The Concept of Middle Knowledge

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The webcast that we do, which was a radio program for many years, starting back in the 1980s, is called
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The Dividing Line. There are many dividing lines when it comes to truth and error, though our postmodern society does not like dividing lines, and anyone who draws dividing lines is considered to be narrow -minded or unloving.
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One dividing line is between those who believe that the scriptures are the word of God and believe those scriptures and seek to derive their beliefs from those scriptures and those who do not, those who would add to the scriptures or detract from the scriptures.
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That is a meaningful dividing line that can be very useful in identifying where people are coming from.
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But there is another dividing line, and that is between those who begin with God as the focus of his own acts, his own glory, and man as merely his creature, and those who begin with the central aspect of their theology and philosophy being the autonomous will of man.
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That man has the ability in and of himself to chart his own destiny, to, in essence, sing with Frank Sinatra, I did it my way.
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That may be somewhat of a humorous description, but there is a strong element of that in man's religions.
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While many would say that, oh, certainly God's help, God's grace is absolutely necessary, fundamentally whether God is successful in the matter of salvation is up to the creature man.
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That is the majority view of mankind. That certainly is the majority view of man's religions. I would suggest to you that, for example, that concept of autonomy is absolutely necessary to the
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Roman Catholic system. The Roman Catholic system of salvation is based upon the sacraments, and to engage those sacraments requires human activity.
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The human will to go to the Mass, the representation of the one sacrifice of Christ, to go to confession, to engage in the penitential activities, requires the use of man's will.
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And so, another dividing line is between synergists and monergists. The synergist believes that salvation is a cooperative effort between God and man, that God gives his part, but without the addition of man's part, there truly will be no salvation.
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The monergist believes that salvation is of the Lord, not merely the possibility of salvation, but that salvation itself is of the
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Lord, that is why he is to be glorified, and man is not to be glorified, that it is a monergistic, one power, that brings about the salvation of the human soul.
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These are dividing lines. Now, many dividing lines were drawn at the time of the
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Reformation, and hopefully, many of you are aware of the great things that took place at the time of the
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Reformation, but then, if you know history, you also know that there was a counter -Reformation, and the people who led up the counter -Reformation, beginning in the middle of the 16th century, were the
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Jesuits, and you've probably heard lots of things about Jesuits, but the Jesuits tended to be philosophically minded, highly trained, and one of those
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Jesuits was a man by the name of Luis de Molina, and Molina is the one, along with others, who developed the concept of middle knowledge.
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The reason he was doing this was the head of the Jesuits, Ignatius Loyola, had commanded them to find ways of combating the
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Reformation itself and Reformed preaching, and so these people would study what the Reformers were saying, see what the strengths were, and find ways to try to counteract the proclamation, for example, of the utter sovereignty of God.
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If you've read Luther's Bondage of the Will, for example, you know this was one of the earliest debates between Luther and Erasmus on the subject of the nature of man's will and the limitations of his freedom.
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Now, initially, Molina was also dealing with the conflict internally within Rome between the
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Jesuits and the Dominicans, and so the theory that he developed had relevance both within Roman Catholicism as well as that outside, but I think we need to be honest.
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The concept of middle knowledge, which I'm about to explain to you, is philosophically derived. It is not based upon exegesis.
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No one simply reading the Word of God in the first 1 ,550 years of this era ever came up with this full -blown idea.
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Now, some people played around with certain ideas that some might say, well, it's sort of like that, or that's sort of like that, but this is not something that you are going to be forced to believe by the exegesis of Scripture.
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And even Dr. Craig, in his works, recognizes that the few texts that those in support of middle knowledge have put forward to defend their perspective are not overly clear.
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He recognizes that there are valid interpretations of those texts that would not lead to the concept of middle knowledge.
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And as we will see, that's not why he suggests that we should believe in it, that is, that it's biblically based, but that it is fruitful in its philosophical and theological ramifications.
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That's why it should be believed. Now, Orthodox theologians had spoken of two kinds of knowledge in God.
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And the reason I'm going to go into this is, some people might have a question, why is it called middle knowledge?
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Well, I'm going to explain that right now. The first kind of knowledge is God's natural knowledge,
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His knowledge of Himself, all possible actions He could take in the future. It is natural to God.
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It is not based upon any decision God makes to do anything.
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It is the knowledge that God has naturally of Himself and any possible actions that He might take.
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And then there is free knowledge, which follows His decree to create. And hence, that's what most people think about when they think of omniscience, is they think of God knowing everything about His creation, everything that's going on in the entirety of the universe.
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He knows everything going on on every planet and in every solar system. But you see, all of that comes after His decree to create, and hence is dependent upon that decree.
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I mean, it's His decree that gives form and shape to the universe, and therefore that knowledge flows from His decree to create.
