August 26, 2004

Scriptural Defense of the Hope Within Us

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The 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.

Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. 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 United States.

It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is James White.

Blog Updates, Jonathan Edwards, and the Work Behind the Program

And good afternoon, evening, whatever time it is for you. Welcome to The Dividing Line. Today we are live at 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number. If you'd like to be involved in the program today, if you've been following it, the blog has a lot of stuff on it today.

I finally went back and put together all of the articles that have been written since the beginning of July, which is when I started doing all of this, regarding the issue of the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, specifically a review of the book, Christ, Our Righteousness.

That is all in one file now, which should make it a little bit easier to follow. I started realizing as I was putting that chart in, not a chart, a table in with the links that, you know, blogs are hard to follow because you have to go, well, you read the article down, but then you have to go up to the next section and, well, anyway, that's just sort of how they work.

So we've put it all in one thing there, and as I write more, which I will be writing more, as I've promised to do so, then we will just simply add those to that one file and it'll eventually be like its own book or something, I suppose.

I don't know.

But anyhow, that's what's going on with that. I have a short list of blogs I look at. I really ought to start finding good blogs to read. Almost all of them that I read are heretical. That's a bummer, too.

I'd like to find a Jonathan Edwards blog. Is there a Jonathan Edwards blog out there? That would be sort of cool to have like a two-and-a-half, three-minute readable Jonathan Edwards blog, something you could read each day from Jonathan Edwards.

Then again, exactly how much can you get out of Jonathan Edwards in two-and-a-half minutes?

I didn't know he was still around to do a blog.

You know, as Rush says, leave the humor to the professionals, okay? Because when you don't, it just, you know, it's bad. It's just really bad. Anyway, when I was back in Pennsylvania, the other speaker, Dr. Nichols, was, you know, it was not fair because Dr. Nichols is this like blonde, young, good-looking guy, and it just made me look like, you know, can we all put a paper bag over his face so we could just listen?

It was bad. But anyways, he was speaking about Jonathan Edwards, and there was lots of neat stuff. I asked him a question about the librarian up in Northampton because I think I mentioned on a dividing line ages and ages ago that we took this tour a couple years ago when I was speaking up in Massachusetts with the lady librarian in Northampton, and it's just fascinating all the stuff that we learned about Jonathan Edwards and stuff.

And he had met the same lady, and he's had much more access to Edwards. He's an Edwards scholar. It's what he does. And I couldn't help but thinking, man, it's a whole lot more fun to be him than me because he gets to read Edwards.

And now you know he's moved on to Machen. I mean, that's cool. Go from Edwards to Machen. Sit around reading good theology. What do I got to do? I got to read stuff that isn't really good. But hey, you know, that sounds like I'm complaining, and I probably shouldn't be doing that.

Anyhow, I'm looking for an Edwards blog. That would be really cool. Something to sort of try asking them to start a blog at JonathanEdwards .com. Well, I suppose I could do that, but that would sort of take away from the whole purpose of it being something short that I wouldn't have to put a lot of work in.

But let me tell you something, I put a lot of work into that blog. I really do. And it may not look like it. It may look like that's just five minutes' worth of stuff and you're off to something else.

But it's really not, especially when you put graphics up there. You've got to restore graphics on different sites. You've got to FTP them over there and then put that URL in. And there's just all sorts of stuff like that.

So anyways, it takes a while. Anyway, I was wondering about here. I was looking at the blog run that I do on a daily basis, and I did not know, and I suppose I should have looked at this. What was the date on this?

I think it was March, wasn't it? I just installed Windows XP Service Pack 2, and so Micah was wondering if my whole computer was going to explode or something like that. But it seems to be working just fine.

Where did I store this thing? That will give me the specific date that this thing took place. Why does it change stuff like that? Don't change my views. Let me do with my views as I want to do with my views.

Why is there nothing in this? There it is.

Okay.

And date modified. I like the date modified button. That's really cool. Oh, it doesn't tell me. Oh, great. Well, anyway, Dave Armstrong was on Catholic Answers. Maybe somebody in the channel will know when this was.

Oh, cool. I found an Edwards blog, and it was for John Kerry's running mate. Thanks a lot. Here I think that I've got some people in there that actually know what they're doing. And what happens? I get a proto-gnostic in there instead.

