I do not know if we have ever done a two hour DL before. Possibly. In any case, I did not even get through half of what I wanted to cover. So, we will do another DL, though not a two hour one, tomorrow. Might go for a jumbo, we will see. In any case, today I dedicated the program to responding to the outrageous statements made by Tucson area youth pastor Micah Coate, a 32 year old gentleman who just put out a candidate for “The Worst Book Ever Written Against Calvinism,” yet a book that carries the endorsements of such men as Paige Patterson, George Bryson, Jerry Vines and Tim LaHaye. It is a classic example of “anti-Calvinism Derangement Syndrome,” as I documented today, and will continue tomorrow (along with some other items) in a special Friday morning edition of the DL (11 am MST).
Right now I have two items to get to on tomorrow’s program: first, I will go through the saga we discovered this afternoon (thanks to TurretinFan, SirBrass, and AOMin, along with others, for digging the info out of the net) concerning how this utterly absurd and libelous section ended up in George Bryson’s book, (cue scary music) The Dark Side of Calvinism, p. 372:
Even more pointed, in comments found on the Internet in a section called “Whilin’ Away the Hours,” the Calvinist John Rabe offers what he calls: “A loose paraphrase from the James White and George Bryson debate on the Bible Answer Man:
“begin paraphrase:
“BRYSON: Calvinists believe that God is an evil potentate who causes sin and tyrannically damns people for no good reason and
causes babies to be raped.
“WHITE: Yes, and here’s why I believe that. Genesis 50 says …
“end paraphrase[.]
“Yikes! With friends like this who needs enemies?”Remember what the apostle James says:
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. (James 1:17)
If the Calvinist is right, then James could and perhaps should also have said:f
Every good and bad gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights and darkness.
I can understand why the admission of White is so disturbing to Calvinists. In his defense, however, White is only admitting what should be obvious to all Calvinists.
Micah Coate, doing due diligence to check his sources and strive for accuracy, simply took Bryson at face value, did a little editing, and came up with this whopper in his book:
In debating George Bryson, leading Calvinist James White admitted to Calvinism’s view of God. The following is a loose paraphrase from this debate:
BRYSON: Calvinists believe that God is an evil potentate who causes sin and tyrannically damns people and for no good reason causes babies to be raped.
WHITE: Yes, and here’s why I believe that. Genesis 50 says . . .
BRYSON: Yikes! With friends like this who needs enemies?
While White’s response is shocking, I deeply appreciate his honesty in acknowledging the “sovereign” attributes of his god. Because Calvinist theology has misinterpreted certain verses of the Bible for 400 years, they have essentially created a totally new and totally foreign god. (p. 285, Kindle Edition).
We have tracked down the audio clip. Listen for yourself:
I just love the contrast in the methodology and research of the two sides of this issue. Compare and contrast the care I took in tracking down sources in writing The Potter’s Freedom; paying people to scan through Chosen But Free looking for Scripture references to make sure I was accurately representing the source (it had a horrible Scripture index and I did not have an electronic version back then), etc., all in an effort to make sure the presentation was not marred by error and straw-man argumentation. And what do we have here? A blog article quoted by a second source in a combox on a website gets picked up by Bryson who was surfing the web trying to find things to put in the new edition of his book to save face over how badly he did in our 2001 debate. Even though George was right there in the studio, and could have checked the recordings for himself, he grabs this absurd little paraphrase, puts it in his book, and then makes an absurd conclusion that he completely knows is utterly false and contradictory to my actual position. Finally, Micah Coate takes Bryson at face value, not knowing he is now putting something out that is about fourth hand and has changed each step of the way that in no way, shape, or form, represents anything even slightly close to the truth, and adds his own incredible “conclusion” at the end as well. A lesson to be learned about the kind of “research” that is acceptable amongst the Hyper Anti-Calvinist crowd, and that gets endorsed by the likes of Paige Patterson and Jerry Vines.
And the second item I want to get to tomorrow is the clip of Dirk Jongkind refuting a key element of Bart Ehrman’s textual argumentation. I hope to get to it, we will see.
