Interview with James R. White (Calvinism, Molinism, & Free Will)

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December 21, 2019

In this interview, Dr. James White and myself discuss issues relating to Molinism, Calvinism, and Free Will. Very fascinating discussion. Enjoy!

00:00: Revealed Apologetics, I'm your host Elias Ayala, and today I have a very special guest with me, a theological hero,
00:09: Dr. James White, who is the, I believe you're the founder of Alpha and Omega, right?
00:15: Oh, co -founder, yeah. Co -founder of Alpha and Omega Ministries, and he is a Reformed Christian along Baptist lines, and he has engaged in over,
00:26: I believe, over 150 debates, unless you haven't crossed the 200 mark line yet, have you?
00:32: 174. 174, oh my goodness, okay. So you are no stranger to conflict, let's just say, right?
00:41: So I'm very, very excited to have the opportunity to nab
00:46: Dr. White in his very busy schedule. I believe Dr. White is a very valuable apologetics resource, as well as just a theological resource, and I just enjoy and appreciate his consistency with his faithfulness to Scripture, and he definitely does not compromise in those areas.
01:03: I think the only caution I would give of Dr. White is his heretical views concerning Star Trek being better than Star Wars, but nobody's perfect.
01:13: Given that the new film is collapsing on issues like homosexuality and stuff like that, it's pretty obvious.
01:22: Well, again, so we're really excited to have Dr. White here. We're going to be covering the topic of Calvinism, Molinism, and we'll allow
01:31: Dr. White to define both of those terms in the most succinct way possible, although these are big topics, and the issue of free will, okay?
01:42: And just right off the bat, I used to be a Molinist for quite some time, and it was not until I went on a vacation with my family to this place called
01:52: Camp of the Woods. It's a Christian camp area. They have speakers like Ravi Zacharias and other people.
01:58: And when my family went to bed, I went into this little cabin area, and everyone was completely empty, and I was on YouTube.
02:05: I wanted to get my theological fix for the weekend, okay? And I have listened to,
02:11: I think, almost every debate you've ever had, and I've watched them all, many of them multiple times, and so I've learned a great deal.
02:19: And I realized that there was one debate that I didn't recognize what you were wearing. You know, when you watch something, you kind of become familiar.
02:25: I think I've seen that one, and you were wearing some jacket. I think it was like a green jacket or something. I was like, I don't think I've ever seen this one before.
02:31: And so I clicked on it, and you were debating a guy I've never heard of, Leighton Flowers.
02:37: And I listened to that debate. While not on Molinism, by the end of the debate,
02:43: I recanted Molinism for the simple statement that you made when you were speaking about consistent exegesis.
02:52: When you asked Dr. Flowers, can you exegete the principles that we would use when we're defending the deity of Christ, when we're defending justification by faith alone, by grace alone, and Christ alone?
03:07: Would you use the same exegetical tools or principles when defending your position?
03:12: And as a Molinist, that spoke to me as a Molinist. And all of the things that I was studying and people
03:18: I was speaking with, that convicted me. Because when I studied
03:23: Molinism, what I found was that I began to drown in philosophical waters.
03:30: And when I listened to Reformed writers and speakers and debaters such as yourself, regardless if people agree with your position or not,
03:39: I have to admit that I was always drawn back to the Scriptures. And that is what grounded me.
03:45: And I still have my questions, even as a Reformed guy. But that's what grounded me back within the Reformed tradition.
03:51: And I know not everyone's going to agree with that. But that's one of the reasons why I became a Calvinist again. I was convinced scripturally and very much through your debates and things like that.
04:00: So thank you very much. All that just to say that. Well, it would have been a whole lot simpler if you had tracked down the actually older videos that we did.
04:14: I did two presentations at Reformed Baptist Church right off campus of Biola.
04:20: I forget what year it was, but it was probably 2010, something like that. But it was a while back.
04:26: And it was as close as we get to debating William Lane Craig. He won't debate.
04:33: We have, of course, offered that. But he says he will not debate
04:39: Christians. And so it would be extremely helpful, extremely useful to see a debate on these subjects.
04:47: But we can't find anybody who will really do that that's representative anyways. I mean, when you talk about William Lane Craig, as soon as you criticize his particular perspective, then you'll have people coming back, say, well, you need to read this person or that person.
05:01: And there's a million different takes on how to do things. But he's the one that he's the primary person that is responsible for maintaining the existence of Molinism amongst evangelicals today, in my opinion.
05:19: I don't think if he was promoting it that the other people who are promoting it would have much of an audience.
05:26: And especially amongst those who are involved in apologetics, it's Craig's utilization of this system, even though it's primarily fallen out of favor amongst
05:38: Roman Catholics where it originated. It's his explanation of it and his broadcasts and all that stuff.
05:47: So that's what I've focused upon has been his understanding of it. There may be people who take other perspectives, but especially when it comes to the issue of the role of middle knowledge in determining what
06:01: God can and cannot do, what possible worlds he could and could not actuate.
06:08: That seems to be what I always hear from people. And I think there's just a lot of Christians who don't want a black and white choice between God's sovereignty and man's sovereignty.
06:23: And so this seems to be it seems to be a way to get around that, to be able to say, well,
06:29: God is still sovereign. He controls all of the natural stuff.
06:37: And for some reason, people don't seem to care if God's in charge of tsunamis. But if he is in actual charge of individual salvation, that's a heresy of great proportion.
06:52: And I find that very odd. But Molinism allows you to say God's sovereign in the natural realm.
07:00: But man has the final say. And God may want to save everybody, but he can't because of this magical thing called middle knowledge.
07:12: And I've not met a lot of people who really fully understood what Molinism was saying.
07:20: And the problem is a lot of the people that I have met weren't overly concerned. It was never derived from Scripture.
07:28: And William Lane Craig admits that it's not derived from Scripture. He would say that it's consistent with a certain reading of Scripture, but that its origination is not found in Scripture itself.
07:41: So for a lot of folks, it's just a way out. I don't want to be involved in the never ending debates.
07:47: And so let's just go this direction, and that's a deal. Well, for folks who don't know what
07:54: Molinism is, let's actually start with the definition, and then we'll kind of take it from there.
08:00: Well, yeah, the easiest thing to do, really, we don't have time in our time frame to develop a meaningful orthodox definition of historical parameters.
08:17: Let's just put it this way. Let's just define what middle knowledge is, because that kind of terminology, most people do not possess the categories to really understand.
08:27: Why is that terminology being used? Orthodox theologians up to the time of the
08:36: Reformation, so early church into the Middle Ages, had spoken of two kinds of knowledge in God.
08:47: And it's not that in this instance, again, we're not talking about some type of philosophical categories being forced on Scripture.
08:54: This is just sort of if God is who the Bible says he is, then you would have
09:00: God having natural knowledge. And natural knowledge is the knowledge that he has of himself.
09:10: So God knows himself perfectly and is the only one who knows himself perfectly.
09:16: And of all possible actions, so all real actions that he has undertaken, all possible actions he could undertake,
09:23: God knows what his capacities, abilities, and so on and so forth are, especially in regards to before creation.
09:36: So he knew what possible worlds he could create in the sense of how vast the universe would be, or he could have just made a solar system and not made all the beautiful stars and everything else.
09:49: It's whatever those possibilities were. So that's natural knowledge. And then free knowledge, which is what we would sort of call omniscience in the sense of following the decree to create.
