Molinists and Reformed thinkers agree that God knows all possible counterfactuals of creaturely freedom according to his natural knowledge. In this regard, the significant difference between the two schools of thought is that from a Molinist perspective God’s natural knowledge does not inform him of which possibilities can be made actual. In other words, from a distinctly Molinist perspective God must look to his middle knowledge because not all possibilities can be actualized due to a different understanding of how God’s determination would relate to human freedom and moral accountability. In other words, because Molinism opts for libertarian freedom rather than a Reformed view of compatibilist freedom, there are infinite possibilities that God cannot make actual because they are out of his control. Molinists call such possibilities “infeasibilities”, yet they’re still philosophically (metaphysically) possible.

If the Reformed faith is God’s deposit of the purest doctrine in the 21st century, then being walled in by Reformed confessional theology can keep one believing true doctrine. Thankfully and in God’s kind providence, we have Reformed confessions and catechisms to guide us theologically and provide protection against believing false doctrine. However, merely believing true doctrine and actually knowing true doctrine entails vastly different propositional attitudes. It’s not hard to appreciate that believing in the Reformed doctrines of grace because the Westminster standards teach them is not on par with knowing the doctrines of grace because we’ve seen them for ourselves in the Scriptures. It’s hardly controversial that if our belief in any theological doctrine reduces merely to subscribing to it without sufficient reason, our doctrinal conviction will be either (a) as weak as our understanding of it, or else (b) factiously inflated. Either way – whether we have no clear conviction or spurious conviction – we cannot but lack cognizant doctrinal assurance.
Even though we may have come to the Reformed faith having seen for ourselves predestination in the Scriptures, we should guard against growing comfortable with a Reformed adaptation of the Roman Catholic notion of implicit faith (fides implicita) with respect to the rest of our confessional theology. However, not only should we not be theologically credulous – neither should we be skeptical when we approach the church’s teachings. Rather, we should recognize that although post-apostolic teachings may err and have erred, Christ’s promise to build his church upon the teachings of Scripture presupposes that by attending to the church’s teaching we can lay hold of true doctrine and the substance of genuine Christian piety and practice. Accordingly, through prayerful study and the church’s teaching, we may be confident that we can arrive at the church’s doctrine set forth in Scripture as we attend to the Scripture’s teaching that is embedded in the catholic creeds and Reformed confessions.
God’s Foreknowledge
Although the Reformed doctrine of the divine foreknowledge is not attended to with the scholastic care it once was, there are nonetheless contemporary doctors in the church who ably defend the doctrine against aberrant views that can appear quite enticing. (See James Anderson and Greg Welty.) Notwithstanding, because Reformed institutions today have in large part not seen the need to bring the Reformed tradition into dialogue with contemporary analytic philosophy, those teachers are relatively few. As a result, capable Reformed students can be left with a superficial philosophical-theology if not an incorrect understanding of how to defend against the sophistication and growing influence of modern day Molinism.
What’s at stake?
Before getting into terms of art and an interaction with the contemporary Reformed landscape, it should be appreciated at the outset that the Reformed doctrine of God’s creative decree as it relates to divine foreknowledge and free will are the most distinguishing features of the Reformed faith when compared to all other evangelical traditions. Furthermore, given the interdependence between theological concepts, in particular the doctrines of God and his works, a fragile grasp of either will necessarily lead to a lack of clarity about the other (if we are consistent).
Finally, the name most associated with Molinism is William Lane Craig. In Craig’s estimation:
[Molinism is] one of the most fruitful theological ideas ever conceived. For it would serve to explain not only God’s knowledge of the future, but divine providence and predestination as well…
Although I differ with Dr. Craig’s viewpoint, on some level I do appreciate his enthusiasm. Any Calvinist who is thoroughly acquainted with Molinism recognizes that it provides a robust view of divine sovereignty while offering a view of free will that is attractive to most. Notwithstanding, it is my conviction that only the theological determinism of the Reformed tradition can reconcile God’s exhaustive omniscience and human freedom. In particular, a deeper appreciation for God’s free knowledge can lead to radically profound reflections over the sovereign determination of contingent truths pertaining to creation, providence and grace, while simultaneously rendering the supposed profundity of Molinism utterly fruitless.
Taxonomy
Before interacting with the thoughts of Paul Helm, who has been considered by many to be the go-to Reformed philosophical expert in the doctrines of decree and providence, it might be helpful to consider some terms and concepts when it comes to God’s exhaustive omniscience. Without being familiar with specific terms of art, it will be difficult to understand Helm and just how generally disunited the Reformed camp is in trading in settled philosophical jargon, which in turn makes dialogue with skilled, yet opposing, Christian philosophers like J.P Moreland and William Lane Craig more challenging than necessary.
