Behold the Secular Woman & WLC on Molinism (Once Again)

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May 7, 2014

Couldn't let the Emily Lett video go by without comment, but having done that, we spent the rest of the hour listening to WLC respond to two articles on Molinism. Once again, listening to someone responding to criticism is one of the best ways of getting clear definitions, and that is what we got today. Not an easy program, but hopefully helpful and educational!

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00:06: And welcome to The Dividing Line on a
00:35: Thursday afternoon. Much to get to today, so I will have to be quick in getting to things.
00:42: Most of the program today will be dedicated to an examination of a recent podcast by William Lane Craig on the subject of Molinism.
00:53: But I had to, before we do that, given the sort of explosion into the minds of most of us of a video, many of you have not seen it by your own choice.
01:07: That's understandable. But a very brief, if I recall correctly, a two, two, about three minute video by a woman by the name of Emily Letts.
01:20: When I first saw it, it was a advertised as a woman who recorded her own abortion.
01:27: She did not. It's her talking about it. It's her in the room.
01:33: It's her afterwards. But the abortion is never shown. You do not see the destruction of the little child.
01:48: You do not see the destruction of the body. You do not see body parts floating around in bloody matter.
01:58: None of that is shown. All you have is smiling people and everyone's happy. So on that level, it's just an abject lie because there are plenty of places online you can go to actually see an abortion as far as what results and see ultrasounds and things like that.
02:18: It's a horrible thing. It's a terrible thing, but those are the facts and that's just the way it is.
02:27: But that's not what this is. Instead, this is, I believe, what you have here is one of the most shocking examples of the moral and ethical disaster that is
02:45: Western culture once it becomes fully secularized. I have heard a lot of people that are very angry with this woman and certainly when you understand that, at least according to the information that I have here from a, let's see what was the source, a
03:05: Cosmopolitan article, that this woman was having sexual intercourse with multiple partners without birth control.
03:17: So sort of looking to do this, it seems. And then to try to turn it into a quote -unquote positive experience.
03:25: But again, I think what we see in this, and listen to this folks, 219 ,000 hour old person.
03:37: 219 ,000 hours, that's how long she's been on this planet. It sounds different than years, doesn't it?
03:46: What if only 219 ,000 hours ago, her mother had chosen to do what she did?
03:55: See she's 25 years old. Oh, okay, 25 years old. That's only 219 ,000 hours. She is, in my opinion, the absolute perfect example of the result of the final secularization of Western culture.
04:12: You see, my parents, see
04:18: I'm pretty much the exact age of being her father. She's the same age as my daughter.
04:27: And so the secularization process really took off, it had begun before this, but it really took off after World War II.
04:38: Many people come back from war, we certainly see this in Britain and other places in Europe. War not only breaks things, it damages people.
04:49: And I think that's why Europe has been ahead of us in this decline, but certainly we had plenty of veterans that came back that were very damaged as well.
04:59: And for some reason, certainly the generation before mine still had a deep, deep respect for a biblical worldview.
05:15: But the communication of that biblical worldview and respect for it diminishes with each generation.
05:23: So that there is not nearly as much communication in my generation and even less to the next generation, including
05:31: Emily Letts. And so what we're now seeing is a fully secularized generation where the parents of these individuals are themselves secularized, but they still had some remnants and there were still remnants in the schooling.
05:54: There certainly was in my schooling. But now we're really getting to start seeing what the religion of Darwinism, the religion of secularism, what the result of it is.
06:09: And as Christians, if we believe that man is created in the image of God, then when someone is not only suppressing that knowledge, but now lives in a society where everyone else gathers around to help them suppress that knowledge, to tell them it's good, that it's proper, that it's appropriate to be able to live in this godless fashion and to not live with a recognition of the existence of God and our own transcendent meaning and all the rest of these things.
06:40: Now you've got this next generation. And what you're seeing when you listen to this woman's moral and ethical disaster, it's not just confusion, it is a moral and ethical nightmare flowing forth from her mouth.
07:03: That's the future of Western culture. That's the future of Western culture.
07:12: So let me just play a brief section here. I'm not going to play the whole thing, but most everyone has noted the same thing toward the end of the video.
07:28: Listen as a human being made in the image of God who thankfully survived in her mother's womb.
07:37: And by the way, in everything I've read about this, and listen to her, this woman has somewhat of a
07:44: God complex. She's going to talk about creating life and so on and so forth here. And I'm going to point out the inherent contradiction of what she just did and what she says.
07:52: But the point is, her partners were irrelevant to her.
07:59: Like they don't even exist. They're just sperm donors. It's nothing more than that. You truly have the utter degradation of human sexuality, male -female relationship.
08:13: All of that. It's just what animals do. This is, like I said, this is the end result.
08:19: This is the logical conclusion of believing that man is simply the result of cosmic chance.
08:29: I was going to say highly evolved, but there is no high in true evolutionary theory. It's just complexly evolved,
08:38: I guess. Something along those lines. This is the result. She doesn't care if she's committing fornication.
08:45: Doesn't matter if the guy is married, not married. Marriage is irrelevant. That stuff's irrelevant. You know, there's no right, there's no wrong.
08:55: That's what we're up against. But let's just catch the last little section here and observe the amazing moral confusion of the modern day
09:09: American. You know, it would help. It's plugged in.
