First Things First: Ask R.C.

Coming up today on Renewing Your Mind. Many you'll hear today on Renewing Your Mind, and they'll all be answered by Dr. R.C. Sproul.

As you listen today, you'll hear clips from various live venues or radio programs. And our first question today comes from 2010. A listener wrote in and asked, God said to Adam and Eve, in the day that you eat of the fruit, you will surely die. But Adam and Eve lived long afterward. In what way did they die, and how does this relate to our human will? In the day that you should have surely died, usually the way this is handled is that people say, well, indeed, they did die that day. They died spiritually. And the spiritual death in terms of what we call total depravity did take place that day. But biological death did not, for many, many centuries. Now others say, but nevertheless, they became subject to death that day because had they not sinned, they never would have died. And even though we point out that it was many, many years later that they did die, still death was part of their experience. Biological death was part of their experience that day.

I personally handled that text this way. I think that what God was saying to Adam and Eve was the day you eat of it, you will die, you will die that day biologically. And that was the warning, that was the admonition, that was the penalty for disobedience that he held out before them. When they did do it, God had every right at that moment to exercise mercy and to postpone the final punishment of biological death to a later day, giving them the opportunity to be redeemed. Remember, his first act of redemption was clothing them by hiding the nakedness of which they were ashamed. And so I think there's many times in the Bible where God says, if you do A, then this consequence will follow B. And then they do A, and then God doesn't carry out the threat. Rather, He gives mercy.

So I don't think there's any great big problem with that. Now, the last part was how does this affect the will? The will remains intact insofar as even fallen humanity in the state of spiritual death, we still have a will. We still have a faculty of choosing, and we still have the ability to choose what we want.

Okay? Now, to that degree, we have a free will, free to choose what we want. Yet at the same time, the will is not indifferent as humanistic views of free will would teach, but rather that the will is in bondage to sin. I still do what I want to do, choose what I want to choose, but I choose according to my wicked inclinations, because my heart and affection to do the things that God wants me to do, that has turned to stone. And I no longer have any desire for pleasing God in my natural state. And then that's why unless I'm born again, I'll never have an ounce of desire or affection for the things of God. And so the will is free on the one hand in the sense that it still has the power of choosing. It's enslaved on the other in that it is held captive by the sinful desires and inclinations of fallen humanity. And my question is this. I have a couple of friends who are very staunch Calvinists, and they say that God has determined all things, including Adam and Eve, eating of the fruit in the garden, and therefore they're claiming that He caused them to sin, because that was His will, yet the Bible says God is not the author of sin. And they say, well, we can't understand everything, but they believe that every act that man does is determined by God, and they seem to have strong backing from Reformed teachers. And I just wonder how you would answer that question, if God is not the author of sin, how then could He determine that people would sin? And I thank you for your time.

R.C. Sproul, Jr. And I thank you for asking that somewhat elaborate and complex question. Let me say at the outset to your question that if you have accurately articulated what your so-called staunch Calvinistic friends have said to you, then the first thing I would say is that they're not staunch enough in their Calvinism, because a classical view of the Reformed faith on this matter, particularly even prior to the Reformation back to St. Augustine, is that God ordains, as Augustine said, in a certain sense whatsoever comes to pass. That idea then is picked up in the Westminster Confession of Faith, for example, when it talks about God's eternal decrees in which it says that God from all eternity doth freely and immutably ordain whatsoever comes to pass.

And then it goes on from there after a semicolon. Now, there's a big difference between the word determine and the word ordain. When we think of the concept of determinism, we think of an outside force that coerces us to do something that we, if left to ourselves, would not freely choose to do. I don't like that term determinism here, as neither would most historic Calvinists.

But when Augustine spoke and when the Confession speaks, it speaks of God's ordaining things again, and that concept is set in parentheses in a certain sense, or at least in some sense. Now, you brought up the question of the fall of Adam and Eve and whether God is the author of sin. Now, historic Calvinism has emphatically taken the stance of the so-called biblical a priori that God is not the doer or the author of sin. Now, let's make that clear. However, could God not cause sin, be the author of sin, and still ordain it?

