August 24, 2004

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Pasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line.
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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.
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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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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
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United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. And good afternoon or morning, wherever you are.
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Welcome to The Dividing Line. We're back live today, having missed Thursday evening and, boy,
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I can really hear myself really well. I'm going to have to turn these things down somehow. Having missed
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Thursday evening because we were in Pennsylvania, boy,
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I'll tell you, it was warm and it was humid and it was moist and green and everything that it's not in Arizona, I assure you of that.
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And so anyhow, it's good to be back and it was nice to see the folks who came out and visited with us while we were at the conference there.
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It was a long conference in the sense of talked about a lot of things for a long period of time.
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But those of you sitting there didn't seem to mind and some of you drove from Virginia and New Jersey and places like that.
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And so we appreciate you having been there. 877 -753 -3341.
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I did not finish the blog article I wanted to post yesterday. I need to get that done sometime today.
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And so I don't want to really go into that particular issue until I have taken some more time to get that material up.
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And so it is up to you what we do today. 877 -753 -3341.
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I honestly have nothing on the plate whatsoever. There is absolutely zip in front of me and nothing that is absolutely demanding being addressed.
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I mean, there's all sorts of stuff coming up. Of course, I haven't had a lot of travel problems this fall.
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It's always been my experience that when I go someplace, the folks that bring me in arrange the travel.
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I mean, sometimes they have special deals and stuff. But the past couple of weeks, everybody who's bringing me in is expecting me to arrange the travel.
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And they're going, so you haven't gotten your tickets yet? No. Was I supposed to? You've got to tell me these things.
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I just found out something in barely two weeks from now and I don't have any tickets. And I'm like, OK, great, wonderful.
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And so note to everyone, if you have me come in, arrange the travel.
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Thank you very much. So who knows? I don't.
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Unfortunately, the place I'm going that I'm speaking of now, the airline that I have access to doesn't go there.
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So I ain't driving. I can guarantee you that much. And so who knows what will happen there?
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I have no idea. We're two weeks out and that's not a good thing to be two weeks out and not have not have your airline tickets yet.
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That's generally bad, generally not a good thing. So anyhow, no, you know,
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I'm someone is getting really annoying and channel. And I'm going to next time they say something about my credit card, they're going to be sitting in the darkness someplace.
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Anyways, eight, seven, seven, seven, five, three, three, three, four, one. The blog article
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I was mentioning will be on the subject of of the imputation controversy.
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I have a feeling there may be a book about that title down the road someplace. And that's that will be
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I tell you, I like I said, talk about getting blindsided by something.
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If somebody had had asked me five minutes ago, five minutes ago, five years ago or five minutes ago, five years ago, what would be one of the great controversies and and the like that never would have crossed my mind that there would be
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Protestants who would be either saying, well, you know, I think we've just gone a little bit too far with this imputation business.
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One thing's pretty obvious. There's a lot of folks in academia who have never encountered a
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Roman Catholic apologist. They have never, you know, in any way, shape or form had to on a pastoral level.
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Someone's asking about the reason Whitehorse and I don't hear the Whitehorse and I can't comment on things I can't hear. They've obviously never pastorally dealt with individuals who are being attracted to Roman Catholicism.
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In fact, if you remember, I played a clip for Phil Johnson when he was on from the discussion between Mark Dever and J.
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Ligon Duncan on the subject of James D .G. Dunn saying, hey,
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I had never read Roman Catholic scholarship, so I didn't know I was saying the same thing, basically.
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And that's what happens when you you have this this wonderful thing called the hallowed halls of academia where everybody just sits around and writes articles for one another and they never get out and get involved in stuff, let alone the battle.
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People talk to me about, you know, why aren't other people doing what you're doing?
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Why aren't other people engaging all that stuff? And I don't know, but it's pretty obvious they just don't have the desire to do so.
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Maybe it's not politically correct within academia to do this kind of thing. Or the scary part is there is the fact that, well, in academics, you have you have this idea, at least within secular academics, and I see it really coming into, quote unquote,
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Christian academics that, hey, as long as somebody has the right credentials, then they have a right to speak within the context of theology.
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Theology has been taken out of the church. Theology is no longer the purview of the church.
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Academics outrank elders, even though there is no such position in scripture.
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And so the academic thinks that he is above and beyond the church. He's above and beyond the eldership.
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He's above and beyond fidelity to the teachings of the church.
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And so he's drunk deeply at the well of the world. And therefore, you know,
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I can speculate on anything I generally want to speculate. That's my freedom as an academic. And instead of, you know,
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I really that's what happens when you separate theology from the church.
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And I can just hear people hooting and hollering out there right now. Oh, traditionalists, all the rest of the stuff, you know.
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But can you honestly say that you can exegete the text of the
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New Testament and come up with this whole thing we've created, the academy, that has no checks and balances?
