In the 16th century, the powerful Gospel of free grace broke out of the clutches of the Roman Catholic Church, and Europe saw a beautiful transition: the Protestant Reformation. Looking back at this time from the 21st century, we behold it like a great sunrise, which is appropriate given that post tenebras lux is a saying closely associated with the Reformation.
The thing is, if you just got to bed at like 4am, and you intend to sleep, then the sunrise isn’t necessarily what you want to see. For the sake of this illustration, let’s call this reluctant night owl something fanciful, say, the ‘Roman Catholic Church’. So, confronted with the annoying rays of light protruding through the blinds, thanks to those Protestants and their Gospel of grace, Rome began its counter-reformation: in other words, she shuttered the blinds and buried her head under her pillow.
So here we are, meeting the shuttered blinds, and the pillow. Historically, the name for them was the ‘Jesuits’, and as we have alluded, their mission was to counteract the illuminating power of the Reformation.
Enter Molina. Now, this author understands what you might be thinking. ‘Enter Molina? Where’s that? I don’t have time to go to wherever Molina is, and if you say I must, then that’s the end of reading this blog!’
Fear not. Luis de Molina was a Jesuit priest, and he is most well known for conceiving a system which derives its name from his surname, Molinism.
The Gospel that the Reformers were elucidating, that is, the Biblical Gospel of free and powerful grace, was a threat to Rome. The Gospel is about God, not you. God saves sinners by himself, for himself and from himself. The thing that threatened Rome so much is that the Biblical Gospel is not one that man can control and regulate with ordinances and sacraments, much as Rome may try. This is key for later: the fact that God is totally sovereign over all things was not delightful to Rome the way it should be to any true Christian. The fact that God makes his decisions based on his kind intention and the counsel of his will should fill us with confidence and assurance, not dismay. More on that later.
When a Christian wants to know the truth on matters of doctrine, his approach should always be to ask, ‘what is the consistent teaching of all of the Scriptures on this matter?’ The first port of call is to seek to come under the authority of the Scriptures and learn what God has taught in his word, and then to trust in that revelation.
On the other hand, the wrong approach is to ask yourself, ‘is there a system or explanation I can think of that would make sense of the data I see?’ One shouldn’t firstly look to their own problem solving or their philosophical categories, but rather to doctrine and Biblical categories.
Surprise surprise, the latter is exactly what Molina was doing. It was never his intention to draw out the teaching of the Scriptures on the matters of God’s sovereignty, election, the will of man, and the preservation of the saints. It was his design to come up with a system that didn’t contradict Scripture and could plausibly be inserted into it. You may be thinking, ‘well, that’s not so bad. If it doesn’t contradict Scripture, isn’t that enough? People come up with doctrinal ideas all the time.’ However, that’s just the problem. Firstly, we are failing to trust the wisdom of the Holy Spirit if we assume by our actions that Scripture does not speak clearly enough on an important matter to clearly find answers therein. Secondly, we are overestimating the power of our intellect and philosophy, which are errors from which a sober reading of 1 Cor 1 and Romans 1 would most certainly disabuse us.
Indeed, and we will make this point again: you must seek to find what the Scriptures are teaching, and not simply settle for ‘theological models that are compatible with Scripture’. There is a great chasm of difference.
With those matters of background established, we will now enter the mire of Middle Knowledge and attempt to make it understandable without presenting it as a strawman.
Firstly, see in the above image two ‘stages’ or ‘moments’ of God’s knowledge. The first image represents how things were before page 1 of the Bible, i.e. when all that existed was God. There was no air, no atmosphere, no laws of physics, just God. At this point, God is all that exists. Then, according to the kind intention of God’s will, he chooses to create the world, to give life to Adam and Eve, and to put into motion this great drama that we call history. At the moment that God created, he perfectly and fully knew everything about the world and creatures he created. After all, he created them. This full and complete knowledge God has of his creation is called Free Knowledge, because he freely knows it all as a result of it being his idea, his plan, his action. Let’s put it a different way. Before God creates, all that exists is God. There isn’t a set of rules about how things have to work, or how God should make the world, or who he should treat in such and such a manner. In this state, God is all that exists, and anything else that will come to exist does so because he intends and creates it (see the totality of Christ’s work as creator in Col 1).
