May 10, 2018 Show with Dr. Tony Costa & Dr. Kirk MacGregor on “Calvinism vs. Molinism: A Discussion Between Two Brothers in Christ Who Disagree Over How Scripture Explains God’s Sovereignty & Man’s Freedom” (Part 2)

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this tenth day of May 2018, and I'm so delighted that we are having part two today of a discussion that we began on May 1st.

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This is part two of Calvinism vs. Molinism, a discussion between two brothers in Christ who disagree over how

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Scripture explains God's sovereignty and man's freedom, and to discuss this issue we have today

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Dr. Tony Costa, who is the Calvinist in this discussion. He is professor of apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary, and we also have

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Dr. Kirk McGregor, who is the Molinist. He is assistant professor of philosophy and religion, and I believe he is the head of the philosophy and religion department now, since that bio came out, is that correct,

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Kirk? That's correct. At McPherson College, and he is the author of Luis de

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Molina, or Luis de Molina, The Life and Theology of the Founder of Middle Knowledge, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome both

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Dr. Tony Costa and Dr. Kirk McGregor back to the program. Greetings, gentlemen.

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It's a pleasure to be with you again, Chris. And we have joining us also, once again, my co -host,

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Anthony Eugenio, co -founder of New York Apologetics. He also, you'll see him on YouTube, as he has organized a number of public moderated theological debates, as I have, and you will also notice that he occasionally moderates those debates.

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In fact, he actually participated in a debate himself. Could you tell us about that debate that you had with the female apologist,

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Anthony? Oh yeah, that was at Long Island University, probably about four or five years ago now, and she's a professor of philosophy, and she just, obviously, she's an atheist, doesn't believe in God, and we had a really good, fun time going back and forth.

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I think at the end, the audience was pretty much on my side, based on what we, you know, we had gone through, so you can check that out online.

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Just type in Eugenio, U -V -E -N -I -O, debate, and it'll come up in YouTube.

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Great, and let's see here, I just, sorry, I just got startled, because my webmaster emailed me.

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He should know better not to email me during a show, unless it's an emergency, and it looks like it's something about something in the past, so I will, something that does not need my attention immediately.

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So, let us, if you could, each of you, start off with a basic summary, for those of our listeners who are just tuning in for the first time, they did not hear you guys on May 1st discussing these issues.

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Give a summary of your positions, and as brief as you could be, because we already went through a lot more detail on May 1st, and people can always go back to the

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May 1st discussion. But, let's start again with Dr. Kirk McGregor, if you could give us a summary of what

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Molinism is. Molinism is a view that makes two claims.

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The first claim is, before God's decision to create the world, God knew everything that would happen in any possible scenario he might create.

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So, God knew the truth value of all statements of the form, in such and such possible scenarios, so -and -so would happen.

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Molina called this, would knowledge, God's middle knowledge. The second claim, as beings created in the image of God, humans, like God, possess libertarian free will.

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Libertarian free will is a technical term. It means the ability to choose between various options consistent with one's nature.

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It's got to be emphasized that libertarian free will does not specify the range of options from which a person can choose.

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One's nature fixes the range. So, a totally depraved person can only choose between spiritually evil options.

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So, the criminal can choose between robbing the bank, robbing the liquor store, raping, murdering, and so on.

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A regenerate believer can choose between the options of various spiritually good action, or they can choose to succumb to temptation.

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God can only choose between spiritually good options. So, God could choose to create any beings that he wants, to create very different beings than us.

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He could choose to create no world at all, purely based on his sovereign good pleasure. So, whether we're discussing a totally depraved person, a regenerate person, or God, all possess libertarian free will.

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And one of the main points that I was trying to argue is that one can be a

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Molinist and be a Calvinist. That Molinism is a tool that you can use.

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It's not a complete systematic, as is a Calvinism or Arminianism. I think a

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Calvinist can use this tool in order to bolster their own system, as can people of other theological persuasion.

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Now, just to clarify something, you said something that may appear on the surface to many people as even more hyper -Calvinistic than the worst of hyper -Calvinists.

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You said that somebody who's totally depraved, an unregenerate person, can only choose between evil options, or choose to do evil things.

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Now, some might be scratching their head, even some Calvinists might be scratching their head, before you clarify that statement.

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Obviously, Hitler could have rescued an old lady walking across the street that was about to be hit by a bus.

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You know, evil people, unregenerate people, who are not even considered evil by the world's standards, they can do great and wonderful things.

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You can have atheists doing enormously charitable and benevolent, kind and compassionate, even sacrificial things.

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You could even have atheists giving their own lives, sacrificing their own lives on behalf of somebody that they love.

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So what exactly do you mean by that statement? Well, that's why I said spiritually evil.

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And what I mean by spiritually evil is, even if you do something that works for the betterment of society, or saves human life, that ultimately you're doing it out of a wrong motive.

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That it is not spiritually pure in the sight of God. It's like Isaiah says, that all of our righteousness are like filthy rags.

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So, that the atheist who does something kind or self -sacrificial, they're not doing it out of the right motive.

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Or someone who perhaps has some type of belief in God, where they say that, well,

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I believe in God, but the reason for believing in God is not because they love God in and of himself, but they love

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God for the good things that God might be able to provide for them, or they love God as the get -out -of -hell -free card, or something like that.

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So what I'm saying is that actions that are performed from the bent of selfishness, from the bent of being a self -centered person rather than a

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God -centered and other -centered person, that that would be a spiritually evil action. That's a distinction that goes back to Augustine.

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And even the fact that God considers our righteous deeds nothing more than filthy rags, when they are being offered to him as some kind of a meritorious action that deserves our, that warrants our getting rewarded and entering into heaven and so on.

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Now, before I go to Tony, I wanted to have something clarified that I even said last time we were together.

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I asked you the question, as a Molinist, do you believe that God has ever decreed an evil act that did not merely occur because he knew it would already happen due to his omniscience?

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And one thing that I wanted to clarify in my own wording was,

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I do not mean to say by that question that I believe that God takes morally neutral people and decrees that they commit evil acts that they otherwise would not have been easily capable of doing due to their spiritual condition.

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I'm talking about specific actions. For instance, you know,

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God knows that apart from his restraint, apart from his even having mercy on not only the unelected but those around them, he restrains the evil of the unregenerate as much as he pleases to.

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And so he can lift a finger of restraint and a person, according to a decreed plan of God, will commit a murder such as the

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Jews crying out for Christ's death and the Romans who actually nailed him to the cross. Now do you believe, again

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I'll say that statement again having made that clarification, as a

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Molinist, do you believe that God has decreed even evil actions to occur that it is not merely based on his omniscience and knowing something that these evil men would already do?

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Yes, I do believe that, because certainly God's decree is what sets everything in motion.

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If God doesn't decree for something to happen, then it's not going to happen.

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If God doesn't choose to create certain individuals in certain circumstances,

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God doesn't choose to providentially fine -tune this world down to the last detail, then nothing will happen.

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So the Molinist doesn't believe that, well, it's going to happen anyway regardless of whether God decrees it or not.

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No, the Molinist will say that if God doesn't decree for something to happen, then it's not going to happen.

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What the Molinist thinks is that God has the creative ability, it belongs to his omnipotence, to be able to create creatures who can choose between alternatives consistent with their nature, and that God, perfectly knowing his own imagination, knows how, if those creatures were instantiated, how they would act in various scenarios.

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So God knows that my criminal from before, if he were in such and such circumstances and God didn't restrain him from doing it, that he would rob the bank.

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And if God doesn't do anything, if God doesn't decree anything, then not only will he not rob the bank, but he won't even exist.

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So God has to decree that he exists and that he robbed the bank in order for him to rob the bank.

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It's just that God uses the knowledge that he has in issuing the decree. Now if you could,

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Dr. Tony Costa, give us a brief summary of Calvinism, and especially and specifically in regard to God's sovereignty in its relationship to the will and freedom of man.

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Obviously there's too much involved with Calvinism for you to summarize everything. But as far as the discussion that has direct relationship to Molinism as a counterpart or an opposing view to Molinism, if you could summarize what is known as Calvinism or the doctrines of sovereign grace or reform theology in this regard.

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That's sure. The ideas of reform theology stipulate that from the very beginning, when

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God created man, he was perfect in Eden and had perfect fellowship with God.

