Matt Slick Live

The following program is recorded content created by Slick Live, works out nicely. See you next time. And so we're going to Israel next year, by God's grace. So if you want to join us, all you got to do is check out Karm Israel. And that's, yeah, Facebook stream is good. Okay, good.

KarmIsrael.com. Sorry, got things going on. Maybe some tech issues I don't know about, but looks like it's okay.

All right, good. So KarmIsrael.com has all the information that you need right there, and you can check it out and see all the good stuff we got going on, because we'll be going next year. We got like 20, 25 people signed up, and it looks like it's going to turn out to be a really nice trip. I've done it before, and it is fun. It's awesome. Seriously, I really enjoy it. One of my favorite things is the bus part. I get to see all the sights, but I like the people. I like enjoying the people and meeting the people and sitting in different chairs and seats and talking to different people about whatever. It's a lot of fun. So if that sounds like a good time for you, all you got to do is go check it out. We have three online schools.

If you want, you can check them out, schools.karm.org. Oh, prank callers we're getting. I haven't had prank callers for a while. I get a kick out of it. I get a lot of them at my old radio gig, and they'd call in and say, you know, be stupid.

Usually it's young males, you know, the 19, 20-year-old, because their frontal lobes aren't fully developed. And so they would call up afterwards. I'm sure they would, that was fun. I got to be stupid publicly. So who knows? Anyway, so Laura says the schools are great in the chat room. If you want to join the chat room, just go to karm.org, the home page, and you'll be able to see me blabbing. You know, I'm sitting here in a chair in my office and not a big deal, but you get to meet a lot of people, a lot of good people in there. And Dave says hi. And there's Laura. There's William. There's let's see who else is in here. They're coming in. Okay, I see.

Jimmy. Good. Hey, nice talking to you.

All right. Four open lines. Give me a call. 877-207-2276. Let's get to Tony from Greensboro, North Carolina. Tony, welcome. You're on the air. Hello. Hey. Yeah. Hello.

Hello. Yes, I hear you. Do you hear me? I can barely hear you.

I must be in a bad reception zone. Okay. And you hear me okay? Yes, I can. I hear you fine.

Yes, I can. Okay. I was calling. I know that I'm a well, I wouldn't say only infrequent listener. I am not Christian. I am.

I am Jewish and not a messianic persuasion. But I do enjoy listening to your show. I don't necessarily agree with everything, but I do learn a lot listening to you. And I also teach in one of the universities in the School of Religious Studies. I'm more of an archaeologist.

But I know from time to time you had callers and I wasn't able to get through. We were discussing or had questions about matters of comments from the Bible like good and evil. And the questions centered around, I know if you were, I would assume that you're familiar with the term merism. Merism? No. Yeah.

Can you spell it? When you, from the Hebrew perspective, when you look at concepts like day and night, good and evil, joy and sadness, these concepts are not two separate things. A merism is where you have a single idea composed of polar opposites.

Okay. And I've noticed in talking with some of the students in the School of Religious Studies, and they do have some that come from the School of Divinity, usually are confused by some of the translations where these are separated. But they are in fact part and parcel of the same thing. So when God separated day and night, it's really one idea. And the term that applies to it, they're called merism. Okay. Mirrorism. I get it. So like in Isaiah 45.7, God creates shalom, I think it is, and ra'ah.

So he creates peace and calamity, right? I can barely hear you. Okay.

Well, you have a bad connection. Yeah. For example, day and night, joy and sadness, good and evil, it's kind of an idea of the yin and yang. They're not separate, totally separate things. They are polar opposites, but they represent a single idea. Well, that would be logically difficult for me to get my head around, because they're opposites. How could they be the same idea? Because good and evil, you know, evil, excuse me, good is that which resides in the heart and mind of God, is revealed through his revelation.

