Today on the DL: We Get Robbed! And More Review of Patterson

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From the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is the
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Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
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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. Hey, good morning and welcome. Oh, I'm bleeding from the ears as the volume blows me right out of the saddle and I cannot hear anything anymore because I am now deaf.
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I'm trying to find he who runs things on the other side of things. Oh, there he is.
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I've been trying, but he's just been there. I can't chat to him and say, that hurts.
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So I've been yelling and screaming going, turn it down. But anyway, hey, we do this live, folks.
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And don't ask me why it was a thousand things, but hey, it's been a weird morning because we just had all of our mail stolen.
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I wasn't here, but I am informed that a lady, and I use that term very advisedly at the moment, pulls up in front of our location here, which is not overly uber secret, and gets out, walks up to the front, takes all our mail, walks back to her car.
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And we know that this was completely purposeful on her part because when someone went running out to say, excuse me, excuse me, she jumps in her car and takes off.
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And guess what? She has no license plates on her car. Yes, indeedy.
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So it's been, you know, getting ripped off. Just, man,
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I'll tell you, it's always felt horrible. I remember the day I walked out of class years ago from, what was that,
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Latin or Logic? I forget which one. Well, I think it was Latin. And my truck was gone, just, and there was a little glass on the ground.
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But other than that, all gone. And the thing that bugs me is, it's not like, you know, we've already taken care of the stuff at the bank and things like that, you know, the outgoing checks and things like that.
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But there were packages for people, not too many. You know, it wasn't a huge loss. We're not going, hey, we need immediate funding right now.
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You know, I mean, you know, we lost something there. We're going to have to replace those orders. So you know, that's relevant and it takes time and, you know, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.
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But what really bugs me is those CDs, those DVDs are sitting in one of the trash dumpsters in one of the alleys here in our neighborhood.
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You know, probably over across 43rd Avenue, some place like that. She probably went whipping over there, pulled into a, you know, an alley and went through the mail and pulled the checks out and dumped all that stuff in the trash can.
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And that's what's, to this day, I don't know, 16 years later now, no, that was, yeah, 16 years later.
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That's what bugs me most about losing my truck. They found it like 12 hours there. There wasn't much of it left.
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It had been parted out. Everything was gone. But what bugged me the most, yeah, I had changed the change thing.
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The very idea of all those people getting a dime from me just bugs me to no end. But the thing that really, really, really angered me was
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I had behind my seat a bag of books, specifically
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Bibles, which included a leather -bound Greek Septuagint, a leather -bound
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Hebrew text, and a brand -new leather -bound Nestle -Aland text. It was one of the little 26 editions, real small ones, you know?
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And it had blue page edges and this wonderful, I had a guy make it, black, soft leather that has the, how do
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I describe it? You know how sometimes the leather will fold over, sort of? So it sort of covers the pages and sort of, it wasn't a zipper -type thing, but it would sort of fold over.
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And it was just wonderful. And I knew as soon as that truck was stolen, as soon as I started thinking about it, that those
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Bibles, and especially that brand -new Greek New Testament with the beautiful leather, was sitting in a dumpster and would very soon be in the
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Phoenix landfill. And that's where it is this day, of course. It's gone by now. It's been, you know, it's truly returned to dust, shall we say.
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But that was just what absolutely, you know, drove me nuts, was the idea, you know, what are these, what is it like to be a person like that?
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You know? I just, you have no respect for anyone else. It's just you, you, you.
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Oh, just, oh no. Well, you know, at times like this, I go, well, you know what?
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That's, that's why justice will be done. And it may not be done in this life.
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And that's something that's difficult to accept and to handle. But sometimes people get away with things in this life.
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But they only get away with them in this life. And you know, so anyhow, and I've been, we had somebody break into our house many years ago while I was teaching at Grand Canyon.
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And I, the scary thing is there, I think it was somebody that was involved with the school because they knew when
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I'd be gone and they stole some jewelry and they discovered all my class rings are made of steel.
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I have exactly one class ring that's made of gold, it's from high school. And they didn't, for some reason, didn't get it. I think I was wearing it that day.
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But they found my college ring in the parking lot of the college
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I was teaching at. Someone had run it over. So I figured that one out. The only gold ring they got was the nice gold ring that my dear wife bought me when we had only been dating for about two months.
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And that was one of the only gold rings I had. And that one, of course, was never, never seen again.
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And again, you know, people think they get away with it. They think no one's watching.
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But you know what? Those are the people who they hear a door slam and they jump. I jump too, but it's for other reasons.
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They have that conscience. That conscience is still there because they know someone was watching.
