Molinism Isn’t Calvinism with Fortune Cookies: A Response to Idol Killer

Let me begin with sincere thanks to my good friend Warren McGrew (aka Idol Killer) for his recent video response to my blog, Does Molinism Collapse into Determinism? A Friendly Response to Idol Killer. Warren is one of the most thoughtful and articulate critics of Calvinism and divine determinism on YouTube today. I absolutely love his material, even though he occasionally takes friendly shots at Molinism. Most importantly, Warren is a godly man, a brother in Christ, and a personal friend I’d gladly fight alongside—or for. He and I share a lot of theological DNA. We both oppose exhaustive divine determinism (EDD), we both affirm the love and goodness of God, and we both want to preserve meaningful human freedom and moral responsibility. Because Warren is such a good thinker, his version of dynamic omniscience—a form of open theism—is my fallback position if Molinism somehow fails (Warren's view is far better than EDD-Calvinism). I hope he considers that a kind of victory. That said, I believe Warren’s friendly critique of Molinism ultimately misfires. In this blog, I aim to clarify what Molinism actually claims, address Warren’s objections point by point, and show why Molinism does not collapse into determinism—“functional” or otherwise.

Defining Terms with Precision (Not Poetry)

Warren frequently uses terms like

“fixed,” “settled,” “locked,”

and

“guaranteed”

without clearly defining them. These emotionally charged terms risk creating the

illusion

of determinism where none exists. Let’s define the key terms carefully:

• Libertarian Freedom: I affirm two kinds: (1) Sourcehood—the agent is the ultimate originator of their own actions; (2) PAP (Principle of Alternative Possibilities)—not essential, but I believe we often have it.

• Determinism: A state of affairs is determined if antecedent conditions are sufficient to necessitate all events. (But that’s not Molinism.)

• Molinism: The view that humans possess libertarian freedom in the actual world and that God possesses middle knowledge—knowledge of what any possible creature would freely do in any possible circumstance—and uses that knowledge in deciding which world to actualize. This allows divine sovereignty and libertarian freedom to coexist.

• Functional Determinism: Warren never defines this metaphysically. It seems to mean something like: “If an outcome is guaranteed, it is no longer free.” But this equivocates on “guaranteed.” Epistemic certainty does not entail ontological necessity.

A Molinist can say: Yes, God

guarantees

that

X

will occur in the actual world—because He knew that if He created this world, agents would freely choose

X

. But that doesn’t mean God

causally determined

X

. To claim otherwise is either to misunderstand Molinism or to attack a straw man version of it.

The Grounding Objection, Deconstructed and Defeated

Warren’s central philosophical critique is the

grounding objection

: Counterfactuals of Creaturely Freedom (CCFs) are ungrounded because they aren’t based in actual beings. This objection is not new, and it has been thoroughly addressed by leading philosophers:

• Alvin Plantinga argues that God knows all true propositions about what possible creatures would do in hypothetical scenarios. These truths don’t need to be grounded in actual events.

• William Lane Craig notes that God’s knowledge of what free creatures would do is indexed to their freedom—not to His decree. It isn’t imagined (as an author actively imagines or conjures up a story); it’s simply known. There's an important distinction there not to be lost. In the forthcoming second edition of Human Freedom, Divine Knowledge, and Mere Molinism, I explain that a statement is true if it corresponds to the way things are, the way things were, the way things will be, or the way things would have been if things were different. That includes counterfactuals. Their truthmakers are the possible actualizable agents (based upon God’s power to create them) in the relevant possible world, not in the actual one.

Moreover, as

Ryan Mullins

and

Kirk MacGregor

have noted,

truthmaker theory itself is questionable

. MacGregor offers six philosophical reasons to reject this grounding objection. Mullins simply rejects it outright. In short: If truthmaker theory collapses, so does Warren’s objection. If it doesn’t, we still have options. But either way, Molinism remains standing.

Molinism Is Not Functional Determinism

Warren argues that Molinism is “functionally deterministic” because once God actualizes a world, everything in that world is “fixed.” But “fixed” does not mean “determined.” And if it

does

, then his claim is false by definition. There’s a crucial difference between:

• Causal Priority: God causally determines the creature’s choice.

