God's Sovereignty with Godless Granny??

You said statements either true or false. I gave you a statement and you said it doesn't apply.

Not too bad. So only too bad statements would be either true or false.

So is it true that I'm talking to you? Is it true? That is true statement, I'm talking to you, is that true?

Yes.

Okay.

Is it true that babies exist?

Well, I mean, how are you going to go down the skeptical?

Babies exist. Babies exist. Is that true or is it not the case that it's true?

I would, I mean, if you want to go down the, you know, if you want to be very strict about it, I would be a skeptical about it.

Okay, we're done talking.

This is Apologetics Live. To answer your questions, your host from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport.

We are live, Apologetics. Live, here to answer your most challenging questions.

About God and the Bible.

This is the Ministry of Striving for Eternity. I am your host, Andrew Rappaport. We can hear at this podcast, we can answer any question that you have about God and the Bible. No matter how hard, no matter how difficult, no matter how challenging, I can answer any question you have about God and the Bible.

Just remember one thing when you asked me that most challenging question, I don't know is a perfectly good answer. I never said I'd give a satisfying answer. Let me welcome in my co-host here, Drew.

Welcome.

Good to be here. Good to be here. Hello, everyone. I love coming in, like my home, in my home, away from home, sort of.

You know, I never get tired of that clip with Matt Slick when we had him on with the guy that wanted to be, couldn't really be sure whether there were babies. Hey, you know, I got something in the mail today.

Did you?

Yeah, I got this little sticker that says Timeless Fragrances, and it came with some casino bar, or no, it's Casino Noir. Oh, that's what it says.

Yeah, there you go, yeah.

The new fragrance getting ready to come out in production for folks. And now everyone's gonna be contacting you to go, hey, where can I get mine? Well, that's your problem now. You gotta figure out how to, I'm just gonna get you in trouble and make you busy all the time.

So let me introduce our guest for the first hour. And let me first say how this came about. This was something where I had gotten a video sent to me, as we get very often, Drew, and next week, you're, unfortunately, I got two, actually, I guess there are three videos technically, but two videos that were, one was clipped in two parts, but that I was asked to respond to, and I'm gonna let you respond with John Harris next week, because I probably won't be here.

If I do get here, I'll be late, because I'll be in Washington, D .C. But other than that, I was sent a video of a professing atheist known as Godless Granny that was responding to my friend Layton Flowers.

Now, I know, some people get upset when I say he's my friend, but sorry, I have strange friends. What can I say? He is a friend of mine. I do like him. He's a good guy. Look, last week, we had another professing atheist, Billon, who I consider a friend, and I really love that guy, too.

So there.

So.

Did Layton block you in the past, and did he unblock you?

Not that I know of.

Okay, it's just me he blocked.

I'd be really surprised. I would think he would tell me if he was gonna block me. So Godless Granny was doing a response video to, it was, and I didn't even know the other person. I'll let her give the backdrop to it, but basically, the video was about God's sovereignty, human responsibility, and I was asked to respond to the video, I think because people like when I respond to Layton, but then if I do a three-minute response to Layton, that becomes a three-hour video on his channel, so, and then I have to go watch that, but no, the reality is is that I figured, why bother responding to the video when, well, I just reached out to Godless Granny and said, hey, would you like to come in?

So.

So folks know who she is. She goes by the name Godless Granny, and she is a retired attorney. We'll ask her. We're gonna have to ask her, Drew, whether she's Jewish. For folks who don't know, see, being Jewish, I was raised to debate.

I've always said that the reason most Jewish people become lawyers is the only job you get paid to debate. Well, maybe politicians, but they only debate like once every four years, so that doesn't really count.

But she is a

They're not even good ones.

Yeah. Yeah, they don't really debate well. So she's a retired attorney, originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, now lives in Alabama. She has three children and five grandchildren, so we'll have to see if that was the cause of the move.

That's gonna be my theory. Not the children, the grandchildren. Just saying, because I'm in that stage. She professes that she used to be a Christian for 42 years. She says that at that time, she helped to build a church, a church library from scratch, taught women's Bible studies, children's Sunday school, VBS, and led couples groups.

