James R. White vs. William Lane Craig (Post-Debate Interview)

Revealed Apologetics

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00:01

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala, and today, or tonight rather,

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I have a very special guest. I was thinking about the fact that Dr.

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White, who's my guest, it's obvious from the thumbnail, I was just driving home from work today, and I'm like, wow,

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I can't believe that God has actualized a world in which an interaction between Dr.

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White and William Lane Craig was previously thought to be not a feasible world, but apparently it was a feasible world and God actualized it.

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So I have been looking forward to an interaction like this for probably, probably five years, and that's probably before Dr.

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White really, I mean, maybe I'm wrong, I think he has a video that's a few years ago where he discusses

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Molinism, but that was before this issue really was addressed in more detail by Dr.

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White. I just always thought it would be a good idea to get them together. So it is a great pleasure and an honor to have

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Dr. White back on the show. He was on the show a while back to talk about Calvinism and Molinism, but now he's here to have a conversation with me about his interaction with Dr.

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Craig, and hopefully this can be an opportunity not simply to rehash what they discussed, but maybe to kind of expand upon some points that needed a little bit more expansion.

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When you have those kinds of back and forth with that limited time structure, sometimes issues need to be dropped and shortened.

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And so perhaps we can kind of expand a little bit. So without further ado, I don't want to waste too much time with introductions.

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Let me invite Dr. White on the screen with me. How are you doing Dr. White? Doing pretty good.

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Okay, I'm gonna call you Dr. White and I might flip flop accidentally into James, but I wanna show -

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Will not matter. Okay, all right. Well, first I want to thank you.

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I know you're super busy, so I really appreciate you coming on. And my first question for you is this, and I know that here's the reason why

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I was excited to find out that you and Dr. Craig were gonna interact, is that Dr.

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Craig has debated a lot and so have you, but both of you are debaters.

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So not only is there going to be content to your discussion, there's also going to be strategy and getting to the point in a way that someone who's not really used to debating, they kind of meander around in the discussion.

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So with that in mind, from the perspective of preparing for your discussion, what was your strategy?

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What did you intend to do? What did you plan to do at the very beginning? Well, that's pretty straightforward.

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I had over the past month or so on the dividing line been dealing with Dr.

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Craig's book. I was providing background. This is not an easy subject. The vast majority of Christians find it extremely confusing, extremely difficult to follow.

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And so I had worked up to the point where about a week before, a couple of days before the debate,

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I had played portions of the dialogue that took place between Paul Helm and Dr.

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Craig on Unbelievable in 2014, which we had reviewed just a few weeks after it happened, in fact, that far back.

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And right at the end of the program, and Justin even said, well, that was really, really helpful.

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Right at the end of the program, there was a statement made by Dr. Craig that I believe encapsulates the entire issue in just a couple of sentences.

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Now, you have to have some definitions. There's historical things to talk about, Molina, all the rest of those things, sure.

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But even Dr. Craig recognized the centrality of the following words, quote, this is

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Dr. Craig speaking, what the Molinist does say that the Calvinist does find objectionable is that God is not in control of which subjunctive conditionals are true.

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He doesn't determine the truth value of these subjunctive conditionals, that's outside his control.

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Now, as you saw in the conversation, I raised this, I gave this quotation, middle knowledge as it functions in Molinism requires exactly what

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Craig said there. And that is these subjunctive conditionals, the truth value of subjunctive conditionals of what any creature that God could create would do in any given situation.

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But these things are outside of God's control. And Dr. Craig admitted on the program that they don't arise from man because man has not yet been decreed.

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Sure. And so yet they are seemingly inviolable.

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God cannot change them. They do not arise from God's will. That's the terminology he used on the program.

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Let's see, what was the specific independent? They arise, they're independent of God's will is the specific phraseology he used.

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I still have my notes over here. So where do these come from?

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That's what I wanted to focus upon because let's face it, how many books are there out there on the reformed discussion of theodicy?

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I mean, since the Reformation, how many have been written? Dozens of them. You could fill bookshelves with studies in theodicy from back in Calvin's day through Piper and everybody else today.

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So Calvinists are always on the back foot. They're always on the defensive. And I've dealt with theodicy hundreds and thousands of times over my ministry, but I've never heard any discussion because the problem is the thing with Paul Helm, that was in the last five minutes of the program.

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So they never cashed it out. They never pressed on it. They never discussed it. You're not gonna hear a discussion about that.

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You're not gonna find it. And in fact, when the Molinists do, quote unquote, address what's called the grounding objection, it's normally in such a fashion that the people who are listening to Unbelievable would not have any idea what was even being discussed or be able to access it.

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Or even a Google search wouldn't necessarily even pull it up. So my strategy was to make sure that that issue was front and center.

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And besides that, it was completely fair. That's what

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Bill Craig had said in 2014 was what divides us. That's where the distinction is.

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So I figure I'm using his own words. I'm not misrepresenting him.

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And so that's what I pressed. And I think, and Justin said it, and I think he meant it.

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I've actually been on with Justin Briarley about four times more often than Bill Craig has been on with Justin Briarley.

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I've been on over and over and over again, sometimes two programs in a single visit there in London. I remember you took on two

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Armenians. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've done all sorts of stuff on Unbelievable. So I know

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Justin, and Justin's eminently fair. He's on Bill Craig's side. He's not reformed and he's on Bill Craig's side.

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But he's still always eminently fair in everything that he does. And I can tell by the tone of voice where he wants to go, when he wants to take a break, he's always appreciated that I'm an old radio guy, so he doesn't have to shut me down and stuff like that.

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So we get along really well along those lines. But even Justin said at the end of the program, he said,

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I think that the positions of the two sides has been very, very clearly distinguished.

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And I think he was right. That's one thing about Justin. He actually listens to what's being said and is following what's being said.

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I really appreciate that about him. So would you say in your preparation, listening to, as kind of a model, because that discussion with Dr.

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Craig and Paul Helm was, I remember when I first listened, it was excellent. But you're right. Those key issues came out at the end.

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It kind of reminds me of the debate between Greg Bonson and R .C. Sproul. At the end, it almost seemed like they were getting somewhere.

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And I think Dr. Sproul said something to the effect, we're all in leaky buckets. And then the audio ends. And I'm just like, wait, no, that's an important point.

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I got that same feeling with Dr. Craig and Paul Helm. And I really wish they ironed that out.

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So your idea was to kind of maybe piggyback off where they left off. Start there. Let's start where we got to the good point and make sure it stays in the center.

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And I really think that for most of the conversation, that's what happened, yeah.

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Now, did you feel, because of the, really no one thought that this was going to happen.

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Well, I didn't either. That's why I never said anything about it, by the way, is because I was skeptical once I was contacted.

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And I was, I even, you can go back in the emails. I even said, I'm really doubtful this is gonna happen, but okay,

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I'm up for it. And I think I mentioned on the dividing line, I was supposed to be in Amarillo, Texas on Monday, and I had to cancel my trip.

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I was gonna be doing that in my RV. And I'll be honest with you. I'm sort of glad I was in here. It looks, your office there looks cooler than the

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RV. Well, yeah, the studio is more designed, a little more comfortable for things like that. But anyway,

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I was taken aback when I was contacted. We did not, we were not pursuing this.

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We were not doing anything. This was someone involved with Justin that reached out to the two of us and made it happen.

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So there you go. Well, listen to that atheist. Evidence for the existence of God, miracles can happen.

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And in December, look at that. We're close to the Christmas time. So definitely a good stocking stuff for metaphorically speaking.

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Now, so what I was getting at before is you didn't know that this was gonna happen. And so this is, did you feel you needed to be, and I don't mean this in a pejorative sense, more aggressive in your approach to make sure you got those issues on the floor as opposed to kind of, you know how

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Dr. Craig is a very conversational, soft -spoken guy. I mean, he's a debater. He knows what he's doing, but it's very easy to kind of waste 20, 30 minutes with just the surface fluffy stuff.

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Did you feel that you needed, you didn't know this was gonna happen. You wanna take advantage of this. You wanna really kind of press.

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Did you feel that at all? No, I was just simply a part of the strategy to make sure that we focused upon what needed to be focused upon and not get stuck out in the weeds and all the fluff.

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I knew that, I expected, Justin's very good at guiding the conversation and asking leading questions to push it where it needs to go.

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And he did for both sides. And so I didn't really have to worry about that. I wonder how many debates grand total between Bill Craig and I, we've done.

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I have a feeling amongst evangelicals today that probably you put the two of us together and we've got more debates than anyone else alive right now.

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And I mean, real debates. I'm not talking about the debates taking place every day on YouTube, but the fan going in the background of someone's over someone's head type thing.

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They're in their t -shirt with the Cheetos over here. I'm in my pajamas right now. This is, I'm just, no, I'm just kidding.

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I wore my dress pants for this occasion. You didn't have to, you zoomed in plenty farther.

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But no, I think the two of us know how to have a conversation.

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He's going to be, he didn't in this conversation, you know, his debate style when he starts his rebuttal, he always restates his thesis statement.

