Matt Slick Study on Molinism

One, two, three. Okay, interesting. All right, let's go. Ready? Let me know when you say when.

And I'll say, hey, welcome to, run. All right. So here we are, welcome. This is Matt Schlick,.

Introduction to the Study of Molinism

I'll be teaching on Mullinism tonight, the Bible study. We're doing topics lately, and we're gonna be starting hopefully every week, straight up, seven o 'clock local time, which is nine o 'clock Eastern time.

And so this is the idea, barring any technical difficulties that may or may not present themselves at that time. So what we're gonna be doing tonight is talk about Mullinism. And I've been doing a lot of research on Mullinism the past few weeks.

Over the years, I've talked to various Mullinists and learned a lot of things about what it is. And so now what I'm gonna be doing is talking about what it really is. I've got a handout here, so you guys have already got this stuff, right, the handouts.

And hopefully the callers or the viewers later on, we could do some Q &A, and we have any questions about it. Now, I'm just gonna let you know that I'm not gonna be able to satisfy all Mullinists and what Mullinism is and various types of Mullinism, types of understandings of prevenient grace, types of understandings on foreknowledge, libertarian free will, compatibilist free will.

There are variations in there, just as there are within Calvinism. So what I've done is researched out of several books and numerous websites that promote Mullinism. And what I've got here is just a single sheet with some quotes from Mullinist sources, those who hold to it.

And let me just say at the onset that I don't believe Mullinism is biblical. And I don't believe it's heretical. I kind of go back and forth seriously between those, but I don't believe it's biblical.

And let me tell you what Mullinism is, started and I'm gonna jump into some of the areas that I think is problematic with it. So for those of you who are watching, you'll see in the board behind me, hopefully you can see with the cameras, we've got Mullinism and we have philosophy and scripture.

We're gonna be going over such things as counterfactuals, middle knowledge, libertarian free will, and prevenient grace. And I know that Mullinism is on the increase inside of Christianity. A lot of churches, a lot of people are enjoying it and problems, it doesn't.

It only pushes the problems back one level. And I'll show you that. Now, again, I know that there are gonna be Mullinists who are gonna disagree with what I've got. There's a handout someplace if you want it.

And disagree, I know you're gonna email me and say, Matt, you misrepresented. What I'm gonna do is quote from Mullinists. I'll give you the sources and we'll just do what we can there. So Mullinism began with Luis de Molina.

He's born in 1535 and died in the year 1600. He's born in Cuenca, I hope I'm pronouncing that properly, in Spain and resided in Madrid later on. He was a Roman Catholic Jesuit. Now this is important as far as I'm concerned.

And he was a Roman Catholic. Now, I don't wanna commit what's called the genetic fallacy. The genetic fallacy is the Catholic said it so therefore it's false. That's called the genetic fallacy. Molina was highly intelligent.

I've read a lot of quotes of him and some of the things he said. The guy was no slouch. He was a very intelligent man. And he was, he really was, far smarter than I am. But it doesn't mean he's right any more than it means I'm right or wrong.

But at any rate, I believe from what I understand that during the Protestant Reformation period, he started to write in response to the issue of God's sovereignty and man's freedom and how could they be reconciled.

And this is something that's going on today a lot. People don't like the idea of reformed theology or Calvinism where God is sovereign, God elects, God predestines, God chooses. And then people are responsible even though they're not chosen to be saved.

And there are a lot of people who don't like those kinds of propositions. And so what I've seen, not only in those discussions but also in cults, not that this is cultic but what I've noticed cults and with some of these discussions, the same thing and that is the exaltation of man and man's freedom.

Man to some degree is a standard. Now, Molinists are probably gonna slap their foreheads at this point and say, that is not a Molinism. Well, just hold on and let me make the case what I think is a man-centered position that Molinism does promote to some degree, not entirely but I think it does do that enough.

Anyway, Molina wanted to harmonize God's omniscience, predestination and man's free choice. So he developed what is called middle knowledge. We'll go over those, which is that God's knowledge of what free creatures will choose to do under different circumstances.

