A Little Molinism, and a Little Oneness

And greetings. Welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White. I don't have a screen to look at, but we'll figure it out eventually.

Hey, there I am. Actually, I think it would be better if we didn't have a screen. We can go ahead and just turn that back off again. I was just looking at my phone before we got started.

I almost hesitate to say anything nice about anybody, given the kind of critics we have out there.

But Daryl Bernard Harrison had put on Facebook just a while ago,

Listening to some of these Christian social justice activists, it's as if Jesus didn't actually come into the world to die on the cross as an atonement for sin, but to give his life as a divine protest against the injustice of crucifixion.

Good grief, shaking my head. That's very, very, very, very well said.

I would like to have the good brother on, but like I said,

I don't know that I want to give anybody the grief that it results from certain people.

Maybe if I don't invite you on, it's because I actually like you. That's probably something to do with it.

Anyway, I've got a couple things to get to today. Twitter can be a royal pain, and it normally is.

Social media in general is a royal pain. But every once in a while, it reminds you of stuff.

For example, I forgot to tweet that the program was starting. But it will remind you of things.

And someone tweeted me something after the program two days ago, and I went,

Oh, yeah, that's right. I had something else I was going to play, and I completely forgot about it. And I want to get to it before we get to the oneness material.

Well, yeah, yeah. We won't. This is, well,

I guess this is it, isn't it? Till after G3. We won't be able to do any programs next week. So we will be at G3.

Please remember the debate on Wednesday evening with Adnan Rashid. If you're in the area, if you're anywhere nearby,

I strongly encourage you to attend. There's still plenty of room to be able to be there.

Yes. The link to the sign -up sheet is on our website on the banner. So all you do is click that banner, and it's going to take you to where you can sign up and get yourself registered.

Okay. Yeah. And really looking forward to that debate.

It's sad that that has not been able to be my primary focus of late, but that's life in modern evangelicalism.

The topic, is the cross necessary for salvation? Again, a tremendous opportunity to really engage the subject.

This morning, Bassam Zawadi posted a nice thing on Facebook, where he took a picture of a page from my book on the

Quran, and was basically saying, you know, it's nice to see someone honestly engaging.

It was the issue of, and it's always bothered me, but again, we've been consistent about this for a long, long time.

But there are some people that'll quote, Allah is the best of deceivers from the

Quran, and make this a big, huge argument. And as always,

I try to put myself in the other person's shoes, look back toward myself, and see, is there consistency?

And we have to deal with the reality that there are times that God placed a lying spirit as an act of judgment in the mouths of false prophets to bring about the destruction of kings of Israel.

And then you have that signal passage. And this may be where it would be good if apologists were also regular preachers who had to work through texts.

You have that text when Paul writes the Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, about how if you refuse to love the truth,

God will cause you to love a lie. And so I just know that there are judgment texts in the

Bible, both Old and New Testament, where God justly brings judgment and deceives people in their rebellion.

God's under no obligation to grant his truth to those who are justly condemned by their own actions.

They're sinners before God. God can bring about their destruction any way he chooses to do so. It's funny, people don't care if God brings hailstones to destroy people.

But if he brings about their own destruction in some other fashion, oh, that's not fair.

So anyways, in the book, I was actually looking at a section in the

Quran. I attempted to be as fair as possible with the text when

I was dealing with it. I can't say, well, but they're not fair with the

Bible. Well, that's not an option for a Christian. Christians have a much higher standard to work with.

So I tried to be fair with it. And I just basically said, you know, some people argue that this means that, you know, there's a fundamental problem with Allah's nature or something like that in the

Quran. And I said, I don't think that's a fair way of reading this text. It would seem that it would probably be better taken in this way.

Well, Bassam took a picture of that and posted that.

And it's interesting, even on the other side, you have certain folks.

It doesn't matter. You're automatically going to be considered to be the bad guy.

This John Fontaine guy immediately comments, well, I just think this is just a way to try to, you know, get people, basically attributing deception to me.

Even in doing something like that, like being fair with the Quran, it's still a deceptive thing. So they have their people who, it doesn't matter.

And of course, we have our people. It doesn't matter what somebody else says. You know, you've got your own, you got your mind made up, you got your paradigm, and everybody needs to fit into your paradigm.

And there can't be, you know, that's the easy way of doing things. I got to admit, you know, you can just all put it, everything's black and white and they, they, they, and we, we, and that's it.

But it doesn't really help get conversations going and actually get them to go anywhere at all.

So it was interesting to see that. So anyway, one of the subjects that we've addressed many times on the program, that again has, as so often, brought us much criticism, is

I have consistently over the years criticized Dr.

William Lane Craig and his apologetic methodology.

Partly because I don't think Dr. Craig has ever shown evidence of seriously considering the criticisms that are made of his position from a reformed perspective.

