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William Lane Craig, Post Reformation Dogmatics v3 421 - Richard Muller -…

- - - - Pros
        
        WLC sees God's knowledge on three levels; what could happen, would would happen, and what will happen. (Beeke/Smalley 751)
        
        WLC and reformed theologians acknowledge that one of the major points of emphasis for this doctrine is that middle knowledge comes logically prior to God's decree. For WLC this protects God's knowledge and man's freedom, but for the Reformed thinker, this knowledge that is antecedent to his will is a torpedo that sinks the ship.
        
        WLC break logical order into three moments. In the first moment a particular event occurs. Then, in the second moment, statements concerning whether the event is true or false transpires. Finally, in the third moment, God knows only all of the true statements. (WLC OWG 74)
        
        Necessarily then, logically an event happens prior to God's knowledge, though he emphasizes that this does not mean that chronologically an event took place without God knowing about it. Temporally, there are no distinct moments in God's knowledge. (WLC OWG 74)
        
        In the first moment of God's knowledge, God's necessary knowledge is at play. This is knowledge that is true not by his willing them to be true, but they are simply true because they belong to his nature. (WLC OWG 74)
        
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        The third moment is God's free knowledge. It includes everything that will happen, and is logically posterior to God's decision to create the world. (WLC OWG 74)
        
        The second moment, sitting between the other two moments of God's knowledge is his middle knowledge. This knowledge concerns what creatures would do (not could do or will do). (WLC OWG 74)
        
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        It protects man's libertarian freedom.
        
        apart from the invention of middle knowledge, WLC thinks that God's sovereignty crushes man's freedom. (WLC OWG 77)
  - - - What about John 6:37
      - Still another objector could ask why does God not just avoid making those who would not believe, he could instead create a world with other people who would believe.
        
        WLC responds by saying "there is no possible world in which all persons would freely receive Christ." But on what factual knowledge does he base that claim off of? He goes on to further state that "it is possible that God is not, after all, able to create a world in which all persons freely receive Christ." I know of no Scriptural reason (OWG 84)
        
        What force outside of God governs the Lord in such a way?
        
        countless time WLC calls upon outside forces that limit what God can do, as opposed to an inability to violate his own naturel.
        
        "It is possible that in order to create the number of persons in our world who will be saved, God had to create the number of persons who will be lost." (OWG 84) God had to?
        
        "it is possible that the terrible price of filling heaven is the filling of hell as well." (OWG 84)
        
        "It is possible that in order to achieve this much blessedness, God was forced to put up with this much loss." (OWG 84-85)
        
        Additionally, why not just create a smaller world comprised of only those who would accept Christ?
- - - - "God's will does not concur with the creature's will in its origin or moving cause. God's concurrence with such choices takes place only in respect to their 'effect', not their origination." (Venema 240)
  - - - The very ability to exercise a will that has the capacity to make contingent choices requires God from the start. However, he is also necessary to sustain those choices and concur with them, not merely in effect but in the very act of making those choices. (Venema 240)
- - - - Works of the creature (merit based)
        
        "Predestination depends on good works." Bavinck 200)
        
        Synergistic and Semi-Pelagianism
        
        The key actor is not God but man (Venema 239)
        
        The efficacy of Jesus' work of salvation hinges upon what fallen sinners choose to do upon hearing the Gospel (Venema 239)
  - - - "God foresaw no rational act in man before the act of his will to give him reason, nor foresees faith in any before the act of his will determining to give him faith (Eph 2:8) (Charnock 1440)
        
        "God become the chief executive of a world in which he is the slave of his subordinates." "What value is a government whose chief executive is the slave of his own subordinates?" (Bavinck 200)
  - - - If something is purely indifferent, than not even God could foresee the outcome. Knowledge must be based off of evidence which pure indifference lacks. (Helm 200)
- - - - It also was advocated by Frandisco Suarez and a few others, but Molina is the one usually attributed for this concept (Bavinck 200)
        
