A Bit More Discussion on Theonomy, My Knighthood Attempt, Leighton Flowers and Purpos

And greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. I have a completely black screen in front of me, so I didn't know we were going.

Sorry about that. There we go. We are back. Technical difficulties everywhere these days.

It's all pixelated and stuff, and it's great. Anyways, as long as you can hear me, that's the important part,

I guess. Hopefully, everything else will work out. I had technical difficulties yesterday at the beginning of the

Janet Mefford Show when I was filling in. Part of it didn't even get broadcast, and I couldn't hear them, missed the first break.

It was not the good way to start the program. Worked it out the rest of the time, but did not start out right.

And when it starts off all wrong, you're off the wrong foot the rest of the three hours. But we'll be doing that again tomorrow.

I was going to try to have Michael Brown on tomorrow, but there just ain't no way, because he's on the air at the exact same time that I am.

So he was talking about hooking the two together, and I'd have to look at his clock and my clock, and when they mesh, then we'd talk together, and I'm like, no, can't do it.

You may be able to pull it off. You may be good enough to handle that. I am not good enough to handle that.

I have got a bunch of stuff here in front of me, but it's all sort of program stuff. You've got to remember when you're doing those, well, you all have listened to the

Janet Mefford Show when I've been on it, and all the breaks, and none of the breaks, the time segments are the same.

So it's challenging. You get done with three hours doing that, and you're fried.

And I'll be doing that again tomorrow, Wednesday I will be on, and we'll be discussing homosexuality and taking phone calls.

So that should be interesting. Did you all see that Rachel Held Evans is officially now not an evangelical?

As if we didn't know that already. Yeah, I just saw, I just commented on Facebook that Rachel Held Evans has become a

Episcopalian. Why not? Remember James Price, the guy who debated the

Episcopalian Atheist? Yeah, he's an Episcopalian Atheist. And then you've got

John Shelby Spong, who, of course, is just simply John Shelby Spong. So it fits perfectly.

You've got homosexual bishops. I mean, it's just, you know. Welcome to Episcopalianism, Rachel Held Evans.

Wow. Not like we didn't see that one coming. Yeah, we did. Okay, what are we going to do on the program today?

Well, I want to respond to three articles. And it's going to take some time to go through each one.

So get a deep seat in the saddle. One of them I actually have to play a video on, so I've got it queued up over there.

But before I get to responding to Leighton Flowers' last two blog articles, which guess what they're on?

Oh, you guessed. Yeah, because that's everything that Leighton Flowers writes on is about Calvinism.

John Six and Purposeless Evil, not together. They're two different things. We're going to be responding to what he said on those.

And by the way, folks on Twitter and stuff, when I mention things, do you really think

I have all day to Google for you? I mean, I can open Google. You open Google. It's amazing how many people go, where is that?

Where is that? And I'm like, I found it on Google. Can't you find it on Google?

I was kind of hoping that you could maybe tell me what the meaning of is is. Well, let's not go there, because that would get us into the

Clintons and private e -mail servers and the fact that the

Russians and Chinese and everybody know everything about what our government's doing because of things like that.

But that's another issue. We don't need to get into that right now. Please define the word tribble. Tribble?

Oh, okay. All kinds of random things, right? This is a tribble. See? Oh, come on.

Uh -oh. The battery might be dead. Ah, there it goes. Which must mean you're a

Klingon, because it certainly wouldn't do that to me. Even did it over there, which is where I'd hope someday to see a

Borg cube, but maybe someday. Anyway, before we go to the

Layton Flowers stuff, I wanted to respond to an article that was posted on a website titled

Thought Criminal. And it was a nice article. And it was, since it was nice and actually dealt with subjects in a proper way, then

I wanted to actually respond to it and maybe push the antithesis.

That'll make some people, whoo, buzzphrase, move the ball forward.

The conversation, the discussion, whatever. It starts off saying some really nice things about the ministry.

And that being said, I have, over the course of my studies in ethics and social theory in the past two years, gravitated towards the theonomic position.

Van Til's maxim of theonomy, or autonomy, is one that I take very seriously, as I find that if I were to be truly presuppositional in my approach to law and ethics,

I am forced to say that the scriptures, both Old and New Testament, are the only sure foundation that we can have in questions relating to those issues.

On the specific issue of Old Testament judicial law, I find that there is immeasurable wisdom in those laws that we cannot afford to dispense with.

Of course, I agree. And the church today would be much poorer in its witness to the world if it did not draw from those resources to give coherent answers to the sociopolitical and economic problems plaguing the world today.

Again, I agree. I just simply point out that I believe there needs to be a recognition of the purpose of law in a theocratic state and the role that penology and punishment has in a theocratic state, a theocratic state that was specifically messianic in its orientation, that is, the people of God from whom the

Messiah was to come, and that that involved certain church -state interrelationship that the

New Testament does not teach the church will experience. And that has to be, must be, and in the vast majority of online theonomic discussions today, takes back seat at best and for some people seemingly isn't even there.

But again, it's that definition thing and who are we reading and which part are we reading and what decade of what they wrote are we reading and so on and so forth.

Yes, there is to some extent some cultural baggage contained, should be contained, in the

Old Testament law. I don't even like the phrase cultural baggage. I use cultural artifacts, but what

I was referring to was what I just mentioned. That is, you have a theocratic state. It has a specific purpose in God's economy.

That purpose has been fulfilled. Therefore, that has to be just because there is no biblical warrant, no understanding of the part of the apostles that the church is going to eventually maybe after getting rid of its

Roman overlords or something, go back to a position of church -state union as you had in the theocracy and hence

New Testament does not equip us to be able to do those things.

That's the real issue for me. I believe that this is the reason why the Reformed Confession spoke of general equity.

Obviously, there's lots of disagreement about that. It is through that principle of general equity that we are able to filter out those elements of the judicial laws that are strictly for ancient

Israel only and extract the principles from them that are relevant to every culture and every age. Well, that's what

I'm doing, but I don't call that theonomy. Again, every primary writer you're looking at in this relatively new understanding is going to have differences between themselves.

Obviously, if Rushduni... How do you filter out

Rushduni's Armenianism? That's Armenianism, not Arminianism for those that struggle with that spelling.

It's difficult to filter that part out with some of the dietary laws and mixed fibers and so on and so forth.

And yet, I've talked to people who've read Rushduni and says, well, maybe we shouldn't wear mixed fibers. Maybe there is something inherently wrong about that.

And I'm just like, eh. And then others have suggested, well, the high priest did, and so there's something to do with the high priesthood.

It's the mapping and the specifics that's where the details get very difficult.

There's no question about it. I find it perplexing that you accuse the theonomic position of Judaizing.

Where did I ever do that? It's amazing. Again, I'm sorry.

I really appreciate this guy, but I don't know where the filters that you guys are putting on your ears come from.

It's just this, ha, ha, overreaction type thing. I didn't. Where did

I say that? I mean, I said there is, if you do not do the filtering, if you force a certain set of laws that include the entire concept of Judaizing, and we've seen people that have gone off into food laws and all the rest of that stuff.

We've seen that happen with some people, right? And you say, well, that's not true. Well, I agree. I understand. But why is it that if I go, well, how do we avoid bringing an entire society and societal norms along with this if we're not doing this, this, this, and if we don't start with these presuppositions, how is that an accusation of Judaizing?

Anyway, when, in fact, every theonomic author that I know of recognizes the necessity of contextualizing the principles of those laws, the social situations that we find ourselves in.

