Welcome back to the Fourth Way podcast. This episode is going to be a little bit different than a lot of the other episodes. It's gonna be a little bit more philosophical and esoteric. Whereas a lot of times I like to try to make this podcast evidential or, you know, I don't know, based more grounded. This one's gonna be a bit more conjecture and and kind of asking you to imagine things in your mind.

We're gonna delve a little bit more into maybe intuition here. We're gonna touch on issues like free will and possible worlds. It's right up my alley. I love this kind of stuff, but it might be a little bit different. So I don't know.

I I guess you'll see if you like it or not. So to begin, I want you to pause right now. Pause this episode, and I want you to imagine some kind of far out fantasy world with the craziest things that you can. Like, okay, unicorn, whatever. But try to like come up with something maybe a little bit different, like the the craziest thing that you can come up with.

Just go ahead and try to imagine that world a little bit. Okay. Now that you're back, maybe you imagined, I don't know, dragons, unicorns, aliens, flying teapots, practically anything. Alright? Alice in Wonderland, trippy type stuff.

I don't know exactly what you imagined, but I can guarantee that I know something that you didn't imagine. You did not imagine a world with square circles or married bachelors. Maybe you imagined a world where squares were called circles or circles were called squares, but you absolutely did not imagine a world where there was something that was logically impossible. Unicorns, dragons, aliens, flying teapots, none of those things exist as far as we're aware, maybe some of them do, but those aren't logically impossible things. Even the flying teapots, I can imagine possibilities for how those things could be real.

Right? But those aren't logically impossible, they're just highly improbable. We might be able to make teapots fly in this world, and there might be a world where God actually made it to have teapots fly. It's possible. It's it's not logically impossible.

Now that might seem like a stupid activity, but thinking about possible worlds is vital to philosophy. We have talked about or are going to talk about theodices at some point, or a theodicy, and a theodicy is really just a kind of a an exploration of a possibility, a possible world of sorts. Possible worlds help us to hold ideas accountable. You know, an idea might sound really good like having a square wheel that rolls easily, but stable when you're parked. I mean, that'd be nice not to have a parking brake, let's have square wheels.

But when we try to play that out together, we can recognize that one doesn't logically exist with the other. I know, I can just picture it in my mind, I've never made a car with square wheels, but I can tell you what would happen if you do, right? It would be very nice parked without a parking brake, but it's not gonna roll when you want it to go. Squares have edges and circles don't, and it's the intrinsic characteristics of each of these things given the properties of our world which gives them their own properties in regard to how they're going to act. Now today, I want to explore a theological possible world.

I want to test a claim by entering a possible world in our minds in order to test it. So here's the here's the question, here's the setup. I wanna know, is there a possible world in which humanity fell in sin while Jesus did not sacrifice Himself to redeem them? And just a note for any smarties who try to confound the question, okay, we're going to assume that Jesus' sacrifice is the only thing which could redeem humanity, right? Because there are discussions in Christianity and in some church fathers about whether the sacrifice of Christ was necessary.

So we could phrase it differently and ask, would Jesus have sought us out and saved us in any world? But let's just keep this to, we know that Jesus Christ used the method of the cross in our world. Is there a possible world where, assuming the cross is necessary, that Jesus does not bear the cross for fallen humanity. Would Jesus save humanity in every possible world? Or is there a world in which He could stand back and allow humanity to reap only destruction and hell?

Now that might seem like a simple question, you probably thought of your answer right off the bat, like, Oh yeah, of course, of course, Jesus is love, right? He's going to do that in every world. Or, no, Jesus wouldn't do that in every world, He did it in this one. And each of those routes is going to have some pretty weighty ramifications. So I want to explore each option, and I think when we get to the end of this, I'm gonna wrap this up into tie this into non violence, or at least an aspect of it, and I think it's gonna be an important thought experiment in terms of theological acceptance of non violence.

So let's take the first step. No, there's no possible world where Jesus chooses to let humanity die without the opportunity for forgiveness and salvation. He will go to the cross in every possible world where humanity falls. Now, if you answer this way, that there's no possibility of deviation from the course of cross, then you are tying the action of going to the cross, this action of Jesus, this forgiveness, however you want to summarize it, you are tying that action into His character. Who Jesus is determines this act.

