A Bit More on James 2, Molinism, More Augustine Actual

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line, James White along with you and of course in the control room, if you notice that the Rich Cam has been getting a little more use recently and I have no control over that by the way and so I was recently informed that Rich was out and about and someone recognized him and said he watches The Dividing Line.

So I predict that the number of appearances of the Rich Cam will increase exponentially as Rich attempts to maintain that ever-growing legion of adoring fans. A shout out to Andrew. What? A shout out to Andrew.

Is that who it was? That's who it was. I got his name. His name's Andrew. Well, there you go. See what I mean? He was really surprised to learn that I live up in his area. I wasn't really trying to make the point, but now the point has been made.

I am one fan. Yeah, there you go. There you go. Thank you very much. Told you not to get a word in edgewise for any more. It's pretty much done. So there you go. But you all wanted it. When we mentioned the Rich Cam, you were all like, we want the Rich Cam.

We want the Rich Cam. So anyways, welcome to the program today. Of course, unless you're living under a rock, your Twitter feed, your Facebook feed is just one story. Well, there's two stories today, actually.

The major story that is all over the place producing a huge number of memes is the passing of Robbie Zacharias. I was somewhat taken aback in light of the fact that the announcement of stopping treatment was, I thought, just a matter of days ago.

But RZIM has taken two difficult hits over the past number of years, obviously with Robbie's passing today and then Nabeel Qureshi had really wasn't with RZIM for a long period of time, but had become one of the primary speakers for at least a number of months, maybe a couple of years.

I don't remember exactly how long it was. But obviously, our condolences go out to the family and to the ministry as well, because RZIM is very large and, in my experience, has sought to establish a rather large network globally.

And so that means a lot of people are impacted by something like this, far more than us. We may have a large outreach globally, but it's not because we have boots on the ground globally. The only boots we have on the ground globally is me, and right now that ain't happened either.

But a lot of folks, especially working in contexts of universities and that type of outreach. And so, for those who knew him, I did not know Robbie Zacharias. We never met, never spoke, never corresponded.

I was benefited about 15 years ago or so for a period of time in my Islamic studies by RZIM, helped in my studying of Arabic, and so I'm very appreciative of that. And so, we are regularly reminded, if we will but listen, of the passage of time and the shortness of life, as we think about many who have gone over the past few years, what we would call big names, Norman Geisler and Robbie Zacharias and R .C. Sproul.

And the reality is that's going to continue. That's how life here in a fallen world is. But in the midst of that, it is interesting that at the same time you say goodbye to one, we say hello to Gareth Kwabena, I think.

I don't know. Who's supposed to know if you're saying something like that? Us Scottish people aren't expected to be able to figure things like this out. But Kofi's a dad now. I'm sure it's going to have some very interesting results as far as Kofi's posts go in the future.

But it sounded like there was a little bit of stress and anxiety toward the end. And there was with my firstborn, too. He was in neonatal intensive care for three days. So yeah, there was stuff like that going on.

I know how that is. That'll freak you out for a while. But believe it or not, Kofi, after the first one, you've seen all the memes. The first kid, you're sanitizing everything, and you've read all the books about children.

You're just doing all this stuff. And by the second or third one, it's just like, they'll live. They're rough, tough little things. They'll be fine. Don't worry about it. I know with Summer, 44 hours laboring with Clementine because it was all the natural birth stuff and all the girlfriends talking about what an incredible experience.

And then Jenny comes along, and it's like, just get this kid out of me. Just give me drugs and get this over with. It's just like, mm-hmm, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. I know how that works. So anyway, congratulations.

And given where you live, I wasn't certain that they were going to allow births. May have just put it off to shut it down. We can't do that right now. Just hold on. Not allowed. Not allowed. No, stop.

That's... I'm wondering about some governors that they might not think that that would not be a bad idea. Let's just hold off on that stuff for a while. Yeah, there you go. So congratulations on that.

I was thinking this morning, it's funny, does everyone's mind work this way? Don't answer that question. I'm not sure that I want to answer that question, actually. But my mind goes back over stuff that I've said for like 24, 48 hours, and it seems to do it unconsciously.

