Road Trip Debate Review, Quick Comments on Pallmann/Hess Review

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00:35

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line, coming to you live once again from the road, as I have been for nearly a month now.

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Lord willing, I will get home on Thursday and looking forward to seeing my wife again and my kids and grandchildren and being at Apologia Church on Sunday and all that neat fun stuff.

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But this will be, I think, the longest I have been out on the road.

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And as I'm looking down through the rest of the year, there's going to be some other pretty lengthy, probably going to be a lengthy trip in mid -September and being at Apologia Church on Sunday and all that neat fun stuff, but as far as distance needed to be covered.

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So that'll be interesting. But anyways, we are on our way home and I have to have the air conditioning on.

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So I brought one pair of regular low socks.

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I didn't bring a... I had to buy this t -shirt at the KOA yesterday in San Antonio.

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All I brought was really warm stuff and once it's really warm, really warm stuff isn't a whole lot of fun.

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So the AC is running and this unit has seen, well, it's not like it's boiling outside, but you sit out in the sun and things warm up.

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So the low I saw was 14 on this trip and this little booger did just fine.

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So I'm thinking back to that first week out and it seems like a really long time ago.

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It really does. But we've had a great time up there in St. Charles and on the stops on the way and then teaching at Grace and Grace Bible Theological Seminary and I need to...

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I'm so far behind in everything now, I need to be doing stuff for the students so they can be turning their assignments in and I got a lot to do and it's hard to do while driving.

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So like today I was trying to listen to the book review of The Potter's Freedom by Will Hess and by evidently the greatest living scholar,

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I'm not even sure what the church ever did without Brother Pullman to enlighten us, but that's certainly the attitude he gives off.

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But it's hard to listen to something like that.

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I'm listening to it on Bluetooth, but then something is said and I'm like, okay,

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I really need to make note of that. And so doing all that by voice while you're driving, a little bit slow, a little bit tricky.

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You can't really give a lot of attention to that. So it sometimes takes a while. Oh boy, that was a mess

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I was talking about. Well, I've only listened to a little bit of it. We'll talk a little bit more about it later on. But in fact,

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I need to bring that notes file up so I can check it out. Yeah, there it is.

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It is nice that that kind of stuff works. Anyway, but of course, aside from what's going on in the world where tyrants are tyranting and granting to themselves emergency powers, if you want a really, really good reason to never have a cashless society, then look at what's happening in Canada right now, where they are fundamentally just trying to take away the property of Canadians that are involved in these protests.

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These are tyrants. People think that tyrants yell and scream like Hitler.

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No, normally tyrants try to look like Justin Trudeau, Macron in France, but they're no less tyrants and history will prove that to be the case.

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And what are we going to do with these tyrants is the question. Tyrants do not tend to allow for free elections.

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Just a warning. Maybe they've already been doing that. Who knows?

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Anyway, so that type of stuff's going on in the world. And maybe we could comment on some of that tomorrow, but I'll be honest with you.

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I feel a little bit disconnected. I, I think there was a football game yesterday.

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Disconnected type situation. Most of what I know is going on is because people are forwarding me stuff.

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And I've seen, for example, the lengthy conversation between Tim Stratton and Rich today on Twitter.

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And I'm sure there's a whole lot more of that out there. I don't go looking for it. But of course,

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Friday night, we had the debate in Houston. And wow, that was interesting on many, many levels.

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One of the really interesting parts after the debate.

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And this has become a regular feature of, of debates.

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And it's a, it's a blessing. It's a little tiring, but it's a blessing is there are a lot of folks that want to get books signed and take pictures.

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And, and even when I was traveling globally in 2019, you know,

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I was, I learned about you because I was watching a Jeff Durbin video, or I was listening to you.

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And that's how I found out about Jeff Durbin, an apology. We seem to be attached at the hip in some fashion in that way.

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Very, very much the same audience. And many, many people are always saying that they either found out about Alphanamagic Ministries through Apologia, they found out about Apologia through Alphanamagic Ministries.

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And, and so it's, it's a blessing. And I think that's, that's a wonderful thing. And to hear what the

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Lord has done, people brought out of various sundry false churches, false religions, whatever.

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And now enjoying the truth and finding good solid churches and things like that.

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So what was, what was interesting is the church set it up to where the reasonable faith folks were in one room at one end of the hallway.

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And I was in another room with Accordance Bible Software folks and lines with the line would form, interestingly enough, right past where the food was.

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And thankfully, I got a few brownie bites on my way in, or I wouldn't have, wouldn't have gotten anything.

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And you just sit there and from the world's perspective, get exposed to every form of COVID ever known for a long, long time, shaking hands and taking pictures.