09:15: Let's try it again. A month and a half after the procedure now, I feel like I talk to women all the time and they're like, of course everyone feels bad about this.
09:24: Of course, everyone's going to feel guilty as if it's a given how people should feel about this, that what they're doing is wrong.
09:32: I don't feel like a bad person. I don't feel sad. I feel in awe of the fact that I can make a baby.
09:40: I can make a life. I knew that what I was going to do was right because it was right for me and no one else.
09:48: I just want to share my - Um, what can you even begin to say?
09:58: She properly recognizes the role of guilt and shame, which our society is doing its best to completely banish from existence.
10:09: But we can't because the fact that we are made in the image of God and therefore when we break his law, we will experience these things.
10:20: The utter contradiction, the level of self -deception that is involved in being able to say,
10:29: Oh, it's wonderful. I can, I can create a baby. I can make a life. I just destroyed that, but I can do it.
10:37: I could do it again easily. Just need one of those male guys, you know, don't have to have any relationship with him.
10:43: Just, you know, it is absolutely, I mean, the pro -abortion people that are pushing this video don't, didn't they hear that part?
10:54: What did she just say? That was a baby. That was a life. Hello?
11:00: Well, not till it's actually born. Let me just say, if you look at this woman,
11:18: I fully understand. I fully understand the, the anger that listening to this massively confused, contradictory woman who clearly is not mature enough to be engaging in any sexual activity whatsoever, but doesn't care, clearly does not think through morals or ethics or any of these things, and yet is viewed as a responsible member of society with equal voting rights to everybody else.
12:01: I understand the frustration and anger that comes from that.
12:10: But speaking to Christians, you need to realize this is our mission field. This is our society now.
12:19: It shouldn't be that way, but it is. That's where we live now. We live in a, in a moral and ethical disaster zone with people who do not think these things through, have been, have never been taught how to think these things through.
12:36: Their parents did not model for them how to do this. My generation didn't do that.
12:43: Our fault. But this is our mission field. And before we wrap ourselves up in our robes of righteousness and go after this woman, let's remember, we keep saying it, but I don't know that we always believe it, but for the grace of God, there go my children.
13:15: If you're old enough, you're old enough like me to look at someone as being like this is just so young.
13:22: There go I, but for the grace of God and especially to Christians who know better, who have the light of scripture, who have the light of God's revelation.
13:36: When we sin against that light, how is that not even worse than someone who clearly has nothing but a secular worldview.
13:50: Oh, she should have known better. Again, this is the new
13:56: American. This is the new face of pagan
14:01: America. And that's what we have to deal with. And if we hate the people who are our mission field, we're probably not going to do much to try to reach out to them.
14:16: So once again, we are forced to consider how we communicate, what we communicate to be able to communicate with clarity because these people, yeah, they're still made in the image of God.
14:36: But when you've spent all your years in education, being told that you're not creating the image of God, that there is no law, there is no morality, there is no ethics.
14:50: It's just how you feel. You get to define all of it. When your entire worldview has been you're in the center and everything else is outside of that.
15:00: Well, can you see now why not only theology matters, but unless it is an act of the spirit of God, you can't get through that.
15:10: You can try all of your little programs and methods and all the rest of that kind of stuff won't make any difference.
15:17: You can't get through that. It takes the spirit of God to change a person's worldview and take them out of the center and put himself in the center so that you can actually relate to the world in appropriate fashion and hence actually think about morality and ethics and have a consistent framework in which to do so.
15:40: So it's tragedy, it's sin, it will bring judgment. There's absolutely no question about any of those things.
15:48: But I have been, I confess, somewhat taken aback or disappointed at how many of us properly and righteously angered over the destruction of this unique, never to be repeated child.
16:08: Might have been the next Beethoven, might have been the next Bach or Mozart or great medical mind will never be repeated.
16:17: That blessing of that unique individual, this world will never know, murdered, offered on the altar of convenience.
16:29: No question about that. No question about that. But at the same time,
16:36: I've been concerned that the response of many people has been just simply one of not recognizing that unregenerate people act like unregenerate people.
16:52: And that's the result. Absolute moral and ethical chaos, mishmash, no meaningful way for this young woman to engage in any kind of meaningful discussion of what's right and wrong in society, let alone big issues like war and capital punishment and justice.
17:18: Oh, no way at all. It's all just whatever I feel. That's secularism.
17:26: And the secular state loves folks like this because they'll just do whatever they're told. Other thing to keep in mind.
17:33: So wanted to comment on that and did not want to wait until next week when everyone else was already done commenting on it.
17:40: If you'd like to have more coherent but shorter comments, you might want to see the briefing today by Al Mohler.
17:48: He likewise addressed the exact same thing. All right, let's let's switch gears.
17:54: I don't think I can get this done. We'll just go until we get it done, but I'm going to try to get
17:59: I'm going to try to get it all in within an hour. It's gonna be tough to do. Anyway, William Lane Craig put out a webcast and what he did is he responded to an article.
18:15: Now, interestingly enough, the author of the article actually called the ministry. I didn't get a chance to talk to him. I couldn't follow up on that.
