the beginning before we get into the specific comments on the golden chain. So you can hear some of this kind.

Again, just for full disclosure, my son came in last evening before we went to church together, and I was listening to this at two times speed. And when he walked in, he says, no one can understand that.

But then after he listened to it for a while, he said, oh, okay, yeah, he's in Romans 8, right? Okay, yeah. And he starts figuring out, yeah, you sort of can follow that, but it makes their holiday easier.

I will be playing this at 1 .2, so it will be a little bit faster, but it allows us to get through things. And most people can't even tell the difference, but here we go anyways.

The Golden Chain of Redemption and Romans 8:28

Verses 28 to 30 is oftentimes called the golden chain of redemption in Calvinistic circles. They'll say, well, look, God predestined you, and he called you, he justified you, and he will also glorify you.

So it's a golden chain. It can't be broken. If you've been called, or if you've been predestined, you will be called, you will be justified, you will be glorified. It's a golden chain that can't be broken.

That's what they'll say about verse 30. And so I intend to break it today, not because I don't want every single person who's been called to be justified or been justified to be glorified, but because it's simply not true.

It's not what it says.

Okay, so that was actually a semi-accurate representation of the Reformed understanding that those whom God foreknew, and that's going to be the key issue, is his not only misrepresentation of what we mean by foreknew, but his just complete mishandling of the Greek at that point.

But those whom he foreknew, he predestined, and when he predestined, he called, justified, and glorified, and that this is a golden chain, and that all those who experience the beginning, those who experience the act, and all of these are actions of God.

They're all finite verbs where God is acting. God is the one who does all these things. This is not just a general calling that results in some people being justified. That's another area that he does not address, is the fact that you have the exact same audience all the way through.

I guess he does in the sense of basically trying to limit this to just people in the past, as you're going to see. It's an amazing, amazing interpretation driven by his man-centered theology, but we'll get to that in a moment.

Okay, a little bit, a few minutes later, we hear him say,.

But, what's the condition there? If indeed we suffer with him. If you don't suffer with him, you will not be glorified together with him. And glorified together means that you received honor with him, you're receiving glory with him, you're joining him.

It doesn't necessarily mean glorified by, it doesn't say that there, although I do believe, of course, when we're in the new heaven, new earth, you will have a glorified body. But you must suffer with him, then you'll be glorified together with him.

Verse 18.

So, what's important to understand in this, again, very man-centered interpretation, is that rather the description we have of the Spirit's role, and certainly the idea of suffering with Christ, the power of the Spirit in bearing us up in our sufferings, these are all present in Romans chapter 8, there's no question about it.

But to take our experience of suffering with Christ and make it the action on the part of human beings that then determines whether all the rest of this is going to be true, is again, just an amazing insertion of a concept that clearly never crossed Paul's mind, and it flows from this idea of needing to control the power and freedom of God by human action.

And those of you, especially, that deal with Roman Catholicism all the time, you've run into this over and over again. This is the very same motivation, the very same type of thing that we get in Roman Catholic reading of texts as well.

Rather than drawing that from the text, it is an external concept that's enforced upon the text. But we're going to see that coming in when we get into the actual golden chain itself here, as we move into that material.

So, a few minutes later, we pick up.

All Things Work Together for Good and the Meaning of Purpose

There's all things working together for good under the context of all this suffering they're enduring. That when you're enduring suffering, not only should you look forward to what is to come, but that God will work it together for the good, if not in this life, in the life to come.

But notice, it only works together for the good for those who love God. Now, how do you know you love God? You're keeping His commandments. So, for those who are keeping His commandments, all things work together for good.

Listen, if you're enduring suffering, which is seen as bad in our eyes sometimes, and you're giving into it, maybe you're denying Christ, maybe you're sinning in some way, you're not one of those who are currently loving God.

So, eventually, it will not work together for your good. It's going to work together for your bad, because you're allowing the suffering to change you, and you're giving into temptation.

What you're hearing, in essence, now, again, Romans 8, 28. We know that God causes all things to work together for good, those who love God, those who are called according to His purpose. Now, you'll notice the called according to His purpose part is going to get a rather interesting treatment by Mr. Skelly.

In fact, everything in here about the elect, the called, doesn't get treated very well at all, in reality. But what you're hearing is basically a statement that if you're sinning, then this promise can't be yours any longer.