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And I mean, you literally have to tell the line, okay, if you want to take a picture, you give your phone to the person behind you.

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And when you come up, we'll get that done immediately. And then we can sign a book and answer a question or whatever, because it takes too long.

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Get somebody's attention, hand them a phone, show them, unlock it, show them how to use it, la, la, la, la. So, you know, that's been going on for years now.

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I think Rich will remember the line at G3 after the Trent Horn debate. It was at least 90 minutes, maybe two.

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I don't even remember how long, it was huge. And so we were sort of separated. So once the debate was over,

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I didn't see Dr. Stratton again. But I, as I was leaving,

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I texted Rich and informed him that I did see someone named Sam Shamoon. And when he first walked by,

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I said, man, that guy looks like Sam Shamoon. And then he looked at me and I realized it was Sam Shamoon. And I mentioned that to Rich as I was leaving.

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I sent a text and he said, did he corner you? It's not like, oh, I can't believe he was there. It was obvious that Rich already knew.

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And that's when I found out that prior to the debate, Layton Flowers did a predictions video.

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I've only watched the part where Sam was on. I don't care about Layton Flowers predictions. And here's

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Sam talking about how Layton Flowers was the man that proved to him that Tulip was wrong and all the rest of the stuff.

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And Layton's probably holding the phone out like this and just grinning and all that stuff. And I'm sitting here going,

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OK, so one of the things

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I had queued up and I started listening to some of it today, just heartbreaking, was the

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Albrecht Shamoon versus Turretin Fan and another fellow.

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I'm sorry, gentlemen. Sir, you did a great job. I listened to your opening. I got at least to that part and you did a great job.

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I'm sorry the name's just not clicking right now. I'm sure

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I'll learn more about you in the future because you did a wonderful job. On the perpetual virginity of Mary.

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And so Sam has denied all the relevant portions of the faith in regards to eteriology, authority.

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He denies justification by faith. So he not only abandoned reform theology, thank you,

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Layton, but he abandoned justification by faith. He holds to a sacramental understanding.

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And so I can't help but sitting there, see this video and there's Layton. Yeah, I got about reform theology.

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Probably not even knowing where he is now. And surely didn't say anything to him about it and challenge him about anything like that.

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And I'm like, yeah, he's in a pod, synergist together. Why not?

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Where it goes. So, hey, there you go. So didn't know about that until after the debate was over.

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What comments? I was going to take the time to look back at Tim's Twitter feed.

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It seems like as soon as I agreed to do this, and I'll be honest with you, let me be straight up front.

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I've never enjoyed the topic of Molinism. I consider it a man created philosophical means of denying the fundamental freedom of God to be

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God. I have no respect for it as a as a as a as an expression of Christian theology.

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I never have. And so I had actually been in contact with some brothers in Louisiana who had wanted to put something together on Roman Catholicism.

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Well, the time frame wasn't good for them. So my thought was I was going to go down to Louisiana, then head back home.

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And so I'm looking at where I am after teaching the class, the apologetics class.

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The seminary and. Straight down the road is

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Houston, and I've got the standing invitation from the church there in Houston to engage in debates.

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And one of the debates have been mentioned was with Tim Stratton on Molinism. And so that's when

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I contacted the pastor and said, all right, let's let's do it. It was a stop on a long trip.

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I started working on the opening presentation. I think I opened the keynote file on Tuesday.

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The debate was on Friday to start putting some quotes in, you know, formatting stuff, things you got to do when you put together a keynote thing.

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I had a lot of other things going on, still do. And so it was a tack on at the end of a really long trip, but I hoped it would be useful.

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And my confidence always is that if Molinism is the unbiblical, extra biblical, anti -biblical thing that it is,

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God's people are going to recognize that, you know, maybe over a period of time they might be deceived or something along those lines, but God's people are going to recognize that.

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Let the word speak. And so we get there.

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Tim and I have a nice conversation. Tim is a nice guy.

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I was really disappointed with his opening statement. First of all, it's too fast for anybody to follow, especially on a topic like this.

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I mean, it's very clear that Tim sort of, as soon as he found out he was going to this debate, just disappeared.

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And a group, that was a group effort. There were mock debates.

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And I mean, that was as prepared as Layton Flowers' opening, middle, and closing statements were prepared back in the day.

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Was that 2015, 2016? And so, went way too fast, used all sorts of terminology that most people in the audience are just sitting there going, okay, don't know what that's supposed to have to do with that.

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Today he said in one of his tweets that he hopes that this debate will be analyzed for years to come.

