Apologetics Live Open Q&A

We are live, Apologetics Live, here to answer your Apologetics questions, any questions that you have, challenges, maybe even just something that you came up with when you were sharing the gospel, someone challenged you and you did not have an answer, we are here to help.

And so if you have any questions tonight will be an open Q &A. We have no set topics.

So if you have any questions, you can join us. Go to apologeticslive .com.

There is a link to join. If there's anybody watching that's going, Hey, I tried to get in.

I had a bad link. Eli let me know. Hey, you can update that link so people can get in. It is live now.

So Apologetics Live is a ministry of striving for eternity. We're here to answer some questions that you may have.

My name, I'm your host Andrew Rappaport. We are hoping to be joined by my friend

Matt Slick from karm .org. We'll see if he makes it in. I want to give a little bit of an update.

Some people were asking why did I say maybe he's coming back? He's been out for a while and basically some may know that Matt, you know, he's telling me how he wants to get in.

So click the link now.

All right, so we'll see if he can get in. It should be pretty good.

He may have some problems, but we'll see. Eli, maybe you can give him a call since I know you're listening.

You can maybe just give him a call and to see if you can help him in case he has some trouble getting in.

Oh, you're on your phone though, right? You're doing this on your phone probably. So that's probably not going to work. All right, well, we'll see.

So while we wait to see if Matt can figure out the technology, it is a little different.

And so depending on his browser, we'll see. Donald Jacks was saying that he will just play with show what he said.

Matt did a debate last night. He did it. Actually, he did the debate a while ago, just so you know, it just aired last night.

So, so Matt has been for some of you guys know he was been off the show for a while because he'd been getting his house ready for sale.

And he was planning at this point to be in Arizona. He folks who know his wife is not doing well, health wise.

And because of that, he has been up. Here we go. Let's add him in now. There we go.

There's Matt. Let's see if this is if his audio is working. Yep.

I hear you. I don't know if he hears me. I hear you now. Okay. Welcome back,

Matt. How are you? Okay. Yeah, I knew that was coming.

So something's never changed. So I'll continue giving the update on Matt. This is he's not going to. All right.

I like this, guys. It looks like some people are happy you're back with this. Ethan Tanner. I don't see any text or anything.

But if you look on the screen, I put his. Oh, there it is.

Yeah, I see it. Yeah. So. So, yeah. So for folks who don't know,

Matt has been his his wife has not been doing well. Folks, those who are regular listeners know this.

And we've been praying for for Nick and for Matt. So the plan was to be right now, instead of enjoying the cold weather of Idaho, he should be in warm weather of Arizona.

But I guess the Lord had other plans. So the house didn't sell.

So it's now off the market until spring when it is a time when they they sell better.

And Mr. Facebook user says the slick one. I love that guy.

I must mean you don't know me very well. Yeah. So let's see if I can find out who that that I have to go in.

That's let's see if I go on Facebook. That's from the Apologetics Live group.

Andrew. True, true. Carla, I'm probably mispronouncing his name.

Andrew. He's a good guy. Mostly. Yeah. So. So basically, the house is off the market until spring.

And people were saying, why did you say Matt's back? Maybe. So maybe you want to explain what happened the other night.

Yeah, three nights ago. I mean, about that three nights ago. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of you guys may or may not know, my wife has some serious medical issues and she's actually out driving right now on her own.

She went and did something and she can do that kind of a thing. And she often will pay for it, you know, the next day and things like that.

She's best to recover. But she tries to do as much as she can without just being an invalid, you know.

So she's about 20 percent of or it's about 80 percent disabled or 70 percent disabled kind of a thing,

I guess. Anyway, three nights ago, about one o 'clock in the morning, she had trouble breathing. And so, you know,

I'm standing there with her, you know, and she's trying to go to sleep and breathing is getting worse and worse.

And and within five minutes, she goes, I can't breathe. I can't breathe. And she started acting funny, as in afraid, funny.

And so, you know, I go, let's go to the ER. And she goes, yeah, yeah. And so we got her downstairs, got her in the car.

And I was doing 65 down to 35 and at one o 'clock in the morning. And we got her to ER finally.

And they were just they converged on her. And I mean, got texts and everything.

They were on her really fast. I just stayed in the corner, let them do what they did. And she wasn't not breathing.

She's having a lot of difficulty breathing. And it was getting worse. And they just hooked her up. And within five minutes, she was substantially better.

They have all that stuff they do. They know what you're doing, you know. And that was one o 'clock in the morning and got home at six o 'clock in the morning.

And there was a memory you had said to me, you told me that there was a time when no one would really be on the road.

And there was a train right in the quickest, the quickest way to the airport, to the hospital.

And there was a train blocking the road. And you had to go all the way around. You had to backtrack.

Yeah, it's just a straight shot. We go out of our housing area and we just straight shot to the hospital.

Literally turn left, you're in the hospital parking area and straight shot. And a train was just sitting there.

So I just peeled a U and booked it around a long way around. And that's when

I was hitting sixty five, close to 70, waiting for a cop to pull me over. And I would have just said, go to the

ER emergency. He would have let us. But anyway, that was it. My dad had when my brother was born, my dad had gotten to he basically was he got the call, he was teaching at Rutgers University and he had, you know,

Rick was flying, trying to get so he can get to the, you know, to get to the hospital with my mother.

And he got pulled over. And officer explained, he explained to the officer what was going on, what he was doing.

And the officer says, OK, well, hey, follow me. Turns on his lights and he's just following him.

He's going. He gets to the to the hospital. They they pull right up front. He gets to the hospital and the guy handed my dad a ticket for speeding.

Yeah, he took him there, but he gave him the ticket. That's not Idaho. Cops are cool.

You know, they're cool. They're really good guys. Not for long. You're being inundated by Californians. So, yeah, it's a problem.

The Californians are bad. You know, they're socialist, wacko, leftist morons. You know,

I know exactly how to trigger Matt. All right. This Facebook user is actually Brian Simmons. He says hello, brother

Matt and brother Andrew. So, yeah, you met him at one of the conferences.

So we didn't actually have a planned thing. We have a couple of folks who are in here, one who you may recognize.

He's he's, you know, let's bring in Eli here. Oh, as he drinks his cup, you know, covering up his face.

Oh, hey, Eli. Whatever. He's kind of annoying and just kind of a loser, you know, as is it most everybody from the

East Coast. So. Wow. Don't you feel at home,

Eli? New Yorkers are seen as the cool ones, man. It's the people out

West or the weirdos. Well, you go out West of California. It's true. Oh, man.

Look at that. All the cool movies take place in New York. You don't see a movie starring

Arnold Schwarzenegger somewhere in Idaho or something like that. No, Idaho is not a happening place.

No, it is not. No, it's not. That's why they're allowed to carry in Idaho.

I like that. It reminds me, I saw the new Arnold Schwarzenegger movie a couple of nights ago, really enjoyed it a couple, three nights ago.

What movie did you see? It lost billions. You know what? I don't know what's going on, but I thought it was great.

I thought it was great. It was very entertaining. What movie is this, Matt? Dark Fate. Terminator, the newest

Terminator. Yeah. Another Terminator. How many Terminators this was the end of the world?

How many times over? I was amazed with how many Rockies and Rambos they could do, but Terminators are another one where it's just...

Oh, man. No, it was really entertaining. The special effects were incredible. I mean, wow.

I enjoyed it. I didn't like what they did at the beginning. I'm a Terminator fan.

This particular movie was supposed to be a direct sequel to Terminator 2, and it was on the assumption that all the other

Terminators didn't exist. And so I didn't like what they did in the beginning, but I agree with you.

It had a lot of cool special effects and the action was brilliant. Yeah. The beginning was like, what?

They could have not done that and still had the same movie. It would have been good. They could have had a little bit older or something like that so that he's more capable, but you know, but it made sense because it's a different timeline because the future keeps getting mixed up and things.

So they do different things. So then I go, okay, I can buy that. But Andrew's like, well,

I love Jesus, so I don't watch Terminator 2. Okay. Let's have some fun.

So I'm at Matt's house one time. Whoa, absorption. Is there absorption coming?

Huge absorption. All right. But hey,

I'm glad you're on here. I'm going to run something by you. Is it distorted? It sounds a little weird.

Yeah. Bad echoing, bad or whatever. Okay. How's that?

No. How do

I sound? A little bit distorted. Sounds echoey. Yeah.

Going through a book, trying to justify why three persons are in the

Trinity. And Matt Yeser and I are talking about it. And we went and spent a couple hours last night.

And I can't, and the book, I don't, I don't, I don't think the book is clear enough and I'm having to constantly redefine terms, but we went through some stuff.

And then what the guy was talking about an interesting idea of Unitarianism. And I've got my notes, but I haven't polished them yet.

You could talk about it. Why Unitarianism doesn't work. Can you hear me okay?

I hear you fine. Okay. You sound, you're fine now. I'm fine. Okay. I tried changing some settings.

So, so, so what I was trying to say was, and Eli, you'll, you'll be able to appreciate this.

So it's at Matt's house. And as you know, I'm not, you know, really pop culture literate and I don't,

I'm not up on all the movies. Matt is trying to lost over. We were talking about the terminator. Oh yeah. Yeah.

I, I at least saw the first terminator. I don't, I don't think I saw any of the others. I just knew that they were good.

Okay. So let's go, let's try and see if we could recreate the scene. Matt is explaining to me the importance of the movie aliens, which

I still haven't seen. I've seen 57 times. Why is alien so good,

Matt? Because it is the standard by which all other movies should be judged.

For one thing, there's no romance in there, which, because it's a waste of time. Romance is just a waste of time.

And there's definitely aliens. And so aliens are automatically good and there's gunfire, there's screaming, there's running.

And the plot is very simple plot. Anybody can understand it. A bunch of people go meet the aliens.

They scream and run to another area, fight aliens. They scream and run away to another area, fight aliens.

They scream and run away to another area. And their numbers are dwindling as they're doing this. That's a great plot.

That's great. So Matt explains to me, he's like, no, but there's a scene where this person's on the table.

I think a woman or I can't even remember. And he's on the table and everyone's looking and all of a sudden an alien comes out of his stomach and just bursts out.

And they never did before. That's the movie alien. Alien actually affected other movies and comedians and other things because it was so, back in the seventies when it came out, when

I first saw it, it was a talk of the town because no one had ever seen anything like that. And it was, it really had an effect.

I mean, you're gonna remember I'm almost 63 here. And so back in the day when it came out, everyone's like, did you see this?

I mean, no one had conceived of an alien that had acid for blood that would live in you and, but burst out and was super aggressive.

And all you could basically do was run and scream, you know, and it was pretty terrifying.

And it was really great. He's alien movies. He really does. I love aliens. I love alien stuff. I still hear an echo.

It's hard to hear you guys. I don't know if you guys can hear me fine.

Maybe it's, maybe it's just me. Yeah. I don't know if it's, we do know, I mean, you have issues with your internet there sometimes.

So I don't know if that's... You guys sound fine to me now. Yeah. Put headphones on. Maybe that'll take care of it.

We got a question here, Matt, that came in on YouTube by Jay Harry.

He says, does each part of the Trinity have a different purposes? Do they do different things?

Do they have different powers? Leave that up because there's a problem with the question and I'm not knocking the guy.

It's just that the question is a difficult question to answer because terms need to be defined and there's certain implications of certain words.