I mean, you know, we covered the Sy Tim Bruggencate stuff, what, four or five months ago, maybe.

And the Reasonable Faith broadcasts he did on that. And it just, it was just painfully obvious that he's, he's never really listened to what we have to say and really isn't interested in listening to what we have to say.

But the biggest issue with, with Craig has always been a sophisticated, radicalist stance on Christianism.

As such, it is, it is of necessity, eisegetical. It's, it's sub -Christian. And I think it's extremely problematic.

And we've especially talked about what's called the grounding objection.

The idea that, well, let me explain it first. We always have new, new listeners.

And so I can't always take things for granted, though. You can't always just start from, from the beginning either.

Historically, theologians, even before the Reformation, had recognized two kinds of,

I hate to use the term in God's mind, but in God's experience. Two kinds of knowledge in God.

There is the knowledge that he has of himself. Not of his actions in time, but of himself, exhaustive self -knowledge.

And then there is that knowledge that would encompass everything that he chooses to do.

And since he's the creator of all things, would mean exhaustive knowledge, sort of how we would view omniscience.

Because anything that happens in this vast, vast creation of his comes from the fact that he chose to make it in the way that it is.

And so since everything is dependent upon him, there can't be any knowledge outside of what he has chosen to create.

And so you have these two kinds of knowledge, which one is sort of internal of himself and then external of what he's chosen to do.

And that's it. There isn't anything else. Most theologians up to that point in time, that's good enough.

But then, at the time of the Reformation, primarily there are some who have hypothesized—I've never seen any strong evidence of this, but I haven't spent much time on it.

There are some who have hypothesized that some of the Anabaptists developed some kind of concept of middle knowledge.

I question that. Most of them didn't have long enough lives to have ever done anything overly in -depth along those lines.

But certainly, Louis de Molina, the Jesuit philosopher, is the one that's credited with the development of the concept of middle knowledge.

It's a little bit like the situation with CBGM right now, in the sense that the

Germans have come up with a lot of the phraseology, and it just isn't overly descriptive.

It's not really helpful. We're stuck with it until somebody comes up with something better. And middle knowledge, what does that communicate to anybody?

You're the middle kid? Middle of what? Well, I guess it is descriptive in a sense.

It's supposed to be logically, not temporally. And that's where people get confused.

It's logically between—hence, in the middle—between those two kinds of knowledge that I explained.

The knowledge that God has of himself, and then you have middle knowledge, and then you have the knowledge

God has of everything he has made. And so, that's where the term came from, but most people are just sort of like, middle of the road?

Middle earth? Has something to do with Loder?

And so, anyway, the idea of middle knowledge is that God has access to—and it's not easy to follow, but primarily because you're normally trying to plug it into categories that it's not even claiming its own.

The idea is that God knows what any free creature would do in any given circumstance.

Now, we automatically default to the final kind of God's knowledge, and that is, well, yeah,

God knows what I'm going to do because he made me, and because he knows me so well.

That's not middle knowledge. That can't be middle knowledge, because that's the last form of knowledge.

And this is before that. This is before God's decree to create anything. And this is where the real problem lies, and that is, it's saying that God has knowledge of what person

X will do in any given circumstance before God decrees to create person

X. Now, when

I think of God's exhaustive knowledge of me as an individual, that is absolutely connected, without question, to his sovereign decree to make me who

I am. So I really, really, really, really struggle with the idea of even conceptually thinking about there is person

X, and if person X is placed in this universe, person

X will do this. And if he's placed in this universe—normally they say worlds, but what does that really mean?

I sometimes wonder—I haven't heard anybody ask him this, but I wonder if anyone's asked him—would middle knowledge remain true in a non -carbon -based life world?

I mean, how can you even—would middle knowledge be relevant in a black hole?

I don't know. These are odd things that you can think about, but the point is that this idea of middle knowledge does not come from God's decree to create.

It constricts God's freedom in what he can create dependent upon what his desired outcome is.

And this is where a lot of people go, wait, wait, wait, wait. Constricts God's freedom? What do you mean?

That sounds a little weird. It does, but what's important to realize in Molinism is that God does not determine the content of middle knowledge.

So if you have person X and they'll do this in this circumstance and that in that circumstance, that is beyond God's control.

What determined that is beyond God's control because it's middle knowledge.

It's not knowledge of he himself. It's not knowledge of what he's going to create. And this is what we call the grounding objection.

Then where did it come from? Who determined this?

There's no answer in Molinism. It just is. Just the way it is. And we have often played the clip where Dr.

Craig, in answering a question about evil as a Molinist, says, well, look,

God's got to play with the cards he's been dealt by middle knowledge.

To which I go, then we need to be worshiping the card dealer because the card dealer is superior to God.

Because the card dealer determined, sovereignly determined, what free creatures would do in any given circumstance.

