Molinism with Tyler Vela | Apologetics Live 0006 | CARM | Striving for Eternity

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This is Apologetics Live with Matt Slick and Andrew Rappaport, part of the

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Christian Podcast Community. All right, well, we are live,

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Apologetics Live, with Matt Slick, myself, Andrew Rappaport, Matt Slick from karm .org. I am from strivingforeternity .org.

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We are here every Thursday night. If you want to join in, if you're watching online, maybe on YouTube, or, well, if you're on the website,

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ApologeticsLive .com, in there, refresh the page if you need to, to see the link to join.

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That is how you join. We will be doing an open Q &A in a bit. Before that, we're going to have a discussion with a friend,

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Tyler Villa, on the subject of Molinism. But before we get to that, today,

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I think it was today, actually, Matt will correct me if I'm wrong, but today on karm .org was released about 80 articles on King James onlyism.

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So if you have been dealing with that issue, or have friends who believe the King James Bible is the only

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Bible we should use, go to karm .org, do a search for King James only, and you will see a whole plethora of arguments against it, and some good research that was done mostly by one of the other young guns at Karm, Luke Wayne, coming under the guidance of Matt Slick, which is not a good thing.

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Luke was sane before he started working with Matt. I'm just saying, I met him in the early times. He was a sane individual.

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I can't vouch the same anymore. But he's a good guy.

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He's written a lot of these articles, some good stuff. I've been started going through them myself, and I should announce,

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Matt, that I am alive. I'm here. I'm kicking. For folks who were following some of the threads in Apologex Live Facebook group this week, we had a apostle, so he says, an apostle that came in and was dropping some videos of some women preaching, women pastors.

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He decided to support his arguments with some writings from N .T. Wright, who doesn't exactly have the best arguments on the gospel with salvation.

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But basically this gentleman told me, of course he told me this after he left the group, but he told me that I was going to have a heart attack yesterday, that I was not going to make it to the show.

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I got news for folks. I'm here. I didn't have a heart attack. So not only is he not an apostle, that's why he told me

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I was going to have a heart attack, because I said he was not an apostle. He said he was going to prove it. That was his proof.

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And guess what? I'm here, which means he's not only not an apostle, he's a false prophet.

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I guess, you know, I think we're going to probably have to do, Matt, one of these times a whole show on like the apostles and some of these folks in N .A

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.R. where they all want to claim an authority that really they shouldn't have.

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So I want to introduce Tyler Villa, and what we're going to do for this first section of the show is really just let

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Matt and Tyler discuss Molinism. So Tyler had a podcast recently.

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He's the host of The Freed Thinker. Before we get started, I just want him to explain

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Freed Thinker, where that came from a little bit of his background. This is the first time he and Matt have met each other, kind of even virtually, and been able to talk.

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He had a podcast on Molinism. He's done a lot of work on Molinism.

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He had an interesting take on his most recent one. I want to explain that a little, and then I have a feeling he and Matt are going to have a lot of fun discussion with that.

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So Tyler, why don't you come on in, introduce yourself, your podcast, why you came up with that, and a little your background, and then explain some of what you were covering real quick from your podcast.

04:35

Yeah, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. I think, Matt, you and I have probably crossed paths.

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We've been in the same circles for a long time. It's the first time, so it's nice to finally talk. The Freed Thinker podcast has actually been going on for longer than it's been, the

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Freed Thinker podcast. It used to be Logical Theism, but I was new and I had a terrible web provider, and it was

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Logical -Theism, but it was just long and complicated. But it really came out of my interest in apologetics.

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I didn't grow up as a believer. I grew up in a secular home as an unbeliever, as an atheist in my teens, up until actually college when

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I was caught by Christ and regenerated and brought to belief.

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So really, a lot of my background was in philosophy and naturalism and atheism.

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And so even as a young Christian, that was where my interests fell, so to speak.

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So I got into apologetics dealing with right around the time the new atheists came about and dealing with some of those issues.

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And so I always thought it was funny that they were like, well, we're the free thinkers. And I was like,

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I'm not under any ecclesiastical authority. I'm an elder now in a denomination, so I guess now

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I am. But at the time, I wasn't. And even now, I mean, I'm free to believe differently.

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And if I believe differently, I would just leave the denomination that I'm a part of. So there's no really ecclesiastical or authoritarian pressures on what

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I think, what I believe. I go with what I think is most reasonable. And right now, that is, well, not right now, hopefully preservation, perseverance, that is to the end of my life.

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But in Christ, I've been freed.

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And so it's kind of a play on the free thinker to be the freed thinkers. We are the ones who are freed indeed in Christ.

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And as good presuppositionalists, we think that we're now the ones that are freed to think rationally and consistently.

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So that's a big part of it. And I should say this, your most recent one,

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I haven't listened to it, but Matt will appreciate your most recent podcast, but I think I'm going to have to find some reason to pick at it.

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You rip on dispensationalism, I think, from the title at least. It's an article, not a podcast.

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So it's just a couple of verses for why

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I don't think I could ever be a dispensationalist. I know you're wrong because you will be when you get to heaven.

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Just saying. Well, that's all right. I'll be repenting of all kinds of things when

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I get to heaven. So that may be the case. But no, so it's largely geared towards apologetics.

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Lately, just because of how my time constraints have been, and I'm working on my master's at RTS, it's been geared much more towards biblical theology and some systematic theology kind of gotten away from apologetics a little bit.

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So that's where we've been dealing. I've been dealing with Molinism a little bit more, and the age of the earth, and Genesis 1, and some of those issues.

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So really now, the freed thinker still dips into apologetics, but it's kind of whatever is crossing my plate at the time and what my area of research is at that time, but usually within the realm of apologetics or biblical theology.

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Let me ask you really fast. You go to RTS, did you meet John Frame? No, no,

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I actually, I haven't taken any of his classes yet. Oh, he retired. How about Mark Furtado?

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No, I haven't actually, but I've read a bunch of his works, because he's an influence on my view of Genesis. Okay, yeah, because they're both my profs in Westminster in San Diego.

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So, you know, no biggie, no biggie. Just curious. No big deal. So why are you against Molinism?

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Um, so I have lots of reasons to be against Molinism.

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One of the things that I did on the recent episode is I wanted to take a different tactic against it.

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So much of attacks on Molinism are in the sphere of epistemology and dealing with, you know, the grounding objection, the traditional grounding objection against middle knowledge.

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Um, I wanted to come at actually some metaphysical issues that I think, um, arise from, from Molinism.

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Um, Andrew, how much do you want background information on what Molinism is?

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You know, there's going to be some folks that maybe it'll be a new term. So if you could give some, some high level time for Q &A, there is an article for folks that want, if they go to karm .org,

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you could do karm .org slash what dash is dash Molinism or just type in what is

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Molinism and they'd find that too for future. Okay. Well, Molinism is it's, it's called

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Molinism. It's not about, you know, little shrew moles or anything like that. It's based on the teaching of Louis de

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Molina of the counter -reformation. Um, and basically it's a, it's a way of trying to reconcile, um, divine sovereignty and human freedom or responsibility.

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Um, and it typically affirms, uh, some, some version of libertarian freedom, although there's some movement on that lately.

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Um, but what it tries to do is to say that the way that you can reconcile it is through this third type of knowledge, this third type of knowledge called middle knowledge, and it's called middle knowledge because it's right in between what is traditionally believed about God's knowledge.

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So you have God's natural knowledge, which is God's knowledge about himself, um, and his knowledge is necessary.

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True. So they're kind of, uh, God's knowledge about his, his own nature, his eternality, things like that, and necessary knowledge.

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So things like, um, there are no, uh, square circles and things like that. Um, that's on one side.

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The other side is this free knowledge. That's the knowledge that God has of his creation of the world. Um, he, he has, he has, uh, free knowledge that we are having this conversation right now.

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That's a super unphilosophical way of saying right now, but he, he has knowledge of, uh, you know, that, that awesome shirt that Matt is wearing.

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Um, he has knowledge, uh, about what the words that I'm saying he has, he has knowledge that is, uh, of this world, but it's not, it's contingent.

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It's based on the fact that he actually created and actualized this world. Um, that, that pretty much every single

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Orthodox, uh, Christian will believe in those, those types of knowledge. The Molinists is going to come along and they're going to say, well, in order to respond to some of these problems about, um, suffering and evil and to reconcile

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God's, uh, omniscience, um, and, and creaturely freedom, um,

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God has this third type of knowledge called middle knowledge, which right in the middle of the two. And that is, um, that God knows everything that could have been, um, if he had created a different world.

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So he knows, basically he knows every, um, every counterfactual truth.

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Um, so he knows what it would have happened, um, how I would be feeling right now if I had skipped breakfast this morning.

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His natural, sorry, his free knowledge, he knows how I am feeling because I did eat breakfast, but he has this middle knowledge that he, he know, he knows what, what it would have been like if I had skipped breakfast, um, how cranky

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I would have been with you guys and, and, and stuff like that. Um, so that's, that's the, that's the middle knowledge that God has.

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Um, and the claim is that, uh, God can, can know everything.

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He can have a perfect knowledge of, of the world, but we're still, uh, we still have, um, libertarian free choice to do what we would do.

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And God, um, knows what we would have done if he had actualized a different world. Right.

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And this is, this is to give benefit to, um, to the answers to the problem of evil, um, and to reconcile, uh, divine, uh, sovereignty and human freedom.

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You just mentioned the word libertarian free will that that's like the magic, all of a sudden when you mentioned that somehow magically late years, he just shows up.

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I didn't say it three times. Okay. So, so go over the view that you had.

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Cause I know Matt has, has dealt with Molinism quite a bit. Um, and I want to,

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I want to see, I actually want to see his interaction with you on some of what you're bringing up. Cause it was a different way of hearing it.

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And then I have questions for both of you. So typically the, the, like I said at the beginning, the response to, to Molinism is to attack it epistemologically.

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It's to go after their view of, of knowledge. And usually the, one of the stronger ones is to say, well, they have a grounding problem, right?

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There, there is, if there is no actual, um, if there is no actual fact that makes

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God's knowledge true, then there's nothing there's, there's no, what are called truth makers for it.

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So there's no, there's no explanation for why God would have this middle knowledge, right? So, so in, in reform traditions, we would say that God has natural knowledge, but it's rooted in his decrees.

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The reason why God knows what is happening in the world is because God's decreed what's going to happen in the world.

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That's why he can, that's why he can know it. And we would actually say, well, God has absolute, um, uh, counterfact, you know, exhaustive counterfactual knowledge, not because he knows these in, in this abstract way, these other possible worlds, but because God has the natural knowledge that his, whatever he decrees comes to pass.

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And so he can know that the counterfactual facts of, if I had decreed

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X, then X would be true. And, and so he knows what he didn't decree. And so he can still have effectively what is, what is the outcome of middle knowledge, but without the grounding problems, right?

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So there's, there's this whole grounding objection and you go after epistemology epistemologically. I want to come along and say, okay, well, yes, you have,

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I think those are absolutely valid criticisms. I'm not trying to downplay them, but I think we can come at it metaphysically also.

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I think there's other problems that arise from Molinism. Um, one of the big ones being, and I, I give a whole list of them, but one of the big ones is a different type of grounding problem.

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Um, so let me back up. One of the things that, that they're going to say that a

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Molinist is going to say is that when God was creating the world, he could look over a range of possibilities and pick whichever one he thought was best.

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We want to be careful and not accuse Molinists of, um, a greatest possible world theology, a greatest possible world theology is, is kind of the original ontological argument of God.

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God chose the greatest possible world, um, to bring about the most people being saved or whatever it is.

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Because at the end of the day, you could always pull the, I always want to say Guano, but that's bat poop.

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Guiano, right? Is the, the, the priest. Um, you could always say, well, couldn't there be, you know, one more person that's saved?

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You could always kind of improve it. They're going to fall back and say, well, there's, there's, there's a best possible world for his, for his outcome.

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And he looks over these, these, these possible worlds and he act, chooses one to actualize and he actualizes one for his greatest purposes, right?

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And it could be a whole number of, of reasons, right? Which gets them in trouble later on anyways, with some of their assumptions we can get to.

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But when an objection comes up, we're going to come along and we're going to say, well, you're trying to maintain libertarian freedom.

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And one of the ways you want to get out of the problem of evil, the problem of suffering is to say that, that it's libertarian freedom is such a good, um, that God is limited on the types of worlds that he could create, um, in which you have people who have libertarian freedom and freely choose

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God. Um, and that he's limited in that number of worlds. And so the

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Molinist is going to want to say that there, there are some worlds that are, that are what are called logically possible or strictly logically possible.