And so let me kind of unpack it. Does each part of the Trinity, well, that violates the doctrine of the

Trinity to say part, because we don't want to say that he's part. There's a doctrine called divine simplicity.

And what that teaches is that God is one substance, not parts. There is no coalescing or commingling of parts.

So the word part is incorrect. It should be, does each person or each member of the

Godhead, that's how it should be worded, but I'm just being technical, have different purposes. Now, a purpose, what you're hinting at is what's called the economic

Trinity. But a purpose, it means that you either devise it yourself or it's assigned to you.

So a purpose is assigned would be difficult because it would mean one or two of the other members of the

Trinity assigned a purpose for another of a third, which would designate a kind of a part and partitioning within the

Trinity. And that's problematic. So we don't want to say that.

What we want to say is that God exists as a single essence, a single being, a single nature.

And we call, there's a doctrine called perichosis, perichoresis, excuse me.

And I wrote an article about this today. Perichoresis is the teaching that in the one nature of God, there is the

Trinitarian communion and with the members of the Trinity, there's an interrelationship, yet there's a distinction, but they share the same nature because they are the same nature and they have their existence in communion with each of the other.

So a way of saying it is it has to do with the fellowship and the relationship in the fellowship of the three members in which there is, there's love, there's harmony, mutually exhaustive knowledge, et cetera.

And it also refutes the idea of oneness Pentecostal theology.

It establishes, let me just say it this way. It establishes oneness in the sense, not in the oneness theological system, but the oneness as in the single nature of God.

There's one essence, one nature, one substance. And perichoresis is an ancient doctrine dealing with the nature and its essence.

So anyway, do they do different things? Yes. In the sense that in what we call the economic

Trinity, the father sent the son, but the son did not send the father and the Holy Spirit is sent by the father and the son.

So there's a difference we want to say in function, in order, but without saying that there's parts going to make sure we understand that they have different powers.

No, they don't have different powers because that would be a dividing of the persons into parts and power is part and parcel of the very nature of God.

And so they cannot have different powers. Otherwise we'd have parts of God. So no, they all share the same nature, same omniscience, same omnipotent, same on the sapience, wisdom, et cetera.

And so there you go. I hope that helps. Perichoresis is the issue. And it kind of relates to the communicative idiomatum, excuse me, but that's in the

Christological perichoresis. But there's another word, which

I forgot. Anyway, nevermind. I hope that helps. So, and he's saying, he said, fair enough.

Thanks for answering. And by the way, if anyone wants to come in and ask questions, just go to apologeticslive .com.

That's where we come to answer any of the questions. If you want to ask more questions, there was another question

I saw here, Matt. James Manning just said,

I think Matt and Andrew would like the movie, My Name is Nobody. I don't know.

I know nothing about that. Matt probably does. A movie Matt doesn't know. Here we go.

Here was a question by, baptized by Jesus question. Could Jesus exist in human form without Mary's 23 chromosomes?

Well, yes and no. You could have another set of chromosomes, but not a woman.

So, but no, in the sense that in order to be human, there must be human nature and essence in there.

So, we could say logically that there needs to be some chromosomal issue, because without that, then

Jesus would not have been human. So, there has to be a necessity of real biological genetics.

Otherwise, he's not human, because we are human by definition. So, the answer is, in one sense, yes, in another sense, no.

That makes sense. That's kind of like saying, can

Jesus be made of chocolate and still be a man? Well, if he's made of chocolate, he lacks a human nature.

So, it would seem as though that you need those physical elements to be at least a human being in the physical sense, since we, you know, wholeness of a human being is more than physicality, but you need that physicality to be human.

Okay. We have another question that came in on YouTube. And folks, again, if you want to ask questions, best way is to join us.

Just come to apologexlive .com. Also, you guys could share this on social media. Would be great.

So, people can come in, get their questions answered. I think Melissa Owens might be new here.

I think I saw her earlier. She said she was new to the group, but her question is, would the

Trinity be an example of complementarianism? First, define complementarianism and then go for answering the question.

Complementarianism is the position that in male -female relationships within ecclesiastical structures, male and female complement each other.

And so, it's in contrast to -

Egalitarianism. Thank you. It's been a while since I've had to use that word. You're getting old,

Matt. I'm getting old. I was going to be gracious and say he's been too busy, but no, you had to throw the age thing in there.

You know, Eli, your day is coming, sir. Your day is coming. I really appreciate that. Matt and I will be on the ground when you're our age.

I can't believe I'm going to be 63 in about four weeks. Jeez. Anyway -

You're not that old. Oh, I'm old, man. I'm old. But at any rate, so, egalitarianism and complementarianism are different views of ministerial orders and relationship of male -female.

And so, complementarianism says that male and female complement each other, and egalitarianism says they're equal in all areas, and so, therefore, women can be pastors and elders.

So, complementarianism does not port over to the category of trinitarianism. So, he asked,

I guess as a follow -up, would that make Mary - sorry, this is baptized by Jesus says, would that make

Mary special? Yes, Mary would definitely be special if she's bearing the second person of the

Trinity in her body and gives birth to the, basically, to the

Creator. That would make her, yeah, we could say that she's pretty special. But there's nothing specific about Mary that would,

I mean, it's how God used her that makes her special. It's not, because we don't, like, this is some of the things we hear from Roman Catholics, right, that they would try to say there's something unique about Mary, the

Immaculate Conception, which, by the way, folks, the Immaculate Conception has absolutely nothing to do with the way

Jesus was conceived. It had to do with the way Mary was conceived.

Even many Catholics misunderstand that, the belief that Mary was born sinless, that God, it's kind of an interesting thing that, because when you have the, they realize they're in a problem, they're trying to say, well, you know, how could

Jesus, God himself, be born of a woman because a sinless being, how could he be born of a sinful being?

So easy. Yeah, well, easy, but what do they do? They say, well, that can't be, therefore, Mary had to be sinless, but then you still have the same problem with Mary.

How could she be a sinless being born of a, so they go, well, this Immaculate Conception, well, why wouldn't that conception be with Jesus then?

Why does that be with Mary? It's a faulty argument because it's not the vessel that has to be pure for God, it's

God himself who is pure and the womb, you know, is separate.

It's almost like they are arguing the same kind of thing the pro -abortionists do when they say, it's my body, so the womb would be her body and she has to be pure because that has to be pure in order for Jesus to be housed in her.

It's a fallacious argument, but there's nothing biblically or logically that requires that Mary be sinless in order to bear

Christ. Right. We would say that Mary is special because she's chosen.

There's nothing metaphysically intrinsic within her that separated her from someone else that God could have used.

Right. And in that sense, in a somewhat similar sense, we could say every believer is special because God chose them.

If every believer is special, then no one's special. Well, not all are believers.

You said every believer. Yeah. I think we are special in contrast to non -believers, not that we are intrinsically better, but we stand in a better relation with God.

And I think when we say that Mary is special, it's more in relation to her roles.

We're all special, God uses all of us, but the nature of those uses are different. There are many body parts to the body and Mary was used for a very special role and others are used for other special roles.

Mary's job was not the same job as the apostle Paul who proclaimed the gospel to the Gentiles.

And that was his specific calling. Well, just so you know, my wife says

I'm special. Yeah. Is that uppercase S or lowercase S? That was in our day and age when we were kids.

It's all in size lowercase. That was Jerry's kids, for those who remember those telethons.

Yeah, I remember that. So Andrew on Facebook says spot on Eli. Jason picked up what

I was saying here. Jason Manning is saying, what about when we talk about Mary, it's what about Mary's mother and her mother and her mother and her mother?

That's the problem that they have when they get into that argument of, well, sinless, she had to be sinless to give birth to a sinless being.

I remember once I was actually in a Catholic church, some Catholic evangelists, they had some teenagers that came to my house knocking on the door and were trying to convert people to Catholicism.

And they invited me to the church. So I went over and I had like 40 kids that were just peppering me with questions.

They asked the question, you know, don't you understand Mary has to be special to give birth to a sinless being?

She had to be sinless. And I just went, well, what about her mother? And one kid goes, that's a good question.

I always wondered that. So one kid's like, go ask the priest. There were three priests just watching me. So they go over, they ask kid comes back.

I said, what'd the priest say? He goes, they said, they don't know. And just as he's saying that, I'm looking at the priest and they left.

I'm like, okay. Now they were watching me. And now they're like, we're getting out of here. Okay. I got 40 kids.

I could just share the gospel too. Wow. Good for you. That was a special time.

Just like Matt's special. I'm special. So let's see. So Jason has said,

I keep hearing that Christianity doesn't have a problem of one of...

One of the many, yeah. One of the many when listening to Christian debate atheists.

What is the problem with one of the many? So the one of the many issue deals with the nature of the one, for example, would be the transcendental essence definition, whatever you want to call, of number.

And an instance of number would be two or four or six or eight. And so the one is that thing which unifies or categorizes or makes plain or aware the particulars.

So one thing and the many are interrelated. And that can only really exist in a

Trinitarian context, in a Christian God context, because only then can the one and the many be realized and actualized.

If you think of the one as a transcendental necessity, for example, of tables, the idea of a table, there's the one essence, one transcendental nature of what a table is and many particulars of that.

And so in an atheist worldview, for example, you can't justify universal principles or transcendentals in order to account for or ground the idea of particulars.

So that's the major kind of a thing that's going on there. That make sense? Yeah, I think the one and the many grapples with the problem of what is the fundamental essence of reality.

This is a problem that the pre -Socratic philosophers had to deal with and philosophers afterwards.

Some people try to posit that the fundamental element of reality is one sort of thing.

So they held to philosophy known as monism. All is water, all is fire, all is air.

The problem is that if reality is fundamentally one, then how do you make sense out of particulars in our experience?

And so if you are a monist and the fundamental aspect of reality is one, then you have to posit that the particular different things we experience in human experience are illusory.

That's the issue with, say, something like Hinduism that holds to a pantheistic perspective in which all is one and the differences and distinctions that we see are illusion.

And so you have other views that are more atomistic. If you take a look at something like a metaphysical naturalism, if the fundamental aspect of reality is physical, then you have these individual disconnected pieces of fundamental reality in which there is no universal non -material unifier to bring into relation all of the individual particular things.

For example, if I have one barn in a farm, right?

You see in a field you have a barn and you have another barn and another barn. You need a universal concept of barn to talk about in a coherent fashion the reality of individual barns.

So you need to have this transcendent unifier that can make sense out of specific things.

Now, the problem with atheism is that atheism as an atomistic view, because all its materials matter in motion, they can't account for universal.

And in which case, that throws logic out the window. And without logic, you have a self -imputing worldview. Now, if you have a purely monistic perspective, you get rid of particular and you have to posit something that differences in reality are illusory.

And so the cool thing about Christianity is that the fundamental essence of reality on the Christian conception is the ontological trinity.

Since God is both one and many, bliss of God is equally ultimate to the manyness of God, because of his very nature, he's a triune.

Reality reflects the ontological essence of God, because just as God is both one and many, reality that he creates is both one and many.

And because reality is that way, we can bring together unifiers like logic and make coherent sense of particulars, like the specific objects we experience in reality, if that makes sense.

I know it's very hard to talk about without getting too abstract and philosophical. Yeah. Another way to look at it, to simplify is, is the universe one thing and it has parts or manifestation of the one thing.

If that's the case, how you justify that as being true? And there's philosophical, logical problems.