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And the sad thing is, according to our expert witness who observed all this, there was a young kid in the car with this woman watching this.
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What kind of a life is that kid going to have? Watching mom, if it's mom. I'd say he's probably already having.
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Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. What did you say? 12, 13? Maybe 12 or 13. Yeah. Isn't that wonderful? Yeah. Something tells me he wears his pants halfway down his drawers and his hat on crooked.
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Yeah. And mom wanted some money for who knows what. And she didn't get it, thankfully.
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But my goodness, what an experience to be reminded once again of the depravity of ma 'am.
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Well, anyways, I am going to be playing some sound clips today. And the phone lines are open at 877 -753 -3341.
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I just posted the information on the debate,
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June 9th on Long Island. We cannot go running past the upcoming debates.
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If you haven't looked at the calendar page, you need to. I will be, Shamgar, you're a little bit taller than that.
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I will be in St. Louis the 1st, 7th or 9th,
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I think of March, somewhere around there. Then right after that, heading for England.
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And then in April, April 22nd, I will be doing a debate in Oklahoma City against Dr.
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Robert Wilkin on the subject of regeneration and his anti -lordship perspective.
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I think most people know that the quote -unquote lordship salvation controversy, whatever you wish to call that, that tends to be the terminology used amongst dispensationalists.
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But the controversy really, it could not possibly be an issue amongst
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Reformed theologians because of the fact that the reality is that the view of faith that you have, if you believe faith is a divine gift, if you believe that faith is the work of the
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Holy Spirit in the heart of the newly redeemed individual who has been regenerated by the Spirit of God. In other words, if you see salvation as the work of God, then you can't hold to these odd dispensational anti -lordship positions that are associated with the names of Charles Ryrie and Zane Hodges and now
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Robert Wilkin who is basically picking up the mantle from Hodges who is very, very elderly.
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And so we're going to be debating the issue of regeneration, obviously the issue of what happens in regeneration and repentance and faith.
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These are the things we have, April 22nd, Oklahoma City, information's on the website. And then right after that in May, I'm going to be sitting on, however we're traveling in Italy, which
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I will soon be by train, whatever it might be, I'm going to be not getting to see quite as many of the sites because I'm going to be studying.
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I'm not sure if he has either. As soon as I said that,
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I went, well, I'm not sure about that, but I don't know if Zane Hodges is still alive or not.
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But as soon as I said that, I said, man, did I remember hearing something about that? But I don't like to proclaim people dead until I know that.
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So someone would like to Google that for me. In fact, I'm not sure if you want to Google it. I wish there was a competitor.
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Maybe there is a competitor because I was reading and I'm going to wax political here for a moment, but I think you'll see what
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I mean. I was reading an article yesterday that said that the employees of Google gave like a quarter million dollars to political campaigns this past cycle and 98 percent of it went to Democrats.
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Now, the problem with that is when any group does 98 percent one direction, there's a little bit of a bias there.
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It's a little uneven. And I've noticed that in the Google News thing, which I do look at in the mornings.
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Man, they quote some really goofy stuff. It's always got the left spin and all the rest of that nuttiness in it.
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So anyway, someone might want to find out whether Zane Hodges is still kicking or not, because he probably would appreciate that the reports of his death have been premature and all that kind of thing.
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Anyway, that's what I'm saying. And then we're going to Italy and I'm going to be reading all the time. And I've got so much so much to be doing.
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I don't know that I'm going to be able to be sightseeing. I'm going to be sitting there passing these wonderful ancient ruins with my nose and a book or something.
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But then June 9th will be the debate against Bill Rutland on Long Island.
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I'm being told that all of the Catholic apologists, all these the
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Internet Catholic apologists are going to be showing up. I've been told that quite a group of them, if I start going down the list of names, many of you would know them, are going to be showing up for the debate.
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So if you ever want to meet all of them, now's the time to get ready to go to Long Island to the
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Huntington townhouse there for the debate on the issue of whether a non -Christian can enter into heaven.
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That wonderful passage so many Roman Catholics love in the Catholic catechism about Muslims worshiping the same
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God and doing wonderful, fun stuff like that. And that'll be definitely an interesting way of highlighting the differences, shall we say, between...
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No, I don't see Bob Saget as working Bill's book table. I would see him working
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Bill's book table to try to get people to leave Bill's book table, but I wouldn't see him staying behind it. No, don't think that'll work.
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And the Feniites will be running around outside. Thank you,
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Marie, as Aunt Hodges is still alive and speaking for that matter, along with Mr. X. Yes, Bob Saget and Mr.
