Secularist Supremacy and Molinism on Today's Dividing Line

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00:08

Welcome to The Dividing Line, I could tell that Rich was greatly tempted to fire up the camera a little bit early, because I was air guitaring the theme there, and I could just see the look,

00:50

I just knew what he had planned. We're gonna do at the break, whenever the break is, if we go,

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I'm not sure whether we're doing a jumbo today or a mega today, all depends on how things go, but at the break, we'll play all of the new theme song all the way through so you can hear the whole thing if you would like.

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So welcome to The Dividing Line, my name is James White, and we have a lot to cover today. I mentioned on Twitter that I mentioned two

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RF updates, which is reasonable faith updates, which is William Lane Craig's ministry, that we are going to be responding to, finally getting around to responding to the

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William Lane Craig -Paul Helm debate on Unbelievable today. But we've got a couple other things we've got to get to right at the beginning, so hopefully no more than 15 -20 minutes,

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I don't know, depends. And then we will get into that particular discussion, as many people have been asking for a review of that only one hour of interaction, and it goes very quickly, believe me.

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It was barely, what, it was 10 months ago or so that I did the

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N .T. Wright discussion on Unbelievable, and that hour, I think we went an hour and 15 minutes, this was only an hour.

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Well, I did cut out a little bit of the intro, so it was short. But obviously our hope continues to be that the folks at Reasonable Faith realize that we stand ready to do this, do a debate in a formal setting.

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I think that a lot of people would be blessed. I think the students at Talbot Biola would be blessed.

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I think there would be a great turnout. There was, what, 2 ,500, 3 ,000 people that turned out for the debate with Shabir Ali at Biola, and I said at that time

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I would be more than happy to come there and to debate apologetic methodology,

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Molinism, Calvinism, with William Lane Craig there at Biola. No one has taken me up quite yet on that invitation, but that is well within driving distance here.

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Or if Dr. Craig lives in Georgia, would like to arrange a debate in Georgia, I'm sure we could find a church in the

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Georgia area that would host such a debate, and I would be happy to travel to Georgia.

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I have family in Georgia now, and so I would love to see my granddaughter and daughter and son -in -law there in Georgia, and so we can make this happen, and I don't think there's any question if Dr.

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Craig is willing to debate Paul Helm, then let's look at the number of people that Dr. Craig and I have both debated.

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People like John Dominick Crossan and Marcus Borg and Shabir Ali, leaders in their fields.

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I don't think there is any other Reformed voice that has as much experience in public debate as I do right now.

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I could be wrong if someone wants to suggest someone who's done more than 135 moderated public debates all around the world, but we have proven more than once our capacity to enter into this subject in a meaningful fashion and in a scholarly fashion, and so I really think that now that Dr.

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Craig has engaged in debate on this subject that he should really give consideration to doing it on a real basis, on a full basis, and we stand ready to do that.

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So before we get into that, however, I want to mention a couple things. One is a story that actually is a little older.

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This is from January 6th, and I didn't know anything about this. I don't know anything about film or TV shows in Britain, but January 6th, 2014, there is a program in England.

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Well, let me just read you here. It's official. You are no longer allowed to express old -fashioned religious views on British TV. You'll certainly be censured for doing so and will be warned never to repeat your wicked words.

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This is a take -home lesson of the Vander Holyfield controversy. Holyfield, a former heavyweight boxing champ, is currently on Celebrity Big Brother.

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What is Celebrity Big Brother? On Channel 5. They have so few channels over there, you can just name the channel 5, and it's true.

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I've been there. Believe me. Trust me. It's bad. Huh? Oh, it's, yeah. Oh. British TV.

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Man, it's... The one thing when I go over there is I don't have to worry about being distracted by, ooh,

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I want to catch whatever's on British TV, you know. Let's watch the BBC in the morning. Ow.

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It's just, oh, that did hurt, actually. It's just that bad. Oh, I gotta go back and get a freeze -frame of that.

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That's sharp right there. Wow. Look at that. I can have a mark up there. It's just that mind -numbingly bad.

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It's just, they must inject all of their people in the morning news with some kind of sedation before they get out there.

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Anyways, on Saturday night in a chat with a fellow contestant, he expressed his Bible -informed belief that homosexuality is not natural.

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The Bible lets you know there's wrong, there's right, he said. And from his reading of the Bible, he has deduced that homosexuality ain't normal.

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He also expressed the view held by some Christian groups that homosexuality can be fixed through some kind of therapeutic intervention.

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Wow. What hate speech. Are his views outdated? Absolutely. Absolutely.

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Are they wrong? This writer says, I believe so. And many others as well, too. Are they offensive? To some, I'm sure they were. But should

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Holyfield and anyone else who is invited onto TV precisely to express him or herself and to be real, be allowed to give voice to such moral beliefs?

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I think they should. Channel 5 takes a very different view. Shortly after he made his comments, Holyfield was hauled into the diary room and told by Big Brother, that is one of the producers of the show, yeah,

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I'm not sure I'd want to go on any show called Big Brother. I mean, really? Honestly? This is England? You know, remember 1984?

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No, nobody does. That he had used unacceptable language. Now, remember, they're pushing all the boundaries for all the most disgusting language you could ever use.

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But that's unacceptable language. Keep that in mind for our second story. What they meant was that he had expressed an unacceptable idea.

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He had not used the Q word or the F word to refer to gay people. He had simply expressed an idea.

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His inner belief that homosexuality is wrong. He was told that the expression of such views would not be tolerated.

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You expressed the view that being gay was not normal and could be fixed, said Big Brother. While Big Brother realizes these are the views you hold, they are not the views held by many people in society.

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And expressing these views will be seen as offensive to many people. I mean, I just see, again,

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Wells nailed it here. I mean, this is just, you know, the Ministry of Truth speaking.

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It's here. It arrived. And it's got control of the media. This is extraordinary.

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What Channel 5 is effectively saying is that it's okay for Holyfield to possess very outdated views about gay people, but he is not allowed to express them because they are not shared by many people in society.

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So what? Are we now only permitted to express views that chime with the mainstream outlook? Uh -huh.

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That's secularism, folks. You need to get something straight in your mind. The secularist worldview cannot brook dissent.

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It cannot brook dissent because it cannot engage dissent. It does not have a foundation within itself to be able to do so.

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So, yes, that's exactly right. Are no -minority opinions, whether they come from Christians or commies or 9 -11 truthers, allowed?

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Even on a TV show that prides itself on capturing real life and interactions? Whatever happened to the great liberal

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John Stuart Mill's insistence that, quote, if all mankind minus one were of one opinion and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he would be justified in silencing mankind.

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Today, so cavalier have we become about the old Millian ideal of freedom of thought and speech for all, even for those who offend us, that we think nothing of censoring a man simply for expressing a view that is not held by many people in society.

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Big brother, indeed. Well, yeah, exactly right. That's the whole point.

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Now, keeping that in mind, we go to a more recent story. This story is also from the

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UK, but it's January 14th. The official body with responsibility for judicial conduct in the

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UK has chastised a leading high court judge, who is also a Christian, over comments asserting that biblical marriage is the best option for society.

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Sir Paul Coleridge was given a formal warning by the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office, J -C -I -O, also known as Big Brother, because he promoted biblical marriage as more stable for children in society than other alternatives.

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Oh no! Chaos in the streets!

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In an article published in The Telegraph last July, Coleridge said, Stability is the name of the game, and comparatively speaking, that means marriage.

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Folks, this is just such basic common sense, such basic common sense, that for someone to be rebuked for this means that our society, at least

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British society, and we know this could happen here at any day, has lost its collective mind.

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This is judgment. This is a withdrawal of the most basic elements of restraint.

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It's insanity. It goes on, he also angered homosexual rights campaigners and MPs last year when he gave an interview describing homosexual marriage as a minority issue.

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And the sky is blue when the sun is up too! I mean, wow!

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A J -C -I -O spokesperson said they took into account the articles and interviews before deciding to issue a formal warning.

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Yes, we are Big Brother, you are not thinking properly. The Lord Chancellor and the

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Lord Chief Justice considered Mr. Justice Coleridge's decision to give an interview and to participate in the article to be incompatible with his judicial responsibilities, he said, and therefore amounts to judicial misconduct.

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Coleridge, who founded the think tank Marriage Foundation, aimed at encountering biblical marriage and combating divorce, recently said the decision was a disproportionate and unfair reaction to a few lines in two newspapers.

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Okay, so now you've got a judge being told, don't you say that, don't you say that.

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And finally, to the last of the stories. January 14th, two days ago.

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The parents of a, this is the United States of America. This is to make, well, okay,

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I'm sorry. It's actually California. I got the studio audience like that one.

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This is the People's Republic of California, which in many ways really isn't the

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United States any longer, but it's all going the same direction. So anyways, the parents of a six -year -old girl said their daughter was humiliated when a teacher interrupted the child's one -minute speech and told her to sit down because she's, quote, not allowed to talk about the

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Bible in school, end quote. Attorneys for the California family allege. The incident occurred

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December 19th inside a first -grade classroom at Helen Hunt Jackson Elementary School in Temecula, California.

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The previous day, the teacher, listen to this, listen to this. I'm going to start putting something softer so I can beat my head against it because it'll feel better.

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The previous day, the teacher instructed boys and girls to find something at home that represented a family

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Christmas tradition. Now, I just want to point out that within the word

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Christmas, it's a compound word, and there's this word Christ, which is really mainly religious.

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I mentioned that. They were supposed to bring the item to school and share the item in a classroom presentation.

