James White Interview (2014)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.�

In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the

Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King. Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Avendroth.

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Avendroth. I�m your host today. I almost forgot who I was for a second, and that�s because I�m thrilled today to have a guest on No Compromise Radio.

Our theme is always biblical, always provocative, always in that order. And our guest,

I think, pretty much operates by the same principles, maybe with a different kind of nomenclature.

James White. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, ministry. It�s good to be back with you again. James White, for those listeners who are not familiar with this ministry, is the

Chief Operating Officer, or I don�t know your technical title, James, Director of Alpha and Omega Ministries, AOMin .org,

that�s AOMin .org. And for the New Englanders here, if you could not understand what

I was saying, that would be Alpha and Omega. So, James, the top four books that I have appreciated the most, if our listeners want to read some of your books, in no particular order, the

King James Only Controversy. I also love the Forgotten Trinity, use that very regularly in ministry,

Potter�s Freedom, and The God Who Justifies. And, James, maybe it�ll be a good segue just into some general conversation.

In your book, The God Who Justifies, you use the Luther, Dung, Snow illustration, and since you go to Germany regularly, and so do

I, tell our listeners about that. About going to Germany, or the illustration? Either.

Either one, yeah, they�re both fun. Well, you know, we don�t, we�re not actually 100 % certain that Luther actually used that.

There are so many things attributed to Luther that you can�t actually find in Luther�s works.

But he did sit around and do a lot of talking, so we can at least say it�s a possibility.

But the whole point of the illustration, and it�s an illustration that Rome�s apologists have focused on for a long time, was he would speak of the fact that at the end of the year, you would pile up the dung from your farm animals, because you need to save it over the winter to be the fertilizer for the next growing season.

It was a common thing, and a vast majority of Europe was still rural at that time, and still is in many places.

And so, you know, piles of dung are pretty repulsive, especially if you have a little Indian summer at the end of the summer, and can get covered with flies and smelly and so on and so forth.

But then eventually, as you all in the back east have discovered, there�s this thing called snow, and you get that first snow, and it covers everything, including the dung hills.

And when you�ve got a good covering of snow on a dung hill, it no longer looks repulsive, the flies are gone, it doesn�t smell anymore, and the offensiveness has been taken away.

And he likened this justification, that we are the pile of dung, and the justification is an external act on God�s part that takes away our offensiveness to God by declaring us righteous.

And then sanctification would be the change of that dung hill into something that�s no longer just a pile of dung.

And of course, Rome�s apologists go after this and say, �See, here is why this whole idea is so wrong, it�s just a forensic righteousness, it is not real, it�s a legal fiction, it�s still a pile of dung, etc.,

etc., etc .� And what I like to do is turn the story around, which

I know Luther definitely didn�t do because there�s no record of it, but turn the story around and say, �Well, let�s look at it in how

Rome understands things.� When you are baptized in the Roman Communion, and you have that transfer of grace, you are justified, and hence, in the analogy, that the pile of dung instantaneously is changed into a pile of gold.

And because the reason you go to Heaven is because you are intrinsically pleasing to God. You are something that is pleasing to God that He wants to have in His presence, and a pile of gold is evidently, from at least the description of the heavenly

Jerusalem, is a good thing. So you get to go to Heaven. So that�s what justification is.

The problem is, of course, that within Roman Catholicism, you have different kinds of sin.

You have a mortal sin, which destroys the grace of justification. So, you can commit a mortal sin, and �poof !�

the pile of gold has now turned into a pile of dung again. And you have to go through the sacraments and confession and forgiveness and so on and so forth to regain the grace of justification, and �poof !�

you turn back into the pile of gold. The problem is that, as Roman Catholic theologians have pointed out for a long time, one can never know for certain whether you have obtained, that you have done everything necessary to obtain the state of grace, to be in the state of grace, to be justified.

And so, you can�t really know whether you�re a pile of gold or a pile of dung. In fact, many would call this a presumption for you to think that you know that you are actually a pile of gold rather than a pile of dung.

But then there are other kinds of sins, too. There's the venial sin, which does not destroy the grace of justification.

But there are temporal punishments. And so, what happens is, you start getting sections of dung on the surface of the gold.

And so, if you die in that state, and from Rome's perspective, about 99 % of everybody does, there needs to be a cleansing process before that pile of gold will be truly pleasing to God.

And that's, of course, called purgatory. And so, you undergo sadaspatio, the suffering of atonement, and there is the purging of what's left of the dung from the pile of gold, and that's how you enter into the presence of God.