        Other early proponents were Pedro da Fonseca and Leonardus Lessius, both of whom were Jesuits. (Beeke/Smalle 751)
  - - - A third category that falls outside of orthodox reformed theology is understood as middle knowledge. It is the knowledge of God that falls between God's necessary and free knowledge. This category of knowledge includes the acts of free creatures that come about solely through their independent choices with zero interference from their Creator. (Venema 230)
        
        The benefit of this middle knowledge is explained by Muller as God knowing "how individuals will accept or resist the assistance of his grace and can destine them either to glory or to reprobation on the grounds of their free choice." (Muller GCP 161)
        
        The debate doesn't center upon God knowing certain counterfactuals from all of eternity, but instead, does this knowledge belong to a knowledge distinct from the natural and free knowledge of God (Turretin 213)
        
        Open theist agree with the libertarian freedom of the Arminian view, but reject middle knowledge because they hold to the position that God cannot know those choices without compromising the creaturely freedom (Venema 307-308)
        
        "middle knowledge includes all conditional future choices and events - choices and events that involve some act of human will." (Gamble 587)
        
        While reformed theologians like Turretin rejected this concept, Lutheran theologians accepted it. (Gamble 587)
        
        WLC describes the counterfactual knowledge God has before his decree. Counterfactuals are in the subjunctive mood. (Four Views 120)
        
        Necessary knowledge = what could be
        
        Free Knowledge = what will be
        
        Middle knowledge = what would be if
    - - The Socinians and Remonstrants adopted this concept in their defense of free will (Turretin 213)
      - Middle knowledge is an attempt to "harmonize the Pelagian notion of an indifferent free will with God's omniscience and thus is incompatible with a decree of God." (Bavinck 200)
      - The Dominican's opposed molinism in a hotly contested controversy lasting from 1581 to 1611 (Beeke/Smalley 751)
        
        They understood God's knowledge of counterfactuals to come logically after his decree, and therefore opposed the Molinist who stated that his knowledge of counterfactuals came before his decree (Four Views 121)
        
        Dominicans understood that logically prior to God's decree there are no counterfactual truths to be known. Logically prior to the decree, God only has knowledge of necessary truths only, including the various possibilities. When God decreed the world, he then decreed which counterfactual statements are true. (Four Views 121)
        
        The Molinists had a strong aversion to this timeline because they believed it annihilated human free will. (Four Views 122)
- - - - Middle knowledge as previously defined is the knowledge God posses between his free necessary and free knowledge. This middle knowledge is supposed to be comprised of counterfactuals that exist logically prior to God's decrees. However, Vos states that "God's decree grounds the certainty of his free knowledge and likewise the occurring of his free actions. Not foreknowledge as such, but the decree on which it rests makes free actions certain." (Vos 20)
      - Turretin claims that necessary and free knowledge encompass all knowledge (Turretin 214)
        
        "Therefore , as no effect can be understood as future (whether absolutely or hypothetically) without the divine decree (because no creature can be in the world without the divine causality), so no future conditional thing can be knowable before the decree. (Turretin 214)
      - Often times God's eternal nature is used to defend the ability to comprehend absolutely free actions. God is outside of time and the future is always before him. But Vos states that the doctrine of absolute free will overthrows the idea of God's eternity because God needs an increase in his knowledge from things absent of his influence, and in essence, he has to wait for the influence of the temporal. (Vos 19)
      - WLC must answer how can God know truly indeterminate choices? If humanity makes choices that are completely independent of God's will, and stem solely from the power of creaturely autonomy, how then does God know these choices that were willed into being outside of him and can exist as contrary to his will? (Venema 241)
        
        Aquinas thinks similarly when he makes the point that choices stemming from an undetermined will are not predictable, only conjectural knowledge is afforded to God. (Venema 242)
        
        In the same way that a creature has no existence of power of choice except through God's act of conservation, so no creature can exist and exercise this power in a particular way except through God's concurrence and governance." (Venema 327)
  - - - Matthew 11:22-23
        
        Vos Rebuttal (19)
        
        This is hyperbolic speech that is employed to explain the hardening of the Jews of Jesus' day. (I am not sure if that is satisfactory)
        
        Turretin agrees saying that there is no intention to speak of foreknowledge or any future conditional event, but uses hyperbole to shame the Jews by comparing them in a less favorable light to their enemies. He then compares this passage to Luke 19:40 and Ezekiel 3:6 as similar ground (Turretin 217)
        
        WLC makes the argument that this passage is indicating that if Jesus had performed the miracles, the people of those cities would have repented. (WLC OWG 76)
      - 1 Samuel 23:9-12
        
        Vos Rebuttal (19)
        
        God is simply telling David what would happen under the current disposition of Saul and the men of Keilah.
        