Now that's a basic definition of what middle knowledge is. I find the definition to be insufficient. I've spent weeks in dialogues with Molinists saying please define and I'll give them a definition. I'll do it on Facebook, various areas of encounter.

Please give me a specific definition and no specific definition really is forthcoming except that I think one person quoted something that Molina said, but even then I wasn't satisfied with the definition and no, it's not me just being anal and resentful about something.

No, I get more precise in my theological examinations and I need precise understandings of things and precise definitions because one word can make a big difference in how you understand something. And so that's just me, but nevertheless, so Molina provided a heavy emphasis on man's libertarian free will, which is the capability of freely being able to do good and bad without coercion.

Now this is a very brief intro. So what I've got here in this document is a list of things for knowledge. We're gonna go over some things which I think are basically, they're not alphabetically listed.

They're listed in the way that we kind of need to discuss them in order to build the case so that we can understand what Molinism says. And then we'll go through some of the, what I believe are problems.

Probably might even mix those in. I think I might just do that as well. So for knowledge, knowing what will happen before it happens, that's one definition of for knowledge. So this is from, my quote is from Max Andrews, An Introduction to Molinism, Scripture, Reason, and All That God Has Ordered.

This is the Kindle edition, 2014, and in location 391, 392. So I've got a lot of books on Kindle now. It's just a lot easier to do research. So this is where I do my primary research. I can do searching for words, for phrases, and multiple books, and I can collect large amounts of information, large amounts of quotes very quickly.

So what he says is for knowledge should be understood. Should be understood as God knowing future contingents, whereas middle knowledge is God's knowledge of future contingents, not causally determined by the present state of affairs, or human free choice for knowledge.

So God's knowing the future, basically, is what it is. Now, we're gonna get into what's called natural knowledge, middle knowledge, and free knowledge. Now, they're in this order because of how they're presented in Molinistic arguments.

So natural knowledge is that part of God's knowledge that he necessarily knows by virtue of his own nature. So God knows everything that he needs to know and necessarily needs to know based on what his nature is.

And this is a quote from Kirk R. McGregor, Luis de Molina, The Life and Theology of the Founder of Middle Knowledge, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Kindle edition, 2015, page 92. Quote, God knows all possibilities, including all necessary truths, such as the laws of logic, all the possible individuals and worlds he might create, as well as everything that every possible individual could freely do in any set of circumstances in which that individual found itself, and everything that every possible stochastic, that means random, process could randomly do in any set of circumstances where it existed.

God knows his natural knowledge, as Molina's nomenclature suggests, as indispensable to his very nature, such that God could not lack this knowledge and still be God. All right, so that's from The Life and Theology of the Founder of Middle Knowledge by McGregor.

So, and hopefully it looks like I'm gonna be having a discussion with McGregor the first week of April. He and I have busy schedules, and so we've an intermediary, and he and I are just gonna have a one-on-one conversation.

I'm gonna go through various questions and various issues. We've got an expert I'll be learning from on this. So, I'm sure that by that time, I will have gotten some feedback on this video, and we'll see about some things as I learn.

So, natural knowledge is the part of God's knowledge that he necessarily knows by virtue of his nature. Now, check this out. It includes all necessary truths, like the laws of logic, already went over all the possible.

Now, check this out. This is where I have a little bit of a problem here with what comes next in Middle Knowledge. He says, all the possible individuals and worlds he might create. This sounds like Middle Knowledge to me, as well as everything that every possible individual could freely do in any set of circumstances.

That's what McGregor says natural knowledge is, and this guy's a Mullinist. Now, let me jump down to Middle Knowledge. I'm gonna read the definition. God knows all counterfactual truths, including that which every possible individual would freely do in any set of circumstances.

Well, it sounds to me very similar to natural knowledge. Now, some people might say, well, Matt, you don't understand the distinction. I'm just going with what they're saying. And in my opinion, I don't think Middle Knowledge is categorically necessary.

I think that God in his natural knowledge necessarily knows all potential events, as well as actual events, because nothing can occur without God's ordination. He knows everything naturally, automatically, according to his nature.

