YES DR. WHITE, SOME THINGS ARE IMPLICIT ALTHOUGH NOT EXPLICITLY STATED IN THE TEXT

James White during the #FlowersVSWhite debate 2024 accused Leighton Flowers of the following:

“If we’re going to many of the ways around this text, try to insert a break in verse 44 to where you have people who are drawn by the Father, but then they have to do something… They have their Free Will actions or whatever else it might be. And those who are raised up at the last day become a different group? You cannot do that with the language.”

And:

“What has happened is, Dr Flowers has inserted an entire anthropology – not from Romans 1 – but an entire anthropology into verse 45, which grants to people the capacity to hear and learn; and therefore they follow the Father; and therefore they’re given to the Son.”

But is Flowers wrong in assuming (or presupposing, a word that came up a lot in the debate) that the people who are drawn have to do something else, not mentioned in John 6:44-45?

Well as mentioned from 11:00 onwards in this video:

There is another statement by Jesus that we can use to compare against Jon 6:44. It comes just a few verses earlier:

Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man SHALL give unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed. – John 6:27

Emphasis on SHALL, because that is the key point. Jesus seems to be making a certain statement, the text itself mentions no conditions or mere possibility. But read on further, and basically the entire crowd of people whom Jesus addresses – the same ones He says that He SHALL give the enduring meat – walk away from Jesus. They did not receive the meat. Clearly, there is an implicit condition that is not stated in that particular verse!

Isn’t that also what we see in John 6:44-45?

No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I WILL raise him up at the last day. It is written in the prophets, And they SHALL be all taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, COMETH unto me. – John 6:44-45?

A lot of statements of certainty in those verses, yes? But does that mean there are no implicit conditions? (This is aside from Flowers’ argument that v45 itself states the conditions for v44, everyone is drawn but only those who hear and learn (actively, not passively) will come to Jesus.

Oooooooh wait, I missed one non-certain word there: CAN. That implies mere possibility, not the certainty which is asserted by Irresistible Grace!

Anyway, for more implied conditions, look at many of the prophecies which are worded as if they are certainties with no options given (e.g. Keilah in 1 Sam 23; Hezekiah in 2 Kings 20; Nineveh in Jonah 3), but the actual results ended up different because of people’s responses to the warning.