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I don't see any reason for that. Dr. Stratton presents mere

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Molinism, but he does not present Molina's Molinism. And anyone who knows the system knows that no matter how hard I tried,

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I could not get him to meaningfully step forward and make a case for the central defining element of Molinism.

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And that is the existence of little knowledge, and not just a, see what

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Dr. Stratton does, is he does this, well, if there is ever any libertarian will, and what he means by libertarian will is something that was self -generated and created by a creature that is outside of the decree of God.

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That is outside of the free expression of God's creative power.

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See, he uses this Edd thing. You never hear me using that because we don't need to. The Westminster Confession of Faith, the

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London Baptist Confession of Faith, God ordains whatsoever comes to pass in time.

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And it is the expression of that which will result in the final day to the praise of his glorious grace.

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And so what we discovered was they will not step forward and say, here is any evidence, let alone biblical evidence, because there is no biblical evidence of this.

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It is asserted from sources outside. There is nothing in Scripture about middle knowledge.

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Every single example they refer to. Notice, I mentioned David at Kilah.

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He never touched it, and wisely so, because it's painfully obvious that whether you're talking about Capernaum, and they would have done this, any type of subjunctive statement is post -decree and is not indicative of some pre -decree true subjunctive conditionals, which is what you have to prove.

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If you do not prove that is biblical, you have failed utterly to provide a positive case for Wallenism, completely.

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You haven't even gotten to stage one. And so what we learned, and this may be of interest, but it's only interest to Dr.

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Stratton's hobbled version of Wallenism, not the fuller version that Craig presents, where, you know,

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Craig can actually, you know, I've got to give Bill Craig credit here.

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He's willing to go, yeah, my system means this. My system means that we have to think about, is this the best feasible world?

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On what basis? Because there are these true subjunctive conditionals that do not flow from God's will.

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But what Stratton says is, well, that comes from God's being. There's something in God's being that does not flow from his will.

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So middle knowledge is an essential attribute of God. That would mean creation would have to be an essential act of God.

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He could not be God without doing creation because he is defined by knowledge of creatures, specifically human creatures.

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I've not heard Stratton or anybody else try to apply the concept of middle knowledge to anything else, anywhere else.

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Who knows? It's so much a human thing. It's focused upon human creatures.

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But what we learned from all of this, you know, Craig will go ahead and he'll speculate about these things.

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And then when you say something about the Bible, of course they didn't. That's not what this is about.

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This is a system of interpreting things. And it really doesn't have anything to do with exegesis or what the authors thought.

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This is something that we're doing later on type of thing. Okay. And a lot of people caught that in our conversation.

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There were a number of memes that were put out where there was one of me just sort of going, when he said, well, no, of course this isn't what the biblical authors thought.

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This is just a fruitful theological system type thing.

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All right. Because remember when I got the email that said the topic would be, is

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Molinism biblical? I'm sort of like, well, okay, that makes it a whole lot easier for me to decide to do it because that's a fairly straightforward topic that is real obvious.

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So, okay, fine. But again, Stratton's hobbled for Molinism, mere

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Molinism, which if you don't have the defining aspect, it's not mere, it's shadow.

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It's, I don't know, little doggies walking. I'm not sure if you can see those. I imagine you can probably see all that going by.

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Probably right in the middle of the south. Well, he's definitely in an RV park right now. It's not 14 degrees outside because everybody's walking the dogs and doing all this stuff.

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We are in the middle of absolutely nowhere here, by the way. I mean, there isn't a mountain. There isn't a cloud.

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This would be a great place to shoot a movie about, you know, science fiction radiation monsters or something.

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I don't know. There is nothing here. Some of Texas over there had hills and stuff like that, and they are all gone.

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It's just scrub brush and big blue sky. It's all here.

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Anyway, sorry about that. So what we learned, got disrupted there. What we learned is that for Dr.

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Stratton, you prove Molinism by attacking Calvinism. For example, he said in one tweet,

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EDD was the biggest loser. All I had to do to defeat my entire case was to exegete EDD from the text.

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Think about that. Think about what that means from his perspective. No, as a

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Molinist, I don't have to prove Molinism from the Bible. I prove

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Molinism by attacking my straw man version of Calvinism.

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I define it. I will never change my definition. Even when it's challenged, I will continue to use it.

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And I will attack that and go, see, I win because there it is.

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So evidently, and I did mention this briefly in the debate, evidently, you prove

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Molinism by disproving Calvinism, and then that's all that's left.

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I'm sure all the Arminians and Provisionists and Obentheists and all the other people out there are going, what about us?

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What about us? And they're not even in the, but what this does demonstrate that I think is important.

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Remember, Molina developed his system within a context. And in fact, it's interesting.

