William Lane Craig, the Lowered Bar, Molinism, and Erasmus

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Greetings. Welcome to The Dividing Line. It's a Tuesday morning, afternoon, depends on where you are, I suppose.

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Maybe it's not even Tuesday where you are. It doesn't really matter. We're here. And a video came out yesterday.

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I think Tony Costa directed me to it initially. Maybe I shouldn't mention that, but anyway.

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And it is from a Q &A session with William Lane Craig. And I'd like to start with that, talk about some related issues.

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We're going to do a little Mullenism. We still need to get back to the has the Qur 'an been changed thing.

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On a run this morning, I finished listening to the Evangelical Exodus book about the, well, in this book, nine people who were students and faculty at Southern Evangelical Seminary who've become

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Roman Catholics. Dr. K. Scott Oliphant, who teaches apologetics and systematic theology at Westminster in Philadelphia was at ReformCon over the weekend, did a great presentation on that book and the fundamental errors of it.

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If you know anybody who goes to SES, I would highly recommend you linking them to that presentation from Dr.

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Oliphant. It was very well done. To me, it was so encouraging to hear somebody else finally saying the things

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I've been saying for a long time in regards to that situation and all of that. But I hadn't actually read the book yet.

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So we grabbed it and I thought

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I was going to finish it this morning. I did a big long ride yesterday and I got like 44 minutes.

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And so I did a five mile this morning and I know there's a second appendix.

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I could tell. But the recording stopped. For some reason, it happens once in a while, Kindle will burp on you.

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So I haven't gotten to the last appendix yet. So I guess I haven't read all of it. If you can consider not reading the second appendix, not reading all of it.

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But I would like to get back to that. And I tried to bring Kindle up and for some reason, the

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Kindle app on my Macs has never worked quite right. So I've got to like wipe everything out and reinstall it and do all this kind of other fun stuff.

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So I just keep changing it, which, you know, these are older Macs. So I understand, you know, it's not always backwards compatible,

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I guess. Anyway, so I'll hold off on that one until a little bit later. And there is some, there's some incredible statements.

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If you want, we're going to be illustrating Theology Matters a lot today. And when we look at that, same thing, very much same thing.

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And then were you wanting to do Wednesday or Friday? Because I'm not available on Thursday this week.

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So which would you rather do, Wednesday or Friday? Friday's actually better for me. Friday's better for you.

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That works. That works good. So we'll be doing the next Dividing Line on Friday.

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So hopefully, definitely have... Let's not panic, everybody. You will be doing the

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Dividing Line, not me. I'll still be over here. So if I get on the other side of that glass, people start panicking.

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Well, I know one particular person who does, but it's not me either. Anyway, so on Friday, we'll try to,

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I should have everything fixed on that and be able to get to that because really, really important stuff.

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Now like I said, a video came out and it's from William Lane Craig.

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Now people are like, why do you pick on William Lane Craig? Look, you know what? He did a whole Q &A session.

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And I would probably agree minimally with 75 % of everything that would have been said in this

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Q &A session in a general sense. He seems like a nice guy.

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So why am I always picking on William Lane Craig? Well, we're both apologists.

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We've debated a lot of the same people in a lot of the same contexts, many of the same subjects, though there are some differences, you know, and obviously big differences in emphasis.

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But fundamentally, there is a major difference in theology, which results in a major difference in methodology.

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Just that simple. And from my perspective, your theology determines your apologetics.

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And I think that's vitally important. I think apologetics, philosophy, all has to be under the authority of God's divine revelation in Scripture.

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Many people do not believe that. Many people, the primarily philosophically minded amongst us, would tell us, well, but you know, before you get to Scripture, you've got to do epistemology.

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You know what? God didn't do that with Adam. When God created Adam, He had direct contact and fellowship with Adam before there was ever the use of the term philosophy.

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And whenever I see anybody say, but you know, you've got to do this first, you've got to do that first,

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I just go, are we reading the same book? And I become very concerned because, and one of the things that come out in that evangelical

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Exodus thing, that was part and parcel of their problem too, was the preeminence of philosophy over exegesis and theology.

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And a good friend of mine was standing right near William Lane Craig just a few years ago when he was talking to a bunch of young people and he told them directly, if you want to be a good apologist, you need to stop reading so much theology and read more philosophy.

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Now that's the exact opposite of my understanding, exact opposite of my perspective. So I am a presuppositionalist and I'm Reformed.

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He is a synergistic Arminian evidentialist. So we do things very, very differently.

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And because he's out there doing a lot of stuff, it is very easy, you know, people are constantly sending me clips of stuff like this that illustrates why this is such an important thing.

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Now we talked, you know, Justin Brierley and I talked about what these issues are on Unbelievable just a few weeks ago.

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And here's another illustration, but I'm going to try to even be more fair than most people would be to me.

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Well, most people are never fair to me at all, but I'm going to try to be even more fair. I'm going to play the clip that everybody saw.

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But I went and I actually found the whole Q &A. And later on, he said something else, which

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I'm also going to play, that sort of, it doesn't change the issue, but it does ameliorate it to an extent, as we will see.

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So let's start off with the clip that I posted and everybody's going, oh, this is so, oh, good grief.

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Check out, check out, well, you don't do Twitter, but Confessional Bible just put a meme up of a skeleton sitting at a computer, still waiting for James White to name which

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Greek text is inerrant. Guys, I'm going to be getting to you guys.

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And I'm going to hand you your head on a platter because you're acting like children today.

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I'll just be perfectly honest with you. You're acting like children. I'm tired of it. I tried to get a direct question out of Presbyterian memes, couldn't get a direct answer for the life of me.

