It’s Just a Coincidence Illustrated, Back to Middle Knowledge with WLC

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. We are live in the big studio. We're going to be getting back to some

William Lane Craig material here before long. But first, haven't commented for a while.

I need to put my tinfoil hat back on. I noticed some folks making comments about tinfoil hats again.

It is pretty amazing how we've nailed so many things through our tinfoil hats over the past year and a half.

But I saw a video, this came out, this only goes through the end of September.

So this was a while back. But I just, I remind you of the

C -SPAN video of Anthony Fauci and other individuals in his circle lamenting at the slowness of the safety protocol process for getting vaccines, drugs, immunizations, et cetera, approved, how long it takes.

He had said that he was talking about 10 years, 10 years is what he said.

And I then remind you of the fact that literally hundreds of billions of dollars.

I mean, I'm not even talking about the fact this is all funny money. I'm not even talking about the fact that, for example, the bills passing in Washington right now, that if we were ever to pay these bills off, which we never will, but if we were, would literally be incumbent upon our great, great grandchildren to pay right now.

The numbers are just so astronomical that they're not even meaningful to most people any longer.

And of course, this money is just providing, every leftist liberal organization in the

West is now awash in money to produce its books and its videos and to continue its work.

This is, elections have consequences, stolen elections have consequences, and that's what we're seeing.

So I just remind you of the reality that the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil.

This is a biblical statement. And when you have hundreds of billions of dollars, most people struggle to even really imagine $10 million, let alone $100 million, let alone a billion dollars.

These are numbers that just get beyond our capacity. You can buy a lot of people with $100 billion.

You buy a lot of power, you buy a lot of control. And so you put together these things and what you end up with is now, even though the

VAERS database has a record number by far, by,

I don't even know what the percentage is now, of adverse reactions listed for the

Camelot crackers. That's just all, that's now, now the wisdom of the world is coincidence.

It's just coincidence. Premier athletes who have been healthy their entire lives, collapsing with cardiac arrest and myocarditis, coincidence, were they vaccinated?

Interestingly enough, one of the first ones, the initial reports were yes, had just been vaccinated.

And then since that was the first one, there was so much scrutiny on that. I'll say, oh no, no, no, no, no, no. No, we were wrong about that.

I don't believe that for a second. You know why I don't believe that for a second? Hundreds of billions of dollars.

That hundreds of billions of dollars will buy a lot of people tinfoil hats, but these tinfoil hats are meant to keep out like common sense.

And I just keep hundreds of billions of dollars. That's what's going on globally.

So we're now seeing all the studies. Remember the guy in Australia?

I mean, the Australians, wow. Talk about going into full on, hey, we like the

Chinese. We're gonna act like them and basically get rid of all of our unvaccinated people.

Like I said, I'm glad I escaped Australia. That's really the only way to put it.

Yeah, don't do that to me and then not show me anything. Buzzes at me and then it's like,

I'm not gonna talk to you. But now we have the guy down in Australia saying, our hospitals are just are flooded, absolutely flooded with people who don't have

COVID. We've just never seen anything like this. And you just sit there and go, really?

Because see, what's happened is once you do this mass vaccination thing, I'm sorry, this mass distribution of Camel and crackers, you no longer have a control group.

You can no longer say, well, we did this and this control group and we did this with the Slivos and this group over here.

And so now we can actually have correlation. When you don't do that, when you skip that part, then you can just simply say, it's just all coincidence.

Because obviously with any medical procedure, a certain percentage of people are going to die within a period of time after that.

That always happens with whatever medical procedure we're talking about, whatever drug that's administered. And so it's not always a direct causation situation.

So you always go, see, see, see? Until you go, yeah, but we're talking about 20 some odd year olds dying of heart attacks.

How often does that happen? Well, but it does, but not with this frequency.

If we had serious journalists. And of course we do have people looking at this. They're the people who end up getting fired.

They're the people who end up getting canceled and getting removed from social media because of hundreds of billions of dollars.

I don't even using the T word, trillions of dollars, because we can't even, if you can't do billion, trillion just leaves you speechless.