Now, that becomes more complicated. And when Augustine spoke about God's ordaining all things which would include the fall and include our sin, in some sense, what is meant by that is that whatever happens in this world happens beneath the gaze at least of a God who is absolutely sovereign. And some theologians talk about God's permissive will where He lets things happen that are indeed contrary to His moral government, that obviously God does let us sin. That doesn't mean that He sanctions our sin, but when He allows me to sin, the very moment that He allows me to sin, He knows that I'm going to sin, and He has the right and the power to stop me from sinning. And if He does not prevent me from sinning but lets it happen, He is, in a certain sense, choosing to let it happen. And anything that God chooses to let happen, He is, in a certain sense, ordaining. And that's what is meant by historic Calvinism. But I have to say to you at this point that that's not just the historic Calvinism.

That's historic Christianity, because Christianity in all of its varieties, except for maybe open theism, all affirm the sovereignty of God over all things. If we go back, for example, to the book of Genesis and the incident with Joseph, where Joseph is met by his brothers, and they're afraid of his retaliation, and he tries to put them at peace, and he says, I'm not God. He said, you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. So that the human operators here, exercising their will, their intentionality, inflicted suffering upon their brother. But even above and beyond the evil choices of Joseph's brothers stood the sovereignty of God. And if that's not clear there, it's even more clear in the New Testament, where it's by the foreordination of God that Christ is betrayed into the hands of sinners, that God's purpose in that sinful action is altogether good and done for our redemption. Judas's intent in his betrayal of our Lord was altogether wicked.

But none of us acts as an independent, autonomous agent outside the scope of a sovereign God. I hope that helps. Well, our next question is from an Ask R.C. radio broadcast from 2010. In John 8.44, it says that Satan has been a liar from the beginning. So how was he once a good angel? Well, again, the question there is from the beginning of what? Not from the beginning of his existence, but from the beginning of human history, where his first appearance in human history in the Garden of Eden, he came telling falsehoods. He was lying.

So that's the beginning. And he was a liar from that day. Hi, my name is Reese, and my question is, why did God create sin and Satan in the first place, in the first place, knowing we would sin?

All right. The Bible doesn't tell us exactly why. We say that God did not create evil, although I know the passage that I say is translated in the old translation, but I create evil, and I bring prosperity, and that's the use of a parallelism.

That is, I bring prosperity, I bring catastrophe. That's what that means, not that God creates moral evil, but God certainly did more than simply know that our parents were going to fall into sin. Now if you can bear this, I'll quote Augustine. Augustine says that God ordains freely and immutably whatsoever comes to pass, and then the parenthesis that Augustine would say, in a certain sense. Now God, if there is sin in this world, and there's a devil in this world, you know absolutely that God ordained that there be a devil, and that God ordained that human beings would sin.

That's not the same thing as saying that God sinned. You might say, well, God, that was a bad thing that you did creating the devil, or a bad thing that you did having creatures that would sin against you. Now we were never allowed to call good evil or evil good. Now here's the difficult thing I want you to understand, that evil is evil. It is not good, but it is good that there is evil.

It is good that there is a devil, or there wouldn't be a devil, or there wouldn't be sin, because God has ordained both the existence of Satan and the existence of sin, and everything that God ordains ultimately is good. You chew on that for a little while, okay? Thank you. Okay. Well, our next question for R.C.

is this. If there is one Holy Spirit guiding believers, why are there so many denominations and varied interpretations? Well, we do have one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one Holy Spirit who is working to instruct us during our sanctification of the truth that God has revealed to us in sacred Scripture. But we know that even though the Holy Spirit is the operating agent in our regeneration, and that He works with us in our sanctification, we still make a major distinction between the monergistic work of the Spirit and synergistic works. A monergistic work is when a person or an individual is working alone by himself.

Synergism involves the work of two or more people together. In our regeneration, the Holy Spirit is operating alone. I don't contribute to my rebirth. I'm dead in sin and trespasses.