Either that or you have to say, well, nobody did that, which means now the very form of any possible world is determined by some imper...

It's fate. Just fate determined these things. This is the grounding objection.

It's been the objection... Francis Turretin made this the essence of his argument in his

Institutes of Atlantic Theology. And I believe it's an absolutely valid, unquestionable fatality to the

Molinistic system. Aside from the fact that it, from a Biblical perspective, is utterly underrived from Scripture.

It is fatal to the system. There's just no two ways about it. And so what it does, it reduces

God, this great cosmic computer, who taking middle knowledge, is able to run all these possible worlds.

And on the basis of those possible worlds, is able to go, well, if I put...

You know, I don't know how many billions of people have lived on this planet. It's not all that big a number because the population in the past, much smaller it is now.

But let's say there have been 20 billion people. If I put 20 billion people...

And how many possible people are there? That's another question, honestly,

I haven't thought of before. Is there an unlimited pool of possible people from which to draw?

It doesn't sound like there would be. Because if there was an unlimited number, then

I would think God could create any university wanted. Including one where everybody would get saved, if there is an unlimited pool from which to draw.

So maybe there's a limited... Who determined that? I don't know. But what

God does, is he runs all these scenarios. And if I put these 20 billion people into this world with these external circumstances...

And what they'll say is God's sovereign over the external circumstances. So he gets to do all the tsunami stuff.

And earthquake stuff, and plague, and hail, and fires, and all the rest of it.

He gets to do all that stuff, and he can micromanage all the external stuff.

So he can make sure to put you in the circumstances where he knows what...

You're going to do this, this, this, this. So he's absolutely sovereign over all of that. But the ultimate...

The data coming into the God computer doesn't come from within it.

It comes from without it. Which is this middle knowledge that nobody knows where it came from, or where it was derived from, or who determined it, or anything else.

And so there are certain worlds God can't create. Well, there are certain worlds that God may want to create.

Where everybody gets saved and there's no evil. But there wasn't any way... There was no combination of people that would fit

God's ultimate design. Which, I guess, is maximum number of people saved with minimum amount of evil.

But we don't know that. It's not said. Certainly not in scripture, because no scripture writer ever thought of any of this, that's for sure.

And so this is Mullenism. And when you see Keith Lee and these other folks that are just all gung -ho on Mullenism, and middle knowledge, and all the rest of that stuff.

Just keep in mind, this is what they're talking about. And once you describe it to most people, they're sort of like,

I don't remember that in Isaiah. And you're not going to remember that anywhere. Because, as I said, no biblical writer ever even thought about it.

So I was directed to a video that was posted recently with Dr.

Craig. And here's him basically saying what we just said.

We're not misrepresenting anybody. Here's what happened. According to that definition.

Yes. Are there any other things that God can't do? Yeah, I think that here we come to this issue that is raised by God's omniscience and the theory of middle knowledge.

Which says that there are statements about how people would freely choose in certain circumstances.

And the interesting thing about these kinds of statements is that they are contingent.

They are not necessary truths, like the truths of mathematics. In different possible worlds, we may choose differently in the same circumstances.

So they're contingent. And yet they are independent of God's will. God doesn't determine how you shall freely choose in the circumstances that you find yourself in.

Okay, did you catch that? I want you to see that. I want you to hear that. That's what we're talking about.

It's independent of God's will. It's not a part of his creation. There is something that can constrict

God's actions and determine what God can do that God did not create. Separate from his will.

That's what he just said. And what that means is... So God is not then free to determine those acts.

That's right. So that's a limitation on God's own freedom. Yes, that's right. Because these are logically prior to his decree to create the world.

And so... Did you catch that? Logically prior to his decree. So, again, it's logically prior.

So there's natural knowledge of himself, middle knowledge, and then the decree. So the decree is dependent upon middle knowledge.

If he has knowledge of these, they're called counterfactuals of freedom. About how people would act if they were in certain circumstances.

Define those terms, counterfactual. Well, a counterfactual is an if -then statement in the subjunctive mood.

Like, if I were rich, I would buy a Mercedes. No, I'm not rich, so I don't.

But if I were, then I would. That's a counterfactual. It states an if -then hypothetical in the subjunctive mood.

And the idea here is that God knows the truth value of all these counterfactuals about how creatures would freely choose in any circumstances they might be placed in.

And if he does know these prior to his divine decree, then he doesn't determine those.

He doesn't determine how you would act freely in any circumstances you might be in. And therefore, these lie, in that sense, outside his ability or power to determine.

Now what that means is that there are logically possible worlds which are not feasible for God to create.

Because if he were to place the creatures in those circumstances, they wouldn't do that thing.

