(Corrected Version): Tyler and Eli talk Molinism and Tim Stratton’s Calvinist Quiz

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S and podcast. So the Freethinker podcast, Tyler Vela is a cool guy, but I don't want to get into any details, so perhaps you can take a few moments to introduce yourself.

Well thanks. Tyler from the Freethinker podcast.

I've been doing this ministry for probably about 15 years now or so, and kind of came out of my biblical and theological and philosophical studies.

I grew up in an unbelieving home, so I grew up in an entirely secular home where religion just wasn't a thing.

We weren't antagonistic, weren't quasi -religious, it just wasn't a thing.

And so when I became a Christian, handling some of the philosophical worldviews of secularism, of naturalism, things like that, just was in my wheelhouse, because it was what

I came out of. So I do a lot of apologetics and biblical theology, and it's largely focused on areas that I'm studying and interested in.

So as I'm working through my master's in biblical studies, when I hit a topic that I enjoy, sometimes it'll be an in -house debate between Presbyterian and Baptist, Calvinist, non -Calvinist, other theological issues, but sometimes it'll be apologetic, so slavery and the

Bible, and things along those lines. So it's been fun, it's just kind of a labor of love, and it's what

I enjoy writing about and studying and thinking about, and so I'm glad that people have found it useful and enlightening and helpful.

Awesome. What's your favorite topic to study, theologically and apologetically?

Theologically, I'm very—well, I mean biblical theological—I'm very interested in interpretations of Genesis 1.

I'm not a young earth creationist or an old earth creationist or a theistic evolutionist, which is going to confuse a lot of people listening, because I'm rather agnostic on the age of the earth, and I just don't think that that's what the

Bible is really trying to tell us. So kind of study topics in and around that area of study is very, very interesting to me, but then also why

I'm here, studies in Reformed theology and Reformed soteriology and how it impacts our broader theological systems, and so we'll be talking about some of the reasons why

I have issues with a system called Molinism. All right, great. Well, just for those who are listening or watching on YouTube, if you guys are interested in Tyler Vela's stuff, you can find it at the

Freed Thinker podcast, and I have been listening. I'm a regular listener, and he's got amazing stuff, very well logically laid out, biblically backed up, and even if you come to disagree with him, you can't argue with at least the attempt to be biblical and clear, and I'm not just saying this to be nice to Tyler.

I highly recommend his material, and for those of you who might be listening to the

Apologetics podcast, again, you could download Revealed Apologetics on iTunes, or you could subscribe to the

YouTube channel. I just made 200 subscribers on YouTube. This is a big deal.

It's small, but it's growing little by little, so looking forward to more folks subscribing and hopefully finding the material helpful.

So one of my favorite topics to study, and it's not just because of the intellectual exercise involved, but it's because it's also important.

My two areas of focus is apologetic methodology, so I'm a presuppositional apologist, and I love the discussions on Reformed Theology and how

Reformed Theology interacts with other perspectives, especially as they are narrowed into the area of soteriology, which we're not going to be covering necessarily in this episode.

We're going to be covering the topic of Molinism, which we've covered the topic of Molinism in previous episodes.

I had Dr. James White from Alpha and Omega Ministry on a few episodes ago, and then

I had Tim Stratton, who is a Molinist from the Freethinking Ministries.

So there's the Freethinking Ministries, the grimy Molinists, and then there's the Freethinker podcast, the awesome and biblical

Calvinists, and I'm sure Tim will get a kick out of that. I'm totally kidding. But these topics are very, very important.

However, they're very, very difficult for the person to follow. They cover interesting topics that people are fascinated with and understand, hey, this is pretty important, but a lot of people kind of find themselves on the outside, unable to really understand really what are the issues.

All right, so what I want to ask of you, and even though we've covered this, just if this is someone's first episode, can you define for us what

Molinism is? So let's deal with a bare definition, and then we'll start asking the questions to dig a little deeper.

Yeah, and I feel like I should apologize, because to look at the audience, I look up here, and you're like four or five inches below, so if I don't make eye contact,

I'm sorry. Well, I'm looking at you, and then my image looks like I'm looking off to the right. I should be looking at the camera, but if I look at the camera,

I'm not looking at you, so it's really weird. Yeah, it's odd. So Molinism is, well,

I try to keep as much of the evaluative language out of it. Molinism is a view that essentially says a few things.

I'm going to disagree preemptively already with our mutual friend, Tim Stratton.

We're going to use his name a lot. We should preface that you and I both absolutely love Tim Stratton. He's a fantastic brother.

Everything we say here, I'm going to give some pretty strong critiques, has nothing against Tim Stratton as a man, as a brother.

He welcomes it. Yes, he does. I'm going to preemptively disagree with him that Molinism is essentially more than the two pillars that he says that it is.

Molinism is a view that tries to reconcile God's sovereignty with a view of human freedom known as libertarian free will.

Libertarian free will is a type of incompatibilist view that says that determinism and substantive freedom and responsibility are in principle contradictory to each other.

You cannot have something that is both determined and free in any sense of the word. And so they are at principle contradictory with each other.

They are incompatible. So Molinism is an attempt to reconcile those two things.

And so Molinism says that man has libertarian free will, so it's an incompatibilist position.

And it says that to reconcile God's sovereignty, it says that God actualized or created a world based on his three different moments or types of knowledge.

So you have natural knowledge, which is his natural knowledge of himself, his own nature.

You have free knowledge, which is the knowledge that he has based on the execution of his creation.

So it's his knowledge of the actual facts of reality. But they have a third type of knowledge that the rest of us don't have.

So they have this what's called middle knowledge. It's knowledge that's in between. That's why it's called middle.

It's in between those two other types of knowledge. It's not knowledge of himself, but it's not knowledge of the actual creation.

It's knowledge of ... This is where a lot of people get it messed up.

It's not God's knowledge of any other, just how anything else could have been, any type of counterfactual.

It's not God's knowledge that the tree outside could have a million and one leaves, but it has a million leaves.

It's specifically God's knowledge of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom.

It's his knowledge of what people would or could do in different circumstances and different creations that God could actualize.

And it's not a bare counterfactual knowledge. In other words,

Calvinists believe that God has counterfactual knowledge. The issue is where in the moments of God's knowledge does this knowledge of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom exist?

Does it exist logically prior to the divine decree or logically posterior to the divine decree?

So I think that's an important distinction for some people to keep in mind. Yes. Yep. Yep. So they're going to say that God has exhaustive middle knowledge about all of the possible ways that the world could be given libertarian free will.

So that's a big part of Molinism.

From there, you almost have to pick which Molinist you're talking to.

If you're talking to a Tim Stratton compared to a William Lane Craig, you're going to get different views. If you're talking to a

Kirk McGregor compared to a William Lane Craig, you're going to get different views. Some of them are going to go more whole.

I think Kirk McGregor goes whole hog. He is about as close to logically consistent as I think a

Molinist gets without being totally logically consistent because he's not an open theist from what I can tell. But he does affirm things like there is such a thing as gratuitous evil and suffering.

So because, and that comes from, so someone like William Lane Craig is going to say, okay, well, just because there's a logically possible world doesn't mean it's a feasible world.

And I actually, I've been trying to figure out a way to sum up this feasible worldview. I think it is a necessary component of middle knowledge and it's how they move from middle knowledge to the actual world.

Um, and so they say, okay, well, um, God has, um, God has to, you know,

William Lane Craig got himself in a lot of trouble because he said God had to play the cards that he's been dealt. Um, I don't think that's as serious of a problem as other people do, because I think

I, I think I understand what he's trying to say. Um, you know, he, he might say, well, you know, the dealer is, um, you know, logically necessary conditions.

Some of that might flow from his nature. So he's not saying there's like another being out there or something like that.

Um, so I, you know, I try to be as charitable as I can with, with that type of language, even though it's, it's weird, problematic language.

Um, but you know, William Lane Craig is going to say, okay, well, there may be a logically possible world where all of humanity freely repents and believes, and where the number of humans is the same as the actual world.

That's a logically possible world, but that world might not be what he calls feasible for God to exist.

There, there might be no, um, actual set of affairs that God can actualize in which that's the case.

And so it may be the fact that, um, uh, that God had to create a world with pain and suffering because any world with, uh, sufficiently free creatures, uh, and a sufficient number of them would result in as much pain and suffering.

And so he's trying to make a maximally William and Craig has actually said he doesn't like, you know, greatest possible being and all that kind of stuff, but he, he might be creating something like the best possible world out of those types of situations.

And so I think this, this feasibility is, is a necessary, maybe not necessary, is a highly important component to almost every

Molinist I've ever talked to because it's how they actually move from a kind of a bare middle knowledge to any meaningful

Molinistic system as an apologetic, where they're trying to handle evil and suffering and divine hiddenness and things like that.

Sure. Sure. Now, I think what was very important that people should understand is what you said previously, after you defined

Molinism, you then, excuse me, you then said from there, it depends who you ask.

Um, and I think a lot of, um, misinformed criticisms of Molinism, uh, don't take into account what the bare essentials of Molinism teaches as it relates to certain applications, which are non -essential features of bare

Molinism. So you can critique an application of Molinism while at the same time not actually touching

Molinism and its bare essentials. Would you agree with that? Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Um, and, and to be fair,

I don't think that that's a problem with the system. Uh, the, the, the fact that people nuance it differently, take different implications and draw those,

I don't think it's a problem. Um, there, there are, um, well, I, it happens in Calvinism.

