Those Who Fight Against The Decree Identified, and Then Back To Dositheos

Hello Greens and welcome to the Dividing Line. I do not know why the camera lights are all messed up. The one aiming at me is green. Number three is red. It's aimed over there. So I don't know what's going on.

It's all meant to confuse me, evidently. So I have no idea what's going on. So if I'm looking off this direction, it's not my fault. Okay. It's someone else's fault who will not be named, but is from Prescott.

So that pretty well, you know, limits the possibilities. Um, so last program I had said on X, I was going to look at this and I just, I spaced it. And in fact, I wasn't even sure where I had saved it, but lo and behold, it was in my bookmarks.

That's where you're supposed to put things. Um, I lose so many things these days and it's because there are way too many ways of contacting me. Um, you know, I'll remember that somebody sent me a message and then I sit there and go, okay, was it a text message or regular old style text message?

It used to be really exciting to get those. It's not anymore. Um, you know, I remember the first time you got one, well, this is great. Uh, and then you've got a Facebook messenger and you've got direct messages in X and then you've got a telegram and signal.

I think I still have WhatsApp. I don't even think I look at it. So who knows? Um, and, and then a lot of these platforms have their own, you know, sub things and emails and which email address I have three major email addresses.

So yeah, uh, sometimes I just throw my hands up and go, and I tried to log into the, um, the seminary uses this. It's pretty cool. It's pretty neat. Again, it just demonstrates how old school I am and, and how I'm out of it.

Um, this program that does, you know, a lot of the grading and the students can log in and interact with you and all the rest of this kind of stuff. Um, it's, it's pretty cool and I've been using it, you know, I have to, uh, teach there and I need to log into it because starting, oh wow, a week from tonight, huh?

Uh, I'll be teaching early church history for the seminary in here, I guess. Um, and, uh, I had to get into it. Every browser I put anything into that line, you know, the seminary initials, the program initials, none of my browsers recognized it anywhere.

I had to write somebody and say, what's the link? Because I, I guess I cleared cash and cookies and all that stuff at some point and just goes all gone. So anyways, yeah, it's fun. And, um, you know, if you're, if you're old friends like me have trouble finding your emails, just, uh, just realize we somehow ran the world without this stuff for a long time.

Competing Views of Divine Foreknowledge

So there you go. So as I was saying, I, uh, had saved a message from whosoeverwill .bible on X. I think that's who it was. So you can sort of tell, you know, whosoeverwill, you know, all the ones believing that kind of thing.

Um, and the reason I'd even seen it, I don't follow the guy, but the reason I'd even seen it was because Dinesh D'Souza had retweeted it. And I thought that was exciting because finally here is a situation where a guy is addressing, um, other theories outside of Calvinism and saying, it's not just determinism or open theism.

There's all these other things and D'Souza retweeted it. So it's like, okay. I responded by saying, so which one do you hold to? And I've not gotten an answer. Uh, I don't think we'll ever get an answer.

Uh, but here is the, uh, material on the, uh, on the board. And I wanted to, uh, and this actually, interestingly enough, will, uh, connect us right into D'Sythia. How in the world that happened? It keeps happening, doesn't it?

Isn't it interesting? Is that providence? I don't know. But anyway, um, so here's what the guy said, bring this up here. There it is down here somewhere. Um, so he says, but the church has held, the church, I'm not sure what church he's talking about, has held a third way for 1500 years.

I'm not sure if he means from time of just after Augustine or why he put 1500 years. I don't know. God knows the future exhaustively and human choices are genuinely free. So realize that when these folks say genuinely free, uh, what they mean is non-determined, non-decreed.

The Term Βουλομάχοι and Fighting Against God's Decree

Um, in fact, let me, let me put this up here. Um, let me see here. Bula Makoi. There you go. Bula Makoi, um, is a term that, uh, Claude and I made up today. Um, so this is, this is, okay. So I've, I've mentioned that, you know, for, uh, I don't know, since back in, uh, oh, it's been a while now I've been, you know, I went back out on my back porch and I started buying equipment again and I've put a gym together, which is really fun in Arizona during the summer, uh, since it's not enclosed.