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It has no controls. It has no responsibility. It's not it's not accountable to anybody.
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Where do you get that? I don't care how academic you are and how trained you are and how brilliant you are. Where do you find that in Scripture?
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Oh, well, you know, it couldn't have developed back then because, you know, the church is persecuted. But this is a natural development over time and da da da da da da.
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And so, you know, you just can't go to the text of Scripture and substantiate those types of things.
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And so you've got all these, you know, this willingness to just speculate, speculate, speculate. And that's part and parcel.
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Look, when someone does research, when someone's seeking to to advance in their academic degrees, generally the idea is that you are to add to the body of knowledge by your research.
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Well, OK, I can think of many areas in Christian theology and things like that where that's something you could do.
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There are many constructions and usages of of things in the phrases and grammatical constructions and things like that.
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And in the Old and New Testaments that that really are screaming out for further study and for in -depth study and things like that, that's that would be great.
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And certainly church history, things like that, that would be great. But the fact of the matter is the constant push to come up with something new, especially in the field of theology, is inherently dangerous.
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Because while that may work in the in the secular area where there is no established truth, we're talking about the once for all delivered to the saints faith.
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And it shouldn't be overly surprising that over church history, this drive for something new generally means something heretical, not something that that is useful and beneficial and so on and so forth.
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And so anyway, it just the more I see this, the more I see this attitude, the more concerned
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I become, obviously, and the more depressing it becomes. Really, I had mentioned,
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I think, on the program long, long ago that how very unpleasant my one and only experience at ETS was at the
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National Conference. I presented a paper there on, well, on Greg Stafford, in fact, and just the attitude that I saw there, especially certain people.
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I mean, there were certain people that were that were there in the very same context I was that their experience, their activities since then have demonstrated that my feelings were exactly right, even back in 1998 about them.
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But just the general feeling I saw, I saw very little, very little.
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I didn't say none. Well, OK, I didn't see any at the time, but that doesn't mean it wasn't there because my exposure to the whole thing wasn't all that big.
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But but I it just really frustrates me.
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It just frustrates me to remember how these individuals, so many of them were just it's the academy, the academy.
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It was almost idolatrous in a sense. You know, we are the high priests of the academy and we will lead the benighted church to to greater insights.
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And and the idea of humble acceptance of of a you know, that's that there's where there's the term
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I've been looking for. Humble acceptance of a role of service. Serving the church, serving others.
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You know, somebody was mentioning a channel that they were reading a a book by a certain scholar.
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And when someone said, so what do you think about it? And it was like, well, to be honest with you, it was really boring and I didn't get much out of it.
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And it just seemed like the guy really liked using big words.
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You know, it's just like and sometimes he could have said it a whole lot more simply than he did.
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But, you know, it's just this I'm so brilliant. And this this type of, you know, this academic speak.
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It's this it's this code. It's this stuff that that people communicate to one of.
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And scholars use to to serve as a badge. See, I can I can talk the talk.
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See, and the problem is what that ends up doing is the only people that you are, quote, unquote, ministering to the only people you're communicating with are people like you.
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It's not the rest of the church. It's not it's not anybody else. It's just well, let's all get together. And I know people are some people saying, well, you know, there's some highly technical stuff that only scholars really get into.
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OK, I can understand a discussion, say, of an in -depth textual variant.
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And I can understand that people, you know, in a context like that might find some of the language somewhat difficult to handle.
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But you know what? There's only I can only think of a few contexts where you you couldn't explain what those words mean so that everybody could be involved.
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In fact, one of the things I want to do, I was going to try to do it today, but just didn't get around it. I need to reset my computer.
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It's not right now, but I mean, it was moving slower than molasses in January. If you know when something
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I think it's got a print job, it got lost someplace. And so it's all unhappy. But I was what
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I was going to think about doing and maybe we'll do it by Thursday if I can get a chance to, is to post some textual variants on our website.
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And then when we start the program, I can give you the URL. You can go to it and and go through the variant and discuss what the various symbols mean and things like that, sort of learn how to use maybe your
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UBS -4, your NA -27, use these wonderful printed materials that are available to us.
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And if you can't do that, if you can't get at least a layman of average intelligence,
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I realize there are some folks that just they sort of struggle, OK, and complex issues just aren't their forte.
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I can understand that. But if we're talking about an average guy and you are in a situation where you're dealing with a difficult issue, if you can't explain it, then you probably don't even understand it overly well yourself.
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Or you've become so dependent upon scholar speak that you can no longer communicate with anybody else.
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And that's not a good thing. And I don't personally find it overly impressive when when all people can do is sit around and talk to each other in scholar speak, but they can't communicate that to anybody else.
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That that really doesn't impress me. That's you know, what's what's the use in that? But that's what I saw it at ETS when
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I was there. It was a sad thing to see. And is it overly surprising that what, five years later,
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ETS can't get rid of Clark Pinnock and the issue of open theism?
