Two Responses, More Than Two Hours

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January 4, 2022

I chose to provide two responses on the program today, hoping that both would provide opportunities for teaching and, by refutation, edification of the saints. The first, which took up most of our time, was a response to about ten relevant points (and those were about all) in the 2 hour, 45 minute video posted recently from Tim Stratton and Tyson James responding to my reply to James' article on Psalm 33. Though there was nothing of substance as to the exegesis of Psalm 33 provided, a few other comments were worthy of response. Both John 6 and Acts 4:27-28 were cited, which is why we did yesterday's program. Upon completing that marathon, I responded to an ostensible "book review" written by Dr. Jamin Hübner, a former student and friend, published last year. It is a glowing example of "woke penance," and as such stands as a warning to us all. The A&O truck drivers and uber-long commuters will love this one, as it weighs in at a hefty 2 hours and ten minutes!

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00:31: 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.
00:43: Today I'm going to be responding to two very, very different pieces of material.
00:52: 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.
01:01: I have put it in audio format and have marked the sections that I want to address.
01:09: The other is a fairly short, immersively, book review that was published a while back that when
01:20: 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,
01:32: I need to make reference to it and if you are someone who is interested in and concerned about woke
01:43: 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, shouldn't take too much time but we do have some fairly heavy duty things to address.
02:07: 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.
02:17: 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.
02:29: 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.
02:41: This worked this way before there was an internet and you might go, how?
02:49: 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.
03:08: Inevitably, things get bigger and bigger and bigger, longer and longer and longer until it just becomes so unwieldy that the whole conversation collapses.
03:17: 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.
03:34: Anyway, so we began after the discussion with William Lane Craig to go back and forth a little bit with some of his acolytes.
03:49: And given that these two gentlemen, Tyson James and Dr.
03:56: Stratton, given that Stratton is a 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.
04:18: They are obviously very intent upon one particular subject, and in fact, in looking at much of what they do, that's pretty much the one subject.
04:33: I don't think anyone would argue that we have a significantly broader field of materials and subjects that we address, much broader.
04:46: And in fact, I I'm coming to the conclusion that there is a a serious balance issue that I feel need should be addressed on the other side and some of these some of these topics.
05:00: But as we listen, as we play things, you'll see. We start going back and forth some, and as you'll recall, we had we had done hours and hours of material prior to the dialogue before it was even announced it was going to happen.
05:20: 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.
05:30: 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.
05:36: Now, I have to leave that to others to decide whether that is a fair accusation for either side.
05:44: But what's happening is the. The video responses get longer and longer.
05:52: And so last week or the week before, I think started the week before. I listened to and they were complaining because I hadn't responded to them.
06:03: I listened to. A section of a video where enticed
06:10: James went through, well, he hasn't responded this, he hasn't responded this. And then as I pointed out to you all, he mentioned he never responded to my refutation of him on Psalm 33.
06:22: I am so desperate to find scripture being cited as a source by the other side that it's like a
06:32: Bible verse. And I went looking.
06:39: What is this? What's this about? And if I understood him correctly, he seemed to indicate that I had seen it before or something and said
06:49: I was responsible. I didn't remember having done so. But anyway, I found it fairly easy to find.
06:56: And so what we did on the program is we did a response. It was only one response.
07:02: They seemed to think that it was two different responses. It wasn't. It's just ran out of time in one program.
07:08: We don't necessarily do three, four or five hour programs. So I ran out of time and said, we'll continue this on the next program.
07:17: And that's what I did. But it's the same response. And we read. I think we read the entirety of Tyson James's article.
07:27: On this program, so we're letting the other side have its voice. And what we did is we engaged with it exegetically.
07:37: We walked through Psalm 33. And we did so with an eye to original language, original context, context in the soldier, context within the
07:52: 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.
08:11: And we demonstrated that Tyson James's article failed because it itself does not offer any exegesis.
08:25: And in fact, comes to the conclusion that the text is under determinative. Now, that's one way of dealing with things.
08:35: When a text does not teach what you believe. And all you're saying is, well, it doesn't teach what you believe.
08:42: 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.
08:58: So consider yesterday and 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.
09:08: 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.
09:25: And explain what does John 6 say? Need to do the same thing with Psalm 33.
09:33: So we put those videos out and a couple of days later,
09:40: I don't remember how fast it was. We, I see references in Twitter to a response and I look at it,
09:52: I bring it up on YouTube and it's almost three hours long. Folks, busy days.
10:02: I am teaching Christian apologetics at Grace Bible Theological Seminary in Conway, in person, first weekend in February.
10:11: I'll be in St. Charles the weekend before. I was supposed to be there the first weekend in December.
10:17: We had to cancel that. We've rescheduled that for the weekend, the last full weekend in January.
10:23: I'll be in St. Charles, Missouri, addressing the New Testament, textual criticism.
10:30: I'll add in material we've not done in the past on CBGM, issues like that.
10:38: And working on what may come after that on a very long trip.
10:44: Right now, looking at probably making it to a full month away, on the road, long time.
10:54: 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.
11:15: 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 biblical law,
11:28: 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.
11:44: Medical issues and other people's lives, your own life, so on and so forth. So three hours when
11:54: 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.
12:16: They don't show any interest in looking at any of that. And so how much time am
12:25: I going to give in a situation like this? And so I asked a friend in part of Alpha and Omega Ministries, is there somebody who would listen to this and tell me if there's anything in this?
12:43: Because they're saying, we prove that James White's not doing exegesis, he's doing eisegesis.
12:49: 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?
13:07: Because remember, when I first brought this issue up, Tim Stratton's response was, well, you have a deceptive
13:13: God, so he makes you believe bad things, wrong things, and so who can trust Greek?
13:19: Remember? We walked that whole amazing argument that only exists to subjugate
13:27: Scripture to a philosophical methodology. And so I really wasn't expecting there would be.
13:37: And someone did take the time to listen to it. And basically, their response was, it was blah, blah, blah,
13:44: James White is stupid, blah, blah, blah. But it kept coming up, and you can tell that they're getting other people involved and trying to get
13:54: Leighton Flowers, you know, Leighton 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.
14:10: And in the process, there wasn't anything, there was no exegesis to Psalm 33.
14:16: It's amazing how you can accuse someone of engaging in exegesis, and it's just so plain to everybody.
14:29: You know, you might want to try walking through the text yourself, you know? Like, how about do what
14:36: 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.
14:43: No, nothing like that. And it's like it doesn't even cross their minds that this might be a good idea to do.
14:52: So I found, I think, about 10 spots, if I recall correctly. I think
14:58: 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.
15:17: But as far as it being having any relevance to the 33rd
15:22: 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
15:35: X, this person says Y, and here's the evidence.
15:41: And it's just like, they don't even think about doing that. It just doesn't even cross their minds to do that.
15:50: There's nothing in it. It's completely empty. The only biblical references, aside from...
15:59: I'm going to look at Colossians 1 briefly. But the only biblical references where I went, ah, something to talk about were
16:06: John 6 and Acts 4. I'll play those, and then
16:11: 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
16:27: Psalm 33 say? And this is the kind of response you get, which basically doesn't even seem to recognize that Psalm 33 exists.
16:36: Or the necessary weight that is upon someone to demonstrate that their position is consistent with Scripture by doing exegesis.
16:51: 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.
16:59: So I'm going to try to not spend a huge amount of time.
17:07: 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.
17:16: Hopefully that will help. So the first point's not a big point, but I just wanted to...
17:22: Like I said, basically, I mean, this was really not an enjoyable presentation to listen to.
17:28: 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.
17:37: And what they're doing is, when I don't buy their system and definitions, then
17:43: I just don't understand. Of course, I could turn that around, do the exact same thing in reverse.
17:49: 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.
17:58: 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.
18:16: I didn't, I said it, I don't remember the exact words I used, but it was like, oh, it just seems like there might be an issue there.
18:23: 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.
18:34: 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.
18:45: He is, he is, he's their hero. And that's the exact terminology that Tim Stratton used in a presentation he made on meremolanism for the leaders of reasonable faith that I heard a number of months ago.
19:00: 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.
19:11: And so you'll hear over and over again, well, if you just read this, if you just read that, then you would know.
19:18: And it's the standard. There's a really frightening imbalance here.
19:24: There really, really is. And so let's get into it and we'll pick up from this point here.
19:33: 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
19:40: I've said about Colossians 1 and not what James and Stratton have said about Colossians 1.
19:47: So how would you respond to that charge, Tyson? Okay. So this was specifically in regards to, again, the one thing that was clear, and that is one thing
20:00: I should notice, I should make note of. At least one of the really good things about the
20:06: Unbelievable program was that the issue was clear.
20:17: The nature of these subjunctive conditionals, I was successful in putting that out there.
20:26: Dr. Craig did not demur. He remembered the conversation.
20:33: That was extremely helpful. And so everybody can see what the real issue is.
20:39: Where do these come from? If they function, as Dr. Craig is saying, they function to delimit his decree.
20:49: They do not arise from his will. They are not something he creates.
20:55: They do not come forth from the exercise of his creative will.
21:01: And they also don't come from the creature because they exist prior to the creation of the creature.
21:12: And yet, they are unchangeable. God cannot change them.
21:19: He cannot alter them. And so they are trues that do not have a physical existence, but they have some kind of existence.
21:32: So as to delimit the choices of God, that's what he said.
21:40: Now, these guys seem to be a little less willing to go, yeah, exactly.
21:47: That's how this stuff functions. Which makes it more frustrating to try to deal with the issue.
21:54: Because, I mean, Stratton will say, well, if God is omniscient and if God is omnipotent, then he must have middle knowledge.
22:01: Well, that is a cheap debating trick. It's meaningless.
22:07: 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.
22:20: I have very little respect for that. That's just, 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.
22:32: 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.