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Um, and then there are other worlds that are not, that are feasible, right? So there, if we come along and say, well, why couldn't

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God have created a world where everybody freely believes? The Molinist is going to come along and say, well, it might not be feasible for God to create that type of world.

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Because given that amount of freedom, it might not be possible that there's a world where everybody freely believes, right?

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Given, given that much creaturely freedom, there might not be a feasible world where God can create libertarian freedom and have everybody believe.

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So they have this, this feasibility issue. This is where the first area where I'm going to call foul on it.

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Um, when we're, when we're dealing with feasibility, this, this comes from the realm of philosophy and feasibility comes around when you have limited resources, right?

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So I might want to create, you know, a best possible business, um, but I have limited resources to do it.

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So how I can implement a business model, I'm limited on what I can do. So I have, I have logically possible business models that I can do, but with my resources, they might not all be feasible.

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It might, we might even say that after creation, God has limited what he can do in creation.

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So, um, the way that God has created, uh, created the cosmos, he's now, he's now limited what he can do, uh, based on, uh, say his promises.

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Um, and he can't, you know, revoke his guarantees types of things. He might have kind of bound himself once he's created, um, to do

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A, B and C and not X, Y and Z. Um, even if we grant that you still have creation,

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I'm going to say metaphysically, you're dealing with an omnipotent being prior to there being any creational activity.

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And so I see, I see no merit to making this distinction prior to the act of creation where something might be logically possible, but not feasible for an omnipotent

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God to create. Um, so the, the example that I give is I think there's logically a possible world that has the same population as the actual world, same number of humans where everybody freely believes in God.

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There's no logical contradiction. There's no, there's no logical reason why that wouldn't be the case.

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The Molinist typically is going to come along and say, well, by God's middle knowledge, he might know that there, that those people wouldn't freely believe.

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That's moving the goalposts. It's actually changing the term. So let's say, let's say we label this, this world

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X world in X world, you have the same number of people as the actual world, and they all freely choose

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God. God would have, if you're, if you're a Molinist, God would have middle knowledge such that he would know if I actualized

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X world, then this number of people would freely believe, right?

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So if God has that, that, that middle knowledge, that counterfactual knowledge of what could be, there's now no reason why he couldn't actualize that world.

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And for the Molinist to come back and say, well, it might be the case that in a world with sufficiently number of free creatures, um, that they wouldn't freely believe what they've done is said, well,

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God didn't actually have middle knowledge of that counterfactual world in the first place, because they've now changed the features of X world.

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They've made it Y world where it's that number of people, but they don't all freely believe. So they actually have to change the conditions of the world to make it not feasible.

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But in doing so, they've just moved the goalposts and they've made it no longer the same world that God had the middle, the counterfactual middle knowledge about.

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I don't know if that kind of makes, that makes sense if you want to hash some of that out. Dude, man,

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I like what you're saying. I've always wondered about Molinism and the issue of middle knowledge, because that's, that's where I think it's problematic that combined with libertarianism, because you know, you're reformed,

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I'm reformed. And the Bible clearly tells us that, uh, the person is a slave of sin is restricted, uh, to only choose simple things.

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So there is no possible world in which a totally depraved individual will ever choose

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Christ. So the issue of making a possible world, the best of whatever, where most people are saved, doesn't make any sense.

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It's one of the weaknesses I've found in Molinism. It's presupposition of libertarianism.

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And, um, uh, we could talk, discuss the issue of why libertarian free will is not true and why it's against scripture.

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But, um, I like what you said. I've taken a little bit of notes actually, because to comment on a few of the things

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I didn't start doing that until just a couple of minutes ago. But, um, the grounding issue, it's one of the things

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I've discussed with some Molinists is, well, how is it that God can know exactly what will be done in different circumstances?

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If he is the one who has to create the circumstances to begin with. And the problem here

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I'm seeing is that it's like God creating something, creating their free will, putting them in a circumstance.

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God just happens to know what they're going to do in that circumstance. And they're going to have to say that's how he's grounding it. But I see the problem of open theism, uh, creeping into the back door when you start, um, presupposing libertarianism and move away from the necessity of God's decrees.

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When he decrees what comes into existence, he decrees everything that comes into existence.

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And it's either by direct or indirect causation, but he decrees it. And I totally agree with you. This is why he foreknows, because the foreknowledge means that he's decreed it to exist.

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That's why he foreknows. It cannot fail, which includes also the necessity of his own knowledge of his own actions, um, as he decrees everything.

23:02

Um, yeah, I, I, so I, I also think that Molinism logically entails open theism.

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Um, I grant that there can be Molinists who hold it inconsistently and don't affirm open theism and think they can get around it.

23:16

So to that point, it also affects the nature of what the future is, because if you think about it, someone who had opened to open theism, let's talk, tackle open theism, because there's remnants of it creeping in, uh, like I said, to the back door here because of an open theist.

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What's the future? The future is an ontologically separate thing from the actual awareness and nature of God's existence.

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It is something yet to occur. It has its own, uh, well, we call it a potential infinite.

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It's been created by God and goes on without his, um, absolute knowledge of all things.

23:47

I find that to be very problematic. It just makes God a good guesser. In fact, did you hear the one about, uh, the open theist

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God, when his plan didn't work? He said, uh, don't go to plan

24:00

B, uh, it was nothing good.

24:06

Um, well go on that. So there, there's, there's another issue that, that goes into this and I, and I deal with this as part of, part of the metaphysics is that, um, if you ask the question, is someone free to do contrary than what

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God foreknew, uh, traditional and, and, uh, and categorical free will and things like that.

24:26

The, the question is on, on Molinism, if Molinism is true, um, if they have libertarian freedom, can they do something other than what

24:35

God foreknew? The Molinist is going to have to say yes, because they're trying to get around any type of compatibilism, right?

24:44

The problem is once you do that, you're stuck with open theism, because if somebody, if it's possible to do something other than what

24:51

God foreknew, God cannot foreknew that. They can't just assume then omniscience as a brute fact, because those facts would just be precisely categorically the type of thing

25:02

God can't know. Um, and so what happens is even if God is right a hundred percent of the time in, in what he, in what he foreknows about creation, what's going to happen is as creation unfolds, his knowledge of our free choices would be confirmed to him that his knowledge was correct.

25:19

He effectively can't know that he knows, because even if he knows, let's say he says, you know, at time

25:24

X or time T1, John would choose to do X. And he might have, you know, say omniscience foreknowledge about John choosing

25:33

X. But if John has the ability to not do X at T1, contrary to what

25:40

God foreknows, God cannot know that his knowledge is true until T1 when it happens.

25:47

And so what actually happens is even if God is a good guesser, even if God is right a hundred percent of the time, God needs it confirmed to him that his, his knowledge is true.

25:56

So he's actually still learning that his foreknowledge happens to be correct. And so that's a, that's another metaphysical issue with, with, with Mo.

26:06

There's a theological issue also, because how would God know which sins to impute to Christ on the cross?

26:12

If he does not know in the future exactly what sin someone's going to do, then you'd have to deny the legal, excuse me, the penal substitutionary toning work.

26:20

Yep. It gets even, it gets even more bizarre than that. So, well, it's hard to get much more serious than that, but it gets more, it gets more bizarre in that.

26:31

So one of, one of the outworkings of, of, of Molin is actually one of the outworkings of trying to reconcile libertarian freedom with sovereignty, just full stop and all of them is that you get evil as kind of a, a necessary by -product of the system, right?

26:44

So that they're trying to explain the problem of evil by saying, well, libertarian freedom is as, as of such a good that God allows evil because the freedom is, is such a good.

26:54

That's one of the reasons, right? That's part of the theodicy. Yeah. It's hand or tight, I guess. That's why you have to allow evils.

27:00

But, but if you think about it, so evil generally is, is kind of a, a necessary by -product.

27:06

But what that means is also if God, if, if God is out of control of necessary evils generally, that means that he's out of control of every individual instance of evil and suffering, right?

27:20

Which means that the Christian actually can't have confidence that God works all things together for the good of those who love him.

27:26

Because it might be the case on Molinism or on any of these theodicies that, that specific evil, that rape of a child, that murder, that death, that theft, whatever it was, it doesn't, it wasn't actually there because God has redemptive purpose and decreed it to happen for redemptive purposes.

27:45

It might be there as a sloppy necessary by -product of the good of allowing freedom.

27:51

Um, and so it's, you, you put, you actually just open the door to having a whole bunch of non -redemptive facts, um, that, that creep into God's creation such that if bad things happen to us, we can't know that they're actually, that God has a morally sufficient reason for that specific act.

28:08

He might just have a morally sufficient reason for allowing just bad things to happen generally, but that evil might just be purely gratuitous.

28:17

Um, and so you have a big problem there. Yeah. In my Open Theist studies, because this, these are, uh, they're related.

28:24

The Open Theist general response is that God can still work things together because he's so powerful and so good and so knowledgeable in the present.

28:34

And that was an interesting issue of how Molinism relates to the present as far as God's knowledge goes. But, um, in the present,

28:40

God knows things, um, all the time, everywhere is complete and total.

28:46

And so therefore he's able to work it because he, it can extrapolate and he's, he's very good at it.

28:53

So that's how you can work all things out for good. That's just their answers. Of course, it's not a very good answer, but that's, that's the answer

28:58

I came across. Yeah. And, and one of the reasons why that's a bad answer, because if God, if God doesn't desire, let's, let's say a shooting, if God doesn't desire a shooting, but it's a, it's an outworking of evil in the world, in one sense we can say, okay, well, well, if God designed and decreed the world, and he has, he has, uh, there's, there's redemptive value one day, a year later, a hundred years later from that action, we don't, we don't know the ripple effects of it.

29:23

We can say that God has good purpose for that. There's redemptive value for it. If that answer is correct, that means

29:29

God sits there, doesn't want it to happen, sees it happening, doesn't know the future outcomes of it, and still doesn't stop it, even though he doesn't want it to happen.

29:38

Um, and so I, I just, I don't, I just don't find that answer compelling at all. I, I think it makes

29:44

God gratuitously malevolent. I like that.

29:51

Good reformed theology. One of the things I've heard you guys, you guys have, have brought up when discussing

29:58

Molinism, because they, though I've, I've heard you guys both deal with Molinists and discussing it and the issue being of, well, why couldn't

30:07

God create a world where everybody's saved? And they say, no, that's not possible, which I've heard both of you guys say, well, why, why wouldn't it be?

30:15

I mean, why couldn't it be? But could it, I mean, could it be easier? Because their argument is, well, there's just too many people and someone would, you know, for, for God to do that.

30:25

But I mean, why couldn't God have, if, if Molinism is true, why couldn't God have just chosen the world where Adam and Eve never sinned?

30:34

I mean, there's just two people. There's two, two questions there, but in Molinism, uh, because of libertarian presuppositions, therefore he can't create a world where everyone's going to be saved because it's up to their free will.

30:44

How would he know that any particular world he would create would bring about the salvation of everybody since he cannot absolutely know their free will choices?

30:54

Yeah. And only conditionally. No, excuse me. But in, in Molinism, right, he, he knows all the different worlds that.

31:01

Possible worlds. Possible worlds that could have happened. Why didn't he choose one that they don't sin? Well, he could only have hypothetically possible worlds in the sense that he could only know potentials in his own mind, but still you understand how, how, uh, deleterious libertarian free will is.

31:19

Deleterious means hidden harmful effects. So libertarian free will undermines the, the greatness of God.

31:28

And it, uh, undermines the issue of God's foreknowledge and decrees.

31:35

And what it does is it removes the great majesty from God and places it to some degree upon man and his ability.

31:42

So therefore God must react and work according to what he sees man do.

31:48

And this, this is why I ultimately I've said, I haven't said it today yet, but I believe Molinism is sophisticated humanism because it's man centered theological system about man's will, man's ability that God foresees

32:01

God. Now the word react is not the right word. And I know Molinist wouldn't say it. I understand what they're trying to get at, but, but I'll use it for now.

32:09

But God reacts based on what he foreknows or what he knows that they do at any particular time.

32:15

Then he will decrease some other things in relationship to that. So God is not, it does not possess complete aseity, uh, eternal independence in the sense of his knowledge, um, is dependent, dependent in some part upon the actions of God.

32:29

And just like what Tyler is saying, that God doesn't know his full knowledge, what will actually happen until it actually happens.

32:38

He knows what could happen, but he knows in Molinism, he knows what will happen at that particular time. This is why I like that.

32:43

He brings up, it's similar to open theism, a lot of respects because it is both of them necessitate to some degree of prevenient grace.

