Doctrines of Grace in St. Charles Part 2

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December 15, 2009

My cameras (both of them) simply refused to go back one hour and 3 minutes or so on this trip, so yes, it stops right in the middle of something, but hey, that's why you should be there live! :-)

Response to Sheikh Awal (Part 3)

00:01: Well, good evening.
00:19: Thank you for being here. Let's go ahead and get started so we can get as much time in as we can this evening.
00:26: I was asking if there were any championship football games going on or something this evening, but I think that's all tomorrow, isn't it?
00:33: When Florida plays Alabama, is that right?
00:40: Yeah. Alright, so hopefully we're not running into any of that this evening. How many of you were here last evening?
00:49: That's the vast majority of you, and that means I ran all the rest off, so we're down.
00:56: That's normally how it works. I say, well, ain't coming back for a second shot of that, and that's sort of how it works.
01:02: Last evening, we had addressed and started to address a particular subject, so I wanted to take the first part of our time to address this, and then go into some other video clips and some other texts, but before we do that, let's ask the
01:19: Lord to bless our time today. Indeed, our gracious Heavenly Father, we ask that you would be with us this evening by your spirit, that you would help us to understand your word, that you would be honorably glorified in the hand of your truth, and that your people would be edified in what takes place this evening, we pray in Christ's name, amen.
01:39: One of the most popular mechanisms utilized today to get around the biblical teaching on the subject of God's divine decree and his eternal predestination is a philosophical method developed after the time of the
02:02: Reformation called Middle Knowledge. It came out of the Jesuit Counter -Reformation, which a lot of people are not really overly familiar with.
02:13: We know a lot about the Reformation. We say, ah, here was the Reformation, and everything's been well since then, but the reality is, once the
02:21: Reformation began, Rome did not just sit around silently, but beginning with the
02:28: Council of Trent in 1546 through 1564, the founding of the Jesuit order under Ignatius Loyola, there was a
02:36: Catholic Counter -Reformation that retook many nations for Rome that had become, for a period of time,
02:45: Protestant. And part of this process was attempting to find a way around the teaching of the
02:54: Reformers in regards to the sovereignty of God, for the obvious reason that the Roman Catholic sacramental system is completely dependent upon the concept of the free will of man to make any sense at all.
03:07: And so, out of the conflicts between Jesuits and the
03:12: Dominicans, and there are conflicts between the various groups, the Augustinians and Dominicans and so on and so forth, and also out of the conflict with the
03:22: Protestant groups, a man by the name of Molina, Luide Molina, developed the concept of Middle Knowledge.
03:32: Now, he did not derive it from exegeting the text of scripture, he did not derive it from being forced to these conclusions by biblical teachings, he came to these conclusions because he had an end that he wanted to arrive at, and this was the mechanism that he used.
03:53: Now, this perspective has been pretty much abandoned by Roman Catholics, but it has been picked up by Protestants, and especially by Arminians, as a philosophical method of getting around the concept of the sovereignty of God.
04:09: The most popular presenter, the one that you'd be encountering more than anyone else for this concept of Middle Knowledge, is a man by the name of William Lane Craig.
04:18: Dr. Craig is a professor at Talbot Theological Seminary, the seminary of Biola in Los Angeles.
04:28: He is a very well -known speaker, he does a lot of debates, just a few, earlier this year he debated
04:34: Christopher Hitchens at Biola, and so he's a rather well -known individual, and he presents this concept of Middle Knowledge as being really the way of getting the
04:46: Calvinists and the Arminians together, and it also very much influences how he responds to issues concerning, for example, the existence of evil.
04:56: So, I will be focusing specifically on his presentation, so that if you run into somebody, the likelihood is this is an individual who has been reading
05:05: William Lane Craig, and he is the one through whom this concept is primarily coming today.
05:12: Now, historically, this first section, a little bit different than last evening, I am a professor in a seminary, so I can act professorial.
05:23: It'll require you to sort of focus in a little bit, won't be a whole lot of jokes or anything like that, but I think it's worthwhile your understanding this and seeing the lengths to which people will go.
05:33: We're going to see in the two main clips to view after this, the lengths that people go to biblically, here's the lengths that people go to philosophically, to avoid the conclusions of the exegesis of the text of Scripture.
05:49: Now, Orthodox theologians had spoken of two kinds of knowledge in God up to the time of Molina.
05:56: They spoke of a natural knowledge, where God knows himself perfectly, he knows everything that he could possibly do in the future.
06:07: So, God has perfect knowledge of himself, and that's natural knowledge. It would be unnatural for God to be ignorant of any aspect of his own being, for example.
06:16: And then, God knows anything he could do. He knows he could create a universe populated by nothing but purple unicorns,
06:25: I suppose. God would have all that knowledge of whatever kind of universe he would like to create or not create, or however he wants to, whatever he wants to do and however he wants to do it,
06:37: God would have knowledge of those things. That's called natural knowledge. Then, once he makes a decree to create, he would have free knowledge of everything about the resultant universe.
06:53: So, in other words, once God creates, then there's nothing about the universe that he creates that he doesn't know, since he, of course, is the creator of all things therein.
07:02: And so, these are the two kinds of knowledge. The natural knowledge God has of himself and anything he could do, and then the free knowledge following his decree to create, which we would just simply call omniscience.
07:13: It's knowledge of everything that has to do with this particular creation. Now, Melina posited a middle knowledge between those two kinds of knowledge, between God's natural knowledge and his free knowledge.