22:43: That's a meaningless ploy. It's laughable, but it's what you keep getting.
22:53: 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,
23:16: 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.
23:31: 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.
23:41: 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
23:55: 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.
24:12: I mean, the problems with that should cause anybody to go, whoa, whoa, cannot go there.
24:23: So, that was what the issue was about at this point. So, back to Tyson James now.
24:30: Yeah, well, since I work for Dr. Craig and know his work better than White, it's really just a matter of citation.
24:37: So, Dr. Craig cites Colossians 1 in Defenders, Doctrine of the Trinity, parts 2 and 3,
24:45: Doctrine of Creation, parts 8 and 22, and in his article, God and Abstract Objects.
24:51: 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
25:02: Propositional Truth, Who Needs It? There he says, quote, the answer is, who needs propositional truth?
25:11: And he's answering the question, certainly not God. Indeed, we don't need propositional truth either.
25:18: All we need to truly describe the world as it is, is the truth predicate, and that will not saddle us with any
25:25: 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 truths.
25:36: 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, right?
25:46: So, no, Dr. Craig isn't saying what White is saying about Colossians 1. He's not affirming that Colossians 1 says anything about whether or not truths are objects that are created.
25:58: Now, what's fascinating is when you are doing the
26:04: 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,
26:13: Tyson James missed the fact that there's an entire discussion of Colossians 1 in William Lane Craig's book,
26:20: God Over All, and that's what I was referring to. And here was the section.
26:27: Well, there's a—I'm not sure if I want to read all of it here, but just give me an idea.
26:38: 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.
26:51: But the unrestrictedness of the domain—come on, there we go—of
26:57: Paul's quantifiers is evident from the fact that the expression the heavens and the earth, Colossians 1, 15 through 16, is a typical
27:03: Jewish merism or totalizing idiom comprising everything other than God. So everything other than God.
27:11: 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?
27:21: See, that's a fair question. 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 a first -century
27:31: 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.
27:41: Christ has created everything, whether it be A or not A. Indeed, Paul's thinking in Colossians is expansive.
27:48: He moves from speaking of all things in heaven and on earth to all things visible and invisible, and finally to all things simpliciter.
27:56: His intention is that the domain of his quantifiers be unrestricted, which was what
28:02: 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?
28:21: 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.
28:33: As we have seen in Hellenistic Judaism, the kosmos noetas 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.
28:46: Ideal objects are not part of creation or the world but are rather God's ideas. Okay, so we stop there.
28:52: 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.
29:05: 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.
29:30: Now, it doesn't work. It's a sleight of hand. It's a trick of smoke and mirrors.
29:37: 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.
29:45: 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.
29:52: The domain of Paul's quantifiers is unlimited. Everything other than God has been created by God.
29:58: 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
30:09: 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.
30:23: That would be my guess. But anyway. Okay, so we continue on.
30:29: 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.
30:46: Now, this is the epitome of eisegesis, but James White wants us all to believe that he's an expert in exegesis.
30:53: 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.
31:09: Well, look, by making these repeated errors, Dr. White is quickly losing credibility.
31:15: And look, by pointing this out, we're not seeking to destroy Dr. White's ministry.
31:21: We're trying to save it. And Dr. White, just let me speak to you directly here for a moment.
31:29: You need to recognize the error of your ways here, and you need to cease and desist.
31:34: I just finished creating a dissertation this week at Trinity Theological Seminary, and the student cited you and your work to make his point.
31:43: It was on an unrelated theological issue. But look, if this continues, you're calling this exegesis, but this is clearly eisegesis.
31:52: 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?
32:03: So, now, if you're wondering what came before this, zero exegesis.
32:11: Nothing from Psalm 33. Nothing. The idea is, well, if we disagree with your conclusions, then you're engaging in eisegesis.
32:21: 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.
32:40: Did they do that? Did not even try. Did not even make the pretense.
32:46: And yet, they have the temerity to say, we've proved you're doing eisegesis.
32:54: Gentlemen, I don't get the feeling you gentlemen are capable of doing exegesis. I'm sorry,
33:00: Dr. Stratton, you didn't do it in your book. Citing a text and then citing a couple commentaries is not exegesis.
33:09: I am truly wondering, if we sat down with a Greek New Testament between the two of us, whether you could even read it.
33:15: 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.
33:35: 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,
33:45: God is pulling strings and inserting thoughts into the heart. But that's exactly what his view implies, whether he wants to admit it or not.
33:55: So, as it pertains to the passage and my article, his task was to show that Psalm 33 precludes or eliminates libertarian freedom.
34:07: And so far, there's just no good reason to accept that claim, and really good reason to reject it, despite his claims to the contrary.
34:17: Okay, so this is what happens when you have philosophers who are not trained exegetes try to do exegesis.
34:25: They don't even seem to recognize what the goal is. They think in terms of premise
34:31: A, premise B, premise C, conclusion 1, conclusion 2, etc., etc.,
34:36: rather than what we did with Psalm 33. What did we do? We walked through the text, starting at the beginning, following the flow of thought.
34:47: We pointed out, starts off with affirmation of creation, speaks and stands firm.
34:53: 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.
35:12: 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.
35:22: You have one autonomous will, and the creature has been made by the creator and lives in the creator's world.
35:28: We walked through this. We provided exegesis. We provided translation.
35:36: If there had been, if these men had, see, the refutation would have to be something along the lines of, well, here
35:44: 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
36:00: Hebrew here indicates this. They don't do that. They don't do that.
36:06: I'm not sure that they have the capacity of doing that because you have to be dealing with lexicography.
36:13: You have to be dealing with the Greek Septuagint. You have to deal with Hebrew syntax. I don't,
36:21: 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.
36:31: 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.
36:51: They, for some reason, feel that they get to define it and I simply have to live with their definition.
36:59: 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,
37:26: I am seeking to look at the text and allow it to define for me the meaning of whatever terminology
37:40: I'm going to use. When I look at Isaiah 10, when I look at Genesis 50, when
37:45: 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.
38:04: I am going to try to use language to, as best I can, express what's found in Scripture and do everything
38:17: I can to not miss anything that's in that divine revelation because I'm using some other language that will filter that out.
38:29: That's what these gentlemen are doing. They are very much focused, as human philosophy will be, they're very much focused upon man.
38:41: And so the whole emphasis upon, well, let's define libertarian freedom and conditions and everything like that, it's all about man.
38:53: They don't start with God. They do not start with God's freedom. They do not start with God's revelation.
39:00: 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.
39:19: Not man, you cannot, you can't, any system that starts with man will never arrive at the biblical
39:25: 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.
39:36: And Scripture doesn't do that, thankfully. And so if you start with God, then what we're saying is
39:45: 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.
40:00: And he has the freedom to create time and all the actions in time in such a way as to accomplish that purpose.
40:10: 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.
40:28: 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.
40:40: But you don't just come along and say, well, you're taking a philosophical system, determinism. No, I'm not.
40:48: I repudiate it. I reject it. And your simple repetition of it just means
40:54: I'm eventually going to go, okay, have a nice day. So long. I understand going around the mulberry bush with you for the 47 ,000th time.
41:04: 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 like was just presented.
41:17: I mean, this is so far from anything close to a biblical presentation.
41:23: It's just like, what? What are you guys talking? But they are absolutely wedded to this. They have to be because they don't have arguments against the biblical teaching.
41:32: They have arguments against this thing they've come up with where man is just the puppet and God is pulling the strings and making them dance around and putting thoughts into his head and doing stuff like that.
41:42: Well, that's what you believe. And when I respond, Jesus refutes that.
41:49: Well, I don't get it. What does Christmas have to do with anything? And I think I'm hoping, I hope
41:55: I didn't miss it. We'll see at the end if I missed it. But there was,
42:01: 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,
42:12: Christologically speaking, in providing a really surface level response to something.
42:19: And it really made me start to wonder again, is Craig's neo -apollinarianism coming up here?
42:27: It's hard to tell. So I hope I've got it. We'll see. We'll see. I thought
42:32: I had it, but you never know. You could miss something. 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
42:49: 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.
43:00: 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
43:12: Pilate do what his nature led him to do, now God's restraining.
43:17: He's a fallen man. He's fallen Adam. He has a corrupt heart.
43:24: He has a heart of stone. So God will restrain that heart of stone from doing things that he doesn't want.
43:33: Go ahead, Tyson. Yeah, you hear that there, right? On the one hand, White says that if man's choices are free, then he is a god.
43:42: 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.
43:52: He is a creature of God. He's been placed into time. And so he acts on the basis of his nature and about what fills his heart and so on and so forth.
44:02: What I had said was there are not two autonomous wills.
44:08: So free and autonomous are not the same thing. Autonomous is self -law, right? And so autonomy would have no authority above the will.
44:21: 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.
44:32: And so autonomy is an ultimate level of authority.
44:39: And hence, when you're talking about wills, God has autonomy because there's nothing above him.
44:46: We never have autonomy. And so it's always a matter of comparing creatures to the creator and then fallen creatures.
44:56: And what I had said was if there are multiple autonomous wills that clash with one another, then you have multiple gods.
45:03: So it wasn't even in the proper context that the reference is made there. It's impossible for God to create another
45:09: God, right? This implies that it's impossible for man to have free will. But then on the other hand, he says here.
45:15: Now, you see how easily they just go from one context to another context without any concern about whether that was accurate or not?
45:23: 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.
45:34: This is why I'm pretty much done with this, because it's sophism.
45:44: I mean, I think of how many times Calvin talked about the sophists and the schoolmen and the games they play.
45:54: And there's never any resolution because you just keep going around and spinning in circles and never really accomplish anything.
46:02: That's why I want to try to accomplish a few things in this and then say, OK, enough.
46:09: 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.
46:19: But that's exactly what determinism is. See, but that's the definition we insist that you use.
46:29: And so Acts 4, this is why we did what we did yesterday. We walked through this.
