White vs. Stratton vs. McAtee Debate … Molinism vs. Calvinism

In the Calvinist (James White) vs Molinist (Tim Stratton) the Molinist creates a scenario that is supposed to show how wicked the God of the Calvinist is. He says (paraphrasing), “Pretend a regenerate man gives into temptation and rapes a little girl. Now according to your theology God caused this. Do you believe God caused this?”
 
I think James White dropped the ball here as White decided to take the all “I’m outraged that you would even ask such a question” route. White never answers the question.
 
First I would have quoted from Acts 2
 
 
22 “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a Man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs which God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves also know— 23 Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death;
 

Then I would have said…

“Here we see the greatest evil crime ever perpetrated. A crime that is exponentially far greater than a child being raped. Here you have the innocent and righteous son of God being crucified by evil men. Yet, the Holy Spirit inspired Scripture teaches the Messiah was delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God. This same thought is articulated again in Acts 4 speaking of the Father’s assignation in Jesus going to the Cross,

 
28 to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose determined before to be done
 
In both these cases God is said to have determined and with purposed foreknowledge that Christ would be crucified and yet at the same time wicked men are held responsible by the Holy Spirit for doing exactly what they desired to do according to their sinful nature as seen in their rebellion against God’s annonited one.
 
So, the answer to your question about child rape is, ‘Yes, just as God determined that the greater crime against His Son would come to pass so God determined the lesser crime against that child would come to pass as the ultimate cause. However, God still holds the rapist responsible for the lesser crime of child rape just as He holds the crucifiers of Jesus responsible for the greater crime of Deicide and that because they were proximate causes that are responsible for their crimes in a way God could never be responsible. God is not responsible as the ultimate cause the way those guilty of child rape and deicide are guilty because, as Joseph says in Genesis 50 God, as the ultimate cause intended the evil for good but they as proximate causes intended their evil for evil.
 

Now, what the Holy Spirit has to say to you who are obviously railing against God … ‘Who are you O man to question God?'”

Now, the funny thing here Mr. Molinist is that your beliefs don’t deliver you from your charge of God being evil because your god Mr. Molinist creates this middle knowledge world with full knowledge that in this created middle knowledge world full of men with libertarian free will that it would, with certainty, be the case that your little girl would be raped by a regenerate man who had libertarian free will and yet your god Mr. Molinist went ahead and created that world anyway. Your god, per your worldview, is not only a monster (given that He created such a world full knowing what would happen) but he is also a wussie because he couldn’t do anything to stop it.

In the end Mr. Stratton your theodicy sucks bricks and as Richard Muller pointed out some time ago is just warmed over Medevial semi-pelagianism.

“Arminian/Molinist theology is little more than the recrudescence of the late medieval semi-Pelagianism against which the Reformers struggled. Its tenets are inimical to the Pauline and Augustinian foundation of Reformed Protestantism.

(In Molinism we find a) God who antecedently wills the salvation of all knowingly provides a pattern of salvation that is suitable only to the salvation of some. This doctrinal juxtaposition of an antecedent, and never effectuated, divine will to save all and a consequent, effectuated, divine will to save some on the foreknown condition of their acceptance of faith, reflects the problem of scientia media. The foreknowledge of God, consists in part in a knowledge of contingent events that lie outside of God’s willing and, in the case of the divine foreknowledge, of the rejection of grace by some, of contingent events that not only thwart the antecedent divine will to save all, but also are capable of thwarting it because of the divinely foreknown resistibility of the gift of grace. In other words, God is locked into the inconsistency of genuinely willing to save all people while at the same time binding himself to a plan of salvation that he foreknows with certainty cannot effectuate his will. This divine inability results from the necessity of those events that lie within the divine foreknowledge but outside of the divine willing remaining outside of the effective will of God. This theology posits the ultimate contradiction that God’s antecedent will genuinely wills what he foreknows cannot come to pass and that his consequent will effects something other than his ultimate intention. God, in short, is either ineffectual or self-contradictory. Reformed doctrine on the other hand, respects the ultimate mystery of the infinite will of God, affirms the sovereignty and efficacy of God, and teaches the soteriological consistency of the divine intention and will with its effects.”