She had been on two overseas missions trips, as well as numerous home missions projects. Currently, Granny is an activist, feminist, transparent, and asexual. Her interests lie in religion, politics, transgender and LGBTQ rights, and women's rights.

She loves being part of the atheist community and hopes to be able to make a worthwhile contribution. When she's not making YouTube videos, she is a CASA volunteer. Now, I don't know what that is, but I'm gonna ask her that.

So, her real name, I'm gonna give just a first name, because I just asked her if I could do that, and her name is Kelly. So welcome, Kelly, how are you?

I'm fine, thank you very much.

Okay, so you already know some of the first questions I'm gonna ask. Was the move due to grandchildren?

No.

No?

I would like to move to be near my grandchildren, but four of them live in Virginia, and one lives in San Diego.

So you'd have to choose. Well, you got more than one in Virginia, so yeah. I guess the one in San Diego just loses then, but that's gonna be tough. So you moved not because of the grandkids?

No, my husband still works. He is not retired, and we moved for his job.

What is CASA?

CASA, it's Court Appointed Special Advocates. It's a national organization, and we work with the court system to, it's primarily to support kids in foster care. Our primary role is as investigators, and a judge will appoint us as extra eyes on a case.

Usually, one of the problems with the foster care system is the guardian ad litem, the attorney that is paid to be representing the children, usually gets a flat fee, and it's usually a flat fee of like $1 ,000, and so when you've got a case that goes on for years, that $1 ,000 is gone very quickly, and so the guardian ad litem is not visiting the kids because they're not getting paid to, so we go visit the kids.

Okay.

Well, that's good. So I just, since Waist mentioned the intro, are you Jewish by any chance?

No.

But you've probably worked with a lot of Jewish lawyers,.

Right?

Actually, no, because, well, actually a few, a few, but not very many, but I did not, I was not a litigator. I worked for an insurance company, and I worked for a Christian insurance company. Our product was sold to churches, the company insured churches.

Okay.

Yeah, so that explains it. Yeah. I have, what, three or four lawyers in the family, so some of the comments we have really quickly, John asked, Andrew, I would love for you to send me the audio of the No Babies quote.

John, email me so I don't forget, but I will gladly send that to you. KT said, DC's a dangerous place. You know, I disagree. Been there several times since COVID, probably like four times, this will probably be my fifth since COVID.

I've walked around all over the place. I don't find it to be dangerous at all, but then again, I'm strange. So, well, let's get into, so the background of this video, and I don't, you were, you were, I think, had someone on your show?

Okay, it started when I invited Joe Ensley to be on my channel, and I did an interview with Joe Ensley, and then Leighton Flowers saw the video, and he did a response to the conversation, and then I did a response to Leighton Flowers' response.

So let me guess, and you could tell me, see if we're gonna be right here. You probably did, like, your original video might have been like 20 minutes, and Leighton did like a three-hour response.

Would that be fair?

No, the original conversation was an hour. I generally hold my live streams to one hour, and I don't remember how long his video was, but I don't remember it being that long.

Yeah, I'm sure it was longer than yours. That's Leighton's, Leighton is known for. So the topic that you were discussing was God's sovereignty and human responsibility, and you were making a case off of, really, some of Leighton's arguments.

So I didn't go back to watch the original, and I don't know who the gentleman was that you originally had, but your response was really arguing against Christianity based on, really, on Leighton's arguments.

And so instead of for folks having to go and watch that to understand this, let me start by giving you an opportunity to explain your views on God's sovereignty, human responsibility, because as I told you in the initial email, I think I can answer that question without getting to a position where we deny God.

I actually think it would require him. You would disagree with me. That'd be fine. And I should be honest and say, beforehand, we both acknowledged we know virtually nothing of each other. I watched that one video with Leighton Flowers, and then for folks who were on Apologetics Live last week, we had Bill in.

Bill knows Kelly and myself, and ended up sending me some videos of another mutual friend, which is Eric Hernandez, who you did a, and I didn't know the order, whether it was his book in the Atheist Christian Book Club that started it, and then you and Bill interviewed him, and then there was some back and forth where he did a response video, or you did a response video, he did a response video, and I let Kelly know that Eric is a friend of mine.