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And so these are the two kinds of knowledge that Orthodox theologians had spoken of in regards to God.
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Now, Molina posited a middle knowledge between these two kinds of knowledge, one that partakes of elements of both.
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This is not something that should be considered in a temporal sense. This is not, well, first God does this, and then
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He has this, and then He has... It's more of a logical sequence. If you're familiar with the arguments about infra - and superlapsarianism, same thing is true there.
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It's not so much a temporal, time -bound sequence, but a logical sequence. And this is very difficult for most of us to think about because we're time -bound creatures.
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And our minds function only in time -bound ways, past, present, and future.
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And even when it comes to logical concepts, we tend to place them in a time frame. But we're trying to very specifically avoid doing that when we talk about the knowledge of God.
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The reason it's called a middle knowledge is that it is a knowledge that is in between these two.
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It's a knowledge that God has prior to the decree. Make sure you get that part.
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It has to do with knowing what free creatures will do in given conditions.
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Now, at this point, I want to start utilizing Dr. Craig's own material so that, again, I cannot be accused of misrepresentation.
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MK, which is what we'll be referring to, middle knowledge, middle knowledge asserts that God knows, quote, what every possible creature would do, not just could do, in any possible set of circumstances.
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So, theoretically, the difference between those two would be God would know in his free knowledge what any possible creature, if he decided to create a world, he would know what those creatures could do.
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But that's not what middle knowledge is. Let's say we go out this evening after we eat.
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And I've got some friends here, one of whom I'm afraid to publicly recognize that I actually know him.
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But Beau's sitting down here, and he's a Biola grad. And Beau's a friend of mine, and I have now ruined my career.
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But anyway, let's say Beau and I went out to eat.
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And what we're saying is that from all eternity, God would know what
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Beau could eat this evening. He would know what would be the possible realms.
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But that's not what middle knowledge is. Middle knowledge is knowing Beau so well that given any context, any situation,
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God would know exactly what Beau would eat. Not just what he could, which is a lot, but what he would eat.
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So that's what middle knowledge is. Now, you notice what the focus of this middle knowledge is. It's free creatures.
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Free creatures. There's an entire knowledge in God, evidently, about what free creatures would do in any given situation.
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Now, here is a further description from Dr. Craig, and the text is finally small enough that I have to turn around to read it.
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In this second moment of knowledge, middle knowledge, God knows which of the possible worlds known to him in the first moment, that is in his natural knowledge, are within his power to create.
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Hence, there are any number of possible worlds known to God in the first moment of knowledge, which, it should be, he cannot create because free creatures would not cooperate.
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His middle knowledge serves, so to speak, to delimit the range of possible worlds to those he could create, given the free choice which creatures would make in them.
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Okay, some of you are shaking your heads. I know that this is difficult to understand, but let's try to work through it so we can understand it before we can critique it.
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Maybe some of you are shaking your heads because you already understand. You're going, wait a minute, there are some things that are very troubling. God knows which of the possible worlds, so you have
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God, and he can conceive of creation and all the possible worlds he could create.
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I mean, he could have made us all green. Some people in California would like that. He could have made the universe in all sorts of different ways, different sizes and shapes.
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He could have put our heads on our left shoulders and given us four arms, and there's all sorts of things.
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But of all those possible worlds, middle knowledge is saying there are certain of them that God could not create, and God could not create them because his middle knowledge will tell him what free creatures would do in any given situation, and that middle knowledge, then, if God wants to reach goal
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X, he has to find a possible world in which the free creatures in that world cooperate so that he can reach goal
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X, and so what you've got God doing is examining this limit, almost limitless variety of possibilities, and like a massive supercomputer, he crunches the numbers, and think about the complexity of this.
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Now, I'm not overdoing this because if you've listened to Dr. Craig, he talks about how just amazing this is because think about, just think for a moment, about how many free choices of free creatures go into almost anything.
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I mean, think about the free choices of free creatures that went into the crucifixion of Jesus.
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How many billions of choices led to the specific people who were born, people choosing to marry this woman and not that woman, or people choosing to engage in this activity which results in the death of this person, so that line can't keep going, and so you've got all these billions and billions of possibilities.
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It's a massive Jenga puzzle, and there are all these different things that God has to know all this stuff to find the possible world that results in what he wants it to result in, and we're not sure what that is yet, but the results in what he wants to result in.
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But here's, and this is, follow through with this with me, and if I'm wrong here, please point it out to me, but it seems to me that when you use terms like delimit, his middle knowledge serves, so to speak, to delimit the range of possible worlds to those he could create given the free choice which creatures would make in them, what is the overriding consideration in the final form of creation?
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Is it God's pleasure and will, or is it the free actions of creatures?
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It seems to me that God's will is limited to finding a world that free creatures allow him to create to accomplish his purpose.
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That's what it sounds like it's saying. Let's see if that's really the case. Let's continue on.