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What? That sounds nice. Brynn Williams decided to bring the Star of Bethlehem that adorned the top of her family's

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Christmas tree. Now, I hope she got some help getting it down because when you're only in first grade, this could be a bad thing.

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She also worked on a one -minute presentation to explain that her family's tradition is to remember the birth of Jesus at Christmastime.

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Our Christmas tradition is to put a star on top of our tree, the little girl said. The star is named the

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Star of Bethlehem. The three kings followed the star to find baby Jesus, the savior of the world.

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Before the child could utter another word, here comes

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Big Brother. Big Brother has to sweep in the jackbooted thugs landed from the black helicopters.

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Before the child could utter... I'm sorry, folks, but the level of insanity, the absolute lack of common sense on the part of adults these days just makes me go, really?

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Seriously? Before the child could utter another word, the teacher intervened, according to Robert Tyler, the

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General Counsel for Advocates for Faith and Freedom, the law firm representing the Williams family. Brynn's teacher said, stop right there, go take your seat.

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Brynn was not allowed to finish her presentation by reciting the Bible verse, John 3 .16, which is behind every touchdown in the

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NFL, but we can't quote it. We can show it, but we can't quote it. Tyler said the little girl was the only student in the class not allowed to finish her presentation.

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Now, this sounds a little familiar to me. It's been a few years, but remember what happened with my daughter in high school?

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Uh -huh. Yeah. Here we go. After Brynn took her seat, the teacher explained to Brynn in front of all the other students that she was not allowed to talk about the

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Bible or share its verses, Tyler said. Now, can you imagine this happened?

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Anyway, Gina Williams learned about the incident after she picked her daughter up from school. She thought she had done something wrong. She told me she thought she was in trouble.

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I told her she was not in trouble, and I was proud of her. I tried to comfort her on the way home. The following day, Williams met with the principal.

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Yeah, been there, done that. The principal confirmed that Brynn's teacher did the appropriate thing by stopping her mid -presentation, and there are specific education codes that protect the school.

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Protect the school from a first grader talking about Christmas. Ah! The principal then asked

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Brynn, who had tears in her eyes, to come into her office and deliver the same presentation that was censored in the classroom. Afterwards, the principal stood by her decision.

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That's right, because principals tend to be brainwashed anymore. Oh, my goodness.

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I'm sorry, but... Is there anyone... Is there any thinking human being on the planet that can think that anyone of the

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Founding Fathers, anyone who touched the Constitution in signing it, let alone writing it, would have ever thought that this could ever happen?

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Not a single one of them. So if you think that's good, then you are a revolutionary, and you are proving that you want to overthrow the

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Constitution of the United States. If the Constitution of the United States still has any meaning in any way, shape, or form.

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And I'm... Anyways, yes, sir, you obviously... I'm quite sure that had a first -grade little boy come in with a pole and stood next to the pole and started talking about a tradition that was designed to mock the

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Christian faith and Christmas called Festivus... Or a spaghetti cauldron for the flying spaghetti monsters.

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Not only would he have been able to finish, probably would have gotten an A. Been applauded. Definitely, definitely.

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I... We are seeing so many of these stories that we're starting to get numb to them.

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We're starting to get numb to them. And that's what they want. It's just becoming so commonplace that what they want is that by doing this, and then there's some pushback, next time there's less pushback, the next time there's less pushback, and by doing this, eventually, we

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Christians just get the idea, shut up. Shut up.

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We don't want to hear it. Go away. Everybody else can say whatever they want to say. And that's exactly what's going on.

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But you tell the little girl, sit down. We can't do that. We can't do that, little girl.

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Oh, my. Well, there you go. At the same time,

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I'm going to go ahead and mention this. I wasn't going to. But let me just mention this real quickly. There was an interesting article.

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I'm going to go to the original here. There we go. There was an interesting article in the comments section of Christian Today by David Robertson.

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Now, unless I'm confusing my people, and I don't think that I am, but I could be. I think this is the same

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David Robertson that did the Revelation TV debate with Peter Tatchell.

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Just a couple weeks ago. And maybe some of my listeners in the

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UK can correct me on that if I'm wrong. But I think, and I think the same

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David Robertson that's been on Unbelievable and may have been on Roman Catholicism before, which led to me being on Roman Catholicism as well, if I recall correctly.

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I'll stop doing that. I hate when they put these ads in that have embedded videos that automatically start playing with audio.

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It just drives me nuts. Especially when they refresh them like 10 minutes later, and you're in another part of the room going, what, what?

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And it's in a tab that is no longer even open, and you've got three browsers up, and you're sitting there closing everything because they've stuck a video in one of your browsers, and you can't find it, and it's talking about detergent or something.

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You just want to shoot the entire computer. But anyhow, I think this is the same David Robertson, if I recall correctly.

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And he wrote an article in regards to the Tony Miano arrest in Dundee, Scotland.

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And here's what he said. I'm just going to read it. I struggle with this, and you can struggle along with me.

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However, let me offer another Christian perspective, despite the fact that I know even to question the orthodoxy of the persecution narrative in the

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UK is to open oneself up to charges of backsliding, theological liberalism, cowardice, and shooting the wounded.

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I am a Bible -believing, teaching, evangelizing pastor in the wonderful city of Dundee, which is where Tony was arrested.

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I have ministered here for 22 years, and have seen a church of seven grow into a church of 200 plus and an increasing gospel impact.

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It is hard work. There is an ignorance, arrogance, and increasing intolerance that make it so. There is a famine of hearing the word of the

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Lord, and yet there are many opportunities to give out the bread of life. The Christian churches in the city do tremendous work in schools, on the streets, amongst the young.

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We preach the word. We write in local newspapers and engage in all kinds of creative evangelism. Sola's Center for Public Christianity is based here, and we have not been shy in critiquing the dominant cultural narratives or seeking to bring the good news in the public arena.

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That is, after all, our raison d 'être. We have many problems, but here is the rub.

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We have the freedom to do so. We are not banned from preaching the word of God, nor are we restricted, for now, in doing so.

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So whatever else the arrest of Tony Miano means, it is dishonest and wrong for Christians to say that it means the gospel cannot be preached in Scotland today.

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Of course, the implied criticism is that those of us who are living and working here as Christians are not, A, preaching the, quote, full, end quote, gospel, or,

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B, getting out onto the streets, communicating it. The truth, of course, is that there are many churches which compromise, and there are

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Christians who are frightened and cowardly in their proclamation. But that is not all of us. From my perspective, having worked hard in this city to build up good public relations with the police, council, and local community groups, having tried to overcome the narrow and ignorant stereotypes of Christians that many people have here, and having sought to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ in many different ways and contexts, however imperfectly, the last thing we needed was an

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American preacher standing in our city center with an amplification system shouting out words that no one understands, getting arrested, and then finding it front page news in the

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Dundee Courier the next day. Don't get me wrong. I use the word American not because I have anything against Americans, to whom

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I owe a great deal, but because in our cultural context, evangelical Christianity is associated with redneck,

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George Bush -like, Southern U .S. evangelicals. Like all stereotypes, that is not fair, not least on the many fine

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American Christians, including those in my own congregation who are seeking to bear witness to Jesus Christ in a culturally, spiritually, and humanly sensitive way.

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But that is the perception that the man in the street has, and if we are seeking to communicate to the man in the street, then we need to take account of that perception.

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If we seek to be faithful to Jesus Christ, then we are to obey his words and be as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves.

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That means in a culture where homosexuality is seen as a shibboleth issue and homophobia is the sin against the

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Holy State, both H and S capitalized, then you cannot stand on a street corner and shout out a sentence which includes homosexuality and sin in the same phrase without expecting some kind of violent reaction.

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Did the Apostle Paul stay on the streets of Rome and yell out, Caesar is not Lord? Did he parade the streets with banners declaring

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Down with the Antichrist, Emperor? Being put in jail in Scotland for preaching the gospel will play well with the supporters back home and Christians in the

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UK who are desperate to jump on the persecution bandwagon. But in terms of communicating the good news to the people of my city, it is not helpful.

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And now it just decided to... See, there it goes. It decided to refresh itself so it can put a new video in.

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Right in the middle of my trying to read it. And it's a different video. And yes, it is playing the new video.

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I guess that's what you get for advertisements. But in terms of communicating the good news to the people of my city, it is not helpful.

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In fact, to be honest, it does the church and the gospel harm both in the short and long term. In the short term, it reinforces the cultural stereotypes and ignorant prejudices of those who already think we are mad and bad.

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In the longer term, it means that when real persecution does occur, the kind that our brothers and sisters are facing in many countries throughout the world, no one will notice.

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It will simply shrug their shoulders and say, there go the Christians again moaning about persecution. Let's not cry wolf until the wolf is actually at the door.

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And in the future, is it too much to ask that self -appointed evangelists and ministries might actually have the humility and Christian courtesy to liaise with local

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Christian churches before they minister in our name to our people? Or are we simply to be those who are left to pick up the pieces and deal with the consequences of the inevitable train wreck?

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Well, that's interesting. That's interesting.

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Is there no connection? Is there no liaise between the people coming in and the local churches?

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Did Wood Paul, it's a good question, did the apostle

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Paul stand in the streets of Rome and yell out, Caesar is not Lord? Well, he certainly wrote it, he certainly wrote that Jesus is

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Lord and that there is no other Lord, but where do we find the balance?

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Because I certainly, when we were out in Salt Lake City and Mesa, we saw street preachers come out there who were just absolutely, positively a part of God's judgment on the

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Mormon people. They shut down every bit of meaningful conversation.

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They really did. Did he pray the streets with banners declaring,

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Down with the Antichrist Emperor? But at the same time, at the same time, if you are standing on the street corner and you're presenting the gospel, you have to talk about sin.

