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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Calvinism and Molinism: A Brief Overview

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 10th 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.

This is part two of Calvinism versus Molinism, a discussion between two brothers in Christ who disagree over how scripture explains God's sovereignty and man's freedom, and to discuss this issue we have today 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 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, Kirk?

That's correct.

At McPherson College, and he is the author of Luis de 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 Dr. Tony Costa and Dr. Kirk McGregor back to the program.

Greetings, gentlemen, and we have joining us also, once again, my co-host, Anthony Uvinio, 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.

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

I think at the end, the audience was pretty much on my side based on what we had gone through, so you can check that out online. Just type in Uvinio, U-V-E-N-I-O, debate.

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

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, that did not hear you guys on May 1st discussing these issues.

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 May 1st discussion, but let's start again with Dr. Kirk McGregor.

If you could give us a summary of what.

Molinism is. The second claim, as beings, gotta be emphasized, be a molinist tool. It's not a complete... 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. You said that somebody who's totally depraved, an unregenerate person, can only choose between evil options or choose to do evil things.

Now, some might be scratching their head, even some Calvinists might be scratching their head, before you clarify that statement. Obviously, Hitler could have rescued an old lady walking across the street that was about to be hit by a bus.

You know, evil people, unregenerate people, and who are not even considered evil by the world's standards, they can do great and wonderful things. You can have atheists doing enormously charitable and benevolent, kind and compassionate, even sacrificial things.

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

What exactly do you mean by that statement? 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 warrants our getting rewarded and entering into heaven and so on. Now, before I go to Tony, I wanted to have something clarified that I even said last time we were together.

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

I'm talking about specific actions. For instance, God knows that apart from his restraint, apart from his even having mercy on not only the unelect but those around them, he restrains the evil of the unregenerate as much as he pleases to.

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 Jews crying out for Christ's death and the Romans who actually nailed him to the cross.

Now, do you believe, again, I'll say that statement again having made that clarification, that as a 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? Because, certainly, God's decree in any way...

Now, if you could, 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. Obviously, there's too much involved with Calvinism for you to summarize everything, but as far as the discussion that it 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 Reformed Theology in this regard. The ideas of because they are enslaved, libertarian free will of man is a context because he's only free. Calvinism does not deny that man has a free will, it just argues that free will towards evil and sin.

The idea that man is truly free, necessary in Arminianism, but also I believe Molina also held to prevent that grace is a gift from God, it's unmerited, it's not something that we merit, and that it is God who quickened the sinners, it's God who makes sinners alive in Christ.

Precisely because he has decreed from the foundation of the world that people, no one, Jesus says in John 6, 44, no one can come to me. So man in and out of sin, the issue of preventing grace, the issue of libertarian free will, I think are two issues that the necessary knowledge of God, that is God's necessary knowledge of all truth and so forth, and also God's free knowledge as well.

I apply all kinds of ways you're hearing. Now also to clarify something you said there, do you not.

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

So don't you believe that a person can in a sense choose Christ and accept quote quote 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?

Believed in him. By the time you're done touring Abraham was, I am, then and that they needed the son of God to set me that he is that he is autonomous, that he is a free libertarian, free-willing agent.

Jesus comes along says actually no you guys are in bondage and you.

Need to be set free. 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 reformed theology?

If I may borrow Hegel's idea of the dialectic here that form a middle way, a synthesis between the two, and say that yes God's decrees are definitely biblical, God is sovereign, I don't believe his middle knowledge, if we grant that, I don't believe that his middle knowledge is anterior to his decrees.

I think that they are posterior. Yes, because if it were not so,.

When it comes to the good things like choosing Christ, it seems that the election of individuals is really based on some kind of knowledge on what God knows about their response to the gospel. Now is that incorrect of me to say that, Dr. McPherson?

This is the second time I did this. Dr. McGregor who is from McPherson College. Yeah, any brand of Scotch will do.

Sorry about that. The Calvinist isn't going to grant that. Calvinism is something different by libertarian meaning that were developed in the 19th century, and a libertarian view of freedom, put that in the range of options.

Well, obviously the compatibilism as a concept did not begin in.

The 19th century, it was even laid out to some degree in the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, which is a 17th century document. But just to clear some, I'm sorry, somebody trying to say.

Something? I can't, I'm hearing something in the back. Yeah, the term compatibilism, libertarian freedom that I'm defending here, rather than compatibilism, once one understands what compatibilism means.

Compatibilism means that compatibility between determinism at work, if you read the literature on compatibilism, is by cleverly redefining free will. You acted under duress, you did not act of your own free choice of the crime.

Yes, according, in summary, how I view.

