A Discussion On Calvinism (PART TWO)

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Welcome to Trueology, where we study Christian theology, philosophy, and apologetics.

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We do critiques on scholars, politics. We look into events in both classical and modern day issues.

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We do interviews, debates, and much more. Our goal is providing a Christian resource to edify the saints and to engage the community.

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But most of all, we wanna glorify the Lord through our hearts, minds, souls, and strength.

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So, stay with us as we open up the Word of God and look into everything pertaining to life and godliness.

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My name is Belushi Prevalon, coming to you from the Boston area. And right now, you are listening to Trueology, the study of the truth as it is in Jesus.

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Welcome back to Trueology. Last time on Trueology, we laid down the foundation for understanding

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Calvinism by exploring the biblical and philosophical roots that support the Reformed worldview.

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I was joined by my friend, Josh, also known as a soteriology assistant on X. And together, we talked through some key concepts in Calvinism.

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In today's episode, we are continuing our conversation by digging a little deeper into the doctrine of God's control over all things.

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We'll move from the theological framework eventually to some practical implications, you know, how this truth shapes your view of suffering, salvation, even some daily life things.

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We'll also be responding to some more common objections and bringing it even in more scripture so that we can clarify what we believe and why.

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So, stick around. This episode will challenge, encourage, and hopefully sharpen you in your understanding of God's absolute rule over all things.

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And as always, if you've really been enjoying Trueology, don't forget to like, share, and subscribe to stay connected with future conversations that aim to really honor

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God and love His word. So, with that brief introduction out of the way, let me bring back my friend,

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Josh, to just briefly say hi to the peoples so we can begin our conversation today.

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Let me get him on screen here for you all. Josh, what's going on? Hey, thank you for having me back on.

02:38

I appreciate it. Absolutely, yeah. It's my pleasure. And yeah, ready to go again.

02:45

Yeah, good, good. Good to have you. I'm glad I could have you again. It's, your logic is profound, man.

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The world of the Reformed definitely need to hear what you have to say, and I'm glad to be hosting you today.

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So, Josh, last time we laid down those crucial foundations, but since it's been quite a while since we picked things back up,

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I thought it'd be good for us to kind of jump into a little bit of a review and the topic of God's total control over all things and kind of the foundations that we laid beforehand in that first part.

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So, if you could please, Josh, help us understand a little more about the biblical foundations for God's involvement.

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Yeah, to start out with, we all grow up in a worldview to where God doesn't exist.

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When we're born, we don't think about that, right? We grew up in an atheistic world. We might be introduced to Christianity or something like that, where there's this distant

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God. So, we get moved into a deistic understanding where there's a distant

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God, but we still feel like we have free will. We still feel like we're completely in control and all of that stuff, right?

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So, it's moving into a fully God -controlling understanding as we grow.

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So, we start out with this dualistic kind of, we're a power and God is a power, right?

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That's where everybody starts out as a Christian. So, God's introduced to us and we think, yeah,

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God created the world, but that's where he left it. He created and now we're just bopping along throughout the universe doing what we do and he may interfere every once in a while or come and answer a prayer or something like that.

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But that's not the biblically consistent view. The biblically consistent view is that God is always involved at every moment because just like God created and that was his, he was first in that and we came into existence by his power then every moment of our existence is being held in existence by his power continuously, right?

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So, this is his creation. This is nobody else's creation. He didn't consult with another

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God and say, come over here and help me create. Come over here and help me co -determine all of these things, right?

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There was nobody else out there. It was God alone who decided to bring this entire storyline into existence.

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So, in the first episode, we were talking about the foundational verses that support that idea that God alone is the creator and sustainer.

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So, we talked about Hebrews 1 .3 where he upholds the universe by the word of his power.

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That's his power. He is the one that upholds the universe.

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There is no other God besides him that is upholding the universe, right? So, Colossians 1 .17,

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he is before all things and in him, all things hold together. There is no other

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God, no other ultimate being, no other ultimate power that is before anything existing the way that it's existing in the moment, right?

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So, you are not an ultimate power that is causing your existence at each moment. God is the one that's before all things at all moments.

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So, and Acts 17 .28, also in him, we live and move and have our being.

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A lot of people skip over the move part, right? We live, of course, by him causing our heartbeat, causing our breath and stuff like that, giving us breath.

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People use those vague terms, but if they think about it, what it means is that he's in every moment of our living, moving and being, it's in his power that that's coming to pass, right?

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It's not another God or another ultimate power causing our living, moving and being.

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There is no disconnect. So, those foundations have to be right in our presuppositions before we even can rightly interpret any scripture there is.

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So, if we have a different foundation than this, a dualistic foundation or a foundation where there's another ultimate power causing things other than God, then we will come to false conclusions.

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We will come to false interpretations of all of that. And that's basically the foundation that we start with as consistent

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Calvinists. Beautifully said, Josh. Appreciate that, you know, you just surveying that foundational biblical starting point there.

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And as we mentioned last time, would you agree then that because we start with those,

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I guess, very sinful and flawed views of God and ourselves in relation to ourselves, would you say that, you know, the view of understanding

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God's true control over all things, especially metaphysically and throughout our whole life and Him as sustainers is the spiritual view?

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Yes, that, yeah. We all start out natural minded, if that's what you're talking about.

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We have a natural mind and we interpret things through natural meanings all the time.

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So, the natural mind has a hard time understanding the spiritual deeper things where God is in control at all times.

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It's simple to understand that God started up the universe. He created it because even atheists have that experience that simple concept at the beginning that something started it.

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But now we're just going on bopping along on our own. They attribute it to the

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Big Bang, we attribute it to God, right? So, that's the simple starting point.

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And then after that, we're just freely bopping along. So, that's common throughout the entire world, basically.

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Whether you're an atheist or an evolutionist or a newborn Christian, right?

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Still in your natural mind understanding. Sanctification is a part of growing into spiritual understandings more and more and more, the deeper understandings.

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And some of us are faster at it than others by the grace of God. So, and His purposes bringing us to that, if that helps.

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Yes, actually, that does help. In what you just said there, our development and sanctification eventually should bring us down the direction of acknowledging that God truly is

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God. And in relation to Him, we are living out and working out all the things that He has predetermined.

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And He can do that because He's authored all things high and far beyond and above us, but it's still eminently preserving and sustaining the world.

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Would you agree then that that kind of like dualistic, I'm as powerful as God and I can make ultimate determinations just like He can, especially pertaining to things in eternity, that dualistic mindset, isn't that kind of like a form of,

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I wanna be careful how I say this, but isn't it kind of like idolatry or isn't it formally idolatry to just assume that there is a power other than God that can make these ultimate determinations?

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Yeah, I mean, even false religions attribute different gods to different things, even in creation.

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You know, people worship trees. Even some religions have it to where they have a special, they have a

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God for everything, but they save a specific unknown God just in case they missed one.

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So that's part of the dualistic view. I'm not saying that Christians have that view, but I'm just saying that it's prevalent.

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It's the natural mind's understanding of what's going on, right? And we, that's where they come up with the, we are a power also.

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You have all these gods and we can become a God, right?

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So they start out with the understanding that we're not quite God, but they also believe that we can ascend to that.

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That's false religions, of course. Well, even

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Christians themselves, growing up in that kind of a world where you have atheism and semi -deism,

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I like to put it, I like to say it's a form of deism, a form of dualism because the specific definitions most people don't hold 100 % to.

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Like, let's say dualism. Dualism is not necessarily that you're equal power with God, right?

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But a form of dualism says that God is a power and there is another power, whether it's as equal or even lesser, right?

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It's almost like the Avenger characters. We can go to Avengers. You have the humans who, they're powerful, but they're not as powerful as Thor.

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So we've been trained in this kind of dualistic, kind of deistic mindset throughout our whole lives.