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He always redoes his outline. It's just something he always, it's just the way he does things. He didn't so much this time, but no,

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I did make the decision that I was going to absolutely make certain that the

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Molinist had to give a positive account for the key claim of the system that honestly, historically is how

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Molina fulfilled his function as undercutting the Reformation then. And I still believe undercutting the

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Reformation today, just not within Roman Catholicism any longer coming from within Protestantism.

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Now I want to address that because I think there there's a comeback that some people often say, especially from Roman Catholic folks.

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We're going to get, I want to get to that in just a bit. But when we consider, here's some echo here.

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Didn't hear it on my end. Never happened. Okay, well, Molinism's twin pillars,

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I would say is obviously middle knowledge and libertarian freedom. Would you say that libertarian freedom is not only false because you think the

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Bible doesn't teach that kind of freedom, but do you think that the very idea of libertarian freedom is incoherent or do you just simply think it's false and it's not the biblical view?

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Because I think that one key way to critique Molinism is to attack one of those pillars, the plausibility of middle knowledge and libertarian free will.

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Well, as it functions within Molinism, you've had people on, you've had discussions.

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I was listening to your good French friend. How do you describe himself when you first had him?

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I'm not sure if it's the first time you had him on. It was a really funny description he gave of himself.

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I forget what it was, but - Guillaume, you're talking about Guillaume? Yeah. I forget how he described himself, but it definitely made you laugh, but it slipped my mind for the moment.

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But anyways, you all have discussed all the different permutations of soft libertarianism and hard libertarianism and soft determinism and libertarianism in this context, in that context, in this fact.

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And it gets so complicated that the nuances end up losing almost everybody in just a few moments.

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And while I think it's appropriate to have those discussions so that you can talk to people in that realm, the reality is

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I prefer terms such as autonomy and there is only one autonomous will in the universe and can be only one autonomous will in the universe.

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I am a old school, R .C. Sproul was right. God is free, I am free. When my freedom runs into God's freedom,

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I lose. And so there is creaturely, there is creaturely freedom, there is creaturely responsibility, but all this stuff, if it does not start with Romans one, for me as a

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Christian, I don't know that we have the time to be wasting with such things, to be perfectly honest with you.

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I don't mean tonight, I mean just freedom in our world right now. You just walked off like, we're done here.

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And you're like, okay, we're done. Okay, so if I can give a little pushback, cause I'm kind of putting the foot on the other, the shoe on the other foot, there we go.

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While it's true that I think we can get bogged down with some of the philosophical nuances, when we are dealing with people who are really trying to kind of get at the truth of the issues, it seems to me that those nuances become very important.

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Distinctions like, for example, categorical versus conditional ability to do otherwise.

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That might sound like a weird philosophical category, but I think that's actually relevant when you're discussing with a libertarian, the ability to do otherwise, and then they bring up scriptures, which seem to suggest that someone can do otherwise.

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And it looks like it's supporting that particular flavor of freedom. Does that make sense? It makes sense, but what it does raise is something

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I did come up with Dr. Craig and came up much more with Dr. Stratton in my response to his, well, he did a response video to my video and I did response to him yesterday on the program.

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And that is, what are our defining sources here? And as I said to Dr.

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Craig, there is a vast difference between having a theological position.

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And of course, your view of man and his will is a theological position. Sure. I think a lot of people treat that as merely a logical syllogism or some type of philosophical speculation, but especially given that man's condition is central to even understanding why the cross has to take place or what wrath is or what justification is or atonement or anything else, that this is theology and it must be revelational theology.

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So I made the assertion and I don't know, you watched it. I actually haven't watched it.

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I figured it was only a couple of days ago if I can't remember what happened. We were there. I was there, but it's interesting because as I'm speaking to you right now,

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I can't see you. You're right here. So if I look down here, then I look like that. So I didn't see you.

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That's why I look like this because I'm looking at you at the screen and my camera's up there, so. Right, right. So I'm actually, it looks like I'm looking at you, but you're actually down here.

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So I have seen some clips and I see Bill's response, which I could have seen if I had been looking at the screen, but I wanna look at the camera because you're communicating better in that way.

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So there's that. But it seemed to me that Bill really balked at the idea that anyone's theological system is actually derived from scripture.

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His idea is you create models and then you see if they're consistent with scripture.

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And that's clearly his understanding of what reformed theology is. It's just another model. In fact, just another model that's about the same age as Molinism.

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Now, obviously I thoroughly disagree with that. The sound you hear coming from North Africa is

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Augustine spinning in his grave, or Clement. It's coming from Rome, actually.

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That's the more ironic place for it to be coming from. That's Clement spinning in his grave. But so the historical part we could have a debate about, but I can't see

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Molinism as... One of the things I was... I'm not sure if I said it or not.

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One of the things I was going to say was it seems unfair to compare Calvinism and Molinism because Calvinism is an entire theology.

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It's a theology of the Trinity. It's a theology of soteriology. It's a theology of the church. It's a theology of the sacraments, theology of everything.

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And Molinism is not. But there are some people that are trying to make it that way all under the name of Molinism.

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So I don't know about you, but I see development going on even now. Can we go back up just real quick?

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Because I wanted to highlight something you said with respect to what you think Dr. Craig is doing with creating models.

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Yeah. Would you say that, it seems to me, at least from what I've heard of Dr.

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Craig, is not so much that he doesn't believe that theology should be derived from scripture. He may think that there are certain things that are under determinative in scripture.

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And in those cases, we should create models that are, from his perspective, that are consistent with scripture.

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There is a vast and important difference between something that is under determinative and creating a filter that then becomes the ultimate mechanism of knowing what scripture can and cannot say.

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That is, those are two very, very different things. And so we could have, we could talk about aspects of eschatology being undetermined or underdetermined, or in other words, there's only so much revelation found in scripture about that.

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And that therefore there's gonna be a lot of differences of opinion on certain aspects of things.

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That's vastly different than creating a system that then becomes the lens through which, and recognizing, as Craig did, that,

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I mean, he actually at one point laughed when I said, so obviously the apostles and prophets are not

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Molinists. They're not teaching Molinists. Well, of course not. Yeah, sure.

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Okay, so they're not operating with this lens and we are coming along.

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So this came up with regards to Genesis 50, 20. We're coming along 2 ,900 years down the road and trying to say that the meaning of this text is now to be interpreted as Bill did through this lens when you admit that the authors would have had no earthly concept of what in the world you were talking about simply because of the, what was the term he used?

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I'm not sure a lot of people even know this word, theological fecundity. There's expanding our vocabulary a little bit.

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Watch your mouth, Dr. That's right, the theological fecundity of Molinism. This is a PG joke, come on, man.

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Yeah, so I see a huge, huge difference there.

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It's one thing to say that there are things that scripture only gives us a small amount of information to go on.

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It's something completely other to create an entire system that becomes the lens that then limits what scripture can and cannot say.

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So that's why I say, if you're looking at it on a 3D level and this is, if we're looking at scripture here, if you are placing something over scripture that filters out stuff that's there, we all recognize how that's extremely dangerous.

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The real work of doing theology is deriving from having it come forth from the text of scripture.

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And that requires hermeneutics, that requires exegesis, that requires doing the deep work and believing that this whole thing is consistent with itself.

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Okay. And a lot of people just don't believe that anymore. It's not taught in the vast majority of seminaries and Bible colleges, to be perfectly honest with you.

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And so those of us who believe that are somewhat in the minority today, but not historically speaking.

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So, sure, I understand why when talking to certain people, you can,

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I benefited from listening to you and Guillaume talking about various forms of libertarian free will and ability and so on and so forth in regards to, but even most of that was still limited by biblical categories rather than just simply theoretical categories.

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So that's fine. But from my perspective - Wait, can you say that again? Cause I think that was, that's key.

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So you said, so we were talking, Guillaume and I were talking philosophically, but that philosophy was -

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Was delimited by biblical categories. That's right. And so wouldn't Dr. Craig agree with that?

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I mean, we might disagree with him as Calvinist, right? But would he agree with that based on your understanding that Molinism is perhaps kind of a philosophical reflection that's kind of fenced in by, as he sees it, biblical categories.

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He thinks it's consistent with it. What's the difference at that point? See, that's two different things. You said fenced in by, delimited by, or consistent with.

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I see him creating this system, seeing a theological giant in his perspective, who

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I do not believe was a theological giant by any stretch of the imagination. I mean, in the sense of,

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I mean, if you're a Jesuit trying to fight the Reformation, yay. But this is, it is created out here.

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It is not coming forth from this. And Molina was not limited by that.

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I raised that issue. I think you heard me, I pointed out. Molina is not limited by Sola Scriptura. He's a

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Jesuit. That's one of the things they're attacking. And I found it fascinating that in his brief response, he said, well,

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I believe in Sola Scriptura. I believe that scripture is the ultimate authority. That's not what Sola Scriptura says.

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It's the sole infallible rule of faith, not simply the ultimate authority. Because if you express it that way, then you don't have the emphasis that you need to derive your theology from this revelation.

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It needs to flow naturally from it, not be something that's laid down on top of it. So I do not believe that in our conversation,

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Bill would have agreed with the statement that you just attributed, that no, our positions do need to be limited to that, which flows from scripture.

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Because he would admit, Molinism he thinks is consistent, as in not directly contradicting, but the authors weren't teaching it, and it's not taught in scripture.

