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James White #fundie #homophobia #kinkshaming monergism.com

Matthew Vines: What is your answer for gay Christians who struggled for years to live out a celibacy mandate but were driven to suicidal despair in the process?

James White: I reject the category, once again. Matthew, should a “pedophilic Christian” be allowed under-age sex with a willing minor so as to avoid suicidal despair (a documented reality amongst pedophiles)? Should a cross-generational Christian be allowed intimacy with a close relative so as to avoid suicidal despair? Should a trans-species Christian be allowed intimacy with an animal so as to avoid suicidal despair? Should a thieving Christian be allowed to steal so as to avoid suicidal despair? I reject all of these absurd categories, of course—it only shows what happens when you create a category that is morally and ethically neutral or even positive in your own mind and then attempt to create a system based upon that error.

James White #fundie #homophobia #kinkshaming #transphobia monergism.com

Matthew Vines: How many meaningful relationships with lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) people do you have?

James White: This is one of the new twists you have added to the mix, Matthew. I know very few people who are proud of their sin and identify by it. I do not know of any of my friends who say, “I am a man given to anger,” and hence, if someone asked me, “How many meaningful relationships with angry men do you have?” I would not find the question meaningful, especially if the unspoken counterpart to the question was the claim that this means I have no grounds to speak to the sinfulness of anger.

James White #fundie #homophobia #kinkshaming monergism.com

Matthew Vines: Do you accept that sexual orientation is highly resistant to attempts to change it?

James White: As is pedophilia, bestiality, desires toward incest, serial adultery, all sorts of forms of fornication, addiction to pornography, kleptomania, inveterate rage and anger, and addiction to gossip. “But such WERE some of you….”

R. Scott Clark #fundie monergism.com

Is God Capricious?


HC Q. 12. Since then by the righteous judgment of God we deserve temporal and eternal punishment, how may we escape this punishment and be again received into favor?

God wills that His justice be satisfied;1 therefore we must make full satisfaction to the same, either by ourselves or by another.2 1 Exodus 20:5. Exodus 23:7. 1 Romans 8:3,4.With this question we begin considering the second part of the catechism or the "grace" section of "guilt, grace, and gratitude."

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One of the great misconceptions about the Augustinian doctrine of divine sovereignty, which was restated by the Protestant Reformers and which came to expression in the Reformed confessions, is that it makes God arbitrary or capricious.

Without reflection or if we start from the wrong place, the acts of God might seem arbitrary. After all, during the fires, one house was taken and one was left behind. It's not evident that there is any way to say that this house was taken but that one was left because of anything intrinsic to each house. It's a mystery of providence. Of course folk frequently and falsely set up cause and effect relations to explain providence but Jesus isn't having any of it (see John 9). This fact, however, does not mean that we cannot say anything about God's justice nor does it mean that God is really capricious. The charge that the God of Scripture is capricious rests ultimately on the assumption that unless we can explain his actions then we may sit in judgment upon them and him. In other words, the charge rests upon rationalism. Of course we cannot explain all of God's acts and we cannot explain fully any of them! His ways are are higher than our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts. If he did explain himself fully it would consume us. We are not capable of understanding.

If we consider that God always acts according to his nature, then he cannot be said to be arbitrary, especially if we concede that God's understanding of his justice transcends our ability to comprehend it. That is a great difference between the triune God of Holy Scripture revealed in Christ Jesus and Allah or fate. The god of Islam really is capricious. He may forgive or he may not. No one can know. Allah cannot be known. He is utterly hidden. Indeed, he isn't even really personal. The alleged identity of Yahweh and Allah is a great myth of liberalism and universalism. Such a claim is an insult both to Christianity and to Islam.

The God of Scripture is, in himself, hidden from us but he also reveals himself to us and what he reveals to us is true. There is a great divide between the Creator and the creature. We cannot know things as God knows them and we cannot know God as he knows himself, but we can know God because he has come to us and made himself known. He has revealed himself in creation and in redemption and chiefly in his Son, the Word: Jesus the Messiah.

We can correlate God's promises to his saving acts in redemptive history. We can and must count him faithful to fulfill his law and his promises. He threatens judgment for sin. He threatens death for sin and he fulfills that curse (Gen 2:17; Exod 20:5). The whole history of the Israelite holy war against Canaan is the history of God's righteous judgment upon unbelief and sin. He says: "—I will not acquit the guilty" (Exod 23:7). Every human being is personally obligated to produce perfect righteousness before God (Ex 34:7; Ez 18.4,20; 2 Thess 1:8-10; Gal 3:10). Unlike Allah, the God who is, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is not arbitrary. He cannot contradict himself. He cannot be what he is not. He cannot do what is contrary to his nature and his nature is just.

The universal testimony of Scripture is that God's righteousness must be satisfied. Scripture also testifies, however, that God is gracious and merciful. He is merciful in that he does not give to all sinners what they deserve: hell (thanks to Danny Hyde for repeatedly pointing this out on Sunday mornings!) and he is gracious in that he gives to sinners what they cannot earn: his favor. Out of his demerited favor he himself supplies the righteousness required by his justice. I'm grateful to the person at the recent Gospel-Driven Conference at Ponte Vedra PCA who pointed out after one of the sessions that, in Ezek 16:63, Yahweh Elohim promises that he himself will atone for the sins of his people. Of course we remember the scene in Genesis 15 when Yahweh himself passes between the pieces, taking upon himself the obligation to fulfill the promise and to suffer the penalty of violation of the covenant.

This is the difference between biblical religion and all other religions. Only the God of Scripture promises to save his people by fulfilling the obligations of his law for them. All other faiths set up systems whereby we must do for ourselves or, as in the case of Rabbinic and Christian moralism, God gives grace so that we can do so ourselves.

In the biblical faith, however, God meets the terms of his righteousness for us. This is where grace and righteousness meet: in Christ. For us he became both righteous law-keeper (Second/Last Adam) and the Mediator of gracious, free salvation sola fide to and for all those for whom he came, whom the Father gave to him from all eternity.

John Hendryx #fundie monergism.com

Consider this.  If a person borrows $1 billion to fund a company and then goes and squanders it in a week of wild living in Las Vegas, his inability to repay the debt does not alleviate him of the responsibility to do so.  Our condition in Adam is like a debt we cannot repay.  We are responsible.  The command to believe the gospel is to be proclaimed to all men. All are responsible to believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who was crucified for sinners, then rose from the dead and that He grants forgiveness of sin to ALL who believe. But when the synergist says but "men may be saved if they will." we must reply, "Agreed, we all believe that; however, it is the "if they will" that is the difficulty. Are men ever found NATURALLY willing to submit to the humbling terms of the gospel of Christ? Jesus Himself declares that no man will come to Christ unless God grants it (John 6:63-65).

Monergism #fundie monergism.com

Progressive secularists know in their heart that God exists (Rom 1:21). Every time they moralize about racism, slavery, torture and corporate corruption they presuppose His existence. For if there is no ultimate justice then all of their moralizing would unintelligible because they have no point of reference... no objective standard to which they can appeal to in order to reveal how they know their morality has any basis. If they were consistent, it would mean that genocide was no different than a day with the family at Disneyland.