The Narrow Path Ministries

This is a continuation of Earl's thread from the old forum.

I re-listed to the series and thought it was better the second time I went through it. Then, a few days ago, I was thinking about the views of hell (since it was discussed several times on Steve's radio program) and remembered something from day 5 of the debate between Steve Gregg and James White. Read this and tell me if this is a contradictory statement or if I'm just missing something:

Day 5
Time: 3:16-3:54 Steve (in the process of asking a question) is reading from James White's written works and is quoting James:

* "God is under no obligation to extend His grace to the rebel sinner and every single person who enters into eternal punishment would, if given the opportunity, freely choose to remain under punishment rather than bow the knee in loving adoration of the God that they hate."

* "If those who go to hell were given the choice in eternity to either love God completely or return to punishment, every one of them would march right back into punishment."

Now, compare this to what James White says in answer to Steve's question: "Why does God have to harden peoples hearts if people can't repent unless God gives them a special grace of repentance?

Part of James White's answer (@ 49:01) is:
* "You mentioned Pharaoh for example. Why would He harden Pharaoh's heart? Well sometimes sinners will do the right thing to get out from underneath judgment. That doesn't mean their hearts have been changed. If I've got frogs leaping all over me or lice or darkness or boils (the list is a long one) I'm just going to try and save my skin. If that means bowing the knee before God, not of course, out of a true and loving heart but just to try and stop this stuff I'm going to do so. It's interesting that God does not allow this to happen."

Am I missing something here? In one case, God must harden someone or else he will try and get out of judgment, even to the point of bowing the knee before God. Yet in the other case, if given the choice a sinner would walk right back into judgment instead of bowing the knee.

It certainly looks like a contradiction to me, (going by what is posted, I haven’t re-listened to the debate).

I’m not surprised; to me these statements just don’t make sense:

"God is under no obligation to extend His grace to the rebel sinner and every single person who enters into eternal punishment would, if given the opportunity, freely choose to remain under punishment rather than bow the knee in loving adoration of the God that they hate."

* "If those who go to hell were given the choice in eternity to either love God completely or return to punishment, every one of them would march right back into punishment."

In this life at least, it seems man will do just about anything to escape hardship and pain, so why would that change in the after-life?

In church history, there were at times some professing believers who succumbed to the pressure of persecution, but once these were over, would often petition to be re-instated into the congregation.

Jesus said in the parable of the sower:
Mat 13:20 But that which was sown on the stony places is this: he who hears the Word and immediately receives it with joy.
Mat 13:21 But he has no root in himself, and is temporary. For when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the Word, he immediately stumbles.

I can’t imagine that these individuals wouldn’t jump at any chance, if available, to escape out of hell (especially if it was like the traditional popular view).

Another thought - if people actually preferred to stay there, why would there be weeping and gnashing of teeth?

I can accept that there would be some rebellious people who, while living would profess a preference to hell over heaven, but I think it’s only because they don’t really believe in the existence of either. I cannot conceive that anyone, if actually finding themselves in a place of never-ending torture, would choose to stay and not take a way out if offered.

A quick comment, Hi,

I don't think James White was [directly] speaking to universalism. Initially, I thought he might be. But after hearing him out:

He seems to have been focusing on the the Calvinist belief of complete inability and using a theoretical illustration of people who wind up in Hell; that they wouldn't be able to "will" or "choose to love God" even then. Put another way, it appears White was saying that even going to Hell itself and being in punishments there {coming from White's eternal punishment viewpoint, I presume} wouldn't give the necessary "prompting" toward humanity's ability to repent, or bring on the required conditions for humans being able to do it.

Iow, I think White was saying: God chooses {wills, sets the conditions for} who will be saved: People can't and couldn't choose salvation, even if they were under the extreme duress of 'torture' in Hell and had an hypothetical opportunity: No such opportunity exists in Calvinism. I might be wrong on this.

Off-topic: I'm about 95% convinced of Conditional Immortality, 4.5% of the traditional view, which leaves 0.05% (not to go into any of that now tho). Thanks,

RickC wrote:
Iow, I think White was saying: God chooses {wills, sets the conditions for} who will be saved: People can't and couldn't choose salvation, even if they were under the extreme duress of 'torture' in Hell and had an hypothetical opportunity: No such opportunity exists in Calvinism. I might be wrong on this.

I agree, yet James also states that evil men will sometimes do the right thing to get out of punishment (unless God hardens them to prevent this). So his view would still seem to be inconsistent. If people can only good if God put it in them, then why harden peoples hearts to keep them from doing what is right?

hi, i would like to listen to these debates. would someone post a link please?

many thanks †

Hi
Calvinism Debate - Steve vs. James White

A-ha! Got it. Thank you so much Suzana!

I've been listening to this debate between Mr. White (sorry, I can't refer to someone with an unaccredited PhD as a 'Dr' as that is disrespectful to those who really earned one) and Mr. Gregg for the first time (I heard the first one the first time round, but I couldn't stand Mr. White's style of assertion with a loud voice). So far I'm only at the end of the second day, but it is great listening to Steve's articulate and clear responses that get straight to the heart of the matter, delivered in a gracious manner, even when it must be very trying to do so.

Just one point of advice. I would recommend asking for a source from a Greek dictionary when anyone tries appealing to the Greek. The idea that a verb like 'foreknow' must have a causative sense because it is in the active voice is just nonsense.

Verbs like 'know' and 'see' aren't causative, and therefore some tenses are in the middle voice (i.e. the future γνώσομαι), even though we see them as active. The verb ginosko from which it comes is also active, but it certainly doesn't have a causative sense of causing knowledge, but simply of knowing. I think it was dishonorable of him to appeal to the Greek without citing any recognized Greek scholar, since he knows that his opponent does not know the language.