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I guess I could tie this together with the book, quote unquote, book review that was being done by Hess and Pullman.

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One of the first things that I noted in the book review was that they both said,

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I just started talking about all the gross misrepresentations, haven't shown any yet, but all the gross misrepresentations in my book.

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The book that people have for two decades said, you know, you really went out of your way to accurately represent

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Norm Geisler and stuff like that. So this review, by the way, is just horrific.

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And I've only listened to the first 20 minutes. It's just bad.

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Anyway, but they're laughing. Pullman says he laughed when

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I, at some point, 30 some odd pages into the book, describe

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Molinism as a desperate attempt to get around God's freedom. And that's exactly what it is.

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And they didn't seem to understand, never brought up, didn't seem to recognize what

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I was talking about. The level of historical ignorance on Hess and Pullman's part is stunning.

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And what's stunning is they actually think that they really have it down.

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It's like, and in my experience, folks like that generally don't learn very quickly.

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They resist being corrected. Anyway, what you what you have historically with Molina, there is a context and it's called the

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Counter Reformation. And in the

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Reformation, you have the emphasis upon the freedom of God being the foundation of God's grace rather than the sacramental system of Rome being the mechanism whereby grace is channeled to the individual.

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You see, within the Roman sacramental system, it's vitally important that there be some kind of autonomous libertarian free will so that you can access the sacramental system.

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And so you have the mass, you have the priestly forgiveness and the various rights and things like that.

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Indulgences were big at the time. And so Molina is a

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Jesuit. Jesuits today are ultra leftist liberals. They don't believe anything. Well, they believe in leftist theology, liberation theology and stuff like that.

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But in the 16th century, they are the

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Pope's soldiers. I mean, you read the

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Jesuits at that period of time, and they are absolutely positively. If the

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Pope says it, what appears to our eyes to be white is black, then we have the duty to call it black.

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I mean, they are gung ho. And Molina is one of these people. Ignatius Loyola, who's the one who gave that quote, by the way, commanded his men to find ways to subvert and destroy the gospel, the

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Reformation. And Molina's system is specifically designed to do that.

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And it still functions that way. And that was proven Friday night. What do you mean?

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If a non -Roman Catholic proponent of Molinism can think that Molinism is proved by attacking

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Reformed theology, then Molinism is still what it was when it was first designed.

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That's the only thing it is good for. That's what its designer recognized.

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The central element of this system is this assertion of God's kingly freedom to glorify himself in his creation as he sees fit.

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And Molinism says it's as he is delimited by middle knowledge.

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And no matter what Dr. Stratton or anybody else says, that's what they're saying. And I tried to get him to recognize that by challenging his theodicy.

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But he just wouldn't go there. Because whenever you challenge him on the issue of where those counterfactuals come from, where those true subjunctive conditionals come from, he's, like I said, told some people on Twitter today, well, it's a part of God's being.

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But that's impossible. That's not middle knowledge. It can't be a part of God's being. Well, if God has all knowledge, then he has middle knowledge.

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That's absurd. It is a positive claim that there is something that did not come forth from the will of God that delimits what feasible worlds

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God can make. And all Stratton can do is say, well, God can't do anything that's illogical.

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And therefore, God cannot determine a libertarian free choice.

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And the Bible says God determines choices and they are free choices and God judges.

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And I mean, it's very obvious that this is a philosophical system that is not dealing with the supernatural reality of biblical revelation.

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That's why it doesn't come from biblical revelation. It has to be crammed onto biblical revelation. It's not derived from it. So it was fascinating to me to think back upon the reality that Molina is still doing what

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Molina was told to do hundreds of years before. Just it's not the

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Roman Catholics that are using it anymore, but it is synergists who are using it.

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And Tim calls himself a monarchist or something like that. And then when you push and you listen to his videos, resistible grace, the elect are whom

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God by middle knowledge knows can be put in the situations of accepting him.

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I mean, that's really the issue. That's not reformed.

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It will never be reformed. You can convince anybody, any place of anything you want that will never be reformed.

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Call it what you will. But if the elect are determined by middle knowledge and not by the free choice of God to enter into relationship with rebel sinners, to bring about their regeneration, to give them a heart of flesh, to join them to the sun and to lavish upon them the riches of his grace.

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If that's not where it comes from, if God's freedom is simply the creation of a mechanism and the who that get to benefit from the mechanism is not from history choice, that is not reformed.

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Period. End of discussion. And if you try to make it reform, you're just twisting words and deceiving yourself.

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It's all there is to it. So what was proven in the debate was

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Molinism's primary purpose is to exist as the denial of reformed theology.