Um, got to get those workouts in the morning and you still get sweat a lot. But anyways, uh, so I've been lifting and, um, rowing and running again. And if I run tomorrow, I'll be the longest I've run in a week since 2021, something like that.

So you got time to do stuff. And so I was doing, uh, the leg press today and I'm sitting there in between sets and I'm going, okay, for the Council of Constantinople 381, uh, they're going to be addressing the issue of the Holy Spirit.

And they came up with this phrase, they came up with a term, the Pneuma Makoi, Pneuma Makoi, sorry, Pneuma Makoi, the ones who fight against the Spirit, because they were the people who were fighting against the definition of the Spirit being added, the, the material about the Spirit being added to the Nicene Creed.

That's why it's called, normally what you are actually quoting in a church is the Niceno-Constantinoplean Creed. Um, so it's 325 and 381, but it's not really 325, it's as interpreted by 381. And that includes the material in the Holy Spirit.

So, um, the, what would be eventually called the Orthodox, called those who were fighting against the definition of the Holy Spirit as being homoousius, with the Father and the Son, the Pneuma, the people who are fighting against the Spirit, Pneuma Makoi.

And so I said to Claude, I said, so what would we call someone using that as the standard, that as the, as the basis, what would we call someone who fights against the decree of God? And again, it's pretty impressive.

Um, Claude comes back. I had come up with my own idea. Um, but I'm outside and it's hot and I'm sweating and stuff like that. So, uh, he comes back with Bula Makoi. Now, Bulo from Bule, uh, which is, we'll look at, we might, if we have time, look at, um, its appearance in, uh, Acts 4 .27, uh, where Herod and Pontius Pilate, the Jews and Romans, do what they are predestined to do by the Bule of his will.

So this would be the, the council. But see, when we think of council, we think of council as a group of guys getting together and let's do this, you know, um, which when you're a Presbyterian means we'll talk about it, but we'll never get it done.

Um, and, uh, so I'm not trying to offend every Presbyterian that's done anything in the church going, yeah, that's how it works. I mean, we know that one. Um, and, uh, so that's not what Bule means. Um, the, the council of his will would be the decree that flows from God's will.

This is what God chooses to do. This is his decree. This is what we've been talking about for quite some time now. And, and so people there, there's a lot of people that they either want to say God can't have a decree or they have to make it extremely general.

Like God's going to win in the end, but everything that happens between now and then, well, he leaves that up to man. Okay. Um, so I'm going to start calling them the Bule Makoi, so the, so, uh, uh, uh, Brother Flowers, um, you, you need to, you think I'll come up with the singular and we'll have a t-shirt and we'll, we'll send it to Leighton and, and he will, if I, I think if we made a t-shirt up that had this in the singular, um, I think he'd probably do a video wearing it.

What do you think? You're, you're saying no? Rich is absolutely without words right now. Okay. Um, he's speechless, which is pretty unusual. Um, but hey, um, what, what can I say? So the, uh, the Bule Makoi, those who fight against the decree, and, and I would say that if you fight against Acts 4, 27, Ephesians 1, 11, which make it very, very clear that the decree of God is extensive, not just, I'm going to win in the end.

I'm not sure how I'm going to get there, but I'm going to win in the end, um, that you would fall into the Bule Makoi, uh, camp. Um, there are other terms, and in fact, I had a conversation with Claude and I said, how would we do that?

Because the, the Hebrew sounds cooler, but it's much longer and really hard to memorize. What? So what would the ending be in the singular? Well, if it would be a masculine, it would be Bule Maketh. That's kind of what I thought.

Yeah. So you're, you're saying that you would send Dr. Flowers a t-shirt that says Bule Maketh. He's a Bule Maker, I mean us. Okay. All right. Just checking to make sure. I would make sure. That actually fits.