07:27: That's why it's called middle knowledge. A lot of people, why would you call something middle knowledge? Well, theologians are not really good at coming up with really neat terms to describe things.
07:34: So, it's sandwiched in between the two. It partakes of elements of both natural and free knowledge.
07:41: Middle knowledge has to do with knowing what free creatures not could do, but would do, in given conditions.
07:51: And from this point on, I'm going to be quoting directly from Dr. Craig's book,
07:56: The Only Wise God. That way I figure I can't be misrepresenting anybody if I'm just quoting directly from what the individual has to say.
08:04: So, here's what he says in The Only Wise God. MK, middle knowledge, asserts that God knows what every possible creature would do, not just could do, in any possible set of circumstances.
08:21: Now, you've got to get hold of that. Because it's one thing to say, well, after ten years of coming out here to St.
08:31: Charles, Pastor Van knows me well enough to know that I don't mind running by McDonald's to get something to eat, if that's what we need to do time -wise.
08:45: He knows me. After ten years, he knows me. But you see, that's not what middle knowledge is.
08:52: We're not saying that God knows us so well, because he created us, that he knows what we would do.
08:59: No. This is the statement that, theoretically, before there's any decree to create you,
09:06: God would know what any free creature would do, in any situation, perfectly. Alright?
09:14: It's really important you grab hold of that, because you're going to see how that fleshes itself out, in this middle knowledge concept.
09:22: In The Only Wise God, page 130, Dr. Craig says, In this second moment of knowledge,
09:28: God knows, second moment, middle knowledge, In this second moment of knowledge, God knows which of the possible worlds known to him, in the first moment, is natural knowledge, are within his power to create.
09:42: Hence, there are any number of possible worlds, known to God, in the first moment of knowledge, which he cannot create, because free creatures would not cooperate.
09:52: His middle knowledge serves, so to speak, to delimit the range of possible worlds, to those he could create, given the free choice which creatures would make in them.
10:05: So, the idea is, that God has this special kind of knowledge, to where he can infallibly know what any free creature would do.
10:16: So, if he has certain goals, and he knows what free creatures would do, there are certain worlds he cannot create, because free creatures, there's no combination of free creatures, that would do what
10:28: God wants to do. And so, there are all sorts of worlds he couldn't create, because in those particular worlds, given those particular circumstances, free creatures would not cooperate to accomplish what
10:39: God wants to accomplish in creation. So, it's not God's will that determines the form of those worlds, it's the free actions of the creatures themselves.
10:52: And so, what you've got here is a God, who is so vast in his mind, that he can run the numbers on billions and billions and billions and billions of different possible scenarios.
11:07: I believe, Brother Ken, you're a chess player, like I am, have we talked about chess before?
11:13: Yes, yes. When I was 13 years old, I was playing in the
11:20: United States Chess Federation tournaments, played in the adult group, with people in their 60s and 70s, and it was a formative part of my life.
11:32: And so, Brother Ken would understand, and the rest of you who are chess players would understand, that the really good
11:39: Grand Masters, the reason they are that good, is that they have the ability to look at a chess board, and to follow out the possible lines, not just one or two moves, but ten moves down the road.
11:54: And as you think about that, if you start going down, then there's this many branches, and then this many branches, and this many branches, and the farther you go down, you're talking about a huge number of possible variations, and they have the ability in their minds, at an amazing speed, to be able to examine all these variations from each different position.
12:12: That's what makes them a Grand Master, and me not a Grand Master. So what we're talking about is a
12:19: God who can do that, not with a little chess board, but with billions and billions of free creatures.
12:28: Wow, he's smart. He's a supercomputer. He's better than Big Blue. But that's what
12:35: God's doing, is he's running all these possible scenarios, and picking the one, then, that accomplishes what he wants to pick.
12:44: But it's all dependent upon what Moses says. His middle knowledge serves, so to speak, to delimit the range of possible worlds to those he could create, given what?
12:55: His will? No. Given the free choice which creatures would make in them.
13:02: Keep that in mind. Indeed, God's decision to create a world is based on his middle knowledge, not the pleasure of his will, and consists in his electing to become actual one of the possible worlds known to him in the second moment, that is, by his middle knowledge.
13:24: So what God is doing, as the creator, is he runs all the possibilities, and then he picks the best one that is determined by the free choices of the creatures that will be in that particular situation.
13:42: So, if he wants to make sure that such and such a person does such and such a thing, he has to create a world in which such and such a person is put in the exact circumstances he knows exactly what they will do.
13:53: And they cannot do anything other than that. Oh, but they can do something other than that if the circumstances were different, but since middle knowledge tells them exactly what they would do, then they really can't do anything different than that, but they can do something different than that because they're free.
14:06: And if they did something different than that, then his middle knowledge would be different, and so he wouldn't have created that world. Yeah, okay.
14:15: Hey, it's supposed to be just right there in the text of scripture, as we'll see. Now, given middle knowledge, the apparent contradiction between God's sovereignty, which seems to crush human freedom, and human freedom, which seems to break
14:27: God's sovereignty, is resolved. In his infinite intelligence, God is able to plan a world in which his designs are achieved by creatures acting freely, praise be to God.
14:39: Only wise God, page 135. Note that God cannot create any world that would glorify him most.
14:47: He is limited to the worlds that result from the free actions of uncreated creatures.
14:55: Because remember, this is before his decree to create. This is all theoretical. This is before he actually says,
15:03: I will create person X. It comes before that. Accordingly, the very act of selecting a world to be created is a sort of predestination.