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But ever since the Fall, man not only became spiritually dead, but inevitably he also died physically.

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And since the Fall, all human beings are bound by sin. They are spiritually dead, they are enslaved to sin.

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And therefore, because they are enslaved to sin, and are children of wrath, as Ephesians 2 points out, that means that everything they do will be bent towards evil.

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This is what total depravity is about. It's not to say that someone can't do a kind thing, or walk an old lady across the street, or give to charity.

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What it means is that everything that we do is motivated towards our own selfish ambitions, and that in and of ourselves we do not seek

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God, as Romans 3, 9 and 10 points out, no one seeks for God, they've all become corrupt, all have sinned, conferred the glory of God.

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And so therefore, the so -called libertarian free will of man is problematic in the Calvinistic context, because while man is free, he is only free.

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Calvinism does not deny that man has a free will, it just argues that free will is oriented always towards evil and sin.

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And therefore, the idea that man is truly free is problematic.

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The only truly free being would be the Triune God Himself. Man is bound, his will is in bondage to sin, and therefore the idea of prevenient grace, which is something that is not only necessary in Arminianism, but also,

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I believe Molina also held to prevenient grace. The Calvinist also would reject that concept, that grace is a gift from God, it's unmerited, it's not something that we merit, and that it is

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God who quickens sinners, it's God who makes sinners alive in Christ. God's decrees are

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God foreknows His people, not because He doesn't decree something because He foreknows them, He foreknows

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His people precisely because He has decreed from the foundation of the world those who would be in Christ and would be predestined unto salvation.

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And because of that, God quickens people, no one, Jesus says in John 6, verse 44, no one can come to me unless the

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Father who sent me draws them to me. So man in and of himself cannot choose God, he is bound in sin, and unless God takes the first initiative in seeking man and quickening man to spiritual life, man left to himself will never seek

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God. And so the issue of prevenient grace, the issue of libertarian free will,

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I think are two issues that Calvinists would take opposition towards.

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And so the Calvinists would hold to the necessary knowledge of God, that is, God's necessary knowledge of all truth, and so forth, and also

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God's free knowledge as well. And middle knowledge, in my estimation,

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I think if we apply Occam's razor here, there really is no need for middle knowledge in the

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Calvinistic sense. Now also to clarify something you said there, do you not believe as a

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Calvinist, because I know that I as a Calvinist believe this, and I know that most of my heroes, both living on earth and in heaven, would believe that multitudes do indeed choose

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Christ and they intellectually accept the truth claims about him in Scripture, even those that are made by him himself, but this is not a saving knowledge of Christ, this is an intellectual exercise and it might be somebody who is choosing

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Christianity for the benefits of religion in their life, the way that it makes them feel, they prefer

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Christianity over other religions for some reason or another, they might even be a scholar who could recite to you by memory volumes of texts from the

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Scripture without even glancing at a page. But some of these men, many of these men and women, are damned because they aren't really regenerate.

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So don't you believe that a person can, in a sense, choose

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Christ and accept quote -unquote Christ or believe Christ and his claims, but not really be one who is trusting in Christ, one who is truly repentant and following Christ?

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Absolutely, and in fact we have an example of that in Holy Scripture. In John 8 31 it says,

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Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, if you abide in my word you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth, the truth will set you free.

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Well these Jews obviously believed in him from a maybe an intellectual perspective or just they liked his miracles, they liked the show, but when

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Jesus said, look if you are truly my disciples you will abide in my word, and then they go on to become offended at him when he tells them that they are in bondage and that whoever sins is a slave to sin.

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They take great offense at him, and then by the time you're done, John chapter 8, they turn around and call him demon -possessed, they call him

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Miss American, and then in the end after Jesus makes the incredible claim that before Abraham was, I am, they intend to pick up stones and stone him.

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So here's a bunch of Jews that the fourth gospel tells us believed in Jesus, but it's obviously it's head knowledge, it's not true conversion, and the very people who claim to believe in him took great offense at the idea that they were in bondage to sin and that they needed the

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Son of God to set them free. That's the very same message today Chris, that people are gravely offended at, that man does not want to believe that he is in bondage, man believes that he is autonomous, that he is a free, libertarian, free -willing agent.

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Jesus comes along, says actually, no, you guys are in bondage and you need to be set free.

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And as far as Dr. McGregor's explanation of the decree of God of evil acts that have occurred and will occur, are you satisfied with his explanation as conforming to the scriptures and to being acceptable within the boundaries of what we would call

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Reformed theology? Well, I would say it's acceptable insofar as we agree that the decrees of God, that things happen in history, on the stage of history, because God has decreed it, not because God created the best possible world in which the greatest number of people will believe and will be saved.

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I think that the main issues here, really, between us, I think fall within the parameters of prevenient grace and also the idea of libertarian free will.

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And so the idea here is that Molina seems to have tried to bring a synthesis, if I may borrow

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Hegel's idea of the dialectic here, that the Calvinist brings the thesis and the

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Roman Catholic Church brings the antithesis, and then Molina comes to try to form a middle way, a synthesis between the two, and say that yes,

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God's decrees are definitely biblical, God is sovereign, but at the same time, man is still a free moral agent, and that God foresees what every creature would do in a given circumstance.

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And so I believe that God's decrees are fundamental. I don't believe his knowledge, or even if we say middle knowledge, if we grant that,

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I don't believe that his middle knowledge is anterior to his decrees. I think that they are posterior, they come after his decrees.

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Yes, because if it were not so, when it comes to the good things like choosing

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Christ, it seems that the election of individuals is really based on some kind of knowledge on what

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God knows about their response to the gospel. Now, is that incorrect of me to say that, Dr.

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McPherson? This is the second time

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I did this. Dr. McGregor, who is from McPherson College.

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Any brand of Scotch will do. Sorry about that.

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Yeah, yeah. It's important to point out that the view that I'm defending as Molinism, I construe

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Molinism along sort of the narrowest possible parameters in order to include as many people underneath the tent, if that makes sense.

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So I think that anyone who is working with the system that I laid out in those two claims that are presented in Book 4 of Molina's Concordia, people like an

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Alvin Plantinga, who is Reformed, or a William Lane Craig, who is an Arminian, or various others, that all of them would count as Molinists.

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Now, I'm not defending every claim that Molina made. You are correct that Molina did hold to the doctrine of prevenient grace.

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I'm not defending the doctrine of prevenient grace here. I realize that the Calvinist isn't going to grant that, and what

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I'm saying is, the Calvinist can use sort of the structure that Molina gives and just disagree with Molina concerning prevenient grace in exactly the same way that a

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Reformed Baptist might grant the five points of Calvinism, but disagree with what

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Calvin says on infant baptism, for example. So I don't really see the issue as being prevenient grace.

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I see the issue here as being terminological, that Dr. Costa means something different by libertarian freedom than I do.

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Libertarian freedom is not actually a term that is found in Molina.

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Both the terms libertarian freedom and compatibilist freedom, those are philosophical terms with a precise meaning that were developed in the 19th century, and a libertarian view of freedom says that someone has the ability to choose between the options consistent with their nature.

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Now, depending on what you think human nature can do is going to depend on how far you think that range is.

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So if you think that human beings have the ability to choose Christ on their own, then you'll include that in the range of options.

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But I'm saying you don't have to. You could hold the total depravity and say that the only options from which you can choose are spiritually evil options, that you're certainly within your right to do that.

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And Alvin Plantinga, for example, would. Well, obviously the compatibilism as a concept did not begin in the 19th century.

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It was even laid out to some degree in the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, which is a 17th century document.

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But just to clear some... I'm sorry, somebody trying to say something? I can't... I'm hearing something in the back.

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Yeah, what I'm saying is the term compatibilism isn't there in the

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London Baptist Confession of Faith. So even though I can look back on Molina and say

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Molina was a libertarian, which is true, and that Molina taught libertarian free will, which is true, one could say,

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I'm not... I would actually contest this point. I actually think that the London Baptist Confession of Faith and Westminster actually teach a type of libertarian freedom that I'm defending here, rather than compatibilism, once one understands what compatibilism means.

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Compatibilism means that there is a compatibility between determinism, and if you're a theist, that would be divine determinism, and free will.