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Because, you see, Clark Pinnock is a brilliant scholar and and he can cite so many sources and and, you know, so we need to we need to be open.
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And you know, and exactly where do we get that? Oh, well, it's one thing to, you know, we might not want
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Clark Pinnock in our church, but we'll let him teach in our seminary. Hello. Hello.
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Anyone see the problem there? It's eight, seven, seven, seven, five, three, three, three, four, one.
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I disavow all. How do
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I put this? If I feel if I sound a little short today in answer to your question, please forgive me.
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It's just I'm still a little little tired from the weekend and and very disappointed not only with the people in the theological realm, but the political realm as well.
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But I can't get into that because that would be bad and I would be evil for doing it and things like that.
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So anyways, eight, seven, seven, seven, five, three, three, three, four, one. Let's go to Aaron in California.
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Hi, Aaron. Hi. Can you hear me OK, doctor? Yep. Well, good morning in my time.
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Yes, sir. Um, I am trying to tighten up an article I've typed up.
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In part of it, it deals with open theism. And I'm looking for a the most consistent position because I don't want to misrepresent it.
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Some some reviews of the open theistic position seem to indicate that by God being ignorant, that makes human actions free.
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And I don't I don't know if I can correctly point out the problem with this position.
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It seems to be that you stand before my closed closet door and I tell you I could either have tennis shoes or boots in there.
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Now, I know there's boots in there, but is is the assertion of such position that because you don't know that there's boots in there, that actually creates a valid possibility that there's actually tennis shoes in there.
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And I can just assume I'm misunderstanding the open theistic position or I'm me reading someone who's who's improperly representing it, because I just don't see that being having making
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God ignorant can make the future any less determined, as in the example
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I gave. So I'm looking for what would be a better understanding. Am I getting is this the correct understanding of it or am
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I is this a misrepresentation of it? And I have I've read some of it, but I can't
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I'm looking for probably the most consistent position. I hope you can help me with that. Well, I think the
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I think the open theist would probably say something along the lines of, well, the problem with your illustration is it's not it's not personal.
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It's you're just talking about a factual case, whether something is or is not, whether something's in there or isn't in there.
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The sort of the crackers in the pantry fallacy that that Monson talked about.
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And and their point is that that for libertarian freedom, for freedom to exist at all, there has to be the possibility of of acting contrary to to do something differently than what
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God knows we're going to do. So if God knows what the future is going to be, then then that that action is is fixed and it is not possible in that point of time for an individual to do something differently.
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And hence, they can't see there to be a real freedom if, in point of fact,
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God has has knowledge of what that event is going to be. And so I don't know that there's a strict parallel between the concept of what whether there is something or is not something inside of a closed closet door until we open the door and look.
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And the idea that to be free, there has to be the opportunity of acting contrary and doing something differently than what you what you theoretically would do otherwise.
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So I think their argument would be, well, you're talking about the difference between a factual state and the actions of a free creature, basically, is what they would say.
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But the choices of humans are events sealed in the past that cannot be made contrary.
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Therefore, if God guesses or predicts something that you do contrary, it's not a case of free will being validated.
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It's just of God being proven ignorant. It's in the case of, well, I say tennis shoes are in the closet.
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Nope, it's boots. Well, there was never a possibility ever of tennis shoes being in there.
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It just seems to be, well, until I know there's boots in there, tennis shoes are an actual, factual reality until that point occurs.
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Because I don't really understand how they can just say, well, as long as it has to do with human choices, it doesn't matter.
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Because human choices are events sealed in the past once they become. Well, so they wouldn't agree with that. That's their whole point, is that they're not saying that human choices are sealed in the past.
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They're talking about the present. And for there to be freedom in the present, then one has to have the ability to either do
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A or non -A. It's not a past fact. It's not something that's a factual. From their perspective, it's not something that's a point of factual knowledge.
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It becomes a point of factual knowledge when it is actualized in the present.
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Otherwise, if all human actions are only in the past, there is no present. There is no action present. I didn't phrase it right. I'm sorry.
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I did not phrase it right. I mean, even from our perspective, choices we have made in the past from this point backwards are things that are sealed, are things that if you guessed contrary to, you would just be proven wrong.
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You would be proven that the possibility was something we asserted in light of our ignorance, not because it was an alternate reality waiting to happen.
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Well, except in the political realm where the past is irrelevant. But anyway. Yeah. Well, that's very convenient when you can rewrite your past.
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Yes. Oh, yes. I wasn't even talking about the Mormons. But anyways, you were saying,
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I heard you saying, I'm not going to defend the open theists. I'm simply going to tell you what they would say.
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And they would say that the issue is not the idea of factuality or counterfactuality in that sense.
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It is it is the very definition of freedom. And that's all
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I can say. I can't go any further than that. OK, I think I understand what they mean. They're trying to turn it into the, you know, not a mechanical mechanical event, but a personal creature.