Natural knowledge concerns everything God knows about creation once it has been created. Prior to the moment of creation, all that existed was God, and he knew himself perfectly. After the moment of creation, creatures existed who were capable of making decisions, and God knew the fullness of those creatures and their preferences and decision-making habits, because he created them that way.
We have laboured over these two ‘stages’ or ‘moments’, because these two are straightforward teachings of Scripture. It is the third one, Middle Knowledge, that makes things really confusing.
Middle Knowledge would usually be pitched like this: ‘God knows everything, including what actions free creatures would make in any scenario, and he takes that into account when he chooses what kind of world to make.’
The key part of Middle Knowledge, the thing that makes it so controversial, is this: Middle Knowledge comes before God’s choosing to create in the logical order of events (this means that God’s timelessness does not disrupt this timeline, since it is discussed as a logical order of events, not a temporal order of events).
Since Middle Knowledge comes before God chooses to create, it means it is occurring when all that exists is God. No universe, no laws of gravity, just God. However, they would say, it is not just God. The set of data that God takes into account before he chooses to create a world also exists, and God didn’t create it.
In short, creatures that don’t exist are telling God what he can and cannot do.
This might be confusing, so bear with us as we put it a different way: People who defend Middle Knowledge are espousing a set of constraints upon God that do not come from God, nor from the counsel of his will. Middle Knowledge is a deck of cards that God is dealt, that limits what he is allowed to create.
In short, creatures that don’t exist are telling God what he can and cannot do. Whereas the first illustration was a Biblical one, the second illustration that includes Molina’s concept of Middle Knowledge is desperately unbiblical.
Now, highly regarded reader, we would not blame you if by this point you are shaking your head, looking at your next social dinner invitation or work drinks, and thinking, ‘how on earth is this ever going to be relevant in a real conversation?’
If you profess to be a follower of Jesus, you would be surprised how closely this touches on a hotly debated doctrine called Election—and no, it’s not November yet, but we’ll probably talk about an election then also. Here’s where the rubber meets the road on how your acceptance or rejection of Middle Knowledge will affect your understanding of Election. According to the Scriptures, for a person to come to the Father, they must first be drawn by God (John 6:44), and the same text shows that all those whom God draws he will also raise up to salvation on the last day.
Until God draws a person, they are unable to submit to his law, or do anything that pleases him (Rom 8:7). So, if you take God at his word, then no person would ever be saved if God’s choice was in response to seeing who would choose him over the course of their lifetimes, because no one chooses God by themself. Unless God starts the relationship, it is not going to start.
At this point, having had this discussion with Remonstrants before, we must dispel any notion of kinds of ‘prevenient grace’. This is the false concept that God gives everyone just enough light or spiritual awareness that it frees them up to be able to choose him, should they so desire. The principal reason to reject this doctrine is that there is no Biblical testimony in favour of it, and an avalanche of Biblical testimony against it. It really is cut and dry. But don’t take our word for it, read the Bible yourself.
At this point we will go in a slightly different direction, one that this author has witnessed in discussion with Protestants from different orthodox traditions. The topic of which we speak is that of mystery, and its place in Biblical and Systematic Theology. Most Christians rightly understand that since we are tiny little creatures dealing with the doctrine of an infinitely majestic God, there are simply some things we cannot understand. For example, this author struggles to wrap his around the fact that before creation, there was just God. God, perfectly and fully happy as a being expressing love between three divine persons. So, there are some things where it is good, even wise, to take a step back and say ‘I don’t think we can know this, I think it will remain a mystery until the last day’.
For another example, let’s take some doctrines that as Christians we say that we ‘hold in tension’: there is God’s absolute kingly sovereignty, and man’s responsibility for his actions; there is the ‘now and not yet’ of at the same time being a sinner and being a saint indwelt by God; there is also the same ‘now and not yet’ reality of Christ’s kingdom, which has been established, and yet is not here in its fullness.