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And so if you think that you win the debate by attacking reformed theology rather than giving any kind of positive case from the scripture for the defining aspects of your system, then there you go.

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Obviously, over and over again, he used language of coercion, force.

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That's why he wants to use exhaustive divine determinism rather than any biblical phrase like God's kingly freedom in doing as he pleases amongst the sons of men or anything that would be biblical in that sense.

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He wants to basically say we're talking about the Greek concept of determinism, but we're not.

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That's painfully obvious. Tried. I really wanted to get into.

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I wanted to sit there with an open Bible and get into the text. I could not even get him to make enough positive statements about what his system really is to get there.

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Because he'll say, oh, I believe that. And then you watch a video, you listen to something, you realize, but he means something completely different.

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He doesn't really believe what we're talking about historically. And that is about the same problem with Norman Geisler's stuff.

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Moderate Calvinist, also known as the Arminian. That's what

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Norm was. And it was all a matter of redefining stuff. So anyway, everybody knows that there were things he did in the debate that were, if he wants to call them rookie mistakes, that's fine.

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I'm not sure how they'd be rookie mistakes, given that he's watched so many debates. I'm not sure how you make rookie mistakes.

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But in his rebuttal, he faulted me for not having rebutted him in my opening, which

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I'm not supposed to do in the first place. I can't tell you how many, he didn't talk about this.

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And he didn't talk about that. And he didn't talk about this. As if my opening statement is supposed to be,

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I don't get it. In other words, I don't get an opening statement. I have to rebut his stuff live, no preparation, no presentation, just do it right then and there.

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So there was that. And hope he doesn't mind, but Jason Wallace mentioned that his 13 -year -old daughter was listening as they were driving someplace.

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And when he started doing that, she's like, you're not supposed to rebut his opening in your opening.

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His rebuttal hasn't come yet. And then I'm like, so what did she say when I said the same thing? She was like, that's what

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I'm talking about. So kids could see that that's the kind of rhetorical stuff that you get from people that aren't sure what they're doing.

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That's the first thing. Secondly, look, OK, that cross -examination period, look, if I can sit there and start talking to folks in the audience and showing my

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Jeffrey Rice rebind folks, which I did, someone made a meme out of it, while he's just going on and on and on and on, what can you say?

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I can't buy the idea that he didn't know that you're supposed to ask succinct questions.

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And anybody can say, well, you can set up a question. Yeah, you can set up a question.

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But he wasn't setting up questions. He was arguing his position. He was making assertions that I am going to reject and then demanding yes or no answers to questions that were based upon foundations that obviously

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I reject all the foundations he laid beforehand. And you watch when it was my time to ask questions,

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I gave him a ridiculous amount of time. When he was asking me questions,

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I'd say three words and immediately. So, I mean, it wasn't even close.

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And I think that was intentional. I believe that in the debate preparation, it was decided by the group of people with whom he worked to prepare and to train and have everything ready to go.

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They said cross -examination is the most dangerous because James White is very good at cross -examination.

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And that's not an arrogant statement. That's a fact. I was telling somebody, an attorney,

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I met an attorney, I forget where it was. Was it afterwards or was it earlier? I forget where, it was recently.

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But I've said this many times. I like debating attorneys because I don't know why, but they're not taught how to do cross -examination.

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There was one exception. There was a Roman Catholic guy in Long Island. He was good. He had been trained to do cross -examination.

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But every other attorney I've ever debated, it was just like, would you like to have another softball to hit back to right?

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Whee! And they had no idea how it was supposed to be done.

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Obviously, they were attorneys that didn't do criminal law, trial law, stuff like that.

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You know, they're the paper pushers in the background. But they made the decision that Tim would take as much time as possible so as to get through a cross -examination without being damaged too much.

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And I think that's what took place there. And it was obvious to the audience.

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I had three different people, and they were separated in the lines.

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So it was an idea that was not just a group came over and asked it. I had three different people, might have been four, then after the debate say to me, do you think that was as bad as the

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Steve Tassi debate? Now, if you don't know the Steve Tassi debate, it wasn't a debate.

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I don't even list it as one of my debates. Um, the video is out there.

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Because it happened. It shouldn't have happened, but it did happen. I blame Lane for that happening.

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But that's okay. I still love him. And, um, but I, as soon as anybody said that,

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I said, no, no, no, no, no, no, I said, um, this is a, this is a sharp fellow.

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Um, there, there really wasn't any comparison to the Steve Tassi debate where the individual

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I was debating just wasn't, was not capable of engaging in meaningful dialogue at all.

40:23

No comparison whatsoever. And I was actually a little put off by that. I was like, no, come on, be nice to him.