I like him a lot, but my demeanor and his demeanor will be a little bit different. We're just a very, he's, we debate, but we debate differently. So why don't you give folks so that they understand a little bit about what your view is with that, because I would like to start there, and if we have time later, maybe we could talk more about what, you say you used to be a Christian, and what brought you out of it, but we could talk about that maybe after, if there's time.

Okay, well, Joe Ensley is a Calvinist, and his position on God's sovereignty is that there is limited atonement, and that God chooses, even before we exist, as to who will be saved and who will not be saved.

And my argument against Joe was that if there is a God that determines who is going to be saved and who is not going to be saved, how can man have any kind of moral responsibility to this God? Because this God determined everything that you were going to do before you even existed.

And Joe's response was, well, I actually, I'm sorry, I don't really remember what Joe's response was. And Leighton was saying that I was spot-on in finding that Joe's theology was lacking. My biggest argument against Joe was that if humans are, predestined to hell, then God is a moral monster in that he creates people for the purpose of sending them to eternal torture.

And one of the most telling parts of the video was when I asked him, how would you feel knowing that God has selected your own children for an eternal destination in hell? And his response was, well, I'd be fine with that.

And I told him, okay, I get that, but please don't ever let your children see this video. And he could not understand why I told him that. He could not understand that I said, it would be emotionally scarring to your children to hear that their dad is fine with them being tortured for eternity.

And Leighton said I was spot-on with that. And I don't remember exactly what point he made. I'm sorry, I should have reviewed the video before I came on, but I wasn't sure exactly where you were going to go with this.

And so I didn't watch the video again, and I don't remember what his response was.

That's okay. The thing here, and for folks who may be new to this channel, to this show, I like to let our guests speak, and I don't, people are always like, why do you let them speak so much? It's my show.

I can do all next week. I could correct it if I wanted to, okay? And I don't expect you to have, I'm not gonna look to be like, oh, well, you're not prepared, no. But the point is your view would be, and let me summarize it, see if I can capture it right.

Your view of Calvinism, and actually, let me ask this up front. When you claimed you were a Christian, were you in more of a Calvinist-type camp or a non-Calvinist? I don't say Calvinist or Minion, because I don't know anyone that actually holds to our Minionism.

It's usually they're either Calvinist or anti-Calvinist, or not sure in between.

The answer to your question is yes. And the reason the answer to your question is yes is because when I was, okay, I was saved when I was 16. I started going to church when I was 16. And the first church I went to was an evangelical free church.

And then when I married my husband, he was active duty army. We were moving all the time. There are no evangelical free churches in the South. And his church was a Catholic church. His first posting was in Texas.

And so we started going to a Baptist church, but then we actually helped found an evangelical free church in Killeen, Texas, although that church is no longer there. And when I was in the E-Free Church, and then after a couple of moves after that, we were back into Baptist churches.

I was not a Calvinist at that time. Then we went to Fort Wayne, Indiana, and we were there for about 22 years. And I was in an evangelical Mennonite church. And that also was not a Calvinist church, but my closest friend in that church was converted to Calvinism and started going to a Calvinist church.

And she convinced us that Calvinism was the more biblical interpretation. And so we left the Mennonite church and went to the Calvinist church. And at that point, I did become Calvinist, and I did believe in the five points of Calvinism.

Okay, and so you seem to, and you'll correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to attribute Calvinism with determinism. Would that be fair?

Yes. Mm-hmm.

Because Leighton would do the same thing. And so, and this is very common with folks with, and we were talking before the show, and you asked, you assumed, since I'm friends with Leighton, I think, you assumed I wasn't a Calvinist.

And then you assumed, when I said, well, Leighton, I don't agree, you assumed I was a Calvinist. I said, well, I don't really don't, I don't say I'm either one.

Because I never know what people mean by that, right?

And so I said, by Leighton's definition, I wouldn't be a Calvinist, right? And people have tried to correct Leighton on his view of Calvinism. But the idea, though, that many would brustle with is the idea of determinism.

There's a difference. So let me ask, if I could ask some questions. Do you believe that, from your understanding of Calvinism, not, you know, because I want to first just make sure I understand your positions, your understandings.

In your understandings of what Calvinism is, would you believe that God determines everything or just salvation?