18:22: Just had other things I had to do. But I wasn't aware of what the article background was. But it does get mentioned a couple of times in the sections
18:29: I'm going to be playing for you. But basically, then at the end of this particular webcast, he responded,
18:37: William Lane Craig did, to Dr. Anderson at James Anderson from RTS in Charlotte.
18:46: And I actually contact Dr. Anderson. He couldn't join us today, but he did post a response today on his website to Dr.
18:57: Craig. And so if you go to analogical thoughts, you'll be able to see his response there.
19:02: And I would, I would direct you to that. But in the process of responding to this other article,
19:09: I really think that some of the clearest statements from Craig were made in this. And so we want to listen to them, try to understand them and offer a few criticisms.
19:20: What I think this does is, is establish even more firmly than anything
19:26: I've heard him say before, the reality that God's actions are constrained by the content of middle knowledge, the truth value of counterfactuals.
19:43: And hence the question remains, where did these, where did this knowledge come from?
19:50: Why are these counterfactuals true? At one point, he even says these counterfactuals happen to be true.
20:00: Happen to be true? Brute facts? Mere fate? We'll find out.
20:07: So let's, oh, I was at 1 .6. That would sound a little funny. We will be playing it a little bit fast, but let's, let's dive in.
20:14: Now, Molinism classically holds that God surveys the realm of possible worlds prior to the creative act and so sees all possibilities related to free creaturely choices.
20:25: Then God creates the world God desires. All right. There's a fairly nice, short definition of the subject of Molinism.
20:34: Now, the article I'm responding to is an article criticizing Molinism on the basis of violation of God's aseity.
20:41: Aseity is God's self -existence. What Craig is going to do is he's going to argue that the author is wrong about that, that the author is primarily concerned about sovereignty, not aseity.
20:56: There is a distinction between the two, obviously, but I can see what the connection is.
21:01: If, in point of fact, God's actions are circumscribed by a set of true counterfactuals that does not flow from him, where does it flow from?
21:19: Doesn't seem it flows from anything as far as I can tell from what William Lane Craig says. Campbell argued that this undermines
21:25: God's aseity because it makes God dependent upon creatures for omniscience. One of God's essential attributes.
21:33: The argument, if sound, has great force. After all, if Molinism means one must deny an essential attribute of God, that's a pretty serious difficulty with the doctrine.
21:41: So the idea is if there is another source of middle knowledge that defines, for example, what a free creature will do given certain circumstances, if that comes from something other than God, then
21:58: God's omniscience is dependent upon the actions of those free creatures and whatever the source of these true counterfactuals is.
22:08: And hence would, in essence, assert the existence of some source, some uncreated something that determines these things that then fills in God's knowledge and therefore he is dependent upon something else for the attribute of omniscience.
22:30: All right? Those are good questions. So. When I talk of possible worlds,
22:38: Kevin, I use possible worlds only as a sort of heuristic device, a useful tool for talking about possibility and necessity.
22:46: But as you know from my work on divine aseity, I don't think there are any such things as possible worlds. I don't think they are abstract objects that confront
22:54: God. Indeed, my contemporary work is that abstract objects just do not exist.
23:00: I take an anti -realist position on abstract objects. So I am zealous to preserve God's unique aseity and would not in any way think that there are uncreated possible worlds that confront
23:12: God and exist independently of him. Okay.
23:18: The worlds themselves then do not have existence. But the question that at least my little brain has, that the more
23:30: I read about this stuff only gets bigger and bigger and bigger, is the truth value of these counterfactuals,
23:40: God's ability to know what person, what
23:46: Sam is going to do if Sam exists in given circumstances.
23:54: That's not a part of God's decree. That's what makes it middle knowledge, it's before the decree.
24:01: So where does it come from? Because I know that what I do flows from who
24:09: I am and who I am God made me to be. God has gifted me in certain areas and hasn't in others.
24:21: Each one of us is a mixture of different things and I believe we're called to do the best to glorify
24:28: God with what he's given us. But I don't know that a Molinus could say that because who
24:36: I am is not really the result of God's will, it's not the result of anything, really.
24:45: I mean, where did that information come from? Where did the decision that Sam would do
24:53: X in a certain situation, who made the decision that that's what Sam would be? Now all of this is, again, this amazingly vain attempt to try to rescue libertarian free will.
25:05: And I think it's a failed attempt, but it's certainly a popular attempt simply because of the names of the people that are promoting it these days.
25:13: But let's keep going because there's a lot of things he said here that I think will help us to understand. What the
25:19: Molinus does is distinguish between logically possible worlds and worlds which are feasible for God to actualize given the true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom that there are.
25:32: So all these worlds are logically possible but not feasible.
25:39: And the feasibility of these worlds is dependent upon God's middle knowledge, this knowledge of the truth value of these counterfactuals.
25:49: In other words, knowing what Sam's going to do in certain situations. And so God can look at all these possible worlds and go, well, you know, if I put
25:58: Sam in this one, Sam's going to mess everything up. So I can't do that. And so that's not a feasible world because the interaction with other free creatures is going to be that it's not going to be the way
26:10: I want it. So that's not a feasible world. It's logically possible, but it's not feasible in light of what
26:16: I want to accomplish in actualizing any world at all. So there's a distinction between the two.
26:25: And on Molinism, God does not determine the truth value of these counterfactuals of creaturely freedom.