And evil would be that which is contrary to that. From the Hebrew, it's a concept that I understand it's a difficulty in getting around it, or wrapping one's mind around it. It's also like, in many ways, the Judaism, or Hebrew only, particularly biblical Hebrew, only has two texts, two tenses.

It has a past tense, and a future tense, a present tense, but the present tense embodies that. So it tends to be proleptic, which is another thing that's difficult. I've frequently heard, and I agree with you, the problems of getting translations from one language to another, especially when you're dealing with Greek, because Greek has tenses and verbs that don't exist anywhere else in Indo-European languages. Greek's a very precise language, and Hebrew is not a precise language.

Right. So, you know, the Semitic language's context has more to say about what a meaning is. So, for instance, a proleptic idea would be, frequently, what God says to Moses is, it's usually translated, I am who I am, but within the Hebrew context, the more accurate translation would be, I am what I will become. In other words, I am this now, but I'm also becoming this, quote-unquote, to you. But this is all you can handle at the moment.

But it doesn't alter the fact that it goes back to this idea of God being eternal. So I am what I revealed to you at this point. So it's the present. Well, hold on.

We should have a better connection. But do you know what the Septuagint is? Oh, okay. Do you know what the Septuagint is, right? Well, the Septuagint, the Hebrews, the Jews translated, you know, Yahisher into I am that I am. They did it in the English. So, you know, I go with that.

It's pretty accurate. Right. But some of the problem in going to the Septuagint or in the Greek was encompassing, and I will give the Septuagint credit, it made the greatest effort to convey the context in there.

But sometimes you don't get from the Semitic languages, Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, Amharic, into non-Semitic languages. Well, you and I could probably have a good conversation about that sometime. Yeah. I appreciate that input, though. I do. Okay.

Okay. Well, as I said, I enjoy your show. I don't necessarily agree with everything.

But then you're coming from one perspective, I'm coming from another. But I do find, which is the most enjoyable thing, you are, it appears to me, honest, and I do learn quite a bit. Well, good.

Praise God. I'm an honest man, that's right. Not perfect, that's for sure, but I'm honest. Yep. Okay. All right. Appreciate it. All right.

Well, I will be continuing to be one of your listeners, I'm sure. Okay. Well, good. All right. Well, God bless.

Thanks a lot. Okay. Okay.

Baruch. All right. That is?

I hung up on nationally there. Okay. Let's see. Let's get to Elias from Massachusetts. Elias, welcome. You're on the air. Hey, Matt. Hey. Can you hear me? Yeah. I can hear you. Hey.

My connection might be a little laggy, so forgive me for that. All right. I just have a question. So, you know, obviously, me and my wife are complementarians.

Obviously, I watch your videos, obviously, you are a complementarian as well. Yes. And I was just wondering, can, let's say, two men, complementarian, egalitarian, can they still come together as brothers in Christ fellowship? Yeah, they can. The egalitarian would be in error, and the complementarian should, you know, work on him to come to the truth.

Yes. And for those who don't know what that is, folks, complementarianism means that men and women have different roles in churches, and they complement each other, and women cannot be pastors and elders. Egalitarianism says that women can be pastors and elders, which is incorrect. But, you know, when I meet people like that, depending on the situation, I want to correct them, you know, quote scripture. And I've offered over the radio many times over the years to have public debates on it, and no one's taken me up on it. Let's go with just the scripture.

Does the Bible teach complementarianism or egalitarianism as far as eldership and pastoring goes? Okay. So, no one's taken me up on it. Okay.

And so, I had a quick question. So, in the praying of hands with somebody, let's say, like, I'll give you an example. Let's say I'm sick and my grandmother wants to lay hands on me, are you praying for me? Is that allowed? Yeah, absolutely. I prayed for someone last night, as a matter of fact, literally laid hands on him and anointed him with oil.

We met over at a guy's house, and we prayed for him. Anybody can do that. You can do it. Your wife can do it.