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X will be making a brief appearance. And some of you are going,
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Mr. X, why you haven't listened to all the archives yet, have you? There were some interesting things that happened back then.
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But anyway, that's coming up the 9th. And then, of course, over the summer, the cruise to Alaska, the debate with John Dominic Crossan, all of that stuff, which we'll be talking much more about.
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Please, please, please, as I said last week, I'm going to keep reminding you, don't put it off.
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Don't be the procrastinator. Talk to your wife. If you keep going, forget to do that.
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Use a magic marker right on your hand. Do something. But remember to talk with her because she's going to love it and you're going to love it.
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And you just can't put it off forever because we have limited room for the debate.
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And, of course, the cruise is just going to be just wonderful and awesome and things like that. All right. 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number.
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And as you may know, over the past number of months, really, very, very hit and miss.
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I don't know why it is. Sometimes I can hit an audio file and just straight on through it and not a whole lot of interruptions and things like that.
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But for some reason, trying to work through the presentation that Paige Patterson made at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in the chapel has just taken forever.
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Part of it's because I've talked about a lot of other individuals along the way, some of which I probably shouldn't have given their odd responses.
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Isn't it odd how people respond to you? Take what they themselves say.
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And you play sometimes all of it, you know, just straight through and you respond and you respond biblically.
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And the type of reaction you get is incredible.
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We've seen the Dave Hunt meltdown. We've seen the Norman Geisler.
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I can't believe I actually wrote that appendix because I really didn't because my students at my school actually wrote it thing in the second edition of Chosen but Free.
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We've seen that guy that I won't mention up in Canada because he just lives for that.
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It seems to be the only thing he does. And as you see on the blog right now, I have total amazement at the kind of response
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I've gotten from the other person that I'm responding to on the blog right now about unconditional election and Hebraisms and everything else.
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And I just wonder, why won't someone just respond with, well, actually, here's further substantiation of my position and providing sound exegetical response.
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That would be seemingly the way to do it. But anyway, we started playing.
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We were in the second of three MP3s. That means this is the second chapel session regarding the presentation of Page Patterson.
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You may recall last time I read from Robert Raymond's Systematic Theology on the subject of compatibilism, theodicy, etc.,
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etc. And we saw that, once again, Dr. Patterson just dismissed those things straight off the top without any meaningful critique of it, any meaningful critique in what his assertions are.
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And so we will press on with his presentation. And let's hope everything works right when
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I press this button. Well, my goodness, with all of this running through our heads and minds and hearts and two thousand years of effort of Christians to resolve it that often resulted in more disunity in the body of Christ, what on earth are we to say?
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How do we resolve the problem? I'd like to suggest to you this morning that maybe we've been asking the wrong question all along.
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Maybe the difficulty we have with all of this is because we've been asking the what question or the how question instead of asking the why question.
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Maybe we've been trying to somehow get our arms around the mind of God and explain how all of this is compatible when we should have been asking a different question altogether.
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Maybe we should have been saying, Lord, why did you put a doctrine like that in the
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Bible anyway? I mean, stop and think about it for a moment. Even if the doctrine of election means everything, our
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Calvinistic brethren say that it means, why would there be any real necessity of placing it in the
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Bible? After all, it's all settled in eternity past and later on when we can understand it, maybe
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God can explain it to us that here below with our physical and mental limitations, we will never adequately comprehend it.
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So why on earth even put it in the book anyway? And that is a legitimate question.
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Why are these doctrines in the Bible? Now, when we ask that question,
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I believe that we will begin to discover some remarkable answers.
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Yesterday we read from Romans chapter 8, and I want to take you once again to Paul's solution to the problem, which is to answer the why question rather than the how question.
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Instead of deciding how it all works, which nobody has done for 2 ,000 years, to anybody else's satisfaction, instead let's ask why the doctrine is there.
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When we ask that question, I believe we will begin to unravel some marvelous truths. First of all, notice in Romans 8, verses 29 and 30.
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For whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
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Moreover, whom he predestined, these he also called.
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And whom he called, these he also justified. And whom he justified, these he also glorified.
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Now, in any summary reading of that passage, who stands out as important?
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It's pretty obviously true, isn't it? That pronoun, he, representing our
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God. Our God is the one who has done the whole thing. And so the first great answer to the question, why is the doctrine of election in the
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Bible to begin with, is that as long as the doctrine of election is in God's holy word, it puts salvation totally in the hands of God and makes it forever a matter of his grace.
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And of course, everyone to this point can simply say, Amen and Amen.
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And if there was simply a willingness to hear the explanations that have been offered with clarity, with force, with charity by Reformed writers in dialogue over the misapprehensions that the good doctor has about compatibilism, the misapprehensions that he has a fatalism, there would be no reason why what was just said would not lead you directly to the position that I hold and that I espouse.