I can't do anything to bring myself alive. But the Holy Spirit does that on His own power. But once we are reborn, the whole rest of our Christian pilgrimage is a work of synergism. We're to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, knowing that God is at work within us both to will and to do. So it's a cooperative enterprise between God, in this case God the Holy Spirit, and the individual. Now the Holy Spirit in that process of our sanctification illumines our minds to understand the things of God.

But our minds in our sinful condition in the fall are so darkened by sin, so corrupted by sin, that that darkness is not totally eliminated with regeneration, but rather it is gradually improved through the process of sanctification. So as long as sin still clings to us and to our minds, we will misinterpret Scripture, we will distort the Scriptures, we will bring our biases to Scripture, and come to incorrect conclusions so that the Holy Spirit does not, in regeneration or in illumination, make the Christian an infallible interpreter of holy writ. Well, our next question is about the authority of Scripture and the authority of the church. Is the church the one that verifies the authority of Scripture? Well, that's a long dispute between historic Protestantism and the Roman Catholic communion. In the sixteenth century, when the Reformers proclaimed sola scriptura, that the final authority is the Scripture, not the church, the church responded by saying, no, it is the authority of the church that gives Scripture its authority. Because without the church's declaration of the Bible as canon, the Bible wouldn't have any authority.

And of course, historically, Reformers say, no, no, no, no, no. When the church established the canon, the word they used was resipemos, we receive these books acknowledging them to be the apostolic authority and so on. Now, when you ask me, do we believe that in the authority of the church, of course the church has authority. The creeds have authority.

They don't have the final authority. But we are not to just ignore what the church teaches. Now, again, if you and I both agree that the Bible is the Word of God and is that final authority that binds our consciences, but we differ as to what it says. If we have a different interpretation about what the Bible says, the thing that we know for sure is that we both cannot be right. We could both be wrong. We could both misinterpret it, okay? But if you interpret it one way and I interpret it in the opposite way, we can't both be right.

So somebody's made a mistake in the interpretation. And I don't consider my interpretation to be the final authority. I'm responsible for how I interpret the Bible. And with that interpretation, what Luther called private interpretation, comes the awesome responsibility of interpreting the Bible accurately.

But it's the Bible itself that has the authority, not my interpretation. I want to ask a question about the Holy Spirit. I know it has characteristic and it has a personality, but they always question if it's a person or a personality, why isn't the Holy Spirit human being like, you know, the Father I know was the Creator and the Son came down on earth and the Father created the world and everything. And I know in the beginning of the Bible, it mentions all three of them, basically. But why does the Holy Spirit have all the characteristics of a person and a person is someone you see? And these people ask me that, how would I defend myself on that question?

R.C. Sproul, Jr. Well, the first thing you could do is go out and get my book, The Mystery of the Holy Spirit, and then I go through all of that in there. But I would say to you that, you know, the same question could be asked about the Father because the Father is a spirit.

The Father does not have a body. It is the second person of the Trinity that the Scriptures speak of who takes upon himself a human nature. And because the second person of the Trinity does that does not mean that it's required that the third person of the Trinity become incarnate. Remember that in the incarnation, we specifically refer to the second person as taking on the human nature. But at the same time, we can't divorce the second person from the third person or from the first person. It's God who takes upon Himself a human nature in Jesus Christ.

And so since the Holy Spirit is part of the Godhead, the whole Godhead is involved in that incarnation. R.C. Sproul, Jr. Well, our next question relates to how we as Christians should respond to God's moral law. Todd on Facebook asked, how should we respond to the hyper-grace movement? R.C.

Sproul, Jr. If we're talking of hyper-grace in terms of, there are those in that movement that are basically antinomian. That is, they believe that once we experience grace, we're no longer under the law in any sense, even in the instructive sense. And I'm going to say if a person is saved by grace, not by the law, we understand that, that nevertheless that doesn't mean, it's the old question that Paul raised, shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?