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So it's hard for the natural mind to understand these things. It's easy for us who've grown up in that kind of world to understand a dualistic world.

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Yeah, I really appreciate you kind of fleshing that out for us. Now that we've kind of reintroduced the ideas of God's total control and why that's biblically foundational to our views and better for our sanctification if we're to grow in God's grace, can you help us understand what some of those implications specifically are as and pertaining to God as sustainer?

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We all like to say that, he upholds every beat of my heart, but can you get a little more specific in what the implications are for our lives there?

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Yeah, sustainer has a, like we were talking about with the natural mind, sustainer can have a natural meaning like between me and my children,

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I can sustain their health by providing them food and stuff like that.

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So I can sustain my car's performance by putting gas in the tank and make sure

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I do tune ups on it and stuff like that. But when it comes to a creator, a transcendent creator level, the ultimate level, sustainer takes on a completely different understanding, a completely different context.

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So like we were saying before, the false religions, they have those pictures of a man holding the planet on his back, and just straining to hold it up.

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That's a naturalistic understanding. We can't understand the concept of a sustainer as being the creator as a sustainer.

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But once you understand what sustainer means, it's not referring to necessarily just breathing or, it's talking about existence, specifically existence.

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And you existing, God brought you into existence and people think that he just disconnected from you.

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That's where the dualistic part comes from. They think that once God started you, you have the power to continue your existence, but the

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Bible doesn't allow that. That's what the three foundational verses that I went through earlier, they make that, they discredit that, right?

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You can't have a moment where God disconnects and you continue to exist. God is necessary.

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God's causative power is necessary for every moment of your existence. Now, if we take each one of those moments as a snapshot, we can see that there's movement between them, right?

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Just like on a film or something like that. The next frame shows a different movement, right?

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The next frame shows the next movement. So you're living, moving, and having your being in him, which means by his power.

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So every moment of your being is being held into in existence by his power.

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So that's what the moving part of the people really skip over.

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I hope that helps. Yeah, it certainly does. And as you were talking,

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I was kind of trying to follow the logic as well. If God is the ultimate sustainer and that relationship of being the sustainer is different than just upholding you by feeding you, but rather it's ultimate and causative.

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And if it's by a moment by moment and at all times, and that connects directly to causality in your existence, because if God should stop to sustain you, it's not the same thing as you're not receiving food from your parents by their sustenance.

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It's on a higher level and different plane and a greater sophistication than that.

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So this is why, go ahead, what? You would cease to exist. That's why it's key to tie it to existence at every moment.

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Right, and what I was gonna say is, yeah, and if it is tied to existence and God is actively always doing it, including when you're sinning, what does that mean?

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It means that those things are determined. There's no way to escape out of that.

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It sounds, the only kind of objections that are left is really when people have that knee -jerk emotional response.

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Oh, God's the author of sin, and we will definitely get into that later, but I just really appreciate how you're able to actually think through that along with me there.

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But yeah, if God is actively sustaining, he's actively causing moment by moment things, including when you're doing good and when you're doing bad.

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So that's why we could say, yeah, God is in charge of essentially what comes to pass, all of it, and that word all is in bold and italicized.

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It's all. All things, all things. Correct. See, they wanna take all things and break it up into God does some things,

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God causes some things, God keeps some things in existence, but some other power does the other things, right?

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But the Bible doesn't talk that way. The Bible doesn't say some things, it says all things.

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There is no other power by which all things occur, which is crazy because even sin, is sin part of your existence?

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At the end of the day, when you reach the end, is sin part of your existence? Is evil part of creation's existence?

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If it is, then existence is tied to God's power.

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So you can't disconnect it, you can't disconnect it. So now we have to deal with the emotional arguments, which we'll deal with later, but I just wanna put that in there.

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Yeah, thank you for that. So, you know, since God is sustaining moment by moment, when

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I moved to scratch my nose here, you know, Josh, tell me, who moved first,

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God or us? Well, of course, God's power is needed for each moment of existence.

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So of course, God moves first, right? You can't move and like we were talking about with the frames, right?

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As your arm is moving up to your nose, the power that brings that next moment into existence is not a dualistic separate power.

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God has to exert the power to bring that next frame of your arm moving up toward your nose.

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It's moment by moment. And those are microscopic moments that God is forming.

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So God moves first. The alternative is two different powers, right?

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So now think about it. Creation, you have a power in yourself if there is a dualistic view and the dualistic understanding.

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So you're moving your hand up to your nose and God is just observing over there, waiting for you to make a mistake.

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And if you do, then he'll punish you or whatever. But you have to understand that even if it's your arm moving up to your nose, or if it's a wave crashing in the ocean, or if it's anything happening, the rain falling out of a cloud, we are observing

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God's power. Now we're observing it from within the storyline, of course.

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So that's another strange understanding of trying to figure out how we see it from inside, right?

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We're not outside of creation looking in and trying to determine what's going to occur with our characters.

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That's another reason why the Layton's chessboard analogy is strange.

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It's God looking at the chessboard of creation with the people moving inside.

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And then you have this other entity, this other third party entity looking from outside of creation, right?

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Moving chess pieces. That's not how it works. We're not outside of a chessboard. We are inside of the creation.

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That's why the author storyline, our creator versus creation distinction works.

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Because we are inside of the story. We're not outside of it looking in. Got it.

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That certainly makes sense to me. So Josh, I appreciate you just going through that.

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And if people are tracking along, I highly recommend, if you need more of Josh's stuff, definitely gonna let him plug his line in just at the end of this podcast.

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But man, follow him on X and just read through some of the responses that he goes through on X with the common objections to Calvinism.

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Oh, God's the author of sin. And just see the profound response that he gives to some of these emotionally compelling critiques, to say the least.

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But Josh, I really appreciate that survey and you bringing those foundational concepts back into our view as we talk here.

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Now, I kind of want to go on to our next segment and actually take all that we just heard from you and your understanding of how the consistent

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Calvinist view is really justified in all that it's saying, especially biblically and philosophically, and help us understand how all of that connects to salvation.

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As Reformed, we hold to the doctrines of grace, commonly known as TULIP.

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How does God's total control, meticulous control and his absolute sovereignty over all things, all these concepts as we just laid out, how does that all really connect to salvation and both to the doctrines of grace and to specific scriptures and predestination?

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Well, basically we got to understand that God, I know people don't like the author thing, but it is.

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That's why we do away with the chessboard analogy and we prefer to use the author analogy.

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God authored a story. And within that story, he's trying to glorify himself, not trying to, he is, sorry, but he is glorifying himself with a story, right?

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A story that both includes sin and evil and it includes mercy and grace, judgment and wrath.

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It includes all of that. That's what makes it a beautiful story. When you read somebody else's book and it includes these kinds of concepts, it makes it a really good story.

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We're drawn to that kind of stuff because that's how it's all designed. But when it comes to our salvation,

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God is using a very dark backdrop of sin and evil, right?

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At the beginning, part of the bringing out the dark part was what happened in the garden, right?

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By one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners. We were made sinners so that God could display mercy and grace.

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That's why it occurred that way, right? How is he going to show mercy and grace to somebody who's not a sinner?

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Mercy and grace is a concept that necessarily needs sin and evil.

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Without it, there is no mercy and grace. What are you gonna show, right? So that's where it comes from.

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That's why it's all tied into the tulip, of course. We start out in total depravity, which is what a sinner is.

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We desire, we have a moral desire for disobedience to God, right?

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When we see the light, we want to hide in the darkness. We enjoy the darkness. We love it.

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These ideas of morality and disposition are brought up in scripture.

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We love the darkness and we hate the light. This love and hate is not just simple choices.

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They're choices from something. And we can connect our choices to a disposition.

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And our disposition is brought up at the beginning when Adam sinned, everybody was made a sinner by that.