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Even saying, look, I'm going to be talking about this in dividing line. It's coming up. Would you give me a direct answer? They can't give you a direct answer, which is why you guys are not on the front lines dealing with the people out there.

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You're in your little confessional pub someplace. I'm not talking about the Reform Pub, sharing some beers and having some nice jokes, but you ain't doing nothing.

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And there's a reason for it. You can't take this stuff outside and deal with it. As we will say, point out here in a little while, just be patient.

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Let's listen to what William Lane Craig had to say. I have several pre -submitted questions.

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I'm just going to bring one right now. Are scriptures 100 % valid? We have a complex answer we give people.

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We'd love to hear if you have a simple and short answer. Are scriptures 100 % valid? Well, the short answer would be yes.

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Do you have a medium length answer? Let me say this about that.

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I don't argue with a non -believer about biblical inspiration and inerrancy.

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My goal as an evangelist is to set the bar as low as possible to get him into the kingdom.

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I want to put as few obstacles in his way in order to get him saved.

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And so I don't try to convince the unbeliever of biblical inerrancy or 100 % reliability.

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I'm quite willing to say these documents could be erroneous in many respects, there could be inconsistencies and contradictions, but nevertheless, they are historically reliable with respect to, for example, the four facts that I shared last night, which are sufficient for belief in the resurrection of Jesus.

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And if that's right, then you should become a Christian. And then the question of biblical inerrancy, scriptural reliability, that becomes an in -house question among believers.

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So I would really encourage you, at least in doing evangelism, don't try to set the bar so high that in order to be saved, the unbeliever has to come to believe in biblical inspiration and inerrancy.

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That's simply not necessary in order for him to become a

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Christian. So there you go. Most people immediately recognized just how problematic that statement is.

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Some people didn't. I even had a Muslim, I will not give him the pride of mentioning him, even had a

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Muslim say, I should apologize for identifying that as a pathetic statement. I'm not apologizing for anything, especially this particular

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Muslim who makes pathetic statements about Christianity on a daily basis. But what you just listened to, you know, when you say,

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I want to set the bar so low, what do you mean by that? I automatically ask the question, did

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Jesus set the bar really low? Because see, this is where theology matters.

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If you think that evangelism is a matter of you cajoling someone, trying to just make it as easy as possible for them to make the decision to do what?

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To do what? You see, when you don't believe that salvation involves repentance, when you don't believe that salvation involves the

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Lordship of Jesus Christ, when you believe salvation is primarily an attitude of man, where you're going to believe certain specific things about Jesus, but not other things, then this is the result.

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You set the bar low so that you can get this person to make a decision.

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And then hopefully, maybe later on, you can get them to a higher level of discipleship or something like that.

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That is not the biblical gospel. What did Jesus say?

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In Mark chapter 8, he called the disciples to himself. He called the crowds to himself.

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His disciples and the crowds, he called them to himself. If any of you would be my disciple, what must you do?

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You must deny yourselves and take up your cross and follow me. And everybody knew what that meant.

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Taking up your cross, you know, today was not putting a nice stylish cross around your neck.

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I don't have any problem with that, but that's not what it meant. Take up your cross meant to join the death march.

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To be crucified was the worst way to die. It was horrific. And so, to deny yourself does not sound to me like putting yourself in the position of judging whether the gospel is true or not and judging whether you're going to believe in inerrancy or not believing in inerrancy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

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Denying yourself means subjecting yourself to someone else. Taking up the cross, following Christ, clearly the

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Lordship of Christ is part and parcel of that. There is no gospel without the

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Lordship of Christ. Don't be fooled by those people that say you can be saved by just tipping your hat toward God.

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That's not sola fide. Never has been. Never has been. It's an empty gospel.

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It's not a biblical gospel. It's actually a gospel condemned by the scriptures themselves. So if you have that idea, though, then it's real easy to fall into the pattern of getting people saved by just, you know, giving them some facts and getting them to be friendly toward Jesus.

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And you know, once they've said some nice things about Jesus, then all is well. Setting the bar low is the exact opposite of what the apostles did.

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They never brooked any question concerning whether God had spoken. They brooked no question.

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They did not say, well, you know, there's a great, there's a, there's the preponderance of the evidence points to the greater possibility that God will someday judge the world by this person that may have been risen from the grave and there's a better probability that he did or he didn't.

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That's not the gospel message. That's not how the apostles did it. And if you believe that the word of God is alive and powerful, and if you believe the spirit of God is still active in the world, then you trust what

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God has given us in evangelism. You don't try to come up with other things. But again, it all comes back to whether you believe

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God has a divine decree, whether you believe he has an elect people, whether you, whether you believe that he uses means to draw his people into himself, if you can trust those things, then you're going to trust those things and you're going to proclaim the whole gospel and you're going to do it authoritatively and you're not going to make the sinner, the judge who stands in judgment over God.

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So this idea of, well, you know, I think we can, we, you know, we don't even, we can just go ahead and say, well, yeah, there's probably errors as well.

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Where are these errors, Dr. Craig? Maybe the errors are about what the death of Christ actually does accomplish.

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I mean, once you start down this road, the best you can do in discipleship is a patchwork job and you always have to remember you're dealing with a person who you got into this situation by an appeal to their own autonomy and you better not offend them or they're going to walk away.

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Wow. What a, what a mess that is. So Jesus didn't set the bar low.

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Jesus set the bar, your life. The apostles did the exact same thing.

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The early church demonstrated that this was the case. They're saying, well, well, well, well, that's, that's different.

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All he's saying is you don't have to argue about inerrancy. So you proclaim to someone the authority of the gospel, the authority of Jesus Christ based upon the four facts, which you say to the lost person, they get to judge.

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And that's sufficient to actually establish the Christian gospel. No, it's not.