And I was thinking about James chapter 2, and I wanted to make sure that I communicated something with clarity. I did not want anyone to be confused about something. Because I think that the key issue in James chapter 2 is in verse 14.

And what you have there is, what benefit, what use is it, my brethren, if a certain one says, I have faith, but does not have works? Then you have the last portion of the verse, me dunatai hapistis sosi auton?

Now, you'll notice I read that as a question. And punctuation is an editorial thing. But when you begin a phrase, me, one of the negation particles in the Greek language, when you begin that way, it is a question that's being asked, but it's somewhat of a rhetorical question.

Me dunatai, not able hapistis, the faith, sosi, to save auton him. So is the faith, and I did mention that pistis has the article, and that the majority of the commentators that I have read recognize the importance of seeing the fact that this is a particular kind of faith.

It is a said faith, lege, and it is a me eke erga faith. It is a faith that has no works. So it is a faithless work, it is a, sorry, it is a workless faith, there you go, and the question that is asked is, is that faith, is such a faith as this able to save the one who claims to have it?

And we heard one of, the individual that was, I don't have the video up any longer, but we heard the individual that was interviewing Dr. Wilson say that, well, James never suggests that if you don't have works, you don't have faith, well, yes he does.

He says that, those very words right here, when he says, a workless faith cannot save, but what I may not have communicated as clearly as I, or didn't emphasize maybe as clearly as I should, is some people, if you ask those who deny that repentance is a part of the gospel, if you ask those who deny the lordship of Christ is central to an understanding of the gospel.

So submission to his will, that repentance means not just a turning away from sin, but a turning toward obedience to Christ, if you take faith as mere intellectual assent, then you struggle with this particular statement.

Because, as I understood what was being said, they were saying that a dead faith does save, that a workless faith does save, but you should just try to energize the dead faith by works, as if a dead faith could ever produce works in the first place.

I don't even know how that works, to be honest with you. But, it would seem that the answer from that very small group, when I say very small, I don't mean, well, see, by numbers, they're wrong. In church history, this is an exceptionally small group.

I would honestly argue that if you remove repentance from the gospel, you have lost the gospel. It is such a decrepit misunderstanding that it's incredibly damaging and dangerous, but it does seem that the answer from their side to this question is yes, any faith saves.

Any and all faiths save. Even a non-functional faith, as they would put it, a faith that doesn't work. That's what I loved about that one meme that was posted yesterday on Twitter. It was Bones, Dr. McCoy, from the original Star Trek series.

He's not working, Jim. He's busted. Yeah. Instead of saying, he's dead, Jim. And so, evidently, their answer to this question would be yes. Yes, that faith can save him. Now, it would be easy for me to say, it's just obvious, given the context, that that's not what James is saying, but it's actually necessary, given the context.

And that's what I wanted to emphasize. When you study the Greek language early on, in any beginning grammar, you will be introduced, and I just want to read it from somebody else so it's not just me saying it, but you'll find this in any beginning grammar.

So I happen to have mounts in my accordion set up here, and under section 31 .20, this is page 362 of the fourth edition. There are three ways to ask a question, along with the deliberative subjunctive.

No indication is given as to the answer expected by the speakers. That's the first way. The speaker is just asking a question, and the text does not tell you what answer they are expecting to receive.

So, if you just say, There is nothing in that particular form that tells you what the expected answer is to be. But then, if the question begins with u, one of the two negation particles, u and me, sometimes used together in the aorist subjunctive with strong denial, but we're not talking about that right here.

If the question begins with u, the speaker expects an affirmative answer. So, didaskele, u melai soi? Hati apalumetha? Mark 438, teacher, do you not care that we are perishing? And it would be really embarrassing, or actually insulting, if it had been placed in the other form, which we'll look at in a moment.

You don't care that we're perishing, but the assumed answer is yes, he cares that we're perishing. There is not an implicit accusation of carelessness. And then the third, if the question begins with me, the speaker expects a negative answer.