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And the way that you make that work, if you read the literature on compatibilism, is by cleverly redefining free will to mean everything that you do, you do voluntarily, even though that's the only thing that you could have done.

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You could not have chosen otherwise. And I would say in any court in the land, if it were shown that you could not do otherwise, that the only option that you could do is what you did, even though you did it voluntarily, that would be sufficient to say that, in fact, you acted under duress, you did not act of your own free choice, and that you were not guilty of the crime.

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Yes, according, in summary, how I view that whole tension, and I think how historically

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Calvinists have viewed it, is that men are free to choose according to their own desires.

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Their own desires are determined by their nature, and whatever they do before a rebirth cannot please

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God. That's basically that the whole thing in summary. But just one more thing before we go to a break, and then we go to our listener questions that Anthony Eugenio and I, I guess we'll go back and forth reading listener questions, but do you really believe that a

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Molinist point of view does not interfere or even contradict unconditional election?

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Because unconditional election historically has been taught as God's decreeing the election of a certain group of people that is completely unattached to his knowledge of how they would behave or respond or act.

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Well, I guess I would leave that, I'll leave that to Tony to see whether he thinks that what

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Molina thought was unconditional election really does count as unconditional election.

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The way that Molina would have described it, and what

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I think of the situation, would be this. That for every person without bias or partiality towards some people over against others, that God chooses concerning every person whether they are elect or whether they are reprobate, and that what that means concerning middle knowledge is that God will choose,

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God will elect you by putting you in various circumstances in which he knew that if you were in those circumstances, that you would either do something or not do something, which is different from what the reprobate either would do or would abstain from doing.

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And I gave one example of how you could make that work last week if you said that in one world,

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God knows that I would freely blaspheme against the

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Spirit. Now, I agree with Tony that in Mark 3, that blasphemy against the

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Holy Spirit, the way that that was done was by believing that Jesus was doing miracles by the power of Satan, but comparing

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Scripture with Scripture, Jesus says that's the only unforgivable sin. 1 John 5 and Hebrews 6 also describe an unforgivable sin, which makes me think there are more than, there's blaspheme against the

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Holy Spirit. And so I'm saying that in world 1,

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God knows that totally depraved me will blaspheme against the

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Holy Spirit. In world 2, God knows that I will not do that. In world 3, God knows that I will not exist.

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And so God, by choosing world 2, and in world 2, God, say, gives me irresistible grace, then

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God elects me, whereas God could have reprobated me by choosing the first world, or not created me at all.

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And Dr. Tony Koss, before we go to the break, if you could respond to that. Yeah, again,

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I don't see it as God looking at all possible worlds, almost as if he's a mathematician doing probability statistics or something of that nature.

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I see God's decrees set out in Ephesians 1, that God had decreed that he would elect the people to himself in Christ Jesus.

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The reference, of course, are all personal. He chose us, he blessed us, and so forth. And that he did that according to the counsel of his will, and it was to the praise of his glory.

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And so, I think with the Molinithic approach, with the world 1, world 2, and what this person would do in this world or in that world,

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I think it brings us back to, again, that God is almost dependent on what his creatures would do in any given world.

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And that's what I do find problematic about Molinism. And I think it's unnecessary. Why can't we just take what

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Scripture says, that God decreed that he would save the people for his name, that he will actually bring that about, that God will, the work that he started in his people, he will finish it to the day of Christ Jesus.

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And so, I just don't see any need to go into possible worlds and what this person would do in this possible world.

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I think at the end of the day, it is God who is to receive the maximal glory. It's his work to his glory.

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And therefore, I just think middle knowledge really is not necessary, in my opinion. Okay, we're going to our first break right now.

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If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

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If you just tuned us in today, we are having a discussion between two people holding opposing views.

38:24

We have Dr. Tony Costa, who is a Calvinist on the faculty of Toronto Baptist Seminary, and we have

38:31

Dr. Kirk MacGregor, who is a Molinist on the faculty at MacPherson College, both discussing

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Calvinism versus Molinism. And if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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And my co -host today is Anthony Uvinio of newyorkapologetics .com.

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And Anthony, how would you like to work out the questions from listeners? Did you want to start with a question?

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You want me to start, because I have a whole bunch from listeners. And also, I just wanted to let you know, I will be naming by first name, city and state, and country, those who have written to me.

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I don't know how you are going to handle your questions. Well, I had sent out a list of questions to the guys ahead of time and yourself.

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Some of the things that we had come up with in our mentoring group, so these are from a bunch of different guys from our group.

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I didn't take down any names of the people who did them, but I think they are pertinent questions and I'm looking forward to asking them.

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Okay, well let's just take turns. I'll start with a question that we received from Mark in Rancho Santa Margarita, California.

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And Mark asks the question, what is the casual relationship between the circumstances in which a person is placed and their decisions?

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Isn't it problematic to say that God can know what a free creature will decide based on their circumstances, while denying a casual link between the circumstances and the decision?

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And we'll start with Dr. McGregor. No, there isn't any causal link between the circumstances and God knowing what creatures would do in various circumstances.

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The way that God can know how possible creatures would act in various circumstances is simply because having that kind of knowledge is logically possible for God to have.

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If God is an omniscient being, then he must have all knowledge which is logically possible to have.

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And so to deny that God has middle knowledge seems to make God less than omniscient.

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It says that there's this category of knowledge which certainly scripture indicates that God has, and yet says that God doesn't have it.

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So, it was funny last week when Dr. Kostas cited Isaiah 55, 8 and 9,

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For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts are your thoughts.

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I wanted to jump up and down in happiness because that's what Molinism affirms. Only by thinking that God is like a human can one deny middle knowledge.

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If God doesn't have middle knowledge, then there are logically knowable truths before God's creative decree that God does not know.

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So, robbing God of his omniscience and perfection. So, God, being that he is omniscient, being that all possible creaturely essences, so to speak, the pattern of any possible creature he might make, and all facts about what they would do if instantiated, those are all ideas in the mind, specifically the imagination of God.

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So, the way God has middle knowledge of possible free creatures, Molina calls super comprehension, and that means

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God's ability to infinitely perceive the individual essence or pattern of every possible creature that exists solely in his imagination.

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And from that, middle knowledge would follow as a result. So, I just see it as it's logically possible for God to have this knowledge.

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God must have all logically possible knowledge if he's omniscient, and therefore he has it.

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And Dr. Tony Costa, if you could respond to that? Yeah, the idea of God's omniscience is something that has always been recognized in Calvinist circles,

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Reformed circles, and even Arminian circles, and so forth. And so, the idea that God is fully aware of all circumstances and relationship that people have to those circumstances,

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I think is clearly shown in Scripture. We see that as well in Acts 4 .27,

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where the whole week of the Passion, where Jesus goes into Jerusalem, and Pilate is there at the right time of the year, during the

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Passover, and everything is set in motion to bring about the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ.

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And so, as the Westminster Confession of Faith puts it on the Prophets Decrees, which is quickly quoted here,

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God, from all eternity, did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass.

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Yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.

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And so, again, I'm not denying it all. When I was quoting Isaiah 55 and so forth, 8 -9, my thoughts are higher than your thoughts, it has always been understood that God's omniscience guarantees that God knows all things.

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And so, that's not in dispute at all. Alright, Anthony, if you could,

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Anthony Eugenio, ask one of your questions. Sure, I'd like to know on Molinism and Calvinism, does

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God base his eternal decree, because both Calvinists, Molinists, and Arminians all believe

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God has an eternal decree. Does God base his decree or plan on what man will do or does he base his plan on what he wants to be done first?

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In other words, is God's will sovereign over man's will or vice versa? If he's basing his plan on what man does, it would seem to me that man's will is given a greater nod than his own will.

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Who's that question for? It's going to be for both of you, so whoever wants to... Why don't we start with Tony this time, since we started with Dr.

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McGregor last time. Okay, I think that the basis is, according to Ephesians 1,

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I think it's very clear that God elects according to his own good pleasure, according to the purpose of his will, and he does it to the praise of his glorious grace.

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And so, if we look at the basis of God's election, it's his own sovereign will, and it is to the praise of his glory.

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It's not based on what creatures would do, because then this would be a form of synergism and Pelagianism, and Roman Catholicism, of course, and I think

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Molina being a Roman Catholic Jesuit theologian would probably have held to a form of semi -Pelagianism.