26:31: That is to say, hypothetical conditionals about how creatures would behave if they were in a particular set of circumstances.
26:41: All right, now that's very important to listen to. It's very important to hear. This is the same statement, just in more highfalutin language, that we've responded to before in regards to God's got to deal with the cards he's been dealt.
26:57: What are the cards he's been dealt? Well, listen to it again. He doesn't determine these things.
27:06: He is dealing with these things. And on Molinism, God does not determine the truth value of these counterfactuals of creaturely freedom.
27:14: That is to say, hypothetical conditionals about how creatures would behave if they were in a particular set of circumstances.
27:24: So God does not determine those things. Who did? I guess for the
27:30: Molinist, you can't ask that question. It just is. Nobody did. Or the universe did.
27:40: Or I don't know. Is that considered a scientific constant? No, no.
27:46: In fact, because he's going to say here in a second. And I think for some persons, that gives the appearance of making
27:53: God dependent upon creatures in some way, because he does not unilaterally determine the truth value of those counterfactuals any more than he determines volitionally the truth value of necessary truths, of logic, for example.
28:09: Now, what's important here, and he's going to expand upon this later on, once again,
28:15: God does not volitionally determine what free creatures are going to be like, how they are going to respond to particular circumstances.
28:23: That's not a part of his will. And that's why he can have that knowledge before the divine decree.
28:30: To me, biblically, just on a biblical level, this is it. If you really believe the Bible, this is where you get off the boat.
28:38: Because if there's anything clear about the Bible, it's God's creative decree that makes men the way they are.
28:44: And this is saying, no, somebody else did that, or something else did that, or nothing else did that. It just is. Just this brute fact, just the way it is.
28:54: But then notice the parallel, notice what he just said. He likewise said, God did not volitionally indicate or determine natural law either.
29:08: So, how logic works, how the laws of mathematics, or calculus, or whatever else, how deep you want to go, natural law is not a part of God's will either.
29:22: Now, he's going to say later on, well, some theists have rooted that in God's will.
29:29: Some have rooted it in God's being. But it sounds like what they're saying is that 2 plus 2 equals 4.
29:39: And that is true for God, not because God created the universe that way, but because that's the way it has to be.
29:48: Which again, keeps causing a lot of us to go, is there another God out there that we need to be looking for?
29:59: Now, I've not done sufficient reading in the grounding of natural law in either the being of God or the will of God.
30:12: But it certainly struck me initially that if God wanted to have a different set of physical properties for the universe,
30:19: I think God could have pulled that off. I really struggle with the idea that Planck's constant is a constant for God too.
30:30: That Avogadro's number is relevant to, you know, there wasn't anything God could do about that because that's just part of God's being.
30:39: Now, I think there is such a close unity between God's will and God's being that I'm not sure that the distinction is all that functional here.
30:49: But I just have to wonder about an assertion that basically says that God could not have done it differently had he chosen to do so.
31:00: He could not have had a different gravitational constant. He could not have had a different mathematical system because this actually just flows from God's being.
31:08: And so any universe that God created would look like this because God is God and those specific physical things are somehow grounded in God's being.
31:21: Now, I can certainly see that any universe God created is going to be a just universe because God is just in his being.
31:27: I can't see how Avogadro's number is part of God's being and hence would be demanded for any universe he creates.
31:39: That's pretty difficult for me to see. But I'd also say that there's tremendous, there's some real tremendous dangers,
31:47: I would think in paralleling two plus two equals four with why any human being does what he does given certain circumstances.
31:57: I mean, how many Molinists have accused me of believing that we're robots, that God's just pulling strings? Boy, it sounds like you guys are doing that to a much greater level if that's where you're going with that.
32:08: So necessary truths and counterfactuals of creaturely freedom on the
32:14: Molinist scheme are explanatorily prior to God's decree to create a certain world.
32:19: And given the counterfactuals of creaturely freedom that happen to be true, there will be a certain range of possible worlds which are not feasible for God to create.
32:31: Now, did you catch that? I hope you caught that because I want to play it again. Listen, this is William Lane Craig, right?
32:37: Making this up. This is his own voice. The counterfactuals of creaturely freedom that happen to be true.
32:43: That happen to be true. Now the counterfactuals of human freedom, that's how
32:50: Sam's going to do this in this situation. It just happens to be true. Does that bother you?
32:59: It bothers me as a Christian theist anyways. It just happens to be true, not because it's grounded in God, not because God has a purpose for it, not because it's a part of his decree.
33:11: It just happens to be true and God's just got to deal with it because that's just how it happens to be.
33:21: And it's outside of God's control. This is what's being pushed in a lot of Southern Baptist churches, places like that.
33:30: There's a reason why the Jesuits said, yeah, not so much a long time ago. But anyway, there will be a certain range of possible worlds which are not feasible for God to create.
33:44: So God cannot have certain worlds like where everyone's saved because what's the simpler way of saying what he's saying right now?
33:55: Of the cards he's been dealt. Those counterfactuals, truth value of those counterfactuals, those hypotheticals.
34:02: God didn't have anything to do with it. He's just doing the best he can. Doing the best he can with the cards he's been dealt. That's what you're hearing right there.
34:08: Same thing. Hasn't changed. Hasn't changed. But none of these things actually exists on an anti -realist view.
