Aquinas Invades the Reformed Baptists, Tim Stratton Continued

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00:33

Well, greetings and welcome to the Dividing Line. It is a Thursday and here in Phoenix, Arizona, we are hoping for some rain tonight.

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We haven't had any rain. It's been a long time. We had a good monsoon. We are very, very pleased, but so far this winter has been very warm and very dry, and hopefully that will change.

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And I'm sort of just anticipating it's probably, I don't know, nearly 70 degrees outside, but it's been in the 80s for weeks, so it's not like I need a sweater.

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But, you know, as I've said, we only have so many weeks, and then they go back and you put them in those bags, you seal up, and suck all the air out, and, you know, till November again.

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That's just sort of how it works. But anyway, it is good to be with you today. We have a lot to cover.

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I would invite you to get a deep seat in the saddle. We're going to be doing church history and apologetics.

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What a shock that would be. Professor of Church History and Apologetics at GBTS now, we're doing church history apologetics.

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But in reality, we're going to be continuing what we've been doing in regards to Molinism.

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Don't worry, we have a whole different spectrum of the argument to look at today.

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I'm also going to be joining Tony Costa this evening, 5 .30 my time, whatever that is,

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I think 7 .30 Eastern Time, I think would be, yeah, to talk

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Molinism this afternoon. And so, going to be doing a lot of sitting here in front of the camera for the next number of hours.

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But, important things to be addressing, and I'm going to be talking to my fellow

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Reformed folks in dealing with the attack on Reformed theology by Molinism, all of my fellow

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Reformed folks. But at first, need to do some in -house chat.

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And what I mean by that is, I remember the days when the

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Reformed Baptist movement was very small, still is, and getting smaller in some ways.

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But when I, I've said before, my first exposure to Reformed Baptist was in seminary.

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I encountered tapes, yes, cassette tapes in a display at Berean Christian Bookstore, and Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church, what in the world is that?

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And I had to get out the Handbook of Denominations. I never heard of it. And attended, and of course ended up being at that church for 29 and a half years.

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So, you know, major portion of my entire adult life, almost exactly half of it, as it sits right now.

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And when I first became involved, you know, very quickly

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I was involved in speaking and teaching. And, you know,

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I was already, right around that time is when I graduated from seminary, and had already been involved in ministry for years, but now at least consistently so.

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Anyways, the point is that back then there was a major sense of unity.

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There were already some schools, some divisions between certain aspects of the movement.

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I guess that's always been there. I've tried to steer clear of that. I always have. All that political stuff, and this person, that person, this group, that group.

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I didn't care when I went into a church. I just tried not to step on landmines and move along.

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But we had something that held us together. We had a positive, meaningful statement of faith.

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And we were normally facing the same objections, and the same kind of pressures from outside.

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And that was helpful, as far as keeping us together. But what

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I've seen over the past decades, and especially over the past maybe five to ten years, is a brittleness.

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And when I think of something that's brittle, you think of peanut brittle. And what happens if you if you try to bend peanut brittle?

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It snaps. It breaks. There's no flexibility to it. There's no give.

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When something is hard and brittle, it will crack. It will splinter, shatter when it is put under pressure.

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And it just seems to me that when you do not have an outward look, in other words, you're looking outward toward the world.

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You're looking to make application in the world. You're looking to do apologetics and evangelism.

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And you're also looking to have a sufficient Catholicity to work with others that do not walk in absolute lockstep with you.

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And I've been attacked for years and years and years for daring to cooperate with individuals.

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Because there is, amongst Reformed Baptists, even though many

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Reformed Baptists, in my experience, have come to understand the need for that kind of openness, that kind of cooperation with others, that the fact that you can't demand that everyone follow you at every single point.

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Others don't get there. They still have the old -style fundamentalism in the sense of a quickness to divide.

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And we see that amongst fundamentalists, and they don't have a confession of faith.

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When you have a confession of faith, what happens is you end up with what I would call hyper -confessionalism, where you spend your day combing through the letters of someone who contributed to the writing of the confession, and you find that they held this view.

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And that means that's what everybody's got to have now. And if you don't do that, then you're out.

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And the results are obvious. Just look around the landscape as to how fractured everything once is again.

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But like I said, I was involved in traveling and teaching and going from church to church for a long time.

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And there were certain topics that were not discussed at all.

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The first 15 years I was involved with Reformed Baptists, no one ever said a word about certain things.

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I can guarantee you there was never a Thomas Aquinas reading group. In my experience amongst

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Reformed Baptists, it was recognized that Thomas Aquinas was a Roman Catholic, and while a brilliant theologian for his day, the more

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I read of him, the less I fully understand why that has always been said over and over again.

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But still, we recognize that on the key issues, the defining issues of scriptural sufficiency and the gospel, that he had missed it, that he put his trust in things that should never be trusted.

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And so that was the extent of Thomas' involvement.

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And so here we sit in 2021, and literally we are looking at situations now where you need to, if you're going to be considered by certain people, now most of these guys, not all, but most of these guys are really young, younger than my youngest kid, young young kids.

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And they've got it all figured out. Haven't been doing much for very long, but they've got it all figured out.

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And now if you don't embrace really an

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Aristotelian perspective as mediated through Thomas in your doctrine of God, you're heterodox.