46:36: We talked about the vast difference between Herod and Pontius Pilate, the Jews and the motivations and everything that's involved with them, and demonstrated that they've all been brought together to do what
46:49: God's purpose and hand predestined would take place.
46:54: Their actions are under his choice. This is the place.
47:00: This is the time. These are the people. Not because middle knowledge told me this is the only way
47:05: I could work it out. That's not what the Yahweh is dependent upon.
47:12: 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,
47:30: Greek determinism, whatever you want to call it, that they want to bring into this. And it's a straw man.
47:36: 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
47:45: 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.
47:51: ... necessitating 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.
48:02: What exactly is God restraining if man doesn't have free will? If God doesn't cause it to happen, it's not going to happen, whether or not
48:10: God restrains or not. It just doesn't make any sense. Okay, so once you just simply throw out primary causation, secondary causation, just throw that all out.
48:22: We're not going to talk about that. We're not going to allow that into the conversation. We're not even going to give consideration to it. We're not going to start with the intention of Joseph's brothers, the intention of God.
48:34: We're not going to look at Isaiah. We're just going to throw all that stuff out and say, well, God is just causing all this, so God's restraining himself.
48:41: As if, look, we came up with a contradiction, and so we win. That's what philosophy does, but it's not coming from scripture.
48:48: It does not show any respect for scripture whatsoever or the categories of scripture at all. None. And so, well, we're going to get to some of the anthropology stuff a little bit later on.
49:06: So I'll hold off on the other comment on that until we, I think we do, like I said.
49:12: White has not shown that God cannot create free creatures, and therefore he hasn't shown that God can't know prior to the decree what free creatures would do in any given circumstance, which is middle knowledge.
49:26: So what the passage says, it says, for he spoke, and it came to be.
49:33: He commanded, and it stood firm. Right? That's what it says. To take that passage and say this is teaching that God cannot create free creatures is to completely abandon the pretense of doing serious hermeneutics.
49:49: It's just not there. Wow. So if you go back to what
49:55: I was doing, I was establishing, of course, that God is creator of all things.
50:03: So this is what philosophers who don't do exegesis, this is the mistakes they make, and they make them publicly and will not repent of them either.
50:11: I can assure you of that, Bill, in whatever length response eventually is produced.
50:18: But notice what they do is they set up, this is what you have to do, and they just keep repeating their mantra.
50:27: Their mantra is, if God can create free creatures. Well, there's an assumption there, okay?
50:33: The assumption that they are sneaking in there is if God can create without that decree, including the beginning and the end of time.
50:50: But they go, oh, but it does. But in their system, what the creatures will do given the situations they're put in, and again, this is why
51:02: I find Molinism to be just the worst of the used car lot.
51:09: It's the worst thing you can buy on the used car lot. Why? Because it offers you what it will never deliver.
51:18: It's saying to you that this is how you can solve the quandary of God's sovereignty and man's responsibility and all the rest of this stuff when actually what it's saying fundamentally is that man's decisions known beforehand, how?
51:45: We are not told. Well, if God's omniscient, he would know. That's not an answer. That's a dodge. And if that's the only thing you've got,
51:51: I think you need to go into another line of work. Well, no, no, no. If God is omniscient, then he would know what his creature would do.
51:58: Why? There are all sorts of people, all sorts of non -reformed people who don't buy that.
52:07: If it's a free creature, then it can do what it wants. And in the exact same situation, in the exact same context, the exact same time, free creatures can make different choices.
52:22: There is no way to have this kind of knowledge. Aside from the whole idea that that can be fixed before they're created.
52:32: Even after creation, if they are, quote unquote, free, as in autonomous, there's a way to know what they're going to do because we are not fixed entities.
52:44: We're not a fixed database where you have, you know, use the old checksum method of there's only so much data in this package and it's going to add up to this.
52:54: And it can never change that. That's not what human beings are. So you don't get, you know, people say, well, but man's free.
53:04: No, man's not free. If that kind of knowledge actually exists and God puts people in the circumstances where he knows if I put them in this circumstance, that's what they're going to do.
53:16: Have you ever heard the FBI? Okay, it's just one giant sting operation.
53:22: That's all it is. Well, but he did it freely. I don't know, what's the date today?
53:30: You know, yeah, two more days until yet another interesting historical event that would be illustrative of this situation.
53:38: You don't get it any way you go, that you can't explain where these subjunctive statements come from.
53:48: And even if you could, you still have to deal with the reality that mankind does all sorts of weird things and you never expect him to do the things that he does.
53:58: And so they're not really free. And so the freedom is empty. The knowledge is empty.
54:04: And the argument is empty that, well, if God is omniscient and God has all power, then he has to be able to create creatures.
54:11: Where the beginning and the end does not flow from God's eudachia, it just, the whole system falls apart.
54:25: Anyway, if we're going to get done today, just look at the clock. Oh, look at that. Right. And again,
54:32: Dr. James White has a ministry seemingly based upon his ability to properly engage in biblical hermeneutics.
54:41: But like I said before, he's really shooting himself and his entire ministry in the foot by making so many bad mistakes here.
54:48: Look, the last thing we want to see happen is for Dr. White to tarnish his ministry. So that's very kind of you,
54:57: Tim. But the only way for that to be meaningful is if you would actually be providing exegetical and hermeneutical argumentation, which you are not.
55:06: And so those become empty, condescending. I was going to, and I could have because I grabbed the transcript off of YouTube.
55:15: I was going to count how many times they said White doesn't understand, White doesn't know. I decided not to because it would have been so many.
55:25: It was ridiculous. But like I said, listen to yourself if you want to find out one way or the other. 5455, he says, you tell me where scripture tells you that mankind makes decisions separate from the influences of God upon his life and his relationship to Adam in his fallen state and how he's created and how he's going to interact with the creatures around him.
55:50: These are all part of God's decree. Okay. So what's the point there? I mean, if these guys are really listening to the other side, and I don't think they are, but if they were listening to the other side, what's the point there?
56:03: The point is that at any point in our existence, the decisions that we make will be influenced by what
56:15: God decrees, not just to create as circumstances, but what
56:22: God decrees in regards to others' behaviors, the existence of sin, whether he, for example, and I knew
56:31: I was forgetting something, whether he restrained, it almost sounded like Tyson James thought it was silly that God restrains evil.
56:40: What do you think the Holy Spirit's doing in this world? What do you think that restraint spoken of in regards to the
56:48: Holy Spirit, what do you think that means? I mean, I have said over and over again, if God was not restraining the evil of man, you would not be able to walk outside the front door of your house.
57:02: Well, you couldn't be safe inside your house either for that matter. But the point is
57:07: God restrains evil every single day. I live in a major city, fifth largest city in the
57:15: United States. I hear gunshots all the time. Just last year, well,
57:22: I hear gunshots all the time, but just last year, I remember a situation where it was one morning, my kids and grandkids were getting in a vehicle, and I heard, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, five shots in quick succession coming from a certain corner about,
57:42: I don't know, a third of a mile away, something like that. And I stood there in my driveway and said, somebody just died.
57:51: Somebody just died. And I was right. Somebody just died. Now, we as believers believe that our times are in God's hands.
58:05: Now, that means God has restrained the evil of many men.
58:12: If you've ever made it home in your car, God restrained the evil of people.
58:20: And even if you didn't, you got into a car accident. I think of just an awesome family in our church that last year, some idiot plowed into them.
58:34: And you go, well, which one is it? God had a purpose in the one, and he asked to restrain evil when there would be no purpose in the every single day on your way home situation.
58:52: God is working all that. And the Mullah says, oh, yeah, we agree with that. Because God is working all the little details.
59:00: But he's working all the little details, not based upon his freedom and his self -glorification.
59:12: But he's got this middle knowledge, and he can't change it. And it doesn't come from his will. And he's working with that to try to get to an end.
59:23: That's the difference between us. But if God restrains evil in the
59:32: Mullah system, why? Why not just put people in the situations where they would not do those things?
59:38: Or is he just stuck with it? I mean, the purpose of evil is a...
59:44: Every theistic system has to deal with it. Theodicy is an aspect of every single theistic system.
59:51: You have to explain why evil exists. And the
59:57: Mullahnist really doesn't seem to have an answer to this at all.
01:00:03: Because the Mullahnist is saying, God knows what any of his creatures are going to do in any given situation.
01:00:10: And so he... And then I got criticized for actualizes.
01:00:17: That's what you're supposed to say. Actualize didn't change the meaning whatsoever. But there was a lot of that kind of stuff in this particular response.
01:00:25: Actualize is a world where all those horrific acts that took place when the
01:00:40: Japanese invaded China in the late 1930s. Man, the stuff that took place then.
01:00:48: There's a book called The Rape of Nanking. It's hard to read. It's so hard to read the author committed suicide.
01:00:55: I didn't realize when I read it. Um, but the author later committed suicide.
01:01:00: It was just so dark, the study that had been done. Um, why does that evil exist?
01:01:08: As a reformed person, God is going to demonstrate his truth and his glory in all of that on the last day.
01:01:22: But if that exists simply because to actualize some world on the basis of some algorithm, some...
01:01:39: What God's trying to accomplish. But somehow he hasn't told us about in his word. Isn't that amazing? God has told us in his word what he's doing.
01:01:47: He says he's talking about his glory. But in Molinism, we don't know.
01:01:52: Is it maximum number of people saved? Minimum number of evil acts?
01:01:58: But why did all that happen? Why did God providentially put all of those people, both the aggressors, the
01:02:08: Japanese, and the victims, the Chinese. Why do you put them in those situations to do those things?
01:02:17: I don't know. I don't know. In reformed theology,
01:02:24: God's decree, which encompasses all things, will result in his glorification.
01:02:33: But in Molinism, that decree is delimited by what man does.
