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(44) Notice how Dr. White keeps basing his conclusions on his presuppositions. He has already concluded that eternal security is a reality. Thus, he defines what it means to be a Savior in terms of that presupposed definition. That's why he says, "You can't have security!" with an exclamation point, because security is the real issue for him. He can't imagine not having security of never falling away. Unfortunately for Dr. White, there is no verse in the Bible that teaches that a believer can never fall away from the faith, and plenty that say just the opposite.

 

At this point I had then concluded, "Jesus affirms the eternal security of the believer." Sungenis responds:

"Again, Dr. White has read into the verse a precept from his Calvinistic theology. The verse doesn't mention anything about whether the believer will be eternally secure from losing his salvation (which is what Dr. White means by "eternal security"). It only says that Jesus will not cast him out if he comes to Jesus. The verse teaches that Jesus is faithful, not that the believer need never worry that he could make himself fall from Jesus. I can't impress this upon the reader enough. Dr. White's interpretation is a classic example of reading a passage with one's own colored glasses."

Let's remember a few things. First, it is very easy to dismiss what someone else says as merely their own projection of their pre-existing beliefs onto the text. It takes a positive demonstration of the assertion to make it meaningful.

(45) Agreed. Since John 6 says nothing about whether the believer can take himself out, then let's not assume that John 6 is denying it. Is that not fair, especially when you compare it to a passage such as John 5:40 which says that it is the Jews who "refuse to come to" Christ?

Second, if salvation is a solely divine work then the accusation of eisegesis made here collapses. John 6:37a speaks of the Father's giving of a people to the Son---it does not mention man's "free will" as determining that divine act. In other words, the action of giving is fully divine.

(46) R. Sungenis 2: As I pointed out earlier, every time Dr. White sees a passage that speaks of divine action he concludes that it is the only action allowed, or even in the realm of possibility. Let me illustrate. Let's say we are reading John 5-6 chronologically. In John 5:40 we find that truth that the reason the Jews don't "come" to Jesus is that they, according to Jesus' own words, "refuse" to do so. That speaks of their will. Then we read a passage such as John 6:37 that all the Father gives will come to Jesus. Can we not conclude, then, that because of the Jews' decision not to come to Jesus in John 5:40 that the Father will not give them to Jesus in John 6:37? Yes, I think that is a reasonable conclusion. In deference to Dr. White, it might also be true that they don't come to Jesus because the Father hasn't given them to Jesus. But the point in fact is that the verse doesn't tell us which one is correct, or if both of them are correct. But Dr. White keeps insisting that only the latter can be true. If anything both are true. John 5:40 and John 6:40 show us one side of the equation; while John 6:37, 39, 44 show us the other side of the equation. Our task is to put them both together and not deny one for the other. That is what Catholicism does. Dr. White, on the other hand, is forced by his Calvinistic system to side with absolute predestination, and then read this doctrine into John 6:37, 39, 44 to the exclusion of any other solution.

Then immediately after this statement of the Lord we find the direct assertion of the Father's will for the Son in saving all those who are so given, and again the actions are entirely divine, not human. So, given that this phrase sits between two clearly theocentric assertions concerning salvation, who, in fact, is separating it from its context and reading into it a meaning that is not there in the original text?

(47) I think this proves my point. Dr. White assumes that divine action precludes human action, but he hasn't proven that assertion, either principially or exegetically.

You see, to deny the ability of Christ to save perfectly any and all who are entrusted to Him by the Father is to make a positive assertion: and upon what basis does Mr. Sungenis ground his claim that Christ is unable to save outside of human cooperation? Surely nothing in this text. He must go elsewhere to attempt to make that claim.

(48) I never said Christ can't save without human cooperation. Christ can set up the salvation program any way He sees fit. If predestination without Free Will was the way Christ designed it, then salvation without human cooperation would have to be the plan. But the question is: did He set it up that way? Dr. White just can't assume that He did and then castigate everyone who disagrees with him as believing in an "anthropocentric" religion. If Christ designed salvation to be a cooperation of man's will with God's grace, yet someone, like Dr. White, denied it, then the one with the "anthropocentric" religion would be Dr. White, since he would be making up his own salvation design.

So when Mr. Sungenis says I'm reading the text with "colored glasses," this is about the only positive evidence offered for the insertion, on his part, of a completely foreign concept into the text at hand:

(49) No, its not foreign. I already answered this in my previous rebuttal. I pointed to John 5:40, just one chapter earlier than John 6. In John 5:40 Jesus says the Jews refused to come to Him. Now, am I just inventing this doctrine, or did John already set the stage for us before he came to John 6? I think the latter has to be true, especially since we have an almost identical assertion of the element of Free Will in John 6:40.

the idea that Jesus can attempt to save a person, and fail at it due to that person's choice.