Sure. We have, we have hyper -Calvinism, high Calvinism, low Calvinism. I don't think it happens as much as the anti -Calvinists say, or as near to the center as they pretend that it does.

There's pretty much a universal agreement among Calvinists on something like the five points. Um, and I'm sorry if you're a four point, you're just not, you're an

Amaraldian, you're not a Calvinist. Uh, but, um, but to be fair, just because there's disagreement on, on, you know, secondary or tertiary or implications, that's not a problem for the, that's not a criticism.

Right. It's like the Catholic, it's like the Catholic who faults the Protestantism for being so divided because all the churches disagree as though we disagree on the essentials as opposed to the non -essentials.

Right. Or when an atheist comes to a Christian, be like, well, you guys can't even agree. So therefore what? That Christianity is false?

I mean, that's, that's not an argument. I mean, that's, that's, that's just silly. So I don't mean that's not, that's not a critique of Molinism to say it really depends on who you're talking to.

It's just depending on who you're talking to, you might need to tailor a certain criticism, um, or certain criticisms not, might not apply unless you really are going for the core, um, which

I think most of my objections to Molinism go to the core. So, um, at least I tried. Yeah.

One important issue for me, and this doesn't prove one thing or the other, but I've studied

Reformed theology for a long time now, and I've studied Molinism and I'm not a master of either systems.

I mean, there's still much that I can learn. But one of the values that I find in Reformed theology is it's, um, explicit attempt to be exegetical.

Now I know a Molinist will roll their eyes at that and be like, oh, well, you know, you would say that because you're a Calvinist. But honestly, even as a, as a

Molinist, when I was a Molinist reading Reformed literature, it really just looked like they were trying to exegete the scriptures.

Now you might disagree with how they're doing it, but it seems like they were dealing directly with the scriptures. Whereas on Molinism, it seems to me, at least in my experience studying it, is that they're more concerned with answering a philosophical puzzle, which again, doesn't make it false.

Um, it just seems the motivations of behind why Molinism even came into existence seems wrongheaded in terms of an exegetical or hermeneutical perspective.

Yeah, I agree. I, and, this is a criticism, um, you know,

I'm not, when I say I'm an apologist, I don't mean that I'm famous. I don't mean that I'm a scholar or anything like that.

But one of my criticisms of the apologetics community generally, um, and this, this

I think explains why Molinism has, has had such a revival in Protestant, it's weird that it's a

Protestant apologetic because it, it, it largely came out of the counter reformation.

It's, it's heavily rooted in, in, in a Roman Catholic understanding of, uh, of, of the person, of the human, of the nature of the will.

Um, people are going to cringe, but it's very semi -Pelagian, uh, in its philosophical constructs.

Um, uh, I, I, you know, I don't necessarily mean it is full bore, but it's, it's in that type of, it's in that type of tradition that's coming out of, um, you know, uh, uh, a

Roman Catholic view of the will of the person, um, uh, of that type of thing.

And so it's, it's very strange that Protestants have kind of attached themselves to it.

Um, and, and one of the criticisms that I give of, uh, of apologetics and the community at large, and this doesn't actually have just to do with Molinism, just applies here, uh, is that a lot of times the apologetics community is, um, uh, is attempting to do really good philosophical and secular engagement.

Um, and so they back themselves, they, they, they have this objection that, that, that's posed to them.

They're trying to come up with really good philosophical arguments to, to address it. And so they take that philosophical argument and they back themselves into a theological position.

And then from there, they back themselves into their biblical theology. And I just think that's a hundred percent backwards.

Um, so, um, I, I try really hard to push, um, on, on my fellow apologists and say, you, you need to, you need to flip that.

You should, you should, uh, exegete and handle the biblical text well. Get, get yourself really biblically based, um, and then go to, um, more of a systematic theology and then to, uh, you know, philosophical theology.

It's not exactly a linear line. I mean, doing biblical theology and systematic theology go hand in hand and they kind of, you know, anyone who's been doing it for long enough kind of knows, oh, well, they kind of alter each other as they go.

Um, because, well, systematic theology is how, how a certain doctrine traces itself through the entire scripture.

Biblical theology is kind of, you know, what did Matthew believe about the kingdom of heaven type of thing. Um, and so as, as you develop, well, you, you want to check your biblical theology against systematic theology, make sure it's not contradicting something else.

Um, but your systematic theology has to be built on your biblical theology. And so they kind of, it's like this little interchanging, uh, web, uh, so to speak.

And so you have to use them, but, um, kind of reversing yourself through can, can really lead to a lot of problems.

I've had apologists and Molinists flat out tell me, um, that they're just, they're, they're not that interested in doing exegesis.

It's just, you know, oh, I read a lot of philosophical literature and I say, oh, well you have, have you read any commentaries on those passages that you're, that you're doing or tried to go to the original languages or anything?

Oh, it's just, it's not my concern. Now. Okay. Now that's a serious issue. However, that is not true of all

Molinists. Obviously there are Molinists who do, right, right. And that's a key, a key distinction to make. Um, now the

Molinists who are, who will be listening to this will probably be like, well, we try to do that. We try to shape, uh, our, our position here based from, based out of the soil of scripture.

And I'm not denying that, that Molinists are trying to do that. I think they should do a better job in explaining their position along those lines, because when they explain their position, it,

I understand what they're saying, but it does not seem to me that this is something that is being drawn from the lifeblood of the text.

Yeah. And so maybe there's a communication issue that they can do a better job, uh, committee and Calvinist as well.

I mean, we need to be able to explain our views. Uh, there is a philosophical side of Calvinism that can come across if that's the major emphasis of someone's exposure to it.

And we begin to adopt this philosophical language moving further and further away from the biblical language that would do a better job to root our perspective in the scriptures, which

I think is very, very important. All right. So, well, if I could say one, if I could say one more thing on that,

I think, uh, and this happens on all sides. I don't mean to say that this is, this is only Molinists, um, is that it's the difference between exegeting a text and proof texting a text.

Um, and so a lot of Molinists that I meet will say, oh, well, no, I, I, you know, I draw this from the scriptures and I say, okay, well, let's go to a passage and they'll pick a passage and say, okay, let's exegete.

And let's, let's look at the original language. Let's look at the original context. Let's, let's, you know, do, let's, let's, let's work out the syntax.

Let's go through this. Nothing. It's, it's, you know, it's, it's not this, and this happens all the time.

I think when Calvinists do this, you get hyper -Calvinism. Um, so, um, you know,

I'm not trying to say that no Calvinists do this, but what I found is that, um, Calvinists, um, in, in the traditional sense, kind of in the classical sense, um, tend to be, um, far more capable of, of actually exegeting original language type of work in the text and are very textually driven, um, than, than, than really

Molinists or hyper -Calvinists. They, they, they'll use, they'll use scripture, but it's in a proof texting, um, way.

It's, it's, it's just kind of a bald citation. Now that's not to say that Molinists can't exegete scripture.

That's not what you're saying. Yes. But in, in these discussions that, that, again, that's my experience also,

I, I very much resonate with what you're, you're saying. So we're not saying that Molinists don't exegete them, you know, exegete scriptures.

We just wish they did it more. Yeah. And to be fair, remember Molinists love to point this out is that, uh,

Molina, you know, Louis de Molina himself exegeted Romans nine, like exactly like Calvin did almost. So, um, it's just most

Molinists today don't. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, um, why don't you explain for us, uh, a couple of ways before we get in, but by the way, the, the name of this video was

Eli and Tyler, uh, take, uh, Stratton's Molinist quiz.

We're going to get there where we'll kind of engage in, um, uh, in some of the stuff that, that Tim has written in regards to, um,

Molinism and Calvinism and libertarian freedom. Um, but I want to go through this con this kind of, um, discussion that we're having a loose discussion.

I want to cover a whole wide range of things as well, because I think a lot of people will find it helpful, especially our fellow

Calvinists. I think Calvinists often critiquing

Molinism. Yep. And they did terrible job. So, um, I like that we can kind of have a free flow of a discussion and talk about other issues, but then eventually get to the quiz here.

Now, what are some ways where you said before that from that point on, after you define

Molinism, it depends who you speak with. What are some ways in which Molinists apply

Molinism? What are the different applications of it? Normally the, the,

I think one of the reasons why evangelicals and Protestants even know what Molinism is, um, is because, uh, almost entirely because of William Lane Craig, Craig got it almost.

Well, I don't know if this is entirely fair, but pretty close from what I could tell. He only knows about it cause

Alvin Plantinga. Um, so, uh, those two guys basically, and they're fantastic philosophers.

I'm not saying anything, anything bad about him. I have major disagreements with both of them, but phenomenal

Christian thinkers. Um, I think the only reason why it made it to William Lane Craig and then to broader

Protestant apologists, uh, is because the perceived way that it can, um, handle something like the problem of evil, um, and, and get

God off the hook. Uh, that's somewhat of a crass way to say it, but it, it gets got off the hook from, um, being the cause or the quote unquote author of sin or evil or anything like that, because, um, it, it, it's, it's an attempt to say that, uh, that God, um, has this, has this, has this middle knowledge and he, and he has to create kind of a feasible world.

Uh, and it may be that the only feasible worlds where, where there's sufficiently free creatures is evil, like we mentioned before.

And so Molinism is, is a strong attempt at, at, um, a very specific type of free will theodicy or free will, uh, uh, will get to answer the problem of evil.

