A Dividing Line Short: Responding to Stratton and James

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Hey, everybody, you know, years ago, I would do things called screen flow recordings and that's what we're doing here.

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It's been so long that I've gone through like two or three computers, a number of OS upgrades and which means we had to upgrade the program too, obviously.

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But anyways, it works, I was doing it, especially when I was traveling and stuff like that.

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But in our context today, this might be a pretty nice way to throw something out there really quickly, throw it into the stream that we use for The Dividing Line and communicate a little faster that way.

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I'll throw it up also on the Theology Matters blog too and at least the link to it and go from there.

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And of course, where I post it will be dependent upon what it's talking about. But we're talking about Molinism, so again,

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I don't expect that YouTube will have too much of a problem discussing that particular subject.

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As everybody knows, there's a big discussion going on about Molinism right now because I had a discussion a week ago with William Lane Craig, hasn't even been a full week, and that has recently come out.

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And as most of you know, those who follow The Dividing Line, I have been preparing for that.

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I have laid foundations, I've done extensive exegetical work on The Dividing Line on such things as God's decree, the nature of that decree, the extensiveness of that decree.

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And I have done that exegetically. I have gone into the text, demonstrated the consistency of the text using the exact same hermeneutical methodology that I use in dealing with the deity of Christ, the

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Trinity, the Resurrection, and those other things that I've said for years. That is the hallmark of consistent

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Christian theology and apologetics. Theology always comes before apologetics. Anytime you get philosophy or apologetics before theology, you've got it backwards.

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You have to start with God's truth if you're going to be consistent in your handling of Scripture and being a consistent

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Christian. And so that's what we did, is we laid these things out and we started with what the

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Bible teaches about God's sovereignty, God's decree. We worked through Old Testament passages in Hebrew, New Testament passages in Greek, and then we started looking at Dr.

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Craig's book. We started comparing things with Scripture, and then we had the conversation.

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And then afterwards, I did about a 40 -minute just review of why I hadn't told anybody about it, a few things like that, just sort of went over it.

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And then I did another dividing line where I, again, used the big studio.

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We went through the key issues in regards to the fatal flaw of Molinism, which is the grounding objection and where this knowledge comes from.

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And again, went through Scripture and laid out a case for Christian creationism.

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And most people don't think creationism would be relevant to this, but it is very relevant to this. And then on the last program,

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I did an extensive response to Dr. Stratton. He made comments about just a few things that I had said after the debate, that short thing, where he had missed the point of what my objection was and things like that.

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And I did a rather full response to that. Now, so what you see on the screen is

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Dr. Stratton and a fellow by the name of Tyson James, who just put out a video specifically about the debate.

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And from what I can tell from Dr. Stratton, at the time that he recorded this, he has not heard any of the other work

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I've done on this subject, just over the past number of weeks, even though I've made reference to it.

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And almost every objection he raises, I refuted in the work I've already put out there. Well, he must be very busy, even though Molinism is his thing.

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So I would think this would be sort of high on the priority list, certainly not my thing, but it is for him.

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I mean, this is, I think the only book he's written is on Molinism and Dr. Stratton does make the claim that Molinism is the only consistent way to do

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Christian apologetics, which means nobody prior to the 16th century did consistent

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Christian apologetics. And I know, I know, well Calvinism came around the same time. No, it didn't.

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That is just amazingly historically facile. I can go to the earliest

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Christian sources. I can go to Clement of Rome and show you clear references to a belief in the sovereignty of God, in the existence of an elect, it's apostolic teaching.

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And Molinists admit this is not apostolic teaching. This is not what the apostles taught. The apostles didn't believe in middle knowledge.

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Molina came up with something new and I'm saying, no, the apostles believed what

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I believe. I, that's the whole point is that we derive our belief from scripture rather than coming up with it 1 ,500 years later and going, ah, this is, this now figures it all out for 1 ,500 years.

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For some reason, the Holy Spirit of God didn't mind if the entire people of God were, were left without an ability to defend the faith.

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It's an amazing thing when you, when you think about it, but anyway, um, Dr. Stratton and Dr.

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James work for Dr. Craig. And in fact, in the introduction, Dr. Stratton identified,

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I'm not sure if it's Dr. James or not, Tyson James there on the screen, um, as being one of the higher ups in reasonable faith in, uh, in Craig's organization.

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So I can't imagine less unbiased, less prejudiced people that employees of Bill Craig, um, one of which, uh, everything he does is on Molinism.

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Can you imagine a less unbiased, and they said, you know, we put our cards on the table, you know, this is what we are.

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Okay. I'm just simply pointing out that this would be like asking Rich, uh, to do an unbiased review of, of my side of this debate.

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But even, but, but actually it's even worse than that because Rich hasn't written any books, um, to have a personal stake in.

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And so you would expect that this would be the least unbiased and the least fair, uh, review of the debate.

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That's, that's fine and dandy. But what I wanted to get into really was some of the, some of the statements that were made.

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So let's, let's listen to a little something here and then I want to just very quickly throw a different screen up and, um, talk with you about it.

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Um, you know, I think, uh, with the trailer that was being played quite a bit, there's one, um, quote from Dr.

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White and this is in the, in the trailer, but he said something like this. I might have this written down wrong, but he said, if we're going to say that the great

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Yahweh is delimited by what he can do, uh, from whence comes forth something,

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I don't know what he said, but he's, he's basically, uh, complaining this, uh, by the way, again, whatever

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I say, if, unless I all of a sudden go, okay, I'm a

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Molinist, yay, yeah. It'll always be a complaint for Dr. Stratton. He, we've,

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I've documented this over. He's complaining about this. He's complaining about that. Any objection to Molinism is a complaint.

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Dr. Stratton, you need to stop calling everything a complaint when, when you disagree with someone. What I'm saying in that quote, by the way, uh, is that if you're going to claim that there are true subjunctive conditionals that do not flow forth from the will of God, yet delimit what

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God can and cannot do, you do as a Christian, as a

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Christian, have to give a reason, a foundation, a grounding for the existence of these things.

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Because as a Christian, you believe that God created all things and there is nothing outside of that, which he has created and he defines as true.

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And we'll look at that in a moment. And I, again, this is part of the material I've already presented, um, that Dr.

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Stratton hasn't looked at yet. Um, but, uh, that's, that's what's, that was what the quote was about counterfactuals of creaturely freedom, um, are out of God's control.

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And I think that objection is a little bit, I think it's ridiculous to be, maybe that's too harsh.

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Okay. So think about it. The central functional aspect of Molinism is this claim.

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It is what allows it to undo the entire role of the freedom of God's will in brain creation of existence as he sees fit to do so to his glory.

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This is the claim. And Dr. Stratton has just said, it's ridiculous for us to ask where this stuff comes from.

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Doesn't come from God's decree. It doesn't come from God's will. It's not defined by God. It doesn't come from humanity.

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Where did it come from? It's ridiculous to ask that question. I say to you, any Molinist who does not see the weight of this question is simply not seriously thinking about it from a

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Christian perspective. Again, if you want to be a non -Christian Molinist, I'm not sure why you would, but if you just want to do the philosophy thing out here, okay, do your thing.

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But it is astonishing to me that there would be individuals who would seriously look at us and say, you simply have to accept the existence of this stuff.

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Now, Dr. Stratton, his argument is going to be, well, this is a function of God's omnipotence. He tries to use a backdoor to come up with a reason why this stuff exists.

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That God, if he's omnipotent, then must have this knowledge because of what he has created.

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None of that makes any sense because that would require the decree to be involved. But the point is that to identify this issue, which is what identified

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Francis Turret and identify it long, long, long, long, long ago as ridiculous is itself ridiculous.

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And I think most people can see that. At least from what I'm seeing, I'm seeing a lot of folks, people who aren't already convinced of this system that are trying to figure out what even it's even claiming are going to realize, well, wait a minute, if that's your central claim, you have to explain how this information came into existence, don't you?

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And they're saying, nope, we don't have to. I think it's the end of end of Mullinism, to be perfectly honest with you, just think it through.

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But there we go. But I don't think it's a good objection at all.

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And I'll just say one thing on it is I think that these counterfactuals of human freedom, you know,

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Dr. Craig or Dr. White was saying, well, where do these come from? And I think we can just say that it's just what follows if God really is omnipotent.

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And again, I guess it just follows. It just follows. It just follows if God has all power, there are things he didn't create that can limit what he can do in his decree.

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You have to be so sold out to this stuff to even follow the argumentation. You really do.

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I said to you earlier that it's a byproduct of God's omnipotence, that if he can create a free creature in the libertarian sense, which is something that's not logically incoherent.

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And so God being omnipotent means that he can do all things logically possible. It'd be something that he could do.

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In fact, I think scripture is clear that he did create beings who possess libertarian freedom.

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At least. OK, notice he doesn't define what kind of libertarian freedom is talking about. There is a there is a whole discussion of what what what does libertarian freedom mean in what context is just all sorts of stuff that's just being assumed by use of terminology.

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But the idea is, well, if God has the ability to create free creatures, then he would have this knowledge, which still doesn't deal with the reality that what is being asserted is that this knowledge that God has is based upon these true subjunctive conditionals that God cannot alter or change.

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They are. They are. They simply evidently come about if it's if it's the result of God's creation, then that can't be middle knowledge because they have to exist before the decree to create.

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There's just this jumbling of ordering and that's just necessary to come up with.

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Where does this stuff come from? Because it doesn't come from God. It doesn't come from man. And yet it is so true and inviolable.

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I wonder if it's eternal. I'd like to ask. Oh, I did ask Dr. Stratton in a previous video. He hasn't listened to yet.

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But is this is this eternal? Is it as eternal as God? Because it's uncreated.

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It raises all sorts of questions and we're told it's just ridiculous to ask these questions. It is not ridiculous to ask these questions occasionally.

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Then there would be these facts about these creatures that God and omnipotent

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God has the power to create. So what would you add to that? Well, I would just note that on top of that, for why it seems like he puts the will of God, the volition of God, higher even than God's omnipotence.

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Now, I want to think about and you can freeze frame Tim Stratton's thinking about how is that even possible?

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Ephesians 1 says that everything that God did to the exercise of his power was according to the eudaicia to thalamitas of his will.

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That's the scriptural teaching. And so since that's since it's the belay of his thalamitas and the eudaicia of his thalamitas, then scripture is what places

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God's will. God is freely choosing to reveal himself as he desires to do so.

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That's that's just I've got Bible on my side. Where do you have a teaching of scripture that says that there has to be some parity between omnipotence and the will of God?

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I mean, you have to be able to distinguish the two things. And scripture does.

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And scripture says it was according to the eudaicia of his thalamitas. That's the biblical position.

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Interesting. So I've heard him say before that God causes all things, and that seemed to include all truths.

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Now, if God causes all truths, then that also means that God caused the truth that he exists.

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Yeah. Which is absurd. Okay. I've never said God causes all things as God created all things and that all things exist because of his will.

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That's simple Christian theology. That's what Christians have believed from the beginning. That's Genesis one to Revelation 22.

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So this is here. Here is where you take a again, some type of philosophical construct that you have decided is necessary and try to line it up against what scripture itself says.

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So the idea that God causes the truth that he exists, what God is the ground of all truth.

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If anything is true, it is true because God created. Now, I was going to try to keep this short. So let me try to help these guys out.

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I don't expect them to be fair in reviewing their bosses performance. Okay, I get it.

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But everybody who is not in that position needs to understand that when

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I have said over and over and over again, that the difference between us is that one side believes that you must and can derive your theology from the text of scripture rather than creating it out here someplace and then transporting it in and dropping it down on top of scripture.

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I did a lengthy discussion with Eli Ayala just last evening was doing it right now.

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In fact, 24 hours ago, I highly recommend people take a look at. We talked a lot about this. So I'm not going to go much more into that right now.

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But I want to illustrate, especially for Dr. Stratton. I don't know the other gentlemen.

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So what can I say? But Dr. Stratton has frequently said that his book presents this exegetical case.

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It does not. I'll be happy to demonstrate that simply citing passages of scripture with a couple sentences afterwards and moving on to the next one.

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That is not exegesis. That is not handling the word of God. That is not digging into the text in a meaningful fashion.

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It just isn't. Let me show you on the screen using a little cool little object that I have here.

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Very quickly, Colossians chapter one. Here you have the assertion.

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Now, if we were doing this in a fuller fashion, I would demonstrate the flow of the text where we are in the argument of the epistle.

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I would point out that just above this, we've had the son identified. We've been transferring the kingdom of his beloved son, redemption, all the things there.

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But we're trying to be brief. And here in Colossians 1, 15 through 18, you have in parallel with the

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Hebrews chapter one, I would argue as well, and John chapter one. So John chapter one, Hebrews chapter one,

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Colossians chapter one. You have the three Christological passages that emphasize the creatorship of Christ.

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Now, what I think is most Molinists just their eyes start glazing over at this point because Molinism is philosophy.

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It is people writing papers and presenting them at conferences. And it's this person's view and that person's view.

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And I just like to suggest to you that 100 years ago, philosophical dialogue and debate took place in a very different fashion than it does today.

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And it will 100 years from now. The exegesis text will not. It was the same 100 years ago.

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It'll be the same 100 years in the future. That's why I think it's important that our foundation be something that is not changing with the whims of human speculation, but is something that is focused specifically upon divine revelation.

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So when we look at Colossians chapter one, verse 15, we are told that this beloved son is the image of the invisible

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God. And so he is the one who has made the revelation to us of who the invisible

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God is. It is a trustworthy revelation because he's the he is the icon of the invisible

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God. He is the one who's made. This is a parallel to John 1 18. The perfection of the son in revealing the father to us and that he is the prototype of all creation.

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He is the preeminent one. Translated firstborn. But go into the Greek Septuagint utilization.

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I have a whole discussion of this in the Forgotten Trinity on the use of prototypes in the Greek Septuagint. He is the one who has preeminence over all creation.

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All creation. Now, is it all creation? Do is is there this huge amount of truth and data concerning human beings and what they would do in any given situation that doesn't come forth from God's will and it doesn't come forth from the creation, the created beings themselves?

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So did Jesus create that? Is it a part of creation? Maybe they'll say it's not even a part of creation.

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It's extra creational. I don't know. Does does Paul think there's something outside of that? Well, let's let's take a look at that.

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Because in him, by him, the son were created tapanta all things.

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Now, how extensive is all things? Well, that's going to be given to us in this section right here.

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So it's the things visible. And the things invisible.

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That pretty much. Do you think Paul's trying to be extensive there? Completely extensive.

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So it's not just the physical creation, but the not visible creation.

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We're made by him. They're made by by Christ or thrones or lordships or rulerships or authorities.

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Is if if middle knowledge delimits God's decree, is that not authority?

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Because this is God cannot feasibly make certain worlds because of this stuff.

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So is that an authority? And on what basis would you say, well, this isn't talking about any of that stuff.

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So so how would scripture? If this isn't saying all of creation is through Christ, how would

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Paul have said it? Because he's I mean, think about it. He he says.

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All things. D out to an ice out on that's fascinating through him and for him were created because I saw time is used.

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I think it's in Romans in first Corinthians eight. That's one of the ways that the father and son are distinguished in the expansion of when

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Paul gives us that expansion there. He uses ice out on with the father. I think it's

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Romans 11 where he does the same thing here. It's of the sun. So you you have absolute extensiveness as to all things through him and for him were created.

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And he is prop on tone. Now, if you're talking about a temporal context, then, yes, before.

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But if you go outside of a temporal context, he is before all things. Is he before the content of middle knowledge?

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Remember, this is the sun. He is the God man. That raises all sorts of questions.

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He is before all things. And top on top in him soon as they can soon as they can to come to coherence, to come to consistency is found solely in him.

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The point is a Christian doctrine of exhaustive creation can be derived from looking at the text of Scripture in its original language, in its original context.

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This is what Paul is communicating to the Church of Colossae. This is a proto Gnostic, anti apologetic uses all the terms of the

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Gnostics going to be using 150 years in the future. And he is refuting what they are that what they're going to be saying.

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The point is this is how you derive a text, you drive a theology from the text rather than create a theology out here, bring it in and drop it down on top of the text.

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And what I'm saying to these gentlemen is this is how you edify the saints. This is how you present a divine truth that will be relevant 150 years after you're dead.

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And this is not. And when when when you present an assertion, a positive assertion about the content of middle knowledge, and then when someone says, but wait a minute.

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How how does that come into existence so as to delimit God's decree and to define for God, not from his will, not from his will.

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What feasible roles he can make. How does that fit with an exhaustive doctrine of Christian creation in Christ?

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These are these are the issues that that those outside of your small community are currently thinking about.

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Many of them have never thought about them before. And I'd like to suggest to you, if you're not getting into the text like this to answer

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Christians questions, you've got to ask yourself the question, why aren't we? And I suggest to you, it's because you guys don't do this stuff regularly.

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You're I've listened to your stuff. You're you're writing these papers and this person's argument and that person.

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And it's all logical syllogisms. And none of it is delimited by the exegesis of the text.

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And there's a reason for that. There's a reason for that. And I'll close with that.

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Told the story before. Had a good friend at a conference years and years ago. He was manning a table.

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Bill Craig came up with a group of young guys, maybe some of you guys, maybe some of these guys that were around him at that time as years ago.

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And my friend reported to me, hearing Bill say to them, if you want to truly do apologetics, then what you need to study is philosophy, not theology.

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And I think these guys would agree with that. They said at one point that I am under read in this field.

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You guys are under exegeted in the entirety of this field. And that's the problem.

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That's the problem. So I'm hoping that Dr. Stratton will take the time to catch up on the stuff we've already provided refutations historically, logically.

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And oh, and by the way, just really quickly, one of the things they said was, it's just amazing. The grounding objection is a philosophical objection.

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So White is contradicting himself because he's saying you don't go to philosophy. And I'm just like, okay, so you guys make a philosophical assertion and import it into theology.

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And when I point out that your philosophical assertion has no biblical foundation, that I'm being inconsistent for engaging in philosophy.

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Okay. Obviously that doesn't make a lick of sense. But a lot of the responses that have been offered so far don't make a lick of sense, unless you already buy the whole system and say no one outside of our community really can understand us and so cannot offer any type of meaningful criticism.

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And the rest of us are going, okay, well, if you say so. So this wasn't as quick as I thought it would be.

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I probably should have known that it wouldn't be, but I wanted to put together real quick and hope it's helpful to you.

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Maybe do this a little bit more in between dividing lines and things like that as time permits. And in the future, it might not be with the blue screen behind me.

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It might be in the RV as we're traveling. But anyways, thanks for watching. God bless.