I could make it really cool. So Layton, Layton, someone's going to direct you to this. So you're going to watch this. So I know you have a sense of humor. Okay. You are a funny guy. And tell me, especially if I had it made, um, in unsealed text, like the ancient papyri and stuff like that, you know, like our papyri over here, you know, if it was, if it was in unsealed text and looked really cool, would you wear it?

Would you, would you at least carry it around and show people, you know, and then mock it or something like that? You know, because, because when I debated Bart Ehrman, at the end of the debate, I gave him a P52 tie that I had designed, that had manuscript P52.

Don't have one of those. I should, I should get P52. I have a little one, but a nice one, like from a West South here. Um, and I gave him a P52 tie and I don't know what he did with it. I've joked over the years, uh, that he might've burned it.

He might wear it on fundamentalist day or something like that. You know, I don't know. Um, but you know, would you wear it? Cause it, it would look really cool. So let me know and let me know what size.

Okay. Um, cause, cause I'll, I'll follow through with it. I've got a lot to do over the next month cause we're one month out from the, uh, from the debate with Craig Trulia. Um, but, uh, we'll get it done.

We'll get it done. Rich, Rich can help me get it done even if I'm on the road. So we are working on that trip by the way. And I want to thank everybody doing this right in the middle of this is stupid, but I want to thank everybody we got.

I think there were about six, six emails. I think we got that you forwarded to. Yeah. I sent one over this morning from South Dakota. Right. That actually came through apology. Oh, okay. That was Luke Pearson.

He had the, he, that, that actually came through end abortion now. So yeah, I'm following up on that one because that's where I was looking for getting from Colorado to Bismarck, South Dakota is in between, and that might work out and then back down to, uh, Kansas and Kansas city and a bunch of places in Kansas.

So, uh, we're working on that. I'm, I'm going to try to get an email out to all you guys tonight and say, okay, here's the tough part is scheduling. How do we, if I left October 26th, um, and was willing to go into, you know, like the second week of November, how do we work all this out?

Um, and stuff like that. And then we just ask everybody else to help pay these $6 and 40 cents per gallon of diesel right now. Thank you. I, I'm going to have to say this. I'm, I know I'll go back to this in a second, but three years ago, four years ago, a bunch of people, wasn't me, but I didn't object to it.

We're putting pictures of Joe Biden doing this. And the caption was, I did that. And they're sticking them on gas pumps because the gas was so expensive. Well, the gas is a whole lot more expensive now than it was back then.

And I haven't seen any pictures of Donald Trump. I have. You have? Yeah, they're out there. I have not seen them. Um, maybe they scrape them off real fast. I don't know. Maybe they scrape, you know, Biden couldn't scrape anything off of anything very fast.

So, uh, maybe they are, but, um, let's just be honest. Um, you know, you, you start a war, you can't win and, uh, we're all getting to pay for it now. Anyway, that is neither here nor there. Well, it is, but, uh, that's not part of our topic here.

Critique of D'Souza's Retweeted Theories

So yes, heading for the Midwest. Back to the Bullockers. I'm sorry. Okay. I have obviously tickled Rich's funny bone, uh, with, with my, my made up, um, Greek, uh, phrase there, but, uh, word actually, but it's sort of a phrase that's translated those who fight against God's will.

So anyways, back to this. All right. So the point is Dinesh D'Souza, who is the king of the Bulamakoi, um, honorary king, because he's, you've got, you know, I mean, Leighton's been at this forever. So it's not fair to Leighton to let Dinesh come along, uh, and become the king before Leighton does.

Right. I mean, that's not fair. Leighton's a nice guy. So, uh, so vice regent, I don't know what, what we, what we'll call Dinesh, but, um, he's up there in the leadership of the Bulamakoi. Anyway, uh, he retweets this.

And so you have Boethian, Molinist, Ockhamist, and I thought there was a fourth one. I guess there wasn't. Um, I mean, I would put simple foreknowledge in here, but simple foreknowledge just doesn't really answer all the questions.

Uh, and it's funny that we'd say 1500 years, cause Molinist, Louis de Molina, uh, you know, the end of the 16th century. So not sure where they came up with that one. Um, we'll point that out when we get to it.