10:05: So once he decided to make this universe, then what he chooses to do within it, what all creatures do, what all free creatures do, what all creatures who do not have freedom of will.
10:23: You know, how many times, you know, I'm a cyclist and I like seeing videos from Australia where these poor
10:31: Australian cyclists are out riding and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, here comes this kangaroo at incredible speed and just blows the person right off the bike, you know.
10:44: We wouldn't say that kangaroo has a will in the sense that man has a will, but certainly that kangaroo can interact with mankind and therefore impact what takes place, especially if God wanted to use that guy to bring revival to Australia, and he just got killed by a kangaroo.
11:01: What a bummer. God's got to start all over again. So you've got issues like that. You've got natural knowledge and free knowledge.
11:09: And up until that point, Christian theologians had felt that pretty well exhausted the categories in regards to God's knowledge.
11:19: So what middle knowledge is, is in between those two categories.
11:30: So in between natural knowledge, which comes before creation, free knowledge, which comes after the decree to create and includes everything in creation.
11:37: So what you want to do is you want to sandwich a category of knowledge in between these two, which is called middle knowledge.
11:50: And it's, sorry about the sound, but unfortunately, I'm not sure how to turn off the notifications on my thing without turning you off at the same time.
12:03: So I suppose we can just, it'll just give you an idea of just how often we are contacted every hour by family and pastoral.
12:13: These are some of my co -pastors that are talking about things and it just, it goes all day long.
12:19: Anyways, this middle knowledge, it partakes of elements of both, but middle knowledge has to do with knowing what free creatures will do in any given...
12:33: Would do. Well, what they would and what they, and what they not just could do, but would do.
12:40: So it's more than just theoretically such a free creature could do this, could do that, could do that.
12:49: But it actually, and this is where the problem for me is, it actually indicates what a free creature would do, not what they could do, not what their capacities would be.
13:02: And no matter what you do with that, no matter how would, could, the
13:08: Hawaiian Yards, the question when you come to middle knowledge is when you think of free creatures, when free creatures act, how we act is derived from who we are.
13:26: And if middle knowledge is before the divine decree to create, then you can see that in the long run, it's going to limit what
13:43: God can and cannot do to get to a certain end.
13:49: If God wants to, you know, the big question is, you know, William Lane Craig's always asked the question, is this the best of all possible worlds?
14:00: Is God saving the most people that He can? Or is,
14:07: I mean, really, there's lots of ways that question could be asked. I mean, it's one thing to say, is God saving the most people
14:13: He can? Some people might say, is God saving the best people that He can? Is there anything to that?
14:21: I mean, there's all sorts of questions you can ask. But the point is, middle knowledge becomes a restrainer because within the
14:30: Molinistic system, God having the first kind of knowledge of Himself and everything
14:37: He can do, then having middle knowledge, which does not come from His decree. It's not an act of His will.
14:45: Where it comes from, that was the primary objection to middle knowledge by the
14:51: Reformed Orthodox thinkers like Francis Turretin. So if you read Turretin's discussion of middle knowledge, the grounding objection is the primary objection.
15:02: Where does this knowledge come from? What's its origin? What is its source?
15:08: Because if it's not found in God's will, then it's one thing to say
15:17: God's natural knowledge of Himself is natural to His being. And so you wouldn't have to look at something outside of God for God's natural knowledge of Himself.
15:26: But middle knowledge isn't about God. It's about God's creatures. And yet it's not found in God's decree.
15:33: And so it doesn't come forth from God's will. So where does it come from? Well, wouldn't middle knowledge be, for example, when we take a look at Molinism as a whole, wouldn't it be primarily a view of God's omniscience?
15:46: Right? So it would be an explanation of the nature of His knowledge. Well, it partakes of the two other kinds of knowledge in a sense.
15:58: But I would have to say no, simply because the object that is being known has not been defined by God's decree as yet.
16:13: So how can you say what John Brown would do before God decrees to create
16:23: John Brown as John Brown? I can fully understand how God would have knowledge once He has decreed to create someone and define them, how
16:35: He would have knowledge of what they would do in any given circumstance. We confess that. But what middle knowledge is trying to do is to avoid the creative decree whatsoever because if that's the case, then it doesn't solve the problem of an autonomous will.
16:51: Okay, so let's summarize real quick and then go back to what you're saying here.
16:58: So Molinism, Molinists tend to understand God's knowledge in three logical moments.
17:03: Like you said, there's natural knowledge, there's middle knowledge, and then there's the divine decree, and then
17:10: God's free knowledge, right? So what helped me when I was a Molinist was to break up the three logical moments of God's knowledge as could, would, and will.
17:19: So natural knowledge is everything that could happen within the mind of God, all possibilities. Everything that would happen, knowledge of counterfactuals that are logically prior to God's divine decree.
17:29: And then once He decrees the world, you have His free knowledge, His knowledge of what will actually transpire.
17:35: Now you said something about middle knowledge being...
17:40: If we were to understand God's middle knowledge as His knowledge of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom that's located logically prior to the decree, you're saying that that places a limitation on what
17:55: God can choose to actualize amongst the possibilities that are contained in His natural knowledge?
18:01: Is that what you're saying? Well, again, until the decree has defined what the free creature is, how can there be middle knowledge of what a as yet uncreated, unchosen to be created, and undefined free creature will do?
18:26: And if you assert it, then you get the end result, which to me is the most frightening thing of William Lane Craig's application of this.
18:36: And that is when he is really pushed on the ultimate purpose of creation, he will say that, yes,
18:45: I believe that God is saving the maximal number of people. This is the best of all the possible worlds that God could initiate.
18:54: This is the one that will bring about the best results, whether that's the most number of people saved or a balance between good and evil.
19:05: You know, maybe there might have been a world where more people have been saved, but the cost of the greater amount of evil would have been too great or, you know, some type of...
19:16: But the key issue that determines God's calculations in all of this is the restricting parameters of the would.
19:31: What would any person that conceivably God could create do in any circumstance in which
19:39: God might place them in any divinely decreed creation?
19:46: And I've never heard anyone offer a meaningful basis for grounding this, not only in Scripture, but in explaining where does this knowledge come from because it assumes the reality of free creatures.
20:08: It assumes that they're created in such a way that they can have free choice. So it, in one sense, assumes the prior reality of the decree, but then jumps before the decree and says this is how someone would act in a given situation.
20:25: So the result is, for me, the most infamous statement from William Lane Cray, and that is when someone really started pushing him on this.
20:37: And, well, how do you know this? You remember what he said. It's pretty famous. But he said, look,
20:43: God's done the best He can. He's got to deal with the cards He's been dealt.
20:49: Now hold it right there because I want to address that issue, and I think that's a great point. But I think what you touched on before is really important, is that if God's counterfactual knowledge of creaturely, you know, if God's counterfactual knowledge of His counterfactual actions, it's so hard to talk about.
21:10: Wait a second. I got this here. God's counterfactual knowledge of His counterfactual knowledge of creaturely free acts exists logically prior to the divine decree.
21:20: What you're pointing out is that if they're logically prior to the decree, how can they have any truth value since there is no defined essence and nature of who these people are independent of a decree?
21:35: Yeah, you have to have a creature to know what a creature is going to do. The creature has to have a particular set of characteristics.
21:43: There has to be a context in which choice can even be made. What if we lived in a different universe that has different physical constants?