So, now, here's where you get some people who get a little bit on the controversial side, because this is an important element. Me pontes glosai slaluson? 1 Corinthians 12 .30. Not all speak in tongues, do they?

Not all are apostles, are they? And Paul uses the construction that has me as a part of its form, and therefore the expected answer is no, not all speak in tongues. Even though there are entire denominations that are based on the idea that yes, all speak in tongues, Paul's assumed response is no, not all speak in tongues.

So, if the question begins with me, the speaker expects a negative answer, and so we go back to James 2 .14. That last phrase is me dunatai hapistis sosi auton? It starts with me. And so the expected answer, given the form that James uses, is that kind of faith cannot save him.

That's the kind of faith cannot save him. So, a workless faith is not a saving faith. That's what James 2 .14 says, and that's what is then explicated, and then once you get to verse 18, daikson, show me your faith by your works, fits, is where the connection is to Ephesians 2 .8 -10, for we are his workmanship, creating Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

I said yesterday that the Reformed understanding of the gospel maintains the proper and necessary balance in this matter, and not just apologetically, but overall in its theology, which is so important, because the cliffs on both sides are steep cliffs, and not only is it theologically vitally important to see what the relationship is here, but the human tendency, and I don't fully understand it, but the human tendency is to fall off the balance point when it comes not only to the glory of God in salvation, where we want to appropriate, in some fashion, control over salvation.

I mean, that's the very essence of the sacramental system of Old Rome, is a mechanism whereby mankind's will, and mankind's will as expressed in the leadership of the church, becomes absolutely determinative, and so even though you talk about grace, and even though you talk about the necessity of grace, you can't talk about the sufficiency of grace, because that has been replaced with the sufficiency of the human will.

Mankind wants to insert himself, and yet on the other side, then, is if it's all of God, all of grace, then there is nothing that mankind can do. Yes, to bring yourself into, maintain, and finish the work of salvation, it's all of God, no question about it.

But where does God's purpose get to fit in here? Can God have a purpose? I mean, why couldn't God just simply save us and then take us out of the earth? He could use ministering angels to come down and say, this is the gospel, that would be a pretty effective mechanism, wouldn't it?

But he's chosen not to do that. He leaves us. He is reproducing his son in us, Christ in us, the hope of glory. We are the body, and as is expressed so clearly in Ephesians 2 .10, we are his workmanship.

We are the result of his divine expression of power. And so, there's no place, even in the discussion of good works, given to any type of alien merit, there is no place for saying that at the end, we're going to see that it was all of God that got us into it, but then, because God has worked in us, there is going to be some additional standing or level of merit that we're going to have by having obeyed Christ or anything like that.

No. But, it's plain that it's God's purpose that we be sanctified. It's plain that it's God's purpose that we be made like Christ. And there should be no one who hears commandments like, or statements in scripture such as, no one will see God apart from holiness, and run from them, and try to explain them away.

The balance is, we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus, in union with him, unto good works, which God has before ordained. Now, if you don't believe God can foreordain anything, if you don't have a divine decree that is being worked out to glory of God, I don't know how you make head to tails of any of this stuff, to be perfectly honest with you.

But, God has decreed, he has before ordained, that's what the decree is, that we are to walk in good works. So, this is an expression of his sovereignty, and it has reality in time. And so, that's in perfect harmony with James 2 .14, that's in perfect harmony with James 2 .18, and 2 .20, and 2 .24, if you will allow the context to speak for themselves.

So, I think it's very, very important, and it helps us to maintain a balance that a lot of people do lose hold of. And, when you've, if you've been in pastoral ministry, you encounter folks who just really struggle with the issue of assurance, they really struggle with knowing whether they have, you know, real peace with God.

And, so you've had to deal with these things. And, you can't, there are some people that have decided that to avoid any of that type of a trouble, I'm just going to pass right over all of the texts that say examine yourself to see whether you're in the faith, that exhort us to provide warnings, so people just don't even, I mean, you've seen people just dismiss the warnings in Hebrews for, on various sundry grounds, try to get around them, but God uses those warnings to prick our conscience, to provide guidance and light.

