Two Responses, More Than Two Hours

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White, and we are live with you today as I announced yesterday, and as I explained yesterday, today I'm going to be responding to two very, very different pieces of material.

The first is a video of two and three quarter hours in length. Don't worry, we're not going to be playing all of that. I have put it in audio format and have marked the sections that I want to address.

The other is a fairly short, mercifully, book review that was published a while back that, when I first saw it, I, out of respect for an old friend, pretty much ignored, but since that individual has decided to bring it back up again, need to make reference to it.

And if you are someone who is interested in and concerned about woke Christianity, and if you are also a person who seriously considers the subject of apostasy, what it looks like, what its motivations are, where it leads, we'll do that at the end of the program.

It shouldn't take too much time, but we do have some fairly heavy-duty things to address. Like I said, that's why I wanted to do positive stuff yesterday, to be in the text of the Word of God, rather than doing that as a part of this.

So yesterday's discussion, lengthy discussion, John 6, not quite as long discussion of Acts 4, will come up as we listen to these materials. So what I did initially, look, when you have back and forth, generally, how it goes, this is how it's worked for a very, very long time, this worked this way before there was an internet.

And you might go, how? Back in the days of what are called BBS, the BBS days, computer bulletin board systems, where computers would pack up mail, you had nodes and you'd send it off, and sometimes, honestly, you wouldn't see someone's responses for a couple days.

Inevitably, things get bigger and bigger and bigger, longer and longer and longer, until it just becomes so unwieldy that the whole conversation collapses. That's just how it works. Debates sort of cut that off by the fact that you have your longest presentation time at the beginning, and then you have less and less time as the debate goes on, which leads to the frustration of not being able to deal with all the issues that comes up.

Anyway, so we began, after the discussion with William Lane Craig, to go back and forth a little bit with some of his acolytes. And given that these two gentlemen, Tyson James and Dr. Stratton, given that Stratton is specifically a reasonable faith chapter coordinator, leader, director, something, and that Tyson James works for William Lane Craig, I mean, he is employed by reasonable faith.

They are obviously very intent upon one particular subject. In fact, in looking at much of what they do, that's pretty much the one subject. I don't think anyone would argue that we have a significantly broader field of materials and subjects that we address, much broader.

And in fact, I'm coming to the conclusion that there is a serious balance issue that I feel should be addressed on the other side in some of these topics. But as we listen, as we play things, you'll see.

We started going back and forth some, and as you'll recall, we had done hours and hours of material prior to the dialogue, before it was even announced it was going to happen. And basically what is going on is we're going back and forth, accusing the other side of not listening to what we're saying.

And both sides feel like there's a bunch of stuff that we've presented that the other side just won't even listen to. Now, I have to leave that to others to decide whether that is a fair accusation for either side.

But what's happening is the video responses get longer and longer. And so last week or the week before, I think it started the week before, I listened to, and they were complaining because I hadn't responded to them.

I listened to a section of a video where Enticed James went through, well, he hasn't responded to this, he hasn't responded to this. And then, as I pointed out to you all, he mentioned he never responded to my refutation of him on Psalm 33.

I am so desperate to find scripture being cited as a source by the other side that it's like a Bible verse. And I went looking. What's this about? And if I understood him correctly, he seemed to indicate that I had seen it before or something and said I was going to respond to it.

I didn't remember having done so, but anyway, I found it. Fairly easy to find. And so what we did on the program is we did a response. It was only one response. They seemed to think that it was two different responses.

It wasn't. It's just ran out of time in one program. We don't necessarily do three, four, five hour programs. So I ran out of time and said, we'll continue this on the next program. And that's what I did.

But it was the same response. And we read, I think we read the entirety of Tyson James's article on this program. So we're letting the other side have its voice. And what we did is we engaged with it exegetically.

We walked through Psalm 33 and we did so with an eye to original language, original context, context in the Psalter, context within the Tanakh, context in all the scripture. Doing so using the same hermeneutical principles that we use when defending the deity of Christ or the resurrection or the doctrine of justification.