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Indeed, God's decision to create a world is based on his middle knowledge and consists in his electing to become actual one of the possible worlds known to him in the second moment in his middle knowledge.
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So middle knowledge becomes the determining factor. This world exists solely because of all the possible worlds it was the one that God chose to actuate.
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But the form of this world is the result of what? The choices of free creatures.
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Not God's sovereign will, not God's pleasure. It was God's pleasure to actuate a world determined by the decisions of free creatures.
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That's a severe limitation of the extent and the nature of God's will and his decision, is it not?
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It would seem to be. Given middle knowledge, the apparent contradiction between God's sovereignty which seems to crush human freedom and human freedom which seems to break
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God's sovereignty is resolved, Dr. Craig believes, in his infinite intelligence.
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God is able to plan a world in which his designs are achieved by creatures acting freely.
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Praise be to God. Now, please, think about what's being said.
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Think about what's being said. I honestly believe that people want to try to resolve these two things.
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I just honestly believe that outside of the grace of God, the resolution will always be a limitation of God's sovereignty, even with lip service to it.
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But notice what is said. In his infinite intelligence, God is able to plan a world.
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Now, what does it mean to plan a world? Because, you see, this world is just simply one theoretical construct of billions that are out there.
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He didn't determine its shape. He doesn't determine the outcome. The only determination is by free creatures.
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He had to look at all these different possibilities, and this one evidently came the closest to what he wanted.
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Think about what that means. And when you say, praise be to God, for exactly what?
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Seriously, what is God being praised for? Because he, in his infinite intelligence, found the best possible world?
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He couldn't have done better than this. That's what I'm saying. He couldn't have done better than this. And we're going to get to exactly what that means as we look at this.
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So, what does this have to do with predestination? Well, this is where the rubber really starts to meet in the road.
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Because let's think about this for just a moment. I know you've already read it. It shouldn't have gone that fast, right?
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Okay, now don't read that. How many of you would read it? I'm a father.
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I had kids. I know exactly how that works. Predestination.
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That's not fair. The Molinist, the advocate of middle knowledge, believes that everything that happens in time is totally known to God.
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They're not open theists, and I appreciate the fact they stand against open theism. I do consider open theism an absolute heresy.
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Thank you. And God knew you were going to say amen.
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So, God is not surprised. And I'm so glad God is not surprised.
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I don't know about the rest of you, but think about it for a moment. About open theism. Can you imagine what it would be like to be
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God on September 10th, 2001? Ooh, this looks bad. But what if they do this and they do...
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Oh, this looks bad. But God doesn't know who's going to die on September 11th or September 10th. They really believe that.
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If you haven't heard them, haven't heard of them, they're out there, sadly. InterVarsity Press loves publishing their books.
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And the evangelical theological side, you can't kick them out. And if you want to see how well that system holds up,
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I debated Dr. John Sanders at Reform Theological Seminary back in 2001 on that very subject, and I think you might find it very interesting.
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But at least they stand against that. I'm glad the Molinists don't buy into open theism. But at what cost?
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And by what means, is the question. When it comes to the issue of predestination, very clearly,
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Dr. Craig is not Reformed. He... Indeed, as I pointed out, one of the books that we're looking at here where he first presents this is
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The Grace of God and the Will of Man, which is a case for Arminianism, edited by Clark Pinnock, who himself is an open theist.
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Now, anyways, I don't think he was then yet. I don't know. In any case, predestination, the idea that God in eternity past chooses, that's what foreknowing means in eternity past, chooses to enter into loving relationship with an individual, an undeserving individual.
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Not because he looks down the corridors of time and says, ah, this person's going to believe in me. And so I will enter into relationship with that person.
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No. All the Father gives me will come to me. It's the giving of the Father that determines the coming of anyone to Christ.
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That's Jesus' teaching. And so, that intimately, personal, and eternal, and amazing biblical truth, that knowing me better than I know myself, the holy
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God still chose to redeem me. Personally, before eternity begins.
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Very controversial thing. A tremendous encouragement and treasure to the believer, but, for many, very controversial.
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What happens in Molinism? Well, if God knows exactly what's going to happen because he chooses to actuate one particular world, then you have a form of predestination.
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Here's what it says. Accordingly, the very act of selecting a world to be created is a sort of predestination.
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Given that God's middle knowledge is correct, God, in creating certain persons who will freely accept his grace, thereby ensures that they will be saved.
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As for the unsaved, the only reason they are not predestined is that they freely reject God's grace. But, you see, predestination just becomes an artifact of choosing to actuate one particular world.
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The personal aspect of it is gone. It just so happens that God actuated one world in which certain people will respond to the gospel and other people won't.
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That foreknowing becomes a philosophical thing rather than a personal and intimate thing.
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That, to me, is one of the greatest costs of the concept of middle knowledge.