And, so, the balance of Scripture is a beautiful thing to observe, to see, and to see the consistency of James 2 with Ephesians 2 and Philippians 3 and Romans 4 through, well, all of Romans and everything else.

So, if, like I said, if you expose yourself to the commentaries of the world, you will find lots and lots of people who will want to try to assert that there is a fundamental contradiction between James and Paul.

It is, and Luther struggled with it. There's no question that Luther struggled with it. And, for all his great insights, this is one he missed. And, Augustine missed stuff, and Luther missed stuff, and Calvin missed stuff, and we all missed stuff.

And, that's one of the real advantages of reading church history is God always uses very, very imperfect vessels. And, there you go. Okay, someone in a Facebook group that I am a part of, which I will not mention because if I ever join a Facebook group, then there are certain people that descend upon those Facebook groups and make my life miserable, made a, provided a link to a question from Reasonable Faith and our good friend Dr. Craig, William Lane Craig.

Question number 326. I don't remember this one. That doesn't mean anything. The sad thing is I may have already responded to this one sometime in the distant past. But, I don't remember doing it, so we're going to do it again.

Because, if I don't remember it, then you probably don't either, and we're all just perfectly fine here now. But, July of 2013, a person writes in and says, I had a question regarding God's foreknowledge, which is a topic that consistently eats away at my heart.

I was looking at an article Dr. Craig wrote on middle knowledge, and I was wondering, how does middle knowledge take us away from the idea of determinism? If God picks which world is created, and in that world someone I know is not saved and cannot be saved, is this suggesting that in no such world would that person ever be saved?

Now, if you are a relatively new listener to the program, you may not be familiar with the tenets of middle knowledge, and what's called Mullenism. We obviously have talked about it a lot in the past, and gone over it in various venues, and there's a two-evening, two-part YouTube series.

From back somewhere before 2008, 2009, somewhere in there, I think, I did a response to William Lane Craig's views on Mullenism at a Reformed Baptist church right next to Biola. That's the closest we're going to get to a debate.

Anyway, just to remind everyone, or to bring up to speed, Dr. Craig is a proponent of Mullenism, probably the most popular proponent of Mullenism, and the idea of Mullenism is the concept of middle knowledge, that between the two moments, aspects of God's knowledge, which is God's perfect knowledge of himself, and then God's perfect knowledge of what he himself has done, will do, can do, so it's natural and free knowledge.

In between these concepts is something called middle knowledge, and middle knowledge is of what any free creature would do, given any circumstances that free creature would be put into. So it's the idea that God knows sort of this archetypal John Smith, and somehow God knows without having chosen to create John Smith.

This is, to me, where the whole system completely falls apart, where it's just utterly untenable, is that this knowledge is not grounded in God's creative decree. It is not grounded in any action of God.

It does not flow from his will. He does not say, I am going to make John Smith in such and such a way. I'm going to make him this tall, with these characteristics, with this amount of mental power, and he's going to be this kind of person because he speaks this language, and he's born at this time in history.

No, none of that stuff is a part of middle knowledge, because if you put that in, then it's no longer relevant. The whole reason this system was created was to find a way to get around the sovereignty of God, to get around the idea of a divine decree.

And so, from some other source, you get this middle knowledge. Now, God may possess it fully internally to himself, but the specifics of it, who John Smith would be and what John Smith would do, does not flow from the action of God in defining and decreeing who John Smith would be, or anyone else.

So, that said, that's where this system is a philosophical system, and it is not a biblical system by any stretch of the imagination. The idea is that having this middle knowledge, God can then envision possible worlds, and he's the greatest supercomputer ever made.

He makes quantum computing. You know, that's the new thing now. I don't understand it. I've read a little about it, and it's beyond me. But quantum computing, these new super-duper computers that people are hoping to basically make artificially intelligent, and then you obviously end up having Terminators coming back to get us.

All the movies, they're all coming true. I Am Legend and Terminator, all at the same time. And it'll happen in 2020, too. Yeah, we remember 2020. Didn't really think the beginning of the year was going to be this bad, but anyway.