And we demonstrated that Tyson James's article failed because it itself does not offer any exegesis and in fact comes to the conclusion that the text is under determinative. Now, that's one way of dealing with things.

When a text does not teach what you believe and all you're saying is, well, it doesn't teach what you believe, you can just simply say, and no one really knows what it teaches. Rather than the strong response would be to demonstrate positively what the text actually teaches.

So consider yesterday when we did John 6. If you're going to say, oh no, you're going way beyond what the text says, then you have to provide a positive interpretation. You have to provide as full and deep and consistent exegesis using the same principles of hermeneutics that you would use in defending the deity of Christ, that you would use in defending the resurrection.

And explain what does John 6 say. You need to do the same thing with Psalm 33. So we put those videos out and a couple days later, I don't remember how fast it was, I see references in Twitter to a response and I look at it, I bring it up on YouTube and it's almost three hours long.

Now folks, busy days. I am teaching Christian apologetics at Grace Bible Theological Seminary in Conway in person, first weekend in February. I'll be in St. Charles the weekend before. I was supposed to be there the first weekend in December, we had to cancel that.

We've rescheduled that for the weekend, the last full weekend in January. I'll be in St. Charles, Missouri, addressing the New Testament, textual criticism. I'll add in material we've not done in the past on CBGM, issues like that.

And working on what may come after that on a very long trip. Right now looking at probably making it to a full month away, on the road, long time. So you've got that going on. We have the natural theology simplicity debate going on, which in of itself requires a large amount of listening to podcasts, lectures, reading, research, so on and so forth.

I'm preaching regularly at Apology at Church. Jeff does a little bit more than I do, but I'll be doing the sermon on God's law concerning human sexuality for January 16th. And I'm at that stage in life where you have a lot of things that you need to be doing for other people and things like that.

Medical issues, other people's lives, your own life, so on and so forth. So three hours when I already know these guys have never shown any interest in, for example, going back to the lengthy presentations that I did on the nature of God's decree, its connection to his will, the freedom of God that is expressed in that decree.

They don't show any interest in looking at any of that. And so how much time am I going to give in a situation like this? And so I asked a friend in part of Alpha Omega Ministries, is there somebody who would listen to this and tell me if there's anything in this?

Because they're saying, we prove that James White's not doing exegesis, he's doing eisegesis. Well, the only way to do that is to do exegesis yourself. So is there anything in this response that's literally about Psalm 33 that they finally, for the first time, offer some kind of biblical argumentation?

Because remember, when I first brought this issue up, Tim Stratton's response was, well, you have a deceptive God, so he makes you believe bad things, wrong things. And so who can trust Greek? Remember?

We walked that whole amazing argument that only exists to subjugate scripture to a philosophical methodology. And so I really wasn't expecting there would be, and someone did take the time to listen to it, and basically their response was, it was blah, blah, blah, James White is stupid, blah, blah, blah.

So, but it kept coming up, and you can tell that they're getting other people involved and trying to get Layton Flowers, you know, Layton Flowers is promoting it and all the rest of this kind of stuff.

So I decided to put it on super high speed and plow through it myself, get it done as quickly as I could. And in the process, there wasn't anything, there was no exegesis to Psalm 33. It's amazing how you can accuse someone of engaging in exegesis, and it's just so plain to everybody.

You know, you might want to try walking through the text yourself, you know, like, how about do what White did and go from this section to this section and see how they're related and the language and, you know, something like that.

No, nothing like that. And it's like it doesn't even cross their minds that this might be a good idea to do. So I found, I think, about 10 spots, if I recall correctly. I think I have the thing here. I think I found about 10 different little places where there was a learning moment, a teachable moment, something worth addressing.

But as far as it being, having any relevance to the 33rd Psalm as providing an alternative reading, providing... See, if you're going to say someone, you're wrong about this, you need to go into the text and say, the text says X, this person says Y, and here's the evidence.