01:02:39: And God just works with it as best he can. That was the best he could do? Those are some of the questions.
01:02:51: I stopped this one in the middle, sorry. What do you think? So let's take what White has said here and ask if this is the
01:03:00: Molinist position. He says that, according to Molinism, he says that mankind makes decisions separate from the influences of God upon his life.
01:03:12: And what did I mean by that? What was I saying? I wasn't saying that mankind makes decisions.
01:03:18: I was saying that the content of the decisions that mankind would make in the conditional subjunctives is not determined by God's decree.
01:03:29: That was the context. I'm talking about that mythical stuff that is the very essence of Middle Knowledge and Molinism.
01:03:37: That's what I was talking about. Let's see if they're accurate. Does the Molinist make that claim?
01:03:44: Of course not. The content of Middle Knowledge does not include the actual decisions that mankind makes.
01:03:53: This is called playing games. And I recognize the difference.
01:03:59: He's saying the actual decisions are not included. It's the subjunctive. It's the would, not the did or will.
01:04:07: I get that. But that's not what I was talking about, was it? No, it wasn't. It includes the decisions they would make were
01:04:16: God to create them. Actual decisions are part of God's free knowledge.
01:04:22: Subjunctive conditional decisions are part of God's Middle Knowledge and do not require the existence of creatures.
01:04:29: So again, White is demonstrating that he just doesn't understand the very basics of Molinism.
01:04:35: The very basics. He's so dumb. Actually, Tyson just wasn't listening.
01:04:43: So listen to that again and just think about what this means. Subjunctive conditional decisions are part of God's Middle Knowledge and do not require the existence of creatures.
01:04:57: Think about that just for a moment. So Middle Knowledge does not require...
01:05:04: Okay, so that's what they're saying because it pre -exists the decree to create, right?
01:05:11: And yet the point is from any meaningful biblical perspective, what any creature would do is dependent upon how
01:05:23: God creates them, which is the decree. And so they want to somehow turn into hypothetical, a hypothetical knowledge.
01:05:35: Not based upon the... And here's where the problem is. The expression of God's kind intention in the creation of all things, in his act of predestining all things.
01:05:51: That eudachia, once again. The decree is not this empty little thing as it is in Molinism, where having run all the algorithms and come out with the final decision based on Middle Knowledge, now the decree is just sort of like going, start.
01:06:13: No, the decree is the rich expression of all of the fullness of God's intention in his self -glorification.
01:06:25: It's so much more than this decrepit Jesuit philosophical system could ever begin to understand or ever express.
01:06:36: But, he doesn't understand even the basics.
01:06:43: Well, okay. All right. I'm going to kettle water. Anyway, White continued at 5915 and said, the only way we can love
01:06:55: God is if he changes our hearts. That doesn't fit into a philosophical syllogism.
01:07:01: Is that true? Actually, it does fit into a logical syllogism.
01:07:06: You can put just about anything into a logical syllogism. So, here's a logical syllogism.
01:07:13: Number one, premise one, if God doesn't change our hearts, then we cannot love him.
01:07:19: Premise two, we can love him. Premise three, therefore, God changes our hearts.
01:07:25: There you go. This is a valid... Now, I just have to ask within Molinism, which is a synergistic system at its core, if you change the heart...
01:07:38: Now, remember, we spent all this time in Psalm 33 because it talks about God forming the hearts of man.
01:07:46: There was clear sovereign expression of God's activity in regards to the very decision -making element of man, which ostensibly
01:07:57: God can't touch because middle knowledge is based upon what that heart would do in any given circumstance.
01:08:06: Again, this is what happens when you create something out here, try to cram it on Scripture, and you end up having to change the parameters of Scripture.
01:08:13: That's why it's an unbiblical system. It does not derive from Scripture.
01:08:19: If you read Psalm 33, you're not going to come up with Molinism. So, that's where...
01:08:28: Okay. Therefore, God changes our hearts. There you go. This is a valid deductive syllogism of the four modus tollens, and it's perhaps even a sound one.
01:08:42: But what follows from the conclusion? All that really follows is that God changes our hearts.
01:08:49: It doesn't necessarily follow though that the way he changes our hearts is via exhaustive divine causal determinism.
01:08:58: So, the question is, is causal determinism necessary for changing our hearts?
01:09:04: And I don't think so. See, I don't even know what they think. I mean, it's obvious causal determinism for them is some type of a philosophical concept.
01:09:15: It's God freely doing what he wishes with his creatures to his own glory for his own purposes.
01:09:23: And he is not limited by their overriding precedence in their decisions based upon middle knowledge.
01:09:38: And again, how can God change hearts? How does that fit in Molinism?
01:09:45: Playing these little games here saying, well, it doesn't require EDD. No, but it does require that God has the freedom to change the hearts of man.
01:09:59: And yet your system says that the content of middle knowledge of what people would do in any given circumstance does not flow from God's will.
01:10:09: But if he changes my heart so that I do what is good in his sight, did that not flow from his will?
01:10:17: So, that's why I say the anthropology of Molinism is Molina's. It's not a biblical anthropology.
01:10:23: That is going to come up here. I know that is. And I've given this analogy in a prior video, and a lot of people said they really like this analogy.
01:10:34: So, I'm going to give it again. So, I don't think that causal determinism is necessary for me to change my six -year -old daughter from a non -bike rider to a bike rider.
01:10:46: And then he goes on from there, just demonstrating that, again, sadly, causing a rebel sinner who hates
01:10:59: God to become a lover of God is not the same thing as teaching your daughter to ride a bike.
01:11:06: And if you think it is, you have not even started to think about these things seriously.
01:11:14: That's really all there is to that. So, that's the first thing. The second thing is that White claims that saying determinism is the same as forcing people to do stuff is a straw man.
01:11:26: He's the one saying that our claim that determinism is forcing people to do stuff, he says that's a straw man.
01:11:32: But is it? Yes. Well, to me, it just seems to follow by definition, right, on determinism.
01:11:39: Yeah, they get to make up all the definitions they want, don't they? God is literally causing people to will, to choose, and to do everything.
01:11:50: How is that not the same as forcing them to will and to choose and to do?
01:11:55: So, again, since they will not allow the biblical evidence to determine their parameters, then you're stuck with just all that philosophy can give you.
01:12:07: You don't have a biblical view of man. And so man just becomes this thing that you're forcing him to do these things.
01:12:15: If there is any divine decree that includes the actual actions of man, where that decree itself is not delimited by man's freedom.
01:12:27: That's the difference between, they say we both believe in God's decree. No, we do not.
01:12:33: I believe in a decree that flows forth from God's freedom.
01:12:39: You believe in a decree that is delimited by creaturely actions, not creaturely actions in time, but what creatures would do in whatever circumstances.
01:12:49: You can't tell me where that knowledge comes from. That is, to me, why there's really no sense in wasting a lot of time on this in the future.
01:12:59: But that's the difference between the two. We are using the same words. We do not mean the same thing by them.
01:13:05: And I think most people can recognize the vast difference between a decree where God is expressing his freedom to his final glory.
01:13:17: And when God is giving a decree where he's doing the best he can, given the cards he's been dealt. Those are not the same things.
01:13:24: Those are not the same things in any way, shape, or form. No, we're talking about upholding the perfect righteousness of God and the responsibility of man for his sin.
01:13:38: We're talking about demonstrating how the God revealed in nature and scripture can be rightfully said to be holy.
01:13:47: And White thinks that we're just playing logical games and solving little philosophical quandaries.
01:13:53: Right? People's faith has been shipwrecked by the inconsistency that exists between White's determinism that's shared by many pastors around the world and the love and moral perfection of the
01:14:06: God revealed in the Bible. And I truly pity people who struggle under the mental strain caused by this cognitive dissonance that's needed to maintain that God moves his creatures to choose and do evil, and that somehow
01:14:23: God is not the author of evil. So there really is the issue. There really is the issue.
01:14:29: This is the purpose of... This was Molina's purpose. This was the purpose of the
01:14:34: Jesuits. It was an anti -gospel purpose. It was a mechanism to do away with the powerful message of the scriptures that salvation does not come through a sacramental system and through man's freewill actions in obtaining bits and drabs and dribbles of God's grace through the sacraments of Rome, but that God as sovereign over all things...
01:15:04: Remember the first written debate of the Reformation. These guys would not be on Luther's side. The first written debate of the
01:15:12: Reformation, Erasmus, Luther, freedom and bondage of the will, the very focus of what all that was about.
01:15:20: And so this is what they detest, is the absolute freedom of God to save as he wills, because they'll talk about, oh, again, the decree, you bet, you bet, you bet.
01:15:36: But what God gets to be free to choose is not predestination and election.
01:15:45: In fact, let me throw this in here. Okay, earlier today,
01:15:59: Tim Stratton on Twitter said, and I almost fell out of my chair,
01:16:07: I'm a Reformed theologian who has the highest view of God. I oppose
01:16:14: EDD Calvinism because this philosophical view turns God into something far less than a perfect being.
01:16:20: And if God forces you to affirm a false belief, how are you morally responsible for affirming the false belief?
01:16:29: And so I'm like, why do you call yourself a Reformed theologian?
01:16:35: He says, a tweet is insufficient, but in a nutshell, I recognize the importance of and my historical links to the
01:16:42: Reformation and affirm that the inspired word of God is authoritative. I had to convince
01:16:47: NWU that my view was consistent with Reformed theology prior to writing my dissertation. Well, that's not an answer, or it shows a abysmal misunderstanding of what it means to be
01:17:00: Reformed. So I have historical links to the Reformation.
01:17:06: Well, so did Robert Shuler, but he's not Reformed. I said, I simply do not understand the use of the term.
01:17:13: You oppose the central key defining element of Reformed theology, that being the utter freedom of God in his divine sovereignty.