40:30

It's not, it's not that bad. But the point is, he needs to realize that the people at the debate were just like, really?

40:42

And of course, the Avengers stuff. Doctor Strange and Bucky and Hydra and, hey, look, it fits.

40:55

I mean, it fits Molinas. That's, it fits. I, I keep going.

41:02

Keep doing that. It's okay. So anyway, uh,

41:08

I, uh, I would,

41:15

I would do debates there again, roads in Houston. Oh my goodness. Some people said some of it's due to the flooding a few years ago, the hurricane, maybe.

41:24

Um, but I, those roads are bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.

41:32

Um, Phoenix all of a sudden really shot up in my, my hometown just shot up in my estimation, um, as to our condition of our roads in comparison to what you had in Houston.

41:45

But, um, yeah, I would, I would definitely, you know, do more debates there.

41:50

And, and, uh, the folks were really nice. And, and I spoke at, uh, Bodie's old church, um, uh,

41:58

Grace family Baptist church on Sunday, even though I had to shoot right afterwards.

42:03

Cause I went from there. I needed to get San Antonio last night. Otherwise I either have some really, really long days.

42:10

Um, wow. That's tiny. Wow. Did you say goodbye? I mean, that is really little.

42:19

I mean, you'd never be, not only could you never stand up in that, but I mean, that's just like a bed following you behind.

42:25

That's about all there is to it. Anyway. Um, I get really much better gas mileage. Um, but, uh, yeah,

42:34

I had to shoot out right afterwards to try to get, it took a day off of my trip home to be able to get to San Antonio last night.

42:41

So, um, wish I could have spent more time there, but that's how it works.

42:47

Okay. Just a few other things, not about the debate. Um, but let's talk a little bit about the, um, the book review.

42:58

I already talked about one point. Some of you, I mentioned this at some point over the past couple of weeks, but we'll has of, uh, the church split.

43:11

And I was on the church split last year at some point, or, well, obviously that was good.

43:17

I don't know, six, eight months ago at the most. I don't remember. And we had a good time talking

43:24

James only ism and stuff like that. Wasn't any big deal, but they had mentioned that he was anti -reformed and we had sort of joked a little bit about it, but then when

43:40

I saw that Pullman was going to be on the first thing they did, and I mentioned this in the last program was they said, this has nothing to do with what happened.

43:53

I remember on the last program I went through Pullman wasn't even close in describing what actually happened.

44:01

And I'm like, look, kid, you're less than 25 years of age.

44:07

So you can't, you can't blame memory failure. So it, you, you're literally telling people that I wrote a long article saying your opinions cannot be, uh, taken seriously because you work at Dillard's.

44:23

And the truth is I wrote two short sentences. They might've actually been a run on basically saying, who is this guy?

44:31

Never heard of him. And then I put the clip from his own page, uh, historical

44:41

Armenian, uh, evidentialist and all this stuff. And I'm like, what do you expect from someone like this?

44:48

And it included the fact that he's at, he's at Dillard's because I was asking, why are we, why are we spending time on someone who has yet to do anything in life that would give him a basis for dismissing?

45:01

Not just myself and Jeff Durbin and other people, those of us who are alive, we can defend ourselves. Anybody can just compare and figure those things out themselves.

45:10

But it was the Greg Bonson stuff. Um, a life well lived and a life lived deeply.

45:20

And he didn't even describe his criticisms accurately. He didn't, he didn't mention, well, I just think they get listened to because they're, you know, cause their rhetorical skills and stuff like that.

45:29

It's not deep thinkers like he is. So we talked about that and then we got it.

45:38

I started listening to these things and I guess I'm only going to have time.

45:44

I didn't queue it up because I just forgot. Um, do you want me to be honest with you?

45:51

I was doing laundry. In fact, I hope no one steals because the dryer is done by now.

45:56

I can assure you. Um, Hey, it's, it's how you live, man. You know,

46:02

I'm, I don't, I got no servants, just me, me, myself and I. Uh, so you, you gotta do what you gotta do.

46:08

Um, anyway, I, I really would like to play these things. So let me just, uh, mention one thing so far.

46:21

I've only listened to just the first part of, they say it's gonna be a four part review.

46:26

Oh my, um, it's extremely dismissive, extremely condescending.

46:32

It's, it's nasty. Um, let's just be straightforward. This is not, um, kind stuff.

46:39

And so I'm going to be just as bold in response and letting you know exactly how

46:45

I feel about what's being said. These men think they know history, but they're incredibly ignorant of history.

46:53

I don't even know if Pullman has even taken his church history classes yet. Um, I was teaching church history when he was born before he was born well before he was.