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So, okay, so I guess I have two questions then. And okay, so when you say that, how can

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I word this? Man, it was right on the tip of my tongue. I should have let you finish the point there.

26:54

Okay, when it comes back to me, I'll ask it again. So you were talking about - Are you starting to age there, brother?

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Man, look at this, you see? Because I'm gonna tell you, I was saying to my wife today, I was saying,

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I need to go do something on the computer. I have about 12 feet to walk. Will you remind me when

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I get there, what it is I'm supposed to do? Because that's what happens all the time. I'm usually good, it's been a long day.

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It's, yeah, okay. It is later where you are than where I am. So I suppose that does count. It is later, it is later.

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So let me, okay, so since I lost what I was gonna ask, let me go to a question that I did remember that I was gonna ask.

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Oh, okay, so this is what I remembered I was gonna ask. So, sola scriptura, okay. Sure, Dr.

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Craig said he holds the sola scriptura and took issue with how he defined it. But is there any inconsistency with a

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Molinist saying, no, I hold the sola scriptura just like you just defined it? Yeah, I believe that there's,

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I believe there's inconsistency with that and with the claim that you can be a five point

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Calvinist and be a Molinist too. So I wanna explain both of those. And I've already seen all sorts of people online say, oh, you're committing the genetic fallacy by pointing out it was a

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Jesuit. No, Dr. Craig was the one saying, this is the theological giant that came up with this stuff.

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And I think it's extremely relevant to point out that he was fulfilling the command of the founder of the

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Jesuits, Ignatius Loyola, to find a way to combat the Reformation. And this was the specific purpose that he had was to fundamentally change.

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And the best way to do that, and I've debated more Roman Catholics than anybody else I know of right now.

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And the way they function is they wanna get as close to where we are as possible and make that gap as small as possible.

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And that's what Molina tried to do by accepting as much as he could.

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And then by inserting that concept of middle knowledge with the functional claim of this ungrounded knowledge claim of the subjunctive conditionals, basically invade and destroy the enemy territory.

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That's in essence what they ended up doing. So I really believe that when

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Dr. Craig answers my primary objection with rejecting maximal truth -making, that that is inconsistent with Sola Scriptura.

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It is saying that you have a system that you can create out here, outside of the realm of scripture, doesn't have to come forth from scripture, you create it out here, and yet it will have a truth value that is determinative of what this says.

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I don't believe that reformers would have accepted that as being consistent with Sola Scriptura as the sole infallible rule of faith, because you are adding to the rule of faith with something that comes from outside the rule of faith.

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And as far as the maximal truth -making is concerned, I made the argument,

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I don't know if you saw the program, but I made the argument day before yesterday, I think, on the dividing line that I cannot possibly, when we're talking about the very nature of God, and that's what we're talking about here, nature of God, nature of man,

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I cannot possibly think how you can hold to a meaningful Christian theology of creation and not be a maximal truth -maker for one simple reason.

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If it's true, it's true because Jesus makes it true. I've been teaching that for decades.

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It is a radical claim of the Christian faith that the one who created all things, for by him were all things made, whether in heaven and earth, visible, invisible, principalities, powers, dominions, or authorities, all things created by him and for him.

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He is before all things. Do we really believe that? And in him, all things soonest they can.

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They hold together. Do we really believe that? Paul is exhausting the prepositions of the

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Greek language to emphasize the exhaustiveness of the creative act of Jesus Christ.

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Okay, I wanna stop you there. I wanna stop you there because you said something that's very, I think, very key, because Dr.

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Craig's main response to your criticism, the grounding objection, was this issue that you're presupposing a truth -maker maximalist position.

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And I think that's very interesting. I wish you would have said it. I think you probably said it in a different way, but you said that you don't see how someone who believes in creation wouldn't hold to a truth -maker maximalist position because God is the one who's creating everything.

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And so that seems to indicate that the fact that he creates things have the truth value they have because they issue from his creative decree.

31:50

Right, not only that, and it's not just in a bare theistic sense of creation, but when

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Paul expresses it there in Colossians 1, when he says all things are cohesive, they adhere together in him, he's talking about Christ.

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And so to admit that there is anything that is true and that has, and here's one of the questions that I haven't heard really answered yet, has sufficient truth existence to delimit feasible worlds for God that cannot be changed by God.

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He cannot alter the truth content of the subjunctive conditionals.

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Would you agree that that's necessary in Craig's position?

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It would seem to be the case. Yeah, okay, so if that's the case, then there is not a small set, but a huge data set of inviolable truth that does not come forth from God's will, does not come forth from God's creative decree.

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And hence, how can you say that it's soonest they can, it holds together in Christ? And I think another point there is getting back to the sola scriptura thing, because you were talking about at first, when you said that Dr.

33:23

Craig, who is challenging the truth maker maximalist assumption, you said that it's something that he's assuming outside of scripture and laying it on and at first I thought, well, one could make the argument that Dr.

33:37

White is begging the question. Maybe it's his version of truth that is the scriptural one.

33:43

And you're assuming until you said that in light of God's creative decree, you were giving kind of a biblical reasoning for why you hold to the theory of truth you are putting forth.

33:56

And so that this other view that entails that there doesn't have to be truth makers actually is coming from outside of scripture.

34:02

I thought that was interesting because it kind of showed biblically why that version of the truth maker theory is something that we should consider.

34:11

Well, let's be honest in our day, holding to that radical,

34:19

I would say necessary, but still radical Christian concept of creation.

34:26

And that in fact, Jesus of Nazareth, who walked the earth was in fact the creator is not the majority opinion of most people who call themselves

34:41

Christians today. Now, historically it was, there's no question about that. But today there's a tremendous amount of embarrassment about that.

34:50

And so I really have to wonder in our day how many

34:56

Christians take seriously or do we just create a wall in our mind so that we don't have to really deal with this, that we are literally saying that the creator invaded his own creation.

35:07

I suppose it's a good time of year to be talking about this because that's what it's all about. But that's also related to what happened on your program when you had

35:18

Tim Stratton on after we were on, I forget what the date was. You may have looked it up.

35:24

I forget when it was. It wasn't all that long ago. You still had no hair, so.

35:29

Well, no, no, no. This was within the past two years. You haven't had hair for a long time. I haven't had,

35:35

I shaved in 2001. So yeah, it's been a while. And you may recall that he made the comment,

35:46

I don't see what Christmas has to do with any of this. And evidently

35:52

I hadn't clearly expressed to you either because you didn't seem to understand it either, what

35:59

I was emphasizing there. And I didn't get, I stated it once, but I did not get to expand upon it.

36:04

Bill didn't bite on it. So it didn't really become a part of the conversation. But I did make the assertion and I think it's a vitally important assertion.

36:12

And that is that the reality of the temporal world and its importance is clearly proved for a

36:21

Christian by the incarnation. And Tim just didn't seem to understand why that is.

36:27

He's the God -man. And so he existed within the temporal realm for a period of time.

36:34

He acted, he spoke within the temporal realm as the God -man. So if the creator can enter into his own creation in that fashion, that's not only in a sense a sanctification of that realm, but it is a demonstration of the vital importance of that realm because that becomes the realm in which redemption itself takes place.

36:55

And so the incarnation, Christianity, one of the things you've got, you got to give props where props are due.

37:05

Eastern orthodoxy tends to be more Trinitarian and more incarnational than Western Christianity seems to understand.

37:14

And Christians really struggle with thinking through what it means that Jesus was the

37:21

God -man. And so my point with that is,

37:27

I would love to ask both Tim Stratton and Bill Craig.

37:35

I don't know where Tim stands on this. I know where Bill stands on this. Bill's a neo -Apollinarian by his own confession.

37:41

And so most people in the audience probably don't know what an Apollinarian is. But in the doctrine of the hypostatic union, we have two natures in one person.

37:53

They are not intermingled, which is Eutychianism. They're not separated from one another, which is

37:59

Nestorianism. And you do not have a replacement of a part of the human nature with the

38:06

Logos, Apollinarianism. In essence, Bill denies that element of the human nature of Christ.

38:15

And I've started to wonder, as I've been thinking about this, if there's not a relationship here.

38:22

Because if the historical doctrine, the

38:27

Orthodox doctrine of the hypostatic union is true, did God have divine middle knowledge of the man,

38:38

Jesus? How could that even be?

38:45

Because that would require the incarnation to be a reality prior to the decree to create.

38:55

Never thought, I never made that connection before. When you said it in the discussion, I was like, where is he going with that?

39:00

That's very interesting. Yeah, so the human nature of Jesus, if middle knowledge provides truth, value, to conditional subjunctives about what human beings will do in any given situation, was the actions of the incarnate

39:22

Son of God delimited by middle knowledge? That's fascinating.

39:34

Okay, so let's put that to the side. That's actually very fast. I would actually love to read up on that connection.

39:40

I wonder if anyone has kind of made that connection before. I've not read anybody, but I'm not, look, by the way, the reason

39:48

I do this topic is because Molina designed it to be a negation of reformed theology, and I'm a reformed theologian and apologist.

39:59

So people would throw Bill Craig stuff back at me starting many, many, many, many, many years ago.