So, God's a supercomputer, and he can take from this middle knowledge literally billions and billions of people, because there's billions of people on the planet right now. There haven't always been, but that's still billions of people, and he can plug them in at different places.

Now, I'm not sure how you do this, because obviously, whoever John Smith is, John Smith's mommy and daddy were important to what John Smith is. So, it's not like every John Smith and Mary Brown is a...

None of you remember this, but for those of you who are old like me, remember Lightbrite when you were a kid? I never got one of those, so that's one thing I've sort of felt sad about in my life. But I was able to buy a Clementine one years ago, so that was sort of fulfilling.

Just a childhood sadness of mine. Anyway, but... What? Okay. Explains a lot? Oh, thanks. So, well, it's bright lights. I could make a Coogee out of a Lightbrite. I really could. That would be awesome.

Anyway, you've got these different colored pegs, and it's not like people are just a different colored peg. You can just... I'm going to plug it in over here. Oh, I'll plug it into a different center over here, and it's always going to do the same thing.

So, somehow, this middle knowledge is expansive enough to know that John Smith would respond to given circumstances as a Puritan and as a hippie in the 1960s. Okay? And so God's so big that he can put together these possible worlds, and these worlds can have different mountains and rivers and lakes and streams and different natural things going on and different histories and all the rest of this stuff.

And then he can just draw from... I guess there'd have to be a finite number of these Lightbrite widgets to play with. There'd have to be a finite number of possible individuals. But maybe there's an infinite number.

That doesn't make any sense. But, anyways, he can pull these individuals out and pop them in and see how a world would turn out. Now, he is micromanaging all of the circumstances. So, you put John Smith in a particular world, and then you micromanage everything that happens in John Smith's life.

Everything. To the clothes he wears, to the economic situation he finds himself in, to the weather, everything. And you get him to do what you need him to do to accomplish your purposes because you know what he's going to do in any given situation, so you put him in the situations to get the result you want.

But, the whole point of the idea is he's still doing it freely. There's no decree. I mean, there's sort of a decree. But it's a decree that is based on and determined by the content of mental knowledge which does not come forth from God.

It exists some other way. Where it comes from, they never have an answer. So, they think that they are in essence saving autonomy and free will. And you can say, well, if someone doesn't accept Christ and they're lost, it's their own free will, it's their own choice.

They were given the opportunities and they didn't take them. Well, this raises all sorts of questions. I mean, it raises questions about, well, how many people can you put into a world? What if you put fewer people in the world?

And Molinism, since Molinism is not constrained by being divine revelation, it's just a philosophical system. It doesn't come from the Bible. It's being forced onto the Bible. It's a means of getting rid of problems that actually reading the Bible brings about.

So, what we're going to see in this thing here is that Molinism can just skip over certain questions because it's not a divine revelation anyways. And so, the questions that come up is, well, is God able to save everyone?

Well, you could, I suppose, theorize that no, he can't. And in fact, William Lane Craig has theorized that the world we are in is the best possible world with the maximum number of people being saved.

But Molinism has to go, well, what about the existence of sin? Because there's a whole lot of sin. And so, is the Molinist idea that God is getting the maximum number of people saved with the minimum amount of sin?

Could God have saved, could God have had much less evil, but then as a result had much fewer people saved? And so, God runs all these calculations. And like I said, the big quantum computer. And he comes up with the best world.

And that's where we are. This is the best world. And you're free, but not really. Because middle knowledge, see, remember the illustration I used a couple weeks ago when I said, does God know what I'm going to have for dinner on Christmas Eve in 2021?

And if God does know, am I free to have something else for dinner on Christmas Eve in 2021? Because if God's foreknowledge is perfect, then it could not be falsified. Because if I have something other than what God has eternally known I was going to have, then he was operating on false knowledge.

And his knowledge has been falsified. And that has all sorts of implications for things regarding prophecy and stuff like that. Well, in the Molinist perspective, God knows what you're going to have, even though you freely chose to have it for dinner on Christmas Eve in 2021.