They would do something else. So the theory of middle knowledge says that there are all of these possible worlds that God knows that are possibilities, but then there's a subset, a proper subset of these, which are all of the feasible worlds that God could actualize given the truths of these counterfactuals of freedom about how creatures would act.

Now, did you catch that? Given these truths, these counterfactuals. In other words, given middle knowledge.

So what God can do, circumscribed and determined, by middle knowledge that he did not create, that's not a part of his will.

That's what's being said. That's pretty straightforward in his own words. And he chooses the one that he thinks are the proper ones to make real.

That's right, and then he will pick one of these feasible worlds to be the actual world. And so that's a very interesting,

I think, limitation upon God's freedom. Again, it's purely logical because it's based upon the logical impossibility of making someone freely choose something.

That is logically impossible. It's contradictory. Now, what you just heard, interestingly enough, is the assertion that compatibilism is logically impossible, which is exactly what the radical

Calvinists are saying from the other perspective. So here you have the Molinist and says there can be no compatibility between God's decree and man's freedom.

And then you've got the people on the other side saying that's right, which is why it's

God's decree that determines everything and not man's will. So here's the two polar opposites, both saying that the idea expressed in Genesis 50 and Isaiah 10 and Acts 4 is not logically possible.

That's what happens when you cut stuff down. It's not an infringement on God's freedom that goes beyond logic, but it does have very interesting implications for God's providence over the world and for the evil and the imperfections that are in the world, because it may be that there was no world feasible for God in which everybody always freely chose to do the right thing.

It's possible that in any feasible world, some free creatures at least, would go wrong and there would be sin and evil in the world.

So this has very interesting repercussions for questions about the evil in the world and the other imperfections and limitations in the world.

Yeah, it does have huge ramifications, actually, massive ramifications, because there's just nothing biblical about what was just said, unfortunately, and that's the problem.

Where did that go? Da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da. Okay, and I'm just trying to find…

Is that coming through? Almost. Because, again,

I can't… It doesn't show me what it's sending you. Okay, let me try this.

No? How about that? Gotta find something other than this someday.

It just doesn't work on this end. Okay, what? Now before you move on,

I have a question. Uh -huh. And I don't know the answer to this question, but I remember a while back you were talking about weather systems, weather patterns, and how they're affected by movements, and you talked about the butterfly.

Yes, uh -huh. And I wonder sometimes, is, is, that's, those are fractals, by the way. In Molinism, is that, that kind of thinking that they're, what if the butterfly doesn't take off?

No. No, there's not. No, Molinism, Molinism is just the opposite of what you'd have in processed theology systems, open theism systems.

It has, it has extreme micro control, providentially, of all circumstances, but its whole purpose is to try to maintain the idea of an autonomous human will, while at the same time affirming absolute divine sovereignty.

The cost of that is the introduction of something that God did not create and, and controls what he can and cannot do.

Okay, and then the second thing I want to point out is, in listening to him describe that, I found it interesting how convinced he is of it, and yet he refers to Molinism as a theory, and yet he treats it as fact.

He, well, but he's a philosopher, and he's just, he's doing what, he's doing what any good philosopher is gonna do.

He's gonna refer to it as a, as a theory. Right. Yeah, yeah, there's, there's a question about that. Okay, so there you go.

There's, there's some Molinism for you, if you were just looking to have your, your brain scrambled this morning.

I'd, I had that on the list to get to and had forgotten it, and wanted to, wanted to get to that.

Now, I was sent to, I was directed to a video by a

Mr. Ritchie, who I believe Eddie D 'Alcourt debated last weekend.

He is a oneness advocate, if you're not familiar with oneness theology. I don't know this man, and so I, I can gather from some of the things he says in this video, some of his perspectives.

There are differences amongst the various oneness individuals today.

The particular form of oneness found, for example, in the UPCI, the United Pentecostal Church International.

When we, you may have heard these groups described as Jesus -only groups, they baptize in Jesus' name only, but the, and most of them will say speaking in tongues is necessary for salvation, it's the only sign of salvation.

But they're, the primary definitional aspect of these individuals, of these groups, is a denial of the doctrine of the

Trinity. And historically, you had the various modalistic groups.

What's a modalist? Well, a modalist is a person who says that God exists in different modes, and so sometimes he might exist in the mode of the

Father, or in the mode of the Son, or in the mode of the Spirit. If you, and I had someone actually explain it to me this way once, they didn't mean to be a heretic, but if you have an actor, used to be in the olden days, women didn't act.

Men did, and even the women's parts were played by men. And you would wear masks, and the mask would indicate what person you were playing at that particular point in time.

And so you would, the idea being that sometimes God wears the mask of the Father and the mask of the

Son or the mask of the Spirit, but it's just one actor, it's just one person, taking on different modes of relating to the audience, or in this case relating to the world, things like that.

And so a basic modalistic idea is there's one being and person,

God. God is Unitarian, but he expresses himself or reveals himself in different modes.

