(Part 2) Leaving Molinism with Max Andrews

All right, welcome to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Elias Ayala, Eli for short.

You can call me whatever. I am happy to be back with my my guest

Max Andrews where we will continue our discussion as to why he left Molinism.

For those of you who are interested in how that or what that that first discussion looked like, you can check out that video on my

YouTube channel, Revealed Apologetics. Today we're going to be continuing that discussion, a very highly philosophical discussion that will include the reasons why

Max Andrews is no longer a Molinist. And so his reasons are primarily philosophical and I suppose we haven't touched the

Bible so much yet, but I would assume that there are some biblical reasons as well. But if you have any questions in regards to some of the details as to what he has laid out thus far, or maybe you just have a question about Calvinism and Molinism and some other issues that might be related to that, you guys can feel free to leave your questions in the comments on the side and we will be addressing or Max rather will be addressing some questions today.

But then we will be doing a third and final part which will summarize everything that he has said up until this point and we will focus more on taking people's questions.

So please if you have any questions, comments, or even criticisms, Max has expressed his desire to be refuted.

He wants to see if people, if there's a weakness in his reasoning. You know, we're totally not against sharing what you think are criticisms of what he's presented thus far and what he will be presenting today as well.

So please feel free to post your questions in the comments. All right, just by way of a couple of announcements,

I do have Dr. Kirk McGregor, who is actually a prominent Molinist. Well, he'll be on my show not to discuss

Molinism, but rather to discuss the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. Now people who know me, they know that I am a hardcore presuppositional apologist and so people are probably wondering, what on earth are you having those grimy classicalists on your show for?

Well, listen, I have found it immensely helpful to be in touch with all of the variety of apologetic methodologies and I think one of the weakness in apologetic, in presuppositional apologetics, not as a methodology, not in its content,

I think it is the biblical approach and it is an irrefutable presentation of the Christian worldview. But I think a weakness in many presuppositionalists is that they are so focused on these broader worldview issues that they are actually incapable of jumping into some of the weeds and some of the details which pertain to the specific claims of the

Christian faith. And so I think we would do well as presuppositionalists to listen to some of what our classicalist and evidentialist brothers have to say with regards to some of the specifics, the evidences and things like that that pertain to the

Christian faith. So I'm looking forward to having Dr. McGregor on to talk about the resurrection, which I think is quite appropriate given that Easter is right around the corner.

Also for those who want their presuppositional apologetics taste buds tickled,

I will continue to be reaching out to the very busy Dr. James Anderson from Reformed Theological Seminary.

I had an email correspondence with him a month ago and he expressed to me that he was very busy but that he'd be willing to come on sometime in March.

And so hopefully we can connect and set that up on the show here.

And we'll have a bunch of other interesting guests that we'll be covering more specifically presuppositional issues.

Now that being said, although the discussion today is why Max Andrews has left

Molinism and he is giving his reasons and getting into some of the details of his unique position, it is actually somewhat related to presuppositional apologetics because we're gonna be talking about the

Trinity. And I think this is very important because the Trinity deals with really the ontological foundations of the

Christian worldview. When we say, for instance, when we present the transcendental argument that the proof for the truth of the

Christian worldview is that if it were not true, you couldn't prove anything at all. We ground truth and coherency and intelligibility within the ontological

Trinity. We talk about the issue of the one and the many. So I'm going to be talking a little bit about that towards the beginning, defining what that is, to provide a context for Max Andrews to jump in and share his views in regards to why this is important to his broader discussion.

But I want you to have your apologetical antennas up and ready to see the very important connections with knowledge claims about specific things, coherency and intelligibility, and how it is connected to the foundation of reality, which for the

Christian is the ontological Trinity. How God grounds, the triune God grounds, this issue of what we call the problem of the one and the many, which has vexed philosophers throughout history and has been a major point of discussion within the

Greek philosophical thought, especially during the period of the Pre -Socratics. And so hopefully we can get into a little bit of that.

And then, of course, Max will be guiding the discussion in regards to focusing on how this relates to his broader discussion with regards to Molinism.

All right. So with that being said, I'm going to invite Max Andrews on and you're going to see him on the screen, but he will not be saying anything because I am first going to read a portion from a philosophical source that will explain the problem of the one and the many to provide a brief context as to why this discussion is important.

And then I will let Max take it from there to share with us how this is related to his broader views in regards to his new position and reasons why he left

Molinism. So with that said, I'm going to add him to the screen here and he is muted, which

I don't have to mute you because you're not the kind of person I have to fear. You're gonna just jump in and over -talk me.

So let me actually start by defining the problem of the one and the many, which we don't see a lot of discussion on this in popular philosophical discussion.

It's kind of one of those annoying problems that if we pretend that if we ignore, it's not that important. And so let's leave aside the issue of the importance of metaphysics and the discussion of worldviews because for all we know,

I mean, we don't know what the nature of reality is, so the philosophers say, and so let's just speak along more pragmatic lines and talk about epistemological issues and things like that and ignore metaphysics.

And that's what seems to be the case in many discussions. So let us talk a little bit about the one in the many. So I'm going to take a brief moment here.

Okay, this is the one in the many. All human cultures in some way have to deal with accounting for the myriad of objects and phenomena surrounding them.

We live in a world of infinite objects that are constantly changing, yet even in this imposing world of objects and change, there seems to be an underlining unity and stability.

For instance, every human being begins as an infant and then grows into an adult. Every adult is a different object than they were as an infant.

In fact, they are unrecognizable as being the same object, yet we recognize that there are the same object, that something has remained the same even though the infant has changed into an object that is nowhere close to its original state.

Likewise, a corpse is nothing like the original living human being, but we still recognize that something has remained constant.

We see the same stability and constancy even across objects. While the world is full of trees, there is still some constancy and stability to tree -ness, which never seems to change.

This observation of the world of phenomena leads many cultures to believe that the infinity of things and their changes can ultimately be related back to a single object, material, or idea.

The problem of finding the one thing that lies behind all things in the universe is called the problem of the one and the many.

