William Craig on Foreknowledge vs. Freewill

 

I noticed the above short clip by William Lane Craig attempting to reconcile the foreknowledge of God with human freewill. Here is the transcript:

“According to the middle knowledge position, God not only knows everything that could happen, and everything that will happen; but he also has this knowledge of what would happen under any set of circumstances that you might imagine. And so by knowing how people would freely choose in any set of circumstances God places them in, God can be providentially in charge of a world of free creatures without abridging or abusing their freedom. He simply knows what circumstances to place people in, knowing how they would freely choose in those circumstances. And so this is a beautiful reconciliation of divine sovereignty and human freedom. And it also gives God foreknowledge of the future, because knowing his own decree to create people in certain circumstances, and then having knowledge of how they would freely choose if placed in those circumstances, immediately he has knowledge of future free acts of people.”

He is right of course to defend human libertarian freewill (against Calvinism which denies it); and so he gets credit for that. But he is going about it in a “philosophical” way, which is not the best way. The better way is to rely on the revelations of God, which provide the more correct explanation, or justification. The biblical information on the subject, however, is not as detailed, explicit, or specific as modern LDS scripture is, to address that theological issue. Modern scripture informs us that God’s foreknowledge enables him to look into the future, and actually see with precision how it unfolds—which is not the same as his “philosophical” speculation, based on “middle knowledge”. Indeed, God is not only able to see into the future, in minute detail; but he can even show it to someone else—with the same detail. I had previously discussed this subject, with plenty of scripture references, in an earlier blog post which can be seen here. That places God’s foreknowledge, or his ability to know the future, at an infinitely higher level than Craig’s philosophical speculation about God’s “middle knowledge” etc. would make possible. So the bottom line is that you can’t do theology with philosophy; that is impossible. Revelation from God is the only reliable way.