Was Jesus A Jew … A Disambiguation and Clarification

At that time Rezin king of Syria recovered Elath to Syria, and drave the Jews from Elath: and the Syrians came to Elath, and dwelt there unto this day. II Kings 16:6

This is a translation the King James Bible gets wrong. Most other translations properly label the people that Rezin “drave” as Judahites. In this war where Syria and the Northern tribes were aligned against the Southern Kingdom Rezin drove out a gathering of men from the tribe of Judah out of Elath. Those who were driven out were not Jews. They were Judahites. In the Bible the designation of “Jew” has to do with what religion one was a practitioner of and did not have to do with where one was from.

The Hebrew word mistakenly translated in II Kings 16:6 as “Jew” is the Hebrew word “Yehudi,” which literally means a Judahite or a descendant of Judah. The word is used in the bible in at least five ways;

1.) A person(s) from the tribe of Judah

2.) The Kingdom of Judah

3.) The land of Judea

4.) The nation of Judah

5.) The house of Judah

So, in II Kings 16, we are being told that it was men from the tribe, kingdom, land, nation or house of Judah who were driven from Elath.

Now when we come to the NT the Greek word is Ioudaias which means Judean — the sense of “from the country of, or from the land of Judea.” Just as those who lived in Samaria were Samaritans so those living in the land of Judea were Judeans or Judahites.

What we do today is this. When the word “Jew” is used today it is not used to refer to someone who is from the House of Judah, or the land of Judah, kingdom of Judah, or the nation of Judah When we use the word today we redefine it to mean someone who practices the religion of Judaism.

Consider, as an example, Galatians 1. This is one of the few times you will see the Greek word “Jew” refer to the religion of Judaism. Most other times it refers to someone from the land, house, nation, kingdom of Judah.

13For you have heard of my former way of life in Judaism, how severely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it. 14I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers.

Now the Jewish religion or Judaism was antagonistic to and contrary to the Christian faith. It was Judaism, under the parties of the Pharisees and Saducees, who constantly opposed Christ the Judahite. Paul who would later write Galatians was before conversion a Benjamite who practiced the Jewish religion. At that time Paul was not a Jew who practiced the Christian religion. When Paul converted he was a Benjamite who practiced the Christian religion in defiance of his former Jewish religion. When Paul converted he went from being a Benjamite who practiced the Jewish religion to being a Benjamite who practiced the Christian religion.

Because of all of the above we are not now, nor were we ever properly labeled “Judeo-Christians.” Nor are we part of some group called the “Judeo-Christian” faith. One can not more combine these two radically different faiths than we could combine Monogamous-adulterers. Those who are practitioners of the Jewish faith have no more in common with those who practice the Christian faith than cannibals have in common with debutantes who graduated from the finest finishing schools. Every time we use the phrase “Judeo-Christian” we dishonor Christ who was the Lion of the Tribe of Judah but who was no Jew as is seen in the NT by the fact that Jesus was always attacking the Jewish religion. Jesus the Judahite had no greater enemy than the Jews and the Jews plotted to kill Jesus the Judahite.

When Pilate hangs that sign over Jesus saying “King of the Jews” he did not order that sign hung there because he understood that indeed that was what Jesus really was. Pilate hung that sign there to anger the Jews. And it worked.

When Paul the Benjamite boasts of having once been a Pharisee he is boasting of who he was in His former religion. He is not boasting of where he hailed from. Notice the way Paul puts it. He says he was, “of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin. A Hebrew of Hebrews.” With that He gives his nationality and blood line. When it comes to matters of religion though he says, “as touching the law, a Pharisee.” He could have as easily said, “as touching the law, a Jew.”