• Explanatory Priority: God chooses a world because of the creature’s choice.

Only the former is determinism. In Molinism, God chooses world W because in W, creature C would freely choose X in a libertarian sense. God’s act of actualizing W doesn’t causally determine X—it presupposes that X would freely occur if W were actualized. The agent is still the source of their action. There are no physical or metaphysical causal strings attached. That’s libertarian freedom. Warren calls this a metaphysical sleight of hand. I call it

metaphysical precision and philosophical nuance

.

The Fortune Cookie Analogy: Misleading and Misfiring

Warren (quoting Alan Rhoda) compares Molinism to God discovering and then reading “fortune cookie slips” that describe what possible creatures would do. This analogy badly misrepresents the view. A better analogy is

Doctor Strange in

Infinity War

: Strange surveys all the feasible freedom-permitting endgames and selects the one in which agents like Tony Stark and Peter Quill

freely

do what leads to victory.

• Doctor Strange doesn’t causally determine their mental actions or physical movements.

• He chooses the timeline based on what they would freely do.

That’s Mere Molinism.

And just like Strange didn’t make anyone choose what they did, neither does God determine the choices of creatures on Molinism. He actualizes the scenario based on knowledge of free creatures and the best feasible freedom-permitting endgame, not by determining every mental action and physical movement of the creatures.

This is how both Doctor Strange and God can predestine an outcome without causally determining the outcome.

God doesn’t

find

truths or read slips. He eternally knows all truths—including truths about what possible free creatures would do in all possible circumstances. He knows this

because of their freedom

, not in spite of it.

Molinism is not akin to Calvinistic determinism. Calvinists will affirm as much—after all, they reject Molinism (I know this all too well). Unlike Calvinism, God doesn’t write the fortune cookie slips; He simply knows what they say. And that’s a huge difference.

The Christological Heresies Parallel Fails

Warren creatively compares Calvinism to Apollinarianism and Molinism to Eutychianism—two ancient Christological heresies. The analogy is clever but fails under scrutiny.

To begin with, these heresies deal with the ontological nature of Christ—what Christ is. Molinism, by contrast, addresses modal logic and divine providence—how God interacts with libertarianly free creatures in possible worlds. They are entirely different domains.

No Molinist claims that divine and human wills are "fused" into one nature. Molinism presupposes the Creator-creature distinction and maintains that God sovereignly actualizes a world in which distinct creaturely wills operate freely. So while I appreciate Warren’s theological creativity, the analogy simply doesn’t map.

But Warren presses further, objecting to Dr. William Lane Craig’s Neo-Apollinarian Christology and citing it as an example of how Molinism has already compromised the Incarnation and might be predisposed to further theological error.

Let me be clear: Neo-Apollinarianism is not Apollinarianism, and it should not be conflated with the historical heresy that was rightly condemned by the early church. The “neo” prefix is meaningful. It signals that Craig’s model is a development informed by contemporary philosophical anthropology, especially substance dualism and depth psychology (i.e., the idea that aspects of consciousness—like the divine mind—can exist at a subconscious level, beneath ordinary human awareness).

In short, Craig proposes that the second person of the Trinity—the Logos—serves as the rational soul of the incarnate Christ and unites with a complete human body. On Craig’s model, Jesus possesses a normal human consciousness, but it is underlain by a divine subconscious.

This proposal attempts to honor the Chalcedonian Definition by affirming that Christ is one person with two natures—divine and human—unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, and united.

So, far from embracing heresy, Craig is carefully attempting to avoid both Apollinarianism and Nestorianism. He acknowledges both as serious errors and attempts to thread the needle in a way that preserves Christ’s full humanity and full divinity without dividing His person or fusing His natures.

Craig’s view also fits comfortably with substance dualism (which I affirm). Human nature on this model involves the union of a rational soul (mind) with a physical body. When the mind is separated from the body—such as at death—we don’t have a complete human person; we have two distinct substances: a soul in the likeness of God and a corpse. That’s why, on this view, the Logos assuming a human body and becoming the rational mind of Christ constitutes the unification of a full human nature.

If one denies this and insists that Christ had two rational souls—one divine and one human—then what exactly happened at the cross? Were there two disembodied persons during Jesus’ death? That’s not just theologically questionable—it borders on incoherent.