And you can't have anything else. But you have it freely, except that what determined that you were going to have it freely was this middle knowledge thing that God didn't create. We're not sure who did.

How is that actually a better system than having a God who works both in eternity and time and has assured us that events in time are meaningful? It doesn't. That's why I find Molinism to be just an empty, philosophical waste of time.

But it's popular among certain people. And so that's what this guy's asking about. And he's asking, if God picks which world is created, and in that world someone I know is not saved and cannot be saved, is this suggesting that in no such world would that person ever be saved?

That's a valid question. So when God, the quantum computer, is running the numbers, did it get down to ten final worlds, ten finalists, and your friend, the person being referred to here, was saved in four out of the ten, but none of those four ended up giving the maximum total number, and so they will not be saved.

How is that not a choice on God's part? That's why I just look at Molinism and go, it does not answer anything. It raises more questions and it makes every single prophet and apostle go, huh? What are you talking about?

Where did you come up with that? So you end up with more questions, bad answers, and the most important thing is, it ain't biblical. Good reason not to believe it. So anyway, interesting question, because it's saying, is this suggesting that in no such world would that person ever be saved?

Now, I have heard Craig say that there are certain people who would not be saved in any possible world, that there are people God cannot save. Now, does God get to actuate worlds where there are fewer of those people He actually ends up creating?

Because again, does He just have this massive pile of light bright things He can just plug in to create these worlds? Do we then just assume that God has created a world in which everyone who can be saved in any world will be saved, and any who can't be saved won't be?

And if that's the case, what good is human prayer in this situation? Doesn't it kind of just make it so that anyone who prays for what God has already done is going to have his or her prayer answered and that the others won't?

I would have thought the answer would be that God would have factored human prayer into His decision making and plan for the world, not that we change God's mind per se, but it seems like if God's creation decree already established salvation and damnation, does it matter?

When I try and ponder God's foreknowledge of my life, I have horrible doubts. I feel incredibly depressed and guilty because my mind cannot reconcile it all. Now, I don't know why you would feel depressed and guilty by not being able to reconcile God's timelessness.

That concerns me, I'll be perfectly honest with you. I feel like Calvinism suggests that God predetermines everything and we are all following a script, which makes everything seem meaningless to me and to Dr. Craig as he says in his answer, but middle knowledge seems to suggest that God predetermines us by choosing which world we exist in, so it seems like it's not too different from Calvinism.

It's just a step higher. I would love clarification here. I don't think it's a step higher. And then Arminianism, it's supposed to be Arminianism, suggests that God draws all to Him, but not all are saved, yet God does things in the world that bring people to salvation, yet does not do them to some other people, which suggests either arbitrary behavior or some form of higher knowledge.

I generally hate it because I have always been a relatively strong Christian, but I have opened this Pandora's box that I cannot figure out how to shut. I know this question was a bit rambly, and I know that someone other than Dr. Craig is probably going to answer, which is cool, but I guess my final question is, how do you live life with joy?

How do you not fear that someday, that maybe someday, something might happen that brings doubt into your heart and then you start to wonder like, what if I'm one of those people who could never be saved and just thought I was?

I know it sounds ridiculous, but I worry myself about this kind of thing and genuinely seeking the advice of fellow Christians on this matter. I never thought about this kind of stuff until I got into the whole foreknowledge debate.

Unfortunately, this kind of discussion goes way beyond the current level of understanding of the members of my church, and I can't really have this kind of discourse. Thanks very much for all input. Mike in the United States.

Well, I would hope that Mike in the United States six years ago, seven years ago, would find a church with elders who have thought through these things and would be able to provide a thoroughly biblical and balanced response.

This is a question that obviously Reformed elders deal with fairly regularly. I mean, this comes up in fellowship meetings and Bible studies and everything else on a fairly regular basis. When people say, you know, all that stuff, I just don't know that it's all that meaningful.

Here's a situation where you have a real pastoral application because there are people who really do struggle with these things, and the answer is not to say, well, just don't worry about it. The answer that an Arminian, the answer that a Molinist and the answer that a Reformed theologian are going to give are going to be different.