01:17:18: You oppose election and predestination as defined in Reformed confessions. It makes as much sense for you to call yourself
01:17:24: Reformed as it does for me to call myself Roman or Pelagian. It creates complete confusion.
01:17:30: I said completely. It creates complete confusion and makes hash of all normative historical markers.
01:17:36: Why do it? Because as I said above, I affirm the utter libertarian freedom of God, his complete sovereignty and exhausted divine predestination over all creation.
01:17:53: I simply oppose EDD. I love the Reformation, celebrate Reformation Day every year.
01:18:03: Now, if someone says to you, I affirm the utter libertarian freedom of God, his complete sovereignty and exhausted divine predestination over all creation.
01:18:12: Sounds Reformed, doesn't it? Until you ask a question. So God chose and elect people without any reference to their merits or actions and freely brings them to salvation by the exercise of his divine power, raising them to spiritual life, granted them the gifts of faith and repentance?
01:18:34: Ooh, that's where the rubber meets the road, huh? Answer. I affirm election and predestination.
01:18:41: I affirm that no one gets to God apart from his divine power. You and I will disagree on a few things here and there, but ultimately it is going to come down to EDD.
01:18:53: EDD is unbiblical and turns God into a moral monster. We must reject EDD. Are you getting the idea that from these guys' perspective, this is the target?
01:19:05: And it was Melina's target, too. They're just continuing it on. I said the moral monster argument is laughable, of course, but you did not answer my question.
01:19:12: Are the elect chosen freely by God, apart from any foreseen faith, solely upon the free and gracious choice of God, so that he raises them to spiritual life solely by his divine power?
01:19:27: I can be somewhat dogged. It's not laughable when it's deductively concluded via sound logic.
01:19:35: That's probably why you refuse to engage in the topic of the debate with Dr. Craig. To answer your question, yes,
01:19:42: I affirm what you've written. I am a Reformed theologian and monergist. Simply reject
01:19:49: EDD. Wow. So God chooses his elect apart from reliance upon true subjunctive conditionals?
01:20:01: You understand why I'm asking the question? True subjunctive conditionals, middle knowledge. So God chooses his elect apart from middle knowledge?
01:20:11: Because that's what the Reformed people believe. Here, finally, you get to the answer.
01:20:22: It's God's sovereign choice to save people whom he knew would not eternally reject his love and grace.
01:20:36: Hear it? See how far I had to dig to get to it? It is
01:20:44: God's sovereign choice to save people whom he knew, middle knowledge, would not eternally reject his love and grace.
01:20:53: So he doesn't choose the elect. The elect choose him. God is not required to bring anyone into his presence, so I guess he didn't have to create.
01:21:05: If it's not based upon God's knowledge, middle knowledge, and it's not based upon the individual, their actions, then the elect are merely lucky.
01:21:23: What's the one option not included there? The Reformed one.
01:21:30: It's based upon God's eudachia, not in Molinism.
01:21:39: I said, I really hope, my response was this, I really hope people are following this.
01:21:45: This is not what anyone who is Reformed in any meaningful historical sense believes. Once again, now
01:21:50: God's choice is not personal, either flowing from his own eudachia, or having as its object a specific individual freely chosen, but instead the bare act of choosing to save those who choose to be saved.
01:22:04: You are saying it is based upon middle knowledge, which is not based upon God's will, so the choice is not sovereign in any meaningful definition of that term.
01:22:12: You likewise have affirmed, then, that it is based upon the individual, as foreknown in middle knowledge, which was the whole focus of Molina's attempt to undo the gospel of grace, the
01:22:23: Reformation, a project you continue today while calling yourself Reformed. That was an interesting and useful exchange.
01:22:34: It really, really honestly was. It really, really honestly was. Okay, I'm going to get,
01:22:45: I know, I see the time. Rich is falling asleep at home, and let me see.
01:22:54: Yeah, oh yeah, we're getting close here, we're getting close here. Sorry, I feel like Jeff Durbin. I'm close to the end.
01:23:02: Small amount of dishonesty there. On determinism, God isn't restraining creatures, he's restraining himself.
01:23:10: From making those creatures do things. And this is exactly why I think Psalm 33 cannot be used as a proof text against libertarian free will.
01:23:20: It makes an absolute mockery of the idea that both man and God genuinely make plans.
01:23:28: So that's a false definition of determinism. God is not restraining himself.
01:23:34: Man is a fallen creature, found of all sorts of evil that God does not allow him to express, for which we should be greatly thankful.
01:23:45: The whole idea that man is just this empty thing that God's pouring evil thoughts into and stuff like that is a laughably childish understanding of God's creation in time.
01:24:01: And the interaction of human beings with one another in time. We've gone over this over and over again.
01:24:08: If they're just going to continue repeating the same thing, there's no reason to have any discussion about it. But it is a straw man, and we recognize it for what it is.
01:24:18: Well, White asks a deep question that he apparently... By the way, I'm going to 1 .2.
01:24:24: We got to get this done. Thanks. The Molinist can't answer, so get ready for this one. At the eight -minute mark, he says,
01:24:31: How many times did Joseph walk past a Roman soldier? How many times did Mary walk past a
01:24:36: Roman soldier before the angelic announcement? And could not one of those
01:24:41: Roman soldiers have given vent to their evil? Could not have one of those soldiers given vent to their evil?
01:24:48: Well, on determinism, no. Unless God caused them to do so. Again, unless God caused them to do so.
01:24:54: They're these inert objects. This is just such a laughably bad definition of what is...
01:25:03: They just don't understand. It'd be one thing to say they don't understand. They've heard it explained 47 ,000 times.
01:25:08: So this is a situation where you have this imbalance. And again, I said this at the top of the program. This is all these guys do.
01:25:16: I do not see a balance in what they write, what they're lecturing on, what they're dealing with.
01:25:23: That's why, again, one of the things I've been very thankful for, which these guys would say is my greatest weakness, is the
01:25:31: Lord's never allowed me to get focused on just one thing. They have one thing they're focused on. I mean, look at everything
01:25:37: Tim Stratton's done. How could he ever abandon Molinism? Couldn't.
01:25:42: It's what he's defined himself by. And so you just... You have to have it. You have to have this definition.
01:25:49: You have to run with it. And it's completely sub -biblical and only appeals,
01:25:58: I guess, to philosophers. They couldn't have done anything. But on Molinism, God doesn't need to cause them to do anything because he knew that in all of those circumstances in which
01:26:05: Joseph and Mary passed by those Roman soldiers, they would not have given vent to their evil, even though they could have.
01:26:11: So by God's providentially bringing about those circumstances, he guarantees, though he doesn't causally determine, that Joseph and Mary would pass by unharmed.
01:26:19: Now, if that's the case, then why does God ever have to harden hearts or open up hearts?
01:26:27: Because there, what he's saying is, well, God just makes sure that while they were free, they could have.
01:26:33: But God knew that they wouldn't. Again, I dispute that that's even a possibility, and it makes a mockery out of autonomy.
01:26:41: But why not just put them in the proper circumstances so he never has to harden hearts?
01:26:47: Why not put Pharaoh in the proper circumstances that he didn't have to harden Pharaoh's heart? Why does he have to open anyone's heart?
01:26:56: Just put him in the proper circumstances, right? Or is it that there are bumps in the feasible world where this is the best
01:27:04: God could do. There were still some holes, and so he's got to jump in and mess with people's libertarian freedom just a little bit, just a few times to make it all end up working.
01:27:17: I don't know. I don't grasp how any of that's supposed to work.
01:27:24: Notice also that at this point, White is talking about Roman soldiers and Joseph and Mary strayed quite a long way at this point from attempting to show that Psalm 33 is a proof text against libertarian free will.
01:27:34: Yeah, quite a long way indeed. Well, he continues in his journey. By the way, it was never my intention to prove that Psalm 33 is an argument against libertarian free will.
01:27:44: I exegete Psalm 33, and it teaches that God's will is above man's, and it is what is accomplished, not man's.
01:27:54: That was really what was going on. 923, and he says, Remember, Molina believed in prevenient grace, so he's a
01:28:00: Roman Catholic. Okay, now here it just gets absolutely childish. Okay, just absolutely childish. I'm talking about Molinistic anthropology, the necessary things to recognize in regards to mankind that are unbiblical.
01:28:17: They do not recognize man's deadness and sin, the results of that has in regards to the activity of the heart, so on and so forth.
01:28:26: So listen to where this goes. Prevenient grace is the cellophane tape of theology. It's just there to hold stuff together, but it never actually works.
01:28:34: There's just no biblical basis. Oh, look, Tyson, I don't know about you, but I'm not Catholic. I was a Protestant pastor for years and still belong to the
01:28:41: Evangelical Free Church of America. Are you Catholic? And is Dr. Craig Catholic? Help us out. No, no,
01:28:47: I'm not Catholic, and as explained by Dr. Y 'all catch this? Didn't say that they were.
01:28:53: It's irrelevant. This is playing to your audience. It's childish, silly.
01:28:59: Craig, who is also not a Roman Catholic, he's actually a member of a Baptist church in Georgia. As explained by him, prevenient grace is
01:29:07: God's seeking out sinful, alienated, spiritually estranged people and drawing them to himself to the point where one can respond or not by faith.
01:29:16: That's what's meant by prevenient grace. So the question is, you know, why it says there's just no biblical basis. Well, what about John 6, 44?
01:29:22: No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. Right? It's this drawing which Molina and others consider
01:29:28: God's prevenient grace. Now you know who did yesterday. That's it. I'm sorry. It's rather disappointing.
01:29:35: But we spent an hour on John 6 yesterday and we demonstrated exegetically that that is a complete misuse of John 6, 44, and it stands refuted.
01:29:49: Now I would challenge Tyson James, drop all the philosophical mumbo -jumbo,
01:29:56: Tyson. Go to the text and answer the exegesis
01:30:01: I offered of John 6, 44. Leighton Flowers has never done it.
