all right Tim yeah so free will yeah got free will talked about that little in the last video there
are a lot of Calvinist stuff there and disagree with you yeah and how this applies to salvation
especially yeah so my dad was a Calvinist right now I'm a member of a Calvinist Church yeah you're
now strongly Calvinist I'm not a Calvinist now I've got a friend named latent flowers you know
Layton yeah we're real great guy oh he's awesome and just he's written a really awesome book about
free will he's not a Calvinist what do you think about his view compared to what you're
saying here well Layton and I are gonna agree on almost everything I've taken a bit further and I
try to explain it through the lens of Mullen ISM and I don't think Layton will affirm Mullen ISM
the way I do but he's not opposed to it either I think he's friendly to it and open to it okay
so but we're gonna have many of the same views so yeah I guess I did it what is Mullen is okay good
question that's a funny word it is it's derived from the last name of a Spanish theologian from
the 16th century named luis de molina so Molina more lanolin's there you go and he's the founder
of middle knowledge and I can talk about that here so are you gonna have like Tim Stratton is that
gonna become Stratton isms dead is your outer sphere me maybe in 500 hundred years strattice
right yeah so a lot of people think Mullen isms hard to define I've tried to make it as simple as
possible and so I say well just like you know dr. Craig and many others will say well let's
define mere Christian unity it what's what do we have to have and that's God raised Jesus from the
dead right if God raised Jesus from the dead then some flavor of Christianity has got to be
true so you're talking about a mere Mullen Amir Mullen ISM what are the two East's hensel's that
if these two things were true then some flavor of Mullen ISM has got to be true and I say the first
key is that an omniscient God if God is omniscient and omnipotent then something would fall and that
means that God knows everything that would happen based on any possible scenario he could create
now this entails middle knowledge right if God is all-powerful omnipotent and omniscient right
all-knowing then this would follow that God would know all that what happened based on everything
he could create any scenario he could create so if that's true then God's got middle knowledge
and then the second key ingredient here of mere Mullen ISM is that humans like God possess the
ability to choose between a range of options each compatible with our image of God nature
if you will so that's how I define mere mullen ism it's really pretty simple God's got middle
knowledge and humans have libertarian free will so if that's true if those two statements are
true then some flavor of Mullen ism has got to be true now what's interesting is look at the five
points of Calvinism the the tulip and if you look at each of those five points and then you consider
the two key ingredients of Mullen ISM they don't contradict each other in any way if you just look
at them at face value so I contend that you can be a Calvinist even a five-point Calvinist I'm not at
five point Calvinist but you can be you can be a five-point Calvinist and still be a mere monist
so there doesn't have to be attention here in fact I look at some Calvinists like Oliver Crisp almond
planica a Greg cocoa with stand a reason is a good example in this book called tactics he makes it
clear that even though he's a five-point Calvinist he affirms that humanity possesses what I call a
limited libertarian freedom in the last video we talked about how if you don't have free will how
you can't be rational yeah or possess knowledge gained from the process of rationality right and
and so greg coco argues for this now he's a five-point Calvinist and still says yeah but
we've got a libertarian free will and an area is not related to salvation now think about this you
know so so if the Calvinist or anybody for that matter affirms that you have limited libertarian
freedom at least in some issues some of the time and then they also affirm that God is omniscient
eternally and necessarily you know eternally without beginning then God will have middle
knowledge so is the Calvinist in some sense being inconsistent or is the Calvinist is the Calvinist
being inconsistent with their view by adopting the form of Mullen ISM as well or they don't
have to be not the mere Mullen ISM so that so now I apply mere Mullen ISM to salvation issues
but you don't have to right so that's where so I'm trying to build a bridge here between
Calvinists and mold honest showing that we can all affirm several things and we can disagree on the
salvation part good we all get along I think we can I think we can I try to build bridges
behind the doors of the church as much as I can so that's good it is important and you know I'll
never forget a statement that Michael Berg made one time and he said you know I'm in Australia
and I'm debating people who don't think that the Bible has anything really to offer us today while
you guys are having all these heated debates over non essential theological issues says I'm I'm I'm
fighting two barbarians at the gates while you guys are involved in fraternal fratricide over
the proper length of candy wow so I like what you're doing and using it as I co K you know
we can get along with this this doesn't have to be a dividing point yeah I think the Lord would
frown on all the kind of I remembered there's a guy named Amy Anna's Marcellinus and he wrote in
I believe it was the fourth centuries the final Roman historian oh really yeah so he'd seen the
brutalities of a lot of Rome and what the Romans did to people who rebelled against him and and
yet in contrast he saw how Christians treated one another and he wrote and he said no wild beasts or
such dangerous enemies to men as Christians are to one another Wow amen to that I mean that's
horrible but that's true I mean you've both seen it right yeah yeah yeah so we want to do better
Christians we need to do better we do mm-hmm what I like about flowers Layton's late and flowers
book is he bases his view does some exegesis of scriptures provides a fresh view right a way of
looking at those scriptures in a non Calvinist way that that's entirely plausible so I think
he's right what what your approach with Mir Mullen ISM is is not I mean you would agree with all the
different kind of scriptures but this isn't really a scriptural thing is it oh I think it is I'm
you're mulling it something yeah I think arguing that harp reading scripture differently than say
a strict Calvinist would there's certain ways that you would sign it if well I'll tell you this and
my so in my first chapter of my dissertation I go through how to have a proper hermeneutic and
then I want to take that hermeneutic and apply it correctly from biomimetic you mean that the
your approach to scriptural interpretation right right exactly and and it's got to be logical yeah
that's a big part of it I mean you don't want it illogical interpretation of Scripture because
then you will have a false interpretation of Scripture I like to say that truth and
logic are inextricably linked you can't have one without the other and so if the Bible is true it
will always be logical and so even if you can't connect the logical dots the logical dots are
out there to be connected and so you might not figure out how to do it you can punt a mystery
but that doesn't mean that somebody else might not do it and it definitely means that you should not
as a theologian or pastor affirm two statements that you say are both biblical yet contradict
each other God doesn't ask us to believe logical contradictions you might want us to affirm some
mysteries but that's a different thing yeah now I take this logical approach to interpreting the
entirety of Scripture and I say that when one does that that this Mullin istic view is the
best explanation or the best interpretation of Scripture so that's really the project of the
final the ultimate project of my dissertation awesome yeah free thinking ministries free
thinking ministries is your ministry right yeah free thinking ministries calm is my website and
trying to be a little bit more active on YouTube now if you want to Kenny how can they follow you
on youtube I just searched for free thinking ministries and that's a YouTube channel that's
yeah yep and on Facebook I've got a the free thinking ministries Facebook page we've got a free
thinking podcast group that you could be a part of I'm on Instagram under free thinking underscore
theist the free thinking theists and and if they're going to join that group on Facebook
what's the name of it again by the free thinking podcast and the pre thinking rethinking yeah free
thinking podcast group and the free thinking ministries page so there are two yeah pages
on Facebook groups you have yep you can follow us on Twitter to it let's see at free thinking
men awesome other words working doing thank you well that's pretty cool hope y'all enjoyed it you
you