Here is how the same verb from Romans 8:28 is used in Thucydides and Josephus. Note I've only taken examples where the exact same form of the verb is used, in order to save time:

The Peloponnesian War, 2.65
τοσοῦτον τῷ Περικλεῖ ἐπερίσσευσε τότε ἀφ᾽ ὧν αὐτὸς προέγνω καὶ πάνυ ἂν ῥᾳδίως περιγενέσθαι τὴν πόλιν Πελοποννησίων αὐτῶν τῷ πολέμῳ.
So that at the time Pericles was more than justified in the conviction at which his foresight had arrived, that the Athenians would win an easy victory over the unaided forces of the Peloponnesians.

Here the standard translation turns the verb into a verbal phrase built on the idea of foresight.

The Second is from Josephus,

Against Apion, book 1:
ἀλλὰ σοφὸς ἦν ὁ μάντις, δι᾽ οὗ τοῦτο κατορθώσειν ὁ βασιλεὺς ὑπελάμβανε. καὶ πῶς οὐ προέγνω τὸ ἀδύνατον αὐτοῦ τῆς ἐπιθυμίας;
However, the prophet by whose means the king thought to compass his design was a wise man. If so, how came he not to know that such his desire was impossible to be accomplished?

Here again simple foreknowledge is in view.
I cannot convey just how irresponsible I think Mr. White's comment was.

Hi Dean,

Thanks for those helpful examples.

I knew that Mr. White was continually mistaking the "active voice" of a verb to mean that it involved what we would recognize as "active behavior" on the part of the subject (even the verb in the phrase, "I lay motionless" is in the active voice). It was one of the many things I did not have time to respond to in the presentations. Thanks for pointing it out here.

I'm now about a third of the way through day four, but wanted to comment since it'll be a few more days till I get to the rest. I wanted to comment on the whole issue of the verse 'as many as were ordained to eternal life believed'. Even though I'm not Calvinist, I haven't really thought about that verse before, and listening to the debate really made me do some homework on it.

Firstly, Mr. White is of course right (and no one is disputing it) that the tense of the verb is pluperfect (there was no need for the technical language of the periphrastic form - all that was important is the tense). But the tense has to be pluperfect; it's the same in English: when we are writing in the past tense, and wish to state something that occurred prior to the tense we are using, we shift back a tense: 'as many as had sat down at the table, ate'. Shank's work didn't deserve the bluster and the insinuation that it was suppressing something.

I did some study on the meaning of the word, and was having some difficulty with it (I have four years of homeric/classical/hellenistic Greek, but I'm still learning, and there is still a long, long way to go). It seems that White was right to say that it doesn't mean they were themselves naturally disposed to eternal life, or that they disposed themselves.

It seems that they were disposed to eternal life by the preaching of the apostles - which makes a contrast with those who rejected the preaching of Paul and Barnabas and judged themselves unworthy of eternal life (a point that Steve made). Anyway, here's a quote I found on Google Books that explains all this. At least it seems to make a lot of sense to me and i think it's right. It's lengthy so I'll split it up and recommend that people skip ahead to the bottom box if there's too much here:

Appoint suggests simply volitional determination; but the original term, in virtue of its idiosyncracy, suggests the idea of objective arrangement rather than of subjective determination or decree. It is such an arrangement, that is referred to even in Mat. xxviii. 16,—" where Jesus had appointed them." Jesus had arranged with them to meet them on the mountain. In Luke vii. 8, the same idea is manifest,—" I am a man set under authority." The meaning is not, " I am a man appointed under authority," but, I am a man holding under authority the place arranged for me. So in Acts xv. 2—" they determined that Paul and Barnabas should go up so Jerusalem." The real idea is—"they arranged that Paul and Barnabas should go up to Jerusalem." So in Acts xxii. 10; xxviii. 23. And so in Rom. xiii. 1. And in 1. Cor. xvi. 15, the idea of appointment is altogether inadmissible,—"they have addicted themselves to the ministry of the saints." The idea is that they ranged themselves in the category of ministers to the saints. Whosoever loses sight of this idea of objective arrangement, and substitutes for it the idea of subjective determination, misunderstands, and that radically, the nature of the word. (See the multitudinous compound of the word.)

The translation of Acts xiii. 48 is somewhat of a difficulty, just because we have no precise homologue for the original term. But the idea undoubtedly is,—that "at many as were inwardly adjusted, arranged, or put in order in relation to eternal life, believed." As many as were ready for eternal life believed. That is the idea. But because there is no English word that exactly covers the breadth of import embodied in the Greek vocable, a verbally precise translation is a matter of difficulty, perhaps of impossibility. "Appointed," however, is altogether objectionable." Ordained" is much better, for in its original import it suggests ordination in the sense of the Latin ordinalio, that is, in the sense of ordering or setting in order.
“Doctrinal and Exegetical Queries,” The Evangelical Repository, Third Series, Vol. 3 (Glasgow: Thomas D. Morison, 1865), 231.

Also,the Greek word for 'as many as' (hosos in the sing. masc. nom.) does mean .... 'as many as'. Therefore I can't see how the conclusion can be avoided that there were no more elect among the crowd that the apostles preached to. I think this was a real low point of the debate in so far as White's argumentation goes. The only alternative would have been to say 'yes, that's right, that crowd was hardened, but there were still other people in the city they could preach to'. Fair enough, but the passage understood from his perspective would rule out any others from among the crowd being of the elect. Good job to Steve on this once again. I wish I could be so sharp under pressure, and maintain such grace and humility. I learn so much from the answers, and from the spirit exhibited.