Now we gladly concede that the religion of today’s self styled Jews was and is commonly Judaism but it is possible to be an Israelite and not be a Jew, just as was true of St. Paul after he was converted.

We need to quit with the phrase “Judeo-Christian,” if only because the phrase causes us to let our guard down against those who are members of a religion who often remain the enemies of Christ just as members of all non-Christian religions are enemies of Christ.

These distinctions above are important because of the confusing way “Jew” can be used. For example, former Prime Minister of Israel David Ben-Gurion was, for a time, a Buddhist by way of religion but of course never quit being thought of as a Jew by way of birth. Similarly, theoretically a China-man or African can embrace Judaism and so, in terms of religion become “Jewish.”

So, we have seen in the above, that by way of religion Jesus was never a Jew. Indeed the religious Jews were his greatest enemies and that is because the religious Jews had abandoned the faith of the Hebrews to embrace Babylonian Talmudism. In the NT Babylonian Talmudism was referred to as “the tradition of the Elders.” That Jesus was practicing a different religion from the religious Jews (Pharisees/Saducees) of His day is stamped all over scripture;

Matthew 15 Then the scribes and Pharisees who were from Jerusalem came to Jesus, saying, “Why do Your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread.” 3 He answered and said to them, “Why do you also transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition? 4For God commanded, saying, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘He who curses father or mother, let him be put to death.’ 5 But you say, ‘Whoever says to his father or mother, “Whatever profit you might have received from me is a gift to God”— 6 then he need not honor his father [a]or mother.’ Thus you have made the [b]commandment of God of no effect by your tradition.7 Hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy about you, saying:

8 ‘These people [c]draw near to Me with their mouth,

And honor Me with their lips,

But their heart is far from Me.

9 And in vain they worship Me,

Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ ”

Note the religious conflict here. The Babylonian Talmudists have one religion referred to as “the tradition of the Elders,” while Jesus is operating under the ancient Hebrew religion called “the commandment of God.” They are two different religions.

To underscore all this the late Rabbi Stephen Wise wrote;

“The return from Babylon and the adoption of the Babylonian Talmud marks the end of Hebrew-ism and the beginning of Judaism.”

That the religious Jews of Jesus time understood what Rabbi Wise centuries later explicitly said is testified to again in John’s Gospel,

5:46 For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me. 47 But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”

The point here is that those who owned a different religion than Jesus owned did not believe Him because they did not believe the Biblical Moses preferring instead to believe a Moses made to their own Babylonian Talmudic liking. They owned a different religion.

The point to take away here is that the entire ministry of Jesus served to expose the fact that the religious Jews were practitioners of an entirely different religion than the one found in the Old Testament. Jesus was not a Jew, religiously speaking.

Now as to Jesus. Was Jesus a Jew in terms of stock?

The answer is resoundingly no! Just as Paul identified himself not as a Jew but as a Israelite so Paul can say of Jesus,

3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my [a]countrymen according to the flesh, 4 who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises; 5 of whom are the fathers and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, the eternally blessed God. Amen.

Now, certainly Jesus was a Jew in the sense of coming from a land, kingdom, and nation that was predominated by the religious Jews but Jesus was the Lion from the tribe of Judah and so no Jew, either physically, or religiously.

Now, there is one application we should take from this that is monumental. Keep in mind that both Jesus and the Jews, though having different religions, both appealed to Moses and the prophets as their Holy book providing their texts from which they found warrant for their beliefs. And yet from those same texts they were practicing two completely different religions that had absolutely nothing in common with one another except for the formal text. They shared a text that yielded two different religions that hated one another.

