Psalm 33 Refutation Concluded, Thoughts on Trinitarian Orthodoxy Over Time

And greetings and welcome. It is Christmas Eve, Eve, and I hope you and your family will have a wonderful time together. I think that maybe we all need to be thinking very deeply concerning the real reason for the season more than we ever have in the past.

And so I hope your time with your family, hope you have opportunity to be with your family at this time of the year. If you do not, that you would find your your peace and your joy in in your Lord. I'm wearing.

I brought this in because someone sent me this very nice mug. It says 30 years of debates, 1990 to 2020. It's got my name and the Alpha Omega logo on the bottom. But then it has this. And as I as I look.

Yeah, this is this is definitely the this definitely the Coogee that they must take in a screenshot. But even the little yellow things are at the same same place in this sweater as in in the cool cat Coogee one.

So I am pretty certain that that's that that's how that works. So I felt that today would be a wonderfully celebratory day to wear one of my brighter ones. I actually I don't think I have it in here. I have the other room.

I offered one to rich to wear. Maybe if it was a little bit cooler. No, no, it would. There would have to be icicles hanging off of the cameras before before Richard do that. But I do have one here that is one of my two brightest Coogee's.

I mean, it is just blinding. And I would love to, you know, get a rich cam shot of of rich wearing that that Coogee. But he said that he would have to be dead before that would happen. It could happen.

You never know. I said, I said, you can preach my funeral, but you can't dress my coffin.

Yeah. Yeah. OK, well, we'll see. Because by then, you know, ain't much you can do about it. You might go into eternity wearing a Coogee. You know, it's just you never. There's purgatory. Yeah, there you go.

Psalm 33, Molinism, and Biblical Anthropology

All right. We got a lot to get to today, and I've got an appointment this afternoon. And so I can't go super, super long today as I have been recently. So we need to get to it. And I've got all sorts of stuff all over the screen here.

So if you recall, last program, we were together. We did two things. We had Dr. Joseph Boot on to talk about the end of religious liberty and the fundamental attack of the Canadian government on the Christian faith and on humanity as a whole in Bill C -4, which will go into effect in just about a month, a little over.

Well, no, a matter of weeks, actually, in Canada. And a reminder that January 16th is going to be the day when our church and many other churches will be standing with our Canadian brothers and speaking to the biblical teaching on sexual morality and sexual ethics.

And we did link to that in the description of the last program. If you want to have the link to be able to go to the website that talks about that. And then we started responding to Tyson James article from 2018, as I recall, which is responding to a dividing line from 2014 on Psalm 33.

And so in the last program, we walked through Psalm 33. Provided a exegetical interpretation application of the 33rd Psalm in regards to its context, in regards to the relationship of Psalm 33 and its assertions regarding the connection of creation with providence, and that is that there is a clear contrast drawn in the text on 33 between the plans of men and the plans of God that God frustrates the plans of men.

These are plans that they have hatched in their hearts. Of course, that means these are unregenerate men. These are unregenerate kings or generals or whoever it might be. We're talking primarily about the nations outside of of Israel.

And so these are the fallen sons and daughters of Adam. And one of the one of the things that does need to have more discussion, and I did discuss this with Eli Ayala on his program, is one of the gaping holes in Molinism.

Is its anthropology, since it's philosophically derived, it's primarily it's primarily attracted to people who just want to do little logical games and philosophical quandaries and things like that. And so it's it completely lacks any kind of meaningful anthropology.

Because to to even say that God has knowledge of what any given person will do before that person is decreed to be made raises all sorts of real problems in regards to the doctrine of total depravity, original sin, the inability of man to do that, which is pleasing to God.

And so it doesn't matter what circumstance someone is put in if you're spiritually dead. There is a limitation by your nature on the range of options that are available to you. That's that's a given. And, of course, the will then operating on the desires of the nature.

That nature will only be presenting evil desires. And so there's there's limitation based upon fallenness. And then, of course, so many of our decisions are based upon not just a sterile set of circumstances, but upon interaction with other fallen, sinful human beings.