It's natural to him to know all these things. In my opinion, I don't think Middle Knowledge is necessary. I think it's a false category. But nevertheless, Middle Knowledge is the knowledge that God has concerning the foreseen choices free creatures would have made if their situations were different.

But why not say this the same thing as natural knowledge? God knows all possibilities, all possibilities. Well, the people's or the creature's different choices in different situation is a possibility, but yet they're distinguished.

I have a problem with this. So maybe I'm just not getting the differentiation, but to me, I don't see any necessity for Middle Knowledge definition. But nevertheless, Middle Knowledge is God's knowledge of all counterfactuals, we'll get into that, that are a result of God's foreseen knowledge of creaturely free choices under different circumstances.

Well, why isn't that natural knowledge? It seems to me that Middle Knowledge is exemplified or defined in context or in relationship to libertarian free will, which even then I don't believe is necessary when you consider God's natural knowledge.

He naturally knows all possibilities, which means any, so to speak, potentially libertarian free will creatures will be known by him as well as what they're gonna do. He knows all things actual as well as potential.

And I've written on this 20, 25 years ago. I have an article on the calvinistcorner .com, calvinistcorner .com called Absolutes. And I wrote about this many years ago and I need to go through there and revamp it a little bit since I've learned a lot more since then.

But it has to do with God's omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, and the necessity of him knowing and decreeing all things based on these things. And I can get into that some other time, but nevertheless, I don't see why Middle Knowledge is necessitated if Natural Knowledge means that God knows all possibilities, all possible individuals and all possible worlds that he might create as well as everything that every possible individual would freely do in any set of circumstances.

So why do we need Middle Knowledge? Middle Knowledge is defined as God knows all counterfactual truths. Well, that's what it means in all possible circumstances according to Natural Knowledge. So this is one of the first problems I have with this issue so far.

Free Knowledge is the knowledge that God has about the actual world and everything that will happen in it. Well, I don't see necessity for his Free Knowledge as a subset definition of his knowledge because if he's Natural Knowledge, he knows all possibilities, including necessary truths.

All possibilities includes the reality that we're in right now since it's a possibility since it's an actuality as well. And therefore he knows all things natural, all things freely and all things middle because it's just part of his nature.

Maybe I'm being naive. Maybe people are saying, Matt, you just don't get it. Well, maybe I don't get it, but I don't see the necessity of differentiation here. In my opinion, God's omniscience means he simply knows all things by the nature of his existence, all things actual as well as potential and all potential things by definition include, which I don't agree with libertarian free will, but just to argue, would include necessarily libertarian free will choices.

God doesn't know those possibilities. Of course he does. That's in his Natural Knowledge. Why call it Middle Knowledge? I have a problem with that. Let's get into what's called counterfactuals. A counterfactual is something that does not exist but might exist based on the foreseen knowledge of the choices of free will creatures.

And notice this, free will creatures. Notice that free will is exalted a great deal. Free will creatures. Why is that? Well, I believe it's because there are certain issues in theology that are difficult to kind of work through.

Some of the issues being things like how can God predestine, how can he elect and yet not elect certain individuals and they're responsible for going to hell for their own moral choices, but they couldn't help themselves.

It's one of the issues that people try and solve. I don't think we have to worry about solving it. And I have an explanation for that. Dealing with federal headship, representation, image of God, and the necessity of obligation of doing what is right, whether you're able to or not.

It's not dependent upon man's will, it's dependent on God's nature. That's why he is a standard, not man's ability. And that's what I think Molinism does, is I think that what it's inadvertently doing is raising man's nature, raising man's free will to the level that it has to be the standard by which we can judge moral truths.

Now what I've been looking for, and I saw it once, I've been looking for it ever since. This is a few weeks ago in my research. The reason God created from a Molinistic view. Now I'm trying to remember what it said, but it was basically as a maximization or the world that exists is here because this is the world that God decided to create in order to maximally produce people who were saved.

