The God Who Does Not Take Counsel
Understanding and Refuting William Lane Craig
Who gives God His options?
William Lane Craig's Molinism is presented as a way to reconcile divine omniscience, providence, and human freedom. It teaches that, logically before God decides what to create, God knows what every possible free creature would do in every possible circumstance. God then chooses which "feasible world" to actualize.
But a more fundamental question remains: What makes those creaturely "woulds" true?
If they come from God's nature, how are they contingent? If they come from God's decree, how can they stand logically before that decree? If they come from the creature, where is that creature before God creates it? If no one and nothing grounds them, why should brute contingent facts determine which histories are available to the sovereign Creator?
The God Who Does Not Take Counsel presents William Lane Craig's position carefully before subjecting it to sustained philosophical, biblical, theological, and confessional examination. This is not an attack on Dr. Craig as a person. It is a direct examination of whether his theological model can bear the weight placed upon it.
Written for ordinary Christians as well as pastors, students, apologists, and theologians, this book:
- Explains Molinism, middle knowledge, counterfactuals, libertarian freedom, possible worlds, feasible worlds, and weak actualization in accessible language.
- Examines Craig's arguments without relying on straw men or personal attacks.
- Interprets the principal biblical passages used in the debate, including David at Keilah, Tyre and Sidon, the crucifixion, Joseph and his brothers, Assyria, Romans 8-9, and Ephesians 1:11.
- Answers the strongest Molinist objections concerning brute contingency, moral responsibility, the author-of-sin accusation, prayer, prophecy, Christology, and the problem of evil.
- Uses Greg Bahnsen's transcendental method to ask whether Molinism possesses an independent foundation-or survives only by borrowing from the biblical doctrine it attempts to revise.
The decisive question is not whether Molinism is philosophically ingenious. The question is whether God receives an undecreed map of achievable histories or whether, as Scripture declares, His counsel stands and He accomplishes all His purpose.
Jesus Christ is not the fortunate result of a feasible-world calculation. He is the eternal Son, the Lamb appointed before the foundation of the world, crucified according to God's determined counsel, and raised as the sovereign Lord of history.
God does not consult possible creatures before governing His creation. He is the One from whom, through whom, and to whom are all things.