15:17: Given that God's middle knowledge is correct, God, in creating certain persons who will freely accept his grace, thereby ensures that they will be saved.
15:28: As for the unsaved, the only reason they are not predestined is that they freely reject God's grace.
15:34: Now, what is the overriding factor in all of this? The man. The actions of that man.
15:43: But, you see, what you've done with this middle knowledge is you've found a way, allegedly, to protect his free will, even though God has absolute knowledge of exactly what's going to happen in time when he creates.
15:56: But instead of the fabric of time flowing forth from the decree of God, all to his glory, what you have is a
16:05: God who's been examining billions and billions and billions and billions of possible chess moves.
16:11: And he's found the one way, the one world that he can actuate, given his middle knowledge, where he can accomplish what he wants to accomplish.
16:24: But you're probably thinking with me for just a moment. Okay, wait a minute. Okay, I hear what you're saying, but could
16:34: God have created a better world? A world with less evil?
16:41: Could God have created a world in which everyone's saved? Hmm. Well, let's find out.
16:52: Dr. Craig says, God gives sufficient grace to all people everywhere to be saved.
17:00: And he desires that they accept his grace and be saved. In fact, many of the unsaved may actually receive greater divine assistance in drawing than do the saved.
17:10: That they are lost is their own responsibility. But didn't he actuate a world in which he knew, given the circumstances that he himself actuated, they would never be saved?
17:27: It seems to me a rather shallow thing to say, ah, but they could have been, when you have to add at the end of the line, in a different world.
17:40: How does that actually accomplish something? We've already had to sacrifice God's good pleasure.
17:47: His own will is the source of all these things. And now you're saying, ah, but we have man being free, except that God knows exactly what he's going to do, and he created the world in which
17:57: God knows he will do exactly what God wants him to do. And therefore
18:02: God chose a world in which all the people who end up in hell ended up in hell. How does that accomplish something?
18:09: And yet there are many people, oh, on seminary campuses around the world.
18:20: In fact, I understand that just earlier this year, Dr. Craig was traveling in Turkey and Israel.
18:28: And everywhere he went, he always made sure to do a presentation on this subject. To help people to understand how they don't really need to be cowboys.
18:36: Because you've got this concept of middle knowledge. Middle knowledge can thus provide an illuminating account, not only of God's foreknowledge, but also of his providence and predestination.
18:46: Does God then, listen to this, does God then possess middle knowledge? It would be difficult to prove in any direct way that he does.
18:55: For the biblical passages are not unequivocal. Nevertheless, the doctrine is so fruitful in illuminating divine creations, providence and predestination, that it can be presumed, unless there are insoluble objections to it.
19:11: Now there is a philosopher speaking, not a theologian. It's so fruitful, you see, that we can presume it's true, even though we have to admit we really did not derive it from scripture.
19:25: And I at least am thankful that Dr. Craig admits that the few biblical passages that middle knowledge proponents point to, really in no way substantiate this belief.
19:40: This is a philosophical system. Now it is in answering specific questions to middle knowledge that the real heart of this matter comes out.
19:48: Notice, Dr. Craig in answering questions makes the following statements.
19:55: There are some possible persons who would not freely receive
20:01: Christ under any circumstances. Only if God coerced them would they believe in Christ, hence
20:09: God cannot be blamed for creating a world in which such people are lost. So he says, there are some possible persons who would not freely receive
20:20: Christ under any circumstances at all. So in other words, as we're going to see in the next slide,
20:28: God could not save all people. There just was no possible world out there where God could save everybody.
20:36: God simply had to create a world where people went to hell. He was limited in that way. There was no other possible way of doing it.
20:43: That's what the middle knowledge advocate is saying. But when you look at that, hopefully as you look at that you go, wait a minute, there are some possible persons who would not freely receive
20:55: Christ under any circumstances. Isn't that all men at all times? Outside of the regenerating work of the
21:03: Spirit of God, isn't that everybody everywhere? Of course it is.
21:10: That's the problem. This kind of philosophy is just that.
21:15: It's a philosophy, it's not theology. It's a philosophy that trumps theology. It's a philosophy that ignores the biblical teaching of the absolute deadness of man in sin, the fact that he is a rebel sinner against God, who will always suppress the knowledge of God, unless that radical thing called regeneration takes place.
21:35: Taking out the heart of stone, giving a heart of flesh. That's the biblical example. And it's so sad.
21:41: I will try to remember tomorrow morning to play for you a clip of Norman Geisler, in essence, mocking that biblical concept of God taking out a heart of stone and giving us a heart of flesh.
21:57: Talking about rewiring us as if we were marionettes or puppets to be rewired in a particular way.
22:03: What an amazing thing. So, the result of this is there is no possible world in which all persons would freely receive
22:14: Christ. God could not have created a world with free creatures that all would receive
22:22: Christ. That's the assertion he's making. That's an amazing thing. The Calvinist said, were it
22:28: God's will, he could have saved everyone had he chosen to do so.
22:33: Why doesn't he choose to do so? May I suggest to you that there is a fundamental and clear response to that.
22:40: I believe that the answer to that is to be found not only in Ephesians 1, which we'll look at at a later point. The fact that he has accomplished his own good will.
22:50: But I believe, and this has helped a lot of people, I didn't come up with this, believe me. This is something that many people have said many times.
22:56: Jonathan Edwards, I think, expressed it very, very clearly. That God created a universe in which all of his attributes are revealed to his creatures.
23:10: All of his attributes. You see, think about it. God can save no one.
23:18: God can save everyone. Or God can save some.