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Maybe Dr. McGregor could correct me if I'm wrong. And so if God does things based on his will and what humans will, then

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I think we're going to end up in a synergistic system where man cooperates with God in salvation.

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But I think Ephesians 1 is very clear that God's election is based on his own will, his own purpose, it's to the praise of his glory, and as Paul pointed out in Ephesians 9, in the case of Jacob and Esau, they were in the womb before they did good or evil, but so that God's election might stand,

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God said that the older will serve the younger, and so I think that God's will is absolutely paramount here, and that if God were not to choose, then no one would be saved.

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And Dr. McGregor? I would agree. No, God does not base his eternal decree or plan on what man would do for the simple reason that if God never makes a decree or plan, man can't do anything.

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Man wouldn't even exist. God bases his eternal decree or plan on his sovereign good pleasure.

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So God authored the script of history. It certainly wasn't decided for him or dictated to him through his creatures.

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What Moenism, as I've been defending it, in other words, the propositions of Book 4 of the

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Concordia, I'm not defending everything that Molina believed, so even though one could classify

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Molina's own application of his own system as semi -Pelagian,

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I'm not defending those aspects. I'm only defending the two aspects that I laid out last week and this week.

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So Moenism understood that way, what's been called by my colleague Tim Stratton mere

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Molinism. What mere Molinism suggests is that God, in authoring the script of history, reflects on the fact that he could create beings who are determined to do all they do and that he could create beings who can choose between alternatives consistent with their nature.

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God, for reasons of his sovereign good pleasure, decides that some of the beings he would create are of this latter kind.

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Because God perfectly knows his own imagination, he innately perceives all facts about each of these possible beings, including everything they would do in every conceivable set of circumstances.

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God sovereignly decides to use this knowledge in bringing about his plan. It's important to emphasize that God could have just as easily chosen to create fully deterministic, hominid creatures like us, but who lack libertarian freedom.

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And God could have just as easily created an utterly different set of divine image bearers than us.

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It's just that this is the script God wanted to write. So in no respect is man's will sovereign over God's will.

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Rather, God's will is sovereign over man's will. For more reasons than I can list, to illustrate

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God's willing to create us is necessary for our will to even exist. God can always at any moment override our will and determine us to do things whenever he chooses.

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And God only allows us to exercise our will to choose between alternatives when he infallibly knows that it will fit within his providential purpose for the world.

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So God fine -tunes this world down to the last detail in accordance with his authorship of the script.

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Okay. Dr. McGregor, would you say that God's decree could come before middle knowledge?

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I would not say that simply because if his decree came before middle knowledge, well, first of all, it wouldn't technically be middle knowledge because, point of terminology, it would just be counterfactual knowledge.

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It wouldn't be middle knowledge. So middle knowledge is knowledge which God has of counterfactuals which precede his decree.

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But I would say we know that counterfactual knowledge exists before the decree because God is omniscient.

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That's what I'm going to keep coming back to here. I want to preserve the perfection of God. That's where my heart is.

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So I want to make sure that God knows all truths at any moment that are logically possible to know.

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And so the question is, is it logically possible for God to know counterfactuals before his decree?

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And here the answer is yes. There's no rule of logic that would forbid such a thing. And when people ask, but how could

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God know this? That's the so -called grounding objection. Two responses could be given.

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One is Molina's doctrine of super comprehension where it's simply a matter of God perfectly understanding his own imagination.

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Second is by saying, I can't picture how God could know it. No human person could know this stuff, but that's no argument that God doesn't know it.

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To say that it is idolatrously makes God in our own image. The only limits on God's knowledge are logical limits, not the limits of what we finite creatures can understand.

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So I think there are plenty of scriptures where we find that God makes creative decisions, the sum total of which are included in his decree on the basis of counterfactual knowledge.

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And so when Dr. Costa said, well, why don't we just stick with the scripture? I don't think his view really does stick with all of the scripture.

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It sticks with some. I think adding what I've said actually allows you to account for all of the scripture on this score.

51:37

In Exodus 13, 17, God decides not to leave the children of Israel on the road through the

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Philistine country on the explicit rationale that if they face war, they would change their mind and return to Egypt.

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In Exodus 34, 15 to 16, God decides to command the Israelites to tear down the

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Canaanites' altars and destroy their idols on the explicit rationale that if they didn't, they would make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, play the harlot with their gods, sacrifice to their gods, and take some of their daughters for their sons.

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In Mark 4, 11 and 12, Jesus decides to explicitly explain his parables to his disciples and only use parables to everyone else on the explicit predestinary rationale that this way they would be ever seeing and ever perceiving and ever hearing but never understanding.

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Otherwise, they would turn and be forgiven. So here, Jesus is making a salvific choice, which is part of the decree, based on the knowledge that if they got the explicit teaching, they would be saved, but if they lacked the explicit teaching, they would be lost.

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And I could give multiple other scriptures. Matthew 11, 20 to 24 would be a case in point.

52:54

And we'll have Tony Costa respond to what you just said when we return from our middle break. This is an elongated break that Grace Life Radio 90 .1

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FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us. It's 12 minutes long. And so take this time to write in your own questions for Dr.

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Tony Costa and Dr. Kirk McGregor, and also take this time to write down the information provided by our advertisers so that you can successfully patronize them.

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But we're going to be back after these messages, so send in your questions to chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence.

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If you live outside the USA, don't go away. God willing, we'll be right back with Dr. Tony Costa and Dr.

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Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Before we return to our discussion on Calvinism vs.

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Molinism between Dr. Tony Costa of Toronto Baptist Seminary and Dr. Kirk McGregor of McPherson College, we just have a couple of announcements to make.

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That's also the email address you can send in a question to our guests, Dr. Tony Costa and Dr. Kirk McGregor today.

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It's chrisarnsonatgmail .com. And if you could, Dr. Tony Costa, now respond to what

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Dr. Kirk McGregor was saying before the break. It seems that the biblical language sometimes seems to give us an indication that God is going to act in certain ways in response to how man either obeys or disobeys.

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But if you could respond to what Dr. McGregor said before the break. Sure. Let me just say that Calvinism does not have a problem with counterfactual knowledge.

01:10:28

In fact, Calvinism accepts the fact that God does possess counterfactual knowledge.

01:10:33

This has even been affirmed in the Westminster Confession of Faith. It doesn't use the word counterfactual knowledge, but for instance, in the

01:10:40

Westminster Confession of Faith, again under God's decrees 3 .2, although God knows whatsoever may or can come to pass upon all supposed conditions, and here's the important article, yet hath he not decreed anything because he foresaw it as future, or is that which would come to pass upon such conditions?

01:11:02

So, the texts that are cited in the Westminster Confession of Faith, interestingly enough, are the very ones that Dr.

01:11:09

McGregor cited. They cite 1 Samuel 23, where David was asking the

01:11:14

Lord about being delivered out of Keilah when Saul was pursuing him. The Westminster Confession of Faith also cites

01:11:21

Matthew 11, 21 and 23. And so, it's not that Calvinism denies that God has counterfactual knowledge.

01:11:29

Of course, he has knowledge of all that can happen in all supposed conditions, but notice it qualifies that by saying that he's not decreed anything because he foresaw it as future, or that which comes to pass upon these conditions.

01:11:46

In other words, it places God's decrees as primal, and his decrees are not based on what he foresees the so -called pre -Royal creatures as doing.

01:11:57

Now, Dr. McGregor did mention Exodus 13, 17, Exodus 34, 15 to 16, but it's interesting in Matthew 11, 20 to 24, even

01:12:06

Dr. Craig openly admitted that this text does not give us this strong argument for real knowledge because the context clearly shows that when

01:12:17

Jesus was giving his rose to Chorazin and Bethsaida, if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.

01:12:27

The context of this passage is judgment. In other words, these references to Tyre and Sidon, he's telling them that because you have this light, the light that these ancient cities did not have, you are all the more culpable.

01:12:43

But it's interesting that if we continue on in Matthew 11, verses 25 to 27, Jesus goes on to praise

01:12:50

God for holding knowledge from the learned and revealing them to the simple.

01:12:56

He says, Matthew 11, 25, At that time Jesus declared, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children.

