Middle Knowledge

About two years ago, I hear about Molinism for the first time. My Calvinist buddy Morgan and I love to talk about apologetics. Somehow the topic of Christian philosopher William Lane Craig came up. Now I was a little familiar with Craig because of his work of defending the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Morgan informed me that Craig was a Molinist and held to the idea of middle knowledge. At the time, I didn't have the faintest clue about Molinism. Morgan told me that it deals with reconciling divine foreknowledge with human freedom.

So in the last couple years, I've studied Molinism on a off-and-on basis. One of the difficulties that I've had in my study is that the most of the proponents of Molinism are top-notch philosophers (Bill Craig, JP Moreland, Alvin Plantinga, Thomas Flint) and so it's kinda hard to understand their writings. I need more concrete illustrations in order to get a grasp on such abstract concepts.

Basically Molinism holds that God's foreknowledge has three logical moments. Now it's important to realize that these aren't temporal moments. What we're talking about is "logical priority." As Craig writes, "To say that something is logically prior to something else is not to say that the one occurs before the other in time. Temporally, they could be simultaneous. Rather, logical priority means that something serves to explain something else. The one provides the grounds or basis for the other" (127).

Now before we examine these moments, it's important to remember that two of these moments take place logically before God decrees to create the world. The last moment takes place logically after God's decision to create the world. Let's take a look at each of these moments.

The first moment is called natural knowledge. This term refers to God's knowledge of all the logically possible worlds that He could create. God's natural knowledge includes His knowledge of all necessary truths. "God's natural knowledge includes knowledge of all possibilities. He knows all the possible individuals He could create, all the possible circumstances He could place them in, all their possible actions and reactions, and all the possible worlds or orders which He could create" (Craig 129).

For the time being, let's skip to the third moment in God's foreknowledge and then later we'll come back to the second moment. The third moment is called God's free knowledge. This refers to God's knowledge after His decision to create this world. This includes His foreknowledge of every event that has occurred on our world and has yet to occur. Since God didn't have to create this world, He didn't have to this knowledge. If He had decided to create a different world, the content of His free knowledge would have been different.

Now let's jump to the second moment in God's foreknowledge, which is called His middle knowledge. "In this moment God knows what every possible creature would do (not just could do) in any possible set of circumstances" (Craig 130). Thus, before His decision to create this world, He knew what I would do in any situation.

The Bible gives us a couple of illustrations of this in 1 Sam. 23. In 1 Sam. 23, David is being chased by King Saul. David is hiding in the small town of Keilah. Somehow Saul finds out about David's hiding place and heads toward Keilah. Learning of Saul's plot, David asks God an unusual question. David asks God if the elders of Keilah would turn him over to Saul if he should stay in Keilah. God answers yes. So David leaves before the elders get the chance to betray him. This passage shows us that God not only knew what actually happened in the situation, but God also knew what could have happened if the circumstances had been different. Another example can be found in Matt. 11:20-24.

This is an interesting doctrine that we need to consider when wrestling with the issue of God's foreknowledge.

Open Theism and Theological Fatalism

So it's rainy Memorial Day here in western Nebraska. I wanted to paint my house today, but so much for that. I'm already done with the scraping! However, instead of painting, I guess that I'm going to blog some more about William Craig's book The Only Wise God. In this book, Craig addresses the doctrine of God's foreknowledge. Lately this doctrine has fallen upon hard times from skeptics and even some "evangelicals" like Gregory Boyd.

I was eighteen when I first heard about open theism when reading Boyd's book Letters from a Skeptic. This was my first experience with someone that denied God's knowledge of the future. Of course, the Bible makes it very clear that God indeed does know the future. The whole concept of prophecy makes absolutely no sense if God is ignorant of future events. As the early church father Tertullian writes, "God's foreknowledge has as many witnesses as He has prophets."

Open theism is basically an overreaction to theological fatalism. Theological fatalism hold that since God knows the future, humans are not free agents. If God knows what will happen, then it must happen as such and it couldn't have happened any other way. This, of course, does severe damage to human freedom and responsibility.