Anyhow, he knows what that's all about. Dave Armstrong was on Catholic Answers. And, actually, here comes the date. Here comes the date. It's just taking, man, all of a sudden Explorer is, like, really slow.

Is it having to, like, rebuild things? I'm hearing people talking in the background, by the way. I think it's having to, like, rebuild all of its stuff because it's taking forever to list all this stuff.

And I did not know. I did not know that Dave Armstrong had been on Catholic Answers. And, believe me, I would have listened or at least listened within the week or so after that. It was March. That doesn't make any sense.

This is October 10, 2003. I suppose 031010 would have to be. And what other would 03 be? I mean, that would be March. But then it would have to be 2010, which would be futuristic, which we don't think is really happening.

So last year sometime, evidently, Dave Armstrong was on Catholic Answers Live. And I somehow missed that. Maybe it's because that's right around when we were up in Utah. I don't know. But I took the time to download and listen to the entirety of the program.

It was fascinating. It was interesting. It was on the subject of Sola Scriptura. And if you go to Dave Armstrong's blog, you know, it talks about how, well, I do not like this. You hit Mozilla now with the service pack.

And it's like Microsoft is saying, since you're not using Internet Explorer, it's going to take you 47 seconds to fire up any other browser. I would not put it past Microsoft to do that in any way, shape, or form.

I bet you people do. Anyway, you go to his blog, and it talks all about stuff like, you know, my website, consistently rated among the top three most popular Catholic apologetics websites by Alexa Web Search.

Don't go to Alexa. It'll put so many cookies on your system you'll never, ever be able to get rid of them. And he's got all sorts of stuff. His literary resume and all the rest of the stuff on here. So, you know, here comes the program on Sola Scriptura.

And I start listening, and I'm like, wow. Well, you know, this is the common stuff. So we're going to respond over the next number of weeks. Now, I can do it all at once. If you had other things you'd like to discuss today, you'd like to call in, that's fine.

But we're going to make it a regular part of the dividing line for a while to listen to and respond to Dave Armstrong's appearance on Catholic Answers. And I felt it would be very useful and helpful to the listening audience if we had, like, a theme song for Dave, for each of these little segments where we're going to be responding to Dave Armstrong's appearance on Catholic Answers Live.

So, Mr. Soundman, sir, I hope you are ready to go here. Because we have our opening theme song for our review of Dave Armstrong on Catholic Answers Live.

We have...

The Spanish Inquisition.

I am usually referred to as the master.

There are some who call me Tim.

And now... I just... You know, when you saw Star Wars 11 times in the theater, you just expect Star Wars to come after that 20th Century Fox thing. I've got a little closer, too, if I can remember exactly what it is.

Sola Scriptura and the Catholic Answers Debate

All right, let's... What was interesting was it seemed that the host of the program, who was the moderator of my debate with Tim Staples last time, if we can use that term rather loosely... Yeah, I should have used the Spike Jonze thing.

That would have been so funny. Sort of had to take the lead here. Let's listen in.

You like to give on this topic that consists of basically ten primary points. And I'm going to have you touch briefly on each of them right now. We can go back and discuss each one in further detail. But I think it's important to get each one of them out there.

What I'll do is I'll sort of name each one for you. You gave me the list here. And if you can give us about a 30-second explanation of what you mean by each one, then, as I say, we can go back and look at each one perhaps in greater detail.

First of all, Sola Scriptura is not taught in the Bible. Dave, some people would say it is. How would you answer that?

Okay.

First of all, I would like to make it very clear to our Protestant friends that we certainly agree that Scripture is the standard of truth. We agree with that, even the preeminent standard. But the difference with Catholics is it doesn't rule out finding authority of epistolic tradition in the church.

We'd also agree with Protestants that Scripture is materially sufficient, which is a 50-cent word for meaning every true doctrine is in the Bible. It may be only implicitly or indirectly or by deduction.

But our point is that nothing in the Bible teaches that Scripture is the formal authority or what's called the rule of faith, which is also called formal sufficiency. That's what Sola Scriptura is. It's the Protestant rule of faith.

But we say that this isolates the Bible from church and tradition, and we also claim that it can't even be deduced from implicit passages. Protestants will try to make that argument, but I think it fails.

I'd like to talk to some on the phone and have them give it a shot, because I've talked about this many times. I think it's in the Bible.

