August 26, 2004

Casting 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. 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 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 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 have to start finding good blogs to read.

They're all, 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'd 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's 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, like can we all put a, can we 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 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. That'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, you know, just sort of try asking him 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 because let me tell you something.

I put a lot of work into that blog. I really do. And I mean, I look like it may look like that's just, you know, 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, we store our graphics on different sites.

You got to FTP them over there and then put that URL in and there's just all sorts of stuff like that.

And so anyways, it takes a while. Anyway, I was, I'm 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 is going to explode or something like that, but it seems to be working just fine.

Where did I store this thing? Let me, that'll give me the specific date that this thing, this thing took place.

Ah, 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 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, you know,

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, this all of a sudden Explorer is like really slow.

Is it having like rebuild things? I'm hearing people talking in the background, by the way. I think it's having 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 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. 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. Put so many cookies on your system, you'll never, never, ever be able to get rid of them.

And, you know, he's got all sorts of stuff is his literary resume and all the rest of 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 we're going to respond over the next number of weeks.

Not because it all at once. If you had other things you'd like to discuss today, you'd like to call him.

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 these little segments where we're going to be responding to Dave Armstrong's appearance on Catholic Answers Live.

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

We have. Nobody expects the

Spanish Inquisition. I am usually referred to as the master. There are some who call me.

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 to if I can remember exactly what it is.

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 a Spike Jonze thing. That would have been so funny. I sort of had to take the lead here.

Let's let's let's listen in. Each of you like to give on this topic that consists of basically 10 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 totally agree with that, even the preeminent standard. But it doesn't the difference with Catholics is it doesn't rule out finding authority of apostolic 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.

So Protestants are trying to make that argument, but I think it fails. And I'd like to talk to some on the phone and have them give it a shot.

And because I've talked about this many times, I don't 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 of the Scriptures as the the 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 response to this.

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, what

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.

But 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, 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.

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, the

Holy Spirit has no role in guiding and directing. Obviously, when we talk about Sola Scriptura, we would not agree that all we have 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 is a completely different context. Interesting how those things do not normally get challenged within the context of Catholic answers.

Yes. Okay, when you see word or word of God or word of the Lord in the Bible, a lot of people do not realize that it is often referring to oral teaching of the prophets or apostles or proclamation.

Prophets spoke the word of God, whether or not it made it into Scripture later. The example

I had was Jeremiah 25, verses 3 -8. I will skip around a little. It says,

For twenty -three years the word of the Lord has come to me, and I have spoken to you again and again. And then

God is talking. He says, But you did not listen to me. Therefore the Lord our Almighty says,

Because you have not listened to my words. 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 do not have in our

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

Lord. Okay, well again, you know, it is 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 Itto 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 cannot tell us what Jeremiah said outside of what is 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 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, 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 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, in 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, we'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, but...

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

Corban 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, oh, this was passed on. You can see this in the rabbis.

So was the Corban 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 through 6, Mark 7, 8 through 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, 2 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 can guarantee, 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 it 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.

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. A godly man is such a rarity today, so many stars...

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 5th, 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.

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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.

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

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Seating is limited, so order your tickets now at aomin .org. That's www .aomin .org.

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 had 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 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.

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.

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. Someone can be baptized.

They're in the covenant. Right. But they can't apostatize and they cannot be part of the elect and not go to heaven.

Right. You can be in the covenant without being part of the elect, according to their viewpoint, yes. Okay. Do they believe that someone cannot be baptized and be saved and fall down just before God 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's limited to that context, and hence a person could be saved without being baptized.

All right. Now then, here's my question. What advantage is there to be in the covenant if I was raised, say, in a

Baptist church? I'm not baptized. Being raised, 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's not in the covenant?

I don't see the difference then. I'm a simple -minded folk. I'll give you 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. 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. When you're a children, you're not baptized in a Baptist church. Okay. Are you saying that from their perspective that would mean that those children are not in the covenant?

That's my understanding. Yeah, I would wonder about that myself, except Doug Wilson has said in a recent blog entry, and remember that one of the problems when you start talking about the federal vision is that you have to define who you're talking about.

That is, are you talking about Rich Lusk? Are you talking about Doug Wilson? Are you talking about Steve Schlissel? Are you talking about John Barrett?

Who are you talking about? Because I see differences between each of the perspectives that are presented.

And so Doug Wilson said in a blog entry just recently, he has a blog and he writes on this subject fairly frequently, he said, we baptize our children because they're

Christians. We do not make them Christians by baptizing them. We baptize our children because they are

Christians. We believe God's promises in regards to covenant children, and therefore that's why we baptize them.