In order to understand Craig's argument, we must remember that Craig is dealing with theological fatalism. This should be distinguished from determinism. Craig explains the difference by saying,

"Now fatalism should not be confused with determinism, the view that all our choices and actions are determined by prior causes. Given a series of causes up to some point, the effect at that point is completely predetermined. There is at that point no freedom to act in another way, for, given the prior series of causes, one's choice is causally necessary; that is to say, the causes determine one's choice. By contrast, fatalism does not necessarily hold that everything is causally determined....Fatalism does not appeal to causal factors to deny human freedom; rather it holds that from the very fact that we shall do some action, we must do that action" (14).

Now Craig also rejects determinism, but for different reasons. The open theist's problem is that he buys into the validity of the theological fatalist's argument. And thus, he rejects the Biblical doctrine of God's foreknowledge. Instead Craig offers a different approach. He challenges us to reexamine the fatalist's argument. There are logical weaknesses here that we need to point out.

The problem is that fatalist confuses certainty with necessity. Just because something is certainly true does not make it necessarily true. Let me illustrate what I mean. It is certain that President Clinton became in 1992; however this was not a necessity. It is possible that George Bush could have been reelected. In contrast, something is necessarily true if it is based on it's own definition. For instance, 2+2 is necessarily 4 in every possible world. All dogs are canines. This is necessarily true in every possible world.

The fatalist's argument is as follows:

Necessarily, if God foreknows x, then x will happen.
God foreknows x.
Therefore, x will necessarily happen.

However, it doesn't follow that x must necessarily happen. All we can conclude is that x is certain to happen. The argument should be written.

Necessarily, if God foreknows x, then x will happen.
God foreknows x.
Therefore, x will happen.

X is certain to happen, but it's not necessary that x must happen.

Well, I better get going. I'll post some more about it soon.

Check this out

Here's a blog that I found by Ardel B. Caneday, the author of The Race Set Before Us, and his friend Timotheos. They are studying through Romans. He takes a little different perspective than the Lutheran one I've been taught. I've enjoyed commenting on this blog called CrossTalk. It's forced me to study the text again to make sure that I've learned correctly. I'm learning alot in the possess.

Shelley and me at the beach 

Texas 

Mom and Dad at the graduation 

The whole family 

Shelley and me at Moody's graduation 

Chris and me in Chicago 

Movies

A couple of weeks ago, Shelley and I watched The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. We had different reactions to it. Shelley rather enjoyed Douglas Adams' weird sense of humor while I found his existential philosophy disturbing. The movie made me kind of depressed. What a sad way of looking at life! While on our trip, Shelley decided to purchase the novels to read. Admittedly, they are pretty funny. Adams is a great author for all of his silliness.

Throughout the film, Adams ridicules the idea of God. He continually jokes about how God made a mistake in creating the universe and that everyone agrees that this was a bad idea. In one part of the movie, the folks on one planet ask a giant supercomputer about the meaning of life. After a million years of thinking about it, the computer absurdly responds, "Forty-two." To Adams, life has no meaning other than the one that you decide to make up. In the midst of all this humor, I couldn't help but feel sad about the consequences of such a worldview.

Another scene that stands out to me revolves around a torpedo that is transformed into a whale by the hitchhikers' spacecraft. The whale suddenly finds himself in the middle of atmosphere falling to his death. In the whale's short life, he has just enough time to ask the meaning of life before gravity sends him to his death. Life seems so futile.

Watching the movie was a bit like reading through Ecclesiastes. Death has a way of sobering us up. We need to ask why we exist. Until we know why we are here, we have no idea how we should live.

In Ohio

So I've been on vacation for the last couple of weeks. It's been fun. My parents were with us in Chicago. Wow! That was scary, and funny at the same time. Small town Nebraska folks in the big city. They were freaked out. Like usual, my dad said over and over again that he didn't like all this traffic. "Why would you need to be around all those people?"