40:09

And that's what dragged me into it. I would imagine there are,

40:14

I mean, I've taught Christian philosophy, religion on the graduate level. Okay, fine. But I imagine there's all sorts of people that should be able to engage this with a broader reading background than I have.

40:29

But I have to wonder if maybe one of the reasons that I'm presenting some arguments that are clarifying is that I'm not stuck in that realm.

40:42

I'm coming at this much more from an exegetical perspective, an apologetic perspective, than being quote -unquote in the academy or something like that.

40:52

So I wonder if that doesn't, I've always felt that if you really know a subject, you should be able to teach the sixth graders that subject.

41:04

Well, he did come out with that kid's book that teaches Molinism. Well, okay. Come on, dude.

41:11

Come on, man. I think I have a couple of them. It was something that I agree, because I mean, obviously people know where I stand.

41:19

I very much respect Dr. Craig, but I do disagree with him in some areas. But there are some points where I have some agreement, and I think he does a good job in explaining it in those little books.

41:29

But be that as it may, I have a question. I wanna give a little pushback here, because you did make a comment, which

41:35

I think is important to make, because you're right. Molina was a counter -reformer.

41:40

And so he definitely was looking into these issues with an aim to kind of undercut what the reformers were doing.

41:49

But be that as it may, how does that not commit the genetic fallacy?

41:54

It seems to me that someone would just say, fine, let's assume that that's correct. That is just a token example of what the genetic fallacy is.

42:02

Maybe he was trying to undercut the reformers, but that doesn't mean his view is false.

42:08

How would you respond to something like that? Well, because once again, we're not talking about, I'm not having, many

42:14

Molinas are, but I'm not having some unbiased, uncommitted philosophical discussion at a philosophical society meeting someplace where we're pretending that we live in a neutral world.

42:27

I'm a Christian theologian, and the issue is the gospel. And we have a man here who is not only committed to denial of sola scriptura, which means you can't deny sola scriptura without having another authority behind it.

42:44

And what he was defending, what he was seeking to defend was the sacramental system of the Roman Catholic Church and the traditions thereof.

42:52

And so you have to keep, and those are gospel issues. I mean, the sacramental system is the very mechanism of salvation, the distribution of grace through the sacraments in the

43:01

Roman Catholic Church. And this is what Molina believed. This is what he practiced. The propitiatory sacrifice of the mass and the idea that Roman Catholic priests are an ultra Christus, another

43:15

Christ. This is all a part of this giant of theology, as it was described.

43:21

And so I do not believe that the intention that he had in the production of his system can simply be ignored.

43:31

And then brought into the system he was attempting to destroy, which allegedly has fundamental denials of what he believed in his worldview that gave birth to his perspective.

43:45

So how can you take a system from someone who believed in the sacramental system, believed in the traditions of Rome, how do you disconnect all of that and transport it into quote unquote

44:00

Protestantism without fundamentally changing the parameters of what we're talking about?

44:07

That's why I said, I do believe it is a violation of a historically understood commitment to sola scriptura.

44:16

It is a violation of a historically understood commitment to the sovereignty of God.

44:24

We both use that term, unfortunately. But the reformed understand that as an expression of the fullness of God's freedom to express all of his attributes, not, well,

44:41

God has the right to either turn off his sovereignty or just choose to function to determine feasible worlds or anything else.

44:51

And that's where we touched on and you saw, and I agree, we were right at the end of the program.

44:58

So fine, we couldn't get into it, but I thought it was perfectly fair to point out the assertion that within Molinism, there are people who

45:09

God cannot save. And cause I mean, that's how he has made application.

45:16

Let's put it that way. I suppose there are people that argue that's not something you're necessarily committed to as a Molinist. Okay, fine.

45:22

But I was talking with Bill Craig and that's what I mentioned just in passing when

45:27

I reviewed the debate. And that's what Tim Stratton focused in on was this idea of the trans world damned.

45:33

Well, think about it. That also raises this same issue. And that is there is a fundamental difference between Roman Catholics and the reformed, the reformation at that time in regards to what the nature of regeneration is.

45:49

And there still is. And there is very much between myself and Tim Stratton.

45:56

He likened what I believe in regeneration to be rape. And my response was taking out a heart of stone and giving a heart of flesh, releasing some from the captivity to death, resurrection life is not rape and should never be called rape.

46:11

But the point is that goes back to Molina. Molinism is consistent with the sacramental system on that line.

46:19

It can't be consistent with the reformed understanding of where God is sovereignly able by his grace to take out a heart of stone and give a heart of flesh.

46:30

So how can there be someone that he cannot save? Now, Tim Stratton, the whole thing was you're just objecting that God should be able to do something that's logically impossible.

46:41

But what did he mean by that? What he meant by that was I'm gonna define regeneration as someone freely choosing to enter into a love relationship with God.

46:53

Rather than the biblical examples, I'm sorry, but the Valley of the Dry Bones, I would not suggest using that as a theme for a romantic date with your wife.

47:07

You know, it's power and dry bones stink.

47:13

And there's a messiness involved with all of that. But that's the biblical example.

47:19

I mean, Lord, he stinketh, you know? Lazarus, same situation.

47:25

He wasn't raping Lazarus by raising him from the dead. So I do see the connection there.

47:33

And I don't see how Molinism can be made consistent with the reformation.

47:40

And I would certainly say, just go read Luther's Bondage of the Will and tell me that Molinism can be made consistent with that.

47:50

So you're saying that if someone were a Molinist and they held to what reformers would define on paper, sola scriptura, you would say such a person would be inconsistent.

48:03

Yes. So then we do have some people who say they're not inconsistent because look, I'm a Protestant. I hold to sola scriptura and I'm a

48:09

Molinist. You'll say, yeah, you're probably sincere that that all is consistent, but here's why there is an inconsistency and you'd kind of dig a little deeper.

48:18

Yep, yep, exactly. And look, for years I taught systematic theology for the former

48:26

Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary. And I'm gonna be teaching again for a new school starting soon, but we'll talk more about that some other time.

48:38

And when I would teach systematic theology especially, I would say to the students in the first class,

48:45

I would say, look, I'm a little unusual, a little weird, a little on the strange side.

48:51

Most of your professors aren't doing debates in mosques or Roman Catholic churches or things like that.

48:57

What that means is I am going to step on your theological toes in this class.

49:04

And if I don't, I have failed you. And I felt that it is absolutely necessary in any meaningful theological education for you to be pressed, to become consistent, not only now in your theology, but to realize that that's a lifelong, that's something you have to do lifelong.

49:27

You cannot simply say, okay, good, I've got my master's degree, I'm done. No, it is something that you need to do throughout your life.

49:35

We always have to have the humility to be looking at ourselves in that way. And it's hard to have a balance between standing firm, but also recognizing these things.

49:45

But it's a part of Christian maturity. And so, yes, I would say to the person who says, oh,

49:51

I believe in solo scriptura and I believe this. And I would say, I think if I put those two beliefs right next to each other and turn the light up bright enough, you might see they don't really fit together.

50:04

But look, we are all works in progress. And so we can be patient and I can make my best argument and leave it to the

50:13

Lord at that point. And I'm now old enough. I have students that I've taught in seminary that now have their

50:21

PhDs and are teaching other students. I'm seeing the second and third generations now. And that's exciting and that's wonderful and that's awesome.

50:28

But I'm still well aware of the fact that when I was younger,

50:34

I met big name scholars who had decided that they had reached the pinnacle and could no longer grow or be corrected.

50:45

I made the commitment when I was a young man, I'm not going there. Well, let me ask you a question because folks might be interested because there's a certain perception of you online where many people think that James White cannot be corrected.

51:03

This is a person - And you know where that comes from? You know where that comes from? That comes from the people who will not listen to the dividing line.

51:09

They will not read my books. They are absolutely determined that they are only going to go on what other people say about me.

51:16

But the people who actually know me, the people who, for example, might listen to, oh, my sermons or might actually listen to the program where I'm constantly correcting myself or saying, you know, here's another place where I once said this and I say it all the time.

51:34

And so - Well, you've changed your whole eschatology. Is that correct? I have. I was gonna use that as an example to follow up with what

51:41

I was just saying. Is that, you know, I was raised with one eschatological position.

51:46

It was drilled into my brain, not in a negative way, but as a young person, I mean, I really took it in.

51:53

And then during Bible college, I realized that doesn't really work too well.

51:59

And I saw people throwing firebombs every which direction over the subject eschatology. So for a while,

52:04

I became an agnostic on eschatology. In other words, a pan -millennialist. It'll all pan out in the end.

52:12

And I've told the story. I'll go ahead and tell it. Never, ever use that terminology in front of John MacArthur, okay?

52:20

Trust me. I did - Pan -millennialism? That one? Pan -millennialism. No, don't.

52:26

That look will melt paint, okay? It really, really will. So don't even do it.

52:33

I don't want to get the MacArthur stare. Oh, it was - There's the MacArthur stare, and then it's the James White stare when he stares at you exegetically.

52:41

That's my favorite meme, James White. I actually like that meme too. That was well done. That's a good one. But that was during a particular, do you know where that was from?

52:49

That was during a particularly pointed and focused cross -examination.

52:55

And if I am anything, I am focused during cross -examination. The rest of the world goes away.

