300 Page Response to MERE MOLINISM

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala, and today we are covering the topic of Molinism, and not just any old kind of Molinism, it is mere Molinism, and we'll kind of explain what that is when I invite my guest on in just a few moments.

But folks typically like this topic. It's kind of, when you talk about Calvinism, whether you love Calvinism, whether you hate Calvinism, it seems that people are always interested in the topic. And I think the same thing with Molinism, whether you love it, whether you hate it, folks find the topic quite fascinating.

And so I'm actually really excited to to be speaking about this topic today with my guest. And so if I can kind of categorize my favorite topics to discuss, it would probably have to be apologetic methodology.

You guys know I'm a presuppositionalist. I love talking about methodological issues. I love talking about the Calvinism issue. I enjoy talking about Molinism a lot, and probably creation, you know, old earth, young earth.

Those are the fun, you know, if you want to start a barroom brawl between peace-loving Christians, just bring up one of those topics and you sure does see some fireworks. So, but there's not gonna be any fireworks here.

I don't want you guys to get it twisted. I know the thumbnail says rest in peace mere Molinism, but you know, it's kind of tongue-in-cheek. But that being said, my guest has actually done something quite impressive that I'm looking forward to sharing with you guys, and we'll kind of jump into that topic in detail.

So before I invite my guest Colton Carlson on, I want to make just a quick little, a couple of things here that I want you guys to be aware of. Tomorrow I'm going to be having Eric Hernandez on to talk about apologetics and abortion.

So if you're interested in how to do apologetics within the context of discussions on abortion, you're not going to want to miss that discussion. So that's tomorrow at 9 p .m. Eastern. I also am going to be having on Luke, Luke Pearson, who is the pastor, is a pastor at Apologia Church over there in Arizona.

That is the, it's a church where James White goes, and there's a Pastor Jeff Durbin, Durbin is over there. We're going to be talking about apologetics in the local church. That's going to be on June 9th at 9 p .m. Eastern.

So looking forward to that. Also I am holding my online apologetics course that the classes are going to start on June 7th, so if folks are interested in kind of doing a five-week kind of structured course on presuppositional apologetics, PresuppU, that's what it's called, folks can actually sign up right now on RevealedApologetics .com, and so that sign up period is going to be open from now all the way up until June 7th.

So if you're interested in that, that is a great way to support Revealed Apologetics. It takes a lot of work to prepare for a lot of these things, and so financial support is very, very helpful, so I do appreciate it.

However, whether it's donating through the donate page on the website, or signing up for a course, all those things are super, super helpful, and it's greatly appreciated. Well, with all of those things out of the way, we have a nice little crowd here.

Without further ado, I would like to introduce my.

Introducing Colton Carlson and the 300-Page Response

Guest, Colton Carlson. How are you doing, man? I'm doing fantastic. I'm so privileged and.

Honored to be here. Well, thank you for that. It's not that big of a deal,.

But hey, man. I'm honored. Okay, that's right. That's right. So I've allowed you to be.

Graced by my presence. All right, well, why don't you tell folks a little bit about who you are, and then we'll kind of get into. What I found quite fascinating is this, I guess this paper that started out kind of like a paper, but kind of turned into a book on the topic that we're going to be discussing.

So why don't.

You share with folks who you are before we get into all that? Yeah, sure. So, Colton Carlson. I'm a mathematics and philosophy teacher at Mission Heights Preparatory High School. I teach actually in Casa Grande, Arizona, which is around like 30 minutes or so south of Phoenix.

I've actually been to Jeff Durbin's church before. I met both him and Luke. Great people. Great people. Their apologetics ministry on Mormonism and Latter-day Saints. Beautiful. I've learned so many things from them.

So yeah, so I'm kind of in that same area. I have a two degrees, so I'm gonna say why I have two degrees in a bit, but my two degrees, secondary mathematics education, and then also theology and Bible.

So philosophy, what I teach at my charter school is like an elective, so high school philosophy. I teach them kind of like topical scenarios, ethical dilemmas, and teach them a bit about logic and big stuff about philosophy.