Well, isn't that the issue? Isn't that the continuum where, evidently, if you're farther to the right, you say everyone who's to your left is an anti -theonomist?

I certainly ran into people like that, as you all know. My Eastern European theonomist colleagues do not cease to be

Eastern Europeans. My African theonomist colleagues give up their African -ness by adopting the position that they do.

Every culture needs to be redeemed under Christ, but nobody is asserting that they have to be changed to some sort of Neo -Israel in the process to assert otherwise is to assert a straw man.

Great! Y 'all need to start talking to some of your online advocates then, because they're not very good at expressing themselves.

Okay, I mean, again, this is just, 99 % of this is you don't have a unified position.

And so, when someone sees Rush Dooney saying something, well, but that's not really theonomy.

Well, what about what Bonson said over here? Well, but Rush Dooney said this. And there's the problem, is the definition thing.

And it becomes very frustrating after a while. And I've noted that I really haven't moved forward since Bonson.

I haven't moved forward. At least not in my opinion. If someone would like to show me where there's been books, there's been popularizations, but on a meaningful scholarly level,

I haven't seen any movement forward since, and that's, what, 20 years now? Yeah, 20 years.

Well, it was late 95, so let's say 19. Anyway, that being said,

I must speak on the statements you have made regarding Sharia and its alleged similarity to the theonomy. What I said, of course, was that Islam has a body of law that is absolutely definitional to Islamic, not just Islamic jurisprudence, but to what

Islam is itself. And therefore, it is meaningful, relevant, and proper to ask the question of how any theonomist differentiates the assertion of, when you say, in every detail, exhaustive application, that does not communicate deriving appropriate principles based upon the recognition of the uniqueness of the theocratic state of Israel, its messianic purpose, and the fact that the function of the

New Testament Church must be defined by New Testament documents. You know what? I think that's one of the differences here.

Let me just mention this. I think that's one of the differences here. And it was brought out by Sam Waldron, too.

Sam Waldron actually says in his article that one of the key questions here actually goes back to baptism.

Because, and this will come out a week, two weeks from yesterday, from my perspective, if the

New Covenant documents do not equip the

New Covenant Church, the Church that we see in the New Testament Scriptures, if those documents do not equip the

Church to engage in certain activities, then those activities cannot be said to be constituent to the duties and function in life of the

Church. So, if someone were to say, well, we've got to go back to the old

Covenant Scriptures to define for the New Covenant community what they should be doing in these situations,

I go, ooh. So, where are our priests?

Where's our Urim and our Thummim? What about the year of Jubilee? There's all sorts of things that take us back to the priestly system and then you can no longer separate properly between the judicial and the ceremonial and the prophetic and the prophetic's been fulfilled and just so many things start coming up and I go, so the

Church, you know, if we start talking about church -state relationship type stuff and the magistrate bearing the sword to guarantee the purity of worship, it might be worth looking at the original form of the

Westminster Confession of Faith sometime regarding the magistrate and you'll understand why a Baptist has a little problem with that because a lot of us spent a lot of time in prison in those days because of that, because of the magistrate who claimed to be a

Christian taking away our freedoms under the guise of keeping the purification, you know, the purity of worship

There's all sorts of issues like that and I go, well, I wish Paul had said something to Timothy about that but I don't think he did so that raises all sorts of questions for me

I have never once on this program said, well nah,

Theotomy's wrong because it's too much like Sharia If anybody who heard that listen to what

I'm saying, please, try to be fair I mean, come on, I'm really trying to help move things forward here

I mean in comparison, the vast number vast majority of Evangelicals they couldn't tell this to me and a theonomist anyways if they listened to my sermons

I mean, they couldn't so if we're going to have this kind of hypersensitivity even to someone that you know is that close but has these differences

As a student of Middle Eastern Studies who's in the process of reading the Quran in the original Arabic and has written no less than two university level papers on the subject of Islamic jurisprudence,

I think that I can speak with some level of credibility on the topic of Sharia Well, that's good Perhaps I'm not up to your level when it comes to knowledge and acquaintance in the

Islamic sources, but by God's grace I'm getting there, and ought to be just as effective in that area as you are. Be that as it may

I do find the comparison between Theonomy and Sharia to be both oversimplistic and inaccurate. I would too, if I had made it

As there are many points of divergence between the two Well, of course there are points of divergence between the two

My issue was not that, but that'll come out as we look at this. Number one First of all, while Theonomy is comprehensive it is not exhaustive.

That is a distinction many people fail to make Many Theonomists online fail to make

And if someone then responds to that then they're guilty of misunderstanding

See the point? I'm not sure Recall that there are only 613 laws in the

Torah whereas Sharia has tens of thousands of laws covering all sorts of matters that the Torah does not even begin to touch on.

Well Yeah, sort of This is because biblical law was never meant to be exhaustive

Biblical law has many areas that are adiaphora, where we can exercise our Christian liberty, whereas Sharia regulates every part of your life, right down to how you go to the bathroom, or what positions you may have sex with your spouse.

I've yet to see a theonomic treatise on the proper biblical way to clip one's toenails That is quite true

That is a difference, and that is a difference that Muslims view as a deficiency on the part of biblical law interestingly enough

But since I never said they were identical to one another it's their function in evangelism and their function in society and how we differentiate them that was my issue

It's not overly relevant to what I actually said and attempted to communicate Number two, many of the

Islamic penalties are much more severe than the biblical penalties. For example thieves must pay back what they stole in the

Torah whereas in the Quran they get their hands chopped off The number of crimes one may be put to death for is also significantly smaller in the

Torah than it is in Sharia These are all quite relevant.

I'm not sure how they're relevant to what I asked, but they definitely would be relevant if you were comparing the two systems just on their general merit or more importantly

I think pointing out that Muhammad was clearly ignorant of the actual nature of biblical law

He only quotes biblical law once, the Lex Talionis and does not have any knowledge evidently of the content of the prophets the minor prophets where law is applied in those places things like that.

Islamic law, barely if at all distinguishes between sins and crimes the way biblical law does, well that of course is because the author of the

Quran did not have a biblical worldview and a biblical understanding of anthropology. For them, most if not all sins must be prevented or punished by the state somehow.

Theonomists recognize the Kuyperian concept of sphere sovereignty which limits the extent to which the state can punish that which is unlawful and leaves it to the spheres of family and church to handle those laws that lack judicial penalties

Well again when you say theonomists do this you're speaking for a rather diverse group and not everybody is necessarily on the same page you will not find any equivalent to sphere sovereignty in Islamic social thought as they tend to mix and infuse the spheres together you probably find some liberals that do but what defines

Islamic social thought? Is a liberal Muslim from Cambridge the same thing as Al -Azhar?

No The economic systems are polar opposites Biblical economics is based on free enterprise which you'll get from reading any number of Gary Norse writings.

That's a funny sentence when you actually think about it. He's not that old Sharia, on the other hand is based on heavy regulation taxation, basically socialism

Every discussion of Sharia compliant economics I've ever come across talks about heavy income taxation, banning of interest and welfare statism

Well, I'm not going to argue with that It's certainly an interesting economic system that does not actually exist anywhere in the world and I don't know could exist anywhere, at least in the modern world which is interesting, but that itself raises an important issue

If we recognize that Sharia is stuck in essence in the 7th century and that it does not have basic principles that can then be applied in different situations does that not then also mean that when we look at a number of the judicial laws of the

Mosaic Code that we must take the exact same position and say that what we do is we take concepts from putting the railing on the roof, from not gleaning to the edges of the field and we take those concepts and make application in modern situations but we do not demand the specific laws let alone the penology that goes with them and if you're saying yes then your argument is that a lot of people call themselves theonomists that say no that's for you guys to fight out

I don't think it's fair to say to us well until we get everything figured out you all can't say anything about us or when we do say well this guy just said well but he doesn't represent us who does?