And so maybe from that perspective, they would actually believe those children are in the covenant, they've just not been given the privilege of the sign.

I don't know. That's a good question. I would like to ask that very question.

What about children that are raised within a church where they are under the preaching of the gospel, but they are not baptized?

Are they not in the covenant? And hence, does baptism become ex opera operato, something that automatically joins one of the covenant?

Good question. I'm not exactly sure where they go with it. If you attend Auburn, I'll ask him.

I wanted to ask you first before I asked him. Well, I'd ask him. But remember, that's just that one pastor and that one church's view.

I saw, for example, I don't think that church practices paedo -communion, right? I thought he did.

I thought he did. Maybe I'm mistaken. I've never actually attended the church. I really don't know.

All right. Maybe he does. I don't know. All I know is there were paedo -communionists amongst the speakers at the

Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Conference and non -paedo -communionists. So there would be a difference right there as far as that goes.

So I would be interested in knowing what they said in response to that.

But I would also be interested in knowing exactly what Doug Wilson would say about that. Is a child precluded from the covenant by lack of experience of baptism, even if they are under the preaching of the gospel and in a

Christian home? Because that would seem to be required by what he said earlier, we baptize our children because they're

Christians. The problem, of course, remember, for Doug Wilson, a Christian is not necessarily of the elect.

Right. That's where part of the confusion for most people comes in, is he will talk about the lesbian,

Wiccan, Episcopal bishop woman, Eskimo bishop woman, who is a

Christian. He says she's a heretic and she's going to hell, but she's still a

Christian. And that's where people go, why would you use, why separate the term

Christian from the gospel at that point? And that's going to be part of the discussion, obviously. So I would be interested in what he thinks about that.

But as far as what is the advantage, that's one of the questions I have. And that is, it only seems that the only advantage eternally that one could have is if one is of the elect.

Anyone who is joined to the covenant who is not of the elect is going to apostatize and hence bring upon them the most severe of curses in light of their understanding of Hebrews 10, verse 29.

I don't agree with that exegesis of Hebrews 10, verse 29, but that is the assertion that is being made. And hence, by baptizing them, you are exposing them to those curses.

Well, thank you very much. I appreciate that. Okay, I'll be interested to let us know what your friend says. I will.

God bless you down there. Thanks, Lancer. Bye -bye. 877 -753 -3341.

A little bit distracted there. Somebody was flooding the channel with the entire Bible. It's just like, use the private message thing, okay?

Don't post entire chapters. No other, I don't see any indicate, no one wants to call today.

That's sort of sad because unlike last time where I had no energy and was like brain dead, now

I'm wide awake and I've got all this energy and nobody wants to call.

I suppose I could open up a file and start reading it in British.

Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm sorry. Well, I forgot. Yes, the powers that be have announced from on high that I, their slave here before the microphone, must announce and remind everyone that the prices for the debate slash conference, remember the debate slash conference coming up first weekend in November.

Yes, that big interesting time when we're all going to get together and you're going to get to meet important people like Steve Camp and Phil Johnson.

And unfortunately, you will have to listen to me speak as well, even though you might be able to skip out on those when

I'm singing. Well, I would skip out if I was singing as well, but when I'm speaking. That great conference, the debate and the conference, the prices for the debate and conference that is walking through the door, that is staying in the hotel, which have been very, very low for a very, very long time, will be going up September 1st.

Yes, believe it or not, folks, we are only a small number of days away from September 1st.

It is right around the corner. I've sort of noticed maybe you have, too, that the sun's going down a little bit earlier and it's not quite as hot outside.

I think it's wonderful. And I have people actually encouraging me to sing on the program.

That's not a wise thing. The world has gone nuts. Anyway, the prices will be going up on September 1st.

So you need to get your tickets now.

Do not be a procrastinator. And also remember, when you wait till the very last moment, that means somebody else has to rush to try to fulfill your request.

And sometimes that places all the more stress upon those poor folks. And so do not be a procrastinator.

Get it done. I know there are many more of you who are planning on being there. They're in Los Angeles and so on and so forth.

So get in touch with them. I had a question in the channel, since no one's calling in.

A question, what is the significance of the Calvinist communion?

Sing in Scottish. Yeah, right. Well, I don't know what a Calvinist communion is.

But if you mean Reformed view of the Lord's Supper, there's a range of viewpoints expressed there because Calvin sought to follow a different road than had been followed by Luther, for example.

And you might want to look at the section on that particular subject in both the Westminster Confession of Faith and in the

London Baptist Confession of Faith, as that will explain those things for you better.

And I could at least give you a foundation for that. All right. We have a follow -up on the last call.