So anyways, I saw this video taken from John Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center.

And it's COVID -19 deaths before and after mass cracker distribution program.

So you see up at the top, that's what it says. And then it has the country.

And so I'm just gonna, so this little thing right here is a syringe.

And so the blue is before, the red is after. And so let's just, this is only going to late, the 21st of September.

So this is January of 2020. Yeah, January 2020 through September 21st.

All right, so let's just, let's see if this is just all a bunch of coincidence, shall we? So here is

Afghanistan. Here is Albania. Algeria, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Brazil, Burma, Cambodia, Côte d 'Ivoire, not sure what that is,

Djibouti, I think, Fiji, Grenada, Guinea, Guyana, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Jamaica, Jordan, Malaysia, Mauritius, Mongolia, Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal, Curacao, Paraguay, Portugal.

Qatar, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Uganda, United Kingdom, Uruguay, Vietnam, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

Okay, so there are just a massive number of amazing, amazing coincidences.

It's just a coincidence that in all of those places, as soon as you have the distribution of the

Kamala crackers, you have a massive spike of coronavirus deaths.

Just a coincidence, because we know that they're safe and effective, and we were promised that once you got it, you couldn't get it, you couldn't pass it on.

I know, they now say that, well, yeah, you can still get it, and you can still pass it on.

In fact, you can pass it on just as effectively as you ever did before. But the big thing now is you might not get it quite as bad.

Well, that's why we'll still force this into the arms of five -year -olds, which

I hope and pray within 10 years, there will be a recognition of the crimes against humanity that are being perpetrated right now.

It would be nice to think that the people who are profiting from this, who are making billions of dollars from this, and who are profiting from the deaths of so many people will be brought to some type of justice.

I'm not holding my breath. There will be a day of justice, that's a given. But in this life, well, we can hope and pray.

Where'd that study come from again? John Hopkins, yeah, yeah. Quack, right?

Yes, yes, yes, well, what can I say? Okay, let's, before we go back to Dr.

Craig, I enjoy going to scripture. I am perfectly well aware of the fact that for many people, the reason that we don't, that they do not start with scripture in answering many of the biggest questions concerning the existence of God, his relationship to the universe, is because they just simply don't believe that scripture is up to engaging on that level.

That in reality, it is the wisdom of Christians doing philosophy, not ancient men writing poems, which for example, is what we have in the

Psalter. When you look at Isaiah, much of that is in poetry. And there is a fundamental lack of not just respect, but faith, that especially

Old Testament scripture, there is an element of, some people are canonically challenged and they really view the

Old Testament scriptures as functioning on a lower level than, at least if you're in Ephesians, you've got some real high level discussions there, right?

But the Psalter? David? Asaph? Really?

I think a lot of people really struggle with that. And so for me, it is just necessary to remind myself over and over again, even as I read materials from those who are promoting a form of Christian philosophy,

Sola Philosophia. I need to keep going back and recognizing that the one who made me and who entered into human flesh used the words of the

Tanakh, including the Psalter, as the final authority in the disputations that he engaged in.

And it was recorded for us in scripture. So in the 33rd Psalm, Psalm 33, we read these words, by the word, you don't need to put that up because that's

William Lane Craig. By the word of Yahweh, the heavens were made. You will never have a serious

Christian epistemology or worldview that does not start with creation. And notice it's the word of Yahweh.

So it's intentional, it's purposeful, it's sovereign, it's kingly. By the word of Yahweh, the heavens were made and by the breath of his mouth, all their host.

And that's the breath of his mouth, that's just, that's so anthropomorphic and it's actually so personal.

So word and breath, it's command. So the heavens were made, all their host, all the creation comes from God's kingly freedom.

He gathers the waters of the seas together as a heap, he lays up the deeps and storehouses, the vast oceans under his control.

As a result, let all the earth fear Yahweh, all the earth, not just the inhabitants of Israel, but all the earth is called to fear

Yahweh. Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him. This was the great scandal of Jewish religion is that their

God's authority did not stop at the border. He did not come out of the creation, he was not limited by the creation, he is the source of all the creation.