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You cannot speak of salvation without defining what you need to be saved from, and that's sin, right?

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And we know that these people are specifically seeking to have a reason to complain to the police and to use these unjust laws.

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And so, what are you going to do if you're standing there and you're saying, all you're saying is that God is holy, we all know in our hearts and minds that every one of us has sinned against God, and someone says,

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Is homosexuality a sin? What are you going to do?

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You're going to say, I can't talk about that. And if you say the

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Bible says that it is, boom, you're in jail.

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So, I don't know. I don't know. That's a question.

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It seems to me, it's not like Paul was a resident of Thessalonica or Berea when he was passing through.

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Yeah, but there weren't any churches there. He was the one founding them. Well, if he had been going into a place, there was a church.

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Would he not have contacted the bishop of that church? I think he probably would have. Yeah. I think of the early days when we went to Salt Lake City.

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Yeah, we didn't ask about any of the churches there because there wasn't anybody out there doing anything. In fact, some of those were the ones telling us, like I said on the last show, you can't reach those people.

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They're too hard -hearted. You'll never get through to them. Good question. Good question.

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I don't think he's amused.

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Oh, that's interesting. Sorry, I'm reading something on Twitter here. And I guess the

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Wee Flea, I'm not sure who the Wee Flea is. Oh, yes.

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Okay, there you go. That's somebody in Dundee. So, maybe that is David Robertson right there.

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And it says, I don't think he's amused. Did I give some sense that I was unhappy with Mr.

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Robertson? I didn't. I said, I'm not sure how to answer these questions. I don't know where to find the balance.

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I think it's something we all got to keep talking about. But I'm reading it. I let people know about it. I didn't just skip over it.

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So, I'm not sure who the Surge MG is. But Surge, stop telling people that I'm upset with him.

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I wasn't upset with him. I think he made some good points. I'm just not sure. I think there is a balance.

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Paul has to say, Caesar is not Lord. He has to say it. But can it be put into a context?

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Well, here, let's put it this way. I don't think that the people promoting homosexuality in our society are rational people.

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They're not fair. They're not honest. And when you call the cops the way they're calling the cops,

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I just don't know how you could say anything about the Gospel without offending these people.

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So, I don't know where to find the balance. You kind of wonder, at some point in time, if they don't get something to sink their teeth into, they're going to make something up.

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I mean, eventually, these people are just going to start saying, well, he said this and he said that, when you never said any of it.

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But anything to get you out of there, because that's really the point of it all. And disgust.

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Hi, this is live. There. Okay. Anyways, well, something to think about.

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I think it's important, and we'll see what happens with it. Now, let's get to, normally, what

30:57

I would have done in the past, and it's right at 3 .30, I suppose we could do it, but there's no reason to. Normally, this would have been a

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Radio Free Geneva. But I wanted to throw some other things in there, and I wanted to hear the new theme anyway.

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But this is generally where we would have done Radio Free Geneva. But, yes, people in the chat are going, are you actually typing to people on Twitter?

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Yes, I'm a multitasker. What can I say? It also means that my attention span is way shorter than it should be.

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Two things. First of all, over here on this screen, I have this massive explosion of color, which is not a picture of one of my

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Coogee sweaters. It is the actual audio file of the unbelievable radio broadcast between William Lane Craig and Paul Helm.

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Before I do that, since that aired, what's it called?

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Defenders broadcast? Is it called Defenders? It does two things.

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It does an apologetic thing, and it does a Sunday school thing. This is a Sunday school thing. This was Doctrine of Man number 17.

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And I started listening to it. I did not listen to all of it. I started listening to it and said, okay, we all know that William Lane Craig is an

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Armenian Synergist. Nothing new here. But then someone this morning directed me to a six -minute video that I can tell came from the same one because William Lane Craig has this really cool yellow sweater on.

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No, no, no. It was somebody else in Twitter this morning. No, that was the whole thing he did.

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We talked about the we need to get me a pretty yellow sweater. It would be great. Ah, I'm sticking with the

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Coogee. I'm not going with the yellow sweater. I will outshine him with one of my many Coogees. Stop putting your head in your hands.

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Coogees are beautiful. Anyway, and they also confuse your opponent, especially if you move.

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It causes nausea. Oh, no,

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I just revealed one of my great debating secrets. The use of psychotropic sweaters in debate will be a blog article

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I'll put up soon. Anyway, this is a six -minute segment of an audience question from that Sunday School lesson.

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Obviously a Calvinist who is reading R .C. Sproul and going, this stuff sounds really weird, engaged him in a bit of a conversation.

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And I think it's relevant to some of the comments that he makes in the Unbelievable broadcast.

33:53

I'm going to play this first, and then we'll start working through the Unbelievable presentation as well.

33:59

So let's listen to this portion from the

34:05

Bible Study class that William Lane Craig just recently did. I don't think the Reformers would disagree about the who, which you've been talking about the who.

34:13

I'm still stuck on the how, and I don't believe you've discussed that as well as I would like.

34:19

It seems like to me you are very close to the Reformers in saying, well, some of the things about what they change their idea of how a person does it.

34:28

My question is if a person's dead in his sins, Ephesians 2, 5, and God draws him, that idea of drawing is like you're taking something from a well.

34:37

God does it all, and we're dead. We're not sticking our hand up saying, please help me. We're dead. We can't do anything if you believe in total depravity.

34:45

So the whole thing to me goes back to total depravity. We are not able to do any of this.

34:51

So God must change our will, and where you say he draws us, I think the Reformers would say he does draw us in that the

34:58

Holy Spirit changes our want to. We never do want to. We're all sinful. All of us, everyone is sinful, so we can't do it on ourselves.

35:06

He must change us in some ways so that we are able to do that work, and that's through the Holy Spirit, not of our own self.

35:13

Well, I think the difference between what I'm saying the Reformers would come out most clearly with regard to whether grace is irresistible.

35:19

On the view that I'm suggesting, it is not irresistible. I would say that we're always resisting.

35:24

We're constantly resisting until he changes our want to resist. Yeah, and I'm disagreeing with that.

35:30

I'm saying that a person can freely respond to God's grace and the drawing on his heart, and that it's not irresistible.

35:41

So obviously, one of the major issues that we've had all along, and this has come up when we...

35:47

Look, theology determines apologetics. Your theology must determine your apologetics.

35:56

It cannot be otherwise. Even if you start, as I continue to believe and have more and more evidence all the time that William Lane Craig does, even if you start with philosophical presuppositions as your primary source, and then construct a theology that most closely matches the philosophy you've embraced and have made the center point of your work, still, that is only going to get you so far.

36:32

And you're still going to be stuck with the fact that it's theology that is first and foremost going to define what you can and cannot say.

36:44

I mean, remember illustration. Remember William Lane Craig debates Shabir Ali, and in the middle of the debate, what does he say?

36:50

Well, you know, that original sin stuff, I'm not going to, you know, there's a lot of different views on that.

36:55

How can you engage a Muslim on a soteriological subject and be squishy on whether man fell in Adam or didn't?

37:08

That affects man's mind, and here it's coming out here. And look, Bill Craig is on Rome's side, not the

37:16

Reformation's side, on his view of man. He's on Rome's side in his view of grace as well.

37:26

So, you know, and this is nothing new. I remember sometime since 2005, because I was back on the bike again,

37:33

I remember pedaling along the Arizona Canal listening to the Defenders class, and then we played it on the air, and we went through what he said about election and the free will of man.

37:43

And, you know, there's nothing new here. We're not announcing anything new. William Lane Craig is a synergist.

37:51

There is no question about the fact that he's a synergist. And he embraces the very

37:57

Wesleyan, but it came into Wesley from Rome, concept of prevenient grace, that wonderful catch -all phrase that I still have not found anyone to define it meaningfully or to exegetically demonstrate even its existence, but it's that wonderful thing where God doesn't really try to save but just makes it possible for you to respond positively.

38:19

That kind of grace. Still looking for that Bible passage but have never found it.

38:25

So, anyway, none of that is new.

38:30

All of that is very, very well known. But the fact of the matter is, here's an illustration that if you don't start with God's revelation and then move to your understanding of the world, start with theology, go to philosophy, it's going to end up being extremely unbiblical, extremely weak, and that's exactly what we have here.

38:56

Now this gets into other issues, but it is related to whether or not

39:02

God really wants all persons to be saved. I take very seriously these passages in the New Testament that says,

39:09

God is not willing that any should perish but that all should reach repentance. God desires that all persons be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth.

39:17

Now, if you take those passages literally and at face value, that must mean that God does not choose to give saving grace to some persons.

39:26

He doesn't change their want to, as you put it. Yeah, that's called election. And here, at face value,

39:36

I have never heard, and this is why, again, Dr. Craig, let's debate those texts.

39:43

Let's debate those texts. Let's do it at Biola. Let's do it on the campus or do it there in Atlanta, wherever, and let's do it in something more than an unbelievable -style one hour.

40:01

Because there's just not enough time. But let's go through 1 Timothy 2. Let's go through 2

40:07

Peter 3. Let's exegete these texts. And let's not just go, well, you know, there's been some people who said this.

40:13

No, let's exegete them. Just as in the Unbelievable program, Dr. Craig started talking about, well, you know, in Ephesians, tuta is neuter and therefore faith is not the gift.

40:23

Okay, let's talk about that. We're going to be talking about that. Let's get into the text. And so it's not enough to say, well,

40:33

I'm not a theologian or I'm not an exegete,

40:39

I'm a philosopher. No, you bring these things up. And right here you're saying, well, I take these texts at face value.