01:30:08: None of your other friends have ever done it. But if you want it, there it is.
01:30:16: Let's see what you come up with. So it's prevenient in the sense that it comes before one's faith. This drawing comes before one's faith.
01:30:22: That's literally what prevenient means. It means to come before. And it's grace because it's unmerited. God draws us all to himself because he loves all of us, not because we've earned his favor.
01:30:32: Amen. Now, that's not what John 6 says, but that's what was just asserted.
01:30:41: All right, at 9 .55, White says, Molina's depending upon something that is not at all biblical to make it even a possibility that God could put people into a position where they will freely choose to follow
01:30:51: Christ. There is no such position. According to Romans chapter 8, there is no condition you can put someone in where they will freely do that because unless they have been regenerated, they will not do that which is pleasing to God.
01:31:02: They will not submit themselves to the law of God. How would you respond, Tyson James? Yeah.
01:31:08: So again, because White doesn't even know what we mean by libertarian free will, he's really unqualified to say whether Romans 8 has anything to do with it.
01:31:16: But let's catch that. So since I don't know what they believe about libertarian free will, you know, proper conditions to be able to make free choices, so on and so forth, then
01:31:29: I can't say anything about Romans 8 which means we're going to get an exegesis of Romans 8, right?
01:31:34: Romans 8, 5 and 6, you know, that's where you get, right? Let's just give it to him for the sake of argument. Let's say that no one will submit themselves to the law of God unless they have first been regenerated.
01:31:43: So once they're regenerated, are they able to freely submit themselves to the law of God or not? Okay. Think about that for a second.
01:31:53: I'm talking about whether someone will come to Christ. He wants to jump past that and say, okay, but let's say that.
01:32:02: Then once they're saved, then do they have libertarian free will that's outside of the decree of God? And I say no, but they have a freed will.
01:32:11: They're no longer slaves to sin. They now are able to follow the godly desires of their new nature.
01:32:17: That's a completely different situation. But how is that an answer? I mean, talk about completely dodging the reality that Molinism is saying people are put into circumstances where they will freely choose.
01:32:32: And the Bible says there is no such circumstance. Did they give an answer? No, they dodged it completely.
01:32:41: Do they think that's effective? I don't know. Well, 1 Corinthians 10 .13 says that regenerate
01:32:47: Christians have the option to choose between resisting and giving in to temptation. So this seems sufficient for libertarian freedom because the alternative is causal.
01:32:54: See, this is the William Lane Craig thing. Now we're going to do something on 1 Corinthians 10 because this is like James 2 for Mormons.
01:33:00: They repeat it over and over and over again, and it's not even talking about what they're trying to make it talk about. But be that as it may, think about what's being said here.
01:33:12: So you throw it out there. To choose between resisting and giving in to temptation. So this seems sufficient for libertarian freedom.
01:33:18: So this seems sufficient. Who do you hear say that over and over again? William Lane Craig.
01:33:26: And in his methodology, all you got to do is just come up with something that's sufficient.
01:33:34: Not that something that is consistent with all of biblical revelation. It's as long as you can come up with something.
01:33:40: And that's the thinking here is, well, if regenerate Christians have free will, then that means it exists.
01:33:48: And therefore, middle knowledge exists. And therefore, we're right and you're wrong. And they really think that that's good argumentation.
01:33:54: They really do. Because the alternative is causal determinism, where one's choice is limited to that which is causally necessitated by factors outside of one's control.
01:34:01: So that would remove a genuine option from 1 Corinthians 10, 13. Yeah. So yet again, we do not see the exclusion of libertarian free will in Romans 8.
01:34:11: Yet again, we see White's use of proof texts. Did we have any exegesis in Romans 8?
01:34:19: No. But by the end of the double speak, oh, now all of a sudden we have the conclusion.
01:34:26: Oh, we didn't find anything there. He didn't even try. He didn't even touch it.
01:34:34: It's sad. It really is sad. All right. Just two more. Just two more. And this is far more radical.
01:34:43: I've never met a Calvinist who rejected God's natural knowledge. But it seems, according to James White, it seems that he not only rejects divine middle knowledge, but he also seems to reject
01:34:52: God's pre -volitional natural knowledge. Because God would have to create those truths as well. So before creating anything, according to James White, God knows nothing.
01:35:01: B -U -N -K. Bunk. It's misrepresentation. Straw man. You know it, Tim. That was a lie.
01:35:07: I have no respect for it. There's just absolutely no reason to respect that kind of rhetoric.
01:35:13: You know it's not true. I refute it. What it means is you misunderstood what
01:35:20: I said. But you guys don't seem to think that you could ever misunderstand anything.
01:35:25: There is a level of arrogance, sir, that is astonishing. It really, really is astonishing.
01:35:33: That was one of the many things. It's just like... Anyway. And then
01:35:38: White says, so again, logically, Acts 4, 27 and 28 is out the window. Is that right?
01:35:44: Yeah. So let's go ahead and read Acts chapter 4, 27 and 28. It says,
01:35:50: For truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the
01:35:57: Gentiles and the people of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.
01:36:03: That's what the text says. And what he's saying is that I'm throwing that out the window as illogical. Okay, so what is his reasoning?
01:36:10: Well, apparently he's taking this word predestined here and saying that we don't affirm that predestination, right?
01:36:18: We think it's logically incoherent or something, because that would mean that God is not the one causing people's choices or something like that.
01:36:23: But that's not at all the case. The Greek word for predestined here is proorison, which just means decided beforehand.
01:36:31: So in other words, he planned for this to happen, but there's nothing in this text that suggests that he causally necessitated these events via determinism.
01:36:38: So again, he's reading his view into another passage of scripture. Predestination is not the equivalent of causal determinism.
01:36:46: Amen to that. It's just not. Okay, we walked through Acts 4 yesterday.
01:36:55: We looked at the yad yaw way. We looked at the fact that the very individuals who were placed by God into that situation was part of his choices.
01:37:07: This was not, well, this is all he could use because of middle knowledge. We tore that apart. This is laughably bad playing at handling the
01:37:20: Bible, and this is what really concerns me. Gentlemen, you know that I didn't even play all the places where you said things that I could have pointed out just make it look really bad.
01:37:35: I actually tried to focus upon things that would be useful. Could have done a little bit more with Romans 8 now that I played that.
01:37:43: And somehow I missed the section where there was a statement made regarding how
01:37:55: I brought up the same thing I brought up to Eli Ayala after the debate that he found very interesting, and that was, how does
01:38:05: God know? So, when we're talking about the
01:38:10: God -man, since Jesus is the God -man, hypostatic union, then there is a human being in the sense of that perfect human nature that is involved in the one person of Christ.
01:38:30: Again, Polynarianism takes that aspect of the human being out and replaces it with the logos and is a formal heresy, and William Lane Craig holds to Neo -Polynarianism.
01:38:46: So, my gut feeling is Tyson James does too, and so he's probably an Apollinarian. And so maybe his answer reflected that, but his answer was that no, there would be no middle knowledge of what
01:39:01: Jesus would do because Jesus was God and all his decisions were as God. So, there's no voluntary giving of a human being in the atonement.
01:39:13: That was one of the primary refutations of Polynarianism. You don't have a real atonement because you don't have an actual human life being given.
01:39:25: So, I'm not sure if that's where it's coming from. Thought I had it marked. Didn't.
01:39:31: Apologize for that. But it's in there. You can find it if you want to dig through two hours. Actually, it would be easy to find.
01:39:38: Be very easy to find if you want to find it, and I could track it down as well.
01:39:45: Grab the transcript from YouTube, from the video.
01:39:52: It's a very useful thing, by the way. It's also how YouTube can take your videos down so fast is they're doing this now.
01:40:03: You can grab that transcript and then you can search on keywords. So, search on Jesus because that name didn't come up a whole lot in this conversation.
01:40:12: Search on Jesus. You'll find it really easily. You'll track it down very easily. Okay, I've got an hour and 40 minutes already.
01:40:20: I'm going to try to make this quick. I said I had two issues to deal with today.
01:40:29: And the second one is sad. It's a sad issue.
01:40:38: And it is in reference to Dr. Jamin Hubner and a book, ostensibly a book review.
01:40:50: It's not a book review. It's not even close to it. If this is a book review, he should be ashamed of himself. Because it's not even close to a meaningful book review at all.
01:40:58: It is a manifesto of wokeness. And I'll finish up by talking about what that means.
01:41:08: But in the volume nine, issue one, 2020 of the
01:41:14: Canadian American Theological Review, that's a big one, there is a review, evidently, because of the new edition of The Forgotten Trinity, the second edition.
01:41:32: Dr. Hubner wrote this hit piece.
01:41:38: And that's what it is, the hit piece. Now, Jamin was once...
01:41:45: In fact, I forgot to look. Maybe if Rich could look. If you guys could... Is there still anything left on the website, on the blog?
01:41:54: Because Jamin once wrote for us. He was what we would call a channel rat.
01:42:02: I just got a no. Okay. He was a channel rat, which means he was a regular in our
01:42:11: IRC channel. And the fact of the matter was, he would have to be honest,
01:42:16: I was his mentor. And he was a pretty young kid when he first came along.
01:42:25: And so over the years, what has happened is
01:42:31: Jamin has become woke. He has moved far, far, far left.
01:42:41: And so far left that much of the criticism...
01:42:55: There's nothing positive said whatsoever in this book review. So there is nothing positive at all to be found in this book.
01:43:06: It's completely negative. Now, of course, when this book came out, Jamin loved it. And learned from it.
01:43:16: And I was one of the first people to direct him toward the study of Greek and all those things.
01:43:23: But that embarrasses him now. It embarrasses him greatly. And that's what this book review is about.
01:43:29: Let me just run through a couple of the issues here. It starts off talking about the approach is different than typical university academics or local pastors, since it is the approach of conservative evangelical apologetics.