The reason that we believe both ends of those sets of propositions is because Scripture teaches them, not because we came up with a philosophical model that we find the most compelling, or because we have a pet doctrine we want to believe whilst making room for what the Bible says.
What ought not happen is for a Chrisitan to settle into ‘mystery’ on a topic where the Scriptures are not silent. It is for this reason (amongst others) that this author takes exception with the approach he has seen amongst Lutherans, where their doctrine can embrace mystery and contradiction to the point that it bumps up against clear revelation in Scripture. Logic and systematic theology are not something to be shunned and looked down upon. We will take one example before concluding, quoting here from Matthew Block’s piece Why Lutheran Predestination isn’t Calvinist Predestination.
Lutherans look to God as revealed in Christ; they do not speculate about unrevealed aspects of God’s will. Consequently, Lutherans affirm only that which they see affirmed in Scripture. Scripture tells us that Christ died for the whole world (John 3:16-17). So we believe it.
(Block, para. 11, emphasis mine)
This is a crystal clear example of tradition taking the place of exegesis. John 3:16 tells us that ‘in this manner God loved the world, that he sent his only son, so that all the believing ones would not perish but have eternal life’. It does not say that Christ died for the whole world. This might seem off topic, but as Block goes on you will see the consequence.
Scripture also tells us that God desires all people to be saved (2 Peter 3:9). So we believe it.
(Block, para. 11, emphasis mine)
Again, this reading of 2 Peter ignores the context, meaning that this is ‘cherry-picking’. 2 Peter 3 is a section of Peter’s letter in which Peter is arguing that just as God often took a long time before judging a people in the Old Testament, he was doing the same in Peter’s time. The whole section is addressed to believers: ‘I am writing to you, beloved’, ‘the Lord… is patient towards you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance’. If you are practising consistent methods of exegesis, you will clearly see Peter’s point: God is being patient towards his people and slow to judge, because not all of his people are yet following him, and he will wait until all have reached repentance before he brings his terrible judgement.
When you actually consider the context, this is not teaching that God is hoping that every created person ever will go to heaven. Otherwise, he would be a very disappointed God. Block goes on:
It further tells us that God has predestined those who will be saved (Ephesians 1:3-6). We believe this too. And yet, Scripture tells us that not all people will be saved (Matthew 25:41). This we also believe.
(Block, para. 11)
Block is correct here, which creates a problem for him. He believes the following:
- Christ died to save all people from hell.
- God wants all people to be saved.
- God has chosen beforehand who will be saved.
- Not all people will be saved.
His next words are a prime example of the problem of mystery:
We are willing to accept the seeming paradox, that an almighty God who predestines believers to be saved and who earnestly desires the salvation of all nevertheless will see some not saved.
(Block, para. 11, emphasis mine)
There is no paradox here, only there is one created by his Lutheran theology. However, he is not embarrassed, because his system lets him hide in the anemone of ‘mystery’ and ‘paradox’. It is one thing to embrace the complexity of the Incarnation or the Kenosis or God’s Aseity, and in those places to fearfully and humbly admit that not all can be known, but it is another to claim no need for logical consistency in places where the clear and contextual reading of Scripture is in fact logically consistent.
What can we take away from this? Firstly, that God’s word is sufficiently clear in all matters of faith and godliness. That God’s word should always be the first port of call for understanding a doctrine, and that we must let the Scriptures define the categories, not philosophers or theologians or even great Reformers like Luther. Secondly, that the truths we find in Scripture will fit together systematically, because they are all truths spoken by the one God. Finally, and as a reminder: Middle Knowledge and any form of Molinism must be rejected as unbiblical and counter-reformational sophistry.
After all, the Gospel is a stumbling block to the Jews, who looked for signs, and to the Greeks, who sought wisdom. It is a powerful but foolish-looking Gospel, and that’s what’s so special about it. If you have not yet trusted in Christ, then the fearful expectation of judgement that 2 Peter spoke of still looms over you, and we pray that you would consider the empty cross and empty tomb, recognise Christ’s Lordship over all creation, and willingly entrust your life unto him.
Distilled Orthopraxy 