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

Debate Strategy and the Grounding Objection

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala, and today, or tonight rather, I have a very special guest. I was thinking about the fact that Dr. White, who's my guest, it's obvious from the thumbnail, I was just driving home from work today, and I'm like, wow, I can't believe that God has actualized the world in which an interaction between Dr. 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.

So I have been looking forward to an interaction like this for probably, probably five years, and that's probably before Dr. White really, I mean, maybe I'm wrong, I think he has a video that's a few years ago where he discusses Molinism, but that was before this issue really was addressed in more detail by Dr. 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 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. 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.

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

Let me invite Dr. White on the screen with me. How are you doing, Dr. White? Doing pretty good. Okay, I'm gonna call you Dr. White, and I might flip-flop accidentally into James, but I want to show

Will not matter. Okay, all right. Well, first I want to thank you. 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 I was excited to find out that you and Dr. Craig were gonna interact, is that Dr. Craig has debated a lot, and so have you, but both of you are debaters.

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.

So with that in mind, from the perspective of preparing for your discussion, what was your strategy? What did you intend to do? What did you plan to do at the very beginning?

Well, that's pretty straightforward. I had, over the past month or so on the dividing line, been dealing with Dr. 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.

And so I had worked up to the point where about a week before, a couple of days before the debate, I had played portions of the dialogue that took place between Paul Helm and Dr. Craig on Unbelievable in 2014, which we had reviewed just a few weeks after it happened, in fact, that far back.

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

Now, you have to have some definitions. There's historical things to talk about, Molina, all the rest of those things, sure. But even Dr. Craig recognized the centrality of the following words, quote, this is 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.

He doesn't determine the truth value of these subjunctive conditionals, that's outside his control. Now, as you saw in the conversation, I raised this, I gave this quotation, middle knowledge as it functions in Molinism requires exactly what 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. 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. Sure. And so yet they are seemingly inviolable. God cannot change them. They do not arise from God's will.

That's the terminology he used on the program. Let's see, what was the specific independent? They arise, they're independent of God's will is the specific phraseology he used. I still have my notes over here.

So where do these come from? 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? 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. 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.

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

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. And besides that, it was completely fair. That's what Bill Craig had said in 2014 was what divides us.

That's where the distinction is. So I figure I'm using his own words. I'm not misrepresenting him. And so that's what I pressed. And I think, and Justin said it, and I think he meant it. I've actually been on with Justin Brierley about four times more often than Bill Craig has been on with Justin Brierley.

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 Armenians.

Yeah, I've done all sorts of stuff on Unbelievable. So I know 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. 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. So we get along really well along those lines.

But even Justin said at the end of the program, he said, I think that the positions of the two sides has been very, very clearly distinguished. 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. 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. 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.

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. 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. So I got that same feeling with Dr. Craig and Paul Helm, and I really wish they ironed that out. So your idea was to kind of maybe piggyback off where they left off.

Well, start there. Let's start where we got to the good point and make sure it stays in the center. And I really think that for most of the conversation, that's what happened, yeah.

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

Well, yeah, the studio is more designed, a little more comfortable for things like that. But anyway, I was taken aback when I was contacted. We did not, we were not pursuing this. We were not doing anything.

This was someone involved with Justin that reached out to the two of us and made it happen. So there you go.

Well, listen to that atheist, evidence for the existence of God, miracles can happen. And in December, look at that, we're close to the Christmas time. So definitely a good stocking stuff, for metaphorically speaking.

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 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. 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.

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. 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.

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. 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.

And I mean, real debates. I'm not talking about the debates taking place every day on YouTube with the fan going in the background of someone's over someone's head type of thing. They're in their t-shirt with the Cheetos over here.

That's not what I'm I'm in my pajamas right now.

This is, I'm just, no, I'm just kidding. I wore my dress pants for this occasion. All right, Doug.

You didn't have to, you zoomed in plenty farther. But no, I think the two of us know how to have a conversation. He's going to be, he didn't in this conversation, you know, his debate style. Sure. When he starts his rebuttal, he always restates his thesis statement.

Yes. 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, I did make the decision that I was going to absolutely make certain that the Molinist had to give a positive account for the key claim of the system that honestly, historically, is how Molina fulfilled his function as undercutting the Reformation then.

And I still believe undercutting the Reformation today, just not within Roman Catholicism any longer, coming from within Protestantism.