01:43:47: By the way, I should note that there is one book that Jamin has written called
01:44:01: Deconstructing Evangelicalism, a letter to a friend and a professor's guide to escaping fundamentalist
01:44:07: Christianity. I looked to see, you know, because this is published by Bethany House Baker.
01:44:17: So I looked to see who published this. The first thing I noticed was one of the commendations,
01:44:26: David Gushie. Oh, some of you remember David Gushie. We spent five, six hours responding to Gushie's defense of homosexuality.
01:44:36: Homosexuality. Yes, that gives you an idea of where things come from.
01:44:43: So I looked up the publishing house here.
01:44:50: And it's called Hills Publishing Group. And it happens to be based in the same place that Jamin lives.
01:44:55: And as far as I can tell, only makes available his stuff.
01:45:01: So I think it's self -published. I think it's a self -published book. And he wrote the article, wrote the review.
01:45:11: And in the process, at the end, identified himself.
01:45:21: It's Jamin Andreas Huebner, LCC International University.
01:45:30: LCC International University. I'll be honest, didn't ring any bells with me.
01:45:37: So I looked it up. And it's not in North Dakota. It's a nationally and internationally recognized liberal arts institution in the city of Klaipeda, Lithuania.
01:45:57: Klaipeda, Lithuania. Established all the way back five years before I wrote the book.
01:46:08: So I guess that's, he does something for a school in Lithuania. Okay, all right.
01:46:15: Gotcha. So the overarching functional framework, while the tone seeks to be generous, that's the nicest thing said in the review, the overarching functional framework naturally remains one of entrenched warfare about false teaching and heretics versus truth and the orthodox, where both the author and implied reader are already familiar with this orientation.
01:46:46: Okay, so remember, this is where Jamin once was, and he's not anymore.
01:46:54: And it really helps you to understand a lot of people. Bart Ehrman. Look at the subjects Bart Ehrman addresses.
01:46:59: Look at the books he's written. Is that part of a process explaining where he once was and where he now is?
01:47:07: I think that it is. We go on. Questions only multiply as readers encounter one puzzling assertion after another.
01:47:18: The Trinity is the highest revelation God has made of himself to his people. That's what
01:47:23: I said. Leaving readers to ask, according to whom?
01:47:29: And isn't the Christ event the highest revelation of God, assuming there legitimately exists such a superlative?
01:47:38: The vast majority of standard systematic theologies would agree with my statement, but see,
01:47:47: Jamin doesn't believe in any of that stuff anymore. Helps you to understand where he's coming from. White also laments that the
01:47:54: Trinity is rarely the object of adoration and worship, at least worship and truth. In reading the book, it was hard to discern.
01:48:00: Ah, catch this. In reading the book, it was hard to discern the difference between worshiping
01:48:05: God as Trinity and worshiping the doctrine of the Trinity. Not an objection he would have had when he still believed what we believe.
01:48:20: But there's a footnote. Well, no,
01:48:26: I missed two footnotes. Sorry about that. Two footnotes on this page were fascinating.
01:48:35: The answer to this last one is obviously a historical ethos. This isn't a book review on the
01:48:40: Trinity, folks. You want to know how woke this is? The answer to this last one is obviously a historical ethos of coercion and threats of violence.
01:48:51: Yes, violence. Whether in the long story of the institutional church burning heretics at the stake specifically for questioning
01:48:59: Trinitarian dogma, or the more common threats of eternal hell from the pulpit, the forgotten
01:49:05: Trinity implements the standard strategy of various sectarian, religious, and fundamentalist movements by mixing subtle threats with love.
01:49:16: I wish to invite you, my fellow believer, to a deeper, higher, and more intense love of God's truth.
01:49:22: But we must be willing to love God as he is. That's supposed to be a contrast.
01:49:31: A mental mistake, a faulty image of God in our mind on the level of God's nature, has the worst of consequences.
01:49:36: One is here reminded of Marcella Althaus -Reed's Tea Theology as quoted in Lynn Marie Tonstadt, Queer Theology, Beyond Apologetics, Eugene, Oregon.
01:49:48: Theology is a grand, imperial narrative of power. It seeks to classify all reality systematically.
01:49:56: Tea Theology teaches people how to justify acts of brutality as, in a sense, acts of Christian love.
01:50:03: Have you heard anything more woke than that? Or anything less connected to the content of the book?
01:50:13: Once you're woke, your whole worldview is broke. And that's all you can see.
01:50:19: All you can see, he once didn't see it, but now, enlightened by the woke worldview, violence, threats of violence.
01:50:33: And then also, the use of male pronoun for the Trinity as the whole is also noticeable for a contemporary work in theology.
01:50:40: Even the most conservative and reformed of systematic theologians writing in the most conservative and reformed publishers are at least critically aware of this issue and its importance, as he well knows.
01:50:49: Well, I don't know. Had he started going wonky by then? I think he had. When I wrote my book on justification, when the first draft came, the editors had thrown in random feminine pronouns.
01:51:06: And I'd be reading along and I'd go, what? What? Because I'd start looking for the feminine antecedent.
01:51:14: Well, where was I talking about a woman? What? What? And then I realized after a few pages that this was just all the way through.
01:51:21: And I wrote to the publisher and I said, that is not how I speak. That's not how I write. And the people to whom
01:51:26: I'm communicating do not want that either. Take it out. And they did.
01:51:32: They did. I do not apologize for that. And I consider anyone who thinks that's relevant, small minded and childish.
01:51:42: Just so you know right where I stand on that. Uh, the perspective of the book is also noticeably modern and rationalist in its anthropology.
01:51:54: Allergic to anything subjective, the deepest feelings and emotions evoked by the spirit. And I quote, this is quoting me here.
01:52:03: The deepest feelings and emotions evoked by the spirit are not direct, are not direct toward, probably misquoted me, are not directed toward unclear nebulous fuzzy concepts, but toward the clear revealed truths of God concerning his love, the work of Christ and the ministry of the
01:52:20: Holy Spirit. So he's objecting to my statement. That while the spirit of God creates deep emotional realities in regards to our worship of God, the spirit does not direct us toward unclear nebulous fuzzy concepts, but toward the clear revealed truths of God concerning his love.
01:52:44: Once you go woke, the idea of objective revelation, something that's true from one generation, next generation, don't believe it anymore.
01:52:56: Isn't it sad to see? Because he once believed this. I know he once believed this. And everybody who was in channel with us knew he once believed this.
01:53:07: And it's a sad thing to see. It really is. In reading the book, it seems unfathomable to the author that a person could worship something genuinely mysterious, or that human feeling and intuition might indicate truth, or that the clearest theological truths may not have anything to do with the
01:53:24: Trinity, or that God might primarily be understood as a person to be experienced and not an object to be systematically comprehended.
01:53:33: See, this kind of language is heartbreaking to hear come from someone who once knew the truth, because you know they're suppressing it.
01:53:44: But I've, I went to Fuller, heard it all before, saw it, picked out the few gems you could get and left the rest behind.
01:53:58: Indeed, the perspective is extremely dogmatic. And the dogma of the Trinity, dogmatic, okay.
01:54:04: A paltry few pages are given to mystery and the limits of language before brushing all that aside to define the
01:54:11: Trinity in contemporary propositional language, and then we actually define the
01:54:16: Trinity. Within the one being that is God, there exists eternally three coequal and coeternal persons, namely the
01:54:22: Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, something that Jamin Hubner once in his youthful days found to be extremely useful and helpful.
01:54:31: And now the clarity of that kind of definition, well, when you're woke, you can't have that.
01:54:37: Can't have that. Thus, if readers raise any questions about the post -definition, one already knows in advance that their eternal salvation may be in question.
01:54:49: Oh, and the footnotes are just great. Notice there's been almost no interaction whatsoever.
01:54:56: I mean, as far as a book review is concerned, this should never have seen light of day.
01:55:03: It's embarrassing to the editors of this journal that it was published, because they should have seen it for what it was. But they may be.
01:55:09: They're probably woke too. So it's like, hey, as long as it's woke, it's good. And it would fail any course
01:55:15: I would be teaching, that's for sure. The author is part of the Reformed Anti -Empathy
01:55:21: Movement. I didn't even know there was one!
01:55:27: The Reformed Anti -Empathy Movement. Wow. Rich is lolling on Signal now.
01:55:37: Um, which prides itself on the course, C -O -A -R -S -E, course preaching of judgment and predestination and discourages any substantive appeals to emotion, irrational discourse, especially in the face of minorities,
01:55:55: African Americans, non -heterosexual persons, etc., who are suffering social oppression.
01:56:01: That is so laughably dumb. I don't even know what to say about it. I mean, there is no such movement.
01:56:09: It didn't have anything to do with that. It has nothing to do with minorities. It's just, wow.
01:56:17: When you go woke... I mean, this kid was sharp. He really was. That's why at first I just ignored it.
01:56:23: It was just like, you know, sad. But he was sharp. And to see this kind of stuff now, it's just like, ooh.
01:56:33: Then you have this, and here's where you start getting argumentation. Footnote. Hence, forgotten trinity.
01:56:39: Most Christian people are remembering the term trinity have forgotten the central place of doctrines to hold in the Christian life. It escapes
01:56:44: White that these unfortunate Christians include those of the first two centuries C -E and that the official acceptance of Trinitarian dogma in Christendom, to whatever extent it was in certain periods, is not proof of its concrete impacts on the
01:56:59: Christian life. So here you have straight up heresy again. I mean, that's what you expect from... That's how you advance amongst the woke is embracing more and more things.
01:57:10: I sort of knew this was happening, but I didn't keep track of it. So when
01:57:16: Ignatius uses Trinitarian language one generation after the apostles, what do you do with that,
01:57:26: Jamin? You know it. I taught it to you. I showed it to you. You just ignore it now? Um, the rise of Nicene orthodoxy over Arianism is also said to be proof that political power cannot overthrow scriptural truth.