Your grandmother doesn't matter. Okay? Right. There's a doctrine called the Priesthood of All Believers. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but I've written an article on it on CARM, and it's worth looking into, because we have a priesthood, priesthood of all believers. I just released it, I think, last week, because it was coming up, and I was surprised. I hadn't written on it.

So, I wrote it on the 25th. Anyway, so there's scriptures that deal with this. You are living stones. You are built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood. That's 1 Peter 2, 5-6.

And 1 Peter 2, 9. You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. And so, there's a priesthood of all the believers, and that means that we have the right, I believe anyway, that we have the right, all of us, to be able to administer sacraments. As in, anybody can give communion and baptize and anoint with oil. Okay. Specifically, however, the offices of the church, the roles of the church, the offices are differentiated.

So, elders and pastors are going to be male, not female. There's good reasons for it. Okay? Right. Okay. All right. Thank you. All right, man.

God bless. Okay. Hey, folks, if you want to give me a call, 877-207-2276, we will be right back.

This is Matt Slick. There we go. Sorry about that. Hey, if you want to give me a call, we have four open lines, 877-207-2276. Give me a call, folks.

All right. Let's get to John from Florida. Hey, John, welcome. You're on the air. You're asking Matt Slick. I have a question.

Sure. What would be a proper response to a Unitarian who gives you 1 Corinthians, I believe it's 15, 24 to 28? And he wants to use that as a demonstration of Unitarianism? Right, that Jesus is not God, but he's born into the Father. I'm a Trinitarian, but what would you say is a proper response to a Unitarian who gives that passage? Well, you see, all authority has been given to Jesus.

That's what it says, right, in the text, in the pericope. All authority has been given to him. When he's a boss, all authority and power must reign until he's put all enemies under his foot. So ask him, does he have the authority to forgive sins?

Yes. Does he have the authority to make judgments, right, equal with God, right? So how could he be the one who has equal judgment that God has and yet he's not God? Please explain that. Okay.

Right. Because think about it, all authority has been given to him and all things are subjected to him. Wait a minute, only God has all things subjected to him. It never says all things are subjected to an angel or some prophet or some apostle, but Jesus, he's ontologically different in order to have all things subjected to him. All things.

And ask him, what does it mean, all things? The angelic realm, the fallen angels, hell, heaven, the universe, mankind, what is all things? And once they give you a list, you know, make sure it's a good list, say, so how's this possible if he's just a created thing?

How can he have that dominion over all those things as a created thing? Please explain that. And then you can see how the text works against him in that position. All right? Got it.

Got it, thank you. Okay, I got something else for you. Since we've got no callers waiting, I got something else for you, okay?

Do you contact or are you in contact with Unitarians very often? No, just one. Just one, only one guy. Okay, well, I got something for you then. Boy, I got a yawn coming on. Oh, man. Okay, that was a good yawn, sorry. Sorry about that, folks.

I need a cough button. That was a good yawn. All right, so what you can do with Unitarians, and I do this every now and then, I don't meet them very often, but I'll say, okay, so God is one person, right? Yes, he's eternal. Okay, that's your position. Okay, good, okay. So let me understand it.

Now, I got a question for you. So can you define personhood for me? Just ask them to define personhood. Well, you know, self-aware.

I mean, help them out a little. Self-aware, aware of others, be able to think, reason, to love, to hate, to think, right? And they'll go, yeah, that's what personhood is. And so your view is that God is one person, right? Uh-huh, he's one person. Okay, so before the universe was created, God eternally existed as one person, correct?

Well, yeah. Okay, what was he doing? What was he doing? Can you tell me how he was exhibiting the attributes of personhood by himself, alone, in darkness, forever?

Can you tell me how that's possible? Since there's no one to love, how could he love? There's no one to show mercy to, how could he be merciful? There's no one to communicate with, which is one of the aspects of personhood.

There's no fellowship going on. How could you explain how this works with your view of God? And you'll find that they'll have difficulty explaining it.