Natural Knowledge, a very good place to start:
Natural knowledge is God’s knowledge of all necessary truths. What this means is that God’s natural knowledge includes those things that are impossible not to be true, such as the law of non-contradiction (LNC) and God’s attributes. For example, there is no possibility that an object while being a rock is not a rock (LNC), or that God can be other than holy (divine attribute). We might observe up front that objects of natural knowledge are true without God willing them to be so. Rather, objects of natural knowledge are true because they are grounded in God’s unwilled nature. In addition to these sorts of necessary truths, God also knows all possibilities according to his natural knowledge. From a distinctly Reformed perspective, God’s natural knowledge of all possibilities correlates to God’s self-knowledge of what he can do. Which is to say, God can actualize all possibilities, which is not a tenet of Molinism.
Free Knowledge
In addition to God’s natural knowledge, God has free knowledge. Unlike natural knowledge, free knowledge is logically predicated upon God’s creative decree. A comparative example might be useful here. God knew that Tyre and Sidon would not repent because he freely willed that they would not repent. Consequently, God’s knowledge regarding Tyre and Sidon, from a distinctly Reformed perspective, was predicated upon his sovereign determination, which is unlike God’s passive knowledge of his holiness. What is perhaps less obvious in this regard is that God did not only determine the hardness of heart found in Tyre and Sidon, but also the counterfactual truth that had certain miracles been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented. So, although the counterfactual of Tyre and Sidon’s repentance was not decreed actually to occur in history, it was no less determined that: had certain miracles been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented. We may refer to such counterfactuals of creaturely freedom as would-counterfactuals. The takeaway is simply this. From a Reformed perspective, objects of free knowledge don’t just include determined things that will occur but, also, determined things that would occur if certain states of affairs were to obtain (even if they won’t). Consequently, although all would-counterfactuals are objects of God’s omniscience (specifically, God’s free knowledge), not all are foreknown as future. In other words, some counterfactuals are determined merely to be true, whereas others are determined actually to occur. An additional example might be useful in making the point. God decreed that I’d write this piece at precisely this time under certain conditions. However, if God also knows what I would have done had I been distracted by a phone call while writing, then that bit of additional knowledge would be according to his free knowledge of an independently determined counterfactual. In other words, God would not know what I would have done under other circumstances according to natural knowledge but via his free knowledge.*
Consistent Reformed thinkers, a summary of sort:
An entailment of Reformed thought is that the free choices men would make in any situation are divinely determined and, consequently, a result of God’s creative decree. With this understanding comes a recognition that would-counterfactuals, which God freely knows, are in a qualified sense a subset of counterfactual possibilities that God knows according to his natural knowledge. This means that from a Reformed perspective, would-counterfactuals are contingent truths which God freely determines, whereas the set of possibilities from which God chooses to make them true are necessary truths grounded in God’s self-knowledge of what he can actualize.** As 19th century Princeton theologian A.A. Hodge would correctly have it – God determines the relationship of cause to effect. In other words, for Hodge it is the decree of God that makes even contingent events contingent!
The decree, instead of altering, determines the nature of events, and their mutual relations. It makes free actions free in relation to their agents, and contingent events contingent in relation to their conditions.
In other words, God pre-interprets the particulars and wills their relationship of cause and effect. Consequently, true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom are objects of God’s creative decree and consequently posterior to it.
Agreement and disagreement between opposing camps:
Molinists and Reformed thinkers agree that God knows all possible counterfactuals of creaturely freedom according to his natural knowledge. In this regard, the significant difference between the two schools of thought is that from a Molinist perspective God’s natural knowledge does not inform him of which possibilities can be made actual. In other words, from a distinctly Molinist perspective God must look to his middle knowledge because not all possibilities can be actualized due to a different understanding of how God’s determination would relate to human freedom and moral accountability.
Read More
Related Posts:

The world we live in has changed, and the faster the church gets our heads around it, the better. And the past two and a half years of a global pandemic have only turbocharged the change.  In a time of rapid, dislocating change, it becomes easy to want to get back to what we lost.  Instead, we must embrace God’s call into what we are.

Last month Jacob Birch wrote a widely-viewed article at Christianity Today questioning the common use of Jeremiah 29 in the Western church.  In short, Birch complains that the common refrain, “We live in a period of exile” in today’s Western church is an ill-advised framework to understand the church’s relationship to our broader culture.
We can understand the basic thrust of the article.  In essence, Birch states, “It’s really not that bad to be a Christian in the West.  And so, when the Western [and he presumably particularly means the American and Canadian] church starts talking this way, it cheapens people who really have been forced out of their homelands, experienced all sorts of horrors, and suffered mightily.”  Birch raises a valid point.  Those who have fled war, who have been forcibly deported, who will never see their homes again, those who have suffered, deeply – they may rightly take umbrage at comparisons which seem to imply, “Yes, we feel that too.”  No, honestly, we don’t.  We can agree with Birch’s concern at that level.