And it's just like, they don't even think about doing that. It just doesn't even cross their minds to do that. There's nothing in it. It's completely empty. The only biblical references, aside from, I'm going to look at Colossians 1 briefly, but the only biblical references where I went, ah, something to talk about were John 6 and Acts 4.

I'll play those, and then I'll make application of what we did yesterday in providing the exegesis. But there is reason for concern when the initial subject of discussion is, what does Psalm 33 say? And this is the kind of response you get, which basically doesn't even seem to recognize that Psalm 33 exists, or the necessary weight that is upon someone to demonstrate that their position is consistent with scripture by doing exegesis.

That just didn't happen. It wasn't there. So, you can go listen to it yourself. You will see that that is, in fact, the case. So, I'm going to try to not spend a huge amount of time, and I might be semi-successful because we did what we did yesterday.

And did, what, an hour and 40 minutes or something like that yesterday. Hopefully that will help. So, the first point's not a big point, but I just wanted to, like I said, basically, I mean, this was really not an enjoyable presentation to listen to.

The fundamental argument is James White's stupid, and the sub-argument is he's dumb as well. Over and over again, he just doesn't understand. And what they're doing is, when I don't buy their system and definitions, then I just don't understand.

Of course, I could turn that around, do the exact same thing in reverse. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to get into the food fight that they want to get into. So, there you go. But, I had, in passing, at one point, made reference to some comments that William Lane Craig made about the exhaustive nature of Christ's creative work.

I didn't, I said it, I don't remember the exact words I used, but it was like, I don't know, it just seems like there might be an issue there. I want to look some more into what Craig said. I didn't make any big deal out of it.

Well, they decided to jump on that, of course. Because one of the scary things in listening to this is there is an expanded canon here. There is the canon of the works of William Lane Craig. William Lane Craig is the greatest expert these men have ever seen in philosophy, theology, exegesis.

He is, he is, he's their hero. And that's the exact terminology that Tim Stratton used in a presentation he made on mere Molinism for the leaders of reasonable faith that I heard a number of months ago.

The first five minutes was just absolute hero worship. It really was. And so, he is just all, he's all that and a bag of chips. And so, you'll hear over and over again, well, if you just read this, if you just read that, then you would know.

And it's the standard. There's a really frightening imbalance here. There really, really is. And so, let's get into it and we'll pick up from this point here.

He says, I want to go back and look at what Craig has said on Colossians 1. It certainly sounds like he was saying what I've said about Colossians 1 and not what James and Stratton have said about Colossians 1.

So, how would you respond to that charge, Tyson?

Okay, so this was specifically in regards to, again, the one thing that was clear. That is one thing I should notice. I should make note of. At least one of the really good things about the Unbelievable program was that the issue was clear.

The nature of these subjunctive conditionals, I was successful in putting that out there. Dr. Craig did not demur. He remembered the conversation. That was extremely helpful. And so, everybody can see what the real issue is.

Where do these come from? If they function, as Dr. Craig is saying, they function to delimit his decree. They do not arise from his will. They are not something he creates. They do not come forth from the exercise of his creative will.

And they also don't come from the creature because they exist prior to the creation of the creature. And yet, they are unchangeable. God cannot change them. He cannot alter them. And so, they are trues that do not have a physical existence, but they have some kind of existence.

So, as to delimit the choices of God. That's what he said. These guys seem to be a little less willing to go, yeah, exactly. That's how this stuff functions. Which makes it more frustrating to try to deal with the issue.

Because Stratton will say, well, if God is omniscient, and if God is omnipotent, then he must have middle knowledge. That is a cheap debating trick. It's meaningless. Because there is a specific positive assertion being made concerning the nature of middle knowledge and its relationship to God's divine decree.

That's just being smuggled through there, rather than being openly defended. I have very little respect for that. And I think any clear thinking person who listens carefully has to go, yeah, if you're going to make this assertion, you've got to substantiate.

