Evidence for God from Science

puritan lad wrote:What a horrid thought! I would hate to think that God is ordaining my circumstances and leaving it up to me. I’m liable to mess it all up. What possible comfort could that bring? In the end, Molinism is simply Arminianism dressed up in philosophical clothing, with a more direct “contingent” foreknowledge.

First, where is any scriptural support for middle knowledge? He "... worketh all things after the counsel of his own will," (Ephesians 1:11)

Second, either the actions of men are determined by God, or else they are determined by circumstances. (There is a third option of libertarian free will – Full Pelagianism, but no one wants to go there.) There is no problem with the first option, as I have already established in the post about irrationality. If they are determined by circumstances, then they are morally irrelevant. If, as the molinist holds, God merely ordains the circumstances, then man’s actions are contingent and not foreknowable.

Third, if God merely “foreknows” (to use the term in an unbiblical manner) how man will act in a certain circumstance, then there exists of necessity, a moral virtue in some men that others lack, since some will reject God in certain circumstances whereas others won’t. (Human ability and Conditional election). But God chose us to be holy and blameless, not because he foreknew that we would be given the right circumstances.

Finally, it is clear from Scripture that God ordains and sovereignly works in the sinful acts of wicked men. A brief, but hardly exhaustive list includes:

The kidnapping and selling of Joseph (Genesis 45:7)
The hardening of Pharoah (Exodus 7:3-4)
Absalom’s Incest (1 Samuel 12:11-12)
The trials of Job (Job 12:9)
The Crucifixion of Christ (Acts 2:23, Acts 4:27-28)

God works all things after the council of His own will. He does not merely permit (Arminianism), nor does he just simply set up circumstances (Molonism) which is another description of permission.

“The LORD brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; he frustrates the plans of the peoples. The counsel of the LORD stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations. Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD, the people whom he has chosen as his heritage!” (Psalm 33:10-12)

puritan lad wrote:Which part Rick? The post was scriptural. Which part would you object to?

narnia4 wrote:Imo a big part of the reason why Molinism does seem flexible and open-ended is because its been underdeveloped and doesn't have the "restrictions of Scripture". Most of the Scriptures listed in support of Molinism seem incidental at best to me. Unlike something like Calvinism where you have multiple verses that the case for Calvinism rests upon that will determine whether it succeeds or fails. Calvinism, as well as other theological systems, relies upon an interpretation of Scripture (whether correct or mistaken, that's not the point here). Molinism largely ignores it. It could be that this is simply God's way of doing things and he didn't talk about it in Scripture, but like I said an argument largely bereft of Scriptural reference, support, backdrop, and foundation is a huge red flag.

Looking into it is important, but this doesn't have the rich, long history of some of the classical theological systems that have been debated for centuries. Will it hold up under similar scrutiny? As that Craig quote states, elements of it like God's knowledge of counterfactuals, have been accepted by theologians for a long time. But I see it as having the same problems that I usually see in Arminianism (as a couple of the posts likening it to Arminianism have mentioned).

First, where is any scriptural support for middle knowledge?

Third, if God merely “foreknows”

RickD wrote:

narnia4 wrote:Imo a big part of the reason why Molinism does seem flexible and open-ended is because its been underdeveloped and doesn't have the "restrictions of Scripture". Most of the Scriptures listed in support of Molinism seem incidental at best to me. Unlike something like Calvinism where you have multiple verses that the case for Calvinism rests upon that will determine whether it succeeds or fails. Calvinism, as well as other theological systems, relies upon an interpretation of Scripture (whether correct or mistaken, that's not the point here). Molinism largely ignores it. It could be that this is simply God's way of doing things and he didn't talk about it in Scripture, but like I said an argument largely bereft of Scriptural reference, support, backdrop, and foundation is a huge red flag.

Looking into it is important, but this doesn't have the rich, long history of some of the classical theological systems that have been debated for centuries. Will it hold up under similar scrutiny? As that Craig quote states, elements of it like God's knowledge of counterfactuals, have been accepted by theologians for a long time. But I see it as having the same problems that I usually see in Arminianism (as a couple of the posts likening it to Arminianism have mentioned).