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God gives sufficient grace to all people everywhere to be saved, and he desires that they accept his grace and be saved.
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In fact, many of the unsaved may actually receive greater divine assistance in drawing than do the saved.
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That they are lost is their own responsibility. Now, it is right here that I want to suggest to you that I'm not sure that Dr.
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Craig's position remains coherent. I truly believe there are some assertions here that I believe that Dr.
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Craig believes that he is answering some of the big questions. God gives sufficient grace to everyone to be saved.
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What does that mean? See, this demonstrates that Dr. Craig is operating on a concept of grace that I don't believe is biblical at all.
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I don't believe in peanut butter grace. I don't believe in grace that you just sort of spread all over the place and it gets to the right people for some time and sometimes it doesn't.
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I mean, God is certainly gracious. There's certainly common grace all over the place. That's why mankind does what he does and hasn't destroyed himself quite yet, but that's not what we're talking about here.
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We're talking about saving grace. And Dr. Craig certainly has as a theological foundation, and this is where theology matters, and this is where theology should determine philosophy and never the other way around.
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This is where the issue really is joined, because Dr. Craig's theology is what the problem is.
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It results in the philosophy being a problem. And that is even in his own teaching.
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He has said when talking about soteriology, you have the reform view, you have the view of Trent. Which side did he come down on?
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A modified version of the Council of Trent. So there is a fundamental opposition to the
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Reformation at that point. When you're talking about give sufficient grace, folks, sufficient grace saves.
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Sufficient grace saves. I've said so many times, but I have to keep repeating it.
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It amazes me when I see Protestant scholars and theologians, big names, and they start talking about Roman Catholicism, and they go, wow,
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I was just reading the Council of Trent, and the Council of Trent anathematizes anybody who says you can be saved apart from God's grace.
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Isn't that wonderful to hear Rome say that? As if the
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Reformation was about the necessity of grace. The reformers never said that Rome denies the necessity of grace.
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What was the Reformation about? It was about the sufficiency of grace. Whether God saves by His grace alone, or that grace is just a helper, and now it's up to man.
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That's what the issue was. And it's still that issue today. The sad part of the fact of the matter is, the vast majority of Protestants are now on Rome's side on the issue.
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And they don't even know it. So, seriologically, in regards to salvation, a large portion of today's
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Protestants are popeless Catholics. And they just don't know it. And so, when he says,
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God gives sufficient grace to all people, everyone will be saved, and he desires that they accept His grace and be saved. What does that mean?
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He did not actuate a world in which they would be saved. He has a way around that.
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But, once you've left the biblical realm as we have here now, the way around it is only going to make things worse.
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Notice, we are told that middle knowledge can thus provide an illuminating account, not only of God's foreknowledge, but also of His providence and predestination.
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Does God then possess middle knowledge? Listen to this. He's already said,
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God's entire choice to create is based upon middle knowledge. Does God then possess middle knowledge?
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It would be difficult to prove in any direct way that He does. For the biblical passages are not unequivocal.
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Nevertheless, the doctrine is so fruitful in illuminating divine prescience, providence, and predestination that it can be presumed unless there are insoluble objections to it.
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Folks, that's one of my biggest problems, is when Christian theology is determined by philosophy and not by the exegesis of God's divine
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Word. We will always be led astray. I truly believe that there is an inherent lack of trust in the clarity of the
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Word of God behind that kind of a state. I think that's why you always hear
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Dr. Craig talking about probabilities, not certainties. So, why should we believe in middle knowledge?
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Because it's a doctrine fruitful in illuminating divine prescience, providence, and predestination.
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It can be presumed to be true. Now, at this point, he then went into answering objections.
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Folks, let me tell you something. When you answer objections, that's when your true system comes into the light.
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I learned a long time ago. I didn't know this in the first few debates that I did. I never took a class on doing debates.
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Not once. I never offered in any of the places I went. It took four or five debates before I came to realize you know where the debate takes place?
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It's called cross -examination. Because anybody can make presentations. Anybody can then give counter -arguments.
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But it's when someone comes and examines you. When someone comes and asks you for the consistency of your position, that's when the wheels fall off.
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And so, Dr. Craig responds to objections to his position. And that's when the real statements that illustrate what
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Middle Knowledge really does come to the fore. He responds to someone who would object to Middle Knowledge and saying, well look, there are too many lost people.
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God would never make this world with all this evil and all these lost people if he truly had
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Middle Knowledge. There would be more saved. And so he's wrestling with that idea. And that's what brings out the real limitations that Middle Knowledge places upon God.
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He says, there are some possible persons who would not freely receive
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Christ under any circumstances. And then in elucidating that statement, he says, only if God coerced them would they believe in Christ.