Basically stated, the problem of the one and the many begins from the assumption that the universe is one thing.

Because it is one thing, there must be one unifying aspect behind everything. This aspect could be material, such as water or air or atoms, as some of the pre -socratic suggested.

It could be an idea, such as number or mind. It could be divine, such as the Christian concept of God or the

Chinese concept of Shang -Chi, the Lord on high. The problem, of course, is figuring out what that one unifying idea is.

Philosophy in the Western world begins with this question. The earliest Greek philosophers mainly concerned themselves with this question.

And as a result, the problem of the one and the many still dominates Western concepts of the universe, including modern physics, which has set for itself the goal of finding the theory that will unify and make into the one thing the laws of physics.

Okay? All right, so I'm going to conclude there and put, I'm going to turn your mic on, and just creating a context by way of definition.

The one and the many, we are seeking to find unity within the reality of plurality. What is the ontological foundation, the metaphysical primary, that grounds both unity and diversity?

Why don't you answer for us, Max? Why is that question important? And then we can make a segue into the broader discussion that we left off with.

The question is important in the sense that we have this problem of entanglement.

When I speak any proposition like, I have free will, and then you start exegeting that proposition, well, what does free mean?

And then free gets connected to another definition. And then, well, what is libertarian? And then you start trying to define libertarian.

And so there's this problem of things being connected to other things for meaning. And when we look at our worlds, as I'd say, we see what it is composed of.

We see a little bit of biology. We see a lot of chemistry. We see a lot of physics.

And physics is broken down to mathematics. But I don't think that is reductionistic enough for a proper worldview, in the sense that mathematics is still language.

It's still words. And so this entanglement, this what is called isomorphism of language, where physical particles are the same as particles of speech.

And so that's how I would solve the problem of the one and the many, in the sense that everything is a particle of speech.

Now, the thing that we need to root it in, or thing, is what

I would call the divine object, which accounts for subjectivity and objectivity.

Now, when you say the divine object, you're referring to God himself. The divine object is not

God. The divine object is I am. And we can just use God synonymously with I am.

But the divine object, strictly speaking, is I am, where the subject and the verb function as an object, and the object is a proposition, a whole world of itself.

Okay. All right. So, but in terms of ontologically speaking, you would agree that because unity and diversity is equally ultimate within the triune

God, that God provides that metaphysical context that accounts for unity and diversity.

Would you agree with that? Oh, absolutely. Yes. Okay. All right. Well, good. All right.

So now setting up that context, we left off walking through an outline of your of your new book.

And if people are interested in Max's book, it is available for free online.

And perhaps if Max, you have access to the the chat there also.

Perhaps you can provide a link as well. Yeah, let me try to get in there. The link is also available in the previous interview that we did.

They can kind of look through the comments there, and I think you provided the link there as well. All right. So we walked through an outline of his book and we ended up on chapter four, which focuses on the

Trinity. All right. Now again, if you've listened to the previous discussion, I actually had some friends who are pretty well versed in philosophy.

And as they were listening, they were like, I'm not sure I understand what what Max was saying, which is fine.

I mean, this is kind of a, you know, the purpose is also for learning. It's not just you know, talking about Molinism and blah, blah, blah, those sorts of things, but we're learning.

We're trying to figure out these things. And I think getting past the barrier of unfamiliar vocabulary is very important as well.

So why don't you in as simplest terms as you're able to, and I know that's difficult for people who are very philosophical minded because we want to be very precise and we know that when we use common language it can make things a little ambiguous and not refined enough.

But if you were speaking with a high school graduate who's just coming into this conversation, you're saying, what are you guys even talking about?

Like, and you know, what's going on? So how can you define these issues in the most simplest way possible in regards to what we've discussed so far, brief summary, and what you've just explained with regards to the

Trinity and the divine object and things like that? I would start with, you know, the problem of the one in many.

That's a good starting point to get them thinking about it doesn't restrict their thinking to a specific topic, but it broadens their thinking in an abstract sense.

So it kind of opens them up a little bit more. And then I would ask, you know, you know,

I would have to ask the meta question. You know, if you want to have the right answer, you have to have the right question.

So if I ask, how do I get to the

Houston Space Center where NASA functions, the answer to that is going to be different between living in San Antonio and living in Africa.

So the answer is going to be different. So we have to ask the right question. And I think the right question that we have to ask is what is meaning?

What is meaninglessness? What is something and what is or what is nothing and what is everything?

Okay, there's there's two parts. That we have to address. What is nothing? What is everything?

Okay, and how would you now know if someone wasn't a high school graduate, they'd be like, I don't even know what you just said, man.

Like, what do you mean? What is nothing? What is what is everything? Why don't you unpack that for us? So there's different sense of everything can be synonymous with a world, it can be synonymous with something where you would say all of.

And so if I say, is everything out of your pockets? And you're going to check your pockets, you might have a chapstick or a pen or something, you pull them out, and you'll say everything is out of my pockets, nothing is in my pockets.

And contextually, we restrict that universal, that um that everything.

So there's different types of everythings of different sizes. Okay, so let me let me let me see if I can clarify this for some some folks.

So I say is everything out of my pocket? Uh, you're limiting the universal everything to objects that can feasibly be in my pocket.

But you're not talking about literally everything in regards to like universally like, well, the stars aren't in my pocket, the sun's not in my pocket, the galaxy, the

Milky Way galaxy is not in my pocket. So you have different subsets of everything. There's the universal everything, metaphysically speaking, and then there's the limited everything with regards to objects that can feasibly be in my pocket.

Is that what you mean by two different kinds of everything? So I would call the everything in your pocket a restricted universal.

Okay, because it's restricted to objects that can feasibly be in your pocket. Right. And we get that restriction by its context, by its entanglement with the other particles of speech and everything else that's going on around you.

I wouldn't say, well, you've still got a giraffe in your pocket. That wouldn't make much sense.

And so, you know, it's the context that kind of restricts universals or all ofs or the nothings.