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Very, very clear. There is no question. God's grace, God's power.
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But what must then be the continued result of this?
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What does it mean to say it is all of God's grace and all of God's power? Because I've heard many people say that.
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I have heard many people say, Oh, it's all of God's grace. It's all of God's power, except I would like to suggest that if you do not then continue on and answer the is grace necessary but insufficient or is grace necessary and sufficient question that you're leaving the key issue unresolved and you're not helping anybody.
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All you're doing, if you give this kind of thing, it's all of grace. Let's just let all these things, you know, let's not ask the how.
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Let's just be happy with the why. Well, I think the how and the why go together, don't they? The why question, you know,
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I don't think that Calvinism is actually trying to answer the how question in the sense of trying to provide some sort of exhaustive description of the mechanism by which
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God, for example, works his will within the heart of man and the compatibilism and all the rest of that.
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The first question we ask is the why. The why is the glorification of God and his grace.
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Is that not the case? I think it is. So we get, but up to this point, what do we say?
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Amen. Exactly true. Indeed, may I suggest to you that this is the continental divide of all human thinking.
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Over there on one side, you have the Buddha. Over there with him is the
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Muslim. Over there with both of them is the Hindu. Oh, we understand what you're doing.
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You're putting all the religions of the world over on one side of the continental divide and Christianity over. Oh no, friend.
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Over there with that Muslim and with that Hindu and with that Buddhist, most of the folks who claim to be
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Christians are over there too. You're one of those narrow -minded old Baptists, aren't you? You're going to put them all over there and just put the
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Baptists over here. No, I wish I could do that. But unfortunately, a vast number of lost
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Baptists are right over there with the Hindu and the Buddhist and all the others.
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Because you see, about 98 % of our world's population is unalterably convinced that there is something they can do to make themselves acceptable to a holy
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God. They have very different paths down which they would go and different holy books that inform them.
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But on this one issue, they agree 100%. Salvation is bound up in something
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I do to make myself acceptable to God. And of course, the
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Reformed person would again say, Amen, and then would say, and if you then make a libertarian act of free will called faith, the deciding issue, are you really escaping from what you properly recognize as being a violation of the gospel?
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Now, of course, we've just recently, I did a little article about Hypercalvinists on my blog.
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And they will then take that and say, see, I mean, there is a Hypercalvinist on an email list and the email list died, or I got kicked off it,
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I'm not sure which, but there's a Hypercalvinist on that list. And he was saying,
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I'm not a believer. I'm not a Christian. And I can guarantee you he would say,
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Paige Patterson's not a Christian. Why? Because we do not have the exact same understanding and formulation that he has, and his is what defines it.
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He is, his understanding, the perfection of understanding, defines what the gospel is. Every Christian who is a
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Christian has a perfect understanding of limited atonement, for example. So, I mean, when you get all down to it, this guy, as I mentioned on the blog, has to draw the circle so tightly he has to stand on one foot to stay inside it.
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He's the only one left. He's the only Christian out there because he becomes the standard, instead of Christ becoming the standard.
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But the point is that they will take this and they'll say, see, you're pointing out, you're rightly pointing out an inconsistency with what was said before.
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I mean, he's differentiated himself from our Calvinistic brethren. He's putting, he doesn't view himself in that way, etc.,
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etc. And that means he's not a believer. So that's where the disconnect is. That's where the problem is.
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That doesn't make him an unbeliever. It makes him an inconsistent believer. Oh, well, why don't you apply the same standard to the
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Roman Catholics? Because we're talking about something different, aren't we? We're talking about, he said, it's all of grace.
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Well, you know what? I'm still seeing what that means, aren't you? Aren't you seeing that grace, every day
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I learn more about what grace is supposed to mean. So if understanding and having perfect consistency is the standard, none of us are saved.
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Anybody who would look at me and say, oh, well, see, I'm saved because I know all those things. You're lying.
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This is all there is to it. So there's the danger in going in the direction. Here we see inconsistency. When you see inconsistency, you point out inconsistency.
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Why? Well, because we don't want to be a postmodernist. Well, that's true. But the real reason is you want to honor
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God. Is that not the case? How do you honor God? By saying, well, God really can't clearly communicate anything.
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He just wrote a mumble to us, and we're not really sure what he said. That's the wonderful God of postmodernism is, even though he made us as thinking, reasoning, communicating beings, he can't communicate to us with much in the way of clarity.
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Obviously, we can communicate with more clarity to our children than God can to us, which is an odd way of viewing things.