And that, of course, I think illustrates what Luther was trying to go at.

And that is that if salvation is going to be the work of God and God only, and if only God is going to receive the glory for it, then it cannot involve this kind of internal – this connection of sanctification and justification in such a way that they become confused.

Sanctification and justification are clearly connected. I think Reformed folks have the best answer and balance in presenting that, because they're all fulfilling the purpose of God in the elect of God, and it's

God who's accomplishing these things. But you have to distinguish between what justification and sanctification is.

And that justification is the declaration of the fact that a person is right with God based not on who they are or what they've done, but based upon who

Christ is and what He has done. And then it is that union of that person with Christ, and the purpose of God in conforming them to the image of Christ, that is then in view when we talk about sanctification.

And it certainly is God's purpose to turn that pile of dung into a pile of gold. But the pile of gold doesn't go to heaven because it's a pile of gold.

And it's not an issue of the intrinsic value of the soul that causes that person to go to heaven.

It is their union with Jesus Christ, and the standing they have before God is solely based upon His righteousness, that initial perfect covering of snow, not the patchwork quilt of justification that the

Roman Catholic Church envisions, which is made up of the merits of Jesus and Mary and the saints and yourself, even the merit that you gain under satis passio and purgatory, so on and so forth, that the patchwork quilt, and it will never avail before a holy

God. Talking to James White today, Alpha and Omega Ministries. I love talking to James for lots of reasons.

He is smarter than I am, he's more studious than I am, and he answers questions in such a fashion that out of the 25

I have prepared, I just only have to ask three, and then I think I'm listening to the dividing line. So it works out perfectly.

James, if you were asked to go to the Vatican and talk about marriage, would you go? And if you would go, what would you talk about?

No, monosyllabic answer, that way we can get to some of your other questions. No, no, I wouldn't, for one simple reason.

You know, I hear what Russell Moore said, that he'll go anywhere he's asked to speak about Gospel issues, but I just cannot convince myself that the

Apostle Paul would have attended a marriage ceremony, a marriage seminar or conference with the

Judaizers in Galatia. They may have agreed, and in fact there's no reason to think that they didn't agree on issues regarding marriage, or the deity of Christ, or all sorts of things like that.

There would have been all sorts of places where they could have quote -unquote cooperated. I just don't see that having identified them as pseudedelphoi, false brethren in the book of Galatians, that he would then say, well, you know, that's over there, but this is an important social issue that we need to address, let's all get together and let's talk about it.

But I just can't convince myself that that is actually what he would have done. And I know, see, years and years ago

I was involved with Operation Rescue, and I did some of the media stuff, because I was a good debater, and so I'd go on with the pro -abortion people and rip and shred them, and that was very enjoyable to do.

But it became very clear to me over time that that was not something

I could continue to do, because what was being assumed on the part of everybody involved is that I would not raise issues regarding the

Gospel in that context with Roman Catholics, that I would have to assume that anyone who claimed to be a

Christian was a Christian, whether I believed that they were holding to a false Gospel or not.

And when you look at what Rome has added to the Gospel and taken away from the Gospel, it makes what the

Judaizers did in Galatia look like child's play. And so if Paul could say, we did not put up with them for even a moment, so the truth of the

Gospel would abide with you, I think it's just a matter of priorities as to what's most important, and you're sacrificing the truth of the

Gospel for something else. I just simply, personally, cannot put myself in a position where I can't proclaim the

Gospel because of some assumed allegiance I'm going to have to a greater cause or something along those lines.

And I'm not going to condemn somebody else, I'm just going to say, this is where I am, this is my reasoning, and if they can explain where that's wrong, great, fine, wonderful, otherwise...

I can't help it otherwise, God help me, yes? Yeah. James, I asked our mutual friend

Carl Truman a couple weeks ago on No Compromise Radio, I asked him the question, if you could tell anything, if you could say something to your

Reformed Baptist friends, your Baptistic friends, what would you tell them? Something nice, something encouraging, convicting, and he gave me an answer.

And so, you're friends with lots of Presbyterians, if you could just say something to the Presbyterian brethren out there, what would you tell them?

Stop it! How's that? This is for Carl.