Um, and so I think, I think that is the, is there are other applications, but that's like the big one.

Like if you have, if you have a pie, if you have a pie chart, that's 80 % of it. Okay. Um, and I think that's, that's important too, because a lot of Calvinists who try to interact with Molinist, with Molinism, they almost seem to think of Molinism as, um, a soteriological view.

Yeah. Where they fail to recognize that Molinism can be applied to soteriology. It's not an essential feature to it.

And so I think that's a very important distinction to keep in mind. And I think that happens because in, in reform circles, the nature of the will for us, even though it's technically in anthropology is such a vital soteriological issue that when we get into conversations with other views about the nature of the will, it just, in our minds, those, those little connections have been made into soteriology.

And so, um, and so for us that it just, those, those categories blend. Right. So, so the application of Molinism, the majority of it is applying it to the whole issue of the problem of evil, and they can apply it also to issues of soteriology and you could apply it in a more

Calvinistic sort of way, or in a more Arminian sort of way, whether they do it consistently, that's another issue, but there are different applications that some

Molinists have, have done in those directions. Yeah. I, um, uh, again,

I'm trying to be, I'm trying to be as nice and charitable as I can.

I don't think you could be a Calvinist and a Molinist in any meaningful sense. Um, I also, and this is where a lot of my

Calvinist brothers are going to get really confused. I'm not sure you can be a Calvinist and an

Arminian, at least in a historic Arminian sense. If you understand kind of, uh, if I can use a terrible phrase for it, but reformed

Arminianism, Arminianism as it was under Arminius during the Reformation, I don't think you can be that and a

Molinist either. Um, really Molinism lends itself towards Roman Catholicism, uh, and something like, uh,

SBC traditionalism or provisionism or open theism, um, where it has a strong view of libertarian freedom, um, historic or re or reformed

Arminianism. They agree to total depravity. He's agreed with the broken nature of the will.

Um, they're, you know, their concept of pervenient grace is very, very different than kind of broad evangelical

Arminian, pervenient grace now. So, um, there, there's some, there's some historical clarity that I think is lost on some of the way that Molinism people talk about Molinism and how it relates to other views.

All right. So let's, let's, um, I'm going to ask you a shotgun in a shotgun approach, although you don't have to give me a shotgun answer.

You can take your time and go through it. Um, here are the questions that I hear people asking.

Um, and this, this podcast, I think hopefully this particular episode is to help our Calvinist brothers a understand

Molinism and B if they disagree with Molinism as a viable option, they have some way of responding to it.

Obviously. I mean, there's literature. I mean, I have books here. I got a bunch of Molinist books here.

I mean, you can't cover everything in a, in a podcast. Yeah. But perhaps we can give kind of a starting point for people to kind of begin to think about these things in a way that is critically minded and is able to at least begin to address some of the issues.

Um, so, so let's take a look at my first question. What's wrong with Molinism as a purported biblical position?

Um, it's a great question. Uh, I take, and I'm going to probably, if I haven't already turned off every

Molinist listener already, I'm going to, I'm going to do so now. Um, I, uh,

I think Molinism, um, is a false system, uh, that has heretical entailments, um, which, uh, which basically means that I, that I praise

God that most Molinists are inconsistent in, in not following the system to its logical ends. Um, so, uh, there, there's a, there, there's a lot, am

I getting to all my objections or supports for that right now? I don't know. I don't know how far down the rabbit hole you want to go right at this moment.

Well, you can give, just give, just give a couple, just give a couple. Now, now real quick, just to clarify, you said heretical entailments, which, which is, is to say, if you can correct me if I'm wrong, you're not saying

Molinism is a heresy. You're saying that various aspects of it entail things that may be heretical.

Correct. Okay. Now, Molinists who disagree, disagreed, that was what you were saying. We just want to clarify. So we're not saying

Molinists are heretics, uh, necessarily, right? Yeah, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not calling them, you know, damn, damnable heretics or it's, you know, anything like that.

Um, but I think it has entailments that if you, if you follow their logical entailments out, for example,

I think it, I think it logically entails open theism. Uh, I think it logically entails a denial of, uh, the immutability of God.

I think it logically entails the denial of the aseity of God. Um, so there, there's, there's... Stop right there.

Stop right there. It's a lively conversation. I'm going to stop because this is good. This is good. So let's explore that a little bit.

You said that you think it entails open theism. And, um, let's, let's tackle why you think it entails open theism and let's tackle why you think it affects the issues of aseity.

And then when you begin to talk about aseity, perhaps you can define it for folks real quick and then explain your position. So go for it.

Um, so Molinism, uh, as I said, it, it hitches its wagon to libertarian freewill.

Libertarian freewill again can be variously defined, but generally it's viewed as, um, a kind of freedom whereby, um, the, the, uh, the chooser, the agent, um, is first undetermined.

Remember it, it's an incompatible view. So any type of determinism is out, just, just in principle, it's out.

Um, and where the agent is, um, has the, has not just the faculty of a will, but actually has the real ability to choose contrary than the thing that they do.

I said it that way very specifically because I'm trying to avoid, um, uh, not all libertarian.

There are some libertarians who are going to say you actually have to have options to have libertarian freedom. Um, there are some, uh, like William Lane Craig, who says that the principle of alternative possibilities is false.

You don't actually have to have alternative possibilities. You just have to have the ability to have done otherwise.

Um, if, if there was options. Um, so I, I think in saying that you have the ability to do other than you do, it covers both those camps.

Um, there is, I think when you mix that with Molinism, I already have problems with libertarian freedom anyways, just full stop.

I think when you mix that with a Molinistic metaphysic, that is the view that God, um, the, the choice that God makes of which world to actualize based on his middle knowledge, um, creates a unique set of problems.

So, uh, I'm going to try to go through this, um, without being too technical.

I don't know how to do it without using somewhat of symbols. You, you can try your best. This is, this is an upper level kind of like,

I'm assuming I had, I wanted to do this with you, assuming that people who are interested in this topic, there's some background.

So don't go way over our heads, but it's okay to use the words you think are best to describe what you're saying.

Okay. Um, in, in, uh, as we said before, in, in, in Molinism, God chooses to actualize, um, uh, a world, maybe not the best possible world in the sense that, you know, you could always have, you know, more palm trees, um, but the, the world that achieves his ends the best.

Um, I think even Molinists would, would agree with that kind of concept. I mean, Calvinists affirm that God created the worlds that bring him, brings him the most glory.

Um, we all, we all hold to some type of best world, you know, understanding. We just don't always mean it's quantitatively the best things.

Uh, um, and so the Molinist is going to say, well, um, uh, there, there are logically possible worlds, and then there are these feasible worlds, um, where, um, that those are the ones that God can actualize.

So God may have actualized the best feasible world. So let's call, we're going to call the actual world, world

A, and we'll call another feasible world, world B. Okay.

Now, uh, God actualizes world A. When actualizing world A, world

A just, God has foreknowledge of world A. He has, he has natural knowledge of world

A once it's actualized, but he, he has, uh, he has foreknowledge of world A.

He knows every, world A just is a set of true propositions. Um, it's, it's, it's the

A set of propositions. He doesn't actualize world B but he has foreknowledge, he has, he has some natural knowledge and he has some middle knowledge of world

B. But world B just is a set of propositions. Now, they're a set of true propositions in the conditional sense now, because they're not the actual world.

So it's not true, um, you know, some proposition isn't true of world B. It's conditionally true of world

B, because it's not the actual world. So that's very basic.

No, no Molinus should really have a problem with that yet. Um, here's the problem that I have.

There, there, there's, and there's a couple of them. Let's imagine for the sake of argument, world

A and world B are identical in their propositions prior to creation, except for one, uh, trivial proposition of the will.

Okay. I don't mean trivial in the sense that one tree has one more leaf than another tree. Although that, that those types of arguments can be made.

Um, one, let's, let's say, let's say that at, at T1, at T1, John has a libertarian free act, whether it's to think of something to, to do something to whatever it is, there's a libertarian free act, but it's a trivial act.

Um, and I have to say this to avoid the butterfly effect. Let's just for the sake of argument, say there's no butterfly effect.

The, the truth of, uh, of John doing that action affects no other truth proposition in, in the world, right?

Um, it's just that at T1, John either has this fleeting thought freely, or he doesn't have this fleeting thought freely, and it has no other impact on the world whatsoever.

Prior to creation, God can equally, can equally choose either of these worlds. Um, if God actualizes world

A, he's determined which of those truth values will be true in the actual world, right?

Because there, but because leading up to them, if you're a libertarian leading up to them, there's no causally determinative factor that determines if John chooses

X or not X. It's simply a free act of John. Right? To have this fleeting thought.

To have this fleeting thought, right? So you have a problem. So, and, and it's kind of a horns of a dilemma.

So let me do the first one. The first one is that you seem to already be stuck in that God has prior to creation determined between those two truth values.

Because he says, I'm going to actualize world A. And I'm not going to actualize world

B. And so, and, and so if the only difference is X is true and X is false,

God has determined by choosing the A set and not the

B set, right? That's the only difference. And so you're stuck with saying somehow, and I think this, this turns into a contradiction on the view.

You're somehow stuck saying that John, because you need to affirm libertarian freedom,

John has libertarianly chosen X in world A and God has determined X in determining to create

A and not B, right? He has causally determined which of those worlds, because he's caused

A to exist. He has not caused B to exist. And so I think you're stuck with the fact that you say libertarian freedom is true and determinism is true, which is a contradiction.

