More From Fred Butler
J.C. Thibodaux
Got another post from Fred Butler in response to my rebuttal to him. He starts out with some more of his irrelevant well-poisoning before stating,
He even has created a cute little graphic mocking Grace to You ministries where I work.
Actually, I was just a spoof of the common Calvinist attitude shown when discussing doctrine (e.g. Fred's "you're blaspheming if you disagree with me" mentality), it was not intended as an insult to John MacArthur or the other members of GTY.
I am not going to give a blow-by-blow response to J.C.'s. I don't have the time or the desire.
Or a case strong enough,
I will say there are at least three foundational problems with his overall polemic against mine:
1) He doesn't believe regeneration does anything specific to change a sinner's heart.
He writes,
"Sin proceeds from the heart (Matthew 15:19), and just as good works are the outworking of faith, so sin is the result of a heart turning away from God"
However, the biblical evidence, as I noted, tells how a sinner's heart is so entirely changed that his desires are now only to please the Lord (see my article).
Here Fred resorts to simply trying to put words into my mouth to create a straw man to burn. I never said that regeneration doesn't change one's heart (it does), I simply stated that the change wasn't irresistible. We still have a sinful nature that wars against our spirit, we are not changed so that we can no longer fall to temptation, and will not be so perfected until we are with Christ. Fred goes on,
He will never turn away from God, because his heart has been created anew. Just as we didn't have the desire to come to God without the divine work of the new birth, after the new birth, we don't have the desire to turn from Him. J.C. doesn't interact with any of the information I presented. He just waves his hand and pronounces me an idiot of sorts.
Again, Fred's 'information' is quite lacking in the scriptural specifics department. Scripture makes it clear that even those who have escaped the world's corruption can still fall back into slavery to sin, which I'll touch on further below. Fred continues to pound his chest by calling my view of prevenient grace 'pagan,' he then asserts,
His view teaches works salvation. In spite of J.C.'s scornful protests to the contrary, his view of salvation is most certainly works oriented. He writes,
"Ah ah ah, no one said God couldn't save anyone without their cooperation, simply that scripture indicates that He requires it."
What? If God requires that we cooperate with His plan of salvation as J.C. so adamantly claims the Bible teaches, then how is this NOT works?
He really isn't getting it. The Calvinist tendency to associate anything that people do with 'works' is one of the great errors in the case for Calvinism. As J.P. Holding put it,
And a point I have yet to see explained as well is how making a decision qualifies as a "work." The Jews were forbidden to work on the Sabbath; did this prohibit them from thinking or making a decision? Is there any evidence that the Greek word behind "works" (ergon) ever refers to a thought or a decision? It is my earnest wish that an enterprising Calvinist will step to the plate and answer this question, for it seems to me that this is a flawed premise upon which the Calvinistic case rests. (Un Conditioning, J.P. Holding at Tektonics.org)
That pretty much spells it out. The answer is simple: Cooperation with grace is not a work.
The sinner has to do something in order to cooperate, correct? Believe the gospel with his faith, be obedient, produce good works, keep pursuing God or risk having sin so over take his heart he forfeits salvation, etc. What is the difference between J.C.'s view of salvation and say, the Muslim's? Or maybe the Mormon's? Or even the Roman Catholic's schtick? How exactly am I mis-understanding, mis-representing?
Mormon? I for one do not believe that "keeping the commandments of God will cleanse away the stain of sin" (Journal of Discourses 2:4). If we chose say Sunni Islam, its hard determinism would be much more in line with Calvinism than Synergism. I simply believe that one must receive the grace of God (and thereby the gift of faith) to be saved, and remain in the faith of Christ (i.e. persevere) which produces good works as a result to obtain the resurrection of the just. Once again Fred passes sweeping judgments of 'paganism' based entirely on his misconceptions.
[I wrote] "Works oriented?" Sorry, faith in Christ is not a 'work,' and remaining in the faith of Christ is not a 'work.' If that's the crux of his argument for condemning conditional security as blasphemy, he lost before he started.
But J.C., don't you have to exercise faith in order to cooperate with God as the Bible requires? You just wrote that a person did. Don't you have to remain in the faith of Christ by producing good fruit and guarding your heart from being over taken by sin in order to prevent forfeiting salvation? How exactly is this NOT works? Either J.C. is severely muddled, or he is re-defining words to fit his conclusions, Or both.
Or Fred completely missed the fact that I said, Sin proceeds from the heart (Matthew 15:19), and just as good works are the outworking of faith, so sin is the result of a heart turning away from God. in the last response to him. To assert that 'producing good fruit' or avoiding sin are the means to remain in the faith is completely backwards. Fred manufactures a bit more evidence against me in stating,
J.C. equates the terms and stipulations of the Mosaic covenant with the New Covenant.
This is probably the most blunderous aspect to J.C.'s entire worldview. He thinks the promises and curses that governed the nation of Israel when the occupied the land are as equally applied to Christians.
No, I don't. I do believe that the covenants share the aspect of conditionality, this does not make them the same.