Well, look, to be perfectly honest with you, in many contexts, on many topics,

I'm closer to my Presbyterian friends than I am a lot of my Baptist friends. And so, when we stand side -by -side on issues regarding the

Gospel and things like that, it's a great thing. Obviously, when we talk with each other about what separates us, if you're looking for something encouraging, then, you know,

I would talk about the tremendous connections we have and the fact that, you know,

Reformed Baptists and Orthodox Presbyterians seem to be the most similar to one another.

I would say that we have far more similarity to each other than they have to the

PCUSA or I have to wild -eyed, semi -Pelagian

Southern Baptists. And so, we all have our distant cousins that may bear our name, but we recognize that they're actually people fundamentally closer to us that don't bear the same name, but as far as the broad range of theology goes, are actually much closer to us in their practice.

And so, I've seen that in many places that I've gone to, and those conservative

Presbyterian brothers need to stand firm on issues regarding inerrancy and inspiration, but we all see what's happening.

You know, you see what happened at Westminster with Peter Enns, and, boy, they did a good job getting rid of him, given where he's gone, but there's a constant erosion that is taking place that we always have to be fighting, no matter what side of the fence we're on.

But you know, just in an exhortative phrase,

I guess, I would ask my Presbyterian brothers, take some time to listen to what some of our best guys are saying when it comes to the issue of the covenants and things like that.

I'm frequently frustrated by the fact that Reformed Baptists read far more about what our

Presbyterian brothers say when it comes to Baptism than our Presbyterian brothers read about us.

Most of them just don't think we have anything meaningful to say, and the reality is, there's been some good stuff produced.

People like Sam Waldron, and Fred Malone, and Richard Bercellus, and they're, you know, they're really putting out some,

I think, very meaningful stuff, and I'd love to see a little bit more discussion of that kind of stuff than we've had in the past.

Talking to James White today, Alpha and Omega Ministries, aomen .org. Dr. White, I love

Jay Gresham Machen for lots of reasons. One is that he was a bicyclist, and so I know you're a bicyclist as well.

Yes, he loved to ride around Europe, he loved to ride around even New England on his bicycle. And when

I think about Machen, Machen is saying in Galatians, as he would talk about it,

Paul, Apostle, not. He's saying we're going to stand up against these things.

What do we do with our Christianity when everybody keeps telling us we have to be positive all the time, we've got to be known for what we're for and not what we're against?

And I was listening to you talk about Galatians earlier, and I'm thinking, don't we need men who say, well, if we're for righteousness, we're against unrighteousness, we're against sin and Satan?

And how do we navigate the minefields in modern evangelicalism where people just only want kind of positive

K -love information? Well, it really, it's indicative of the fact that what we have in so many of our congregations is a, we've brought people in, what we've, well, you've heard the phrase before, what you win them with is what you win them to.

And when we do not bring people in with a clear understanding that the

Gospel stands against this world and against the culture, that it is, that the world will hate what the

Gospel really stands for, what it has to say, when we bring people in through entertainment and things like that, we're sowing the seed of our own downfall in this issue, because then we're allowing the world, and these people buy into it, we're allowing the world to set the standards of the conversation.

So they're starting to talk about how, well, you're just being known for what you're against. Well, if we're talking there about, for example, the big issue of our day, homosexuality, when you really think about what the

Christian Church is saying, or should be saying, it certainly is saying in its best presentation, is we are presenting an extremely positive case as to God is our

Creator, God made male and female, these are the roles, these are the purposes, this is what brings about fulfillment, this is what brings about life, this is what brings about happiness, and the whole reason to go to the mat, the whole reason to die on this hill, is that the homosexualist movement is a fundamental denial of the culture of life, it's a fundamental denial of God's role as Creator, definer of humanity, definer of gender, definer of marriage, definer of happiness, definer of life, definer of everything.

And so, we're simply, well, A, it's a bad argument, but B, when we don't challenge the argument, we are capitulating to a form of modernism that is extremely shallow in its orientation, extremely shallow in its presentation, and unfortunately, a lot of our people, since they don't spend nearly enough time being formed by the

Word, and constructing a Christian worldview, and thinking things through in a biblical fashion, that's what they're left with.

And they think that way, and they're very easily cowered by the world at that particular point, by saying, well, you don't want to be behind history, you don't want to be on the wrong side of history.

Yes, I do! There's all sorts of things in history I want to be on the wrong side of history on.

But the point is, we should know why. And a lot of our people just don't know why, because we don't actually create, purposefully, a positive

Christian worldview upon which to think on these things. I encourage our listeners to go to AOMin .org

and pull up the gay Christianity issue that James has there. I think you'll find it informative and helpful.