And that that sinful nature is not a predictable nature. Sinful natures are tremendously unpredictable. And we have biblical evidence that God is engaged in restraining the evil of men. There could be no room, as far as I can see, in Molinism for an act of providence of God in restraining the actions of men.

That would be a violation of their, quote unquote, free will. That would be the the the married bachelor, the square with with three sides or whatever else. Because just as they they reject the idea that God can raise you from spiritual death to spiritual life, unite you to Jesus Christ, change your nature so that you naturally now love God instead of rebel against God.

They reject that. You can't do that. That has to be something that man actuates himself. In the same way, in the opposite direction, how then could God limit the freedom of the expression of the evil of man?

Yet he does. Plainly and clearly does. Had to have to bring about the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. Think how many times. How many times did Joseph walk past a Roman soldier? How many times did Mary walk past a Roman soldier before the angelic announcements?

And could not one of those Roman soldiers have given vent to their evil? How about just simply brigands thieves? How many times to bring about just think, just think about the prophecy, that the line of descent to the Messiah.

How many times God had to protect that line against the natural inclination to evil of men and women around those people? Had to be able to resist, had to be able to restrain their their evil and did.

And how does that even work in a Molinistic concept where the greatest goal is the maintenance of the absolute autonomy of the human will? That is, that is the whole reason that anyone has even come up with this assertion is to protect the idea of the autonomy of human choices.

So the anthropologist, there's all sorts of issues regarding original sin and and total depravity and that just simply, I don't think are part of things because remember Molina believe in prevenient grace.

So he's a Roman Catholic. Prevenient grace is the cellophane tape of theology. It's it's just there to hold stuff together, but it actually never really works. There is just no biblical basis for anything.

I don't remember how many years ago it was. I bought a book that just come out on prevenient grace, and my review was there's nothing there. I mean, there just simply isn't any biblical basis for this concept.

It's it's absolutely necessary in synergistic systems. But Molina is depending upon something that is not at all biblical to make it even a possibility that God could put people into a position where they will freely choose to follow Christ.

There is no such position. According to script, according to Romans, Chapter eight, there is no condition you can put someone in to where they will freely do that, because unless they have been regenerated, they will not do that, which is pleasing to God.

They will not submit themselves to the law of God. Romans, Chapter eight. So the whole system doesn't work. For many, many reasons, that that's a that's a very fruitful area of criticism of Molinism is the whole area of biblical anthropology.

And at that point, the Molinist is really at a loss because now they have to engage the scriptures directly. And that's just not something I've found that they're overly comfortable doing. They're much more comfortable in their logical stuff, which I think is logical stuff.

By the way, I'm really tired of them saying I somehow reject logic. As if I've ever said that Logic is only as good as the basis upon which it proceeds. You can create logical arguments on the basis of naturalistic materialism, which will have nothing to do with the real world.

They will be formally correct. You can put it out in whatever forms you want to put it out in, in symbolic logic, and it'll all work out. But since it's based upon something that's outside of reality, the results will be irrelevant.

They will not reflect what's real. And so logic is wonderful. God has made us to think in that way. He is his creation guides us in that direction. No one's saying reject logic or reason. But the foundation and the starting point is the fear of the Lord.

That's the whole point. And none of that changes the reality that God made us as human beings to be dependent upon scriptural revelation from the beginning. Adam was dependent upon what God informed him of and gave him the parameters of.

So with all that said, we started looking at Tyson James' comments in Psalm 33, and I marked where we were. So I want to get that done and get to our other stuff, because I've already gone 12 minutes.

OK, so we pick up with Tyson James saying the only alternative available to white is that God is unable to select a particular, complete description of reality to bring about. As Jonathan Thompson notes, White's claims are contradictory, for he wants to assert that God is sovereign in his decree of all things.

It claims that on Molinism, God's bringing about some possible world. A complete description of reality makes him less than sovereign. Thompson drives point his home, drives his point home. Well, let's just stop again and point out where they're missing the forest for the trees, I guess.

God's sovereign decree flows from his eudaicheia, the good intention of his will. He is ordering time with a direct purpose of the demonstration of his attributes, of his wrath, his power, his justice, of his love, his mercy, and his grace.