Okay, there's how we start. Now, Mr. Armstrong is a good follower of Cardinal Newman, and so he definitely likes to use the material in regards to the development hypothesis and things like that. It is interesting to read Augustine when he speaks of the Scriptures as not expounding anything but what we have in the Scriptures and reading others who likewise spoke of the Scriptures as the standard by which we judge all things.

And I don't really guess that a lot of folks are going to be calling in in response to Mr. Armstrong. There is a call later, by the way. We won't get to it today in any way, shape, or form. But there is a fascinating call a little bit later where someone does start getting to the point.

All of a sudden, I think we're about out of time. We'll get to that a little bit later on. But Gregory of Nyssa said some long lines of, we make the Holy Scriptures the canon and rule of every dogma. And I wonder what Mr. Armstrong would think about those things.

It would be nice if we could get Mr. Armstrong to debate those issues in some context other than just from the keyboard. So in other words, what he's saying is this is material sufficiency versus formal sufficiency.

And the fact that you had the partum-partum viewpoint of the Council of Trent where you had partly in the written traditions, partly in the oral traditions, that seems to have just sort of disappeared.

Here's another one of those examples, folks, where even Roman Catholics can't agree on exactly what their position actually is. Here you have a Roman Catholic talking about what the Roman Catholic position is, but he only mentions one of two, and the viewpoint he has was the minority at Trent.

That's just one of those many illustrations where it may sound real good. It may sound real good that, oh, wow, you know, the unified Roman system. It's not unified in that way, and that is rather intriguing.

Now that was not exactly a 30-second response to what the guy had asked, but I guess he sort of gave up and just moved on from there.

Word of God, Oral Tradition, and the Rule of Faith

All right, well, we will talk more about that, I have no doubt, on today's program. Point number two in your presentation or your table of contents on why we need more than the Bible is this question of word of God, what exactly we mean when we say word of God.

For, I guess, Catholics, it has a bit of a different meaning than it does for some non-Catholic Christians. What do you have to say about that?

Now, it is interesting why we need more than the Bible. Another type of standard tactic of Roman Catholic apologists, especially Mr. Armstrong, do we need more than the Bible? Well, you have to define your context.

We do not believe Sola Scriptura, for example, means that the church has no authority to teach, that the Holy Spirit has no role in guiding and directing. Obviously, when we talk about Sola Scriptura, we would not agree that all we've been given by God is the Bible.

There is a specific context into which we are placing that particular terminology. Someone says, do we need more than the Bible? More than the Bible for what? For a certain knowledge of what the gospel is?

No.

But God has given us more than the Bible in the sense of the Holy Spirit and the church and all these other things, but that's a completely different context. Interesting how those things don't normally get challenged within the context of Catholic answers.

Yeah. Okay, when you see word or word of God or word of the Lord in the Bible, a lot of people don't realize that it's often referring to an oral teaching of the prophets or apostles or proclamations.

So prophets spoke the word of God, whether or not it made it into Scripture later. So the example I had was Jeremiah 25, 3 through 8. I'll skip around a little. It says, for 23 years the word of the Lord has come to me, and I have spoken to you again and again.

And then God's talking. He says, but you did not listen to me. Therefore the Lord Almighty says, because you have not listened to my words. So that was oral at the time. This one is in Scripture, but it shows how word of the Lord or word of God does not have to be always referring to Scripture.

And it has equal authority also. When Paul spoke and wrote his letters, he had the authority of Scripture. They turned out to be Scripture, but he had the authority whether or not, say there was a letter to some other church that we don't have in our Bible.

Paul's words had the authority at the time, and that was the word of the Lord.

Okay.

Well, again, it's interesting. You go back to the Roman Catholic controversy, a book I wrote a number of years ago. And one of the things I say what Sola Scriptura is not is a denial that the word of God has ever been spoken.

No one would question the fact that the Bible includes this truth that was just stated. The problem is not everything Jeremiah said or Ido the seer or anybody else, not all that was meant to be in Scripture, first of all.

And it does not mean that God intends everything that has ever been spoken by a prophet to be passed on in one of two ways. For example, Rome can't tell us what Jeremiah said outside of what's in Scripture.

I remember when I asked Father Mitchell Pacwa, is there a single word, a single word of Jesus Christ that has been dogmatically defined by the Roman Catholic Church outside of what is found in the canonical scriptures?