Okay. And so, when we get to the distinction between restrictions of everything and restrictions of nothing, well, what about an unrestricted nothing or an unrestricted everything?

And so my claim is that we have to pick one of them to start with. Is there, is it possible that there is a universal, a universally unrestricted nothing?

There is the absence of everything universally, not just in my pockets, but absolutely nothing.

And I would say, no, that's logically impossible because there's something that's logically necessary. And that everything is the divine object

I am. Are you basically saying then that it's just metaphysically impossible for there to not be anything?

Right, correct. And I would go as far as to say it's logically impossible because of the logical necessity, the grammatical necessity of I am.

Okay, and that's somewhat related to having a necessary cause, right? That you can actually take this idea and kind of transfer it to arguments of for God's existence, contingency, and things like that.

Am I correct? Right. I wouldn't say that my theory here is an argument. It's just the rules for, you know, it's the exegetical worldview.

It's what takes apart and deconstructs all of language. Okay. All right.

All right. So, okay. So, I mean, there's so much, there's so much there, but if folks are interested in getting into the details, they can look at the prior video.

So let's go into chapter four, the Trinity. And you said that there, let's go through this each point here.

You said, point one, there is one univocal I am, the mereological singularity, which roots the many in one reality as a many in one.

Why don't you unpack what that means? There is one univocal I am.

So, there's the, when I say the univocal I am, there's just a singular meaning.

It's not metaphorical. It is one thing in and of itself.

And by mereological singularity, that's the grammatical component to it.

The subject, which is paired with the verb, which functions as the object and proposition. And so that's the mereological part.

And then the many in one is what we just spoke of a physics mathematics language.

And so the many in one of that, of contingent reality, is rooted in a necessary many in one, where the divine object is split threely, as I would say.

And so the rules of the grammar here are consistent with contingent reality, and it applies to the

Trinity itself, the intra -Trinitarian relations. And so, yeah, okay, go ahead. Well, when you say the divine, the divine object is split threely, that is not, that splitting in threely is just an eternal description of the triune

God. It just, it's not, he begins to split threely, right? So you have this eternal divine object that has eternally existed threely.

Right. And that is just to say, for simplicity, the Trinity is eternal and eternally the

Trinity. So there's never a time where the one divine object splits into three. The divine object has always had his one essence and unity and eternal tri -personality and individuality, right?

Correct. Okay. All right, continue. I'm sorry. So I guess to the next point of how we understand the

Trinity, and so this even makes language contingent upon this

I am, and it's never, there's never an article before I am, it's never the I am, or it's never a or an

I am. And so when we describe the Trinity, we first can describe it numerically in the sense that I am is one.

And so, you know, the problem there is, you know, we briefly spoke about this in the last podcast where numbers have to describe some object or some, some thing, their first adjectival rather than being nouns first, there's no abstract one that exists.

And so there has to be a first one in that sense. And so the first one would describe

I am. Okay. All right. Point two, you say describing the

Trinity necessarily begins adjectivally. The reality of numbers is whatever we can construct and extrapolate given the meaning of these numbers and their relationships.

What is it? What do you mean by that? Right. So, I mean, that's kind of what I just touched on a little bit. Okay. So when we speak of language, we kind of automatically think of it as the most reductionistic element of two plus four equals six.

And so what I'm saying is that those are adjectival, they logically imply some noun that is to some noun that obtains fourly.

And so whether, you know, it's apples or, you know, pencils or whatever. So, but there's no abstract object because of entanglement, everything always participates.

And so there's nothing disconnected from reality or that exists on its own per tenet one.

So numbers are, you know, logically adjectival. And so when you start exegeting, numbers first have to be adjectival.

They have to be adjectives first. All right. And how does, how does this concept and what you've just explained here, how does this relate?

Or if it does relate, maybe it doesn't, there's not a necessary connection to your view of Molinism.

Is this particular understanding of the triune nature of God and the I am and things like that affected or related in some way to your views on Molinism?

Right. So if I speak of a possible world, we still need to exegete that.

And so it's not the sense that possible worlds exist concurrently with the divine object.

It's more of the sense of the divine object than possible worlds. And so you've got the question of does, if something's necessary, it has to be possible, right?

And so the fourth rule of grammar, you know, it restricts the quantifiers, you know, quantifiers are necessity, possibility, contingency, instantiations.

And so the fourth rule of grammar also applies to the Trinity in the sense that there are some things that are possible for the

Holy Spirit, which is not possible for the Son. An example is it's logically impossible for the

Holy Spirit to be the Son. And so this is where we see that looping effect of the worlds applied to contingent reality and inter -Trinitarianly.

And so the four rules are consistent in the sense that they just loop back and forth, loop back and forth. Now the

Molinist is going to have all natural knowledge, which is all possible worlds. And my objection there is that when we start talking about possible worlds that are not

I am, then you have the problem of entanglement. You know, the language, again, you start exegeting everything and everything starts getting entangled with each other.

And so that's why I'm arguing that you know, a possible world, what is possible?

I would say that it has to be meaningful. And so something that's meaningful has to have, it implies some grammatical rules.

And so that's where we get the presuppositional element of we need something to root our knowledge that is not in ourselves because of this problem of entanglement.

And so we have to root it in something that's grammatically necessary. And so basically for people who are familiar with presuppositional language, you're looking for the necessary pre -conditions for knowledge.

Right, right. So, you know, last week we spoke of the proximate starting point and the ultimate starting point.

The proximate starting point, now remember we also speak

I am in the sense of you know, Eli, if you were to say your theory is false and I start exegeting that proposition,

I could ask, well, who is speaking? And then you respond, I am.

So, you know, that's how you would root the language that you spoke, the worlds that you spoke. And so that's, you know, the modal analog.

It's the divergent part of the theory. Now, all that you have to do is to presuppose yourself.

You presuppose your own existence for that to be true, because if you deny it to be true, then you contradict yourself as being as speaking

I am as well. Okay, so the necessary preconditions for speaking it would have to be your own existence. One of the preconditions, obviously.