01:13:07

And the reason, verse 26, Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. And so notice again how

01:13:13

Jesus rejoices in the fact that the Father was hiding knowledge from the learned, revealing them to the simple ones, the little children.

01:13:25

And this was on the basis of God's will, his gracious will. And then he says, All things have been handed over to me by my

01:13:30

Father. No one knows the Son except the Father. No one knows the Father except the Son. And anyone to whom the

01:13:36

Son chooses to reveal Him, we notice again the sovereign Son of God who has the authority to sovereignly reveal the

01:13:44

Father to whosoever He chooses. And so we don't have any issues with these texts, 1

01:13:51

Samuel 23, Exodus 13, 17, because God knows all this counterfactual knowledge because He has decreed all of this.

01:14:01

It's been determined by God. And so this is not, I don't think that this is an argument against Calvinism.

01:14:08

This is something that Calvinists have understood. They have engaged these texts, but they see that the events happening in these texts happened the way they did because God decreed them, not because He foresaw what free -willed creatures would do.

01:14:24

All right, now we have a listener from, is it Ponoka or Ponoka, Alberta, Canada, Dr.

01:14:31

Costa? I know you're a Canadian, so you could perhaps... I know Alberta and I know

01:14:36

Canada, but I know not whence the city is from, or I'm not familiar with the name. Well, this is a person who just started submitting questions for us a few days ago.

01:14:47

His name is Sika Lee. It's a Dutch -slash -Canadian name, Sika Lee. And he is from Ponoka, Alberta, Canada.

01:14:54

Sorry if I mispronounced the city. He says, I'm curious about Dr. McGregor's take on Romans chapter 9, 11 through 24, where it seems to specifically rule out libertarian free will.

01:15:08

So, Dr. McGregor, if you could respond. Here, my take is the same as Molina's own take.

01:15:18

It's rather remarkable. One fact that I point out in the book, which is an interesting sort of biographical aside, is that Molina actually agreed with Calvin's exegesis of Romans 9.

01:15:33

And so Molina, whether or not we agree that he did, Molina thought that he taught a form of unconditional election, but he agreed with that.

01:15:44

So, it wouldn't rule out libertarian freedom for the simple reason that libertarian freedom means the ability to choose between various alternatives consistent with your nature some of the time.

01:16:02

And there's nothing in Romans 9 that says that this individual was compelled to do this particular sin, or that this individual was compelled to act in this particular way.

01:16:21

So, what Romans 9, I would agree, says is that God does sovereignly choose some to be saved, some to be lost.

01:16:32

He could have chosen any of the lost to be saved, he could have chosen any of the saved to be lost, or he could have decided that they didn't exist at all and that other people would.

01:16:43

And that this is all up to God. And that where I think that the tension here,

01:16:54

Tony correctly pointed out that in the Westminster Concession, I think it's odd, that qualification in the

01:17:04

Westminster Confession. And I'm wondering how we know that Westminster is right about this when it says, yet he has not decreed anything because he foresawed his future.

01:17:15

That, of course, I agree, because God doesn't decree it because he foresees it as future.

01:17:22

God doesn't look ahead down the corridors of history. That's an anthropomorphic, perceptual way of viewing

01:17:29

God's knowledge. But why does it go on to say, or as that which would come to pass upon such conditions?

01:17:37

And I find that odd, because Scripture teaches that God is all -wise. And it seems the essence of wisdom is applying knowledge.

01:17:46

So why would an all -wise God say, ah, well, I've got this knowledge, but I'm not actually going to use it?

01:17:53

To me that's absurd. Now before we have Dr. Costa respond to that,

01:17:58

I just wanted to ask you how Molinism would have, in its exegesis of Romans 9, why would

01:18:09

Paul's built -in question from an opponent to what he is saying, why would this question also come up for a

01:18:18

Molinist, when in 19 Paul says, will you say to me then, why does

01:18:24

God still find fault for who resists his will? On the contrary, who are you, oh man, who answers back to God, the thing molded will not say to the molder, why did you make me like this, will it?

01:18:40

Why would a Molinist have that built -in to your exegesis of Romans 9?

01:18:48

I mean, other than the fact that it's God breathed, and it's a part of the text. But why would that be a natural response to your understanding of Romans 9?

01:19:00

Well, my understanding of Romans 9, here, Paul is showing the self -refuting nature of the question.

01:19:09

The person, the objector, is saying, why then does he still find fault for who can resist his will?

01:19:17

And notice that the questioner, in asking the question, is resisting

01:19:22

God's will. By asking it. And so, the questioner says, but who can resist

01:19:29

God's will? And the questioner is himself resisting God's will by asking that very question.

01:19:35

And Paul says, this is absurd. But who indeed are you, a human being, to argue with God?

01:19:40

You know, your logic is self -contradictory here. Well, what does molded say to the one who molds it?

01:19:46

Why have you made me like this? And so, what he's saying is that we aren't merely some, like, craftsmanship that God has molded.

01:19:59

We're not like a cat or a dog. What is merely molded won't say back to the one who molds it, why have you made me like this?

01:20:06

It can't. But notice, you just asked that question. Why does

01:20:12

God still find fault? Why did God make me like this? And something that's merely molded can't do that.

01:20:18

And so I think it's interesting in the Greek that that's why it seems that Paul shifts from talking about the one who molds it, the plasanti, he shifts to the biblical analogies, like, that's not the right way to look at it.

01:20:37

Look at it in terms of the potter and the clay instead. Has not the potter the right over the clay to make out of the same lump one object for special use and another for ordinary use?

01:20:48

And I would say, yes, God has the right to create a world in which I go to hell.

01:20:54

God has a right to create a world in which I go to heaven. God has a right to create a world in which I don't exist.

01:21:01

So I think that even though this isn't really a Molinist question, it's more of an exegesis of Romans 9 question,

01:21:11

I think that oftentimes people miss Paul's sarcasm in 20 trying to show that what the objector is saying undermines his own question.

01:21:21

But when you relegated the questioner's understanding of God's will to his prescriptive will, that he is in some way insulting

01:21:35

God by asking the question, I think that the questioner correctly is responding negatively.

01:21:42

I'm not saying that he should have responded negatively, but he understands that it's the decretive will that Paul is talking about.

01:21:51

You seem to be switching over to a prescriptive will. In other words, while it may have been

01:21:56

God's decretive will that David's wives slept with his neighbor in public as a result of his chastisement for committing adultery with Bathsheba and murdering her husband, it's certainly that adultery that took place by David's wives and his neighbors was certainly a violation of his prescriptive will, even though he decreed it to happen.

01:22:23

But anyway, Dr. Tony Costa, could you respond to this as well, please? I think it's interesting that Westminster State, that I just quoted there, that God does not decree anything because he saw it as future or as that which would come to pass upon such conditions.

01:22:40

They cite Romans 9, 11, 13, 16, 18, chapter 9, verses 11, 13, 16, 18, the very text that we're looking at.

01:22:48

And so looking at this text, I mean, the whole thrust of the argument is to show, in verse 11, is that in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works, but because of him who calls.

01:23:02

And so we're back to that call of God, that decree of God that we see in Ephesians 1.

01:23:07

And then he goes out to point out that God has the sovereign right to have mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, to have compassion on whoever he wants to have compassion.

01:23:18

At the end of the day, the election is all of God. It's monergistic. It's what God does and God alone.

01:23:25

And so I think the thrust of the passage seems to be that God is the potter, sovereignly makes vessels to his honor and makes vessels to destruction.

01:23:34

And in all of this, in Romans 9, I don't see any libertarian free will creatures having anything to do with this.

01:23:43

It is God all the way. It is God from start to finish. It's God's calling, it's God's election, and it's God's purpose.

01:23:49

And Anthony Uvinio, your turn to ask a question from that meeting that you had. Okay. I'm going to ask a question to Tony and to Kirk.

01:23:59

Basically the same question, just depends on their view. So Tony, on Calvinism, does

01:24:04

God eternally damn a group of people who are able to choose Jesus but won't because of God's decree?

01:24:12

And Kirk, on Molinism, would God damn a group of people who would have chosen

01:24:18

Jesus in another world but don't because it's not the world that God actuated? So Tony, you go first.

01:24:25

Okay. I have the question here in front of me. On Calvinism, does God eternally damn a group of people who could choose

01:24:31

Jesus but won't because of his decree or damn a group of people who would have chosen Jesus in another world?

01:24:38

On Calvinism, God eternally condemns people not because they would choose

01:24:45

Jesus but precisely because, given their total depravity, they would not choose

01:24:51

Jesus. And they would not want to choose Jesus. And therefore, the idea here is that God decrees from the very beginning all those who will be in Christ, all those whom he elects, the

01:25:09

Father elects, the Son purchases, the Holy Spirit seals unto redemption.

01:25:14

So we're not talking about people who could choose Jesus. We're talking about people who will not choose

01:25:20

Jesus. No one can come to me unless the Father draws them to me. So there is no idea of innocence here.

01:25:28

And then, would he damn a group of people who would have chosen Jesus in another world?

01:25:34

So I think the answer to that second part would be the same as the first. And Dr.

01:25:39

McGregor? I would agree with what

01:25:45

Tony says, that if you hold to the doctrine of total inability, you wouldn't have people having the ability on their own to choose

01:25:55

Jesus in any of these worlds. But as I suggested last week, the

01:26:01

Calvinist could maintain that God eternally damns a group of people who could commit the unforgivable sin but won't because of his decree.

01:26:15

Or as we talked about earlier today, we could say that God eternally damns a group of people who could maintain a sort of superficial, intellectualistic faith, but they do not because of his decree.

01:26:36

So it does seem that this affirms God's sovereignty, that God does ultimately choose who is saved and who is lost, and that we can't gainstay

01:26:49

God for this because God is the potter and that we are the clay.

01:26:56

So I think that the way the question was phrased, you know, are there worlds in which someone would choose

01:27:05

God, but since God did not actuate those worlds, they won't choose him. Framing the question that way assumes either the total inability is false or that the doctrine of prevenient grace is true or something else.

01:27:21

And because I'm not working within the framework of those assumptions, now, of course, a

01:27:28

Molinist who is an Arminian could work within those assumptions and then they would give a different answer than the one that I'm giving.

01:27:38

Well, we have to go to our final break, and when we return, we'll be asking more of the questions that both

01:27:46

Anthony Uvinio has compiled and also that our listeners have contributed. You may be able to squeak in with a question of your own.

01:27:55

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01:28:02

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01:28:11

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01:28:18

But we are going to be right back. This is going to be a very brief break, so don't go away. God willing, we'll be right back with Dr.

01:28:23

Tony Costa and Dr. Kirk McGregor on Calvinism vs. Molinism right after these messages.

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01:31:02

Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko, inviting you to tune in to A Visit to the Pastor's Study every

01:31:07

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01:31:13

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Eastern Time for A Visit to the Pastor's Study because everyone needs a pastor. Welcome back.

01:31:37

This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our two guests today, Dr. Tony Costa of Toronto Baptist Seminary and Dr.

01:31:44

Kirk McGregor of McPherson College. The first a Calvinist, the latter a

01:31:51

Molinist, and they are discussing the differences they have. And we have also in our, a part of our conversation, my co -host today,

01:32:00

Anthony Uvinio, founder of NewYorkApologetics .com. And by the way, that is spelled out in two words or should

01:32:08

I say three words? But New York is spelled out in two words, N -E -W -Y -O -R -K -Apologetics .com.

01:32:15

But Anthony Uvinio, it's your turn to ask a question of our guests today. Okay, here's my question.

01:32:23

It would apply to both men. Where ultimately do man's choices come from?

01:32:28

Are they determined by himself? Do they come ex nihilo? Are they arbitrary? How do man's choices come about?

01:32:37

And I guess we could start with Dr. McGregor. Well, I would say none of the above.

01:32:43

They're not determined, they're not ex nihilo, and they're not arbitrary. The power to make choices comes from God.

01:32:51

In other words, God allows us to do it. That's the doctrine of divine concurrence. And the choices come from human will.

01:32:59

So just as God's choice of who to elect and who to reprobate comes from him, it's not determined ex nihilo or arbitrary.

01:33:07

So the choices God empowers us to make come from us. And this would be called agent causation.

01:33:15

Dr. Costa. Tony? Yeah, I think I would agree with Dr. McGregor.

01:33:21

I think that man's choices do come from their own nature.

01:33:26

Because man is totally depraved, man's choices will always be towards doing evil.

01:33:32

And as Genesis 6 -5 says, that the intent of the heart was evil continually.

01:33:39

And so man's choices will always be outside of God's regenerative grace. Man's choices will always be towards sin and evil.

01:33:48

However, there are choices that people make that bring about, obviously, these are choices that are consistent with God's determined will and his decrees.

01:34:01

So, for instance, Proverbs 19 verse 21 says, Many are the plans in the mind of the man, but it is the purpose of the

01:34:10

Lord that will stand. And so here I would see an example of compatibilism where God's purpose, or that could also be translated, the

01:34:20

Lord's decree will prevail, as some other translations have it.

01:34:28

And so it's not to say that the choice that people make are outside of God's decrees. They are also within God's decrees.

01:34:35

They're part of the secondary means or choices that the Westminster Confession speaks about.

01:34:41

So the choices, for example, the choices of Joseph's brethren, for instance, when they wanted to have him initially killed and then they decide to sell him off to the

01:34:51

Midianites and so forth. These were choices that were totally compatible with God's decree, that Joseph would end up in Egypt so that he would be elevated to the place of authority so that Jacob and his sons would come to Egypt and therefore settle in Egypt, become a great nation, which would open the door for the 400 years of slavery that God told

01:35:12

Abraham his descendants would go through, and this would open the door as a segue to the coming of Moses, to bring about the great exodus, and then on and on and on it goes.

01:35:20

And so all of these things are consistent within God's purpose and decrees. And this would be more for Dr.

01:35:28

MacGregor, because I already know what you would believe as a Calvinist in this regard, a

01:35:34

Tony, but Dr. MacGregor, as far as the example that we have of Pharaoh's heart being both hardened and softened by God, does not

01:35:47

God's sovereign control over all things ultimately determine the way a person is going to decide this or that?

01:35:56

Because I believe that as a Calvinist that the planet Earth would not be safe no matter where you may run and hide, even if it's in your own home, if God were to completely release his restraint of evil, if he were to raise his hand and let people do whatever was according to their nature that they desired to do.

01:36:19

I agree with that. So how do you explain as a Molinist the fact that Pharaoh made decisions based on God's restraint and God's hardening?

01:36:32

Well, there are two options available to the Molinist. One would simply be to say that here

01:36:39

God does determine that Pharaoh's heart will be hard or that Pharaoh's heart will be soft and that here you do have an instance where sometimes

01:36:53

God doesn't let people choose according to the various options compatible with their nature, that God just comes in and says this is what is going to happen.

01:37:04

And remember the doctrine of libertarian freedom holds that sometimes humans are able to choose between options compatible with their nature.

01:37:14

So I think the mistake here is to say because this instance might be determined, then everything we do is determined.

01:37:27

And that's a far exegetical overreach. Even if it's the case that what

01:37:33

God does deterministically hardens Pharaoh's heart, even if that is true, that doesn't show that God deterministically causes everything.

01:37:44

Secondly, the Molinist can offer an account of how God could do this indeterministically.

01:37:52

What I find more attractive myself is in Exodus it both says that God hardened

01:37:59

Pharaoh's heart and that Pharaoh hardened his own heart. Never says he softened his own heart, though.

01:38:05

Never says Pharaoh softened his own heart. Right, right. I agree with that.

01:38:11

But it does say that God hardened Pharaoh's heart and that Pharaoh hardened his own heart. The Calvinists have no problem with sinners hardening their own hearts.

01:38:20

Right, right. So because I believe in biblical inerrancy, what

01:38:27

I would be inclined to say is that the way that God hardened

01:38:32

Pharaoh's heart so as not to be the author of sin is by knowing that if Pharaoh were confronted with this overwhelming display of God's glory, then

01:38:46

Pharaoh would harden his own heart. God, knowing that's what Pharaoh would do, decrees to place

01:38:54

Pharaoh in those circumstances. And so God hardens Pharaoh's heart by doing this, and it's simultaneously true that Pharaoh hardens his own heart.