James, thinking of Machen again, I'm reading his biography at the moment. He goes to Germany, and almost becomes a liberal based on the kindness and niceness and some of the exegetical prowess of some of the theologians there.

But God protects him, and he comes back to the United States. You got your PhD at Fuller.

Was there anything... No, no, no, no. My first math, just an MA. Please do not hang that one on me.

Oh, I didn't know that. Okay. But I am a graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary. Not the current

Fuller, the 1980s version, which, trust me, was still way off to my left, but not nearly where it would be today.

How did you navigate that school then? Was there anything in it with the professors that seemed alluring to you?

You might want to change your views? Or were you already so mature in your faith that you easily could cut through the issues?

Well, you know, that's interesting, because I do refer... I even referred to myself then as Fuller's token fundamentalist, and it was a battle.

Thankfully, I was already involved with apologetics when I did start that, and I went to Fuller because it was the only graduate -level program of study in Phoenix at the time.

There just wasn't anything else. None of the other extension seminaries were here. Phoenix Seminary wasn't here.

It was the only game in town, and it was based at Grand Canyon College where I graduated, and so they drew a lot of their teachers from Grand Canyon.

So the extensions were not nearly as liberal as the actual campus, which was part of the reason that I could do as well as I did.

But there were many times that I ended up in fairly strong disagreement with what the professor was saying, and so back then, you were not punished for that.

For example, one of my favorite professors, he was a very good teacher, Dr. Terry McGonigal, taught

Pentateuch, and he holds up Gerhard von Rath's commentary on Deuteronomy. He says, this is the best commentary in English on Deuteronomy.

And so we're supposed to write a pro and con review of it, and so when I wrote...

I read the whole thing, and I wrote my review, and on the pro side, I said, this book has a tremendously nice cover, and then

I went into the negatives from there, and I got a 98 on the review because he could tell that I had actually read the book and was interacting with it from a perspective that found it to be very disappointing and troubling, but you weren't punished for that back then.

In an ethics class, one of the last classes I took, the professor who did come from the main seminary and flew in actually came out from behind the podium, came out into the classroom, sat down across from me, we turned our chairs to each other, and everybody surrounded us, and we debated abortion.

I was against it, he was for it. And again, I still got an A in the class.

It was very helpful for me at the time. I really didn't know why I was having to do this stuff, but years later, now that I've had to take on religious liberals, even

Muslims who use our liberals, I know the liberals. They were what was being presented to me in seminary, so I didn't know at the time why that was so important and how that was going to be useful to me, but I figured out over time.

I certainly would not recommend that for the vast majority of people. I don't know that seminary should be a time of constant battle on a fundamental level.

I think you should be challenged. I think you should have your toes stomped upon numerous times. It shouldn't just be something where you're just having everything you've already thought you knew reaffirmed.

But at the same time, I don't know that it should be something where every single class you're having to raise your hand or make note that, well,

I don't believe that, I don't believe that. There's got to be a dividing line there, and that's why

I would say I don't think anybody could go to Fuller today the way I did 30 years ago and survive that situation.

Dr. White, tell us a little bit. We've got about a minute and a half left. Are you working on any projects now, book projects, anything we should be looking forward to in terms of debates or future ministries with James White?

Yeah, well, I just got back from South Africa. We're continuing that work down there. Twice now debating inside mosques in South Africa.

Just an amazing historical opportunity there, and we want to go back again next year and continue that.

Right now I'm co -authoring a book with Dr. Shabir Ali, Sheikh Shabir Ali, one of the leading

Islamic apologists in the world, on Trinity and Tawhid, and I'm supposed to be working on that, and we're a little bit behind, but we'll get caught up eventually.

So that's going to be an extremely unusual book. There are almost no books out there where you have two believing representatives of Islam and Christianity co -authoring a book on what really the issues are between us.

So hopefully that will be out sometime next year, and that's really the focus right now, that and teaching.

I'll be teaching in Kiev and Berlin starting next week. So great opportunities, exciting to do.

Today we're talking to James White. James, thank you for your ministry, thank you for your partnership, for many things that we've done in the past.

I appreciate you and your desire for truth, the desire to extol Christ Jesus the

Lord. I can't talk, but I am a radio host. And if anyone wants to go hear some of James White, Dividing Line, pick up some sermons, phoenixreformedbaptistchurchaomen .org

That's aomen .org. Thank you, Dr. White. It's been great to be with you. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 10 .15 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.

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