34:17: These are just ways of talking. It's a façon de parler, a way of speaking, a heuristic device for talking about modal notions.
34:25: A façon de parler. I actually did study French once. Don't ask me to say anything and it's been completely blown out of my mind by German.
34:32: But anyways, did you catch that? None of these things actually exist.
34:38: They do not have any real existence so as to not threaten the aseity of God.
34:46: But are you thinking with me? They don't exist. Then how can they circumscribe and determine the range of God's possible actions if they don't exist?
35:03: Well, they only exist in God's mind. So there are things that exist in God's mind that do not arise from his will or his nature.
35:13: Because middle knowledge is between the two. And God did not determine these truth values.
35:21: And they don't arise from his being unless you're going to say that these are necessary attributes of God's being.
35:28: So where did they come from? Because if they limit what
35:34: God can do as to what world he can actualize, then they have to have some existence, not a physical existence, but a sufficient existence to delimit
35:51: God's activities and actions. Right? I mean, God can't change them, can he? God can't go, oh man,
35:58: I've got this world. It's almost perfect. I've been working on it forever. If I could just get
36:04: Sam to do A instead of B, it'll all fit together.
36:10: God can't change Sam to make it fit? Not if you believe in libertarian free will, you can't.
36:17: Mm -mm. No, no, no, can't do that. So who determined all this?
36:25: That's a question. That's, I think, an important question. I take it that what he's trying to say here is that just as counterfactuals of creaturely freedom are independent of God's will, so necessary truths, for example, truths of logic or perhaps mathematics, are independent of God's will.
36:44: It's not as though God made it up that two plus two equals four. This is something that is necessary and doesn't depend upon God's will.
36:53: And on a Molenist scheme, that's quite right to say that these are not truths which are dependent upon God's volition.
37:01: Now some theists will find that unacceptable. That doesn't make God's existence dependent upon anything because at this point, nothing exists other than God.
37:12: It's not as though there are possible worlds or creatures that exist. We're talking purely in terms of a kind of explanatory power of what
37:21: God knows. And it is true on Molenism that God does not determine by his will which necessary truths are true or which counterfactuals of creaturely freedom are true.
37:32: So there are things that are true that are true outside of God's will in making them true.
37:45: Do you really think that's what the Apostle Paul had in mind when he said, For by him were all things created in heaven and on earth, visible, invisible, principalities, powers, dominions, authorities, all things created by him before him.
37:54: He is before all things in him, all things hold together. Do you think Paul had that, that idea in mind? No, no, no, no, no.
38:03: I cannot imagine any biblical writer. I cannot imagine any meaningful biblical scholar looking at any biblical writer and going, yeah, yeah, yeah,
38:12: Molenist, Molenist, and maybe someone might go, uh,
38:18: I think Habakkuk was. Right. Okay. Okay. Um, but you hear him, he,
38:27: I mean, this is one of the clearest, you, you most often get clarity when you're responding to criticism.
38:36: And now I don't know how many times he said it now, those, those, uh, those hypotheticals, those counterfactuals, those hypotheticals of human freedom, not determined by God.
38:46: Nope. Nope. Has God eternally known them? Is, is this an eternal reality or did
38:56: God come to learn them? If it's eternal, then it's a necessary attribute of the very being of God that knowledge of creatures he has not willed to create would be a part of his being.
39:18: I've said many times Molenism is a man -made philosophy, um, pretending to exist in biblical theology.
39:31: And at the beginning of this program, the host talked about how Dr. Craig has, has contributed so much to philosophy and theology.
39:41: So sometimes I think he sort of dodges behind the, well, I'm a philosopher, not a theologian thing. But it seems to me this whole thing has some serious implications for theology too.
39:54: Really does. Really does. Now, by the way, if any of you are sitting there going,
39:59: I'm getting a headache. Why are you doing this to us? Again? Well, I think it's important stuff, but I was going to point this out at the beginning and I'm just going to play it now because I know where I am.
40:11: I can go back to it. Uh, this is how the host, Kevin Harris, this is how he finished the program. Okay.
40:18: I'm going to take some aspirin. You know what,
40:26: Kevin? The rest of us need to too, but not for the same reasons you are. I assure you.
40:34: That was, that was, that was, that was classic. Okay. We, we, we press on. He says, there is debate over how such a set of possible worlds might be populated.
40:44: Does the set of possible worlds come from God or is it simply a set of necessary truths? Whatever one's answer to this, it remains clear to me that Molinism is not defective in this area.
40:52: The Molinist simply holds that God selects a possible world from the set of possible worlds. Now, if I might interrupt at that point, that's, that's not quite right.
41:00: I think what this fellow is failing to see is that there is a proper subset of the set of possible worlds, which is feasible for God.
41:08: And there are worlds that are possible in and of themselves, but they're not feasible for God to create or actualize given the counterfactuals of creaturely freedom that are true.
41:18: So the unique contribution of Molinism here is seeing this differentiation between worlds that are possible and worlds that are feasible for God to actualize.
41:29: And if one doesn't understand that distinction, one hasn't even begun to understand Molinism. Well, we want to make sure we understand at least
41:36: William Lane Craig's version of Molinism. And so he's already mentioned this before, and we do understand, given the counterfactuals of human freedom, these hypotheticals, the fact that they are true, who makes them true, we never get an answer to, what makes them true, how they're true, when they became true.
