Michael Jones was recently interviewed by Braxton Hunter and Jonathan Pritchett in a segment that felt more like MSNBC lobbing questions at Obama than a serious theological discussion. You have to wonder if Hunter and Pritchett even have arms, considering the softballs they tossed Jones’s way.
They began by attacking fundamentalist anti-intellectualism—a fair target, in itself—but their critique rings hollow given that they are guilty of what they accuse others of: filtering Christianity through speculative philosophical systems. To defend themselves, they claim that Christianity requires philosophical assumptions. That even exegesis operates with philosophical presuppositions. But that’s superficial. The issue is not whether philosophy is involved, but which kind of philosophy.
I once dialogued with a man who claimed he didn’t need the Bible because he had the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit as the foundation of all his theology. I’m sure Hunter and Pritchett wouldn’t accept his assumptions. Nor would they accept Richard Carrier’s naturalistic presuppositions just because “everyone has them.” The issue isn’t having assumptions—it’s whether those assumptions are legitimate or distorting.
Because this is an SB Traditionalist-friendly space, the Calvinism issue inevitably came up. They asked Jones how determinism doesn’t follow if the world is merely the product of divine thinking. His response? One word: “Molinism.” And they moved right along, without a shred of pushback—proving they haven’t thought about the issue seriously.
So what is Molinism?
Molinism is an attempt to reconcile divine sovereignty with libertarian free will. It posits a third logical moment in God’s knowledge—called middle knowledge—that comes between His natural and free knowledge. The model looks something like this:
- Natural knowledge: God knows all necessary truths (e.g., 2+2=4, logical laws, all possible worlds, etc.).
- Free knowledge: God knows what He has decreed to happen (what will happen).
- Middle knowledge: God knows what every possible person would freely do in every possible situation, even though He has not decreed any of it yet.
Proponents of Molinism say this “middle knowledge” allows God to choose, from among all feasible worlds, the one in which human libertarian choices best fulfill His purposes. This knowledge is supposed to be contingent because it concerns free choices in possible but non-actualized circumstances.
But here’s the problem: in theistic idealism, all possible worlds are necessarily real. They exist in the mind of God as necessary thoughts—just as 2+2=4 is necessary. There is no such thing as a merely possible world in idealism. Every world God “thinks” exists necessarily, and all events follow necessarily from divine thought. God’s thinking is not conditioned by contingency—His thoughts are eternal, necessary, and unchanging.
Thus, under idealism, there are no feasible worlds to choose between—only necessary outcomes. Middle knowledge collapses. Molinism dissolves. What remains is determinism cloaked in philosophical jargon. God does not choose which world to instantiate—every possible event is eternally real and necessary. God thinks what He thinks, and nothing causes Him to think otherwise.
The conversation eventually turned to what motivates this metaphysical outlook. Pritchett appealed to the notion that one cannot escape one’s own perspective—a classic subjectivist move.
To his credit, Pritchett was forthright: the idealism he and Jones endorse is rooted in epistemic subjectivism. On this view, we are trapped inside our own first-person perspectives. We cannot access reality directly; we only know what appears in our consciousness. But this claim is self-refuting. To say “no one can escape their own mind” is itself an attempt to step outside individual subjectivity and describe the limitations of everyone else. As Jimmy Stephens aptly notes: “In order to analyze universal conditions of knowledge, one cannot be limited by a non-universal perspective.”
Idealism collapses under its own epistemic claims. It tries to give a global critique of knowing from a local standpoint. It postures as a solution to the problem of unity and diversity, but it cannot ground either one.
Further Suggestions:
The Council 