You can't just go, well, if God is omniscient, then he must have middle knowledge. Because it's a scientia, so omniscience, scientia, so he just must have it. That's a meaningless ploy. It's laughable.

But it's what you keep getting. So, the question, what I had said was, if it is true, not that if it has physical existence, but if it has sufficient existence of some type outside of the will of God, and yet God's choices are, God has to make his choices based upon whatever this stuff is that you are asserting is there, then it has to have been defined by Christ.

He created all things. Otherwise, it's internal to God, and is a part of God's nature, and hence is his natural knowledge of himself. And that becomes really dangerous. Why? Because if you're saying that the free choices, what human creatures would do as their free choices, which God cannot change and does not give rise to, is a part of his nature, you are now mixing the very essence of God with a hypothetical creation that cannot be changed.

I mean, the problems with that should cause anybody to go, whoa, whoa, cannot go there. So, that was what the issue was about at this point. So, back to Tyson James now. Yeah, well, just since I work for Dr. Craig and know his work better than White, it's really just a matter of citation.

So, Dr. Craig cites Colossians 1 in Defenders, Doctrine of the Trinity, Parts 2 and 3, Doctrine of Creation, Parts 8 and 22, and in his article, God and Abstract Objects. So, he mentions Colossians 1 there, and you can kind of sum up his view with something that he says at the end of an article titled, Propositional Truth, Who Needs It?

There he says, quote, the answer is, who needs propositional truth? And he's answering the question, certainly not God. Indeed, we don't need propositional truth either. All we need to truly describe the world as it is, is the truth predicate.

And that will not saddle us with any Platonistic commitments. Basically, he's saying we can have the truth predicate and that doesn't commit us to objects out there, abstract or concrete called truth.

So, of course, if truths are not objects, then they are not objects of creation because they don't exist. So, they don't fall under the scope of Colossians 1. So, no, Dr. Craig isn't saying what Wyatt is saying about Colossians 1.

He's not affirming that Colossians 1 says anything about whether or not truths are objects that are created. Now, what's fascinating is when you are doing the I know everything there is to know thing and trying to make somebody else look bad, you have to be really careful when you do that because somehow Tyson James missed the fact that there's an entire discussion of Colossians 1 in William Lane Craig's book, God Over All.

And that's what I was referring to. And here was the section. Well, there's a I don't I'm not sure if I want to read all of it here, but just give me just give me an idea. Again, the would-be Christian Platonist must maintain that the domain over which Paul quantifies in saying all things, he's talking about Colossians 1, is restricted in such a way that abstract objects, if they exist, escape his quantifiers.

But the unrestrictedness of the domain, come on, there we go, of Paul's quantifiers is evident from the fact the expression the heavens and the earth, Colossians 1, 15 through 16, is a typical Jewish merism or totalizing idiom comprising everything other than God.

So everything other than God. Now, let me stop just right there. So if something exists that does not arise from God's will, is that God or is it other than God? See, that's a fair question. It's a it's an appropriate question.

Paul's characterization of the created realm as all things in heaven and on earth was not in the mind of first century Jew any sort of restriction. Moreover, Paul characterizes the sun as the creator of all things visible and invisible, a characterization which is collectively exhaustive.

Christ has created everything whether it be A or not A. Indeed, Paul's thinking in Colossians is expansive. He moves from speaking of all things in heaven and on earth to all things visible and invisible and finally to all things simpliciter.

His intention is that the domain of his quantifiers be unrestricted, which was what I said in the initial video where I'm talking about the extensiveness of Christ's creation and hence asking the question, if something exists that does not arise from the will of God and yet limits his possible choices, from whence does it come?

The Christian response would be to look to passages like this. The unrestrictedness of Paul's domain of quantification is not compromised by the fact that only concrete things, in fact, inhabit the domain.