53:02

Well, your glasses go down. I don't know if you noticed, but your glasses go down. Someone said you're like - If I'm wearing glasses. You'll notice

53:07

I try not to anymore because my eyes have actually improved.

53:13

I don't have to wear them, except for stuff that's up close. Then I need them. But anyway - You probably went to a Benny Hinn crusade then.

53:19

I did not. I just was getting older, and that's what happens. But the point was,

53:24

I eventually embraced another eschatology because I needed to have one. And now I've actually embraced an eschatology because it's actually related to the rest of my theology.

53:33

So yeah, R .C. Sproul did the same thing. He went through three stages. I've gone through three stages. You thought

53:41

Star Trek was the best, and now you changed your mind, and Star Wars is better. No, no.

53:46

There are some things that are objectively true, and others that are objective. Well, I wanna shift gears a little bit, and I just wanna let folks know there are a lot of people watching.

53:55

By the way, thank you, Dr. White. I think we have the most viewers I've ever had on a video. So we've gotten up to the 70s and 80s.

54:05

I don't remember who it was, but I knew this was gonna be a popular discussion. So folks, I just wanna let you know

54:10

Dr. White was kind enough to say that he's cool taking some questions. So just make sure you preface your question with the word question so that I can differentiate them from the comments, and keep it respectful, and you guys usually do.

54:22

So thank you. But I wanna shift gears a little bit, Dr. White. There are a couple of things that Dr. Craig said with respect to what he thought

54:29

Calvinism taught. And I've heard this multiple times.

54:34

He says that on Calvinism, God moves the will of the person to do evil.

54:40

Now, I'm a Calvinist, and I've never heard, I mean, I'm sure you can find someone, but I've never heard a

54:46

Calvinist say that, in the way that - And I think I said that at one point, but I do need to explain.

54:52

He said it multiple times. And if I had been willing to go into defense mode and abandon my strategy of what

55:00

I wanted this to do and accomplish, I would have jumped on it every single time. But I just,

55:05

I have to trust, you have to have an audience in mind. I should have mentioned this earlier, but when you're developing a strategy for debate, you have to have an audience in mind.

55:14

It's sort of like when writing a book. When you write a book, you have to have an idea of who you're trying to communicate with.

55:20

And you can't communicate with everybody. I mean, there are people, I've already seen comments from people about the debate and dialogue.

55:27

And I'm like, what debate or dialogue were you even watching? Because I couldn't even, I don't even know how they got to that, but there's that level of bias and prejudice on both sides.

55:38

There were people who watched that debate and they didn't hear a word Bill Craig had to say. And there were people who watched that debate, they didn't hear a word

55:45

I had to say. I can't worry about those two extremes. Okay, they're outside my control.

55:51

And so that's why I didn't necessarily jump on this issue because I already know, if anyone picks up any basic introduction to reform theology, then they know this isn't the case.

56:06

They, see Bill, I don't know

56:11

Bill very well, but I've certainly listened.

56:17

Let's put it this way. I've listened to a whole lot more of him than he's listened to me. All right, that much

56:23

I know. And as soon as reform theology is mentioned, well, we all know what he said to Christopher Hitchens, right?

56:33

I mean, what Christians do you disagree with? Well, Calvinists, of all the things out there,

56:42

Bill has a deep prejudice toward reform theology.

56:48

I don't know where it comes from, but he ain't the first person I've seen that has it. Let me guarantee you something.

56:56

I have been sitting across the table, mano a mano, nobody else around with Norman Geisler.

57:03

And when you would mention anything about reform theology or Calvinism, it was like a wall comes down and that's the end.

57:13

You're gonna get one response and there is gonna be no possibility whatsoever of any discussion about it.

57:20

I've seen it before. And I think that lies behind. When Bill responded to Si Ten Bruggencate's stuff on presuppositionalism,

57:31

I was stunned. I was absolutely stunned. It was very clearly a man who has never read

57:39

Bonson. I will say right now, if Bill Craig has actually seriously read

57:45

Bonson, I would faint. I really, really would. I just don't think he respects it.

57:51

And so he has a mantra, moving people's wills to sin as if their wills are neutral and not in rebellion against God.

58:03

That's why, what was my response when I finally did address it? I was like, what do you mean moving?

58:08

He restrains evil. But you see, we have a very, very different anthropology, very different anthropology.

58:18

And so I think that's where it flows from is that there is a philosophical.

58:27

I mean, I cannot imagine, let's be honest. I cannot imagine a more philosophically derived and oriented view of man than that which

58:36

Molinism provides. And I'm specifically referring not just to libertarian free will, but to the idea that man can exist in such a way as to be known before God decrees to create him as to whatever he would do in any given situation.

58:56

There's not even a libertarianism of indifference there. I mean,

59:01

I would say that allowing for libertarian of indifference, libertarianism of indifference where you can go to one place or another place to have lunch today, that doesn't even exist in Molinism because God knows exactly what you're gonna do in any given situation.

59:21

So how can that be? That to me is a dehumanizing of mankind, but also, and this is something that I have not heard people bringing up.

59:34

And again, multiple things coming together here. Bill and I have debated some people, some of the same people and we've both debated

59:44

Shabir Ali. I've debated him many more times than Bill has, but we've both debated Shabir Ali. I think he's debated Shabir more than once.

59:50

I've debated Shabir I think seven or eight times. But in one of those debates,

59:56

Bill dismissed original sin as being just sort of something some

01:00:02

Christians believe, but it's not at all definitional of the Christian faith. You gotta reiterate that in his book on the historical quest for Adam.

01:00:09

I was shocked when I read it because he brought up the issues with Adam and original sin.

01:00:14

And he kind of suggested that it wasn't very strongly supported in scripture. And the Eastern Orthodox get along fine without assuming it.

01:00:21

I was kind of just like, ah, see, it's stuff like that. I love that. Did Dr. Craig ever say this? I love you, but sometimes

01:00:27

I'm just like, ah. Right. Well, and I think that's a key issue. And it's a key issue also in regards to how

01:00:36

God could have knowledge of fallen men prior to the decree.

01:00:43

What is the effect of sin? What does Romans three say? When there's none that seek after...

01:00:48

If it says there is none that seek after God, how can you put them in a particular context where they will seek after God if there is none who seek after God?

01:00:57

There's all sorts of these issues that you can't just simply take mankind and turn them into this philosophical...

01:01:06

Well, what did we come up with? Essence of James White. And let me tell you right now, there are so many comments, like people, everyone thinks they're, you know, where can

01:01:16

I get the cologne? I just read it. I know, I know. If I was, look, if I was smart,

01:01:21

You could have a zebra proof sweater. I'd already have something on Etsy someplace or something and I'd be selling it. You could wear a zebra striped sweater and advertise it.

01:01:29

It'd be really nice. That's zebra Coogee. No, my Coogee, that's right. Yeah, so, but there is no essence of James White.

01:01:37

That's the point. And biblically human beings are far more complicated than that.

01:01:43

So the idea that, but that's anyways, we've already covered it. I wanna get to some of your questions and stuff.

01:01:48

So I wanna ask just like two more questions of my own and then we'll go into some of the audience questions and then we'll wrap things up.

01:01:55

And so this has been an excellent conversation. Thank you so much. And folks who are listening in, I hope you guys are benefiting from it.

01:02:01

And listen, whether you agree or disagree, this is a really cool, I mean, I saw a lot of comments on Facebook and social media.

01:02:08

People are really happy that this conversation happened, but sometimes people are happy that it happened for the wrong reasons.

01:02:15

I think that we need to be very careful with. We want clarity on these issues and we want to hear what both gentlemen have to say and kind of take it from there instead of saying, oh, this guy got crushed by that guy and we have to stop that.

01:02:29

The purpose of these interactions is to learn and get closer to the truth and get closer to scripture, right?

01:02:36

So I just wanna keep that in context there. Now, a couple of points here.

01:02:41

So you made mention of God hardening hearts, okay? And God restraining.

01:02:48

Now, when a Calvinist says that to a non -Calvinist and they have kind of this preconceived idea of what they think

01:02:55

Calvinistic determinism is, they have trouble making sense out of that. So I'm gonna ask you, when we say that God hardens someone's heart or he restrains someone from doing something, what does that mean metaphysically?

01:03:11

How is God doing that? Or do we say, we don't know exactly how he's doing it. So how is he doing it such that he's not the one moving them to do the things that they do?

01:03:21

Well, notice what's going on there in those two different instances. In the sense of the most obvious,

01:03:29

I mean, there's more than one example of God hardening hearts in scripture. He hardened the hearts of the kings of the nations in Canaan when he brought

01:03:40

Israel in and we're told exactly why. So that they might be utterly destroyed. So that is an act of judgment.

01:03:48

That's an act of judgment. And if you have a problem with that, then you have a problem with God being able to judge sin.

01:03:58

And I imagine you probably don't believe in the flood or basically most of what the

01:04:05

Bible teaches about God's right to, you don't believe that God had the right, for example, to kill

01:04:11

Aaron's sons when they offered strange fire on the altar. Any of those types of things.

01:04:18

God has the right to punish sin. And in fact, just on a basic level, given that we are born in that condition, he could just simply wipe out the human race and he would be perfectly justified to do so.