Yet, we shouldn’t entirely abandon the analogy. We shouldn’t abandon it because the bible itself talks this way.  In fact, in 1 Peter 1.1, Peter calls God’s elect, Christians, exiles in the world:
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who are elect exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood: May grace and peace be multiplied to you. (1 Peter 1:1–2, ESV)
Other English translations render the ESV’s “exiles” as “scattered,” “sojourners,” “strangers,” and the like, so we should be careful to note the potential range of meaning in Peter’s description.  Not every sojourner is an exile, nor are the terms identical, but they do have overlapping ranges of meaning and signification.  In other words, the ESV, though not the only possible translation of the term, is a legitimate and defensible rendering of Peter’s meaning.
And why that designation?  Those who read the New Testament know what it means to be elect, and verse 2 confirms what Peter means – the ones who were chosen in advance by God the Father, sanctified by the Spirit, for obedience to Christ, redeemed in his blood.  Peter writes to Christians scattered through the Roman Empire, choosing imagery that links them to the dispersion and exile of the Judeans following the Babylonian conquest and destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC.
According to Peter, the elect were scattered throughout the world.  Why?  They were scattered because of persecution.  We should be careful not to read that too far – Birch has a point – the persecution wasn’t yet as bad as it could be…or would be.  But Nero was probably already ruling when this letter was written, and it would keep getting worse.  The Christians of the early church faced hardship and persecution – socially, economically, and eventually physically.  And even when these early Christians experienced social and economic persecution, Peter wrote to them as “strangers in the world, scattered – exiled – among the nations.”  They were in the same spot that the Jews in Judah had been centuries before – oppressed, harassed, living in the midst of a pagan culture that mocked all they stood for.
In other words, there’s nothing per se wrong with using the analogy of exile for Western Christians today.  We simply must recognize that this is an analogy, and every analogy can be pushed too far.  Our situation in the Western church is not nearly as bad as what many brothers and sisters around the world face daily, nor should we act like we have it so hard.  Yet, we can still profitably look at and learn from the question of what it means to live as exiles in the world.
And whatever analogy we use, it is fair to say the Western church has moved and is moving towards a minority position in terms of its influence on culture.  Now probably, from what all the statisticians say, the number of people who have really met Jesus, been born again, has not changed terribly much as a percentage of the population.  Instead, the well-documented rise of the “nones” is driving this change.  Christianity in America for a long time managed to live in a position of cultural hegemony, where the mainstream, whether or not it truly believed in Christian orthodoxy, still gave lip service, accepted many of its cultural claims, and voted with it, so to speak.  We must remember that was often a hollow faith, but in many places in the West, including until recently in most of America, it was relatively easy, safe, and even socially helpful to say you were a Christian.
That, certainly, has changed in much of the West, somewhat earlier in Europe, then first in the American Northeast and West, then spreading more broadly to cultural centers across the nation; and we have no reason to think the trend will suddenly cease.  The church is moving towards a position of less cultural influence, and whether we describe that as “occupation” (Birch’s preferred analogy) or “exile” (also valid), that requires rethinking how Christians relate to our world.  And Jeremiah 29 remains not just helpful, but crucial in thinking through the question.
These are the words of the letter that Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders of the exiles, and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. This was after King Jeconiah and the queen mother, the eunuchs, the officials of Judah and Jerusalem, the craftsmen, and the metal workers had departed from Jerusalem. The letter was sent by the hand of Elasah the son of Shaphan and Gemariah the son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah king of Judah sent to Babylon to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. It said: “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let your prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, declares the Lord. “For thus says the Lord: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.” (Jeremiah 29:1–14, ESV)
How did we get here, to this cultural moment?  We might start with how Israel got there.  This is a letter from Jeremiah the prophet, back in Jerusalem, to some of the exiles deported to Babylon, a letter written near the end of the history of Judah as an independent nation.  After Solomon, God’s people split into two separate nations, sometimes allied, often fighting each other.  A couple hundred years later, the northern nation, called Israel, had been wiped out by the Assyrian Empire.  Now, a bit past one hundred years later, the southern nation, called Judah, was in the process of being wiped out by the Babylonian Empire.  The Babylonian judgment happened in three stages, and in each of those three stages the Babylonians deported a portion of Judah’s elite, exiling them, taking them back to Babylon for what basically amounted to a forced reeducation campaign, one that made them into Babylonian civil servants.  Jeremiah 29 occurs in the midst of those three stages.  The prophet Jeremiah, still back in Judah, wrote to God’s people who had been exiled to Babylon.