And only Christianity provides that answer. We can have the one thing who is

God and particulars of the manifestation of the doctrine of the trinity and things like that. But at any rate, he's the necessary precondition for all those things that we experience in particular fashion and particulars.

So, yeah. And that's why Christianity is the only religion that makes sense. Yeah. This is back to the other thing,

KT says this, what gives us value is not intrinsic in us. It is because we are the father's love gift to the son.

That's a quote from John MacArthur. So Matt, earlier, someone said this, baptized by Jesus, said,

Matt, that's heresy. Bring your wife here and let us talk. And so - Someone asked the question, what part?

Ethan said, what part is heresy? And so he said, baptized by Jesus, Matt said his wife says he's special.

So I guess he's doubting that your wife actually says that. Yeah, she does. I am trying to get her on the radio too.

She actually broached the idea in passing. But anyway, because she's suffering so much and I want her to get on the radio to talk about her suffering and her faith in God and her relationship to her suffering.

That actually would be good. Yes, it would be. Yeah, it would be because folks who don't know her, know she's suffering probably doesn't, it's a, yeah.

Yeah, she's suffering. Someone else is. Yeah. It's not very often she's not in pain. It's not very often.

The only time she's not in pain is when she's in a certain position in a recliner. But at any rate, that's, there we go.

So - Other comments or whatever? Well, we got, this is, I'm going to go look at this,

I think is Andrew again. He said, you explained that very well, Eli, you too,

Matt. Ethan has another quote from John MacArthur. Matt, we're going to have to explain to you.

Matt's not going to get this quote. Yes, I will. Beth Moore, she should go home. He's correct. Now the thing, okay.

So John MacArthur said, for folks who don't know the context of the maze, I was actually there.

Okay. Wow. So when everyone's sitting there and trying to say MacArthur was making some comment about her going home and being in the kitchen, and this is just, he's just anti -women and all the nonsense that I'm hearing.

First off, let's put it in context. This is at a conference where earlier that day, Justin Peters did an excellent job going through and playing

Beth Moore herself, false prophecies, false teaching, saying, you know, preaching at a pulpits on a

Sunday at church, and then saying she believes in complementarianism. So you had all this.

And the question that was asked was, Todd Friel was saying,

I want one word answers or short answers to whatever I ask. So it was basically just really quick thinking.

What are you going to say about this person, this thing, whatever it is. And so he gave to MacArthur and said,

Beth Moore, and he just thought, go home. But in the context, he then explains what he means.

And it's about her teaching. And that's what they want to avoid. They want to avoid the fact that Beth Moore is a false teacher and a false prophet.

She made prophecies that aren't true. And therefore, she shouldn't be teaching, period.

But because she has loyal followers, they support her. And so they all tried to make it to mean to try to say that MacArthur was saying that she should be home in the kitchen and nonsense like that, making sandwiches or whatever.

And we're all being home in the kitchen making sandwiches. Yeah. Well, I think Jason Manning puts it,

Jason Manning, you'll love this one, Matt. Jason Manning says, I'm waiting for the T -shirt from Karm that says, reformed women make better sandwiches.

That's a good one. I like that. You know, Matt will probably have that shirt soon. Oh, that's great.

So let's see. So Jay here has another question. And folks, the best way to ask questions is actually come in and ask them.

But he says here, and he's got a big question. So it covers Eli's face altogether. Suddenly the show looks better.

He said, I was a Tupel believing.

Sorry. So he was a Calvinist for years. For many years.

What I thought was genuine relationship with Jesus. I am now agnostic and don't believe that Jesus was who he said he was.

Am I still saved? Well, first off, J. Harry, please come on in here for a discussion on that.

But go ahead, Matt, and answer. First John 2 .19, they went out from us because they never were of us. If they had been of us, they would have remained.

So if you don't know if God exists and you're denying the true and living God, and I can't call you a Christian, and if you're not a

Christian now, you never were a false convert. Jesus says, unless you believe that I am, you'll die on your sins.

If you don't believe who Jesus, if he was who he said he was, then by definition, just by that, his own description, he's defined himself out of the

Christian faith anyway. I'm going to say this, and I don't want you to take this the wrong way.

It's going to sound kind of harsh, but when we have people that say that I once was a

Christian, and Matt already quoted what God says on the subject from First John, if you went out from among us, it meant you were never of us.

So what were you? You weren't a Calvinist.

You weren't a TULIP -believing Calvinist Christian at all. I don't mean this to come off sounding hard, but it is.

You were a hypocrite that stopped pretending. You were pretending to be a Christian before, and you weren't a

Christian, and now you stop pretending. He says, his response is, but I was a believer.

I did believe that Jesus was who he said he was. The difference, I think there, and I'll let

Matt answer after, it's not that you believe that Jesus was who he said he was. Jesus was not your ultimate authority.

God and his word were not your ultimate authority, and therefore, because if he was, then you'd still be believing.

The fact that you don't believe means he wasn't your ultimate authority. Yeah, and since God grants that we believe,

Philippians 129, he works faith in us, John 6, 28, 29, causes us to be born again, 1 Peter 1, 3.

We're born again not of our own will, John 1, 13. Therefore, if you're really born again, it was the work of God.

If you're really believing, it was the work of God, and since you no longer believe, then it was not God's work in you by which you had believed it was your own.

It was something else. So, you know, biblically speaking, if you say you're a Calvinist, you should know this, and therefore, the problem is that you were never saved to begin with.

I was muted there. So, okay, so he's saying his response, and this is why it would be much better if you came in here,

Jay, if you go to ApologeticsLive .com, the link is there, but he says this is no true

Scotsman fallacy at its finest. Hold on, let me jump on that. I quoted the references.

I quoted the scripture. This is the Christian worldview thing you're asking about. It's Christianity you're asking about.

God grants that we believe, Philippians 129. You cannot come to me, Jesus says, unless it's been granted to you from the

Father, John 6, 65. It says in 1 Peter 1, 3, we are caused to be born again.

As many as had been appointed to eternal life believed, Acts 13, 48. He grants repentance, 2

Timothy 2, 25. I'm quoting you the references, and you can go check them out, and you can go see. This is what the scriptures teach.

So, if someone is truly born again, they're born again because of the will of God, not because of the will of man, John 1, 13.

So, there's no fallacy here. It's simply what the scriptures teach, and if the fact, if you're really a believer, then what you're saying, according to the scriptures, is that God gave you that act of believing, and then he took it back.

Now, it also says in John 6, 37 -40, Jesus says, all that the Father gives me will come to me, and all that come to me

I certainly will not cast out. For this is the will of the Father who sent me, that all who believe in the Son will have everlasting life, and I will raise them up on the last day.

So, what he's saying here is he cannot fail to do the will of the Father, and that a certain group called the all was given to the

Son, and that they will come to him, and they will believe in him, and he cannot lose any, but if you are outside, and you say you are in, but then you're outside, that means you're lost, but Jesus can't lose any.

Inside the Christian worldview, it's impossible for you to have been lost if you truly were saved, and since you were, you're outside the camp of Christ, just as Eli said in John 8, 24, unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins, so you deny who

Christ is. You don't even know who God really is, so you deny his truth, and who he exists, and you go to Exodus 20, 1 through 4, so therefore it's not possible from the

Christian worldview that you were truly born again, that God actually gave you the faith, that God actually granted you that repentance, and that he actually called you and came to Christ, because that's only possible if the foundations of the world you've been called elected for that,

Ephesians 1, 4, and 5, and appointed eternal life to have by God's great grace, Acts 13, 48, so the fact that you're outside of that simply says you never were born again to begin with.

You can go to 2 Corinthians 10, 7, which talks about true repentance and false repentance, and false repentance leads to damnation, leads to judgment, and so you have a false repentance.

The fact is you did not trust in Jesus, you were trusting in something else other than Christ, and the reason you did not trust in Christ is because God did not grant that you trusted in Christ.

You did not believe in a true and living God because God did not grant that you believe in the true and living God, otherwise you'd still be in because God does not give back what he grants to you in that belief thing, because he would give you to the

Father for redemption, and Christ can't lose you, so therefore it's not possible biblically from the

Christian perspective that you are born again, you were a false convert. This is not pointing a finger and yelling at you, it's just saying you're a false convert.

Do you want the real gospel? Do you want to know what the real truth is? What you've done is you've run from that gospel.

You have submitted the word of God to your reasoning, to your feelings, to your ideology, and this is why you're lost, and this is why you're outside the camp of Christ.

God has let you have what you desired. There's a false convert situation here from the very beginning, and that's what the issue is.

And I think one of the things for J. Heriot to realize is, I know you think you once believed, but and to argue, oh, it's a no true

Scotsman fallacy, people throw that out without really understanding what that is. No true

Scotsman fallacy is when you try to say, when there is no objective standard to something.

There is a way to know who a true Scotsman is, if they were born in if they have citizenship in Scotland, right?

But the argument is that, well, the way they word it is they may be a Scotsman, but they're no true Scotsman.

So, in other words, we set up a way of defining what a true Scotsman is. Well, there is a definition of what a true

Christian is, and it's provided in the scriptures. And therefore, that's why Matt gives you the scriptures, because that defines what it is.

So, there is a true definition for that. So, it doesn't fit the no true Scotsman fallacy, because it's not an arbitrary standard.

It's an objective standard that you can examine. So, that's one of the things with the no true Scotsman fallacy, is it has to be an objective versus subjective standard.

Matt, Eli, and I gave you an objective standard. We're giving you God's word. That's the difference.

So, it doesn't fit the new true Scotsman fallacy. And as I think with what

Matt was saying, if you were a Christian, then God changed your heart.

This is what scripture says. So, therefore, your ultimate authority is God and his word. For you to be convinced otherwise would mean that you never had

God and his word as your ultimate authority. You had yourself as your authority. And the hardest thing for people is to say, well,

I know what I used to believe. But if what you used to believe, you thought you were a Calvinist, but the scripture says you weren't.

Not only were you not a Christian, you weren't a Calvinist either. So, what scripture would say is you weren't a

Christian. So, what you think of Christianity, you either had a head knowledge and that was it, or you had a misinterpretation of Christianity and you were believing a falsehood.

But either way, what you believed was not in Christ. All right. So, I'm going to bring

Andrew in. He had a question for us from down under. Yeah.

Hey, Matt. Hey. I was going to say, how do we know that people are putting up an act?

That's easy. It's easy. You buy a ticket, you go sit in a chair and you watch a play and they're putting on an act.

Yeah. Okay. That's one way. So, but how do you mean, you mean the contact

Christianity and true converts? I guess, how would you be spot if somebody was putting up an act and would you have the right to be able to say that person was putting up an act?

Yes. If you know for a fact or within reasonableness that they are lying. So, you know, let's say you meet an individual who says he goes, let's say he goes to church and you meet him in church and you've made them there three, four, five, six weeks in a row and you guys are hitting it off and you go out to lunch, you know, after church one day and he kind of leans over.

He trusts you. He goes, look, man, I got to tell you about the adultery I'm in and I got stock in a porn place and it is awesome, man.

And I'm making a lot of money. In fact, I'm putting some money behind a porn thing. What do you think? You go, what?

That's so he's putting on. Now he, the thing about putting an act on means that they are purposely being deceptive in that sense, but we could have someone who doesn't know that they're being wrong.