As we have seen in Hellenistic Judaism, the kosmos noetis was not taken to be part of the creative world, but to exist in the mind of the logos and to serve as the pattern for God's creation of the concrete world.

Ideal objects are not part of creation or the world, but are rather God's ideas. Okay, so we stop there. So is that what middle knowledge is? If it is, that's natural knowledge, not middle knowledge. See, middle knowledge has to be other than God's natural knowledge of himself.

Otherwise, it becomes irrelevant. It has no meaning. It does not function in the way that Molinism requires it to function, as being the mechanism whereby you can fundamentally say that God is not the creator of evil, because people do this freely on their own.

Now, it doesn't work. It's a sleight of hand. It's a trick of smoke and mirrors, but that's where you've got to go with it. That's the whole point of it. They have no existence outside the divine mind, so in ascribing to Christ the role of the logos in creating the world, Paul is affirming that everything apart from God has been created by God through Christ.

The domain of Paul's quantifiers is unlimited. Everything other than God has been created by God. Now, that's what I was referring to, and if these true subjunctive conditionals do not arise from the will of God, and he cannot change them, then I submit it still is completely irrelevant.

But that wasn't one of the passages that Tyson James mentioned, though my guess is that the book material drew from maybe one of the articles. That would be my guess, but anyway. Okay, so we continue on.

That one took a little bit longer than I wanted to.

You know, once again here, it seems like James White is unwittingly assuming a philosophical view, and then he imposes it upon the text of Scripture. Now, this is the epitome of eisegesis, but James White wants us all to believe that he's an expert in exegesis.

Now, this is really too bad, and look, White is damaging his ministry by abandoning careful exegetical principles and exchanging them for eisegesis while continuing to claim that he's just exegeting the text.

Well, look, by making these repeated errors, Dr. White is quickly losing credibility, and look, by pointing this out, we're not seeking to destroy Dr. White's ministry. We're trying to save it. Dr. White, just let me speak to you directly here for a moment.

You need to recognize the error of your ways here, and you need to cease and desist. I just finished creating a dissertation this week at Trinity Theological Seminary, and the student cited you and your work to make his point.

It was on an unrelated theological issue. But look, if this continues, you're calling this exegesis, but this is clearly eisegesis, and if this continues, why would students continue to cite your work when everyone can see just how sloppy you're being in this regard right now?

So, now, if you're wondering what came before this, zero exegesis. Nothing from Psalm 33. Nothing. The idea is, well, if we disagree with your conclusions, then you're engaging in eisegesis. The only way to substantiate that is to do what I did.

I took the words of Tyson James, we went to Psalm 33, and we refuted it by positively walking through the text using the proper rules of hermeneutics. Did they do that? Did not even try. Did not even make the pretense.

And yet, they have the temerity to say, we've proved you're doing eisegesis. Gentlemen, I don't get the feeling you gentlemen are capable of doing exegesis. I'm sorry, Dr. Stratton, you didn't do it in your book.

Citing a text and then citing a couple commentaries is not exegesis. I am truly wondering, if we sat down with a Greek New Testament between the two of us, whether you could even read it. I'm truly starting to wonder about it.

Because this kind of, we're trying to save your ministry, but you're just bumbling and fumbling, and yet you won't even step up to do the work. It's hard to respect that. It is really, really hard to respect that.

So White may object to our pointing out that on determinism, God is pulling strings and inserting thoughts into the heart. But that's exactly what his view implies, right? Whether he wants to admit it or not.

So as it pertains to the passage and my article, his task was to show that Psalm 33 precludes or eliminates libertarian freedom. And so far, there's just no good reason to accept that claim. And really good reason to reject it, despite the claims to the contrary.

Okay. So this is what happens when you have philosophers who are not trained exegetes try to do exegesis. They don't even seem to recognize what the goal is. They think in terms of premise A, premise B, premise C, conclusion 1, conclusion 2, etc., etc., rather than what we did with Psalm 33.