Now, I recognize what he's saying. Let me recognize at least the partial truth in the statement that is being made. This is a family promise. Romans 8, 28 cannot, in any way, shape, or form, be embraced, confessed, grabbed hold of by anyone other than the children of God.

Those who have fled for refuge to Jesus Christ, those who have bowed the knee in repentance and faith, these are the individuals who will find this promise to be true. But there is a vast difference between recognizing that we love God because He first loved us, that our love of God is due to the fact that He has changed our hearts, that He has taken out a heart of stone to give us a heart of flesh, we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God, we are being conformed to the image of Christ and made like Christ.

There is a vast difference between recognizing that and the idea that, well, we have to keep up that love for God, and we have to do this, that, and the other thing, and we have to be making sure that we're not sinning.

The wonder of this promise is that all things, not just some things, God causes to work for our good. All things, that means we can even look back over those difficulties in our lives that at the time were so dark and so difficult and confess and recognize that in reality, God was working all things for our good.

This bent toward a sinless perfectionism would certainly rob many a believer that I know of, of the only foundation they have for their belief that God will continue to work in their lives. But you'll notice as well in Romans 8 .28 that when it talks about those who love God, that they are the called according to His purpose, and we're going to find out what that purpose was, but we're not going to find out much about what the calling is.

You'll see that as we move along, so we continue on.

So what is this purpose here? This word for purpose here is prothesis, and it means to set forth something in public, a presentation that has a plan or a purpose. So you set forth something in public that has a plan or a purpose.

So what is this purpose that God had? Well, this purpose that God had, this plan that God had that He made in public, this purpose that He made in advance, this plan in advance, the pro part of it is, He planned this in advance, was to redeem a people for Himself in Christ.

Now, was that a specific people? What's being said here is that God made a plan that He was going to redeem someone, that He was going to make redemption a possibility. The reality is that His purpose is to redeem a particular people in Christ Jesus.

Look at Titus chapter 2, verses 11 through 14, if you want to have a really good example of that. But the comments that were just made, I want to look at them a little bit more closely because we have our first error.

Looking at accordance here, the term prothesis that is found in Romans 8, 28. Let me show you something here. Let's look this up. And here, let's look it up in BDAG. Here is the definition that He was giving to us, setting forth something in public, setting forth, putting out presentation.

Now, when you use a Greek lexicon such as Bauer, Dunker, Arndt, and Gingrich, BDAG, you need to be somewhat careful that you note that the authors of the lexicon will indicate for you which part of the definition they understand to be relevant to the text that you are utilizing.

So, when we look at prothesis here, and we see this first definition, we will notice that there is a second definition down the road, and that is that which is planned and advanced, plan, purpose, resolve, will.

And if we look down beneath that, we see that there are subcategories. There isn't a subcategory to the first part of the definition. There is a subcategory to the second definition, A, of humans, and B, of divine purpose.

And what you want to do, first and foremost, if you want to accurately represent the lexicon correctly, is that you need to find where the authors of that particular lexicon place the text that you are utilizing.

Now, if we look back at the definition that included the term setting forth something in public, we will not find Romans 8 .28, because the authors of BDAG do not place it there. It is placed under meaning number 2, and it's not put under meaning number 2, A, of humans, but 2B, of divine purpose, it's the first one listed right here, those who are called in accordance with God's purpose, Romans 8 .28.

The reason I emphasize this is because Mr. Skelly puts a lot of emphasis upon the public aspect of the proclamation of this purpose, I would imagine, so as to avoid the idea of any secret or divine decree.

But the reality is that that's not what BDAG says, and if he wanted to emphasize that and the meaning of prothesis, he would have to provide us with some kind of contextual evidence for this. The reality is that when we look at the Greek text itself, that those who love God, that is being described again by kleitos kataprotheson kleitosouson and it is kataprotheson kleitos, those who are called according to purpose.

In fact, kataprotheson is put between kleitos and kleitos, so it's sandwiched between them, so it's the according to purpose called ones. So the point is that Paul is telling us that those who love God, love God, why?

Because they're called according to his purpose. Mr. Skelly wants us to believe that if you love God, then you will be called according to God's public purpose, and that is to redeem people who love God.

Now, one of the two of those, well, is not like the other. They are coming from completely different angles. Something tells me that if we were to ask Mr. Skelly about the rather famous issue in 1 John, in fact, let's just pop over there just for the educational purpose of it.