01:57:45: That's where I was discussing about what happened after the Council of Nicaea and evidence of the irresistible force of truth.
01:57:50: But this problematically suggests that the doctrine's political success is an indicator of its theological truth, not to mention that orthodoxy is rightfully coercive.
01:57:59: That is just such bunk. I don't even know how to... Did anyone read this?
01:58:04: Did you read it, Jamin? To yourself. That's the opposite of what I said. It's right there in the...
01:58:12: Cannot overthrow... Oh, scriptural truth. Oh, but that suggests the doctrine's political success is an indicator of its theological truth.
01:58:23: What? What? Once you go woke, just...
01:58:32: Ooh. The approach of the book is typical of cheap apologetics.
01:58:39: The orthodox idea is defined, followed by proof texts and additional evidence showing that it's correct and refuting dissenters along the way, in this case, primarily
01:58:46: Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons. Are Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons correct now, Jamin? Although readers are reminded to love
01:58:53: God, experience proper emotion, and not just obtain good ammunition to use the next time I debate the
01:58:58: Trinity, the book essentially functions imprecisely this way. It says that, but I know.
01:59:06: See? I know. For an explicitly popular level work of American evangelical fundamentalist apologetics, one unfortunately witnesses what one might expect, a near total absence of relevant secondary sources, prevalent use of outdated biblical studies resources, and astounding degree of isolation and ignorance on the primary subject matter.
01:59:29: Then you have footnotes, which basically means I did not fill this book, meant for my fellow believers, with the garbage of liberalism, which
01:59:40: I had to study when I was in seminary but recognized it had nothing to do with the subject of this book.
01:59:48: And so, what's interesting... So, for example,
01:59:54: White implements Hodge, Warfield, and Burkoff all from the early 20th century. It's not like I believe the
02:00:00: Trinity has been true since, you know, for 2 ,000 years. It was true before then, of course, but I mean, as far as Revelation, you know.
02:00:07: Remarkably, one of the... And then, remarkably, one of the only contemporary persons cited in favorably is Wayne Grudem, whose notorious views in the
02:00:14: Trinity have been the object of repeated criticism by fellow conservative evangelicals, reformed theologians, and traditional Trinitarians, followed by,
02:00:21: I don't know how many references below that, to talk about his views on eternal functional subordinations.
02:00:28: Which I didn't get into in the book because, as he knows, it was written before the explosion in 2016 and did not believe that it was appropriate to add a chapter in 2020 to the book on that one particular subject, especially because of its connections to other things.
02:00:50: But see, this is Jamin's thing. Jamin is now full on into all the egalitarian women stuff, and so that's why this is here.
02:01:08: See, the vast majority of this has nothing to do with the book. That's why it's just so laughable on any scholarly level. Has nothing to do with the book.
02:01:14: It should never have been published, but it's a hit piece, and I'll explain why in just a second. We're almost done. Yeah, I don't mention
02:01:25: Bart or Moltmann or Rahner. Yeah, that's exactly what people needed. That's why people have actually liked the book and why he liked it when it first came out.
02:01:35: And then it says, familiarity with developments or debates on the
02:01:40: Trinity over at least the last thousand years. It's as far from academia as one can imagine.
02:01:47: Well, if this stuff that you're putting out is academia, I want to be as far away from it as possible.
02:01:57: It's unfortunate. It is unfortunate. Oh, I need to read this properly. It is unfortunate that a critical review like this has to be written.
02:02:07: If I had some music to play right now, it would help set the stage for this. It is unfortunate that a critical review like this has to be written.
02:02:14: This isn't a critical review, Jamin, and you know it, but it is more unfortunate and baffling why a division of Baker House would publish and republish such phony scholarship to begin with and buy a publicly notorious figure, no less.
02:02:32: Can you say ad hominem? I can say ad hominem and I know what ad hominem is.
02:02:40: Publicly notorious figure. Well, there's a footnote. Note observations in Jamin Andreas Huebner, deconstructing evangelism, evangelicalism,
02:02:56: Rapid City, South Dakota, 2020. Oh, his self -published book. Oh, here it is.
02:03:03: White serves as a pastor of the infamous Apologia Church in Mesa, Arizona.
02:03:09: So that's what notorious means. Oh, okay.
02:03:17: The book will put Christian readers in an incredibly vulnerable place. Vulnerable place. Remember, saphism.
02:03:24: Leaving them with a superficial account of theological development in church history and misplaced priorities about the nature of worship, theologizing, and biblical study.
02:03:34: It should go without saying there are dozens of Christian doctrines and models of the Trinity and that they are frequently complementary, not in competition.
02:03:42: Furthermore, churches are free to identify themselves with Nicene orthodoxy, implement some other articulation, or do the work of the church without a creedal requirement at all.
02:03:51: Who needs to know who God is? If discerning what can rightly be called
02:03:57: Christian on this subject is White's primary concern, then we will have to do more than close our eyes and ears, circle the wagons around shameless ignorance, and proclaim certain knowledge about perhaps the most notoriously complex topic of Christian theology.
02:04:13: Thus ends the review. All right, real quick, because we've already gone two hours.
02:04:20: What was this? This was an act of penance. This is woke penance.
02:04:29: This is a man who was once amongst us. They went out from us, so it might be demonstrated they were not of us.
02:04:36: He was once amongst us, and this is woke penance.
02:04:43: What I'm going to do is I'm going to write this about my former mentor, a man who did a lot of things for me and invested in me, but I have rejected that faith.
02:04:59: I have embraced a new perspective that repudiates all that, and so I'm putting my book out talking about my apostasy, and so I will do an act of public woke penance by attacking my former mentor.
02:05:18: I will do so without actually engaging in any meaningful interaction with any of the biblical argumentation, sources, or anything else, purpose of the book, and I will never mention to anyone that I once thought it was one of the best books
02:05:31: I'd ever read because I did, but I don't anymore, and I'm embarrassed that I ever did, so I'm going to do penance.
02:05:40: Jamin, here's the problem. You're going to discover that the people on your side won't care because you can't do enough penance.
02:05:49: You can't do enough penance, and the real issue is what would motivate someone.
02:05:57: See, I can understand if someone actually becomes convinced that everything they have been taught was wrong, and so they go another direction, but see, those folks, they just go the other direction.
02:06:09: They don't feel the need to do this kind of thing. This indicates this is suppression. This is katakantom.
02:06:15: You know what katakantom is, Jamin? Right? This is suppression, active suppression of the truth.
02:06:22: This is coming from a tortured soul, and it's sad to see.
02:06:31: It is so sad to see. Like I said, when I first saw it, it was just like, well, you know, but then he's promoting it on social media, so it's like, all right.
02:06:47: I was willing to let it pass despite the absurdity of it all, but if you're going to throw it out there, and you're going to keep pushing it, all right, let's point out how sad it is as a warning to others.
02:07:05: Don't take your standing in an apathetic fashion.
02:07:10: You may think you are standing firm. Take heed lest you fall, because the fall will end up in this.
02:07:20: Well, there's all sorts of models about God, and you don't even have to have a real understanding of the
02:07:25: Trinity or anything like that, because, I mean, you know, there's just lots of different ways, and we need to be affirming of this view and that view, and there's all these different perspectives, and they were cited, you know, models of God from Sally McFague, and the cosmo -theandric experience from Ramon Panikkar, and you just go, how could someone lose their footing that way?
02:07:53: Well, take heed lest you fall. Take heed lest you fall. It's a sad thing to see, but the
02:08:04: Apostle Paul named names of those who had once been with him and were no longer.
02:08:11: So I guess it's an appropriate thing to do. But given that it doesn't even touch the actual substance of the book, that tells me there really wasn't much else to do other than to write this manifesto of wokeness.
02:08:29: And so there you go. All right. Wow. Two hours and eight minutes.
02:08:35: Sorry, Rich, I'm sure that that has probably put your dinner on hold and everything else, but had to get through all of that today.
02:08:46: Lord willing, be back on Thursday and thinking about some other things.
02:08:53: At some point, we're going to have to do a program on Odyssey, directly on Odyssey, because I've been being such a good boy and not talking about all that's going on about that other stuff and need to talk about some of those things going on.
02:09:12: Just really, really do. So maybe Thursday, maybe... I don't know. We'll see.
02:09:17: We'll see what the schedule allows and where you can fit it all in. One last thing.
02:09:23: Don't start the music yet. One last thing. I think...
02:09:29: Did I mention at the beginning? Okay, it's been over two hours and I've covered a lot of stuff, but really excited.
02:09:35: I think I did. Yes, really excited. Repeating now, for those of you who...
02:09:41: If you made it this far, you need me to remind you as well. Don't forget, when you watch this program and I'm putting stuff up on the big board and we're looking at Greek and Hebrew and the
02:09:51: Septuagint and all that kind of fun stuff, I am using Accordance Bible software. And as of today, my main works, including that one...
02:10:02: Oh, that's going to make Jamin feel really good. ...are available in Accordance.
02:10:08: And so they're on sale right now in Accordance. And so I'm really excited about that because I love
02:10:17: Accordance. It's what we use here as far as biblical studies software.
02:10:24: I just don't think there's anything that comes close to it. And so if you're an Accordance user, jump online and you can get a sale right now on...
02:10:34: It's not all my books, but it's my main books. I'm pretty sure it's just my Bethany books. So I don't think it would include the
02:10:41: Potter's Freedom or... I could be wrong. I'll double check. But I think it's just the Bethany books. But available in Accordance Bible software now.
02:10:49: It's really exciting. And I hope you'll grab that and hopefully it will be useful to you in your studies.
02:10:56: So with that, thank you very much, Rich, for doing this remotely. And we will see you next time here on The Dividing Line.