32:50

Um, particularly when they, they, the good Molinists, if you can call it good ones actually affirm total depravity.

32:57

Um, and then they get into certain issues. What happens with prevenient grace gets into, uh, the picture. And then why does some believe when some don't and they go back to libertarianism, but we can talk about libertarianism or I can put that to bed.

33:08

I can rest that one. It's easy to defeat scripture, but yeah. Yeah. And to go back to your question,

33:13

Angie, this is, this is where they, they go between, um, you know, uh, strict logical possibility and feasibility.

33:20

Um, and, and they're going to say, well, you know, that world might be strictly logically possible, but it's not feasible because in any, in any world with sufficiently free creatures, that many of them, um, it, it, it might be the case.

33:30

And this, this is the, so here's the funny thing. So they're, they're saying is it might be the case that in such a world, no one will freely choose.

33:38

Therefore that world is impossible. The Molinist loves to accuse objectors of modal fallacies.

33:44

That's the biggest modal fallacy in the world to go from it, it, it might be the case to therefore it is the case.

33:52

Um, that, that's, that's just a huge folks. Cause I don't know that everyone knows that. Uh, a modal fallacy is, is essentially,

34:00

I don't know how to describe it without being even more technical. Uh, it's, it's improperly allocating a modal operator.

34:06

So it's, it's moving from, uh, it's, it's, uh, possibly the case to it's necessary, the case, or it's possibly necessary to it's necessary.

34:14

Um, so it's, it's, it's the wrong distribution of modal operators from one side of an occasion to another. Um, but so here's, here's the thing that I come back to.

34:22

So if you think of every free choices of coin flip, um, good choice, bad choice, right, right, wrong.

34:27

If we think of right and wrong and black and white, we know it's more messy than that. But if you think of it in right and wrong, um, heads or tails, that's like saying that there's a, there's, there's a logically pot.

34:38

There's a strictly logical possible world where a billion pennies can all be flipped the all land heads, but it's not feasible for God to create that world because in a world with sufficiently enough coins, it's not possible for God to actualize that world because in that many worlds, that many coins, it might be the case that not all of them are going to land heads.

34:57

But, but, but to take a case of saying just two people being heads. Right. So why can't, why can't he go back and just, and just eliminate the, why can't he have the world where Adam and Eve sinned?

35:08

Maybe there's a billion logically possible worlds where Adam and Eve sinned and there's one where they did it. There's one with no fall, which means no sin into the world anywhere ever.

35:17

Right. Why can't he go back and do that? That's a great objection. I think that's, that's fantastic. But what the, what the

35:22

Molinus is going to say is that, well, in, in that world, it might be the case that the outworking is, is, is sufficiently lacking compared to what it comes about in the actual world.

35:34

It might have less, maybe less people reproduce, maybe whatever, but then we can say, well, isn't there a logically possible world where Adam and Eve don't sin and you get the same amount of people as the actual, why can't that, there's just, it's inexplicable why some of them are feasible and others aren't except for one works with the theory and one doesn't.

35:53

Um, but, but so another, another kind of going along with this, another major problem I have, uh, metaphysically with Molinism, um, is that a lot of times the focus is on God's knowledge and relation to creation.

36:08

And they're going to say, well, well, God's knowledge is, is causally a feat, right? You can't say that creation is deterministic because God foreknows, right?

36:16

Because foreknowledge isn't, isn't causally determinative. There's some issues with that, but even if we agree with it,

36:23

I'm going to say, okay, well, I'm not going to attack you based on the epistemology. I'm going to come based on the epistemology or based on the metaphysics because God doesn't, um,

36:33

God's knowledge isn't the only thing that God does. God actualizes a world, right?

36:40

There's, there's, there's a metaphysical act where God chooses to actualize this one world over this other world.

36:48

And so the example I give is, let's imagine that you have two worlds. One of them is the actual world, and one of them is, is world one.

36:56

They're identical in every single possible way, except in world one, that isn't the actual world, at some time there's a person named

37:06

John, and John freely has an abstract thought that pops into existence and out of existence with no repercussions whatsoever on the timeline following.

37:19

It doesn't replace anything that's in the actual world. So the only difference between the actual world and that world is this one free choice that has no other ramifications whatsoever.

37:30

God is now, let's say he's eliminated all the other options. He's like, I'm down to these two choices. Let's, okay, the

37:36

Molinus, I'm not actually saying he goes through this process. I'm not, get over that character. That's not what

37:41

I'm trying to say. But let's say he, he, he, he's limited down to these two choices. And he says, okay, I'm going to create the actual world or world one.

37:50

He actualizes one of these worlds. What is the causal determination that causes the difference between the actual, that, that difference between if John has that thought or doesn't have that thought?

38:05

It's not God's foreknowledge of that. It's the fact that God actualized one world in which that thought would exist or doesn't exist compared to the other world where that thought doesn't exist.

38:17

Right? So God's decree and actualization of a certain world is causally determined.

38:24

He's caused that world with that specific propositional content to exist, right?

38:31

That's, that is, that is a causally determinative action that determines the outcome that determines that world as opposed to a different world.

38:41

So even if it's weak causal causation or secondary causation, which, which we would affirm is compatibilist, it still is a causally determined thing that, that is going to guarantee that what happens in that world is guaranteed to happen compared to what could have happened if he had actualized another world.

38:59

So that's another metaphysical problem with Molinism that I, that I find. Good. Vincent, you, you had a question you wanted to ask of,

39:11

I guess, Matt and, uh, and Tyler, but you gotta unmute yourself.

39:19

How about now? Can you hear me? Yeah. All right. So, and I'm, I do apologize because I didn't catch everything y 'all been saying so far.

39:26

I'm a little late. But my, my question is, in, do either of y 'all believe, like, and I know both

39:33

Molinism and Open Theism was brought in. So, so do y 'all believe that this systems kind of were invented as a, a means to deal, dealing with the problem of evil?

39:45

And, and if so, do, what, what would you use to justify

39:51

God causing these things, whether, like I said, whether directly or indirectly as God doing evil?

40:02

Um, I, so I don't think Molinism was created directly as a theodicy to get around the problem of evil.

40:08

Um, Molinism came about during the Counter -Reformation, um, specifically to start defending, uh, the, the

40:15

Catholic view of, of, of, um, an unencumbered will. Basically they were, they were fighting against the, the

40:22

Reformation and the Calvinists and the Lutherans who were, who were going more towards, uh, you know, a toll depravity, um, justification by faith alone, uh, regeneration, proceeding faith, things like that.

40:33

And so they needed to, um, uh, defend against those and defend the

40:38

Catholic view of the will, um, that came about. Molinism has just seen a heyday, a resurgence in, in apologetics, um, because it has ramifications for the problem of evil, um, as a problem of suffering and, and explaining some of these.

40:52

So, but that wasn't the impetus for why it was, why, why Molina, uh, kind of formulated it,

40:57

I don't think. They just didn't like Protestants, huh? Well, they didn't, they didn't, they didn't like our, our, uh, our, our soteriology and our, and our anthropology.

41:06

Still don't. It's true. Matt, you know, I think you discussed this as well, or did you want to respond to, to Vincent?

41:15

No, I think I agree. Uh, it was started by a Jesuit priest, uh, Molina, in response to the

41:22

Catholic, to the Protestant Reformation and where Protestants would teach God's decrees from eternity and to oversimplify,

41:30

Catholic church said, no, it's up to man's free will and man's ability, not God's simple decree. And so, um, middle knowledge was invented by, um,

41:39

Molina. Well, let's just say invented, developed, codified, uh, as a means to justify a human libertarian, uh, issues and freedom, uh, so that God was not the determiner of all these things, but they fail to understand though.

41:54

And a lot of the Molinists do is that God can directly cause someone to do something and also not be the one responsible for any sinful actions.

42:03

And that's revealed in scripture. And there's a logical way that could be defended as well. And so the real issues of Molinistic, in my opinion, the real issue of Molinism is trying to, um, handle the issue of theodicy, the problem of evil and related to man's freedom.

42:19

Um, and so, uh, they, they fail, sorry, distracted. They fail to see that, that there are answers to these issues.

42:28

Um, that's a, a, a very simple way of saying it. So, you know, one of the things

42:38

I've noticed, and Matt, you've, you and I have some mutual friends, uh, that are Molinists, right,

42:43

Eric? Um, and so one of the things I've discovered, I know I've, I've, I've talked to you about this in private, but it'd be good to discuss this is to me, it seems that Molinism is more of a philosophical argument than it is a theological argument.

43:01

Um, I know, I know your position on that, but can you explain why you think that is? Well, I talked to Eric Hernandez, uh, every now and then, and, and, uh, he's a staunch

43:09

Molinist and I've told him numerous times. I said, Eric, um, and I, you know,

43:14

I like Eric, he's a good guy, but I said, Eric, you know, you're more of a philosopher than a theologian and you use philosophy to interpret the

43:21

Bible. And he says, you have to use philosophy to interpret the Bible. And I said, no, you use the Bible to interpret philosophy.

43:27

I said, it must be the word of God that's inspired, not man's philosophy. That's not, you have to go to the word of God and see what it is.

43:33

And for example, in the issue of, um, of the will, um, I think it's 2 Samuel 24, 1, the anger of God incited

43:41

David to number Israel. And yet, uh, in verse 10 of the same chapter,

43:46

David sinned by numbering Israel. Well, what we see here is the, the scriptures where God is, his anger is inciting him to do it.

43:56

And when he does it, he's one responsible for the sin involved with it. How is that possible?

44:02

Well, we could also go to the verse, I think it's 2 Chronicles 22, 1,

44:07

I think, where it says Satan incited David to number Israel. So three parties acting on, on David, God, Satan, and David.

44:16

And yet David is one responsible for his actions. So when we say we go to the scriptures and the scriptures teach this idea that I believe that, uh,

44:25

Molinism tries to refute the scriptures themselves, declare certain things. And there are certain places when you're, when you just should say, no, we can't figure this out perfectly and completely.

44:36

We don't leave it alone because if you don't leave it alone, you end up with errors like opentheism and you end up with errors like Molinism, which are humanistically based or it had to reduce the majesty and the knowledge and capability of God in order to justify their philosophical positions that they impose upon scripture and then impose upon God to elevate man.

44:52

That's why I call it humanistic philosophy. So, um, anyway, I talked to him about that and that is the case.

45:00

Every single time I talked to a Molinist, it's philosophy, philosophy, philosophy. That's what it is.

45:06

When I quote scriptures and show them it's philosophy, philosophy. In fact, I talked to Eric once about libertarian free will.

45:11

And I said, look, Jesus said that he could do nothing of his own initiative. Um, if he did nothing of his own initiative, yet he had free will, that would mean that God predetermined what

45:20

Jesus was to do. That's compatibilism. And, uh, I don't remember his exact answer.

45:26

He came back with something that can't be called compatibilism because of such and such. I remember thinking that doesn't make any sense. And we went on to some other topic, uh, because he talked a lot quickly, but, uh, yeah, he does.

45:38

And he's a good guy, but, uh, with the issue of the inspiration of scripture, which also supports the idea of compatibilism, compatibilistic free will, and, uh, the issue of Christ himself, which clearly exemplifies compatibilistic free will.

45:52

We can go to the scriptures and say, look, the scriptures teach. For example, compatibilistic free will in Jesus Christ, who is the perfect example of what it means to be a human being.

46:01

He was completely under the will and the foreordained plan of God in every single detail.

46:07

Yet Jesus, of course, had free will and was able to do whatever he desired, but he only desired to do what the father told him to do.

46:13

He said, I could only do that which I see the father do. When we get to the David numbering Israel thing, we see the issue here of David acting freely, yet two forces were acting upon him, but yet he's the one responsible.

46:25

And though he may not be able to answer it perfectly, we can say this for sure. That's what the scriptures teach.

46:30

And though it teaches something that can be paradoxical, and it does, we can have discussions on how that can work, and I think there's ways to work it out.

46:39

But the thing is, the Molinists would have to adopt, well, that's because of middle knowledge, or that's because of this, and they have to apply their philosophical view in order to do this.

46:48

But the scripture says don't... I jumped ahead. I believe the scriptures say don't do that kind of a thing.

46:54

In 1 Corinthians 4, 6, do not exceed what's written. Now, I don't have any problem trying to explain, for example, the doctrine of the

47:00

Trinity and hypostatic union and communicatio deumatum and certain doctrines and things. I don't have any problem trying that.

47:06

And you have to use logic, a little bit of philosophy, but you better be very, very careful how far you take it, because as soon as you start speaking for God in areas that he has not revealed in scripture, then you're on thin ice.