Sometimes the Father, sometimes the Son, sometimes the Spirit. Now, the

UPCI that's based in St. Louis here in the United States, which traces its roots back to the split with the

Assemblies of God back at the beginning of the last century, has a slightly different perspective, and that is they deny the

Trinity, they are Unitarians, but what they teach is that Jesus was two persons.

And so when you're looking at Jesus in the Bible according to them, the

Son is a temporal being who has not eternally existed in reality.

They like to play on this idea of, well, you know, in God's knowledge, but we all existed in God's knowledge in that way.

But the Son as a divine person did not exist in eternity past.

So the Son is a creature, but they'll call him God because he's indwelt by the

Father. And then after the Resurrection, the mode of expression of God becomes that of the

Spirit. So Jesus was two persons. He was Father and Son, the

Son referring to his human nature, the Father referring to his divine nature, which means that the prayers of Jesus are a conversation internally between the human

Son and the Divine Father, who are one person, but sort of, not really, they're sort of two persons because they're talking to each other.

And you'll find different ways of defining and defending this depending on who you're talking to.

There are thoughtful advocates of this, but then there are a lot of really just fiery type of advocates.

You can see some of the debates we've done on this subject in the past, and hopefully they can be of some assistance to you.

Anyway, so evidently this Mr. Ritchie is a oneness advocate, and what are the key issues that, when you try to respond to oneness theology, biblically speaking,

I have always, since the 1990s anyways, emphasized those texts of Scripture which describe the

Son as an eternal, divine person. Because if the

Son pre -existed His birth in Bethlehem as a divine person, then oneness theology is done with.

And they know that. And so they want to do everything they can to find a way around these particular texts.

Now, I've never found oneness advocates to have much of an emphasis upon a consistent, fully developed hermeneutic or exegetical system.

It really doesn't have that kind of scholarship behind it. But that's what they will attempt to do.

And so when you think about, well, what text do you go to that would address

Jesus's pre -incarnate state as a person?

I mean, you have to start thinking about, well, what defines a person, and how would you come up with that? And there's just lots of stuff to think on.

And in the debates I've done, I've emphasized John 1 and the relationship between the logos and theos and the distinction that is drawn.

John 17, and especially verses 3 through 5, where the

Son distinguishes Himself from the Father but refers to His relationship to the

Father in a glorious state prior to the

Incarnation itself. And then to the Carmen Christi, Philippians 2, 5 through 11. And the reality that what is presented there is the assertion that this

One who takes on flesh had eternally existed in the form of God.

What does the oneness people do with that? Well, it depends on the oneness individual. It is interesting.

If you go back, I forget what year it was, it still pops up in Google.

I'm not sure how long that'll be before, you know, Google stops linking us to any of the things we've done in the past, just try to make us go away.

That's happening in social media, whether we want to admit it or not, it's already taking place. The people in control of it are totalitarians, and they will eventually take their roles in the various individuals in 1984 and Brave New World and all sort of squished together in some maniacal mess.

Unless God is merciful to us. But anyway, you can look up an article that I wrote sometime in the 90s for the

CRI Journal on the Carmen Christi, which is Philippians 2, 5 through 11.

And in that, you will find that I went through a number of differing interpretations on the

Carmen Christi to try to help prepare those who are utilizing the text apologetically.

You know, you can just simply tell people, well, use this text, quote this text. Well, it's vitally important that we understand what other people are going to hear in that text and what other interpretations have been offered.

This is especially, I think one of the great weaknesses of many involved in apologetics type ministry, is if we don't expose ourselves to other perspectives, if we have the fundamentalist fear of even hearing what somebody else has to say, you get yourself into an apologetic situation and someone throws a curveball in the sense of maybe giving you a liberal interpretation of what the

Carmen Christi is about. Well, if you've never studied that before, then you may be left speechless.

Unfortunately, what normally happens then is people go, well, that's just ridiculous. That's just ridiculous is not an apologetic argument.

It may seem ridiculous to you and you just may have on a common -sense level just seems ridiculous, but that's still not an answer.

Though it's not nearly as flashy and it takes more time, we've always emphasized the importance of this.

Like I said, you go back to this article back in the 90s. What do I do? Spent time going through a number of interpretations.

That's where I went through the differing understanding of what's being said in regards to did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped.

What does Harpagman mean there? I talked about the differences I have with Dan Wallace on that particular text and that's why

I tell the story how he and I stood there and at ETS in 1998 and just discussed that aspect of the because that's and so when

I wrote my article, I sent it to Dan first. I want to make sure I'm accurately representing you.

He wrote back and said, well, I might tweak this, tweak that, but otherwise, yeah, that's pretty much what I'm saying and okay. That's how it should be done.

He didn't anathematize me and send me off to the pits of hell or things like that. It was a different day back at the turn of the century.