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But as it may, if you're not a postmodernist, you point these things out because God isn't glorified by muddled thinking.
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He didn't make us to exist that way, and so we address it. Over against that is biblical
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Christianity. It is totally different from all of that, because in biblical
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Christianity, salvation is by grace through faith alone.
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It is the grace of God. It is God's plan of redemption. It is
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God's operation of redemption. It is God's purchase of redemption.
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It is God from the beginning to the end. It is not about what we do.
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It's about what God has done. And as long as the doctrine of election is in the
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Bible, it forever states that salvation is God's doing from beginning to end by his grace alone.
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Again, quite true. Right on the nose. However, since it's been a while, let me remind you that our speaker has already indicated the fact that he does not accept the concept of particular redemption.
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And so when we're hearing about redemption accomplished, I'm afraid that when we start pushing, what we're going to hear is redemption made hypothetically possible but not actually applied.
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That's going to be the problem, I think, at that particular point. But again, outside of that, we can just simply go, that's wonderful.
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Now, I have already told you that we need to ask the why question rather than the how question, but let me just point out one thing to you where I think when we get to heaven, we may discover the resolution of the how question just for the fun of it, okay?
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Look at those verses I just read one more time. Whom he foreknew, then he did predestinate.
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Whom he predestinated, then he also called. Whom he called, then he also justified.
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Whom he justified, then he also glorified. Speaking of the future salvation of our bodies, our glorification, as though it had already taken place because it is so certain, now let me ask you a question this morning.
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How many of you here were glorified before you were justified? And that's a question we will answer on the other side of this break.
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I think it's a question we all know, but hey, we'll continue listening to Paige Patterson responding. We'll be right back.
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Try to save your soul from death. It's all worth righteousness, you know.
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Can a man yet venture? Alaska, the unspoiled land of nature and immensity, both in its realities and its possibilities.
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James White and Christian recording artist Steve Camp as they explore the great doctrine of Sola Scriptura.
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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 scripture and lead believers away from true
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Christian faith. In a readable and responsible style, author 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 .aomen
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.org. The history of the Christian Church pivots on the doctrine of justification by faith.
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Once the core of the Reformation, the Church today often ignores or misunderstands this foundational doctrine.
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In his book, The God Who Justifies, theologian James White calls believers to a fresh appreciation of, understanding of, and dedication to the great doctrine of justification, and then provides an exegesis of the key scripture texts on this theme.
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Justification is the heart of the gospel. In today's culture where tolerance is the new absolute,
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James White proclaims with passion the truth and centrality of the doctrine of justification by faith.
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Dr. J. Adams says, I lost sleep over this book. I simply couldn't put it down. James White writes the way an exegetically and theologically oriented pastor appreciates.
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This is no book for casual reading. There is solid meat throughout. An outstanding contribution in every sense of the words.
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Remember, it was the like 12 -inch amber screen, 4 .7,
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no, 4 .77 megahertz, 8088, 20 megabyte hard drive, and I was tapping away in the darkness, and I start hearing somebody banging on the kitchen window.
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And I look into the kitchen. I see someone outside, and they're banging on the kitchen window. So it was 8 megahertz.
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Okay. And so I have a 12 -gauge shotgun. And I opened the door, and the sound of a 12 -gauge, you know, when you, well, here, this right here.
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Yeah, that one right there. The fact that it didn't get the lady's attention then indicated to me, we found out later, she was completely fried on methamphetamines.
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I mean, we are talking one of those ladies that has like super strength, you know, like takes four cops, and she's like 5 '1 and weighs 85 pounds, you know what
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I mean? And she was hearing voices. She eventually threw a pot through the neighbor's window, and we're talking the panel windows, so very, very small little hole, and dove through the glass headfirst.
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That was a fun night. Why am I talking about all this criminal activity today?
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You'd think that we have a problem with that around here. Well, there's not too many places these days we don't. But anyhow, we are listening to Paige Patterson's sermons on Calvinism from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, and we will continue with that now.
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That's what I thought. How many of you were justified before you were called?
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Well, that's what I thought. You see, there is a sequence of salvific events unfolding here, isn't there?
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In our experience, yes. But the fact that they're all put in the past, even referring to those who had not lived at the time of the crucifixion, indicates that from God's perspective, there is a certainty on the eternal level that then becomes the ground for the experience in the temporal.
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We are time -bound creatures, and so we experience things in a temporal order.
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To place that upon God's purposes and upon God is where we have a problem. And if there is a sequence of salvation events, where does it begin?
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It begins with the foreknowledge of God, whom he foreknew, then he predestined.
