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(101) So now Dr. White has discovered and revealed the mystery of the Trinity. Let me clue you in. He has not done so. All he has done is given us words. "Being" and "Person" are mere words that help us get at least some handle on what is going on in the Trinity, but they don't by any stretch of the imagination explain the Trinity to us. It took them four centuries in the early Church just to tell us what we CAN'T say about the Trinity, but no one has ever explained the essence of the Trinity.

The fact of the matter remains that there are only two possible positions on the matter of man's salvation: either it is a free act of God's grace based upon His own purpose and will (as the Bible explicitly teaches!) to the praise of the glory of His grace, or, it is a cooperative effort between God and man in which God does all He can do to save every single person but, in the final analysis, the decision is man's.

(102) Translation: In the Reformed view it is God's will that some be saved and some be damned based purely on God's pleasure, not on any factor of man, be it goodness or evil. God predestines some to Hell, without giving them a choice in the matter, because by sending them to Hell He shows Himself just in condemning evil. In the Catholic view, God's grace and man's free will work together. God predestines no one to hell. God did not cause the fall of Adam. God abandons no one without them abandoning God first. God gives grace to everyone to repent. That sounds like the God of Ezek 18:23; 33:11; Zech 1:3; 2 Tim 2:10-13; John 5:40. And we can also include John 6:37-39, since those verses do not deny man's free will, rather, they only explain to the Jews that God is giving up on them because of their persistent refusal to repent.

As many a preacher has put it, "God has voted for you, the devil has voted against you, and now you get to cast the tie-breaking vote." This is the true dividing line, soteriologically speaking: the Reformers stood firmly for the sovereignty of God's grace, and Rome stood firmly for the sovereignty of man's will so that God's grace, while necessary to salvation, does not in and of itself save anyone outside of their cooperation. If nothing else, this dialogue has surely shown the chasm that exists between the theocentricity of Scripture and the anthropocentricity of Roman Catholicism and Arminianism.

(103) I would agree there is a chasm. That's why we are spending such time on this topic. But let's get the terms straight if we're going to polarize the two views. Catholicism believes in the sovereignty of God, much more than the Calvinists do. Any God who can control all events in history, and yet do so with man's free will operating, has got to be the more sovereign God. Second, Catholicism does not believe in the "sovereignty of man's will." We don't use such terms. It is not man who makes the "final decision," as it were. The decision is, without compromise or confusion, a result of God's grace and man's cooperation. A mystery, indeed, yet nevertheless true.

I wrote in TPF: Verse 39 begins with "This is the will of Him who sent Me," and verse 40 does the same, "For this is the will of My Father." But in verse 39 we have the will of the Father for the Son. Now we have the will of the Father for the elect. "That everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day." Amazingly, many wrench this verse out of its context, misunderstand the reference to "every one who beholds.every one who believes in Him," and say, "See, no divine election here! Any one can do this." But it is obvious, when the text is allowed to stand as a whole, that this is not the intention of the passage. Who is the one "beholding" the Son and "believing" in Him? Both these terms are present participles, referring to on-going action, just as we saw in "the one coming" to Christ in verse 37.

"Appealing to Greek present participles is not going to prove Dr. White's case."

Note: as anyone can see, it was not intended to! The point I have often made on the basis of this is to contrast the continuing nature of saving faith against the idea prevalent amongst some Evangelicals of a kind of "one time" faith that has no abiding results.

(104) I find it fascinating that here Dr. White uses the participles of John 6:37-39 as evidence of "continuing action," but earlier in his rebuttal he tried to deny my use of the active voice of these very participles because he said they were substantives. So which is it, Dr. White?

"These verbs could just as well be aorists ("those who did believe in Him") or perfects ("those who have believed in Him") without infringing on the intention of the text."

I remind the reader of the contrast between the aorist and present tense regarding "believe" in John, and the common discussion in the scholarly literature of John's use of the present participle as a substantive in contrast to the surface-level faith of the disciples who turn out to be unable to "hear" the word.

(105) Is that why John 4:48; 5:44; 6:30; 7:39; 8:24; 9:18; 9:36; 11:15; 11:40; 11:42; 13:19; 14:29; 19:35; 20:25 all use the Greek PISTEUO in the aorist tense of a belief that Dr. White would call "true belief"?

"The key point that Dr. White misses here, as I noted earlier, is that "beholding" and "believing" are in the active voice, not passive. The action is done by the subject who is "beholding" and "believing." If anything, there is a unique combination of God's election and man's cooperation in this verse, not the one-sided view of election that Dr. White wishes us to see."

We have seen Mr. Sungenis' error here already, and have seen that the active/passive distinction he makes is utterly without foundation in the text, let alone is it relevant to the Reformed position, which affirms that the gift of faith is actively exercised by the regenerated sinner.