21:51: There's gonna be different choices that can be exercised. But there simply isn't any way to just grab this element of knowledge and pull it out of the third moment in the
22:06: Molinist system, in the classical, the second moment, and push it out of the way for what reason?
22:15: There's only one reason. I mean, let's just be honest. We haven't even talked about any type of scriptural foundation for any of this because there really isn't one.
22:26: But even the few things that have been suggested, the whole reason is to find a way around the sovereignty of God in relationship to the will of man.
22:37: It is a way of seeking to defend the idea of the possibility of an existence of multiple autonomous wills.
22:45: You've got God's autonomous will, though I would argue that if he cannot, you know,
22:51: Willem and Craig would say there was no—God could not create a universe in which all people would be safe.
22:57: Even though it was his desire. But I think it's important to recognize also that his application of that is not a necessary component of Molinism.
23:06: That's just a specific application that he makes. Not all Molinists would hold to that specific understanding.
23:11: You have a flexibility within various Molinist perspectives where they apply it.
23:17: In some cases more along lines of like an Arminian view or some do it more lines of a reform view if they're doing it consistently or whatever.
23:26: But I don't think it's a necessary component. And I think this is important. When critiquing Molinism, it's difficult because not all
23:33: Molinists are created equal, so to speak. And so to critique an application of Molinism is not the same as critiquing
23:40: Molinism and its essential features, if that makes sense. Well, I think that Molina himself,
23:49: I think that his motivations were pretty clear. And so if you want to try to take the essence of his system and abandon the purposes that he had and try to make applications someplace else, well, okay.
24:06: I don't see that. I think Craig is at least being consistent at that point and is at least owning up to the reality that the fundamental purpose here is, in fact, to make room for an artificial relationship between an ostensibly autonomous will of man and the autonomous will of God.
24:33: That's what he's trying to do. And whether he's successful or not, at least he's owning up to the reality that the grounding issue, that the origin of middle knowledge is key and central.
24:48: He sees that. He sees that God's got to do what middle knowledge allows him to do.
24:55: Now, right there, when you just said that there. And I think a criticism that some people have raised because your card dealer example is obviously makes its rounds on the internet.
25:06: People have commented. Well, it's not my illustration. Well, I guess it's the illustration that Dr.
25:13: Craig used, but I think people are familiar with your criticism of that. And I think there are good points to this.
25:21: And I suppose I've heard some. Well, when you say middle knowledge limits him. Yeah, it almost to a person who's a
25:28: Molinist that that might be kind of understood as as as you're treating this, this middle knowledge of some this, like, impersonal abstraction.
25:36: When, in fact, middle knowledge is just a knowledge that God has within his own his own nature.
25:42: Except to say it's in his own nature does not explain how it then can become a restriction on what his decree can actualize.
25:57: So in other words, in in only wise God, he says, indeed, God's decision to create a world is based on his middle knowledge and consists in his electing to become actual.
26:08: One of the possible worlds known to him in the second moment in the second moment.
26:14: But the content of the second moment does not derive from the will of God. Right, so so if God knows what
26:24: Dr. White would do if he were to create on their view, the knowledge of what you would do is not determined by God's decree.
26:33: What you would do would be hypothetically true, independent of a decree. And if it's independent of God's will, if it's independent of the decree, then it's independent of God's will.
26:43: Right, right, right. And my whole point is all of creation exists because God wills it to exist.
26:51: And once you once you slide open the door to anything that is defined by something other than God's freely choosing to define it that way, you now have a limitation.
27:05: And and that's what he electing to become actual. One of the possible worlds known to him were in the second moment, not the first and not in the third.
27:19: So this is that that second moment. You know, you can a Molinus can say, well, this is just a natural knowledge that God has.
27:27: But it's it has inverted the logical relationship between the decree and the will of God. And it's no longer something that comes from God's will, because that's the whole purpose.
27:37: The whole purpose that Molina had was to be able to hold together. Well, in Molina's context, interestingly enough, the
27:46: Roman Catholic sacramental system, the reformers are emphasizing the sovereignty of God and the grace of God.
27:53: And that destroys the power that Rome had over its people, because that's why they had to adopt semi -Pelagianism, the
28:01: Council of Orange and move away from Augustine and stuff like that, because you had to have that power over the people.
28:08: And if you have sovereign freedom, the sacramental system is no longer the mechanism to be able to do that.
28:14: So he is tasked with a way of getting around that. So it is it is a there's no question that the not even
28:26: Protestant, but the modern evangelical fascination with this has created a hybrid that that no longer has the connection that it originally had to Molina's purposes.
28:40: But those defending it are on the other side of the Tiber on the issue of the deadness of man's will and sin, total depravity, all the rest of these things.
28:52: And so it's it may no longer be a complex sacramental system that is is driving this.
28:59: But and that means that. The wide variety, the wider variety, barely wider variety of theological perspectives that you'll find amongst
29:14: Protestant evangelicals, if you can use the term evangelicals, there is going to result in some shading differences as to how you apply
29:23: Molinism. But the key issue, I think, remains the same, and that is the volitional element of God's choice to create as he created to give gifts as he gives gifts and to save whom he saves is what is offensive.
29:45: And therefore. The whole idea again comes down to from whence does that middle knowledge come?
29:55: You can you can say it's a it's a natural part of God's being. But given that it assumes the reality of free creatures, it is assuming that God has chosen to create in the first place.
30:14: It's I don't see if you if if you can explain how Molinus gets around it, I I'm willing to hear it.
30:21: Yeah, that that'd be a good, you know, I have I have. You're a Molinus.
30:27: So so how does the Molinus get around the reality that to know what a free creature would do requires that that free creature have sufficient definition to have the qualities of choice?
30:48: Yeah, I think what you're asking, basically, you're bringing up the grounding objection. What grounds these things?
30:54: And I think I don't I'm not aware of the answer that they're giving now. But I remember reading in Keith Lee's book,
31:02: Salvation and Sovereignty, where and people can correct. It's been a while since I actually held this position, but he was almost
31:08: OK with saying, I don't know if God is omniscient. You know, it his omniscience.
31:15: I don't see why his omniscience couldn't include him having knowledge of counterfactually.
31:21: But that's that's why I stopped reading, Keith. I'll be honest, you asked me about it when he got because I wanted to know this is this is where the rubber meets the road.
31:32: This is where the issue is. This is what I honestly believe is the is the fatal objection.
31:39: And when you get to this point, Keith Lee was like, yeah, go read the other guys.
31:45: And well, fine. I read the other guys. And there's there's two problems.
31:52: One is the biblical problem. From my perspective, there's there's nothing there's no biblical author and no
32:02: Christians for fifteen hundred years ever thought of anything like this.
32:08: I mean, and what's interesting about that is, as you know, especially in the early, early church, you had a lot of people that were very, very deeply influenced by Greek philosophy.
32:21: It's time period where the canon of Scripture isn't even completed yet. As far as I mean, you've got
32:26: Justin Martyr creating theology with a minimal canon available to him. You've got to give somebody like that credit for being as Orthodox as they were.
32:35: How many of us would be even semi Orthodox if we only had, say, a third or a half of the
32:40: New Testament and we have and all the people who come before us to keep us from getting silly in our in our theology?