It's not even compatibilism because a compatibilist would say libertarian freedom and determinism are not true.

That libertarianism is an incompatible system. So compatibilism and incompatibilism can't both be true.

I've heard some Molinists say that God could determine some things, but not necessarily does he have to determine all things so that you could be determined in one sense and libertarianly free in regards to other things.

Yeah, so it, uh, well, there's a problem with that. So they would say with regard to X, if it's true that God determined that, then it's not true that John had libertarian,

John did not choose X then, they'll say, because they're incompatibilists. So they're going to say, if for X, it's true that God has determined it, then it's false that John libertarianly chose it.

Okay. Okay. I agree with them. If they want to say that it's possible that God can determine some things and not other things, it's possible.

The problem is, is that once they've already admitted the, the episode that I did on this was called the metaphysics and the failure of because once you admit this metaphysic, uh, which

I not sure how you can avoid, and I haven't heard really any good responses to it. It's a metaphysical fact that God is actualizing a, a certain world, a set of propositions.

Once you grant it for proposition X, you've granted it for every other proposition unless, and this is the other one of the dilemma for this one, unless you would, unless you affirm that there are certain propositions of, of the world that are either random or indeterminate.

Um, once you say that they're random or indeterminate, the whole other can of worms open, right?

Because once it's random or indeterminate, the question is, well, if it's indeterminate, if, if, if God actualizes a, and the truth of X is indeterminate, there's nothing for God to know, right?

Because there's nothing to know yet. There's no truth maker for X yet. X, X it's, it's, um, uh, it's

Heisenberg's cat in the box. It could be true. It could not be true. We won't know until we, until we get there.

The Molinus has a bunch of responses to this, right? The Molinus is going to come back and say, oh, well, um, got, got, well,

God just is omniscient. He just knows what John would do. But that doesn't, all, all you're saying is nah,

God knows it, right? You're not actually, you're not actually addressing the problem. Now that's related to the grounding objection, right?

What grounds, what grounds the truth? Yep. I think here's the thing I have asked, and I typed this out in Facebook, someone give me a clear non -technical dumbed down version of how do you answer the grounding objection?

Because I, what I've heard from Molinus say, oh, here goes the grounding objection again, we've addressed this a million times.

And I'm maybe they have, and I don't understand it. But then when I pushed a little bit, all

I got was it's mysterious. And there's no problem with that for the Molinus. So maybe I'm missing something, maybe

I'm limited into my reading. But it seems as though they punt to mystery when really pressed on the issue of the grounding objection.

Well, I think they either punt to mystery or they, or they punt to unwittingly affirming contradictions, right?

So if they say something like this has come up when, when I've given either the grounding objection, I've, I've given this objection, they say, oh,

God just knows it. Okay. If God just knows X, does that mean then

X is determined? Well, no. So that means it could be not X. Yeah. So then does God know that it's going to be

X? Or does he know that it could be X or not X? Because knowing X is true is different than knowing either

X or not X. Right? So, so saying, oh, well, God knows that it's X.

Okay. But it could be not X. Oh, but then God would know that. So what you're saying is prior to creation,

God knows that it's X and he knows that it's not

X, but he doesn't know either. Like it just turns into this, it, it, it turns into a, it turns into a shell game, right?

So, so is it going to be X? Yes. Okay. So, so then it's guaranteed, then God has determined that it's

X because it's going to be X prior to him even creating, actualizing the world. And he's determining which world he's creating.

So in world A, it's going to be X. So then it can't be not X. Oh, but if it was not X, God would know it.

Okay. But then God would be actualizing world B. And so which one is it? Oh, well, well, God would just know which one it is.

It's just, it's a non -answer. It's just, it's just saying, um, there's not a problem because whatever, whatever it is,

God would know whatever it is. Um, but when you try to pin them down to how would

God, what is the actual content of God's knowledge prior to creating it? There's no answer for it.

Um, and so it seems like there's a question begging. Yep. There's a question begging baked into the answer.

It's like, well, God just knows, just, just would know it. Well, that assumes that God has the kind of knowledge, middle knowledge that you're arguing for.

That's the very point that we're trying to, to, to determine, right? You can't just say, that's just, that's just the way his knowledge is.

But then when you push and say, well, I don't know how it could be that way. It's just, it would seem, it seems rational and reasonable to affirm that he does have that knowledge.

Right. Yeah. Because he's omniscient. They want to affirm he's omniscient, right? Which is a good impulse. I'm glad they want to affirm that.

I'm glad that they don't again, I, I praise God for their blessed inconsistency and they don't want to affirm open theism.

Fantastic. I love that. Um, so, but this also, this now opens my other objection, right?

So I think that they have that, that kind of horn of the dilemma. Just real quick, real quick, just, just to remind people we are on the question, what's wrong with Molinism as a reported biblical position.

Um, we haven't addressed specific scriptures yet, so maybe we can get there. But what you were trying to do was to show how there are certain heretical entailments.

And if there are heretical entailments, if you're correct on that assumption, then it would be unbiblical.

So technically you are answering the question, even though we haven't addressed specific texts, but go ahead. Right. Right. Well, we'll come back to the, to the biblical texts and I'll explain why

I, I, we'll talk about that in a minute. Sure. So they have that, that horns of the dilemma that, that those two horns, but there, but you could further it.

You could, you could push that further and say, okay, well, um, take it for any, any type of, any, any decision, right?

You know, picking up my, picking up my water, scratching my ear, whatever it is. Um, because they want to affirm libertarian freedom and say, well,

I have the freedom to do other than the thing that I do. I'm going to say, okay, well, um, because we said, okay, well, does

God know X or not X? And it kind of ends up being both and neither, but somehow yes. Um, is do

I have the ability? So let's imagine that God knows prior to creation that I am going to pick up my water that I choose to pick up my water.

Do I have the ability to choose the thing that God didn't know?

Um, not just the capacity for it, right? The capacity, and this is a common conflation, right?

A capacity just is in reformed theology. The will just is a capacity of the, of the self.

The will, the will doesn't choose anything. The will is the thing by which we choose things. It's a capacity.

It's like eyesight. I don't say what, while it's technically right to say my eyes see something, we would say, well, no,

I am using my eyes to see, right? Um, my eyes are a certain faculty.

There are certain site is a certain capacity. Like I, you know, site doesn't see. Um, so, so we're not talking capacity.

I don't, I don't mean that suddenly, um, you know, they, they're, they have no capacity for anything. They have no faculty of the will.

That's not, you know, that I'm not a hard determinist, but do

I actually have a metaphysically real possibility? Am I really able to actualize a state where I choose other than what

God foreknows? Well, that can never, never happen. Well, the

Molinist, the libertarian is going to have to say yes, right? They might say, well, you're conflating could and would, right?

I'm not asking, you know, you're, you're, we're saying God knows what you would do, not what you could do.

And I'm saying, okay, but the only difference between that is what becomes actual, right?

So, so you can't, you can't say that God, that, that God, that I can't do X and make it actual because that's not what

I would do. Well, the question is, do I have the ability to have that be the thing that I would do?

Um, so the libertarian seems to be forced to say yes, right?

Because otherwise if they say no, then they have to give something that is determining, that's constraining, that's causing me to always and only ever choose the thing that I do choose.

Um, and it has to be something prior to creation because God has to know it. He has to know that I'm going to pick up my water bottle and that's going to be the true thing.

But they have to say that I'm able to affect reality such that I could have really chosen to not pick up the water bottle.

But if we couch it in the terms of what, what is something that God foreknows and something that God doesn't foreknow, what that means is

I have the ability to actualize something that God didn't foreknow, right?

Because if God foreknew that I would pick up the water bottle, then me not picking up the water bottle just is categorically something that God did not know.

And so if you say I have the, the real ability to actualize a state of affairs where I don't pick up the water bottle, it means that I have the real ability to actualize a state of affairs that God doesn't know about.

Right? And that's where the entailment of open theism would come in. That's where the entailment of open theism is because that just is categorically something that God cannot know.

So the Molinists can't come along and say, Oh, well, if you didn't pick it up, then God would have known that. Okay, but no, no, no, you're, you're, then you're changing the set of affairs.

We're saying, let's make up a static thought experiment. God, before creation, let's imagine the state of affairs.

God foreknew that I would pick up the water bottle at time T1. Once T1 comes around in creation, do

I have the real metaphysical ability to actualize a state of affairs where I don't pick up the water bottle?

The libertarian has to say, yes, you cannot then change the conditions of the thought experiment to say,

Oh, well, all the way back at the beginning, God would have known that then, because we've already said, that's the thing that God didn't know.

Right? So you're stuck saying categorically, I can do something that God can't know. And so that means that there is a real possibility that God's knowledge could be false.

There, there are categorically things that could be true that God cannot know.

But if it's categorically something that God cannot know, then it's then by necessity, it's something that God can't know that he doesn't know.

Which means that at every single point of creation, even if God's foreknowledge ends up being right a hundred percent of the time, and he's never wrong, right?

He always knew that, at that point, it would just be a belief.

It wouldn't be knowledge. He always believed what we would do. As it's actualized in creation, he would be learning that his knowledge is correct, because he can't know that his knowledge is correct, because I could prove him wrong.

Categorically, I could prove him wrong. And you can't appeal to God's knowledge to get around it, because it just is categorically something that God can't know.