47:18

And I say, I told Eric, I told other Molinists, don't go very far, because you don't know why

47:24

God has not revealed this answer. And for you to speculate philosophically, I say, is dangerous, because you may come up with something you think is right, but may be wrong.

47:34

Why is it God has not revealed the answer? Because he doesn't want us to know the answer, because it's beyond us to leave it alone, lest we come into heresy.

47:44

That's my position on that. Yeah, I agree with you. And, you know, not to be the Calvinist that quotes

47:49

Romans 9 or anything. I'm going to be that guy, though. Is that— Layton's not here.

47:56

I agree with Matt, and I've said this a lot of times. One of the problems with a lot of these issues around Molinism, libertarian freedom, is that they're taking their philosophical concepts and they're backing their way into biblical theology rather than the other way around.

48:10

And they end up, in principle, affirming the objections of Paul's interlocutor in Romans 9.

48:17

So they end up affirming, well, it wouldn't be fair of God to judge someone if they couldn't resist his will. That wouldn't be fair.

48:24

Well, that's just the objection that Paul is getting and responding to. And they say, well, it would be unjust of God to judge someone who couldn't resist.

48:30

Well, that's the other objection in Romans 9 from Paul's interlocutor. I'm OK with trying to philosophically try to work things out, but you've got to be aware, you've got to be able to stop down the road and look around and say, how did

48:45

I get here? I'm now in a position where I'm expressly, almost verbatim, word for word, agreeing with an objection that Paul is responding to.

48:54

I've got to turn around and start over because I'm no longer within the realm of what actually is an application of the biblical text.

49:02

And they'll do this with the so -called Molinistic support passages.

49:09

So you have Matthew 11, where he talks about what would have happened in,

49:15

I think it's, what is it? Corazon and Bethsaida. Corazon, right. Yeah. Or Bethsaida, yeah,

49:21

Bethsaida. What had been, what scene had happened there, they would have repented. In 1

49:28

Samuel 22, 23, what would have happened if David had gone back to Kayla?

49:36

Would they have been, and God says, yes, if you go back, they'll kill you type of thing. And the Molinists is going to come and say, see, God has middle knowledge.

49:43

And I'm going to say, no, that's not having God. That's not, you don't need middle knowledge for that.

49:48

You can have simply God's omniscience, his counterfactual knowledge of if he had decreed that, he knows what would have happened, but that's not it.

49:54

Exactly right. Or just simple, just simple counterfactual hyperbole, right?

50:00

I can say something, if I have someone I'm working with and they're just not getting it, I could say, I could tell this to my dog and they would get it.

50:07

I don't actually mean that there's a counterfactual world, another possible world where if I told my dog this, they would get it.

50:14

It's a way of speaking hyperbolically in judgment about the person. Jesus saying, look, if this had happened in these horrible cities, even they would have got it.

50:24

You don't have to invent this whole metaphysically third type of knowledge to explain that.

50:31

We just have normal rules of rhetoric that explain that. And we don't need to go down this whole realm.

50:37

Well, you do have to explain it that way. If you denied a doctrine of total depravity and God's absolute sovereignty.

50:44

Fair. Yeah, you would need, you need to do some gymnastics to do it. Hence, middle knowledge.

50:51

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I believe that all I see.

50:56

I remember when I first started hearing this, I'm going, well, wait a minute. All of God's knowledge is free. All of it's natural.

51:01

All of it is eternally what God has. There's no time when he learns. There's no time when he extrapolates.

51:07

There's no time when he has to do anything prior. It's just always eternal. And I see the

51:13

Molinus is saying, well, there are times in God's knowledge what he does. They call them moments and stuff.

51:19

But there's these moments in God's knowledge in which certain things, I can't say occur because they don't want to use the word occur.

51:26

But there are times when things change logically for God's knowledge of what must be and must not be as they're related to things.

51:32

And this reminds me of the super inflapsarianism debate and issue. If God's knowledge is always eternal and of every possibility, then naturally speaking, all of God's knowledge is just simply natural.

51:46

I consider middle knowledge to be part and parcel to the very natural knowledge that God would have eternally.

51:52

That's how I view it. So I agree.

51:59

I think his middle knowledge is actually, it's just easier. Like I said earlier, it's just subsumed under his natural knowledge.

52:05

He knows that if he decreed something, it would come to pass and he knows what he has and hasn't decreed.

52:10

I don't think you need to create a third type of knowledge. I am with you on that one.

52:16

That's what I've been saying for a long time. All of his knowledge is his natural knowledge. Because he has natural knowledge, he knows all possible events.

52:24

Yeah, but they can only exist, first of all, all possible events only exist in the mind of God.

52:32

He's chosen to actualize only one set of possibilities. But then again, we get into the issue of, you brought this up a little bit, and one of the things

52:41

I've been thinking about a lot lately is, could God have created another world a different way? And I don't believe so.

52:46

I lean towards he could not have. Now, in one sense, yeah, he has the power and the ability to do it. But in another sense, no, because I believe that God does everything absolutely the best.

52:56

There's no second best with God. There is no second guessing. There's nothing. And that he necessarily, because of the nature of his omniscience, omnipotence, omnisapience, everything, will always and only do that which is absolutely the very best for the criteria and stuff that comes out of his very nature and his essence, which

53:13

I believe is ultimately for his own glory. And I believe that this world that we live in is the greatest world for the greatest glory of God, not for the purpose of people being saved, because the

53:26

Molinist, in my opinion, goes humanistic and says, well, the greatest necessity is for the most people to get saved.

53:33

That's humanism. It's man -centered. I say, no, the greatest issue is the glory of God, not the salvation of man, but the glory of God, and he's glorified in their salvation as well as their damnation.

53:44

And I suspect that since God knows all things, can't do anything second best—I don't believe he can, that's just my position—that therefore this is the greatest world for his greatest glory, and that this is how it works.

53:58

So let me ask, so we've explained it kind of philosophically, defining it, what's the problems with it.

54:06

Scripturally, what are your arguments against Molinism? Why do you see it failing scripturally?

54:12

First John 3 .20, God knows all things, and the only way he can know all things we know is because he decrees things, because he works all things after the counsel of his will,

54:22

Ephesians 1 .11, and he declares the end from the beginning. He is in complete control from eternity, and the only reason we exist is because God created us to exist, and every single thing that's going to exist exists because God has directly or indirectly decreed it, including our free will choices, and our free will choices work against the idea of libertarian free will.

54:43

Let me rephrase that. The biblical doctrine of total depravity and effective total depravity upon human free will means that the person who's enslaved to sin, who's unregenerate, can only do sinful things.

54:55

He will never freely choose God, period. And so these are the kinds of scriptures that I can quote to you if you want that demonstrate, in my opinion, further problems inside of Molinism and refute it.

55:10

Amen. Yeah. So, you know, to me, it's simple. It's just simple.

55:17

Total depravity. The Bible says you cannot come to me unless it's been granted you from the Father, John 665. It's been granted to you to have faith.

55:25

Well, this means God does these things at certain times according to his will. And so this idea that Molina wanted to come up with, and the reputation of that very idea was to come up with middle knowledge.

55:37

What the reformers were doing was saying, well, John 665, you can't come to me unless it's been granted to you from the

55:42

Father. John Philippians 129, it's been granted that you believe. 2 Timothy 2 .25

55:48

has been granted that you have repentance. You believe because you're appointed to eternal life. Acts 13 .48, you're caused to be born again.

55:54

1 Peter 1 .3, you're born again, not of your own will. John 1 .13. These are the things that are there because we are enslaved to sin.

56:04

Romans 6 .14 -20, the unbeliever is. He can do no good. Romans 3 .10, 11, and 12. Cannot receive spiritual things.

56:10

1 Corinthians 2 .14, harsh, desperately wicked, deceitful. Jeremiah 17 .9, full of all kinds of evils. Mark 7 .21,

56:16

23. So, you know, because those things are there, that's what the nature of human free will is in an unregenerate state.

56:23

They're incapacitated. They cannot come to God. And this is the reformed position.

56:28

Why? Because it's a biblical position. What do the Jesuits say? What do the Roman Catholics say? What do the humanists say?

56:34

No, man can do it under the right conditions. There are no right conditions, unless you want to include the right condition being

56:41

God's irresistible grace and regeneration preceding faith that enables us, and then he grants it to believe. But that's not what they mean.

56:47

They mean, in a libertarian sense, all a particular person needs is the right information at the right time, and he has that ability to choose.

56:54

And just like what Tyler was saying, then God then will actualize the knowledge of what he has hoped or might or expected to come about.

57:01

And then he says, okay, now I know for sure at this moment that the decision is made. This is heresy.

57:08

And it's humanism. And it needs to be rooted out of the church, and people need to stop believing this.

57:13

I call it kindergarten theology, this amateurish theology that insert prevenient grace and man -centeredness and human -centeredness that God himself, his knowledge is restricted, his character is restricted, his omniscience is restricted to some degree for the sake of human freedom and humans, so that God isn't the one held responsible for evil.

57:36

My spiritual Tourette's is getting ready to kick in. I'm going to stop it. Tell us how you really feel. I think piggybacking on this,

57:45

I'm not going to add much theological content. What I'm going to say is more of a rhetorical strategy, is that the Reformed have to stop giving in to the equivocation that the

57:53

Molinists and the Libertarians and the Semi -Pelagians and Arminians and everyone plays, where they equivocate between free will and libertarian free will.

58:03

So that so many times you hear a Calvinist and they'll say, do you believe in free will? Oh, no, I don't believe in free will. Yes, you do.

58:08

We believe in substantive choice. We believe we have a free will. We choose what we desire to do.

58:15

And I choose to do what I desire to do. It's just, I don't have libertarian freedom.

58:20

I choose accordance with my nature. There's accordance with what God has decreed. There you go. And so we really, really need to stop giving in to this because what happens is the

58:31

Molinists and Libertarian freedom, they come along and they say, well, don't you agree with free will? Great. You should be a Molinist because you can't be a

58:37

Calvinist because they deny free will. Look, look at all these Calvinists who say there's no such thing as free will because Calvinists are out there saying there's no such thing as free will.

58:47

They should stop. What they mean is there's no such thing as libertarian free will. And so I make a distinction this way.

58:54

The problem is, is all of us believe that we have a will. The question is, is it free?

59:00

In what sense is it free? Free to do what? Exactly. I mean, because the issue is that will that we have is enslaved to sin before Christ.

59:08

Amen. This is the thing that Romans makes very clear. And so the issue is, unless people are going to just deny that, you know, the will is affected by sin, and there are some who try to argue that, but Calvinists get away from the term free will period and talk about the will.

59:27

We have a will that's enslaved to sin. That's the issue. I think that you're right,

59:32

Tyler, and I think that people have given in on the terminology and it's added confusion.

59:40

And Calvinists are often larger to blame for this because they don't know their opposition well enough to know when to say, no, we don't deny free will.

59:48

We believe in biblical free will. Yeah. So what happens is the Molinists and the Arminians, they'll go and they'll say, look, here's all these

59:54

Bible passages where someone's choosing something. Are you, you know, and they're talking to people who aren't trained.

01:00:00

And they're going to say, look, if you want to be on the side that affirms the Bible, that people make decisions and that we choose things, you should be on our side.

01:00:08

And the person looks and be like, oh, well, I don't think we're robots, so I must be a Molinist. But both sides believe that people choose things.

01:00:15

That's the whole point. Every side believes we have a will. The question is, is it enslaved to sin or is it free from influence?

01:00:22

I mean, the term free in free will means that you're free from influence, right?

01:00:27

And we're not. We're influenced by the sin nature that indwells us. Yeah.

01:00:32

But the unsuspecting lay person isn't going to go through that nuance. It reminds me of the theonomist who comes along and says, hey, theonomy just means the love of God's law.

01:00:41

You love God's law, don't you? You're a theonomist. Right. It's the same type of subtle equivocation.

01:00:48

It's going to say it's a logical fallacy called a fallacy of equivocation where you use a word, the same word, two different meanings.

01:00:57

When they're saying you have an ability to choose, that's the will. But then they jump to it's a free will so you can choose

01:01:05

God. That becomes a totally different thing. Now you're in a totally different meaning of free, of will.

01:01:12

It doesn't mean that you can choose things between two different selfish choices that I make.

01:01:21

I may have this choice or that choice. I choose the most selfish one as an unbeliever, right? That is because I am enslaved to sin.

01:01:30

My will is not free. It's a will. When you put it together and it's free will, that means you have a will that is not influenced by anything.

01:01:39

God has a free will. He has no influences outside his nature that affect his decision making.