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Some along that line. I guess so. I understand it, doctor.
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Thank you. OK. All right. I guess that's as far as we can go. All right. Thanks a lot. OK. Thank you. OK, 877 -753 -3341.
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Let's talk with Jason in the United Kingdom. Hello, Jason. Hello. How are you doing? Just before I ask the question, and if I just say hello to a friend of mine who's listening in,
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Peter, who I believe lives in New Hampshire. Let's see, you know, I don't know why people mock my
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British accent because, you know, you just said Peter. And I mean, that was, you extended that E out about four times longer than any
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American would. And when I do that, people just laugh. So I just don't understand it. But so,
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Peter, or Peter, and see, we say er, and you say ah, and what was, where does he live?
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New Hampshire? I think so. I think, I'm not sure exactly, but I think that's, he's an online friend who
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I talk to. Ah, OK. I told him to listen in today. I'm really not certain that they have the internet in New Hampshire yet, but anyway.
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OK, now that you've violated all FCC rules, and actually, we're not under the FCC, so it doesn't really matter. So anyhow, what's up?
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Yeah, I thought I would ask you about the, you know, the free offer of the gospel, because I, you know,
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I told you that I was going to go to that conference. And last week, it was a conference of the
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British Reform Fellowship, and it had, you know, speakers from the Protestant Reform Churches, and have you heard of David Englesmith by any chance?
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Yes. Yes, well, he was one of the speakers there. And they challenged me on a number of issues, and you know,
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I didn't allow myself to be persuaded by any of them, but you know, they made me think.
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And one of the issues that they spoke about is the, you know, the goodwill offer, the free offer of the gospel.
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Which is the belief that, you know, that God desires the salvation of the reprobate, and offers the gospel to them, and they deny that.
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Well, you know, when you say desires, that's where I would go, what do you mean?
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There's a difference between the offer, which comes from the fact that we as individuals, we as God's people, do not know who the elect are, and hence we proclaim the message to all, and it is openly proclaimed that way.
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How could it be proclaimed any other way, given our own ignorance? I don't agree that God desires the salvation of the non -elect, because I think
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God does what he desires to do. That is different than God showing grace to them.
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I mean, if God does not destroy the reprobate the moment they first sin, then grace has been extended to them, and mercy has been extended to them, and Pharaoh could have been destroyed the first moment as a, well, when he was born, for that matter.
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I mean, look at the destruction of the firstborn in Egypt. But at any point in his sojourn, he could have been destroyed, and hence there was mercy and grace extended to him.
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But there's obviously different kinds of grace, and common grace is not salvific grace. It doesn't require a salvific intention for it to be grace, and so I would not agree if that is the way they defined that.
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I wouldn't hold to that viewpoint, because to say that God desires something and then does not accomplish that would mean that he is imperfect in the sense that he will have desires that are not fulfilled, and I don't agree with that.
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Okay, because I've heard some Reformed people say that God offers the gospel to the reprobate and he's genuinely saddened when they don't respond, when they don't repent and accept
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Christ, and you would disagree with that as well? Oh, saddened means saddened.
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Okay, I'm just trying to translate here. Don't worry. I'm a little slow today. Well, you know, it's funny to, again, use that kind of terminology.
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I mean, Gene Cook, for instance, used, I think, Matthew 27, you know, the one about Jesus weeping over Jerusalem.
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Well, there's nothing about Jesus weeping in Matthew. There's something in Luke, but no,
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I don't believe that God's bummed. I say, you know, it's funny.
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People who will defend the impassibility of God and will not subject God to human emotions will then turn around and subject him to frustration and even depths of desperation, and that I don't understand either.
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I do not believe that there is any sorrow in the accomplishment of God's purposes in that sense, and I don't believe,
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I don't follow that perspective. There is a general proclamation, and you see, for example,
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Jesus grieving over the existence and the effect of sin in John 11 in the sense of the presence of death and what it does in separation and things like that, but the idea that God is frustrated each and every day, even though it was within his power to be non -frustrated,
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I don't follow that either. I don't understand what that idea is. Just one other thing then.
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I mean, how would you interpret Isaiah 33, 11? I think it is where God, where Ezekiel says that, you know, as sure as I live, say to the
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Lord God, I do not, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live.
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I mean, is that? I didn't know that Ezekiel was in Isaiah. So what, you said
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Isaiah, oh, okay. I'm sitting here looking at you. Yeah, you have conceived chaff.
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You will give birth to stubble. My breath will consume you like fire. Well, that's what that says.
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Okay. Again, context, context, context. I actually addressed this, both this passage and Ezekiel 18 about,
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I don't know how many months ago now, but I did address it, and I don't remember what the context is.
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People always say, oh, what program was that? I don't remember. We went through Ezekiel 18. It has the same phraseology.