Now, maybe some Molinists are gonna disagree. I know that some Molinists will agree. I've talked to some who have said that is basically it. That the reason God created the way he did in this world with libertarian free will, which I reject, that he did this in order to produce an environment in which the maximum number of people will be saved.

Now, first of all, that's a philosophical imposition. Where'd you get that? I wanna ask him, where'd you get that? You get it in scripture? I don't find that in scripture. What I find in scripture is Isaiah 43, seven.

God says he creates us for his glory. He doesn't create us for the maximum number of people to be saved because that presupposes the necessity of libertarian free will. That the person who is fallen will get totally depraved here in a little bit in prevenient grace is reactualized into the ability of libertarian free will.

God, knowing what their free will choices will be in different circumstances, therefore created this world with the best possible options against the most people saved. Well, that's ridiculous. It is ridiculous.

If that's what God wants, all he's gotta do is show his glory to people. All he's gotta do, if he wants everybody to be saved, if he wants every single individual to be saved, if that's the case, which Molinus has told me, but I don't think Molina taught that, I had to quote someplace, but we'll see if I've got it with me here.

It's a lot I can cover. But if it's the case that God wants maximally the world to exist in order for people to be saved, all he has to do is manifest his glory, his holiness, and people will become saved.

I know, that's what happened to me. Not that I make doctrine out of experience, but in the presence of holiness, in the presence of greatness, in the presence of God, you are humbled, you believe. It's a necessity of the creature to believe when God is there, when God's presence and his greatness and his holiness are shining.

Every time you find anybody encountering God, not just a vision up, but I mean God in the Old Testament, man, they are undone. They're wiped out. You know, get away from me. They could be gone from me.

I'm a man of unclean lips. You know, they have to recover from this encounter with God. Now, some people might think ahead and say, what about total depravity and all these other issues? And if he just appears, well, I believe that's what's called a necessary concurrence of things.

For example, God predestined and elects, but that can't be possible without the cross, without the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ, the penal substitutionary, the legal substitutionary sacrifice of Christ, without that election and predestination of individuals to salvation makes no sense.

These things, the crucifixion and the election predestination of God's work to us are concurrent and are necessary. They have to go together. One can't work without the other. The same thing goes with the necessity of people believing when they are in the very presence of God.

When his Shekinah presence just comes down on you, you end up believing. It's a necessity. That's what happens. There's no way to, just no way. You look through scriptures on this and I'm gonna write some articles on that another time.

And so back to my point is if God wants, I mean, actually for real desires, it's what he wants to have every single individual be saved and that's his primary goal, then all he has to do is show his glory to every single individual.

They will end up believing unless you wanna say that his glory isn't sufficient to get people to believe. I hope that nobody would hold to that position. And another problem I see within the Molinus camp is this issue of, well, who makes the mind?

God, who makes the will? God, who puts them in that body? God, in that place? God, at that time? God, all right. Now, if they're gonna have the ability of free will in the sense that they're gonna be able to make moral choices and be able to accomplish those moral choices once their souls, so to speak, have been restored to a libertarian free will state by prevenient grace, as Molinism teaches.

If that's the case, why is it that one person believes another one does not? Now, if a Molinus is looking at this and they say that's because of the nature of being restored to libertarian free will state, it doesn't answer the question.

Why does one person believe another one does not when God's prevenient grace is given? So I might as well jump into that right now. Prevenient grace. Well, let's talk about the fall. I've got quotes, I got so many quotes in so many different places where it talks about the inability of man to be able to choose God.

Now, those of you who've been following what I've been teaching for a while may note this, that I believe that the unbeliever is so touched by sin and so totally depraved, what that means is that his nature is touched by sin in all areas of what he is, heart, soul, mind, body, spirit, everything, that the effect upon him is that he will not ever of his own free will be able to choose God.

The Bible says, Romans 3, 10, 11, and 12, that no one seeks for God, no one does good. They're haters of God. Romans 6, 14 through 20, they're slaves of sin. Ephesians 2, 3, they're by nature children of wrath.

Jeremiah 17, 9, the unbeliever's desperately wicked, his heart is desperately wicked, deceitful. 1 Corinthians 2, 14, a natural man cannot receive the things of God. Things like this, there's lots of verses like that.