For he spoke and it was done, he commanded and it stood fast. There is a, the speaking of Yahweh creates reality because he is

God. It doesn't just happen, he doesn't just establish the initial conditions and then it just sort of runs on its own.

He commands, he speaks and it is done. Get the cursor back over here.

Now notice once it says, for he spoke and was done, he commanded and it stood fast, the next line is

Yahweh nullifies the council of the nations. He frustrates the plans of the peoples.

The council of Yahweh stands forever, the plans of his heart from generation to generation.

This is a chiastic structure, flips itself over and the point is the council of the nations and the plans of the people, frustrated and done away with by Yahweh.

But his council and the plans of his heart. So what he desires to do, established and standing from generation to generation.

Blessed is the nation whose God is Yahweh, the people whom he has chosen for his own inheritance and then notice,

Yahweh looks from heaven, he sees all the sons of men, from his dwelling place he looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth.

He who fashions the hearts of them all, he who understands all their works.

Now, if we were starting here, if we actually thought that God intends us to hear these words and believe them and make application of them, would this not tell us that the hearts of men now it's talked about the heart of Yahweh and that what he intends in his heart will be established forever.

But Yahweh fashions the hearts of them all or all together, you can either say all their hearts or all together, he is the one who fashions the hearts of men and who understands all their works.

Now, if we hear that, from whence comes man's desires and decisions?

Well, as Peter said, sanctify Christ as Lord is in your hearts. That central aspect of the human being fashioned by Yahweh.

Are we going to say that Yahweh's creative activity is limited only to the physical heart?

It can't be because in this context, when it says he who fashions the hearts of them all, who understands all their works, but the point is there is an active expression of the creative will of God that creates the hearts of men that results in their works.

That's where we would start. If we were designing a worldview that is addressing the issue of God's knowledge, man's knowledge, the interface between eternity and time,

God's eudachia, his kind intention, his goodwill and man's creaturely freedom.

We would take into consideration the positive statement that the very source of the works of men is fashioned by Yahweh.

Now, why do I emphasize this? Well, if you've been listening to the discussion of the concept of middle knowledge, then you know why.

Because we hear repeatedly from the advocates of middle knowledge, we're looking at William Lane Craig, we could be looking at others, even though the other big names writing, at least from a

Christian perspective and promoting this, especially amongst the apologetics community are all associated with Craig, McGregor and others.

But we're looking right now at William Lane Craig's The Only Wise God. And we have seen that middle knowledge constrains, constrains the freedom of God.

In what way? When God considers the worlds that he can actuate, he does so based upon middle knowledge.

And what does middle knowledge tell him? It tells him what the hearts of men would do in any given situation.

So he who fashions the hearts of men is limited by middle knowledge of what they will do.

Do you see a conflict there? I see a conflict there. I see a clear conflict there, but we haven't finished looking at what

Dr. Craig is saying. And so we already looked at,

I think, well, this is by his natural knowledge, God knew Peter could do.

It's hard to remember because some of these things repeat themselves. I don't want to miss anything. Let me see here.

I think we covered that. I think we covered that. I've been reading so much of this stuff and it's all very, very similar.

Yeah, because I remember we talked about this. His middle knowledge serves, so to speak, to delimit the range of possible worlds to those he could create given the free choices which creatures would make in them.

Yes, we definitely did cover that. We did cover this page. And so there you have the terminology, delimit the range of possible worlds.

Now, I simply say, I, it's amazing to look at that monitor back there and it's completely different colors on the screen than what my eye sees up here.

I don't know if you notice the same thing, but that is intriguing. And it completely different than in the

Kindle program when I'm outlining this stuff. So it's just a little, it's going out, right?

Well, okay, whatever. The whole use of the phrase possible worlds, the range of possible worlds to those he could create.

I hope you have sat back on, you know, I don't remember any one of the prophets or apostles ever even considering such thing.

And that would be true. So I remind you of that because I think it's something that a

Christian should take into consideration. Why is this so different than what

I read in inspired scripture? Doesn't of itself make it wrong, but why is it so different?

Why does it seem to have such a different perspective? But the point is that this middle knowledge, which is not a part of God's decree.