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So that's why there's more meaning to the saying, you're not a sinner because you sin.

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You sin because you are a sinner. That has a lot of theology in it, right?

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We were made sinners. That's why we sin. So now

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God has set the dark backdrop for his mercy and grace to shine more than it would if he was just giving us the option, right?

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So now we are set up to be sinners that can be saved by grace, by grace.

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That's what the limited atonement and unconditional election and all of that point to.

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It's the by grace. Limited atonement is by grace. Unconditional election is by grace, right?

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If you have to wait for somebody to change their own heart and get out of their evil and all of that, then it's not by grace.

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He's waiting for you to make yourself good. And then he recognizes that that's not grace, right?

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So the limited atonement, unconditional election, irresistible grace, all of these things are twisted by the opposition, but they all work together.

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So beautifully when you actually understand it from the reformed view, total to brevity, all the way to perseverance of the saints, all makes sense when they're all in a complete package and they're not destroyed by something else.

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Hey folks, thank you so much for tuning in to Truology. My name is Belushi Prevalon. And if this has been a help to you in any way, please like, share and subscribe.

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And if you haven't already done so right now on Spotify, you can vote for the next episode. Now I already have a bunch of things lined up, but I wanna give you, the audience, the opportunity to participate on what

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28:47

Thank you. Yeah, it seems like, you know, if we were to put those two views side by side in regards to God's total control, even over salvation in the

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Calvinist reformed view, God saves by his grace.

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He really actually does. It's unmerited favor. Nothing compelled him to do it.

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It is intrinsically in his nature and goodness and glory that he wanted to express in saving sinners that he moved by his ultimate purposes to save us, by his grace and totally by soul.

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But on the other view, God saves because you let him.

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And, you know, sometimes, you know, I've talked to the non -Calvinists and, you know, their antennas are always up and they're always looking for the misrepresentation, but how do you, like, how is it not so if the ultimate reason for why you're saved is because you had to change your own heart in order to let

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God change your heart? How is it, how are you not saved because you first kind of saved yourself, you know?

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Can you help us put those side by side really quickly? Yeah, I mean, you hit the nail on the head.

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If you have to change your heart first, what is God doing afterwards? It's almost like God's taking credit for what you do on their view, right?

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If you have to recognize your heart, first of all, with a, recognize your heart and then change it and then

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God says, okay, now I'm gonna change your heart. What's he change? If your heart is already changed by you, what more is he doing?

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There's nothing else there to do. So God is just basically playing forgery at that point, you know, or plagiarism, you can put it.

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I asked that question again right quick. So it was just really in regards to just the comparison between God's saving and the other view that essentially makes the human being, the person making the choice, the savior first, essentially in regards to changing their dispositions or their heart, you know?

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Superman comes into the burning building, but he can't just grab you and fly out. He has to shake you on the shoulder and say, hey, can

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I save you? And that's essentially the view. I mean, I know some people will think that's a straw man, but you have to explain at least logically or biblically why that's not the case.

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Don't you have to let God save you? You know, don't you have to posture yourself so that God can save you?

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Like if he absolutely loves you and he's full of grace and abounding with it, you know, why is it not the case that, you know, the person who ultimately saves is not him.

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It's you who let him. Exactly. No, that's true. Yeah, is there something you wanted to add to that?

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Well, they've already stripped the being made sinner by one man's disobedience.

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They stripped that away. So now they're left with neutrality, right? And then at the end, they're trying to get to the point where it's just choice, right?

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So they've oversimplified the entire process, right? There is no total depravity.

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There is no need for unconditional election, right? There's no need for limited atonement, right?

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He just atones for all, which is a whole another issue. If he atoned for all and took away the sins of all,

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I've even had the opposition tell me, yes, Jesus took away the sins of all.

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The only reason that you're in hell is because of a bad choice, right? You made the wrong choice and that's why you're in hell.

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You're not in hell for your sin anymore. You're in hell for the wrong choice. Blows my mind.

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But yeah, that's the difference. In their mind, they have oversimplified it to basically

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God provides, you make a choice, then God saves you by grace. But how's that grace?

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If God is waiting for you to meet the condition before he does his gracious part, then it's no longer by grace, right?

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So let me put it to you this way. If you think deeper about the free will view, right?

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That Jesus died for the sins of all people, right? He took away the sins of all people.

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So now all that's left is for you to make a choice. So now you make the choice, right?

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Now you have, after you've made the choice, you have this endurance section until the end.

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So you have your profession and then you have to make it to the end in that profession, keeping your faith, working out your salvation.

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If there's ever a point in that where you walk away, then God doesn't save you.

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So when you understand it that way, then God's saving grace, when he saves you by grace, saved by grace is at the end, the finish line waiting for you.

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So you started your faith, you keep your faith to the end without walking away anywhere in that timeline and God will reward you with saving you by grace.

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Now, when you think about it, what is grace at that point? You actually made it to the finish line.

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Why wouldn't he save you, right? Basically he would be lying if he didn't save you.

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So why do they call that by grace, right? How they define grace at that point at the very end of the line is that God, it's up to God, whether he wants to save you at that point or not.

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So the implication is you can work all the way up to the end, right? And then

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God could still say, no, I'm gonna choose not to save you. That is what they mean by saved by grace.

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Grace comes at the end. Now I'm not talking about external grace where God provided for all, that is a grace.

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It's almost like a sandwich. God provided for all the grace of the gospel,

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Jesus dying on the cross, the scriptures and all that, that's for all. I'm talking about from when you put your faith in that by free will, you do that apart from God, right?

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This is all from God, but the faith part is apart from God. That's what God's waiting on.

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And then from there, you make it to the end and then God saves you by the second grace, right?

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So how is it grace when it's at the end and you didn't walk away here, right?

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If you walked away here, he still could have saved you by grace is what they say, but he won't save you by grace here.

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If you make it to the end, then he has the choice to either save you by grace or not. It's a whole, it's a mess, man.

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It's a mess when you think about it. Yeah, that's definitely not truly grace, is it?

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I mean, is it really grace if it's like Christmas? I mean, the presence below the

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Christmas tree on Christmas morning, and it's up to you to reach out and grab it. That's not really grace. And it irks me when people define it like that as salvation is like that.

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Jesus already died for you. Now you just have to accept it. One, the Bible never portrays the atonement that way.

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And two, grace in the Bible is bestowed, not grace that's left on the table for you to reach out and grab.

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But that's more, real quick, it's more than that. The gift is there.

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You have to reach out and unwrap it, but not only unwrap it, you got to play with it. If you ever get bored with it,

37:00

God won't save you. That's why the grace is at the end of there. If you ever walk away from your toy, and you're not happy with it, then

37:11

God will send you to hell. So the endurance part is when you open that gift, you have to endure in loving that gift all the way to the end, or God will punish you.

37:26

Not many people understand that way. Yeah, I'd love to expand on that. But I do want to ask you a quick question in regards to making choices.

37:37

Some people will say, and reasonably so, we open the Bible, and it seems like intuitively, at least, we look at it plainly, and we see people making choices.

37:49

A lot of free will proponents will say, ah, I can prove free will, you Calvinists are wrong. See, it says whosoever will, see, he chose right there.

38:00

Briefly, we'll get into some answer and some objections later, but could you just give us a little response to that?

38:05

People making choices in the Bible, and how would we understand that in regards to salvation and what we've already laid down?

38:13

Right, well, the natural mind, of course, has already grown up with us making choices constantly, and God's not opening up the clouds to say,

38:25

I determine that, right, I determine that. So we're already basically programmed by the world to think that we are doing that apart from any other power.

38:35

That's our power. So when we look in the Bible, or when, not us now, but when they look in the

38:41

Bible, they see verses where it shows people making choices, but there is no footnote under it saying, where God says,

38:50

I determine this, right? And this is what they harp on all the time, right? It doesn't say that God did that.