But anyways, here they are. And since de Souza retweets this, he must hold one of these, right? Why would you retreat it if you don't think that any of these are relevant? Um, and he refuses to answer which one he holds.

Um, and I think he will continue to refuse to do that because he does not want to have to answer the questions that he's asking of everybody else. He wants to be able to shoot the gun and not have anybody ever shoot back.

Okay? That's the, that's the easy way of doing things. Uh, and that's evidently what he's doing. All right. So Boethian, now I'm not saying that this guy has got all this exactly right because there are, there are people who write books about the medieval period and philosophy and all that kind of stuff and they disagree with each other on everything.

And, uh, yeah, that's just the way it goes. Um, but I'm just going with what he retweeted. Boethian, God isn't in time. He doesn't foresee your choice from the past. He sees all of history at once present to him.

Watching a free act. So watching, here's, okay, let's, watching a free act doesn't cause it. Okay. Now, um, you're going to hear this all the time. Uh, it's thrown out there like it's the, uh, answer to all things.

Um, watching a free act doesn't cause it. Well, that's a given in, uh, human experience. Of course, watching a free act, I can turn on the TV. I can watch a baseball game and see a wild thing happen and I did not cause it by watching it.

That's exactly true. Um, so this seems to be how this is helpful. But think about what that means for a second, because we're going to come back to it. I want to compare the three of them. Molinist is not an ancient viewpoint.

Molinism was developed in response to the Reformation. So maybe this guy doesn't know that. I don't know. Um, God knows what every free creature would freely do in any circumstance and creates the world accordingly.

That's pretty accurate, given the complexity. I mean, didn't even have to use, how does he do this accordingly? It's called middle knowledge. Okay, where does middle knowledge come from? Well, go listen to my discussion on Unbelievable with William Lane Craig.

It's called the grounding objection. Listen to the debate that I did on the subject. Dr. Bignon felt that I should have done free will stuff. That's what he feels is the problem with Molinism. I think you start with God, and that's why I approached it the way that I did.

Where does middle knowledge come from? That's the big question. That's the big question. We'll get back to it. And then finally, Occamist, William of Occam. God's knowledge of your future choice is real, but depends on the act, it doesn't fix it.

Now, I'll be honest with you, there's a credit cards difference between this description of Boethian and Occamist. Because watching a free act doesn't cause it, and your future choice is real, but depends on the act, it doesn't fix it.

God's knowledge of your future choice is real. I'm not really sure there's that much of a difference between those two. I mean, you could pretty much squish them together, and that's how things, you know, it'd be pretty much saying the same thing.

But, so here's the three that he gives. And like I said, there's a simple foreknowledge view that God has foreknowledge of future events, and no one, well, the open theist denies that. But the vast majority of people will, for various reasons, accept that as a general statement, but it's not really addressing the how.

Why does God have knowledge of future events? Well, because God isn't in time. You know, God isn't in time. Well, you know what? If what you mean by that, and again, I'm not going to get into the massive amount of conversation about theories of time, A, B, blah, blah, blah, I agree.

God isn't in time in the sense that in his being, he is limited to a progression of events. I think if you take seriously, and there's so many things to make sure people understand here, the reason a lot of scholarship views all this as purely speculative and not overly grounded in history, is a lot of scholarship does not believe that you can read Isaiah 40 through 48 and build a full theology of God as creator from what is, in essence, poetry.

Because it is almost all poetry. There's a few sections that aren't, but it's almost all poetry. Hebrew poetry. And they would say, that's all it is. You can't get anything more than that. And that's why I say all the time, if you start with Jesus' view of scripture, then scripture will be enough for you to build a systematic theology.

If you don't have Jesus' view of scripture, what are you going to do? You're going to end up with modern theology, which can't really tell you almost anything. So when we say God isn't in time, yeah, he's with the first and with the last.

Not he was with the first and will be with the last, he is with the first and with the last. And so there is very much a true statement that God sees all of time in one moment. I agree. But not as a mere observer.