23:25: Those are the only three logical possibilities. I mean, once he's decided to create,
23:31: I suppose you could say there's a fourth, but he's decided not to create anybody in the first place. In which of those three possibilities, however, does
23:39: God have any choice at all? And in which of those three possibilities are the range of God's attributes revealed?
23:48: First of all, he has no choice if he saves no one. He has no choice if he saves everyone. Only in the middle does he have any choice whatsoever.
23:55: Does he have any freedom to act? And it's amazing how many people don't really care about God's freedom. All they care about is the creature's freedom.
24:03: But secondly, if God is holy, just, merciful, loving, if he saves everyone, how do you see his holiness, his wrath, his justice?
24:22: If he saves no one, how do you see his mercy and his love and his grace?
24:28: There is only one scenario in which you see God's wrath, God's justice, as well as his mercy and his love.
24:37: And in fact, in that middle scenario where he saves a particular people, as the scriptures say, you see all of those attributes in greater depth than you would in either other situation.
24:51: What I mean by that is when you think of the cross, for example, if when you see the cross, all you see is the love of God, you are only seeing with one eye.
25:05: If you do not see the wrath of God in the cross, you are not seeing the cross.
25:10: What do you think Jesus was praying about when he said, Father, take this cup from me? It wasn't the experience of death, it wasn't the beating, it was becoming sin on our behalf.
25:22: And so if you don't see the wrath of God in the cross, then you're seeing the love of God is diminished tremendously.
25:29: Because it's against that tremendous background of his holiness and his justice and his wrath against sin that the depth of that love is then seen.
25:38: And so I suggest that the reason that God has created the universe that he's created is so that there might be the demonstration of the full width and breadth of his divine attributes demonstrated to that universe.
26:04: So, obviously we have a very fundamental difference here. Dr. Craig says there is no possible world in which all persons would freely receive
26:11: Christ. That means, well, God was limited. He was limited by what his middle knowledge revealed to him about what free creatures would do.
26:21: God holds that a world in which some persons freely reject Christ, but the number of those who freely receive him is maximized, is preferable to a world in which a few people receive
26:33: Christ and none are lost. You hear that? You see, these are the, in essence, do we have any computer programmers here?
26:45: Any computer programmers that will admit it? Okay, I mean, most of the time people are like, I don't know.
26:54: Because they don't want to be known as, oh, you're one of those people? Every time my computer crashes I think of you.
27:00: Only if you work at Microsoft. This is a Mac. Anyway, I'm just waiting for that to sink in. No Mac people here?
27:07: Thank you. No, no, not just this. Put that up there and be proud, brother. Come on now. All right. There we go.
27:15: Boy, I've obviously lost all of you by this point. A little bit hard to follow this stuff, but doesn't
27:23: God strike you as a programmer here? And in essence, we're looking at the formulas that he has programmed into his examination of all these possible worlds to come up with, well, just, it's the best he can do.
27:42: In essence, this universe is just the best God could do. This is the best he could do?
27:49: We have seen, Dr. Craig says, that it is possible that God wants to maximize the number of the saved.
27:55: Well, isn't that nice? That's good. I'm glad God wants to maximize the number of the saved.
28:00: He can't do that of himself, though, because that's all up to free creatures. So what he's doing is, one of the criteria as he's examining all these possible worlds is, you run the numbers and what's the maximum number at the end?
28:14: See? He wants heaven to be as full as possible.
28:20: Yet, as a loving God, he wants to minimize the number of the lost. He wants hell to be as empty as possible.
28:29: His goal, then, is to achieve an optimal balance, to create no more lost than is necessary to actuate a certain number of the saved.
28:41: And so we're crunching the numbers. Used to be you would think of the computers on the
28:49: Enterprise. Out comes this little thing. Now it doesn't really work that way, but that's what
28:55: I see it as. But it is possible that the balance in the actual world, this world we're in right now, is such an optimal balance.
29:04: It is possible, and this is the language of philosophy again, it is possible that in order to create the number of persons in our world who will be saved,
29:15: God had to create the number of persons who will be lost. It is possible that the terrible price of filling heaven is the filling of hell as well.
29:27: And that in any other possible world, the balance between saved and lost would have been worse or the same.
29:36: It's all numbers. The actual world contains an optimal balance,
29:43: Dr. Craig says, between saved and unsaved, and those who are unsaved would never have received Christ under any circumstances.
29:49: You'll notice in Dr. Craig's philosophical theology, he will often say it's possible that this is the case, it's possible that this is the case.
30:00: And then next, well, we've seen that this is the case. As long as it's possible, then it is the case.
30:07: So the actual world does contain, even though before it was just possible, now the actual world does contain an optimal balance between saved and unsaved, and those who are unsaved would never receive
30:16: Christ under any circumstances. So we can, God gets a pass on this. People end up in hell, never would have been saved anyway.
30:25: There's nothing, God could never have saved those people at all. Do you hear what's being said here? The people who are lost were beyond God's ability to save at all.
30:39: We have seen that the doctrine of divine will and knowledge, while having some biblical support, ought to be accepted mainly because of its great theological advantages.
30:55: Folks, this is very, very, very popular out there. I was on a well -known radio program a number of years ago, and debating these issues.
31:06: It never got on the air, but always during the breaks, there was discussion of middle knowledge as the means of getting around the text that I was presenting in defense of biblical theology.
31:22: Just a few summary of my objections, and we'll go on from there. Middle knowledge is unfounded. It's called the grounding objection.