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That's the problem. You're not going, the quote unquote four facts based upon generally reliable historical records, generally reliable historical records are not enough to establish the resurrection of the divine and incarnate son of God from the dead.

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Yes, it's historical. Yes, those four facts are true, but the apostles never left those four facts in some type of a vacuum.

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What's the very first thing that Jesus does when he meets with the disciples after the resurrection? Deliver the four facts?

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He opens their minds that they might understand the scriptures and the prophetic testimony to the

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Messiah and to his resurrection. And never, ever, ever do the apostles preach a gospel message based upon probabilities, possibilities, this, that, and the other thing, and then leave it to the rebellious unbeliever as to whether you're going to accept what

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God says, et cetera, et cetera. It just doesn't happen. Just doesn't happen. And so theology matters.

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The problem is going down the road, what is he going to do? Now what's interesting, here's where I try to be fair, having just ripped and snorted on that, evidently some people in the audience sort of had the same problems with Craig's response, because the guy a little bit later on sort of revisits it, and I think it's important to see what

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Craig said here as well. So I'm going to switch over to this one. And I've got,

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I'm not, am I hearing like some kind of background noise or something like that? And I don't think it's that sound,

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AC really? Doesn't seem like to me. It sounds like, it sounds like a hum, like a 60 cycle hum or something.

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There. What's that? My computer? Yeah. And it's gone. Okay. Well, it keeps coming back.

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But anyways, here's, here's a guy asking a follow -up question, and I think it's fair to include this.

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If you're going to criticize what he said, then hear the other part of it too. Yes. I was going to refer back to the question on the validity of scripture.

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You state, I appreciate your comment on how it's really not necessary for salvation, but for the new believer or for any believer, how would, how would you answer that question?

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Good question. Suppose someone is a Christian and now wants to know how should

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I regard the Bible? I think that the key is to look at how

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Jesus of Nazareth regarded the Old Testament. Jesus is our Lord, and as his disciples, we follow what he taught.

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And when you look at Jesus' attitude toward the Old Testament, he taught and believed that the

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Old Testament was the Word of God, and that it was reliable and to be believed and followed.

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And I think that gives grounds, then, for believing that in fact the Bible is inspired by God and therefore trustworthy and true in everything that it teaches.

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So it's been rightly said, I think, we do not believe in Christ because we believe in the

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Bible. We believe in the Bible because we believe in Christ. And that would be the way in which

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I would justify belief in inspiration and inerrancy. Now that was brief.

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I have all agreement in the world with pointing a believer to Jesus' attitude toward scripture.

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I can't tell you how many times I've done that, done that on this program. I've often said, why would anyone want to be a liberal and say,

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I'm trusting for my eternal salvation in Jesus Christ, but his view of scripture was just naïve.

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It doesn't make any sense. That's just silly. I'll trust him to save my soul, but I'm wiser than he was when it comes to the matter of salvation itself.

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I'm sorry, when it comes to the matter of the inspiration of scripture itself. I'm sorry. It makes no sense.

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So, yes, if you're going to be a follower of Jesus Christ, well, why would you, what is a follower?

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A follower is a disciple, one who follows their Lord. So we have the Lordship of Christ here.

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There's an assumption that Christ is worthy of being followed. And so his attitude toward scripture should be our attitude toward scripture.

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And the consistent testimony of everything that reports for us the words of Jesus Christ is he had the highest view of scripture.

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Scripture cannot be broken. These are the very words of God. Have you not read what God spoke to you saying,

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Matthew chapter 22? I mean, these are things that I've been emphasizing for decades now.

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Agree with all that, but I don't agree with how he finished. It has been said that we believe in the

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Bible because we believe in Christ. That kind of division is totally inappropriate. What did Jesus say?

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Who did the scriptures testify of? They testify of me. So believe the scriptures.

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They testify of me. So, again, I just, what you have here is the difference between an exegetically driven

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Christian theology and I've said it before, you know, you can go back and listen to all these things that we've discussed.

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But I truly believe that Dr. Craig's theology is primarily determined by his apologetics, not his apologetics turned by his theology.

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And I think that's a dangerous position to be in. He's not alone in that. I would include

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Norman Geisler in there as well. Comes to different conclusions, but the point is that it's a philosophical construct that determines the theology rather than the other way around.

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And that really does come down to a fundamental difference between reformed and non -reformed in regards to issues like that.

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That, again, is making me think of a number of statements in the Evangelical Exodus book and stuff that Dr.

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Oliphant was referring to over the weekend at ReformCon. So theology matters and it impacts our apologetics.

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You're saying, so you're saying you have to believe in inerrancy to be saved. I didn't say that. I did say that when you're proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ, you're going to have to make a decision.

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And it seems to me that many evidentialist apologists have decided we're going to make the actual accuracy, inspiration, authority of Scripture a non -issue.

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It's too big a target. These guys are constantly going after it. So it's a methodological choice to come up with the least common denominator, four facts, reliable history can give us these four facts.

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And once you can get somebody to autonomously assent to the idea that there seems to be fairly decent evidence that Jesus rose from the dead, the idea is all of a sudden, boom, you've got him.

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Because if Jesus rose from the dead, then everything else flows from that. Why? Why does everything else flow from that?

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What else flows from that? Well, what's found in Scripture? Well, if they didn't need Scripture to get to that point, why do you think they're going to need

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Scripture to get anyplace else? It's just so radically inconsistent. And again, it's based upon an anthropology, a doctrine of man that is not biblically derived.

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These are people who are suppressing the knowledge of God. That's the message of Romans chapter one.