42:00: These are all questions that inquiring minds want to have answered. But given those, you can have theoretically possible worlds that are not feasible worlds in light of what people would do in those worlds.
42:16: Okay. Okay. I think we got that. I think we got that. But I don't think that was what the objection was in the first place at all.
42:28: The fact that the Molinist emphasizes that these possible worlds include free choices is essentially a moot point so far as aseity is concerned.
42:35: Well, now let me emphasize again, so far as aseity is concerned, as long as you're an anti -realist about these possible worlds and propositions and things like that, there can be no challenge to divine aseity, because these things just don't exist.
42:50: What is real is God, and everything other than God is created by him.
42:57: Now, I will leave it to, I don't know if it's
43:02: Dr. Campbell, Pastor Campbell, I don't know. Don't know what article is being referred to, but like I said, someone called today.
43:12: But my gut feeling, if I'm even reading what's been said, and this is someone summarizing somebody else's, this is someone reading someone's summary of someone else's argument, so that'll give you an idea right there.
43:25: But my gut feeling is probably the argument was that if God's, not just God's actions are circumscribed by these true counterfactuals of human freedom, which
43:42: God does not determine, not only are God's actions circumscribed by that, which would be an attack upon his sovereignty, as Craig has already admitted, but more than that, his omniscience is dependent upon the actions of free creatures, and if omniscience is a part of the attributes of God, then this is the issue regarding to aseity.
44:06: That's my gut feeling, that's my guess. If I got that right, that's a pretty good guess based upon someone reading a summary of somebody else's argument against a position.
44:16: But anyway. I think there's a confusion here between perhaps the debate over divine aseity and the debate over divine sovereignty.
44:25: On Molinism, there's no threat to aseity, so long as one is an anti -realist. But some people would perceive a threat to sovereignty in the sense that it's not up to God which counterfactuals of creaturely freedom are true.
44:39: That is independent of his will. And so they would see that as compromising God's sovereignty.
44:45: He doesn't unilaterally determine the truth value of all of these contingent truths, and so some people would not like that.
44:53: But that's not a challenge to aseity, that would be a challenge to sovereignty, if anything. Yeah. Many just see
44:59: Molinism, period, as a challenge to God's sovereignty. I think the Molinist would just simply say that God is sovereign in the sense that he is...
45:09: Okay, did you catch that? Listen to this. You want to hear
45:15: Molinistic sovereignty? I think the Molinist would just simply say that God is sovereign in the sense that he is free to actualize whatever world he chooses to, that it is logically possible for him to actualize.
45:33: But it is logically impossible to actualize an infeasible world. That's like asking him to actualize a married bachelor.
45:41: And so it's no infringement upon omnipotence. So the Molinist would claim that he doesn't posit any non -logical limitation on God's power.
45:51: Now, when your definition of sovereignty has that kind of caveat on it, may
46:00: I suggest it's not really any more worthwhile than when our
46:07: Arminian friends, our Synergist friends who want to assert that God is sovereign, say things like, well,
46:15: God is so sovereign that he has chosen to not exercise his sovereignty. That's like saying,
46:24: I love the taste of blue. It absolutely makes no sense.
46:30: It's just words that are meant to communicate nothing. So, God is sovereign in the sense that he gets to be free as to which world he actuates amongst those that are feasible for him to actuate based upon the actions of free creatures.
46:51: I was going to say from a layman's perspective, what I just heard was nothing short of conditional sovereignty.
46:58: Well, yeah, of course. It's like, well, the scientific form, A is true when and if, but not when or if, maybe, and you're just, when does the string end?
47:16: Well, it ends fairly quickly, but it ends at the point of utterly denying the actual personal sovereignty of God because his sovereignty is limited to whether he actuates a world or not, not to the exercise of his own will to determine anything other than whether that's the world
47:35: I'm going to choose or that's the world I'm going to choose. That's not Christian sovereignty. I don't know if that's even theistic sovereignty.
47:44: That's certainly not the sovereign decree of God. That's certainly not God saying that he does whatever pleases him in the heavens and the earth.
47:53: I mean, when you have to limit sovereignty to, well, God pleased to actuate this world, but the form of this world was actually determined by the truth value of counterfactuals of human freedom and few free creatures, and he just chose this world over against any others.
48:16: That's it. It just occurred to me, that's an algorithm.
48:22: God is subject to an algorithm. His sovereignty, he just explained it as an algorithm, and if it, all these conditions come together, that's the definition of sovereignty, and -
48:39: Well, each world would be the function of putting all these people together, and yes, as I've said before, he's a supercomputer that can run all these possibilities and everything else.
48:49: But yeah, it's not personal, kingly sovereignty here. Yeah, he is subject to the outcome and the algorithm or the formulas itself.
48:59: The possible worlds that the interaction of those hypotheticals creates. Back to what they get so upset about, the card dealer point.
49:10: It's a valid point. They never - Well, it better be a valid point. It was William Lane Craig's point.
49:15: Well, but they never, the ones who get upset about it never actually refute it, they just get upset.