Right? So you have open theism as it rolls. Right. So now if we go to the other entailments, then we'll never get to the rest of the questions.

So I think that's good for someone to chew on. They're going to have to listen to that a couple of times, but it's worth listening to, because I think

I follow your line of reasoning. And I apologize for my Molinist friends, who are probably going to message me later and be like, you didn't really buy that, did you?

Well, it makes sense. I am not saying—it makes sense. I am following your line of thought, and would be interested to see how some people would respond.

Let me give one more objection, because it's going to come up in what we talked about, Tim Stratton. I'm not going to give the grounding objection, but really, really simply, the basic grounding objection is, if God has middle knowledge of what we would choose, what is it grounded on?

Does he know something because the truth -maker is in himself, or does he know it because the truth -maker is outside of himself?

And so the question is, if God has middle knowledge, is that middle knowledge—does it protect his aseity?

Aseity means that God is self -contained. He's not reliant on anything else for any of his attributes.

And so if Molinism is true, it's going to say that his middle knowledge is not rooted on his decrees.

It's rooted on these counterfactuals of creaturely freedom that exist independent of himself or his decrees.

And so his middle knowledge is grounded on something that is a truth -maker that he himself is not the ground of.

And so it's a violation of aseity, because it means one of his attributes is grounded on something that is outside of himself, that he is not the ground of being for.

And so it violates aseity as well. That'll come up later when we talk about Tim Stratton's argument. Okay, gotcha.

So what's wrong with Molinism as a purported biblical position? Without addressing the specific biblical text, which is another direction we could have went, but that's fine, the direction you went, you find it has certain heretical entailments which would, if what you just said is correct, would make it an unbiblical position.

Right. Unless you are an open theist, and then that's a different debate. Right. So I would go through and say, look, it has all these entailments.

The Bible is very clear, I think, that God knows all things.

I think it's very clear that God is the determiner of the beginning, and he declares the beginning and the end.

I think the Bible is very clear that God has, that there is not a principled contradiction between determinism and human freedom.

I think we see this in the Joseph passage, where it says, God intended this, you know, you intended it for evil.

It's a neuter pronoun, it. God intended it for, or you intended it for evil, but God intended it for good.

There's concurrence on that same action and two intentions. You have

Acts, where it says that they did whatever God's hand had predestined them to do.

And so you have passages that clearly describe what we would call compatibilism.

You have deterministic aspects, and you have freedom aspects, and moral responsibility within the same action. Right. You know,

I think we could go through biblical passages and show that God is not limited in his knowledge, and so if something entails open theism, it's necessarily false.

Gotcha. That God is not dependent on anything else, that God is a se, and so if a position violates a seity, it's necessarily false.

And so I wanted to kind of address those categories first, rather than spend all of our time saying, because I think most of our audience, unless someone's an open theist, or just like, to hell with the seity.

Most people are going to be fine with it. Listen, these kinds of discussions are a good bridge between the

Calvinists and the Molinists, where I think healthy discussions are happening, since I don't think Molinism is heretical, even though it may have heretical entailments.

Open theism is not even on the grid for me, because I think that is so clearly unbiblical. I'm not having a dialogue with them at this point, or trying to build that bridge.

I don't want to build that bridge. I want to do an Indiana Jones, Temple of Doom, where he chops the bridge down, and there's no way to go across, with the open theist.

And our people would stop running across it. That's right, that's right, that's right. Okay, so what's wrong with Molinism as a reported biblical position?

That question is done. My second question, and maybe there is a relation, if there is a relation to your previous answer, then we can skip it.

If you think there's a relevant distinction to be had in answering this question, you can go into it. What's wrong with Molinism as a philosophical system, as opposed to just a merely biblical position?

Yeah, so a lot of the things that I've given are there, but let me just more expressly say,

I think the main problem, lots of problems with it, but philosophically,

I think the main problem is that it attempts to affirm libertarian freedom. It attempts to affirm an incompatibilist system, and a lot of times it does so.

You and I, once we get into the question for Calvinists, we're going to throw out the term question begging left and right.

I think that it does it in such a way that it question begs constantly.

It assumes libertarian freedom, and then anytime it gives a response to something, it's assuming in principle its position, and we're going to see this.

Again, I love Tim Stratton, but we're going to see this over and over again. He does this at every defense of it

I've found. I honestly haven't really heard a good defense of Molinism that can handle objections without begging the question.

For example, the people who say, oh, well, if you deny Molinism, then you're denying omniscience, because then you're saying

God can't know all counterfactuals. No, you're just question begging that middle knowledge is the way that God knows counterfactuals.

I can say that God has necessary, exhaustive counterfactual knowledge because he knows, he has natural knowledge of himself that whatever he decrees come to pass, he has free knowledge of what he actually did decree, and so he has the entailing knowledge of had

I decreed X, then X would be true. He has that kind of subjunctive knowledge. So there's just no problem.

It's still rooted in God's decrees. It's had I decreed something, then it would be true. There's no problem with the

Samuel passage where David and the men of Kala, because God can tell them, yeah, you know,

I always forget if he goes to Kala, Saul will come kill him, or if he leaves, doesn't leave.

Think if he goes. If he goes, right? I always get the direction wrong. If he goes, then

Saul will, then the men will turn him over to Saul, and Saul will kill him. Well, God can say that because he knows if David goes there because God decreed it, then

God had decreed what would take place. There's just no problem with that. It doesn't, when people are like, oh, that proves

Molinism. No, it doesn't. It just proves that what would happen isn't what actually happened.

That's all that it shows. It doesn't prove middle knowledge. It doesn't show all that metaphysical baggage that's behind middle knowledge.

Right. If anything, you'd have to argue that you could, as a Molinist, interpret it from a

Molinist perspective. But even there, you're jumping the gun because Molinism entails that we can demonstrate that God has this counterfactual knowledge logically prior to his decree, and the

Bible doesn't talk about those things. At least the Calvinist can speak of decrees, and that God declares the end from the beginning, kind of jump in from there.

So I think the Molinist has possible interpretations, which deal with the proof texting, as you said before, as opposed to just deriving the position from the lifeblood of the

Okay. All right, good. So here's another question. Do you think that the concept of libertarian freedom is coherent?

Or do you think it's coherent, but you don't think it's true? It depends.

So it depends on how much I'm willing to suspend my disbelief on things like naturalism.

And this is where I actually disagree also with the apologetic of some people.

I think that naturalistic materialism entails a kind of hard fatalistic determinism.

But I'm not sure that all naturalism does. It may be the case that naturalism can bring about emergent properties, such that we could have libertarian freedom, and we're actualizing our choices as it goes.

But in that system, you just don't have to reconcile things like God's foreknowledge and omission.

So it just doesn't become a problem. I think that libertarian freedom makes no sense.

I think it's incoherent within a biblical Christian view. I think where you have

God as the foundation of all things, you have God as the foundation of all truth, you have God's foreknowledge.

We're biblical Christians, so we deny open theism. I think once you introduce libertarian freedom into it, there are other problems with libertarian freedom about if we're even responsible for our own choices if there's no determining factors.

But I think it just runs contrary to the omniscience of God, to God as creator, to his deity, and some of the things that we've talked about.

So next question, does God have libertarian freedom? So this is where I might lose some of our

Calvinist brothers and sisters. Okay. I don't think

God has libertarian freedom. I think God has what Stratton calls limited libertarian freedom.

I think that Stratton is right, that there is a difference between full -on libertarian freedom and limited libertarian freedom.

And limited libertarian freedom is kind of a kissing cousin of compatibilist freedom.

The problem is, the reason why I say God has limited libertarian freedom is because you don't have to reconcile any other being as the foundation of all things.

It's not compatibilistic freedom. Some people make this mistake. They'll try to say, oh, well, God has compatibilist freedom.

That's not true, because compatibilism is the view that there is some other determining thing that is compatible with the agency of this thing.

God doesn't have compatibilist freedom, because there's nothing out here determining what

God as an agent does. God doesn't have compatibilist freedom. He has limited libertarian.

There's nothing outside of himself that's determining his decisions. However— Can you give me a basic definition of limited?

I mean, I've studied these issues. I've never heard that specific variation of libertarian freedom. Can you just give a bare definition?

I don't know if it's a Stratton thing. I haven't really met anybody else. But I think it's a helpful thing when talking about God. Limited libertarian basically says that there are determining factors to people's actions, but they're not external to the agent.

Okay. So it's really determined within themselves. Yeah. So I would say, for example,

God's holiness and righteousness is determinative of God's actions.

And the Bible tells us this. God cannot lie. Does God have the liberty to lie?

No, he does not. Does he have the power to lie?

Does he have the capacity to lie? Yes. But can he lie? No. So it doesn't mean that if God were to attempt to lie—this is such a crass example of it, because God doesn't have a voice box or anything like that.

But it's not— God has the ability to speak and communicate.

It's not like if God was trying to lie, that ability, that capacity would just go away.

It's that God does not have the metaphysically real capacity, because of his own nature, to lie, to tell a lie.

So I think God has limited libertarianism, because he is constrained and determined by his own nature, his own desires, things like that.

But I don't think that humanity has that, because humanity has compatibilist freedom, because we are determined, because we are part of God's creation.

We have creaturely freedom. Throw sin in and get into the bondage of the will, and it gets even a little more confusing.