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You are no longer a sound Orthodox teacher. You're not really a

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Reformed Baptist any longer. And so we have a fellow by the name of Josh Sommer.

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He's a young pastor, obviously well -read. But also,

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I honestly, my hope is that 20 years from now, Josh is going to be sitting at his desk and just going,

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Oh Lord, I see now. And I've repented.

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And may I teach others not to do what I did as a young person.

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There are so many pitfalls when we're younger that you fall into and it can be messy.

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But here's a quote from him. This is actually posted by Corey Allen Byram.

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So I'm assuming Corey Allen Byram agrees with this. Quote, James White, Owen Strand, and Jeff Johnson.

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So Jeff Johnson is founder of GPTS. Owen Strand's now the provost and I'm now a professor.

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All depart from the fundamental confession of the Christian faith concerning the doctrine of God. Now, all three of us are

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Trinitarians. All three of us defend the deity of Christ, believe in the soul of scripture and justification by faith, but we're heterodox now, you see.

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Because there's this new standard. A confession, the majority of the patristics.

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The patristics? If you mean the early church fathers. This shows an incredibly shallow understanding of not only patristic literature that I was teaching when you were five, but just the...

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I don't know what it is, but when people get imbalanced, it is so common for them to buy into a particular theory of church history that gives them a feeling that they're doing something big and cool and they're a part of the ancient church, all the rest of that stuff.

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And every group does it. The reality is their church fathers are all over the place.

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It really depends on how you... I mean, who are you going to get to include? Do you include Shepard of Hermes?

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Do you include Epistle of Barnabas? What do you do with the divergences in these issues in the second century,

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Tertullian and Tatian? What do you do with all that? Do you just sort of sweep it under the rug?

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Anyway, I'm sorry. I should just go ahead and read it, huh? A confession of the majority of the patristics, medieval theologians, well, there's a grab bag for you, and reformed confessional theologians thought was essential to one's

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Christian profession. I'll have to remember to go back and... Statements such as Actus Purus is not the

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God of the Bible. I would say that's probably something that Dr. Johnson said. Or God as three sets of consciousness, which is a quote from a debate with a oneness guy who was asking about how to define persons.

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We're going to go to Josh's definition of person here in a moment. Or God has three wills are not orthodox statements.

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There aren't any sources that are given there, but anyways. Consequently, this is the kind of fundamental distortion that will be heralded at GPGS as the biblical position as such will not only exemplify a palpable level of arrogance and not only represent a blatant dishonesty because they've been corrected countless times, but will also deceive their students.

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A seminary is a force multiplier because students go on to teach others and those others, others, and so on.

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A shame it is when error, not truth, is what is being multiplied. I hate this debate.

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I think on some level it's stupid to even have it, but I think of God and I think of students and both of those things warrant serious attention.

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Josh Sommer. Now, a seminary is a force multiplier, but let's see.

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I was just looking at some of this stuff because I believe I had made reference to this fellow one other time.

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He had popped off about something and I hadn't been following him or anything like that. Never heard him before, but people will send you stuff and there you go.

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That's one of the problems with the media. But here is a statement from Josh Sommer.

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I want you to listen to this. It's very short, just one tweet. Regarding the doctrine of God, the one exists in three relational ways.

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Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Everything proper to the divine nature exists in each relation.

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If authority is proper to the divine nature, it exists in Father, Son, and Spirit.

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So, I would assume that this young fellow is making some kind of a statement in regards to maybe

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ERAS, EFS, ESS, all the different ways that it's expressed.

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Because it says, if authority is proper to the divine nature, it exists in Father, Son, and Spirit. So, that each has authority?

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Maybe? I'm not sure. But what struck me was the unwillingness to use the term person.

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Now, I could sit here and say, who in church history did that? You're just talking about how you're in line with all of church history and all the rest of this stuff.

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And I'm like, well, that's the term that's been used. And obviously, anyone who knows history knows that there were great debates concerning the utilization of language.

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Part of it was due to the division between Latin and Greek and East and West and the difficulty that that introduced.

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The rejection in the East of Sabellianism, and hence a concern about the terminology that you would use.

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There has always been, and I've taught since I was much younger than this fellow, that our great danger is the importation of creaturely categories, because of the limitation of language, into divine application.

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So, the term person can definitely carry inappropriate terminology that is connected to our creatureliness.

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And so, if you talk about three persons, it is easy to take that out of the context in which you're using that language.

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And hence, as a result, lean toward a tritheism, a separation.

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And that happens in many people's minds. So, we've talked about Gregory's wonderful statement, I cannot contemplate the three without being brought back to the glory of the one and contemplate the one without being brought to the three and all of that in the past.

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And it's all true, as long as this remains our fundamental source.

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Not an overlay of this, not a limitation of what this can say because of categories established by pagan philosophers such as Aristotle.

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Not importing ideas of movement and immobility into this, but instead allowing this revelation in time to be the substance that it is then our job to communicate, really down through the entire history of the church, however long that's going to be.

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And so, I'm really concerned, I'll be honest with you. The emphasis upon what

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I'm going to just go ahead and start calling hyper simplicity, that is becoming accepted as a necessary.

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I've not seen anyone demonstrate the assertion that if you do not hold to hyper simplicity, you're going to eventually be a tritheist and deny monotheism.