We're getting so old, we can talk about what it was like before the turn of the century, back when people were much more kind to one another.

Anyway, it was sort of before social media and it does seem that people were more kind to one another.

Al Mohler mentioned on the briefing yesterday, I think it was, that they had this one study where they took teenagers and for five days they could not have any electronic devices.

At the end of five days, they tested significantly more compassionate and empathetic toward other human beings than they had before.

Well, now there you go. The other thing is to consider that we're having exchanges on social media with people who were not born at the turn of the century.

Oh, yeah. That's crazy. Yeah, that's not crazy.

How did that happen? That sort of happens every century. How did it happen? I don't believe it. It's just not reality.

Yeah. I deny it. Yeah. So anyway, the point is, one of the perspectives that, change the camera because I'm looking to the left all day, one of the perspectives that I discussed in the article is the

Lutheran interpretation. Now, I'll be honest with you, I don't know if it goes back to Luther or just simply is what has been adopted by Lutherans, which was interestingly enough adopted by Robert Raymond too, which really makes him out of the

Reformed mainstream on that particular issue. But it's the idea that what you have in Philippians 2, 5 through 11 is an incarnation, not it has nothing to do with the

Incarnation, but is in reference to an incarnated state that Jesus made himself into a reputation by making himself a servant on the night before his crucifixion.

And so I dealt with all those perspectives because from my understanding, the best way to prepare the largest number of serious believers to deal with this issue is to give them a full background in the topic.

And so that would prepare you to deal with what we see in this particular video.

But I don't know if this guy was doing damage control. I have not heard the debate with Eddie yet.

I may have the opportunity to grab it, I may not. We'll see. I heard it went well.

It is sort of strange that you'd be posting multiple videos right at the same time as your debate. That makes me go, hmm.

But let's take a look at what he had to say here. And the first,

I'm going to look at two issues really quickly. The first issue is, are you misquoting the

Bible when you say the glory which the Son shared, the glory which I shared with you in John 17, 5?

There are a couple of less than formal translations. I think the, what was it,

CSV or something, an NLT, I think. Those two, I think, have shared. But this goes on and on and on and on and on, accusing

Eddie of misquoting the Bible. It's not shared, it's just had. Doesn't change the meaning, but gives you an idea of what we're looking at here.

...minutes and 22 seconds into his video about wellness theology, Dr. DelCore misquoted

John 17, 5, and I'm quoting how Dr. DelCore quoted John 17, 5.

The glory which I shared with you, rather than the glory which

I had with you. There is no scriptural evidence to replace the word had with shared, but this is exactly what

Dr. DelCore did on his online video on oneness. Let us play the video clip from 3622 to 3633.

Together with yourself. You know, glorify me, Father, with the glory I shared with you, parasoi, before the world was or became.

No reputable translation of John 17, 5 ever reads, the glory which

I shared with you. John 17, 5 in the ESV reads, and now,

Father, glorify me in your own... Okay, so he's going to go on and on and on and on, simply about the difference between I had or shared.

You'll notice that Eddie even mentioned the phrase parasoi.

The literal translation is had, icon, had. But when you have,

I guess he could dismiss the NLT and the others as reliable, or whatever term he used of translations.

But it is a more dynamic or functional translation, but is it a misquotation?

No, because when you look at the phrase parasoi...

Oh, I'm sorry, and this is another... There it is.

When you look at the text, here's icon, which

I had, and then, it's interesting, before the world to be, so before the world was, parasoi, which

I had together with you. Well, is it not an appropriate understanding that when you're talking about,

Now glorify me, Father, together with yourself, the glory which

I had parasoi, with you. If I say, I had spaghetti with a friend of mine last evening because we're going to do a long bike ride.

Is it a misrepresentation of the idea that we shared dinner together?

Whatever parasoi means, it means in which I had in your presence.

That's what sharing means. And they try to say, well, you see, but then he gives his glory to his disciples.

But the disciples didn't exist back then. There is no statement that they did. It's the son as a divine person, referring to the father and referring to a time before the incarnation.

And this is what is utterly destructive of oneness teaching.

This is the son using personal pronouns of himself in distinction from the father, referring to a time before the world was.

I do not believe there is a meaningful oneness response to this. It has to be eisegetical.

It has to ignore the context of what is being said. And so Eddie wasn't misquoting something or trying to change something.

The issue with John 17 5 is that you have the son referring to himself as a glorious, personally existing, self -conscious individual in the presence of the father before the founding of the world.

This is not how thoughts speak. This is not how plans in the father's mind speak of themselves.

This is a divine person referring to himself in distinction from the father.

And yet, by the very language, anyone who would ask a

Jew of the first century, before creation, before anything else existed, was

Yahweh glorious? The answer would be yes. So if the son, before creation itself, is in the presence of the father and shares, possesses, parasoi, that glory, then who is the son?