31:30: There are a lot of reasons, and if you're a philosopher and you want to get into all the in -depth reasons,
31:36: I can point you to the papers and things like that. There's been a series of discussions of this in my blog recently, and links and things like that.
31:44: If you really want to get into the in -depth philosophy, which normally bores me to tears.
31:50: It is unfounded. It assumes humans act consistently in the same circumstances. Upon what basis do you assume that given one set of circumstances, that any free creature will always do the same thing?
32:05: Haven't you ever surprised yourself? I have, and I'm a really predictable guy. I was joking earlier about Van knowing me well enough to know that I don't actually eat at McDonald's every day.
32:20: But I did once. From the middle of my sophomore year, when I got my driver's license.
32:26: Until I graduated from high school. So the middle of sophomore year through my senior year. Six days a week for lunch.
32:34: At a corned cheese plane. Fries and a Coke. Six days out of seven.
32:45: Are there any cardiologists? Predictable as can be, but you know what?
32:54: Even in the midst of all that, there were a couple of times when I said, Supersize that.
33:04: And I think there might have been a few times when I said, Give me a full -weight of fish instead.
33:12: Wild man. Wild man. I know. You know how we were when we were young. That's how
33:19: I was when I was young. But the reality is, what's the basis?
33:26: You see, a lot of the open theists, for example, hate this idea. Because what middle knowledge is saying is, Oh, God's really concerned about free will and stuff.
33:35: So what he does, he creates a world where he micromanages everything that happens in your life as far as external circumstances.
33:41: So he controls you. So he can get exactly out of you when he wants to get out of you. Yet there are a lot of Armenians that go, ah, go ahead.
33:49: That's not what we mean by free will. How can it be free if you can't do anything but that? You see, this proponent is saying,
33:56: Oh, you could do something differently, but then God's free knowledge would change. But the fact of the matter is, he chose this actualized world, and you can't do anything other.
34:07: Or his middle knowledge would change, and then he wouldn't have actualized this world. So it doesn't really accomplish what it's trying to accomplish at all.
34:18: Middle knowledge is contradictory outside of God's creative decree. There is no basis for knowing what a free creature is.
34:25: How in the world can you say that God could have such intimate knowledge of you before he decrees to create you, that he would know exactly what you would do?
34:34: You are you because God made you to be you. It just doesn't make any sense.
34:41: It's a philosophical sophistry. Middle knowledge compromises the very nature of God, as it posits a controlling factor that delimits
34:51: God's choices and capacities, that does not find its origin in God's essence or in God's decree.
34:56: Middle knowledge limits God's choices. The ultimate authority of middle knowledge is the actions of free creatures, foreseen by God by this special power called middle knowledge.
35:08: But he can't create any universe he wants to create. He can't create the universe that glorifies him in the way he desires to be glorified.
35:14: He can just run the numbers and come up with the best that free creatures allow him to have. And of course, you immediately ask the question, wait a minute.
35:23: Could he have created a universe with only 100 ,000 people in a grand total instead of billions and billions?
35:29: Could he have created a universe with tens of hundreds of trillions of free creatures?
35:36: Is the limit as to the number of people based on how much God can figure out? I mean, there is just really, at some points it starts to sound a little bit like this stuff was developed at a
35:47: Star Trek convention. You know, a bunch of guys just sitting around going, well, remember the time travel one where the
35:53: Enterprise did this, you know, the trouble with Tribbles, you know, and it came back from DS9.
35:59: Uh -oh, I just revealed way too much about myself. But anyway, you know, and so you've got all these.
36:04: It starts sounding like it's a space alien type thing. It really does. When you start going, well, you could have done it this way, but then if you do that, then
36:14: I'll change the timeline and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Makes for great science fiction, but it's not good theology at all.
36:23: It is unbiblical in many ways. It is not derived from exegesis. And Dr. Craig admits that.
36:30: It is not a positive teaching of scripture. It ignores the biblical teaching of man's depravity. It contradicts what the
36:37: Bible says about God's nature, and it contradicts what the Bible says about man's nature. And it compromises the
36:42: Bible's teaching of the source of God's decree and its end. I think I'll go ahead and look at this, because this would be a good time to look at this text.
36:53: Ephesians chapter 1, one of the big texts where we talk about this issue.
37:00: Normally you think of Romans 8 and 9. Ephesians chapter 1. John chapter 6, 8, 10, 17, et cetera, and other passages.
37:11: But Ephesians 1 is certainly one of the key texts. And if I recall correctly, the very first time
37:17: I came out here, I got picked up at the airport, and we went to Taco Bell.
37:25: And over at Taco—who laughed at that? And over at Taco Bell, we had a discussion of this text, and one of the more popular ways of getting around this, and that is saying
37:36: Ephesians 1 isn't talking about election to salvation of individuals.
37:44: This is corporate election. This is Christ as the chosen one, and as long as you are in him, then you receive those blessings.
37:55: But it's not anything about God choosing individuals for salvation.
38:01: I think that was part of our very first discussion that we had. But as we look at Ephesians chapter 1,
38:07: I would just ask you to consider what the text itself says. This letter was probably—was meant to be a circular letter.
38:15: That is, a letter that was circulated amongst the churches. Ephesus was the main church, but remember in Colossians 4 .16,
38:23: there's this cryptic reference to the letter coming from Laodicea. We don't have a Laodicean epistle.
38:30: It's probably Ephesians. And I think one of the clearest evidences of this is Paul spent how many years in Ephesus?
38:37: Three. Three years in Ephesus. There's not a single personal reference in this letter.