He said, well, no. And the same thing would be true of any of the apostles. When Paul was teaching orally, the question is, what do we have today? What is the rule of faith today? To look back at periods of inscripturation doesn't do anything for today because even Rome admits there is no revelation going on today.

So why bring this up? Good question. Don't know. It makes it sound like, oh, that's something I've never considered before. But without making the connection directly to the point, which you can't make because they don't believe revelation is ongoing, the idea being, well, these teachings, maybe they are found in these oral traditions.

Well, then make the assertion and then prove it. That's what Newman recognized he couldn't do, which is why you had to have the development hypothesis. And so these Catholic apologists are always there.

They're borrowing the argumentation of the partum-partum people initially, and then they try to back away from having to really prove that by adopting the development hypothesis. But then they go back and forth.

The inconsistencies are incredible. They really, really are. It's amazing. But let's do just one more section here, and then I'm going to have to find some way of marking exactly how far we got because there's 50 minutes of this, and we're not doing it all today.

But let's do one more section. We've already got one person online at 877 -753 -3341. That means we have room for you at, well, the same number, 877 -753 -3341. Let's do one more section, and then we'll start taking our calls.

Okay. Our phone number here again, 888 -318 -7884. We are talking about why we need more than the Bible. And in no way does that denigrate the Bible, as Dave pointed out here at the start of the program.

But we do have open phone lines for you right now, Catholic or non-Catholic. I know that this is a point of contention often, and we certainly don't want it to be in our discussions with our fellow Christians.

But if you have any questions about what is, what constitutes the Word of God, then, in light of what Dave just shared with us, if you have difficulty explaining tradition and its role in the life of a Christian and the life of a church, and how it can and really should be used to help interpret the Sacred Scriptures, give us a call.

Isn't it interesting, I'm just throwing this in here, where exactly does it interpret the Scriptures? We keep asking that question. Roman Catholics cannot give a specific answer as to where Rome has infallibly defined any passage of Scripture.

There are some that say, well, there's seven verses, and there's others that say, well, as long as it has something to do with dogma, then it's been officially interpreted. And then others will say, well, look at Matthew 16.

Matthew 16, 18 has been infallibly interpreted. But then when you push that, they'll go, well, only one sense of it's been infallibly interpreted. And there you go again. There's no way of coming up with a final answer on these things.

And by the way, if Catholic Answers would like to have me on to discuss these things, I'd be glad to do that if they'd like to come on here. We can do that.

Of course, there is that question of capital T Tradition versus lowercase t Tradition. If you've ever been confused or concerned about that distinction, you can call up and join us on the program today as well, 888 -318 -7884.

All right, Dave, continuing down here, time's passing very quickly here, so we'll try and touch upon some of these briefly. You mentioned that Tradition is not a dirty word, kind of a funny little saying there, cute little saying, but I guess it's true.

What do you mean by that?

Well, Protestants will often quote the verses where corrupt traditions are condemned, like the Pharisees, Matthew 15, 2 -6, Mark 7, 8 -13, and we agree with that.

Let me stop it right there. We agree with that. We agree that you should go ahead and condemn corrupt traditions. There's one problem, and see, I've tried to explain this to Mr. Armstrong before. The Jews, in Mark 7, Matthew 15, did not believe their traditions were corrupt.

In fact, they believed they were divine. And, in fact, interestingly enough, they believed that, especially the specific tradition, the Korban Rule, that that had been passed along outside of Scripture.

And it's going to be interesting. You're going to hear Armstrong try to go to Matthew 23 and say, Ah, this was passed on. You can see this in the rabbis. So was the Korban Rule. How do you judge both of them?

Yeah, according to Jesus, by the Scriptures, and how does a Roman Catholic do that when the canon of Scripture and the meaning of Scripture is all under the control of the Church? Interesting. Let's start this section again.

Well, Protestants will often quote the verses where corrupt traditions are condemned, like the Pharisees, Matthew 15, 2 -6, Mark 7, 8 -13. And we agree with that. But our point is that there's also a true tradition that's positively endorsed in Scripture.

And so to give a few verses, Thessalonians 3, 6, Keep away from any brother who is living in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you receive from us. Of course, that's Paul writing.