What did we do? So we walked through the text, starting at the beginning, following the flow of thought. We pointed out, starts off with affirmation of creation, speaks and stands firm. This becomes then the foundation and basis of the worship of the world.

And then that becomes the foundation where God's plans and God's intentions are established. But the plans and intentions of men are frustrated because God is the one accomplishing his purpose. Mankind, not knowing that purpose, running into that purpose, discovers that their purpose is not going to be established because you do not have two autonomous wills running into each other.

You have one autonomous will, and the creature has been made by the Creator and lives in the Creator's world. We walked through this. We provided exegesis. We provided translation. The refutation would have to be something along the lines of, well, here, White says that the creation and God's act of creation is directly connected to the establishment of his plans.

But that's wrong because the Hebrew here indicates this. They don't do that. They don't do that. I'm not sure that they have the capacity of doing that. Because you have to be dealing with lexicography.

You have to be dealing with the Greek Septuagint. You have to deal with Hebrew syntax. I just don't get the feeling that's where these guys are coming from. But that's what you should be doing if you're going to be able to substantiate the accusations that you're making.

If you're going to make the accusation, then you have to substantiate it in that way. Now, secondly, all the way through this, and this is all you're going to hear, and I'm seeing it all the time on Twitter as well.

Exhaustive divine determinism. They, for some reason, feel that they get to define it, and I simply have to live with their definition. And so when I go to Scripture, and I show God acting as he does, for example, in Isaiah chapter 10, and accomplishing his purposes, using human beings to accomplish his purpose, and then punishing the human beings he used to accomplish his purpose because they acted upon the desires of their heart.

I am seeking to look at the text and allow it to define for me the meaning of whatever terminology I'm going to use. When I look at Isaiah 10, when I look at Genesis 50, when I look at Acts 4, when I look at these texts, I am not going to look outside of Scripture for some kind of philosophical platform or framework to try to fit this into.

I am going to try to use language to, as best I can, express what's found in Scripture and do everything I can to not miss anything that's in that divine revelation because I'm using some other language that will filter that out.

That's what these gentlemen are doing. They are very much focused, as human philosophy will be, they're very much focused upon man. And so the whole emphasis upon, well, let's define libertarian freedom and conditions and everything like that, it's all about man.

They don't start with God. They do not start with God's freedom. They do not start with God's revelation. They start with man. And so when we say that the decree of God demonstrates His kingly freedom to glorify Himself in all of His creation, and that's the starting place.

Not man. You cannot, you can't, any system that starts with man will never arrive at the biblical God. And any system that starts with man will end up with a God who ends up looking like a big man and will have human limitations because you're going backwards.

And Scripture doesn't do that, thankfully. And so if you start with God, then what we're saying is God has created in such a way that He is going to glorify Himself through the drama of creation and redemption and the salvation of a specific people in and through Jesus Christ.

And He has the freedom to create time and all the actions in time in such a way as to accomplish that purpose. And He can actually create time, all the actions in time, and make it all meaningful so that at the end it demonstrates His wisdom to all of creation.

Now that's probably too big for any philosophical system to comprehend. And so no philosophical system is going to come up with enough categories and the proper categories to be able to handle all that.

But you don't just come along and say, well, you're taking a philosophical system, determinism. No, I'm not. I repudiate it. I reject it. And your simple repetition of it just means I'm eventually going to go, okay, have a nice day.

So long. And I understand going around the mulberry bush with you for the 47 ,000th time. I'm not a Greek determinist. I don't believe in fatalism. I don't believe that man is some kind of morally neutral being that God is placing thoughts into.

I mean, this is so far from anything close to a biblical presentation. It's just like, what? Why do you guys talk? But they are absolutely wedded to this. They have to be. Because they don't have arguments against the biblical teaching.

They have arguments against this thing they've come up with where man is just a puppet and God is pulling the strings and making him dance around and putting thoughts into his head and doing something like that.