Sola Scriptura, Models, and the Authority of Scripture

Now, I want to address that, because I think there's a comeback that some people often say, especially from Roman Catholic folks. We're going to get, I want to get to that in just a bit. But when we consider, here's some echo here.

Didn't hear it on my end. Never have. Okay. Well, Molinism's twin pillars, I would say, is obviously middle knowledge and libertarian freedom. Would you say that libertarian freedom is not only false because you think the 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? 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.

Well, as it functions within Molinism, you've had people on, you've had discussions. I was listening to your good French friend. How do you describe himself when you first had him? I'm not sure if it was the first time you had him on.

It was a really funny description he gave of himself. I forget what it was, but Guillaume, talking about Guillaume? Yeah. I forget how he described himself, but it definitely made you laugh. But it slipped my mind for the moment.

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.

And it gets so complicated that the nuances end up losing almost everybody in just a few moments. And while I think it's appropriate to have those discussions so that you can talk to people in that realm, the reality is 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.

I am a old school, R .C. Sproul was right. God is free, I am free. When my freedom runs into God's freedom, 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 1, for me as a Christian, I don't know that we have the time to be wasting with such things, to be perfectly honest. I don't mean tonight, I mean just freedom in our world right now.

You just walked off like, we're done here.

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

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

And that is, what are our defining sources here? And as I said to Dr. Craig, there is a vast difference between having a theological position, 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.

So I made the assertion, and I don't know, you watched it. I actually haven't watched it. I figured it was only a couple of days ago, if I can't remember We were there. I was there, but it's interesting because as I'm speaking to you right now, 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 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.

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

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. Now, obviously I thoroughly disagree with that.

The sound you hear coming from North Africa is Augustine spinning in his grave, or Clement. It's coming from Rome, actually. 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 Molinism as... One of the things I was... I'm not sure if I said it or not. One of the things I was going to say was it seems unfair to compare Calvinism and Molinism because Calvinism is an entire theology.

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

So I don't know about you, but I see development going on even now.

Can we back up just real quick? Because I wanted to highlight something you said with respect to what you think Dr. Craig is doing with creating models. Yeah. Would you say that, it seems to me, at least from what I've heard of Dr. Craig, is not so much that he doesn't believe that theology should be derived from science, he may think that there are certain things that are under determinative in scripture.

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

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

That's vastly different than creating a system that then becomes the lens through which, and recognizing, as Craig did, that, I mean, he actually at one point laughed when I said, so obviously the apostles and prophets are not Molinists.

They're not teaching Molinists. Well, of course not. Yeah, sure. Okay, so they're not operating with this lens, and we are coming along. 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?

I'm not sure a lot of people even know this word, theological fecundity. There's expanding our vocabulary a little bit. Watch your mouth, Dr. Phil. That's right, the theological fecundity of Molinism.

This is a PG show, come on, man.

Yeah, so I see a huge, huge difference there. It's one thing to say that there are things that scripture only gives us a small amount of information to go on. It's something completely other to create an entire system that becomes the lens that then limits what scripture can and cannot say.

So that's why I say, if you're looking at 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.

The real work of doing theology is deriving from having it come forth from the text of scripture. And that requires hermeneutics, that requires exegesis, that requires doing the deep work, and believing that this whole thing is consistent with itself.

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

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

So that's fine.

But from my perspective Wait, can you say that again? Cause I think that was, that's key. So you said, so we were talking, Guillaume and I were talking philosophically, but that philosophy was

Delimited by biblical categories. That's right.

And so wouldn't Dr. Craig agree with that? 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.

He thinks it's consistent with it. What's the difference at that point?

That's two different things. You said fenced in by, delimited by, or consistent with. I see him creating this system, seeing a theological giant in his perspective who I do not believe was a theological giant by any stretch of the imagination.

I mean, in the sense of, I mean, if you're a Jesuit trying to fight the Reformation, yay. But this is, it is created out here. It is not coming forth from this. And Molina was not limited by that. I raised that issue.

I think you heard me, I pointed out. Molina is not limited by solo scriptura. He's a Jesuit. That's one of the things they're attacking. And I found it fascinating that in his brief response, he said, well, I believe in solo scriptura.

I believe that scripture is the ultimate authority. That's not what solo scriptura says. 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.

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

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.

So, okay, so I guess I have two questions then. And okay, so when you say that, how can I word this? Man, it was right on the tip of my tongue. I should have let you finish the point there. Okay, when it comes back to me, I'll ask it again.