38:58

That's true, but if you're reading the Lord of the Rings, and Frodo makes a choice where he gets up to take the ring or something like that, or chooses to take the journey of the ring, you're not reading in there,

39:12

Tolkien putting a footnote in there saying, I determine that. No, you automatically know that's part of the story.

39:18

That's part of the author's story. So why would you assume any differently? Why would Tolkien have to say that on every page of every choice?

39:28

It's ridiculous. But that's why we have the foundational verses that we infer from into those passages so that we can rightly discern them in those passages.

39:39

So now if you take their logic to where God doesn't say it specifically in the verse, and you apply that to today, right?

39:49

When you pray, and there is a result from that prayer, if you take their logic from how they attack us in the

39:59

Bible where God did not say he determined it in that particular passage, he did not say he determined it today.

40:07

So does that mean you answered your own prayer? A lot of people believe that way. You pulled yourself up by your bootstraps and then

40:13

God rewards you, right? The saying God helps those who help themselves, that's where that comes from, right?

40:25

So we infer it from foundational verses into that so that we properly interpret that scripture.

40:34

They just assume into the verse, if it doesn't say it, then we can just take that verse out of context of the entire

40:41

Bible and say, it doesn't say it, so we can input whatever we want to, free will.

40:51

Yeah, certainly agree with that. It seems like oftentimes when people do use the, hey, look,

40:57

I can use my little finger, point to the verse that shows that that person's making a choice. See, free will exists.

41:03

It seems like free will, the assertion of free will is always like ignorance of the gap, sorry.

41:10

You just kind of fill in your ignorance with the free will concept. When really the choices that are being made in the

41:18

Bible, as you said, they don't all need a footnote to say God did it. But when we see people making choices in the

41:24

Bible, what we're seeing is we're seeing the outplay of what

41:29

God determined. We're not seeing why their hearts do what they do.

41:35

Like none of those Bible verses are addressing why they're doing what they're doing. There's other verses that do talk about the human heart and what it does, in fact, will do.

41:45

So when we see people choosing to trust in Jesus in the scriptures, we shouldn't be like, oh, free will.

41:50

No, we should look to the verses that tell us about the human heart to tell us why they did what they did.

41:56

And we should keep in reference all those verses that like Colossians 117 and Hebrews 1 .3,

42:04

which are always true at all times that God is sustaining. And he's active there. His spirit is actively bringing about all that he has decreed to come to pass.

42:15

And we should not forget that. So really appreciate that, brother Josh. So we are moving on here on our little podcast discussion really, you know, we don't have to go fast.

42:27

We could take things slow, but if you would, in regards to God's control over salvation, can you help us just bring out, you know, one or two verses or so from scripture that help us understand the predestination connections there?

42:47

There's tons of verses, but what I wanted to say about predestination is it's, I mean, everybody knows this.

42:53

It's made up of two words. It's made up of pre, which is before something, and destination, which is the end result, right?

43:02

So predestination in a broad overarching sense is what

43:10

God has determined before the foundation of the world to occur in his story, right?

43:17

He planned, purposed, and determined everything that would occur in his story, including all the sinful and evil actions that would occur.

43:27

The crucifixion, Joseph being brought into slavery, right? God meant it.

43:33

They meant it for evil. God meant it for good. That is two different meanings. God determined it on the ultimate level for a meaning, right?

43:44

He meant it to happen. They also within the story meant it to happen. And the result was something good that came out of it.

43:55

So there's many verses you can talk about, but predestination itself is

44:02

God predetermining a storyline, right? What happens in that storyline gives the reasonable reason the destination occurs from it.

44:14

So we can take when it comes to mercy and grace,

44:21

God does not just say, hey, I'm gonna create this person, send them to heaven, right?

44:27

The storyline plays out to where they start out as sinners. God saves them by grace.

44:34

They believe and trust in Christ. They are sanctified to the end.

44:40

And the destination, the reasonable destination of what happened during that storyline is heaven, right?

44:50

So if God was to, the oversimplified argument that they use a lot of the times is asking the question, so you're saying

45:01

God created people specifically for hell, right? So no, he did not create people specifically for hell.

45:09

That's taken pre and destination and stripping it of the storyline that gives the reasonable reason why that destination is there.

45:19

Right, so we can take Pharaoh, for instance, in Exodus 19 and, or Exodus 9 and 16, you know, where God says,

45:30

I raised you up for this purpose. Pharaoh's purpose was never to be shown grace.

45:35

His purpose was always to be, God said, I'm gonna raise you up for this purpose.

45:41

And the purpose was to display his power and glory. And ultimately in the end, he was destroyed and his destination was not heaven, right?

45:52

So that's where you have the verses that say, everything's made for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble.

46:02

God's plan, his pre -planning included wickedness, right?

46:11

And wickedness brought out the good of God displaying his power and glory. And in the timeline, well, the destination of Pharaoh resulted from that purpose.

46:24

So God pre -planned Pharaoh's purpose in the storyline, he brought it into existence and the reasonable destination after that was that he was destroyed and he was never saved.

46:38

Now, he did that with us also, right? He purposed that we would display his grace and mercy.

46:45

Not just his power, wrath and judgment and patience, but his grace and mercy.

46:52

So he created us, all of us believers now, he planned, purposed and determined that we would start out as sinners so that we could be saved by grace to show

47:04

God's loving kindness, his grace and mercy, put it on display for wretched sinners.

47:11

And the reasonable part is that we put our faith in him and trust in him and we love him to the end.

47:18

And the reasonable destination of that is heaven, right?

47:24

He brings us into the kingdom. So that's my understanding of predestination as an overarching thing.

47:31

Now, when us Calvinists talk about predestination, we're talking about the specific side of that, the elect side of that, the ones who are chosen to display his grace and mercy.

47:41

Right? So we are predestined to play the part of displaying his grace and mercy in time and our ultimate destination will be heaven, right?

47:57

So that's election. God elected us before the foundation of the world, right?

48:04

To be in Christ. What occurs in time is that we come to belief and we are in Christ in time.

48:12

So we're in time before the foundation of the world in his plan. We become in Christ in time.

48:19

And the result of that is our final destination in heaven with him for eternity. Definitely makes sense to me.

48:26

And I appreciate you kind of, you know, kind of orienting that back to scripture and some biblical examples such as Pharaoh, which

48:33

I believe, you know, I mean, if Romans nine is not a Calvinist, you know, explicit teaching on the concepts of that, you know,

48:44

I remember reading Romans nine for the very first time, not ever knowing what Calvinism ever was. And I sat there as a brand new believer and I'm like, well, it looks like God can do whatever he wants, including with me.

48:56

And I just, and it only helped my prayer life and my relationship with God, because I knew that he was in total control and that he had loved me.

49:04

He had set his love upon me and he had brought me into salvation. But you know, you start to go through church and those things kind of get massaged out of you and you start embracing concepts of like free will and things like that.

49:20

And you never are actually pressed to think them through. So really appreciate you going through that.

49:27

So let's move on to our next segment here and talking about, you know, the practical side of Calvinism, you know, because we don't want to let people think that we are just here navel gazing and thinking about these high philosophical studious concepts, but rather, you know, like on the, down the earth, you know, everyday level, okay,

49:52

God determined all things. He's the ultimate author and in the storyline level, we're experiencing and everything is outplaying all that he is determined.

50:01

Like what is that supposed to do for us in regards to our comfort? Our comfort and our view of tragedy and, you know, personal sins and struggles and things like that.

50:11

Can you help us understand that? Yeah. Basically, if you have the mindset that God's not in control of all things, right?

50:21

He's not the power behind all things and he's not planning all things, then how can you say all things will work for the good of those who believe?