Well, that's what you believe. And when I respond, Jesus refutes that. Well, I don't get it. What does Christmas have to do with anything? And I think I'm hoping, I hope I didn't miss it. We'll see at the end if I missed it.

But there was, I think I got it. It's toward the end, so we'll find out. I was really concerned at one point because Tyson James was dancing on formal heresy later on, christologically speaking, in providing a really surface level response to something.

And it really made me start to wonder, again, is Craig's neo-apollinarianism coming up here? It's hard to tell, so I hope I've got it. We'll see. I thought I had it, but you never know. You could miss something.

Yeah. All right. Well, at the 43-minute mark, he says, if you can look at Acts 427 through 28 and look at the centrality of the drama of redemption of Pilate and Herod and the Romans and the Jews and just go, oh, well, you know, if that's just determinism, then it was just simply they're being forced to do what they did.

No, he says, there doesn't have to be any force. God's sovereignty is so beautiful and so powerful and so righteous and so glorious that not only did Pilate do what his nature led him to do, now God's restraining.

He's a fallen man. He's fallen Adam. He has a corrupt heart. He has a heart of stone. So God will restrain that heart of stone from doing things that he doesn't want. Go ahead, Tyson.

You hear that there, right? On the one hand, White says that if man's choices are free, then he is a god. And since he takes it as impossible. Okay, let's correct that. Obviously, we believe that man's choices are free in the creaturely realm.

He is a creature of God. He's been placed into time. And so he acts on basis of his nature and about what fills his heart and so on and so forth. What I had said was there are not two autonomous wills.

So free and autonomous are not the same thing. Autonomous is self-law, right? And so autonomy would have no authority above the will. And if you're a creature, if you are the pot, there will always be a potter.

And the pot will never be equal to the potter. And so autonomy is an ultimate level of authority. And hence, when you're talking about wills, God has autonomy because there's nothing above him. We never have autonomy.

And so it's always a matter of comparing creatures to the creator and then fallen creatures. And what I had said was if there are multiple autonomous wills that clash with one another, then you have multiple gods.

So it wasn't even in the proper context that the reference is made there. It's impossible for God to create another god, right? This implies that it's impossible for man to have free will. But then, on the other hand, he says here.

See how easily they just go from one context to another context without any concern about whether that was accurate or not? Because there's a reformed understanding of free will. It's not autonomous will.

And so to try to say, well, you're talking about creating other gods. This is why I'm pretty much done with this because it's sophism. I mean, I think of how many times Calvin talked about the sophists and the schoolmen and the games they play.

And there's never any resolution because you just keep going around and spinning in circles and never really accomplish anything. That's why I want to try to accomplish a few things in this and then say, okay, enough.

Go on and do a five-hour video if you want. Whatever. I'm not really interested. But there doesn't have to be any force in man's choosing or doing what he does. But that's exactly what determinism is.

See? See? But that's the definition we insist that you use. And so Acts 4. This is why we did what we did yesterday. We walked through this. We talked about the vast difference between Herod and Pontius Pilate, the Jews and the Romans, and all the different motivations and everything that's involved with them.

And demonstrated that they've all been brought together to do what God's purpose and hand predestined would take place. Their actions are under His choice. This is the place. This is the time. These are the people.

Not because middle knowledge told me this is the only way I could work it out. That's not what the Yad Yahweh is dependent upon. That's what they're telling us. But that's why we went to Acts 4, 27 to 28.

To demonstrate that this is much fuller and deeper and more meaningful than this simplistic determinism, Greek determinism, whatever you want to call it, that they want to bring into this. And it's a straw man.

And gentlemen, it's dishonest. Stop it. It's just dishonest. Or just be honest and say, the only determinism we can deal with is Greek determinism. And so we're just going to say that's what you continue to believe.

And at that point, again, we just go, okay, but we're done. A choice or action. This is why the language of restraint, God restraining evil, is just so awkward and inconsistent when it's combined with determinism.