He may, you know, that such a situation it's conceivable that such an individual could believe that they're right, that things are going okay and that it's all right to do that.

You say no, no, no. Now that's not an act, but you could also have someone who is pretending because I've heard of guys, they put on a

Christian act in order to get girls at church. They put on, now that's putting on an act. So how do you find out?

Well, you hang around with them. You start looking, you start listening, you start comparing the profession with the action and that's how you determine.

Either that or you buy a ticket and see, you know. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Now, you know, one of the things that we end up seeing, he in, you know, staying in the context here,

I gotta find where he posted that. But this is so typical that we see from people.

He says, these are assertions. I'm telling you what I believed. You are just calling me a liar.

No. No, God's calling you a liar, not us. He's self -deceived. Now there's a difference between believing something to be true and lying, because you can believe something to be true that's not true.

And that's self -deception. Like Mormons, for example, believe that their belief in God is the correct belief, but they're believing a lie, but they're not liars.

So they are self -deceived. And so I'm just telling you from the Christian worldview, you thought you were a true believer.

I believe, I believe you think you were a true believer, but according to the scriptures, you never were.

That's it. That's the Christian perspective. You don't have to like it, but that's, that's the perspective from scripture, which is why

I quoted those verses and made the case. So if you say, well, you don't accept that, then you're not accepting the

Christian perspective. And since we're talking about the Christian perspective, you either deny what the

Christian perspective is, or you affirm it and realize that you never were a true convert to begin with.

But if you want to say, no, I was a true convert. I don't care what the scriptures say. That's evidence of not being a true convert in the first place, because you aren't believing and submitting to the word of God in the first place.

Yeah. And, you know, I do, I do hope that he, you know, it's a lot easier to have these discussions when, if you can come in and, you know, just the way it's, it's hard to, you know, so if anyone wants to come in, pauljexlive .com.

So Andrew, you had a couple more questions there. Yeah. From stemming from that. So then the scripture tells us directly that we will treat them as non -believer.

Right. What does it mean to treat them as non -believer? How do you treat non -believers? Yeah. That's what I mean. Give them the gospel.

Okay. And so this guy who's an agnostic now, both Eli and I and Andrew are quite capable of politely dismantling the arguments that he would have against Christianity.

We can do that. I can, I can do that very easily. And who's typing and I'm hearing typing sounds.

I think someone's typing like Eli, maybe Eli's typing. And so we're going to release on typing.

And he's just ignoring us. That's right. Cause he's typing away, not listening. He's so concentrated on his typing.

It's so hard to hear. I can barely hear you guys, but that's the minutes.

I'm going to try to sign. I'm so sorry. I'm going to try to sign out getting through my iPad.

And if that doesn't work, I might have to bail. Okay. I'm going to try to jump in one more time.

I do apologize guys. I do want to talk about Unitarianism. My internet's terrible. Let's see if it works on my iPad. Now you're going to go.

Whoa, Andrew, it's bad. Just went bad. Very bad. He said he was going anyway.

Yeah. Wow. I can't understand what

Andrew's saying. Probably a good thing. I was just saying that Eli was leaving and coming back.

Not coming back? No, and coming back. Okay. Is that better?

A little bit, but still bad. So Andrew, you had more questions.

That's better. That was the other one. But then I was going to ask, do we prophesy in the modern day church still?

Like, would we be able to say we prophesied per se as the prophets would have? There's no more prophets, but the gift of prophecy was spoken about in 1

Corinthians 12 and 14. And the Bible says not to lack any charisma while you're waiting for the return of Christ.

So I would say yes. Why does this question always come up? Matt hasn't been here forever.

And then he pops up and then boom, right back in the - I'm sorry. Why is

Eli upside down? Because Eli doesn't know how to hold his phone. Okay. All right.

No, it looks better when you're upside down, really. It's okay. Okay. Here we go. But that's the answer

I wanted. There we go. That's better. If you believe in the continuation of the charismatic gifts, yes.

If you don't, then no. Yeah. I do. And since John Knox practiced it,

I have no problem with it. Not everything he did was good, but let me ask you this. And since I prophesied, I've done it.

Yeah. I doubt it. No. No, I did. I did. I've told people before what happened, very detailed, and it came to pass.

Well, I'd love to hear that story. It's a really easy story. Real quick, what happened?

And there's an easy answer. I was taking someone home from a Bible study. All right.

So I was taking her home because she needed a ride home and she needed something. Oh, I got a book at my house, my apartment.

Let's go over. Her name was Tony. And so I could still see her. She was short.

I could still see her standing there. And she said she's going to go to Australia in two weeks in order to do mission work.

And I said, you're not going to go. I was like, all of a sudden. Seriously, I was just like, oh, really? And it's like, you're not going to go.

You're not going to do your mission. What's going to happen is you're going to stay. And in five months, you're going to meet a guy.

He's going to become your spiritual leader, your spiritual mentor. And in 18 months, you and he are going to have a special bond together.

You could do mission work together. What was that? All right. Two weeks later, she got on a plane.

She went to Australia. She got off the plane, realized she wasn't supposed to be there, got back on the plane and came right home.

She did not do her mission. In five months, she met a guy and he became her spiritual mentor.

In 18 months, they'd gotten married and they went to England together and did a mission. And I can tell you where I was sitting and everything and placed the whole bit when she came to me and said, everything you prophesied came to pass.

Well, the thing is, the experiences. So let me ask you this,

Matt. I do want to ask you sort of along the lines with this, because this is a question I got asked.

And I'd be actually curious of your perspective. So this question was coming from a reformed charismatic, someone like yourself that is reformed.

So they're not the whackadoo, charismatics, word of faith type folks, right?

A reformed guy who believes in the charismatic gifts. Now he, now this is the thing that I'm not,

I want to actually sit down and talk to him because in greater length, because he actually does hold that the passage in 1

Corinthians 13 is referring to the canon. And so here's the difference though.

He's saying that he believes in the gifts because there's apostles today.

Now here's how he's saying this. And I think I know where the problems are, but I'm curious to see if what your thoughts are.

He's saying there's apostles today because apostles would basically do what pastors are doing.

So he was saying that there's capital A apostles and lowercase a apostles, but there's apostles today who actually preach.

There's seven kinds of apostles in the Bible. A lot of people don't know that apostles who are among the 12.

Paul was an apostle because he wasn't among the 12 and he was commissioned specifically and differently than the others.

Barnabas was an apostle, performed no miracles, wrote no scripture. Jesus is called an apostle in Hebrews 3 .1.

They're apostles in the sense of simply being sent because the Greek word apostella means sent. It could be possible that anyone was involved with Christ's ministry before his death and saw him after his resurrection could be referred to as an apostle,

Acts 1 .21 -22. And there are false apostles, 2 Corinthians 11 .13.

So there's seven kinds that I found in scripture by looking through that. So it depends on what you mean by apostle.

Is he defining apostle biblically? In 1 Corinthians 9 .1, Paul defends his apostleship by saying, have

I not seen the risen Lord? Well, if he's seen the risen Lord, what he's saying is that he is an apostle in that sense.

Well, is that the kind of apostle that the guy's talking about? Is he going to prophesy? Well, the issue of prophecy seems to be among the apostles who knew

Christ specifically. So if we were to say that someone who had seen the risen Lord was qualified as an apostle, then what do we do if Jesus appears to somebody and appears to them today?

And I met somebody in Jerusalem who said that happened to him and I believe him. Because he was a

Jew, got converted on the spot to Christianity when he said Jesus himself appeared to him as a young man.

And when he looked into Jesus' eyes, he said he knew he was God. Just like that.

I can't deny that that's legitimate, okay? Unless it's just something he's saying, but he convinced me.

You know, but at any rate, so we have different issues of what an apostle is and how we're going to define apostolic stuff.

So I don't believe that 1 Corinthians 13, 8 -12 is about the canon. I don't think it makes any sense.

Yeah. But, you know, Well, I do. But I know, I think, I thought you'd come to say, so you and I are on the same page.

I actually think it's a category error because he's using apostles, meaning sent ones, people who are preaching.

And yeah, that is used that way. But then to say, well, the gifts continue as long as the apostles continue.

But those are different apostles. So I don't, I think there's, that he's, he's, it's either a category error or a fallacy of equivocation because he's using the word apostle two different ways.

Right. You got to be careful. You always define your terms. In all of apologetics, if you want to know the most powerful thing in all apologetics, number one, define your terms.

Yeah, I think you, you were dealing with that on your radio show, Matt's like live just this week. You had someone and, and you're just like, it was, you're just like, you have to define the terms first.

Define your terms, define your terms, define your terms. And then you can talk about transcendentals. You can talk about everything.

You wanted to talk about, I forget what now you said earlier, Unitarianism. Unitarianism, yeah.

All right. So, so like I said, reading through this book and the file,

I had to close it. Let me open it. And the necessity of God's existence, just my mankind.

Not that one. One in many issue. Nope. Hey, what are you doing?

I'll pet you. God's offensive, God's Unitarian nature. Which cat is that? This is

Luther. Because Andrew thought it was Kittler and it isn't.

Now Kittler is, I can go get Kittler and show you Kittler to you guys if you want. Kittler looks like Hitler.

You want to explain why we call your cat Kittler? He has a little mustache and a hair part. And when he walks, he goes, meow, meow, meow.

So we call him Kittler. All right, check this out. Are you reading through the

Trinity and the Vindication of Christian Paradox? Yes. Okay. And I find this chapter nine to be extremely confusing.

And I'm not convinced on his arguments at all in the

Trinitarian sense. Yet, I'm not saying he's wrong. I'm just saying it's not making sense. And as Matt Yester, he said he had to go through it like eight times.

And then he went through it with somebody else. And I'm going, okay, which is fine.

You know, sometimes some of these concepts are really difficult. So I'm trying to figure things out. But in this,

I was taking some notes and it occurred to me about something. So here's this. And this is still very rough, all right?

So let's assume a Unitarian God, one person. If that's the case, then the one person exists eternally.

But if that's the case, there could be no eternal fellowship. Because there's no fellowship with anybody or anything else.

It's just him. But that would mean that his existence cannot include by nature fellowship.

With me so far? What do you mean? So his existence cannot by, say that part again?

His existence cannot include the issue of relationship. His, you mean like in his essence?

Within his nature, there is no relationship within his nature. Relationship would be contingent upon him creating someone to stand in relation with.

Right. Now, someone might call that an emergent property. But they would say an accidental property.

So you have necessary properties and accidentals. Right. Which are only true in virtue of some other contingent.

Right. And so we'd have an accidental quality here on the contingent issue of creating something else, by which then we have a relationship between one and two things.

All right? So that would then mean, or here's the question.

If he were to create something, we have now an accidental property. So if we create something and that accidental property is now relationship, the question then is, is that a change?

Well, I don't know the right way to ask this. Does this then imply that there's an insufficiency in the

Unitarian concept of God? Because there is no quality of fellowship within his nature.

That in order to obtain that fellowship or relationship, it has to exist outside of his own nature.

Can you, you skipped out a little bit. You're, the sound quality, by the way, is much better. I could hear almost everything. But that, can you just ask the question in a very succinct, very succinct way?

Right. This is hard to articulate. I know. It's hard to get the wording just right. Because I'll say it, you'll ask me to repeat it.

And I'll say it three different ways, you know, because, and I'm trying to get this down right, because I think there's something here.

Okay. So the fellowship would then be a new quality within the being.