Now, it's interesting that you said that, because in my discussion with Tim, I was asking him—well,

I brought up the issue of whether—I wasn't sure libertarian freedom is even a coherent concept. And he said something to the effect that if God has libertarian freedom, then it's a coherent concept.

But then I thought that there was a logical leap from the idea that if God does have libertarian freedom, and that's logically coherent, it doesn't logically follow that such a freedom would be a coherent concept as a derivative created creature.

I think that's a logical leap. Would that be correct? Yeah. It's like saying it's logically possible for a being to have immutability.

And so, therefore, humans are immutable. Okay, yeah. That's what it felt like. It felt like there was a leap in logic there, at least on that specific point.

There's a violation of the creator -creature distinction that happens there, right? Something can be true of the creator and not true of the creature.

I agree with him that—well, I don't think there's any sense that libertarian freedom makes sense, but God might have limited libertarian freedom.

That might be a coherent concept, but that can be a coherent concept only within the context of the creator, right?

It doesn't make any sense, I think, within the context of his own creation. Okay. All right.

Now, every theological system places mystery somewhere. For example, the common mystery that Calvinists place when we're thinking about the idea of how can

God be meticulously sovereign and in control, and how can man be sufficiently free and morally responsible for his actions, many

Calvinists and throughout the historical literature, people say, you know, there are philosophical attempts to create models in which we could understand that.

Jonathan Edwards is an example. Some others try to explain it. But typically, that is an area of mystery that Calvinists say, hey,

I mean, the Bible doesn't address this issue. Let's affirm what the Bible teaches, and we'll leave all of the metaphysical explanations to the

God who knows. Deuteronomy 29 .29, the secret things belong to the Lord. Now, that's where Calvinists place their mystery.

What's the difference between the Calvinist employing mystery and the Molinist employing mystery? Why is one legitimate and the other not legitimate, if in fact it is not legitimate?

Yeah. I think that the Calvinist says, okay, we see these two things in Scripture, right?

Our data is drawn from the Scripture, right? So some of the passages that I gave earlier, right?

We see passages where God says, for example, I will harden

Pharaoh's heart, right? Make no mistake about it. As much as people want to say, oh, well, Pharaoh hardened his own heart first.

No, he didn't. It said the first time it mentioned Pharaoh's heart actually being hardened is chapter 7 verse 13, and it says,

Pharaoh's heart was hardened just as the Lord had said. Well, how did the

Lord say it was going to happen? He said it two times. He said it previously in chapter 7, and he said it again in chapter—or previously to that in chapter 4, and he says,

I'm going to harden Pharaoh's heart. Well, it's because God foreknew that he would harden his heart and so that God knew that he would confirm the hardness given that he knew

Pharaoh would harden—you see, people can give those explanations, but that's not what the text says. That's not what the text says.

The text says—God says, I'm going to harden his heart, I'm going to harden his heart, and then the text says,

Pharaoh's heart was hardened. It doesn't say Pharaoh hardened his heart. It says passive voice about the heart of Pharaoh.

Pharaoh's heart was hardened just as the Lord had said. How did the Lord say that it was going to happen?

That he was going to do it. But once you get to 1 Samuel 6 -6, it shows, you know, do not harden your hearts as Pharaoh and the

Egyptians did. It's giving the moral culpability to Pharaoh, right? So when we look at these two, you know, look at passages like that.

You look at Joseph and his brothers saying that you intended it for evil, but God intended it for good. You look at, you know, in Proverbs where it says, you know, the steps of the king are in the hand of the

Lord. You see all of these biblical passages that affirm both with regard to the same act.

It's not just, you know, some affirm determinism in some abstract way, and some—we have other passages of freedom and so on—with regard to the exact same acts, right?

Joseph's brothers, Pharaoh hardening his heart, the crucifixion of Jesus. Again, the most evil thing that ever happened, deicide, the, you know, the murder of God, of the

Son of God, which, make no mistake, is the most evil thing that has ever happened on the face of the planet.

It says that God had determined. They had done whatever the hand of God had proridzo, had foreordained, had determined to come to pass by his definite plan.

So you have very specific instances where the Bible says it's determined, and they chose to do it, and they're morally responsible.

The Calvinist is going to come along, the reformed person is going to come along and say, we affirm both of those things.

Some will fall back on just its antimony. It's just a mystery. We affirm both.

We have no idea how it's the case. We affirm that God is all loving. We affirm that God is wrathful and just.

In Christ, the mystery is resolved, but really, is the metaphysics of that resolved? Not really. We affirm the

Trinity. We apprehend the Trinity, but do we fully comprehend it and understand the metaphysics of it, right?

So we get the data itself, that the Scripture affirms these things. They're not contradictions, right?

But there's tension there, and we affirm the tension, and we don't always know we can work it out. The problem with Molinism, I think, is that it's, in order to affirm the libertarian freedom, there's always a twist that happens with the text, right?

There always has to be a, well, if we just think about, okay, well, like you said, you were laughing when you said it, but it's a real answer that we get, is, well, if God foreknew that Pharaoh would harden his heart, and so God said that he was going to harden his heart, but really he was just like putting the circumstances around so that Pharaoh would freely, like you have to do so many gymnastics to cut off the deterministic side of it to make your paradigm fit within the text, and that's a problem.

Sorry, my camera just, I'm like moving my chair, and the wire got, almost hit myself.

Okay, that's good stuff, and I think that's a problem.

Again, doesn't mean that what they're saying is necessarily false, if they feel like they could argue from different places, but dealing with the text in that way,

I don't think is appropriate. Now, let's move along. I have one more question before we get to the

Calvinist quiz, okay? And it's just really one of the driving reasons why people kind of get down on the

Calvinist view of determinism, right? There are different forms of it, of course, is

A, they think they're protecting God's character. B, they are truly convinced that libertarian freedom is the biblical position.

That's important to keep in mind, right? But also, they think that affirming a Calvinistic kind of causal deterministic perspective is self -refuting.

So Tim has said in other contexts, and Dr. Flowers as well has said in other contexts that if you affirm causal determinism, then you couldn't,

I mean, you're determined to believe it, and so it becomes this kind of, this thing that's kind of, you can never rationally affirm anything on that view.

That's a big, that's a common, it's been repeated a thousand times. How would we as Calvinists begin to address that sort of objection to show that causal determinism, as we understand it, does not entail this kind of inability to rationally affirm something?

Yeah. So what that shows, again, I think is a question begging nature.

I think that a lot of libertarians, there's a lot of confusion about what libertarian freedom is and isn't.

There's a lot of confusion about what compatibilism is and isn't. You get, it always makes me laugh when

I'm talking to a libertarian of kind of the anti -Calvinist stripe or the,

I'm going to say ignorant, I don't mean in a bad way, but just in the not well -read sense. And they say, oh, well, see, compatibilism just is determinism then.

And I would be like, no, like where, of course it's determinism.

Compatibilism just is that determinism is compatible with, like, where am

I? Did you think it was determinism? It's compatible with freedom. So you have the freedom and you have the debt.

It's just always funny when they're like, well, you're compatible. Like, don't you see? See, it's just as deterministic. It's just, you know, everything is determined.

Then don't you see how everything is determined? I say, well, of course I affirm determinism. I mean, but then they're like, oh, well, compatibilism, that is just determinism.

No, that's like, yeah, that would be just as absurd as saying, well, compatibilism is freedom then. We affirm freedom just as much as we affirm determinism.

So to say, well, collapses in determinism is because you're just picking that one side to look at is

I could say, okay, well, compatibilism is freedom then because we affirm freedom and responsibility.

So the problem is, is that the incompatibilist, the libertarian doesn't, they don't get out of their own view, right?

They don't get out of their own principles, right? So remember, to be an incompatibilist means that you think determinism and freedom and moral responsibility are in principle incompatible.

And so for them, they think that if they can prove, and this is why they think that it's such a gotcha, that if they can prove that you're a determinist, then they can prove that your system denies freedom and makes people robots.

Because if they can prove that you're a determinist, then they can prove that in principle, you're against it, right?

All that does is it shows that they're just question begging the principled objection that they have that makes them an incompatibilist.

And I'm just going to say, well, I just reject that principle. You have to demonstrate that to me.

You can't just question beg that there's a principled contradiction between the two things. Again, I can show you biblical passages where someone is determined,

God determines and acts and causes something, and the person is responsible for it.

If I can come up with one, it's just like the free will defense, what they love. If I can come up with one exception to it to prove the dichotomy false, then

I can show the principles false. So let's unpack that then. Okay, so we affirm determinism, we affirm freedom.

Okay, Tyler, that's what you affirm, but I can't see in any meaningful way how that makes sense.

How do you make sense of the idea that you believe in freedom, you believe in determinism, how is it the case that the determinism doesn't engulf what we call freedom and it's just an illusory sort of freedom such that you cannot, at that point, rationally affirm anything?

Right, so it's that very last sentence, right? Notice how the objection sneaks in the assumption of incompatibilism.

It just has to, right? So I would say, okay, without going into a full philosophical lesson,

I would just point people to Guillaume Bignon's book, Excusing Sinners, Blaming God.

By the way, he has my favorite summary of Molinism. I actually spoke to him a while back.

He says Molinism, in his French accent, Molinism is my favorite of the false views.

Yeah, it's definitely one of the more interesting of them. But he basically points out, there's a whole bunch of equivocations that happen.

There's a whole bunch of question begging that happens. There are question begging principles in the background that they don't know that they're doing.