50:33

Because the all things is not some things. It's not just the good things. We all know this, all things is all things.

50:41

So for the Calvinist, we understand that the section of our total depravity, no matter how long it is, when we are by nature, children of wrath, we look back at that and say, that was a good thing that God did.

51:04

Because now in our looking back at that, we see the grace that came out of that.

51:11

We always get to the other side and say hindsight's 20 -20, right? So you get a different kind of character if you go through a hardship or if you lose a house, speaking more narrowly, if you lose a house, your house burns down or something like that, or you survive cancer.

51:34

I mean, you can go through all kinds of examples. When you're on the other side of it, you get to help people, you get to understand more and the result is always a good thing.

51:46

So when we look back at that time where we were by nature, children of wrath, right?

51:54

Before God saved us by grace, we can look at that and say, wow, we can see the grace because of that.

52:04

Where if that wouldn't happen, wasn't part of our life, we wouldn't see graces clearly.

52:11

It'd be a good gift. I appreciate you saving me God, but you didn't save me from much.

52:19

So those things work for our good. For now, those who love him and are called according to his purpose, all things work for his good, not just the good things, all of it.

52:33

So now take that concept and we look into our future. Anytime that something bad happens, we know during that bad time that God is doing something good.

52:45

He's bringing something good out of it. He needs us to be a certain kind of character in the story.

52:50

And this has to happen in order for that character to progress the sanctification process.

52:59

So bringing us closer to being more like Christ over time.

53:06

Sanctification is a long time and it includes both good and bad things, but the good and bad things are all things, right?

53:13

That's what we're meaning by the all things. So when we look at that, we can have hope that God hasn't forsaken us, right?

53:21

This doesn't mean that God has forsaken us because we love him and we're called according to his purpose. We know this.

53:27

So God, what are you telling me right now? What are you trying to get me through? And it gives you hope to make it through those valleys.

53:33

And it gives you hope to make it through because you know that God is working this and there's a purpose for it.

53:40

There's no reason to have doubts or suicidal thoughts, right?

53:46

When you're looking to God and you know that he's on your side even in this and you know that he has a purpose in it, you have hope and you endure through those things because of this kind of an understanding, a full all things encompassing understanding.

54:05

Does that make sense? Yes, it sure does. It seems very inconsistent if someone were to affirm that things that you're dealing with now and the things that you have done from the past strengthen your faith because you've seen

54:20

God work them all out for good. Very subtly, sometimes they forget that they're actually affirming that God actually has a purpose for bad things.

54:31

All the bad things that have happened in your life, the current ones and the one that happened in the past, but they have a hard time affirming that the very next bad thing was brought by God for a specific purpose.

54:43

Sometimes if the tornado destroys the house, oh no, God didn't do that. That was just the storm, it just happened.

54:51

But now that it's happened, I guess God's gonna figure out how to have a plan for your life, right?

54:59

It's almost like they simultaneously wanted to affirm that yeah, the bad thing that happened, oh, purpose by God, and he strengthened my faith through it.

55:07

But in the present and then even in the future, the things that come to pass, it's like, at least in the moment, very emotionally, they seem to not follow through with the idea that even this too is by the hand of God.

55:23

And I mean, if you just think about just that concept alone, the things that come to pass in your life, the struggles that strengthen your faith and build you as, give you character,

55:33

I mean, those are some of the ideals that many missionaries in like the 19th century held to.

55:41

Like they went to pagan lands and the things that they endured and suffered, they attributed it to the hand of God, all of it.

55:48

And they knew that they were the vehicle through which the gospel was gonna bring light to the heathen nations.

55:57

And God was doing it all, including the suffering that they would endure, even that they would never see a convert in their lives.

56:03

Like, I mean, was that all purpose by God? They certainly believed it.

56:08

I think we should believe it too based on what we disclosed here tonight. Do you have anything else to add to that?

56:17

Yeah, I believe that's why God included the story of Job in his overarching,

56:24

Job, yes, Job, in his overarching story. I love the book of Job.

56:31

When, since you were talking about a tornado coming and taking it, and then somebody assuming that the tornado acted first, like we were talking about before, they think that it acted first and then

56:45

God comes in afterwards and tries to clean up the mess, by what power was that tornado doing what it was doing?

56:53

There is no other power, right? There is no other power by which wind blows or anything like that.

57:02

So when the tornado comes and it destroys the house or any kind of weather pattern, it's not that God is distant from that, it's that God is not waiting for it to, which is an odd concept, waiting for it to do its thing as if God didn't know.

57:21

And then once it does, he's like, oh my goodness, I gotta fix this. So in the book of Job, it gives us a glimpse of understanding and hope and everything.

57:33

The inspired writer says, the Lord gave and the Lord took away, right?

57:38

And when we understand that, for the person who thinks that the tornado acted by a different power, they cannot understand the second part of that phrase, the

57:54

Lord took away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Okay, if he was not sinning with his lips, when he said that, then that part, you either have to say the

58:09

Lord was something else or you have to say the Lord in the first section and the Lord in the second section are the exact same

58:15

Lord. The Lord gave the children, the house, the property, everything that was going on there, all of his possessions, the land and everything.

58:27

And the same Lord took it all away, right? That's ultimate level talk.

58:34

That's ultimate level writing a story talk.

58:40

Now the characters that played in there was Satan, the Chaldeans, fire from the sky and all that stuff, right?

58:50

But that's part of God's story. All of those characters and all of those events and everything are part of God's story.

58:57

That's why the inspired writer by the spirit can rightly say, and he did not sin with his lips.

59:08

Job also understood that it was God who took all of that stuff away. He never attributed it to Satan.

59:15

He never attributed it to the fire or ultimately he never attributed it to any of that.

59:22

Ultimately, key word, ultimately, he attributed it to the Lord took all of that away.

59:29

And that's a biblically consistent understanding that we try to hold throughout the entire

59:35

Bible. We can understand things on the storyline level that Satan acts, that evil people act, but we can also understand on the ultimate level that God authored all these things without himself being the storyline level sinner himself acting in the story.

59:54

Hey folks, thank you so much for tuning into Truology. My name is Belushi Prevalon. And if this has been a help to you in any way, please like, share and subscribe.

01:00:02

And if you haven't already done so right now on Spotify, you can vote for the next episode. Now I already have a bunch of things lined up, but I wanna give you the audience the opportunity to participate on what

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01:00:21

Thank you. Job is a wonderful book to understand God's authorship and how to find comfort in that because it says that God sent

01:00:31

Satan and then it says Satan did it. It's both man, not either or. So Josh, I do wanna transition to our final segment here as appreciate you just talking to us about these things and helping us have a little more grasp on them.

01:00:49

Let me ask you some questions, and let you answer some objections for us if that's all right.

01:00:57

Yeah, I'll try my best. Yeah, let's see if you can dismantle briefly, coherently, impeccably, what?

01:01:08

Real quick, what's odd is I don't want anybody to think that I'm gonna sound exactly like I do like on Soteriology Assistant online because the things that are in my head, they come out like you hear on the podcast, but they are way more organized when

01:01:26

I do it online. So I'm gonna try my best to answer everything. It's there.

01:01:31

It's just, it comes out different online. It does. Yeah, don't worry. Just give us your response.

01:01:38

These are, I mean, some of the biggest objections, I guess, emotional or not, they come out.

01:01:46

Most people have not really been pushed on them. And sometimes Calvinists, I posted something the other day.

01:01:52

I said that sometimes Calvinists believe the provisionist critiques because deep down inside, we have a form of ignorance that's causing us to sort of kind of be persuaded by them because we haven't really worked through them ourselves either.

01:02:05

So if you could help us with some objections here, Josh, I just wanna begin with the big one.

01:02:12

If anyone's listened to this for more than 10 minutes already, they already know and are probably yelling,

01:02:18

God's the author of sin. How would you respond to the God's the author of sin objection that sounds so bad?