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I've never heard anyone demonstrate that. I've heard them make the accusation, I've never heard anyone demonstrate that.

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I just want to go, show me, why? Show me how it works. And it just seems to be an assertion that just lives on its own.

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And if you're wondering, what is hyper simplicity? Well, remember, we talked about this number of months ago when we were talking about the doctrine of simplicity, the idea that God's being is not complex.

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That is, it's not made up of parts. So, you don't have lesser parts that once you somehow get them together, creates

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God. That is not a philosophical speculation.

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It flows from the assertion of scripture that Yahweh is self -existent, that he is not.

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It is the entire presentation, and this was the great offense of biblical revelation in the ancient world.

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It flows from the entire revelation of Yahweh as being the God who created all things, the gods of the peoples.

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See, when you interpret the Tanakh, the Old Testament scriptures, in the context in which they were written, you discover there's a tremendous amount of apologetic involved, even in the languages used.

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And though you have to be careful because some people will create all sorts of complex contextual arguments and things like that that don't necessarily follow.

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So, there has to be some level of care. There is a lot of light that can be shed by looking at how, for example, in Jeremiah chapter 10,

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God gives Jeremiah the direct words to say to the people around him when they're invited to engage in idolatry and things like that.

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It's really beautiful, and I just feel for people who look down on the

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Hebrew scriptures as if they're lesser than the Greek scriptures, because they're not.

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That's even the teaching of the Greek scriptures. All scripture is Theanostos. But anyway, the doctrine of God's uniqueness and his kingship and his creatorship was just outlandishly unusual in that day.

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The gods of the peoples had certain areas where they ruled, and they came out of the creation, and the creation predated them.

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And the teaching of the scriptures is that Yahweh is the creator of all things. Therefore, he can't be something that is made up of lesser parts, because there's no one to have created the lesser parts to make him up.

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If he's eternal, he's the creator of all things. These things follow of necessity. They're not some type of philosophical system you create out here and cram onto the

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Bible. It flows from what the scripture itself is actually teaching. If there is going to be any overriding authority in defining for us our understanding of the attributes of God, it's going to be how

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God demonstrated his uniqueness over against the gods of the peoples.

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So Isaiah 40 -48, again, absolutely key, as I said in the debate with Bill Craig.

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Yes, you can go through Isaiah 40 -48. I think, Rich, do we still, did we,

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I'm sure we had to have, because you were doing all this stuff. We should have the doctrine of God in Isaiah 40 -48.

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It was something, I forget what the title was, but it was one of my papers in seminary. I think

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I was, I was doing Hebrew, and I think that's on the, yeah, he's getting me the link.

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So there is a, you can go back. This is, there's nothing new for us.

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You know, all of a sudden, I'm the heterodox guy. I probably wrote this when some of my critics, no,

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I wrote this before my critics were born. It doesn't make it right. It just means that we've been doing this for a long, long time, and we'll,

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I'll try to remember, and Rich, try to remind me to link to it when we put the blog together so people can look at it.

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So it's there on our blog. You can look it up. That's where you'd find inspired, and I think this is consistent with the apostolic example.

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This is how the New Testament is written. This is what they're looking at. Yeah, the theology of God in Isaiah 40 -45, yeah.

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So the theology of God in Isaiah 40 -45, there's a dash in between each of those words.

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1988, yeah. And so that's what we're going to drive things from.

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The challenge the church always faced is taking that prophetic revelation and communicating it to the broader world, and of course, in the early church, the challenge was dealing with Greek philosophy, and there were all sorts of different responses to that.

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There were the just and murder responses, which is utilizing all that Greek philosophy and eventually coming to the conclusion that the

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Greek philosophers had received revelation from God in essence, to those who said, what does

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Jerusalem have to do with Athens? To a complete rejection, and the

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Alexandrian school, much more of an acceptance and synthesis and a destructive synthesis in most situations in regards to these particular subjects.

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So anyways, the church history on all this stuff is extremely complex. You can look at almost any of the early fathers, and you will find a mixture as to where they come down on these things, and you will even find development within that person if we have sufficient extant writings to be able to follow those things.

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So any simplistic reference to the patristics, that's just immediate sign to me that, okay, don't really know what we're talking about, but okay, if it makes you feel good.

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So the point being that when we come to even the analysis of our confessions and a recognition of all the development and the background and the influences and all the rest of that stuff,

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I don't know, I'm just a naive guy. I thought we believed in simple referenda.

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I thought it was always a matter of continuing that process by this as the primary mechanism, not by the application of external constructs.

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And then in fact, the process would be filtering out that which is entered in from those external sources.

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I thought that's what we were up to. We all seem to agree on it, at least back then.

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Now, not so much. Now, not so much. So this issue of simplicity, you can read any type of systematic theology.

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There's going to be a discussion of simplicity and God is not made up of various parts, constituent parts.

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But then hypersimplicity is the idea that you have to take this and you have to so emphasize the unitary nature of the essence of God, that all of God's attributes have to become one.

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Now, again, it's obvious if they're truly attributes of the one God, then they exist in perfect harmony with one another.

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Yeah, okay. But that's not what they mean. I mean, that's a true statement.