The theonomic movement is very libertarian in its orientation Rush Dooney wrote in the Institutes of Biblical Law let's see we've got

North, now we've got Rush Dooney once we get Bonson in here now we've got all the differences between them that need to be dealt with the theonomic movement is very libertarian

Rush Dooney wrote that theonomy is I think as close as one can get to radical libertarianism so it's a it's a political philosophy didn't you say earlier that it can be translated into Eastern Europe and Africa and so on and so forth but if it's actually a political philosophy if it's a form of radical libertarianism then does that mean that we should be fighting for a particular political position as a part of missionary work that's one of the questions that I've wanted to raise that's one of the questions

I was trying to raise and everybody goes, oh you're just comparing us to Sharia no I'm saying is there a political system that is a part of the gospel that's a question

Sharia has the opposite tendency it is totalitarian and can only be truly enforced in a state of society where civil government reaches into every area every area of its citizens lives well that's awfully true

I mean all you've got to do is look at Iran look at Saudi Arabia ugly, very ugly finally, theonomists being orthodox

Calvinists well, mainly I don't even want to get into federal vision stuff believe that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone that only the

Holy Spirit can make the heart desire obedience to God's law we do not believe in salvation by law as a certain Islamic apologist mischaracterizes us as believing there's a link there to an interesting article because the

Muslims have picked up on this too the idea that a perfect law can behavioristically change hearts and minds may be an

Islamic notion but it is not a Christian one and repudiate it wholeheartedly agree, completely these are just a few of the differences between the two systems that come readily to mind, here's another article which explains the difference between the two suffice it to say,

I find the attempt at comparing the two to be totally inaccurate, can only be sustained if one is not well acquainted with both biblical law and Sharia agree, had nothing to do with what

I said of course but I agree then there was a discussion after that of angry theonomists and so on and so forth that we won't need to get into right now but I appreciated that but it still doesn't necessarily really address what is needed and that is even at the end of his life

Bonson recognized that in the mapping of what is civil ceremonial the principles that we're speaking of which underlie these things which give us so much light and guidance how these are applied outside of a theocratic state that had a specific purpose how to then, and then of course there's all sorts of other issues in regards to theonomic post -millennialism and the whole concept of this age and the age to come and what seems to me the clear reality that in theonomic post -millennialism things that are clearly said to be in the age to come are transferred into this age and the problem that creates because in this age you will always have the wheat and the tares you will always have the rebellious mixed together with the true and if you try to take things that are from the age to come and put them in this age and practice them the result is going to be disastrous and just isn't ever going to happen for that matter so there's all sorts of those questions to address as well.

I would like to see the conversation move forward really would

I think that's something that really needs to happen amongst theonomists and whatever the next generation is going to look like need to take it as seriously as Bonson and then move beyond and right now what

I'm seeing is a lot of backbiting, a lot of territorialism a lot of this is really cool but the future will belong to those who are willing to eschew all of that and provide some meaningful solid thoughtful progression from where Bonson left off and even and obviously

Bonson recognized his work wasn't done therefore had he lived longer would he have modified previous statements and positions things like that is there a willingness to modify those things that really is one of the questions now let's see

I'm not sure I'm not sure oh is there actually someone on facebook saying that I don't know someone just sent me a comparing theonomy to Sharia law thing and all

I can say after all these programs is if anyone says that's what I'm doing they are either deaf or dishonest that's the only two possibilities left and I just hope no one would do that but interesting stuff hahaha a fellow named

Derek said you should stick to your strengths Arminianism ain't one of them yeah

I'm not sure I'm not sure I would actually agree with that we've done a lot on that subject alright speaking of which going directly against Derek's wishes

Layton Flowers has put up well again I know that Brother Flowers is not happy when

I say this but I'm concerned for Brother Flowers because I discuss other things we're discussing theonomy and I want to get back to I really wish

I could find if someone out there knows one I should mention it audio note taker don't worry it's going to be 89 90 degrees on Monday everything is flowering all the stuff is in the air and my sinuses are doing their thing again and that's where the cough is coming from I'm in fine shape

I need to introduce you to my allergist allergies man I just fight through them

I'm getting my shots every week right now no thanks anyway we're going to be

I want y 'all have seen audio note taker in fact I think I've even shown you audio note taker so you can see what it looks like perfect for playing stuff but man

I wish there was a video version of it because I've got this debate that Zakir Hussain did and the amount of time that it takes to play the video of that and then to mark sections it's huge it's massive it takes much less time to do the audio and it's interesting

I listened to the Hal McDermott debate I didn't watch it and unfortunately a lot of our younger listeners don't know about Nixon Kennedy they don't know about the lessons that we all learned from Nixon Kennedy or the lessons we didn't learn when

Richard Nixon debated John F. Kennedy in their presidential campaigns the first one that was televised now of course this was the quality of the television even the television signal would be extremely poor black and white

I don't even think it was color at that point it would have been black and white I've seen it have you seen it? it actually would have occurred probably about the time

I was born I don't remember when it was I think that was in October 1960 so the interesting thing that came out of it was that people who listened to the radio and listened to the debate on the radio gave the debate to Nixon people who watched gave the debate to Kennedy what that means is what people see will impact what they're hearing and I listened to the

Hall -McDermott debate I heard people say that J .D. looked angry that he looked mean and I have certainly experienced the reality that people can't allow their emotional reaction to the individual to determine what they hear and do not hear and so point being that's a long way to get around to I want to play

Zakir Hussain stuff but I'm probably just going to have I just don't have time to do the video I'm going to have to do audio that's just the only way to do it

I was going to plug a little I thought into that I and I don't know what you just thought of something just occurred to you too many things

I cannot for the next year folks I'm going to be an airhead I'm sorry but the schedule that I put together for the next 12 months and I blame myself completely

I have to learn how to say no I'm going to be an airhead I had something I had to get done before this program and I didn't do it my fault what

I was going to say was when I edit our debates I do everything I possibly can to present both debaters in the best possible light so if I wanted to you can take the back door insinuation that I'm making because I'm not going to be blunt about it but I'm not going to be vague either if you if I wanted to I could take

ISO shots on the guy who's sitting down while you're standing up and I can make him look so bad

I can get facial expressions I can do all kinds of things and I saw it in the method that was used here

I didn't see it so I can't comment on it I don't approve of it and I will let you

I'll take the heat for it because I've done this and again you'll notice when

I edit a video I try to stay focused on the guy who's speaking when there's cross -examination

I get both of you in the frame at the same time because both of you are going at it there's techniques that can be done here and I can make the other guy

I can make the other guy that way people will know I can make the other guy look as bad as I want to and I can make you look as good as I want to if I want to do that but the point is that's not fair and that's just not how

I do things I hear you alright

Airhead here my apologies I will try to fix this as much as I can as soon as the program is done