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Hence, God cannot be blamed for creating a world in which such people are lost. So what he's saying is, in God's Middle Knowledge, there were certain people that no matter what, they would never freely accept
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Christ. Folks, may
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I suggest to you that the biblical teaching is, that's every single one of us.
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Is that not the teaching of Romans 8? When Paul says, they cannot submit to the law of God.
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They lack the ability to do so. Is that not what Jesus says?
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No man is able to come to me. Here's where theology matters.
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Yeah, you're exactly right. There are some possible persons. Every single fallen son and daughter of Adam.
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That's everybody. But he says there are some possible persons who would not freely receive
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Christ under any circumstances. Do you hear what he's saying? That means there are some possible persons God could never save.
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God does not have the capacity. He does not have the power. Why? Because the ultimate authority in this system is the free will of man.
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Not the free will of God. Page 147 if you want to check it out.
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Next statement. There is no possible world in which all persons would freely receive
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Christ. Well that follows from the last one, doesn't it? If there are certain people who never, that means there's no possible world.
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God could never have been a universalist. You hearing what this means?
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That means God had to create people to go to hell. To have anybody go to heaven.
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His middle knowledge forces him to this. God holds here's the statement.
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That a world in which some persons freely reject Christ but the number of those who freely receive him is maximized is preferable to a world in which a few people receive
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Christ and none are lost. Do you hear that? God holds that it's better to have lots of people saved and lots of people in hell than to have fewer people saved and nobody in hell.
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That's God's position. He says we have seen that it is possible that God wants to maximize the number of the saved.
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He wants heaven to be as full as possible yet as a loving God he wants to minimize the number of the lost. He wants hell to be as empty as possible.
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His goal then is to achieve an optimal balance to create no more loss than is necessary to actuate a certain number of the saved.
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I don't know about you but this is sounding really impersonal. This is a numbers game.
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God's a huge supercomputer and he's crunching the numbers and this is the best way to work it all out but it's never based upon what?
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God's good pleasure. It's based upon what his middle knowledge of what free creatures will do but he says it is possible that the balance in the actual world this world we're in is such an optimal balance.
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It is possible that in order to create the number of persons in our world who will be saved
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God had to create the number of persons who will be lost. It is possible that the terrible price of filling heaven is the filling of hell as well.
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And that in any other possible world the balance between saved and lost would have been worse or the same.
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So it's possible that we live in the best possible world.
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It's possible. You see the difference between philosophy and Christian theology?
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One says it's possible. The other says thus saith the Lord. And we need to keep them straight as to which one's which.
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But you hear what's being said here? The suggestion is this is the best
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God could do. It couldn't have gotten any better. If he changed anything there would have been less here, more there.
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This is just simply the best of everything that was offered to him by middle knowledge.
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And remember, middle knowledge is not the result of his decree. One of the questions
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I'm going to be asking then is it seems to me that God's options were determined by something outside of God.
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As a Christian theologian that makes me wonder. So he says the actual world contains an optimal balance between saved and unsaved and those catch this and those who are unsaved would never have received
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Christ under any circumstances. What he's saying is those who go to hell they never were savable in the first place.
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God somehow managed to actuate a world where every single person who goes to hell there is no possible world they could have been saved anyways.
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So hey, why is God to be blamed? Interesting idea. We have seen that the doctrine of divine middle knowledge,
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Dr. Craig says, while having some biblical support ought to be accepted mainly because of its great theological advantages.
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There is the statement. Let me summarize the objections. First of all,
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I believe middle knowledge is unfounded. It assumes humans act consistently in the same circumstances.
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How does God have middle knowledge? Do you always do the exact same thing when you're in the exact same circumstances?
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Have you ever surprised yourself? I am probably one of the most predictable people around.
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Thank you. Thank you again. I was speaking at a church in Georgia once and I got to this, man
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I was preaching. I got to this point about the cross and I was preaching about Mel Gibson and the
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Passion movie and how he just missed it and he doesn't understand what the cross was and I got right to this really big point and right as I paused for that effect someone's cell phone went off.
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And I said, there's Mel calling right now. What else can I do? And someone is now crawling under a pew toward the back of the room with their cell phone.
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Now, did I have to give that humorous pause to our discussion?
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I could have chosen not to. Middle knowledge is saying God knew that whatever that sort of, I would always do that or at least in this world
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I would always do that. How do you know that? Doesn't that destroy, doesn't that make doesn't that make man a robot?
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Does that not make man a puppet on a string? Are we really coming up with an answer here?
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I mean how many times have I had Molinas say, well you Calvinists think that we're just a bunch of robots. And I go, wait a minute, I think you're the one on that gig.
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Not me. Because you think that God can have knowledge, that your freedom is so mechanistic that God can put you in circumstance
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X and you're always just going to do the same thing. Is that not robotic? Am I right?
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I honestly do not believe that the whole assertion that God would know what any free creature would do in any possible circumstance is a meaningful statement.