Remember for middle knowledge to be middle knowledge, it's before the decree. It's just simply

God having knowledge of what any free creature would do in any given situation, but it has to be a knowledge that is not derived from the exercise of the freedom of God's will.

This is to me, the issue. All the philosophical mumbo jumbo, and that's what a lot of it is, that all the hoops you have to jump through.

From a Christian perspective, if a person says, I'm a Christian, and I believe that middle knowledge shines light on biblical revelation, okay, good.

That means you and I get to go to scripture and we get to have a discussion about this. And the key issue that I don't believe

Dr. Craig answers and nobody else that I've read really answers is if middle knowledge is innate to God, then where did it come?

Where did the content of middle knowledge come from? The content that tells

God what a creature he has yet to design is going to do.

Because our decisions are brought about by a number of created factors.

And so God has to will to create them. Oh no, it's just all hypothetical. God hypothetically thinks that if I made

John Smith six foot seven or made

John Smith four foot seven, then I'm going to know what either one of those John Smiths is going to do depending upon where they are in the height gradation, given the gravitational constant of whatever possible world

I put them in. And I go, that doesn't make any sense because it's not just one factor like that.

It's all sorts of facts. Well, but God is big enough to do every possible factor calculation.

But every possible algorithm, the greatest computer we have today, you still have to start with data.

You still have to start with something that's real. And all of that aside,

I would just simply say that any theory that says that middle knowledge rescues true freedom is really, really shallow.

To say that man is truly free on this basis, when God micromanages every single circumstance around him to the point where he can't even create some worlds as we're going to see, the speculation is there were certain people that could never possibly be saved, but God still has to put them in the world to make things work.

Where is that data coming from that constrains God? And how is it that my children did all sorts of things as they were children that I didn't expect them to do?

Well, you just didn't know them well enough. The point is, the idea is that any free creature, given certain circumstances, if they will always do the same thing, that's not autonomy.

That you aren't getting what you think you're getting out of that. You say, well, you're a Calvinist. Yeah, I'm not looking for autonomy.

I'm looking for creaturely freedom. I am looking for the sufficient kind of freedom that allows

God to justly judge because I acted on the desires of my heart. I'm not looking for autonomy.

And that's why a lot of people who reject middle knowledge, reject it, it's like, this is...

Folks who promote middle knowledge should never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever do the robot thing against Calvinists.

Because it's actually more valid against you than it is against us. Really is, really is.

So we looked at this last time, God's decision to create a world is based on his middle knowledge and consists of his selecting to become actual one of the possible worlds known to him in the second moment.

That is notice, and I want to make sure we cover all this here.

Oh yeah, that's right. Got to turn it on first. There we go. Come on. Thank you.

Oh, we didn't do the sound, but that's okay. We don't need the sound. God's decision to create a world is based on his middle knowledge and consists in his selecting to become actual one of the possible worlds known to him in the second moment.

This is very, very important. Known to him in the second moment, the second moment's middle knowledge.

And so this world does not have its origin. This world originates in middle knowledge, not in the freeness of God's eudachia.

What is the biblical reason why God does what he does?

Well, part of it involves the praise of his glorious grace, but part of it also involves the demonstration of his power and his wrath and his justice.

None of that here. It's all this second moment, middle knowledge.

But middle knowledge is like his free knowledge in that its content is not essential to God.

Since creatures could choose differently, God's knowledge would be different if they were to do so.

Not if he were to freely create in such a fashion, but here the actions of creatures decides the content of God's knowledge.

The action of creatures decides the content of God's knowledge in this theory.

That's extremely important to hear and to understand and to see, all right?

We press forward. Ah, yes, this is where we are. Now, it's interesting that Dr.

Craig, before going to theological objections, while still in the essentially philosophical part of his discussion on middle knowledge in his book, the biblical evidence of middle knowledge, okay?

This is where the rubber meets the road. The biblical evidence of middle knowledge.

Now, I've already made a comment about this. This will only help me to substantiate the comment that I already made. All right, move that out of the way.

Why suggest that God has middle knowledge? Basically, two sorts of considerations come into play here.

