his "traditions," he said to me, "James, I have no traditions." I replied that we all have traditions and that the man who thinks he has none is the man who is the most enslaved to them. To truly practice sola scriptura we must test our traditions by the ultimate authority of God's Word, even if they are beliefs we have held for many years and have had pounded into our heads in sermon after sermon. That is what this debate is really about. I am Reformed because of one thing: Consistently, honestly, and thoroughly read, God's Word, the Bible, teaches that God is sovereign over all things, that man is a fallen creature, and that God saves perfectly in Jesus Christ. It is the consistent application of sola scriptura (Scripture alone) and tota scriptura (all of Scripture) that leads inevitably to the doctrines of grace. When we use consistent, proper, unvarying exegesis of the text of the Bible, we are led to believe Reformed theology concerning the grand work of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ. I do not believe the doctrines of grace because of Augustine or Calvin or Jonathan Edwards or Charles Spurgeon or Benjamin Warfield or R.C. Sproul. I rejoice in their company and am thankful for the testimony of men of God down through history. But first and foremost, I believe in the doctrines of grace because of the exegesis of the text of the God-breathed Scriptures, the Holy Bible. This is the firm foundation of Reformed theology, and it is what must be dealt with by any-one who would seek to truthfully convince men that the doctrines of grace are not divine truth. In this exchange I will be challenging Mr. Hunt to test his traditions, not merely reiterate them. I have chosen to present the positive case for the doctrines of grace based upon the text of Scripture. The reader is encouraged to hold both sides to the same standards. Who presents consistent arguments? Who presents a biblically based position that provides a consistent and sound exegetical basis for the assertions made? Does one side simply state basic assumptions over and over again, while refusing to respond to a critique of those presuppositions? THE BIBLE VERSUS PERSONALITIES In his book, Mr. Hunt focused on attacking Christian men of the past personally; specifically, John Calvin, Martin Luther, and Augustine of Hippo. Seemingly, he believes that if a teacher of the past held to doctrines he disagrees with, everything that person believed was wrong. Amazingly, he hands all of history to the Roman Catholic Church, making Augustine a Roman Catholic (although Augustine would have had no concept of the phrase and, as we shall see, held to all sorts of beliefs contrary to Roman Catholicism) and then he asserts that Calvinists are in essence crypto-Catholics! This charge is made in ignorance of the facts; indeed, it is Mr. Hunt's position that stands in harmony with Rome on the key points of debate (the nature of grace and the will of man). But these specifics aside, is it a valid argument to attack these men, allege they taught various forms of errors and were somehow mean-spirited and unkind, and on this basis seek to bias the reader against an entire theological position? Does it somehow mean some-thing that the Roman Catholics who engaged in the Inquisition would agree with Mr. Hunt on the "free will of man"? Or does a meaningful argument have to provide more than just a vague allegation of a connection to carry weight with the person who thinks clearly and weighs facts honestly? The very term Calvinism is a strange fact of history, for Calvin is in no way the originator of " the doctrines of grace." His name became connected with the view simply because of the unrelenting consistency of his writing on the subject, not because he taught on it more often than anyone else. Indeed, the section on prayer in The Institutes of the Christian Religion is longer than that on predestination, and Luther spoke more often on the subject than Calvin did. Hence, the issues of God's freedom in salvation and man's inability are not to be decided by reference to
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