Halt we may have to go a little after sorry I was going to start off the program since I'm now a week late on this we have had major website problems for two weeks or more and a week ago it just put up the white flag and keeled over and died and looks like it's back up and running and fixed and so on and so forth and that's great and that's wonderful but what that did is kept me from being able to take a few moments and talk about South Africa and Kiev and numerous overseas missions type trips where I'm going to be teaching lecturing debating training pastors in foreign contexts to know their faith and you have to strengthen the local church that's how world evangelism is done is not by me going over there and doing it but the people are there that's how it's done and this will be the third year we're going to South Africa I'm going to have to go for a little longer that's going to cost more why?

because of Votie Balcom yep because of Votie Balcom Votie as you know is moving to Zambia he's going to be the president of Reformed Bible College there in Zambia and let's be honest the vast majority of us don't have a clue where Zambia is the only reason

I know where Zambia is is because as I'm waking up generally when they wake you up to give you your breakfast as you're landing in Joburg if you look at the if you've ever taken international flights you know they up on the screens they'll have where the plane is and the route and so on and so forth and sometimes it'll zoom in and show you things and stuff like that and generally we have breakfast over Zambia because Zambia is

South Africa's northern neighbor borders South Africa and North so Votie has already said well if you're going to South Africa you're going to have to come to Zambia so somewhere in the trip to South Africa we've got to go from Joburg up to Zambia and then back again down to Durban or whatever however we're going to work these things out so we're probably going to have to be there even a little longer sorry

Rudolph but be that as it may it costs money to do this and we are a small ministry and so we raise funds and God's people have always been good well

I am combining that need which we need to start working on with something that I do that is very important to me most of you know that I pursue a tremendous amount of athletic activity

I do a lot of my studying on the back of a bike or now running as well rowing, those are my three sports, riding, rowing and running no it had nothing to do with R or alliteration or three points of a sermon it just happens that rowing helps to counteract what you're doing in the other two anyway

I'm going to be doing something a week from last Monday so Monday the 16th of March that is absolutely insane it's crazy what

I'm going to do and I'll explain why I'm explaining this you're all going get back to Calvinism just hold on a second I will a couple about two months ago sometime in January I think

I saw on Facebook that my good friend Doug McMasters New Hyde Park Baptist Church on Long Island was doing something crazy he and I both he living in New York has to do a lot more than I do living in Phoenix but especially people back east have to do riding on trainers now the old trainers where you took your bike and you stuck it on this thing and the tire rolled on something and it made a lot of noise and you just sat there did your thing that's you know back in the 90's that's pretty much what

I did but people started realizing that you know this is a lot more interesting if you have something to watch and so a whole market has developed of training videos and now the next generation of trainer is controlled by your computer and so what that means is you can do these training videos and that video then will control the resistance of your trainer and that means look out

Katie bar the door you're talking about incredibly high quality training so there's no place to hide you know and the old type of trainer is like do effort 9 you know like as if you can know what an effort 9 is one day it could be this the next day you're feeling real good it's a lot better no now it says you're going to be climbing a hill of this grade and that means you have to put out 340 watts and the trainer says okay here we go and you got to put out 340 watts that's just there's no place to hide you doesn't matter if you're feeling good that day or not there is a series of these videos called sufferfest videos and they've become popular all around the world and part of the part of the mystique of them is that you are riding for sufferlandria you are a sufferlandrian and you're competing with all these other people and they show footage from the big races you know the big riders that are popular today people like that and here

I see Pastor Doug and he is doing one video after another video after another video on the same day now let me tell you something you do one of these videos all out at 100 % you get off your bike and almost puke your guts out

I mean it's just that difficult it just it is a tremendous workout you'll burn hundreds and hundreds of calories doing a sufferfest video

I did one yesterday morning 40 miles 1351 calories

I covered in just under 2 hours and so they're really tough and here he's just doing one after another and another and I'm like what's going on well that's when

I found out about this you can become a knight of sufferlandria a knight k -n -i -g -h -t not n -i -g -h -t a knight of sufferlandria now all you get are some decals and the other guys pat you on the back but it's actually a huge accomplishment you can become a knight of sufferlandria but this is how you do it 10 videos in a row with no more than 10 minutes in between all in one day for Pastor Doug that was over 12 .5

hours 6500 calories and 250 .2

miles ridden on the trainer in one day that's what

I'm doing next Monday and what they encourage you to do is to raise funds it's like people who go for a

I'm going to do a 10k and donate toward my 10k run and la la la la la la well a 10k run takes less than an hour we're talking 12 and a half here and so I'm like well

I think missionary work overseas is good so what I'm going to do is

I was supposed to have this up and it went because I have so many things that other people are asking me to do about all sorts of wild stuff what

I will put up as soon as I'm done with the program and hence if you're watching this later on it should be there is an article about this with a link to the travel page in the bookstore and if you in fact there it is all pixelated on my screen there's your donate button right there and you can go there and if you would like to help me get to South Africa whether I survive

Monday or not but especially if you would like to encourage me in the suffering that I'm going to be doing the 12 and a half hours of intense working out on Monday the 16th then you go there and there's the picture on the screen and we'll keep a running tally of what comes in between now and then and that will help me to know what kind of encouragement there is from folks out there as I get ready to try to become a knight of Sufferlandia and raise some funds to go to South Africa I'm not sure how many people

I don't think RC is quite up to doing this anymore riding 250 miles in one day for this so I gotta do it while I'm still semi young that's just how it is so if you'd like to help me get to South Africa and other places yes

Lynn in channel just said does that mean we have to call him Sir Oakley? Yes that is correct if you want to get on the air in the future it'll be

Sir James this is I now refer to Sir Doug because he did it he is a knight of Sufferlandia I am not, that's right

I even said to him after he was done I need to do it now so I do not have to bow in your presence every time that we meet that's the other reason

I needed to do it so that's what I'm doing on Monday I wanted to let you know about that last week so we could have gotten an earlier start but we were having problems with the website and now

I'm just a space cadet and forgot to put the article up but I'll do it as soon as we're done here so if you would like to help me make my alright

I'm looking at it here while he's looking at it I would like to point out that it's awful nice to be able to have that store back and even be able to navigate through it without it blowing up on you and I want to thank all the people that volunteered to help me make that happen you know those things are rather complex it's been very complex and unfortunately yesterday

I spent most of the day pounding my head against it after we did the upgrade and then suddenly realized that I skipped or forgot about one of the most basic things you're supposed to do you're still showing me doing my thing instead of you're talking and well you do your thing while I'm trying to you know

I'm trying to fill a stretch fill some time here and so a lot of people stepped in and helped out and I want to thank them for that because it was desperately needed yeah well especially for us there's no two ways about it so I don't even know where Zambia is yeah isn't that great

I'm trying to find I'm trying to find a larger someone's already pointed out oh

I know that's why I'm looking at it I really need to get the this thing fixed

I keep typing all the wrong stuff here so what is the one there come on alright it's just see

I just clicked on the picture that she put up there yeah it is it doesn't border it's just that's where we do actually start descending there though that is where we normally are having breakfast but there's actually well they have these things called airplanes that you can go from I'm well aware of that in other words it's close it's not like flying up to Egypt or something like that Botswana is directly north but Zambia that's correct my error but that is where we start that is where we have breakfast

I'm not sure why we'd be that far to the east though at that point

I mean we are in the far western part of it when we go over it but I'm not sure why we'd go that far that direction coming from well

I guess from Frankfurt I guess if you draw a line that is sort of straight isn't it yeah I guess so anyway we have digressed far far far from our subject here but I wanted to let people know about that and I had not been able to do that for a while now back to where we are supposed to be oh yeah yeah

Ben says good luck on the sufferfest I winced just watching my dad do it yeah that's for sure it's it's something to be proud of let me tell you something if you can survive 12 and a half hours of that level yeah yeah for someone who's 52

I'm looking forward to surviving it but it will not be easy and there's all sorts of stuff that could go wrong believe me

I've been having to spend some time planning alright if you go to soteriology101 .wordpress

.com you will be able to find the articles that I now am going to take a look at or maybe article

I'm not sure I can get to them now without making this like a mega size dividing line so and I just realized well not sure how what we're going to do on Thursday might need to move to Friday because of well you know why secret stuff but let's see let's just see how it goes the article from well this says

March 10th but it wasn't from March 10th this was a couple days ago that this was posted I think it was posted yesterday if I recall correctly purposeless evil in order to prepare for a debate with Dr.