01:01:47

Well, he doesn't make decisions. He just knows it all. But the point being is that that's what free means.

01:01:53

And they say, well, you believe in a will, right? And you say, yes. And then they go, oh, so you believe in free will. Two different things.

01:02:02

That's why I always say what you do, there's three steps. Do apologetics. First thing, define terms.

01:02:09

Then make statements using those terms. Then you use third thing is scripture and logic to validate or invalidate the statements.

01:02:17

But definitions are paramount. Always define your terms. When someone says you believe in free will, I say define free will for me.

01:02:26

That's right. So what I want to do is maybe a good discussion.

01:02:32

We do have someone that's been here waiting. He was here from last week, Ariel. He's a Roman Catholic. So this could fit in well in discussion with him.

01:02:40

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And so we are very thankful for their support. So with that,

01:04:18

I want to bring Ariel in. Ariel was here last week. We had some good discussion last week on Roman Catholicism and Mary and Sola Scriptura and a whole plethora of things.

01:04:30

I don't know, seeing from the chat, he may have some responses with some of the discussion you guys had.

01:04:35

So Ariel, welcome. Do you have any questions for Matt and maybe even Tyler tonight? Hey, can you hear me?

01:04:41

Can you hear me? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, excellent. I had no immediate responses. I'm actually not a

01:04:46

Molinist. I think that it's possible that Molinism could be true. The Catholic Church itself doesn't have a position on this.

01:04:55

I'm also sympathetic toward. Well, I'm not a Calvinist, but I'm sympathetic toward the

01:05:01

Augustinian view of predestination. So I don't have any like dogging in this fight. But I didn't exactly have a question on this.

01:05:10

But if you want, I mean, if you had a question you want to ask me about this, I'm happy to, you know, humor you guys.

01:05:17

But I guess I was more curious about, I don't know. Well, if you have other questions.

01:05:25

You said you were curious about something. What was it? Oh, this might take us off the track you guys were on.

01:05:32

But I was curious about it. It's okay, because we're doing, you know, we want to start with Molinism, but we're doing open

01:05:37

Q &A. So, you know, whatever question you have. Oh, sure. If others want to come in, they can go to Apologeticslive .com.

01:05:43

And there's a link to join there. Oh, excellent. So last week, we talked about authority.

01:05:49

And hopefully I won't take up too much of your time. Because I understand there might be other people that want to ask questions. But since we talked about authority, we had touched a bunch of different topics last time.

01:05:59

I guess the one topic we hadn't touched was the question of soteriology. Okay. About, I guess, justification by faith alone.

01:06:08

So I'm wondering if you could give me the evidence that you would have, like the most decisive evidence that you would have against the

01:06:15

Catholic view about justification by grace and works, made by faith and works. Yeah. Well, we go to Romans chapter four.

01:06:26

I'll just read it to you. What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather, according to the flesh, has found?

01:06:32

For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. So that's speaking of the vertical between God and man.

01:06:41

For what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. So what was credited as righteousness?

01:06:47

His belief. Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but what is due.

01:06:54

Notice what Paul does right here. He's saying belief, and he's introducing the idea of works. Two concepts here that we're dealing with.

01:07:01

Faith and works. Belief and works. Belief and faith in the Greek. Same word, pistos. Abraham believed

01:07:07

God, and it was credited him as righteousness. Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but what is due.

01:07:12

So if you say that faith and works are necessary, then faith plus works, and Paul the apostle says, and that's what's due to you, are your works.

01:07:20

That's the biblical definition here. The one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but what is due.

01:07:25

But to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies in godly, his faith is credited as righteousness.

01:07:31

So this is faith alone right there. Not work, but believes. We have two options, faith and works.

01:07:38

One's negated, the other's by itself. To the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies in godly, his faith is credited as righteousness.

01:07:45

So that's a very clear statement right there. Now that's Romans 4. Let me go back to Romans 3, 28.

01:07:51

We maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. He very clearly says it right there as well.

01:07:58

I go to Galatians 2, 16, 21, and other verses, but this is the basic evidence right there.

01:08:05

That's what it says. And when the Roman Catholic Church says that you obtain salvation, paragraph 20, 68, in the

01:08:11

Catholic Catechism, you obtain it by faith, baptism, and observance of the commandments, then the observance of the commandments is what you work.

01:08:19

Therefore, salvation is due to you based on your works. But there's a problem.

01:08:27

Galatians 3, I'm going to read a little bit from there to begin with. And I'll go to Galatians chapter 5.

01:08:34

You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you to think that that which has been begun, excuse me, before whose eyes

01:08:41

Jesus Christ is publicly portrayed as crucified. So one thing I want to find out from you, did you receive the spirit by the works of the law or by hearing with faith?

01:08:49

Notice what Paul does again. It's either works, the law, or faith. Are you so foolish having begun by the spirit?

01:08:56

Are you now being perfected by the flesh? So what Catholics will do is they'll say that their works contribute to their salvation.

01:09:02

They're being perfected by the actual work of what they do. And that's what it teaches. I quote you the references there.

01:09:10

And when you go to Galatians 5, something very interesting. I know I'm going through quickly, but this is the basic stuff.

01:09:15

Behold, I, Paul, say to you that if you receive circumcision, Christ will be of no benefit to you. Circumcision was a very small act, no pun intended, by which someone entered into the covenant with God.

01:09:29

And if you receive circumcision, Christ will be of no benefit to you.

01:09:34

I testify that every man who receives circumcision, that he's under obligation to keep the whole law. You have been severed from Christ.

01:09:41

Notice the pun. Severed from Christ. You who are seeking to be justified by law.

01:09:47

You've fallen from grace. Now notice what he says here. You're seeking to be justified by law. By doing what?

01:09:54

One thing of the law. Doing one thing of the law, you're seeking to be justified by the law.

01:10:00

That's what Paul's saying right there. One thing of the law. Now, according to the

01:10:06

Roman Catholic Church, the things that are necessary for salvation, giving up riches and being a member of the church, penance, the sacraments, observing the natural law, which the

01:10:18

Ten Commandments reflect the natural law, it's a works righteousness system. So therefore, the

01:10:23

Roman Catholic Church is teaching a false gospel. The Roman Catholic Church is false. And if you or anybody were to believe official

01:10:31

Roman Catholic theology regarding the doctrine of salvation, you are guaranteed to go to hell.

01:10:39

Okay. That's wonderful. Thank you for that. So let me go to Romans chapter three, verse 27.

01:10:46

So it's right before 28 that you quoted. Yeah. And here he talks about. So I'll just quote. I'm using

01:10:51

ESV, by the way. He says, by what becomes of our boasting, it is excluded. By what kind of law? A law of works?

01:10:57

No, but by the law of faith. So after Romans 3, 27, it goes on to Romans four, where he talks about he has a discussion about Abraham.

01:11:08

So the way I interpret it is that in this context, he's talking about a law of works, a law that demands that we fulfill all the stipulations.

01:11:19

Show me the verse for that. Well, a law of works, a law, well, the law of Moses specifically.

01:11:27

But Abraham has a law of works. So you're talking about the Mosaic law, all 613 laws or what?

01:11:38

Well, it's initially talking about a law of works because he's saying. Can you give me an example of two or three so we can have it narrowed down a little bit more?

01:11:46

I mean, seriously, just a couple of three, like what? Circumcision, for example.

01:11:51

Okay. And what's another one? Dietary commandments. Okay. Okay, those are two.

01:11:56

Go ahead. But it also includes the moral commandments. So it's not simply the ceremonial commandments that are part of the

01:12:02

Mosaic law, but also commandments like do not steal, do not commit adultery, do not blaspheme.

01:12:08

And what Paul is saying. I'm trying to understand your position, so let's apply it. Verse 27,

01:12:14

Romans 3, then where's your boasting is excluded by what kind of law? So you're talking about the dietary law, the

01:12:20

Mosaic, the moral law, that kind of law. The law that consists of works.

01:12:26

Paul's saying that you cannot fulfill this law perfectly because even in the law.

01:12:32

So if you look at the law of Moses, for example, it doesn't provide. No, no, no.

01:12:38

But I'm going to give you an example and I can give you an example from Paul himself. Well, he quotes from the psalm.

01:12:45

But if you look at Galatians, for example, Galatians 3, he says, this is the works of the law are under a curse for those written curses, everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law to perform them.

01:13:02

So if you do one thing in the law, you are obligated to keep all. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. So what do you have to do to keep yourself safe?

01:13:11

What do you have to do under the law? All the commandments, all the moral commandments.

01:13:17

So if you feel so, you are obligated, you're obligated to keep the whole, all the moral law in order to be saved.

01:13:23

If you're under the Mosaic law. That's why that's what I talk about right now, right now, right now. What do you got?

01:13:29

Oh, no, no, absolutely not. Absolutely not. I'm not obligated to keep. I should, which is it would be a great thing if I could, but I sent all the time.

01:13:35

So I definitely can't do that. I hear you on that one. Absolutely. I send every day. Absolutely. Unfortunately.

01:13:41

By the way, that's why Abraham could not have been justified by works because he cannot fulfill the entire Mosaic law or in his time, there was no

01:13:48

Mosaic law back then, but even the moral commandments, he cannot have fulfilled all the moral commandments. Because the

01:13:53

Catholic church say you have to keep, you obtain salvation through faith, baptism, and observing the commandments.

01:14:00

Well, the Catholic church only requires that we keep the commandments that, that the, the rejection of which leads to mortal sin.

01:14:13

So there are many sins that are not mortal sins that we're not allowed to, but we're, we can commit without falling out of salvation.

01:14:23

So as long as we don't break any of the 10 commandments. It's impossible. I can prove it's impossible. It's impossible to fall out of salvation.

01:14:29

And I can prove that from scripture, but look at what paragraph 2068 says. The council of Trent teaches that the 10 commandments are obligatory for Christians and that the justified man is still bound to keep them.

01:14:40

The second Vatican council confirms the bishops, successors of the apostles received from the

01:14:46

Lord, the mission of teaching all peoples and of preaching the gospel to every creature so that all men may attain salvation through faith, baptism, and the observance of the commandments.

01:14:59

Which commandments? Give me two or three of them. Do not commit adultery. Do not murder.

01:15:04

Okay. And, and being honest and bearing, you know, okay. So those things.

01:15:10

So you have to keep the law to be saved. Right. And what does Galatians 3 .10 say? Under obligation to keep all the law.

01:15:18

Everyone who does not commit, not abide by the entire law. Yeah. I'm paraphrasing, but yeah.

01:15:24

Now go to James 2 .10. I can read it for you if you want. Oh, go ahead.

01:15:30

Sorry. I don't have it on me, but whoever keeps the whole law yet stumbles in one point has become guilty of all. So do you stumble in one point?

01:15:38

Yes. Yes. I do too. I'm not accusing you of anything. So then we're guilty of all.

01:15:44

So then if you have to keep the commandments to be saved and you screw up in one, you're guilty of all of it. You're damned.

01:15:50

And as Paul says, you receive circumcision. That's one act of the law. Then you're trying to be justified by the law. You should be severed from, from Christ yourself.

01:15:58

You have no salvation. That's so the curse under law is under the

01:16:04

Mosaic law, which simply you have to get to fulfill every single commandment of the law.

01:16:10

But the law of Christ does not require us to do that. James 2 .8. I don't have to be perfect under the law of Christ.

01:16:16

I don't have to be perfect. I just have to have faith. I just have to have faith. You have to be perfect.

01:16:22

Matthew 5 .48. Be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect. And he says in 1 Peter 1 .16, Be holy if I am holy.

01:16:27

This is James 2 .8. If, however, you are fulfilling the royal law, according to the scripture, you shall love your neighbors yourself.

01:16:33

That's Leviticus 19 .18, which Jesus quotes in Matthew 22 .39. So that's obviously

01:16:39

New Testament that he references. He's talking about if you are fulfilling present tense, that law of the

01:16:45

Old Testament, which Jesus himself said to do. But if you show partiality, you're committing sin and are convicting with the law under the law as transgressors for whoever keeps the whole law.

01:16:54

Yes, devils in one place become guilty of all. He's talking present tense, not about some Old Testament law requirement.

01:17:01

So let me find. He goes on to say. So Paul says,

01:17:07

I can't find the exact quote, but he says that if we fulfill the commandment that to love our neighbors as ourselves, we fulfill the entire law in one commandment.

01:17:16

But that's only because we're doing it through faith in Christ, through faith in Christ. Do you love your neighbors yourself the way

01:17:25

Jesus did? That's the standard. Not as Jesus did. I'm trying to find the exact first.