40:46

Well, I take them at exegetical value. I take them in their context. And I take all of the

40:52

Bible in that way. And I don't believe that your position can withstand critical examination.

41:01

And to be honest with you, my concern really is that what I've heard, and I've heard this more than once,

41:07

William Lane Craig gets asked the question, well, what theologians have influenced you the most?

41:18

What's his response? None, really. I don't know of any theologians who are philosophically advanced enough to really do good theology.

41:26

Really? Wow. Well, thank you to everybody who does theology.

41:34

Some of the things that Bill says that misrepresents the reformed theology, they're basic errors.

41:42

Because I'm sorry, I just get the feeling that he just sort of looks at us like, well, they're elvenists.

41:47

They don't have to worry too much about what they have to say. Which explains the clip we have on the

41:53

Radio Free Geneva thing. Well, I think Calvin was a hyper Calvinist. I can't see what the difference is. Well, there is a difference.

42:01

And just because you're not all that interested in knowing what the difference is doesn't mean that there isn't a difference.

42:07

There is a difference there. On my view, I would say that God does offer saving grace to every person, but some obstinately push it from them.

42:17

They resist it, and so they fail to be saved. Now, excuse me, then it's not saving grace, is it?

42:25

Could we define our terms accurately here? Saving grace, to be saving grace, the result of its expression on God's part will be what?

42:36

Salvation. Not simply the attempt of salvation. And folks, there's a huge difference here.

42:44

There is a huge difference here. We're going to hear this from David Allen, too.

42:53

I've got a bunch of that stuff queued up here. Let me see real quick if I just happen to...

43:06

Well, it has to have been in that segment there, but I don't want to play the whole thing. You want to hear how

43:14

I was listening to David Allen? I've played stuff like this before, but this is how

43:21

I was queuing up David Allen. This is the speed that it was at. Now, he speaks so slowly that that's actually understandable.

43:33

That's 2 .0. That's double speed. You do that to William Lane Craig, it don't work real good.

43:39

No, no, no. Double speed William Lane Craig is not understandable. See? My attention span.

43:47

Way, way, way too short. This will give you just sort of an idea.

43:53

Let me slow it down so you can hear it. These folks can be very passionate. Here's David Allen.

44:00

See how this is... Why didn't I type out where he specifically makes the comment about Jesus did not save anyone at the cross?

44:15

That whole concept is unbiblical, it's false, and you need to understand that it's unbiblical and false because there has to be the human response.

44:26

But here's just an example. Ours the healing, his the wounds. There are more than 7 billion people on planet

44:33

Earth right now. My understanding of that verse and my understanding of the New Testament tells me that God caused all 7 billion plus foul sewers of sin in one rushing, roaring, filthy, malodorous flood to be emptied upon the body of Christ when he died on the cross for the sins of all.

44:54

That's what I think the Bible teaches. I believe that to be biblical. I believe that to be clear in Isaiah 53 and I believe it to be clear in 1

45:04

Corinthians 15. The unbelieving elect, these who are now believers, which by definition they would be saved, thus they would be among the elect, however we define election, you with me?

45:16

But before they were saved, even though there was an atonement made for them, before they were saved, Paul says, you were still under the wrath of God.

45:22

That's a different section. So anyways, this gives you an idea, and we're going to be going through all of that and I'll just have to make better notes.

45:29

I was working on it a little bit fast in preparation for the program. So anyways, going back to Bill Craig here.

45:36

We continue on, and I am playing all of this at 1 .2. It just gets us through faster.

45:43

And yes, I've used Audio Notetaker. We'll take out silences and stuff like that so that we can get through more.

45:50

It's just dead air is not a good thing when you only have so much time. So I may be wrong, but I think that it's clear that this is a different view than Luther and Calvin's at least.

46:01

It is a different view, yes. This is Rome's view. Okay, let's just be straightforward here.

46:08

This is the main man pushing Molinism, and Molina was a Baptist, not a

46:14

Baptist, not a Methodist, Eastern, no. Oh, Jesuit, that's right, Jesuit.

46:20

Counter -Reformation Jesuit, which he's going to say in the Unbelievable Program. He's going to point that out.

46:26

But this is Rome's view. And I think that's what the guy is going, you know, this sounds like the other guy's perspective.

46:34

The people over there. That's the point. At least, I think you've got to give me that, that this is a different view.

46:40

This is a view that does allow significant human freedom, where theirs doesn't. Now, let me say this.

46:47

Significant human freedom. This is a term that not only does William Lane Craig use it all the time, but so does

46:55

Justin. Justin's been using it a lot too. Significant human freedom. What does that mean?

47:01

I think this is a new way of saying autonomy. And it's a new way of saying something without having to say that what you all believe is not really freedom at all.

47:15

If you say that compatibilism is true, you don't believe in significant human freedom, which means man's ability to act outside of God's decree.

47:28

And I really wonder if most of these folks even believe there is a divine decree, and I think most of them do not.

47:33

Let me say something about this analogy that is often used by persons in the reformers' camp of a dead person.

47:41

Paul says we are dead in our trespasses and sin. And that this is interpreted by...

47:47

Okay, now, I would think that by this time in his life, that Bill Craig has had to do enough interaction with reformed theologians, who he may not respect, and philosophers, who

48:04

I would hope he would, to recognize what we really believe about the will of man.

48:12

That man has a will. That that will is bent and deformed.

48:19

That that will is enslaved to sin. That man loves his sin and hates holiness, loves the darkness, hates the light, makes specific personal choices to rebel against God, et cetera, et cetera.

48:40

That's a strong biblical anthropology, and I don't think that William Lane Craig has a strong biblical anthropology.

48:46

That's the whole problem. We're going to see that in the debate with Paul Helm. But you would think at this point in time there at least wouldn't be canards.

48:56

There wouldn't be the puppet stuff, and there wouldn't be the man -doesn't -have -a -will stuff.

49:04

That's just Bush League stuff. That's minor league stuff. That's not for people who have actually interacted and read meaningful material, right?

49:14

Reform people to mean that we are utterly comatose, that we have no will or ability to respond whatsoever.

49:24

And I think that that is reading things into the text that isn't there. Yeah, it's also reading things into Reformed theology that isn't there either, because the inability to respond comes from what?

49:41

Our slavery to sin. Our love of self.

49:51

So it's not the idea of comatose. It's the idea of slavery to sin.

49:59

Now, just because the Bible talks about hearts of stone becoming hearts of flesh, and talks about valleys of dry bones as pictures of the sovereign work of God in the

50:15

New Covenant, you can blame the

50:20

Bible for utilizing those analogies if you want, but their meaning is fairly clear. Because they're never isolated.

50:28

It's never said that, oh, you're just a stone and there's nothing you can do.

50:35

There's activity on man's part. That's why I like the illustration that I used in The Potter's Freedom, in opposition to the illustration that Norm Geisler used about the boys who go swimming in the old farmer's swimming hole.

50:53

And they're drowning, and the farmer only throws one life ring in to save one. He could have saved all of them, but he didn't, blah, blah, blah.

51:00

I said, that's not a biblical analogy. The analogy would be if a king returns to his castle, and the people that he had put in charge of taking care of the castle are burning it down, they're destroying it, they're killing and murdering one another, and the king's son goes in to save a certain people.

51:24

And to save them, he has to give his life to do so. And even at that point, to try to save them, they are resisting his every effort.

51:33

That's what grace is all about. And that's much more of an accurate presentation of what our deadness actually is.

51:42

It's a deadness to life, but a love of death. Isn't that why when God withdraws his hand of restraint upon society, what does that society do?

51:51

It becomes absolutely enamored with what? Death. Death, that's what's happening to us.

51:58

We murder our unborn children, we're introducing euthanasia to children in Belgium, and all the rest of this stuff, it's heading in our direction because we become fascinated with death.

52:08

Because our father is who? The one who brings death, Satan. So, seems to be a rather biblical perspective.

52:18

The idea of being dead in trespasses and sins means that there is no spiritual life in us.

52:24

We are under the condemnation and wrath of God. We are destined for hell.

52:31

We are not saved. But it doesn't mean that we're like cadavers.

52:37

We are still persons who have mental, cognitive faculties that are functioning.

52:44

Which, of course, we believe. But it is not by your mental, cognitive faculties that you come to know the

52:53

Gospel, is it? And can choose to respond or resist God's grace. Doesn't the

52:58

Bible say that no one seeks the Lord? Yes, and that's the necessity of prevenient grace. You can always get past, there's no one who seeks

53:08

God, except for prevenient grace. Okay, we don't find this prevenient grace in the

53:14

Bible anywhere, but exactly how does this work then? This prevenient grace comes and it makes everybody seek

53:22

God? Or just gives them the ability to seek God? We're never told because it's just, it is the scotch tape of synergism.

53:36

Because you can't hold this system together biblically. So you gotta have stuff you can stuff in the holes.

53:42

It's sort of like back when I used to make models when I was a kid, I wasn't patient enough to make models. So I would not allow the glue to dry.

53:51

So I had to put scotch tape on to hold it together because I wanted to play with the thing and it would just fall apart.

53:57

So I had to tape it. It looked horrible, it looked terrible. But so does synergism for that matter.

54:05

Remember I said the natural man doesn't seek the things of the Spirit of God. Apart from the prevenient grace of God, no one would come to him.

54:11

I remember that quote. It's a textual variant. So you've got to have, as your first step,

54:18

God taking the initiative, convicting and drawing people to himself. But the fact that people are dead in trespasses and sins doesn't mean that they're no longer rational individuals endowed with libertarian freedom.

54:32

Ah, there we go! That they're no longer rational individuals endowed with libertarian freedom.