Yeah, that's the the proximate starting point, which implies the ultimate starting point. Right, okay.

And that's important to not mix up, because a lot of people don't know that distinction between proximate and ultimate starting points.

Right, this usually brought up in criticisms of the presuppositional method. For when we say we start with God, you know, the critic will be like, well, no you don't, you start with yourself.

Well, proximately we start with ourselves, but we only can make sense of ourselves given the ultimate metaphysical context, which is

God. So there's a difference between those starting points. I think that's important to bring out. Yeah. Okay.

What interests me in your outline here, you said that the, I've never heard this before, the trinity can be expressed mathematically using the universal wave function.

Now, this is where I am very philosophical -minded, I'm very theologically -minded and biblical -minded, but once you throw math in,

I'm just kind of like, that's something I struggle with. I was like, the wavelength function, what? Can you explain that?

The trinity can be expressed mathematically using the universal wave function. And then you have some strange odd symbols that make my mind go back to high school math.

Right, so the universal wave function is how we would express language.

And so it's an expression of a split particle, of a splitting of numerical identity.

So you've got, you know, approximately zero, approximately one, and then you've got the zero, one, or one, zero.

You can think about this as you know, approximately true, approximately false, and then we get this superposition where it's both true and false.

Now, let me plug in an example of, you know, of applying language to this.

I could say that the sun is more lover than terrorist.

And so he would be approximately zero. And I could say the Holy Spirit is more terrorist than lover.

And so approximately one. So we've got a thesis and antithesis. And so the father, you know, we've got two of those are harmonic functions.

They work together, and one of them is not. And so the father combines the two in the sense that we could say that he is a love terrorist.

And you know, his love scares us in the sense that it's a fear of holiness.

You know, he literally, he loves us so much that we're literally terrified by it. And so I would imagine on the second coming, it's going to be very scary, but also very beautiful in the sense that this is incredibly terrifying.

But you know, he's done all of this for me, and I feel loved. And so that's how we get the true and false functions.

Now, I can give another example of splitting particle that may not be as confusing. Okay. Yeah, before you jump into that, though,

I think that some people are trying to follow and they are, it seems as though they think your views are implying other things.

And so maybe we can take just a few moments to clarify that, if that's okay. And you don't have to spend too much time, because I know you have a lot more you want to unpack.

So just listening to how you were talking about the splitting of not persons, what would you say?

You said someone asked the question, split is a troublesome way of explaining what you explained with regards to the

Trinity. And so someone was wondering if you held to a form of partialism, or was that just an element of the language you were using to make a particular point?

What is partialism? Well, that's a good question. Depends on how that person is defining it.

I would assume that partialism is a particular Trinitarian heresy that doesn't capture very much the orthodox position.

So maybe the person could define that for us in the comments, and then we'll visit that again.

So you don't have to answer that if you're not sure what they're saying. Well, that's coming back to us. It comes from the

Schrodinger cat thought experiment. Are you familiar with it?

I bet you are. Now, so just briefly, it's the idea that when you put a cat in a box, and there's some poison in there, that it could kill it, it could not kill the cat.

And so the idea is that the cat is both dead and alive. And so when we are not observing, there is a superposition of where it's true and false at the same time.

And so the cat's numerical identity is split in the sense that the cat is alive, the cat is dead, approximately zero, approximately one, and then you put them as a conjunction.

You could say dead and alive. So we'll come back to a lot of examples of what it means to split something.

Okay. And some people were also suggesting that your view looks like it implies some form of pantheism or panantheism.

Why don't you briefly address that? I would emphatically deny that, because that is inconsistent with the first rule of grammar, the first tenet.

All non -divine particles, anything that is not the univocal I am, is radically contingent on I am.

And so he is not identical with the physics of reality.

You could think of it as a dream of how he moves particles around, etc.

But yeah, I would emphatically deny that because it goes against the first rule. Right. So let's clarify.

So you emphatically deny pantheism and panantheism? Right. Okay. And you would affirm the creator -creature distinction?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. All right. Good. So that's good to clarify because then some people are trying to make connections.

All right. Good. Listen, man, I like you and I like this conversation. I don't want anyone to think

I have some heretic on the show, you know? All right. All right. Good, good stuff.

All right. So let's continue. So you were talking about expressing the mathematical universal wave function.

I think you kind of explained that. But is there anything else you want to say on that before we move down the outline?

No, they can check out the appendix B of the book where I give the example of the terrorist and the lover distinction.

Okay. All right. And the gentleman who asked about the partialism, they defined it here, if you're interested in the definition, that each person of the

Trinity is only a part of God, that each is not wholly divine in their self, and that only together can they be fully

God. I would deny that. Yeah. Good. I would align myself with Athanasius.

Okay. All right. Good, good. Very good. That's a good context. Let me get this off. I apologize. There we go.

Okay. So let's continue here. So you have that particular understanding of the

Trinity. Is there anything else that would be useful in expressing about the Trinity that is relevant to your broader issues with Molinism?

Or should we move on to the next chapter and talk a little bit about your view of history? Up to you.

I would say one more thing on the Trinity, and it concerns free will. When we think of free will, we can't start with ourselves.

We have to think of how each person of the Trinity is free and in what sense.

One thing that we'll get to when we talk about history is that the

Son taught to deny the self. And so if we speak in an inter -Trinitarian way, this is how

I can see it functioning in the sense that the Son would say, I am not, but you are, with you referring to the

Father. And then the Father could say, I am not, but you are, referring to the

Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit says, I am not, but you are, referring to the Son. And so each person of the

Trinity denies themselves in that superposition where they'd say, I'm an atheist and I am not.

But that superposition would be rooted in another person of the Trinity.

So the Trinity is self entangled. And so when we think about free will, we would have to say, if we were to plug in to the universal way function, free and slave as kind of a thesis antithesis, we would have the

Trinity as a free slave, where each person of the Trinity is a slave to each other, but also free in the sense that they are slaves to the free person as well.