32:47: So that means that they were really deeply influenced by Greek categories of thought, which would not flow along the lines of the
33:00: Old Testament's testimony of one God, sovereign creator over all things. That there was a strong element of of human autonomy, even though you had the gods, the gods were under the control of the fates, too, and all the rest.
33:16: So it's not like the natural human tendency for the exaltation of the will of man would have been the primary thing.
33:25: And despite that, you still don't have Molinism until Molina. Some people argue some Anabaptists.
33:30: Two things real quick. I think if if we were to ask a
33:37: Molinist, I think the primary reason why they find this reconciliation helpful is not so much.
33:44: And obviously, I mean, obviously, as part of it, not so much to give man autonomy for the sake of autonomy, but they see it as protecting perhaps the goodness of God.
33:54: Right. Whether they do that effectively or not is is that's that's where we were. It's not even so much effectively.
34:00: I do hear that. I do hear that. That's an important piece. I do hear that people say that the problem the problem
34:08: I have with that is. When you say you're protecting the goodness of God.
34:14: Are you really protecting the goodness of God? Are you protecting your mechanisms that you've always used traditionally to understand what you think is
34:25: God's goodness? You're basically making an argument that if God is truly sovereign over human affairs and he can't possibly be good.
34:34: And there's just so much in Scripture. I mean, how do you how do you apply that to the flood of Noah?
34:43: I mean, we don't we don't know the names, but there was a huge human population that God wiped out.
34:51: We don't know the names of the people in Sodom and Gomorrah. We don't know the names of all the Amorites that were wiped out when when when the children of Israel came.
34:59: It just strikes me that when you talk about defending the goodness of God.
35:06: It's the same mindset that ends up turning the Old Testament into mythology.
35:15: Or, you know, what's happening right now where there are evangelicals who are basically saying, yeah,
35:22: I really don't think all that happened. I think Noah's flood was a local flood. And I don't really think that this happened.
35:28: And they didn't really wipe everybody out. And they're finding ways around this stuff because we're defending the goodness of God.
35:38: And so I'm when I when I hear people saying that, I go, well, OK, for some people that that might be the case.
35:46: But in reality, it seems to me that you have an idea of what God must be to be good.
35:53: Rather than deriving what the goodness of God should look like from looking at what God did.
36:00: And so it seems to me that Jesus, if we want to use him as our as our go to here, read the
36:08: Old Testament text in a pretty straightforward manner. And this idea of of the modern
36:14: Western idea of the goodness of God. But leaving that aside to say, well,
36:20: I think they're trying to defend the goodness of God. But they're doing so by removing the key element of volition from God's choice.
36:32: Because if again, electing to become just using this as a quotation,
36:38: I've got plenty of others, but it seems. So his decision to create a world is based upon his middle knowledge and consists in his electing to become actual one of the possible worlds known to him in the second moment.
36:53: But the second moment's fundamental essence is the would of free creatures that the system is saying he is not responsible for.
37:11: Right? What a Molinist would a Molinist say, and we'll let you be the Molinist here.
37:17: I was never I am not a recovering Molinist. So you are. Well, I wasn't an expert in Molinism, but I don't know that there are are almost any who are.
37:28: That's the problem. They're in their own version. But then now it's different than somebody else's.
37:33: And Molina's been long dead. So. Okay. Okay. I know a couple who are experts. Would the
37:39: Molinist say that the would knowledge of middle knowledge is based upon God's volitional choice as to how he is going to create to glorify himself?
37:56: I'm sorry. I don't. Even if someone said yes, I'd go. Oh, how does that work?
38:04: Because logically, as far as I can understand it. If middle knowledge is to function as it does in Molinism, it has to have an origination outside of the will of God to create you in such a way that you would have certain characteristics so that you will act in a certain way.
38:26: Because once once you get to the idea that God makes you so that you'll act in a certain way.
38:32: Now you just got puppets and the whole idea of middle knowledge flows out the window and it doesn't accomplish anything.
38:40: So where does it come from? So. So is it your position that God can't have middle knowledge?
38:46: Do you think the idea of middle knowledge is a logically incoherent concept or do you think it's a coherent concept that just happens to be false?
38:56: It it posits a realm of knowledge that fundamentally does not need to exist because the two realms already mentioned are sufficient.
39:11: So, A, it is unnecessary. And B, I would say it is an incoherent concept because of the grounding objection.
39:22: So even to those reformed people who, for some reason, and I've never fully understood why. Sure. Embrace the idea of middle knowledge.
39:31: I, I just have to ask them what their doctrine of the decree actually encompass.
39:38: So. So you would think that it's it's a logically incoherent concept given. Well, given divine revelation and the existence of natural and free knowledge.
39:49: Yes. So it's OK. So it's logically incompatible with what with what we have in Scripture, not just that it's unbiblical in the sense that the
39:57: Bible doesn't teach it right. But you would see it's unbiblical in the sense that it's just logically incompatible, not just biblical.
40:04: I'm not sure that I would use that term again. My primary objection is that it assumes a reality from the third moment and imports it back into the definition of the second.
40:18: OK. So if you if if it's going to be middle, it really needs to be middle.
40:24: And at least Craig is consistent there because the car dealer is a there has to be some origin source of the substance of middle knowledge.
40:35: The substance of middle knowledge requires the decree. If you disconnect from the decree, there has to be some other source for it.
40:41: Hence the car dealer. So you're so your biggest criticism of Molin ism in general, and then we're going to we're going to do a shifting now after this last point here.
40:50: But so your biggest criticism of Molin ism is a it. You don't think it reflects the teaching of Scripture, the clear teaching of Scripture.
40:57: And philosophically, you think the grounding objection is kind of a nail in the coffin of the concept in general.
41:05: I don't I until someone can explain how you can know and how you can know what a free creature would do before God decrees the universe in which he exists, his own character, his own capacities, what his physical nature is going to be, what his mental nature is going to be, what is gifting.
41:30: I'm sorry. It creates it makes it makes human volition something that is utterly separated from the human being itself.
41:42: Because if you're going to say that God decreed that you get to have hair and I don't,
41:49: OK, that if you're going to say that the decisions that we make is somehow some completely separate thing from how we've been made, the context in which we're going to live.
42:04: The whole we are it separates it out in a way that's that really is sort of a
42:10: Greek philosophical thing. It's not the Hebrew way of thinking of man. Man is a body, soul, spirit, unity.
42:16: It's all connected together when we're born, where we're born. Everything else is a part of who we are.
42:22: And middle knowledge treats all of that as if it's just something that can exist out there someplace.
42:27: And then it's almost like the Mormon concept of intelligences. You know, all of a sudden, while these intelligence out there gets down into a preexistent spirit and then into the into the mortal probation, all the rest of the stuff.
42:39: No, I aside from just going, I really think this would have confused.
42:45: Can you see Peter going middle knowledge? Could you explain that again? Could we try that one more time?
42:50: What I don't see. And I don't see any of the early church fathers. I know.
42:56: I don't see. All right. Well, OK, good. Thank you for sharing that. That's helpful. I think that helps clarify, kind of just narrows in, because, as you know, these discussions get very, very convoluted with philosophical terminology that, you know, can lose the average person.
43:10: Even as a Molinist myself, when I asked about the grounding objection, I and there are Molinists who say, yeah, we have we have a response to the grounding objection.
43:17: But to be perfectly honest, as a Molinist myself, I never understood the answers given.