38:44: You would think that he would send personal greetings to all the elders. He had chosen that he doesn't do so. So this is probably a letter that's meant to be passed around.
38:54: That might explain its very high and lofty language. But he begins this letter by saying,
39:02: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us.
39:07: Now, I realize that in our modern day, grammar and language has been de -emphasized in school.
39:18: I'm not going to bore especially the younger of you with the back when I was in school stories. But there is such a thing as a verb.
39:27: There is such a thing as the subject of the verb. And there is such a thing as the object of the verb.
39:37: And when you look at the phrase, Who has blessed us? God is the one who's doing something.
39:44: What is he doing? He's blessing. And who is he blessing? He's blessing us.
39:51: Straightforward language, right? Okay. Let's keep that in mind because it sort of helps us as we move through the text.
39:59: What has he blessed us with? Every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.
40:05: Now, over and over and over again. 10 times in 13 verses. You're going to have in Christ, in him, or in the blood of him.
40:12: There is no question. The Ephesians chapter 1 absolutely teaches that God's work of salvation is limited.
40:22: Limited to being in Christ. What's that relevant to? A denial of election?
40:28: No. It's relevant to a denial of pluralism. It's relevant to a denial of those people who would say,
40:34: Oh, well, Jesus is one way. No. You want spiritual blessings in the heavenly places?
40:42: They're only found in Christ and nowhere else. Just as he chose us in him.
40:52: Now, here's where the corporate view tries to come in, but it simply can't.
40:59: I can't tell you how many times I've heard high -powered theologians on radio programs and television programs say, well, you see,
41:07: Christ is the chosen one. And we are chosen in him.
41:13: So it's your choice to either be in him or outside of him. If you're in him, then you have what he gives, eternal life, so on and so forth.
41:22: But that's, whether that's true or not, that's not what this text is talking about. Just as he, subject, chose, verb, us, direct object.
41:34: It doesn't say just as he chose him. Whether that's true or not is another issue.
41:42: There is one place where Christ is spoken of as the chosen one, but not here. Just as he chose, the direct object is us.
41:51: It's personal. He chose us in him.
41:58: So all that says is, yes, God's choice is personal. But it is never exercised outside of Christ.
42:09: It's exclusive, right? No, that's not popular today. Everybody wants an inclusive
42:14: God, where we get to make up our own ways to God and all the rest of that stuff. But that's not the
42:20: Christian message. He chose us in him when? Before the foundation of the world.
42:29: Now, you and I, we're not making personal decisions before the foundation of the world. And it is a shallow attempt to get around what the text is saying to say,
42:41: Ah, well, God looked down the corridors of time, and he saw what we would do.
42:51: Oh, but doesn't the Bible talk about foreknowledge? Yes, it does. But as we'll see when we look at Romans chapter 8, there's a difference between the noun foreknowledge and the verb foreknowledge.
43:08: And we'll see in Romans chapter 8 that looking down the corridors of time doesn't work.
43:16: That's not what foreknowledge means. Just as he chose us in him, his choice in Christ was before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before him in love.
43:28: Now, it is amazing to me that there are major theologians and Bible teachers who will say,
43:34: Oh, see, this is just that we'd be holy and blameless. All this is saying is that anyone who's in Christ should be holy and blameless.
43:42: That's all it's saying. Has nothing to do with salvation. Really? Nothing to do with salvation.
43:53: That would be sort of like saying that God has chosen a group of guys in New Orleans to win the
44:03: Super Bowl, but that doesn't have anything to do with football. Makes lots of sense, doesn't it?
44:13: But that's what they're saying. Oh, well, God has just predestined that they would be a predestined adoption of sons,
44:21: Romans 8. Has nothing to do with salvation. Is there anyone who is adopted as a son or daughter of God that isn't saved?
44:31: And in fact, the very mechanism by which they enter into that adoption is by being saved?
44:38: Being holy and blameless before him? Doesn't that mean saved?
44:44: It's amazing to me. The lengths to which people will go. I'm going to play you a clip later on. And you're going to sit there going, no.
44:51: Come on. This is torturous to listen to. Yeah. He chose us and him before the foundation of the world that we would be holy and blameless before him.
45:05: Now, we could go over to BibleWorks. This is pretty to look at, easy to read. But we could go over to BibleWorks and look at the original language, and you'll discover that this first section of Ephesians is one big, long sentence.
45:19: Just subclause after subclause after subclause just strung together. And you can sort of tell where your
45:26: Bible translation comes down in trying to simplify things as to how many sentences it divides it up into. For example,
45:32: I've often said the ESV, which has become extremely popular, Crossway has just demonstrated to the world how to advertise a
45:39: Bible. It's a good translation. But I've said since it came out, it's the New American Standard minus semicolons.
45:48: The New American Standard will have longer sentences. The ESV takes out the semicolons, and it's pretty much the same thing other than that.
45:57: And so, for example, it says that we would be holy and blameless before him in love. It could also say that we might be holy and blameless before him, period.
46:04: In love, he predestined us. And you'll find some translations that will do that. Because exactly where to put the commas, remember, in the original manuscripts, there not only was no punctuation, everything was written in capital letters with no space between the words.
46:22: So, it is an editorial issue at that point. I think it's probably good here.
46:28: We would be holy and blameless before him in love. He predestined us, verse 5, He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to himself according to the kind intention of his will, to the praise and the glory of his grace which he freely bestowed on us in the beloved one.
46:50: He did something. It's a verb. It's an active verb. Predestined.