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It had to do with the context of people saying they couldn't repent because they were suffering for what their parents did, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
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And I would direct you back to that as, as really the foundation for, for taking a look at, at that, but we need to take our break right now.
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Thanks for calling, Jason. And we'll be right back after this here on the divine. At the heart of the controversy between Roman Catholic and reformation theology is the nature of justification itself.
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It is a debate, not merely about how or when or by what means a person is justified, but about the very meaning of justification and the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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What's a debate reserved for Roman Catholics and the reformers, the doctrine of justification is now being challenged from within the walls of reformed evangelicalism itself.
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Join Alpha and Omega Ministries as we embark on our first national conference and confront this very issue.
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Justification, the heart of the gospel with pastor and co -author of Holy Scripture, the ground and pillar of our faith,
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David King, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Founders Conference, Tom Askell, New Testament Research Ministries founder and author of Evangelical Answers, Eric Svensson, the founder of the
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Spurgeon Archive and executive director of Grace to You, Philip Johnson, nationally renowned reformed
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Christian artist, Steve Camp, and the founder of Alpha and Omega Ministries and author, Dr. James White.
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Join us at the Los Angeles, California LAX Sheraton Ballroom on November 6, 2004, beginning at 845 a .m.
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Seating is limited, so order your tickets now at aomin .org. That's www .aomin .org.
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Answering those who claim that only the King James Version is the Word of God, James White in his book,
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The King James Only Controversy, examines allegations that modern translators conspired to corrupt
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Scripture and lead believers away from true Christian faith. In a readable and responsible style, author
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James White traces the development of Bible translations, old and new, and investigates the differences between new versions and the authorized version of 1611.
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You can order your copy of James White's book, The King James Only Controversy, by going to our website at www .aomin
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.org. Convictions once held and died for among Bible -believing Protestants are now being reconsidered with the advent of the recent
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Auburn Avenue Movement. Is there currently a common basis for dialogue between Roman Catholics and Protestants?
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Were the signers of ECT correct in their ecumenical efforts and all of the reformed scholars who opposed them in error?
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Does Trinitarian baptism make one a member of the new covenant? Are Roman Catholics our brothers and sisters in Christ?
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Join us in Los Angeles, California on November 5, 2004, for a full three hours of moderated debate between Dr.
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James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries and Douglas Wilson of the Auburn Avenue Movement and New St.
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Andrews College, as these topics are debated between two of the most respected representatives of the opposing viewpoints.
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Additional information and tickets can be ordered at aomin .org. That's www .aomin .org.
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Welcome back to The Dividing Line.
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It is 1134 a .m. here in the Mountain West, and we have the phone lines open at 877 -753 -334 -8.
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Let's talk with Johnny in California. Hi, Johnny. How are you, James? I'm here.
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All right. Well, I got a question on Roman Catholicism. I'm holding in my hand a book called
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Church History, 20 Centuries of Catholic Christianity by John C. I can't pronounce the last name,
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D -W -Y -E -R. Dwyer? Yeah, I guess it's
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Dwyer. Yeah, I guess that's it. Anyway, in the book, on page 233, he says something that caught my eye.
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I don't know if you have the book. Nope. Okay. He's talking about the debates that Luther had at the beginning of the
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Reformation, and he references here the first debate, I believe, he had with Dr. Eck. And he says, under Eck's probing questioning,
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Luther probably came to realize more clearly the implications of his own theology. He admitted that he did not recognize the authority of the pope and could not agree that the decisions of seven of even church councils, which were divinely protected from error of scripture, was the only ultimate authority he could accept.
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No, that's not true. Immediately, Dr. Dwyer, whoever he is, just blew a fuse and fell off the truck.
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There is no question that in the Leipzig confrontation with Eck that Luther began to see, because of it, the implications of his position.
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There's no question about that. He went to the library during breaks in the debate, because it was not like debates we have today.
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They're only two or three hours in length. They extended over days, and there were lunch breaks and dinner breaks and everything else.
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And he went to the library and discovered, because of Eck's questioning, that he was saying many things that, in fact,
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Jan Hus had said just over a century earlier, which certainly caused him a great deal of consternation.
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But to say that that means he rejected the papacy at that point is just simply ridiculous.
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You don't just simply one day wake up and go, hey, you know what?
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I think that I'm going to just take a completely radical viewpoint today.
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No, that took a fair amount of time. It took a period of time for that kind of thing to develop, and it certainly didn't just simply develop during the debate with Eck.
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And really what happened in the debate with Eck is that he was forced to recognize that there was a tension between those two, but he did not, in just a matter of days, come to a clear conclusion as to what that is.
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So if I heard it properly, what you were saying was that as a result of this,
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Luther at that time rejected popes and councils immediately, right then and there.
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No, that's not the case. And in fact, it wouldn't even be fair to say that the result eventually would be that he would recognize, as we see in his speech before Charles about three years later, that popes and councils have erred.