And if you listen to what they say, you can, because they're in error, as they try and defend their error, you'll have more information to attack their error. And then one of the illustrations I give is if you were to put a bad guy, you know, a man or woman, you know, it doesn't matter, a bad guy, and you put him in solitary confinement. There's no heat, no light, no darkness, no cold, it's just even. And he's got a toilet in his cell, and everything's padded, and a meal is shoved to him in the dark, and that's it. That is all he has, period, for his entire life. Would that be torture? And he will say, well, yeah, of course. Well, isn't that what your God is doing? Isn't he in the same situation? How is it not torture for him to be infinitely alone for an infinite amount of time, without fellowship, without expression or reception of love and intimacy, communication, which is part of the necessity and quality of being human, of being person?

It says we're made in his image, Genesis 1.26, and we're like him, and he desires fellowship with us that must be part of his nature. How is that possible from your perspective that he doesn't have that for an infinite amount of time? Can you explain that?

And they can't. So it's a problem. Right, right. Yeah, I'll definitely ask that. Yeah. And then I'll wait for callers, but I'll explain aspects of why the Trinity makes sense, logically. All right? Okay. Okay. All right. Okay. You want to hang on? I don't know.

We've got no callers waiting beside you if you want to hang on. Oh, can I ask you another question? Sure.

Sure, no problem. How would you respond to a Catholic who says a bizarre saying to me? I think it's bizarre when they say, Mary is the spouse of the Holy Spirit.

You know, you need to tackle that. One of them is I'd say, well, he's a spouse. Did they have a marriage ceremony? So what does it mean to be a spouse? I am a spouse.

I'm a husband, and my wife, you know, we went through a ceremony, and we exchanged vows, and we became husbands and wives that were spouses. So explain to me how Mary is a spouse of the Holy Spirit, because, you know, are you implying some Mormonism here, where God came down and had relations with Mary to make the body of Jesus? I've actually said that to Catholics.

That's blasphemy. Don't talk like that. Hey, I'm just going off what you said. You said they're the spouse.

So how does that work? You're a carnal. You're wicked. Dude, I'm just going off what you said. Explain how she's the spouse without being married.

How are you a spouse without being married? I don't want to talk to you anymore after that. You're stupid. Well, if I'm stupid, I'm not smarting you.

What does that make you? Well, kindergarten stuff. Here's the thing.

You use what they say against them. It's a simple procedure. And here's the thing.

It takes a little bit of art, a little bit of smarts to do it, a little bit of practice. And I'm not just saying you play a game with everybody. That's not it. Only the Christian Trinitarian worldview is correct, and every other worldview eventually is self-refuting and has internal problems. Only Christian Trinitarianism does not. So what essentially Catholicism is doing, even though it's Trinitarian, it is essentially adding Mary into the Godhead without doing it. They're not doing it, and they denounce that. But when they make her a functional goddess, in that she can hear millions of simultaneous prayers all over the world and spoken and thought in languages all over the place simultaneously and hear them, she's a functional goddess.

And you can just start using that against them. And then when they say she's a spouse of the Spirit, do they have a ceremony? No? Then why are you saying she's a spouse? It means a different way. That's not how it's used in the Bible. You don't believe in it.

You don't have it back. All right, buddy? Got it. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much, my friend. All right, man.

God bless. Hey, folks, five open lines, wide open. Call 877-207-2276. It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877-207-2276.

Here's Matt Slick. All right, welcome back, everybody. We have five open lines. Nobody waiting if you want to give me a call, 877-207-2276.

The last four digits spell C-A-R-M on your phone. Now, I mentioned the idea of Trinitarianism and Unitarianism. I want to actually talk a little bit about why the Trinity must be the Trinity, why God must be Trinitarian, why that's the natural and logical necessity of his existence. So I'm going to go through this slowly, and this is something I've written up, and it's on some notes which I've not released yet, but I want to go through this a little bit. So get your thinking caps on. This is going to take a couple three minutes, and it might hurt you, okay? There's some thinking to go on. Just a little bit.