There's watching a free act. That means the free act was derived from where? Autonomously from the creature. So it's not a part of God's decree, and therefore he has no control over it. And so when you think about it, the final conclusion of this perspective is God creates and then he looks at the creation and he goes, cool, I win, praise me.

He might not have. It's not his will that's being done. It's not his purpose and his plan that's being accomplished. So why is it supposed to glorify him? I don't know. Because the free acts that bring about evil, okay, that's just all on them.

But the free acts that bring about good, all on them too. God becomes the external observer. Not the creator, not the weaver of time, not the one working all things after the counsel of his will. That is an active participle.

It's something God is doing. This God is watching, not doing. So is this his position? I'd like to know. Is this Dinesh D'Souza's position? I'd like to know. Molinism. Okay, I'm not going to spend too much time on this.

Like I said, this is not one of the 1500 years things. So I think the guy's just confused. But the big issue with Molinism is where does this come from? Where does middle knowledge come from? As you know, William Lane Craig, the primary modern promoter.

Well, you know, there's some philosophers who'd be really miffed if I said that. The primary popular promoter of a theory of middle knowledge. Because there's different theories of middle knowledge. There's different forms of Molinism.

That's why people write books and publish articles and do all the rest of that kind of stuff. But William Lane Craig, his perspective, which is the most popular because he's a popularist in that sense.

The idea is, well, it's his terminology. He's the one that used it. When people ask, why this universe? Because the idea is, God is so vast and so wise, he can look at all possible universes. All logically possible universes.

Since he has middle knowledge, which tells him what any free creature would do in any circumstance, where it comes from, we'll talk about in a second. Then he can micromanage all those circumstances. That way, he can put all these free creatures into circumstances where he knows what they're going to do, but they do it freely.

Even though he is micromanaging the circumstances so they really can't do anything else. Theoretically, they can. But if middle knowledge is true, then he will always know what they're going to do in any given circumstance.

So by controlling those circumstances, he's controlling the outcome. He can accomplish his will with all the creatures remaining free. Luis de Molina, a Jesuit, created this theory to fight the Reformation, to fight the Reformed.

So it's not overly shocking that Dinesh D'Souza would be sitting there going, well, this is amazing. The Reformation, those original documents, what a mess, and Calvinism is an attack on the Reformation.

Then he's retweeting something that suggests Molinism, which was an attack on the Reformation, directly. He doesn't know that. Again, when you decide to act in ignorance, you're going to say and do very ignorant things.

So that's what happens. But Molina does this because the Reformed are emphasizing the sovereignty of God and his priority in all actions, which directly attacks the Roman Catholic sacramentalism. The sacraments are the mechanism whereby you control God's grace.

And so man has to have not an autonomous will, because Rome says that man has fallen, but man still has to have free will so as to be able to use and work the sacramental system. And that's what the Jesuits were doing.

That's what Molina is doing with his middle knowledge. And so as William Lane Craig says, why this universe? Well, his theory is that this is the universe where God gets the best balance of the number of people saved versus the amount of evil in the universe.

And how did he come to that calculation? Because middle knowledge allows him to compare all these universes. And where did the middle knowledge come from? Well, what did he say? Well, God has to deal with the cards he's been given.

I'm sorry, God has to work with the cards he's been dealt. You deal cards. There you go. God has to work with the cards he's been dealt. So the cards he's been dealt is the middle knowledge, is the content of middle knowledge.

Where did it come from? Not from God. It does not come from God's creation. It does not come from God's decree. Where does it come from? I would argue there's another God out there, because fundamentally he has a theological system where there's something that can limit what God can do by its nature that God didn't create.

That, to me, is the absolute fatal flaw of middle knowledge. And if you go watch the debate that I did with that young fellow, Stratton, I think was last name, I think. Yeah, you can tell I've been thinking a lot about that debate since then.

And that's why during the video version of Radio Free Geneva, you have him talking about the Marvel universe, and this, that, and the other thing, and trying to bring middle knowledge out of it. And the camera zooms in on me, and I'm just sitting there going, just rolling my eyes.