54:38

We won't even allow the possibility for what Reformed people talk about when they talk about compatibilism and creaturely freedom.

54:46

A freedom that is actually grounded in God's eternal decree to judge people based upon their acting upon their desires.

54:56

No, no, no, no, no. We don't go there. Who can respond to God's grace? That's reading things into the text that just isn't there.

55:03

Remember, it's reading things into the text. Prevenient grace. It seems to me that what

55:09

Paul is saying, as we've seen, is that you have the ability to have a response of faith to the preaching of the word and that it's up to you, then, whether or not you will respond.

55:21

Okay, one more follow -up. The last thing I would say is that R .C. says, man has free will, but God's is freer. But God what?

55:27

God's is freer. I think the actual phrase, if I recall, chosen by God having read it many years ago is,

55:38

God is free, I am free, God is more free than I am. When my freedom runs into God's freedom, I lose. That's pretty close,

55:45

I think, to what it is. But that's just the way I've remembered it. Yeah, I don't know what that means.

55:51

I mean, that's a... Well, it means we can't trust God. God always trumps us. So His will, the high view of the sovereignty of God, should always be in our view.

55:59

Now, if by saying God's will is freer, that means that God negates man's free will, that He obliterates it in the process of salvation.

56:07

That's exactly what I'm disagreeing with, that He doesn't treat us as though we were puppets, and He pulls the strings, and that is what makes us then respond.

56:18

As I say, I don't think that can make sense of the passages about God's will that everyone be saved.

56:25

So, if he's wrong about 1 Timothy 2, 4, 2 Peter 3, 9, Matthew 23, 37, and I've never heard him even offer a counter -exegesis to those texts, then he's admitting, actually, my entire theology is pretty washed up.

56:40

I don't have anything else to... Because he has to keep defaulting back to that. He's defaulting back, well, there's no decree of election because these verses say that God wants to save everybody.

56:52

Now, of course, he has actuated a world in his Molinism where he can't do that.

56:58

So, here God wants to do something that William Lane Craig's own theology says

57:04

God can never do. Here is a God who's going to be eternally frustrated. He wants to do something he cannot do.

57:12

He looked. I don't know how many billions of years he took to look and look and look and look, but he could not find any way to do what he really wanted to do, and that was to save everybody.

57:25

Okay, wow. All right, tell you what. I haven't even gotten into the unbelievable program we're going to do that right after we take a break, but I figured the nicest way to take a break would be to throw the graphic up for two minutes and 30 seconds and let

57:41

Grey Level take us through while I drink some water and get ready for another hour. So, let's press on right after this.

59:49

How you figure out titles to songs and things like that, but they decided to call that one

01:00:20

Scottish Morning. There's a second one that will be headed our direction eventually as well.

01:00:25

It may end up being a closer or something like that. I don't know, but it was great meeting with Grey Level up in Canada, and I'm just very, very thankful they did that.

01:00:36

And, of course, we're going to be back Hey, I'm not the kind of guy that just changes stuff. I mean, we had used the same theme music for I don't know how long.

01:00:48

Oh, yeah, this was all caused by Rich. He's the one that decided that, you know,

01:00:54

I've been reading all this stuff on the internet about record companies and stuff, and I think... So, we had to.

01:01:01

It wasn't anything against the music we had. It's just the guy behind the glass over there just decided that we had to change everything.

01:01:13

And, you know, this is what we did. Am I on here? Yeah, I thought so. Yeah, well, I don't know.

01:01:18

Now, for what, 10 years? We continue on with... For 10 years, you were like, when are we going to update this and when are we going to update that?

01:01:28

Well, commercials, yeah. I'd go ahead and update something. I mean, we've got commercials on there.

01:01:34

People go, who's that lady on that commercial?

01:01:40

And she's probably like 20 years older than she was when she did that commercial now. I mean, it's just... Okay, that's not the same thing.

01:01:46

I was perfectly happy with, you know, what? I'm not even going to touch that. Okay, that's probably a good idea.

01:01:53

That's probably a good idea. Because we have work to do here. I've got work to do. All right.

01:02:01

Yes, indeed. And we have a studio audience here too. We had somebody in channel say, I'm supposed to say that our studio audience is made up of a jerk, but I'm not going to say that because I would make that person in the channel just way too happy, and we don't want to do that because...

01:02:18

Anyway. All right. Yes, I was surprised when I heard that William Lane Craig and Paul Helm were going to be discussing

01:02:26

Calvinism and Molinism. But honestly,

01:02:32

I'm glad the conversation took place. I appreciate the conversation.

01:02:39

But I also think that it raised more questions than it answered.

01:02:45

And I believe that there is definitely room for a very valuable interaction on the subject of Calvinism and Molinism.

01:02:56

And given that Dr. Craig is extremely experienced in doing debates,

01:03:04

I would think it would only be fair for him to engage individuals who likewise are experienced in doing debates.

01:03:12

There is a particular mindset and set of skills required to doing a debate.

01:03:21

You need to be able to be focused. You need to be able to multitask. Take fast notes.

01:03:28

Think on your feet. And so I think it would be a great opportunity.

01:03:34

And I'm looking forward to the opportunity sometime in the future to engage these particular subjects.

01:03:41

But till then, all we can do is play what was said and respond there too.

01:03:46

And that does give me more time. There is no question about that. We can be a little bit more thorough, but that's okay.

01:03:54

That's what we will be doing for the rest of this hour as we respond to that. So let's get into the very beginning.

01:04:02

William Lane Craig was asked. Oh, I need to slow this down or it's going to sound really weird. William Lane Craig was asked to define

01:04:10

Molinism. And he gave a fine definition. Bill, coming back to you, Molinism.

01:04:15

Now, this may be a term that many people are not familiar with. Would you like to explain what it is and how you came to arrive at the decision that you are a

01:04:23

Molinist? Yes, Molinism derives its name from Luis de Molina, who was a 16th century

01:04:31

Jesuit counter -reformer. And unfortunately, Molina thought that the central point of the

01:04:37

Protestant Reformation was the denial of human libertarian freedom in favor of God's being the all -determining reality.

01:04:46

Why is that unfortunate? That happened to be true. All I've got to do is read the first written debate of the

01:04:56

Reformation. And what was the first written debate of the Reformation? This is something you all should know. I think more people in this audience know the answer to that question than almost anybody.

01:05:06

Everybody in the other rooms goes, Luther and Erasmus and Rogers as well. That's right.

01:05:12

But if you just read that, it might give you an indication of how central this was to the

01:05:19

Reformation and Reformed theology. So why is it unfortunate that that's what

01:05:24

Molina thought? Molina was right. And so Molinism was his way of fighting the

01:05:32

Reformation. Let's just be clear about that. That's exactly what this is all about.

01:05:39

And so what Molina was constrained to do was to offer an alternative to Luther and Calvin that would affirm the same sort of sovereign, divine control that Paul spoke of a moment ago, but without denying libertarian freedom.

01:05:54

Paul as in Paul Helm, not Paul the Apostle. I didn't include his discussion of Reformation.

01:06:02

And the view that Molina enunciated came to be called Molinism after his name.

01:06:08

It eventually entered into Protestant theology through Jacob Arminius. And there is a kind of bastardized

01:06:14

Molinism that goes under the name Arminianism today, though it usually is somewhat different from Molinism.

01:06:20

Now, really? Hmm. I really wonder if Arminius would have accepted that particular description, because obviously there are lots of Arminians who are not

01:06:36

Molinists in any shape or form. So I find his historical description somewhat questionable at that particular point in time.

01:06:47

You wouldn't describe yourself as an Arminian in that sense? Well, I would in the proper sense, but these names or labels can be very misleading, and therefore it's very important that we define what we mean when we call ourselves a

01:07:00

Calvinist or a Molinist or an Arminian. Now, before you lay out the Molinist view, I'm sure you'd affirm lots of other aspects of what those

01:07:07

Calvinist reformers were doing. In fact, as Paul spoke a moment ago, I thought, I believe everything he just said, which would make me a

01:07:14

Calvinist. The Molinist has this very, very strong sense of divine sovereignty and meticulous providence.

01:07:22

Now, okay, it hasn't really been defined yet, but let's make sure we all understand what's going on here, because I think sometimes it can be very confusing.

01:07:33

I think there is such a massive difference between what a

01:07:38

Reformed person understands as divine providence and sovereignty and what a

01:07:46

Molinist believes is divine providence and sovereignty, that to say that I resonate with that,

01:07:55

I'm sorry, I thoroughly disagree. Because the sovereignty and providence that I believe in is of God's absolute freedom to glorify himself in the way he chooses to do so.

01:08:17

The idea that God is primarily examining possible worlds based upon middle knowledge, a knowledge of what free creatures would do in given circumstances, and coming up with the best possible world to actuate based upon the cards he has been dealt by middle knowledge, by this amazingly obscure source of information that somehow, apart from God's decree to create mankind, can limit for God what those men will or will not do based upon this middle knowledge.

01:09:16

And whoever that card dealer is that deals these cards to God, that's the God we should be worshiping, but we don't know anything about him, or it, or whatever.

01:09:25

But to call that divine providence and sovereignty in the same way that Paul Helm is talking about?

01:09:31

Divine sovereignty and providence? No, no, no, no, no. There's no resonance there at all. It's all dissonance.

01:09:38

There's no resonating there. We're talking about something completely different. Completely different.

01:09:46

I mean, God's kingly freedom is not the same thing as God going,

01:09:53

I think this is the best world of all these worlds are presented to me by something that's outside of my control.

01:10:04

That's not what we're talking about when we talk about divine providence and kingly freedom in any way.

