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The WLC and James White Exchange

December 14, 2021

Summary

A much-anticipated dialogue on Molinism and Calvinism.

KEVIN HARRIS: Bill, for years people have urged you to debate Dr. James White. Dr. White himself has challenged you over and over to debate him on Calvinism and Molinism. While you responded to James White on some podcasts from time to time, you’ve always explained that your work and ministry does not include debating other Christians. So this is a little surprising to many of us. What went into your decision to have this exchange on Justin Brierley’s program?[1]

DR. CRAIG: I think people need to understand what I mean by a “debate.” As someone who was trained in competitive academic debating, by a “debate” I mean a formal event that consists of structured timed speeches (constructive speeches, rebuttal speeches, and a closing statement) which have specific time limits which are kept and enforced by a timekeeper and which is conducted according to the rules and the etiquette of academic debate. And I don't have time or interest in participating in that sort of debate with fellow believers. I want to debate non-Christians on university campuses on the truth of Christianity and these opposing views. But I have no interest at all in debating with other Christians. But, of course, I'm quite happy to be on an interview program with someone and to answer questions in an informal conversational way. I did that several years ago with Paul Helm, as James White notes, and I'm quite happy to have done it with him as well.

KEVIN HARRIS: One of my own observations (and I'm not alone on this) is that the topic was, “How Calvinism and Molinism deal with the problem of evil,” but it seems that Dr. White was more interested in making this about Calvinism versus Molinism. Did you feel that you had to keep it on track?

DR. CRAIG: I think that this is very discerning of you, Kevin, and you're exactly right. When Justin Brierley asked me to participate in this interview he said the topic would be “Calvinism and Molinism: Which has the better view of the problem of evil?” And I said to Justin, “You're going to have to keep this discussion on track. This is not about middle knowledge versus anti-middle knowledge views. This is about which of these views has the better solution to the problem of evil.” And Justin said, “I understand. I will keep it on track.” And you may remember that when he introduced the interview he put it this way. He said, “Which view, if true, would provide the best explanation of the evil and suffering in the world?” So you were supposed to presuppose the truth of the other person's view and then explore its adequacy with respect to how well it explains the evil in the world. And that was exactly what I did. I said, “Let's assume Calvinism is true. How well does that handle moral evil?” And I argued “not very well” because it makes God the author of evil. But James White didn't really do that. He never asked, “If Molinism is true, how well does it explain the evil and suffering in the world?” Instead he treated this as a debate over Molinism per se and attacked the truth of Molinism rather than the adequacy of its solution to the problem of evil. I don't think I did a very good job of keeping it on track, but on the other hand I think if I had tried to avoid talking about middle knowledge and his objections to it people would have thought I was being evasive because they often don't understand the precision of the wording of a topic which in this case was specifically limited to the problem of evil.

KEVIN HARRIS: Well, there has been so much response online that it's difficult to narrow it down, but let's look at a few responses. Wintery Knight[2] has had a blog for a long time. He said,

If I could boil down the mistake that James White makes to one sentence, it would be to say that he comes to the text with a philosophical presupposition (determinism), and this causes him to misinterpret the plain meaning of the text as a whole. And this misinterpretation isn’t about peripheral teachings of the Bible. His embrace of God as the cause of moral evil means that he denies the goodness of God – a basic Christian doctrine. (This is compounded by his embrace of double-predestination, although that was not the topic of the debate). Christians shouldn’t let a philosophy – determinism – override the plain meaning of Scripture. Determinism is man’s philosophy – it’s a Greek philosophy that existed centuries before Christ.

What do you think about what Wintery Knight says here?

DR. CRAIG: I agree with Wintery Knight. I have said in the past that the man who claims to have no need for philosophy is the man who is most apt to be deceived by it. Now, I said that of Stephen Hawking, but I think it could equally be said of James White. Claiming to have no philosophy, he imposes unwittingly on the text his own philosophy of universal divine determinism, and he misunderstands the important role of philosophy in shaping and guiding Reformed theology itself.

KEVIN HARRIS: Wintery Knight also says,

White also was clearly unfamiliar with the philosophy of religion of his own Reformed tradition, and especially with the history of the development of Reformed theology. Craig was able to correct him, by showing him the books on Reformed Dogmatics and explain the historical antecedents of Reformed thought.

That's when you pulled out that big book.

DR. CRAIG: That's right. The four-volume history of Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics by Richard Muller which I have consulted in connection with my own systematic philosophical theology. I've been writing for the last several months on the attributes of God, and in my work I first explore what is the biblical basis for certain of the divine attributes. And what I found so often is that the biblical data are underdeterminative. It's frustrating you can't prove from the Bible exactly what God's attribute is. I gave several examples in the conversation with James White. The attribute of necessity or necessary existence. I would love to have a scriptural proof text to show that God exists necessarily in every possible world. The Medievals appealed to Exodus 3:14, “I am that I am” but commentators seem to agree that at most that would suggest God's eternal existence, and that's not the same thing as God's broadly logically necessary existence – that God exists in every possible world. Or take divine eternity. The Bible is ambiguous as to whether God's eternity means that God is timeless or whether God is infinite throughout all time. Or again, the attribute of God's relationship to space. Is God omnipresent in the sense that he transcends space altogether but is active at every point in space, or does God actually in some way fill space itself? Or the attribute of divine simplicity. We all agree that as a spiritual being God has no physical parts. He's not put together out of pieces that could come apart. But that doesn't imply that God doesn't have distinct properties or that God has no potentiality or that God's essence is existence. And yet Reformed dogmatics borrows from Medieval Catholic philosophy the doctrines of divine necessity, timelessness, spacelessness, and simplicity. It's wholesale reproduced in Reform dogmatics. And James White would be very hard-pressed to give any sort of biblical justification for that interpretation of the doctrine of God. This is a synoptic or synergistic working together of biblical data and theological reflection to try to determine what God's attributes are like.

KEVIN HARRIS: This exchange just happened relatively recently and so all the response is just now coming in. I don't want people to think that we're just playing some of the clips and some of the quotes from people who are in your corner, but so far most of them have been. Maybe in the future we'll do another podcast of people who are maybe a little more in favor of James White or whatever. But in the meantime we've been collecting some clips and some reaction. Here's a clip. It's a response from Leighton Flowers. He and Eric Hernandez got together and discussed the exchange a little bit.[3] We'll go to clip one here. This is Dr. Flowers and his response.

Many of you have watched the William Lane Craig-James White debate over Molinism. I wanted just to give somewhat of a preface. Some people were asking my thoughts on it . . . I was frustrated through a lot of it because a lot of the discussion was derailed based upon what you saw there in that first clip. It seemed to me that Dr. White was speaking more from a theological vantage point and William Lane Craig more from a philosopher's vantage point in some ways. They go hand-in-hand. You don't do one without the other regardless of what some people may say. You always end up doing this philosophy especially when it comes to interpreting text and how you interpret things, especially infinite qualities such as omniscience and how that works with free will. You can't talk about that without getting into philosophical statements. So some of the conversation didn't go very deep into the intricacies of Molinism because it seemed to me that Dr. White was focusing on the issue that really wasn't even in Dr. Craig's purview. This is something that derives from the Scripture. God is sinless. He's omnipotent. He's omniscient. He's omnipresent. In other words, God is maximally great. I think both William Lane Craig and Dr. White agree with this statement – that the Scripture clearly teaches us that God is maximally great. The Bible also clearly teaches us that man is a responsible sinner. We're justly held culpable for our sins, our actions. Those are not points of contention. Both Calvinists and Molinists and everyone in between . . . and I think Molinism, like Dr. Craig says, is consistent with the Scriptures and a biblically viable way to explain how these two truths that are in Scripture can be reconciled. How does an omnipotent, all-knowing God create free creatures who are responsible for their choices? How does that work? These two truths are derived from Scripture. I think we can all agree with that. I think Dr. Craig would say, yes, absolutely these two truths are derived from Scripture. But the debate is over how. . . . It seems to me White doesn't treat it as if it's a philosophical worldview, however. He treats it as if it's just from the Bible.

What do you think about what Leighton just said there?

DR. CRAIG: Well, I tend to agree more with Wintery Knight that you quoted before. I think White has a very naive view of theological method. It is not true that he approached the question theologically and I approached it philosophically. It is precisely that false dichotomy that needs to be challenged. Rather, we both approach the topic as systematic theologians trying to make sense out of the truths that are taught in Scripture which included those two truths that Leighton Flowers mentioned. White's way of explaining the biblical data is universal divine determinism. My view is that it's best explained via middle knowledge. But even at that, as I say, that wasn't supposed to be the topic under the debate. The conversation was supposed to be which view, if true, is the best explanation of the evil and suffering in the world? And I stand by my position that making God the author of evil is something that impugns the goodness of God that Leighton Flowers rightly says cannot be compromised.

KEVIN HARRIS: I believe this is a shorter clip. This is the second clip from Leighton, and I think this one starts out with James White and then Leighton's response. Let's go to that clip.

. . .when we talk about the difference between a Calvinist and a Molinist, the assertion that is being made (and this is what came up in the previous conversation; this was the clarifying remark that Bill made right toward the end of discussion), here's the quote: What the Molinist does say that the Calvinist does find objectionable is that God is not in control of which subjunctive conditionals are true. He doesn't determine the truth value of these subjunctive conditionals. That's outside his control.

OK. In my estimation, all that statement is from Dr. Craig that he just read is saying God doesn't determine the choices of men. OK. I know it's very long and philosophical and it sounds a lot more complex than just that, but I think that's all Dr. Craig is saying – is that the thing that God does not control is the moral choice of man. That's the thing he does not control. Now, he's speaking about that thing (whatever that thing is) that he does not control – the choice of man – from a Molinistic perspective of God in his infinite nature, and therefore that's why it sounds so complex and difficult to follow. But basically that's the only thing that it seems like White is reading about there. It's just that God doesn't determine the choices of men. And, yeah, that obviously is our position. That's what libertarian free will is all about. God is not the determiner of what we will determine. He allows us to make some determinations. Those determinations don't make us superheroes, as Dr. Pritchett is famous for saying. Free will is not a superpower. So just because God grants us the ability to make choices doesn't mean that we somehow thwart the will of God or that we become more powerful than God. The only reason we have free will to begin with is because he chose for us to have free will. And so it's not as if God is giving mankind an ability and then he's just going, “Uh oh, now I gave man an ability; now I'm at their whim and I can't handle it.

KEVIN HARRIS: Did that go more toward the problem of evil and where the debate was supposed to be?

DR. CRAIG: No. He's still debating about middle knowledge and the fact that these counterfactuals of creaturely freedom are not determined by God. I don't think this is all so complex and difficult as Leighton seems to present it. The question is: Does God determine what you would do in various circumstances? And the Molinist says, “No, he leaves it up to you to do whatever you would freely choose to do.” But White is so committed to universal divine determinism that just saying that about Molinism is in his mind a refutation. Just to state the Molinist view that God does not determine the truth value of these counterfactuals – to him that's a refutation. To me, it's just a description of the view. And I don't see any reason to think that divine determinism is true. On the contrary, I see good reason to think it false because it makes God the cause of evil.

KEVIN HARRIS: One more quick clip from Eric Hernandez. Let's hear from Eric.

Both men are attempting to take the data of Scripture and construct some type of systematic to explain it. What I found funny and even ironic . . . White would quote Scripture as if he's going to quote something Craig's going to disagree with. Just quoting the Scripture isn't proof of your position. . . . The question is not, “Do you believe this part of Scripture?” The question is how do we explain it? How do we understand this? And that's going to take some philosophy.

DR. CRAIG: That guy is exactly right. Hernandez. We were both presenting our systematic theological constructs to explain the data of Scripture, and White, oddly enough for all of his emphasis on theology, his objections to Molinism were not scriptural. They were philosophical. He was objecting to Molinism on the basis of truthmaker maximalism – that there needs to be truthmakers for these subjunctive conditionals prior to the divine decree. And in the absence of these, he didn't see how they could be true or false. Well, that’s not a theological or biblical objection. That's a philosophical objection. So I found it rather ironic that the man in the dialogue who claimed to be speaking solely on biblical bases was in fact the one who was using philosophical arguments to try to refute the interlocutor's opinion.

KEVIN HARRIS: I wish we had more time to hear from Tim Stratton and Tyson James. They've done a great response on YouTube with a video. We'll maybe revisit it in a future podcast but for now they did address the grounding objection. Can you talk a little bit about the grounding objection?

DR. CRAIG: This is the objection that I just referred to. The claim here is that logically prior to God's decree to create a world there isn't any ground for the truth of these counterfactuals of freedom. And what I pointed out is that this presupposes a very crude view of what's called a truthmaker theory of truth which says that truths have truthmakers. And a radical version of truthmaker theory is truthmaker maximalism which says that every truth has a truthmaker, and I think that doctrine is very plausibly false. And I gave a counter-example to it. Do you remember? I said, “How about the proposition that ‘Baal does not exist’?” What is the truthmaker for that other than just the fact that Baal does not exist? And if you allow facts as your truthmakers, well, then you can allow facts to be the truthmakers for these counterfactuals of freedom. What you cannot claim plausibly is that the truthmakers have to be concrete objects. There are just numerous examples of truths which have no concrete objects as their truthmakers, and yet that seems to be what James White is presupposing. Now, this does get into technical issues, and if anybody's interested in following it up I have an article on the Reasonable Faith website in the section on divine omniscience on the grounding objection to middle knowledge.[4] I think that that will acquaint our listeners quite well with this objection and its solution.

KEVIN HARRIS: As we conclude today, I think that this is a very important exchange that happened, and thanks to Justin Brierley for having the insight to bring the two of you on to discuss this even though it got a little off topic from time to time. There are a lot of issues concerning the problem of evil that should have been addressed. This has electrified people who have been looking at this issue for a long time. Molinism is just skyrocketing these days just among laymen. And if anything this is just sending people to the books and saying, “Let's study. Let's read more on this. I want to hear more because it seems to bring about a balance between these great truths of Scripture. Molinism does.” So I don't know. Your concluding thoughts?

DR. CRAIG: Well, I have to confess that, for me, I have tended to look at this as sort of a tempest in a teapot. The concern over the truth of Calvinism versus Molinism. It just seems to me to be such a minor issue when our society at large is going to hell in a handbag and we need to address these issues of growing secularism and atheism and skepticism. It seems to me those are the debates that are so much more vital and interesting in contemporary culture. But I take your point. The video with Justin Brierley and James White, after just eight days, had over 138,000 views. So you are right. People are interested in this, and if it stimulates theological thinking and exploration, well, all the better and I’m glad to have done it.[5]


[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECcN-fisQRk (accessed December 14, 2021).

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VovM_ei_YGM (accessed December 14, 2021).

[4] “Middle Knowledge, Truth–Makers, and the ‘Grounding Objection’,” https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/scholarly-writings/divine-omniscience/middle-knowledge-truth-makers-and-the-grounding-objection (accessed December 14, 2021).

[5] Total Running Time: 23:18 (Copyright © 2021 William Lane Craig)