It's not that every time Jesus sees a cross, He's like, Oh yeah, gotta gotta go do that. It's not this deterministic sort of thing where an event determines what Jesus does, but Jesus and His character, His love, who He is, determines that anywhere, any world where humanity falls, He will pursue them and love them, and He will love them even unto His own suffering and death. Because Jesus is love, He cannot deviate from that love. He could do nothing else but love humanity by dying for them. So what's the problem with this choice that seems pretty good for me as a fallen human?

Well, for those who hold to libertarian free will as necessary for choice and meaning, it really saps Jesus' choice from love. Because of who Jesus is, He could not have chosen otherwise. Now, just a caveat here, I say could not have chosen otherwise even though I don't I don't believe that. So for those of you into the free will discussion, a lot of times what will happen is if somebody is a compatibilist, which means they believe that we have meaningful free will while we are also in a sense determined, Long discussion to kind of get into that, but they always say, Well, look, I as a human, as a fallen human, I could, in theory, do something, right? Perform an act.

I could, in theory, live a sinless life, right? I could make an act all the time to do good. But that's not who I am because my character determines my actions, and because I am a fallen human being, I don't want to do good all the time. Perhaps another way to put this, and I'll link, I have an article on this because I I really like the free will discussion a lot, and so I'll post some of those below. But one of of my wife's apologetics professors, he was a he was very into libertarian free will, but he would say, you know, that that, you know, I'm just not dumb enough to to poke my own eye out.

And I'm sitting thinking, that makes me so squeamish to think about like cutting my own eyeball out. There's no possible way. Like, yes, I know that my I could make my hand move to grab a knife, and I could make that hand with the knife move to cut out my eye. I could do that, but there's like, I couldn't do it. I could not make my hand do that.

I just I couldn't. Like, I'm a coward, I'm too weak, I just I could not make myself do that. And so, what a compatibilist will say is, Could, yeah, sure, I could, but I wouldn't, right? And what libertarian free will people say is, Oh, that's a cop out, right? You're just you're really saying you couldn't because if you never would, that means you couldn't.

Well then, that's why I'm using the word couldn't here, because if Jesus never would make any other decision, then He couldn't, right, according to libertarian free will. So in this world, Jesus, in no meaningful way according to libertarians, could have chosen otherwise because his character, his nature is so immutably grounded in love and eternally grounded in who he is that he could not deviate from the course of Cross. All right. So the first world has some implications for our conception of the will. What about the second world or the second path, the second option that we have in imagining this possible world?

Let's say that there's at least one possible world in which Jesus could exercise libertarian free will and choose to let humanity die without the opportunity for forgiveness. The problem with this view is that Jesus' decision to love us in this world moves from one that is grounded in His eternal nature of love to one which is arbitrary. In this other world where Jesus chooses not to love us, He just didn't feel like dying for us that day or in that world or maybe He counted the cost too great. And this is significant because then the enemy love aspect of Jesus would not then be immutable. If enemy love is an immutable aspect of love and of God, then Jesus can only choose to love enemies.

You know, an immutable characteristic is is very different than something that's mutable. So God could have, I think, made giraffes purple, right, if he wanted to. He could have made them purple. He could have changed that. Not a big deal, that's I mean, maybe it wasn't arbitrary, I'm sure God has a reason for everything He does probably, but I think there's probably a world in which drafts could have been purple because it just doesn't matter.

But there's not a world in which God could sin because holiness is a part of God's character, His immutable character, who He is. So if there's a world in which Jesus could choose not to love His enemies, then enemy love is not an integral part of what it means to love. It's kind of an addendum, an addition that can be added or taken away as God in His decree sees fit. So if enemy love is not a mutable aspect, but rather an optional accoutrement, then it's an accidental feature as opposed to a necessary one. And by accidental, I don't mean happenstance.

Accidental is just a property that is not necessary, something that's you can add to or take away from. Now, this has some serious ramifications for how we view a position of non violence and how we view God. See, God's love for us in a world where we recognize He didn't have to die for us according to His character, means that God kind of, or Jesus made this choice to love rather in spite of us. It's not a work He does because of who He is, because He would have done otherwise in a different world. In another world, the giraffes would have been purple and we'd all be going to hell because Jesus wouldn't have died for us.

