Here are the details of the debate:

Is Molinism Biblical? Christian apologists James White and Tim Stratton tackle an increasingly debated question in the Church today.

Okay, you may not know what Molinism is or why it matters. Well, the old-fashioned debates within Christianity around free will (say, Reformed vs. Arminianism) are at the heart of this debate. Do all things come to pass because God has decreed them? Or does God possess counterfactual (middle) knowledge of what would happen in a variety of possible worlds? This question gets to the heart of God’s sovereignty, how it is applied, and whether God, for example, ends up being the “author of evil.” Few would ever want to deny God’s sovereignty. But how does that square with man’s free will? Doesn’t something have to give? Molinism seems to be a creative response to this problem. But does it square with the Bible? James White is a Reformed Baptist who holds to the traditional Calvinist/Reformed position of God’s sovereignty. Tim Stratton holds to the Molinist position and recently received his Ph.D on this topic. Both men will bring their best to this important conversation.

The debate is Friday February 11th at 7 PM Central time, which is 8 PM Eastern, and 5 PM Pacific. You can join the live stream 15 minutes early, it’s here:

Dr, Stratton has a new book out on this issue, published with a prestigious academic press. But you won’t have time to read that before the debate, so I found you a brand new post by Tyson James.

He writes:

Christian thinkers who affirm both that God is sovereign over all of creation and that humans have freedom sufficient for moral responsibility draw support from various biblical passages…

However, the Bible doesn’t really spell out for us the relationship between these two affirmations. What we want to know is how these puzzle pieces can fit together. Many explanations have been proposed, but, according to some of the most acclaimed Christian thinkers today, the most promising one was formulated by a Jesuit monk named Luis de Molina in the late 1500s.[1]

Molina’s idea was rather simple: God knew prior to creation that he could create free creatures, that is, creatures who could make choices which would not simply be the necessary outcome of preceding factors. In addition to knowing he could create free creatures, God knew prior to his decision to create what those creatures would freely do in whatever circumstance he could place them. Molina called this middle knowledge because it is situated between God’s knowledge of what could be and what will be. With this knowledge, God could incorporate creatures’ free choices into his exhaustive planning of history, thus preserving complete divine sovereignty and the creaturely freedom necessary for moral responsibility.

I do think this Bible passage is related to the view he outlined above:

Acts 17:24-27

24 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man,

25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

26 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place,

27 that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us,

In that passage, God is using his power to create to place his creatures in the times and places where they will freely respond to his drawing them to him. If they resist his drawing, they are responsible. But he is doing all the work of drawing them.

Tyson lists out a bunch of theological problems that are fully or partially resolved if Molinism is true: the problem of evil, doctrine of inspiration, fate of the unevangelized, perseverance of the saints, etc.

If you have read articles on the Reasonable Faith web site, then you’ll have read some of these before, like this one on inspiration. Or this one on the fate of the unevangelized. I’m so old now, that I remember reading both of those when I was an undergraduate student! I’m sure some of you reading got through college by reading articles like this.

Anyway, if you like to debate, Tyson’s article is filled with useful answers, like this:

“If God already knows what I’m going to choose, doesn’t that mean I have to choose it? That doesn’t sound like free will.”

This statement confuses certainty (a psychological state) with necessity (a property of propositions, or the way something exists or occurs). God knows and is certain about what we would or will choose, but our choices themselves are contingent. That is, they are not necessitated by prior factors. We don’t have to choose what we will choose, but God is certain about what choices we will (or would) choose.

I was asked this by a co-worker named Sean in my first job. I was 23 years old. Sean had a PhD in computer science from Northwestern, and I still defeated him on this, using an answer like Tyson’s.

Here’s one that James White is SURE to ask, because he asks it in all of his videos:

“On Molinism, it seems like God’s knowledge is based on creatures, which means he’s depending on something other than himself for something he knows. Doesn’t that mean he’s not sovereign?”

This statement assumes that the way God knows our free choices is by looking at creatures and seeing what choices they would or will make. We call this a perceptual view of divine knowledge. But since God knows our choices even prior to our existing, there’s simply nothing for him to “look” at in order to discover this information. Instead, it’s better to think of God’s knowing these things as purely mental: God perfectly conceives in his mind the creatures he can create and what they would or will freely choose. We call this a conceptual view of divine knowledge.