It's interesting that people have seen so many similarities between Molinism, and Arminianism, because Craig seemed to want to make it clear that his version of Molinism, was trying to reconcile the extreme end of Calvinism, and the extreme end of Arminianism. Narnia, are you coming from a Calvinist background? And, maybe that's why you see Molinism as being similar to Arminianism?

“Biblically speaking, Molinists are more in line with the Arminian view. God chooses who will be saved because He knows who would choose Him. However, Molinists are more philosophically sophisticated than the typical Arminian. For example, William Lane Craig avoids the criticism that God’s decisions are dependent on man’s decisions by holding that God’s middle knowledge is not derived from His knowledge of the world. Rather, God’s middle knowledge is based on His existing natural knowledge. In this way he hopes to uphold God’s perfect omniscience. So, today’s evangelical Molinists are basically philosophically sophisticated Arminians.”[4]

jlay wrote:

Third, if God merely “foreknows”

If God foreknows, it is hardly a 'merely.'

Here is an article from WLC where he answers objections. My link is not a defense of WLC, molinism or middle knowlege.
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/New ... le&id=7437

So the Molinist concurs wholeheartedly with you that "if Pilate has libertarian freedom, then regardless of ALL the right biblical conditions, he can still choose one way or the other." Absolutely! He can choose one way or the other; but he will choose one way. If he were in C, he would freely choose A, though he could choose not-A instead. Don't confuse what someone would do with what he could do or think that because he would do A he could not do not-A.

There's no lack of information in such a case either. So long as the circumstances are fully specified, the counterfactual will have a truth value, and God, as an omniscient being, must know it. He knows what is the truth value of every proposition, regardless of our ignorance.

Actually, I have no problem with certain classic statements of the Reformed view. For example, the Westminster Confession (Sect. III) declares that:

God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin; nor is violence offered to the will of creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established

Now this is precisely what the Molinist believes! The Confession affirms God’s preordination of everything that comes to pass as well as the liberty and contingency of the creaturely will, so that God is not the author of sin. It is a tragedy that in rejecting middle knowledge Reformed divines have cut themselves off from the most perspicuous explanation of the coherence of this wonderful confession.

By rejecting a doctrine of divine providence based on God’s middle knowledge, Reformed theologians are simply self-confessedly left with a mystery. The great 17th century Reformed theologian Francis Turretin held that a careful analysis of Scripture leads to two indubitable conclusions, both of which must be held in tension without compromising either one:

that God on the one hand by his providence not only decreed, but most certainly secures, the event of all things, whether free or contingent; on the other hand, however, man is always free in acting and many effects are contingent. Although I cannot understand how these can be mutually connected together, yet (on account of ignorance of the mode) the thing itself is (which is certain from another source, i.e., from the Word) not either to be called in question or wholly denied (Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 1: 512).

Here Turretin affirms without compromise both the sovereignty of God and human freedom and contingency; he just doesn’t know how to put them together. Molinism offers a solution. By rejecting that solution, the Reformed theologian is left with a mystery.

There’s nothing wrong with mystery per se (the correct physical interpretation of quantum mechanics is a mystery!); the problem is that some Reformed theologians, like my two collaborators in the four-views book, try to resolve the mystery by holding to universal, divine, causal determinism and a compatibilist view of human freedom. According to this view, the way in which God sovereignly controls everything that happens is by causing it to happen, and freedom is re-interpreted to be consistent with being causally determined by factors outside oneself.

It is this view, which affirms universal determinism and compatibilism, that runs into the problems you mention. Making God the author of evil is just one of the problems this neo-Reformed view faces. At least five come immediately to mind:

1. Universal, divine, causal determinism cannot offer a coherent interpretation of Scripture. The classical Reformed divines recognized this. They acknowledge that the reconciliation of Scriptural texts affirming human freedom and contingency with Scriptural texts affirming divine sovereignty is inscrutable. D. A. Carson identifies nine streams of texts affirming human freedom:
(1) People face a multitude of divine exhortations and commands,
(2) people are said to obey, believe, and choose God,
(3) people sin and rebel against God,
(4) people’s sins are judged by God,
(5) people are tested by God,
(6) people receive divine rewards,
(7) the elect are responsible to respond to God’s initiative,
(8) prayers are not mere showpieces scripted by God, and
(9) God literally pleads with sinners to repent and be saved (Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility: Biblical Perspectives in Tension, pp. 18-22). These passages rule out a deterministic understanding of divine providence, which would preclude human freedom. Determinists reconcile universal, divine, causal determinism with human freedom by re-interpreting freedom in compatibilist terms. Compatibilism entails determinism, so there’s no mystery here. The problem is that adopting compatibilism achieves reconciliation only at the expense of denying what various Scriptural texts seem clearly to affirm: genuine indeterminacy and contingency.

2. Universal causal determinism cannot be rationally affirmed. There is a sort of dizzying, self-defeating character to determinism. For if one comes to believe that determinism is true, one has to believe that the reason he has come to believe it is simply that he was determined to do so. One has not in fact been able to weigh the arguments pro and con and freely make up one’s mind on that basis. The difference between the person who weighs the arguments for determinism and rejects them and the person who weighs them and accepts them is wholly that one was determined by causal factors outside himself to believe and the other not to believe. When you come to realize that your decision to believe in determinism was itself determined and that even your present realization of that fact right now is likewise determined, a sort of vertigo sets in, for everything that you think, even this very thought itself, is outside your control. Determinism could be true; but it is very hard to see how it could ever be rationally affirmed, since its affirmation undermines the rationality of its affirmation.

3. Universal, divine, determinism makes God the author of sin and precludes human responsibility. In contrast to the Molinist view, on the deterministic view even the movement of the human will is caused by God. God moves people to choose evil, and they cannot do otherwise. God determines their choices and makes them do wrong. If it is evil to make another person do wrong, then on this view God is not only the cause of sin and evil, but becomes evil Himself, which is absurd. By the same token, all human responsibility for sin has been removed. For our choices are not really up to us: God causes us to make them. We cannot be responsible for our actions, for nothing we think or do is up to us.

4. Universal, divine, determinism nullifies human agency. Since our choices are not up to us but are caused by God, human beings cannot be said to be real agents. They are mere instruments by means of which God acts to produce some effect, much like a man using a stick to move a stone. Of course, secondary causes retain all their properties and powers as intermediate causes, as the Reformed divines remind us, just as a stick retains its properties and powers which make it suitable for the purposes of the one who uses it. Reformed thinkers need not be occasionalists like Nicholas Malebranche, who held that God is the only cause there is. But these intermediate causes are not agents themselves but mere instrumental causes, for they have no power to initiate action. Hence, it’s dubious that on divine determinism there really is more than one agent in the world, namely, God. This conclusion not only flies in the face of our knowledge of ourselves as agents but makes it inexplicable why God then treats us as agents, holding us responsible for what He caused us and used us to do.

5. Universal, divine determinism makes reality into a farce. On the deterministic view, the whole world becomes a vain and empty spectacle. There are no free agents in rebellion against God, whom God seeks to win through His love, and no one who freely responds to that love and freely gives his love and praise to God in return. The whole spectacle is a charade whose only real actor is God Himself. Far from glorifying God, the deterministic view, I’m convinced, denigrates God for engaging in a such a farcical charade. It is deeply insulting to God to think that He would create beings which are in every respect causally determined by Him and then treat them as though they were free agents, punishing them for the wrong actions He made them do or loving them as though they were freely responding agents. God would be like a child who sets up his toy soldiers and moves them about his play world, pretending that they are real persons whose every motion is not in fact of his own doing and pretending that they merit praise or blame. I’m certain that Reformed determinists, in contrast to classical Reformed divines, will bristle at such a comparison. But why it’s inapt for the doctrine of universal, divine, causal determinism is a mystery to me.

So why do so many intelligent and faithful Christian leaders buy into Calvinism? I think that the sort of Calvinism represented by the statement quoted above from the Westminster Confession is a fair summary of Scripture’s teaching and therefore should be believed.

It’s only when one goes beyond it to try to resolve the mystery by embracing determinism and compatibilism that one gets into trouble. So insofar as these Christian leaders are content to remain with the mystery, I think theirs is a reasonable position.