And one of the biggest ones is the difference between what he titles categorical ability and conditional ability.

Categorical ability is that ability to do other than the thing you do, right? An incompatibilist is going to say that's what's necessary to be free, right?

So when we say freedom, we mean that, right? The compatibilist is going to say, you don't need that.

I just need to be conditionally free. It means I just need to be able to do the thing that I want to do without being coerced, right?

It can be based on my God nature. It can be based on my desires. It can be based on my beliefs.

By the way, I don't think you choose your beliefs.

I don't think you choose your desires. We often struggle against that. If we could choose our desires— You don't choose your nature. You don't choose your nature.

You don't choose your history. You don't choose your genes. You don't choose any of that stuff, right? The libertarian is going to say, oh yeah, but that's all just data that feeds in.

And then your will, it doesn't determine what you choose. You get to choose based on that input.

And I'm going to say, okay, well, I don't think I've ever chosen anything that I didn't desire to choose unless I was coerced.

So the conditional ability is going to say, okay, well, as long as you're able to choose the thing that you want to do without coercion,

I'm not being forced. I'm not being causally forced by something else to do something other than what

I desire to do, then I'm free, right? In order to object to that, the libertarian needs to presuppose their system because they need to say, oh, well, that's not really free.

And I'm going to say, well, why isn't that really free? And they're going to say, well, because you're not free to choose otherwise. And I'm going to say, all you've said then at that point is that conditional ability is false because categorical ability is true.

But that's your view, right? You can't say I'm wrong simply because you disagree with me, right?

And so you need to give an actual defense for why categorical ability is necessarily what we have to mean when we say we're free and why conditional ability cannot mean that we're free to do the thing.

Because I would say, as long as I'm doing the things that I desire to do, if I'm choosing to do X, it's not because something has coerced my will to do

X. It's because I desire to do X. And so I'm choosing to do X. Then I am sufficiently free to be morally responsible.

And it seems to me, and Binyon argues this repeatedly throughout the book, that in order to get around that, 99 % of the time, they just question -beg categorical ability as a necessary condition of freedom, which is just to beg the question.

Now, just to give a shout out to Guillaume Binyon's book, Excusing God, Blaming Sinners, right?

Excusing God, Blaming Sinners. Other way, Excusing Sinners, Blaming God. Thank you. Excusing Sinners. There is an entailment of heresy there somewhere.

Now I'm questioning if that's it. I have it on Kindle. I used to have the paperback here.

At any rate, Guillaume Binyon's book, Blaming Sinners, Excusing God, or Excusing God, whatever.

It's one of those. You can search it. Tim Stratton said that in his estimation, that was one of the most rigorous and best defenses of the

Calvinist position that he's read. I don't know if that's changed since the last time he said that.

Obviously, he disagrees, but he thought that that was a very, very strong defense. That was a book that you suggested,

I think it was you, might have suggested to me that I should read. I think I did. Yeah, and I've read portions of it.

It's not an easy read, but definitely worth opening up and taking notes and things like that.

Tim kind of commended the book for being a really good book on this specific topic, if people are interested.

All right, now, let's take the quiz, finally. Let's do it.

Let's do it. Calvinist quiz. The Calvinist quiz. You can find Tim Stratton's stuff on Freethinking—it's so informal—his stuff on freethinkingministries .com.

And again, Tyler, if you're interested in Tyler's material, he's on the FreedThinker podcast, the

FreedThinker podcast you can find on iTunes and other formats, I'm sure, right? Other formats as well. So the point of the

Calvinist quiz, as I understand it, is that Tim is going to ask these questions to his fellow

Calvinists so that they can answer it in such a way so as to affirm in a minimal way that you hold to some form of mere

Molinism, right? Have I got that correct? He wants you to affirm mere Molinism. Now, mere

Molinism is the bare essentials of what makes Molinism Molinism, without all of the extra baggage that people can add.

And the reason why he does this is because, I think, to Tim's credit, he is a bridge builder.

He really does think that there is a way to hold to a Calvinist position and be a

Molinist. He believes that those are consistent. Tyler does not believe that they can be consistently matched together.

But here is the quiz. I'm going to read through all six of the questions, and then we're going to return back to the first question, and then you can address them from your perspective and go into an explanation of it.

So, question number one. Question for Calvinists. Did Satan possess libertarian freedom to reject

God? Question two. Did Adam and Eve possess libertarian freedom to not eat of the forbidden fruit?

Question three. Do unregenerate sinners have libertarian freedom and an ability to choose between a range of sinful thoughts and actions?

Question four. Do Christians possess the ability to resist temptation in thought and action, as per 1

Corinthians 10, 13? And when you answer the question, perhaps you could read the passage as well. Question five.

Do Christians have the libertarian ability to choose between reading a red Bible or a blue Bible?

For example, if John Piper—he throws in the Calvinist example. That's so witty of him.

If John Piper chose to read a red Bible, could he have genuinely chosen otherwise and read the blue Bible?

And question six. Do Christians possess the libertarian freedom to deliberate and rationally think things through to reach conclusions like Calvinism is probably true or Molinism is the inference to the best explanation?

Here's the last—well, he has got two more points there, but he says, if you answered yes to one or more of the preceding questions, then you affirm libertarian free will in some form, i .e.,

soft libertarianism. If you answered in the affirmative to any of these questions, the next questions raised are the following.

Was God surprised by any of these free choices, and did God learn anything new based on these free choices?

If you answered no to these questions, because God is eternally omniscient, then it follows that God knew that these free choices would be made logically prior to his creative decree.

If that is the case, then God possesses middle knowledge. This is how God can be completely sovereign over soft libertarian free choices of humans.

God chooses to create a world in which he knows how persons would freely choose. God predestines all things without causally determining all things.

Lastly, thus, even if you are a Calvinist, you still affirm mere Molinism by affirming the two essential pillars.

One, God eternally possesses middle knowledge, and two, humans possess libertarian free will.

All right, okay, so let's jump in. Question number one, did

Satan possess libertarian freedom to reject God? Go. Well, since I deny libertarian freedom, and he's front -loading into the question, no.

Okay, explain that a little bit. This is repeated throughout this.

There's only one question where he leaves off the modifier libertarian, which is interesting, because it's the one passage that appeals to a biblical text, which we'll talk about.

If you want to ask, did Satan possess freedom to reject God? Well, do you mean capacity, or do you mean metaphysically real ability?

That's going to be an interesting question. But if you're just going to ask, does Satan possess libertarian freedom to reject

God? No, because I just don't think libertarian freedom is coherent within God's own creation, so no.

Right, okay, good. And I think that's interesting, because he does use the word in one of the questions where it says a person could genuinely choose otherwise, already begging the question that that particular view of freedom is the true view of freedom.

All right, question two. And if it gets repetitive, go ahead. We'll just walk through these. Did Adam and Eve possess libertarian freedom to not eat of the forbidden fruit?

Well, since libertarianism is not possible in God's creation, no. Okay, three.

Do unregenerate sinners have the libertarian freedom and the ability to choose between a range of sinful thoughts and actions?

Well, again, since unregenerate sinners are living in God's creation and libertarian freedom is not possible in God's creation, no.

So they don't have an option between a range of options? There are a range of options, but they don't have limited libertarian freedom to choose to do other than the thing that they desire to do.

So there are a range of options that they are able, it's within their capacity, but God did not decree a world in which they chose those actions that are consistent with their nature.

That's correct. Okay, all right. Question four. Do Christians possess the ability to resist temptation in thought and action as per 1

Corinthians 10 .13? Sure, 1 Corinthians 10 .13. I'll read it, by the way. And this is the one that he leaves off libertarianism, interestingly enough.

And it says, therefore, let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.

That's leading up to it. No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability.

But with the temptation, he will provide you the way of escape that you may be able to endure it.

Now, question. What does Tim think that passage entails, and how would you respond to that?

Tim thinks that that passage entails that we have libertarian freedom. We have the ability to choose to do other than the thing that we do.

The problem is manifold in this. The question leaves off libertarianism.

So I'm going to answer in the affirmative. I'm going to say Christians do possess the ability to resist temptation.

Our capacity as regenerate Christians is no longer bound to sin.

We are now alive in Christ. The example,

I can't remember if it's Jonathan Edwards or Martin Luther, one of them, it's the question of a horse in a carriage being driven by a dead man or a live man.

The thing driving it determines where it's going to go in the sense of the capacity.

So if an unregenerate sinner is the thing that's driving, it will always sin because the thing driving the will is unregenerate.

The believer is now not dead in sin, so our will is now no longer bound to sin.

So if we desire to do righteousness in Christ, we can do that now. Our ability is different.

Our capacity is enlivened now. The question is, do we have libertarian freedom to do other than the thing we actually do?

The answer to that is no. We still don't have libertarian freedom to choose other than the we do.

It's just the thing that we choose, our passions, our desires, are now no longer dead to sin.

We are no longer in bondage to sin and death, and so our options now are different.

So I would say no. One of the problems here, though, this is actually a good example of, and I love

Tim, but this is a good example of Molinus not actually exegeting a passage. God is the one that is taking away the temptation and ensuring it's not something that will overpower us.

It's not something that's beyond our ability, and our ability is tied to us being able to endure the suffering or the temptation to make it through.

It's not actually talking about the ability of the will in a libertarian sense.

Even if libertarianism is true, that's just not what this passage is talking about.