If you think you’d like to learn how to think about this issue, then tune into the debate. I think White is a tough opponent, an exceptional debater, and excellent on church history, theology and politics. But I’ll be cheering for Stratton.

In this post, I want to take a look at some of the rhetoric coming from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. He’s been saying some very intolerant things about his fellow Canadians. After that, we’ll take a look at a recent violent crime that was committed by a radical far-left Antifa activist. It’s another in the long, long line of domestic terrorist hate crimes committed by the secular left.

First, Trudeau’s comments, reported by Life Site News:

Prime Minister Trudeau maligned Canadians who are opposed to receiving the experimental C0VID-19 gene-therapy injections as “extremists,” “racists,” and “misogynists” who deny science.

The September interview went viral on social media only late last month and has since attracted strong criticism from politicians and citizens alike.

[…]Further, Trudeau’s assertion that those opposed to v4ccination are “racist” is at odds with the fact that many of the most v4ccine-hesitant people are members of minority communities who have a strong distrust of government due to mistreatment in past generations.

In Canada, indigenous groups like the Six Nations community in Ontario have a v4ccination rate of only 46 percent as of mid-December, compared to a rate of over 85 percent for the province’s population as a whole.

In America, the group to report the highest levels of hesitancy is black Americans, with a whopping 50 percent reporting a distrust in the procedure.

Trudeau explained that people who are skeptical about the effectiveness of cloth masks and about the need for v4ccinating children under 5 “do not believe in science, who are often misogynists, often racists, too”.

Watch it here:

Did Canada know what they were doing when they elected this man? What was the point of making a skiing instructor and part-time substitute drama teacher the head of your country? He has never achieved anything on his own. When people like that fail – as they surely must – they always resort finger pointing. In the worst cases, they just pick some group of people to be the scapegoats for their own failure to achieve what they set out to achieve. I know he is handsome, and has nice hair, but you don’t want to have someone who blames all his failures on some minority’s “treachery”.

I thought this speech by Conservative MP Raquel Dancho really explained how bad things have gotten in Canada:

Moving on. Trudeau talks about his opponents being anti-science. Trudeau doesn’t have a STEM degree, and knows nothing at all about science. He is anti-science, in his actions. His sole credential is having a famous rich father, who was also Prime Minister. That’s it. He has no achievements in the competitive private sector that would qualify him to set the policy of a developed nation.

He’s also considering the use of the Canadian military to crack down on protestors.

Post Millennial reports:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded to questions regarding the possibility of military being called into Ottawa to remove the truckers’ Freedom Convoy that has taken over and gridlocked the capital’s downtown core for nearly a week now.

Trudeau said that the military option was “not in the cards right now,” though the federal government would be there to support police of the jurisdiction and to review any formal requests sent by the city or the government of Ontario.

The protestors have not been charged with one single, solitary act of violence. You don’t even consider calling out the military to deal with non-violent protests. But do you know who has committed violence? The people who agree with Trudeau’s view of the protestors.

Canada’s Rebel News reports:

The man charged in Winnipeg for an attack on a convoy protest is a radical far-left anarchist. Police, however, are still treating the incident as a hit-and-run, rather than a hate crime.

Four people taking part in a convoy protest in Manitoba’s capital city were injured and rushed to hospital after a car plowed into the crowd. The man alleged to be the driver of the vehicle, Dave Zegarac, was taken into custody an hour later after a brief struggle with police. A white jeep can be seen hitting one person, before accelerating and hitting three more.

The crowd had gathered in Winnipeg in support of the ongoing peaceful protest by truckers and their allies in Ottawa, where they are demanding an end to C0VID restrictions and v4ccine mandates.

[…]A feature on Zegarac in the now defunct alternative online publication The Scope published in April 2008 noted Zegarac’s radical left-wing activism…

When you are in the public eye, you have to be careful with your words. You don’t want to incite some crazy extremist to violence. But Trudeau has been behaving irresponsibly. His divisive rhetoric could easily have set this Antifa lunatic off. Trudeau needs to be more careful. Or, maybe the Canadian people should be more careful about who they elect to high office.

By the way, if anyone is looking for a new prime minister, I hear that Pierre Poilievre is available. Just saying. Voted Best Constituency MP.