(106) Actually, what we saw was a red-herring argument by Dr. White in which he postulated that there is such thing as a passive participle used as a substantive. I don't know of such an instance in the NT. Thus, the active participle only speaks of the action of the subject of the participle.

Mr. Sungenis is seeking to turn the phrases "the one seeing" and "the one believing" into proof-texts for his view of free will:

(107) Proof texts? Not really. I'm just showing, and as Dr. White has already admitted earlier, that John 6:40 does not have the exclusive predestinarian flavor he would like it to have.

there is nothing in the phrases, however, that supports his assertion, for neither of them address, even slightly, the real question: does the decree of God to elect a people unto salvation result in the infallible awakening of those elect at a point in time to spiritual life, resulting in their actively seeing and believing? I continued:

(108) I already answered this in my previous rebuttal. The answer is that whomever the Father gives to Jesus will come to Jesus. That's what the text says. There is nothing about "election" or "infallible awakening" or "actively seeing and believing" (Dr. White's view of seeing and believing) in the text. Those are all concepts added by Dr. White due to his Calvinist beliefs.

Jesus raises up on the last day all those who are given to Him (v. 39) and all those who are looking and believing in Him (v. 40). Are we to believe these are different groups? Of course not. Jesus only raises one group to eternal life. But since this is so, does it not follow that all those given to Him will look to Him and believe in Him? Most assuredly. Mr. Sungenis replied: "I agree. No one has suggested that they are different groups." No one has? Did we not read of Mr. Sungenis telling us, regarding 1 John 2:19, that there will, in fact, be true believers who do not persevere in their belief? If this is the case, does it not follow that the identity of the two groups, those given, and those raised up, will differ, unless it is Mr. Sungenis' suggestion that the identity of the first group is determined solely on the basis of the perseverance of the second?

(109) I've already said that those who fall away in disbelief do not remain in the Father's will, and thus they are not given to Jesus. This is especially true of John 6:39, which uses the perfect tense of "give" in an effort to encompass, from the point of view of the consummation, all those who will be saved. Thus, there are not two groups. There are only those who remain faithful who will be raised.

I continued, Saving faith, then, is exercised by all of those given to the Son by the Father (one of the reasons why, as we will see, the Bible affirms clearly that saving faith is a gift of God).

Mr. Sungenis replied: "Of course saving faith is exercised by all those given to the Son by the Father. If they don't have faith, then the Father is not going to give them to Jesus. So this statement is inconsequential for Dr. White's position."

This shows us clearly that Mr. Sungenis does not understand the very heart of the whole issue! Plainly he assumes an order here that is the very center of the argument, yet his words tell us he is unaware of how he has accepted this assumption without any foundation at all. Listen to the sentence, "If they don't have faith, then the Father is not going to give them to Jesus." In other words, foreseen faith, human action, is the basis upon which the Father gives anyone to Jesus. Rather than the clear order already seen in 6:37, where the giving of the Father results in the coming of anyone in faith to Christ, Sungenis reverses the order without even noticing it. This means he has not "heard" almost anything that has been said in the presentation I have offered to this point. He thinks the statement inconsequential, yet it is a restatement of the very heart of the passage and the very heart of the debate!

(110) No, its Dr. White who doesn't understand. I didn't mean or say anything about human action as the basis of the Father's giving. All I said is that if they don't have faith, then the Father is not going to give them to Jesus - - no matter how that faith was supposed to come into their lives (predestination, free will, or both). Its really very simple, but Dr. White apparently misunderstood what I said, which is the cause for his exclamations above.

Thus ended the discussion of the quotation I provided of the positive exegesis of the text in John 6:37-40. All this and we haven't even gotten to the actual response to my last article! Verbosity reigns supreme! At this point in the last article I quoted Mr. Sungenis' initial remarks based upon our web broadcast with Mr. Windsor. These can be found in the previous article on this subject, as I shall not repeat them here. To simplify, I shall simply put JRWPrev for the previous article, Sungenis for his response, both indented, and then my current reply.

JRWPrev: What shall we say in response to this? A striking fact to note is that Mr. Sungenis assumes the presence of "free will" in the exact same way an Arminian does (and Mr. Windsor did). Yet, the text never makes reference to such a concept, and instead denies the very heart of that concept in 6:44.

"Again, Dr. White is reading into the verse what his theology dictates."

So Mr. Sungenis says, but so far, we have found the case to be just the opposite. John 6:44 states: "No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent Me draws him..." "..and I will raise him up on the last day" is the rest of the sentence. Without that final phrase, which is so often ignored, the passage is not whole. As we shall see, it is vital to a full and proper understanding of the text.

