Posts By Martin Glynn

Back in Business

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After much tinkering, our website is finally mostly back in order. All of our former material has been transferred from the old platform to the new one, though unfortunately the dates of many (but not all or…

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Molinism, Calvinism, and I Corinthians

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I just finished Dr. Olson’s book Against Calvinism (It is really difficult to find time to read when you have a one year old). In appendix 1, Dr. Olson goes over several attempts by Calvinists to protect God’s character despite their theology. One particular argument caught my eye: the use of middle knowledge.
Roger Olson explains:

Molinism… is the belief that God possesses “middle knowledge” — knowledge of what any creature would do freely in any possible set of circumstances. The creature may possess libertarian freedom — freedom not compatible with determinism and able to do other than it does — but God knows what he or she wold do with that ability in an conceivable situation. [Roger Olson, Against Calvinism, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2011), 184]

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Playing With Dolls

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A question that I was recently considering was whether or not God could truly love us if we did not have free will. Clearly He could care about us like I care about my grandfather’s jacket or my car, but could one really say that He loved us? I think the answer is both yes and no.

For context let us consider the kind of love that we are dealing with. In the Bible, it uses the analogy of marriage to define God’s love for His elect people. However, it uses the analogy of a parent and child to define His relationship with creation. When we are talking about free will, we are naturally talking about how God designed us. Therefore the parent/child relationship is at the forefront and so it is this kind of love that I am going to be addressing.

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Corporate Election Analogies

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Baseball

I wrote on this analogy a couple of years ago, but it is worth repeating. For many, corporate election doesn’t make sense because groups, or certain kinds of groups, aren’t real entities. James White once referred to it as a “impersonal nebulous group” in his debate with Michael Brown. This doesn’t quite make sense considering that the group is formed through personal relationship with Jesus Christ, but I digress.

My point of the baseball analogy is that one can in fact elect groups, and have personal connection to both the group and to the members of the group in a way that makes sense. So I use something which is very familiar: the election of one’s sports team, in this case baseball.

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