Now we call it an accidental. All right. But it was not an eternal quality or a part of God of this

Unitarian being's essence. Right. So once we have fellowship, the question then becomes, the

Unitarian being creates some sentient being and now has fellowship.

At that moment, what I'm asking or thinking about is the issue of, the

Unitarian being creates some sentient being. Someone said something?

No, that was you. You kind of had a double voiceover. Yeah. It didn't sound like me though.

I heard myself. It doesn't sound like me at all. It was distorted. It was weird. So then if it's a new, if we say it's a new quality, then would that imply that he was incomplete?

Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. But it almost, and I'm trying to, because this is the first time

I'm really hearing this, so, but it sounds like it's - First time I'm saying it. Yeah. It sounds like you're trying to say somehow

God is gaining an attribute almost of fellowship? Well, I'm not sure because I'm wondering,

I'm thinking, because there's, oh, I can think of some counters to this, but I'm working with this one thing. Um, if it's a new quality, or is it a new quality?

If something that's accidental, which we would call or imply is an emergent quality, that only exists in relationship to something else, then is a

Unitarian being incomplete? Uh, I don't think it'd be incomplete, uh, because it's not that he, he doesn't need that relation.

Correct. It just means that if he purposed to have that relation, he would have to then create another, another sentient being in which he could stand in relation.

I actually thought you were going to go, go the route that if God was Unitarian, and that the relationship, the characteristic of relationship is not essential to him, that he is, uh, contingent upon something else existing in order to have that relationship, relationship.

Once he creates that relationship, is there some sort of intrinsic change within the nature of God? That's where I thought you were going.

Well, I was going to hint towards that in a little bit in my notes, because is there a, uh, uh, an alteration in his essence?

Because the essence emanate, or properties emanate out of the essence. So this issue of the properties of fellowship would affect the, would be affected by the nature of the essence.

If properties exist, that no longer existed before in the issue of fellowship, this is where I'm getting into the issue of, is that related to his essence and his property or an emergent quality.

One attribute of God we have to take into play here is that Unitarian God, not the

Trinitarian one. Yeah. Is immutability, right? So this being was immutable, right?

Correct. Because if, if God's immutable, then no, I mean, that's where I'm, I'm looking at listening to saying, this is the problem that is rubbing up against his immutability, right?

Because he's gaining, it's almost sounds like he's gaining an attribute. He's not getting an attribute.

He is standing in a different relationship to something else. Right. Change is relational. It's not intrinsic.

Right. That's what I would say the same thing. I would say the same thing, but there's a, there's a gotta be a reason.

Cause in this issue that we're talking about here, the necessity of God being Trinitarian. The necessity of God being

Trinitarian is connected to a bunch of things. But if you're getting back to the one in the many, without getting too complicated, the one in the many is how we just express it.

But it's actually also related to knowledge and intelligibility. Because without the, without a metaphysical context that grounds the one in the many, you don't have a metaphysical context that can ground language, law, and things like that.

Like, for example, connecting a universal concept that connect specific particulars.

You need to have both a one and the many as a metaphysical ultimate.

So, so if there's only, so if there's only a Unitarian God, that actually will itself impinge upon the, the idea of knowledge.

That such a view could actually reduce to skepticism, which is part of the transcendental argument for the Triune God. That the proof for the truth of the

Triune God is that if you were not true, you couldn't prove anything. And someone says, well, what about this Unitarian God?

The Unitarian God runs into the problem that his, his or its being does not ground both plurality and unity.

And so you still have this idea of what is your ultimate. What if the plurality was a transcendental quality of the

Unitarian mind? It is knowledge -based. What if the plurality was a transcendental quality in the sense that the

Unitarian God knows all potentialities and that potentiality of transcendental relationship is a possibility?

No, I see, see, when you say it's, it's in, it's a quality of his mind. Remember a

God is without a body. And so he is by essence, a mind. So he would have to be, if that was the case, it would be grounded in his nature, not just his mind.

He doesn't have a body with a mind who has this one in the many grounding. He is a disembodied mind.

I've seen some 50s movies, 1950s movies that were like that. Bad joke.

We're going to talk about this off the air on, on the phone sometime. Here's a question. I think he just froze.

I don't know if he lies. Yeah, he froze. But here's a question. I'm still, I'm running through all this thinking about this.

I mean, I'm not saying everything I know or suspect or counters and things like that. But here's a question.

Is relationship, here's a question. Is relationship a necessary aspect of personhood?

Is relationship a necessary aspect of personhood? I want to,

I want to jump out on a limb and I want to say, I want to say, oh,

I was going to say something that I don't know if I want to say. Well, wait a minute. Well, wait a minute.

As a triune, as a triune, as a trinitarian, I would have to say yes. Because, because you're almost asking in an indirect way, is it possible for God to be a person without standing in relation with the other persons within the

Trinity? I would say that in order for there to be an unnecessary precondition for knowledge, the ultimate grounding of reality must ground both the one and the many, which are prerequisites to even make sense out of particulars and universals.

So in an indirect way, to be consistent with the Christian worldview, I would have to say yes, because you're dealing with the very nature of God.

And the Christian worldview. I grant the possibility. But why, hold on. But why would that be necessary?

I don't, I don't, I, I'm not, I'm just playing devil's advocate because I, or because I don't, I don't think it must be necessary.

I don't think there's anything to it that is intrinsic to it being necessary. And I think it's a case of causality, right?

It just, we see this, that doesn't mean that that's the cause. There's no scripture that I'm trying to think of a scripture

I could turn to on it. And I. Well, Andrew, God is necessarily

Trinitarian. Yes. Why? That's what I'm trying to discern as another topic.

Why is he necessarily Trinitarian? That's not a hard question to answer because when you say why is

God priune, the answer to that can't go any deeper than the brute factuality that God, that's just the way

God is. We say, why is God all knowing? Well, because it's his nature to be all knowing. You can't, you can't appeal to some external fundamental.

That's more primary than the nature of God himself. God. Right. But I would say, I would say that God, God's revelation of himself and the transcendental nature of the law, laws of logic and all that, and morality reveal the necessity of his essence is not necessary because of some external thing, but this is necessity of his essence.

And I'm trying, that's what I've been thinking about a lot lately. I'm saying the metaphysical reality of the triune God must be true in order for even revelation to have intelligibility.

Since revelation itself presupposes a grounding for the one in the many, which is connected to knowledge, the knowledge itself.

But Eli, your argument, your argument you're making is because God is relational. By nature, by necessity.

Yeah, but Trinitarian, I'm looking at a Unitarian base to find problems with Unitarianism. I have a reason for going through all this.

Go ahead, Andrew. I'm sorry. Keep going. I'm going to get Kittler. So here's the thing though, because this is going to be the challenge is what makes it necessary.

The fact that he is relational doesn't mean that it's necessary to be relational.

And that's where I'm pushing. I would disagree. You're veering off the transcendental necessity of the triunity of God.

If it's not necessary, then you're actually placing contingency over the necessity of the triune

God, which he's the prerequisite for even our conversation, because you need the grounding for the one in the many, which actually accounts for the fact that we're

I'm not trying to justify him through contingency, but through revelation, necessity by his own essence.

I'm trying to find that connection. There is a connection though, because the revelation in order for revelation or anything to make sense, you still need a metaphysical grounding for the one in the many.

Oh, my goodness. And Matt is putting

Kittler up. Kittler is his cat that has a mustache like Hitler.

See the hair part? The parted hair. And if you're watching or listening to the podcast, you're going to have to watch the video.

Hold on. Watch this. Wait. I'll show you something. You got to see this. Okay. I know this is so off, but look.

Oh, I got to do this. Hold on. There we go. Come on.

This is great for podcasting. Oh, yeah. Now, this is Kittler right here.

And I do this to him. We're just seeing his tail. He actually starts purring.

And I hit him hard like this. Someone's going to call PETA and pet abuse.

Yeah. He's the weirdest cat. You smack him, smack him, smack him. And he starts playing the piano and everything.

He loves it. So that was Kittler. So now you guys know who's Kittler. You destroyed my entire train of thought.

I know. I know. I know. The problem of the one in the many is such an abstract and difficult idea to discuss.

And that just threw me off. What I'm trying to do is find out a way to get into the one many issue and the refutation of Unitarianism as an intrinsically natural problem.

Because then we can deal with the issues of Islam, which is one of the things I want to be able to do later. And so I'm trying to get into showing this, the problem of a

Unitarian being. But it has to be logical necessity. And it has to be clear. We can't get into some esoteric thing.

It's so off where I have to teach people 18 concepts before they can understand something. Right. But when you said something that it was an issue of revelation, you're now dealing with epistemology.

What I'm saying is that the metaphysical reality of the tribe of God is a necessary transcendental connection for the intelligibility of even revelation.

So that is connected to the fact that God is by necessity tri -personal.

He must be in order for there to be intelligibility. But why must he be?

Matt is stepping in your worldview. Because he needs a metaphysical grounding for the one and the many. We'll have to talk about this.

Okay. Yeah. But I think the thing is Matt's trying to step into their worldview first and you keep going back to yours.

Oh, then maybe I'm misunderstanding what he's asking. He's asking. I thought he was asking.

Because I do understand the, you have to be careful to do an external, you know, but there's a difference between external and internal critique.

So maybe that I'm misunderstanding what he's asking. From in the Christian worldview, since I ground the necessity of knowledge in the ontological and metaphysical tri -personal

God, then I could never grant that he's not that way. And we can still have a rational conversation.

I agree. Unitarian does not presuppose a tri -unity.

But then that is to his detriment since when you deny the tri -unity, you've actually removed

God as an ontological grounding for the one and the many. And so you can ground the one. Right.

But you don't know what I'm doing. For example, in Mormonism, you have a God who is exalted by a

God, exalted by a God, by God, by God. You have an infinite regression of causes. Logically, that's impossible.

Why is it impossible? And then we can give the reasons. Okay. Well, there are other problems with that as well. Yeah. If Mormonism is true, ultimate reality is actually impersonal.

Well, hold on, hold on. I'm just trying to illustrate. That's all. Okay. I'm not jumping into Mormonism, but Mormonism as an illustration of a problem with a regression of gods, you can't have that.

And the logic is because you cannot have an infinite set of causes because there is no initial cause.

And if there's no initial cause, you can't have a second or a third or fourth or any others. And it goes back an infinite amount of time.

And you can't cross an infinite amount of time to get to now. So it's just impossible. Real simple.

Now, Unitarianism can't work because real simple. That's what I'm trying to get to.

You see, because in Mormonism, the argument I'm showing here goes, yeah, well, you know, we presuppose a

Trinitarian view. But what I'll do is talk to a Mormon and go, this is why your position doesn't work.

I gotcha. I got Unitarian. This is why your position doesn't work. So then if I were you,

I wouldn't use the one in the many to demonstrate that. There are other ways transcendentally to demonstrate that in a more easier fashion.

And by way of internal critique, when you use a transcendental argument, yes, God is the metaphysical grounding for the one in the many.

But you don't always have to apply the transcendental critique by appealing to that because that is abstract.

You can use more simpler examples. Why is a Unitarian being self -refuting? Well, when you're getting down to the essence, again, you're looking for a quick explanation.

I would say in this situation, if you're going to discuss the one in the many, there is no simple explanation.

You're going to have to sit down and say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Why is a Unitarian being not possible?