49:21: Oh, I know. Believe me. I know. I know. I know. Thomas Flint, mentioned before, in fact co -authored an article with Alfred Ferdowso called
49:29: Maximal Power, in which they defended God's having maximal power or omnipotence from a
49:36: Molinist perspective, because the inability to actualize an infeasible world doesn't put any non -logical limit upon God's power.
49:46: Well, the bottom line, Dr. Wartick just says that Campbell has failed to make a compelling argument against Molinism from a saiety.
49:53: In order for his argument to be successful, he would have to show that Molinism's view of possible worlds is somehow radically different from any other position, and then also demonstrate that Molinism's view also necessarily makes
50:04: God dependent upon creaturely freedom. All right, now, here again, I think there's the confusion between a saiety and sovereignty.
50:10: If we're talking about a saiety, what the detractor of Molinism would have to show is that God is dependent for his existence upon some other entity, or he would have to show that there is some other entity that actually exists that is uncreated by God.
50:28: And clearly the Molinist isn't committed to the existence of such things. Unless the
50:33: Molinist wants to give an answer to the question, if the personal nature of free creatures is determined by X, does not
50:50: X have to be personal? If the personal characteristics, and I would certainly argue that if you can know what a free creature is going to do in any given situation, that that's the most personal aspect of that individual, then the source of that must likewise be personal.
51:17: The impersonal cannot give rise to the personal. So while I think the original argument from Campbell was that this has to do with God's omniscience, and if omniscience is dependent upon what is defined by something outside of God, then that's the issue.
51:40: Here the issue still remains the fact that Molinism is telling us that there are things that are true, not because God wills them to be true, and not evidently because these are necessary truths related to the very being of God.
51:57: They just are true, and that God must deal with their truthfulness.
52:04: So there is an authority, in essence, that at least in some sphere circumscribes
52:10: God's actions, possible actions, so on and so forth. And that would be, is, will always be the real problem with Molinism.
52:23: But I suspect what Campbell's really worried about is not aseity, but sovereignty, that it makes God dependent upon creaturely freedom.
52:30: And in one sense, creaturely freedom does limit God's ability to actualize worlds.
52:36: There will be possible worlds that are infeasible for God to create, given the counterfactuals of creaturely freedom that are true.
52:44: Again, they're not logically impossible for God to create, but they're not feasible for God to create. Right, it's logically impossible for God to actualize an infeasible world.
52:52: That is a logically impossible feat. But the world, in and of itself, is logically consistent and logically possible.
52:59: Now, did you catch that? I want to make sure that you caught right at the beginning of that. Sovereignty, that it makes God dependent upon creaturely freedom.
53:06: And in one sense, creaturely freedom does limit God's ability to actualize worlds.
53:12: Creaturely freedom does limit God's ability to actualize worlds, because it makes certain worlds unfeasible.
53:21: Got to deal with the cards you're dealt. Got to deal with the cards. You got to play the game. Now, here again, it seems to me he's raising extraneous issues.
53:30: He seems to want to say that somehow God generates the set of possible worlds.
53:37: It's dependent upon God. And I take it that he means not ontologically, but that somehow necessary truths are determined by God's will, that God decides that 2 plus 2 should equal 4 rather than that 2 plus 2 should equal 5.
53:54: Now, there have been some theists that hold to that. Descartes comes to mind. But the vast majority of theists haven't adopted such a position that necessary truths are dependent upon God's will.
54:06: They would root them rather in God's nature, but not in his will. Okay. Now, we already talked about this, so I'll be brief.
54:15: But once again, I see a much more close relationship between God's will and God's being, but I'm really concerned if what he's saying is the vast majority of theists, and I'll be perfectly honest with you,
54:31: I don't think the vast majority of theists have ever even thought about this. So when you start talking vast majority stuff, let's be careful there.
54:42: But I'm concerned about any idea that basically says that natural law is imposed upon God by some necessity of his own nature.
54:59: I really think that if God had wanted to create Adam and Eve on a world where they could live to be 20 feet tall because the gravitational constant was lower, that he could have done that if he wanted to do it, and adjusted everything else to fit that.
55:17: I don't see anything in the being of God that determines that Avogadro's constant is always going to tell you about the number of atoms in molar concentrations, all the rest of that kind of stuff.
55:30: How does that flow from the very being of God? I have a fake
55:44: James White Twitter competitor, and he just put in Twitter, After listening to William Lane Craig just now,
55:55: I have put aspirin on the ministry resource list. Could not do this without your support. Did we get those things on the
56:03: MRL yet? Be watching the
56:08: MRL over the weekend, folks. There's two more items to go on there. But I'll let you know when we get them on there.
56:14: I think we might get this done fairly close. So let's press on. We have a blog referring to you. Oh, stop.
56:20: Okay, real quick. And we probably would have gone longer if Dr. Anderson had been able to join us.
56:27: Here is the brief response given to James Anderson by Dr.
56:33: Craig. Here first is the argument. Kevin Harris is going to read it. We have a blog referring to your radio interview on the
56:41: UK's Unbelievable, where you discuss Molinism, Dr. Craig. From James Anderson of his blog,
56:46: Analogical Thoughts. I think it really would have been good for them to say, Dr.
56:52: James Anderson of Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, teaches apologetics, that kind of thing. To that,
56:58: Anderson says, It should be clear that according to the Molinist view, there are possible worlds in which God's plans fail.