James White and we will be debating I didn't know that this was this was titled

Soteriology Summit Calvinism Debate which Soteriological View is taught in Romans 9 he insisted the term

Calvinism debate had to be in it okay fine but it's not just about Calvinism both positions have to provide a positive argument

I would prefer something like monergism versus synergism but anyway this will be

May 7th 7 -10pm the Oaks Baptist Church 801 East 120 Grand Prairie Texas and there is a there's a a webpage up on it we don't have anything on ours yet but we'll get it taken care of hopefully eventually in order to prepare for a debate with Dr.

James White I've been listening and reading through many various online discussions recently I've come across a troubling and quite confounding argument made by my

Calvinistic friends they seem to insist that all the heinous evil in our world must have been meticulously brought to pass by God's sovereign plan otherwise it would prove one

God has no purpose for evil's existence or two he is powerless to do anything about it once again fundamentally what you're going to hear over and over again in our debate is the difference between man centeredness and God centeredness now as offensive as that might be to someone on that side the reality is when you dig down past verbiage the focus of Leighton Flowers theology is man and that's actually come out in what we're going to see here and the

Calvinist hears that and goes well don't you understand the sovereign decree and freedom of the king of the universe is a positive thing it is the grounds of our even being able to trust that the gospel is going to come to fruition that God is going to be victorious over evil that Christ his self giving would not be fruitless etc etc that the prophecies of the future will be true

I mean man these days with Iran running around getting nuclear weapons and everything else if you don't believe that I don't know what you believe so from our perspective it is the positive assertion of this truth about God that is the first and foremost thing and what is then derived from that is that what he has created in time that is all going to resound to his glorious grace comes from that freedom that kingly freedom that is his and that therefore that which we see of evil in our experience and in our world is to be placed under that truth it's to be seen in the light that we see it in the

Old Testament scriptures where God is sovereign over the kingdoms where he brings

Assyria against his people to trample them in the dirt it is his purpose there is sin going on there and he will be glorified in it because it fulfills his law and his word we see all of that but there is a hierarchy and who

God is is at the center now in this position in his position that's changed the fundamental argument of this particular article is that what

God has done is he his primary activity is to choose to create autonomous creatures that's that's the extent of his kingly freedom is he chose to create autonomous creatures now he still gets to do earthquakes and volcanoes and that kind of stuff but as far as time there is no sovereign decree his kingly freedom was

I'm going to create autonomous creatures so that they can choose to freely love me that's it there is no exhaustive decree and even though he knew what would result he is not an open theist even though he knew what would result the result is not a part of his decree even though in his knowledge he knew what would happen it's happening is ancillary to flows out from the greatest good which is the creation of autonomous creatures who can do whatever they please now that's not a biblical view of God it's not a biblical view of man the bible presents something a little different about God's sovereignty and there is no way that you can substantiate that philosophical autonomy of man in light of the plain teaching of scripture about the fallenness of man his slavery to sin and so on and so forth but that's that's what you got two completely different perspectives very very different perspectives for instance he says continuing on James White was asked and now we go back to the absurdity yes indeed even

Layton Flowers decided to pull from the absurdity from what oh well

I can't see any of that because it's all pixelated and it's just a bunch of blobs and a screen so but if you want to that's up to you if they can see it fine for me it's just it looks terrible goes back to the question

I was asked on the bible answer man broadcast and all of the outrageous absurdities that have flowed from that remember remember remember this book a cultish side of Calvinism that quoted from Bryson's complete misrepresentation of all of that remember all that stuff well anyways same quote is gone too when a child is raped is

God responsible did he decree that rape he answered yes because if not then it's meaningless and purposeless and though God knew it was going to happen he created it without a purpose and God is responsible for the creation of despair there's all sorts of dots here it doesn't sound like what

I said if he didn't then that rape is an element of meaningless evil that has no purpose anyways I'm not going to go there another

Calvinistic scholar Matt Slick says and he quotes Matt Slick in regards to autonomy so on and so forth

I agree with what Matt Strider concludes quote it is obvious both Matt Slick and James White are committing the logical fallacy of a false dilemma namely they are insisting that there exists only two alternatives or solutions to a problem when in fact there are other valid options to be considered well of course that's absurd

Professor Flowers please I would really like this debate to be meaningful and this is childish it's just childish it really is it is not a false dilemma issue because we have always made it very clear that what we're talking about here is the reality that God has exhaustive knowledge of future events now if you just want to blow that off into mystery and all the rest of that stuff fine go ahead you are going to have to give up on biblical prophecy and the biblical

God in so doing but just because you refuse to take a stand on that doesn't mean that biblical theologians can do that and when we talk about this issue it's based upon the recognition that God has in fact exhaustive knowledge of all future events when he creates and that we actually can ask the question is there a purpose in God's economy for what takes place in time now when you say well there's a third option and we're ignoring that we're ignoring that because it's not biblical it's not that we're creating well it's either this or this we're saying it's this or this given the biblical parameters of what you read in psalm 33 and what you read in psalm 135 6 and Daniel chapter 4 and Ephesians chapter 1 and so on and so forth so I'm sorry this is

I mean if this is all you've got fine great it's not going to survive cross examination very well really isn't and the thing is the people watching the debate have probably read both sides and so they know these things and they're going to know that this kind of stuff is just distracting it's not actually dealing with the issue logical fallacies

Professor Flowers writes confound the issue and at times they can convince unsuspecting listeners of an argument's validity this approach is very similar to the fallacious question asked by Calvinists regarding the boastworthiness of the libertarian's decision in salvation well what's he referring to there well the fact that we all point out that if God is trying to save everyone equally and you get saved that means that the difference between you and someone who is lost is not in the grace of God or the choice of God or the purpose of God it's in you and as much as I have heard my

Arminian friends pound the drum we don't believe that I've never had one of them explain why that's not true not a one not once if God is trying to save everyone equally and person

A gets saved and person B does not then the difference is in what

God's grace no God's purpose no God's desire no God no it's in the person right but I assure you there is not much substance behind either of these baseless arguments let's unpack it let's unpack it what

Calvinists fail to acknowledge is that in our system who's our who's us well

I guess synergists well there's every kind of synergist on the planet

I mean monergists are a much smaller and easier to define group every religion of man is synergistic

Roman Catholics are synergistic so there's Roman Catholic synergism and there's

Arminian synergism and semi Pelagian synergism and Pelagian synergism and there's all sorts of synergism our system we don't know what this system is unfortunately could you give us a statement of faith of your system before our debate