Distinct, and yet the same gospel has identified the son as Yahweh, and only by assumption of Unitarianism do you get around what

John is actually talking about. So there is this big, long blah, blah, blah about, well, you're mistranslating it.

I'll be honest with you. I have found oneness folks to sort of utilize this kind of mechanism, this kind of thinking.

But then he went to the second text, and so let's go ahead and jump to that and see what was said.

For into Dr. Delcor's video about oneness, Dr. Delcor said, who although always subsisting in the nature of God or form of God, did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped.

Did the father not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped? Well, certainly it's not the father.

It's Jesus Christ as a son post -incarnationally that did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.

It makes absolutely no sense for a timeless, co -equal God the

Son, who would have had all authority and all power and all majesty, if there was a pre -incarnate co -equal

God person, a co -equal almighty God person, it would make no sense whatsoever for a co -equal almighty

God person to not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped.

The only thing that makes sense is that the man Christ Jesus on the earth, Emmanuel God with us on the earth, who knew his true identity as God with us as a man, could think as a man with a human conscience, knowing his true divine identity as God with us as a man, did not consider it equality with God, something that he should grasp for.

A co -equal... I'm sorry, that does not make a lick of sense. I mean, I don't know if that makes any sense to you.

It made no sense whatsoever to me. What you have in the Carmen Christi...

Now, again, the Lutheran idea is that when Jesus, for example... And I'm not saying that every

Lutheran holds this, but it is a general Lutheran perspective. It's tied in with the ubiquity of the body of Christ stuff.

We don't have time to get into it. But the idea is that the time frame of Philippians 2 is in reference to the incarnate

Christ, that he made himself of nothing as a servant here on earth. Let me give you...

And then he goes on, he quotes me too, and says, I made the same mistake. Well, here is the translation that I provided in the

CRI journal. Again, late 90s, might have been 2000 or after, now I think about it. I think it was 99, just off the top of my head.

Anyway, you can look it up if you want the specific date. Here's my translation.

You must have the same mindset among yourselves that was in Christ Jesus, who although he eternally existed in the very form of God, did not consider that equality he had with God the

Father, that's in italics, something to be held on to at all costs. But instead he made himself nothing by, in italics, taking on the very form of a slave, by, in italics, being made in human likeness.

And having entered into human existence, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even the death one dies on a cross.

Because of this, God the Father, in italics, exalted him to the highest place and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, so that at the mention of the exalted name of Jesus, everyone who is in heaven, on earth, and under the earth bows the knee, and every tongue confesses,

Jesus Christ is Lord, all to the glory of God the Father. So that is the translation that I provided.

His objection is to, who although he eternally existed in the form of God, and I guess

Eddie used similar terminology there, once again, when we look at the text itself, what

I'm referring to here is we have this phrase here, and if we could put that up on the screen,

Rich is a little distracted at the moment, with a phone call. There we go. Who, existing in the form of God, not began to exist, this is not an aorist participle, it's a present participle.

And so if you wanted to point to a specific, well, the incarnational event, then why use this form?

And I translate it in the sense that both

Akenoson and Laban in verse 7 are sub -descriptions of the mechanism by which the son made himself of no reputation.

He emptied himself by taking on the form of a servant, by being made in the likeness of men.

So Laban and actually Ganomenos are describing how he emptied himself.

And so if the incarnation is the mechanism by which he made himself of no reputation, then what takes place in verse 6 are the actions of a divine person in eternity past, who had equality with God the

Father, but did not consider that equality something to be held on to at all costs, but he then did these other things.

He made himself no reputation, he took on the form of man. That's not allowable from the oneness perspective because the son did not eternally exist.

So pre -existent ideas cannot consider equality with God as something not to be grasped because they can't consider anything.

Pre -incarnate ideas cannot give consideration to anything. And so the point is that the son did not enter into existence in Morphe Theou, form of God, but had always been in Morphe Theou, had always been

Einai Issa Theou, equal with the Father, but did not consider that condition of equality with the

Father as something to be held on to at all costs, but laid that aside by receiving the form of a servant and being made in likeness of man.

And then being found in likeness of man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even to death on the cross.

That's what Philippians 2 is telling us. And again, what's the fundamental proof of this? The fundamental proof of this is that this is a sermon illustration about serving others.

Humility of mind. And no other way of understanding what is being said in the

Carmen Christi will give you humility of mind. If you have just a mere human being not trying to become equal with God, that's not humility of mind.

That's just not committing blasphemy. That's the only way that you can allow the

Carmen Christi to function the way it does in Philippians 2 and still be meaningful.

So I guess I should have played that to the point where he mentions me, because I guess he quoted me too, but it doesn't matter.