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By the way, can I just throw out here really quickly? There are some people running around, especially here in the

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Valley of the Sun, but I think it's getting around to other places. They call themselves reformed, but they actually have a completely non -reformed doctrine of man where they actually believe that the only reason a man sins is ignorance.

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No one ever sins willfully. They only sin out of ignorance. That is heresy.

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That is not reformed, and that is utterly destructive to any meaningful biblical apologetic.

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Just be warned that there are those people out there. When you hear somebody say, well, no one ever really sins purposefully, they do so out of ignorance.

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No, men sin, all you got to do is watch a four -year -old. When they're, don't, don't take any cookies out of the cookie jar, that's ignorance?

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No, it's not. It's purposeful rebellion, and kids do it, and adults do it too, and you know it if you know your own heart.

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If you know your own heart, you know it as well. Anyway, that was an aside that we threw in for absolutely nothing, no charge whatsoever for that one.

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So, I reject the idea that you can make the distinction that is made there between believing in Christ, believing the

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Bible. The Logos to Thayu is testified to by the

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Word of God. The Logos, the Word of God became flesh, Jesus. The Word of God written, you can't, when you try to make that kind of a disjunction between them,

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I think you end up in major problems. Now, the appearance of William Lane Craig, somewhat appropriate, because last,

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I think over the weekend at some point, had a little bit of a back and forth with some

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Moulinists on Twitter, and we have spent a fair amount of time in the past discussing

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Moulinism here on the program, and listening to presentations on it, and so on and so forth.

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I'm not sure how long ago it was now. I forget, let me see if there's a date on this, then maybe

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I could tell you where this is. Okay, it's been five years, well, four and a half.

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November of 2011, Moulinism and the Satirological Problem of Evil Once More. You can find that on ReasonableFaith .org.

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You can go read this for yourself if you wish. So it's probably been,

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I don't know, three, four years ago. We took the time to look at an answer that William Lane Craig offered.

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He does the Q &A stuff on his website, which is very useful, especially when you want to criticize what he's saying, it's very useful.

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And, you know, he's left it there. That's a good thing, and I'm appreciative of that. Here is, let me just read some of this to you, give you some of the background, so you can understand why

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I'm addressing this again. Basically, it seems like a number of Moulinists are running from what

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William Lane Craig said in this answer. We've documented this many times before.

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Anytime you make a criticism like this, my experiences with Moulinists, they simply say, well, but I have my own understanding.

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So many of them are just so into the, I'm a student of philosophy thing, that, you know, they have a hard time coming to any type of conclusion as to what

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Moulinism actually does or does not mean. And it is an extremely difficult concept.

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If you read Moulina, most of us just don't do the philosophy speak thing all the time.

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And it's like trying to understand the ontological argument. You probably can get to it if you work really hard, but you should probably take some

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Advil before you start and afterwards. And an hour after you get done, you won't be able to figure out how you got there in the first place.

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So it often works that way. Anyway, it seems to me that in the years since this appeared, there are a number of Moulinists have been like, well, no, not really.

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No. And you know why I think it is? I'll tell you very honestly why

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I think it is. It's because Craig's response was too accessible to the rest of us.

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It too accurately and fundamentally explains the real issue with Moulinism.

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And I think a lot of Moulinists like being able to spout their creaturely counterfactual stuff and use all their big words.

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And people are just left going, oh, wow, you've done a lot of studying. I'll just have to believe what you say and just move on from there.

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I think some of them really like that. And Craig sort of left the reservation by pointing some stuff out that most people can understand and go, oh, wait a minute.

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That's what you mean? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. So here's part of his response.

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You suggest more plausibly, I think, that there are no persons whom God could have created who would, under all circumstances, reject his grace for salvation.

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Now, it's really hard to just give brief backgrounds here, but you need to understand the idea.

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In classical Christian theology, you have God's perfect knowledge of himself and God's perfect knowledge of what he has done and will do, particularly in his decree of creation.

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And people wonder, what does middle knowledge mean? Well, if you've got those two forms of knowledge, this is crammed in the middle.

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It's not necessarily temporal, but logical. You put this middle knowledge in here.

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And this middle knowledge is the assertion that God would know what any free creature would do in any given circumstance.

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But what you need to understand, since it's middle knowledge, it exists logically prior to God's decision to create.

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Very frequently, they'll use the term to actualize. He brings a particular world into existence.

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Well, here's the problem. The idea is that God has this ability to examine all possible worlds based upon this middle knowledge of what any free creature would do given any given circumstance.

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And of course, the problem is, if you're thinking with me for a moment, well, wait a minute. Where does middle knowledge come from?

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It doesn't come from God's decree because that's afterwards. That's the other side of the middle part.

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So, if we're talking about Bob Smith as a free creature, how can anyone, including

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God, have knowledge of what Bob Smith would do in any given situation before God decided to create

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Bob Smith? Because that would make Bob Smith's character, his essence, his being something that is determined by someone other than God because God hasn't decreed to create

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Bob Smith. Well, hypothetically, if he chose to create

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Bob Smith, but the point is, the reason that he would know what

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Bob Smith would do in any given circumstance is because he's the creator of the character of Bob Smith.

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Otherwise, the very essence of that free creature is self -defined or defined by something other than God.

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You can posit something else, I suppose, if you want. But the point is that William Lane Craig has said that there is no possible world where everyone would be saved because the question, obviously, is raised of Molinism.

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Well, all right. If this is your idea, then is this the best of all possible worlds that we live in?

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Are the most number of people going to be saved in this world? Because this has all sorts of impact in regards to the

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Odyssey and the existence of evil, and the whole idea of middle knowledge is to protect the autonomous will of man.

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Whatever man does, he does freely. But it's through a micromanaged situation where God examines billions and billions and billions and trillions and trillions and zillions of possible worlds with this number of people in it and that number of people in it and these events and that events.