And what's he referring to? He, of course, is referring to the teaching that Paul had delivered to the Thessalonians in person in regards to the necessity of working and the broad outlines of the Gospel itself that does not, in and of itself, in any way, shape, or form, establish the existence of any kind of revelation that would differ in substance or material from that which is found in the God-breathed Scriptures, such as such things as the immaculate conception, bodily assumption of Mary, or papal infallibility.

1 Corinthians 11, 2 I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I have delivered them to you.

Yes, the Corinthians did listen to the teaching of Paul, especially in regards to the Gospel that he had delivered to them as well. Again, does not establish anything in regards to the Roman concept of a tradition that exists outside of Scripture that contains this other information, the basis of which almost 2 ,000 years after the giving of the Gospel message you define things that you then bind on people's hearts and souls, such as the bodily assumption of Mary.

And 2 Thessalonians 2, 15 Stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter, which is notable because it emphasizes the oral part again.

It certainly does, and of course as we've discussed that many, many, many times over the years, including in a couple of different books, in regards to the issue of Sola Scriptura and that particular passage, that once again he's referring to the fact that he was with the Thessalonians, he preached to them, so the word of mouth would have been what he preached, the letter would have been 1 Thessalonians, and specifically in the context he's talking about the Gospel, not things like papal infallibility or the bodily assumption of Mary, and should you object to even using that example, the bodily assumption of Mary, papal infallibility, those are the last two dogmas that were defined specifically on the basis of alleged tradition.

And I would love to challenge Mr. Armstrong, Mr. Armstrong, a challenge from the audience, show us, since you just cited it, show us where Paul taught the Thessalonians, because that was not just to the presbyters, that was not just to the bishops.

The passage just cited in 2 Thessalonians 2 .15 was addressed to all of the Thessalonians, and so where were they taught? The concept of the bodily assumption of Mary and papal infallibility. Document from history, sir.

Cardinal Newman knew he couldn't, that's why he abandoned the historical field of battle at that point, as George Salmon pointed out.

Also, 2 Timothy 1, 13 and 14, I'll just give the verses now, and 2, 2, Jude 3, content for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints, the idea that there's a tradition handed down.

No question about that, but again, none of this has anything to do with Sola Scriptura, if you understand Sola Scriptura, because the assumption would be that these are traditions passed down outside of scripture and not to be found in scripture, and without the documentation of that, these citations are irrelevant.

As well as the word of God, I would say that they're actually synonymous, which is another interesting point.

All right, you also mentioned that Jesus and Paul accepted non-biblical oral and written traditions.

That would be a perfect place to start. I'm going to go ahead and put the cursor right there, and five minutes and 55 seconds in, and so on Tuesday, we will once again take the opportunity, we'll pick up right there, and continue our response to the subject of Dave Armstrong's appearance on Catholic Answers.

Let's get ready to go back. Well, we're actually ready to go to our callers, but to make sure that everyone knows this segment is ended, we run away to our break. 877 -753 -3341. We'll be right back right after this.

Auburn Avenue, Federal Vision, and the Upcoming Conferences

Much a rarity today, so many stars, strong and true, quickly fall away.

Convictions once held and died for among Bible-believing Protestants are now being reconsidered with the advent of the recent Auburn Avenue Movement. Is there currently a common basis for dialogue between Roman Catholics and Protestants?

Were the signers of ECT correct in their ecumenical efforts, and all of the Reformed scholars who opposed them in error? Does Trinitarian Baptism make one a member of the New Covenant? Are Roman Catholics our brothers and sisters in Christ?

Join us in Los Angeles, California on November 5, 2004 for a full three hours of moderated debate between Dr. James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries and Douglas Wilson of the Auburn Avenue Movement and New St. Andrews College, as these topics are debated between two of the most respected representatives of the opposing viewpoints.

Additional information and tickets can be ordered at aomin .org. That's www .aomin .org. This portion of the dividing line has been made possible by the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. The Apostle Paul spoke of the importance of solemnly testifying of the gospel of the grace of God.

The proclamation of God's truth is the most important element of his worship in his church. The elders and people of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church invite you to worship with them this coming Lord's Day.

The morning Bible study begins at 9 .30 a .m. and the worship service is at 10 .45. Evening services are at 6 .30 p .m. on Sunday and the Wednesday night prayer meeting is at 7 .00. The Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church is located at 3805 North 12th Street in Phoenix.