So I hold to what's called total depravity. The reformed doctrine of total depravity is that left in that state, like right there, just as he is, there's no possible way for that person to ever come to believe in the gospel message and believe in Christ because of his enslavement to sin, his hatred towards God, his heart's full of evil, Mark 7, 22, 23, all of this, that's total depravity.

Now, check this out. This is on, I have pages of quotes, but anyway, the first sin of Adam, which is original sin. This is from McGregor's book again, page 72. Quote, while Molina would disagree with these conclusions of Luther and Calvin, he did concur with one aspect of Calvin's reasoning.

Molina agreed that the impact of original sin upon humanity was so great that it incapacitated her mental faculty to choose freely to do spiritual good, including positively responding to Christ's offer of salvation.

That's exactly the position that we teach in reformed theology. Now, as a result, to continue on, as a result, Molina deduced, along with Calvin, that humans left to their own devices could not freely choose salvation.

But contra Calvin, Molina believed that God's sufficient grace for salvation given to all humans by the Holy Spirit, namely God's prevenient grace, supernaturally restored their mental faculty to choose spiritual good.

All right, you got that? He holds to and teaches the same doctrine of the reformed doctrine of total depravity and the resultant incapacity to believe and trust in God of their own free will. But prevenient grace is a solution.

Now, I've talked about prevenient grace before. Now, prevenient grace, what is it? The grace given by God to a person that restores him to a state of libertarian free will and enables him to choose morally good options, including receiving Christ.

Now, in my opinion, this is one of the great weaknesses of Molinism, prevenient grace. Now, there's so many, these things are interrelated, libertarian free will, we'll get to that in a second. Prevenient grace, the grace that comes before that enables a person to be able to believe in Christ.

All right, so we have Bob and Frank, twins, identical twins. Same mom, same dad, same home, same house, same schools, same everything. They even, at 25 years of age, marry twin girls. And at 30 years of age, they live next door to each other, their kids play together, the wives enjoy each other's company, everything's the same.

Bob and Frank, they go to church. Bob ends up believing the gospel, Frank does not, why? They're identical, everything's identical. Remember, total depravity says they could not have their own free will.

So Molina's solution, as well as Arminian's solution is, we would just impose a value of prevenient grace. What is prevenient grace? The grace that comes before that enables them to be able to freely believe.

Great, so, which I don't find in the scriptures anywhere. It's just a philosophical imposition, the solution for what they see as biblical. They have to, in my opinion, have to impose a philosophical position that doesn't exist in scripture.

I don't see any place where we are restored by prevenient grace to a state before a fall, which even then, I don't even know if that's what true libertarian free will really is because of some of the things I've read, but let me get back into this.

So why does the prevenient grace given by God work on Bob and not Frank? Why is it Bob believes with prevenient grace and Frank does not believe with prevenient grace? This is what I ask Arminians, this is what I ask the Molinists, why is it?

Now, the answers I've received are the same. The reason one believes the other one does not is because that's their free will choice, Matt. Once they're enabled back to libertarian free will state, they're just able to believe, okay?

Why does one believe after enabled and another one does not with prevenient grace? Matt, that's just because that's what they do, okay? Why is it that's what they do? Why is it that one believes another one does not with prevenient grace?

Why is it, something funny, no? Oh, me. Why is it that one believes and another one does not? Now, we Calvinists could answer the question with scripture. The Molinists can't answer the question. They can only say, look, this is what the natural state is, libertarian free will, and it's left up to them at that point, and that's just what it is.

One just does, one just does not. If that's the case, then why does it say in Philippians 1 .29 that God grants that we believe? Why does it say, Jesus said in John 6 .28 .29, they said, what must we do to work the works of God?

And Jesus says, this is the work of God that you believe on whom he's sent. Why is it Jesus said in John 6 .44, you cannot come to me unless the father draws you in John 6 .65, you cannot come to me unless it's been granted to you from the father.