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And, of course, God creates the external events. He can control tsunamis and earthquakes and stuff like that.

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But what happens is you have God running through all these scenarios and coming up with the world.

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Well, I've never heard one of them say that glorifies God best, but they generally come up with some kind of criteria.

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The most number of saved or the optimal balance between the number of saved and gratuitous evil or whatever else it might be.

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And that world is determined not by God's freedom, not by God's will at all.

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It is determined by middle knowledge. And God's freedom is limited to whether he will or will not actualize it.

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And God's freedom is limited to what his criteria is going to be.

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But that's it. As to the events in time, God has no freedom in those things. Now, he has to micromanage all of the external stuff to put people into the circumstances that he knows they'll do this given that circumstance.

38:18

But the idea of a sovereign decree of God that determines the fabric of time and that I am who

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I am because God made me to be this way. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's this middle knowledge stuff.

38:33

So, man, it always takes forever just to even begin to provide a foundation.

38:41

All right, so back to Craig's statement. You suggest more plausibly, I think, that there are no persons whom

38:47

God could have created who would under all circumstances reject his grace or salvation. Maybe you're right, but how can you know?

38:54

I just don't think we're in a position to make those kinds of judgments. You talk about the insanity of unbelief and yet such persons are all around us, people who have heard the gospel again and again, who have the

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Bible, who have read apologetics material and yet who refuse to believe. Of course, from our perspective, we know what it is.

39:10

In fact, I've had unbelievers say to me on more than one occasion, even if I knew that Christianity is true, I still wouldn't bend the knee.

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Remember, we're talking only of freedom -permitting circumstances here. How do you know that God couldn't put together a world in which the unreached are people who wouldn't bend the knee under any circumstances?

39:30

So here's the suggestion he's making. Suggestion he's making is, actually, everyone who's going to be lost would have been lost in any other world anyways.

39:42

Based upon what? Based upon the Holy Spirit's ability to take out a heart of stone? No, no, no, you can't do that.

39:49

The whole focus of Molinism is the almighty autonomous will of man.

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You've got to protect that over everything else. God's autonomous will, we're going to limit that to actuating worlds.

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Nothing more. We're going to make him a supercomputer. His autonomous will, his freedom as a creature, hey, it doesn't matter.

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Oh man, you've got to understand how anthropocentric this is. Absolutely centered upon the creature man.

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So you can't do that. So the idea is, well, everyone who will be lost would have been lost in any possible world anyways.

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So God has done no blame to God. He actuated the best world. So there are people, under any circumstance,

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God could never have saved them. Period. Outside of God's power to do so. Can't do it.

40:44

And how does God know this? Middle knowledge. Where'd that come from? Ah, that's the question.

40:51

In fact, this hypothesis has real implications for other issues like the wider problem of evil. For example, maybe only in a world involving scads of natural and moral evil could

41:00

God arrange the sort of world we're envisioning. Maybe his desire to achieve an optimal balance between saved and lost overrides the benefits of a world with less natural and moral evil.

41:10

It may well be that getting the right counterfactuals of creaturely freedom in place to achieve number three involves putting up with a lot of otherwise gratuitous evil.

41:20

So, again, it's all a matter of what's your ultimate goal here?

41:27

And, you know, God, I guess, gets to make the decision as to what the goals are, but he doesn't get to make the decision as to who gets saved.

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That's all decided by middle knowledge. Which God somehow has, but does not derive from within himself.

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His actions are constricted by it. He cannot actuate a world where everyone's going to be saved.

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Can't do it. Not possible. So, whatever this middle knowledge is, it can actually constrain the actions of God.

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He can't do certain things because of middle knowledge. Now, you ask, why create

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Fred in the first place? Here's the real nub of the issue, I think, and why you find my hypothesis unattractive.

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You think God could have just left Fred out, but that's not true if my hypothesis is correct. There may be no world feasible for God involving universal, freely embraced salvation which comes without other overriding disadvantages.

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Sure, God could have refrained from creating Fred, or both Fred and Sophie, but then the resulting world might have been even worse, or at least no better.

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The hypothesis is that God has done the very best he can given the true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom which confront him.

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So, God is confronted by true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom that do not flow from his decree.

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Where do they flow from? This is called the grounding objection. Where does it come from?

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Why didn't anybody until the 16th century figure out that this is what the

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Bible is talking about all along? Well, let's just be honest. This isn't what the Bible is talking about. Molinism and middle knowledge do not come from biblical exegesis.

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The vain attempts, even Craig admits that the couple of texts that have been thrown out there, and we've played him talking about this and responded to it in the past.

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Just look up William Lane Craig in the archives. You can go listen. We've played him talking about this and he admits.

43:55

It's possible that maybe when Jesus was talking about Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities of his day,

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Sodom and Gomorrah would have repented if they had seen these things. See, there's middle knowledge.

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It's not what it's talking about. It's saying that the people of that day were to be rightly judged because of the tremendous light that had been given to them.

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It has nothing to do with middle knowledge or counterfactuals or anything like it at all. It's a misuse of the text.

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None of the biblical authors ever use these categories. It's an external philosophical system that's crammed down on top of Scripture.

44:33

What really bugged me were the people that were talking to me on Twitter and saying, well, you know, it's possible that this is an attractive...

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You're using philosophy to do eisegesis. And it just makes me wonder if you know how to do exegesis.

44:49

Because you're not doing it. And there were a number of people I was talking to, by the way.

44:55

But here's the idea. Given the true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom, which confront him.

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Hmm. Which confront him? When do these things confront him?

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Before his actualization of creation itself. Before that third set of knowledge of his decree and everything he does in creation.

