I understand that this won't be well received by you. From what you have written here and elsewhere, you get to decide whether someone is qualified to be honored :tonofbricks: with debating with you. And if they do disagree it is only because they haven't deeply examined the Scriptures or read the correct books.
Please take a step back and ask God to develop in you a humble spirit.
Only he can say, but I got the sense, given how many times James and I have been in discussion with Evan, that James was being sarcastic, or at least facetious.
What I asked is what Evangelist6589 demands. Just read the tag line at the bottom of his posts. He'll tell you how great he is if you give him an ear
Many of us have countered with exactly what you have written, that scripture is enough, that the words of man contained in books should take a back seat to scripture.
Oh, btw...
I didn't make it clear, but the Evangelist and I are friends. We might not always post as though we are, but I love him like a blood brother
In the seminary environment you can't just read internet articles or sermons. You have to read the textbook. In a Reformed seminary MacArthur's Gospel According to Jesus or Gospel According to the Apostles would be the book(s) that the quizzes will come from or they may be secondary books, as John Frame wrote a far more exhaustive book on the topic.
About the only persons on this board that I do respect their disagreement on is John C and Deacon in this area. John C read cover to cover more than once the book Tell the Truth which is also a book defending LS and Mac never wrote it.
And we're not in a seminary environment. What do you think MacArthur's book is going to teach me about Lordship Salvation that I don't already know? I've heard his sermons. I've read his articles. I've heard others comment on it. I've listened to Paul Washer run down churches like mine for not believing the doctrine he holds to. I have told you before that I do not find Lordship Salvation to be a Biblically sound doctrine. I've told you before how I view it as a works-based form of salvation.
Reading a book by John MacArthur is not going to change my mind. It's not going to change how I discuss and debate this issue. You have decided that only those with a certain level of education, as judged solely by you, are worthy of debate. I don't mind debating and discussing with you, Evan. But now I find out that, even though I know the LS issue well enough to discuss, I'm no longer wanted in your discussion threads because I haven't read certain books.
We don't have tests and quizzes around here. I've always thought of this forum as a place of debate and discussion, and hopefully a place where we can each grow in the faith by, as I stated to American Dream earlier, "iron sharpening iron." If we follow your example, then we seriously limit those we can hold good, edifying discussion with, simply because we have judged them unworthy to be involved, based on a metric we create for ourselves and enforce on ourselves. Is that really the type of Christian you want to be? If you go out and do your open-air preaching, and someone questions you on Lordship Salvation, do you try to explain it to them, or do you tell them to run down to Barnes and Noble and pick up some books by John MacArthur and come back later once they've read them?
Lordship salvation is more correct than what is rightly disparaged as "easy believism," but it is not entirely the biblical view.
Lordship salvation assumes that the gospel is about "getting saved" and going to heaven. It is not. The biblical call to discipleship to Jesus is the call to enter the Kingdom of God and find eternal life in an interactive relationship with the Triune God.
And yes, I have read the book by John Mac, as well as the rebuttals such as, "So Great a Salvation." I was in the early phases of my Christian walk when those books first came out and it was the topic of conversation when I was in college earning a theology degree.