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And it's not the only time the Bible says that. For in 1 Peter 1, Peter says, elect according to the foreknowledge of God.
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Now, at this point, I would think, maybe
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I'm wrong here, maybe I'm off. I don't know. I don't think so, though.
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At this point, I would think that at a graduate institution, the people sitting in front of him
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I mean, I don't know how many people. We've got a number of people at Phoenix Reformed. We're a small church. We have a number of people who sit there and they have the
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Greek text in front of them. Some of you saw that really cool reader's
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Greek New Testament that I mentioned on my blog. And you see a lot of those. You'll see the UBS text or the
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NE27er. They're sitting there with their text in front of them. And I would think at a seminary, that would even be more common, right?
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In a chapel service, that's going to be very, very common. Now, most of you who have and I always realize we have new listeners all the time.
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So I sometimes have to go back over things. Please forgive me if you've heard all this before. You know, it's really difficult to discuss the difference between verbs, nouns regarding foreknown and foreknowledge while watching people in channel discussing
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Monty Python and the rabbit, the death that awaits you all with nasty big pointy teeth thing.
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The contradiction is extremely difficult. And it also tells me that no one in there is listening to me anyways.
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Anyway, just thought I'd mention that in passing and embarrass everybody who's doing that. But I would think, you know, if you've been listening for a while, if you've been reading, if you've been keeping up with the discussion, for example, with Dave Hunt, you know that there is a difference between the verb to foreknow and the noun foreknowledge.
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And you know that when the verb is used with God as the subject,
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God is the one who is doing the foreknowing that each time that's used in the
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New Testament, the object of the for the foreknowing, the action of foreknowing is personal.
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God foreknows persons because that foreknowing is personal.
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It is a relational term. Foreknowledge is knowing future events and activities.
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And while the two can be related within a particular context, to simply switch between the two without recognizing the difference, just making them, just obliterating any distinction that might exist in the text, not even recognizing it, is not how you do sound exegesis.
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And it just strikes me as odd that within the context of graduate level studies with people sitting there with their
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Greek texts open, that you would go from Romans 8, which uses the verb,
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God foreknew, over to 1 Peter, where it uses a noun and not even seem to recognize that that's what you're doing.
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And I think the reason that this is so common, you hear this all the time, is that so rarely will these individuals allow themselves to enter into meaningful dialogue and discussion about these subjects.
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And so they're not challenged on it. And I would like to think there might have been somebody in that audience afterwards went up to him and said,
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Dr. Patterson, do you notice, did you notice that you did this? How do you respond to this?
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But that's not normally how it works, unfortunately. And so once again, we see a common exegetical error.
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Will that be addressed? Let's find out. So that foreknowledge, in some sense of the word, precedes election or predestination, which also precedes calling, which also precedes justification, which also precedes clarification.
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Now, somebody says, and correctly so, hold everything there, Patterson. Have you forgotten that time is endemic to human beings?
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OK, that's true. We'll get there. But no discussion, just an assumption of the equality, the equation, that foreknowledge is equal to the same thing as foreknowing.
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And that's where the problem lies. That's where the error lies. But God, God is the creator of time.
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He stands outside of and above and transcendent to time. Time is his own creation.
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God experiences everything in the eternal now. There is no yesterday or tomorrow for God.
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He is God. And so he is a timeless being. So therefore, if God foreknows something to be true, then there is no way that it's ever going to be any other way except how he foreknew it to be.
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And in God's mind, foreknowledge, justification, calling, glorification, all happen at the same moment because God is living in the eternal now.
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Um, yeah, except obviously I would grant to God as the eternal creator the ability to distinguish between the events that he decrees will take place in time.
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There's certainly no basis for confusing those things.
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There's certainly no basis for saying that because God exists timelessly, that therefore he cannot recognize temporal order within what he decrees take place in time.
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As long as we're saying that, I think we're okay here. But to me, the main point's already been missed.
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And that is in regards to the meaning of foreknowing versus foreknowledge. Don't you know that, Dr. Patterson?
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Yes, I'm well aware of that approach. And I am quite confident that God is the creator of time.
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I don't know exactly how it's all going to work itself out, but I suspect that when we get to eternity, we're going to discover that there is something about God's relationship to time that we have never completely understood.
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And that therefore we can be right and have been right in affirming that the electing providences of God are not just arbitrary on the part of a supraleptarian
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God who chose to create some to damn them and some to save them, but rather somehow his electing providences are bound up in his foreknowledge.
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And is that not really just one of the most common Arminian arguments?
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That is, I've never heard of a supraleptarian God. Have you ever heard of a supraleptarian
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God? I've never heard of a supraleptarian God. I find it odd and troubling that something as important as a discussion of God's decrees and God's purposes in creation, which really is the only meaningful element to the infralapsarian supralapsarian discussion, is turned into...
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I don't know, do you sense almost a level of disgust on Dr.
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Patterson's part when he says supralapsarian God, arbitrary, you know, throwing these terms around.
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Isn't what's really being discussed here the idea that God has the freedom to do with his creation as he chooses to do so and is not bound by the actions of the creatures he himself has made?
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That seems to me, anyway, to be where people... Well, we had a guy...
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Excellent example. We had a guy came in a channel a few weeks ago, ended up having to kick him out because he couldn't behave, but he tried to come back in last night and he went into our...
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We really have two channels in Starlink IRC. We... Prostapologion is the main channel, and then we have
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Apologetics, which is a secondary channel that we don't do a whole lot in, but when it gets active, it gets really active because generally there's a debate going on.
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Sometimes the debate isn't such that we want to kick it out of our main channel in the sense of just stop it, but it's starting to get warm or sometimes there's more than one discussion going on, and we'll say, you know what?
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Why don't we move the rather warm conversation over to Apologetics? And so he came into Apologetics last night after being kicked out of Prostapologion by the fact that he's banned.
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And so I went over there just to make sure he understood that when you're banned in a channel, you shouldn't try to rejoin it. You shouldn't try to change your host mask to slide back in.
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That's an offense that can get you kicked right out of the entire network, not just the channel that you're in.
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And so a conversation started. Apollos and Irrational and a few others came over and continued it on.
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I talked for a little while, but just didn't want to be spending the whole night talking to this fellow because his mind's made up, let's put it that way.
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But his big thing is he believes that if... It was the issue that came up just last week in the
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Dividing Line about children. And he seems to believe that all Calvinists believe that every child that dies in infancy is going straight up bobsled to hell.
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And I briefly explained what my viewpoint was as we explained on the Dividing Line last week. But when you push him on what the issue is there, it was interesting.
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Not only did he end up, in essence, denying the concept of the imputation of Adam's transgression to his children, which
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I found very interesting, so much for Original Sin, but the big thing for him is the big thing behind that objection about the children all comes down to the freedom of God.
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These folks can't trust God to be God. They can't trust God to glorify himself in the way that he finds to be properly glorifying.
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And it really does go back to something. I haven't said this a long time, but it's something I have said many times in the past.
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And the very few of you who've listened for a long time know it. I found a tremendous amount of insight.
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And someday I'm going to have to track this citation down. Maybe Tex Presby can track it down for me, since he spends so much time with Jonathan Edwards.
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But Edwards made a statement once. It may have been in Religious Affections or in one of the sermons related there, too.
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I don't remember. But he made a statement once that one of the greatest evidences of regeneration is that we love those attributes of God that are the most hateful to the natural man.
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One of the greatest evidences of regeneration is that we love those attributes of God that are the most hateful to the natural man.
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Now, natural men hate the fact that God is free with his creation.
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That he's the potter and we are the pots. Men hate that. And so it does concern me when in conversation with people who call themselves
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Christians and who say they believe the word of God, and they believe it fully, and they believe it completely, to see...
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And some of you know exactly what I'm talking about, because you've been there. To see this... And I'm not saying that Dr.
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Patterson has this, but I'm saying that it informs the tradition that he is clearly presenting. There's no question about that.
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I've never met the man, so make sure I make that caveat here. But I have seen,
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I've seen in Dave Hunt, a hatred for the sovereignty of God in the sense of, you're telling me that God could do...
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God can do with sinners as he wishes? No, they'll say, well, of course he can.
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But then when you really push it, when you really get down to brass tacks, they don't believe that.
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I remember years and years and years ago... I'm using that phrase years and years ago a lot anymore.
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But we had an office down on 16th Street. And this lady contacted me from the local
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Kino Institute, which is a graduate institute for Roman Catholics. And she had, hi,
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I'm doing a class project, and I need to interview a fundamentalist. It's sort of like calling up the local animal shelter.
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I need to interview a St. Bernard, you know? It's just very odd. And you feel like a freak, you know?
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Because from their perspective, you are a freak. And so she came over and we started talking. I could tell immediately that she was surprised that I had a vocabulary beyond about the sixth grade and was able to intelligently discuss theological issues with her and in fact had a knowledge of Roman Catholicism and things like that.
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But we eventually got into the subject of salvation and the subject of God's freedom and grace and the nature of grace and ended up in Romans 9 for some odd reason.