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And so he will say that they're human and that they've contradicted one another, which is a manifest fact, obviously.
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But that's something that he came to a conclusion on over the course of time between those things.
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He hadn't concluded that beforehand. When he wrote the 95 Theses and when
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Eck and he disputed, he still had a lot of development yet to go in his theology at that point.
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Well, he goes on to say something else that also caught my eye. He says, Eck was sincere and a clever debater, but it is impossible to read the transcript of the debates without concluding that it was
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Luther who had real religious substance on his side, even though some of his views were dangerously one -sided and that Eck was defending some practices and views of the late medieval church, which were doubtfully
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Christian. Oh yeah, there's no question. What caught my eye there is that basically, for a
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Roman Catholic to say this about Luther, I think it's phenomenal. Um, no, there's actually a fair amount of that amongst
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Roman Catholic historians, and I'm not even referring to the rather humorous experience we had in Salt Lake a number of years ago, where a guy
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I was debating referred to St. Martin Luther and the propriety of praying to him as a
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Catholic. But honest Roman Catholic historians recognize that Luther's fundamental issues had a tremendous amount of validity, and that the practice of indulgence selling and the like, at least in its practice, was a reprehensible thing.
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And I would imagine a lot of them don't like the fact that indulgences are still a part of Roman Catholic theology even to this day.
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Remember, when you're talking about Roman Catholic scholarship, you're frequently talking about something that exists in many times in a very different context than Roman Catholic apologetics and historic
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Roman Catholic theology, at least today. There's very frequently a big difference between them. So it does not surprise me he would say that.
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There are many Roman Catholic scholars that recognize that Luther was not completely washed up.
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They're not into the old polemics of Luther being this terrible, horrible, nasty guy.
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And in fact, they recognize there are a lot of people on their side that just didn't break with Rome, who likewise expressed their concerns as well.
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Well, what were some of those practices outside of the selling of indulgences? I mean, the concept that he was defending some religious practices along with the selling of indulgences that were even doubtfully
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Christian, what were they doing also? Well, at least in the
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Leipzig Disputation, it was primarily focused upon indulgence selling and the entire complex of beliefs that are related to that.
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Some of the things that Luther himself would say over the next couple of years would include, and I don't know that he would necessarily be referring to this in regards only to the
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Leipzig Disputation with Eck, but one of the most telling criticisms that Luther records was from his previous experience, and as I recall, 1510, when he went to Rome.
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And going to Rome was, you know, it was supposed to be a spiritual thing, but Rome was a real difficult place to go in those days.
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It was the center of religious corruption. The papacy was at a nadir of corruption and had been for hundreds of years.
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And Leo X wasn't the worst there was in the world, but the Pope excommunicated Luther.
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But still, there had been some pretty nasty popes up at that period of time. And so when
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Luther went there, he was shocked at the surface level of spirituality.
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One of the things he specifically mentions is they would have these places where you could go as a priest and say
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Mass. There would be a room where there would be multiple altars around the outside of the room, and you could go in and say
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Mass. And you could pay a priest to go in and say Mass for you.
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And so he records that there were these Italian priests who would take money from these pilgrims to go say
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Mass for, you know, some dearly departed individual. And they would go in there, and they would not even say the entirety of the
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Mass. Sometimes they weren't even actually saying it correctly. Sometimes they were just mocking.
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You know, if it was a German, for example, who didn't know Latin, they would be saying just completely nonsensical things and just taking the money and just laughing at the person.
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And he was scandalized at not only that, but just the very commercialization of Christianity as a whole that he saw there in Rome.
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So the whole practice and piety of the time was subject to the same kind of criticism.
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And so maybe that's what he has reference to there. I don't know. The only thing I know of in the
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Leipzig Disputation was focused upon the issue of indulgences, which very quickly moved the issue of papal authority and establishing the selling of indulgences.
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Do you think that maybe Eck was actually defending what you just talked about, the experience that Luther recorded?
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Oh, no, Eck's only going to be, Eck recognized that there were people, there were godly people who, like Luther, rejected the implication of the selling of indulgences in the form of a tax, the selling of God's forgiveness.
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So Eck was a smart debater. He knew that the only way to really win this debate was to put
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Luther on a different ground. He knew that he wasn't going to win this debate by actually defending indulgences.
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He had to defend the system that made indulgences a possibility. And that's why he went to the issue of the
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Papal Commission, which had established, given Tetzel his authority, and then made the coup de grace by connecting
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Luther's statements to Huss's statements, because they were not far from where Huss had been burned at the
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Council of Constance in 1415. So to connect someone, to make someone echo the words of a man who went up in flames only a hundred and two, three years earlier, and was still remembered by people, that was just brilliant debating strategy, except we need to realize in those days, you know, it could also have cost
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Luther his life. Right. Okay. All righty. Thank you very much.