If libertarian free will is restored by prevenient grace, which is interesting in itself, what is that? Prevenient grace given to a person, if they just are left at the place of being able to freely believe, then why does the scripture say they can't unless God grants it to them?

If prevenient grace was true, that wouldn't be in scripture. If prevenient grace was true, that enabled someone to get back to the level of libertarian free will, where they're just basically neutral and basically able of their own free will to believe, then why does it say that God grants it to them?

Well, I've talked to some people who've told me that what that means in Philippians 1 .29, he grants that you believe, it means that what he's doing is granting you the circumstances and that work of his grace upon you so that you can come to believe.

Well, I didn't see all that written in that verse, but that's what I've been told. And what they're doing is something that I think is another problem inside of Molinism, imposing a philosophical position upon the doctrines of scripture in order to justify their philosophy.

In my opinion, Molinism is heavily philosophical. Every single Molinist I've encountered, without exception, every single one of them uses philosophy above scripture. Every single one of them uses philosophy above scripture.

Philosophy is primary to scripture. I even talked to one Molinist who said that, when I said, in response, when I said, look, scripture's above philosophy. He said, that's your philosophical position.

I was really blown away by that because it's like, wait a minute, the Bible itself clearly tells us that we cannot understand the word of God unless it's been given to us. In Luke, it's gonna be in Acts 16, 14, God opened the heart of Lydia to believe.

In Luke 24, 45, Jesus opened their minds to understand the scripture. It wasn't philosophy that did this, it's the spirit of God. It's the work of God himself that does this. This is not philosophy, this is scripture.

What's philosophy? Philosophy is man's attempt to learn. It's an epistemological thing. There's different kinds of philosophical approaches. Some use your mind, some use your experiences, some use deductive reasoning in various areas combined with this or combined with that.

There's been some great philosophers throughout the centuries. Some, I can agree with some of their points and some not. But the thing is this, philosophy is a man-made tool. It's a man-made tool. Now Colossians 2, eight says, do not be held captive by vain philosophy.

Doesn't mean we can't be reasonable. It doesn't mean we don't look, we don't think. My point is simply this. Scripture is above man's philosophy. How do you know? Scripture's inspired, 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17.

Scripture's inspired. Philosophy never said to be inspired. Scripture, God breathed. Philosophy, man breathed. Man is the one who developed it. Scripture from God, up here. Philosophy from man down here.

Whenever anybody tells me, Matt, you need this to understand this, then what they're doing is telling me we don't need the clarification of the Holy Spirit. Now 1 John 2, 19, excuse me, 1 John 2, 27. You don't have any need that anyone teach you, but the anointing you have received, talking about the Holy Spirit, the anointing you have received will teach you of all things.

Now, in 1 Corinthians 2, 14, a natural man cannot receive the things of God, for they're foolishness to him, for these things are spiritually discerned. It does not say philosophically discerned. Now I know a lot of Molinists are gonna take umbrage with what I'm saying, but I'm gonna tell you that every single Molinist I've encountered without exception in weeks and weeks of study and putting myself in their environments and trying to interact with them, it has always been philosophy above scripture.

Now that's to me is bordering on idolatry. No, I'm not calling Molinist idolaters. I'm trying to bring out a point. Scripture is primary, philosophy is secondary. Scripture is a truth, not man's philosophy.

It doesn't mean we negate all of man's philosophical approach and knowledge and learning, but we have to understand that God's word is inspired, philosophy is not. If Molinism is so biblically based, why is it that, this is only my experience, limited as it is, that every Molinist I've encountered, it's about Molinism, counterfactuals, libertarian free will, middle knowledge.

These are all philosophical things that they have to define, have to put in place, and then they're ready to go to scripture. That's a problem. Now I don't know about you, that's a problem for me. I'm always telling people, what does the Bible say?

Show me scripture, show me in scripture, show me in scripture. You can't show me in scripture, not interested. That's not talking about cars and plumbers. If we're talking about anything related to what scripture teaches, particularly the nature of man, the nature of God, God's knowledge, you better show it to me in scripture.