Because it does not ground the one in the many, and it actually would reduce to an impossibility of knowledge acquisition.

Okay, let's go to the knowledge one. Okay, you can't know anything. Okay, so no ability, knowledge.

All right. No ability, yep. All right, so let's do this. It's like the argument that I say with the materialists.

If you're a materialist, your brain, it works on chemical reactions. You cannot know if your materialism is true.

Therefore, it's self -refuting. Okay, simple. All right, so let's go with this one then. The knowledge problem.

All right, premise one. The Unitarian God and the issue of knowledge.

Now, why is that a problem? Why would you say that's a problem? Now, you said talk about the one in the many, which means now we've got to introduce the concept of the one in the many and explain it in such a way that it's understandable.

Right, right. Well, that would be the task of the preceptor who wants to use that. But let's define our terms, as we said in the beginning.

When you're saying what's the problem with the Unitarian God, that's still an ambiguous notion. What God are we talking about?

If we don't define the God, then I can't tell you why it's inadequate. Let's do the Muslim God, for example.

Okay, good. The Muslim God, who is immutable, eternal, and possesses a seate, does not grow in wisdom or knowledge.

He's like a Trinitarian God, he's just not Trinity. Okay, and so when we do an internal critique, that is connected to the worldview system of Islam, correct?

Right. So there's a logical reason why the Unitarian view, the

Islamic Unitarian view, or I would say any Unitarian view, is logically impossible.

Say that part again. That part again.

Well, your voice skipped here. It's a technology, bro. It's okay, it's okay.

You're being so suspicious. I really don't want to hear it. No, no, no. I was laughing because you said, say that again. It's a matter of figuring if he can say it exactly the same way again.

That's the problem. Okay, so the issue of the grounding of knowledge, it's a grounding of knowledge problem, okay?

Now, why is it a grounding of knowledge problem? Well, the very nature of the Muslim God is, unlike the

Christian God, he is allowed to deceive. I totally agree.

Surah 4, 157, Surah 354. I was just talking about that last night, or two nights ago, and today.

But I want to go a different way. I know, we could go a different way, but that would cancel out knowledge on the

Muslim conception, which we just defined. Right, you can't know anything, right. And that's it. So, if you want it an easy way, we don't have to jump into the one and the many.

The very nature of that Unitarian God is already self -refuting. So, yeah, I totally agree.

I totally agree. Okay. I got that. That's easy. I use that all the time. Well, you want it easy. You're looking to go to this abstract, very difficult concept, and trying to boil it down.

And that's really difficult. Yes, I am. Well, let's do it. All right, let's try, let's try. Come on.

Okay, so you have the Unitarian God. Is this Unitarian God the grounding of logic?

Yeah. Okay. So, now, if he's the grounding of logic, he must be consistent, right?

Yes. And his nature must be consistent with the ability to ground something like logic, correct?

Right. And does logic not presuppose the coherency of a universal principle with particulars?

Now, let's talk about that. Coherence of universal principle with particulars. Okay, what do you want to talk about?

Is there a direct? Yeah, we just said it. We just said the universal principle with particulars, okay? Okay. Okay.

So, if in order to ground logic, you must also be able to ground universals and particulars, then that needs to be something that's part of the metaphysical essence of that being.

Well, let's break it down a little bit. Okay, let's say a table, all right? A universal... You're breaking up a little bit.

Table. La Mesa. Table. Table? Table. Okay.

A table, all right. So, we have the universal concept of table, and we have particular instances of tables.

Okay. All right. So, that's the one in the many.

This is the very simplistic form of that, okay? So, what we'll have here are the transcendentals that are behind the idea of the particulars that we encounter.

Okay. So, we encounter particulars, but we recognize those particulars because of the transcendental necessity which resides in God's mind.

Right. Okay. Now, here's the question. Why can't a

Unitarian being be the necessary grounding for that sense? Which Unitarian being?

This is the Muslim one, but forget for now. Forget the idea that he's a deceiver.

No, you can't, and that's the point. J -Dub God. Jehovah's Witness God. I want you to trust me. I know what

I'm doing. I don't think you do. I know. I know. I don't think you do. You're... Yes. If you don't define the

God, then we're actually taking the universal concept... You don't understand what I'm doing. ...independent of a web, and that's the way you refute it.

You need to show there's inconsistencies within the web. If we don't define, you can't just say a Unitarian God in general, because then now you're talking about a neutral concept of the divine.

Okay, I got you. Okay. I'm working on a certain logical point. Okay. A single logical point, and we're going to...

Logical point, once you get that down, of course, it has to exist in a parameter of other things.

But what I'll do is I always look at one point, and we're going to focus on that. Not forgetting, ultimately, but in a certain context.

But that's part of the reputation, Matt. It's these other things that's part of why... The God of Islam is self -refuting because it has historical errors in the

Qur 'an as well, because it's supposed to be true, and there's satanic verses that were put in and taken out. Plus, in Surah 354, he's a deceiver.

And in Surah 4, 157, he creates someone, makes them look like Jesus. Yeah, I got all that. I know, but here's what you're doing.

You're trying to isolate, and you're saying with your mouth... Eli, let's just say that there's a

Unitarian being who's immutable, eternal, and has a deity, all right?

And is non -Trinitarian, non -binarian. That's it. Okay? This is an exercise.

So how does a being like that ground universals and particulars? If we're going to say that...

Here's a question I have. That if we're going to say only the Trinitarian God can ground that, okay, then

I'm going to say, is the same reason moved over to a Unitarian position valid? Now, you can hear me out.

Because if we're to say that the true living God, the reason we know that there's universals and particulars is because of a transcendental necessity that he has in the idea of a table.

God knows all tables, all forms of tables, and he's the one who transcendentally has revealed what table is out of his mind.

We experience, because we're in the image of God, we experience particulars of tables. Now, the issue here is that the transcendental is by nature an abstraction.

Because a tableness, the quality of that, is something that occurs here. And we recognize particulars.

We wouldn't say that an abstraction is embedded into a physical object like a table. Because then we would have a conflation of essence and we have ontological problems.

So what we're saying here is that the tableness resides in the mind of God. So what we're saying is the transcendental is by nature an abstraction.

Does the abstraction necessitate a Trinitarian being, or can it be possible in a single mind being, since it's simply an abstraction?

No. It would have to be in a triune mind, because you have to have an ontological grounding for the one and the many, which even differentiates...

But that could be in the Unitarian mind, the transcendental of one, and he can imagine and know the potentials of all others.

Right. Now, again, I know you don't think it's a problem, but I think it's a problem in that you still aren't...

We're not specific enough in regards to this Unitarian God. You have to be coming from a worldview to posit a specific

Unitarian God. Otherwise, you have the Christian worldview bubble here, you have the Muslim bubble here, and then we're floating somewhere in the middle talking about some

Unitarian God. There's no necessary connection in which we can show a conflict. You see, you couldn't even know that you experience a table if Islam is true.

Since, for all you know, we could be living... Okay, give me the why. I'm sorry? Aside from the issue of his deception, okay?

You can't say that, because that's wrapped up in the fact... Okay, I already said, I already said, posit a God that is

Unitarian, immutable, possesses a seed. You need to couch that in a worldview, because I don't believe there's a neutral concept of Unitarian independent of a worldview system.

Your question almost implies the assumption that we can talk about this in a neutral fashion.

And even though you're acknowledging that there are these outside connectors, we're not allowed to talk about them for the sake of the example.

But those are the very elements that refute the fact that God is a deceiver. Everything we can talk about, well, how do we make sense of a table?

How do you know what a table is? For all you know, that can just be part of the deception. And that's always going to be linked to the critique, if that makes sense.

I got you. I don't have a problem with that. Okay. What I'm trying to do is...

Oh, let's go to the Christadelphian God. All right.

I'm not very familiar with Christadelphianism, but go ahead. I'll explain. Christadelphian God is immutable, eternal, has a seity, does not change in his knowledge base, but is completely

Unitarian. All right. This is Christadelphianism. Okay.

So we have a worldview. There are no false prophecies in the Unitarian position, in the

Christadelphian position. There are no false prophecies. How do we know about...

What is the source of knowledge of the Christadelphian God? How do we know about the

Christadelphian God? So you're telling me about... I don't know this position. So if someone were to say,

Hey, look, I believe in this God, this God, this God. The part of the internal critique is for the person to lay out their position.

How do they know about this God? Well, why is it... Let me ask you, Eli. Why is it that the

Mormon God and infinite regression thing that can't work? Say again? Why is it the infinite regression idea of the

Mormon God can't work? What's the logical problem with it? There are logical problems with it. What's the logical...

Give me one. One logical problem with an infinite regression of causes of God's become a

God, all go back infinitely. What's the one logical problem? A logical problem.

When we get back after the unfreezing... Okay, there you go. Now you're unfrozen. So what's the logical problem?

With an actual infinite. You can't have an actual infinite number of things out there. You have mathematical and logical problems.

So what you just did was you said the logical problem in that is the problem an actual infinite can't exist.

Gotcha. The Unitarian God. What's the logical problem why it can't exist?

Because it's like saying, because an actual infinite can't exist. What you're doing in the Mormon one is you're actually identifying the logical problem.

But when I ask you about the Unitarian one, I'm saying, let's do the same thing. Let's find a logical problem with it.

And you say, we can't do that. But you just did it with Mormonism. No, no, no, no, no. Here's the thing. When you...

Yes, yes, yes, yes. When you tell me about a position I know nothing about, I can't identify a logical issue if I don't know enough about the position, unless the logical issue is explicit right off the bat.

Like, say something like an infinite regression of God. That's an easy one. But there you go. But it's a logical issue.

The infinite regression is a logical problem. Yes, but... You and I would agree that we can ultimately ground why it's a logical problem only with the revelation of Scripture and the

Unitarian God. I would agree. But what we can do is say it's a logical problem. Here's why. Now, we're not telling the opponent, so to speak, the ultimate issue of the grounding of the logic that we're using anyway.

What we're talking about is, here's the... I want you to understand this. You can't have an infinite regression. They go, oh, I get that.

Unitarianism. You can't have a Unitarian God. This is why. Oh, I get that. That's what

I'm looking for. Right. But it's not as quick as something like what you just said in regard...

I know it's not. That's right. So that's what I'm saying. So let's go. Now, let's continue. We can do this.

I know, but... From that perspective. That's why I'm asking the question that if the contradiction is not as explicit, you ask questions so that you get a fuller understanding, and then you engage in internal critique.

You can't engage in internal critique if a person hasn't laid out their worldview. I understand. Let's go back to the knowledge thing.

Why is it a Unitarian God can't ground knowledge? Well, because knowledge presupposes logic, and logic requires a metaphysical grounding for the one and the many.

I know. And you can't... A Unitarian God can't... Why can't a Unitarian God not ground the one -many issue?

Because you have... Within a Unitarian God, you need... In order to ground the one and the many issue, both unity and plurality need to be equally fundamental.

Within a Unitarian God, you do not have equal ultimacy between the one and the many within his very nature.

Equal ultimacy has to do with predestination of the damned and the saved. No, that language can be applied to predestination. But when we say

God is triune, we would say that plurality and unity are equally ultimate in God.

I'm not trying to use it in predestination. Okay, that's fine. But you still have not granted or not proven...

Connect the dots. Why? You're just saying they can't do it. Why can't... Oh, and I did explain why.