While riding in the car, I've been reading The Only Wise God by William Lane Craig. It's a great book dealing with God's foreknowledge and human responsibility. In his argument, Craig attempts to refute theological fatalism. Fatalism teaches that since God knows the future, then all of our "choices" are determined, fixed in such a way that we couldn't have choosen otherwise. In my college philosophy class, we spent a lot of time working of Nelson Pike's famous argument for theological fatalism. When studying Pike's argument, I know that something seemed wrong with it, but I couldn't place my finger on exactly what was the problem. Of course, if Pike is correct, then this argument does severe damage to human responsibility. God would be the author of sin and evil. This flatly contradicts the Bible. So Craig's book has so far been a delightful read. He's a primarily a philosopher and not an exegete so he doesn't spend much time debating the exegetical works of Calvinist scholars like D.A. Carson and Thomas Schreiner. That's one thing that could be better. As I read the book, I'll probably post some more on it.

Preaching

So this week Dan Williams, our senior pastor here at CBC, is on vacation for a couple of weeks. So this Sunday I'm preaching. I normally have an idea for a sermon some time in advance, but this time I've really struggled with bringing my thoughts together. I've wanted to talk about building a Biblical epistemology, but just can't piece it together. Besides that, I think that most folks would be bored out of their minds the instant I mention the word "epistemology." So I'm bringing things down to the popular level in hopes of creating a broader interest. Here's what I got so far.

The central question in epistemology (by the way, I'm not going to use that word) is "How can we know what's true?" Is a knowledge of the truth possible? What tools should we use to discover the truth? As Christians committed to the Bible as God's Word, what does the Bible tell us about knowing the truth?

1. As humans, our knowledge of the truth is always limited.

Throughout the Bible, we can continually observe that our knowledge is confined by several different factors. First and foremost, our knowledge is limited by our own sinfulness. As Jeremiah 17:9 says, "The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, who can know it." We have so many preconceived ideas, biases, and subconscious desires (all of which are corrupted by sin) that we could never be completely objective in discerning the truth. This means that we could never be scientists in white lab coats when comes to examine the evidence for God or Christianity. We have vested interests. We want to be our own bosses. I don't necessarily want God to be the ruler of my life. As Romans 8:7-8 says, "For the sinful nature is always hostile to God. It never did obey God's laws, and it never will. That's why those who are still under the control of their sinful nature can never please God."

Secondly, our knowledge is limited by our own "creatureness." We never have the complete picture. When we do know God's absolute truth, we never know absolutely. That is, we never know fully. The scope of our knowledge is always within the boundaries of our humanness. As Romans 11:33-34 says, "Oh, what a wonderful God we have! How great are his riches and wisdom and knowledge! How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his methods! For who can know what the Lord is thinking? Who knows enough to be his counselor?"

2. Our knowledge of the truth is ultimately a gift from God.

Because of the limits to our knowledge, we are in constant need of a touch of God's grace when it comes to knowing things. Our minds have been so corrupted by sin and deceit that in order to function correctly we need God to do some retooling. Romans 12:2, one of the first verses that I ever memorized, says, "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will." It's a relief that here Paul gives us some hope of actually knowing the truth. But we must remember this starts as God renews our minds--transforming us inside out.

Proverbs 2:6 reminds us, "For the LORD gives wisdom, and from his mouth come knowledge and understanding." Remembering this will keep us from the arrogance that often comes with human knowledge. As Paul warns us in 1 Cor. 8, "Knowledge puffs up!" Viewing our knowledge as a grace from God will begin a transformation when it comes to pride. I have knowledge not because I'm so smart and intelligent, but because God has graciously worked in my life.

Vacation

So we're about really to go on a vacation for a couple of weeks. And man, do we got a lot planned. It's crazy! We're going to Chicago, Ohio, and Texas to visit family and stuff. I'm excited, but I hope that it's a good change to get away and take a break from youth group.

Both Shelley and I really need some time to get refreshed and hang out. I was telling the kids that this is a great thing for them that we get to go on vacation. Hopefully, I'll be better prepared to serve as a youth pastor as a result of the break. Then when we get back, we have to hurry up and finish painting our house.