And I thought that's great. That's a great example, because I think the freedom and slavery motif is very important, just in scripture.

If we were just to go practically speaking, where we are free in Christ, yet the apostle Paul says, you know,

I, the apostle Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ. So there's, there's a, there's a freedom and a slavery involved in that concept, which is very beautiful and has, uh,

I think a very, um, practical application in the life of the believer. So just putting that kind of in that context, the language of, uh, thesis and antithesis that you're using there,

I think has some biblical warrant, uh, at least with regard to free and slave. Right. And we'll come across this with, you know,

Jesus is teaching, you know, the first will be last and last will be first. And what does that mean? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And so, so when you're talking about the Trinity, then I think this is interesting. So we believe in the absolute personality of each person of the

Trinity. And I think it's, it's important to recognize that when we take a look at the relationship between the father and the son and ask the question, well, well, what facilitates the relationship between the father and son, you have the universal context of the spirit.

And then you ask the question, what, what facilitates the relationship between the Holy spirit and the son, you have the absolute personality of the father.

And so they are kind of exhaustive of one another and create a context through which each two persons relationship stand, where you have that third universal context that makes sense out of it and kind of vice versa.

Does that make sense? I think so. Yeah. Okay. And that, and, uh, if people are, are interested in a, a more, um, detailed description of what

I just said there, and it kind of relates to the relationship between the members of the Trinity, you might want to check out Brett Bosterman's book, the vindication of Christian paradox.

Um, and, uh, I think it's vindication of the Trinity. Oh, I'll put the, uh, the link in there.

Very good book and very much related to presuppositionalism as well, but let's move on here. So that was, uh, do you feel sufficiently, uh, you've been able to sufficiently kind of summarize the

Trinity. Did you want to go through something else? Okay. All right. So chapter five is entitled, what is history?

Um, and your, your first point says that the chapter begins by explicating what a narrative is. A narrative is an objective synopsis of a string of particles forming a whole, a together seeing of the whole about the whole, the whole may be in process.

So narrative does not denote completion. What do you mean by that? So, um, when there's a narrative going on, uh, it doesn't have to be the end of the story in the sense that I'm looking at the whole of a world, not just, um, uh, a world that functions as a particle to another object.

This is a specifically bounded world, uh, narrative that we're looking at.

Uh, so that, and it's about the whole, not, um, not the actual, uh, it's divergent in its propositional content from the story itself.

Um, and so you can be part of a narrative. You can be part of a story, uh, without it being over.

And so I would understand history as, you know, it's being conditioned and told by the Holy spirit.

Um, and, uh, we are, I don't want to say, no, that's not the wrong, that's the wrong word.

Okay. We'll keep, we'll keep moving on. Okay. No problem. No problem. All right. So then you, you had another point here.

So we ask questions like, why is this happening? How did that happen? Such questions are rooted in the determination of actuality with proper exegesis meaning can be extracted and narratives form subplots, which then entangled to bring about the world's narrative.

What do you mean by that? So, uh, we've got, here's where we revisit the meaning and the meaningless aspect.

Um, if I were to say that, uh, rape is good, that would be a meaningless proposition.

And so that would, uh, exist kind of outside of the reality structure. And so it would be an exchanging of for a falsity.

Now, um, we can also apply meaninglessness to, uh, you know, the problem of evil, all of these evil acts that don't correspond with the divine object.

And those meaningless, uh, particles of the story are then entangled back into the narrative in the sense that meaninglessness is meaningful.

So there's no such thing as a meaningless particle in the narrative because the divine object entangles everything, everything always participates.

So everything, every individual thing only has meaning as it relates to something else.

Right. And, and so you're saying that the Trinity or the, or rather the divine object is always related to everything else.

And so all of the particulars have meaning because they're entangled with the broader picture, which would be the divine object.

Exactly. Because that is the grammatical singularity by which, you know, we can root meaning if we didn't have, yeah,

I think this, this theory provides a sophistication to language without it. Um, objectivity becomes an illusion, uh, because of this entanglement, everything just relies on each other and we have no specific point of, of meaning by which we can define everything else.

And so I am, is a meaningful particle of itself. And so, you know, that's otherwise entangled when you look at entanglement that's rooted in the divine object, it's a very beautiful thing, but if you're not affirming that first, uh, that first rule, then objectivity just goes away.

Yeah. Okay. So now let's make some biblical application here. Now, would you say that what you've said about the

Trinity and what you've said about history is obviously the Bible is not a philosophical textbook, but would you say that these are logical deductions from what we know scripturally given the nature of God and how he relates to other things?

Like for example, the triune nature of God, the word Trinity doesn't appear in the Bible, but the, um, but the notion obviously is biblical.

And the fact that God is a universal spirit, um, he's omnipresent, that's biblical. And so we're using philosophical terminology and logical deductions as to different ways to apply those biblical principles.

Would you say that your understanding of the Trinity and what you've just expressed about how you understand history are deductions from biblical principles?

Right. I couldn't be, I couldn't have, the theory is philosophical, but I couldn't have constructed it without the revealed aspect of the

Bible. Okay. I see these principles throughout the Bible, uh, or these deductions.

And then I, you know, construct something that, you know, loops it all together.

Okay. And I think that's important too, because, um, what you're saying can be biblical, even though you're not using biblical language or quoting verses.

And I, and I think that because someone was asking here, what about the biblical application? And I, and we told, and I'm sure you agree, you totally understand that sentiment.

We want to be biblical, but what you're saying, I think is important to understand that these are things that you are drawing out of biblical principles.

Now, whether you're drawing them out appropriately, you welcome criticism, right? So, so if you're saying something that seems unbiblical, uh, then someone should point that out.

And I think that was something you welcome towards the beginning so that you can kind of rework and strengthen the position that you think you've, you've stumbled upon and say,

Hey, this, this kind of makes sense. Right. You know, at this point we're discussing the applications of those four tenets, those four rules.