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It sounds good. There's nothing lacking in harmony in God's essence or being.

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But because of external definitional authority, you have to affirm that for that essence to be truly simple, then you have to believe that God's wrath is the same as God's omniscience and His omnipresence is the same as His mercy.

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There is no distinction between the attributes. And you just go, well, if we can distinguish between them,

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I'm sure God can too. God wants to communicate and display.

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God Himself says that He did what He did with Pharaoh, that His wrath and power might be made known.

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But there's a different revelation that is made to the vessels of mercy, and that's mercy and grace.

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God seems to want to demonstrate the full range of His attributes, but they're not the same thing.

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And in fact, I don't understand. And for many people, it's because you're just so dull, you're so stupid, you've got a low

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IQ. But I don't understand the benefit to God's people to do a series on the attributes of God and then finish it up by saying they're all one.

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What do you mean they're all one? Well, they're all one in that they all represent the one being of God.

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Everybody agrees that. Well, everybody should. That's true. But that there isn't any distinction between them.

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And to say that there is, is to start down the road toward polytheism. So did

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God start us on the road toward polytheism when He demonstrated the differences between His wrath and His mercy?

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No, of course not. I've just never seen anyone make a meaningful argument that if you go, yes,

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God's wrath, pure, holy, just,

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God's mercy, undeserved, gracious, that if you do that, you're somehow heading toward polytheism.

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And I will simply say right now, the reason I've never heard it is because I don't believe it's possible to do.

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Far too easy to refute that kind of imbalanced diatribe. So the hyper simplicity movement, well, the argument is if you don't do this, you're going to end up moving toward a communal form of the

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Trinity. And social

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Trinitarianism is another term that's used. And there is no question, anyone who, again, for the past 30 years, 35 years, has listened to any of the presentations

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I've done on the doctrine of the Trinity, you well know of the fact that I emphasize the need for balance in the biblical doctrines that give us the doctrine of the

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Trinity. I'm a biblical Trinitarian. Monotheism is the foundation. The existence of the three persons, the equality of those persons form the other legs of the triangle, but the ground is monotheism.

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And so it's just a matter of remaining balanced. And the balance has to be provided by this.

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And so this testimony biblically to absolute monotheism, to the use of Yahweh, of the divine persons, for example, central.

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But then this tells us that it's the Son who became flesh, not the

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Father or the Spirit. And this tells us that the Son in His pre -existent state gave consideration to what the incarnation would mean and voluntarily engaged in that activity and that action.

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And that there was love between the Father and the Son in eternity past. Now, can any of us fully comprehend what any of that means in the sense of in eternity?

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No, but if what we have here is given to us for our advocation, then the

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Holy Spirit of God believed it was appropriate for us to know these things. And I'm honestly becoming concerned because this quote from Josh Sommer, he won't use the word person.

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And there are some absolutely astonishing and amazing statements that I find in history, especially from Aquinas.

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Listen to this one. Let me just read this one for you. See if you're edified and built up by Aquinas' brilliance.

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But the divine intellect has sensed

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God's understanding is His existence. His intellectual conception, which is the intelligible likeness, must be

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His substance. You can use this one. It's fun. And the case is similar with affection in God regarded as loving, consequently, the representation of the divine intellect, which is

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God's word, is distinct from Him who produces the word, not with respect to substantial existence, but only according to the procession of one from the other.

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And in God considered as loving, the same is true of the affection of love which pertains to the

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Spirit. Now, I'm going to be honest with you.

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The London Mass Confession in this definition of the Trinity is significantly clearer than this kind of statement.

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Ah, Rich says that I lost the first five seconds of that.

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Did we have a glitch in the feed or something like that? Is that why we lost the connection?

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Oh, interesting. Okay. Audio followed video.

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Well, I don't understand any of that, but I will attempt to, just since it was lost, let me read it again.

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But the divine intellect has this exclusive perfection, this is Aquinas, since God's understanding is

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His existence, His intellectual conception, which is the intelligible likeness, must be His substance, and the case is similar with affection in God regarded as loving.

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Consequently, the representation of the divine intellect, which is God's word, is distinct from Him who produces the word, not with respect to substantial existence, but only according to the procession of one from the other.

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And in God considered as loving, the same is true of the affection of love which pertains to the Spirit.

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So, it is appropriate, since I'm reading

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Aquinas, that Rich is doing penance via signal, because Aquinas was a

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Roman Catholic and hence wrote on penance and the sacraments and sacramental forgiveness. But what

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Rich will discover is that doing penance toward Aquinas will get you no more peace than it ever got anyone else who ever followed that particular perspective.

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So, just, now, did any of that make sense to you?

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What you've got going on here, I have a number of other quotes that really, well, let me, here's one.

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The Son of God, according to Aquinas, is the word and concept of God understanding

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Himself. Therefore, the word of God is rightly called conceived or begotten wisdom as being the wise conception of the divine mind.

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Here's another quote. Whenever anyone understands because of his very active understanding, something comes forth within him, which is the concept of the known thing proceeding from his awareness of it.

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Now, I am familiar with religions that view the idea of a deity contemplating himself and the thoughts coming forth, becoming divine without movement.

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And that is the fundamental concept of Gnosticism. That's where the Barbelo came from and the whole nine yards.