Remember 1 John 5 .1? Remember this? Everyone believing that Jesus is the Christ has been born from God. And my argument at this point has been that the ha-pistuon, the present tense substantival participle here at the beginning of 1 John 5 .1, in relationship to gegeneitai, has been born from God, that perfect passive, that the present tense and perfect passive, consistently in 1 John, would be that if you are believing that Jesus is the Christ, it is because you have been born of God.

You do not believe so as to become born of God. You are believing because you have been born of God. And the argument is that we have been able to look at other texts. 1 John 2, is it 29? Yes. 1 John 2 .29 says, If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him.

Well, look again. Here is pas-hap-poyon-ten-dikai-asunen-ex-autu-gegeneitai. The one doing righteousness, there is your present tense participle again, has been born from him. And when we talk to most of our Arminian friends, we can point this and say, Now, are you comfortable saying that if you are doing righteousness, that is how you become born again?

Because if what you are saying in 1 John 5 is that by believing you become born again, the parallel here, syntactically in the Greek, is the doing of righteousness. So do you do righteousness to become born again?

Something tells me Mr. Skelly would say, Yup, exactly. That is exactly what happens. It is the doing of righteousness that causes you to be born again. I don't know. Maybe I could be wrong about this, but I have a feeling that is probably where he is coming from.

And then, in 1 John, is it 4 .9, I believe? Let's see if we can find it here. There it is, 4 .7. Yes, there it is, 4 .7. Look at 4 .7. There is kai-pas-ha-aga-poyn-etu-theu-gegeneitai. So everyone loving, whoever loves, has been born of God and knows God.

So, do you have to love God so as to be born of God? I get the feeling that probably Mr. Skelly would say, Yes. So, if he would, at least he would be consistent. So, either John is saying in each one of these instances that the one who has been born of God is the one who is going to be loving God, the one who is born of God is the one who is going to be doing works of righteousness, the one who is born of God is the one who is going to be believing in Him, believing that Jesus is the Christ.

This is all the result of God's action of causing us to be born again. Or, man-centered perspective. That's the God-centered perspective. That's what God does. The result, then, is these things in those who follow Christ.

This is the result of God's work. Or, you have the man-centered perspective, which is you do these things, the result is you're born of God. Now, of course, you're going to get quite a list there. I mean, you need to be loving God, you need to be believing God, and you need to be doing works of righteousness to be born of God.

Very works-oriented. But that's how that would work, I guess. So, we go back here to Romans chapter 8, and continue on. Again, so, first point, prophesis. The emphasis upon the public setting forth or something like that is not what we have here.

We have God's purpose, and that purpose is in the calling of a specific people who love God, and therefore God works all things for their good, according to his purpose. And there was a strange reading of the lexical material there, not looking at what BDAG was actually emphasizing, as far as the use of the term there.

And then a de-emphasis of the concept of calling. There wasn't any recognition. This is very common amongst people who don't actually read the language, because you can look at this word, and one of the first things that is obvious to someone who would be translating this, when you look at toise, kata, prophesin, kleitos, usin, you see toise, you see the article.

And then you see the word it's going with, which is kleitos, and there's words in between it, so you're used to this article, important descriptor term, and then the word you're modifying, and it just becomes second nature in your thinking that you're not going to define kata, prophesin, especially because you've got the particle right in front of it.

You're not going to interpret that separately from the calling. It has been put together for a purpose by the author, and when you've got that preposition standing there as well, it all becomes one thought in your mind, and you're going to interpret it all together, rather than taking apart, which very frequently is what you get in a lot of sermons.

Let's just put it that way. Sermons that aren't necessarily overly good sermons. So we continue on with Mr. Skelly's presentation.

And the people who are loving God, they are part of those who are called, because they respond to the calling of God properly, by loving Him, by enduring suffering. They're responding to the purpose that He set forth in public long ago.

So there you have, again, the turning of this on its head. Listen to that again, and notice what's being said here. Rather than God has a purpose, God calls these people to Himself according to His purpose.

This is God's activities, God's self-glorification. If you don't believe that, if you don't want to have the centrality of grace, and you want to control grace by the actions of man, this is what you've got to do.

And the people who are loving God, they are part of those who are called, because they respond to the calling of God properly, by loving Him, by enduring suffering. They're responding to the purpose that He set forth in public long ago.