I'm not interested in your reasoning unless I ask for it. I wanna see the word of God. I wanna see it examined, I wanna see it promoted. Because, real simply, the more we use human philosophy, the more we're gonna be likened to, fall into heresy.

It's just that simple. So, prevenient grace. Why does one person believe when God's prevenient grace is given? And what is that? Think about it, what is prevenient grace? Now, I'm gonna be a little ridiculous here to illustrate something.

Bob, he believes, Frank, he does not at 30 years of age. They go to the same church, hear the same message, the same thing, Bob walks forward, sorry Calvinists, walks forward to receive Christ, all right?

John 1, 12, the man has received him. To receive Christ, in fact, today over the phone, led somebody to the Lord by his request, and I pointed him to receiving Christ. I have a problem with leading someone there.

I believe he's already there, it's helped him. But, look, Bob believes, Frank does not. So, God, before then, let's say a week before, a month before, an hour before, a minute before, a year before, who knows?

Because how long has God gotta work on him, right? So, God's got some prevenient grace, right? So what does he do? He takes, goes like this, well, here's some grace, let's put that into Bob. Take the same amount of grace and put it into Frank.

Now, it's up to them. Now, that may be a ridiculous illustration, but is it? What is prevenient grace? Is it a substance? Is it something given to them? What does it mean to be given to them? Is this grace something like in Roman Catholicism, that's sacerdotal, where the priest has the authority to administer an amount of grace, and grace is like a substance that can be given in large quantities or smaller quantities through the sacerdotal system of the priest's authority, representing the treasures of grace, representing God, all this stuff.

And he can do this and give it to individuals. So what is this prevenient grace? It's something I've asked people before, what is it? Is it a substance? Is it God's action upon them to get them to be restored back to the libertarian free will position?

Is it something that just kind of works and makes them back to neutral? Where's that in scripture? The book of Hesitations? Where is it in scripture that God in any way, shape, or form gives grace in any way, shape, or form to somebody to bring them back to a position where they're now no longer enslaved to sin, and they're able to freely choose God?

Show me that in scripture. In all of the Molinist writings that I've read, hundreds of pages, gone through hundreds of pages of material, not once have I encountered an answer to that. Not once. Why? Because in my opinion, Molinism is philosophy imposed upon scripture.

It is not scripture imposed upon philosophy. It's a problem. Now, libertarian free will, let's talk about what that is. Libertarian free will, we've got handouts, if you haven't got it already. Libertarian free will is the ability of a creature to choose between different alternatives and also be able to accomplish those alternatives.

Basic. So Kenneth Keithley in Salvation and Sovereignty, he's a Molinist. Page 26, he says, by definition, the ability or power to choose or to refrain from choosing is what is called libertarian freedom.

Now, this is an example of what I think is an insufficient definition. Why did I pick it if it's insufficient to illustrate something? You see, the ability or power to choose or to refrain from choosing, that's what libertarian freedom is.

I should have brought in my cat and held my cat up. I have three cats, Luther, Finney, and Obadiah. We used to have Luther, Calvin, and Finney, but, you know, cats. And so let's say I brought in Luther, all right?

He's a lovely cat. He's a man-coon, he's really, really sweet. All right. So does Luther have the ability or power to choose or to refrain from choosing? Okay, you can have some tuna or some rusty dirt bolts, dirty bolts, eat.

He has the power to choose, doesn't he? That's what libertarian free will is. As I've said, then my cat has libertarian free will. Okay, thank you, Luther, okay. Well, how about this one? Keith Lee says libertarianism is the view that the morally responsible agent, now that's a little bit different definition, the morally responsible agent is in some sense the origin of his choices and that prior conditions such as circumstances are not the final determiner for that agent.

I don't have any problem with that definition. It doesn't bother me. I agree with that. It's just not sufficient. I literally was on some Facebook pages on Mullinism. And what's really interesting, if I remember correctly, I haven't been on for a few days now, because I'm doing so much writing on this now.

I went into two or three different Facebook pages asking to be let in so I could ask questions. And after four or five, about a week, two of the pages, my request hasn't been accepted. I don't know, maybe there's a sleep at the wheel.