You can call for further information at 602 -26-GRACE. If you're unable to attend, you can still participate with your computer and real audio at prbc .org where the ministry extends around the world through the archives of sermons and Bible study lessons available 24 hours a day.

Justification and the First National Conference

At the heart of the controversy between Roman Catholic and Reformation theology is the nature of justification itself. It is a debate not merely about how or when or by what means a person is justified but about the very meaning of justification and the gospel of Jesus Christ.

What's a debate reserved for Roman Catholics and the Reformers, the doctrine of justification is now being challenged from within the walls of Reformed evangelicalism itself. Join Alpha and Omega Ministries as we embark on our first national conference and confront this very issue, justification, the heart of the gospel, with pastor and co-author of Holy Scripture, the ground and pillar of our faith, David King, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Founders Conference, Tom Askell, New Testament Research Ministries founder and author of Evangelical Answers, Eric Svensson, the founder of the Spurgeon Archive and executive director of Grace to You, Philip Johnson, nationally renowned Reformed Christian artist, Steve Camp, and the founder of Alpha and Omega Ministries and author, Dr. James White.

Join us at the Los Angeles, California, LAX Sheraton Ballroom on November 6, 2004, beginning at 8 .45 a .m. Seating is limited, so order your tickets now at aomin .org. That's www .aomin .org.

Federal Vision, Baptism, and Covenant Membership

And welcome back to The Dividing Line. We're halfway through already, and we need to get to our phone callers. And we have an interesting phone call right off the bat. We have a question about the Federal Vision, but it's coming to us from Robert.

And Robert is at Ground Zero. No, he is not in Manhattan, because he's asking a question about the Federal Vision. He's in Monroe, Louisiana, which if you know about the Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church Conference, that's where it is.

Am I correct about that, Robert?

Yes, sir.

Yes, sir. Right smack dab in the middle, right?

Yes, sir. I've never been to that conference itself, though.

Oh, well, I hear you're going to have someone, a reason to go next year. You know who's going to be speaking?

Yes, sir. I should know. I was told.

N .T. Wright. I know that certainly would, if I was in the neighborhood, I might want to try to drop by and hear N .T. Wright speak. That would be most interesting. So what can we do for you, sir?

Well, being in Monroe, I've been trying to read up on it a little bit, trying to understand it, and I have a simple question. I guess I'm kind of simple-minded. They teach that if someone's baptized, they're in the covenant, but they can't apostatize and not be part of the elect.

Correct?

Okay.

Run that by me one more time, because that was somewhat distracting.

Okay.

Someone can be baptized, they're in the covenant, but they can't apostatize and they cannot be part of the elect and not go to heaven.

Right.

Okay.

You can be in the covenant without being part of the elect, according to their viewpoint, yes.

Okay. Do they believe that someone can not be baptized and be saved and fall down just before God in the baptismal waters or sprinkled and die before he got baptized and be able to go to heaven?

I would certainly assume that they would believe that baptism would not be the necessary means of salvation in the life of one of the elect. I would assume they would argue that, being good Presbyterians, that it is the standard or, shall we say, the normative way that God works to call his covenant people within the confines of covenant families, hence covenant children, and hence are to be baptized, so on and so forth, but that does not mean that he is limited to that context and hence a person could be saved without being baptized.

All right.

Now, here is my question. What advantage is there to be in the covenant if I was raised, say, in a Baptist church, I am not baptized, being raised, being raised in, you want to call it Sunday school, being taught by my parents, what advantage does the person in the covenant have over the person that is not in the covenant?

Well...

That's a simple answer.

Well, a couple things. First, from their perspective, a person who is not of the elect who is in the covenant receives covenant curses, which would not exactly be an advantage. I suppose they would say that through the preaching of the word they might have the advantage of a curb upon their sinful tendencies or things like that.

I'm really not certain if that would be considered an advantage in the context that you're saying. But the example you gave left me a little bit confused, so let me ask you to ask a question about it and see if I can understand exactly where you're coming from.

Okay.

The example you gave was you're raised in a Baptist church but you're not baptized.

Right.

I mean, before you're... Yeah, when you're a children you're not baptized in a Baptist church.

Okay.

And so, are you saying that from their perspective that would mean that those children are not in the covenant?