Okay, the way it was taught to me in church was that he determines salvation. He does not determine everything. But on the other hand, they also spoke out of the other side of their mouths and said that he does determine everything.

John Piper was the champion of my pastor, and my pastor practically worshiped John Piper. And if you've ever seen it, there is an article where John Piper says, if a person is raped, God determined that the rapist would commit this rape.

And that is the Calvinism that I was taught, that everything that happens is God's will. And even if God didn't specifically tell the rapist, okay, go rape that person, it was his will that that happen.

Okay, and do you believe that people have, or let me rephrase this, in your understanding of Calvinism, because I think you'd have a different view today. So in your understanding of Calvinism, do you believe or do you believe that Calvinists would have a view that people have a will that they can have a, you know, make moral choices?

And you struggle with the question because it is a difficult question. And it's a question that I wrestled with as a Calvinist as well, is what kind of free will do we have? And the way my pastor explained it to me was that we do make our own moral choices, but even though we are free to make those choices, those choices were also willed by God.

I don't think that makes any sense anymore, but at the time I accepted it, and I accepted it as one of these things that, well, after we die, we'll get to ask God and he'll make it all make sense.

Okay, well, I'm hoping that by the end of this show, I can help it make sense. And we don't have to wait till you die. We will see. So what is, so then with your views today, because I know I did pick up your discussion with Eric Hernandez, the issue came up there about, you know, moral choices, things like that.

You brought up free will. And I just, I do, my struggle in the precision was, because I don't use the word free will. It was something you used in the episode you did with Eric. I'll get to maybe later if you want why I don't use that term.

And I use the term will, because I think there's a difference, but it came up there. So what would be your view? Because you were using it. You're using the issue of God's sovereignty, human responsibility as an argument against God.

And you did that in the response video to Leighton. You did it with Eric. And by the way, Eric would also, Eric used to work for Leighton for folks to know.

Yeah, they'll tell you that.

They would, they wouldn't, they would agree with their dislike for Calvinism, even though they would have very different reasons. Eric is, if folks that don't know Eric Hernandez, Eric Hernandez is a philosopher.

I mean, that's his background. You experienced that when you had your discussion with him. And he's very, he's very good with his philosophy. And it's a strong suit of his, but that gets you, he would be, for folks who understand the term, he'd be what we'd refer to as a Molinist.

And so the Molinist, their way of trying to answer the dilemma that they see as a dilemma of God's sovereignty, human responsibility, their way of answering it is that God looks through a tunnel of time, or sorry, that God looks at all the different possible worlds that could be created, and he chooses one, and that's the one.

So the one he chooses is one where people made their free choice. And Eric and I, we're planning, I plan to be out in Dallas to do a debate with him on that very topic of Molinism. We've done it on this show before, informal.

We're gonna do a formal one. So back to the question for you, Kelly, is what is your view of God's sovereignty, human responsibility? You make an argument to basically argue that that proves God doesn't exist.

So if you could make that argument.

Sure. The easiest way to explain it is with Adam and Eve. Before Adam and Eve existed, God knew they would fall, correct?

You're asking me. So I would say, well, if God is omniscient, he has to, and I would say he is omniscient.

Okay.

So if God knows this is going to happen before he even creates Adam and Eve, the moment that he creates them, they cannot help but fall. They cannot choose to do other than what God knew before they existed, they would do.

Okay.

And so if God creates them and they cannot choose to not fall, they have to fall because they were created to do that, then how can they be morally responsible for doing what they were created to do?

Okay.

So are you asking that as a question or is that?

That's really my position, is that there can be no moral responsibility if there is an omnipotent God that is creating you knowing before you do anything, everything that you're going to do.

Okay.

So you've laid out two possibilities, right? Either God is omniscient, knows everything, or he's not good, would that be fair to say? Because he's forcing people to do evil?

I wouldn't say forcing them to do evil as much as determining what they are going to do. You know, I hear so many people talking about free will that, you know, God gives people free will, but how can he possibly give someone free will if he knew what they were going to do even before they existed?

Well, that's a good question. I mean, I can answer it, but I wanna make sure that I wanna give you the time to explain your views thoroughly unless you want me to answer some of those, but.

I think it'd be easier if you go ahead and answer because if I tried, I'm not sure I would go in the right direction if I try to just keep going.