So they respond to the calling of God properly. So this is the universal, general type of a call, not a specific call that actually results in their salvation. Everybody receives this. But they respond properly by loving, and by enduring suffering, and so on and so forth.

So it's their actions of loving, enduring suffering, so on and so forth, that makes them... Well, it doesn't make them the called, can it? Because everybody's called. See, it doesn't really make sense, but at least you can hear.

You getting this? Okay, we've got a studio audience today, so I'll make sure that we acknowledge the studio audience. When you get out from behind the monitor there, because I can't see you... And then this is parallel just 30 seconds later.

Others to be saved. That's the purpose He has for those people. Now they must respond to that purpose properly by loving Him, by enduring the suffering we saw laid out in verses 16 through 27.

So this purpose is not personal. It's general. It's this general idea that if these people will do these things, if they will suffer, if they will love, then these things will be true for them. God's purpose is just a general thing that does not actually result in the salvation of anyone.

It just makes this a possibility. All right? So there you have the background, and he continues on.

The Call to Love God and the Warning Against Sin

But things only work to good for those who love God. So if someone comes along to these three verses 20 -30 here and says, well, I sin every single day, but I'm part of this group that's going to be predestined, called, justified, and glorified, would that be true of them?

It couldn't possibly be true. Because all things were not worked together for good for them. It would be bad for them.

Now, insofar as the Scriptures tell us that those who are born of God do not practice sin, and it sounds like he's talking about people who practice sin, people who have no concern for the glory of God, have no concern for anything as far as holiness.

If that's all he was saying, then I can understand where he's coming from. That's not all he's saying. That's the problem. Because, again, it's a covenant promise. It's a promise for the people who have been called, who have been regenerated.

But when you're dealing with someone where regeneration and salvation is actually the result of things that we do, we have a completely different foundation. We're talking about a completely different gospel.

We're miles apart here. And you see the result in how we look at the text of Scripture itself. Okay, we continue on.

Foreknowledge, Progenosko, and the Object of God’s Knowing

Now, the word foreknew here doesn't mean this. Some Calvinist would have you believe that foreknow means that God knew people, had a relationship with them before they were born, before they were created.

But I want to give you every single instance of this word in the New Testament. You can decide for yourself what it means. Acts 26.

Okay, so now we get into the real heart of why I wanted to deal with this. And that is aside from creating a completely backwards context that's focused upon the actions of man rather than the actions of God.

The primary argument he's going to use here is he's going to go after progenosco, pro-egno, as it occurs at the beginning of Romans 8 .29. Hati hus pro-egno, chi pro-ordison, to predestine. The lesson to be learned here is how not to do Greek word studies.

Because the argument placed before us here is, well, just, again, I've taught Greek for years. And if any of my students, I had the opportunity of teaching at Grand Canyon yesterday morning. And the professor for that class is one of my former students.

And I remember to ask him, I asked him, so what did I teach you? What class did I have you in? This is back, I don't know, 14 years ago or so. Even more, longer than that, 15 years ago. And Greek was one of the classes that I managed to get him through.

And if he had made this kind of an argument in my Greek class, he would not have passed my Greek class. Because what you're going to find out here, and again, I'm sorry, but you're going to hear a lot of preachers that are going to put forward word studies like this.

And they're not word studies. They can only be done by people who don't actually read the language or have never even given thought to such things, what's called lexical semantics, where you really try to define words according to their usage so that you really are understanding how the author intended his words to be utilized.

I have, for example, many times recommended a very important book by Moises Silva, Biblical Words and Their Meanings. I think the current edition of that has a new title, but when I read it, it was Biblical Words and Their Meanings.

If you really want to dig into this. But let me talk to you about how to do this right, and then we'll listen to Kerrigan's skelly doing it all wrong. Let me run through some of the fundamental assertions that we need to keep in mind about pro-egno at Romans 8 -29 as I laid them out in The Potter's Freedom.

Because this is such an important term. It's such an important text that I think it's important. If you have The Potter's Freedom, you can look this up. I actually had to buy my own book on Kindle today because I didn't have it on Kindle.

I suppose I should have that. And I did just recently get the James White Lagos collection. Thank you to Lagos for giving that to me. But that doesn't include The Potter's Freedom because that's not one of the Baker books.