They are going to be functionally different from one another. And obviously, we would say that one of them could be considerably more consistent and biblical than the others. But you can't just simply go, you know, we just shouldn't talk about things like that.

Remember about two weeks ago now, I read from the Institutes and read from one of the sections where Calvin was saying, we are literally questioning the wisdom of the Holy Spirit of God when we say, and he said, I respect these people, I understand their concerns.

He said, we're questioning God's wisdom when we are unwilling to talk about that which the Holy Spirit himself has given to us in Scripture. If the Triune God has chosen to reveal to us in Scripture His eternal nature and His eternal decree, then these are things that we are to have to struggle with.

And it may be a struggle. It may be difficult for us. But these are things we have to do. Now, Craig's response runs along these lines. To begin with, it is inaccurate to say that a Molinism, God picks which world is created and in that world someone I know is not saved and cannot be saved.

That person who is unsaved can be saved and is being lost as a result of his free rejection of God's saving grace and is contrary to God's will for his life. On Molinism, his destiny lies in his own hands, not God's.

That's my comment there. It's not clear what you mean when you say in no such world would that person ever be saved. Obviously, in no world in which the person is not saved, is he saved. But there are possible worlds in which that person is saved.

Perhaps you're asking whether there are feasible worlds in which that person is saved. Molinism is neutral on that question. So, he starts off with a great autonomous will of man, is in charge of everything.

But then when he really gets down to what's actually being said, he says, nah, we don't know. Molinism is neutral on that question. What's that question? Perhaps you're asking whether there are feasible worlds in which that person is saved.

So, could God have actuated a feasible world in which that person could have been saved? And it says Molinism is neutral on that question. The Molinist could hold that that person is unsaved in every feasible world in which he exists.

But that is not inherent to Molinism. Oh, okay. The more you push on this system, I watched, recently I watched, because I've always enjoyed both of them, the 1960 version of The Time Machine, remember that one?

And then early 2000s, they did a remake. It was really good. Changed the plot just a little bit, but it was really well done. And, of course, things have advanced a little bit in CGI and things like that since 1960.

I mean, the Morlocks were a whole lot uglier, scarier in the modern version, but they were pretty ugly and scary in the original version, too. Almost on a cooler level because they didn't have all the CGI.

It was actually actors going, glowing eyes and stuff like that. Anyway, I like time stuff. You know, my favorite Star Trek stuff is time, things like that, and things like that. Anyway, so you've got, we have this idea.

And in that one, in the second one, what they introduced was the idea of paradoxes. The time traveler is trying to save this woman's life. His fiancée, he's just given her the ring, and they're robbed, and she's shot and killed.

And so he builds a time machine to go back and to save her. Well, when he goes back, and they run from where she had been killed, she gets run over by a horse. No matter what he does, she dies. Can't save it.

Can't stop it. This was the big question that he's struggling with all along. Sorry if I just ruined it for you. Didn't mean to do that, but the movie is like 2003 or something. I forget when it was. So it raises issues of what is the purpose of God in creation?

And so, when it says here, the Molinist could hold that that person is unsaved in every feasible world in which he exists, but that is not inherent to Molinism. It's so purely theoretical. Maybe, but we don't know.

But we'll criticize the Calvinists for having an answer, because they keep going to those same old texts, like Acts 4, Isaiah 10, or whatever else. His answer goes on, You ask, do we then just assume that God has created a world in which everyone who can be saved in any world will be saved, and any who can't be saved won't be?

Obviously not. Otherwise, there would be an infinite number of people in the world. Really, your question seems so confused, it's hard for me to make sense of it. Maybe you're asking whether anyone who is unsaved in the actual world is unsaved in every feasible world.

And the answer is that Molinism is neutral in that regard. The answer is, we don't have an answer. Maybe you're asking whether someone who is saved in the actual world is unsaved in some other feasible world.

Again, Molinism doesn't pronounce on this, but why not? As for the efficacy of prayer, I agree with you that God would have factored human prayer into his decision making and plan for the world, not that we change God's mind per se.