Much the same is happening in what remains in modern Christendom. We have different religions all appealing to the same Scriptures and yet they really have nothing in common save the formal text. For example, I have nothing in common with epistemologically self-conscious Roman Catholics, Radical Two Kingdom Practitioners, Arminians, Eastern Orthodox types, Amyraldians, etc. Luther understood the idea I’m getting at when he told Zwingli at the Marburg colloquy, “Your spirit and our spirit cannot go together. Indeed, it is quite obvious that we do not have the same spirit.” Both Luther and Zwingli were reading the same Bible but so different were their interpretations that they did not share the same faith.

It was the same with Jesus, the Judahite and the Jews. They were reading the same Law and the Prophets but they were not practicing the same religion and for that reason Jesus was not a Jew.

Peeking at the Word “Racist”

 ‘Racist’… A word made up by Leon Trotsky, a revolutionary communist so extreme in his views that his fellow communists murdered him! That’s right, our politicians/rulers/leaders speak the language of revolutionary communists. Did you know that the word ‘Racist’ was popularized by Marxist Leon Trotsky in 1927? It was used to cudgel and bully ordinary Russians into accepting the horrible practices of the Communists. It has been used in Britain by the ruling class for the last 25 years to diminish the way of life of the indigenous British people, to frighten them against any protest against the drive toward a multi-racial Marxist totalitarian state, and will ultimately rob you and your children of your way of life and your homeland.
 
 
Peter Hammond
Slide presentation on Racism

Being called a “racist” by those who hurl that epithet is like being called a “fundamentalist” by a WOKE Liberal. It is like Chef Boy-R-Dee calling Gordon Ramsey a cuisine hack. It is like the ugly girl in the class calling the prom Queen, “Homely.” It’s like being called a homophobe by a raging flamer.

The accusation tells me more about the person casting the epithet than it tells me about the person upon whom the epithet has been cast.

In the end, all “a racist is, is a man who honors his race, reveres his ancestry, prefers — like virtually everyone — to be with his own kind, and believes that his genetic inheritance is worth preserving in the same way that liberals believe that the spotted owl, snail darter, American Indians, and Australian aborigines are worth preserving.”  (John Bryant)

 

As we consider the pejorative “racist,” or “racism” all can concede that if racism was hating someone solely based upon the color of their skin that would be hatred and sin.

However, in the current cultural milieu where the words “racism” and “racist” have gained so much traction, we do not find that simple of a definition. Instead what we get in terms of definition of racism is “prejudice plus power.” This is why many people insist that it is not possible for minorities to be “racists” or to practice “racism” because, so the argument goes, minorities, while perhaps having “prejudice” certainly do not have “power.” Hence it is impossible, so the argument goes, for minorities to be “racist” or to practice “racism.”

The irony of a definition of “racist” or “racism” that has as its substance, “prejudice plus power,” is inherently ironic because in such a definition the only people who can be guilty of practicing “racism” or of being “racist” are white people since, as the argument goes, only white people have prejudice as combined with power. So, we see, the cultural Marxist definition of racism is racist. Not only is the charge “racism” or “racist” racist it is a tautology.

Just as “bald people have no hair” is redundancy so “White people are racist” is a redundancy. In Cultural Marxist speak, it goes something like this,

Q.) Who are the racists?

A.) White people.

Q.)Who are white people?
A.) They are the racists.

Hard baked into the word “racist” or “racism,” as used by the modern cultural Marxist and churchmen (is there any difference?) is the presuppositional reality that the accuser himself, is the racist. He has a prejudice against white people and the use of the word itself is a power play. Prejudice plus power. The usage of that word against somebody else involves the one using the word in a contradiction of the most startling sort.

But hey … who cares about being in contradiction anymore? After all, rationality is so over-rated.