If I had to name two policies that would help minorities the most, I would say that health savings accounts and school choice would be my choices. Let’s talk about the second one in this post. The Republican governor of Oklahoma, Kevin Stitt, has announced a piece of school choice legislation that made me howl in delight! But it will make unionized public school teachers cry.

The Daily Caller reported:

Republican Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt is slated to announce a sweeping school choice bill Monday at the State of the State address, the Daily Caller exclusively learned.

Stitt will introduce the Oklahoma Empowerment Act, an educational savings account program designed to “fund students” instead of public school systems. Oklahoma’s Secretary of Education Ryan Walters told the Daily Caller that all students eligible for private school are eligible for Oklahoma Empowerment Accounts.

Eligible students can receive approximately $3,600 in an educational savings account to pay for books, tuition, transportation and other educational expenses, according to Walters. Students with special needs or extenuating circumstances may be eligible for increased funding.

[…]“Just 15% of Oklahoma high school graduates are ready for college in English, math, reading, and science,” Stitt plans to tell Oklahoma legislators. “Less than one out of five. We can do better than 47th in the nation when it comes to our kids.”

The Republican governor claims that the educational savings account program will “make sure that money follows the student” and will make Oklahoma “a national leader in school choice.”

The bill intends to ensure “that parents, legal guardians and others with legal authority over children in [Oklahoma] be able to seek educational services that meet the needs of their individual children.”

How big is this bill? HUGE:

Corey DeAngelis, the Director of Research at the American Federation for Children, told the Daily Caller that the Oklahoma bill will be “even more expansive” than West Virginia’s, which saw the “biggest school choice victory in 2021.”

Even giving parents a little money back will allow them to put pressure on the public school teachers and administrators. Right now, we have a situation where the public school teachers and administrators are being paid regardless of how they perform. And they call the FBI on parents who demand better, labeling them “domestic terrorists“. They don’t want anyone to interfere with their real priorities: indoctrinating children in secular leftism, with no accountability.

Tennessee

Oklahoma isn’t the only state getting serious about reforming education. Tennessee is bringing in the very conservative Hillsdale college to reinvent their charter school system.

The Daily Wire explains:

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee (R) announced on Monday a state partnership with Michigan’s Hillsdale College to launch a number of K-12 charter schools.

Lee announced the partnership during his state of the state address on Monday evening in front of a special joint session of the state Legislature. Hillsdale College is a liberal arts college in southern Michigan known for its refusal to accept federal funds. The college has launched an initiative to revitalize “public education through the launch and support of classical K-12 charter schools.”

Lee and Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn are working together to build a system of charter schools in Tennessee.

“Two years ago, I traveled to Hillsdale College to participate in a Presidents Day celebration and spend time with champions of American exceptionalism,” Lee said. “For decades, Hillsdale College has been the standard bearer in quality curriculum and the responsibility of preserving American liberty.”

“I believe their efforts are a good fit for Tennessee, and we are formalizing a partnership with Hillsdale to expand their approach to civics education and K-12 education,” he added.

And more:

The governor announced a host of education initiatives, including an overhaul of a roughly 30-year-old system of funding for school districts, shifting it from a school-focused system to a student-focused system.

“A formula that prioritizes the needs of students above all else, and that pays particular attention to students with disabilities, rural students, low income-students, and students with other priority needs,” Lee said. “If we do this correctly, we can create a funding formula that demands accountability and rewards districts for performance, but most importantly funds students and not bureaucracies.”

Education is a winning issue for Republicans. Governors of red states are the best people to implement these measures. It provide evidence to others that we know how to get results, so they can imitate us and defeat the secular left in every state. We want the other states to be like red states.

Teacher unions

I wanted to say a word about the people who block education reform: the leaders of the teacher unions. Teacher unions donate overwhelmingly to Democrats, and Democrats oblige them by block any legislation that allows parents to put the needs of their children first.

This is from Open Secrets, which tracks political contributions:

SIXTY-SIX MILLION DOLLARS, and the vast majority going to Democrats, (the rest went to independents and blue state progressive Republicans). That’s why children don’t learn in school. The people in charge of the schools make sure they never get fixed.

Photo: Virginia police arrest father of girl raped in public school bathroom by biological male wearing a skirt