(50) That's not the way Jesus sees it in 2 Timothy 2:12-13, or John 6:40. Jesus doesn't consider it His failure. Only Dr. White assumes it would be Jesus' failure.

And is this not just the over-riding assumption of free-will that I identified in my previous article? Of course it is. Hence, Mr. Sungenis is engaging in circular argumentation, assuming the conclusion of his argument before he has in fact proven his argument. That assumption, I believe, comes from his highest authority (Rome), not from the text of Scripture.

(51) No, I don't think that is the full story. If John 6 had made some definitive statement about eternal security I would be the first to accept it. I have no intention of playing with Scripture. But I am warning that simple clauses such as "All that the Father gives to Me will come to Me," do not, in the specific choice of words and syntax, teach eternal security. It only teaches that all the Father gives to Jesus will come to Jesus. Only someone who has already decided that eternal security is true will superimpose that belief upon John 6:37. But that is a theological pretext, not an exegetical argument. Here we are only concerned with the exegesis of the text. Let's say what the text says, and no more. Otherwise, one or both of us is going to go into heresy.

So, the "colored glasses" are firmly planted not on my exegetical eyes, but upon his, placed there by the authority of the Pope in Rome. This is borne out by what comes next. I had written, "Jesus is the one who gives life and raises His own up at the last day. He promises that there is no possibility whatsoever that any one who is coming to Him in true faith could ever find Him unwilling to save."

Sungenis replies, "No problem here, for this is precisely what I am contending. Jesus, because He is faithful, will never be unwilling to save those who come to Him. But I hasten to add that this present statement by Dr. White is not the same as his previous statement concerning "eternal security.""

I truly hope the reader can see the issue: for Robert Sungenis and the Roman Church, Jesus is more than willing to save, but is incapable of doing so outside of the cooperation of those He is trying to save.

(52) The only thing the reader should see is that Dr. White has already presumed that a salvation plan that includes man's cooperation is principially wrong. But from where does that premise come? From John Calvin and Martin Luther. They were the first to say (outside of Lucidus and Gottschalk) that man's cooperation could not be involved in salvation.

So Christ's willingness does not, in Rome's system, translate into the accomplished fact of salvation. The text, however, says just the opposite: Christ's willingness results in the perfection of the work because Christ is a perfect Savior who is able to save!

(53) Dr. White would first have to prove that "willingness" means that man's sins cannot curtail Christ's desire to see all men saved, but he hasn't shown that to us yet. He just keeps assuming its true, and then shifts to "Rome" and her influence. Dr. White and the Calvinists don't believe that Christ desires to save all men; never did, never will. He believes Christ created them for eternal damnation. That is the only way Dr. White can have a God who "saves perfectly," as he calls it, since only those He predestines without their free will will be saved, and those he predestines without their free will to Hell will not be saved.

I continued in TPF: But this tremendous promise is the second half of a sentence. It is based upon the truth that was first proclaimed. This promise is to those who are given by the Father to the Son and to no one else. Of course, we will see in verse 44 that no one but those who are so given will be coming to Christ in faith anyway: but there are surely those who, like many in that audience in Capernaum, are willing to follow for a while, willing to believe for a season.

This promise is not theirs. Sungenis responds: "Dr. White implies that he has made an important statement above, but there is nothing of real significance here."

The only way I can translate this statement is, "It is not significant to note that the promise of Christ not to cast out any who come to Him is based upon the divine sovereignty of the Father in entrusting His people to the Son, and that despite the fact that Jesus then spent the next two verses explaining that very relationship, so that He obviously felt that it was most important to do so." Of course, those who are not given to Jesus by the Father do not have the promise that Jesus will not cast them out. The reason they don't have that promise is because they have never come to Jesus. According to the verse's premise, you can't have the promise that Jesus will not cast you out unless you come to Jesus. In logic, the condition of the category must be fulfilled in order for the category to enact its stipulations. In effect, Dr. White is making an issue of a non-issue. Please note that Mr. Sungenis forgot that the only ones who come to the Son are those given to Him by the Father, hence the connection I described above.

(54) I forgot? I Don't think so. I've been saying that the Father gave them to Jesus since this debate started.