Biblical and theological. The 16th century theologians, and I remind you, 16th century

Jesuit theologians felt that they had good biblical grounds for ascribing middle knowledge to God.

I just stop for a moment and point out to you that Jesuit theologians do not need to limit themselves to biblical grounds because they rejected solo scriptura and part and parcel of Jesuit argumentation was against solo scriptura.

Let's keep that in mind. Even though I just saw someone recently trying to argue that Thomas Aquinas believed in solo scriptura, which was,

I saw the quote that they gave and I was just like, oh, that's, that's just like when Norman Geisler tried to argue, you know, the necessity of grace versus the sufficiency of grace issue.

Anyway, one of the texts most often cited was 1 Samuel 23, six through 13.

1 Samuel 23, six through 13. I'll read it from Dr. Craig's materials here.

When Abiathar, the son of Himalak, fled to David to Kilah, he came down with an ephod in his hand.

Now it was told Saul that David had come to Kilah and Saul said, God has given him into my hand for he has shut himself in by entering a town that has gates and bars.

And Saul summoned all the people to war to go down to Kilah to besiege David and his men. David knew that Saul was plotting evil against him.

And he said to Abiathar, the priest, bring the ephod here. Then said David, O Yahweh, the

God of Israel, thy servant has surely heard that Saul seeks to come to Kilah to destroy the city on my account.

Will the men of Kilah surrender me into his hand? Will Saul come down as thy servant has heard? O Yahweh, the

God of Israel, I beseech thee, tell thy servant. And Yahweh said, he will come down. Then said David, will the men of Kilah surrender me and my men into the hand of Saul?

And Yahweh said, they will surrender you. Then David and his men who were about 600 arose and departed from Kilah and they went wherever they could go.

Then when Saul was told that David escaped from Kilah, he gave up the expedition. Now, this story was understood to show that God knew that if David were to remain at Kilah, then

Saul would come to get him. And that if Saul were to come to get David, then the men of the city would hand him over.

For if God's answers through the ephod are taken as simple foreknowledge, we must conclude that his answers were false since what was predicted did not happen.

But if the answers were understood as indications of what would have happened under certain circumstances, then they were true and serve as a proof of God's middle knowledge.

Okay, what about it? That is not middle knowledge.

And it stuns me that anyone thinks it is. It really does. I read this and I go, guys, you're being serious here?

This is all post decree. This is

God telling David about what Saul and the men of Kilah would do. When?

Long after the decree. This isn't a second moment. This is

God's free knowledge. He created Saul. I mean, even the open theist could look at this and go, well, the reason

God knows this is he knows Saul and he knows the men of Kilah. He knows them intimately.

Not only did he create them, but he's even from their perspective, if God has some type of temporal limitation, temporal experience, then he's seeing how these men behave.

He's seeing how they act. He's seeing how Saul is doing all these things. And so how could any of this be middle knowledge?

This isn't before the decree. This is post decree. God knows Saul. God knows all about the hearts of the men of Kilah.

How can this be middle knowledge? I'm sorry, can someone answer that?

Well, it's a knowledge of counterfactuals, but it's not counterfactuals before the decree.

It's after the decree. It has to be before the decree to be middle knowledge. That's definitional.

So how is that middle knowledge? It's not. That's why I said on the last program, there can by definition be nothing in scripture that's descriptive of middle knowledge because it's all after the decree.

It's all in time. So a second passage commonly appealed to was

Matthew chapter 11, verses 20 through 24. Then Jesus began to upbraid the cities where most of his mighty works had been done because they did not repent.

But woe to you, Chorazin, woe to you, Bethsaida, for if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.

But I tell you, it shall be more tolerable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you,

Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You shall be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.

But I tell you that it shall be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you.

Dr. Craig's commentary. Here, Jesus himself declares that if his miracles had been performed in certain cities, which did not in fact repent, they would have repented, taken literally what

Jesus is saying here is under certain conditions, certain individuals would have acted in a particular way.

This was taken as positive proof of his divine middle knowledge. Please note how that is expressed.