47:05

Um, so it's astonishing to hear just the confident arrogance and the dismissive laughter that especially that man has when he has no idea what he's talking about and is, and anyone who does know the

47:20

Reformation knows he has no idea what he's talking about. So for example, I talked about the heart of the

47:29

Reformation and by the way, so far, they have demonstrated an utter incapacity to engage the actual argument of a paragraph or the flow of text.

47:43

So they're, they're doing the scattergun thing. And it's, again, in a meaningful educational system, they would both be failing.

47:53

If they were supposed to be writing a review of a book, because they're not engaging with what was actually being said.

48:00

Those of you who know the book know that one of the points I made toward the beginning,

48:06

I dealt with the first written debate of the Reformation. And the first written debate of the

48:14

Reformation was between Martin Luther and Desiderius Erasmus. And it was on the freedom and bondage of the will.

48:23

And in that book, Luther said to Erasmus, you have all of my opponents have touched upon the heart of the matter, the hinge upon which the whole matter turns, the matter of the

48:39

Reformation. And what was it? Freedom and bondage of the will. It was material logical.

48:46

And it had to do with God's sovereignty over human affairs and the deadness and slave, the deadness of man's sin and his slavery sin.

48:59

Luther identified that work as his most important theological work. Now, these gentlemen dismissively said, this is, this is just ridiculous.

49:19

The point of the Reformation, according to Paulman, was

49:26

Sola Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, not this other stuff, the

49:32

Sola Scriptura. And I'm driving along and I'm, I'm thinking it would be so enjoyable to, to get to give a quiz on church history.

49:49

I've written many of them over the years. First class

49:54

I taught, 1990, Scholar Residence, Grand Canyon College, or was it University by the way,

50:00

I don't remember. Name changed right around that time. Was church history.

50:10

And Reformation church history has been one of my central themes. And as I pointed out to the group that we took to Germany in 2017 for the 500th anniversary, when you look at the timeline, what you discover is that there is a flowering in the mind of Luther.

50:39

Starting especially, it, it, it really begins to percolate in 1510, when

50:51

Luther visits Rome and the things he sees in Rome, especially when he, he sees the priests and they're, they're rushing through the mass so they can be, get paid by the pilgrims for doing the mass and, and they're not even pronouncing the

51:05

Latin right. They're leaving stuff out and he knows this. When he sees the Pope riding through the streets in full armor, he is deeply impacted by the corruption and the worldliness of the church in Rome.

51:26

This begins together with his own deep reflection upon his own sin.

51:32

This begins the process of his studying through the Psalter, and then especially in Romans and Galatians.

51:39

And then of course, his obtaining of the Novum Instrumentum. Incredibly important that he was able to get hold of that first edition of Erasmus.

51:53

But the first thing that he comes to understand is what we call the material principle of the

51:59

Reformation. I would love to ask these guys, what's the material principle? What's the formal principle? When they first appear in Luther's thought, what, what caused them?

52:08

I know these things. I do not believe they do, but they have the incredible temerity to pretend like they do.

52:21

It's, it's really distasteful. It really, really is distasteful.

52:28

But it does give us the opportunity of revisiting these things. We always have new listeners and people learn so much.

52:34

And like I said, when we did the tour in 2017, one of the things that I will never forget was the fact that our people learned about the

52:47

Reformers as they actually were, not as they are lionized and caricatured by many others.

52:55

First lecture I gave in Berlin was, I, I mentioned,

53:01

I recognize these men would not, most, most of them will be studying, would not extend the right hand of fellowship to me at all.

53:07

In fact, some of them would have had me killed. And people are shocked. And everywhere we went,

53:13

I talked, I talked about the fact there were two Luthers, the pre -1525 Luther, the post -1525

53:18

Luther, and his anti -Semitism afterwards, his non -anti -Semitism before.

53:25

We talked about all these things. And what is obvious and what's very helpful for people to understand is that Luther came to understand justification by faith first, but Luther was an

53:42

Augustinian. And so justification by faith for Luther is not justification by faith for either

53:51

Will Hess or Mr. Polman. They don't get what was behind the terminology of that time because they don't do serious historical research.

54:04

And so he, when he's talking about justification by faith as an

54:10

Augustinian, that's dealing with the whole realm of God's knowledge, foreknowledge, grace, election, all of these things, as Luther makes it so painfully clear in his work, are a part of what he's dealing with.

54:33

But again, if these gentlemen taught church history or studied church history to any length, any depth, they would know that you can trace that.

54:49

Well, it was interesting. I think it was Hess made some comment about the the 95

54:57

Theses, which has nothing to do.