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There are a lot of Armenians who agree with me. They recognize Molinism is the end of their concept of the autonomous will of man.
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So on the one side, oh we've got to defend the autonomous will of man. But on the other side, you end up creating a creature that God can know exactly what he's going to do in any given circumstance.
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And he will never vary. Or if he does then God's middle knowledge becomes invalidated.
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I have a problem with that. I've surprised myself. Like I said, I'm the most predictable person around.
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And... Do we have any cardiologists here? No cardiologists. Don't worry, I'm doing fine.
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It's okay. Didn't want anybody to panic there for a second. Test, test, test.
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Do we have anyone? We've got news for the hat too.
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All right. It's back now?
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Test it. Nope, it's dead. I'm going to speak from the rest of the way up here. We'll just do it from here.
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Okay? Feel more powerful behind a pulpit anyways. But... All right.
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You'll get to this story eventually. Starting in the middle of my sophomore year, I got my driver's license.
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And I discovered that I could leave campus at lunch and get something to eat and get back in time for the next period.
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And we were allowed to do that back then. I wasn't breaking any rules, don't worry. I didn't even get a demerit in high school, so I was a freak.
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But I was never tardy to a class. I never got a B. Okay, I'm a freak. It's all right. Starting in the middle of my sophomore year, through the rest of my high school, graduation, including on Saturdays, because I was working on Saturdays, that's six days a week,
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I had the exact same thing for lunch every day. Quarter pounder with cheese, fries, and a
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Coke. That's why I was asking if there was any cardiologists here. And so some days, it was rare, but some days
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I would walk in and I would supersize it. I'm a wild guy,
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I know. I think there was one time in all those years
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I got a Filet -O -Fish sandwich. That's a clear sign of liberalism right there.
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Now, as predictable as I am, I don't believe that God could have middle knowledge of exactly what
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I would order, because I did change it. As predictable as I am, and some of you aren't anywhere near as predictable as I am.
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So I question this first assertion. I don't believe that middle knowledge is founded, because I think it really destroys what they're trying to preserve, and that is some concept of the autonomous will of man.
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Secondly, I believe it's contradictory. Outside of God's creative decree, there is no basis for knowing what a free creature is.
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It amazes me. How can you know, intimately, a creature that doesn't actually exist?
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Now, I understand the theoretical concept, but my assertion is that if it exists, it exists because God decreed that it exists.
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That is Christian theology. And it seems to me that middle knowledge presents to us things, these counterfactuals, as the modern language frequently uses it, these counterfactuals, that have a real existence that can limit
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God's choices as to what He does in His universe, to what universe
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He can even create, and yet, they don't flow from His good pleasure. They don't flow from His decree.
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There's something here that is impacting God and determining what God can and cannot do that God does not determine in and of Himself.
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And that to me violates the fundamental assertions of what Christians believe about God.
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He is the creator of all things. If it exists, He made it. It is what it is because He made it that way.
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It seems there's some things in this theory that He didn't create, He didn't make, but they can determine what actions
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He can take in creation itself. That concerns me greatly. Middle knowledge compromises the very nature of God as it posits a controlling factor that delimits
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God's choices and capacities that does not find its origin in God's essence or in God's decrees.
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Middle knowledge limits God's choices. We saw Him saying that. And I say to you, where did you get that from Scripture?
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Because if you're going to say this illuminates Christian theology, then
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I say to you, find that in what is theanoustos, what is God breathed.
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Don't bind it upon someone's conscience if it is not there. Middle knowledge is unbiblical in many ways.
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It is not derived from exegesis. Now, let me address you if you are a proponent of middle knowledge this evening.
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You might say, oh, well, you know, David and Kyla, you know, I mean, God knew what the people of Kyla would do as if that somehow,
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God's exhaustive knowledge of all of their thoughts, all of their history, this is after the decree, is actually a sufficient basis for all these possible worlds, and God working through all these possible worlds and things like that, as if that's what the writer intended us to learn from that.
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I'm sorry, that's really difficult. And then, of course, well, you know, Sodom and Gomorrah would have repented if they had had the light, the creation of Bethsaida did.
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As if that's middle knowledge in some other world, Sodom and Gomorrah repented. Obviously, the point of what is being said by Jesus is that Sodom and Gomorrah, which were watchwords to the most evil, pagan, non -Jewish cities, if they had had the amount of light that these
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Jewish cities had had, they would have repented. The point is not to say something about Sodom and Gomorrah, but to say something about the hardness of the heart of the people of Jesus' day.
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Clearly, that is his intention. But to create entire philosophical systems based upon something like that is to use the
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Bible as a proof -text machine, not as a divine revelation that is consistent with itself.
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So, no one simply exegeting the text of Scripture and allowing Scripture to be a harmonious revelation would have ever come up with the idea that God examines all these possible worlds based upon the actions of free creatures and comes up with the one that's the closest that he can get to to glorifying himself.