This was taken as positive proof of his divine middle knowledge by Jesuit theologians.

Does Dr. Craig take it that way? I hope not, because this isn't middle knowledge.

By his own definitions, this isn't middle knowledge, but it's a counterfactual, but it is about people who are well -known.

This is a judgment oracle. This is saying to Chorazin and Bethsaida and Capernaum, comparing them with the cities that are the example to the

Jewish people of the first century of the evil of the world, the evil of the Gentiles, Sodom and Gomorrah, God's judgment came upon them.

Tyre and Sidon, the very definitions of standing against Yahweh and worldliness and evil and idolatry and everything else.

And what Jesus is saying to them is those people, if they had had the light you have, that you've sinned against, would have repented.

But you are so hardened in your false religiosity. Wow, that was a shot across the bow.

That was condemnation. That's the primary meaning here, but it has nothing to do with middle knowledge.

This is post -decree. This is God's free knowledge.

God knew the people of Tyre and Sidon. God knew, that doesn't give a specific timeframe there, but certainly

God knew the people of Sodom and Gomorrah right before their destruction. All that's post -decree, all that's post -creation.

How can that be middle knowledge? And that's it. There's three sentences commentary here.

There's about three or four on the last one, and that's it. That's all you got.

How much time have we spent in Ephesians 1, Romans 9, Psalm 33, Isaiah 40? We could spend much more time in many other texts to give a positive presentation of the theological foundation of what we believe on this issue.

And this is it. And by definition, how could it be any other way? How could it be any other way?

So theological ramifications, theological ramifications. Beyond the biblical evidence, which we have seen is completely absent, the

Jesuits saw that theological capital was to be gained. Okay, got to do this, sorry.

Theological capital, theological capital, was to be gained by ascribing middle knowledge to God.

Prescience, providence, and predestination could be explained in a matter, in a manner compatible with human freedom.

There is your ultimate authority. There's your ultimate authority for the

Jesuits. Because you see, the whole purpose, the founding of the

Jesuit order was to do what? Most people don't know. Why did

Ignatius Loyola go to the Pope and get the authority to begin the

Jesuit order? This was back then, not today. The Jesuits are as leftist liberal as they can be. Mitch Pack was a

Jesuit, but he's probably the most conservative Jesuit on the planet. The order itself is absurdly leftist, but they weren't in the 16th century.

Why did Ignatius Loyola start the Jesuits? To counteract reformed theology, to counteract the

Reformation. And they were successful in many places, they were.

So the theological capital was to attack

Sola Scriptura, Sola Fide, Sola Gratia, Sola Deo Gloria, Solus Christus. That's the theological capital of the

Jesuits, of middle knowledge. And all of it had to be compatible with human freedom, why?

Why? Because the sacramental system, the sacramental system of Rome is based upon human freedom.

You have to have individuals working the system. That's how Rome maintains control of them.

If you have a sovereign God and free grace, the sacramental system of Rome collapses as it was functioning in the 16th century.

So I think that's extremely relevant. And it is striking to me that when

Dr. Craig was debating Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens, and he has asked, well, what

Christian group can you identify that you disagree with? It's teaching heresy. Only thing that Dr.

Craig came up with was Calvinism. Calvinism. There's a reason for that.

And when you look at those that are promoting middle knowledge today, are they consistent?

Are they consistently reformed? Nope. Oh, but you can be, I don't believe so.

I know, I know, I know, I've heard the claim. You can be a five -point Calvinist and believe in middle knowledge.

Nope. Can't. Well, but I've read people, sorry.

The key to reform theology is consistency and a theological system that is based upon the defense of the autonomy of man at the expense of the freedom of God cannot be made consistent with any kind of meaningful expression of reformed theology.

You will have to redefine one or the other, or I would say both, both.

But this is absolutely key. Must be seen, understand, understood.

So theological ramifications. Nonetheless, foreknowledge is not logically foundational, but is based on God's logically prior middle knowledge and his free decision to create a world.

Now, please notice something. This is, this, I know, I know, I know. We have to go to this level,

I'm sorry. It's not, you know, I would rather not, but is based on God's logically prior middle knowledge.

So foreknowledge is free knowledge because it's based upon what God does in creation. I want you to see this.

And his free decision to create a world. What is the range and content of God's free decision?

Because the temptation is to look at that and go, see,

God has a eudaicheia. He has a free decision to create a world.

Yeah. The world defined for him by middle knowledge, which is defined by the free actions of creatures.

So this isn't creating a world that is specifically to demonstrate in its fullness, his attributes, his power, his justice, his glory, his grace.

The decision is I get to create a world. Now that world is determined by my running certain priorities as to what

I want that world to do. But the parameters that world are, do not flow from my free choice.

They're determined by middle knowledge because by his middle knowledge, God knows all the various possible worlds, which he could create and whatever free creature would do in all various circumstances, those possible worlds.

For example, God knew that Peter, if he were to exist and be placed in certain circumstances, would deny Christ three times.

So instead of the denials by Peter, being a part of the sovereign decree of God to demonstrate things for us, to allow for the restoration of Peter later on, when

Jesus three times asks him, do you love me? Do you love me? They use different terms and all the rest of that stuff.

Instead of that, the denials of Peter are based upon an inalterable, immutable knowledge that Peter, if placed in those circumstances, was going to act in that way.

That's, you see the difference? So instead of God determining for his purposes, it's

Peter's nature that determines these things. And it is not Peter's nature as chosen by God.

I don't know where this comes from. This is why Dr. Craig said what he said that one day.

God has to deal with the cards he's been dealt. What he meant by that was, there is a content to middle knowledge that does not flow freely from his creative desire.

It's an innate knowledge. So where did the facts of that knowledge come from? Don't know, don't know.

So notice where, here is a free decision of his will, God's will.

God then chose to create one of those possible worlds. So see the difference between the sovereignty of God, creating the very fabric of time to his honor and his glory, and the idea that God's free decision is to choose to create one of those possible worlds.

His decision has been delimited, to use the phraseology of the book, delimited by something outside of his eudachia, outside of his bullae, outside of his telematos.

It is an inalterable reality of who

Peter would be. And evidently who everyone that Peter interacted with, because God has put those people in those places to do the things that they did, based not upon his free choice, but based upon looking at, you know, the servant girl, the servant girl that, and I seem to hear the problem, but when we move this forward, now if I sit back here,

I disappear behind the board, and that's okay, yeah.

Because sometimes I, you know, the back starts hurting a little bit, you know, you just want to sit down and just sort of talk with folks.

I just noticed that it, I suppose we could move the table forward, but eventually we're all going to be in the back wall going that way anyway, so I don't know.

Eventually we're going to just have thousands of people in here, right? Stop moving

James's, thank you, Rob, I appreciate that. That is, I do not like when people move my cheese. There's no two ways about it.

What were we talking about? Moses and the bulrushes, yes, okay. So the servant girl, just think about it.

The servant girl who says to Peter, you're one of those, you're one of his disciples.

So God had to find the exact right human being who in that circumstance would do that.

So there wasn't anybody who's alive in the 21st century that would have done that at that point, when maybe there would have been, but God just decided to put that person in that place, and that's the, but just think of all the possible, oh yeah, there's just so many permutations here.

I mean, this really shows us how big God is. But God is being turned into a massive computer, not a free king, but a massive computer working on data provided from middle knowledge.

And the big issue is where does that data come from? If it does not come from the exercise of his will, it doesn't come from Psalm 33, where does it come from?

Where does it come from? Knowing both every possible world he could create and his decision to create one of them,

God foreknows exactly what will happen. That is to say he has foreknowledge, but this foreknowledge is the inevitable result of his choice to create and to actuate the circumstances, everything in the physical universe, so as to put creatures in to do exactly what he wants them to do in each given circumstance, they're all micromanaged, all based on middle knowledge of what they would do in that circumstance.

And if one person acts autonomously, it all falls apart, but they can't, they can't, there can be no, there can be no autonomous free choice.

Oh, but they're all autonomous free choices. If they can't do anything other based on middle knowledge, it's not an autonomous free choice.

You can pretend it is and say, we've solved it all, but it really doesn't solve anything, actually.

Knowing, for example, that Peter would deny Christ three times under certain circumstances, so was there a Peter that would deny Christ only twice?

Only once? Four times? I don't know. And that Peter just didn't get created?

So how would, if it's never created, how would you know what, I don't know. Knowing, for example, that Peter would deny

Christ three times under certain circumstances and knowing his own decision to bring about those circumstances, that's where his freedom comes in.

God knows what Peter will in fact freely do. Thus, God is able to know future free acts on the basis of his middle knowledge and his creative will.

So this is the theological capital, but the theological capital is a fundamental undercutting of the freedom of God to actually do what he desires to do because those possible worlds are delimited by middle knowledge.

So if it be asked how God has middle knowledge of free decisions by creatures, yeah, that's an important question, proponents of middle knowledge usually respond in one of two ways, which

I find interesting. Dr. Craig has a way of saying, well, proponents of middle knowledge, instead of I say this, which is interesting.

Number one, God, by his infinite understanding, knows each creature so completely that he discerns even the creature's free decisions under any conceivable circumstance.

God, by his infinite understanding, knows each, and I'm really wondering if the guys noticed what word they used there.

What's a creature? What's a creature? Do you see there's a

C -R -E -A -T, creature that comes from created?

I would say to you that biblically God does know each creature because he created each creature and he created them in a certain way.

And that creation of that creature is an expression of God's sovereign will.

So God made them the way they are. God decreed that they would have the gifts they would have.

Do we believe that the gifts were given? Come from God. Are the gifts that you have been given, and we don't have to limit this to spiritual gifts, we're talking about the created gifts that you have been given.

Do they impact the decisions you make in every circumstance you're in? Of course they do.

So how can that not be an expression of God's creative will? And so if God made you that way, then clearly he's not delimited by some middle knowledge.

That is an expression of his creative desire. That's how he's glorified in you.

He made you that way. God by his understanding knows each creature so completely discerns even the creature's free decisions under any conceivable circumstance.

Since the moment of middle knowledge is logically prior to God's creation, no actual creatures exist at that moment.

That's true. No actual creatures exist at that moment, but God comprehends them as they exist in his mind as possible creatures.

Okay, possible creatures, but as they exist in his mind, but they are definable because they will make certain decisions.

And knowing where they can be defined is on the basis of what? God having defined them by the exercise of his will.

He knows them so well that he knows what they would freely do in any situation because he gifts them and designed them to fulfill his purposes.

Number two, statements about how creatures would decide to act in place in certain circumstances are true or false.

Since God is omniscient, he knows all truth. Therefore God simply knows all true statements about how creatures would act in certain circumstances.

Now this is a, I consider it philosophical fun.

Other people have developed this maximal being argumentation based on this.

So we'll look at another point in time, but statements about how creatures would decide to act.

Okay, right here, decide to act. To do that requires you to be what?

Created. Non -created creatures do not decide and do not act.

So to talk about statements about them are either true or false and then say, and God is omniscient, he knows all truth.

Therefore God simply knows all true statements about how creatures would act in certain circumstances may make you feel really good in your philosophy class, but it's meaningless drivel, biblically speaking, and out in the real world.

In fact, a lot of stuff in philosophy class is meaningless out in the real world. And you know that, those of you that live in that strange world.

So there you go. Are we done? Not even close. No, no, we're not.

We're not. There's more because we're going to get into the big question of, so why are there people who never accept

Christ? And it's a good question. And what are

God's purposes? And why are there so many people that don't accept Christ at this point in history?

And so there's more to come. We're getting toward the end. And I just want people to recognize we are allowing

Dr. Craig to speak for himself. We putting it up on the board. The only wise

God, you can go get it yourself. Not having to hide anything, just walking through it and thinking biblically about what it's claiming and what it's saying.

And hopefully that is useful to you as well in thinking these things through. So thanks for watching the program today.

The previous portion at the start will probably get us all bounced off of YouTube forever, but that's just sort of how it goes.

We hope not, but Lord continue to protect us and allow us to speak the truth on all sorts of matters.