Our salvation or Jesus' love is is kind of as meaningful as the color of a giraffe. It's something He could have done or could not have done indifferent. Now you may have put two and two together by this point, but if God's call for us to love our enemies is a commandment, which isn't grounded in the being of God because God can choose to love enemies or not to love enemies as just kind of when He feels like it, it's not an integral part of love, then this commandment to enemy love isn't like a commandment to, let's say, truthfulness, right? Truthfulness is always right because that's grounded in the character of God. God is truth and He cannot lie and we are to do the same, right?

We are to imitate God in His character. Enemy love would not be like this, would not be like truthfulness in a if we recognize that we live in a world where Jesus just so happened to die for us but didn't do that in every world. So enemy love becomes a a just a brute command, which, I mean, God gives brute commands, just commands that He decrees, just like we've talked over and over before about how I can give a brute command to my kids. You may not use the stove, and I can rescind that command at other times. If I can provide supervision at the moment, maybe I let my daughter make some eggs for us or my son in fifteen years when he's responsible enough to make some eggs.

Although I don't know if I'll even trust him in fifteen years with fire and power things, but we'll see. Regardless, right, brute commands exist, but what we need to recognize is that this aspect of love, this enemy love, loving of enemies as an aspect of love becomes a brute command and not an integral part of it. We love our enemies simply because God said it, and that's it. It's not really a part of what it means to love. And and that of course brings up a kind of deeper question which just came to me, so I I don't really I'm kind of saying this off the cuff, and I I don't have notes here or anything, so it might be totally wrong.

But if if it's just a brute command, I would wonder, is it even possible to do that if God says, hey, look, enemy love is not really a part of what it means to love, but I'm commanding you to love your enemies, it doesn't seem like you could fulfill that command because it's obligatory. Whereas if you are to love your enemies because that's what it means to love, then that's something that you can fall into because it is what love is. True ultimate love is to love your enemies. But anyway, it might be God's prerogative to issue these sorts of brute commands, but the power behind the command loses a lot of its motive force, at least it does in my mind. I mean, when Jesus says that loving enemies and doing good to those who harm us is what makes us children of God, it's what makes us like Him because God sends His reign on the just and the unjust, that's powerful to me.

I love enemies because that's who God is. If God isn't that way, I can still do my best to obey, but man, it loses a lot of a lot of emotive force, which again, doesn't make it wrong, but certainly isn't very compelling. And we could also talk about a bunch of other hypotheticals which could be argued would change the landscape. Now, would Jesus die for sinners in a world where only one sinner would trust in Him? What about a world where nobody would trust in Him?

Would He still die for them, as kind of a demonstration of who He is or would He not? And that gets to an even more core question of these things which is, does Jesus die to accomplish something, to exhibit something, or both? If Jesus died in a world where none would place their faith in Him, would He still do it because it was an exhibition of His love? Or does Jesus require accomplishment? I don't know.

If Jesus does need accomplishment alongside of exhibition to warrant His death, and He were in a world where only one would believe, would He consider that one lost sheep as accomplishment enough to warrant the exhibition of His self sacrificial love? I don't know. So when we get down into the weeds like this, I think it becomes a lot harder to do anything but speculate and argue from our personal assumptions. However, I think the general question on the macro level makes a lot of sense. I don't think there's a parallel world equivalent to ours where Jesus would have chosen not to die.

And that's because I think Jesus is of such an immutable nature and love is of such a substance that Jesus would have no other path to take concomitant with His character and nature. We love Him because He first loved us while we were His enemies. We can become love like God only because God loved us. Now, this has a huge, huge ramification in terms of the nonviolent position because if non violence, if the love of enemies is not just some tack on to love, then it is what love looks like. You cannot have love apart from enemy love, not not true love anyway.

Loving enemies is not an option if you think like I do, that Jesus would have died in every possible world. But obviously, if you take that position, then there are some other costs to peripheral theological issues, philosophical issues. This episode was filled with a lot of conjecture, a lot of questions, a lot of esoteric kinds of things. I had fun, I hope you had fun, and I hope it gets you to think a little bit more about the complexity of of things and the importance of some of these ideas. So hopefully that was thought provoking exploration for you, but for now, peace, and because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it.