I continued and brought out the theocentricity of the passage in these words: The promise to the elect, however, could not be more precious. Since Christ is able to save perfectly (He is not dependent upon man's will, man's cooperation), His promise means the elect cannot ever be lost. To which Sungenis replied:

Again, Dr. White keeps adding things to the passage that the passage does not address. Where does the passage mention, let alone deny, "man's will, man's cooperation"??

One is hard pressed to respond to such a question. When the passage presents the Father's divine gift to the Son and preceding and determining the very identity of every single one who, as a result of being given, come to the Son, and then goes on to reveal the Father's will for the Son to save every single one of those given by the Father to the Son, the issue is not "where does the passage deny" synergism, the issue is, how in the world could anyone read synergism into the passage as Mr. Sungenis does at every turn?

(55) I don't "read synergism" into the passage, because its not there. But I also don't read "election" into the passage because its not there either. The only thing I read is that all that the Father gives the Son will come to the Son. It is the theology of Dr. White which is making the verse one which teaches a monergistic salvation.

Where does the passage conclude that those who come can never be lost?? It does so by stating that 1) all who are given come, and 2) the Son raises up all those who are given to Him in perfection (i.e., He loses none). This is simple contextual reading.

(56) Correction. The passage says it is the Father's "will" that these people are not lost. It doesn't say that some will not be lost. But obviously, to Dr. White, the Father's will and the idea that they will never be lost are one in the same thing. That is because Dr. White comes to the text with a presupposed idea of God's will. That presupposed idea is that, whenever you read of "God's will" in Scripture it refers to a will that cannot be frustrated by the devil or man. Now let me qualify this a little before I go on to rebut it. In one sense, we can say that God's will will be done. God knows the devil and man are going to sin of their own Free Will and thus God makes His ultimate plans accordingly. That is why the passage I earlier quoted from the Catholic Catechism, para 600: "To God, all moments of time are present in their immediacy. When therefore he establishes his eternal plan of 'predestination,' he includes in it each person's free response to his grace." So in that sense, and that sense only, God's will cannot be frustrated. But that is not Dr. White's view. His view is that God's will cannot be frustrated in any sense of the word. For example, Dr. White believes that the Devil's rebellion and Adam's sin were willed by God's decree, that is, they were both predestined to fall into sin. Thus, their sin didn't frustrate God's will, rather, they fulfilled God's will. Similarly, Dr. White believes that God wills that only certain people will be saved, arbitrarily, without any recourse to their Free Will (and if we follow F. Klooster's remarks of true Calvinism, without any regard to their sin). Thus, when Dr. White reads a passage such as John 6:39, it can have only one meaning for him: Since it is God's will that nothing will be lost, then nothing will be lost. Now, considering that I have proposed two understandings of God's will, is Dr. White's version a plausible interpretation of the passage? Yes, it is plausible. But whether it is the correct interpretation of the passage is another story altogether. The point in fact is that we don't know which understanding of God's will is displayed in this passage, and that's what makes discussions of predestination and free will so difficult sometimes. The temptation is to side with one version of God's will at the expense of the other, which is what Dr. White and the Calvinists are prone to do. That is why they interpret a passage such as 1 Tim 2:4 to mean "God desires to save all the elect (or all kinds of men)" rather than as the text says, "God desire to save all men." They've already presumed that the definition of "God's will" we must work with is the one that cannot be frustrated. In effect, they put God in a box of their own liking. And when it comes to interpreting passages such as Ezek 33:11, they will ignore the plain sense of the passage and claim that God's pleading is only for the purpose of judging the people for their sin, not for seeking their repentance, as we saw in Dr. White's explanation earlier.

"Those thoughts are simply not there. Granted, "Christ is able to save perfectly," because He is God and does everything perfectly. Would we want a savior who is imperfect? Of course not. But how does Dr. White get from Christ's perfection to the conclusion that Christ does not anticipate "man's will, man's cooperation."

Does not anticipate? Is this stated in the context of accusing me of eisegetical insertions into the text? If Christ saves perfectly, Mr. Sungenis, are you seriously suggesting that He only saves perfectly those who enable Him to do so? The text ostensibly under consideration says that Christ saves perfectly those that the Father gives Him, and that those who come to Him are, in fact, those that are given by the Father (remember, this whole section is about why those who see Jesus do not believe while the Apostles, as we will see by the end of the discourse, do).

(57) The text does not speak of Christ "saving perfectly," whatever Dr. White intends to mean by that phrase. It is Dr. White who keeps throwing the word "perfectly" into the mix, and then using this insertion to prove that "perfectly" means that man's will is not involved in salvation. Here again we have the problem of "will." Dr. White is assuming there can be no fallout from the raising, since God's will to save them cannot be frustrated. But he hasn't proven that such a definition of "God's will" is being used in the text.

I had written in TPF: Since He will not cast out, and there is no power greater than His own, the one who comes to Christ will find Him an all-sufficient and perfect Savior. This is the only basis of "eternal security" or the perseverance of the saints: they look to a perfect Savior who is able to save. It is Christ's ability to save that means the redeemed cannot be lost. If it were, in fact, a synergistic relationship, there could never be any ground for absolute confidence and security.

Sungenis replies: "Without restating the obvious, you can again see how Dr. White has confused Christ's perfection and all-sufficiency with "eternal security.""

The contrast of theocentric and anthropocentric systems is now clear: if Christ is a perfect Savior then He is able to accomplish salvation in the Scriptural view. But in Rome's view, Christ has a lesser task: making salvation possible but not actually accomplishing it. Hence, from Rome's view, Christ can be a perfect Savior by making men savable, while as we will see in this text of Scripture, the reality is that Christ is a perfect Savior because He actually saves those who are given to Him.

(58) No, the issue is not theocentric versus anthropocentric. That polarity is a red-herring. The issue is how we understand God's will? You'll notice in the above paragraph that Dr. White is working with only one understanding of God's will - - the one he favors for his Calvinistic viewpoint. But that is short-sighted, since he will then eliminate all the other passages in Scripture which speak of God's will differently. That is why the Catholic Church says that the context for interpreting a verse of Scripture is the whole Bible. We have to understand all of what the Bible says before we settle on only one particular viewpoint of God.

"Moreover, we can easily turn the tables here and say that, in being perfect, Christ has an obligation to reject those who, once having come to Him, become faithless and remain so. If He didn't reject them, then he wouldn't be true to Himself, as 2 Timothy 2:12-13 tells us so clearly."

Note that in Mr. Sungenis' view, faith is not the work of Christ either: that is, faith that truly brings a person to Christ can in essence "go bad" (the truth is many come not to Christ but to religion on the basis of a non-saving "faith" in something other than the Savior), resulting in the above scenario.

(59) Faith is a gift of God. But that doesn't mean faith does not involve man's cooperation with God's grace. Again, we have Dr. White falling into the same trap. Every time he reads of a divine action, this means that man's cooperation cannot be involved. He hasn't proved that assertion, he just assumes it to be true.

However, are we not told that Christ is the author and finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:1-2)?

(60) He is the author and finisher of our faith, but what Dr. White failed to do was look at this verse in context. He just throws the verse out there, one which refers to God's action, and then implies, "See, does this not teach that it is all God's action and none of man's?" The answer is No. It only says that Christ is the author and finisher of our faith. Similarly, we can both agree that God is the "author" of the Bible. Does that mean that man is not involved at all in the writing of the Bible? That man's will is not involved in the writing of the Bible? Of course not. We have a mysterious synergism between God and man in the writing of the Bible, something that cannot be explained by our limited understanding. Moreover, if Dr. White had quoted Hebrews 12:1 he would have seen man's cooperation. The writer says, "let us also lay aside every encumbrance, and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us." Now, why would the writer plead with them to do such things if they were all predetermined eventualities? Again, Dr. White's view is that these are not pleadings, they are declarative sentences, ie., "you WILL lay aside every encumbrance, and the sin does NOT so easily entangle us, and you WILL run with endurance the race set before us." This is what Dr. White's view does with the whole Bible - - any verse that portrays man's involvement is reworded and reworked to eliminate man's involvement.

Not only that, look at Hebrews 12:15-17: "See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled; that there be no immoral or godless person like Esau, who sold his own birthright for a single meal. For you know that even afterwards, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought for it with tears." Now you can see why the writer warns them in verse 1 to "lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles them." If not, they will end up like Esau, despised and cursed. But you can depend upon it that Dr. White will come back and say, "Yes, but people like Esau were never truly saved in the first place, so naturally they are going to fall away." So in this case, instead of turning the pleadings into declarative sentences, Dr. White will keep them as pleadings, but with one caveat - - they are not pleadings to get the people to repent (since if they are not "truly saved" they can't repent no matter how hard they try) but they are pleadings to convict them in sin and bring them to judgment, as we have seen him say before. Either way, Scripture is twisted to conform to the wax nose of Calvinism.

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