How do we get a follow -up on the last call? That's fairly quick. Let's talk with Steve in Arlington, Texas, a state that I doubt seriously is on the list of states that are in play in the

Electoral College in the upcoming debate election. Would that be a fair statement there,

Steven? We're all pretty unanimous, I think. Has the other guy even shown up in your state as far as campaigning goes?

I don't know. I know some of his followers have gone to Crawford, Texas.

Yes. That's right down the door. Did you all give him a nice Texas welcome? I don't know.

I shouldn't get into that stuff. Anyway. We're so Republican here.

I know my wife works with a homosexual who is Republican. You know, that could only happen in Texas.

Well, maybe in California, too, but anything can happen in California. Anyway, what can we do for you,

Steve? I was wondering if they, the federal vision type people, if they can agree with other regular

Reformed folk that dispensationalism errs where it kind of seems to see physical descendants of Abraham as still belonging to Israel.

Why is it that they insist that physical descendants of Christians are part of the church?

Well, it really, and this gives me an opportunity to maybe help a number of folks to get a little better perspective on this whole situation.

To be fair to Doug Wilson and the federal visionists and people in that camp, let's try to remember where they were coming from.

What they themselves said was their reason for emphasizing the things they're emphasizing.

In 2002, at the Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church Conference, if you listen carefully to the presentations that were made, which

I have more than once, they emphasized that their concern is pastoral.

And that is, how are you to deal with, especially the individual, and I'm getting a dog barking in the background here, with an individual who is subject to what might be called excessive introspection, looking inside the ...

Hello? You might want to turn that down in the background. We're getting feedback on it. Okay? Okay.

Alright, thanks. When I start hearing myself talking to me, that's a bad thing. So anyway, what they're concerned about is that if you go the

Puritan route, where you talk about examining yourself and you talk about fruit and evidences of those things, and especially if you do what

I thought everybody did at one point or another, but, well, of course, I realize that's not quite the case. If you emphasize this call to a life -shattering, changing, conversion experience, and you make that normative, then you are, in essence, causing people to not have an objective, unchanging foundation upon which to stand.

And so their perspective is that you need to have ...

The covenant is objective. It is not subjective. It's not an issue of who's in, who's out, examination of fruit, conversion experiences, and all the rest of that stuff.

They say we Reformed folks have missed the boat because we've viewed the covenant through the lens of elections, through the lens of the decree, rather than viewing the decree through the lens of the covenant.

The covenant, they say, is given to us. It's objective. It's something that we see. You enter into it by baptism.

And as a result, we are to look at that. That's all we can hold on to.

That's why they say, hey, as long as you've received Trinitarian baptism, you're a Christian. You're a member of the Church. Now be faithful to that.

And hence the idea of evangelizing Roman Catholics by grabbing them by their baptism, because the baptism is objective.

They've been joined to the covenant, and it's objective that way. The problem is, as most people have pointed out, that doesn't solve the problem.

Because they have to, if they're going to be fair with the biblical information, they have to likewise admit that that doesn't really tell you anything, because you can be baptized, and you can be in the covenant, but that doesn't mean that you're elect.

And in fact, it may only mean that God is greatly increasing the curses that are going to come upon you, and it just doesn't answer to the alleged reason as to why all this concern about the objectivity of the covenant in the first place.

And so this really does go back to the old Northern Presbyterian, Southern Presbyterian viewpoint.

Charles Hodge representing the Northern Presbyterian viewpoint, and a number of the great

Southern Presbyterian writers responding against that. Especially in regards to what is a valid baptism, and so on and so forth.

Hodge accepting a Roman Catholic baptism. Many Southern Presbyterians would not accept that Roman Catholic baptism.

Doug Wilson has specifically insisted that we should accept Roman Catholic baptisms.

Greg Bonson, we have this clip on our website, on my blog, specifically said we shouldn't.

And what's the difference between the two? Well, Bonson said, quite simply, Rome is a false church.

It doesn't have the gospel, and hence it can't do anything that is valid or right or proper.

It doesn't matter what form it was done in. When you separate it from the gospel, it's no longer Christian.

And taking, at that point, a more Southern Presbyterian view, whereas Wilson would take a more Northern Presbyterian view, the objectivity of the covenant, and he would basically say, look, if you start talking about whether it's a true gospel or a false gospel, now you're getting subjective.

Now you're getting into a gray area. We want something that's black and white. Have you been baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Good. Boom.

You're in. That's objective. Now be faithful to that. That's the whole point of allegedly making the covenant objective in this way.

But like I then said, but if you then admit that you can still fall away in that context, how does that answer the question?