To understand this situation correctly, we must recognize that Israel ended up in exile because of both injustice AND false worship.  Jeremiah 7:1-7 says – and the OT prophets had been repeating both these themes for centuries – that God had exiled them because of both their religious apostasy and the rampant injustice of their society:
The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Stand in the gate of the Lord’s house, and proclaim there this word, and say, Hear the word of the Lord, all you men of Judah who enter these gates to worship the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your deeds, and I will let you dwell in this place. Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.’ “For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly execute justice one with another, if you do not oppress the sojourner, the fatherless, or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own harm, then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your fathers forever.” (Jeremiah 7:1–7, ESV)
One can almost open the preexilic prophets of the Old Testament at random and find these two themes.
First, as to idolatry, this remained a very religious people.  Atheism was a much, much later cultural movement.  Everyone at this time was religious; the only question was which god you followed.  Further, this remained a people who said they were worshiping the Lord.  If you had asked the people themselves, “Have you turned to other gods?” they would have answered, “No, this is how we worship the Lord.”  Of course, God didn’t see it that way.  In his eyes, they were “going after other gods.”  In other words, they had a religion that claimed it was still the worship of the Lord and even formally looked like, at least in many ways, it was the worship of the Lord.  It had the same ceremonies, the same sacrifices, the same patterns, yet it was a false worship of the Lord.  It had much of the form of Yahwism, but in God’s mind it was something else entirely.
Second, as to justice, this remained an incredibly blind people.  Their stated faith and their market and societal ethics simply did not match.  As long as the Temple continued its work, as long as the sacrifices were made, people considered themselves to be good with God, well set, having done their religious duty.  No matter if one then went out and slept with a prostitute, exploited the poor, oppressed the widow, the orphan, or the refugee.  No matter if one’s business practices were technically legal but corrupt.  No matter if one’s faith had no impact once he exited the Temple courts.  Jeremiah critiques, standing in a long line of Old Testament prophets, the worst of legalistic, formalistic religion.
And, we might add, Jeremiah rejects their complacency in the light of all of that.  They cry out, “This is the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord.”  In other words, they cry out, “We’re good, so long as we meet the obligations of the Temple sacrificial system.  We have nothing to worry about.  God will always protect Jerusalem, because he has promised to.”  To which Jeremiah says, “The Temple’s presence will not save you.  Give me a true religion, one that rejects idolatrous religious compromise and one that seeks justice.”
If the Western church has moved into a position that is much more exilic, even if in a very light form, how did we get here?  Interestingly, the two warring halves of the movement formerly known as evangelicalism each concentrate on one or the other of those causes.
One of the two halves often traces the roots of the church’s loss of influence to false worship, particularly to the rise of liberal theology in the early 20th century, which then really flowered with the 60’s and the sexual revolution and then more recent cultural moves on gender and sexuality.  The narrative goes as follows:
Read More
Related Posts:

The book has the following outline. The first section is a historical survey of discussion in the church. The focus here is that the Trinity is indivisible and so the works of the Spirit are inseparable from those of the Father and the Son. So when we consider the Spirit, we must not think of him as out on his own. The second section is biblical, tracing the pervasive and increasing stress on the Spirit in creation, the history of redemption, the life and ministry of Christ, the work of the apostles, and the establishment of the church, ultimately extending to our own transformation and eventual resurrection. The book comes to its climax with a short chapter that asks how we are to discern where the Spirit is clearly at work. 

This book follows an invitation by the publisher to undertake a trilogy on the Trinitarian persons, stemming from my earlier work on the Holy Trinity (2004, 2019), especially the second edition. Further volumes on the Son and the Father are projected. I contemplate this with a sense of overwhelming responsibility. Something in me tells me that it is too much for one individual to give an account of the Holy Trinity in all its uniqueness and glory, and yet also to write of the three hypostases or “persons” distinctly. This is literally an awesome task, too great for a mere human to undertake. Yet God has made himself known to us. He has come among us in the person of his Son, living as man. He has poured out his Spirit upon us and within us. We can so speak; indeed, we must speak, if only through trembling and stammering lips. One thing is certain: this book, as all others on the subject, will be nowhere near adequate. John Stott often quoted the words of the great Charles Simeon, who upon entering the pulpit would remind himself: “One thing I know, I am a fool; of that I am certain.” We are all fools, for such wisdom as we have comes from the Holy Spirit alone.
In order to appreciate the presence and work of the Holy Spirit today, we need to ask how this has been seen over the past two thousand years of the church’s existence. Such a search is not a merely antiquarian exercise. It is vital for us to ensure that our own thinking is within the parameters shaped by more than fifty generations of those who have gone before us. How else can we be clear that our experience is demonstrably Christian? We have two millennia of accumulated wisdom, biblical exegesis, and concentrated thought to guide us. While not all of it may seem fruitful, much if not most will. It is absurd to assume that we must ground everything on our own exegesis of the Bible, while ignoring the cumulative wisdom of the people of God down through the ages.
Read More
Related Posts: