Back on June 11, 2011, a debate took place in Rochester, New York, on the topic of the Five Points. It was billed as “the Baptists” vs. “the Reformed.” What it was, of course, was Independent Fundamentalist King James Only Dispensationalist Synergists vs. Reformed Theology. I am a Baptist, but there was nothing in these men’s hermeneutics that I could even begin to recognize as my own. In any case, this train-wreck of theology and hermeneutics was a tremendous field from which to draw example after example of really, really bad hermeneutics and exegesis. My favorite was when one of the “Baptists” quoted Hebrews 10:10, “By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (KJV). He then informed us that clearly this refuted limited atonement, because it clearly says Christ died “for all,” that is, for every single person. The reality that this is a temporal adverb (ἐφάπαξ) and it cannot mean that (linguistically and contextually) but that fact did not seem to present itself during his study of the text. Likewise educational was Sam Gipp’s amazing attempt to get around the meaning of Ephesians 2:8-9. In any case, hopefully this will be a useful study in how not to handle the Bible, and the dangers of the combination of King James Onlyism, dispensationalism, and anti-Calvinism.
Alpha and Omega Ministries is a Christian apologetics organization based in Phoenix, Arizona. James White, director, is a professor, having taught Greek, Systematic Theology, and various topics in the field of apologetics for numerous schools.