I'd like a and please if it's that horrifically written traditional statement that's not a statement of faith that doesn't even qualify

I mean wow yeesh what

Calvinists but let's leave that to the side listen to this what Calvinists fail to acknowledge is that in our system evil is a consequence of autonomous human freedom something they presume cannot exist well we believe that there is one autonomous being and that is

God and the idea of creating other autonomous beings has all sorts of problems but the fact of the matter is the

Bible doesn't say man is autonomous the Bible more often says man is not able than man is able and as long as u dunatai is there in the

Greek text that is unbiblical and in fact we do believe that God does now here it is we do believe that God does have a purpose in giving man the ability to make autonomously free choices now see he's not answering the question the question is is there purpose in the evil he's saying well

God had a purpose in giving man the ability to do evil well of course

God had a purpose in giving man the ability to do evil whether it's the same capacity or not something different but that's not answering the question is it because even if the ultimate freedom of God is expressed in his giving man the ability to do evil that doesn't answer the question that ok he chooses to give man the ability to do evil did he know what evil man would do before the creation as a southern baptist you have to say yes and so the question comes back again was there a purpose in on God's part regarding the evil that man would autonomously produce so God produces the agent that produces the evil but since God knows that's going to happen it doesn't excuse

God it doesn't change the question it doesn't answer the question it just moves it one step back it's the exact same thing the exact same thing that the

Roman Catholic does when he talks against solo scripture and says well we have the church you can't even know what the canon is because we have the church and I have absolute certainty because I have the infallible church except you were the one that had to fallibly choose to follow the church right so you actually haven't answered the question you just moved it back one step and then just sort of you know it's like you stand in sand and you just sort of cover over your footprints hoping no one will notice all you've done is just move back one step that's what you're doing here that's what you're doing here and you get distracted ah there's the

I'll retweet Soteriology 101's tweet here since that's what

I'm looking at on the screen ha famous birthday famous birthdays

I got a tweet from famous birthdays wishing me a happy birthday today three and a half months two and a half months something like that yeah that's great better late than never you think if I print that out and take it to Denny's no that's not going to work take it to Denny's might get free grand slam something like that alright okay okay in fact we do believe that God does have a purpose in giving man the ability to make autonomous choices so it is only in presuming that God did not purpose to create autonomous creatures that one is left with the dilemma of either

God purposing evil or to purposeless evil wrong sorry but again on any logical level that doesn't work this is just moving back one step and oh

I've introduced I've introduced the means well we believe in means we just recognize that God knew in the means the only way this works

Professor Flowers is if you're an open theist this is open theism here whether you know it or not it is this is where it's coming from and at least in regards to the question

I'm asking and so you can say well God purposed to create autonomous creatures great did he know what the autonomous creatures were going to do yeah so he by creating

X brings Y into existence so did God have a purpose for Y well we can't answer that we can't ask that it's better to have more figures in our algebraic equation or something what's the advantage

I I believe a clear distinction must be made in the idea of God actively purposing evil and is actively using evil for his good purposes that sounds wonderful but it's got a major problem in it first of all you just took out the means again and the means are central the means are absolutely purposeful no matter how often you try to say we can't use it your arguments are utterly fallacious as we will see but if we follow this if what you're trying to do is say that the evil exists only because autonomous creatures created by God with the ability to do evil create the evil then now you have a

God who is circumscribed by the evil created by his own creation but again if he knew what it was he wouldn't be circumscribed by it it would be part of his plan but are you saying he had no plan and now he's just reacting to this this is the

God of the Bible have you read Whitehead process theology you know where it all came from cause man this is scary stuff and we were starting to wonder about who's dealing the cards here again the former impugns his holiness while the latter highlights his redemptive sovereignty and ultimate glory as the perfect sinless creator so evidently actively purposing evil means that God in his sovereign decree included the existence of evil and the redemption there from and the glorification of himself in the cross that somehow impugns

God's holiness so the alternative is actively using evil for his good purposes excuse me where did the evil come from you talking about something

God didn't create there's something God did not create so before he decrees to create there's something that exists that does not come from his will how did again just dragging this back to the

Bible is a great thing you know I know philosophers love to sit around and play these games but how about where do you get this scripture where do you get

God doing this um actively using evil for his good purposes an evil that comes forth from the creation that he himself created with these capacities all you're doing is taking a step back wiping away the footprint and going

I didn't do that sorry this may work in a classroom at Dallas Baptist University please don't try to take this into the apologetic realm please please it would be it would be bad it would be ugly so in short the

Calvinist has assumed our premise cannot be true question begging no biblical exegesis and conclude that God is either one purposing all evil or two the existence of evil has no purpose false dichotomy which as we've already seen was also a false argument thus their argument once again rests on a fallacy which we have now refuted

Calvinist should be asking what we believe God's purpose is in creating autonomously free creatures well who are we it's not as if you're just all one group certainly the

Hankins group has not put forward much in a way of a systematic theology you're certainly not suggesting you've done that um anyways

Calvinist should be asking what we believe God's purpose is in creating autonomous free creatures not merely presuming he hasn't or couldn't even if he so desired and in turn we should be asking

Calvinist what they believe God's purpose is in creating non -autonomous creatures that he himself determines to do evil now notice again when we dealt with his misuse of on the homosexual stuff remember we took that apart and his whole response was well that's what monergism says and it was just I'm sorry it was just completely off base as we said before Professor Flowers refuses to see

Calvinist again this is Professor Flowers I know you're listening here's one of the reasons

I've criticized you for being a one string banjo if you had five strings and you were balanced and you were dealing with other things you might not make these types of mistakes but when you've only got one string when you've only got one focus

I have seen this so many times I've said this of myself I have said I am so thankful that the

Lord did not allow me when I first began apologetic ministry to remain focused upon only one group because we've seen what happens when that happens we've seen people just get you know

Mormonism they're behind everything they just get swallowed up in it and they become imbalanced in their exegesis well

I'm sorry sir but you don't even seem to have the capacity to listen and to go yeah there's more to it than that there's more to it than this perspective so what he says in creating non -autonomous creatures what you mean is in creating creatures who have creaturely freedom under the sovereignty of God that he himself determines to do evil that he himself determines to judge rightly you see what you're trying to suggest to people is

God staying behind somebody with a big old gun do bad things he's restraining evil all for the accomplishment of his glory

I just don't think you you don't have a biblical anthropology you just you just don't you don't take seriously what the

Bible says about the depth of man's depravity and you know what I'd be really interested in how deep your response to the annihilationist movement would be because without a biblical anthropology you've got a leg to stand on not a leg to stand on you can just repeat your traditions if you want so most people do anyway but my response to the annihilationist movement flows from my anthropology and your anthropology could not could not deal with it couldn't do it and if you were dealing with other issues you might see that it might click historically non -Calvinists have not avoided addressing this question though they've addressed it in many different ways he then quotes

C .S. Lewis and I as much as I enjoy

C .S. Lewis's writings I do not look to C .S. Lewis for my theology by any stretch of the imagination I just don't believe that he is much of a theologian but God created things which had free will that means creatures which can go right or wrong some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong but I can't if a thing is free to be good it's also free to be bad and free will is what has made evil possible why then did

God give them free will because free will though it makes evil possible is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having a world of automata of creatures that work like machines would hardly be worth creating the happiness which

God designs for his higher creatures is the happiness of being freely voluntarily united to him and to each other in ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and woman on this earth is mere milk and water and for that they've got to be free of course

God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way apparently he thought it worth the risk dot dot dot if God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will that is for making a real world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance can happen instead of a toy world which only moves when he pulls the strings then we may take it it is worth paying end quote notice it wasn't a verse of scripture because there could never be a verse of scripture the idea that this universe is at war that it's a risk again that's open theism that's process theology that's the only logical conclusion those things can go to and that's why so many people have ended up going there but of course there's always the immediate response that so that means that the love that the non fallen angels have for God isn't really love and we won't really love

God in the future unless you're and that there will be well there would have to be falling and evil and further punishment even in the future state even though united to Christ even though perfected in him if we don't have the free will to leave then that's not real love according to C .S.