43:22: I remember asking certain certain questions and I get these responses with like, you know, these logical, you know, symbolic
43:29: P implies this implies that I'm like, OK, I don't know what that means. Now, I'm sure there's an easier way to explain it, but I've never heard one that that and that just might be my own limited, you know.
43:39: And it may be mine, too. But if this is going to have any meaningful application in our lives, if it's if and if it's going to look again,
43:52: I keep going back to Dr. Craig, but that's because he's the most popular Molinist I know as far as somebody who's actually answering questions about other than go to a philosophical program someplace.
44:01: But when he answers biblical questions about ultimate purposes in creation, this has a huge impact.
44:13: And if the fundamental question about where it comes from is left to a complicated formula on the board, that's that's a real problem for me.
44:25: I mean, compare this with the Trinity. I can explain the
44:31: Trinity to kids. Now, maybe not some of the most most difficult issues regarding analog analogies and stuff like that.
44:41: But I can I can differentiate between being in person and I can I can go to biblical revelation and I can
44:47: I've explained the Trinity to kids. But if you're a seminary graduate and you're asking the experts and you're still left going,
44:57: I didn't follow that. It hasn't this sort of become.
45:04: Well, the ultimate answer to all of our system requires you climb this huge philosophical mountain when you get to the top.
45:10: The guy there may not make any sense at all. That's OK.
45:16: Or it might end up all being a Geico commercial. Who knows? I don't know. OK. All right. All right.
45:22: So you're walking down the street. I don't know why this would ever happen to you walking down the street. Someone recognizes you and says, hey, you're
45:28: Dr. White. I heard it happens. I heard that. And when that happens, my normal response is, are you
45:35: James White? And I'll say only on alternate Thursdays. OK, and that shocks them just long enough that if I need to run,
45:44: I've at least got a couple of seconds. That's right. That's right. So you're walking down the street and someone's like, hey, you're
45:49: Dr. White. I heard you're a Calvinist. What is that? Someone asks you what you're in a normal conversation.
45:55: You're not in front of a, you know, doing a lecture somewhere. Someone asks you, what is Calvinism? How would you define that for people?
46:02: Well, it sort of depends on what they're not, their level of knowledge is. If they have no earthly idea, then
46:07: I'll just simply say, well, Calvinism takes very seriously the Bible's teaching that God is
46:13: God and I am not. And therefore it begins with God.
46:20: It ends with God. And the whole story is about God. And we are his creatures and we are the are gloriously redeemed and saved by God.
46:33: But it's all for his purposes. It never becomes about us. It always comes about God. So that's a nice broad way of saying
46:40: Calvinism is a God centered theology. If there's someone who's at a church and there are a member of the church and I hear you're a
46:50: Calvinist, then they normally have some kind of a specific objection, whether it is to the divine decree, whether it's to total depravity, very frequently limited atonement, irresistible grace, whatever.
47:03: And that'll frequently express itself by how the question comes out.
47:09: But yeah, the person walking down the street, I'm just going to emphasize the reality of the fact that we're talking about a
47:15: God centered reading of Scripture, which I think is very much what you would derive if you just simply actually read the entirety of that work and let it speak for itself.
47:26: All right. Calvinism is often associated with, at least in popular discussion, with universal divine determinism.
47:36: And this idea of determinism, a universal determinism, has kind of a negative feel to it when people hear it.
47:43: And you have this idea of puppets and, you know, we don't have free will and all these other sorts of things.
47:49: How would you respond to someone who accuses the Calvinist position, if you are a universal divine determinist, as they would say, how would you respond to the idea that if causal determinism is true, then you cannot hold to Calvinism rationally since you've just been determined to do that?
48:09: If you're a Calvinist, you were determined to interpret Scripture that way. If you are a non -Calvinist, you're determined to interpret
48:16: Scripture that way. It really just has this kind of self -refuting, you know, foundation that even if it were true, you couldn't know it to be true because you're just determined all the way around.
48:27: How would you respond to that very common objection? Well, it's common, but it's not well thought out because it assumes that we are saying that we as creatures can have knowledge of God's divine decree, that we can think in the same categories in which he thinks, and ignores the reality that God has made us to exist within time.
48:55: He does not reveal the future to us. He does not reveal the contours of what that divine decree are, and that he judges within the context of that created order.
49:06: And so issues regarding justice and righteousness and the propriety of judging for sin and willful disobedience, all the rest of those things, which are very, very important.
49:17: That's theodicy. That's the justification of God. That aspect of that kind of objection,
49:22: I think, is the most important because it's what Scripture addresses. It's what Scripture addresses in Romans 9.
49:28: It's what Scripture addresses in Romans 3. And so I wish that that were normally the objection, and it often is.
49:38: But the objection, the way that you were expressing it, was more of an emotional, feelings -based, well,
49:46: I'm just determined, if that's the case, then I'm just determined to believe this, and you're determined to believe that.
49:53: And if you push that far enough back, what the person is saying is unless you have creaturely autonomy and no decree at all, there can be no reality to anything that God does in time.
50:10: That's fundamentally what's being said is if God has determined to act in time in a particular fashion, then that cannot have any reality.
50:18: And my fundamental response to that is not one that will work for a non -Christian.
50:26: If I'm talking across the aisle to a Muslim, there's a step that has to be established before I get here.
50:34: But for a Christian, I say to that assertion, well, what happens in time can't really be real.
50:41: You're just determined to do what I do, and you do what you do, and I'm determined to do what I do. That fundamentally destroys the reality and importance of the actions of Jesus in the
50:51: Incarnation. Wouldn't they say that that's the point? Wouldn't they say that that's the point, that if that's your position, then it would destroy the reality of what actually happens in time?
51:01: And I'm saying that that's the fundamental refutation of their entire argument is that if the
51:08: God -man entered into time, and Christians believe Acts 2,
51:14: Acts 4, that what took place in his life was absolutely predetermined by the predestined hand of God.
51:22: But that did not keep them from recognizing that in Acts 4, what
51:28: Herod did, what Pontius Pilate did, what the Romans did, and what the Jews did, they actually did.
51:34: They didn't go, you know, it was just all decreed, so whatever.
51:39: No, they are praying for protection. They recognize that every one of them acted as creatures who will be judged on the basis of the desires of their hearts.
51:49: They saw that what takes place in time in Jesus' ministry, His death, burial, and resurrection is vitally important.
51:57: And they didn't see this contradiction, this idea. They didn't see it, but let me give pushback because we know these kinds of conversations, there's the back and forth.
52:07: But what about what? So it is true that they didn't see it that way. In time, they're making decisions, you know, just decisions, and they assume, hey,
52:15: I'm making this decision. But couldn't someone kind of look at it from kind of a meta perspective?
52:21: Yeah, but they're only doing those things because God decrees specifically. They couldn't really do otherwise. No, the only person who has that meta perspective is
52:30: God. So there is, in essence, a creaturely hubris that the church did not participate in and did not accept.
52:39: The very fact that they are praying to God to protect them and to allow them to be used to His honor and glory demonstrates that in the one hand, they profess
52:50: God's absolute sovereignty in what has taken place in Jesus. But now what they're doing is they're praying that God would use them and protect them.
53:01: How do you put those two things together? Because that's how God has made us. He has placed us in time.
53:06: Time is real. What happens in time is real. We are only called to act upon the realm in which we are created.