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And I'll never forget this woman doing graduate studies in a Roman Catholic institution. And she said, are you saying that God chooses who he will save?
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And of course, I went through the whole thing. It's not like I just said, yeah, just live with that, lady.
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I didn't do that. I talked about what, you know, if grace is to be grace, it must be free. Remember that we're talking here about the potter and the pots and God's self -glorification and the fact, you know, grace cannot be something that you earn.
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It cannot be something that we can demand of God. I went through all that stuff. But even after all that, she comes back.
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So you really do believe that in the final analysis, if someone's saved because God chose to be merciful to them, it's not of them.
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And if they're not saved because God chose not to be merciful to them, I said, yes, that is exactly what
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I'm saying. That person who continues in their sin, a sinner will continue in their sin unless God and his mercy interrupts their self -destruction.
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Yes, that's exactly right. And I'll never forget what she said to me. She said, I will never love and worship a
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God like that. And my response to her was, I know. And she was like,
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I said, I know. You know, I had already told her some of my views on Roman Catholicism.
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I said, it's only the gospel that changed the person's heart about who God is, about what
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God does. And yeah, I know you won't. You won't worship a God like that.
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You refuse to do so. And so I've seen this on the part of people so many times.
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You proclaim the freedom of God. And I've got that wonderful quote in a couple of my books.
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I think it's used it three times now from Charles Haddon Spurgeon, where he talks about how men will allow
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God to be seated upon his throne, dispensing blessings and keeping the stars in their orbits and just keep them out there someplace.
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But when God ascends the throne of power and we proclaim an enthroned
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God and a sovereign God, men gnash their teeth in hatred. That's true.
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They do. They do. And so I think
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Edwards was right on the money when he said one of the chief evidences of regeneration is a love.
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And of course, only we know when we truly love something is a love for those attributes of God's nature that are the most reprehensible and hateful to the natural man.
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There's an insight there. So I sort of went off on a little bit of a sermon there, but let's get back to the discussion.
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Now for that, back to my point today, which is not to ask the how question, but to ask the why question.
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Number one, as long as the doctrine of election is in the Bible, salvation is by grace through faith alone.
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But number two, as long as the doctrine of election is in the Bible, it secures our salvation.
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If you want to put it the way Baptists have put it somewhat coarsely across the years, once saved, always saved.
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It guarantees that once a man is born again, he will never, ever, ever forfeit that salvation.
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Let's see if that's true. Look, beginning in verse 31, and let's see what happens in Romans 8.
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What shall we say then to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?
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If God elects us, who's going to cast the negative vote? He who also did not spare his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?
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Who shall bring a charge against God's elect? Anybody going to bring a charge against God's elect?
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I don't think so. If he tries, he won't last long. Why? Why? See, you know, again, we come back to one of the most glaring inconsistencies of non -reformed evangelicalism that believes in something like once saved, always saved, or notice they never use the phrase perseverance of saints because that really wouldn't fit their theology, but I just don't understand why a person who will preach up a storm about the necessity of libertarian free will for men to be held accountable will then turn around and say, yeah, but once you get your ticket punched, you're on your way.
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You can't get off the train. God has locks on the outside, see? And once he's got you, he's got you.
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And all that free will stuff, forget it. It's gone.
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And yeah, before you're a Christian, you have to have libertarian free will to be responsible and to be loving and all the rest of that stuff.
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But once you are a Christian, all that stuff disappears. We don't need to worry about that anymore.
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You don't need libertarian free will. You don't need the ability to lose your salvation to remain human. And the love you have for God, as long as you chose to do it once, it remains true love, even if now you can't stop doing it.
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Am I the only one who sits here and goes, wait a minute, there's no consistency here. This is grossly self -contradictory, is it not?
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It certainly seems so to me. All of the wonderful things that are being said about the fact that there is true salvation in Christ, and he will not lose any of those who have given are all based upon the very things that have been identified as capricious and arbitrary in the fact that the
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Father gives the people to the Son, not based upon foreseeing what they're going to do, but what they do is based upon what he's done in Christ.
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All of that stuff, the inconsistencies are just, I don't know, glaring.
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At least they seem so. Seems so to me. Well, last week we got through two minutes, a grand total of two minutes of this program, of this particular presentation.
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This time we got through 12. Now, that is a six times improvement.
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That's six times better, and that's what we're all shooting for here. Oh, well, we're going to go look for our mail.
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Rich and I are going to be dumpster diving today looking for our mail. Oh, my goodness.
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Well, hey, you know, God has a purpose in all things, and maybe we'll find a different place to put our mail now.
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Who knows? But we will be back again Thursday afternoon, four o 'clock,