All right. Now, God is Trinitarian, and in the Trinitarian state, that's where he can exhibit the fullness of the attributes of personhood. That includes fellowship, love, communication, reciprocity.

That means I like you, you like me, I say hi, you say hi, back and forth. Contemplation, knowledge, et cetera, without an impersonal aspect of being part of God's nature. So this is what's important, that the nature of God exhibits.

Now, this is important. The attributes of personhood, and personhood is not impersonal. It's not impersonal because it has to be personal.

That's an important concept. Now, so I'll say this and I'll expand on it, but if God were a single person, then there would be an eternal state in the past where God was unable to exhibit many of the aspects of personhood, such as fellowship, communication, love, reciprocity. This would mean that he existed eternally in the past in solitude without fellowship, without awareness of others, without the exhibition of love, which are necessary expressions of personhood.

So this is problematic. Now, if we were to expand on this a little bit, our personhood consists of self-awareness, awareness of others, fellowship, love, communication, emotions, like I said, reciprocity, contemplation, knowledge, knowledge of others, knowledge of ourselves, reason, and the exercise of free will. The lack of the exhibition of our personhood in relation to others due to isolation is considered a form of torture. So it would be by analogy to say, it would be analogous to say that it would be a form of torture if God were a single eternal person who experienced an eternal time of isolation in a state where he could not exhibit the full expression of his personhood, which would be a lack in God's nature, because the nature of God is what it is, but if there are attributes that can't be expressed because of his condition, then that's a problem that contradicts his condition, his nature. So this casts doubt on the validity of the Unitarian concept of God.

It's ultimately self-refuting. So let's just add this aspect here. If God were two persons, then the fullness of personhood could be expressed eternally.

However, there's going to be a problem. Now, look, if there's two persons, then they could be aware of others. Each could be aware of each other, exercise free will, have knowledge, contemplation, reciprocity, love, et cetera. This would mean, though, that these attributes would also be consisting of an impersonal aspect.

Now, this is where it gets a little bit hard for me to articulate this. Communication and love between two persons would necessitate an impersonal aspect of that fellowship as an impersonal abstraction. See, love, fellowship, reciprocity between two persons are abstractions.

Let me pause here for a minute and explain this. Abstractions are things that are of the mind. So if I were to say to you, I'm thinking of a football, not a soccer ball but a football, American football, you have in your mind an image of that football. If I were to say duck, there's a duck, quack, quack, and I were to say the word duck, you will have in your mind an image of a duck. So there's a quality, a transcendental quality called footballness and a transcendental quality called duckness and chairness and blueness, et cetera.

We call these transcendentals, which means that these are abstractions. These are concepts that we recognize. So if we were to recognize the number 1, the number 2, the number 3, the number 4, I could say the number 2 and I could imagine writing it on a chalkboard and you could imagine the same thing with me. So if we were all in a classroom and I was on the chalkboard and I wrote that symbol, that little 2 up on the chalkboard, if I were to ask you, is that the number 2?

A lot of you would probably say, well, yeah. I'd say, well, no, it's not. Actually, it's a representation of the transcendental concept, the transcendental idea of what we call two-ness because two-ness can exist here in this room with us in our minds but also at home with our families if they're counting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

And any place else in the world where 2 is applicable. If I were to go to that chalkboard and erase that symbol for the number 2, two-ness is not destroyed because that symbol is not 2. It's a representation of an abstraction. Now, this is new concepts for a lot of people, but the idea here is that love is an abstraction. So I love my wife and my wife hopefully still loves me even though I'm kind of obstreperous and irritating sometimes. But I love my wife, but that's an abstraction.

But at the same time, there's an actuality to it. So I have a feeling and an expression of love for my wife. I can do the same thing in the issue of mercy to someone else or compassion with someone else. And these are aspects of existence and they're aspects of fellowship.