Lewis which seems to be your authority here and so the idea of the love of the elect for Christ in perfection would not be perfection according to this standard right do you believe that we will live in eternal insecurity that we will be able to cease being good even perfected in our sanctification will we be less human once perfectly sanctified you see the idea that God's highest the highest good for God is the free will of man where's that in the scriptures

I mean you would think that that would be on every other page but it's of course not it's nowhere man's inabilities slavery deadness and sin that's everywhere

God's goodness God's glory God's giving people a heart of flesh when they had a heart of stone that's everywhere but here it's totally changed this is creating an external system setting it on top of scripture filter out the stuff you don't like that's what you've got here then do you have my desktop presenter and you've got the video okay then he says for another answer to this question well the point is there are some similarities to what

Robbie Zacharias is going to say here but it's not the same answer hey let's offer a bunch can

I go full screen on that it's going to totally mess everything up don't do that go back alright so you got that alright here we go you mentioned the story of that I think you said he was

Jewish and he was shot by I think it was a concentration camp or something like that and I'm going to play the devil's advocate for a bit and pretend

I'm Sam Harris no pun intended of course you stated that God was watching

God watched the gentleman pull the trigger if God was watching why didn't he make that trigger not work why didn't he make that poor individual just pass out while he was digging the grave

I believe Sam Harris would ask that type of question and demand an answer yes

I appreciate that question you mentioned playing the devil's advocate you said that why didn't

God keep the man from pulling the trigger rather than allowing the man to pull the trigger and then watch over him and bringing about some kind of judgement

I would say this to you that the supreme ethic that God has given to us is the ethic of love it is the peak of all intellectual and emotional alignment this thing we call love which places value upon the other person of worth and as something to be protected it was interesting of all people it was

Oscar Wilde who on his death bed in his 40's by his lover by his side

Robby Ross he turned to Robby and he said did you love any one of those little boys for their own sake it was an incredible question to ask by a man who was a hedonist on his death bed in his 40's and he said

Robby did you ever love any one of those little boys for their own sake Robby Ross said no

I can't say I did he said bring me a minister bring me a minister and it was in his magnificent poem the

Ballad of Reading Jail that Oscar Wilde said only Christ was big enough to cleanse his heart and forgive him for all that he had done the point even the hedonist realized was that in pleasure also value and love are the supreme ethics that can be treasure but you can never have love without intrinsically weaving into it the freedom of the will you cannot have love without the freedom of the will if you are compelled by some machine to a certain decision you can never love you can comply but you will never be choosing to express that sentiment and the reality of love if love is the supreme ethic and freedom is indispensable to love and God's supreme goal for you and for me is that we will love him with all of our hearts and love our neighbors as ourselves for him to violate our free will would be to violate that which is a necessary component so that love can flourish and love can be expressed if you're asking for God to always stop the trigger why not

God stop everything else next time you hold a cup of boiling water he makes it frozen water instead next time you're about to cross the street and you're going to be hit he pulls your leg back what you're asking for is a different entity than humanity as wonderful as it may seem that in stopping that you think he is protecting you from that which is destructive the greatest denial that you're asking for is the freedom of your will to be able to choose and to love

God with all your heart and all your soul when you've got love as the supreme ethic and the freedom of the will to choose that love all of the other contingencies come in and can become explained why it is possible to either choose or to reject so that love can ultimately reign supreme if you want compliance and a and some kind of a mechanical response your question itself will self -destruct you're asking the question because you're free to ask it and you're free to ask it because you're free to love and when you love him in spite of all of the contraries that you see around us you're trusting him for having the supreme wisdom and the knowledge to ultimately bring a pattern out of it all we think for example we know so much the story is told in mid -eastern folklore of this man who lost his horse that ran away and when the horse ran away the neighbor came to him and said you know bad luck isn't it your horse is gone he said what do

I know about these things few days later the horse came back with 20 other wild horses and the neighbor came and said amazing it's not bad luck it's good luck you've got 20 more man says what do

I know about these things his young son is going and taming one of the new horses that young horse kicks him and breaks his leg the neighbor comes and says terrible isn't it your son's leg is broken bad luck that these horses came the fellow says what do

I know about good luck and bad luck few days go by and a bunch of thugs are coming looking for recruits to join their gang and they're looking for all the able -bodied young men and they're about to pick this young man but find out his leg is broken and they say we don't want him we're going to move on to the next house so the man comes and says good luck isn't it your son's leg was broken in one little series of episodes we don't know what lies ahead why don't you wait till you stand before God face to face and you will find out there were reasons why he didn't stop that trigger so that you will see the heinousness of evil and see the majesty of love and good managing to navigate yourself as a pilgrim's progress to come to the celestial city

I think most of us recognize that from the middle to the end there was a contradiction if you take the assertion as being in the middle that when he's talking about free will he's talking about autonomy not creaturely free will not the radical change that takes place when a heart of stone is replaced by a heart of flash but autonomy if that's the case then the comments at the end made no sense because they clearly indicated the sovereignty of God in human affairs you can't have them both if you want the one you can't have the other it's pretty difficult to try to walk between the two but I'm really not certain that he's saying the same thing as C .S.

Lewis was saying but if he is again I would have preferred to hear some biblical texts because there are direct biblical texts in response to those things but I leave it to others as to why they present things in the way they present things but what is the answer to the

Calvinist since God is obviously fine with determining mankind to think believe and act as he determines then why not just create them as he wishes them to be from the beginning why determine suffering, rape, molestations and the like in order to produce in creatures where clearly he is more than willing to determine in them apart from such means anyway if you're trying to follow this yeah it's difficult to follow to claim there is a purpose in a given act of evil one to claim there is a purpose in a given act of evil oh the comma is in the wrong place one must establish what purpose that given evil act accomplished that could not have been accomplished equally as well through non -evil means the concept of purposeful means is a problem for the

Calvinist alright let's see if we can unpack that real quick cause we're going way over time here well let's look at his example and then

I think we can see what's being said obviously right from the start he does not accept the idea that means are important in God's decree that the means are central to for example our sanctification to the basis of the exercise of his righteousness and justice and judgment of mankind all that see from this perspective

C .S. Lewis being the primary source this is all just puppet play so you don't have the three dimensional thing you don't have any way for the incarnation you know we

Calvinists just you know we've never thought of these things and you know Jesus was just role playing anyways it didn't really have to become incarnate or he could have just beamed in beamed out that type of thing no

I've yet to see anybody seriously interact with a full orbed understanding of the fact that God decrees both the ends and the means and is himself a part of the means in the incarnation

I've just that's too complex that's too deep that's too three dimensional and all of my favorite arguments against Calvinism are blown away if I were to actually try to address that so let's just keep it with the real simplistic type thing here for instance in Romans 11 14