"All the passage says is that anyone who comes to Jesus has to be drawn by the Father.

That's all the passage says? It does not start out by speaking of the inability of man? It does not go on to assert that all who are drawn are also raised up?" Surely the passage says much more than Mr. Sungenis wishes to admit!

"We would expect nothing less. Anything less would be teaching Pelagianism - - that man has the free will, apart from God's drawing grace, to respond to God. But then how does Dr. White see a "denial" of free will here?"

Perhaps in the section Mr. Sungenis doesn't see, the one that says, "No man is able"?

(111) No, I saw it, but it doesn't change anything. No man is able to come unless the Father draws him. What is so hard to understand about that? No man, apart from God's drawing grace, can come to Jesus. Didn't I just say that in the immediately preceding paragraph Dr. White quoted above from my previous rebuttal? I just said that if someone claims to be able to come to Jesus apart from God's drawing grace then he is teaching Pelagianism. What Dr. White has missed is the real reason why Jesus makes the remarks in John 6:44. Jesus is telling the Jews that God is giving up on them - - that He is no longer going to be drawing them (as a nation) to Jesus. Now is the time for judgment for their sins, and part of that judgment is God blinding them in their sin (Rom 11:8). Dr. White hasn't seen this motivation, and thus he keeps thinking that John 6:44 teaches predestination. No, its teaching the Jews blindness because God is withdrawing His drawing grace. That is the real story.

"He does so by seeing more in the verse than what it actually says, and by relying on his unproven presupposition that election and free will cannot coincide. In order to prove this presupposition, Dr. White would have to find a verse or verses of Scripture which explicitly state that election and free will are totally antithetical to each other."

The reader will note that Mr. Sungenis has excised the phrase "no man is able" from John 6:44, seemingly not even seeing it on the page before him;

(112) Not true. I already said John 6:44 teaches that no man comes to Christ unless drawn by the Father.

further, there is no such phrase as "free will" in Scripture outside of "free will offerings" in the Old Testament which were simply offerings not demanded by law. The phrase "free will" came into existence in Western theology primarily through the influence of Tertullian writing long after the New Testament period. So of course there is no such passage: the idea of human autonomy is nowhere found in Scripture.

(113) Yes, human autonomy is found nowhere in Scripture, and Catholicism doesn't believe in human autonomy. They believe in God's grace working with man's Free Will, a Free Will he received by grace. Be that as it may, its my turn to question what Dr. White learned in systematic theology. Lesson 101 tells us that we don't have to see the precise words "free will" in the Bible to see synonymous ideas and principles in the Bible. Give an honest read to Zech 1:3; Ezek 33:11; and 2 Timothy 2:10-13 and see if they don't teach the concept of Free Will. Then look at the other 14 verses I gave Dr. White a while ago, which he never bothered to address, except for some shallow comments about Matt 6:33.

God is free in the Bible: man is a creature, limited both by his creatureliness and by his fall into sin. The biblical testimony to the utter freedom of God and His sovereignty over creation, and the biblical testimony to the deadness of man in sin, has been fully proven from Scripture so often that it almost seems silly to prove it again. Both issues are fully discussed in The Potter's Freedom.

(114) Yes, God is sovereign, man is a creature. God is in control over his creatures and his creation. But none of those premises denies the existence of Free Will in man.

But, to refocus upon Mr. Sungenis' attempted discussion of John 6:44, we can only say that it utterly fails to even begin to seriously deal with the text. It ignores the clear assertion of man's inability due to sin;

(115) No, I've already said man is unable unless drawn by God's grace.

it didn't even bother to cite the rest of the verse which teaches us that those who are drawn are also raised up (identifying the drawing of the Father as coterminous with the giving of the Father to the Son and refuting all universalistic applications of the text), which would seem to indicate that Mr. Sungenis is unaware of the many issues relevant to the exegesis of the text itself.

(116) I may not have cited the last part of the verse every time, but I cited it at other times, so Dr. White's accusation is hollow. The point in fact is that "raise up on the last day" does not do what Dr. White claims it is doing. John 6:40 says it best. Everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him may have eternal life and will be raised up at the last day. Agreed. No argument. But here is the question: what if they stop believing? The verse only says that those who are beholding and believing, that is, they must have an active ongoing belief that does not stop, and then they will be raised. If they believed once but then disbelieved later then we cannot say they will be raised at the last day. The problem with Dr. White's view is he has conveniently left no room for contingencies in the verse. He has assumed, and quite wrongly, that the Father's "will" means that they cannot disbelieve once they believe, but he hasn't proven that assumption. In fact, he dismisses all the verses that would have an impact on John 6:37-40 as "irrelevant," except the ones he likes, like Romans 8:29 or Eph 1:5.

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