They're aspects of personhood. So my wife is a person and I'm a person, and we exchange love between each other. But love is not a package that we go out to the store and go, I've got two units of love here I'm giving you this to.

It doesn't work like that. How it works is there's this interaction between us and the abstract thing we call love exists within each of us toward the other. And so this is what's interesting about this.

Now, in this sense, I'm going to introduce a concept here. In this sense, is that love that is exchanged, is it personal or impersonal? If we were to say that it's personal, then the love itself would have to be self-aware.

But that's not the case. It's not self-aware. It's the number two, and two-ness is not self-aware. Or chair-ness is not self-aware.

Or football-ness is not self-aware. So we would say that love is impersonal. Now, that kind of contradicts the connotative understanding of love. No, it's personal.

We exchange it. But the thing itself is what we call an impersonal actuality. But it occurs with persons, in persons and among persons as they relate to other persons. So this is the aspect I'm trying to get to, because when we get to the next point, if we were to say that God was existing as two persons, and let's continue with this idea of love being exchanged, love itself is impersonal in that sense, as I've explained, because it's an abstraction. But it occurs in the heart, but that occurrence is not self-aware.

It's an occurrence. Well, this would mean, then, that in a binitarian, a God with just two persons, it would mean, then, that a fundamental aspect of the nature of God would be impersonal. The love towards one another would be impersonal, because it's that entity, we call it abstract entity, but it means that this thing, which is not self-aware, it's not personal, is exchanged between two who are personal, therefore love, fellowship, compassion, appreciation, valuing. These are aspects of the impersonal. They're impersonal abstractions that are exchanged and used and connected with. Now, there's a whole lot of tangent I could get into, is how they have their transcendental nature, because that only works with the transcendental God, but that's another thing. I love talking about that, but I'm not going to get into that. So this is a problem with the idea of a binitarian God, is that we would have two persons who exchange something that's impersonal.

That would mean a fundamental aspect of the binitarian God would be personal and also impersonal, which is problematic, because how do you have an impersonal aspect being an actual essence of the personal God? That's a problem. Now, when we get back to the break, I'll adapt this to the Trinitarian God and why it works perfectly in Trinitarianism, and then we'll get to the callers. 877-207-2276. We'll be right back after these messages. Please take it. All right, everybody. Now, I'm going to finish up on this issue that I was saying. I have to write myself a little bit of note.

Okay, good. And so as I want to continue on the issue, when we move from the binitarian view, which has obvious problems now, let's move into the Trinitarian view. In the three persons, the Trinitarian, the Trinity, each of the persons would then mediate their personhood among the other two. So what we would have here is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Father and the Holy Spirit would have fellowship that's mediated by the personhood of the Son. The Father and the Son's fellowship is mediated by the personhood of the Holy Spirit. And this works in the combination of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Father and Holy Spirit and the Son and the Son and the Holy Spirit with the Father, etc. Then we don't have a fundamental aspect of God being impersonal. Remember, the idea of love and forgiveness and things are impersonal.

Not to say that... What I mean by that is they don't have self-awareness. Forgiveness is not an entity of itself that you can talk to. But it's something that exists in an abstract sense. And in the binitarian sense, fellowship, love, communication, would be impersonal. And that would be a fundamental aspect of the binitarian God. But in the Trinitarian God, that's not necessary because we would have each of the member mediating the fellowship and love and intimacy between the other two. Because there's a doctrine of perichoresis, the inter-dwelling, and divine simplicity.

We'll get into all those things. And it works. And this way, you don't have the impossibility of unitarianism, the logical problems of binitarianism. And, since God is maximally efficient, then you wouldn't need a quadrarianism view. It wouldn't need to be four. Three is the minimal, necessary, logical essence of what God is to maximize his perfection, his fellowship, his intimacy, self-awareness, and all.

And this is what God is and why God is, etc. Hope that makes sense. Hope that makes sense.