My interests include this, so we have similar interests. I mainly focus more on the free will and responsibility side and compatibilism, determinism, Calvinism.

Yeah, just for it to give folks a heads up, if you're interested in this whole debate, if you guys know a while back, Tim Stratton debated James White on the topic of, is Molinism biblical? And I think Colton and Tyler Vela did an excellent job with a three-part review of the debate.

Totally not boring. It's fun because they have good chemistry and as they're kind of interacting with each other, but it's also just a really great resource to kind of unpack how one might approach this topic and analyze some of the arguments that Tim puts forth.

And of course, this is nothing against Tim. I don't want to waste too much time saying this because I think we always caveat these sorts of discussions with this, but we think that Tim is a great guy.

We just think he's wrong on this specific topic. So that's all. I know he'll probably watch this, but he will. He will. Trust me, he'll be coming out with a 10-part response video. No, I'm just kidding.

Well, he might. Well, you never know. So if God actualizes a world in which he sees it and that's what he wants to do, it'll happen. He'll give him glory. That's right. Amen. So what caught my attention, Colton, was that you intended to interact with Tim Stratton's work just kind of briefly.

You know, maybe I'll write an article or something like that, maybe a blog post, and then like a wink, a snap, turn around three times, and now you've written a 300-page interaction with what Tim Stratton calls mere.

Mullenism. My question to you is, what the heck, bro? There's a couple reasons why. So I did start off like after his book came out, which I was really excited for, but it's just so lackluster and just dull.

And I actually have it right here. I'm not sure if you can kind of see some parts, but I did do a lot of highlighting in the book. So I did read it. Let's get a close-up on that later. I've read a lot of your book.

Yes. Those of you who don't like writing, shame on you. You should write, and you learn a lot. But I did read it. I probably read it close to five times, at least the philosophy and theology sections.

But basically, I was so disappointed with it. I was going to do like a 20-page, because I had a lot of personal correspondence with Stratton, through like Facebook groups and so forth. So I wanted to do like a 20-page kind of, I don't know, review of the book.

Like review. Like I wanted to review it. And then Binyan came out with his review. I'm like, oh, I'm done. I don't need to do it at all. He came out with it on January 1st, 2020. I was like, this is great.

This is basically everything I wanted to say. It's short, concise. I mean, he told everyone to pack a lunch when he sent it out, and I packed a lunch. And two months later, Stratton, because we all knew he was going to, I was just waiting.

He posted a review, or sorry, a rejoinder of Binyan, 50 pages in response. And again, so lackluster, so disappointing with the response. I believe Stratton said one time to Binyan, he was unimpressed with Binyan's negative argumentation against the consequence argument.

Well, I'm going to return the favor. I was really unimpressed with Stratton's defenses of Binyan. And so to me, I was like, well, then I have to do something. And that's when I started meeting with some other fellow Molinists and Incompatibilists, so not just Calvinists, but Incompatibilists, who had similar views on Stratton's work.

And we started kind of talking, and we started developing this kind of friendship. And one thing led to the other, I started writing, 20 pages became 50, 100, 150, 300. It just happened.

You just jumped from like 50, 100, yeah, 300.

My wife was like, when I kept telling her how long it was, and she kept, her mouth kept dropping, like, what, what, what? So it's kind of an instant joke. But yeah, so I call it Brief. I know if you're, the title is called A Brief Philosophical and Dialectical Inquiry on Mere Molinism, Incompatibilist's Reply.

So on my preface, I actually, if you go to the link and go to Academia and download it, you read my preface, I actually explain all this. But I keep the word Brief in the title kind of for like, hilarious, sentimental reasons.

But also, I think I do it, because I kind of do as a tribute to Vindman Wagon. So Vindman Wagon's famous work, An Essay on Free Will, where he exposits his consequence argument. And when you read it, you're like, this is no essay.

This is, this is a whole book, and you're going to town and arguing for incompatibilism. And so I'm kind of like, as a tribute to him, I kept the word Brief in there. And I thought it was.

Hilarious and cheeky. So. That's awesome. Now, quick question. So you, you described Stratton's book, or I think, both his book and his response to Binyong as lackluster. Now, without getting into the specifics, because you're kind of, you're going to kind of go into that.