Paul anticipates that envy might provoke his fellow countrymen so they may be saved what specific purpose does provoking a man to envy accomplish is not effectually accomplished by the inward work of regeneration supposed by the

Calvinistic system notice here Professor Flowers is the false dichotomy and you're using it you use it all the time instead of allowing

God to use means to accomplish things that will instruct others be examples to others be on the day of judgment an illustration of God's perfect justice and mercy and all the rest of it no now here you do the false dichotomy it's gotta be this or it's gotta be this simple two dimensional can't have anything bigger than that even though we have that clearly presented in scripture in Joseph's brothers and so on and so forth what actual purpose do signs and wonders fulfill that is not likewise accomplished by the effectual calling so if God wants to effectually call somebody he does not have the freedom either or black and white making the very error that he accused me of at the beginning of the article um you've either got to use signs and miracles or you use effectual calling but God doesn't have the freedom to in some instances use effectual calling without signs and miracles in others he can use signs and miracles especially if it happened to be relevant to the establishment of apostolic authority time of the writing of the new testament but anyway

Calvinist claim to affirm the need of means but deny the purpose behind what makes such means necessary in accomplishing the biblical stated purpose no sir we do not that is wrong you are in error you do not understand because of your simplistic understanding you will not allow means to be part of the decree and have a purpose in and of themselves you will not allow

God the freedom to do things as he wishes here or as he wishes there with means or without means he is free to do all of those things he is under no compulsion except in your marionette thing which we don't believe in anyways after all a man unconditionally elected and effectually regenerated regardless of whether or not he sees a sign or has provoked envy will certainly be saved so to a world with or without suffering rape molestations or other such heinous means would produce the same determined product of God so determined no it would not

God's justice wrath and power would not be seen in contrast with his mercy holiness and love in the way that it will be at the final judgment that's what

God says that's what God says in Romans 9 and I hope you will have something better than that when we get to that part of Romans 9 because that's part of his argument then

I start hearing stuff that just sounds like standard atheist stuff to be honest with you why condemn most of humanity to eternal torment in order to show those he determined to believe how great he is as if he couldn't have determined believers to fully realize that without the rape suffering and torment professor flowers are you a

Christian theist do you you just sent me some links we're doing some tweeting while uh what's going on there and I said so I do all sorts of other things

I looked at the things you go to a church something about meeting in a flagpole what do you write what do you say you've you've uh 15 papers for my my studies post on various topics and I'm teaching

I'm teaching a course on minor profit so that's good um how much time you're spending on that you debating anybody in the minor profits this seems to be your focus

I don't see a balance I really don't I'm sorry I just don't and it's certainly coming across here because that is an argument as Christian theism not

Calvinism if you're a southern Baptist that is an objection to you don't you see that why condemn most of humanity to eternal torment he created knowing that that's what they were going to freely do even as autonomous creatures didn't he unless you're an open theist then you'd be consistent but then you wouldn't be a southern

Baptist this all keeps coming back to the same thing and when

I push on this you go mystery mystery mystery so you can't make arguments like this it's it's irrational you can't do it so are you saying what's the basis the condemnation of humanity it doesn't demonstrate

God's greatness in his justice and holiness again

Romans 9 I'm not going to tell you where but you might want to read one of those verses in there it directly addresses this plus does anyone really believe such deterministic teaching makes

God sound sound more merciful or glorious to those of us he has saved well obviously it doesn't to you because this marionette simplistic two dimensional stuff that you call

Calvinism we don't even recognize and if you don't present something deeper than that in May the

Calvinist the non -Calvinist may go oh it's great but the Calvinist are gone okay another one of those guys even

Calvin called reprobation a dreadful decree and most Calvinist speak of how difficult it is to accept these doctrines you know what are you an annihilationist

I'm sort of wondering because your language would seem to indicate you would not have any means of battling the annihilationist because hell is a dreadful doctrine too if you still believe in that is that a valid argument against it that there are things that are difficult to believe in fact many remain closet

Calvinist and use fake names on Twitter so as to not reveal their true beliefs due to the difficulty they impose what

I guess I skipped that sentence I have no idea what that's about if God's purpose is to reveal to us something glorious about himself then why do so many of his own followers find such doctrines so incredibly terrible instead

I would really not want to be responsible for these words someday because they are assuming they're assuming some things that are not only grossly unbiblical but they're ignoring a lot of stuff that feel sorry

I feel sorry if God's purpose is to reveal to us something glorious about himself how has he done that where is the central text in all of scripture that specifically reveals that Ephesians chapter 1 the praise of his glorious grace right and is it not the very essence of that chapter that you have to explain away ignore the grammar come up with corporate election to avoid its actual clear and obvious meaning why have doctrines that are meant to glorify

God been splitting his bride in two for most of Christian history you consider this an argument

Unitarians use that argument against the Trinity right must have validity right

I'm hoping for better I'm hoping for better then we have what

I call one of the well I'll go ahead and let me just finish the whole thing up and then we'll wrap up we'll do

John 6 next time maybe God just determined his church to be split over this issue why do you suppose that is could it be that your false views about God are the autonomous cause of such strife in our churches

I know that is a difficult thing to ponder but mustn't we all willingly and objectively consider that possibility given the absolute dearth of biblical argumentation in the vast majority of your materials and certainly in this

I'll be really careful about making this kind of argument after all think about it either we are correct in Calvinism is causing unwanted strife in the church by their own autonomous choosing or God is determined for the non -Calvinist to cause these battles that kind of foolishness sir is used by people attacking the substitutionary atonement of Christ attacking justification by faith attacking the deity of Christ the person of the

Holy Spirit the second coming of Christ the doctrine of the Trinity I could go on and on and on and on every heretic has always used that argument every heretic has always used it now does that make you a heretic well

I don't know yet because you are just so blessedly vague on things you're good at throwing bombs at other people but when we come back and go well but what does that mean for you you give us things like well you see

God chose to create autonomous creatures oh that's nice what does that mean well you know some people say this and some people say that and C .S.

Lewis said this but to use the argument well you're dividing churches why aren't you dividing churches why don't you put that shoe on your foot

I mean if you're actually promoting an idea that the greatest good from God's perspective is human autonomy

I sure would like to find that somewhere in scripture my dear

Calvinist friends he concludes you cannot get around this fact non -Calvinists are either correctly standing in defense of God's glory or God is determined for us to be incorrect for the praise of his glory oh yeah heard that one before haven't you so if Psalm 135 6 is true if Daniel chapter 4 is true if Ephesians chapter 1 is true if God has a sovereign decree then this is the heretics excuse

God made me do it don't take that one before the judgment bar of God because that only works if you again grossly simplistically childishly misunderstand simplify turn into the marionettes two dimensions means don't mean anything

I know that's what you're doing it's all you've got I understand that and you'll get away with it in this life don't take it before God don't take it before God didn't think we'd go that long but sorry about that we'll do

John 6 next time because that one is actually I think that was a little shorter so might be able to sneak it in with some other stuff when we we'll do it on Thursday we'll see how things are going on Thursday we'll let you know on the morning otherwise we'll have to go for a

Friday but folks don't forget about the donation cart we've been down for about 10 days to 2 weeks up and down we need some help

I appreciate it alrighty folks thank you very much for listening to the buying line today we'll be back again as I said on Thursday or Friday we'll let you know see you then