46:57: What did he predestine? Us. The direct adoption, the direct object is us.
47:04: It's a personal direct object. It's not a plan. Well, he predestined a plan.
47:09: If you believe in Jesus, then the plan is if you get in Christ, you can say, that's not what it says. He predestined us to adoption as sons.
47:19: That's salvation. It's salvation seen in the ultimate conclusion, but it's still salvation.
47:29: And what is the basis of his choice? I had it queued up last night.
47:38: I don't have it queued up anymore, but I had Dr. Geisler. And one of the things that really, really, really bothered me about his book,
47:49: Chosen but Free, was that Dr. Geisler seemed to believe that he had the right to redefine all the language that had been used to discuss this for at the very least hundreds of years, if not going all the way back to the days of Augustine and Cleopas.
48:09: And I don't know about you, but I hope I never get to the point where I think I can redefine all the language of a particular debate that's been going on for thousands of years.
48:23: And what he did was he comes up with this moderate Calvinist stuff.
48:30: And if you've read The Potter's Freedom, you know that a moderate Calvinist is called an Arminian. And what he just does is he just redefines each of the five points to negate its substance and say, oh,
48:46: I'm a moderate Calvinist. Well, no, you're not, you're an Arminian. And so total depravity doesn't mean really totally depraved.
48:54: It means mainly free, but you know, you get some problems. But this issue of unconditional election, now what does unconditional election mean?
49:03: It means exactly what we have here. That God's choice is not conditioned on the basis of foreseeing something that we do.
49:15: He doesn't look down the corridors of time and say, oh, this person's going to accept me, this person's going to accept me, so I'm going to choose them before they accept me.
49:23: Unconditional election means it's unconditional. God's choice is absolutely free. So Dr.
49:29: Gangster comes along and says, oh, well, the moderate Calvinist believes that on God's part, well, certainly it's unconditional, it's free grace.
49:42: But on our part, it's conditioned upon our faith. Well, that means you're changing the subject of the discussion and yet wanting to call yourself a moderate
49:56: Calvinist. One of the main concerns I had in writing Potter's Freedom was I thought that would create a tremendous amount of confusion.
50:02: It has, but God be praised, it has also allowed us to create such a strong contrast between the eisegetical presentation of the chosen and free and the exegetical presentation.
50:14: There are even some sitting here this evening that would say that the Potter's Freedom was very important to their embracing of the uniform faith, and that's a tremendous encouragement to me.
50:25: Notice what it says. When people ask why this person and not another, you look at a family.
50:34: You look at two brothers. One embraces Christ, one does not. Similar upbringings, similar temperaments, education, culture, language.
50:50: One embraces Christ, one does not. Why? Man's religions will always center the answer to that question in the men themselves.
51:04: Fundamentally, no matter what you end up doing, you're going to have to, in the final analysis say, the one that chose
51:14: Christ was in some way better than the one who did not.
51:20: In the sense of being more spiritually sensitive, in the sense of just having some better nature that responded to the call of God.
51:36: But fundamentally what you're going to have to say is that in eternity to come, judgment is done, heaven and hell, it's all finished.
51:46: Those surrounding the throne, those in hell, the difference between them will not be a five -letter word called grace.
51:56: Everyone standing around the throne will be able to say that in some way, shape, or form, it had to do with them.
52:04: As to why they are in hell and others are not. Scripture says this choice was made according to the kind intention of his will.
52:17: Now let me say something to, you know, I know that some of my non -reformed friends watch what
52:23: I post on my blog, and this will be on the blog if the camera is still operating. I'm not sure if it still is. Is it running? Good.
52:29: Battery hasn't died. Let me say something to some of my Arminian friends.
52:36: Sometimes I hear some very harsh language used of God's sovereign decree, God's decree of election.
52:42: Sometimes it's very mocking, sometimes it's very offensive. But I would simply like to say to you, this text says the kind intention of his will.
52:53: Whatever you call it, whatever, even if you disagree, I suggest to you it could be very, very dangerous to your soul to mock and deride the activity of God's will when the
53:07: Scripture says that this is according to the kind intention of his will.
53:14: If God saved even one, it would have been enough. It would have been a kind intention.
53:23: It truly would have. But it is according to the kind intention of his will, not my will, not the saved person's will or the lost person's will.
53:35: The deciding factor is the kind intention of his will. God is big enough to make that claim for himself.
53:44: And if your God isn't big enough to do that, well, then you have a problem, because you don't have the biblical God. So we see what the basis is, the kind intention of his will, and then here is the answer to the why question.
53:58: Why? Why create it all? Why go through all of this? To the praise of the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the beloved.
54:15: I don't know if any of you were, my father went to move Bible Institute. And to this day, when he prays, there is a certain cadence, and there are these and thous, because he was raised on the old
54:31: Schofield reference Bible. And beloved are the people of God, aren't they?
54:40: I always thought that was a spell. It's a singular. It's the beloved one.
54:46: This is another reference to being in Christ. Bestowed on us in the beloved one, in Christ.
54:54: So here is the answer to the why question. To the praise, it could literally be rendered as, to the praise of his glorious grace.
55:07: To the praise of his glorious grace. I've talked with Mormons many, many, many times.
55:15: Thousands and thousands of Mormons. Mormon missionaries and people for 18 years, who went up to the
55:22: General Conference of the Mormon Church twice a year. We get to talk with thousands of Mormons. And for even longer than that, out at the
55:29: Mesa Easter pageant in Mesa, Arizona. And some of those conversations stick with you over the years.