01:17:31

OK, I think you do know which reference I'm referring to, right? I think it's in Galatians. I've heard it.

01:17:37

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fulfill the whole law. Yeah, yeah. So there's a sense in which we do fulfill the whole law, but there's a sense in which we cannot fulfill every single individual commandment of the law of the

01:17:48

Mosaic law, but it's a fill through Christ in us, even though we might individually fail in individual commandments.

01:17:56

Galatians 5 .14. Yeah, 5 .14. There you go. Yeah, for the whole law is to fill in one word.

01:18:03

You shall love your neighbors yourself. Are you doing it? Through Christ, even though I may sin every day, because I have saving faith,

01:18:12

Christ's righteousness, which is infused in me, allows me to fulfill the law in that way, even though I sin all the time.

01:18:20

So then you're saved based on these deeds, these fulfilling the law that you're doing in your state of righteousness in Christ.

01:18:30

By abstaining from mortal sin, from serious mortal sin. Okay. Yes. Even though I may be sinning every day.

01:18:37

I'm going to put a verse in for you. Yeah. He saved us not on the basis of deeds, which we have done in righteousness, but according to his mercy, by the wash and regeneration of the

01:18:46

Holy Spirit. Absolutely. So I just said, so I said to you and you said, yes. So you're saved by on the basis of the things that you do, or I don't remember exact wording.

01:18:57

Deeds that you've done in your righteousness. And I said, I actually added the words in Christ on purpose.

01:19:03

And that's what it means there. And you said, yeah. So I just quoted you, Titus 3, 5.

01:19:09

You agreed. And Paul's saying, no, that's not it. It's not on that basis. Paul in Titus isn't saying that he saved us not on the basis of deeds, which we have done in Christ, in righteousness through Christ.

01:19:20

He doesn't say that. He says, which we have done in righteousness. So I'm assuming he's referring to our own righteousness apart from Christ.

01:19:28

But when the kindness of God, our Savior, and his love for mankind appeared, he saved us not on the basis of deeds, which you have done in righteousness, but according to his mercy, by the washing of regeneration, renewing of the

01:19:38

Holy Spirit, whom he poured out upon us, richly through the Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior. So obviously talking about Christ and righteousness in Christ, because we have a righteousness that's not our own,

01:19:46

Philippians 3, 9. You cannot have your own righteousness derived from the law. See, look, you're going to be wanting to stand before God.

01:19:53

What are you going to say to him? I mean, before the infinitely holy God, and he's going to say, why should

01:19:58

I let you into heaven? What are you going to say? Because he saved me through the washing of regeneration, and I cooperated with him, with his grace.

01:20:07

You cooperated with his grace? Okay, what you need to do is stand up, and you need to raise your hands up into the air and take some bows.

01:20:16

You need to bow before all of creation. I'll do that. All the angelic realm, and bow that you were able to cooperate with the grace of God to obtain that salvation.

01:20:27

You are so wonderful. So, by the way, I haven't mentioned my satirological view.

01:20:33

So I might be an Augustinian about salvation. I might believe that. You can't be if you're holding that view that you just said, what you just said in the false gospel.

01:20:43

God can give us the grace, the irresistible grace to allow us to cooperate with him. Now, I don't know what irresistible grace is to allow us to get that.

01:20:51

He gives us the irresistible grace to allow us to cooperate. What's irresistible grace? It cannot be resisted.

01:20:57

It's efficacious. It never fails. So then God's grace allows you to do something.

01:21:03

It should be God's grace causes you to do something. Sure, sure. That'd be a better way of phrasing it then. Sure. So then his grace causes

01:21:09

Bob to believe, and Frank doesn't work on Frank? An Augustinian would say that God doesn't supply efficacious or irresistible grace to everybody.

01:21:20

So he does? Yeah. Or he does not? He does not say that. Okay. He does not do that.

01:21:27

He supplies irresistible grace to everybody. Yeah. He does not. I'm trying to understand you properly. He does not do that. Okay. So God picks and chooses who he's going to save then irresistibly.

01:21:36

Yeah. For the Augustinian, yeah. Okay. For the Calvinist and for the biblical person. That's what it is.

01:21:41

That's not a Roman Catholic position. It is actually. Believe it or not, it is. No, it's not.

01:21:47

I can send you links about this. There's a view called Thomism. I'd love to see it. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I can definitely send you a link.

01:21:53

If it's on the Vatican website or some official thing, hey, I will modify my view. I keep doing that over the years as people correct me in minutia and things.

01:22:01

That's fine. I have no problem with that. Please do. I'd be glad to tackle that as well and demonstrate that if I'm misunderstanding them,

01:22:08

I want to understand it properly. What I understand from what you're saying, it's inconsistent with Roman Catholic soteriology because the process of salvation in Catholicism is long and arduous.

01:22:22

I can read it to you. It took me two weeks to write one article, one paragraph. Would you like me to tell you what that is?

01:22:29

Sure. Absolutely. So what am I going to do? Process of, process, salvation, come on,

01:22:39

Karm. There we go. The summary of the process of salvation in Roman Catholicism.

01:22:46

This took me two weeks to put together. So I have, and I can put the link here and you guys can follow along with me if you want to.

01:22:53

I have it documented from Roman Catholic sources. And then what I did at the bottom of the article,

01:22:59

I quoted the sources and put them there so you could read them yourself, at least all the catechism references.

01:23:06

So to begin with, God grants actual grace to a person which enables him to believe in Christ. Catechism, paragraph 2000, and also believe in the truth of the

01:23:15

Catholic church, paragraph 1814. After belief, the person must be baptized, which is necessary for salvation, paragraph 1257.

01:23:23

So I'm going to stop reading the paragraph numbers. I'm just going to continue to read. This baptism erases original sin, unites a person with Christ, infuses grace into the person, and grants justification.

01:23:34

After baptism, he's saved. But to maintain his salvation, it is necessary for him to perform good sacraments which provide grace that is proper to each sacrament.

01:23:45

This is necessary in order to maintain infused grace. However, grace can be lessened by venial sins or completely lost by mortal sins.

01:23:54

Venial sins removed part of the infused grace, but not the saving grace known as sanctifying grace.

01:24:00

To remedy the problem of venial sins, the Catholic is to take the Eucharist, which the church teaches forgives venial sins.

01:24:08

He must also perform various penance, which must be done in concert with perfect contrition.

01:24:14

But there is a problem. Sin requires a punishment. Even though sins are absolved by a priest, the punishment due to a person because of his sin can remain.

01:24:22

To deal with that remaining punishment, indulgences are administered to deal with the punishment due to the guilt of the sin already forgiven.

01:24:29

These indulgences draw upon the, quote, good works of the Blessed Virgin Mary, close quote.

01:24:35

Oh, I just, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, open quote, of Christ and the saints, close quote, as to obtain, open quote, the remission of the temporal punishment due for their sins, close quote.

01:24:45

Furthermore, are the indulgences for the dead who are in purgatory.

01:24:52

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, this is always hard for me to read. Now, in case the Catholic has committed a mortal sin, then all his infused grace is lost.

01:24:59

To regain this grace, he must partake of special penance, since it helps restore grace that was lost.

01:25:07

To conclude, the Roman Catholic must have faith, participate in the sacraments, take the Eucharist, keep the commandments, perform penance, and do indulgences in order to attain, maintain, and regain his salvation, as well as reduce the punishment due to him for the sins of which he's already been forgiven.

01:25:23

Can I interrupt you real quick? Yeah, go ahead. Oh, okay. So, that actually, so that quote is actually not inconsistent with irresistible grace or what

01:25:35

Catholics call efficacious, believe it or not, believe it or not. So, to give an example, for example,

01:25:41

Luther thought that we could lose our salvation by losing our faith. Luther was wrong. Okay, but he's, so Luther famously did believe in predestination, though.

01:25:48

Yes. And yet he did believe that we could lose our salvation. I went to a Lutheran college. Oh, okay.

01:25:54

Luther was wrong. He was not inconsistent in that view. Yes, he was. You could conceivably argue that God gives us irresistible grace for a certain period of time, but then shrinks back from giving us irresistible grace.

01:26:10

Irresistible grace in Reformed theology means that the grace that God moves upon you to cause you to be born again, you cannot successfully resist that grace.

01:26:20

And Luther was wrong. Okay. I have a bachelor's degree from an

01:26:25

LCMS, Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod College. And I took all the, not all, but all the theology classes

01:26:32

I could under Dr. Rod Rosenblatt, one of the top theologians in the LCMS church at that time, domination.

01:26:39

And I learned the theology well and pretty well. And, you know, we didn't yell at each other and scream and things like that.

01:26:47

But here, this is what Jesus says. Jesus says this. All that the father gives me will come to me.

01:26:53

And the one who comes to me, I will certainly not cast down for I've come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.

01:26:58

This is the will of him who sent me that all that he's given me, I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day.

01:27:05

And notice he says, raise it up in the last day. For this is the will of my father, that everyone who beholds the son and believes in him will have eternal life.

01:27:12

And I myself will raise him up in the last day. So the raise him up in the last day is tied with verses 39 and 40.

01:27:19

This is the will of him who sent me that all that he's given me, I will lose none that everyone who will raise him up on the last day.

01:27:29

Now, if you can be lost, then Jesus failed to do the will of the father. This is the will of him who sent me that all that he's given me,

01:27:36

I lose nothing to the will of the father that Jesus lose none. If Jesus loses one that he's failed to do the will of the father, he's sinned.

01:27:46

So there's actually different historic interpretations on John six. One of them was actually... I don't care, that's what he says right there.

01:27:52

They disagree with that, they're wrong. Go ahead. So Augustine actually argued that those who are given by the father to the son are simply the predestined to glory.

01:28:03

So all he has in his purview in the scope of that statement are those who are already predestined to glory.

01:28:11

So then what you're saying then is God only gave the predestined ones and the predestined ones cannot be lost.

01:28:24

Yeah, by the father to the son. Yeah, that's one interpretation. I'm not saying that holds this one. But I think... Can you show me where it says the predestined ones in there?

01:28:30

I mean, the first thing you do is you look at what it says and you move out from there. Okay. So the reason why

01:28:36

I think Augustine held his view is because the context, the very context is people who had once believed in him, but they no longer believed in him.

01:28:45

So he's trying to explain their unbelief. That's the context. Jesus is trying to explain the unbelief of the crowds. And so that's why...

01:28:51

Okay. Let me show you something here that... I'm going to ask you a trick question. Are you ready? Sure.

01:28:57

All right. Does God know everyone? No. It's a trick question.

01:29:08

He does not know everyone. Does God know everyone? No. Are you there? No? No. I can't hear you. No. You're right.

01:29:14

He doesn't know anyone. Get with me. I never knew you. Right? Okay. Yeah. So there's a sense in which God doesn't know you.

01:29:19

And of course, he knows all things. And so Galatians 4, 8 and 9, when you did not know

01:29:25

God, you served by nature. Those which are not gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather are known by God, now you serve the true and living

01:29:32

God. So we had the word genosko in Greek, to know. And foreknow is progenosko.

01:29:40

God only knows believers. He never says he knows an unbeliever, except in one place in the gospels. Jesus says, I know you.

01:29:45

You have your father, the devil. And he speaks into the Pharisees. So there's no place where Jesus just said...

01:29:50

Or God says to anybody, just a simple sentence, I know you. And it's of an unbeliever. It does not occur.

01:29:56

And to know, genosko, when he knows you, it means you're saved. Now look,

01:30:02

Romans 8, 29. Those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to conform to the image of his son.

01:30:08

The foreknown ones are only the ones that God had known salvificly ahead of time.

01:30:14

They are the same group that's predestined. It wasn't the ones that simply he knew,

01:30:19

God knew by knowing the future, which group of people is going to end up believing him and retain their grace and get it re -infused.

01:30:28

And so then they're predestined to the son, because that would be flaming heresy.

01:30:34

And the reason it would be heresy is because God is then showing partiality. Let me show you something.

01:30:42

Romans 2, 11, there's no partiality with God. But what I really want to do is go to James 2, 2.

01:30:48

A man comes into your assembly with a gold ring and you're dressed in fine clothes. Comes a poor man in dirty clothes.

01:30:54

You pay special attention to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, you know that thing. So what he's condemning here is the partiality based on what a person possesses, what a person is, or anything like that.

01:31:07

God shows no partiality to people. He does not judge them worthy for salvation because of their ability to believe in him.

01:31:16

That would be a quality within them that's a good thing, that he then saves them because of that quality. That's showing partiality, which the scriptures condemn.