01:04:30

That's not his intention. And he's explained that it's not his intention, but God can bring judgment at any point in time upon any individual.

01:04:38

And he is perfectly just to do so. So the hardening of Pharaoh's heart, for example, was so that God, we are told exactly why that one is,

01:04:48

Romans chapter nine. So I might demonstrate my power and make my wrath and make my power known.

01:04:55

And a lot of folks don't believe God has the right to do that. But if you're going to be a

01:05:01

Christian, that's what scripture says. Now, the restraining of evil is simply for the accomplishment of his purposes.

01:05:11

And you would think people would go, yay, God. You kept someone from committing evil.

01:05:19

Why don't you just do that with everybody? Which by the way, the Molinist says, when you think about it, let's just put the shoe on the other foot here for a moment.

01:05:31

Given the Molinist theory, God puts the evil people into the circumstances that results in their sin.

01:05:40

And he knows they're gonna do it. And he decrees that they're gonna do it. That's why

01:05:45

I've always wondered why so many Molinists seem to think this is just this shoot bang answer to theodicy.

01:05:53

And I go, okay, wait a minute. So let's leave the trans world damned out for a moment.

01:06:00

The evil people in this world, and there's all sorts of evil stuff that's happened today.

01:06:06

Just look over at Twitter and you can see it. God knew that these people would do the things they did if they were placed in the circumstance they were placed in.

01:06:17

And he placed them in those circumstances. Molinism has absolute, complete providence of all events.

01:06:28

And so how is that an answer? The Calvinist is saying he is demonstrating his wrath, making his power known, his love, his mercy, his justice.

01:06:39

And in the final analysis, all of that's gonna resound to the praise of his glorious grace, because there's gonna be a number greater than the sand of the sea who are gonna be saved, which is another nice reason to be a post -millennialist.

01:06:53

But anyway, just throw that little advertisement out there and help everybody to move along.

01:07:02

Well, but real quick, I apologize, but - No, you don't. I'm an apologist, that's what

01:07:07

I do. I guess what I'm asking when we talk about the hardening, not that he hardens, but like metaphysically, like what is

01:07:19

God doing? Because I think that's the point of contention for a lot of people. They think if God is doing those things the way the

01:07:27

Calvinist understands it, how is it not the case that what Dr. Craig says, that God makes someone do something by the act of hardening or whatever, and then punishes them for doing it?

01:07:37

I think that's what I'm trying to think in terms of how they would try to ask the question. Well, again, I'm not sure that the

01:07:44

Bible addresses metaphysical mechanisms by which the spiritual world influences the mind of an individual or something, but we are given examples.

01:07:53

In Pharaoh's example, Pharaoh would be being faced with differing desires.

01:08:00

If I went through those plagues, I want out.

01:08:06

Boils, no thank you. Gnats, flies, frogs, okay. Get out of here,

01:08:12

Israel. But the problem is God wasn't done demonstrating his supremacy over the gods of Egypt.

01:08:19

And so there would be two competing desires in Pharaoh's heart. And it's just simply a matter of making the one desire stronger than the other desire.

01:08:29

The desire for survivability, get the frogs out of here, get out of here. And then the other, the pride and arrogance of the heart that was already there, you inflame that and you harden his heart to continue to stand against what is obvious he needs to do.

01:08:45

But God said before Moses in Exodus four, before Moses appeared before Pharaoh, God said,

01:08:54

I will harden his heart. So this was God's intention from the beginning. So again, could

01:08:59

God have simply brought thousands of pound hailstones down on the

01:09:06

Egyptians only leaving the land of Goshen untouched and the Israelites just simply walk out?

01:09:12

Yep, could have done that. Would he have been just to do that? Idolatrous people, you bet he would have been.

01:09:18

But he didn't do it that way. He did it in a way that was relevant to the demonstration of his glory. And it was prophetic of his work in Christ that would come long afterwards.

01:09:28

So he has the right to do that. And I don't see that there's an argument to be made that given that God could bring judgment at any point in time, and that every day given to a sinner is an act of grace, that if he uses that sinner to edify his people.

01:09:50

I mean, just look at what Passover has meant not only the people of Israel throughout their experience, but how it's attached to the

01:09:58

Lord's supper today for us. I'm simply saying God has the right to do that.

01:10:04

He's God and he has the right to do that. And the restraining of evil aspect is just, it's a part of that, but it is in,

01:10:15

I've often argued that if we saw the amount of evil that God restrains every day, we'd never get anything done because we'd be on our knees in Thanksgiving constantly.

01:10:27

I really do believe that, but we don't see it. And so we rarely give thanks for it, but I think we will see what

01:10:35

God was doing someday. And that'll be part of all the Thanksgiving and praise and honor that we are expressing before the throne.

01:10:45

All right, thank you. That's it for my questions. There are just too many questions. This is for the audience. Just too many questions.

01:10:51

Dr. White's good, but I don't know if he's that good. Too many questions to take all of them. And the way

01:10:58

StreamYard works, I have to actually work from the bottom. So I'm just gonna take the questions that are prefaced with question or something that's just obviously a question in the midst of the comments.

01:11:08

And so Dr. White, let's just do kind of a rapid fire. I'm gonna ask a question, you give an answer.

01:11:13

I'm just gonna move on so we can get to as many as reasonably possible. And then we'll let you go because I know you've been probably had a full day.

01:11:20

And so I thank you so much for your time, Dr. White. By the way, the reason I'm looking over to my right is I have security cameras up and I'm watching my truck in a dark parking lot in a bad, bad, bad part of town.

01:11:30

Okay, where do you live? In the hood somewhere? Is that where you? Phoenix is the hood. We are

01:11:36

LA East. We're the fifth largest city in the United States. And if you sleep with the windows open, you'll hear gunfire almost every night.

01:11:44

Oh my goodness. All right, that's terrible. Well, on that note, here is our first question.

01:11:49

Again, I apologize if I skipped the super chats. They're all the way up there, but thank you so much for the support. I do appreciate it. So here's a question by Biblical Truth.

01:11:57

If the King's heart is in the hand of the Lord and he turns it wherever he wishes, how does God do this through secondary means?

01:12:04

And if the King, who is a man, can he do this with all men? I don't understand that second part, but.

01:12:10

I don't either, but the assertion of the statement is the recognition on the part of the scriptural writer that there is no stratification amongst mankind as to who is and who is not under God's sovereign decree.

01:12:29

Psalm 33, the nation's plan, they make their purposes, but God frustrates all those things and it's his purposes and plans that will be established.

01:12:39

That's all encompassing. It's all encompassing, yeah. Okay, very good. Thank you for that question.

01:12:44

Jeremy Patterson asks, on Molinism, could there have been a reality where Christ could have done differently? Now, you're not a

01:12:50

Molinist, obviously, but how do you think a Molinist would answer that question, Dr. Wayne? Well, leaving aside the

01:12:58

God -man issue, which I raised, which I've never, and the way you responded, it doesn't sound like you had ever heard a

01:13:06

Molinist discussing the hypostatic union and whether there is middle knowledge of the human nature of Christ and what the human nature of Christ would do.

01:13:16

So assuming that that's not something that's the subject of 47 different papers that are just obviously easily obtainable, leaving that off to the side,

01:13:27

I would think the standard Molinist interpretation is that that's part of the decree and not a part of middle knowledge.

01:13:34

And so there wouldn't be anything outside the how we would understand what

01:13:41

Christ would do as a part of the decree and so on and so forth. I can't think of anything that would necessarily impact that.

01:13:48

Okay, thank you for that. Converse Contender says, you said on Molinism, your path is set, but on Molinism, you could do otherwise.

01:13:57

It's just as if you did otherwise, God would know it, but could you do otherwise on Calvinism?

01:14:04

Well, see, I would like to challenge that because that's what Molinists say, is if, well, you could, but if you did, then that middle knowledge would be different, but that middle knowledge is fixed.

01:14:19

See, that's one of the, another real problem with this that I see is that they'll say, yes, you are free to do something different, but if you do something different, then that will change the truth value of the subjunctive conditionals.

01:14:35

But the problem is those subjunctive conditionals are inviolable. Since we don't know where they arose from and Bill said, they do not arise from man.

01:14:43

They don't arise from the will of God. So how could they be changed? I don't, see,

01:14:49

I just don't think this system works. It does not provide the way out, the theodicy that the

01:14:54

Molinist thinks. So leaving that aside as that, over the years,

01:15:06

I have attempted to, I've used the illustration to try to help people understand we have in scripture, revelation that gives us as much as we can comprehend it, a peek into eternity itself.

01:15:27

There are only a few passages of scripture that do that. You may have seen an article I wrote for the

01:15:32

CRI journal years ago. It was one of my favorite pieces that I've written. It was called Beyond the

01:15:38

Veil of Eternity. Okay. And it was an exegesis of Philippians chapter two.

01:15:43

One of those places where we are given this very gracious glimpse into the relationship of the father and the son in eternity past.

01:15:52

And it's difficult for us to really enter into that realm because it's a timeless realm.

01:15:58

It is so beyond our tensed time bound language and minds to comprehend.

01:16:06

But we are told certain things about God's eternal purposes. And then we have creation, which is distinguished from God's existence before creation.