And therefore, he orders time in such a way as to bring about this revelation perfectly, and it represents his desired mechanism of self-revelation. Within Molinism, he is limited to feasible worlds based upon not something that flows from his eudaicheia, does not flow from his will, but is something, these true conditional subjunctives, these subjunctive conditionals, that he does not create, that he has no control over and cannot change.

And so if you cannot, gentlemen, if you cannot see the difference between those two assertions, then I don't know what to do for you. Most people can see the vast difference between those two things, whether you're Tyson James or whoever Jonathan Thompson is, don't have any idea who he is.

These claims are not contradictory if you understand both what the Bible is saying and what Molinism is saying. They're not contradictory. But let's go ahead and read it anyways. It's unclear for me, this is whoever Jonathan Thompson is, it's unclear for me, to me, how God, having the freedom to will or withhold a particular world, just stop and say, again, we're so far outside of any biblical parameters here that we're off in philosophical fantasy land again, but will or withhold a particular world, counts as a sovereignty undermining limitation of God's freedom.

Well, if the delimiting factor is the decisions of mankind as yet uncreated or decreed, but as fixed by some force, something, somehow, all against biblical revelation about the nature of man and everything else, all that stuff, if God is delimited by something he did not create and does not represent the freedom of his will, that's the problem.

There's the issue. I'm not sure how you can't see it, but there it is. Everybody else can. Indeed, given that God is a free agent, notice, a free agent, biblically, he is the one and only free agent. How could his freedom possibly be otherwise?

Well, from a Christian perspective, right. That's why we reject Molinism. It's not as if there could be some third option available to him that doesn't ultimately collapse into his choosing to will or refraining from willing a particular world.

White's criticism thus appears to be unintelligible to me since I can't even conceive how God's freedom could be otherwise. Well, I'm sorry you don't understand what the issues are, sir. I'm not sure why Tyson James was quoting someone who doesn't understand what the issues are, but anyone who's read William Lane Craig's book and as we have gone through it on this program and let him say this is how middle knowledge delimits the feasible worlds that God could create, we all get it.

And hopefully, whoever Jonathan Thompson is, he will read those books and come to understand those things too. Then a subtitle, Exegetical Overshoot, quoting from me, Blessed is the nation whose God is Yahweh, the people whom he has chosen as his heritage.

Notice the application, Yahweh looks down from heaven, he sees all the children of men from where he sits enthroned, he looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth. Now, that could almost be taken at that point as a passive taking it of knowledge, maybe, but that's not what it says.

It says, he who fashions the hearts of them all and observes all their deeds. There's absolutely no question that the heart of man is in biblical anthropology, dot, dot, dot, out of the heart flow the issues of life.

I wonder what the dot, dot, dot was. It is the central seat of man and for anyone to suggest that man could act in such a way as the heart is not determined of his actions is biblically absurd. There's the quote.

Now, response, here White's exegesis far exceeds the biblical data. Yes, God fashions the hearts of man. Does he fashion it to provide us with free will or not? This text does not give any indication.

Now, remember, this is the text that has already had God is creator of all things. Everyone is to be in awe of him. Man's plans and counsels are frustrated. God's are not, but the text has no indication that when God says he looks down on the sons of men and he who fashions their hearts understands their actions completely has nothing to do with the nature of the will.

You can just, all you gotta do is read it and let it stand for itself and let most people just sort of sit back and go, but obviously it does. Right, it does. This text does not give any indication. The Molinist agrees that the heart of man decides his choices.

Good. Notice though that the word heart in the Bible is often synonymous with the person himself. Genesis 6 -5 reads, Yahweh sought the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

Well, that is not actually synonymous with the person himself. It's specifically saying that the thoughts of his heart were only evil continually. It wasn't the thoughts of his left foot. It wasn't the thoughts of his kidneys.

It wasn't just, well, everything he did. No, the contemplation, what he was thinking about, his desires were evil continually. So the assertion, and this is just one of, there are numerous texts. I spent some time going through numerous of the texts in regards to heart.