01:10:09

Molina said not a leaf falls from the tree, but that it does so either by God's will or permission.

01:10:15

And if he were living today, I think he would say the tiniest motion of a subatomic particle cannot occur but without God's direct will or permission.

01:10:22

So this is a very strong view of divine sovereignty and control. But it's divine sovereignty and control only of the created order.

01:10:32

Everything else, which includes the central act of his own self -glorification, which is in the incarnation and in the salvation of a specific people in Jesus Christ, is not a part of his control.

01:10:46

Outside of his sitting back and going, okay, I've narrowed it down to these ten possible worlds, and these are the ten best, not because I chose them to be the best, not because I'm accomplishing what

01:11:02

I want to accomplish, but because these are the worlds that give me the best opportunity of getting the closest to what my true desires actually are.

01:11:11

Now, later on, Craig's going to admit, the idea of—well,

01:11:17

I think it might be in the next section, so I'll hold off on that because it'll come up. You recently contributed to a book on four views of divine providence and divine sovereignty, and there are other views out there.

01:11:28

We're not representing everything that's in the public sphere at the moment. For instance, there's been a lot of debate over open theism.

01:11:34

Right, and I think Paul and I would be united in rejecting open theism. But why?

01:11:40

But why? Again, why would you be united in rejecting open theism? The reasons for rejecting open theism are not the same for a

01:11:51

Molinist as they are for a Calvinist. The fundamental foundational biblical argumentation that would be used against open theism by a

01:12:00

Calvinist is not the same as a Molinist would use. And that, again,

01:12:05

I think is sort of important. Again, it's another debate, perhaps for another time, but today— Yes, another time.

01:12:11

In fact, we're working on one right now. On that subject, unbelievable. It just hasn't happened yet.

01:12:17

We're trying. We're trying. Pray that it'll happen. We're looking at specifically the distinctions between Calvinism and Molinism.

01:12:23

So, Bill, as simply as you can, for the likes of me, as much as anyone else, can you explain how

01:12:29

Molinism, as it were, reconciles human free will and God's foreknowledge, his divine—

01:12:35

Yes. The key to understanding Molinism is Molina's doctrine of what he called middle knowledge.

01:12:40

This is God's knowledge of everything that would happen under various circumstances.

01:12:48

And he called it middle knowledge because it's in between, so to speak, God's natural knowledge, which is his knowledge of everything that could happen, and his free knowledge, which is his knowledge of everything that will happen.

01:13:02

Now, I would—maybe that's just a simplified way of doing it for the sake of a radio audience, something like that.

01:13:15

Natural and free refers to the natural knowledge God has of himself. It is his own exhaustive self -knowledge.

01:13:23

And then the free knowledge is knowledge of what God decrees to do. So when God decrees to create, then he has exhaustive knowledge of what he's going to create, and it is not only of right now, but also of for all of time.

01:13:42

And so that's an interesting way of putting the natural and free distinction, but I'm not sure that it really exhausts the categories of—

01:13:50

It's almost like he's expressing it in such a way that makes middle knowledge sound more natural. You see, middle knowledge was not something the theologians had ever thought up before.

01:13:59

This is a novum. It's funny, the same people who will go, Well, you know, from the beginning of the

01:14:04

Church, it's been this view. Folks who are molders have to go, Yeah, nobody came up with this for the—

01:14:09

Yeah, it was 17th century. You know, that kind of a thing.

01:14:15

So in between everything that could happen and everything that will happen is everything that would happen under different circumstances.

01:14:23

And so the doctrine of middle knowledge says that God knows what you would have freely done if you had been in the

01:14:30

Apostle Peter's shoes. Obviously, I have to bring this up a number of times, the primary problem with this is called the grounding issue, the grounding objection.

01:14:42

How does God know this? And I think Dr. Helm brought it out fairly well in this conversation, that that is the real—that's the

01:14:55

Molinist's real problem, is how does God know this?

01:15:01

For me, the fatal flaw of Molinism is that, well,

01:15:12

Rich and I have been working together for a long time now. Long time now.

01:15:19

And we keep peace in the ministry by having my office on this end of the building and he has his on that end of the building.

01:15:25

And so we actually communicate more in chat channel and text message and stuff like that than almost any other way. But he can predict pretty well how

01:15:37

I'm going to respond to certain things because we've known each other for a long time.

01:15:44

But there are times that I surprise him. You did not think that I would do the interview with the

01:15:55

King James guy. You just figured—you weren't even going to pass that on to me. You weren't even going to tell me that.

01:16:01

And I'm like, sure, why not? So Rich's middle knowledge of me is fallible.

01:16:09

Why? Because—well, you might say that's because he doesn't know you as well as God knows me.

01:16:16

Or might the actual reason for that being that I'm a human being and sometimes, you know, if it had been a different day, if I had just had a nasty conversation with the

01:16:29

King James -only -ist on Twitter and then I found out about this thing, maybe

01:16:35

I would have said, yeah, no kidding. Put that one in file 13 or notes from nuts or whatever else.

01:16:43

But the fact is that what Mullenism is saying, A, I object to the idea that given certain circumstances,

01:16:52

I would always act in the same way. Because I know that's not the case. I know there have been times

01:16:58

I've been out on my bike and I'm coming up to a corner and there's two different routes

01:17:03

I can take. And they're just pretty much the same, you know.

01:17:09

I haven't planned it out in my mind. And it's like, uh, and a different day, the other way.

01:17:19

Exact same conditions. So this—and this is one of the main objections of open theists to Mullenism is that while Mullenism pretends to be protecting the free will of man, it actually destroys what it pretends to be protecting.

01:17:38

Because it's saying, in this given circumstance, this person will always do this.

01:17:45

That means that whoever or whatever it is out there that determined my nature as a created being, because it can't be from God because this is before the decree to create.

01:17:56

So the origin of what makes me me isn't from God. It's from something else out there.

01:18:04

Don't know what it is, but it's the card dealer. Okay, he's putting out the cards. And the card that has my name on it says

01:18:11

I'm going to do X, Y, and Z. So I don't have the freedom to be otherwise. So so much for free will.

01:18:19

This other thing, this other force, we'll call it the force. How about that? The force determines how

01:18:28

I'm going to behave. And of course that brings my primary objection, which you already can tell, is that means we should be worshipping the force, not

01:18:35

God. If God can only deal with the cards that are dealt to him, that's William Lane Craig's own language.

01:18:41

He didn't use it in this, but we've played it before. It's on his website. He's got a deal with the cards.

01:18:47

He's been dealt. Well, the dealer needs to be the one we worship. Because if your

01:18:54

God can only do what the dealer allows him to do by the cards that have been dealt, then your

01:19:00

God is inferior to whatever this other source is. Force, whatever you want to call it.

01:19:07

So there you go. And when people hear it that way, they're like,

01:19:15

That's really interesting, but I thought you said he was a Christian. Because that's exactly right. That's why nobody read the

01:19:21

Bible until a Jesuit who was trying to find a way to oppose the Protestant Reformation came up with this idea.

01:19:29

And to be honest with you, the Christians who believe this kind of stuff, it's because they spend too much time reading philosophy and not enough time reading the

01:19:37

Bible. I'll just be perfectly honest with you. That's just how it works. And you just wonder where it comes from.

01:19:43

But anyway. He knows whether you would have denied Christ three times or whether you would have been faithful or what.

01:19:50

And so the key to Molina's Doctrine of Providence is that by means of his middle knowledge, God knows what free agents would freely do in any set of freedom -permitting circumstances that God might put them in.

01:20:02

So by creating those circumstances and putting the agents in them, God then, so to speak, takes hands off and he lets the agent freely choose how he wants.

01:20:12

But... Now think about this. This is, again, here's somebody who has zero grounds to be talking about puppets.

01:20:21

Okay? Because he's telling us God has absolute knowledge.

01:20:27

Well, hasn't given us, you know, hasn't really explained the grounding issue. But God has absolute knowledge of what you will do in given circumstances.

01:20:35

And so he's the puppet master that works all the... Okay, let's say it's not a puppet.

01:20:42

He has... It's the maze. And he gets to just push buttons as to, you know, walls move and...

01:20:48

And he wants to get you to that point. So... And he wants you to go by here and touch this person.

01:20:56

And that somehow is God's providence. But even God's providence is limited by the cards he's dealt.

01:21:06

The content of middle knowledge doesn't come from God, doesn't come from his decree. It's not a part of his natural knowledge.

01:21:15

Because that's all of himself. It's not a part of his free knowledge because that's the result of his decree.

01:21:21

It's in between. So its ground is lost. But that's what tells him what he can and cannot do.

01:21:27

And that's why there's only a certain number of worlds that he can actuate to get as close as possible to what he really desires.

01:21:36

Now you understand why Paul Helm's saying this is really complicated and unnecessarily so from a biblical perspective, you know?

01:21:44

Yeah. He knows how that agent would choose if in those circumstances... How they will use their free will. Well, more than how he will use it.

01:21:50

Remember that? That's free knowledge. It's how he would use it if he were in those circumstances.

01:21:56

And so then by creating the circumstances and putting the agent in it, God's free knowledge falls out automatically.

01:22:01

Then he knows how he will act. Okay. And control human history. And that free knowledge then does not...

01:22:07

The decree is not really free for God. Because the decree can only do what the middle knowledge allows him to do.

01:22:18

That's what's so devastating about this. And why I find it so horrifically objectionable.

01:22:26

And unbiblical. And yet, he's going to say this is becoming very popular. It's the center.

01:22:32

It's everyone's... This particular group of apologists love to do the majority of scholars' argument even in this situation.

