White vs. Stratton vs. McAtee Debate … Molinism vs. Calvinism

In the Calvinist (James White) vs Molinist (Tim Stratton) the Molinist creates a scenario that is supposed to show how wicked the God of the Calvinist is. He says (paraphrasing), “Pretend a regenerate man gives into temptation and rapes a little girl. Now according to your theology God caused this. Do you believe God caused this?”
 
I think James White dropped the ball here as White decided to take the all “I’m outraged that you would even ask such a question” route. White never answers the question.
 
First I would have quoted from Acts 2
 
 
22 “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a Man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs which God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves also know— 23 Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death;
 

Then I would have said…

“Here we see the greatest evil crime ever perpetrated. A crime that is exponentially far greater than a child being raped. Here you have the innocent and righteous son of God being crucified by evil men. Yet, the Holy Spirit inspired Scripture teaches the Messiah was delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God. This same thought is articulated again in Acts 4 speaking of the Father’s assignation in Jesus going to the Cross,

 
28 to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose determined before to be done
 
In both these cases God is said to have determined and with purposed foreknowledge that Christ would be crucified and yet at the same time wicked men are held responsible by the Holy Spirit for doing exactly what they desired to do according to their sinful nature as seen in their rebellion against God’s annonited one.
 
So, the answer to your question about child rape is, ‘Yes, just as God determined that the greater crime against His Son would come to pass so God determined the lesser crime against that child would come to pass as the ultimate cause. However, God still holds the rapist responsible for the lesser crime of child rape just as He holds the crucifiers of Jesus responsible for the greater crime of Deicide and that because they were proximate causes that are responsible for their crimes in a way God could never be responsible. God is not responsible as the ultimate cause the way those guilty of child rape and deicide are guilty because, as Joseph says in Genesis 50 God, as the ultimate cause intended the evil for good but they as proximate causes intended their evil for evil.
 

Now, what the Holy Spirit has to say to you who are obviously railing against God … ‘Who are you O man to question God?'”

Now, the funny thing here Mr. Molinist is that your beliefs don’t deliver you from your charge of God being evil because your god Mr. Molinist creates this middle knowledge world with full knowledge that in this created middle knowledge world full of men with libertarian free will that it would, with certainty, be the case that your little girl would be raped by a regenerate man who had libertarian free will and yet your god Mr. Molinist went ahead and created that world anyway. Your god, per your worldview, is not only a monster (given that He created such a world full knowing what would happen) but he is also a wussie because he couldn’t do anything to stop it.

In the end Mr. Stratton your theodicy sucks bricks and as Richard Muller pointed out some time ago is just warmed over Medevial semi-pelagianism.

“Arminian/Molinist theology is little more than the recrudescence of the late medieval semi-Pelagianism against which the Reformers struggled. Its tenets are inimical to the Pauline and Augustinian foundation of Reformed Protestantism.

(In Molinism we find a) God who antecedently wills the salvation of all knowingly provides a pattern of salvation that is suitable only to the salvation of some. This doctrinal juxtaposition of an antecedent, and never effectuated, divine will to save all and a consequent, effectuated, divine will to save some on the foreknown condition of their acceptance of faith, reflects the problem of scientia media. The foreknowledge of God, consists in part in a knowledge of contingent events that lie outside of God’s willing and, in the case of the divine foreknowledge, of the rejection of grace by some, of contingent events that not only thwart the antecedent divine will to save all, but also are capable of thwarting it because of the divinely foreknown resistibility of the gift of grace. In other words, God is locked into the inconsistency of genuinely willing to save all people while at the same time binding himself to a plan of salvation that he foreknows with certainty cannot effectuate his will. This divine inability results from the necessity of those events that lie within the divine foreknowledge but outside of the divine willing remaining outside of the effective will of God. This theology posits the ultimate contradiction that God’s antecedent will genuinely wills what he foreknows cannot come to pass and that his consequent will effects something other than his ultimate intention. God, in short, is either ineffectual or self-contradictory. Reformed doctrine on the other hand, respects the ultimate mystery of the infinite will of God, affirms the sovereignty and efficacy of God, and teaches the soteriological consistency of the divine intention and will with its effects.”

Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.

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