Look up heart in Proverbs and Psalms and Jeremiah and see for yourself. The heart is desperately sick and wicked. Who can understand it? Now, does that mean that men then give expression to that? Yes.

But the point is it is the seat of what would have to be known by middle knowledge because we're being told without being told how. We are being told that middle knowledge tells God what every deceitful heart would do in any given situation.

And yet, the essence of James White stuff, there is no essence of a human being floating around out there that can be known as to what that human being will do without addressing the issues of the heart.

Yet, who formed the heart? And what does forming mean? That's a part of the decree. So once again, that which is allegedly known in middle knowledge has to be from the decree of God. You can't separate them biblically.

And yet, in Molinism, you have to. You have to separate these things out because the results of what the heart will do can be known apart from the expression of God's creative decree, according to Molinism.

And my point is, you didn't get that from reading Psalm 33, did you? No, you'd be led to the opposite conclusion if you didn't already have your framework to try to push it down on top of the text, which is what Tyson James is doing.

So this isn't an exegetical overshoot. This is Molinism causing Tyson James to do an exegetical undershoot where you have the evidence right there in the text, but you won't listen to it. You won't believe it because it would be contrary to the system that you've already adopted from out here and are now using as the lens through which you read the scriptures.

Are we to understand the heart here as something distinct from the person? If this is true, then Genesis 6 -5 would suggest that this part has thoughts of its own wholly apart from the person himself, a strange sort of symbiosis.

Obviously, though, the thoughts belong to the person and heart is synonymous for inner or true self. The heart is what produces what is allegedly known by middle knowledge. The heart is what produces the true subjunctive conditionals.

However, whatever way you want to try to express it and whichever flavor of Molinism you end up coming up with, it comes from the heart. And God made those hearts. And that is why he understands. That's the whole point of what is being said when it asserts that he who fashions the hearts.

So if that is the decision-making organ, then that's the same term that's used of God fashioning clay. So how can you have the results of what is fashioned without the fashioner? You're putting the results coming after the creation of what makes the results.

It's backwards, guys. Molina was wrong. So were you. Molina was wrong because he was trying to undercut the gospel of grace. And you're trying to use his wretched tools apologetically. Accomplishes nothing.

Only God's truth can be used apologetically to accomplish something that will actually be lasting. So he who fashions the hearts of them all understands all their works. So the biblical assertion is that he understands what flows out of the heart because he fashions the heart.

He has perfect knowledge of what comes out of the heart because he's the fashioner, the molder of the heart. That's why he can judge perfectly. He knows exactly what the desires were, what the state of knowledge was, everything.

But this is all post-decree. This is all assuming what came before in Psalm 33. God is the maker of all things. That's post-decree. There's no place for middle knowledge here. None. There is nothing in this Psalm that does not fit into a two-knowledge understanding.

Natural and free. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. You would never. I challenge Tyson James right here, right now. You go into Psalm 33 and you derive your system consistently from the flow of the text. Don't bring it in from outside.

Don't say, well, it's consistent. No. You derive it from the text. Because I'm deriving my position. This is why we're doing this. This is what I said to Dr. Craig. This is the difference. I'm walking through Psalm 33 and I'm deriving my beliefs from the text.

You create your system out here and put it down on top of the text rather than deriving it from the text. There's the difference. And certain people can stand their heads and spin in circles and just get all upset when that's just naive.

No one's actually doing that. We're doing it. And I'm thankful that folks out there who are concerned about these things, you don't live your lives thinking about Molinos. You don't live your lives thinking about some of the other stuff we're going to be talking about in the program today.

But still, you can see this. You can recognize this. And that's all that matters. That's the issue. I don't care what any professional organization thinks or anything else. That's why we do what we do.

And there you go. So, all right. If we read the Bible pancanonically, as White suggests elsewhere in the episode, and affirm that heart here is synonymous with man. Again, at this point, what Tyson James would have to have done, why not go to Jeremiah?

The heart is desperately wicked and sick. Why not go to Psalm 139? He who forms the hearts. Why not go to all these places where heart is clearly being defined not simply as all of man, but as the seat of emotion, decision, passion, everything.