01:39:04

But either option is available to the Molinist. Now, Tony, I think that you need to respond here because this is,

01:39:10

I think, the first time during our discussion where Dr. McGregor clearly said that God does not decree everything that happens.

01:39:20

I said God does not determine. God does not causally determine everything that happens.

01:39:28

Okay, well, Tony, how strong of a difference do we have here between those two concepts?

01:39:36

Well, I would say that everything happens by God's decree. Everything.

01:39:42

The crucifixion, the decisions of the Jews to condemn Jesus, Pontius Pilate, and so forth.

01:39:50

And so I'm not exactly sure what the distinction that Dr. McGregor is making between God's decrees and God's determination of things.

01:39:59

I'm not sure. I'm a little hazy there. I know that Calvinists, to make it clear, and you would agree with this,

01:40:06

I know, Tony, that God does not force men to do things against their will.

01:40:11

It's not like a lot of people have depicted Judas as a scapegoat where he never would have betrayed

01:40:19

Christ unless God somehow forced him to do that. It's amazing how Arminians even sometimes will use that.

01:40:27

It's the old imperial type that Calvinists believe that God is a puppet master.

01:40:32

And that God is just playing the strings. That's not true at all. The Western Confession puts it this way.

01:40:39

It says that God does not do violence to the creature. In other words, he doesn't force them or coerce them to do things that they would not naturally be predisposed to do as totally depraved sinners.

01:40:53

And so that what Judas did, he naturally did out of his own greed and out of his own lust for money and so forth.

01:40:58

Right. And there are even some, as I was saying, there are some Arminians who say that Judas was just going along with a plan that he knew had to unfold and he didn't really want to do it.

01:41:09

But it's ridiculous, obviously. But anyway... They're reading too much of the Passover plot with Hugh Sconfield. That's the problem.

01:41:15

But Dr. McGregor, a final thought on that before we move on to another question. Yeah. Does God's decree causally determine what a person will do?

01:41:27

It doesn't need to, but it does if one is a compatibilist.

01:41:32

So what I'm trying to say is that a Calvinist should be a libertarian in order to get their secondary means that the

01:41:40

Westminster Confession talks about to work. It doesn't work on compatibilism. So just as libertarian is this precise philosophical term, the ability to sometimes choose between alternatives consistent with your nature, compatibilism is a precise philosophical term, meaning the compatibility between determinism, for the theist, divine determinism, and human free will.

01:42:03

And the way you accomplish that alleged compatibility is by redefining free will as the ability to act voluntarily even though one cannot do otherwise.

01:42:15

So if I voluntarily go to McDonald's and get a Chicken McNuggets meal, but I could not have gone to Burger King, Freddy's, Wendy's, Applebee's, or abstained from eating at all, then

01:42:25

I am, in the compatibilist sense, free. The only thing I am, free to do is what

01:42:31

I actually do, which I would say is freedom in name only. True freedom requires the ability to choose between alternatives.

01:42:39

If we're in the image of God and the essence of God's freedom is choosing between alternatives, then we can as well.

01:42:46

So I see compatibilism as nothing more than philosophical double -talk from which theologians should abstain.

01:42:53

Okay, and after that I just have to have a very brief comment from Tony Costa, that little dig there.

01:43:00

It seems, I don't know if it seems this way to you, Tony, but it seems that Molinists want, Calvinists are typically accused by Lutherans and others of wanting to explain too much and not leaving enough to mystery.

01:43:13

Here it seems that the Molinist is more guilty of that. Am I off base here, Tony? Oh yeah, put me on the hot seat, okay.

01:43:22

Well, I mean, I don't have an issue with compatibilism in the sense that when the

01:43:31

Western Confession says that God does not violate the creature or do violence to the creature, it simply means that God's overarching decree and purposes are going to be accomplished even through the evil machinations of people like Pharaoh and Judas and so forth.

01:43:52

And so I don't think it's double -crossed at all. I think what Joseph said to his brothers, what you meant for evil

01:43:58

God meant for good. And so while Joseph's brethren had evil intentions and sinful intentions as well to kill their brother and then lie to their father that he was ravaged by a wild beast,

01:44:11

Joseph can lift it and say it was God that did this. It was God who, you meant it for evil, but God used your evil machinations for the good of his people.

01:44:20

And so we're back to Romans Day 28 that God works all things, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

01:44:26

He works all things for the good of his people, for those who are called according to his purpose. And God sometimes will achieve those ends through the works of evil people, including

01:44:37

Satan himself. Okay, we have Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, who asks, How can Molinism be biblical when clearly the first four verses of the

01:44:46

Bible say that God is independent and not depending on the contingent will of human beings?

01:44:54

That's obviously first for Dr. McGregor. Yeah, because Molinism doesn't teach that God is dependent on the contingent will of human beings.

01:45:05

It's a rather easy question to answer. I mean, it's only by shooting down a straw man that that question gets off the ground.

01:45:13

Okay, Dr. Costa, can you respond to that? Yeah, I would say that God is truly the only free, moral being in the universe.

01:45:23

That God, indeed, is the only one who is truly free. And that the only freedom that we can have as contingent beings is to be freed by God, to be regenerated, and to be brought back into fellowship with him.

01:45:38

And so, the will of God is irresistible. I mean, we both, you and I, Chris and Anthony, we believe in irresistible grace, that God's grace, saving grace.

01:45:48

It doesn't mean, you know, Stephen says, why do you always resist the Holy Spirit? Sinful men resist the

01:45:54

Holy Spirit daily, on a daily basis. But that is not irresistible grace. God's saving grace is irresistible in the sense that it has the power to actually bring back from the dead those who are spiritually dead, bring them, raise them up, and take the stony heart and put a heart of flesh in them.

01:46:13

All right, Anthony Uvinio, it's your turn to ask a question now. Is Anthony still with us?

01:46:21

Let me... Oh. I'm still, I'm still... I know a couple of times when you were co -hosting with me, you ducked out early and I didn't know it.

01:46:31

It's a New York thing. I've heard it said by some

01:46:39

Molinists that God doesn't necessarily elect a group of people, but he elects a world.

01:46:46

In fact, I think that was confirmed by Dr. William Lane Craig. So, Kirk, Dr.

01:46:52

McGregor, I'm sorry, would you say that God elects a group of people, or does

01:46:57

God elect a world? Well, I wouldn't say that God elects a world.

01:47:05

To give a little bit of history here, Molina himself held the individual election.

01:47:13

As I show in my biography of Molina, he found Calvin's exegesis of Romans 9 sound, although some

01:47:21

Molinists, like William Lane Craig, hold to corporate election. So it's really up to the individual

01:47:26

Molinist what they will do with the tool of Molinism, as I've presented it.

01:47:32

So, I hold, and Molina held, that for every possible individual, God, in his providential plan, decides whether they are elect, reprobate, or simply fail to exist.

01:47:45

Okay. All right, well, we... Yeah, let me just... Let me just say that the

01:47:51

Scriptures are very clear that God elects people. And, again, Ephesians 1, all the references there are all personal.

01:48:01

He chose us, He blessed us, and He predestined us to be conformed to the image of His Son, Romans 8, 29.

01:48:10

So it's very clear and obvious in Scripture that God elects the people. Even in John 3, 16, when it says,

01:48:15

God so loved the world, it's obvious that the world that He loves are those who believe on the

01:48:22

Son and who have eternal life. Eric on Long Island, New York, asks,

01:48:27

What exactly do you mean by blaspheming the Holy Spirit? And he was obviously referring to something that Dr.

01:48:33

McGregor said earlier, because he, Dr. McGregor, believed this was a key factor somehow in the controversy between God's sovereignty and the will of man.

01:48:43

If you want to repeat, in summary, why you brought up blaspheming the Holy Spirit, and then if you could define it to Dr.

01:48:49

McGregor. Yeah. I would say that one proposal that I gave, and I stressed when

01:49:00

I gave it, that it is a possibility, but it seems that if we're going to let

01:49:07

Scripture interpret Scripture, Mark 3 says that the only unforgivable sin is blasphemy against the

01:49:14

Holy Spirit. 1 John 5 describes an unforgivable sin. Hebrews 6 describes an unforgivable sin.

01:49:20

You put that together logically, it means that 1 John and Hebrews are also describing blasphemy against the

01:49:28

Spirit. But in the case of the audiences of 1 John and Hebrews, they couldn't spirit -blaspheme in the same way the

01:49:35

Pharisees did. They didn't have Jesus standing in front of them doing a miracle and attribute it to the power of Satan.