I suppose I could be wrong, but I didn't check. I assumed it was from Baker, so it wouldn't be that. So if you look it up, let's summarize a few things about pro-egno that should be just common sense for us.

But unfortunately, they aren't necessarily the case. Let's think about it. The primary passages that should inform our understanding of the term are those that have God as the subject of the verbal form as it is in Romans 8 -29.

In other words, when we look at Romans 8 -29, for those whom he foreknew. Now, one of the things that Kerrigan Skelly is going to do is he's just going to look at all of the verbal forms. Now, again, keep in mind, there is a noun form for knowledge and then there is a verbal form to foreknow.

And most people never think about what the relationship of those terms would be. Because for us, foreknowing something doesn't... In Greek, it's an active verb. It's something God actually does. For us, foreknowing is very passive.

We're taking in knowledge of something. So, is it the same thing for God to foreknow someone that it is for a man to foreknow something? And the irony is, in the example he's going to give, he refutes his own position but doesn't seem to realize it.

He refutes his own position. But, you need to distinguish between the noun and the verb. Most of my Arminian friends do not make that proper distinction. They do not distinguish between the noun and the verb.

They do not answer the question, what does it mean for God to foreknow something? Because that asks questions about God's relationship to time and creation. And they can be very uncomfortable things for Arminians to deal with.

Because I really don't find... I've said it a million times before, say it again, the only consistent Arminian is an open theist and Kerrigan Skelly is not an open theist. So, I can understand why they're very uncomfortable trying to deal with the relationship of God and time.

Because they're just not really able to deal with this in an appropriate way. But, if we want to know what it means here, then our first range of text is going to be where God is the one who is performing the action of the verb.

Where God is foreknowing. If you throw everything else in, which is what Kerrigan Skelly does, then what would be the presupposition you're adopting? That God's activity of foreknowing and man's activity of foreknowing are absolutely identical.

And given the illustrations he himself is going to use, that isn't true. Because, for example, he mentions another fellow in the group there. And he says, I can guarantee you that if we go out to eat after witnessing and he goes to use the restroom, I can order a tea half sweet, half unsweet for him.

Because that's what he always does. And then he goes, well, maybe not anymore. Because evidently the guy is trying to lose some weight or something like that. And so it's changed. And what does that tell you?

It tells you that man's foreknowing is always fallible. But God's foreknowing can't be. Or there's an imperfection in God. So it's rather funny that he refutes his own position. Not even realizing that he has embraced and he's made an assertion, but he's never proven the assertion, that by pulling in all of the examples of man foreknowing and say, oh, see, this doesn't mean having a relationship with someone in the future.

As if that was all we were saying. That that, in some way, shape, or form, is parallel. That man and God's knowledge, they're parallel. So, obviously passages that have humans as a subject would differ substantially in their meaning.

For God's knowledge is vastly different than man's. Number two, the verb progenosco is used three times in the New Testament with God as a subject, Romans 8, 29, Romans 11, 2, and 1 Peter 1, 20. The key issue, normally unaddressed by Arminian writers, lies in the objects of God's action of foreknowing.

And this, Mr. Skelly completely ignores. Again, if you're going to be serious in dealing with the language, you're going to look at the verb, you're going to look at the subject of the verb, whether it's God or man, and then you're going to look at the object.

What is it that God foreknows? Because what's the normal Arminian utilization of the foreknowledge defense? Oh, God just looks down the corridors of time and he sees, what? What does he see? He sees who, that's personal, but who does something, who chooses to believe in Christ.

So he sees the actions of individuals and therefore he acts on the basis of foreseen actions. That's the normal Arminian understanding of this. But, as I point out, the key issue lies in the objects of God's action of foreknowing.

What or who is foreknown by God? In Romans 8 .29, the direct object of the verb is a pronoun that refers back to the elect of verse 28, for whom he foreknew. That's those that he called in verse 28. In Romans 11 .2, the object is his people and in 1 Peter 1 .20, the object is Christ.

What is the consistency here? The consistency is that what is foreknown is a person. It's personal. God foreknows people. So if you're going to try to say, well, what God foreknew is what someone was going to do in the future, you've got a tall mountain to climb if you're going to be consistent in looking at the utilization of these terms.

Every time God is portrayed as foreknowing, the object of the verb is personal. Now, this is not saying, I'm not addressing foreknowledge here. I would affirm that God foreknows all the actions of everyone.