01:02:28

It's a very vague term. So it really depends on what you mean by God is the author of sin, right?

01:02:34

So if you think about it, that's why I like the author storyline understanding because when you think about an author like Tolkien writing the

01:02:48

Lord of the Rings, he's not just the author of the good parts of the story, right?

01:02:53

He's also including all of the bad parts. He wrote it all. He is the author of everything.

01:03:00

But what the original vague meaning of that was in the Westminster Confession, God is not the author of sin.

01:03:09

They never denied that God was the ultimate author of sin.

01:03:15

They were denying the specific meaning that was happening at that time where they were saying, they were including

01:03:22

God in the story, saying that he was one of the characters causing sin, authoring on the storyline level alongside other people, right?

01:03:33

That's what they were denying. So if you simply mean that God is the author of all things that occur in the storyline of creation, including the evil things and the sinful things, that's not a problem.

01:03:49

But if you want to say God is the author, like Satan in the story is the author, then we deny that also.

01:03:59

So if that's what you want to mean, God is forcing people or anything like that, if that's what you mean by author, or that you're saying

01:04:08

God is sinning, we deny that also. But there's two different levels of meaning to that very vague phrase,

01:04:17

God is the author of sin. The Westminster Confession was using the storyline meaning when they were denying it.

01:04:24

When we use it, we're talking about God as the creator and sustainer of all things, the planner, purposer, and determiner of all things that includes the crucifixion of Christ, by the way, that also includes the selling of Joseph by his brothers into slavery.

01:04:46

These are the sins that he authored. He meant it for good, he authored that.

01:04:54

So yes, typically what the objectors want to do is they want to conflate those into the same meaning.

01:05:03

That's why they use such vague terms and look at you like you're saying God is the author of sin. And they have a specific storyline level meaning.

01:05:11

And they want you to say, no, he's not. And then we look inconsistent, right?

01:05:19

So stop, stop, stop falling into their trap and define what you mean.

01:05:26

Yes, God is the author of all things like we've been talking about throughout this entire episode.

01:05:31

God is behind all things, God is before all things, God brought all things into existence, right?

01:05:37

But God is the author of the entire storyline, including the existence of things that are labeled sin in the story, right?

01:05:47

We don't believe that God is sinning under the law in the story.

01:05:53

There's a huge difference. Yeah, correctly. And I'm glad you brought that up, the categorical conflation there, the smashing of categories.

01:06:04

If you take the ultimate authorship of God and the storyline level things and you crush them together into one, you really do reduce this all to a game of forensics from the

01:06:16

FBI. Whoever's fingerprint you find, that's who's guilty. And if God determines it,

01:06:24

God's guilty, right? That's a total denial of those categories.

01:06:30

And when you do that, every single Calvinist who's consistent can reasonably object to you and say, you're misrepresenting me.

01:06:38

Okay, now go do that again. Acknowledge that the authorship of God ultimately and the storyline level stuff and tell me where the formal contradiction is.

01:06:47

You won't find one. And I've never seen, and I truly do mean this genuinely,

01:06:54

I haven't seen a provisionist or someone who's non -Calvinistic actually allow those categories to stand.

01:07:03

And if they ever did, we can almost predict exactly what they'd say.

01:07:09

Well, God can't be the author of sin or he just looks mean, right?

01:07:15

It becomes their opinion all of a sudden. All the scripture disappears instantly. It becomes, well, that's just doesn't sound right.

01:07:23

I don't like that. It doesn't sound good. Right. Yeah, I really appreciate you helping me understand that and all of us here listening.

01:07:32

See, that's another thing. I don't know. That's why it's weird to me when they say those things because to us, it's so obvious that there is a distinction, a level distinction.

01:07:46

How can they not see it? It's almost like they are, I don't even wanna say this sometimes, but I feel like they are willingly ignorant of it.

01:07:58

So I want to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they're just, they just can't accept or understand it.

01:08:05

So they're fighting against something that they can't accept or understand. But sometimes it feels like you've explained it too.

01:08:16

I mean, so clear that how can you miss it? You believe in a creator, creation, distinction, right?

01:08:26

But this concept, you can't bring it to the creator, creation, distinction.

01:08:34

You have to keep it compressed. And it's almost like they're willingly ignorant of it.

01:08:39

Either they can't accept it or understand it because of their natural mind or they're intentionally trying to do it just to attack

01:08:49

Calvinism. And I hate that that's the opposite.

01:08:56

It's an argument all the time. Yeah, unfortunately, the current context in which we live in, you get a lot of respect points and brownie points if you misrepresent

01:09:07

Calvinism and bash it by slanderous, offhanded comments in your eisegetical sermon.

01:09:16

So let's move on to our next objection here. Some people will say,

01:09:22

I don't believe because God hasn't given me faith. And, or they'll say something along the lines of, well,

01:09:29

I disagree with Calvinism only because, well, if your view is true, then God determined me to disbelieve in Calvinism.

01:09:36

So why are you working against the decrees of God or something along the lines of that? How would you help us understand that?

01:09:43

That's another thing that blows my mind. I mean, they have been told that it is a moral dispensation difference.

01:09:52

They continuously bring it back to a faculty problem. Like they assume that they can want to believe.

01:10:05

Well, they assume that that's what we're teaching. In their mind, they see that somebody can want to believe in Jesus and God is restraining them like tying onto a chair, which is a faculty inability.

01:10:23

And we're saying, no, it's not a faculty inability. You could, if you want to, but you love sitting in the chair.

01:10:31

That's the problem. Your heart of stone desires that darkness of sitting in the chair.

01:10:36

So it's a moral disability. And they continuously say, no, you're talking about a faculty inability.

01:10:48

We're like, it's simply easy for us to say anybody can believe if they want to.

01:11:00

The sufficient scriptures are there. Jesus is there.

01:11:07

Everything is there that's sufficient for anybody to believe if they want to.

01:11:16

What we are talking about is that you have a moral disposition of hatred towards the things of God from birth.

01:11:25

As you encounter these things, you grow harder and harder, but there's a moral disposition, right?

01:11:35

And when God takes out that heart of stone, he's not cutting off the physical change.

01:11:41

So now you can do what you wanted to always do. No, he's taking out your heart of stone.

01:11:46

And giving you the desire to want to do it. So it's just,

01:11:53

I have tried my best to make it as clear as possible to them.

01:11:59

And just like we were talking about before, it's almost like they want to misunderstand just because they want to attack

01:12:08

Calvinism. I have heard Leighton Flowers say on his podcast many, many times that he understands the difference between a faculty inability and a moral inability, right?

01:12:22

And then the very next episode, he's like, the Calvinists are talking about a faculty inability.

01:12:27

And we're like, you've already been told 10 times. You've already admitted it. Why are you going back to faculty inability?

01:12:36

We are saying anybody could if they wanted to. That removes the faculty inability.

01:12:43

You have the mind. You have the eyes to see. You have the ears to hear. You have the mouth to talk.

01:12:50

But we even go and show when, and when we're talking about Joseph's brothers, right?

01:13:00

They hated him and could not speak peaceably to him, right?

01:13:06

What kind of a could not is that? Is that a faculty inability where they didn't have tongues or they didn't have vocal cords or something external was covering their mouth tape?

01:13:19

No, that is a moral disposition tied to the hatred, right, of Joseph.

01:13:27

They could not speak peaceably to him because of their hatred. That's what it is.

01:13:33

And that's the same kind of inability we're talking about as Calvinists when we talk about the things of God, right?

01:13:42

The natural mind cannot accept or understand the things of God because they have a moral disability.

01:13:49

They hate the light. They love the darkness. And until God comes and takes out that heart of stone, that hatred for it, then you cannot.