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Most welcome. Thanks, Colin. Bye -bye. 877 -753 -3341.
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We tend to look at those events at the time of the Reformation in somewhat of a distanced way.
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Some, you know, we're just looking at people in history books, and we don't remember that what they were doing, really in many ways, was playing with their lives.
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And how many people today would actually believe something deeply enough to risk their life about it?
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I mean, I ask myself that question. I have to ask myself that question. How many people today would actually risk their life on something like Sola Scriptura, justification by faith?
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Or how many would find it so much more easy to simply say, well, you know, why can't we, let's take the
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Rodney King approach to theology. Why can't we all just get along? If our forefathers in that context were willing to give their lives, if they hadn't been willing to do that, we would not have the freedoms that we have today to even be discussing these things.
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And that in and of itself should really cause us to go, wow, think about this.
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And part of my distraction is I keep thinking about, well, there's a bunch of stuff going on.
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I'm trying to arrange travel stuff in between callers and sending emails. And that's all that sort of stuff.
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But anyway, in fact, just three emails just came in and I need to do things and so on.
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But the other thing is I'm admittedly very frustrated about the national situation in my own country.
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And the fact that there just doesn't seem to be many people who are willing to stand up and say anything anymore.
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I hate politics and I hate compromising the truth for the sake of political advantage.
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And that's sort of what we're talking about here as far as, you know, Luther took a tremendous, tremendous risk in standing for the truth.
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Really, really did. And most of us, you know, we sit back and in our nice, comfortable homes with our nice, comfortable incomes and so on and so forth.
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And we look back upon these men and we really don't. We really don't appreciate what they did and why they did it.
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We really don't. And we need to. And I just part of it, part of in the back of my mind, what concerns me is
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I just don't know that that we would do today in our nation what we need to do.
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And I don't know what we would do in the church today, what we need to do given what's going on in the church right now.
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And, you know, I just don't know. I'm also very distracted by the fact that I'm seeing all this stuff about somebody coming online but not coming online or all the rest of the stuff.
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And that's leaving me more than just slightly distracted as well since we're almost out of time on the program today.
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Only have a few minutes left. And so let's try to wrap things up here and get one more caller in before the end of the program today.
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Let's go up to Salt Lake City and talk with John. Hi, John. How you doing?
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Hello, Dr. White. Hi, how you doing? Pretty good. You? Oh, doing pretty good. Wasn't there just something that happened up there with a
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Boy Scout or something? I saw something in the news just about... Yeah, actually a Boy Scout got lost.
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They're very doubtful that I guess that he's alive. Oh, man, that's a shame. That's a shame. I knew I'd seen something about Salt Lake.
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Is it really that cool there already? Yeah, it was snowing in the mountains the other day.
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Oh, goodness. Wow. Well, it's actually cooled down a lot here too. So it's rather early in comparison to last year.
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But anyway, that's not why you called. So what's up today, John? Yes, my question is regarding Calvinism.
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Romans 9, it says, and I know you know the verse quite well. It says, For the scriptures of the pharaoh, I raise you up for this very purpose, that I might, that my power in you, that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.
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Therefore, God has mercy on whom he has... wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden. My question is,
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I understand how Calvinists view the scripture, but my question to you would be, is
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God more concerned about his own glory versus the redemption of man? Well, it's the redemption of man that results in his own glory.
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And that is a, you know, I would definitely say that the ordering principle, the foundational principle that gives coherence to everything else is the glorification of God.
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I mean, Ephesians chapter 1 tells us that all of this has been done to the praise of his glorious grace.
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So how is his glorious grace praised?
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How is it demonstrated? And it's been often said there's really only three logical choices as to how
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God could save. God could either save everyone, God could save no one, or God could save someone.
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In other words, either you're a universalist, God saves everybody, you don't believe
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God saves anybody, I'm not sure there's anybody who believes that, or then you have this middle group where there's a certain number of people that are saved.
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And in only one of those three options is there freedom on God's part.
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Freedom to show grace, freedom to show mercy, freedom to demonstrate his wrath and to make his glory known.
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In the situation with Pharaoh, for example, he destroys the gods of Egypt. I'm sure you're probably aware of the fact that each one of those plagues actually struck at a very well -known
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Egyptian god and demonstrated they were no gods at all, that the gods of this mightiest of the nations on earth were actually idols and that Yahweh had more power than all the gods of Egypt.
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This was a demonstration of their idolatry. And so God has to have the freedom to be able to demonstrate his power, and he does so.
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And of course we know that in those plagues men died, but they were sinful men, they were men that we hopefully would all agree
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God could have brought his judgment against them long before he did, but he does so for a particular purpose, and that is the demonstration, the proclamation of his name.
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So the question is an interesting one in the way that you phrase it, because I would say that fundamentally, yes, the whole reason
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God created was to demonstrate his glory. He just simply demonstrates it in a number of different ways.