The vast majority of them have probably little understanding of Molinism and so are just insufficiently informed to make a decision. A few years ago I spoke at Westminster Seminary in San Diego on middle knowledge, and half way through the Q & A period following my talk, one of the faculty said, “I’m embarrassed to say, Dr. Craig, that we aren’t even able to discuss this with you because we just are completely unfamiliar with what you’re talking about.”

He was embarrassed that as a professional theologian he was so ignorant of these debates. By contrast, some theologians who belong to the Reformed tradition have moved toward Molinism. When I gave the Stob lectures at Calvin College and Seminary, I was shocked when the theologians at the seminary told me that they were all Molinists! I increasingly encounter people who are moving in the Molinist direction (both from the Calvinistic end and the open theist end of the spectrum!)

So don’t be too hard on our Calvinist brethren. Offer them something better, and hope that they will embrace it. From Reasonable Faith Article

narnia4 wrote:So Craig is basically reducing every position other than libertarian free will to hardcore determinism? Looks to me like he's committing the fallacy of equivocation. Every man is responsible, but every man is going to choose against God. Every man deserves to be damned, all have fallen short of the glory of God. So to me a nuanced understanding of the idea that God elects men and saves them magnifies, rather than diminishes, his grace.

People simply don't make choices in a vacuum and free of cultural, social, and genetic influence. Its still THEIR decision, but they have a reason for making that decision.

And couldn't a man with libertarian free will choose not to sin? In fact, wouldn't it just be "a matter of time" that one chooses not to sin? Were that the case, would God choose to send a man "without blame" to hell or are we going to have to delve into some sort of Pelagianism or Semi-pelagianism? If man makes his decision without any outside influence, then do you have to drop original sin and the idea of a sin nature?

Finally, I've only seen Craig talk around maybe the biggest issue, that it doesn't maintain God's complete sovereignty. His decisions become dependent on man's decisions. If Craig is going to go to extremes.. while I'd rather be God's puppet than to have God be ours.

Reasonable Faith-Craig quoted above wrote:Actually, I have no problem with certain classic statements of the Reformed view. For example, the Westminster Confession (Sect. III) declares that:

God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin; nor is violence offered to the will of creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established

Now this is precisely what the Molinist believes! The Confession affirms God’s preordination of everything that comes to pass as well as the liberty and contingency of the creaturely will, so that God is not the author of sin. It is a tragedy that in rejecting middle knowledge Reformed divines have cut themselves off from the most perspicuous explanation of the coherence of this wonderful confession.

By rejecting a doctrine of divine providence based on God’s middle knowledge, Reformed theologians are simply self-confessedly left with a mystery. The great 17th century Reformed theologian Francis Turretin held that a careful analysis of Scripture leads to two indubitable conclusions, both of which must be held in tension without compromising either one:

...that God on the one hand by his providence not only decreed, but most certainly secures, the event of all things, whether free or contingent; on the other hand, however, man is always free in acting and many effects are contingent. Although I cannot understand how these can be mutually connected together, yet (on account of ignorance of the mode) the thing itself is (which is certain from another source, i.e., from the Word) not either to be called in question or wholly denied (Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 1: 512).

Here Turretin affirms without compromise both the sovereignty of God and human freedom and contingency; he just doesn’t know how to put them together. Molinism offers a solution. By rejecting that solution, the Reformed theologian is left with a mystery.

de·cree (d-kr)
n.
1. An authoritative order having the force of law.
2. Law The judgment of a court of equity, admiralty, probate, or divorce.
3. Roman Catholic Church
a. A doctrinal or disciplinary act of an ecumenical council.
b. An administrative act applying or interpreting articles of canon law.
v. de·creed, de·cree·ing, de·crees

B. W. wrote:It appears to me that the great 17th century Reformed theologian Francis Turretin would be one that you are referring too - not Craig. Reformed theologian Francis Turretin could not reconcile the sovereignty of God, human freedom and contingency together. I also see this when High Calvinist try to explain the same things.

The whole need to "reconcile" these issues (which lead to the birth of Molinism in the first place) is built on the assumption that man has a will capable of acting outside the Providence of God.