We have dealt with that particular issue, and I think it's important to keep that in mind.

In closing, I think one of the things to keep in mind, something to take away from this brief analysis of this oneness argument, other than hopefully helping to prepare you for those conversations that you might have with oneness folks, and being able to give an answer why you believe the

Son has eternally existed as a divine person. I've often pointed out, next

Sunday morning, if we gave a quiz, the vast majority of confessionally

Trinitarian churches in the United States and asked for just two verses that would, in their context, teach that the

Son existed as a divine person before his incarnation. I am frightened to think what the results of that very brief quiz would be.

It would be nice to be able to do that, but like I said, it would frighten me to think of what the results of that would be.

But it also, hopefully, reminds us that I think one of the most important things for those who are apologetically might, who want to be

Christians, who give an answer in an age where the faith is under so much attack, especially by those outside the faith, but also by those who pretend to be

Christian, but deny the Trinity, the deity of Christ, the various cults and isms that exist out there.

One of the most important aspects of being truly prepared to be able to do that is having sound exegetical knowledge of the text.

We hurt ourselves when we try to prove divine truths out of texts that were never intended to contain those divine truths.

There's a guy on Twitter that I've been going back and forth with just a little bit who's one of these radical

Calvinist guys. Every text he sees, he reads into it the fully developed theology, not even of Calvin, but of the second or third generation after Calvin.

That's the milieu in which he reads the

New Testament text. That's dangerous because you end up saying, well, this text is about this doctrine.

My systematic theology says that this is about this, and therefore that's what the apostle intended, rather than recognizing that the apostle has one thing in mind, and then we put the whole council of God together, and we can see a consistency throughout all of that.

But that doesn't mean that every single time the apostle was addressing topic

X that he was meaning to give you the full -orbed, reformed understanding of everything in each one of those verses.

We really undercut the exegetical grounds upon which we have firm standing when we start treating the scriptures as a plaything like that.

We see the cults doing it. We don't want to do that. But in the same way, when we give an answer to those who are giving a false teaching, we need to be very careful as to how we consistently handle the text of scripture, because it is the full -orbed nature of that truth that the

Spirit of God uses to convince His people of that truth. It's not the proof -texting thing.

I wonder sometimes if it isn't one of the ramifications or manifestations of the electronic media in which we live, the digital devices and things, that we don't find that idea of a full -orbed

Christian truth, which takes time to communicate, time to understand, is beautiful in its fullness.

It's almost like, yeah, but I can't fit that even in the expanded Twitter message. So I want something shorter.

I want something more concise. That can be dangerous. Very, very dangerous.

So we need to be careful how we approach those things. So with that, we got to both of the things we wanted to talk about today on the program without having to be dragged into everything else.

Please pray for next week, the debate on Wednesday.

As I said one more time, I strongly encourage you, if you're in the area, to join us on Wednesday evening.

Yeah, I know it's going to be recorded, and yeah, it'll probably be posted pretty quick. But ask the people that are there.

It is different to be in the room. The live experience is pretty cool.

You can watch it, but talking with folks before and after and things like that, it's a neat thing.

So I've asked for a number of months now, well, six weeks maybe. Please be praying for Adnan Rashid.

Pray for his travel, ease of travel. I want Adnan to be at his best because the topic is vitally important, and I think the best debate is where both debaters are at their best so that the best of the information is brought out.

We certainly pray for Adnan as Christians. We want to be Christians who testify of our faith firmly.

He does not expect us to be compromising, but it would be wonderful if what he would consistently see in everyone who talks with him is someone who truly cares for him in the name of Christ, is a true witness for Christ.

Pray that that will be his experience when he is there. And then at the G3 conference, there's still room.

One of the real things I'm looking forward to is we're going to be talking about the subject of the canon of Scripture.

Now, it's funny. I heard someone say that they rolled their eyes when

I did a presentation on the reliability of Scripture at a conference on discipleship or evangelism, whatever the topic was, showing that they don't understand the centrality of that particular subject.

They just take it as a given, which means they must not spend very much time with people who don't take it as a given. But the overarching theme this year is discipleship.

So why in the world are Dr. Michael Kruger, who is the president of Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte and I going to be talking about the canon of Scripture?

Well, I think it's rather self -evident. Aside from the fact that any time you can get

Michael Kruger to talk about canon issues, you're getting one of the most brilliant minds in America to address that.

Go back in the archives, we've had him on. It was a fast -paced show. It was a really good show talking about the very same thing.

We want to do the same thing there at G3, and that is to really help people to think through what the canon is and to think through it theologically.

Very important subject. And so pray for that particular session especially, because I think it could really help introduce a lot of people to some stuff they may never have thought about before.

With that, odd time to stop, but I went over the hour, but I didn't want to stop there. We will be back after G3, and something tells me there will be things to talk about once we get back from G3 as well.