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But one thing is for certain, I don't believe any prophet and any apostle of Jesus Christ ever dreamed of that kind of conception.

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This is coming not from Scripture, it's coming from Aristotle. Now, if you want to come up with a theology, and this is why natural theology is being pushed so much, that gives place to Aristotle or Plato or whatever, you're going to have fun putting those together, that's what you're going to have to do.

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But I'm not going with you. And I am confident that the

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Spirit of God is not going to encourage anybody to go with you outside of the realm of Sola Scriptura.

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I have lots and lots of material I could read to warn you about these things.

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But anyways, we have spent far more time than I thought I would spend on that.

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So, this is the accusation that's being made, is that Jeffrey Johnson has dared to question

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Aquinas. And this natural theology, the fundamental difference between what would be a biblical natural theology and an unbiblical natural theology is the source of revelation and authority.

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You have natural revelation in Scripture, but we are told that natural revelation tells us that we should give thanks to God.

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We know God exists, we should give thanks to Him. But it doesn't give us all the rest of this stuff.

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The regenerate mind, with the light of Scripture, can reflect upon the works of God in wonderful ways, but that will always be limited by the parameters of Scripture itself and will not give anything new and certainly cannot give us a lens or a set of parameters that must be placed over Scripture.

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And so, we're back to some of the same arguments we've had in the past that Van Till was dealing with 60, 70 years ago, 80 years ago.

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We're back to those issues once again. And it just doesn't seem that we learned the lesson.

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And I suppose every generation has to have its arguments, and that's the case.

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Okay. Did I want to?

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Yeah, because I've already gotten 45 minutes, and I figured this would be an hour and a half.

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So, switching gears here, but staying in a lot of the same areas, really, for Reformed folks.

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But this is where more of the whole Reformed community, anybody, you know, I think, I'll be honest,

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I've made this argument for a long, long time. I think the definitional belief that forms a real

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Reformed community comes from being one of those people that, well,

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I haven't made this statement in a long, long time, come to think of it, but I believe it was

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Jonathan Edwards. I'm gonna have to double check this. I'm gonna have to dig out my paper. I believe it was

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Jonathan Edwards who made the statement years ago. Well, no, he made a statement last week.

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Anything Jonathan Edwards says was many years ago. I do not have any direct contact with Jonathan Edwards at the moment.

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I just want to make sure everyone understands that. You say anything anymore, it's gonna end up as a meme somewhere.

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Look, James White uses his bright coogee to communicate with the dead. Gotta smile once in a while at all the weirdness.

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Back when I was talking with Edwards, well, Pastor Luke at Apologia does make the argument that the reason

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I know church history so well is because I lived through it. That's what happens when all the other elders in your church are decades younger than you are.

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Anyway, what were we talking about here? Edwards, I think, was the one, I'll have to try to double check this, that made the statement that one of the greatest proofs of regeneration is that we love the attributes of God that are the most loathsome to the natural man.

45:14

One of the greatest proofs of regeneration is that we love the attributes of God that are the most loathsome to the natural man.

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I was watching Twitter and someone,

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I guess there's some threads going on right now of people just detesting the

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Apostle Paul and stuff like that. And they're, you know, Christians always responding by saying, well, that just shows where you're coming from and what your heart is made of and things like that.

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Which is true. But there it's illustrated. There are things that Paul said that just simply represent divine revelation.

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There are aspects of God's holiness. And in our day where your personal experience, your autonomy is the ultimate authority, then sure, go ahead and blast

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Paul for daring to say that you're not your own. Your body belongs to the

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Lord and things like that. There are certain aspects of the divine revelation of who

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God is that the natural man detests. And I think it's one of the greatest marks of what makes the

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Reformed community is someone who recognizes, I am not God. I am a creature. I am so far on the other side of the from God that it's not funny.

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And therefore I must adore not only his power as my creator who sustains my every breath, every beat of my heart, but I must love what his word reveals about his freedom to act with his creation as he sees fit to his own glory.

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There is a pride crushing realization that God is

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God and I am not. And I argue that is the most central mark of what it means to be

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Reformed. Because everything else flows from that. A proper understanding of soteriology, anthropology, it all flows from that.

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And so we could have disagreements and that's what worries me about Reformed folks that place the definition of Reformed in places where we can have disagreements rather than what actually binds us together.

47:59

Anyway, the focus of Molina's work was to fundamentally vitiate the freedom of God.

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To limit it to that which is feasible for him based upon human actions.

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Because the whole reason that I focused upon what

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I focused upon with Dr. Craig is that the debate was supposed to be on which is better in explaining evil.

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And my whole point is Molinism doesn't explain evil.

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Its central assertion is indefensible. And therefore, even though that's what

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Molinists think makes the system work, it is unworkable.

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It is an empty promise. And so we've been talking about this and there's been videos going back and forth.

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And so I was informed by Dr. Tim Stratton that he and Tyson James had done a response to the little...

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I did a little dividing line short, remember, from my home. Got a screen flow working again and just threw that up real quick.

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It was less than half an hour, barely less than half an hour. I thought it was gonna be like seven minutes, but you know me.

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And they then got together and did a two -hour response to it.