Because you need a one and the many grounding, and a Unitarian God, by definition, by his very essence, can't ground... Why can't he?

Because if one and many, the concept of one and many, maybe I'm not getting what one and many really is, but what

I've seen it, and I've studied it, I've seen what people say. This is why I'm having a problem. So Matt Yeser and I are talking.

We're having a problem. I'm going through this book. I don't think the definitions are nearly sufficient. I don't think it's problematic.

And so when I think of things, I think of things very, very particularly. And so this is what I'm trying to get at. Because I believe that if it could be solved, it becomes a very powerful weapon.

That's what I spend the time on. So, but one and a many, God is, the

Christian God is the one mind that conceives of all ideas of table.

So because he's the author of table, right? The one mind of God, right?

Okay. The one mind of the Unitarian God. See, we'd have to go into whether the very concept of Unitarian God is even coherent.

Because you need - That's what I'm trying to do. Well, I'm telling you that it's not because of the necessity.

Why isn't it? Because the God needs to be, in other words, the one and the many needs to be the metaphysical grounding for the coherency of every other one in the many, where you have tables and concepts.

You need a metaphysical context in which that can be spoken of intelligently. The metaphysical context would have to be the mind of God. Yes, the ontological

Trinity. Now, if you don't have the ontological Trinity, then you have - Okay, I'm there, but I don't see the logical necessity yet.

And that's the thing I'm having a problem in that book. You make statements, I don't see logical necessity.

You know, I believe it, but it's not sufficient. If I'm going to argue this and debate it,

I have to be able to connect the dots. And to be honest, I can't connect the dots yet. Because if I'm going to say in the

Trinitarian mind, God is a single mind who has the, you know, perichorosis.

He has this issue of the Trinitarian nature. Okay, well, he's still one mind, and that's how it's perceived, how

God is a Trinitarian mind. So we have the Unitarian mind. If we're going to say in the one mind of the triune

God, and this gets to be paradoxical, we're talking like this. We're going to say that there is this concept of table.

It only exists because God has authored it, or has known it, or we'll just say authored for now.

For eternal, eternal, eternal, excuse me, for eternity. The triune God has authored it, so it's a product.

Absolutely. Right, it's the product of the triune mind. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Which accounts for particular tables and the universal concept of table.

What's required, what's required for a transcendental? A mind. Say that again, you skipped out.

What's required for a transcendental? A mind. Right. Okay, does it require three minds or one mind?

I would say if you're going to get down to the ultimate reality that is the originator of all things,

I would have to say plurality. So the plurality mind is a necessity in order to have a transcendental.

That's just equivalent of saying that the Trinity is a necessary prerequisite for transcendentals, yes.

Okay, why is it a triune mind and a transcendental, a necessity for transcendentals?

Why not a single mind? Because you need a grounding for the one and the many. If you don't have a grounding.

What is it about the Trinitarian mind that grounds the one and the many? And that's different, that's different than a

Unitarian mind. That's an easy one because God's metaphysical essence is both one and many and the

Unitarian God isn't. So he can't ground. If the one and the many is simply a concept in the sense that the one is a transcendental.

It's not just a concept Matt, it reflects the triune God who created reality so that everything.

I'm talking about, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the nature of a transcendental. Okay. The nature of a transcendental is it's abstract.

Right. And it's universal. Right. And you know, it's not dependent on space and time.

So it's not authored by God in that it came into existence. I don't want to say that.

But I'm going to use the word author in that it's concomitant with the eternal nature of God's mind. Right.

That's how I'm going to use the word author in that sense. So, or I should say revealed. That's a better way.

It's revealed in the mind of God. Now I say this, I'm saying the mind, not the minds.

And so if we say in the mind of God, we have a transcendental. Then what we're saying is we have one mind that authors a transcendental.

That reveals a transcendental, which is a product, a necessary aspect of God's existence.

The transcendental, because he knows all things. It's an issue of, it's an epistemological issue related to his ontological lessons.

And so the transcendental nature, which is transcendentals are abstractions. Abstractions require mind. Three minds or one mind?

One mind. Because it's an abstraction. One mind is sufficient for an abstraction. Therefore, we have a transcendental abstraction.

All we need is a single mind. I don't see why, this is where I'm at.

I don't see why there's a logical necessity to say the Trinitarian setup is the only precursor for intelligibility.

If we're going to be using, hear me out. If we're going to be using this issue of logic in order to determine these things by saying then that a transcendental is an abstraction that requires a mind and a

Unitarian is a mind. It could offer a transcendental. We would get back into the same, you said a lot.

So I wanted to stop and then press somewhere. But I kind of forgot where I was going to go with that. Okay, let me go back and say this.

Okay. A transcendental is an abstraction, universal, absolute, immutable abstraction.

Okay. It only occurs in the mind. Okay. Okay. Stop right there. So you said that it requires a mind, the mind of God.

But the mind of God is God himself. Okay. There's not God. He is.

But the nature of that God is that he is both equally and in an ultimate sense, both one and many.

So the very mind of God is the metaphysical context that grounds and unifies particular things and the universal concepts that give coherence to them.

We couldn't even have this conversation without the metaphysical context of the ontological Trinity, because even conversation presupposes a necessity of the grounding of the one and the many.

Now you say, well, why doesn't a Unitarian God, why can't a Unitarian God do that? Because one and many is not equally ultimate within him.

He is just one. Because the very definition of a Unitarian God is that he is one in essence. There is no plurality to him.

And so plurality would actually be a contingent property for him. In order for there to be plurality within Unitarianism, he'd have to create it.

Okay, we're getting narrowed down to the problem here. The definition, it's okay.

It's great. The one and the many versus transcendence. These are the things that have to be defined now.

What do you mean by that, Matt? Because I would say that one and many is transcendent since God is transcendent and God is triune by necessity.

So I would say the one and the many is transcendent and it gives coherency to the one and the many as weak as creatures experience it in human experience.

The one and the many is based on transcendence. It is not transcendent. Because it's based on God.

Because it's based on God. Yes, but God's mind is the transcendent necessity for all transcendence.

All right, say that one more time and try to chew on that. God's mind is the transcendent necessity of all transcendence.

Okay, I would just say he grounds all transcendent. He's a transcendent being. He's the ontological grounding for those things.

Well, he's a transcendent necessity for all other transcendence. And when you say he,

I would say you're referring to a triune, the one who's metaphysically both equally one and many.

So that... Well, hold on. You're jumping ahead. Okay, this is what

Matt Yeser does. I'm like, whoa, back the truck off. Well, you talk pretty fast, too.

So we go a little early here. So all right. So I say that God is a transcendent necessity of all transcendentals,

I should say. Okay, and what I mean by that is that...

I had to define a little bit because a transcendental... What is a transcendental, first of all? Okay, because we're thinking past each other.

A transcendental is an abstraction.

That has universal truth, universal immutable truth.

Okay, right? We could work on that. Okay, such as table as a transcendent abstraction.

Okay, maybe there's a better word. And so God would know what a transcendental issue is of a table.

And he would also know particulars of table, right? Okay, let me write this down.

Transcendent nature of table as well as all particulars of table.

All right. Now, this right here simply requires a mind, doesn't it?

A triune mind. And a creature who could understand that truth is a creature that's made in the image of the triune

God. And so we think in those one of the many categories by necessity. Okay, so why is a triune mind the only explanation since all we need is a mind?

Again, that's like saying, how do I know the triune God exists? By a transcendental necessity, by the impossibility of the contrary.

In other words, to deny it, I would have to already presuppose some other foundation that could account for the one in the many.

Because then I'd have no justification for everything that I use language. But I got you. I don't see you connecting the dots though.

I affirm all this. You got to remember, I'm not arguing against it. Okay, I affirm all this.

I've got something going on. I'm trying to connect the dots so you can see and use it in an argument and see how it works.

I understand. But not only once the tool has been made, I can apply it different ways.

Yes. That's what I want to ultimately do. And to be honest, I can't forge the tool yet.

Right. And it's difficult. What I've been working on, thinking about lately, coincidentally, and then

Matt Yeser and I were talking about it. Now we're talking about it, is a few weeks ago, I started wondering, why is

God necessarily a trinity? See, I don't understand how you could ask that question. That's equivalent of saying, why does

God necessarily know everything? You're just asking about, why does God have the nature that he has?

When I ask, why is God necessarily a trinity? I'm not asking if there's some quality external by which necessitates upon him.

But there is an internal... Okay. Okay. So if you're not asking for that, you're not asking for an external reason why, because then that would be an issue of now, what's your ultimate authority?

I would say that since unity and plurality are necessary prerequisites for knowledge, the fact that there is knowledge and God is a knower, he must have that nature because it is a necessary prerequisite.

He has to be that way in order for knowledge to be had. Since you need those unity and plurality.

I think there's a problem with saying it that way. I hear what you're saying, but I think it begs the question. Let me see if I can articulate what

I'm trying to say is that because we can think logically and logic is a transcendental emanation actuality of God's nature,

I don't know how to describe it the right way. But because of it, then nature and logic and God's nature...

Oh, I'm risking some stuff here. The transcendental nature of logic and the transcendental nature of God's essence have a commonality to some degree.

One is impersonal, but one is personal. God himself as a being is personal. A transcendental is by nature impersonal because a transcendental is an abstraction.

An abstraction does not have fellowship. An abstraction does not have intimacy.

An abstraction doesn't have a conversation. An abstraction is here. So what we have in the mind of God are impersonal abstractions because they're not little sub -beings or gods or live.

This is what I'm thinking. But we see in this, we have the reality of logic.

Logos, the word. I think there's something going on here. I'm really trying to work through all this. And so I've been thinking about it.

I don't know who to talk to about it. I can't even articulate what I'm thinking because it's just... So the thing is,

I believe that logic itself exists only because God exists.

You have no problem with that. I know that. But I also think that logic is a fingerprint of the nature of God and that we can use it to internally define the necessity of his essence being

Trinitarian. Well, yes. So his essence, logic is

God's thinking. It reflects his logic, which is by nature Trinitarian. We know that by Revelation.

That's right. So if it reflects... Well, there's no such thing as non -Revelation. We find ourselves as human beings.

Yeah, absolutely. That's why we know it, by Revelation. That's right. So when we say that logic is reflecting the mind of God, then you are agreeing with me that you needed the

Trinity to ground logic since that logic reflects his mind. It must itself reflect that unity and plurality that's necessary to God's being.

That's the logical necessity that I would say. But if I'm going to talk to someone who's not a Trinitarian, what

I'm looking at, and this could be risky. That's why I say it's risky. It's almost like I'm trying to find a logic outside of God to determine

God's logical necessity. That's what it sounds like. Right. Right. And so I'm aware of that, but I don't want to do that.

And I recognize that that's a risk. That's why I say it's risky to say this, but I'm not trying to say that.

I'm trying to say that it's like looking into a room where God is and we see the light coming out.

We can use that light that comes out to describe him. And we can say, because light is this way, he's that way.

And there's a relationship between them because this is necessary because he's necessary.

The question then is, is there a mutual necessity of his essence with that?

If that makes sense, that's what I'm trying to get at. Right. I would say yes, because it is.

And again, you get into the issue between the differences between Gordon Clark and Van Till.

Gordon Clark, and I tend to agree with him, although I go back and forth with some people.

Gordon Clark translated John 1 in the beginning was the logic. So the word logos, the word, in other words, he described logic as God thinking.