It's a little intellectually difficult, but I hope it worked for you. Let's get to Isaiah from Walnut Grove, North Carolina. Isaiah, welcome. You're on the air. Hi, Matt.

It's my first time calling. I've been listening for a while now, and I really enjoy it. Well, good. I'm glad. Good.

So what do you got, buddy? My question is on Molinism. I've been studying it as deep as I can as a layman for as long as I can. And they rely on, you know, it's interesting to me, Molinism, and how it could explain God's sovereignty over human freedom. But the problem I'm running into is prevenient grace, and I just can't make that work.

So I just want to know if there's any way that these two can work together, or are they just fundamentally different in every aspect? Well, I'll tell you what. Let's discuss Molinism. We've got no callers waiting right now, so let's go over it a little bit so we can introduce it to a lot of people who've never heard of it. And I can tell you why it doesn't work, okay?

It doesn't work, and I'll tell you why. So within Molinism, like you said, it's an attempt to kind of rectify an apparent, which is not really there, but an apparent disparity between God's sovereignty and man's freedom. So it has three aspects. Natural knowledge, which is God knows all things that are possible and logically necessary. Middle knowledge, that God knows any, this is important, free will choice that any person might make at any time in any circumstance.

That's important. Free knowledge means that God, he knows everything that actually exists right now. Middle knowledge is this thing.

It's also called sentient media, middle media, sentient knowledge. Middle knowledge, that God knows what any free will choice will be of any person at any time, any circumstance, okay, anywhere. So God then, because he has this knowledge, the problem then becomes that God's decisions about what to do become partially, at the very least, partially contingent on the known human free will choices that they're going to make. You see what I'm saying so far?

Okay. And this is a problem. In biblical knowledge... Oh, he has to think about what everybody would do, yeah. If he knows what everybody's going to do because they're free, we'll discuss that next, then does God base his future, his decisions to do something in the future based on what he foresees for and knows that people will do under different circumstances? If that's the case, then God's choices depend upon man's choices. Or God's choices are influenced and or partially contingent upon man's choices. Now, this is a problem because in Christian theology, there's a doctrine called aseity. This means that God is eternally non-contingent in his essence, in his makeup, in his knowledge, in his decisions. He is not contingent upon anything because if he was contingent upon anything, then he's not the God of Scripture. Contingency means that I'm contingent on God and that I couldn't exist if God hadn't created the first Adam and Eve and the universe.

I couldn't be here now. So all events that occur now are causally related to the first cause being God. And this is how it works.

But nevertheless, I digress just a little bit. So if God has all knowledge eternally, there is no necessity for him to have middle knowledge. There would be no necessity of him to know what people will do in free will circumstances, free will time under different conditions. Now, there's a logical problem here because nothing could occur unless God ordains that it occurs. So even the choice I have to wear my shirt today which says, Truth, the new hate speech, is ordained by God and I'm free at the same time. Just as Jesus, whose God in flesh has free will, said in John 5.19 and John 5.30 that he could do nothing of his own initiative but only that which he saw the Father do. But yet he had free will and he came to do the will of the Father who sent him from before the foundation of the world.

He was ordained as the eternal son. So we can see that this is flat out proof of compatibilism's validity. Libertarianism is what the issue is here inside of middle knowledge. Compatibilism says that human free will, and we'll discuss what free will is in a minute, human free will is compatible with the sovereign decrees of God. And libertarianism, the arguments go basically that human free will can't be known by God exhaustively because if God knows exactly what you're going to do when it's time for you to do it, are you free to do anything else? Because God knows you're going to do it so therefore you're forced to do it, so how do you have free will? And it's a faulty logic. They switch categories, there's a convolution of ideas in there and they're not clear in their thinking.

This is why they have a problem with it. Now, what's the free will mean? Free will is the ability to make choices that are consistent with your nature and also are not forced upon you. The reason I say consistent with your nature is because sometimes what I'll say to people is, I say, I'm going to trick you, you ready? They say, yeah. Is free will the ability to accomplish, to at least try to accomplish anything you could desire or think about that you could want to do?