It is the heart of man. It's the heart of the issue. Why not go to those? We could do that. I'd be happy to do that. Then we see that the passage really just means, see what's going on here? It's under determinative, you see.

It really just means that God fashioned man, which the Molinus affirms wholeheartedly. Does the Molinus affirm that God, in his decree, fashions that which produces the true subjunctive conditionals? Yes or no?

Because if you say yes, then the decree precedes the true subjunctive conditionals, and there's no more middle knowledge. If you say no, what then? Again, this under determinative text, that's quote, this under determinative text lacks the ammo against libertarian free will White is seeking.

We have refuted you. Tyson James, you stand utterly refuted by the text, and all you can do is say, well, it's just not clear enough. This is useful because this is exposing what Molinism forces men to do.

On the one hand, let's say this is the word of God. On the other hand, let's say, but it's not clear enough to know what it's saying, and yet the psalmist knew what he was saying, and the people who read the psalmist knew what he was saying, and they never came up with Molinism.

And there's a reason for it. There you go. Last section here. White is right, but not really. So, quote from me, the king is not saved by his great army. I'm going to skip my part. Let's just go to the response.

It is not entirely clear here what White's point is. I'm trying to rush through this. It sounds as though he thinks on Molinism, God would have control over natural events, but not over the decisions of human beings.

Of course, in a sense, he's right. Since Molinists believe that it's logically incoherent to say that God causes deterministically our free choices, it wouldn't be rational to say that God has control of human decisions in that sense.

So, the heart of the king is not in the hands of Yahweh. He does not turn it whichever way he pleases. It's a biblical phrase, biblical term. Molinism says no, because that is Molinism's central assertion.

That's the only reason it exists. Molina invented it to create a means of, on one hand, affirming God's sovereignty, on the other hand, affirming man's sovereignty. Can't do it, so it doesn't work, but that's the whole point.

Again, just briefly, the idea of causal determinism and the simplicity that Molinists assert to this idea, they simply cannot begin to understand how God could decree and create in time the massive chain of fulfilled prophecies that lead to the incredible conjunction of Pilate, Herod, the Jews, and the Romans to do exactly what his hand, not what his knowledge of middle knowledge had allowed him to feasibly determine, but what his purpose and his hand predetermined would take place.

And yet, no one who reads Acts chapter 4 comes away going, yeah, well, obviously that means that the Bible is saying that Pontius Pilate wasn't guilty and Herod wasn't guilty and the Jews weren't guilty and the Romans weren't guilty.

Nobody comes up with that because it's obvious in Scripture you have a full-orbed, multidimensional presentation of time and eternity, God's purposes, man's intentions, all coming together in one in the fulfillment of all the prophecies in the redemptive work of Christ, rather than that flattened-down, it's just a bunch of puppets-type idea that you have not only in Molinism, but that you have in Provisionism, too, interestingly enough.

So, of course, since most believe it's logically okay, the reason this wouldn't be rational is that omnipotence doesn't require that God be able to do what is logically or metaphysically impossible. So, again, logically, Acts 427 -28 is out the window.

But, of course, Molinism has the resources to avoid such incoherence and yet affirm a robust sense of divine providence, namely, middle knowledge. If God's knowledge includes how free creatures would freely act in certain situations, say, knowing that a particular soldier in the middle of a particular battle would flee rather than fight, then he can obviously incorporate those decisions into his meticulous, providential planning of history.

Again, that's not God freely expressing himself. It's God working with the legos provided by middle knowledge to put together the best he can do, given the cards he's been dealt. Conclusion. Psalm 33 is under-determinative regarding the question of free will, and therefore fails as a proof text against it.

Given the parallelism of the passage affirmed by White himself, it also plausibly gives support to proponents of libertarian freedom. Moreover, White unjustifiably reads divine causal determinism into the biblical language of God's fashioning the heart of man.

Remember, that's the exact same Hebrew term used of forming the potter, forming the pots. Yetzir has a long and deep biblical usage here. Notice there's nothing from the text is brought out to do this.