Okay, so there is, right, so in logic, we talk about a fallacy of the excluded middle, and I wanna make sure we don't fall into that because there's a third option here, okay? So one thing that you and I are both limited in is our knowledge, right?

We learn things. We don't know everything. This is something that wouldn't be for God. God doesn't learn anything. He doesn't, learning being that you observe and gain information, God doesn't do that.

He knows. You and I cannot even conceive of what that's like. We can't conceive of omniscience. Just knowing everything. He would also, he's also outside of time, and we can't comprehend that either. We're limited because you and I are bound by time.

We are creatures that are chronological in our thinking, in our actions, and so because of that, we tend to attribute that to God, and therefore, when we look at it with the fact that he's both omniscient, knows all things, he's outside of time, the only way I can, and this may be a poor illustration, but it's the only way that makes sense to me, is that to God, everything would be an eternal now.

So right now, Adam and Eve are in the garden. You and I are having this conversation. Jesus is on the cross. Abraham's offering Isaac. It's all the same moment to him. That's the only way I can conceive of what a being outside of time would be.

Does that at least make sense?

Mm-hmm.

Okay, so I'm gonna rely on some of your, and actually, a question I did have, totally unrelated, but I wanted to get back. So you said you became a Christian at 16. What were you before, out of curiosity?

Were you raised in a Christian home, or?

Agnostic.

Okay, so you're agnostic.

Mm-hmm.

Okay, so I'll be curious. Maybe later, on a second hour, I'll ask what brought you from that. But from your upbringing there, when you were in church, let me ask this question. Who wrote the Book of Romans?

Paul.

Okay.

Is that really the answer? Who really wrote the Book of Romans, from your training in churches?

Well, they would say that it's the word of God.

Correct.

Yeah, I've got a lot of problems with that, but anyway.

I get it, but I wanna lay down the argument to see if this is helpful for you, though, at least. So, there's a doctrine that we have when it comes to how we got the Bible, called the doctrine of superintending.

Doctrine of superintending, in the case of Romans with Paul, Paul would say that God wrote Romans through Paul. In other words, Paul chooses the words he wants to use, because his style's very different than, say, John's style, or Moses, or Peter, right?

They all have a different style. They all chose words. You can see, there's certain words that Luke, as a physician, uses, that Matthew, as a fisherman, isn't gonna use, right? And we see word choices that each of the writers like to use.

So, we could see that they chose their words, and yet, what we would say is that God worked through them, so that even the words that they chose were exactly as God intended it to be. Does that at least make sense to you?

Well, it makes sense in the sense that I understand that that's your position. It does not make sense in the sense that, okay, Christians claim that the Bible is the word of God, and that it is inspired.

But one major problem with that inspiration idea is it's entirely hung on a single verse from 2 Timothy, a book that's a forgery. We don't even know who wrote it, but whoever did write it claimed to be Paul.

And so, we're getting the word of a liar, and from that, we're hanging the entire inspiration of God on this single verse. And then, even if it is inspired, what does inspiration mean? Inspiration can mean a lot of things.

If I'm inspired to write something, it could just simply mean that I saw something pretty, and I thought, oh, that's pretty, I'm gonna write about it. That can be inspiration. Or if the inspiration is supervisory, where God is checking to make sure all of the details are correct, that would make it more the word of God.

But I really feel like Christians want to have their cake and eat it too. They want the Bible to be the word of God, where God has supervised this to the point where this is the word of God. But on the other hand, God has not supervised it to that point where people are choosing their own words and saying their own things.

And so when the Bible has errors in it, they can say, well, that was just a scribal error, or that was just an exaggeration on the part of the writer, or that was just an embellishment on the part of the author.

Well, if God is the actual author and God is perfect, God should be at least making sure his book that is the revelation of himself is perfect. And it's not perfect. There's all kinds of errors in the Bible.

Okay, so Drew, you marked a question that I think a lot of folks are asking.

So why don't you bring that up and ask the question?

So Rob says, forgery, how do you know?

I'm reading Bart Ehrman's book, Forged. There's a great deal of scholarship in that book.