So you were talking about

You starting to age there, brother? Man, look at this, you see? Because I'm gonna tell you, I was saying to my wife today, I was saying, I need to go do something on the computer. I have about 12 feet to walk.

Will you remind me when 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.

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

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. Oh, okay, so this is what I remembered I was gonna ask. So, Sola Scriptura, okay.

Sure, Dr. Craig said he holds the Sola Scriptura and took issue with how he defined it. But is there any inconsistency with a Molinist saying, no, I hold the Sola Scriptura just like you just defined it?

Yeah, I believe there's inconsistency with that and with the claim that you can be a five-point 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 Jesuit.

No, Dr. Craig was the one saying this is the theological giant that came up with this stuff. And I think it's extremely relevant to point out that he was fulfilling the command of the founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius Loyola, to find a way to combat the Reformation.

And this was the specific purpose that he had was to fundamentally change. And the best way to do that, and I've debated more Roman Catholics than anybody else I know of right now. 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.

And that's what Molina tried to do by accepting as much as he could, 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. That's in essence what they end up doing. So I really believe that when Dr. Craig answers my primary objection with rejecting maximal truth-making, that that is inconsistent with solo scriptura.

It is saying that you have a system that you can create out here, outside of the realm of scripture. It 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.

I don't believe that reformers would have accepted that as being consistent with solo 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.

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

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

He is before all things. Do we really believe that? And in him, all things soonest they can. They hold together. Do we really believe that? Paul is exhausting the prepositions of the Greek language to emphasize the exhaustiveness of the creative act of Jesus Christ.

The Sovereignty of God, Creation, and Truth-Making

Okay, I wanna stop you there.

I wanna stop you there because you said something that's very, I think, very key, because Dr. Craig's main response to your criticism, the grounding objection, was this issue that you're presupposing a truth-maker maximalist position.

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.

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.

Right, not only that, and it's not just in a bare theistic sense of creation, but when Paul expresses it there in Colossians 1, when he says all things are cohesive, they adhere together in him, he's talking about Christ.

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.

He cannot alter the truth content of the subjunctive conditionals. Would you agree that that's necessary in Craig's position? 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.

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. 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.

At first I thought, well, one could make the argument that Dr. White is begging the question. Maybe it's his version of truth that is the scriptural one. And 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.

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

Well, let's be honest, in our day, holding to that radical, I would say necessary, but still radical Christian concept of creation. 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 Christians today.

Now, historically it was, there's no question about that. But today there's a tremendous amount of embarrassment about that. And so I really have to wonder in our day how many 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.

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 Tim Stratton on after we were on, I forget what the date was.

You may have looked it up. I forget when it was, it wasn't all that long ago. You still had no hair, so. Well, no, no, no. This was within the past two years.

You haven't had hair for a long time.

I haven't had, I shaved in 2001. So yeah, it's been a while. And you may recall that he made the comment, I don't see what Christmas has to do with any of this. And evidently I hadn't clearly expressed to you either because you didn't seem to understand it either what I was emphasizing there.

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

And that is that the reality of the temporal world and its importance is clearly proved for a Christian by the incarnation. And Tim just didn't seem to understand why that is. He's the God man. And so he existed within the temporal realm for a period of time.

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.

And so the incarnation, Christianity, one of the things you've got, you got to give props where props are due. Eastern orthodoxy tends to be more Trinitarian and more incarnational than Western Christianity seems to understand.

And Christians really struggle with thinking through what it means that Jesus was the God man. And so my point with that is, I would love to ask both Tim Stratton and Bill Craig. 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. 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.

They are not intermingled, which is Eutychianism. They're not separated from one another, which is Nestorianism. And you do not have a replacement of a part of the human nature with the Logos, Apollinarianism.

In essence, Bill denies that element of the human nature of Christ. And I've started to wonder, as I've been thinking about this, if there's not a relationship here. Because if the historical doctrine, the Orthodox doctrine of the hypostatic union is true, did God have divine middle knowledge of the man Jesus?

How could that even be? Because that would require the incarnation to be a reality prior to the decree to create.

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

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 Son of God delimited by middle knowledge?

That's fascinating. Okay, so let's put that to the side. That's actually very fast. I would actually love to read up on that connection. 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 I do this topic is because Molina designed it to be a negation of reformed theology and I'm a reformed theologian and apologist. So people would throw Bill Craig stuff back at me starting many, many, many, many, many years ago.

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

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

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.

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