But if it's God thinking and it's his thoughts, it's his mind, it is in that sense. That's impersonal.

It's an essential feature of God. God's thinking is not, it can't connect that with God's name.

Yeah, but then you couldn't have an impersonal thing become personal. That's an ontological problem. I don't think Clark got that right by saying that it's just the logic, the thinking of God.

Thinking itself is not personal. If I have a thought, it's an abstraction.

But an abstraction, by definition, is not personal. It's not self -aware. It's not alive. But Matt, if logic reflects the triune

God, it reflects the triune God. And so logic must have, as its necessary grounding, the one and the many, because God is the one of the many.

Well, when you say God is the one of the many, what you're saying is that God is a transcendental being who's aware of all potential aspects of a transcendental concept, like table.

But he's self -sufficient. He doesn't need anything for the actualization of table.

He's aware of it, knows all potentials, and knows all particular or potential particulars.

But for God to know an individual table in his mind, there already needs to have one and the many concepts intrinsic within that.

For example— See, that's why I don't see the dot connected between that and the one and the many, in that he's patrinitarian. I believe it's necessary.

I don't see the logical necessity yet. Poor Andrew, Andrew's like— Oh no, the thing

I hate is I don't want to stop this before we came up on time. It's like, you know, I'm enjoying it.

I've been putting the comments up. I just decided to let you two go, because a lot of folks, it's funny, they're going, are these guys debating?

What are they debating? No one can figure it out. And I'm typing to people, this is what it's like when you have philosophers, theologians that are trying to work through an issue.

And that's what— This is a very difficult debunk issue. Matt will get it when he goes to sleep. He's going to wake up and be like,

I got it. Yeah, in the morning, he's going to shoot up out of bed and be like, I understand it.

But when you do that, call Eli, not me, okay? Well, Eli and I have discussions like this.

Yeah. We've been doing this for years. And that's why I think it's good. I think it's good for some folks to see, you know, how people work through the issues.

What you're trying to do is give an answer. You're trying to work through an argument. And I like the way you explained it by saying it's a tool.

And once you figure out the tool, you can then apply it in different areas. But with some of the philosophy, it's not so easy just to walk up and go, okay, here we go.

And this is the answer. And for people who, you know, I'll put this in your plate,

Matt, in the sense of you've been doing this for like 40 years, right? You're 60. In January, it'll be 40 years old.

So 63, I cannot believe it, man. Gosh, I'm twice

Eli's age. It's three years ago. And I'm three times your mental age. It's three years ago since you tried to kill us in that black ice storm.

Well, that was fun. Oh, fun, uh -huh. The short of the story is we hit black ice.

Matt managed to strike every car, every person that was staying at his house.

That's right. We're sitting there and we're waiting. The police don't want us to leave because they want to do a report. And we finally were like, look, we just go.

And he's like, no, I got a report. And Matt goes, look, all these guys, I hit them. I hit them.

They're staying in my house. We can figure out the insurance. The guy goes, wait a minute. You hit all these guys.

Yes. And they're staying in your house. Yes. Go, just get out of here. That's right. There were like 22 cars involved.

I know. I actually banged into Luke's car. He was staying in his house. I slid. Everybody was ahead of me.

I slid into Luke's car. I just, you know, couldn't help it. Bounced off of him. I hit another car.

It happened to be Dave's car. You know, it was just weird. They were all staying with me. It was just weird.

I had said to my wife, I'm like, you go with Dave. Because we ended up finding out we were short on cars.

We ended up having a word. Dave's going to be safe. Go with Dave. I'll go with Luke.

And as soon as you hit. Luke and I didn't even realize it was you. Until we saw

Jim and Dave standing on the side of the road when you hit them. You're like, oh.

And then Luke goes, I think that was Matt that hit me. Luke was sliding into my lane too, a little bit.

It is one of those things. He was sliding. We thought we were just going to miss it.

And boom. But yes. But for folks who are watching this time, because I wanted to let this go.

And I, you know, I took, I backed out of it because I think it's good for folks to see how we go about having to wrestle with these things.

Not all this stuff is just easy concepts. But then when you're trying to formulate not only the right way of saying it.

You're trying to formulate, okay, here's what's going on and here's how to apply it. And what for folks that can, you know, watching or hearing what you're seeing is you're seeing two guys trying to make sure they're on the same page with their terminology and concepts and then the applications of them.

And it's not always easy. So I know someone early on was going, my brain hurts. Sometimes these things do.

But what ends up happening, and this is the reason we do this sort of stuff is because after this gets worked out, then we find, as Matt said earlier, a simple way of explaining this.

So you don't have to explain 18 topics to be able to refute an argument. And that's what he's trying to do.

Look at the idea of, is Jesus God? Yes. Does Jesus get, does

God get hungry? No. Did Jesus get hungry? Yes. People debated how to make sense out of that.

But also that Matt could write a small little article and then we could use it in evangelism. Yeah. Yeah.

That's what I do. See, I try and do, I try and do the heavy lifting of thinking through all these things, but this is so esoteric and so difficult that I'm not able to solve it on my own.

And that's why I'm going to you and Matt Yester. And because you guys both have good minds.

Where is Matt Yester? Why is he not, we got to get Matt Yester back in here. We haven't seen him in these. Yes. Matt Yester question.

He only has, he has a four speed transmission and only two of the gears are operating.

Third and fourth. Yeah. No, that's not a question. He's awesome.

Super sharp guy. I think you've got that wrong. He's a great guy. He's got, he's got five gears and it's only four and five that are working.

Well, he's really great. But maybe the three of us could sit here and work through this because my job as an apologist is to break it down and connect those dots to make it understandable to people.

So if I don't see, I mean, of course the Trinitarian God's necessary precondition for intelligibility. Of course it's a revelatory necessity and we can't abandon the

Christian worldview and argue rationally. Of course. No problem. I could sit there and argue that all day.

Not a problem because I'm not going to abandon the Christian worldview. What I'm trying to do is develop a tool the same way

I could say in Mormonism, the infinite regression God problem is faulty because now in this issue, it's a simple one because of an actual infinite doesn't work and we could expand on that.

That's easy to understand. But what that's doing, of course, is just simply giving them a rational reason.

They're not aware that they're inside the Trinitarian world and they don't understand that, but I can use that and say, this is why you can't work.

Ultimately, that's because of the Trinitarian worldview. I'm trying to do the same thing with Euterianism. So without them explaining the

Trinitarian necessity, I'm trying to show them something that doesn't work from their inside the perspective, but it's all ultimately from the

Trinitarian perspective. If I want to argue, for example, with a Muslim and yes, I can do the, sorry,

Surah 354, Surah 457, I could do the self -deception thing and I was doing that today.

I'm trying to find an additional tool that I can use and have in the quiver and this one,

I think the potential here is far greater than just simply, hey,

Allah lied. It's far greater and has a far more applicable thing and that's why I'm really trying to work on this.

Can I say something real quick and Andrew, I know you're trying to finish up too, just real quick and this is helpful.

See, I let these two go for a while. What happened? They just don't want to stop. Go ahead.

You can wrap up. I'll talk to him later. No, go ahead. Finish up, finish up. Well, I just want to let you know that where myself and Matt Yester learns all this stuff is listening to Greg Vonson's lectures.

He does talk about these kinds of things and about universals and particulars and how that all works together and obviously,

I would never compare myself to Vonson. He explains it so clearly. So you might want to look into, maybe when you talk to Matt Yester, he can direct you to the specific lecture and you could download it and give it a listen.

Sure, absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. And for folks who are watching, listening, here's the thing. This is what we've seen throughout church history.

You're hearing a lot of discussion on the Trinity, but there was a time where they wrestled, the early church fathers wrestled with the idea of the

Trinity. Trinity was a solution to a problem, right? How could Jesus, he had to be

God to pay an eternal fine. We just lost Matt. I don't know if he might have accidentally booted himself.

Yeah, we look at the early church and what do you see? You end up seeing that they realized that Jesus Christ had to be

God. Here he is. He's coming back in. The wrong button, obviously. Yeah, obviously. So Jesus Christ, they realized had to be

God to be a punishment of sin to pay an eternal fine, but they also realized he had to be a man.

And so they're struggling with this. And this is where you start to see some of these things form where they first are dealing with the whole hypostatic union.

The fact, how could he be, he's fully God and fully man. And then once you say he's fully

God, well, then what do you do with God, the Father, and then the Holy Spirit?

And so there was, this wasn't some, you know, like we take for granted the

Trinity and the definitions that we have there and the hypostatic union and the definitions we have there.

But the men who wrestled with this did what you saw for the last hour for months and in some cases years of wrestling through the scriptures, wrestling through the philosophy until we got the, as Matt was saying earlier, the tool or the solution that we use.

And so I know for some people it hurt their brain, but learn people enjoyed it.

Yeah. Oh yeah. I was putting up those comments where people were saying they really enjoyed it. They enjoyed the, you know, because theology and philosophy, one person said that they go together and you can't separate these.

And I think that it was helpful for people. Otherwise, you know, I mean, that's why I wanted it. That's why I just backed out and took

Andrew and I out and let you two go back and forth so people can watch that because it's helpful for folks.

Yeah. So next week, I don't know what we're doing next week.

I got to look because I'm not sure. I don't know that I will be able to host because I will be actually,

I know I won't be because I will be in Raleigh.

I think I'm wrong. Well, I'm in North Carolina with Dr. Anthony Silvestro, and he will be speaking next

Thursday night. So I will not be able to host Apologetics Live, but I'll see if I can get someone else to fill in.

And folks, some people were asking late at the end of the show, how your wife was doing,

Matt, go back and watch the beginning. We covered that, but continue praying for Matt's wife.

They're going to try to tough out another winter in Idaho, which is not the best for his wife, but they're going to do that so that they could try to get the house back on sale for the spring.

So be praying for that. Anyone wants to move to Boise, there's a house for sale. Just contact

Matt, go to CARM, contact and say, I'll buy your house. And then he can move sooner.

Just saying, for anyone that's looking to move out, the only advantage to moving out there is you can carry a gun.

That's a big advantage. Yes, it is. So Matt, good to have you back.

We're still free here in Idaho. Not for long. You got the Californians moving in. They're going to change that laws.

Oh, and here real quick. This aired last night, but Gospel Truth says Matt Slick did great in a debate last night.

That's right. It was from a few weeks ago. It went well. It's just been a while. We prerecorded it a long time, and then it was released last night.

So you like that? Good. And here you go. This one's from Matt. Jason Manning is saying, Boise is California 2 .0.

No, it is not. Oh, man. All right. So with that, folks,

I'm glad you guys watched. Just check out karm .org. Check out strivingforeternity .org.

Eli, do you have a website yet? Almost, but I do have a podcast and a

YouTube channel, which I just have a little bit of content there, but I'm going to start moving that along so they can check it out. Yeah, you do it backwards.

Website first. Website first. I'm working on fumes, man.

It's so hard for me to get anything done. I'm just trying to do the best I can. Yeah, well, we appreciate it.

Thanks for coming in. I think it was a good discussion. Yeah, it was fun. It was educational, helpful for many.

So until next week, if there is no show, I'll put something up on apologaxlive .com.

So just always go there. And Eli, I should say publicly, thanks for letting me know just minutes before that I had old links.

So I corrected that. So until next week, remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.