53:14: He did not create us to sit in the meta narrative and to judge His actions. This is why
53:20: I don't think He intended it this way, but there is that song by, I think it's Stephen Curtis Chapman, He is
53:29: God and I am not. I think there is a fundamental disconnection with some people of a philosophical bent when they miss that point.
53:46: Years ago, before the Internet, there was something called Fidonet. You're too young to remember that, but there was something called
53:52: Fidonet. And you could actually communicate with people through what were called bulletin board systems.
53:58: It would take a couple days, but you could do it. And in reality, that was probably a better way of doing things.
54:06: Because when you can communicate instantly, it escalates fast. But when you had a few days to think about it, it was actually a more in -depth conversation back then.
54:15: But the point was, I had a reader program. And you could define, like you have in your emails, you'll have a header or a footer or something like that.
54:25: They'll give your degrees or information or something like that. One of my footers for my messages was, may
54:35: God grant you a divine interview. And I think it was
54:40: Job 38 something. And what it was, was at the end of Job, when you have all these big questions being asked, what's the final?
54:51: How does God answer those questions? He comes to Job, and he overwhelms
54:57: Job with how many chapters of rhetorical questions.
55:04: Where were you? When I did this, when I did that, when I established the heavens, when
55:10: I created the earth, when I created all the living creatures. Where were you, Job? And the whole essence of it was to put
55:18: Job back where Job needed to be. Because the going back and forth as his friends had dragged him into a position that he shouldn't have been in, which they already were.
55:30: And that was of sitting as judge. And what I'm saying is, if we have a biblical anthropology rather than one derived from Western philosophical categories, it is an anthropology of humility.
55:47: And as such, we'll militate against adopting the position that I somehow have the ability even to see the big metanarrative.
55:58: I need to allow biblical parameters to define those things for me. Now, Dr. White, I'm on your team, okay?
56:06: But if I were to give a little pushback here, you said that only God has the metanarrative.
56:11: And of course, I think even our Molinist friends would agree. However, if we're saying that the biblical teaching of the decrees is as the
56:21: Calvinist says it is, then we have a gaze into an element of the metanarrative which states that if the decrees are this way, if you interpret it that way, it seems to be this kind of puppetry understanding that would result.
56:35: And so that's why that would be the correct understanding. But that's exactly what I was saying about the church. I was saying that the early church, the apostles, the people who had walked with Jesus and were now filled by the
56:45: Holy Spirit, where there was a level of holiness that Ananias and Sapphira dropped dead would lie to God.
56:51: And they are praying they don't have the result that you are suggesting comes from this.
57:00: They don't have that. They are recognizing God's absolute sovereignty and then living in light of it and asking for His guidance and protection to do what has been revealed to them.
57:15: They fully know that God's going to accomplish His purposes, but their desire is to serve
57:21: Christ and to honor God. And therefore, that's the whole grounds of the prescriptive and descriptive, the revealed will of God, the secret will of God.
57:33: The revealed will of God, He tells us how we're to live. The secret will of God is His decree, which we don't know. And so we can only be accountable to one.
57:40: We can't be accountable to the other one. The assumption behind the metanarrative perspective is we can somehow live in light of the knowledge of something we've not been given.
57:48: And so we live in that tension. It's not a contradiction. It's a tension in recognizing that God is sovereign over all things.
57:59: If the folks over in Reading understood this, they wouldn't be doing what they're doing right now, if you know what
58:05: I'm talking about. The young child that they're trying to raise from the dead after five days, they wouldn't be doing that.
58:12: Christians have never done that. So there you have a situation where an element of God's truth is being ignored to the detriment, really, of the entire church.
58:24: To be honest with you, not like they're the representatives of the entire church, but of Christianity as a whole. The early church didn't do that.
58:31: Paul did not do that. Paul asked for prayer. The guy who wrote Romans chapter 9 asked for prayer.
58:39: So that means he recognized that in even the act of prayer, there is the reality that what takes place in time is meaningful.
58:50: And it may be perfectly known to God because it's part of His decree. But since the Incarnation took place, there is your ultimate proof of the fact that those two realms,
59:01: The philosophical person says if the one realm of the decree exists, then the actions in time have to become irrelevant because they're already known.
59:10: The Incarnation says no, what makes the actions in time meaningful in eternity is the intimate connection that exists between that decree and the outworking of time and providence.
59:22: Because what's God doing in this creation? He's demonstrating His wisdom. He's demonstrating in the final analysis that He did what was right and brought about His own glory in that process.
59:31: So I think we flatten that out and we rob it of its eternal significance, especially due to the fact that I'm pretty convinced that in the final state, we are going to have a much deeper understanding of the relationship of all these things to one another than we have right now.
59:48: We really are. All right. So now let's draw things a little bit, not yet to a close.
59:54: I did tell people to send me some questions if you don't mind taking a couple. Just a couple.
01:00:00: Yeah, just a couple. Sure. We'll get this one out of the way. Someone says, can you please ask
01:00:05: Dr. White why he's afraid to accept the traditionalist Catholic Brother Peter Diamond's debate challenge?
01:00:12: I don't know who that is. I don't even know if you know who that is. I do. Okay. I do. In fact, this goes back almost 20 years.
01:00:23: And you can dig up stuff on our blog where I've interacted with at least one of the
01:00:29: Brother John something. These are schismatic Romanists.
01:00:35: They don't even represent Roman Catholicism. They're schismatic. These are the guys literally who are living in a monastery someplace that have gone through hours of dividing line videos and frozen me in positions where they capture my hand to indicate satanic signs and stuff like that.
01:00:56: These people are nuttier than a fruitcake. Okay. And so I just don't take them seriously because no one else takes them seriously.
01:01:04: When Rome doesn't take you seriously, I'm not going to take you seriously either. By the way, every critique of anything you put out has a thumbnail in the most unflattering way possible.
01:01:17: Some people do that. Yeah. Sometimes it's natural and other times, there you go. All right. Let's move on from there.
01:01:23: Someone's asking, did Adam and Eve have libertarian free will? I would prefer using the term, were they autonomous creatures?
01:01:35: And as the late R .C. Sproul put it very, very well,
01:01:42: God has free will, I have free will, and my free will wins and God's free will I lose. So they had creaturely free will.
01:01:51: But I believe there's only one autonomous will in the universe, and that's God's. And they had creaturely free will.
01:01:59: But the nature of that free will, we don't know a lot about.
01:02:05: And some people have tried to speculate about it, like a man named Jonathan Edwards.
01:02:12: And even a huge Edwards fan, like John Gerstner.
01:02:17: I mean, John Gerstner lived and breathed Jonathan Edwards. But even John Gerstner said that because Edwards didn't do what
01:02:26: Calvin did, Calvin said, when scripture makes an end to speaking, we must make an end to speaking.
01:02:33: Right. Edwards went beyond that. And as in the attempt to plumb the depths of what the nature of Adam's will would have involved.
01:02:46: And even Gerstner said the great man found himself in complete self -contradiction.
01:02:54: He became trapped in complete self -contradiction. Because when you think about it, we have two chapters, two chapters.
01:03:01: And the purpose of those chapters are not to discuss the nature of Adam's will. So you can only derive a very small amount of information from those two chapters.
01:03:13: And maybe, you know, you might be able to go to another text of scripture and imply something.
01:03:18: But that's not enough to answer the kind of questions a lot of people want to ask. So you would say, so if someone were to just press real quick.