Outside of saying, well, what that means is when you stand before the people of God and you preach, you can preach as if everyone in front of you is a member of the covenant and has these responsibilities, and you don't have to have this thought in the back of your mind, well, some of these people are elect, so some of them are going to listen and some of them are not.

But again, I don't see how their system escapes that because that's still the fact.

Some of these people sitting in front of me are not elect, and some of them are not going to, they don't have ears to hear what

I'm saying, and I can exhort them to faithfulness until the cows come home, and it's not going to make any difference.

So I don't see that it accomplishes anything other than one thing very, very clearly. Confusion, a tremendous amount of confusion.

How in the world do you evangelize by grabbing someone by their baptism? I mean, I understand the idea, well, call them to faithfulness, but, and this is especially, here comes the

Baptist part of me, how do you call somebody to faithfulness to something that happened to them when they didn't even know?

And especially if it's from a false church where there's no gospel. I mean, are you actually going to tell them, you know, a

Roman Catholic who's baptized as an infant, as a child, that they somehow by that are made to be responsible to covenants that are not even a part of what the church taught them, not even taught their parents at that point in time, they're actually by that action made responsible to a covenant that unless they live somewhere where there's some

Christians that can preach to them, they can't even know what that was? Is that really what we're saying?

That doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever. So, did I even get close to your question there?

I don't remember. Sorry, I tend to go along with it.

But I'm satisfied, I think. Yeah, see, to me the issue's real simple.

Baptism, apart from the gospel, is a mere human right.

Okay? That is my position. Anything separated from the gospel of Jesus Christ is not blessed by the

Holy Spirit. It is not appropriated by God. It is not representative of the Christian faith.

If you don't have the gospel, you don't have the power of God. Period. End of discussion.

I mean, that's where I'm coming from, and that's not where the federal visionaries are coming from.

Okay. Okay? I'm sorry, did I get a little bit too animated for you there? No, no. I just didn't know what to say.

Well, say, go Bush or something like that, and we'll let you go. Okay, God bless you. Thanks, Stephen.

God bless. Bye -bye. I won't even say 877 -753 -3341 because we're just about out of time.

But that's, you know, that's my point. And I think I can preach that one, and I think

I can defend that one. If it's not associated with the gospel.

And, in fact, let me take this farther. Roman Catholic baptism. Roman Catholic baptism is part of a system that not only is separate from the gospel, it is a denial of the gospel.

When you talk about the mass, when you talk about the sacramental system of Rome, we're not talking about just a variant here.

It's these quote -unquote reformed Catholics. Talk about oxymoron. Just don't get this part.

They just don't get this part that the gospel is not a matter of opinions. It has this big, broad, you know, the big tent viewpoint of the gospel.

Either Jesus Christ died once for all, and his death is perfect in and of itself, or it's not.

You can't have it both ways. And Roman Catholic baptism is by a system that blasphemes the gospel, and therefore the idea that somehow despite that, despite the blasphemy of the gospel, there is no gospel truth there.

Despite all that, it's still Christian baptism? Where in the world do you get that from the page of Scripture?

Where on earth does that come from? I don't know. I can't figure that part out at all.

But that's the only way I can understand what's being said.

And so there's where the battle is joined from my perspective. Obviously I think that the idea of the new covenant existing apart from the gospel is likewise grossly unbiblical.

The new covenant is the covenant in the blood of Jesus Christ. And I don't believe there's anyone in the new covenant who is not bathed and cleansed and perfected in the blood of Jesus Christ.

And I know, I know, but if you haven't taken the time to at least listen to what the other side is saying at that point and what

I've said about that subject, please do, before you say, oh no, no, no, you're, you're, you're, you know, that's a whole other issue.

Hey, Tuesday morning we will be getting together here again on The Dividing Line.

We do so at 11 a .m. Mountain Standard Time, whatever time that is for you right now, through September and into, is it late

October again when they do that? I don't know. I feel sorry if you guys have to change your clocks, but we'll be back here at 11 o 'clock my time

Tuesday morning. I don't leave again until I'm heading up to Toronto, Canada. And in fact,

I only realized last night, I'm not going to be in the United States on 9 -11.

That's sort of scary. That's sort of odd. But I will not be flying on 9 -11 either.

I'll be flying 9 -10 and 9 -12. But anyways, it's going to be a couple weeks before we are gone again.

And so 11 a .m., that's 2 p .m. Eastern Daylight Time. For The Dividing Line, we will be here.

We'll continue our review of Dave Armstrong's Attack Upon Sola Scriptura on Catholic Answers.

And we invite you to be with us then. See you then. God bless. Bye -bye. This has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.

If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O.

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