Sadly, it seems that White did just what he has elsewhere accused Moles of doing, beginning with a philosophical view, determinism, and seeking to loosely justify it with biblical proof text. Well, I assert that Tyson James' article has been refuted to the last comma and period.

There is nothing left of it. It stands fully refuted, and there you go. All you gotta do is go to scriptures and don't be intimidated by all the philosophical stuff on the outside. Yes, sir?

So I'm getting the impression that Psalm 33 doesn't work for him, because that's pretty much what I hear him saying. It doesn't work for me, so you don't get to use that one. The end.

Well, look, simple fact. I can go from Psalm 33 1 to the end consistently in context and drive my beliefs from it. The Molinist cannot, and he knows it. So what's the only thing you can do? Well, nobody can.

It's underdeterminative. That means there is no passage anywhere in the Bible that is determined enough to tell us Molinism. So all you gotta do is say all the rest of the Bible is underdeterminative to refute it, and we win.

That's what we're up against. You know, again, there you go. Okay, switching gears. Switching gears. All right. Story time with Uncle Jimmy here. This isn't too long. Something tells me I'm not going to get as far today as I wanted to, but we'll do our best.

Basil of Caesarea on Knowing God by His Operations

Basil of Caesarea is one of the great Cappadocian fathers. He is post-Nicaea. So in other words, all is important. 325 AD is a dividing line. Not to use the name of the show in an appropriate way. It is a dividing line in church history.

Pre-Nicene, post-Nicene, that's just standard historical terminology. It is a watershed period because it's the first, in hindsight, ecumenical council. Nobody at the time thought that that's what it was.

People at the time did realize it was extremely unusual because the Roman Empire called it. And this was only 12 years after the end of persecution. So that was a pretty quick turnaround. And so people recognized that, but its decision in regards to Christ being homoousius with the father was disputed for 40, 50 years afterwards.

And so it wasn't like, oh, there's been an ecumenical council. Everybody needs to believe it. But it's still an absolutely key point in history. You need to know when it was, 325. And so Basil comes after this point of time.

So we're talking about, in general in history, the development of post-Nicene orthodoxy. Now, obviously, depending on how you view things, those who have a very high view of a development of a kind of tradition will see this period as extremely important.

It's extremely important in the debates that were going on concerning, okay, now that we've said Christ is this, what does that mean about the Holy Spirit? What does that mean about the person of Christ?

This is when you have the Christological controversies. This is when you have conversations that lead to the definition of the hypostatic union and everything else because you've gotten a more foundational issue dealt with.

And now you're building on top of that. And obviously, a Protestant, a consistent Protestant, has to say, well, Nicaea is important. We can be thankful for Nicaea. But Nicaea is not canon scripture. And this raises all the issues about the relationship of creeds, confessions, signs, symbols, and the authority of scripture.

And of course, within Roman Catholicism, that's understood in a very, very different way. Since written tradition, scripture, is joined with oral tradition and subsumed under a larger category of sacred tradition, capital S, capital T, then this is what leads to the ability to have entire new dogmas defined 1 ,400 years later after this time period that have the same authority as the resurrection of Jesus or even the Trinity itself.

So lots of really important topics come up here. And no one should be claiming infallibility for the great Cappadocians or for Augustine or any of the people writing during this time period. They are important to understand historically in regards to the development of certain things.

But to grant to them infallibility is to ignore the fact that they frequently were not exactly in line with one another either. And terminology differences exist. And there's still a lot of it. It requires an incredible simplification of this time period to come up with any idea that there is just one understanding of everything.

Now, Basil of Caesarea wrote this epistle in answer to a question. And you can find these easily online. Like I said, if you just put in Basil, letter 234, you'll find two, three, four different versions of it just online.

CCEL, it's available in the shaft, the old Erdmann. It used to be called the Erdmann set. Now it's a Hendrickson set, the 38 volume set. But here is that letter. Do you worship what you know or what you do not know?

If I answer, I worship what I know, they immediately reply, the people he's arguing against. What is the essence of the object of worship? Then if I confess that I'm ignorant of the essence, they turn to me again and say, so you worship, you know not what?