01:31:24

If it's because they are the ones who are wise enough to be able to come back to Christ and get grace infused to the sacramental system, it's called sacerdotalism.

01:31:31

Then what he's doing is he's showing partiality on them because these are the ones who are good enough to make it.

01:31:38

I'm going to give them to the son and they're worthy of salvation. That's partiality. It violates what

01:31:43

James is talking about. So, I mean,

01:31:50

I could respond to that. Do you mind if I ask you another question? Should I respond to that? Sure, sure. Whatever you want to do.

01:31:56

What do you want to do? I don't care. Okay, sure, sure, sure. I want to make it seem like I'm sidestepping the issue.

01:32:03

So you had quoted earlier Galatians chapter 5. And you quoted, I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law.

01:32:14

You are severed from Christ who would be justified by the law. You have fallen from grace. So you had earlier mentioned, you had quoted from John 6 in order to argue that all of the saints, even those, you know, every single saint who is regenerated will persevere to the end.

01:32:30

But from the plain reading of this text, it seems to imply that you can be severed from Christ and you can fall away from God's favor.

01:32:38

How would you respond to that? Two issues. One is you have to understand covenantal theology to know what it means to be in Christ.

01:32:44

And being in Christ could be another covenantal aspect. But I don't really like to lean that way. I think in Christ means that you're actually saved.

01:32:52

But nevertheless, you have been severed from Christ. You are seeking to be justified by the law. Are people who seek to be justified by the law really

01:32:58

Christians to begin with? They could be initially Christian. Seeking to be justified by the law.

01:33:06

They are Christians. No. So you can initially not seek to be justified by the law, but then you can be tempted toward that direction.

01:33:12

And then, so then, wait a minute. You mean they were initially justified by faith alone? You can initially be a non -Judaizing

01:33:20

Christian and then be tempted toward being a Judaizer. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah.

01:33:26

And that's a common response to that. And then I go to 1 John 2, 19. They went out from us because they never were of us.

01:33:32

If they had been of us, they would have remained. And what Paul is doing here is simply telling us that the

01:33:37

Judaizers, those who want you to keep ceremonial aspects of the law, that the covenant community, they've been severed from Christ.

01:33:45

They've fallen from grace. But when they say fallen from grace, he says that, does it mean that they were saved? Because Judas, you've got to understand

01:33:52

Judas as an example, he was never saved to begin with. Jesus says he was a unbeliever from the beginning, a devil from the beginning.

01:33:58

I forgot exact wording. And he experienced the grace of God. Just as Hebrews 6, 4 through 6 talks about, tasted the heavenly gift, tasted this.

01:34:06

They've fallen away. It's impossible to renew them again to repentance. And then I can go to 2 Corinthians 7, 10, which talks about true repentance and false repentance.

01:34:13

It is all, there's a lot here that goes on. But the problem is that, you know, you went back to this, you waited for this.

01:34:21

You waited to go back here because you want to show that you can lose your salvation. But Jesus says, no, you cannot because he can't lose any.

01:34:27

And your response to that is, it's the predestined ones, which is why I showed you that the predestined ones are the ones that are also the foreknown ones.

01:34:33

And I tried to show you again, I go to James 2, 2 through 4, that God does not give people to Christ for salvation based on a good quality in them.

01:34:44

That's partiality, which the scriptures condemn. And I think we went over this last time in Colossians 2, 14.

01:34:50

Remember that verse? Okay. Colossians 2, 14, for those who don't know, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees, which was hostile to us,

01:34:59

He took it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. That's our sin debt. You agreed. It was a sin debt that was canceled.

01:35:05

If it's canceled at the cross, all of our sin had to be canceled. Otherwise you can't be justified. If all of our sin that's canceled, then you're justified.

01:35:14

But if you go to hell, that means not all of your sin that's canceled, then you couldn't be justified. Yeah, you can't lose your salvation.

01:35:22

Before we get to Colossians, I just wanted to. What I want to do, because we do have one more person that's been waiting.

01:35:28

Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I just want to give you one. I'm going to give you one verse and don't leave because maybe the other person has a shorter question.

01:35:36

But one clear verse for you would be 1 John 2, 19, because it went out from among us, right?

01:35:44

Well, this is what God says. They went out from us, but they were not of us.

01:35:51

For had they been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out that it might become plain that they were not of us.

01:36:03

So when people leave the faith, as you're saying, it exposes they were never of the faith in the first place.

01:36:12

All right. So stick around. I'm going to add Edison has been waiting for a while, and I want to bring his volume up.

01:36:22

And so Edison, you have some questions here. Yes.

01:36:29

Yes. Maybe what you could do, it's probably your bandwidth is a little, it might be a problem.

01:36:45

You might want to turn your video off, and that'll help with your because I think you're on a phone device, a phone or a tablet.

01:36:53

And if you turn your video off, that'll help with the bandwidth. There you go.

01:36:59

All right. Hi. Oh, you're in the

01:37:06

Philippines. Cool. Yeah.

01:37:12

I was a former KGB only, but I am now a reform.

01:37:19

Good. And when I keep getting the questions.

01:37:32

It's a little hard to you're breaking up quite a bit. Yeah, I'm sorry.

01:37:40

I just wanted to just a little just one verse. I want to hear what Matt or what? Okay. So you want to hear what we say on a one verse?

01:37:55

Which verse? Yes, sir. It would be Acts chapter number 17, verse. 17, what?

01:38:03

Acts 17. 30. 30. Number 30. God commands everyone, everyone to repent.

01:38:10

Yes. Yes. Maybe you could type your question out in the chat room there.

01:38:24

Yeah, there's if you look at the bottom of your phone, there'll be a chat icon. And you can type in the question.

01:38:32

We could then read it. And so that's one of the things with sometimes.

01:38:45

Why would God are you asking? Why would God command everyone to repent? If he has to grant him repentance? Yes. Okay, I can answer that.

01:38:56

Or if you know, some will be one of the questions.

01:39:05

Thank you. Did I get that question right? Okay. So why would command everyone to repent?

01:39:14

If he has to grant repentance per second, Timothy 225. I think that's the question.

01:39:20

Is that the question? Yes. Yes, sir. Thank you. That's it. Okay. The reason is, is because God is a standard of righteousness.

01:39:28

And people are all over everywhere are obligated to turn from sin. Whether they're able to, or whether they're not, is not the issue.

01:39:36

God is a standard of righteousness. God is the center of perfection. That's why he says in 1 Peter 1 16, be holy for I'm holy.

01:39:43

He says, be holy. Can we be holy? We can't be holy. Holiness, holy, sinless.

01:39:50

Okay. Perfection in everything. Holiness. Be holy because I'm holy.

01:39:55

We can't do that yet. God commands it because he's the standard of righteousness. Not us.

01:40:01

He does not lower his standard for us. Therefore, he commands everyone everywhere to repent. That's the right thing to do.

01:40:06

They are obligated to do it. That's just a statement of fact. But then he specifically grants that ability to the elect.

01:40:20

And God bless you with your ministry. Sure, man. Hey, I was in the

01:40:26

Philippines about four years ago in the southern area. Tacloban, I think it was. And those lizards over there.

01:40:37

Like that, they do that. Oh, man, that was something else. Justin Peters and I will be, Lord willing, going to the

01:40:43

Philippines in May. Oh, good. We're going to be in Manila for a week and then

01:40:48

Cebu for a couple of days. I think two or three days. So, yeah,

01:40:54

I'm from Cebu. You're from Cebu. Okay, so we'll be, I can tell you the dates.

01:41:01

It'll be middle of May. We're going to be in Cebu. Do you know who Justin Peters is? Yeah, so we'll be in Cebu May 27th, 28th time frame.

01:41:17

That we'll be in Cebu. I think on that Tuesday, we'll be doing a seminar somewhere.

01:41:23

I don't know where yet, but if you keep tuned to this show, you'll, I'm sure you'll get details because I'm sure as I get more, we'll provide it.

01:41:33

So maybe we can meet out there in the Philippines. Okay, I'm going to add what maybe or probably the last caller for tonight or last questioner is seeking the narrow way.

01:41:59

So you're now on the show. If you want to unmute yourself. Hello. Hello.

01:42:06

Hi, I just had a question about as far as Calvinism is concerned. Whenever I hear

01:42:12

Calvinist preachers, they always talk about how God is doing everything for his own glory.

01:42:19

And every time I hear that, I think of the two Bible verses. First John 4, 8,

01:42:27

God is love. And first Corinthians 13, 5, love is not self -seeking.

01:42:34

So how is it that God would be doing everything for his own glory? If by definition, he is not self -seeking.

01:42:45

The greatest act of love is to lay your life down for your friend, John 15, 13.

01:42:52

The nature of love is to give, John 3, 16. Love does not seek after its own in a selfish way.

01:43:00

And that's what it's talking about in first Corinthians 13. Isaiah 43, 7, everyone who's called by my name and whom

01:43:05

I've created for my glory, whom I have formed, even whom I have made, were created for his glory.

01:43:11

And that's what the Bible says. The greatest glory of God is expressed through the work of Christ, predestination, election, and things like that.

01:43:20

And so the nature of God is love, first John 4, 8. He is love, but he's also the greatest being in existence.

01:43:29

And so he also glorifies himself through all of creation because he works all things after the counsel of his will,

01:43:35

Ephesians 1, 11. One of the mistakes some people make sometimes is to say, for example, God is love, therefore he would never send anybody to hell.

01:43:44

And what they're doing is they're failing to recognize that God is love and holy and just and merciful and pacement, and he gets angry and he's kind.

01:43:54

And all of these things work together perfectly. And so he does create us for his glory, and yet he's also loving at the same time.

01:44:02

And the greatest thing in the universe is God. Not that he's a thing or an object, but the greatest is

01:44:09

God. And so he deserves all glory, all admiration, all praise, and all things.

01:44:15

And he's also loving in the process as he saves the elect. And then the unbelievers, the non -elect go to hell.

01:44:22

And that will be for the glory of God as well. Okay. Thank you.

01:44:29

Sure. So with that, you have any other questions?

01:44:39

Well, Taylor's a good, competent Calvinist. Maybe you could add to something like that. Taylor, you want to add anything to that?

01:44:50

No, I think that was a great answer. However we want to reconcile it, I mean, God seeking his own glory and doing things to glorify his own name is just a common theme throughout the entire

01:45:02

Bible. We see Jesus' entire ministry was about not only laying down his life for the church, but to present them to God to glorify him.

01:45:13

So however we want to reconcile those two things, we shouldn't allow one side of our theology to kind of dismantle the other side.

01:45:22

Absolutely. It's going to be a balance. If a diamond and blue only comes out at one angle, it doesn't mean the whole thing is blue.

01:45:29

It just means when part of the refraction is that way. We look at God as a whole, not as a part. Let me ask you a question, seeking the narrow way.

01:45:37

Do you believe that a child should obey their parents? Yes, I do.

01:45:45

Is it because of their position as the parent that would demand the obedience?

01:45:53

I think that's a component of it. Yeah. Well, God is the creator of everything, correct?

01:46:00

Correct. Okay. So by the very nature of who he is, it would require that everything in the world, everything in his creation, because it's more than just a parent relationship, that might be the closest thing we can compare.

01:46:17

He created everything out of nothing, and therefore all of creation gives glory to him, because that's what it was created for.

01:46:25

Not in a selfish sense, but in the sense where he created it. So the natural response of all of creation should be to give the creator glory.

01:46:36

I do agree with that. I'm going to do more research into it, but I just never saw selfish as being a component to the definition of self -seeking.

01:46:47

It's not selfish. No, no, no. It's not selfish. Think about this. If God is the greatest of all beings, and he is the one who is most perfectly majestic and holy, then isn't it logical to say that seeking him would be the greatest thing, and praising him would be the greatest thing?

01:47:09

The answer would be, well, yeah. Since he knows this, he's going to let you know that as well, that praising him is the greatest thing.

01:47:21

I do agree with that, but what I'm saying is like in the Bible verse, it says love is not self -seeking.

01:47:29

The definition of self -seeking, I never saw selfish as a part of that definition.

01:47:35

So it's not when I say that. I don't think God would be selfish if he were self -seeking.

01:47:41

One of the things about being selfish and not being self -seeking in that type of love relationship is that that person isn't in our relationship with our spouses and our relationship with people.

01:47:53

It's the fact that we're not running roughshod over the people. We're not seeking ourselves over others.

01:48:00

We're not being tyrant over other people and seeking ourselves to the detriment of others.

01:48:07

It's what Matt's getting at. It's not necessarily the fact that God as the most glorious being isn't worthy and seeking his own glory.