45:23

Before then, and what then determines what he can do there is what confronts him.

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That's something outside of himself. That's an external thing. And some of the people on Twitter are saying, well, it's just all we're saying is

45:37

God can't create a round circle. That's not all you're saying. You are saying that middle knowledge contains information as to what any free creature would do in any given circumstance.

45:49

That is about the nature of those creatures which have not been decreed by God to be made.

45:56

I say to you, biblically, that the nature, the character, the attributes of any created being come from their creator.

46:08

That's the Christian understanding. That's the biblical teaching. How can something confront

46:17

God and constrict his choices? But here's the big paragraph.

46:27

Here's the big paragraph. Your claim that there are an infinite number of beings God can create who would freely accept the gospel without somebody else rejecting it is guilty of the same error you alleged earlier, namely, speaking without a context.

46:40

Suppose that for any possible person there may be circumstances under which he would be freely saved without someone being lost.

46:47

It doesn't fall that there is a feasible world in which every person would be freely saved without someone's being lost.

46:54

For the relevant circumstances may not be compossible. Your pun on Sophie's choice, a choice between two bad options, reveals that you haven't yet grasped the theory of middle knowledge.

47:05

For God doesn't create such a choice for himself, the counterfactuals of creaturely freedom which confront him are outside his control.

47:18

He has to play with the hand he has been dealt.

47:28

Now I fully understand why there are a bunch of Molinists out there that want to run from that because it's just too plain.

47:42

It's just too clear. The counterfactuals of creaturely freedom which confront him are outside his control.

47:52

They do not find their source and origin in God. He has to play with the hand he's been dealt and he's just done the best he could.

48:04

I can see why many a person wants to go, well, look at that shiny thing over there.

48:14

Yeah, I get that. I get that. Because that's not the

48:20

God of the Bible. It's not the God of the Bible. My God's not confronted by anything that's outside of his control that then can constrain him to do anything.

48:35

That's not the God of Psalm 33. That's not the God of Isaiah 43 -48. That's not the

48:40

God of Psalm 135. That's not the God that Nebuchadnezzar, the pagan, knew about. But it is the

48:46

God of the philosophers. It is the God of the philosophers. So I understand. But here's the question.

48:54

God's been dealt these cards. What are these cards? These cards are the counterfactuals of creaturely freedom. So you, as an individual, this theory says that God would know before he sovereignly chose to create you what you would do in any given circumstance and that's outside of his control.

49:19

So he couldn't have made you differently. So who dealt the cards?

49:27

What's the source? What's the ground? And I've seen a lot of Molinists do flip -flops and handstands and do the merengue and everything else to try to find some way of rescuing this system.

49:44

Can't do it. And I think what's useful about that phraseology is that it really helps people to see what's really at stake here in this issue.

49:59

So I understand. If I were you, I'd run from it too.

50:04

I would run from it. But I don't actually happen to believe that.

50:10

Now, last thing here I may have to go a few minutes over, but it won't go too long.

50:17

I'm not going jumbo or anything like that. But we may go over a few minutes. Hopefully your blood sugar level out there won't drop too much.

50:25

You're good. First of all, once again, let me thank everybody who last week we filled up the ministry resource list and in fact, there's some more things on it right now

50:43

I think, and I haven't mentioned anything about a lot of people just don't I haven't even looked, so maybe I'm wrong.

50:49

But we put a bunch of material on the ministry resource list. Hundreds of dollars worth of stuff.

50:56

In less than 24 hours, you folks provide all of them. One of them is the book

51:01

I'm holding in my hand it's called Beyond What Is Written Erasmus and Bayes as Conjectural Critics of the New Testament And it's fascinating.

51:10

Fascinating. I'm having a hard time putting it down. It's a goldmine of information.

51:16

Now, most of the information was available in the annotations written by Desiderius Erasmus.

51:22

I'm shifting gears here, by the way. Big shift. From Molinism to Erasmus.

51:28

Yeah, that was a leap. Sorry about that. We should have played a song or something to make it easier. Erasmus, of course.

51:37

The Dutch humanist scholar. Brilliant scholar. The irascible

51:42

Erasmus. I bet you someone's written a book by that title. I haven't seen it. The irascible

51:47

Erasmus. You didn't want to get into a written debate with Erasmus.

51:52

He would have been kicked off of a lot of Facebook forums.

51:58

Let's just put it that way if that were the situation. But he could use satire and sarcasm and wow, he was just a brilliant scholar.

52:10

Given how much less information he had available to him than we have today, wow, what he did with it certainly makes me feel like a dolt.

52:22

But Erasmus, of course, is the one who produces those five vitally important printed editions of the

52:29

Greek New Testament between 1516 and 1535 and then

52:36

Stephanus, Robert Estienne, his edition, then Beza's in 1598. Those are the seven printed editions of the

52:43

Greek New Testament utilized by the King James translators. So Erasmus is considered, rightly, in essence to be the father of what's known anachronistically today as the

52:56

Texas Receptus. And it is an anachronistic phraseology. So what is this book about?

53:05

It is about Erasmus and Beza as conjectural critics of the

53:13

New Testament. What's a conjectural critic? Well, a conjecture is generally a changing of a text, in this case, the text of the

53:26

New Testament that is not based upon being in possession of written documentation that contains the reading.

53:36

In other words, you're going, I bet this is the original reading and it's been changed and that explains where all of today's readings come from.

53:47

And both Erasmus and Beza make conjectural inundations. And it's important to know where they are.

53:55

And so on and so forth. So, for example, I found while just looking through this material in preparation for today, for example, one of the things that was said was especially in the book of Revelation but other places as well, that Erasmus assumed that the name

54:17

Jesus should always have an article. And so there are a number of places where articles appear that none of the exemplars that Erasmus was using actually contained them.