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He demonstrates it through the exercise of his wrath and his holiness and his justice, for example, in the destruction of the
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Canaanite nations at the hands of Israel, at the Egyptians. But then he's also free to then demonstrate his mercy and his grace in the salvation of and elect people who do not deserve that.
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And in fact, they deserve the exact same wrath that others received. They not only receive unmerited favor, they receive demerited favor.
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They demerited the grace and favor they received from God. And yet, he changes their hearts.
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He changes them from being God -haters to God -lovers. Okay, my perspective on this, though, is that if the
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Calvinist position is correct, and I think there's more weight for the Calvinist position than, say, Dave Hunt's position, that God is more concerned with his glory than he is with the redemption of man.
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And the reason why I say that is it makes no difference whether a thousand people or ten thousand people or a million people go to hell.
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For every person that does go to hell, in the case of Pharaoh, God is glorified. So it makes a difference whether a man is saved or not.
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God is still glorified one way or the other. Well, I would disagree with that only in this sense. A, I wouldn't make it an either -or situation where you say he's more concerned about this than this, because the than this part, that is the redemption of man, he himself says is the chief means by which he brings about his own glory.
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So I don't see it as two contrasting positions, and you're just giving the nod to one side or the other.
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And then secondly, the glory that God receives in the salvation of a sinner is different in nature than the glory received in the exercise of justice and holiness.
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Both are self -glorifying acts, but I would not make them parallel acts, because one is strictly in the realm of legal justice, and the other transcends that realm and requires the self -giving of the
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Incarnation. Yeah, but I don't see that in Romans 9. I do see a parallel there.
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I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you, that my name might be proclaimed on all the earth.
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In other words, God is proclaiming his name in all the earth, and in so doing, he's raising
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Pharaoh up for that very purpose. So they're actually parallel, as far as I can see it.
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Well, the parallel in 9 .18 is, therefore, God mercies whom he desires to mercy, and he hardens whom he desires to harden.
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There is a direct parallel there at that point, yes, but that is not to say that there is a strict parallel later on when it says, or does not the potter have it right over the clay, to make in the same love one vessel for honorable use and another for common use.
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And it even says, he did so to make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory.
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So there's a difference between vessels prepared for glory and vessels prepared for wrath, and the glory that he receives in the exercise of grace,
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I would argue, is different than the glory which comes from the exact exercise of justice, and the venting of his proper wrath against sin.
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I think there is a difference. Yeah, I don't see the difference. I don't think I can make a distinguishment between,
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I'm not trying to argue with you, but I don't see a distinguishment between different types of glory.
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God is glorified, nonetheless, according to Calvinist perspective. Somebody goes into hell,
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God is glorified because he's exercising his justice, because that person is receiving due penalty, but see,
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God created that person for that very purpose. Well, I would disagree with that simply because, as I said before, when
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Paul talks about election in Ephesians 1, for example, he says, In love he predestined us to adoption as sons of Jesus Christ to himself, according to the kind intentions of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, which he freely bestowed on us and the beloved.
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That praise of his glorious grace is not a phrase that is used in reference to the destruction of the wicked and the judgment that comes upon them.
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And so I don't see any basis for saying that you cannot differentiate between the glorification of God's grace in saving rebel sinners and the glory that God receives in the maintenance of his justice, which he does actually through the cross in both ways.
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But again, there seems to be a fundamental difference in the biblical writer's viewpoint as to the glory of grace over against the punishment of the wicked.
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I just don't see those phrases being used in a parallel fashion by the biblical writers themselves.
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They clearly say that there is something very special about the fact that God changes rebel sinners' hearts and draws them to himself, changes them from being
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God haters to God lovers. That's a far greater miracle and a far greater display of who he is than merely the bringing of wrath upon the individual who hates
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God and continues to hate God. Is there some reference material where I can read up on this particular subject?
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Yeah, actually, I think that there would be some. Interestingly enough, the only other speaker at the conference
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I was at this weekend spoke on Jonathan Edwards. Edwards has spoken much on the subject of God's self -glorification in both the punishment of the wicked and salvation, the difference between the two and things like that.
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So Jonathan Edwards might be a good place to go. Robert Raymond, Systematic Theology, he talks a lot about this particular issue.
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Not exactly certain if Wayne Grudem went into that depth in his Systematic Theology, but those would be some of the reference sources that would be fairly readily available.
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There may be some journal articles that, just off the top of my head, I wouldn't be aware of that would likewise go into those types of things as well.
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OK? Great. All right. Thank you. Thanks for calling, Jon. All right. God bless. Bye -bye. All righty, folks. It's time to wrap things up on the
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Dividing Line. We'll be back, Lord willing, on Thursday evening. Maybe have time between now and then to throw that textual data material up on the website and maybe do something along those lines.
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Don't hold me to that. We'll see. We'll see what happens when we get around to it. But we will see you Thursday evening here on the