01:49:41

So there have to be other ways to do it. So from these three texts, we may generalize that the blasphemy against the

01:49:48

Holy Spirit is the deliberate and irrevocable rejection of the being of God, not merely the saving grace of God, but of the being of God as absolute evil, resolving to permanently reject

01:50:02

God as such. And I actually think that the blasphemy against the

01:50:08

Holy Spirit occurs on a fairly regular basis. I'm like, you know, look at all the evil in the world!

01:50:13

Look at all the horrible things that people do! I tend to think that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit happens quite regularly, and so I don't see this as, you know,

01:50:24

I think that people out of a sense of pastoral concern, which is certainly a valid concern, have tried to say, oh, no, no, no, that really can't be, you know, something that a lot of people can do.

01:50:38

But it seems to me that if we take 1 John 5, where John's like, look, there are some people who are committing this unforgivable sin, and don't pray about it.

01:50:47

It's not going to do one bit of good. Or Hebrews 6, you know, once they've committed that, well, they're subjecting the

01:50:57

Son of God again to open shame. Now, I agree with the Calvinists that 1 John 5 and Hebrews 6 are describing a sin that a truly regenerate person cannot commit.

01:51:10

I think that a nominal Christian who took part in the activities of the Church can, though, commit them.

01:51:18

And Dr. Costa, you want to respond to that answer? Yeah, I would just say the Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit again, it's debatable whether 1

01:51:26

John 5 or Hebrews 6 is talking about it. Is it talking about a sin that cannot be forgiven? Absolutely, but you would be hard -pressed to demonstrate that that is the

01:51:35

Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit mentioned in 1 John 5 or Hebrews 6. It has been suggested by some commentators, but it's not very certain if that is the case.

01:51:43

now Dr. McGregor said there are people committing the Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit every day, but Saul of Tarsus, no doubt, before he became a follower of Jesus, the

01:51:53

Messiah, no doubt Saul of Tarsus would have agreed with the Pharisees, being a Pharisee himself, that Jesus of Nazareth was a false

01:52:01

Messiah, that he was someone who he would have seen from his vantage point being in league with the devil as well.

01:52:07

Yet, Saul of Tarsus was qualified by God. He was chosen, he was forgiven, and so forth.

01:52:12

Which would not be the case if he actually did blaspheme the Holy Spirit, because this is a sin.

01:52:18

Jesus says there is no forgiveness either in this world or in the world to come. But if we hold to God's decrees, we know that those who commit the sin of the unpardonable sin, whether it was something done in the first century and Jesus was around, or whether it's a contemporary sin, anyone who commits these sins are not elect of God anyway.

01:52:37

And so, in God's decrees, all those who would commit the sin would not be part of the elect.

01:52:44

Yeah, I used to recoil every time I heard Hank Hanegraaff tell people when they would ask him that question. Well, since you are worried about it, that means you didn't commit that sin.

01:52:54

I don't buy that at all. There are reprobate people who worry about hell all the time. They just have a wrong and damning solution to the situation.

01:53:02

Right. Well, I think that we should allow our guests to have three more minutes each now just to summarize what they want to say because we're running out of time and we'll start with Dr.

01:53:14

McGregor. Please give us three minutes of summary and then Dr. Costa will do the same. Well, I think that given my defense of what

01:53:28

Tim Stratton nicely calls mere Molinism, the notion that before God's decision to create the world he knew everything that would happen in any possible scenario he might create.

01:53:38

I think, as Dr. Costa pointed out, the Westminster Confession actually affirms that God has this knowledge.

01:53:46

It very strangely says that God doesn't use it, but it does affirm that God has it.

01:53:53

And so, if God has this knowledge, then the Calvinists should concede that yes,

01:53:59

God does have mental knowledge. And so, I agree with those contemporary

01:54:05

Calvinists like Bruce Ware who say even though the Calvinists might reject libertarian freedom, they should not reject mental knowledge.

01:54:14

And then secondly, as beings created in the image of God, humans like God possess libertarian free will.

01:54:21

And the thing that I've been struck with is given what libertarian free will means in the philosophical literature, and I've always come back to this precise definition, that in some circumstances you are able to choose between options consistent with your nature,

01:54:38

I don't see that as different than what Dr. Costa is presenting. He calls it compatibilism, but I don't think it really is philosophically what the term compatibilism means.

01:54:51

I think that compatibilism is just philosophical double talk because it says that no person can choose otherwise than what they voluntarily do.

01:55:06

That if I go to McDonald's, that's what I had to do. I couldn't have done otherwise. And that isn't real freedom.

01:55:12

And so I think that if you say that yeah, human beings do have the freedom to choose between various options consistent with their nature, that the person who blasphemes against the

01:55:26

Holy Spirit didn't have to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit, they could have done some other sin instead, but they voluntarily chose to blaspheme against the

01:55:37

Holy Spirit. If one believes that, one isn't really a compatibilist according to the precise philosophical definition of that term.

01:55:45

One is a libertarian. And so I don't see any problem besides taking offense at, you know, the

01:55:54

Westminster's claim that God doesn't use his mental knowledge, which seems weird, but I don't see why the

01:56:01

Calvinist can't use and shouldn't use the way Alvin Plantinga does those two facets of mere

01:56:09

Molinism. And Dr. Costa, you have three minutes. Yeah, well, first of all, I just want to thank Dr.

01:56:14

McGregor for giving us his valuable time. I really enjoyed interacting with him. And I also want to recognize

01:56:21

Dr. McGregor to be a leading scholar in this area. He's written probably the first biography on Louis de

01:56:28

Molina. And so I want to thank him and acknowledge him in this time. And I wish we had gone into other issues concerning Molinism, particularly.

01:56:37

I know Dr. McGregor in his book, page 69, talks about how Molina embraced justification as a once -for -all transformative event.

01:56:45

And I would have liked to probably have gone into that and talked about how that collided with the Roman Catholic view of infusion at baptism, where people received this justification at baptism.

01:56:57

And so I think, at the end of the day, we have to understand that Dr.

01:57:03

McGregor acknowledged, candidly, that he doesn't agree with everything Molina says. Because, again,

01:57:08

I think Molina was reacting to the Reformation. I think that in many respects, the

01:57:14

Jesuits were formed by Ignatius of Loyola precisely to counteract the

01:57:19

Reformation. And so, in Molinism, what I see is an attempt to try to fuse this

01:57:26

Reformed idea of God's sovereignty with this Roman Catholic view of synergism or semi -Pelagianism.

01:57:34

I think that if we look at Scripture, I think that everything that God does is done by His eternal decrees.

01:57:41

God decrees all things for His own glory, according to His own will. And so,

01:57:48

I think, on the face of it, while Molinism is interesting, Molinism seems more of a philosophical construct.

01:57:56

As Dr. William Craig himself admitted, it's more of a philosophical construct than it is a construct.

01:58:24

So, I think that Molinism is more of a it is a So, I think that Molinism is more of a philosophical construct than it is

01:58:37

Toronto Baptist Seminary, where Dr. Tony Costa, our Calvinist participant, is on the faculty, the website there is tbs .edu

01:58:47

tbs, fortorontobaptistseminary .edu. Do you have any further contact information,

01:58:52

Dr. Costa? They can just go to TonyCosta .web .com,

01:58:58

and that's my website, TonyCosta, one word, .web .com. And that's .webs

01:59:04

.com, only one B in there? Correct. Okay, great. Webs, one B. Yes, and Kirk McGregor is on the faculty at McPherson College, and that website is

01:59:15

McPherson .edu, M -C -P -H -E -R -S -O -N .edu. Any other contact information you can share,

01:59:21

Dr. McGregor? My email address is M -A -C -G -R -E -K -R, excuse me,

01:59:29

M -A -C -G -R -E -G -K. I always get that mixed up. So, McGreg, and then

01:59:36

K, M -A -C -G -R -E -G -K, at McPherson .edu. And I know that Anthony Eugenio's website, again, is

01:59:43

NewYorkApologetics .com, and New York is not abbreviated. It's spelt out NewYorkApologetics .com.

01:59:49

I want to thank you all for participating, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater