Agreed. God has blessed us through this man's knowledge.

Probably intentional 😂

God cannot create a libertarian free will creature because that would require a self sustaining power apart from God and God cannot logically know the future free will actions of creatures because that would require dualism and removal of God's sustaining power of ALL things

What are your thoughts? It's helpful to know where someone is coming from.

@@Choraldiscourse well I don't bring any theological baggage with me, I look at the verse, it's context and I follow Jesus/God not Calvin or Arminius or Molina etc...(1 Corinthians 1:13; 3:4)

@@adventures8977 the verses are not inconsistent with monergism or synergism (though I guess it could depends on the system). Both are able to explain sufficiently I believe.

@@Choraldiscourse from the pplain reading of the passage in context I think it's affirming synergism.

@@adventures8977 Calvinists might label those verses as a secondary cause. Man's actions and choices are real choices but they don't discount God as the primary cause. A verse which shows God as primary cause and man as secondary could be Acts 13:48. Here you have both working together.

_"Dr. White asserts that it’s impossible to know what a free creature would do,.."_ It is important to distinguish between libertarian philosophical theories of free will, or autonomous creaturely free will, from other theories and not generalize White's (or the Reformed) position as being against any sort of free will at all. This assumption that libertarian free will theories are the only free will theories is another "brute fact" that should be called out and explicitly defended by the anti-Calvinist as well. This is especially important as Stratton is involved, and while he love to default to the phrase "libertarian" free will and pretend like Calvinists reject all forms of free will; when he gets more precise he starts calling his view "limited" libertarian free will, and when you dive into what exactly that is supposed to mean, its rather hard to distinguish it from the reformed compatiblist position found in all the historic confessions. A lot of their argument depends on playing lose with what exactly free will entails for their side. White defends his argument, and it is pretty straightforward. If the creature can do otherwise than what God knows they will (or would) do, you cast doubt on God's omniscience. If creatures cannot do otherwise than what God knows they would or will do, then how are they libertarianly free? To put aside labels for a second, as they seem to be an emotional crutch for people: If God knows what choices man would do, how does the Molinist version of free will differ from the Reformed version? The only difference I see is in how God knows their choices (discovery through middle knowledge or intent through God's decree), but you and I have no contrary choice under either system. Historically, free will without contrary choice is a Compatiblist system, and counter to libertarian free will, but people love that word "libertarian" and stick it on everything these days, muddying the waters.

@@oracleoftroy - yeah I was reading an article once from Dr. Craig on this and it basically boiled down to this: A person could logically possibly do otherwise (but they won’t). But as long as they decide and are not logically necessitated to do what they do, then even if they won’t do otherwise, it is logically possible that they could have. God would have just known differently had they made a different choice. In other words, it’s basically saying “it is possible that they could choose otherwise even if they won’t”. I guess it makes philosophical sense but it does seem like a smokescreen to me. I’m definitely a Compatibilist and I think it’s plausible that parts of Molinism could be correct and describe how Compatibilism works. But I don’t think God knows indeterminate things rather determinant things and so, even if Parts of Molinism are true, it still implies EDD, exhaustive divine determinism.

@@gregmahler9506 Yeah, that aspect of Molinism just seems really weird to me. Molinists really really want to say humans have libertarian free will. But it isn't you or I that have libertarian free will; that is, not as actualized flesh and blood human beings. It's the potential you or I that act libertarianly free, and we as the realized versions are fatalistically stuck on the path that our potential selves chose and God approved for actualization. But then some notice that this isn't all that satisfying an answer and want to say that you and I as realized human beings do in fact have libertarian free will, yet never connect the dots back to God and what he knows. God chose this potential worlds because he knew I would choose A, and yet I end up choosing not A. How then is God omniscient if what he knows can be wrong? You end up drifting into open theism, where God at best knows the probability distribution, where I'm 80% likely to choose A, 15% B, and 5% C. Is that really omniscience at this point? And can God's prophecy end up being wrong if he gets an unlikely streak of low probability events? Or does God just cheat and violate our free will if it would violate his plan? But now we are entering the realm of Frankfurt-style cases: the classic pro-compatiblism thought experiments. So all that's to say, exactly right about the smokescreen. It seems like when you try to clear away the smoke, you reveal a system that is either a variation of Open Theistic heresy, or more fatalistic than the worst strawman version of Calvinism, or a compatiblist system that isn't obviously functionally different from the historic Reformed position, just with a bunch of extra steps involved. And I haven't seen any clear answers to this, at least beyond whinging "you don't understand Molinism" for pointing out an issue with the system. Dear Molinist, I grant that I don't understand Molinism's answer to this problem, so scoff all you want, but please explain it.

@@oracleoftroy - Right on. I guess for me it's not as big an issue that it's not the flesh and blood you or me that God has knowledge of because Middle Knowledge is just "facts" or true/false statements, which are inanimate and abstract in and of themselves. Imagine it like this. You see a vision in your mind of some event that will happen that involves holograms of people that look and act exactly like the real people will. I still think this could be useful information to know if you knew it was true or false, even though the content has holograms instead of the real people. I think the biggest issue, that Dr. White brings up, is that Dr. Craig does not have an explanation for where the facts of Middle Knowledge come from. God is not in control of them and neither are the creatures that supposedly make them true. I do see this is a fatal flaw in the system. It's not about "truth-makers" either. It's simply about having no explanation of the arrival of Middle Knowledge on the scene. For if MK is eternal, then it's just Natural Knowledge. Whereas on the Calvinist side of things, these facts are made true by God's decree and the resulting consequences of God's actions and decisions. Lastly, I was in Dr. Stratton's facebook group for a while and I posed the challenge that if Unconditional Election is true, than even if God has MK, it does not matter. This is because if Election to Salvation is unconditional, then God would never use "would do" statements to factor into His decree of election. Some Molinists there saw the implication, some didn't. The ones that saw it, just deny that the bible teaches U (in TULIP). For me, the passage in Roman's 9 is pretty clear on it. I think Dr. White would use this argument against the system in general and do better off.

Speaking of autonomy being ontological in origin, I know someone who speaks in defense of both divine sovereignty and human autonomy, if you're interested.