01:22:45

Now, how does this then apply to, for instance, the issue of salvation? How does

01:22:50

God then organize the world with this doctrine of middle knowledge in mind? For Molina, divine election to salvation is simply that aspect of divine providence that relates to salvation.

01:23:03

And so what he would say is that the circumstances in which God puts a person include various gifts of divine grace, various solicitations of the

01:23:13

Holy Spirit. And God knows how you would respond, for example, to the gospel if you were born and raised under such and such circumstances or you were to hear the gospel preached in such and such a way.

01:23:26

And so by putting... Now remember, we're talking about Molina here. From my perspective, he didn't have the gospel.

01:23:34

I mean, oh, genetic fallacy. It still could be true even if there was a Roman Catholic who thought it up. But it's a theology.

01:23:42

And part and parcel of his understanding were the sacraments and transubstantiation and the priesthood and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

01:23:50

But that's old history, right? ...people in various circumstances, God can elect certain persons to salvation without abridging their free will.

01:24:01

Okay. And so in that instance then, do you believe God has ordered the world in such a way that the maximum number of people who would believe and accept his salvation will do so?

01:24:12

This is interesting. This is interesting because that's his view, but he recognizes that wasn't

01:24:17

Molina's view. And listen to how he identifies his own view here. That's not part of Molina's doctrine,

01:24:23

Justin. Molina said that God is free to choose whatever sort of world he wants, with whomever to be saved.

01:24:30

Again, it's a very strong view of sovereignty. My own inclination is to think that God does want as many people to be saved as possible, and therefore he would try to create people in circumstances which would be conducive to the greatest number being saved and the least number being lost, consistent with human freedom.

01:24:51

But that's an idiosyncrasy of my own view. That's not Molina's view. An idiosyncrasy of my own view.

01:25:00

Wow. There are times, there are times, and I try to tell you, that I'm just simply giving you my own view.

01:25:14

There are times people call in, we let the call get through, and I'm addressing a topic that really

01:25:23

I've not done a whole lot of study on, so I'm just, I let you know. I'm just an elder in the church, and I'm answering this question along those lines.

01:25:33

But when we're talking about being one of the best known proponents of a system, that's how he was described at the beginning.

01:25:41

That's how Justin described him. He is one of the primary people pushing this, and that's an idiosyncrasy of his own view?

01:25:49

And we're talking here about something that's going to determine, it's going to become the interpretive lens through which you look at all of scripture.

01:26:01

It just bothers me. It bothers me a lot. It bothers me a lot. Well, it's fascinating, and it is a bit difficult to get your head around.

01:26:09

It is, if you like, a little bit more, you have to think that through, those concepts. Perhaps explaining why it isn't, in a sense, as widely accessed by the general

01:26:18

Christian population, because it's, I mean, do you feel that it is becoming a more mainstream view, that it's gaining acceptance among?

01:26:24

I think that it's definitely got momentum on its side. When you look at the debate over divine providence, it's very interesting that the

01:26:31

Calvinists now, some of them, I mean, are talking about Molinistic Calvinism.

01:26:37

Some of the Armenians are talking about open theism that affirms God's middle knowledge of counterfactuals of freedom.

01:26:43

So the extremes are being sucked, I think, toward the center of gravity in the middle, which is Molinism. And Dean Zimmerman, who is a prominent

01:26:50

Christian philosopher, recently said that of the plethora of views available, on divine providence,

01:26:56

Molinism probably has the largest percentage of Christian philosophers who would support it.

01:27:03

Well, there you go. And we know that Christian philosophers define everything, and therefore we just need to embrace

01:27:10

Molinism. You know, I have no way of even interacting with the percentage of people, but I do have one thing to say.

01:27:19

If you're a Calvinist, you have no reason to be playing with Molinism. None.

01:27:25

What is lacking that the idea of God doing the best he can with the cards he's been dealt could give you?

01:27:35

Really? What's there? I can't even begin to imagine, but we press on.

01:27:42

Paul, okay, you're very familiar with the Molinist view. Why has it not convinced you?

01:27:49

For a number of reasons. One is that I think it's an unnecessary theory.

01:27:55

What is done by God's natural knowledge and his free knowledge, what those terms cover, covers all that William Craig wants to apply to middle knowledge.

01:28:07

So it's unnecessarily complicated, but that's for theological reasons.

01:28:13

Now, Dr. Helm will, at the end of the debate, get to the grounding objection.

01:28:19

He will eventually get to it. But this didn't write at the start.

01:28:27

In Calvinism, there is a stronger view of sin and the way in which it binds the will, such that God's grace can not only be offered to men and women, it has to be imparted to them for these men and women to become reborn.

01:28:42

And it has to be effective as well. And to become liberated from their sin. What Molinism does is to postulate, in common with the multitude of other views available, postulates a very strong sense of human freedom.

01:28:56

And God must respect that sense of human freedom in the way that Bill's been describing. But one question is, do they have that freedom?

01:29:03

And if they do have that freedom, in the strong sense, how can God know it in advance? He's going to ask the same question

01:29:10

I am, and that is, if you say God knows, then man can do nothing other. So how do you say he's free?

01:29:17

The whole definition of libertarian freedom is the ability to do A or non -A in any given situation, but if by middle knowledge he knows exactly what you're going to do, and God puts you in that situation, then how is

01:29:31

God not accountable for what he knows you're going to do when he puts you in that situation? It's really such a very shallow thing to say, oh, but he didn't actually do it.

01:29:43

What does that actually... The whole idea of the origin of this knowledge and how it can be infallible, because if it's not infallible, then

01:29:54

God cannot conceive of worlds that he's not decreed to make.

01:30:01

You see what I mean? The middle knowledge has to be infallible so he can adjust the controls, so to speak, of the created circumstances so as to see the interaction of the human beings that he chooses to place into this particular world.

01:30:26

So evidently, God can choose which people to put into any given world.

01:30:35

So evidently, some of the worlds he would have examined had fewer people. Some of the worlds had more people.

01:30:42

And so what he's got to do, and I've actually heard William Lane Craig describe

01:30:48

God's capacity in this way as being what makes him so glorious, is that he has this huge mind where he can think through all these things and he can go, all right, now in this particular world, if I take this group of people out and I put this group of people in and I adjust these circumstances, then

01:31:07

I get this outcome. And if I take this one out and put this one in and I change this little thing and I change the temperature by two degrees here and I change the wind direction by two right there,

01:31:17

I mean, hey, it sounds like a fractal to me. Ooh, cool, let's do fractal art.

01:31:23

But that's what God's glory is, is doing all this stuff. How are any of those people actually free given that what they will do is already known to God, not because of a foreknowledge in time, because there's no decree to create yet, so there's nothing he can know at that point, but because God has a knowledge.

01:31:49

Where it comes from, it's not internal. Where it comes from, we don't know. What determines me or you as creatures and what we will and will not do,

01:32:00

I mean, I will do stuff now. And you've got to remember, this is not just a general vague thing.

01:32:07

This is very specific, because if you know me, I'll use myself as an illustration. I did something two years ago that if my dearly departed mom had been around, she would have left.

01:32:24

That would have been it for her if she had seen me doing it. I grew up absolutely terrified of heights.

01:32:34

Now, I still don't like it past about the third rung of a ladder.

01:32:40

If I can fall off of it, I don't like it at all. Flying, no problem. Flying, no problem.

01:32:48

But I remember we moved out here. We went out to, I forget which lake it was.

01:32:53

It was along Apache Trail. And there were some pretty decent cliffs.

01:32:59

It was a dirt road. And I was on the floorboard of the car. When we went to Washington, D .C.,

01:33:07

we went up the Washington Monument. I got out of the elevator and plastered my back against the inside wall, even though there were just little, you know how little the observatory windows are in the

01:33:19

Washington Monument? They're just slits. They're not very big. But the first time

01:33:24

I went up, second time I actually got close enough to sort of do this number, but then I was just, and not that long ago,

01:33:30

I got the opportunity to go up Statue of Liberty. I can only go so far.

01:33:36

Stairs and stuff like that, especially if I can see through the stairs, oh man, that is no fun. That is,

01:33:41

I can't handle it. Well, so if you know me, if that's part of God's middle knowledge of me, then that could impact where I could and could not go, what

01:33:52

I could and could not do. When I hiked the Grand Canyon right after I graduated from college,

01:33:59

North Rim, South Rim, if you know on Bright Angel, I think it is, the bridge that goes across the

01:34:09

Colorado is see -through. And the reason I got through it okay was

01:34:15

I did it at 2 a .m. in the morning. It was pitch black. I couldn't see. All I had was my flashlight.

01:34:20

I held it low enough that all I could see was the surface of the bridge. I couldn't see the water roaring past. I knew it was there.

01:34:27

I was still uncomfortable, but I was able to do it. Well, the point is, two years ago, I ride the triple bypass ride in Colorado.

01:34:37

And I see a storm coming up on me. And so I'm next to I -70 on a bike path that is no more than, what, maybe three and a half, four feet wide.

01:34:51

And then it just goes whoosh. And I am flying down this bike path on a bike with tires that are that wide at 32 miles per hour.

01:35:03

And I did it. Now, I could not have done that only 15 years earlier.

01:35:10

No way. Could never have done it. But as I've aged, I've changed. So middle knowledge, interestingly enough, has to also include my development as a person over time.

01:35:23

But my development, as we all know, is very much related to what my experience has been.

01:35:31

But my experience is based upon what situations God will put me in, which is supposed to come after middle knowledge.

01:35:39

You seeing a problem here? Yeah, so am I. So am I. I mean, again, in a philosophy class, this might fly.