That whole tension, and I think how historically Calvinists have viewed it, is that men are free to choose according to their own desires, their own desires are determined by their nature, and whatever they do before a rebirth cannot please 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 Molinist point of view does not interfere or even contradict unconditional election?

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. Whether they are concerning middle knowledge and be against the whole healing miracles by the scripture, do you describe an unforgivable sin.

That not created me at all? And Dr. Tony Koss, before we go to the break, if you could respond.

To that. Yeah, I again, I don't see it as God looking at all possible world people to himself in Christ Jesus. The reference, of course, are all personal, and that's what I do find problematic about Molinism.

And I think it's unnecessary. Why can't we just decree that he would and so I think at the end of the day. Okay, we're going to our first break right now. If anybody.

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Today, we are having a discussion between two people holding opposing views. We have Dr. Tony Costa, who is a Calvinist on the faculty of Toronto Baptist Seminary, and we have Dr. Kirk McGregor, who's a Molinist on the faculty at McPherson College, both discussing 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. And my co-host today is Anthony Uvinio of newyorkapologetics .com. And Anthony, how would you like to work out the questions from listeners?

Did you want to start with a question? 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.

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. 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.

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

Causal Links, Circumstances, and Middle Knowledge

Okay, well, let's just take turns. I'll start with a question that we received from Mark in Rancho Santa Margarita, California. And Mark asked the question, what is the casual relationship between the circumstances in which a person is placed and their decisions?

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? And we'll start with Dr. McGregor.

Any causal links are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, as the heavens are higher than the earth, so I wanted to jump. Only by thinking that God is like a human can one deny middle knowledge.

If God doesn't have middle knowledge, then there are logically knowable truths before God's creative decree that God does not know. So robbing God of his omniscience, those are all ideas in the mind, specifically the imagination of God.

Supercomprehension, and that means God's ability or pattern of... And Dr. Tony Costa, if you could respond to that.

Yeah, the idea of God's omniscience is something that has always been created from just God from all eternity, did by the most wise and holy counsel to possibly ordain whatsoever comes to pass. Is God the object of sin, or is violence offered to the will and tendency of second causes taken away?

But again, I'm not denying at all. When I was quoting Isaiah 55, and your thoughts.

All right, Anthony, if you could, Anthony Uvinio, ask one of your questions.

Sure. I'd like to know on Molinism and Calvinism, does God base his eternal decree, because both Calvinists, Molinists, and Arminians all believe God has an eternal decree. Does God base his decree or plan on what man will do to be done first?

Why don't we start with Tony this time, since we started with Dr. McGregor last time.

Okay. I think that according to Ephesians 1, I think it's very clear. And Dr. McGregor?

No. God's history, it certainly wasn't despite what Molinism has been defending it. In other words, the propositions of Book 4, not defending everything that Molina believes. So even though one could classify Molina's own... I'm not defending those aspects.

I'm only defending the two aspects that I laid out last week and this week. So Molinism understood that way. What's the mere Molinism? What mere Molinism suggests is that he could create... determined to do all they do, and that he could create beings who can choose between alternatives... reasons of his sovereign good pleasure, decides that some of the beings he would create are of this latter kind.

Because God perfectly knows his own imagination, he innately perceives all facts about the full set of circumstances. God sovereignly decides to use this knowledge in bringing about his plan. He could have just as easily chosen to create fully deterministic, hominid creatures like us, but who lack libertine image-bearers than us.

He lists sovereign over man's will, for more reasons than I can list, to illustrate God's willing to create us as alternatives, when he infallibly knows that it will fit within his providential purpose for the world.

So God fine-tunes this world down to the last detail, in accordance with his authorship of the script. Dr. McGregor, would you say that God's decree could come before middle knowledge? Uh, I would not say that... because... the middle terminology, uh, middle knowledge, simple knowledge exists before the decree.

God is omniscient. That's what I'm going to keep coming back to here. I want to preserve... yes, there's no rule of logic that would forbid such a thing. And when people ask, but how could God know this?

That's the so-called grounding objection could be given. One is Molina's doctrine of super-comprehension, where it simply a matter of God perfectly understanding his own imagination. 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. 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.

...in his counterfactual knowledge. 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 scripture on this score. In Exodus 13, 17, God decides not to leave the children of Israel on the road through the Philistine country on the explicit rationale to change their mind and return to Egypt.

In Exodus 34, 15 to 16, God decides to command the Israelites to tear down the Canaanites altars and destroy their idols on the explicit rationale that if make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, play the harlot with their gods, take some of their daughters for their sons.

In Mark 4, 11 and 12, Jesus decides to explicitly explain his parable to everyone else on the explicit rationale that they're perceiving and never hearing, but never understanding. 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 live in 20 to 24,.

Would be a case in point. 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 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. 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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