In what, in what sense would you describe his both his book and his response as being lackluster? What do you.

Mean by that? And why? I'll give one example, I guess. So in personal correspondence with Stratton after his 13 plus hour responses to Binyong in 2020, where you were a part of, I watched all those videos.

So when you're interviewing Binyong and their responses back with Flowers, Hunter and him himself, and then also his other reply with Tim Fox afterwards. Sure. I watched every single one, took detail notes on every single one.

And I was talking to Stratton somehow on Facebook, and he was basically saying, Hey, just wait for my book, like, stay tuned. I'm going to explain a lot of this. I'm like, okay, like, you make a good case, not convinced.

But I really wanted to look at your book because your articles are kind of like, for the layman, and they're not, they don't go in detail. So I want the book because I'm expecting it to go into detail.

Sure. And there's some things he's not going to remember, but I remember, there's some things in personal correspondence that I was like, does he deal with, do you deal with guidance control or Fisher Revisa's contemporary compatibilism?

And he kind of alluded to me, at least to the fact that yes, anyone who's familiar with the literature will know that I allude to that. And I'm like, Oh, great. I want an incompatible is good reply that has to do with Molinism.

And this would be great. When I got the book, I ordered it as soon as I had the money or as soon as my wife allowed. And then I read it in like, I think, two weeks or so. And that's why I was so lackluster because none of what he promised actually cashed out for me.

It was virtually to me, a rip off of his blogs. It was and being on points this out ad nauseam in his own review, that a lot of it was just his blogs, just regurgitated. Some sections like the historical section didn't make any sense.

Why do you need that historical section in there? And then he never explained why we need the categorical ability to do otherwise, which I'm going to explain in a bit. So these are some, like to me, like some issues that I wanted resolved that I felt like maybe my hopes are too high.

I don't know, but he did hype it up a lot. We know that. He hyped it up so much that I was just expecting too much. I don't know, but that's why I consider it lackluster. And then, yes, his rejoinder is better.

Yes, I'll admit that his rejoinder, to be honest, a little bit better, but it still doesn't have the philosophical oomph that it needs. And that's a problem.

And I would say, too, that the criticism of what Stratton has put out is not simply coming from other Calvinists. It's coming from other novelists as well. So I think that's important to keep in mind.

And I think charity is in place here. I appreciate how when Tim said, hey, wait for my response, your attitude of like, all right, great, because you guys, we know this, that when we're talking about some of these issues, it takes a lot to unpack and to kind of just get it all out.

So we want to be charitable even after watching this. And Tim says, hey, I want to have an opportunity to address that. Like, hey, this is an active topic. We're willing to interact and kind of take the time to kind of plow through the stuff.

And so responses are welcome. That's how we learn. So I do appreciate that attitude that you had. And hopefully the dialogue, if we can say, not that we're talking in the behind the scenes, but hopefully that debate can kind of have a healthy continuation as we continue to move towards hopefully closer to the truth.

So, all right. Well, okay. So you wrote this 300 page monster, which by the way, a lot of people appreciate it. I have some comments here. Someone said, thank you for making it available on the internet.

Yes. Thank you very much. It's the worst when someone writes something and then you have to like go through a paywall and you're like, I'm too broke to pay for an article. Come on, man. So I appreciate that.

It's free. It's wonderful. So what was your overall aim and the methodology that you took to kind of begin to unpack where you wanted to go with respect to interacting with Tim's work here concerning Mere Molinism?

Yeah. I think you said it perfectly. It was dialectical and conversational, hence the title. So I wanted it to be more of a philosophical approach, a compatibilist philosophical approach to Molinism and his overall response.

But I also wanted it to be conversational. So there's actually some parts in some sections, which I may use less than a professional philosophical language because I wanted it to be approachable in that sense.

I wanted it to almost seem like a dialogue where, Hey, he's saying something, I'm responding to it. What's the next thing he says this I'm responding to it. And here's how maybe Beyonce or some other philosopher or theologian said this, how does that incorporate with Stratton's overall Molinistic framework?

Here's how. And then we move on. So I kind of wanted to be that. Also, I wanted it to be a philosophical defense for compatibilism. And I'm going to highlight that word there. Defense is not an argument for compatibilism.

And I know Stratton has already confused negative and positive argumentation with Binyan himself. You interviewed Binyan about that when their whole consequence argument controversy. And Binyan's like, what?

That has nothing to do with the consequence argument. So I want to highlight that part. If you're going to read this 300 pages, don't see it as where's the argument for compatibilism? It's not there. I will assume compatibilism all the way throughout the whole book.

I'll assume determinism all the way throughout the whole book. I'm on the defensive mode, which means who's in the offensive mode. Stratton. He's the one who published the book full of arguments. I'm going to look at those arguments and be defensive.

Binyan did the same when he did his review of mere Molinism. So I will pretty much assume something very similar, a similar methodology. And so I do allude to other arguments for compatibilism, such as Binyan's or Buvellin's, which we'll kind of get to a little bit.

Anderson's kind of arguments and definitional stuff or guidance control, that will be in volume two. But yeah. And so this is a defense, not an argument. Sure. I think that's important to keep.

In mind. That's a good point there. Just as a heads up, folks, if you're familiar, I think Tim has put something out indicating that he's coming out with another addition to his book. What's the name of the book again?

I forgot the name of the book.

It's Human Freedom, Divine Foreign Knowledge, and Mere Molinism. And he's just going to call it second edition. I'm pretty sure he's going to use the subtitle.

Okay. Yeah. So again, so if he addresses everything that you're going to be talking about.

Here in there. I'd be happy.

That'd be great. Yeah. So that's fine. If someone says, Hey man, if you're a fan of Tim's work, you're like, wait a minute, man, you got to wait for the second edition. Like that's cool. Like.

We're down for the second edition. That's the issue is the second edition is not out yet.

So, right, right. All right. So let's move down to, if we have our outline here, that's kind of the introductory stuff that's out of the way here we have on the outline libertarianism. Why don't you define some terms for us and then kind of jump into how this relates to the overall approach.

That you've taken to interact with Tim? Yeah. So libertarianism is a simple thesis. Libertarianism is just the thesis of incompatibilism and free will some of the time. So what that means is incompatibilism must be true.

So you can't be determined and free at the same time. Otherwise that would be compatibilism. So that needs to be true. And also a necessary condition for libertarianism is that humans need to possess some sort of freedom.

Some of the time it doesn't need to be all the time. It doesn't need to be more times than not. It's just means some of the time. So it could be one time in their life or it could be 50 times in their life.

It doesn't really matter. It just needs to have some sort of freedom. So that's the basic definition. And so in section 2 .1 .1 specifically, and I am going to throw page numbers out and I hope that's okay for the audience.

So all along and, but page 14, Stratton has this claim of libertarian compatibilism, and he's often said that before. Binyan has criticized him in his own review about it, but I, I agree. Like, so for instance, Stratton says this in 161, page 161 of his book, he says, indeed, given the above definitions of libertarianism.

So all the definitions he kind of describes in this book. But by the way, he says his limited libertarian freedom, which we're going to get into a bit, it's the ability to do something compatible with your nature.

So consistent or compatible with your nature. So it's not against your nature. It's just compatible with it. So we're going to see what that means. So given those definitions and everything he's explained, Stratton writes both compatibilism and libertarianism might affirm that some form of libertarian freedom, at least occasionally corresponds to reality.

Issue is that's not true, or at least not in the way that he's writing it. He needs to clarify a whole lot in order for that to, to work. So for instance, I agree with Binyan and Binyan writes libertarianism entails incompatibilism, like I said, therefore compatibilists cannot ever affirm that anyone has ever had or ever will have libertarian freedom.

So that would require incompatibilism, which means compatibilism would be false. So this is the first kind of blunder, and I'm not the only one to critique him on it. So I don't want to spend too much time on, but there is, I want to be charitable.

There are some in the literature, and I do have a footnote, footnote 20 on pay for my, my reply footnote 20 on page 14. There are some that respond and call themselves or have called their view libertarian compatibilism.

So, and these are good philosophers like Cadre Villan, Christian List, even Millie has somewhat said, Hey, they can affirm similar things. But I want to clarify this just because they can affirm similar things that yeah, libertarianism can affirm something about someone's nature and they can't do other, other than what their nature allows.

And just because compatibilism has that same definition doesn't mean that you can just combine the two views and say libertarian compatibilism.

Sure.

I think Stratton has recently already conceded this much as a video in response to Paul Minatta, like literally like recent, like within a month. So when I watched that video, I was like, yay.

Yeah. A little pom poms. Yay.

You're getting, you're getting it, but yeah. So he wants to say that I can like, I affirm some freedoms that are compatible with determinism and some freedoms that are not, but the freedom that's necessary for libertarianism or for rational responsibility is what he calls it.

He says is not compatible with determinism. And I would say, great. Then by definition, you're an incompatibilist, but then he wants to go further, or at least he did want to go further and say, no, no, no.

I'm still can be a compatibilist in some sense and incompatibilist in other senses. And I'm saying it's just not helpful. Like it's just not helpful. Obviously I'm an atheist with regards to Zeus. John, am I going to go around saying I'm a Christian atheist?

That makes no sense, right? Like you're not going to say that in the same way. You're not going to go around saying I'm a libertarian compatibilist because it's just, it's just not helpful. Now he may think he's being helpful to the layman.

He's actually not. And the reason why he's not is because those definitions, what I'm explaining to, to you and everyone else are standard in the layman, uh, freewill philosophy books. Like for instance, like Keynes, uh, Robert Keynes, uh, contemporary introduction to philosophy or to freewill philosophy back in like 2005, he had like a small book on it.

He says the same thing I'm saying. So it doesn't really make sense for him to use these kinds of words. And so that's my first critique in that section. So your critique, so if I can just summarize,.

So your critique of Stratton is his use or misuse or irresponsible use or clumsily, clumsy use of standard definitions, which kind of muddles the whole discussion.

That's precisely it. And I think it's even all the more ironic when he thinks that people like us, uh, I'm going to just say Calvinists or whatever, or compatibilists, uh, muddy the definitions or muddy the waters.

No, that's actually ironic because you're the one doing it. And I would stand by that statement. And since he's conceded it recently at the end of his 30 minute video to Paul Monada, uh, I would take that he agrees with me.

Uh, and so he's going to stop doing this libertarian compatibilism and he's just going to say, yep, uh, I'm an incompatibilist. I'm an flaming incompatibilist. Rethinking is what he would call himself and, uh, leave it at that.

And I would be like, thank you. Amen. We can move on because the definitions are, you know,.

Are important. So, so, okay. So these definitions with respect to how he defines libertarianism, have you heard of the phrase, have you heard of the term soft libertarianism?

Yeah. So I expand a little bit about it actually in that same footnote, footnote 20, I believe. I do say that, um, that is what it is. Soft, soft libertarianism would just affirm what he wants to affirm.

So why does he not just use the word soft libertarian? He does in his book in his chapter 12, he briefly mentioned soft libertarianism, but the issue is just say that don't keep bouncing around with these.

I'm a libertarian compatibilist or whatever. Uh, you know, just say you're soft libertarian. Everyone knows what you mean. Call it good.

Yeah. I've heard of soft libertarianism from Kirk McGregor when I was a Molinist and I was part of the Molinist Facebook group where I used to interact with Dr. McGregor and, um, Jonathan Thompson and Tim.

That's where I heard soft libertarianism for the first time. And it sounded very similar to compatibilism. If to the untrained ear sounds very, uh, similar. Can you briefly kind of, uh, tell us the difference between compatibilism and soft libertarianism?

Yeah. So Stratton does a little bit, um, but I think he fubs, is that a word?

Hey, it's the internet. We can make up whatever we want.

Humbles, I guess, uh, the definition of a compatibilism, but we'll get to that later. But really the distinguishing factor between soft libertarianism and compatibilism is that, uh, soft libertarianism is still by definition incompatibilist.

So the types of abilities that ground or our are necessary for responsibility are just different. So the ability for soft libertarianism that's necessary for rational responsibility or moral responsibility is going to be the categorical.

So they still want to say that you categorically could do this or that A, B, C, D, or not a, not B, not C, whatever. Um, that is the categorical, no matter what kind of view of libertarian you have, no matter how minimalist it is, no matter how mere it is, that must be a condition.

And so I actually take great pains in this libertarian section, the first section here to, to make that prevalent. I try to argue the, with regards to libertarianism and indeterminism that if indeterminism is something that's entailed by libertarianism, indeterminism means more than one future.

So what does that mean? It means alternative possibilities. Well, what does that mean? It means you have access to alternative possibilities. What does that mean? Access is the categorical access to be able to actualize this Avenue, that Avenue, that Avenue, that Avenue.

Compatibilism concedes none of that. That's the main difference. I would say, uh, it's just the type of abilities. And then obviously the former soft libertarianism is incompatible with some compatibilist.

So,.

All right. That makes sense. Just for the heads up, I hear some people, I see some in the comments, someone says you should interview Dr. Kirk McGregor. Well, actually, actually, actually, before my channel got viewers, but I'm not, I mean, I, I don't know where I am in terms of subscribers now, but when I was much smaller, once upon a time, I actually did interview, uh, Kirk McGregor twice and get this.

Okay. When I was a Molinist, right. Or when I was struggling with the issue between Molinism and Calvinism, I actually moderated a debate slash discussion between Kirk McGregor and Matt Slick of CARM.

So if folks are interested, if you just look up Kirk McGregor versus Matt Slick, it is an interesting discussion to say the least, if I can just, it's a very interesting discussion. I think in my personal opinion, Matt Slick's a friend of mine.

I happen to think that Kirk McGregor did an excellent job in that discussion. Um, however, I obviously ultimately don't agree with him at the end, but if you want to hear kind of a good defense or answering various objections to Molinism, that's a great video.

So it's not on my channel here on Revealed Apologetics. It was kind of before I got Revealed Apologetics started, but it's there on the internet. So folks could actually check that out if you, if you search.

All right. So, uh, Colton, um, Oh, one more thing for folks who are listening. Uh, we got a nice, a nice crowd here. If you have a question, preface your question with question. And like we normally do at the back end of the show, we'll see if we could address as many as possible.

If Colton is up to it. Sorry. I didn't say that beforehand. I hope you're okay with it. All right. Is that okay? Okay. All right. So what about determinism? What is determinism and does, is this another category that Tim, that you find Tim kind of, uh, messes up and confuses?

Uh, how do you think Tim approaches his on, you know, how do you think, or how well rather do you think Tim understands determinism? Does he mess up on the definitions.

There? What's going on there? So there's a, um, not really, I don't, and I want to say that he doesn't really mess up libertarianism because obviously it's his view, right? I just don't think he uses standard definitions and he ought to, especially if he wants to dance in the philosophical arena.

And so you ought to use this definitions already in the arena. And if you disagree with those definitions, you ought to give a really good reason why. And I don't find any of Tim's reasons. Um, so why he defends, why defines libertarianism the way he does, um, good enough reasons, although, because it's his view, I'll give him it.

Um, and I'll show internally why I think his limited libertarian freedom is actually false later, but going back to determinism, um, no. And yes, he defined, he defines it as exhaustive divine determinism, which to me is a complete redundancy.

Now I, I understand he has tons of, tons of different articles and stuff, why exhaustive or ed exhaustive defined determinism isn't redundant. And I just, I kind of politely kind of, uh, scoff at those because, and the reason is it's because it does, it, he doesn't, uh, understand again, the standard definitions.

If something is determined, that means that some things can be, and like, let's just say I'm determined to do this. That doesn't mean all things are determined for sure. It just means that thing is determined.

Well, then if something is determined that non-exhaustively determined, but that doesn't mean that's non-exhaustive determinism isn't, is what grants it to all things. I have yet to see any standard philosophical work from laymen to professionals say that, Oh yeah, for sure.

There's a thing called non-exhaustive determinism. Now I understand it's his own definition and he wants to try to argue it, but he's doing a terrible job. And I mean that with all love and respect. So what I mean is what he should just say is some things can be determined and some things are not determined.