        Turretin states that terms "to descend" and "to deliver up" do not speak of hypotheticals but rather to purpose and intention. (Turretin 216)
        
        WLC seems to indicate the he understands his Scriptural defense is not an impervious fortress. In both his chapter in Four Views and his writing in Only Wise God, he provides 1 Samuel 23:9-12 and Matthew 11:22-23 as proofs for middle knowledge. However immediately after doing so in his chapter in Four Views he states "Unfortunately, this does not answer the question of whether God has middle knowledge. For the Scriptural passages show only that God possesses counterfactual knowledge, and, as I have said, until modern times, all theologians agreed that God possesses counterfactual knowledge. The dispute among them concerned when in the logical order of things this knowledge comes." He then goes on to say "Since Scripture does not reflect upon this question, no amount of proof texting can prove that God's counterfactual knowledge is possessed logically prior to his creative decree." To his credit, he ends on a very honest note by saying "While it is clearly unbiblical to deny that God has simple foreknowledge and even counterfactual knowledge, those who deny middle knowledge cannot be accused of being unbiblical. (Four Views 125).
        
        WLC The answers given by God indicate his middle knowledge. He states that this story shows that God knew what Saul and the men of Keilah would do if David were to remain in the city. He goes on to state that this can't be foreknowledge because since it didn't come to pass it would make God's answers false. (WLC OWG 76)
      - In summary of Matthew 11 and 1 Samuel 23: WLC points to these two examples from Scripture as events that never took place and are therefore examples of God's counterfactual knowledge. However, it is better to see these two Scriptural passages as insight into the wicked intentions of men. In 1 Sam. 23 of men to do evil to David, and in Matthew 11 of the great wickedness of the unbelieving Galileans who were more obstinate than their pagan counterparts. (Beeke/Smalley 752)
        
        If for the sake of argument what Jesus said about Tyre and Sidon are actually about what they would do under different circumstances, it still does not support middle knowledge as much as it does God's knowledge of his own will, for in just a couple verses later Jesus speaks of how God effectually reveals himself to those whom it pleases him. (Beeke/Smalley 752)
    - - One of the biggest problems is the fact that this doctrine takes away the sovereignty and dominion of God because the acts of the will are prior to God's decree and therefore aren't ascribed to God's will but from itself. Further, it seems inescapable that God becomes dependent upon the free will of the creature that is uninfluenced by the Creator before he can decree what shall come to pass in the scenarios predetermined for him. (Turretin 215)
        
        Romans 9 is a good example of this problem.
        
        One should walk away from Romans 9 and marvel, but not at the fact that God hated Esau, but rather that he loved Jacob at all. Yet, middle knowledge interferes with this important Gospel take-away because God merely allowed for the world to happen where Jacob would freely choose him, and thus merits God's love.
        
        Therefore Turretin states "Thus grace might with greater propriety be called the servant of the human inclination than the mistress, and the companion than the cause, making God depend on man rather than man upon God." (Turretin 216)
        
        According to the middle knowledge view Jacob's predestination is ascribed to his free will choice and not based upon God's purpose and good pleasure
        
        Yet, Paul expressly deals with this possible temptation to ascribe the glory outside of God by stating in verse 11 that the matter between Jacob and Esau is directly to God's purpose of election and has nothing to do whether they would choose to do good or bad, including the ultimate good of choosing him.
- - - - He is well known for his promotion of the Kalam cosmological argument and for his defense of the resurrection of Jesus.
      - He studied philosophy at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School under Norman Geisler (Wikipedia)