Like, are we really doing this? Yes, we are really doing this. Because there is some source out there of middle knowledge. And who knows where it came from? Don't know. But there is, the grounding objection is, there is no source of this.

There is no such thing as middle knowledge. Does God know what any free creature would do in any given circumstance? Yes, only because he created every free creature. So the nature of the free creature is what determines what the free creature will do.

Who creates that? God does. There is no need for middle knowledge. It is a distraction. And again, it's not one of the third ways, or 1500 years, or whatever. And then the alchemist, God's knowledge of your future choice is real, but depends on the act.

It doesn't fix it. Now, I would like to ask, is that being used, is fix it being used in the technical philosophical form of, his knowledge of it is real, but the knowledge flows from, it depends on the act itself.

So that would mean that God learns. Right? Because what comes before what? If his knowledge of your future choice is real, but it depends on the act, and the act arises from the action of your will in time, then God created and learned.

And that's why I don't see much of a difference here. He creates, he looks and goes, ah, I win, glorify me. That's not the God of the Bible. That's not Isaiah 43 -48. And by the way, just so you're aware of this and don't get blindsided by somebody, I would say in the majority of theological seminaries you go to today, and even in some maybe formerly evangelical or evangelical-ish types of contexts, you would encounter professors who would say, well, look, this is all very interesting.

However, I just don't think that Isaiah is up to being this foundational. Yeah, it can contain messianic prophecies and stuff like that. And Jesus can open the minds of the apostles to understand it. That's supernatural stuff.

All this stuff is actually talking about in Isaiah is narrow down to what God's going to do with Cyrus and restoring the people to the land. It has nothing to do with anything else. None to do with anything.

I think you would find a lot of professors, even in sort of evangelical or evangelical-ish, evangelical-adjacent type theological education that would hold that view. Really do. In fact, I bet you dollars don't.

There are a bunch of Southern Baptist professors teaching Old Testament that would take that view. I mean, I'm not naming names, but I just think that that is pretty obvious. So when it says all of them affirm that God knows everything, they only deny that knowing a choice is the same as decreeing it.

There it is. Knowing a choice is the same as decreeing it. Get out of the way. It's the only problem with that. Decreeing it. So how does God know that choice? Middle knowledge doesn't do it. These turn God into the great observer.

What do all of these do? What is the one thing that's being smuggled in here and being defended here in all this stuff? It's real easy. Human autonomy. There it is. Human autonomy. We're in charge. God's reacting to us, responding to us.

He creates it, and he puts all the processes in motion, but then he steps back to watch it and see what happens. He's an observer. But think about that for a second. Again, if this is D'Souza's position, and he's not going to tell us, he's not going to tell us.

I could link directly this whole presentation and put it up here and say, here's the tweet you retweeted. Deal with this. He's not going to respond to this. But when you look at what all of this is about, all of this is in defense of human autonomy versus divine autonomy.

That's what this is. The bulimakoi, I need to ask Claude for what he would come up with for defenders of human autonomy. That'd be a long phrase. But that's what it's about. That's what it's about. You either have an autonomous God, and I know exactly what people would say, who then, in mercy and grace, releases his autonomy to his creatures.

That doesn't work. Because if God creates the universe with all the mechanisms in place for evil to take place, and then steps back, that makes him an idiot. And that makes all acts of evil purposeless.

Don't you see that? It blows me away, the number of people right now who think that's great. Just super. It's wonderful that God revved the universe up. He put a bunch of teenagers into a hot rod and gave them no driving instructions, and then he's sitting back and watching the crashes like it's the demolition derby.

Maybe having fun with it. I don't know. But my goodness, the idea is, I just can't handle a God who might be wise enough to actually have a purpose. And so, yeah, people keep going back to the Bryson debate and putting memes up and all the rest of this stuff.

And what are they doing? They're saying, I want a God who created purposeless evil. That's what I want. And that's what Dinesh D'Souza wants. I mean, I have the PDF of his opening statement in the discussion with Mignon, and that's all the opening statement is.