01:03:26: So did Adam and Eve have libertarian free will? You said, well, I'd call it creaturely free will. Well, the person's calling it libertarian.
01:03:32: So if you take it, Liz, libertarian free will, you would say, probably not. No. Yes. Maybe. Not in the sense of Greek philosophy.
01:03:43: Not in the sense of having the ability to act outside of God's decree.
01:03:49: No. I mean, if that's how you want to define it, the ability to act outside of God's decree. No. Okay.
01:03:56: Two more questions. Here's someone has, if I push someone into another person,
01:04:01: I'm to blame. How is that relatively different to what God does to sinners on universal divine determinism?
01:04:08: Because God isn't someone who is simply pushing people around. Again, this takes us back to Job.
01:04:18: Where were you? You are not here to bring about your cosmic glory.
01:04:28: You're a creature who is here to reflect the glory of your maker. Therefore, what
01:04:34: God decrees to take place, the things that God did to bring about the fulfillment of messianic prophecy.
01:04:46: Think about it. It happens to be the week before Christmas. And I was just speaking,
01:04:54: I think, on the last dividing line about Micah 5 .2. And when the
01:05:00: Magi come to Herod and Herod asked the Jews, where is the king of the Jews to be born? What did they say?
01:05:06: Bethlehem. Micah 5 .2. Those words have been written hundreds of years before. Now, let's just ponder for a second how many free creaturely choices had to be undertaken in the proper order, in the proper relationship to one another to bring all the people to Bethlehem at that time in that way.
01:05:33: Bethlehem still has to exist. The Romans could have wiped it out long before then. If some Roman general hadn't liked what somebody did that lived in Bethlehem, there may not have been a
01:05:42: Bethlehem for there to be a fulfillment of the messianic prophecy in. Right? We could have had interruptions in the messianic line leading to Jesus.
01:05:52: There's a million, millions and millions of possibilities that could have taken place.
01:05:58: And yet Christians take as a given that these prophecies exist.
01:06:03: And in fact, after the death and resurrection of Jesus, what's the first thing Jesus does with his disciples? He gives them a
01:06:09: Bible study on how they should have known this. But because the hardness of their heart, they wouldn't listen to what the prophets had said.
01:06:16: So I just simply go back and go, as a Christian, do you hear what your own scriptures are saying?
01:06:23: Do you see the sovereignty of God that is behind stuff that you accept as an absolute given?
01:06:32: You couldn't know Jesus was the Messiah outside of those fulfilled prophecies. And yet those fulfilled prophecies mean
01:06:39: God is active in human history and in such a way that if they were to fail, then as Jesus, when in Isaiah chapter 43,
01:06:53: God says to the people of Israel, before it comes to pass, pass. I'm going to tell you it's going to come to pass. So when it happens, you may believe and know that I am he.
01:07:00: Jesus quotes that of himself in John 13, 19 about Judas. So what do you do with Judas?
01:07:06: Couldn't Judas have done something other than what he did? Or is he the one exception? There's just, again, it depends on whether you start with a biblical perspective on the fulfillment of history or a man -centered one.
01:07:22: A man -centered one isn't going to make any sense out of scripture. Last question, and it's a practical one, not that your other answers weren't practical, but what kind of advice would you give to Reformed folks who are dealing with Molinist friends within a context of a respectful dialogue, not some of the garbage that goes on online, but you kind of have a friend, you guys can openly discuss these kinds of things.
01:07:42: What sort of pieces of advice would you give to Reformed folks as to how to respond to a
01:07:49: Molinist position within kind of a casual conversation? Well, I found a right cross to work best initially.
01:07:57: If they don't see it coming, then it's always the best. No, it's interesting that you shared your own story because that particular debate really wasn't on that subject.
01:08:15: But what works for Reformed theology as a whole, and I realize there's some people who consider themselves
01:08:24: Reformed who would also believe in middle knowledge and stuff, but what works for most people is pressing them to believe all the scripture.
01:08:34: I mean, it's funny, I'm sure you've heard on Radio Free Geneva, one of the quotes that we have in the opening theme song is latent flowers.
01:08:45: And I'm asking him, are you using the same method of exegesis for this that you would use for the resurrection and the deity of Christ?
01:08:53: And then there's a brief pause, and he goes, well, no. So I'm sort of like, there you go.
01:09:00: That was the end of the debate as far as I was concerned. We were done. That's what you push people for.
01:09:06: I think you can very positively say to people, we honor and glorify God when we seek to be consistent in how we handle
01:09:13: His Word and be obedient to His Word and the exegesis of His Word. And if the
01:09:20: Spirit of God brings conviction that that's what I need to do, that I need to use the same arguments in this area that I use in every other area, you can't bring that conviction.
01:09:30: You can't do that. But you can display it. You can regularly live it out.
01:09:36: And you can encourage someone along those lines, but you can't really force anybody. Those were all our listener questions.
01:09:43: And before I let you go, I'm going to try and sneak in just a personal question for me because it was very difficult to get you because you're such a busy guy.
01:09:51: So I figured let me just sneak in one of my own questions. I'm married and I have three kids.
01:09:57: I am busy all the time. My primary way of learning is through audio. It's just difficult.
01:10:04: And I would imagine your schedule is far more packed than mine is. I don't have kids, but my grandkids are hopefully going to be moving to Phoenix next year.
01:10:13: So maybe we'll be even more busy. Right, right. How do you go about planning your day?
01:10:20: Are you very structured in what you're doing the moment you get up, or do you just kind of study when you just have a moment and you go to your office?
01:10:27: Well, it really, really depends. I travel so much. I flew 165 ,000 miles this year.
01:10:34: So, you know, that does a lot. So, honestly, these days for me, what do
01:10:43: I have coming up? What am I preaching next? What's my next trip? What's my next debate? Where am
01:10:49: I in working on CBGM for my PhD project? What's the weather going to be like?
01:10:57: Am I able to, you know, my plan on Saturday is 80 -mile bike ride with 3 ,000 feet of climbing.
01:11:04: So I need to find some time to get a couple of audio books or debates.
01:11:10: You know, I've got to sit here and look at my spring schedule. I've got G3 coming up.
01:11:15: I'm going to be speaking in New York right afterwards. So I have to be thinking all that type of stuff through as to what
01:11:21: I'm recording from my Kindle to MP3, to throw on my phone, to listen on my
01:11:27: Bluetooth headsets while I'm riding on a bike for an 80 -mile. Because an 80 -miler is going to take, minimally at best, four and a half hours.
01:11:35: So that's at 1 .25 on the speed. You can get through, you know, almost a full, decent -length book.
01:11:45: When you're listening to stuff, though, I mean, don't you take notes? I mean, you can't take notes when you're riding a bike. Is it just let it absorb you?
01:11:52: No. Well, of course, it's not ideal, but it is getting two things done at the same time.
01:11:59: So it's how I've done it for years now. If there's something that I really, really, really, really, really want to remember and take note of,
01:12:07: I'll stop. I can do an audio note to myself real quick on the phone to remind me of it.
01:12:15: And then when I get back, maybe I can look at the phone, see it was at such and such a time in the file, something along those lines.
01:12:21: Normally, I can't stop, though. So you said you're an audio learner.
01:12:29: The reason this works for me is that, like, sitting here right now, I started thinking about it.
01:12:35: I immediately started thinking of the fact that when I did that unbelievable radio broadcast with N .T.