01:35:47

Out here in the real world, not really. No, it doesn't really get there. Bill seems to think that, well,

01:35:54

God knows it in advance in the sense that he's got a sort of movie of it. Okay. And reality will run in accordance exactly with the movie that he's got, as it were, in his head.

01:36:04

But if these people are free, and free in the strong sense that Bill indicates, then how can

01:36:09

God know that they will act in these circumstances? Do you believe that, in some sense,

01:36:15

Molinism collapses into a form of Calvinism? Well, I think it collapses into a form of Arminianism. Arminianism is the view that God's foreknowledge is compatible with this strong sense of human freedom.

01:36:26

And Bill's view is that, with, of course, the Molinist twist to it. But it boils down to a kind of Arminianism.

01:36:35

Because if creatures are truly free, as far as you're concerned, that means God cannot know what they will choose.

01:36:42

Well, free in Bill's sense, we've got different senses of freedom at work here, right?

01:36:47

A Calvinist will affirm that human beings are frequently free. Okay, so what kind of freedom do you affirm?

01:36:53

The sort of freedom that you've got as you're speaking to me now, responding to remarks that I've made, responding to the situation that we're in, doing so in an uncoerced way.

01:37:01

These are, as it were, cases of freedom for the Calvinists, typically.

01:37:07

Of course, people can be coerced. But with the strange view of freedom that people have exactly the same, that they have wills such that in exactly the same situation they're in now, they could have, as it were, chosen differently in precisely that situation.

01:37:21

This, the Calvinist thinks, is an unacceptably strong, or unbiblically strong view of freedom. And you want one ought not to, as it were, allow one's theology to orb around this view of freedom.

01:37:32

Okay, I don't normally need to interrupt Dr. Helm because, obviously, we're on the same side.

01:37:38

And he's raising many of the same objections and responding to Justin's interactions from the

01:37:46

Reform perspective. Does that cohere with the way you understand the way a Calvinist might view freedom, Bill? Yes, I think that Paul has correctly delineated the differences.

01:37:55

One major difference would be with regard to your doctrine of grace. For the Calvinist, grace is irresistible.

01:38:01

For the Molinist, grace is not irresistible. It becomes efficacious only when it meets with an affirmative response from the human agent.

01:38:10

Which is, again, the issue of the Reformation. You need to understand that.

01:38:18

To embrace this perspective is to place yourself, historically, against the heart of the

01:38:25

Protestant Reformation, against the heart of Sola Fide, against the heart of Sola Gratia.

01:38:31

You just need to understand that. This system can never, even those, and I don't know why they're doing it, but even those quote -unquote

01:38:38

Calvinists that are flirting with this stuff need to understand what the history is, where it came from, and I just don't see how this all fits together from a

01:38:51

Reformed perspective at all. Another difference would be the notion of freedom. I do think that a person in identical circumstances could choose one way or another, and I think that is biblical.

01:39:04

You know the verse in Scripture when it says that in any situation in which we are tempted,

01:39:11

God will provide a way of escape so that we will be able to endure it. Now what that means is that in any situation in which a person succumbs to temptation and gives in, it was possible for him to take the way of escape and to endure it.

01:39:26

So I think that teaches that in those circumstances, sin, temptation, or falling to temptation isn't inevitable, that that person could have taken the way of escape.

01:39:35

So I think that this doctrine of freedom is consistent biblically. Now, you take a text that is specifically telling us that we will be judged for acting upon our desires, and that if we desire to follow

01:39:53

Christ, he will provide us with a way of doing so, and extrapolate that out to a statement that actually says there is no divine decree, and it's up to you to determine the course of history by what you do.

01:40:12

And I just go, you know, there are such clear, compelling, beautiful texts that talk about God's sovereignty over time and his sovereignty over the affairs of man.

01:40:28

You've got Psalm 33. What's going to happen is what God intends, not what man intends, all this kind of stuff.

01:40:37

Direct revelation in Isaiah 40 about God's interaction with time as a creator and all this stuff.

01:40:44

And what do you do? You go to a text in Paul where he is specifically talking about as a believer, you have the promise that if you want to follow

01:40:58

Christ, you will always be able to do so. You will never be put in a position where you have to do what is ungodly.

01:41:06

This is meant to be an encouragement to us. It has nothing to do with trying to say there is no divine decree.

01:41:14

And yet, that's what it turns into. And that's why exegesis must come before love of philosophy.

01:41:23

And I know, well, you don't have to do exegesis. You've got to know about the theory of language. All of that kind of rhetoric falls apart when

01:41:32

I go, excuse me, but when God said to Adam, don't eat of that tree, Adam didn't say, now, is that a reference theory of epistemology that you're using in regards to that tree?

01:41:46

Because tree could actually represent a generic type of concept of tree?

01:41:53

And am I supposed to make a direct relationship between the word tree and that particular physical object, which

01:42:00

I don't even know really exists? That's not what happened, okay? And so when

01:42:07

I hear you philosophy guys playing your games there,

01:42:14

I just want to hit you upside the head with a Bible and go, that's not what Adam did.

01:42:19

When God said, don't eat of that tree, Adam said, yes, sir, lord, and master. And Adam probably would have been a far greater philosopher than you could ever be, because he did not have a sin -benighted mind.

01:42:34

But whenever you say, oh, well, philosophy has to come first, because you've always got all these theories of knowledge, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, it's...

01:42:42

Now, Paul's criticism here, though, is that you described it as being like a movie playing out, I think was the terminology you used.

01:42:48

Yes, my worry at this point is that if God knows what would happen in these circumstances, where Jones had the freedom we've just been talking about, why isn't

01:42:59

Jones free to actually exercise that freedom when it comes to pass? Well, isn't it just what

01:43:04

I said a moment ago, that I think in identical circumstances, a person has the ability to choose

01:43:10

A or not A? How? How? If middle knowledge says that person will do

01:43:16

X in given circumstances, how can he do not X? How can that be?

01:43:23

Isn't that what middle knowledge is all about? Well, here's how they explain it.

01:43:29

Well, this is a subjunctive statement. It's what he would do, not what he will do.

01:43:37

Now, if you're sitting there going, that's not overly satisfying, because it doesn't seem to have much meaning. Yeah, again, this is why it flies in philosophy classrooms and not so much out in the real world.

01:43:48

I don't know any Molinists who actually live in light of a

01:43:53

Molinistic concept of what's going on in the world, but anyway. It seems to me that that's what Scripture affirms, and I don't see any reason to think that that's not true.

01:44:02

That makes us responsible for sin, because we freely choose sin. So given that, it doesn't seem to me that Molinism is deterministic.

01:44:11

It's at the heart of this view. Molinism is not deterministic. So God brings into existence certain worlds that he knows what the end is going to be, because he's only put into it the people who will interact in such a way, given the circumstances, that he himself brings into existence by his sovereign power.

01:44:38

But it's not deterministic. By his middle knowledge,

01:44:49

God knows how people would freely choose in these circumstances, and he doesn't make them choose that way, and the circumstances are not deterministic.

01:44:57

They're freedom -permitting. He just knows how they would choose. But how can he know them if in the actual circumstances the people have this very strong view of freedom to choose alternatively in a given set of circumstances?

01:45:10

Why can't they, as it were, go off in the other direction? Why couldn't they go off script in that sense? Well, they could. So there's a world in which they do.

01:45:19

And you have a problem, I think. Bill has a problem at this point, just as Arminians have a problem with divine foreknowledge and human freedom.

01:45:26

Exactly right. The Arminian just ignores it and turns it into God passively taking in knowledge.

01:45:35

But Molinism is not a meaningful escape from having to deal with the reality of God's foreknowledge in any way, shape, or form.

01:45:44

He can say, well, God just does, and we'd have to accept his word for it. God just does, but there's a mystery there.

01:45:50

Well, if I might address that issue, how does God know how free agents would act in any circumstances?

01:45:56

I think it's because there are these subjunctive hypothetical propositions which are true or false.

01:46:04

You'll have to explain that a bit. Subjunctive hypothetical propositions. Then statements in the subjunctive mood, grammatically.

01:46:12

Like, if I were rich, I would buy a Mercedes. No, I may not be rich, and so I don't buy one.

01:46:19

But, I'm sorry, this is not a meaningful answer. Again, it might fly in the philosophy classroom, but not here.

01:46:28

If I were rich, I would buy a Mercedes. But if you're truly free, and you're on your way to the

01:46:37

Mercedes dealership, and a BMW goes zipping by you, and you go, oh, cool! If you're truly free, you can hang a left and go to the

01:46:45

BMW dealership, and therefore violate the middle knowledge, the subjunctive statement that was supposedly true.

01:46:55

So, if the subjunctive statement, if I were rich, I would buy a Mercedes, is true, then that's all you could buy.

01:47:02

You couldn't buy the BMW. So you're not free, right? What, where's that wrong?

01:47:12

It may work out there again in the theoretical realm, but we're talking about making it work in the real world.

01:47:20

Because it's being suggested to us that we need to use this as the lens through which we actually read the word of God.

01:47:30

And that makes it really, really, really important. Well, believe it or not, we're actually going to wrap up just a couple minutes early.

01:47:38

For some of you, this seems like it's been really, really long. Almost went two hours today, but I realized a few moments ago, not via middle knowledge, but simply because my brain started working, that I needed to make a phone call before five o 'clock this evening.

01:47:52

And so I need to make that phone call before five o 'clock. So we're going to wrap up the program today.

01:47:58

And obviously, we have much more to do in the program as far as revisiting all of this.

01:48:05

And we will do so the next time on... I'm not sure if it'll be the next time on The Dividing Line. We'll see what happens.