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I started listening to it. I did not listen to all of it. And I'll tell you why. It became painfully clear that though in my response

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I had talked about the hours I had invested in working through on the dividing line, the exegetical issues, we had laid a foundation biblically for reformed understanding of God's decree.

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But we had done this on the basis of Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ephesians and we had worked through it.

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We had also been working through Dr. Craig's book, including his biblical argumentation.

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We had put it up on the screen. Here's what he's saying. Here's the text. Let's look at it.

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We had done all these things. And then after the debate, I had done stuff with Eli Ayala where we had gone into more depth on these things and had talked about why, focused upon what

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I did, and went ahead and then discussed the other stuff in regards to God as the author of evil and all that kind of stuff.

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Well, it became very plain to me that they had not bothered to look at any of that stuff. So why should

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I be investing hours of my time listening to them when they're not going to bother to listen to what

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I've done? But at the same time still accused me of not understanding and not doing the necessary work and all the rest of that stuff.

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So I didn't go through the whole thing. But in the first few minutes, there was plenty to deal with that would be of benefit to you, the listeners all around the globe, because it illustrates the fundamental difference between revelationally -originated theology and theology that is produced by philosophical mechanisms and then propped up next to Scripture as if it is consistent therewith.

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It really, really does. And so that's what I want to look at. I want to try to be brief.

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I'm not being overly brief today. I apologize. But these are not easy issues.

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They are important things. We're not talking about surface -level stuff.

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We're going for the deep stuff. And that's why those of you who watch

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The Vying Line do, and those of you driving trucks across the US, you listen and you don't mind when

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I go long because you've got a long way on the road today. And God bless you and be safe.

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And please, truckers, when I get out there with my truck and my RV, please work with me.

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I'm not trying to get in your way or slow you down at all. Some of you guys...

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Anyway, it just gets a little scary. I've been driven off the road by a few of you guys, and I'm just sort of wondering if y 'all don't like us.

52:45

But anyway, that's neither here nor there. Let's just start playing some of this stuff, and let's dive into it because I've got...

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I've literally want to... You know,

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I did not throw this at Rich, but do you think there would be some way,

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Rich, maybe at the 90 -minute mark, that we could throw up a splash screen and some music or something like that?

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If need be, I'm getting to be an older man. And you normally take breaks in the class, and there's a reason why we take breaks in the class.

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Rich says he can make it work. So Rich isn't here today. Rich is doing this remotely. By the way, this is one of the books

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I want to read from. It's called Considering the Eternal Predestination of God. It's one of the quotes that will come up in what we're listening to.

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And I just wanted you to... Do you see the paper? I'm not sure if that comes through for you.

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That's not dust. It's age. I can tell when that thing right there is in my book.

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That was the 80s. So this baby's 40 -some odd years. We do not make good books.

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I'm sorry. I mean, my 1550 Stefanos down there is in better shape, page -wise, than this paperback is.

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Yeah, something on screen would be nice so people don't tune out or something. But you know how...

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I know how long ago I was reading this. Here was my bookmark. And this is the first printing, because I'm going to tell you something.

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This print's so small, I can't read it. I mean, especially the notes at the bottom.

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It's like, yeah, I know. But this is the first printing of the Christian message track.

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And I was using one as the bookmark in this book. So I have two chapters

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I want to read in there, plus a bunch of quotes over here. So we got to get into it. Storytime with Uncle Jimmy and all the rest of that stuff.

54:56

Professor Jimmy now, I guess is the way we'll have to put it. So let's...

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Oops, sorry. Make it big enough so that looks good for Rich there.

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And hopefully all the sound's going to work. We tested it beforehand. Let's dive in.

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But we just got to say that when it comes to Molinism and maybe systematic theology and analytic theology,

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I don't think that's Dr. White's strength. Now, before this, he was saying, hey,

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Dr. White does great work with the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses and Muslims and all that stuff out there. But systematic theology, that stuff that he's been teaching for decades and decades, that's just not his strength.

55:38

And OK, let's just see how that works out as we dive into things. And, you know, if Dr.

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Stratton thinks that's his strength, then I will put what I've written in that field,

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God Who Justifies, Scripture Alone, things like that up against his book and let people decide for themselves.

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Obviously, the thing is, I feel the same way. I don't think systematic theology is their strength. Molinism isn't a systematic theology.

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It's not a theology at all. It's a foreign insertion. It's a virus injected into the body of Christian theology.

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But that's why we disagree about these things. But, hey, I mean, you can't be an expert in all things.

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I know I'm not. I'm not even going to pretend to be. So now the debate that White had, that Dr.

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White had with Dr. Craig, was supposed to be focused on which view, whether it be

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Calvinism or Molinism, offered the better solution against the problem of evil.

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This is often referred to as the greatest objection raised against the knowledge of God, as Paul would say in 2

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Corinthians 10 .5. That is not what Paul was talking about in 2 Corinthians 10 .5.

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I mean, people have maybe, you know, make that argument, and theodicy is important and vital, but that wasn't

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Paul's point in 1 Corinthians 10 .5. It's important to point out that you can't just say, well, that's an important thing, and so 1

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Corinthians 10 .5 is therefore, that's what it's talking about. That's not the case. Come on.

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And Paul tells us to destroy these arguments raised against the knowledge of God. So really, this is a biblical issue.