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Wouldn't have happened. It is not a positive teaching of Scripture in any way. And it ignores the biblical teaching of man's depravity, as we saw.
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Oh, there are some people who would never be saved. Yeah, that's everybody. This system posits an unbiblical anthropology of man that says that there are people outside of the great, merciful, loving act of regeneration, where God takes out a heart of stone and gives you a heart of flesh, raises you to spiritual life, where apart from that there would be people who still could be saved.
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That is not what the Bible teaches about man in the state of sin. It violates the
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Bible's teaching on man's depravity and it compromises the Bible's teaching on the source of God's decree and its end.
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And what do I mean by that? Well, I want to look at one text of Scripture and then we might have time for just a couple questions, okay?
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Let's look at this text of Scripture together. You know it well. It's Ephesians chapter 1, where Paul, writing this letter, and I think very clearly it was his intention that this letter be a circular letter.
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It was to be passed around the churches in the Lycus River Valley, beginning at Ephesus. It's probably the letter referred to in Colossians 4 .16
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that was becoming from Laodicea. Etc, etc. But it's like Romans in the sense that it is meant to touch on these high themes and communicate these things to the early churches.
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And in those words, Paul said, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before him in love.
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He predestined us to adoption as sons to Jesus Christ to himself, according to the kind intention of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the beloved.
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Now I managed to get up here without my Bible. Consider with me these inspired words.
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First, I'm going to go back to verse 3. This blessing is to God for many things.
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God the Father, the source of our salvation.
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Many people, even Christians, view God as a angry, distant God who is appeased and made happy by Jesus.
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The source of all salvation is the Father. His love, his mercy, the source of all things.
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Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who blessed us so many people robbed this text of its personal nature in an attempt to save the free will of man, the autonomous will of man.
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A will that the Bible teaches us is depraved and bound to sin and incapable of doing what is right before God, but those passages dismissed and the intimate personal nature of what
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God has done in Christ Jesus, sacrificed for the sake of a philosophical construct.
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Because He blessed us. He didn't just bless a nameless, faceless group.
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He blessed us. He's blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms in Christ.
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Yes, everything God has done, everything the Father has done, He's done in Christ. That is His will.
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And over and over again, in Christ, in Him, in the Beloved One, is repeated in Ephesians chapter 1.
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All of that is true, but it is a gross abuse of this text to take the beautiful truth that it is only in Christ that the
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Father has acted to His own glory and turn that around and say, Christ is the one who's chosen.
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And therefore, it's all up to us, whether we get into Him or not. That's not what the text says.
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The spiritual blessings are in Christ, but we're the ones blessed with them. The direct object is us, not
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Christ. The realm in which we have them is only in Christ. There's no room for pluralism.
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There's no room for the idea that outside of Jesus Christ, the spiritual blessings of God are available. It's not biblical.
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Our society wants us to say that, and our society will tell us we're not loving people unless we say that. We have to decide who we're going to honor more.
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The PC cops or God Himself. He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ just as He chose us in Him, not
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Him and then we get in Him. He chose us, direct object of the verb, in Christ when before the foundation of the world.
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We are the direct object. That's personal, and if you as a believer are not absolutely amazed since God knows your heart better than you do that He chose you.
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You didn't deserve it. You deserved His wrath and His punishment and yet He chose you before the foundation of the world.
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The certainty of what was going to take place in this universe had to be fixed for Him to even know you would exist because you are the result of literally millions of free choices of people in all the generations before you.
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That's why I asked John Sanders in our debate in 2001. Dr. Sanders, when
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God created did He know you would exist? No. Can you imagine? No, God didn't know.
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When Jesus died did God know you would exist? No. Open theism, sad stuff.
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He chose us in Him over the foundation of the world and He chose us for a purpose. That we might be holy and blameless before Him in love.
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God doesn't just save us and then leave us to ourselves. There is a reason why any individual receives the grace and mercy of God.
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God is glorifying Himself. He is conforming us to the image of Christ and He glorifies
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Himself in so doing that we might be holy and blameless before Him in love.
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God's glorified by that. That's why He's done it. Verse 5
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Having predestined us personal direct object again unto sonship through Jesus Christ unto
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Himself predestined us to sonship. I can't tell you how many people
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I'll name names. I'm not sure if I can do this in California. Pastor, can I do this in California? Chuck Smith.
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Ever heard of him? Ever heard of Calvary Chapel? I've heard of it too. Sort of popular around here.
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Chuck Smith. Don't you see what it says? It's predestined unto adoption.
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That's all. Everyone who believes in Jesus will be adopted as sons. Has nothing to do with salvation. Nothing to do with salvation?
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Adoption as sons conformed to His image has nothing to do with salvation. He does the same thing in Romans 8 in the golden chain.