And, you know, I may be wrong about how we understand history in some sense that some of the specifics like,

Oh, it's, it's a story told by the Holy spirit. And, you know, you could object to that and say, Oh, the father's involved a little bit more, et cetera.

Uh, you know, that's fine. You know, that those criticisms are welcome. Um, but the criticisms that I'm really looking for is for someone to try to disprove the four rules without using the rules.

And so, you know, like I said, with the modal analog of IM, uh, somebody has got to figure out a way of speaking without speaking or to find a word that's not a word.

So, yeah, that's the, that's, that's what I'm looking for. Okay. Uh, you have a second point here.

You said determination amidst particular indeterminacy. How is it that particles in logical space, which are real become actual from possible and becoming of actual being, how would you explain that?

Uh, so, uh, just a reminder, the principle of particular indeterminacy is that a particle is indeterminate by itself.

It needs a subject to act upon that particle to give it meaning. And so it would be an object, which attains meaning from someone else.

Now, at the same time, that object particle, which just was determined, had determined meaning can then act on another particle in the sense that, uh, particles are both deterministic and indeterministic.

But if we just think of it, if I say the word, um, bat, you know, that may be, there's no context there, uh, by which another particle can act on it.

Now, if I say baseball bat or flying bat, we can see the determination come about. And so it's kind of, uh,

I would understand the difference between, you know, possibility, uh, you know, the reality, uh, going from logical space to physical space is just a speaking of that, which adds more entanglement to it.

Okay. I'm jumping down a couple of points here. Um, and that's, uh, I, uh, I hope you don't mind where you have 0 .5

where it says the divine dramas plot. I survey the beginning to the present, wherein the

Holy Spirit is telling the story as spoken word in the economics of the Trinity. The Holy Spirit is the storyteller guiding the narrative throughout history.

The Holy Spirit is the cosmic chess master. Okay. I wanted you to be able to explain that, but then also expand on this idea that he is the chess master, since people might have issue with that, uh, analogy, um, for various reasons, you can unpack that for us and, and, uh, tell us what, what do you mean by that?

So, um, I would say that the Holy, Holy Spirit conditions reality in the sense that, um, you know, some of the conditions that result in our free choices are brought about behind, like behind the scenes to conditions back, you know, there's a condition and maybe a meta condition that you may not be aware of.

So, you know, this is something that can account for, uh, you know, issues with problem of evil.

We may not understand what's going on, but it is still functioning as a meaningful particle, different from how we understand it.

Now, the transoration example, um, this is kind of a word that I invented in the sense of transitive speaking, transitive oration, transoration.

Now this is how others can speak through others. And this goes back to the universal way function.

So here's an example of transoration. Have you ever seen the movie, uh, transformers?

Yeah, sure. So Bumblebee is one of these transformers and he speaks through the radio.

And so if Bumblebee says, hi, Mr. Witwicky, did

Bumblebee say that, or did someone else say that? It would have to be both. Right.

So it's true that Bumblebee said that, but it's also false that Bumblebee said that because someone through the radio said it.

And so the, I am particle there is split in a sense that you would have to qualify it in a sense that, you know,

I am the radio host. And then we understand that he speaks through the radio host.

And so we can see a proposition becoming true and false. And so the Holy spirit can speak through us in the sense of these conditions that are around us.

You know, I think of us as advanced programs and we're living in, I'm going to stop. I'm so the spirit can speak to us through what would, what did you say?

Through different conditions. So you're kind of saying that the Holy spirit can speak to us kind of like Bumblebee speaks using the mechanical structure of the radio and the recording of the voice, that kind of, that kind of thing can speak to us.

And he can also speak through us in the sense that, you know, if if the

Holy spirit says, you know, I am max and then whatever I say that pertains to max, you know, it's not a context that's always universal and always happening, but you know, it can happen.

This trend is transitive speaking. Okay. All right. All right.

So good. So is there anything else you want to say in terms of history? Is there something that you want to kind of express there or do you think you've summarized it?

I think I've summarized it. The rest of the chapter kind of speaks to the relationship of parts to the holes of, of the story.

Yeah. All right. So then let's move to chapter six on living and dying. Okay. And this is going to be the last chapter, except for the conclusion, which we will you'll then wrap up and summarize.

And I think for people who are listening, I think they want to take advantage of the fact that if they have any questions, please send them in the chat and eventually max will address them.

And then the third video, we're going to do a third part. We will take the time to address a wide range of questions.

That'll be more geared towards, you know helping some of the listeners out, understand some things related more specifically to what interests them, but is also related to what you've said, if that makes sense.

Okay. All right. So, so on living and dying, what is, what is chapter six about?

So the previous chapter, chapter five focuses on a lot of the objectivity of life and death.

Now chapter six focuses on the subjectivity of life and death. So this is much more emotionally oriented in how we understand.

So I opened the chapter by focusing on the issue of suicide and you know,

I empathize with those who struggle with suicidal tendencies. And so, you know,

I kind of entangled that, that idea that, you know, we're in the breakers, you know, we've got this idea that no one's coming to save us, but we see this one light in the ocean and maybe that light, that person who's in that boat knows that we're there.

And so we've got that glimmer of hope. So that's how it starts out. And then it gets into the problem, you know, the human condition, what is the nature of humanity?

How does sin work in our minds? And I think the most poignant thing before we get to the game part is when we were most like God.

And I would say that this is something that's upside down. We like to avoid suffering and we prefer pleasure.

That seems to be the, you know, the current human condition. No one likes to have pleasure, but when we plug it into, you know, the universal wave function, we end up having pleasure in suffering.

And it's not something that we necessarily seek out. So the religious experience, when we think of religious experience, we usually think of something that is euphoric.

It feels good. It feels insightful. Whereas, you know, that, that might happen.

But my argument here is that we are most like God when we are suffering because we're denying ourselves and we're not choosing the pleasures of the self over the suffering that the trials that are brought to us.

Now, and of course, you're not saying that God is suffering and he's denying himself, but rather the idea of being other mindedness, you're thinking of others, right?

Or, yeah. Okay. That's important because people are, Oh, he believes that God is suffering. And, you know, that's not what you're saying.

I don't, right. And so, you know, that's when we are most like him when he has suffered, because, you know, if maybe this is just me, when

I try to do good things, I usually do them for selfish reasons, or I've got some ulterior motivation.

And so, you know, those good things are not as pure as my suffering because my suffering is unadulterated by, you know, different desires.

When I do good things, I'm not denying myself to the full extent that I should be. Now, when you, okay.

So when you wrote this chapter on living and dying, how did that fit into your broader picture?

So you were saying, Hey, I have this kind of theory, I'm working it out. What caused you to write this chapter on living and dying?

It seems like there's a shift to what you've said. And then kind of, it looks like you're trying to apply it to something that you find important.

Why did you include that chapter? Right. So, you're right about that in the sense that the first five, six chapters, including the introduction, it's very technical.

It's very, yeah, let's just go with technical. Whereas chapter six is more of an application of the rules.

And so the way that I understand the application of the rules is that in the fullest extent, most reductionistic sense that we are living in a game and it's a very simple game.

You know, there's the Paul writing to Timothy. Also, if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not win the prize unless he competes according to the rules.

I think that's a good metaphor for how we understand life. And it's an imitation game. When the son said, if anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me for whoever wishes to save his life will lose it.

But whoever loses his life for my sake, we'll find it. And we find that, you know, those confusing contradictory elements in the sense of, well, if I save my life, then

I lose it. But if I lose it, I save it. But when we apply the universal wave function there, we can make sense out of it because reality is not a binary system.

It's ternary. It is, you know, three elements. And so it's an imitation game of denying the self, just as the son denied himself and affirmed the father, we deny ourselves and we affirm the son.

So I would say there's two rules to the game. The first rule is don't exchange the truth for a lie.

And I think that's, you know, pretty relevant to, you know, Pauline thinking.

And the other is to deny yourself. So we, once you start understanding who you are, then you can start beginning the game.

And the first thing that you do is quit the game because you're playing a different game that doesn't correspond to, to the son's game.

And so the Holy Spirit regenerates you in order to be able to say, I am not, but you are.

And you begin to understand what it means to speak. I am to understand who you are.

I like a little point you wrote here. So the game is an imitation game in order to play the son's game.

You must first die. I am not, but you are there and begins an asymmetrical existence in order to live as the son.

You must die unto yourself. I like that. And that's following that biblical sentiment, right?

So the goal of the game is to live, but you have to die in order to live. And that dying is that dying to the self that I am not, but you are.

And so at, when we get to the point of the grammatical understanding of, I am not, but you are, you get very close to the myriological singularity of,

I am. Once you start understanding how close you are to that aspect. And so when you, when you start plugging in these seemingly contradictory elements, like if the goal is to live, you have to die.

Well, you know, if we look at that in a binary sense, that doesn't make much sense. But if we look at it in the, if we plug it into the universal wave function, you know, it works.

We can make sense out of contradictions that are true and false. Right. And, uh, uh, Gisbertus Votius says

Christ's death was the worst and the best that as thing that has ever happened. So you have kind of, uh, in a common parlance, you have both extremes being true at the same time.

And right. It was, it was, you know, I didn't say this. Um, I it's from a book.

I want to say William Dembski. No, I don't know, but it was the idea that Christianity is not a philosophical conclusion to the origin of worlds.

It's a catastrophic historical event. And so we would call that, you know, a, you catastrophe, you know, we put the prefix on there, you meaning good.

And then catastrophe meaning, you know, climactic, you know, revelation of what's happening, um, or horrible.

And so we get this good catastrophe that comes from Christ on the cross. No. All right.

Very good. Interesting. That definitely coming at it from a different perspective. I could see your touch, you're touching on common themes, but from an angle that maybe people haven't really, uh, thought about it before.

Right. So I think that's fascinating. All right. Um, is there anything else you want to cover with regards to on living and dying?

Um, I, or I think this, if, if you do go for it, if not, I think this would be a good time to address the conclusion and see, well, what does this all mean in regards to, uh, applicability?

Why is this important and things like that? Right. So the conclusion and in the outline, I've only got one part there.

Um, but in the book, there are three sections. The first section is yesterday, which, uh, kind of reflects like, what were your opinions about, uh, reality before reading this theory?

What do you think of, you know, the theory of everything? And then it goes to the second section, which is today.

It kind of parallels the first element in the introduction, the theory of yesterday, tomorrow, where we see things, we discover the theory of everything, but when you're reading it, you're reading things that,

Oh, did this already happen? Is this happening now? Or is it will happen? So it confuses the timeline as you read through it.

And so the conclusion kind of, you know, wraps those confusions together of yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

So what can we do today? You know, I've got five charges that I think follow from what we should do after this application.

And the first one is that we need to understand that words have meaning. And I call this the epistemic charge.

You know, this is a true, you have to understand the first tenant, what it means to say that all night, any non -divine particles are radically contingent on the divine object.

Once you understand that you can root knowledge, you can root, um, reality in this aspect.

Otherwise you've got that problem of entanglement and, uh, yeah, go ahead. No, I was agreeing with you.

Oh, okay. So the second one is that there's an authority to the words of scripture, you know, it's the ecclesiastical charge.

And this is because, you know, a lot of, we referred to this earlier, a lot of this is just revealed.

And then I'm kind of reconstructing it a different way without the revelation in scripture.

I could not have this theory that I think accounts for everything. And it's, you know, wholly consistent self -explaining.

And so we need to understand that, you know, I kind of issue it in a broad sense. I don't get too technical.

Um, but you know, there is an authority there that we have to study and understand. Uh, the third one is the humanitarian charge where we need to promote life, uh, and Liberty for the flourishing of humanity.

And this follows from, you know, the denying of the self, you know, I am not, but you are.

And so while you died to yourself, you want others to live. And so you help others live.

And so I give a few examples of that, you know, for example, um, one of the things

I would like to see is a change of mind when it comes to the issue of abortion. I'm not,

I don't have a political agenda for governments in the sense that governments need to make this, uh, illegal.

I'm saying, even if your governments make these things legal, you try to, uh, change the minds of others who would otherwise, uh, kill a young person.

Um, so there's no political agenda here. It's just a renewing of minds in the sense.

Uh, the fourth one is more of a, an ecological charge, a stewardship charge.

This is a environmental, um, when it comes to climate change and other aspects, we need to be mindful of the economies that involve with ecological elements to return to that first charge that Adam had.

All right. Yeah. So, so there, again, that that's the biblical app, the biblical principle upon which that, this aspect of your points here is based.

Right. Okay. All right. Very good. And, uh, and what about the, uh, missional, the mission missiological charge?

What's the, what's up with that? Right. Keep going. Um, you know, this, this, uh, isn't the end.

We've got more to share about, um, who the divine object is, who the

Trinity is, who we are in our relationship to this, um, these persons who root all of reality.

And so, you know, the book really takes a different angle of approaching how we understand everything, you know, and what

I would say, I guess, modestly is that this is a theory of everything. Um, I would even go so far as put the definite article to say it is the theory of everything.

Um, so that's why I'm encouraging someone else to, you know, come about, you know, I think that, um, ideally,

I guess in a perfect world, I would choose the smartest person that I can think of that would be willing to debate.

And I would say, well, let's, let's, I see Elon Musk as somebody who's very intelligent, okay. You know, let's debate this.

So, uh, yeah. Okay. Um, all right. Well, great. Well, if people are interested in reading the book again, it is, uh, not an easy read, but that's not a bad thing, right?

Uh, you know, read it with a highlighter and a notebook, uh, jot down some terms and look it up.

Uh, uh, it's sometimes it's really good to kind of push ourselves a little bit in that regard. So, uh, once again, his book, what's the title of the book again?

The workings of worlds on the universal theory and the game of life. That's right. And in the comments, uh, the link is there for those who want to look that up.

It's, it is available for free. So if, if philosophy is your thing, um, and you want to see how all these things connect to, uh, what we have been discussing thus far, uh, you might want to pick that up, uh, free online.

Okay. Um, well there, there is a couple of comments here. Uh, not many, which is fine.

The next video that we're going to do, I think we should spend more time addressing people's questions.

So if you're not going to have any questions, um, during this, uh, this episode, um, please listen in.

We're going to be doing, um, part three next Saturday. Uh, if, if, uh, everything works out well and we will dedicate that time to address your questions.

Um, and I'm sure if you're not familiar with what he's laid out thus far and your questions are coming from maybe a different place.

Um, I'm sure Max would be happy to address those as well as best as he can. All right. Someone said here,

I was going to ask if he can describe more about the Trinity and the divine object, uh, as you were talking about before.

So why don't you, um, unpack that for, uh, for folks, uh, once more, if you can.

Okay. So the, the divine object I am is first described as one.

There is no other, I am, it is univocal in a sense that it is one speaking. It is not divergent from anything else.

It is not contingent upon anything else. And so grammatically, uh, this one object is already a split particle in the sense that it's grammatically split where the,

I am the subject verb function as the object and paired with the proposition. Now, grammatically, um, that's how we can understand that in, uh, another sense.

Uh, when we look at the Trinity itself, the Trinity itself is, uh, you know, they are split.

The fourth rule of grammar also applies to them in the sense of, uh, who is who.

So for example, I would say that it's impossible or the Holy spirit is not the son.

The son is not the father. Uh, the father is not the son or the

Holy spirit and the Holy spirit is not the father. That's just to deny modalism. You're not a modalist, a modalist, right?

M -O -D -A -L -I -S -T, not Molinist, modalist. Right. And so the consistency of the many in one apply.

And so the many in one of contingent reality is not the starting point. The starting point is the many in one of the

Trinity. And so, because we have to start with I am, we understand

I am as a split particle who is many in one, which is reflected in contingent reality.

Right. Now, when you talk about the, I am biblically, we're talking about Yahweh and Yahweh is the triune

God, right? That's right. So again, so again, don't, don't be confused if people are listening, don't be confused of the lack of heavy biblical language.

The concepts that he, that you're talking about are very much there in scripture. As far as I can tell in the areas where, where we would be in firm agreement,

I, yes. In other areas, I'd have to read, read and kind of think and relisten again to make sure that I'm grasping you.

But again, if you, if you think that there are issues with what Max has shared again, this is a place where you can express those disagreements and that's how critical thinking is done.

And Max welcomes criticisms as he has expressed towards the beginning there. So all right.

So is there any last thing you'd like to share Max before we close out this discussion?

No, I don't have anything else to add at this point. I'm looking forward to the questions and you know,

I welcome those, the biblical questions. You know, if you want to clarify how, you know, how Orthodox I am, then yeah, please do that because I want to also identify the consistency of my biblical understandings with you.

That way you see the consistency of my theory. All right.

Well, great. Well, once again, guys, please stay tuned for next Saturday. We're going to shoot for 10

AM live stream. If that's, if that works. If anything comes up, I'll definitely let people know on Facebook and things like that.

So if, if people listen to the first two videos and they're saying, Hey man, this is just over my head.

That is quite, that is all right. The third will be predominantly Q and A. So you could ask them live and Max will do his best to answer them.

And they can be based upon what he's discussed or a wide range of issues relating to Calvinism and Molinism.

And of course, some biblical questions as well are welcome. So please stay tuned for that. If you guys enjoy the content, please subscribe on YouTube and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

I'd greatly appreciate that. And just keep your eye out. We're going to be having some really great guests on to talk about issues more related to apologetics and apologetic methodology.

And so that's going to be coming up in the near future. All right. Well, that's it for today's show.

Max, thank you so much for, for joining me and hopefully our listeners, you know, their brains aren't hurting.

I want the brain stuff. Yeah, that's true. So, so thank you so much for joining.

I look forward to our, our last and final episode next week. All right. Take, take care and God bless.