A Son’s Recollections of His Father — David Lee McAtee (Part III)

Some might ask why I would write such hard things about my own father. The answer to that is probably manifold. First, it’s now just a few weeks shy of 22 years since Dad passed and I am of the age that if I get 22 more years I will count myself as blessed, and so there is an odd symmetry that strikes me as providing a fitness for writing this now after all these years. Second, I want my male descendants to know the importance of being a godly father. I don’t want them to go down the path my Dad went down. Third, I want people to see the power of God’s grace. God’s grace can and does break generational and familial curses (“to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me”) and makes trophies of His grace out of the most unlikely of all. Indeed He delights in doing so. Rough beginnings for children should not be translated as “God has forgotten me.” Fourth, I want people to have the same compassion for Dad that God gave me. Biblical Christians are always going to be treated ill by those outside of Christ. The natural impulse is to call down God’s curses on them, and there is a place for that. We should not want the wicked to prosper. However, there is something wrong with us if we can’t feel genuine sorrow for the people who ill-use us. They would not do so if they weren’t themselves so twisted, bent, and exhausted with sin. This is the lesson that Tolkien is seeking to teach in the relationship between Frodo and Gollum. Frodo knows Gollum and yet Frodo can’t help but have compassion. We should be able to find in ourselves someplace of compassion for the Gollums in our lives and weep for them even when they are treating us the way that Gollums do. I am not saying this is the only response we as biblical Christians should have but I am saying it should be a response that is present somewhere in us. I think it is something of what Jesus meant when He instructed us to “love our enemies.” This Holy Spirit given ability to have compassion for Dad was the only way I found to avoid the bitterness and to rise up out of potential self-pity and to not embrace the victim role. I never hated Dad. I loved him with all my being. Even now, I tear up remembering him. At 62 years of age and after all these years I still ache, wishing it all could have been different. I am not so much sorry for myself as I am sorry for how much delight and joy he missed out on experiencing. Sin is such a cruel and relentless taskmaster.

Let’s begin with a few abstracted pericopes involving my Dad.

In retrospect one of the funniest memories I have of Dad (though it sent me into terror at the time) is when Dad was taking a friend of mine (Cal Richmond) and myself to Church one day. We were probably somewhere around 16. Dad pulled up to the busy intersection at White School Road and US-12. This was a busy intersection for little Sturgis. Anyway, Dad pulls up to this intersection and asks Cal, who is sitting in the front seat with Dad, “is there any traffic coming.” Cal answers instantly, “Nope.” With that report, Dad began to pull out. Just as we were inching forward Cal continues with his previous one-word answer by saying, “Nothing but traffic.” Dad slams on the breaks and backs up from where he had inched forward. Cal was laughing hysterically over pulling one over on Dad. I was sitting in full fright mode. I knew what was coming.  Sure enough, Dad exploded. Cal instantly quit laughing. I had never seen Dad that mad at anybody before except his wife and I. I thought for sure that Dad was going to go all unleashed. But, to his credit, he got his rage under control quickly realizing that this adolescent wasn’t his to deal with as he pleased. But, boy howdy, that was an intense storm. After Dad dropped us off at Church, Cal asked me, “Does your Dad get angry like that often.” I deflected but thought, “buddy, you don’t know the half of it.”

I noted earlier that Dad was proficient with firearms. He had won county-wide trophies in competitions and was justly pleased with his ability in this regard. Dad did a great deal of skeet shooting and pistol range work at the local firing range. I suppose by today’s pc standards our home would have been called a compound or armory with all the weapons (rifles, shotguns, pistols — all of them of all descriptions — as well as assorted and sundry knives. I had thought at one time this would be our inheritance but in subsequent years the IRS caught up with Dad and errors on income tax reporting and the finest weapons were sold to satisfy Uncle Sam’s lust. All these weapons were fascinating for an adolescent but now in retrospect, I realize that those weapons were present at the expense of Mom having to work. In short, they shouldn’t have been purchased because the household budget just didn’t allow for that extravagance.

Dad was so attached to the weapons that he routinely slept with a loaded derringer under his pillow at night. I genuinely feared he would accidentally shoot himself or worse yet one of us for thinking us a burglar or something.