I answer that the word to know has many meanings. We say that we know the greatness of God, his power, his wisdom, his goodness, his providence over us, and the justness of his judgment, but not his very essence.

The question is therefore only put for the sake of dispute. Oh, really? I'm not quoting right now. Someone would actually introduce things into arguments that are only there for the sake of dispute? Even long, long ago?

Yes, unfortunately. Thankfully, Basil never had to deal with Twitter. I am convinced that the majority of the early church fathers would have lost their minds had they ever had to do a deal with Twitter.

The question is therefore only put for the sake of dispute, for he who denies that he knows the essence does not confess himself to be ignorant of God, because our idea of God is gathered from all the attributes which I have enumerated.

Now, please note what Basil's doing here, and note that there to this day exists a fundamental difference between East and West on this topic, and on a number of topics. And almost always when I deal with this issue, I am struck once again that we still struggle with terminological differences like we did back then, even though we know that they struggled with terminological differences then, we continue to have them today.

We continue to struggle to create a vocabulary to describe that which is timeless, and that's understandable. And that might mean that in certain areas where you do not have clear biblical revelation, there might be a need for humility, grace, and patience.

Maybe? But especially when talking about the East, thankfully, and I don't identify my dear brother because I don't want to get him in trouble and he knows exactly why, but I have a dear brother who is expert in many things, and every time I think of this brother, I smile, and I have joy because he just brings joy to me when I think about him.

We haven't been able to spend a whole lot of time together, but the times we have have been pretty special. Anyway, he knows a lot about the East, and so I am thankful to have someone that I can sort of pop some questions off to.

And in fact, he's the one that said, well, just read Basil's 234th letter, it'd give you a really good idea. And he was right, of course, obviously. But the East does not hold to the same concept of simplicity as the West in general.

You have to say in general at almost any point. The East, while affirming, obviously, monotheism, differentiates between the essence of God and his attributes or his powers or his energies. Whereas the West, especially as formulated in a particularly strict fashion, the West, with Aquinas, moves toward a doctrine of simplicity that eventually in Aquinas results in the idea that the attributes of God in God are all the same thing and cannot be differentiated.

They're only differentiated like you put light through a prism. And so the light going in is purely white. So in God, all of his attributes are the same, but through revelation, they become distinguished to us.

And this is a major portion of the conflict and argument going on in Reformed circles right now, or at least Reformed Baptist circles, regarding the doctrine of simplicity. And so here is Basil, and he is saying, for he who denies that he knows the essence does not confess himself to be ignorant of God, because our idea of God is gathered from all the attributes, which I've enumerated.

But God, he says, is simple. And whatever attribute of him you have reckoned as knowable is of his essence. But the absurdities involved in this sophism are innumerable. Now, I just stopped just to point something out.

There are young men, especially these days, who seem to believe that their understanding, mediated through Aquinas and through modern writers, has no objectionable element to it. And they believe that this is apostolic.

This has always been the view of the church. If you have made that statement, and you have not read this, maybe you missed something. Maybe this wasn't a point of discussion 100 years earlier. Possibly.

That's why maybe you should be a little slower to get out your cancel gun and start identifying people as heterodox, or no longer worthy of being followed. Before you do that, you might want to consider some of these things.

But, I repeat the sentence, but the absurdities involved in this sophism are innumerable. What's the sophism? But God, he says, is simple. And whatever attribute of him you have reckoned as knowable is of his essence.

When all these high attributes have been enumerated, are they all the names of one essence? And is there the same mutual force in his awfulness and his loving kindness, his justice and his creative power, his providence and his foreknowledge, and his bestowal of rewards and punishments, his majesty and his providence?

In mentioning any one of these, do we declare his essence? If they say yes, let them not ask if we know the essence of God, but let them inquire of us whether we know God to be awful or just or merciful.

These we confess that we know. If they say that essence is something distinct, let them not put us in the wrong on the score of simplicity. For they confess themselves that there is a distinction between the essence and each one of the attributes enumerated.