And his answer is, God forbid. But some people want to make it sound that once you have experienced grace, then basically you can live however you want, you know, free from the law, blessed condition, I can sit all I want, still have remission. And like I say, this is one of the greatest threats to the contemporary evangelical community I think right now is the resurgence of a radical character of antinomianism and libertinism. And part of it is related to that seriously deficient doctrine of the carnal Christian that has been so widespread that believes that a person can actually be a Christian and still not have had their constitutive nature changed by the Holy Spirit.

They're still in a state of carnality, total carnality. That's just an impossibility. Hi, this is Barbara from Northridge, California. I go to Cal State Northridge, minoring in philosophy. My question is, how do we deal with a lot of the ridicule and mockery that happens in the classroom and the unfairness? Are we supposed to serve our rights or be silent like the lamb?

How do we know when to speak or when to be silent when we're asking too many questions or when we're offending by our conduct versus by the message, that type of stuff? In class, we talk about Christianity and usually I don't bring it up. I avoid bringing it up. But when the teacher references it, it's always in a negative derogatory way.

The Christians have the holy wars and the crusades and the witch burning. So please, if you can address that, and we already have a whole series on it, I bet. All right.

Thanks a lot. Bye. Well, thanks for that question, because you're certainly not alone in having to deal with that issue on college campuses.

It's epidemic, obviously. Now, I give a practical bit of advice to students that I'm involved with. The advice is this. Never argue with the person who has the microphone. You can't win. I've been invited many times to be on talk shows, on television, and I won't do it for that very reason. It's never a fair fight.

And because you can't control the microphone, somebody can shut you off in the middle. Now, that's what takes that into the classroom. The professor controls his classroom. And if you try to get engaged in a debate with the professor, 99 times out of 100 you're going to lose. You have no chance. And so, the best thing to do is just be quiet and deal with it outside the classroom with your other students, with your peers.

Talk with them. Say, hey, what did you think about what the professor said there today about the holy wars and the crusades and all of that kind of stuff? I mean, wasn't that a little bit one-sided? You look at the history of the influence that the Christian church has had on the world in terms of orphanages and hospitals and college education. In fact, the whole collegiate system that this man is taking advantage of by being a professor was something that was instituted by historic Christianity. And so, I mean, he's given such a one-sided view. But give the other side, not to him, but to your fellow students outside of the class. Or you may want to write a term paper or an opportunity where you're not in an open public debate, but you are writing your paper, footnote it, document it, do a good job, and make your case. And then you can do it from an academic perspective in a respectable way and see whether he has any fairness left in his soul at all. But in the meantime, strategically, don't fall into the trap of being baited by a professor in the classroom.

It's just not a good plan. Such helpful and practical advice there by Dr. R.C. Sproul, and we hope you've enjoyed these answers from R.C.

You're listening to Renewing Your Mind. I'm Lee Webb. Thank you for being with us today. It is a kindness of the Lord that our archives here at Ligonier Ministries are full of questions like the ones we heard today from Ligonier students through the years. We have put together what we believe is a unique and special resource offer for you this week.

We've compiled 65 full Q&A sessions onto a single USB drive, many of them more than an hour in length. In addition, we're including a digital copy of more than two dozen crucial questions booklets, plus a PDF of Dr. Sproul's book, Now That's a Good Question. This really is a treasure of practical insights from R.C., and for your donation of any amount today, we'd like to send you this special resource.

Request it when you go to renewingyourmind.org or when you call us at 800-435-4343. Well, 2020 is finally winding down. It has been a year for the record books, hasn't it? And we here at Ligonier Ministries are looking forward to 2021 with great anticipation. We see doors to ministry opening around the world, and that's why we humbly ask that you consider a generous year-end gift. The deadline is this Thursday, the 31st, so make sure your check is postmarked by then. Or you can give your gift right up until the deadline when you go to ligonier.org slash donate.

And in advance, let me thank you for your gift. Well, tomorrow we will feature another of these Q&A sessions with Dr. Sproul, and here's a preview. I believe I've heard R.C. Sproul say something about how Jesus had to learn languages, history, doctrine. Well, being God, why would he suddenly forget? It's a good question, and R.C. will answer it tomorrow. So we hope you'll join us Tuesday for Renewing Your Mind.