Thus, just as God stated He would bring cursings upon Israel if they refused to heed the covenant He made with them at Sinai, like giving them over to foreign enemies to punish them if the people worshiped false gods, or even completely cutting them off; so too a Christian is under the same curse of being cut off and experiencing eternal damnation if he doesn't fulfill his requirements of partaking in the covenant.
Yes, a Christian will be cut off for not fulfilling the requirements of the covenant. The big difference is that the new covenant is based upon faith in Christ, which if one rejects, he will receive the worst of punishmemt.
Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace? (Hebrews 10:29)
The Mosaic covenant that governed Israel as a people was certainly conditional. That is because it was meant to function as a temporary covenant governing a temporary theocratic nation. The Mosaic covenant was meant to be replaced by fulfillment with the New Covenant. The New Covenant expanded beyond the borders of the land of Israel to encompass the entire world. Where as the New Covenant is described as being eternal, the Mosaic wasn't.
Yes, the New Covenant is eternal, whereas national Israel completely broke and severed the Old Covenant, the Covenant of Christ will never cease to be with God's people as a whole (or with Israel, for His gifts and calling are in that sense irrevocable - Romans 11:29). This doesn't entail the idea that no one in covenant with God can fall out of covenant with Him, which I address at the conclusion.
Fred finishes painting his distorted picture of Synergist doctrine, displaying either his inability or simply his unwillingness to understand what he is arguing against,
It never was meant to be. Thus, for J.C. to apply the same stipulations of blessing and cursings that governed the Mosaic covenant to the New Covenant is an embarrassing error.
Once again he misrepresents his opposition. I stated nothing about the stipulations of the Old Covenant applying to the new. The Old Covenant was based on works of the law, the new on faith in Christ apart from the works of the law (Romans 3:27).
J.C. mocks that I don't provide any examples of how the new birth, or regeneration, is permanent in the believer so that its affects can never be undone. Note the key phrases in Jeremiah's prophecy of the New Covenant that is also cited in Hebrews,
I will put My law in their minds...
I will write it on their hearts...
I will be their God...
They shall be my people...
I never argued that it wasn't permanent. It IS permanent if one remains in Christ. If one does not remain, then yes, such blessings can be revoked, a concept that carries no conflict with anything he cites above.
There is a divine work that takes place in this covenant that will change the participants. In this case, a divine heart change that will make them godly. Obedience is now a result of an internal motivation created by God. Ezekiel also uses similar language in his description of the New Covenant when he writes in 36:26, 27,
26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
27 I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.
Which I agree with.
How can this be any clearer? God says He will cause them to walk and they will in return keep His judgments and do them. They won't fall away into sin because there remains no longer a heart desirous of sin. The principle of sin that enslaved us has been made inoperative as Paul describes in Romans 6:6, because the heart of stone is replaced with a heart of flesh that has God's laws written on them.
And here is where Fred's case breaks down entirely. While God does regenerate us and put a new heart and spirit within us, the sinful nature still remains until we go to be with the Lord. If it were inoperative and incapable of overcoming us, then we could not be sincerely warned,
But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. (Hebrews 3:13)
nor could it be possible for those who had escaped the corruption of the flesh to be overcome by it, but scripture states,
For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning. (2 Peter 2:20)
Fred tries for one last shot,
That is the promise of the New Covenant, and its promises of bringing its participants to eternal life is so certain that the sun and moon will cease functioning as God has ordained them before that promise is broken (Jeremiah 31:35, 36).
But completely misses the context,
And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.
Thus saith the LORD, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; The LORD of hosts is His name:
If those ordinances depart from before Me, saith the LORD, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever.
Thus saith the LORD; If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith the LORD.
As I've already cited from Romans 11:29, God's covenant with His people as a whole will never depart, nor will a remnant that is His cease to be. This states nothing against the fact that individual members who do not abide in the covenant can be cut off. Just as God showed His great mercy continuously towards Israel (Ezra 3:11), this was no bar to individual members being cut off; likewise those that have been grafted into the New Covenant are warned,
Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in His goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off. (Romans 11:22)
To sum it up, there is no scriptural or logical reason to equate receiving the grace of God with a work of the law, clearly making grace-based Synergism incompatible with 'works-oriented' soteriology. The old and new covenants both have stipulations: one is based on works, the other on faith in Christ. While God does continue to preserve the redeemed as a people, this does not mean that some individuals cannot be cut off. The new birth gives us the desire to follow God, but as the various warnings against falling away in scripture testify to, the danger of falling into faithlessness still remains. It's not a wise method of biblical interpretation to discount the warnings God gives based on how we would like to interpret His promises, as the assurance of His faithfulness does not eliminate the stipulations He has sovereignly established. I will also note that Fred's usage of the terms 'blasphemous' and 'pagan' to describe Arminian and Synergist doctrines displays both a critical misunderstanding of the beliefs he attacks as well as very unchristian behavior towards his brethren. Perhaps it's time to hang up the mace.
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