01:14:00

It is a real cannot. But they want to twist it into something else like Joseph's brothers, like Calvinism is teaching that Joseph's brothers don't have a tongue.

01:14:15

And if we were saying that, we would agree with you that that's ridiculous. Calvinism would be ridiculous if it was teaching that Joseph's brothers could not speak peaceably to him because he doesn't have a tongue or vocal cords or there's tape over his mouth.

01:14:34

We agree with you on that. That is not the category of inability that we are talking about.

01:14:41

So if that makes sense, hopefully. Yes, it does. And speaking of Layton Flowers, and I do respect him and his challenges to Calvinism.

01:14:52

He definitely keeps you on your toes and keeps you sharp. But I mean, there's just some fundamental things that I've seen him erroneously assume, like you pointed out.

01:15:03

You ever heard the rope analogy from Layton? You know, when he says, everyone has the ability to grab the rope.

01:15:14

What Calvinism is essentially teaching is that you can't just grab the rope, that's works.

01:15:21

No, we're not talking about the physical ability to grab the rope. We're saying you don't want to grab the rope and you will never want to grab the rope until.

01:15:27

Exactly. Until you want to grab the rope. They've even used examples.

01:15:36

And even Colin from the Consistent Calvinism podcast has called it out. And he went back and said, we understand that's what you're talking about.

01:15:47

And Colin's like, then why did you bring that up in your podcast again?

01:15:53

But what they were talking about is a little girl, if they were told to go pick up the couch where their dad was sleeping on it, right?

01:16:02

A physical or a faculty ability, go pick up the couch, but she's too weak to pick it up.

01:16:09

And then the guy, the dad gets off the couch and punishes her for not picking up the couch.

01:16:16

Or like Layton, Layton, you've said in previous episodes that you know that's not what we're talking about.

01:16:24

That the little girl doesn't even want to pick up the couch, right? He's used those kinds of examples over and over and over again.

01:16:35

So now it's like, even Colin pointed out that it's not like picking up something that you can't physically pick up.

01:16:44

It's more like you tell your daughter to go in there and clean up her room with her little tiny

01:16:49

Legos that she physically can pick up if she wanted to, right?

01:16:55

And then she doesn't want to. Now you're punished because you didn't do what you could do and you were able to do because of your moral disposition of hatred for cleaning up your room, hatred for being disobedient.

01:17:10

But Layton wants to twist it back to a physical inability every time just to try to make us look bad,

01:17:18

I guess. I don't know. He knows better. He knows better. Yeah, correct.

01:17:25

And because they are brothers in Christ, we need to have patience with them, but sometimes it does get a little frustrating having to cover these things over and over again.

01:17:36

Really appreciate that. So let's move on to our next objection here. Actually, one that I kind of want to give to you if you want to help us think through this as well, the human responsibility thing.

01:17:48

If God is in total control, we're not responsible for anything. Does that tie into any of the other things that we talked about earlier?

01:17:55

Or is this specifically something that you want to address with that? Yeah, responsibility, moral responsibility is a part of creation, right?

01:18:06

Just like the law is a part of creation. God gave the laws to humans, right?

01:18:12

So now they are not just responsible to obey, they're morally responsible to obey because they're under a law that is given to them by God, right?

01:18:23

So responsibility is just responsibility. Like you were talking about before, if the tornado comes and destroys the house, what's responsible for destroying the house?

01:18:32

The tornado. But that never rises to moral responsibility because God never gave a tornado a law, thou shall not destroy the house, right?

01:18:45

So we can say that God is responsible for all things that occur in his story line, but it's a category error, a category error to say that God is morally responsible for something in his story line.

01:19:04

It just doesn't even compute. There is no logic there, right? Because in order to say that God is morally responsible, he would have to have a higher authority saying, thou shall not conduct your creation in this way.

01:19:21

And then he disobeys that higher authority. Now he is morally responsible to that higher authority.

01:19:29

But no, God can determine that his story has the crucifixion in it.

01:19:35

God can determine that his story include what they want to call divine child abuse, right?

01:19:49

He planned, purposed and determined that his son would be on a cross and hung there by sinful men, right?

01:20:01

That's part of the story. He is responsible for that, all of that.

01:20:07

But he's not morally responsible. A lion can go and kill a human and it is responsible for the death of the human.

01:20:17

But the lion is never morally responsible to punishment because they killed the human because there was no law given to the lion that says thou shall not kill humans.

01:20:31

Does that help understand the responsibility? Yeah, it certainly does.

01:20:37

Because if you think about moral responsibility as being tied to the law given in creation, then it can rightly be said that, yeah, moral responsibility is an aspect of creation itself does not apply to God because there is no law above him.

01:20:54

And God can determine all that you do and determine all your choices and yet have you choose and live them out.

01:21:02

Because ultimately when it comes to responsibility, you're free from your neighbor, your ecosystem, but you're not free from God.

01:21:14

It's always these categorical things that people tend to miss and they spew at Calvinism, especially if you grew up in a tradition that is pretty, say to least, pretty vague and very fundamentalistic and doesn't really care about thinking through these grander concepts.

01:21:35

And not that they're unattainable by the lay person in the pew, but rather it just takes some time to actually really give it some thought.

01:21:44

Responsibility is something that God created. In regards to you, you're free from everything that is within the creation realm, but not free from God who determines all things within the creation realm.

01:21:57

It's, man, these things are so massive and impact the way you see

01:22:02

God in yourself and affects us in our very day -to -day comfort.

01:22:09

Josh, help us now. Let's kind of head towards the wrapping up here. I got, can you tackle two at the same time?

01:22:18

I'll kind of mix them a little bit if you don't mind. All right, yeah, sure. So, you know,

01:22:24

God determined, if God determined everything, Josh, why evangelize? You know, everything's determined, it's fatalism.

01:22:31

What's the point? Right, well, basically

01:22:37

God has, God could snap his fingers and save people, right?

01:22:43

God could have simply determined that as soon as Jesus Christ died, everybody was saved without belief, without anything.

01:22:55

So God could have done it that way, but he determined that salvation would come through specific storyline level means of preaching the gospel, of Jesus being crucified, people hearing the gospel and people believing the gospel and people trusting him to the end.

01:23:22

So these are the storyline level means that bring about those ends.

01:23:28

Now, how do those means come about? God has also determined that we play that part in those means, right, as those means.

01:23:41

That's why we evangelize. God does not save people apart, even though he could,

01:23:48

God does not save people apart from them hearing and believing the gospel, right?

01:23:54

So how are they gonna hear it without somebody preaching it, right?

01:23:59

So if God has determined that hearing and believing is the means by which they reach the end and are saved, the final third salvation or being saved, then he has also determined that it come about by the means of evangelizing.

01:24:21

So go evangelize. Once I realized this concept, it's like everything that I do in evangelizing and praying has meaning now because God gave it meaning in his story.

01:24:37

It makes me want to evangelize more because if I don't do that, right, then the ends do not happen.

01:24:47

God does not just save people. He has not determined that he will save people apart from those things. So if he has determined that those things are what must come first in the storyline and that we are gonna be the ones to do it, you might as well do it.

01:25:04

Now that almost sounds like I'm talking about me free will or whatever, but no, the concept in my mind is part of it now, the understanding of it, right?

01:25:18

And this is what drives my will, determines my will to evangelize is the understanding.

01:25:26

My will is not free from that understanding. My will is not free from that desire to want to do it.

01:25:33

So this is how God determines to save people. You understand that you must evangelize first.

01:25:40

That drives the willingness to go and evangelize more. It drives the willingness to pray more because God does not, there are certain things that God only brings about when his people pray.

01:25:57

So why not pray more? That's what this understanding produces inside of me, at least.

01:26:06

Yeah, and sometimes when people say things are fatalistic and they tie that to Calvinism, it's just -

01:26:14

I didn't address that part. Huh? I didn't address that part, sorry. Oh, no, no, it's fine, because all that you say kind of flow into it too.

01:26:25

When people do say fatalism, fatalism, they're all, I think Colin also addressed this in his podcast.

01:26:33

It's when people say fatalism, they're assuming a mindset and they're projecting it onto your view.

01:26:39

You know, if God determined the means and the ends, then what we do is meaningful because all of that God has provided within to be able to accomplish those ends.

01:26:53

That's the mindset we have. We're giving praise and glory to God through prayer, through worship, through evangelism.

01:27:00

We're not adopting the fatalistic, oh, there's no point. That's a mindset.

01:27:06

Our mindset is that we can be confident that God will draw his elect. That's why we're on the streets today, you know?

01:27:13

It's sometimes, you know, sometimes if Calvinists will shake in their boots, I guess, when people say, oh, you're just fatalistic.

01:27:21

No, you're fatalistic. I'm confident in God, you know? I'm putting your mindset on me.

01:27:30

That's not the mindset, the outlook that I have. Here's my theology. Here's the philosophical outlook that I stand on.

01:27:36

Your misunderstanding is causing you to try to portray that on me.

01:27:43

It's like, it's a sleight of hand. You know, it's so sneaky, but yeah, it's, once again, just categorical errors.

01:27:55

You wanna add to that? When you actually think about fatalism, right? It's the concept that you can act this way and it bring about an end, right?

01:28:09

Or you can act other than this way and that end still happen.

01:28:15

So if you think about it, the only view that this kind of concept of fatalistic mindset can occur is if you presuppose a free will view to where you can do other than, right?

01:28:31

So if you, if God doesn't just know, but he creates, right?

01:28:43

As soon as he creates somebody and the end is there.

01:28:52

So I don't put this. If God knows that by creating you, you will end up in hell, right?

01:29:01

This is one of Colin's arguments from the Consistent Calvinist podcast, right?

01:29:06

If God knows that by creating you, he's including the act of God creating, not just knowing, but the act of creation, that you will end up in hell, right?

01:29:19

Let's assume that free will is true during that. So from the act of creating you to the end, right?

01:29:28

You're gonna end up in hell. So if you can act other than what

01:29:33

God knew, you're still gonna end up in hell or you're gonna falsify

01:29:38

God's knowledge. That's why the categories are just so off when it comes to this stuff.

01:29:44

The fatalistic mindset only works if you have a view to where you can do two different options and the end result is the same.

01:29:55

But on our view, God determined that one set of options would occur and the end result is the reasonable end, the reasonable destination from what occurs in the timeline.

01:30:09

Right? So if God knows that I'm going to end up in heaven, what is the reasonable timeline?

01:30:18

There is no freedom in that to do other than what God's timeline sets out.

01:30:24

So it includes the preaching of the gospel. It includes the hearing of the gospel. It includes the believing.

01:30:31

It includes the enduring all the way up to the end result. So therefore there is no room for fatalism in a consistent understanding of our view.

01:30:42

If you're inconsistent in your understanding of our view, then you may have a mindset of fatalism.

01:30:49

But when you understand that your actions are what result in that reasonable end and your actions are part of it, there is no room for a fatalistic mindset because there is no option to do other than that.

01:31:10

Does that make sense? Basically, a free will only works. I mean, fatalism only works if you presuppose free will.

01:31:19

Yes, correct. Fully agree with you there. Well, Josh, we should wrap it up here.

01:31:26

Man, I'm so thankful you were able to join me tonight. I know it's been a while and I've been kind of promoting this for a while.

01:31:36

So really enjoyed hearing you expand a little more on all of those concepts.

01:31:41

And man, it's so rich. Looking forward to your greater development and the online interactions you've had.

01:31:51

I'm a subscriber. This is no surprise to you, but I'm a lifetime subscriber. I appreciate it.

01:31:58

I do. If you do decide to get your podcast going, man,

01:32:04

I'll help you out with that, with the logo and everything, and get you started, all right?

01:32:12

Yeah, go ahead. All right. Like I said, I have decided to do the podcast, but when we did this last one, the first part of this series, it was right before summer hit big.

01:32:24

So I was coming out of a slow period and thinking ahead, thinking it was just gonna be slow so I could get the podcast started up.

01:32:32

So I'm telling you at the end of September, that's when I'll be free and just let everybody know the podcast is coming soon.

01:32:41

I don't know exactly what it's gonna be called yet. Probably something to do with soteriology assistant or something, but it is coming.

01:32:49

End of September, probably first of October, something like that.

01:32:55

All right. Well, folks, you heard it here first. I'm looking forward to it.

01:33:01

And let me know. Definitely boost that for you. Josh, can you just remind people where they can find you in regards to social media?

01:33:13

Yeah, basically, I mean, like you said before, I'm on X now,

01:33:19

Twitter, and it's soteriology A1. So soteriology

01:33:24

A1, if you search that, you'll find me or soteriology assistant.

01:33:30

And that's where you can check out all the stuff that I'm saying on there. I have a YouTube channel.

01:33:37

I forget the name of the YouTube channel, actually. That's terrible. Let me find that right quick.

01:33:44

Is it the Practical Calvinist? No, I do have a few different ones. CC Shorts, at CC Shorts.

01:33:58

I don't know if anybody has been watching that, but if you wanna check out, I've taken some of Colin's videos, and he's got like a five -hour podcast that is packed with great content, but it's a lot of stuff packed in a five -hour episode.

01:34:14

So what I have been doing for a long time is taking his consistent Calvinist, CC, and shorten them up into shorts, like two -minute episodes.

01:34:25

So my channel is CC Shorts, but it's a bunch of his content broken up into smaller bite -sized pieces.

01:34:33

So you can find me there also. Great, appreciate that. So as we close today, just wanted to leave you with this, everyone.

01:34:42

God's control over all things isn't just some lofty doctrine for theologians only.

01:34:48

It's honestly just truth meant to anchor your soul. From the smallest to the biggest moments in life, scripture is explicitly clear on this.

01:34:57

Our God reigns. This isn't just biblical, it's deeply practical as well.

01:35:04

And I truly want you to walk away with that. If we truly understand that nothing catches

01:35:09

God off guard or escapes his gaze, and that all things work after the counsel of his own will, and for us, especially, they're gonna work for our good so that we can be to the praise of his glory, then we can truly have purpose to stand in anything, even when we can't see the big picture.

01:35:29

So let's not treat God's sovereignty like it's some esoteric

01:35:34

Calvinist concept, but let's acknowledge that the scriptures do point to this warm blanket of truth in a chaotic world.

01:35:43

And it truly does humble us and ground us and lifts our eyes up and points us to the

01:35:49

Lord Jesus Christ who saved us and loves us and sanctifies our minds so that we can continue to understand who he is and the things that he is doing and bringing to pass and their infinite glory, honestly.

01:36:03

So for all of those listening, thank you so much for listening to Truology. Until next time,

01:36:09

I want you to stay rooted in the word and rest in the rule of God's sovereign grace and his ultimate control over all things and the things that he has bestowed upon us and his wonderful love.

01:36:22

Until next time, keep studying the truth. Appreciate you watching. So have a good night.

01:36:28

God bless. Truology is a podcast that seeks to equip, effect, and engage the world through Christ and his wonderful gospel of the kingdom against which he has promised that the gates of hell shall never prevail but increased by his government, his law, and grace, till it be presented a glorious church without spot or wrinkle.

01:36:50

If there's any fear, threat, or worry, remember that the one that has called you according to his purpose and grace has also promised that all enemies will soon be placed under his feet.

01:37:03

Now, I want you to believe that not because I said it or because it sounds really nice and spiritual, but primarily and wholeheartedly and only and biblically, because it's the truth.