57:05: For the Molinist is committed to the claim that although God knows that S would choose A and C, and he actualizes
57:12: C because he plans for S to choose A, it is nonetheless possible for S not to choose
57:19: A and C. Craig clearly affirms this point a couple of times in his exchange with Helm.
57:24: In other words, there are possible worlds in which God actualizes C so that S will choose A, but S doesn't choose
57:31: A. There are possible worlds in which God's eternal decree doesn't come to pass because the libertarian free agents do otherwise than he had planned.
57:42: The upshot in this, on the Molinist view, there are some possible worlds in which God is fallible.
57:48: Indeed, there are many, many such worlds. Any world in which God's plans fail is a world in which God is fallible. It seems to me that this conclusion is built into the
57:55: Molinist system. Now, like I said, I don't have time to go through the response that Dr.
58:02: Anderson has posted, but he admits in his response, he says,
58:10: Craig is correct that I made a misstep in the original argument as I acknowledged and replied to a comment by Greg Welty. I said at first it wasn't relevant whether God's decree or providential plan, to use
58:19: Craig's terminology, is included in C, i .e. the circumstances in which God places the free agent S, knowing that S will do
58:26: A in C. But that's mistaken because Molinist will say that C doesn't include
58:31: God's decree such that in those possible worlds in which S does not do A in C, while C is the same,
58:37: God's decree is different. As Craig puts it, God's providential plan is not firm and fixed across worlds in which S chooses in C, even though C is fixed.
58:45: The counterfactuals are different in those alternate worlds and therefore God's decree will also be different in those worlds since it is based on those counterfactuals.
58:53: Now, let me just say right there, let me just go ahead and play Craig's response and then my primary response here is this.
59:03: What you're hearing here and what you're going to hear in Craig's response here is
59:08: I think where the Molinist is left trying to have his cake and eat it too.
59:16: And this is why I think the vast majority of Arminians, like Roger Olson and others, recognize that Molinism is not an option for them.
59:26: And that is, if they're trying to protect libertarian free will and yet God can know infallibly what any creature will do, that the truth value of those hypotheticals is actually true and it's outside of God's will but God can know it, then there really isn't any libertarian free will.
59:47: Because in that given situation, that individual does not have the freedom to do something else without falsifying the truth value of the hypothetical.
01:00:03: So if God can know ahead of time, there really isn't any libertarian free will. That's why open theists are the only consistent folks on this matter.
01:00:10: They really are. But I think if you listen carefully, that's where he's going.
01:00:16: Well, I think he's made a misstep in his argument here. It certainly is true that in any particular freedom -permitting circumstances an agent is free to do other than as God knows he will do.
01:00:30: But in that other world in which the agent does something different, God's plans wouldn't be the same.
01:00:37: What this fellow doesn't seem to remember is that in that world, God would have different plans. God would know in that world that S would do something different in C.
01:00:46: Now every Calvinist in the audience is cringing as if we've just been stuck in the eye with a sharp stick.
01:00:57: Because what you're hearing a Christian theologian saying is that God's plans,
01:01:03: God's decree would be different based upon what he knows about man and what man's going to do.
01:01:11: So what's the central aspect? What's the heart of the Molinist vision of God and his decree?
01:01:19: Man. And so in that world, he would have plans for that to happen.
01:01:25: So what he's tried to do is keep God's plans firm and fixed from world to world, but then vary the value of the counterfactuals.
01:01:34: And you can't do that. If you switch to a world in which S does not do A and C, then you can't say, well, in that world,
01:01:41: God's plans are that S would do A and C. No, no, in that world, God would have different plans.
01:01:47: So when you switch the truth value of the counterfactuals, you've got to switch the providential plans as well, because the providential plans are based upon the counterfactuals that are true in those worlds.
01:01:58: So given that God's plans are based upon what he knows the free agents would do, the plans will change from world to world, along with the decisions of the agents.
01:02:07: So there's just not any problem. God's never, his plans never fail, and he's not fallible. Because there really isn't any libertarian free will, and God's plans will always perfectly recognize what man will allow
01:02:21: God to do. The trajectory notion that comes up in this is, God knows that this person will do this, but then that person is free, and that person didn't do what
01:02:29: God knew he would do. And that's a contradiction, as you say. That would be to deny divine omniscience. And hence, fundamentally, to abandon libertarian free will.
01:02:40: The quote -unquote libertarian free will of Molinism is a phantom. It doesn't exist.
01:02:47: If the person were to fail to do it, then God would have known that, and so would have planned accordingly.
01:02:54: Okay. I'm gonna take some aspirin. So do the rest of us.
01:03:02: Perfect fitting. Perfect fitting ending. And the rest of us need to take an aspirin now as well.
01:03:10: But hey, folks, we try. We try our best to bring you the important stuff.
01:03:18: And I think it is important. Well, there you go. Well, maybe Dr. Anderson, I know
01:03:24: I want to have Dr. Anderson on later on to talk about his new book on Christian worldview, and maybe we'll have a little chat a little bit more about that when we get that taken care of and get that scheduled.
01:03:34: Thanks for listening to The Bodyline today, folks. We will see you, Lord willing, next Tuesday. God bless.