So yeah, the thing about Bart Ehrman though, is Bart Ehrman has been disproven by several people like Dr. James White, Michael Kruger, Dan Wallace. He's been disproven by a number of people. So we can't just rely on one man like Bart Ehrman,.

Who even himself

Oh, I agree. He's got quite a bit of scholarship behind him. Like I said, if you read the book, you'll see.

Sure, yeah. I mean, Bart Ehrman, he is a very smart guy. I mean, he was Bruce Metzger's last PhD student. He's done a lot of work with Bruce Metzger in writing books in the field of textual criticism.

The problem is, is once he became an apostate, he started and started writing his books against Christianity. It wasn't long before biblical scholars like Dan Wallace and Michael Kruger actually refuted him.

So I would

The view that the pastoral letters are not written by Paul is not just the opinion of Bart Ehrman. That is the consensus of textual critics.

Well, I don't know that I would say it's the consensus, but I know that

I've seen that written by at least three different authors.

Yeah.

But I would say that too, if it got my point out there.

Well, see, but here'd be a thing. I would contend that since Peter recognizes that what Paul wrote was scripture, I'm gonna take that, the fact that early century people recognized what was scripture.

So the issue is, though people wanna say that he didn't write it, whether it's Romans, 1 Timothy, whichever, we know that early believers recognized it immediately as being scripture. And Paul wrote other books.

He wrote two other letters to, I believe two letters to Corinth. Some people think one. They weren't scripture. Because, so, you know, Peter would recognize, just so folks understand, in 2 Peter 3, in verse 15, I'll start in 14 just for context, but he says, therefore, beloved, since you look for these things, be diligent to be found in him in peace, spotless and blameless.

And in regard to patience of our Lord and salvation, just as also our beloved Paul, according to the wisdom given to you, wrote to you. And so he will recognize as Paul wrote these things, he will end up calling them scripture, okay?

Wait a minute, I didn't hear him calling that scripture.

Oh, sorry, verse 16. Also in all his letters, speaking to them of these things in which are some of the hard to understand, and that's what I was gonna lead up to, that Peter recognizes Paul says that these things are kind of hard to understand.

So Peter didn't quite get it. Paul being a scholar, Peter being a fisherman, you might understand it. So I'll pick up at verse 16 then with, so I'm sorry, I was gonna give a little analog there. But so as also in his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which some things are hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort as they also do the rest of the scriptures to their own destruction.

So he's putting Paul's letters, Paul's writing on par with scripture, calling it scripture and saying that there are people who are untaught that distort them.

Okay, well, first of all, I don't think Peter wrote that.

Okay.

And one of the reasons is, and this does come from Bart Ehrman again, is that he said in his study of first century Galilee, there's no record of any school being there. And it is extremely unlikely that fishermen in Galilee would have been educated and sufficiently educated to write in the style of Greek that the New Testament is written in.

And so he finds it extremely unlikely that Peter could even write, let alone write in this kind of a style.

See, the thing is, is, and I noticed a lot of assumptions that you're making,.

Right?

And so when we look at it to base it on someone like Bart Ehrman, who is very clearly, stating that he's kind of got an ax to grind. In fact

I disagree with that statement. Well, I mean, when I listened to him talk, he says he doesn't have an ax to grind. He's studied this for 40 years and he's sharing what he's studied. And he said, you know, if people want to believe it, that's up to them.

He's not out to try to destroy people's beliefs.

Well, but in his, so in his book, Misquoting Jesus, the first edition, it became a New York Times bestseller. He wrote a print copy, a soft copy. Publishers want to make more money, get it. So he added an epilogue.

And in the first printing of that epilogue, he said something that he pulled out because it was true, but it was being used by Christians to point out the truth. And what he said was that, you know, all of the textual variances that we have, they don't affect a single Christian doctrine.

That's true. But that was pulled out. They quickly did a second printing and it was pulled out because of the fact that it was hurting the argument to be made. And the argument then was the purpose, right?

So that would say that there is an ax to grind. There is, he's got a purpose in why he's writing.

What he wrote.

Because if you study Bart, when Bart Ehrman writes at a scholarly level, I tell people, when he writes at a scholarly level and cites his work, he's usually pretty good. When he writes to the masses, he will say things that are true or partially true and then put them with other things that are partially true and then give it a meaning that people read into it.