54:27

And he just assumed there was an error on their part but he was wrong about the use of the article.

54:34

And he certainly is not the first person in the history of the Christian Church to have struggled with the Greek article. But what's really interesting is

54:47

I found an error today in the CNTTS apparatus

54:54

I'm not sure if Garrett the Geek is in channel or not. Maybe he'll find this interesting. But in 1

55:02

Peter 3 .20 I was reading Jan Kranz is the author of this particular book and there was a lengthy discussion about 1

55:14

Peter 3 .20 and the various notes that appeared in the annotations from Erasmus over the course of you know, because you're talking 19 years in five different editions and a lot of writing on the part of Erasmus.

55:33

And the on page 1 .30

55:38

we read, this annotation is marked by two concerns namely, the correct understanding and thus the correct Latin translation of ad decata ad decata or ad dex edeka that is a tough one ex edeka and the correct

56:01

Greek reading whether it's op edeka hapox edeka or hapox ex edeka that's a big one um finally it goes to his conjecture this is

56:22

Erasmus of hapox ex edeka is the natural outcome for some reason he wanted to adopt the word hapox for otherwise he could have adopted the attested reading of op ex edeka the conjecture was to become the reading of the

56:40

Texas Receptus so so I was it's a fairly well known variant and it's very difficult but I was looking at the

56:50

CNTTS apparatus and it's wrong it lists the

56:57

TR as reading hapox edeka but that's not what the

57:03

TR reads the Texas Receptus and I need to also let the folks at Accordance know that their last update created this blank box that messes up the display and I'm really surprised they haven't already fixed this but the

57:29

Texas Receptus actually has

57:34

Erasmus' reading which is ex edeka and it's right there on the screen

57:43

I'm not sending it to you right now but that's alright as noted in the book so there is actually an error that needs to be fixed in the

57:53

CNTTS revised updated apparatus which lists the TR for the wrong reading and does not actually include the

58:01

TR reading now what's all of that have to do with anything well when

58:09

I posted the video that we started the program with by William Lane Craig Paul Barth on Facebook reposted my

58:24

Facebook post about it and then made the comment well actually let me make sure that I quote things correctly we don't want to misquote anyone here but I have the quote here here it is put on the progressive lenses my phone's getting really small here's what he wrote if only the autographs are inerrant then

58:55

Craig is absolutely right we would have no confidence that the Bible we possess today is inerrant good thing

59:00

God has preserved his word of the church of all ages Westminster Confession of Faith 1 -8 I'm glad even though White holds the same presupposition as Craig he doesn't take it to its logical conclusion like Craig does well

59:13

I suppose I should be happy for almost anything positive there and then there was someone

59:18

Presbyterian memes on Twitter that posted pretty much the exact same thing so I don't know if they got it from Paul Barth or if that is

59:25

Paul Barth I don't know don't know but I asked a simple question um it sounds like what was being said there is that we're not talking about preservation in the way

59:44

I believe in preservation I believe all the original readings still exist um people say well

59:52

I want them in one particular text well you know that's not how God did it and I've spent a lot of time in fact

01:00:00

I really got upset with some people on Twitter today they're going so where do you have the word of God they've heard me address this a thousand times before this being let's just be obtuse for the sake of being obtuse thing it's very childish and I just don't have time for it

01:00:14

I really don't um you well know what I'm talking about and I've described this a thousand times before we we can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that all the allegations of the corruption of the

01:00:29

Bible inserting doctrines like the trinity or the deity of Christ taking out doctrines like reincarnation or something like that we can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt because the multifacality of the text and the tenacity of the text that that did not take place all the stuff that the

01:00:52

Muslims say the stuff that the New Agers say even Bart Ehrman recognizes when he's asked the question so what was the

01:01:00

New Testament all about about Jesus' death, burial and resurrection it's obvious the idea of wholesale change impossible because of the rapid wide distribution of the text of the

01:01:14

New Testament now the result of that is textual variation there are textual variants but all the original readings continue to exist in the pages of the

01:01:26

New Testament we have them there I've used the illustration I think Robert Bowman came up with it and it's a great illustration that what we have in the

01:01:35

New Testament is we have a 10 ,000 piece jigsaw puzzle and instead of having only 9 ,900 pieces which would be a tragedy we've got 10 ,100 pieces and the issue is what has accrued over time not what has been lost so we have to look at textual variation everybody has to look at textual variation

01:01:57

Erasmus looked at textual variation Beza looked at textual variation Robert Estienne looked at textual variation everybody did it any text you've got has come to you from the hands of people who've done textual critical study so if you don't like it well

01:02:16

I'm sorry if you think it's too messy well I'm sorry welcome to the real world there's nothing to be gained by ignoring the reality of how

01:02:27

God has given us the scriptures and you can make stuff up all you want just don't go out there and try to present to people who know what the reality is because then you make everybody look really bad so I asked a simple question on Twitter of Presbyterian memes are you saying that there is an inerrant manuscript today which one is it are you saying the

01:02:59

TR is inerrant which TR which one of Erasmus' editions is it

01:03:06

SDN Stephanos if it's Stephanos that's great because I have one in my office here it is final authority all thanks how about Beza Calvin's successor go with that one which one is it they're not identical to one another and so seriously

01:03:27

I would ask is it a particular manuscript of a particular book so theoretically you could have one inerrant manuscript of Matthew but a different inerrant manuscript of Luke is that what's being said

01:03:45

I don't know because they wouldn't tell me well one guy said family 35

01:03:51

Pickering said family 35 Presbyterian memes just wouldn't answer just got very coy very childish what's your standard for inerrancy