55:38: One of them was with a young Mormon elder. I wouldn't call him an elder. But a young Mormon fellow.
55:46: They call him elders. And there was a real haughty spirit in this young man.
55:54: Many of them were that way. But I'll never forget him saying,
56:01: What do you people think you're going to be doing for eternity? Are you just going to be floating around in clouds, praising
56:11: God? And when you know what Mormons believe, and you know that Mormons believe they're going to have their own planet, they're going to have their own kids, they're going to be worshipped by their offspring, etc.,
56:21: etc. And I remember looking at him and saying,
56:26: Young man, if you have such a low view of God, that you could ever think that you could exhaust the praise and honor that's due to him, in your lifetime or in 10 ,000 lifetimes, and you've just demonstrated to me,
56:42: I don't want you, God, and you don't want me. But that's the case. That's the truth.
56:50: Praise of his glorious grace. That's why he did it. He freely graced that to us.
56:58: That's literally what it is. It's the same word just used as a verb. He graced us in Christ.
57:09: But that's why he craved the praise and glorious grace. If you go on Ephesians chapter 1, he's going to talk about redemption, shedding of blood.
57:17: It's all about salvation. It isn't just national blessings like Romans 9, allegedly, or all the rest of that stuff.
57:23: If you just read the text directly, it is plain and it is clear.
57:30: Okay? All right. Let's look at a couple other texts.
57:36: Which one am I going to do first? I'm going to do John 6.
57:42: How's John 6? Oh, weather watcher is unable to connect. You don't have
57:48: Wi -Fi here yet, okay. I get it. Turn to John chapter 6.
57:57: Or don't. Okay. You can look at the... It's up there on the screen. Why should
58:02: I look at it? Well, I'll make it fun, whatever. John chapter 6. I cannot go into the depth
58:09: I normally would like to go into because I need to basically divide this last hour in half and do
58:14: John 6 and Romans 8 all in one hour. That's a lot. And play for you two clips.
58:20: So this will be a little bit faster than I like doing it. But very quickly so you have the context. John chapter 6.
58:27: Longest chapter in the Gospel of John. Feeding the 5 ,000. Lots of people really excited about Jesus.
58:32: Jesus sends them away. They want to try to make him king. He goes off by himself. He walks in the water to the disciples.
58:38: They go over to the side, Capernaum. Next day, people who are all excited about what Jesus did see he's gone.
58:45: These guys are seeking after Jesus. It's specifically used the term seeking after Jesus.
58:51: They get in boats. They row across the lake looking for Jesus. In most modern day churches, people like that would be made deacons immediately.
59:01: Think about it. We can't get people to come to Sunday school on Sunday morning. These people rowed a boat across a lake to find
59:10: Jesus. I mean, we would think these people were spot on. Jesus knows their hearts.
59:19: And so they find him teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum. And Jesus starts talking to them.
59:27: Then they said, Jesus starts talking about the bread from heaven. First thing he does, remember what he's already done.
59:34: He's already done the miracle of feeding of the 5 ,000 loaves and fishes. He says, you're seeking me because you saw a miracle.
59:42: You had your stomach filled. Don't seek after that kind of bread which perishes.
59:48: Seek after the bread that is unto eternal life. Then they said to him,
59:55: Lord, always give us this bread. Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life.
01:00:03: He who comes to me will not hunger. He who believes in me will never thirst. May I just very quickly, because some of you have
01:00:09: Roman Catholic friends and family, as do I. Here is the first reference in the synagogue of Capernaum to eating and drinking.
01:00:20: And what is it clearly about? I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will not hunger.
01:00:26: He who believes in me will never thirst. Coming to him, believing in him, obviously these are spiritual things.
01:00:32: The hungering and the thirsting are spiritual things. To miss that and then jump down to the 50s and go, oh, it's what the priest has turned into the body and blood of Jesus.
01:00:41: Is to completely miss the context of what's being said in person.
01:00:48: May I say something else? He who comes. I didn't remember to get out my uber cool laser to point to these things.
01:00:58: And so I want to show you these things. So I will get out anyways and hope that I have not completely thrashed the battery in the process.
01:01:10: It was in here somewhere. There it is. Ah, that's good.
01:01:23: In this text, the one coming to me, the one believing in me,
01:01:31: These are present tense participles. What does that mean to you?
01:01:38: Real simple. Especially in the gospel of John. True salvation is seen in the continuous action of coming and believing.
01:01:51: A person who has eternal life is a person who is always coming to Christ.
01:01:56: Not one who comes once and there is nothing beyond that. In John 2, in John 8, you have people who believe in Jesus.
01:02:08: Not are believing, believe in Jesus. In John 8, by the end of the chapter, they pick up stones of stone. It's not saving faith.
01:02:16: So what Jesus is talking about is the one coming to me, the one believing in me.
01:02:23: These are present tense. I suggest to you, unless you believe in the sovereign grace of God, this introduces a mission impossible salvation system.
01:02:34: Because unless saving faith is the work of the spirit of God, not a one of us could work up that kind of faith.
01:02:42: I'm awfully glad that salvation is the work of God and not simply of us.
01:02:49: So, but I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe.
01:02:56: It's literally are not believing. You are not believers. These guys had rowed across a lake.
01:03:03: Jesus says, you're not believers. Think about John 6 for just a moment.
01:03:09: Beginning of the chapter, 5 ,000 excited men, not including women and children. Sorry. Sorry, kids.
01:03:20: Lots and lots of people, all excited. What about the end of John chapter 6? Twelve confused disciples, one of whom is the devil.