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What view actually destroys this greatest objection raised against the knowledge of God? And Dr.

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Craig offered Molinism and explained how his view defeated the problem of evil.

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And, of course, that requires you to explain the functional claim of middle knowledge, which is the true subjunctive conditionals that then delimit

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God's decree and create the conditions for feasibility as to what worlds

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God can actuate. Okay, that is the claim. If you cannot substantiate the key assertion, then your system can't give a meaningful answer to evil.

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I said, God is clearly, He makes a statement.

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He is demonstrating all of His attributes in creation. That's a biblical answer.

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That's a Romans 9 answer. That's an Ephesians 1 answer, but it's not a philosophical answer.

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That's not sufficient. So I made the argument, if your system cannot substantiate its primary assertion, it can't answer the question.

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There you go. But it needs to be noted that, as far as I can tell, Dr. White has offered zero solutions to the problem of evil.

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He has made some assertions, but no arguments. And he's not answered the charge that God is the author of evil.

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Well, we'll be talking much more about that issue of the author of evil as we move along here.

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If Calvin's view is true. Now, speaking of John Calvin. Okay, this is what I wanted to, the first thing

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I really want to zero in on. Let me take this down.

59:44

Let's switch this out. Okay, I'm going to move this over to the other screen.

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You don't need to see Dr. Stratton talking to be able to hear him. It's mainly audio. But I want you to see a quotation here.

01:00:01

Where'd it go? There it is. And I'm going to get that big.

01:00:09

Okay, here is a quotation from a website John Calvin wrote.

01:00:16

Okay, this is John Calvin, The Eternal Predestination of God, 1011.

01:00:21

All right. So, notice this is an article on the web.

01:00:28

Now, I want you to listen to Dr. Stratton as he reads. Let's go to the horse's mouth.

01:00:36

I have a quote here from him. What I'd like to read. Here's John Calvin's own words.

01:00:46

How foolish and frail is the support of divine justice afforded by the suggestion that evils come to be, not by his will, but by his permission.

01:00:58

It is a quite frivolous refuge to say that God obviously permits them, these evils, when

01:01:06

Scripture shows him not only willing, but the author of these evils.

01:01:12

Who does not tremble at these judgments with which God works in the hearts of even the wicked, whatever he will, rewarding them nonetheless according to Again, it is quite clear from the evidence of Scripture that God works in the hearts of men to incline their wills just as he will, whether to good, for his mercy's sake, or to evil, according to their merits, end quote.

01:01:43

Okay, now, you'll notice that it started at the exact same point, it ended at the exact same point, and had the exact same ellipses that is in this webpage.

01:02:00

So, why don't you get the webpage full size again. So, I think this is what he was reading from, and what is this?

01:02:17

Oh, look, it's Leighton Flowers! Soteriology 101!

01:02:25

Calvinism's inconsistency revealed, first quote, is what was just read by Dr.

01:02:33

Stratton. Now, okay, we know that Dr.

01:02:40

Stratton teaches for the same school that Leighton Flowers teaches for, but that would also mean that in all probability, in all probability,

01:02:51

Dr. Stratton didn't have a copy of this just laying around, check the context, see what's in between and the ellipses, what came before, what came after, and everybody can trust

01:03:07

Leighton Flowers to have always done his homework, right? Yeah, um, see,

01:03:18

I'm so much older that I need to get out the glasses. Can I do some reading?

01:03:25

Would that be okay? That was section 10, number 11, it's page 176 of this particular publication, if it's even still available anymore.

01:03:39

But I want to, can we have a context? Is that okay? Because not everybody has these books, and so I hope you don't mind if I read for a little while.

01:03:52

Our ancestors used to listen to things without being distracted and without needing explosions and CGI, and so it'd be good if we all could do that again today.

01:04:07

So I'm going to back up to the previous chapter, or not chapter, but section, section 10.

01:04:16

God moves in the hearts of the ungodly is the, is the, is the subtitle. However, even if scripture did not present one way of solving this problem, it would not be really difficult to find another.

01:04:27

More arduous is the other question, does God work in the hearts of men directing their plans and moving their wills this way and that, so they do nothing but what he has ordained?

01:04:36

We do not ask here whether he inspires the pious and holy affections in their hearts, for about this there is no controversy.

01:04:44

The question is whether he has in his power also the depraved affections of the ungodly, moving them here and there so they will what he has decreed they should do.

01:04:53

Certainly when Solomon declares, Proverbs 21 .1, that the heart of kings are in the hand of God, so he inclines it as he pleases.

01:05:01

He shows that in general the will, not less than external works, are governed by the determination of God.

01:05:08

Moses says the heart of Pharaoh was hardened by him, Exodus 4 .21 and 7 .3. It is useless to have recourse here to the concept of permission, as if God were said to do what was done only in the sense that he allowed it.

01:05:22

For clearly Moses says that the hardening was a work of God. Nor indeed is the savagery of Pharaoh ascribed to God in any other sense than is the grace which he is elsewhere said to give to his people in the eyes of the

01:05:33

Egyptians, Exodus 3 .21. For who does not see that fierce beasts were being tamed and subdued by the power of God when the

01:05:41

Egyptians were suddenly turned towards clemency? We ask then how it comes about that Pharaoh should rage so inhumanely unless it so pleased

01:05:50

God, partly to show his tolerance toward his own and partly to exercise his power.