01:48:16

I mean, we could go through a ton of passages like Isaiah, where he says that he's bringing in every name that calls his name, who he created for his glory.

01:48:26

I mean, throughout the entire Bible, there's just passage after passage after passage that God tells us that his intentions are to bring glory to himself and glory to his name.

01:48:35

Okay. And that's why I was trying to say, it's because of who he is, his nature, and what he's done, the creator, that it's not a selfishness.

01:48:47

It is a natural response. Right. That make sense? It does.

01:48:53

It does. And I never saw that idea as being selfish from God's point of view. I mean, I understand he absolutely deserves glory and there's nothing else that matters as much as that.

01:49:04

So I think it's just a matter of my understanding of the term that I need to work on.

01:49:09

Okay. Good for you. Well, good. I mean, and that's what we're trying to do here on this show is to be able to hopefully provide answers.

01:49:17

I know there's someone in YouTube that said they weren't smart enough to come in.

01:49:24

Why are you here, Andrew? Good question. You know, I make you look good and that's hard to do.

01:49:31

Well, I wouldn't say because it doesn't really help a whole bunch. You're so far down.

01:49:36

Get to long insults and forget it. Losing steam. Yeah. There was an insult that just failed. Failed.

01:49:42

It was no good. So, yeah. I mean, for folks who want to ask, I mean, Matt does the regular radio show and really what it is sometimes on the radio, you don't have time for long questions.

01:49:54

You don't have time for some of the back and forth like we had with Ariel and being able to come back in week after week and continue discussions.

01:50:03

And so because of that, that's what we're trying to do here is to give a platform where we can do that. And so if you have questions, if you have things that are just, you know, you want to sometimes some of the questions are too detailed or too long to get through in a, you know, seven minute radio segment.

01:50:23

And so that's what we're here for. We have two hours. Sometimes we're going to take longer. Sometimes, you know, you know, there's, you know, more people we're going to take shorter, but you can always come back in.

01:50:34

So, so, I mean, please come, come back in if you have more questions. And for other folks, we're going to, we're going to start to wrap up next week,

01:50:44

Matt. I'm not a hundred percent sure whether I will be here. I'm going to try, but there is something going on next weekend, but you're not, you know, next weekend you had the, the prime, prime opportunity.

01:50:56

If ever there was an opportunity for Matt Slick to buy me dinner next Sunday night would have been it.

01:51:02

If you would have flown out here, I would have, I would have gladly gladly let you buy a meal for me, uh, next

01:51:12

Sunday night. I would have. Oh, for your, wait, your daughter's wedding. That's right. That's right. So if you, if you wanted to pay that meal,

01:51:21

I would be glad paid for anyway. No, it isn't.

01:51:26

It is not. I only paid $500 down. I have the rest to pay Sunday night.

01:51:32

I can't tell you selfish person. Yeah. God may not be selfish, but Hey, it's, it's your chance.

01:51:42

It's your chance. You got the invite to the wedding. You could have, you could have come. We got two,

01:51:49

Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, I know the activities are starting

01:51:55

Thursday, Thursday, Friday, uh, but we'll definitely have a show next week.

01:52:01

Uh, we just might get, uh, Vincent or John to fill in if not me, uh, but I'm probably going to try to make it, uh, maybe at that point

01:52:09

I might want to do the show to get away from wedding plans. There's like flowers all over my house.

01:52:16

Uh, Oh yeah, I, we have two rooms like almost dedicated to, um, wedding stuff.

01:52:25

So I told my daughter, I can't wait to get my, my gym back. I have a weight room with a treadmill and I can't wait to be able to get in there and actually start using it anyway.

01:52:33

So what's the big deal? No, I mean, actually, you know, I've lost 20 pounds since the summer, since the last time we've seen each other since, since three 40.

01:52:43

Yeah. Sound like that. Hey, actually, speaking of which, uh, I don't know if you heard the news,

01:52:49

Matt, but the Mormon church came out with a statement that they do not want people to, they do not want, uh,

01:52:57

Mormon churches or Latter -day Saint churches to do pageants anymore.

01:53:04

I think that the Manti pageant that you've been going to for years, as, as we know that the

01:53:10

Mormons have been coming in less and less numbers, the Christians have been coming in bigger and bigger numbers. And there's been a lot of, uh, well, let's just say in that area of Manti is one of the lowest

01:53:23

Mormon, uh, areas for Utah. And many, many of us think it's because of the

01:53:29

Mormon miracle pageant where so many Christians, hundreds of Christians go out to evangelize. And, uh, so we think that might be the reason they're saying, nope, we shouldn't do pageants anymore.

01:53:40

Um, so they, they, this next year may be a big year cause it might be the last pageant in Manti.

01:53:48

I'm going to be down in Arizona, Lord willing, that's our plan. So I'll have to fly up to Salt Lake and see if we can arrange that to get there.

01:53:56

Yeah. Now that we finally found a great place to stay that, you know, that place wasn't bad, although we did get pretty sick.

01:54:04

I don't know, but, uh. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. We were all pretty violently sick when we, by the time we got home, that was bad.

01:54:13

Yeah. Yeah. What about that? That's right. We were all, I was out for two days. Oh, now

01:54:20

I remember. Yeah. I lost five pounds in one day. I was thinking of having, but, uh, but yeah.

01:54:31

So, so, uh, some, some resources for folks. There's been a lot of articles that have been shared in the, in the links.

01:54:37

They'll be on the show notes as well from carm .org. We've talked a little about Roman Catholicism.

01:54:43

I want to encourage you to pick up my book. What do they believe? It is a systematic theology of the major Western religions.

01:54:49

So you'd be able to figure out what Roman Catholicism believes along with Judaism and Islam, Moranism, which we were just speaking of, uh,

01:54:58

Jehovah Witnesses and Christianity. So it's a resource you'd be able to pick up. Uh, you can go to what do they believe .com.

01:55:06

Now Matt is showing, uh, his latest book, which is atheistic.

01:55:12

Now here's the thing, Matt, I'm trying to figure this out. We put a challenge out to anybody who wants to come up with a good intro for this show and they would get a free copy of atheistic.

01:55:25

Why is it that nobody wants your book, Matt? I think maybe we got to see if, if I gave away a free copy of my book, would we suddenly get some entries?

01:55:37

Okay, we'll, we'll, we'll liven up. So how about one each? That's what I was just going to suggest.

01:55:42

So I will give a copy of what do we believe, and Matt will give a copy of Atheistica to whoever can come up with the best intro song, intro music and whatnot for our show.

01:55:56

Um, so if you are creative in that way and want a free copy of Atheistica and a free copy of what do we believe, then you can, huh?

01:56:09

Autographed. Autographed, even better. I will sign Matt's name. It makes it, you know, my own name.

01:56:17

I have to make sure it looks like my wife's signature of my name. So I've got it down pretty well now. How's your wife doing by the way?

01:56:24

We, we haven't gotten an update for a while. Um, she cracked another rib sneezing a few days ago and now she's literally walking around with a

01:56:33

Velcro belt. It's about this wide around her abdomen area. And she was actually downstairs with a neighbor going through stuff, or preparing for the move, you know, five months in advance, going through papers and all kinds of stuff.

01:56:47

So she's sitting down moving and she drove yesterday and did some things and, and stuff, but, um, you know, she's just having to move very slowly.

01:56:55

Okay. Here's a real question to see how her health is doing. Has she smacked you? Like backhanded you?

01:57:01

No. No. So she was, you will still be praying for her. She has some healing to do. Not give me an arm hit in months.

01:57:09

So, so you plan to go down to, um, to Arizona.

01:57:15

Is that mean, is that mean you're going to like ruin vocab Malone's neighborhood? Is that how that's going to work?

01:57:21

What we're going to do is put the house up for sale in March. And depending on a few things, uh, when it sells, then we're going to pack up, um, we'll, you know, we'll have two weeks to pack up kind of a thing.

01:57:33

You know, you've got to get out of the house. And, um, and then what we'll do is we'll put pods, have pods delivered.

01:57:39

And, uh, we'll just have a weekend where we just ask all my friends just to just come out and help.

01:57:46

And we'll just blitzkrieg the place and Anika will be supervisor and point, point do do. And then, um, we're going to get a

01:57:52

U -Haul and get my office stuff. Then we're going to, um, clean the house out anyway, then drive down to Fountain Hills.

01:58:00

And we have a place to stay there without any contract or anything. We have a friend and, um, we'll stay there while we're looking for a house in, uh,

01:58:09

Phoenix area. That was a very tactful way of avoiding the question. I, so the question is, are you going to go

01:58:16

Malone's neighborhood? That's what I want to know. I don't even know his neighborhood is, but I picked him up in his neighborhood, but I don't even know where I was.

01:58:24

I just had an address and a GPS and, and, uh, you know, went there. He said, vocab says, no, he's way in the desert.

01:58:34

Uh, whereas I live downtown in a real city slicker. Yeah. Fountain Hills is, uh,

01:58:41

Northeast of Phoenix about, uh, I'd say 20, 30 minutes range. But, um, you know, it was fun meeting, uh, vocab.

01:58:49

It was nice. And, uh, he's not as stupid as I thought he might've been. He was a pretty good guy. He's got a pretty good vocabulary.

01:58:55

Is that what you're. I, I was testing him, but, uh, you know, he's not a Susquehanna Bedillion like me, but he certainly knows, uh, um, black

01:59:04

Hebrew Israelite stuff. He's a good guy. And, uh, so what

01:59:09

I'm going to do, I gave a bad link there, Matt. So there will be an after show. The after show is put on by guys known as the council and the council will do an after show.

01:59:18

They have a YouTube channel that you can go and watch, uh, go to YouTube and search for the council. Uh, we'll put a link.

01:59:24

I just put the link in Matt for you to jump over there. And once you, you head out, I will put the link into YouTube for folks who are watching on YouTube.

01:59:34

Um, and so you guys can join the after show. And for those of you who are here in the room right now, if you guys want to join the after show, you're more than welcome to go over there.

01:59:45

So, uh, politics live is a ministry of striving for eternity. Uh, we do it in coordination with calm .org.

01:59:52

And so this is something we do every Thursday night, eight to 10 Eastern time.

01:59:58

You can join in any time you want. You go to apologetics, live .com, and we'll always put the links to join just before we go live.

02:00:07

Uh, just the way that, uh, the show works. And so you just have to go to apologetics, live .com.

02:00:13

We made it easy for you. It's the same site. Every week you go there, the links, you can watch it there.

02:00:19

And there'll always be links during just before. We want to thank Tyler Villa for coming and sharing with us some of his knowledge.

02:00:26

I want to encourage you to, to check out his podcast, the freed thinker. That's ends in a

02:00:32

D freed thinker because he now as a Christian is freed to think. And, uh, so it's a great podcast, even though he's a

02:00:40

Presbyterian and I disagree with a lot of his views, you know, but, uh, and he writes against my views, but that's okay.

02:00:47

Uh, we, we don't mind getting together for dinner when I get out to California every year, kind of our yearly thing, but, uh, so check out the freed thinker.

02:00:56

If you want to listen to this in podcast form, the apologetics live is a podcast.

02:01:02

You can search for apologetics live. You can share it on social media. And, uh, that is one of the things that we are trying to do as part of the

02:01:10

Christian podcast community, which is a community of Christian podcasts. If you are a podcaster, we're probably going to be opening up pretty soon to, uh, other

02:01:20

Christian podcasters to join. We're doing that in a slow progression. But, uh, if you're interested in Christian podcasts, you can go and do a search for Christian podcast community on whatever podcast app you have.

02:01:34

And that will get you, uh, really all the podcasts that are in the community on one feed.

02:01:39

I do want to encourage you to subscribe though, to my podcast, the rap report. That's rap with two

02:01:44

P's. No, it is not about rap music. It is a play on my last name. Rappaport.

02:01:50

So it's Andrew Rappaport's rap report. So if you want to subscribe to that, uh, that would be wonderful.

02:01:58

I just posted the after show link in the room or in the, the

02:02:03

YouTube channel. And so we want to thank you guys for coming out. Thank you for, uh, asking questions and whatnot.

02:02:11

Uh, we look forward to seeing you next week. Or to host a

02:02:39

Bible interpretation made easy seminar in your area. Can you answer the following questions for your children or for the person to whom you are witnessing?

02:02:50

Number one, is the new Testament reliable? Two, can you explain the Trinity to me?

02:02:55

Three, how is Jesus both God and man and a slew of other questions you will be able to answer.

02:03:01

If you get Andrew Rappaport's new book, what do we believe? It will help you a ton to get your copy at what do we believe book .com.