So again, I think this is more of an example of proof texting than exegesis.

Okay, all right. Question five, so do Christians have the libertarian ability to choose between reading a red

Bible or a blue Bible? If John Piper chose to read a red Bible, could he have genuinely chosen otherwise and read the blue Bible?

Well, here he switched the words. He said libertarian ability. There's nothing in our faculty, even if we're dead and bound in sin, that being bound in sin isn't bound to red or blue books.

So there's nothing in our ability that is bound in that type of sense. But he says libertarian ability, so I think he might just be thinking ability and freedom as synonymous, but that's an equivocation of terms.

There's a conflation that's happening there. And if he means libertarian in the sense of libertarian freedom or the ability to make libertarianly free choices, then again, since libertarianism is not possible in God's creation, no.

All right, question six, do Christians possess the libertarian freedom to deliberate and rationally think things through to reach conclusions like Calvinism is probably true or Molinism is the inference to the best explanation?

And this is wrapped up to the question I asked before, that if causal determinism is true, then you cannot rationally affirm causal determinism or anything else.

So go ahead. So how would you answer that? Yeah. So again, the answer is he's front -loading the question with the assumption of libertarian freedom being the only type of freedom.

And so I'm going to say he's front -loading it with libertarian freedom. So I'm going to say no. The problem here is that it'd be like me saying, does a married bachelor have the ability to think

Calvinism is true or Molinism is the inference to the best explanation? Just because my answer is no to that doesn't mean that in the actual world, nobody has the ability to deliberate and rationally think things like Calvinism.

I just deny the front -loaded principle, but it doesn't mean that I think the outcome in reality is false.

Right. So now if you answered yes, which obviously you did not. Well, I answered the one yes, but it's the one that's inconsequential to either of these next two.

All right. So if you answered yes to one or more of the preceding questions, then you affirm libertarian free will in some form, soft libertarianism.

If you answered in the affirmative to any of these questions, the next questions raised are the following. Was God surprised by any of these free choices?

Obviously no, because they aren't free choices in the sense that he is thinking, right?

Well, I would say that if libertarian freedom was true, God wouldn't be surprised by the choices, but his form of beliefs would be confirmed.

He would learn, right? Remember, I think it entails open theism. If I have libertarian freedom,

I could choose other than what God knew. Okay. And did God learn anything new based on these free choices?

Yes, God would have learned. If libertarianism is true, God would have learned that his prior beliefs were true.

Okay. All right. So if those are the ways you answered and those answers are correct, then you're not affirming what he is trying to draw as the conclusion, that if you affirm the things that he asked in the way that he asked them, then

God eternally possesses middle knowledge and humans possess libertarian free will, which you deny.

God does not have middle knowledge. You would say, for example, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, his knowledge of counterfactuals is really an aspect of his natural knowledge, not so much this extra category of middle knowledge.

Correct. Yeah. I would also, while you were reading the lead up to this, there's a couple of problems actually even in the lead up, right?

That shows the way Molinists and libertarians think about this. He says, at the very end,

God predestines all things without causally determining all things. Well, I mean, on Molinism, if that's the case,

I don't know that, I'm not exactly sure what he even means when he says things like that.

I don't exactly know. So, I'm trying to think of it.

God predestines all things without, because he doesn't equate predestination with causal determinism. Well, I mean, at that,

I'm not even, I just don't know what's the difference between determinism, predestination, foreordination, causal determinism.

It just seems so vague that I'm not sure that he even, I don't know what the difference between those would be.

I'm sure he has definitions. I think he has definitions, but they are not necessarily laid out here.

Because you can say, well, God predestines or God decrees all things, but then it's like, well, what does decree mean?

Well, how does he decree? God causes all things, but how does he cause it? Does he cause it via passive, active actualization?

All these little caveats that aren't necessarily described in this article here, but I'm sure he has specific definitions for those.

Whether you would agree with them or not would be another issue, but I know he does have explanations for those.

All right. Well, the other thing is that God predestines all things without causally determining all things, which shows his hand that he's conflating all kinds of determinism with causal determinism, with hard determinism, right?

Which just isn't the case. I mean, most Calvinists don't affirm causal determinism. We don't think that God, even though that God has predestined and is the first cause of all things, we don't think that God is the primary cause of every single thing.

We think that God works through ends and means, and so it's just not the case that God is causally determining all things.

And I usually point this out. I know we're trying to wrap up on this one, but I normally point this out. I'm listening.

I'm just, while you're reading that, I wanted to point people to an article written by Dr. James Anderson from Reformed Theological Seminary, where he actually lays out the different forms of determinism, so that you can make sure that people aren't equivocating when they use the term.

I can't find it right now, but go ahead. I'm sorry. The thing that I normally point out is something—I think inspiration poses a problem for Molinism, right?

If we can say that God inspired the biblical text such that the biblical text can be called the

Word of God, right? But we say Paul wrote the epistles freely.

He wrote it in his own form, his own style, his own vocabulary, his own context. Paul freely chose to write

Romans. But God so inspired it that each word, right?

If you're Protestant, you affirm verbal plenary inspiration, right? God inspired each and every jot and tittle of the text.

There's no accidental words. There's no things that can be left out. If that's the case, compatibilism just seems not only necessarily true, but you start running into all these problems of the way they get out of it, and they say, okay, well, his statement that God predestines all things without determining all things.

Okay, if God predestined it in the sense that he foreknew, and he picked the world that Paul wrote the book that he wanted him to write, but he wasn't determining the text.

He was predestining the text. That is equally true of every single text ever written anywhere, right?

Where God predestined this world, where Hemingway would write his book, right?

Where Tolstoy would write War and Peace in exactly the way that it is, right?

Because God, it's world A, it's not world B. God had predestined that Tolstoy would write

War and Peace exactly as he wrote War and Peace, but he didn't causally determine it. That means that the

Bible is inspired in a nearly identical way as every other text was permitted and brought about to exist in his creation.

Now, I don't know the answer to this, but I do know that Dr. Craig, William Lane Craig, has written a response to that objection.

I don't remember what his answer was, but if someone's interested in that, maybe they can look up Molinism and Inspiration on reasonablefaith .org

so they can check out what Dr. Craig has to say on that. I do know that he addresses that issue.

I haven't read it in a long time, so people might want to check that out, but yeah, those are some good points.

Listen, it is right now, 1 .43 in the morning, and they have work tomorrow.

I really, I can talk about this stuff all night, but I would like to have you back on so that we can review your really awesome debate with the atheist

YouTuber Tom Jump. For those of you who don't know who

Tom Jump is, he is, well, he's an atheist YouTuber, and you can find his debates on YouTube just looking up his name, but Tyler was invited on his show, and I think, to be quite frank,

I think Tyler destroyed him, and I don't mean that in a kind of like, this is what it's all about, destroying one person.

No, I think that Tyler adequately responded to the various objections or equivocations.

I think Tyler identified logical fallacies in Tom's position and his utilization of the ad hoc fallacy, which when we talk about reviewing your debate, you can go into those things, but that debate is actually on the podcast, on the

Revealed Apologetics podcast, where you can listen to that debate in its entirety, and hopefully that can set the framework in your mind so that when we have

Tyler back on, you can kind of follow along in the discussion. I think he did an excellent job.

Tyler also debated Aaron Ra, who is a very famous atheist, and to be honest,

I have not actually listened to that one yet, so I'm going to have to give that a listen this week. There's two of them. I actually had an in -person formal debate with him, and then we had a follow -up on his show.

Right, yeah, and folks can check that out on YouTube as well, and I think that is it.

If guys are interested, once again, the Freedthinker podcast, I'm telling you, you will not be disappointed if you download that podcast.

Even if you disagree with Tyler, you will learn a lot, and are there any last things you'd like to share before we finish up?

No, thank you. I appreciate you coming on. I know we've been trying to do this for a while, and I appreciate you staying up till 10 .45

my time, 1 .45 your time. No, no, no worries. Here's the thing.

I don't know what apologetic methodology you use. I'm a presuppositionalist, but I'm also a Calvinist, and I'm trying my best, because apologetics is the defense of the faith, and you can do that with the unbeliever, but you could also do that intermurally with the in -house discussions.

I think defending Calvinism, if we think it's the biblical position, that's a kind of apologetics, and I think that's useful for people to learn about, and be able to interact with, and I think you do a fine job interacting with those ideas, and I think you've given us all a lot to think about, so thank you.

Well, thank you. The only thing that I would say in terms of marketing is that if you go to the website freedthinkerpodcast .blogspot

.com, I actually take relevant topics, and I put them kind of in a catalog, so rather than trying to find every single thing that I did on Molinism, I have the

Molinism collection that's available there, or I have, if you're trying to find everything on Calvinism or Reformed Theology and all that kind of stuff,

I have the Reformed Theology collection, so you can find it kind of all in those two places.

That's right, and if you guys are interested in looking again at Tim Stratton's stuff, that is on the freedthinkingministries .com

website. Tim is an awesome guy. I know that even as he listens to this, he's gonna smile and text later and be like,

I'm gonna take a bunch of notes in this again, and then here's where I think things were off, and that's really part of the whole brotherly discussion.

They're strong disagreements. They're important disagreements, but that doesn't mean we can't talk about them in a respectful manner.

So, Tyler, thank you very much for coming on to the Revealed Apologetics YouTube channel slash podcast, and I'm looking forward to having you on again.