01:05:56

On the same principle it is said that God turned the hearts of enemies in hatred towards his people, Psalm 105 .25.

01:06:03

But this does not prevent it being said elsewhere that Pharaoh himself aggravated the condition of his heart, Exodus 8 .32.

01:06:09

We do not make the minds of men to be impelled by force external to them so that they rage furiously, nor do we transfer to God the cause of hardening in such a way that they did not voluntarily and by their own wickedness and hardness of heart spur themselves in obstinacy.

01:06:25

What we say is that men act perversely not without God's ordination that it be done as scripture teaches.

01:06:33

Similarly, it is said elsewhere that the fact that the inhabitants of Gibeon opposed Israel was ordained by God who made their heart obstinate,

01:06:42

Joshua 11 .20. The way in which this happens is expressed by scripture when in one passage

01:06:47

God is said to have incited the angry heart of David to number the people, 2 Samuel 24 .1, while in another

01:06:53

Satan is made the author of the incitement, 1 Chronicles 21 .1. From this we understand that Satan is

01:06:58

God's fan for impelling the hearts of men just as he pleases. This is said more explicitly elsewhere where an evil spirit from the

01:07:05

Lord enters Saul for Samuel 16 .14. Saul is certainly moved by his own criminality and indulges his fury consciously and voluntarily, but nonetheless

01:07:14

Satan impels him in this with God not idly observing but actively willing. Elsewhere the spirit of the

01:07:21

Lord is said to be evil and this must be improper unless he is sent as minister and executioner of God's vengeance, the minister of the wrath of God, not only in the sense of soliciting minds to evil cupidities but of effectively drawing them.

01:07:35

In this sense Paul records error to be effectively and divinely sent to make those believe a lie who are unwilling to obey the truth, 2

01:07:43

Thessalonians 2 .11. It is clear that not only is Satan by the command of God a lying spirit and mouth of all the prophets but his substitutes ensnare the reprobate so that they lose understanding and are drawn necessarily into error.

01:07:57

What Paul says is to be understood in this way Romans 1 .28. Those who are ungrateful to God he gives over to a reprobate mind and delivers them into foul and ignominious lusts so that they do what is unspeakable and their bodies are outraged.

01:08:10

We hear that not only by the permission of a quiescent God but by his just judgment they are abandoned to their lusts for shamefully profaning his glory.

01:08:20

How this happens the passage states God sent them an effective spirit of error. It is clear from this what conclusion must be drawn.

01:08:28

The hand of God rules the interior affections no less than it superintends external actions.

01:08:34

Nor would God have affected by the hand of man what he decreed unless he worked in their hearts to make them will before they acted.

01:08:42

So Augustine's opinion is to be accepted when God to be when God wills to be done what cannot be done but by willing men their hearts being so inclined that they will he himself affects this not only by helping in their hearts but by determining them so that though they had no such intention they fulfill what his hand and his counsel decreed.

01:09:04

Even in the very elements of nature he wisely suggests this thought from which they so many shrink for the great diversity in human talents to be observed since it is divinely implanted in them is a splendid example of what secret working by which he rules and moves our hearts.

01:09:20

That was section 10 now to the section that was just quoted partly. No mere permission in God from this it is easy to conclude how foolish and frail is the support of divine justice afforded by the suggestion that evils come to be not by his will but merely by his permission.

01:09:39

Of course so far as they are evils which men perpetrate with their evil mind as I shall show in greater detail shortly

01:09:45

I admit that they are not pleasing to God but it is quite frivolous refuge to say that God ociously permits them when scripture shows him not only willing but the author of them.

01:09:56

Augustine conceded this to the accustomed and accepted forms of speech for the time being but when he proceeds farther to examine the thing more closely he quite prohibits permission from taking the place of action.

01:10:10

I shall not refer to all that he says about this in matter of this matter in book 5 of Contra Iulianum.

01:10:16

This will be enough these things he does in marvelous and ineffable ways who knows how to execute his just judgments not only upon men's bodies but in their hearts who does not make wills evil but uses them as he wills while being himself unable to will evil.

01:10:36

Elsewhere in the same sense if diligently searched scripture shows not only the good wills of men which he himself made out of evil wills are made good by him to be directed to good actions into eternal life even those which conserve the creatureliness of this world are so within the power of God that he inclines them when he wills and as he wills either to the enjoyment of benefits in the case of some or to the imposition of penalties in the case of others he's noticed that he adds who does not tremble at these judgments with which

01:11:08

God works in the hearts of even the wicked whatever he will rewarding them nonetheless according to dessert that was the last section that was ellipsed all the everything else would have been ellipsed out which spoke of God judging certain people and being gracious to other people and working those things out in that way again it is quite clear from the evidence of scripture that God works in the hearts of men to incline their wills just as he will whether to good for his mercy's sake or evil according to their merits his judgment being sometimes open and sometimes concealed but always just for it ought to be fixed in your hearts that there is no in there is no iniquity with God the reason recorded for God's judgment being sometimes concealed is to be sought in another passage here he frequently declares that sins are penalties which

01:11:57

God justly returns upon those who had first sinned and then he rises that higher and greater hidden secret