55:04

I mean, there's nothing about sola scriptura in the 95 Theses, okay? And Luther is saying what many other

55:12

Catholic theologians of the day would say. He was, and he knew that. But it's after the 95

55:21

Theses that more crystallization takes place in Luther's thought, soteriologically speaking.

55:30

So the material principle of the Reformation, sola fide, is the first thing in Luther's experience.

55:43

Where does sola scriptura come from? Well, that is from the

55:50

Leipzig Disputation. That is from the debate that he does with his lifelong nemesis,

55:56

Johann Eck. And that's where Luther comes to discover he actually is a

56:02

Hussite, which was an amazing revelation to him.

56:08

But it was Eck pressing Luther on papal authority that forced

56:17

Luther to begin to recognize and to begin to study the issue of epistemology, the foundational issue of sola scriptura.

56:28

That comes second. And it develops over time.

56:35

And he does not identify that as the heart of the Reformation, because it's the formal principle.

56:40

It's what gives form and foundation to the defense he then made of sola fide.

56:47

But the reality is that these men's understanding of the Reformation is abysmal.

56:55

It is childish. Many people have a childish understanding of the

57:02

Reformation. Sadly, many people in Reformed churches have a childish understanding of the

57:09

Reformation. But they don't go around pretending like their childish understanding is actually the mature and only understanding.

57:19

And that's what is happening in this review. And so, Basic Church History 101 would have been very helpful to them.

57:30

Guys, I did a, how many, how many, was it 85?

57:37

85 part series on church history. It's available on Sermon Audio. The Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church page is still there.

57:44

I mean, I suggest you might take, might be benefited. I went up through Calvin.

57:51

I didn't finish Calvin. But I only had one, I only had one lesson left. So it was just one lesson short of the medieval

57:59

Reformation church history course that I've taught many times, many years in schools over the years.

58:06

Might help you. Might help you a lot. Because right now, you're firing blanks.

58:13

And you're, if the rest of this is as bad as your start, I eventually may just have to go, look, this isn't even worth the time.

58:24

This is just bad. But for your own sake, I hope you will try to learn.

58:30

Because right now, it sounds like you think you've already got it all figured out. When in point of fact, you don't.

58:38

So just one other thing. I stand by what I said in my book about Molinism.

58:45

And I've demonstrated that in the debate. And we talked about today. Molinism is a desperate attempt to get around God's freedom.

58:55

God's freedom to save whom he wishes to save. Any Molinist will tell you,

59:01

God can only save those whom he knows by middle knowledge, if put into particular contexts and situations, will freely choose him.

59:14

That means there are people that will never be saved. Even if God wanted to save them.

59:20

There's no feasible world in which they would be saved. That's your position. It's foolishness.

59:27

It was meant to be an answer to the Reformation. No apostle or prophet ever believed anything like it.

59:35

But at least admit what it is you're saying. Because that's where it is.

59:42

Okay. I'd love to go on. But I want to make sure that my laundry is still in the dryer when

59:51

I get back. It's just, it's life, man. That's the way it is.

59:58

There are realities to this thing. And so, and those of you who appreciate what we're doing and learn what we're doing.

01:00:08

Thank you for supporting us and doing these things. I got lousy gas mileage today. I got really good gas mileage coming out.

01:00:15

Because think about it. When you're going east, normally I have a tailwind. Or at least somewhat of a tailwind. Today I had a pretty strong crossing wind.

01:00:21

Sometimes I was going into it. And I couldn't find any trucks. There was very little traffic on this route.

01:00:27

And I've been getting pretty good at finding like a FedEx dually or something. To pop behind and let that baby increase my mileage.

01:00:36

I got a couple sections. 7 .3 miles to go today.

01:00:42

And I had been getting up to 10, 11. As long as I had enough traffic. Trucks and stuff like that.

01:00:49

But you all make it possible to be here in my mobile command center.

01:00:55

And put fuel in the truck. So there's a travel fund. You can find it at aomin .org.

01:01:01

If you want to keep sending me various places to do the stuff we're doing.

01:01:07

And to do things like this. Thanks Rich for making this happen once again. I'm glad we have made this work.

01:01:15

And are able to do this. I will try for tomorrow. Tomorrow's trip is about 50 miles less.

01:01:24

Than today. We'll see. All depends on lots of different situations.

01:01:32

And traffic. And I saw two different RVs very similar to my own. Fifth wheels.

01:01:37

On the side of the road today with flat tires. Man that would mess everything up. That would mess everything up.

01:01:44

So pray for traveling mercies. And we'll try to do something tomorrow. But appreciate it.