I'm going to describe the Calvinist God. He decreed this, and he created that, and this is evil, and that's evil. That's all he wants. He wants all that evil to be utterly purposeless, as long as he can say God's not accountable for it.

And what's the cost of that? That God created it. Does he say God knew? That he's just watching? Okay, so God created it, and now he's watching all this stuff and going, wow, that's a mess. That's the God you want?

That's the God you think is being taught in Isaiah 40 through 48, in Jeremiah, in Ephesians 1? Is that the God that the early church was praying to and said, what Herod and Pontius Pilate and the Romans and Jews did, your will, decreed, predestined to take place?

Well, that was just the early church. They hadn't learned their lesson yet. They didn't have us later people. We were just holding on for provisionism to arrive. No, sorry, none of that worked. Completely to be rejected.

So, the Bullimacoi, what are they gonna do with this? I don't know. I got no idea, man. But there we go. Close that, and I guess that's not gonna work. I have to do it over here. I thought that worked.

I thought that was the whole point of it. Yeah, see, there you go. All right, so, now I mentioned that all of this is really sort of interestingly in the providence of God going along with our study in the Confession of Decithius.

The Confession of Dositheus on Divine Will and Condemnation

And I think you'll find this interesting, that this just came up, we just had this section, and here is the next section of Decree Number 3 that we haven't gotten to yet. And guess what it's about? Exactly this.

It is spot on the same topic. All right, so, I can't go back. I can't keep going back and, you know, go, remember this, remember that. I've got to allow for some continuity here. But very, very, very briefly, in case somebody tuned in and you're, you know, you're just following the De Sousa stuff and things like that, I'll make it a little bit bigger here.

The Confession of Decithius is a dogmatically binding statement from the Synod of Jerusalem in 1672 for Eastern Orthodox. And it is extremely important to understand in the relationship between Eastern Orthodox and especially Reformed Protestants.

And knowing that a number of these converts to Eastern Orthodoxy were Reformed, it's interesting because in the section just above this, specifically referring to Calvinists, but to say, as the most wicked heretics do, and so on and so forth.

So, we are called wicked heretics and things like that in this, and it just needs to be understood, you know, this is binding, understood in different ways, but binding in Eastern Orthodoxy. So, look at this section.

But then to affirm that the Divine Will is thus solely and without cause the author of their condemnation, what greater defamation can be fixed upon God? Now, if you didn't know that this was from 1672 and from the Eastern Orthodox, if I just threw this up here, and if I put Dinesh De Sousa's name after it, would you have even blinked?

Probably not. If I put Leighton Flower's name after it, nobody'd recognize the difference, would they? Thought about doing it, but didn't. And what greater injury and blasphemy can be offered to the most high?

How many times have we heard people, not just in the past few weeks, but it's been rather loud past few weeks, but how many times have you heard people saying, Calvinism is a blasphemy against God's nature?

Why aren't they Eastern Orthodox? Well, they may become. Maybe I'm helping people to see the light, right? I just think it's because they are less than 1 of the population, so they haven't been exposed to it, and when they get exposed to it, they go, oh wow, look at that, that's what I believe, and now I can have smells and bells too.

Who knows? But this is what they say, what greater defamation can be fixed upon God, and what greater injury and blasphemy can be offered to the most high. We do know that the deity is not tempted with evils, James 1 .13, and that he equally wills the salvation of all, since there is no respect of persons with him.

That is a complete misunderstanding of the statement that God is no respecter of persons. That is not what it's saying, and it is easily demonstrable, easily demonstrable from the text of scripture, when it says he equally wills salvation of all.

Okay, are there Reformed people who believe in that vague statement? Yes. There are Reformed perspectives that will say that there is a general will of salvation that God wills not to accomplish, okay?

Yes, there are some who will say that. It does not explain why God would will one thing and accomplish something else. It creates a division between God's will and God's accomplishment, which I don't think there's any reason to have.

And it also basically says that God wills his own eternal unhappiness, because if God's will is to save person X, but his choice is to not save person X, is he not going to be desiring the salvation of person X through eternity while that person is under punishment, and hence God will never truly be satisfied?