Great. That's all you need to say. You don't need to say, uh, that, uh, non-exhaustive determinism and exhaustive determinism is existing. He wants to claim rationality, alternative possibilities for rationality because he is a leeway incompatibilist, which just means he affirms alternative possibilities with regards to the mental deliberations.

That's fine. So those can't be determined. Okay. But he could concede that everything else could be determined. I don't know how that's possible. And I would expect him to show me exactly how that's possible, but, um, it technically is coherent in some sense, but that's all you need to say that some things can be determined.

Some things are not determined and you don't need to use this exhaustive, non-exhaustive determinism. So I actually developed this all the way throughout my reply, but I call it the mere Molinist dilemma.

The Mere Molinist Dilemma

Okay. Very. Oh, so real quick, before you get into the.

Mere Molinist dilemma, cause that that's going to be part of the, I mean, the thumbnail says, rest in peace, mere Molinism. So now you're bringing up, we're getting to kind of the, the meat here. Um, so, so you would take issue with, um, would you, would you agree with being young, um, being young's criticism of Stratton that the term, uh, Edd is just an unnecessary.

Redundancy? Yeah. So I pretty much agree with everything beyond has to say, because we, we have the same Calvinistic background. I think you're a little bit more towards Baptist. I'm Presbyterian, but whatever, but basically geology in the Westminster and everything.

Yeah. We're going to affirm exactly. And I would say the same thing here. It's a redundancy. Sure. So anything being on says about, um, Tim, Tim Stratton's definitions and how he goes about, uh, determinism.

I would, I would say the same, but if that answers your.

Question. Yeah, no, that's fine. That's fine. All right. So let's, let's, let's get into the, into the rest in peace. Mere. Molinism is the dilemma. What's the dilemma for the mere.

Molinist? So I explained this throughout most of my chunks. Uh, so I started in this section on the terminism, which is 2 .2, and then I kind of bring it up throughout. So in my Frankfurt style section, and also, um, a little bit in the historical section, because obviously he's a mere Molinist and this is the dilemma.

So here's what I write kind of informally, but either the agent while being determined unto salvation is a not more rationally responsible. So either the agent while being determined on just onto salvation is either a not rationally responsible or B he is rationally responsible.

If horn a that he's not rationally responsible, then Tim's ed definition to me is a useless redundancy. And the distinction between exhaustive and non-exhaustive would be proven superfluous. Incompatibilism would obtain and strands project amending mere Molinism with reformed theology would just be confused quizzical.

Okay. I call that the Calvinist horn strand would be proving that mere Molinism. If he affirmed that horn, that the agent is not rationally responsible when he's determined to salvation. Okay. If he accepts that horn, Stratton would be proving that mere Molinism is not compatible with Tulip Calvinist soteriology, contrary to his project.

And his whole project is try to harmonize because he came from a reformed school. So he's trying to harmonize mere Molinism with a Tulip. So he's trying to say, you could be a Tulip or like Greg Koko.

He uses as a classic example all the time and yet still technically be a Molinist. And I say, eh, no, because is Greg Koko going to accept the fact that he's not rationally or even morally responsible for salvation?

Most Calvinists want to say that they are, but here's the problem. And here's horn B if strand concedes that they are rationally responsible during their deliberation, while also being determined to salvation, then he gives up his free thinking argument.

He's this free thinking argument has to say that you cannot be determined and deliberating at the same time. In other words, you cannot be rationally responsible and yet be determined at the same time.

You cannot. That's what the free thinking argument says. Sure. Stratton would give up his argument and therefore leave incompatibilism defenseless. Here's the issue. He's not going to do that. His whole ministries is called free thinking ministries.

So he's not going to fall on horn B. He's going to fall on horn a, but if he does that, then he just throws his Calvinist friends underneath the bus, like Greg Koko and says, Oh yeah, you are determined the eye and irresistible grace.

Yeah. That I determines your salvation. Your deliberation was not free, not rationally responsible, but here's the problem. I don't see any Calvinist worth their salt actually accepting that. Sure. So he wants his whole project to me, mending them together just does not work.