01:04:03

I'm just asking a simple question if you're going to say that there is a specific inerrant text if you're going to say that what was in the

01:04:18

Chicago Statement on Inerrancy is wrong then could you be specific and what do

01:04:25

I mean article 10 Chicago Statement on Inerrancy we affirm that inspiration strictly speaking applies to the autographic text of scripture which in the providence of God can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great accuracy you're saying no that's not enough it's not just great accuracy it's inerrant in some kind of copy which one is it is it the

01:04:53

TR which manuscript is it it certainly ain't Sinaiticus or Vaticanus we can guess that one

01:04:59

Washingtonianus maybe certainly ain't Bezekandabrigensis so which one is it because if you're going to make that claim if you're going to make that assertion back it up don't be coy don't play games with this stuff tell us what it is well it's the broad

01:05:20

Byzantine manuscript tradition that's not what was just said that's not what was just said

01:05:27

I can give you example after example after example where the people that created the TR engaged in the exact same textual critical analysis that everybody does today just based upon far fewer manuscripts just didn't have the information and data we have today no they were not specifically choosing one kind of manuscript versus another because they didn't know about the different categories of manuscripts they didn't have enough of them to be aware of that but they were doing exactly what we do today so if you're going to sit there and say well it's these manuscripts then be specific which one is it?

01:06:05

because inerrancy sort of narrows things down a little bit you can't just go well it's just sort of vaguely generally you can't do that so if you're going to say this isn't enough by the way article 10 goes on to say we further affirm that copies and translations of scripture are the word of God to the extent they faithfully represent the original you know where that came from?

01:06:28

straight from the word to the readers in the original authorized version the

01:06:33

King James version of the Bible that's what the translators said but they were talking about other translations which is generally why

01:06:41

King James onlyists aren't big on repeating what the translators of the King James actually said that's another issue so if you're going to say to me well you've got the same presupposition are you saying that Craig and I both agree with the

01:07:00

Chicago Statement along with R .C. Sproul and all these other people and the vast majority of Christian scholars today if that's what you're saying okay you can't see the difference between Craig and I in regards to what we're saying here and if you're gonna take a pot shot at me then answer the question when

01:07:21

I ask specifically alright if you're saying you have an inerrant specific you have the autograph is that what you're saying?

01:07:34

do you have the autograph? if you've got this information we need to know the church needs to know this well it's the ecclesiastical text oh okay, which one?

01:07:47

which church? which text? which manuscript? you and I both know you can't answer that question we all know it and once you put it out there then we can examine it and that's when the wheels fall off because far too easy once you put a target out there now it can be examined see it's so much easier to promote these ideas when you don't have to get specific it's exactly what happened when

01:08:20

I debated Doug Wilson on this in their publication years and years it's really easy to throw out the generalizations until you get to specific texts and that's why this kind of stuff only works in house over in a corner some place it doesn't work when you try to take it out into the world and we're sort of big on that taking it out into the world thing so I had hoped to be able to give you a specific answer asked you can go look at twitter look at my questions to Presbyterian memes give me a text well what standards are you going to use to determine inerrancy just give me a text

01:09:05

I won't ok fine there you go you are the weakest link yes so anyway well we covered when you go from mullinism to erasmus what was that you wanted to say something it sounds like you're starting to wrap up I am so I want to dovetail on that when you're done because there is an announcement that I am supposed to make today

01:09:33

I promised that I would make it yes well

01:09:39

I've been informed and I know that you've been informed that the cabins on the cruise no

01:09:47

I have not been informed read your email no I'm sorry anyway the cabins on the cruise are starting to dwindle you mean they're getting smaller yeah something like that what happened to the ship did they put them in the dryer that's what

01:10:04

I do to my wife hit the mute button here remember I control the horizontal and the vertical the number of cabins available to us is starting to narrow so if folks still want to get on the cruise and want to do that make those reservations they need to contact sovereign cruises and events

01:10:26

ASAP there is a big link at the top of our page pointing them to the right place where they can do that and just in case some people may be curious as to how much trouble will be engaged in during this cruise

01:10:45

I will be on the cruise so there will be great trouble I'm sure and mischief we've been on some cruises before I don't recall you being the wild crazy guy yeah well your wife doesn't like it that was before you left town that's true that's true you have been getting a little out of control there so I needed to mention that so that I'm glad you did

01:11:16

I'm glad you read email so don't delay call today very good you even alliterated or rhymed alright thank you for that oh

01:11:30

I guess as we're doing announcements I did retweet a video has been posted for G3 and I have been invited to go to G3 again this year to speak at G3 and the list of people that I don't know how they're going to do this

01:11:58

I mean I've always thought that anybody that comes to G3 is just going to be so exhausted when they leave because it just goes all day long but this is the biggest thing they've ever done it's going to be in a different location it's not going to be at the church it's going to be at the convention center it's going to be downtown it's going to be easier to get to it's going to be huge I mean

01:12:18

Vody, Paul Washer, Steve Lawson DA Carson little old me and we're actually working on trying to put together a debate it is the

01:12:30

Reformation year for obvious reasons and so it's sort of like they want to get the first shot at the

01:12:37

Reformation so you can imagine who we're looking to as far as debates go and maybe what subjects we might be dealing with but you might want to pencil that one in and get your reservations early because it's going to be about the biggest thing

01:12:55

I've been involved with that's for sure so that's coming up in January so I retweeted and maybe reposted on Facebook or whatever they've put a video out and stuff like that so check it out just look up G3 Conference and other people are suggesting other people to go on to be at G3 that as normal in channel probably would not be invited to go to G3 because that's just the nature of people in channel are odd so anyway thanks for listening to Dividing Line today

01:13:27

Lord Willen again as we said back on Friday Friday for the