I spent a large amount of time in hospitals growing up. Accident-prone and disease-afflicted doesn’t begin to cover it. To Dad’s credit, he kept a close and protective eye upon me during those hospital stays. I knew he was concerned for his son’s well-being and recovery. Dad also protected me once from a Junior high-school Principle who once crossed a boundary in terms of physical abuse of me as a student. I chuckled at the time thinking that Dad’s main beef was probably that the Principle was trying to take possession of territory that belonged to Dad. I knew that wasn’t true but there was a dark humor in considering it.  So, you see, Dad did love me. He just couldn’t get it out.

Years later, in my education travels, I learned that troubled parents will often typically beat the child in the home they love the most. Win, place, and show for me in that regard. I never doubted that Dad loved me. He just was carrying too much baggage to get it out in the usual channels.

Here I pick up where we left off in the previous entry. Dad had moved out and had his own apartment now in Columbia, South Carolina. We stayed in touch and would have Dad over for meals. During this period he attended my Seminary Graduation and sprung for some nice steaks that we grilled.

I was thinking that some normalcy might be restored. Not so much.

One night one of my siblings who lived in Indiana phoned me. She had been talking with Dad on the phone and Dad was making what she believed to be some pretty credible threats of committing suicide. Dad always had a streak in him of trying to get sympathy from people. It was the old routine of him saying … “I’m such and such a negative thing,” with the desired response that being sought; “But Dad, no you’re not, but rather you are just the opposite of such and such whatever negative thing that was said.” This time though the ante had been raised with my sibling. This time he was threatening suicide with the expectation that my sibling would talk him out of it by saying sweet things about how important he was to her. At least that is how I analyzed the whole thing at the time but my sister was convinced that Dad was serious. My sister is an educated woman and though I had my opinion of what was going on, she was the one talking to him and she was convinced he was serious. I trusted her opinion which meant I had to do something about it. I tried to call Dad but he wouldn’t pick up the phone though he had just hung up talking to my sister.

So, I had to decide what course I was going to take. If I went to bed ignoring it all and he really did it I would be living with it the rest of my life. Something like that is not something people get over. So, after banging on his door to no response, I did the only other thing that could be done. I made the proper calls, tracked down and awakened a judge at some forsaken wee hour in the morning to sign documents, and had Dad committed for 24 hours in an institution so that he could be analyzed and watched. The alternative to doing what I did was possibly living the rest of my life knowing that I had, by my inaction, killed my father. I’m in my mid-20s at this time. Someone that age should not be put in that kind of position.

It was a long time after that occurred before Dad spoke to me again. Interestingly enough he never brought it up when he did speak to me again. He also never talked about suicide again with me or any of my siblings.

This brings us to a good place to pause. One more entry ought to find us finishing.

Consequences of Sin, and Guilt, as not Quenched in God’s Atonement

Modern man creates substitute atonements that are either masochistic or sadistic. Man, in defiance to submitting to God’s reality where God alone provides atonement, chooses instead to either seek to lay his sin upon himself in a sadistic frenzy or on the other hand seeks to lay his sin upon others in a masochistic frenzy. In neither case is the pursuit ultimately successful and so the masochism and/or sadism in search of atonement continues. This explains, in part, why fallen man so often has trouble maintaining relationships. No relationship can be healthy where both parties are seeking to either use themselves or the other party in the relationship as a means of shedding their sin.

These substitute atonements for Christ’s atonement can never do what they are designed to do — that is take away sin and guilt — and so they ensure ongoing and perpetual guilt. This in turn makes for impotent men and women who are easy to control because of the manipulation of their guilt by others. The elite class seeks to create false guilt to add to the true moral guilt with the end in view of controlling the population. An obvious example of this is the “racism” narrative. This is false guilt piled upon white people in order to successfully manipulate them into accepting a masochistic atonement that finds them beating themselves over their embraced racist identity. Because of this false guilt followed by the masochistic false atonement the white man willingly goes into abeyance and subjugation as minorities are lifted up to serve as those who are advantaged by this attempt to pay for false guilt.