01:16:19

Even that term before is not fully accurate. And what man wants to do is man wants to take what is this fully orbed three, might even argue four dimensional, but we'll just stick with three for now.

01:16:35

Three dimensional diamond of divine revelation. And what man wants to do is flatten it down into something that is paper thin and fully understandable on my grounds because I want something that I can grasp from my experience.

01:17:00

And what I'm saying is this is so full and this is so deep that if we will simply allow it to say everything that it says, we will have that three dimensional diamond rather than just a two dimensional thing that looks like all the other religions in the world.

01:17:22

And so we have our example. This is the Christmas thing again. We have our example in Jesus.

01:17:30

I thought you were gonna talk about the story of Scrooge, the Christmas. I'll tell you what,

01:17:37

I've seen a lot of... Look, two things. I've seen a lot of criticism of that online today, but I expected it because that's not the first time he's done it.

01:17:49

If you've ever listened to Bill Craig speak, you've heard him use that illustration a dozen times before.

01:17:55

But I do think it's far better if you're going to give a story illustration to go into what separates

01:18:05

Christianity from the rest of the world. And so let's go to John 1, 1 and let's go to the

01:18:11

Logos who is N -R -K -N -I -L -O -G -O -S.

01:18:17

In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. And John is using the imperfect form of I, me.

01:18:25

There's no beginning there. That you and I can't... Can any of us honestly say, oh,

01:18:33

I get that. I fully comprehend how the Logos is eternal. You can sit there forever, you will never fully comprehend eternity.

01:18:44

But the word in our language gives us an example where we are faced with the reality as far back as you push the

01:18:52

R -K, the beginning, the Logos is in existence. So God has deemed it appropriate to reveal to us that reality.

01:19:01

And yet that Logos enters into flesh. The word became flesh,

01:19:07

John 1, 14. John 1, 18, the unique God, he has exegeted the father to us.

01:19:14

He has made the father known to us. So we have eternity invading time.

01:19:19

And the next thing we know, we have the one by whom all things are created who has eternally existed walking down dusty roads in Galilee.

01:19:28

How do you put those two things together? You can either allow it to stay like this and say,

01:19:35

I accept all of it. Or you can deny some of it by redefining it and smashing it down into just two levels and saying, there you go.

01:19:43

So when someone says to me, well, could I have done differently in the temporal realm?

01:19:48

Of course, from the eternal realm, nope. Because this temporal realm is the creation of God.

01:19:59

It is a beautiful tapestry woven together. We're gonna see exactly how beautiful it is, only in eternity.

01:20:07

It is real because God has made it. That's why we're not just simply the play things of the various spiritual forces out there.

01:20:15

We are a part of a drama that is gonna glorify the triune God. And what we do matters just as everything that Jesus did mattered as the

01:20:26

God man. But I don't have access to that eternal decree.

01:20:32

So when I get in my truck here in a little while, there's a couple of different ways

01:20:39

I can go home. And could I go away that's not my normal way?

01:20:44

Yep, I could. But let me ask you a question. What if I go out of the way and get hit by a semi truck and die?

01:20:51

Whereas if I went the other way, I wouldn't have. My life is going to interact with all sorts of other people.

01:20:58

Psalm 139 says, my days are written in his book. So is it one or the other, or is it both?

01:21:06

Well, the Bible says it's both. And if we can believe that Jesus is a God man, then we shouldn't have any problem believing that either.

01:21:13

Sure. All right, thank you. The next question is a super easy one. Is God the author of sin? And I like when you go, when you have debates, someone like 30 seconds, answer this.

01:21:25

Yeah, no kidding. So is God the author of sin? He kept saying,

01:21:31

Bill kept saying that. And I understand where these guys are coming from. If you believe what the

01:21:38

Westminster Confession says or what Ephesians 1, 11 says, then they simply say, well, if God creates all things, then sin exists, therefore

01:21:49

God's the author of sin. That assumes a certain meaning of the term author. Sure.

01:21:55

That assumes a certain concept of causation. It ignores primary and secondary causation, which are categories.

01:22:03

Do you say, oh, see, you're going to philosophy there. No, those are the categories of Isaiah 10. Those are the categories of Isaiah 10.

01:22:11

And if you've not read Isaiah 10, I really recommend you read the first portion of Isaiah 10 where the prophet just lays out

01:22:18

God's use of the Assyrians. He brings them against sinful Israel. He's bringing them to punish them in light of Deuteronomy 28 and 29.

01:22:28

And then he judges them for the attitudes of their heart by which he used them. And even likens it to the tool in the hand of the person chopping down the tree and so on and so forth.

01:22:42

I mean, it's very straightforward stuff, but I'll be honest with you, I think one of the reasons that people don't go there is most people look at the

01:22:51

Old Testament as primarily a book of stories rather than the Theanostos revelation that the early church viewed it as.

01:22:57

We have a canonical problem. That's a sermon I'll avoid for the moment. But anyway, so when the

01:23:05

Westminster Confession of Faith says God is in no way the author of sin, it's not denying that God does not decree whatsoever times to pass.

01:23:14

It is saying, as I said in the debate, that that is a complete denial of the idea that mankind is this morally neutral or even morally positively good creature.

01:23:25

And God comes up behind him and puts his big gun in his back and says, do bad things. That doesn't understand what causation means, primary and secondary causation.

01:23:35

It also does not have a biblical anthropology and understanding the fallenness of man and sin, which most philosophers do not have an overly biblical perspective on that subject.

01:23:47

All right, thank you for that question. Oh, I'd love to see this interaction. Would you debate William Lane Craig on apologetic methodology?

01:23:54

After I debated Shabir Ali in 2006 at Biola University in front of 2 ,500 to 3 ,000 students, many students came up afterwards and said, we'd love to have you back.

01:24:06

We'd love to have you do more. This was just really exciting. It was great, it was wonderful. It was a good debate. And they said, who would you love to debate?

01:24:15

And I said, I'd love to debate William Lane Craig on apologetic methodology. And that was 2006.

01:24:21

I've never been invited back to Biola since then. To be perfectly honest,

01:24:28

I know that Dr. Craig doesn't typically debate other Christians and I understand why, but I think, and you agree,

01:24:36

I think you agree with this, having those conversations in a respectful way is really helpful for people.

01:24:44

Well, it's fascinating. Of course, I believe debate is awesome because both sides have to be there. Look, we can sit there and you can go listen to his video and then listen to my video and then go listen to his video.

01:24:54

But where does the rubber meet the road? What does the Bible say? The first one to present his case seems right until when?

01:25:02

The second person comes along and asks him questions, cross -examination. That's where the rubber meets the road.

01:25:08

That's where debate takes place, is where you really find out. Now, it would be,

01:25:13

I admit, a challenge for us to do it because the reason we have such vastly different apologetic methodologies is because we have such different theologies.

01:25:23

And we also have such different approaches to what the origin of your theology should be. So I could easily foresee a debate on the doctrine of man because what's apologetics about?

01:25:42

You're trying to reach a man. So wouldn't it be logical to have a debate about the nature of the person you're trying to reach?

01:25:48

I think that makes a lot of sense. Followed up by an apologetic methodology debate.

01:25:53

I think that, but I firmly believe, the only reason I do this stuff is for the edification of the church and the salvation of the elect.

01:26:03

That's, you know, Paul said, I endure all things for the sake of the elect. So I wanna edify the church.

01:26:09

I wanna leave something behind when I go. And the older I get, the more I realize that day's coming.

01:26:16

So I think it's a wonderful way of doing it as long as it's done in the right way. And between the two of us, we have more experience than any other two people,

01:26:25

I think, alive today to be able to pull it off properly.

01:26:31

Yeah, I agree. The sire asked the question, Dr. Craig doesn't believe that universals exist.

01:26:37

And this helps him from saying counterfactuals exist. What's your thoughts about his denial of universals?

01:26:43

Are you familiar with his denial of the reality of abstract objects and universal categories?

01:26:50

Well, I've heard him talking about it, but that may be directly relevant to why he immediately defaulted to the truth maker thing, but the truth maker maximalism defense in essence.

01:27:04

But at the same time, he is in essence, positing a body of truth that does not derive from God, cannot be changed by God or altered by God that determines what

01:27:24

God can and cannot do. So I don't know how you avoid that. That would be a question for him, not for me, because I don't know how you avoid that idea.

01:27:36

Did that middle knowledge come into existence at a point in time? Is it based upon the reflection of God's desire to create?

01:27:45

None of that makes any sense to me. We're so far outside biblical parameters there that it's hard to even speculate on, but.

01:27:52

All right, let's just do a few more because we're already on the hour and a half and I do wanna respect your time.

01:27:58

It's easy to be greedy with your time. I'm like, I got them here. If he never comes back again, I might as well squeeze a couple more out.

01:28:06

I appreciate it. This is Dr. Bob, thank you so much for your super chat and thank you everyone else for a super chats.

01:28:11

I'm so sorry, I can't get to all of them. But Dr. Bob says, can Dr. White explain the connection of Apollinarianism to Molinism again?

01:28:19

And also Dr. White is right about the Eastern Orthodox being thoroughly Trinitarian. Well, all

01:28:25

I was asking, cause it's not something that I've heard Bill Craig address.

01:28:31

So I can't answer, but I have had the thought cross my mind recently as I've been reviewing his book on the dividing line.

01:28:43

When you have the hypostatic union and you have the human nature and the divine nature, they're not intermingled,

01:28:51

Eutychianism. They're not separated, Nestorianism. And the rational element of the human is not replaced by the

01:29:02

Logos, Apollinarianism. That's where Bill is. And so there's no full human nature in Christ.

01:29:11

And what I was speculating about is in Molinism, since the content of that middle knowledge is about what creatures would do, if the human nature that Jesus takes on does not have rational faculties, there's no way to know what that human creature would do.

01:29:30

So which came first for Bill, the Molinism or the Neo -Apollinarianism or are they connected?

01:29:36

I don't know. I would think that for any Christologically Orthodox Molinist, you have to answer the question, is there a middle knowledge about what that human nature would do, even though it's unfallen?

01:29:53

So a virgin born, unfallen human nature.

01:29:58

So you only have Adam and you only have Christ that would fall into that category.

01:30:04

But is there a middle knowledge to be known of that? Again, I'm not the

01:30:10

Molinist, so I don't know, but it's a question I'll be asking. Okay. Scott Terry, thank you so much for your $20

01:30:16

Super Chat. He says, our Clarkian friends love to remind us that Van Til said

01:30:22

God's sovereignty and man's responsibility is a paradox. That's wrapped up in Van Til's understanding of paradox as kind of a necessary component to a

01:30:33

Christian worldview. And of course, the Clarkian perspective comes from the more rationalistic persuasion.

01:30:39

And so they try to answer those questions that some think are really unable to be answered. So Scott asks, can any model reconcile the two?

01:30:49

I guess as a Calvinist, you would have your position there. Why don't you kind of iron that out for him, if you can.

01:30:54

Well, briefly, I understand what Van Til is saying and I'm very much in the

01:31:03

Van Til -ian camp. But at the same time, maybe he's using the term paradox in a way a little bit different than it's being used in outside of the academy and in the modern context.

01:31:19

I, again, find the best way of answering this question to allow scripture to have final authority.

01:31:26

And the reality is that just as Joseph did not excuse his brothers in Genesis 50, and just as God did not excuse the

01:31:37

Assyrians in Isaiah 10, and just as every one of those involved in the crucifixion of Christ in Acts 4, 27 to 28 were guilty of sin, in every single one of those instances, the scripture says that God was involved in the fulfillment of his sovereign decree in their actions.

01:31:57

And so God's judgment will be just because it is based upon our fulfilling the desires of our heart in light of our creaturely nature and the fact we do not have access to God's sovereign decree.

01:32:11

So we are not judged on the basis of the divine decree. We are judged solely on the basis of where God has placed us and if any

01:32:23

Christian has a question about the propriety of that judgment, I just remind you of Paul's words in Acts 17 that, and this blew me away.

01:32:35

Hey, you want an example? Okay, remember you said, oh, but James, your rep online is that you can't be corrected about anything.

01:32:48

I have openly stated multiple times,

01:32:55

I can give you lots of examples. For example, a passage you and I both know really, really well in first Peter about apologetics.

01:33:05

I have said repeatedly, I spoke on be ready to give an answer for decades before I ever came to understand what it was actually saying in context.

01:33:20

And I had not realized that it was a continuing citation from Isaiah.

01:33:26

Yes. And that this was about treating Christ as Yahweh as holy in your heart.

01:33:36

And that by having that commitment in your heart, that's going to change how you respond to everything.

01:33:42

Cause I never understood why it said anyone who asks you, we apologists are running around tripping people up.

01:33:49

They're not asking us, we're tripping them up, right? Why would people be asking us the hope that's within us?

01:33:56

Because when you have Christ as Yahweh set apart as holy in your heart, that changes everything about your life.

01:34:03

And so you respond to everything differently. And so people will ask you about the hope. So there's an example where I know a lot of apologists that have not worked through that text to realize what it's actually talking about.

01:34:17

And we misused it. I think it's interesting because the context that most apologetics books for first Peter chapter three verse 15 is the court scenario and kind of like the

01:34:28

Greek context. Right. Right. So, and then the kind of one, I think I read that in the book biblical apologetics where it kind of brought up Isaiah and I was like, that kind of makes much more sense.

01:34:39

Peter is kind of coming from that old Testament context, but we don't, you know, like you say, we are

01:34:44

Christians oftentimes with only 27 books in our Bible. It's true. We're not thinking from the soil of the old

01:34:50

Testament. So I thought that was a fascinating observation. Now this is the last question here. Oh, wait, wait, wait. But I didn't answer that question.

01:34:56

Oh, go ahead. I was giving an example of where I publicly have said, here's where I have grown.

01:35:03

Here's why. Act 1731, because he has fixed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness through a man whom he has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising him from the dead.

01:35:16

It was two years ago, driving, no, little over a year ago, driving in a windstorm somewhere in Missouri, right about this time of year, listening to someone else that I finally heard this verse, because most of us hear this and we go, resurrection, furnished proof.

01:35:45

Okay, there's proof of the resurrection. This is great. That's not what it's saying. Here, the resurrection is given as proof.

01:35:54

And what's it given as proof of? That he will judge the world, what?

01:36:01

In righteousness, in righteousness, through a man whom he has appointed, whom he then raised from the dead as evidence of it.

01:36:09

So the point is that it blew me away that the scripture actually teaches that the resurrection is a proof of something else.

01:36:21

And that is that God is going to judge the world in righteousness.

01:36:28

So whatever else a Christian believes, they have to believe that that day of judgment is coming.

01:36:35

And man, am I thankful about it today because of the evil that's going on in this world. And it will be done in perfect righteousness.

01:36:44

All right, excellent. This is the last question. I left kind of a zinger here, a zinger of a question.

01:36:50

You'll be able to answer it. But I was gonna ask you about it because a lot of people I hear give you flack for this.

01:36:57

And it's really the relationship between theology and philosophy. So here the converse contender, thanks for your super chat.

01:37:05

He says, Molinism is philosophy. What's your objection? Oh, you know, the philosophical grounding objection.

01:37:12

By the way, grounding objectors use this against Calvinism too. How would you respond to that?

01:37:17

This idea that Molinism is just philosophy. And then what is one of the largest criticisms?

01:37:25

It's a philosophical criticism known as the grounding objection. How would you interact with that, Dr. White? Right, as I said during the debate, there is all the world of difference between a system of belief that is derived from the text of scripture and that which is placed upon the text of scripture.

01:37:41

The grounding objection is actually demanding that the Molinist give a basis for a positive assertion of a theological concept that fundamentally alters the biblical teaching about God's sovereignty.

01:37:55

My belief in God's sovereignty is derived from Isaiah 40 through 48 as one, just one place, but I can walk through those texts and say, look, here's

01:38:06

Yahweh challenging the false gods to do all this kind of stuff. For example, in Isaiah 41, tell us what's gonna happen and tell us the former things that we may consider them and know why they happen.

01:38:20

Wait, if God is going to challenge the false gods to do history, he doesn't just say, tell us what happened in the past because any old historian can do that.

01:38:32

Give us the grounds. Tell us why it happened. Yeah. Okay? So that's called deriving your theology out of the text.

01:38:44

The Molinist is coming up, Luit de Molina came up with a positive assertion of the existence of the truth value of subjunctive conditionals to use the,

01:38:56

I have to use the terminology. What else am I supposed to call it? That's what Bill Craig calls it. So I'm gonna use

01:39:02

Bill Craig's words, but he's the one making the assertion that this exists and it exists independent of God's will and outside of his control.

01:39:13

My theology of creation comes from Colossians 1, not Luit de Molina. That's the difference between the two.

01:39:21

And so I will engage the philosophical objection because it is making a theological assertion.

01:39:29

But what I'm saying is that system didn't come out of this and I hold myself to be accountable.

01:39:39

And when I responded to Bill's saying, well, what you believe, none of what you believe is found in scripture and direct.

01:39:46

I'm like, you wanna start in Isaiah 40? You wanna go through, you wanna walk through John chapter six with me?

01:39:54

Yeah, it does come straight out of the text, not straight out as in a simplistic, here's the chapter on divine decree type stuff.

01:40:03

No, it's not simplistic, but it is what happens when you apply the consistent hermeneutic to all the scripture in a believing fashion.

01:40:14

That's what's beautiful to me is that scripture is a consistent beautiful whole. I agree.

01:40:20

Dr. White, this was excellent. And I very much appreciate your time. And I know folks have been enjoying this discussion.

01:40:27

Sorry that I couldn't get to all the questions. There's just too much. If you have not already seen the interaction between Dr.

01:40:32

White and Dr. Craig, I have no idea why you're here. Go and watch that and then come and listen to this.

01:40:38

And so I very much appreciate your ministry. And once again, I know you're super busy. So thank you so much for giving me so much of your time.

01:40:46

I really appreciate it. Well, I hope it was enjoyable to everybody. And I'm sure there will be more discussions coming.

01:40:52

Well, I hopefully I can set up an interaction between you and someone else. So hopefully we'll work that out.

01:40:58

Okay. Thank you so much, guys. That's all for this episode. It'll be up on the podcast within the next few days.