01:12:41: Wright, I had three days to prepare for it. And I remember the routes that I rode.
01:12:49: And those roads became an index that indexed what I was listening to from N .T.
01:12:55: Wright. That was your highlight. Right. So there are roads that I can think of right now, a certain part of the road that indexes to what
01:13:04: I was listening to at that time. So my mind does work pretty well that way. And interestingly enough, if it's something that will be necessary for a book or a debate, my memory is amazing.
01:13:18: If I go to Target to get eggs, I will forget them. Yeah. Because I don't have to debate about that.
01:13:23: But debate is so much a part of who I am that if my mind goes, that's something you're going to need to remember for a debate.
01:13:32: It's there. It'll come back. Well, to conclude, you are one of, I have to say, in my top five best debaters.
01:13:42: You are right there in second place. I have to give the first place to the late
01:13:48: Greg Bonson. Greg Bonson was amazing. And I think you're incredible as well.
01:13:54: I have debated far more than Greg did. Yes, you have. Yes, you have. Do you know what two debates
01:14:01: Greg Bonson got to do because I took his place in two other debates? No, I do not.
01:14:09: Most people are not aware of this. Greg Bonson and I knew each other. And it's not like we were best buds.
01:14:15: Don't get that. Sure. But we did know each other. And he respected me enough that he was scheduled to debate
01:14:22: Jerry Madatix twice in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1992 or three.
01:14:34: I'd have to look up which one it was. And he had already accepted.
01:14:42: And that is when he had the opportunity that came up to do the two homosexuality debates that he did do.
01:14:49: He contacted me and asked, would I please go to Omaha and take his place to debate Madatix?
01:14:55: He could debate two homosexuals. I did not know that. And I've heard a lot. You're familiar with Bill Shishko.
01:15:01: He's a mentor of mine. You debated him on baptism. Right. And Bill also moderated a couple of my debates on Long Island, including the one with Patrick Madrid.
01:15:10: Almost killed me. Because he was sitting. I was facing
01:15:16: Madrid like this. And Bill's back here. And Bill wanted to be very official.
01:15:23: And so he brought his gavel with him to mark the time. And so we get to the end of time.
01:15:29: And he, wham, right behind me. And it was like a gunshot going off. I almost peeled over right there and died.
01:15:37: But no, Bill's a great friend. He's a great man. And he had come to so many of the great debates on Long Island.
01:15:44: But he had taught debate for a long, long time. And so it just bugged him that he wasn't involved with it. And then, of course, it was like, well, you know, after doing all this, you and I should debate.
01:15:54: And so we did the debate there. It was great. I enjoyed that debate very much.
01:16:00: It was a great debate. It was well done. I knew Bill would do a great job. And what was neat was, and I think we mentioned in the debate, the night before, that was a
01:16:08: Thursday night. On Wednesday night, he had me preach at the Orthodox Presbyterian Church on justification. So, you know, that's the way it should be done.
01:16:17: That's the way it should be done. And you know Dan Bottifuco as well, right? Why do you think
01:16:23: I have a 1550 Stephanus text? That's right. I actually work for him. I'm a team member of the
01:16:29: Historical Bible Society. I think he moderated the debate with you and David Silverman.
01:16:35: Am I correct? David Silverman. Did he? All those years ago. He might have. I'm sure he sponsored half of them.
01:16:42: At least half, maybe more. So he may have just sponsored it. I don't remember who the moderator was. But yeah, right back there is my 1550.
01:16:49: And he donated that to Alpha Omega. That sounds awesome. And I did have the pleasure of interviewing your daughter a while back on abortion.
01:16:57: Oh, yeah. We have some random indirect relations. It's finally. Well, it all ends up going to Chris Arnzen because Arnzen knows everything.
01:17:06: So that's just it. It's scary. All right. Well, Dr. White, thank you so much for your time.
01:17:13: I really, really do appreciate it. And I know you're a busy guy, but when things settle down, if they ever do,
01:17:18: I'd love to have you back on to talk about Greek orthodoxy, if that sounds interesting. Well, that's not going to happen.
01:17:26: And I'll tell you why. It's not going to happen because I have assiduously resisted the temptation and the constant demand that I get involved in discussing orthodoxy.
01:17:39: OK. I realize just how much work it would take to do so properly, because I actually do have an accurate knowledge of orthodoxy.
01:17:51: I have a really good friend who's a great church history scholar. Nick Needham is a great church historian.
01:17:59: And he and I have talked about this a lot. We both agree that there is a huge hole in the
01:18:05: Reformed world in meaningfully interactive material with the best that orthodoxy has to offer.
01:18:13: So I actually know enough about it to know that I shouldn't talk about it.
01:18:20: OK. Well, maybe we can get you to debate. When Pancanagraph converted, I did a program, and it demonstrated that the vast majority of people don't know anything about orthodoxy.
01:18:33: And therefore, when they hear someone who actually is talking about Energia and all the things associated with it, that they don't even know what to think and think we're compromisers or secret closet heretics or whatever else it might be.
01:18:46: Right, right. So, yeah, no, I just know that there's thousands and thousands of pages of reading that I would have to do to do it right.
01:18:59: Right. And there's got to be somebody out there to do that. If anyone's looking for some
01:19:05: PhD topics, I could give you some great ideas because I know where there's huge holes that need to be filled.
01:19:14: I'm getting old, man. You look good, man. Just before I let you go, if you're interested in doing a debate on Molinism, I don't know if you're familiar with Kirk McGregor.
01:19:23: He wrote a biography on Molina, and I had interacted with him a while back, and he actually said that he would be willing to do a debate with you if you were ever interested.
01:19:31: I know you're busy, but he knows his stuff. There's been a number. I'm sure we've been contacted by a number of folks.
01:19:40: The only person I'd really be interested in debating on Molinism would be William Lane Craig because of the fact that my interest in it is
01:19:48: I don't care about the philosophical realm. I don't care who's sitting around smoking pipes and drinking craft beer talking about philosophy.
01:19:56: It's irrelevant to me. The reason I'm concerned about middle knowledge is the impact it has in the soteriological and apologetic spheres, and almost everybody that I encounter who says,
01:20:08: Oh, I'll debate that. They're just in it because they're into philosophy. They're not apologists, and they're not really impacting
01:20:16: Southern Baptists who are trying to find a way to fight the Founders Conference or something like that. So at my age,
01:20:22: I try to focus on my debates. If they're evangelistic debates like many of them with Muslims are,
01:20:30: I will repeat topics because it's going to be a new audience that's going to hear it, and if I'm reaching out to Muslims, great, fine.
01:20:37: But subjects like that I'm trying to focus upon now as I'm approaching 200
01:20:44: Debates. Stuff that will have the longest, meaningful, and widest audience, things like that because I'm getting to the point in time where I have to be thinking about what am
01:20:54: I going to leave behind. My oldest granddaughter will turn 10 tomorrow.
01:21:03: No, today, today, today. Happy birthday, by the way. Your birthday was the other day, right? Well, my birthday was two days ago.
01:21:09: Clementine and Cadence have birthdays today. So one thing I need to do is get on FaceTime and say hi to them.
01:21:15: My wife's up there. I'll be up there next week. But anyways, the point is I really do try to choose debates that are going to have that kind of a long term impact.
01:21:26: Anyway. Well, thank you very much for your time. I really do appreciate it, and this concludes our interview.