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That has nothing to do with salvation? That is a general statement of salvation.
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Forgiveness of sins. Adoption as sons. They go together.
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No unsaved person can be adopted. No unsaved person can be conformed to the image of Christ.
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It's all God's work of salvation. It's amazing. Predestined us unto adoption through Jesus Christ unto
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Himself. Right here, folks. Right here. We get the big questions.
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Why? Why you? Why not another?
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I think our God is big enough to answer some pretty big questions because this is where the parent says, why one child and not another?
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A brother says, why one brother and not another? I do not approach these questions lightly or glibly as one whose only sister is an apostate.
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God's given us an answer. Woe be to us if we do not consider God's answers to be sufficient.
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I pray God will give us the grace to accept the answer He gives to us. Because when we say that's not enough, my pastoral heart is concerned about any person who does not find the scriptural answer to be enough.
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What's the basis of His predestination? What's the basis of His choosing? According to the kind intention of His will.
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Oh, but I want to find the answer in me. I want to find the answer in another person.
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I was more spiritually sensitive or one of the brothers was more spiritually insightful and that's why one is saved.
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The kind intention of His will, I don't know what that is. Well, you know by scriptural revelation it's kind.
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You know by scriptural revelation that God is good. The basis is the kind intention of His will and the purpose is verse 6.
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To the praise be literally translated as of His glorious grace which
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He graced us, literally. Same root. In the beloved, singular, the beloved one, that's
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Jesus. I was raised with the King James so when I heard the beloved I just figured that was the church.
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Well beloved, we're gathered here today and I sort of figured that was a plural. It's a singular.
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There's the answer to the big questions. Nothing here about well predestined because it was the best world
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God could come up with. God's middle knowledge showed Him that this was the optimal balance of heaven filling choices.
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Do you see the personal nature of this revelation?
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Not only are we the ones who receive these blessings, we're the ones chosen, we're the ones predestined, but God does this on the basis of the kind intention of His own will.
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Now, sorry, but let me finish with this.
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I started preaching, sorry brother. Dr. Craig in his talks tells people that the happiness of man is not why
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God created, and he's right. But then he misses the biblical message when he says the reason
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God created was to spread the knowledge of God. That is an important thing in Scripture.
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God will, God wills to reveal Himself to His people. There's no question about that.
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But that is an end to a greater means that I have never, ever heard. Now, please listen to how
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I'm saying this. I have tried to listen to as much of Dr.
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Craig's presentations as I can, to be fair. I have never heard him say that the ultimate reason of creation is the self -glorification of God.
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I've never heard it. If he says it, that's great, but he doesn't incorporate it into his philosophy.
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And verse 6 tells us that the ultimate reason that God has done what
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He has done is not, first and foremost, to be found in His creatures, but in Himself.
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To the praise of His glorious grace. That's why, and I truly believe, that the
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Spirit of God works in the people of God to cause our hearts to resonate with that truth.
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Yes, God, use me to Your glory.
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Just as you used Pharaoh, and that was to his condemnation, oh, God, use me to Your glory, to my salvation.
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What a wondrous thing. I see nothing in that about middle knowledge.
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I see nothing in that about constraints upon God. It seems to me that the theory of middle knowledge is nothing but a
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Jesuit philosophy that sought through complex argumentation to maintain an unbiblical concept, the autonomy of man, and in the process, do lip service to the sovereignty of God, but in reality, to hamstring and destroy it.
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It is only consistent with an unbiblical soteriology. It is not glorifying to God, and it does not give a biblical
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God -honoring apologetic to an unbelieving world as to why God has created. I'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but the fact of the matter is, for the
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Christian, what must be first and foremost in our minds is honoring
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God by honoring His truth. We deal with extremely important matters here, and I hope and pray that you've heard my heart this evening.
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I hope and pray you will consider these things, look to God's word, and thank you very much for being here this evening.
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Let's pray together. Our gracious Heavenly Father, indeed, we thank you that we still have the freedom to gather and to discuss important things like this, and oh
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God, as I always pray, I think of so many brothers and sisters across this world that would have given anything to be here with us this evening, to sing, to pray, to consider your truth.
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Oh God, we pray for the persecuted church. We remember them, but Lord, we also think of your word this evening, and we think of these great truths, and I pray that your people in this room have been encouraged this evening to think about your providence.
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You are on your throne. Lord, we live in a frightening world. There are things happening so fast around us.
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We ask that you would increase our faith that you remain upon your throne, and that we would derive great pleasure and satisfaction and encouragement from that recognition.
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And Father, as we seek to give a reason for the hope that's within us, may we do so, not by looking to the philosophies of men, but to your word.
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May we honor your word as we proclaim it to others. We thank you once again for gathering us together.
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May we not leave this place except changed and conformed ever closer to the image of our