Good or bad, whatever it is, you can desire to do either one and you can accomplish either one. Is that what free will is? Without anybody forcing you, they say, yeah, that's what free will is. And I tell them that you're a humanist because what you did was you agreed with my tricking you.

I told you I was. You're a humanist because your definition doesn't fit God. It's man-centered, not God-centered. See, God is free, but he cannot choose to do evil. He cannot choose to do evil.

He cannot lie. We can, but his nature is different than ours. It's not self-contradictory and it's pure and holy. So we have to have a definition of free will that includes God because God is the standard of what is free will, not man. Mullenism tends to use man as a definition, as a standard. And then, in my opinion, it reduces God's sovereignty.

That's my opinion of Mullenism, but nevertheless. So if God is to be included in this definition, then what we would say is that God can only do that which is consistent with his nature without being forced. That's free will. So this applies to people as well. Free will is the ability to make choices that are consistent with their nature, but are also not forced upon you.

All right. What does the Bible say about the unbeliever? The unbeliever is a slave of sin.

We're running out of time. I'm not going to quote the references, but the scriptures are he's an unbeliever who's a hater of God, can do no good, is a slave of sin, does not seek for God, cannot receive spiritual things. So that means that there's no condition in which an unbeliever by his nature will ever freely choose God because the Bible speaks against it. So the problem with middle knowledge now becomes that as they say God knows, he freely knows what any free will choice will be of anyone in any circumstance. They also mean that it means that they're able to choose God under the right circumstance, which is false. Enter prevenient grace. Prevenient grace, I call it kindergarten theology because it's the grace that comes before that really enables a person, Adam before the fall, to be able to freely choose God.

Well, Proverbs 21, 1 says, God moves the heart of the king where he wishes it to go. How much prevenient grace does he give to Bob and Frank? And yet Bob believes and Frank does not.

Why? Because of their free will. Well, why does one person's free will with that amount of prevenient grace give them to believe and another one does not? And I can ask these questions at infinitum ad nauseum and the Mullinists can't answer the question. See, the problem here is that it depends upon a kind of contingent choice of God upon the free will, libertarian free will, of people that God sees what they will do and bases parts of his choices on what he has ordained in their freedom, as some Mullinists say, and some say by his foreknowledge and extrapolation, others have said this to me, that he will then make choices to bring about the best possible situation of the world that he wants using their free will choices, which includes libertarianism and in the more difficult areas of prevenient grace, which only makes things worse if you really think about it.

Mullinism, in my opinion, collapses on itself. If you really examine it, it doesn't work. It's an attempt by people with secular minds, secularly influenced minds, trying to understand how God's sovereignty can exist over our freedom. The Bible doesn't say how, it just says it is. It works all things after the counsel of his will. And it says that the unbelievers, a slave of sin, can't receive, won't understand, rejects, hates God, all of that. There's no condition in which he will freely choose God and prevenient grace does not answer the problem because it doesn't explain.

I think we're running out of time. Does that help any? It does, yeah. And at the beginning of our conversation, I said it appeals to me. It's not quite true.

I trend towards the Calvinist view, but with the rise of Mullinism, I felt like I needed to at least address it because it comes up a lot. So, yeah, it makes sense. Okay, yeah. Call back tomorrow.

We're out of time. We could discuss this some more. I hope I made it clear of the major problems of Mullinism.

I've written a lot on it and studied it. Very clear, yes. Okay? All right, buddy. All right, thank you. God bless. All right, man. Okay. Hey, you guys got some good theological stuff, hopefully, on Unitarianism, Binitarianism, Trinitarianism, Mullinism, Middle Knowledge, and stuff like that. Boy, I love this stuff. May the Lord bless you by His grace. Go back on there tomorrow and welcome to talk to you then. Have a great evening, folks.