In sum: Warren is free to critique Craig’s model, but labeling it a heresy misfires. Craig openly rejects the classical heresy of Apollinarianism and affirms the Chalcedonian boundaries. Neo-Apollinarianism is a biblically grounded, philosophically informed attempt to take both divine and human natures seriously within a robust metaphysical framework.

And most importantly for this discussion, none of this has anything to do with Molinism per se. One can be a Molinist without affirming Neo-Apollinarianism, and one can affirm Craig’s Christology without being a Molinist.

So while Warren’s analogy is creative, it fails theologically, philosophically, and categorically.

Could the Creature Have Done Otherwise?

Warren claims that on Molinism, the agent

would

choose X, but

couldn’t

do otherwise in the actual world. This is a fundamental confusion.

• Would not ≠ Could not

• Certainty ≠ Necessity

• Omniscience ≠ Determinism

On Molinism, the agent could have done otherwise. There is nothing that

necessitates

the choice—not God's decree, not the world, not the agent’s essence. God simply knows what the agent

would freely choose

in the scenario He actualizes. This is what philosophers call

categorical freedom

: the agent is the origin of the action and could have chosen differently, even though God knows they

will not

choose differently. The creature is not being “puppeted.” They are the source of their own choice. Full stop. The buck stops with the agent. That’s real freedom.

The 1 Corinthians 10:13 Challenge

Warren argues that on Molinism, the “way of escape” mentioned in 1 Corinthians 10:13 is meaningless if God actualizes a world where someone freely sins. But that objection misunderstands the structure. On Molinism:

• God knows what a person would do in every temptation.

• The “way of escape” is always a genuine and open opportunity.

• The person remains free to take it—or not.

If someone would always resist temptation, God can actualize that world. If they wouldn’t, He can actualize that one too. In both cases, their freedom remains intact, and the offer of escape remains sincere and ontologically possible. Again, there is absolutely nothing deterministically preventing a sinner from taking the way of escape. The fact that God knows what a person

will

do doesn’t mean the “door is locked.” It means God knows whether they’ll walk through the open door—or not.

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning and My Fallback View

If Molinism somehow fails, I’d probably adopt something like Warren’s dynamic omniscience view—so long as it preserves libertarian freedom and creaturely sourcehood. In fact, here’s an analogy:

• Molinism is like Doctor Strange: He knows every possible endgame in advance and actualizes the one that leads to victory.

• Open Theism is like the Entity in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning: A powerful, predictive intelligence that can anticipate what free agents are likely to do (with extremely high degrees of certainty) based on unparalleled insight and planning.

Both models preserve human freedom and divine sovereignty, but Molinism better preserves a stronger view of predestination and omniscience in the classical sense. Still, Warren’s view is far superior to determinism, and I respect it.

Conclusion: Same Team, Different Strategy

Warren and I are both fighting idols. He slays the idol of determinism with Dynamic Omniscience. I slay it with Molinism. What exactly is meant by Dynamic Omniscience? Here, Warren says that one must affirm three essential ingredients:

• God is omniscient and knows all the facts.

• A dynamic (tensed) view of time.

• The future is not "settled."

Depending on how the word "settled" is defined, I -- as a Mere Molinist -- affirm this view of dynamic omniscience. I agree that the future is not "settled" in a deterministic sense and that the future could be otherwise, but God simply knows it won't be otherwise. It seems to me that just as Mere Molinism is technically compatible with both Arminianism and 5-Point (TULIP) Calvinism (not with EDD-Calvinism), dynamic omniscience is compatible with both Open Theism and Mere Molinism. Be that as it may, I contend that Molinism, as opposed to Open Theism, better preserves:

• Divine omniscience

• Libertarian freedom

• Human responsibility

• Biblical fidelity

If Molinism fails, I’ll still stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Warren against determinism. Until then, I believe Mere Molinism offers the most coherent, biblically faithful, and philosophically rigorous model available. Let’s keep sharpening each other (Proverbs 27:17).

Stay reasonable (Isaiah 1:18),

Tim Stratton

P.S.

If you’re not already following Warren’s Idol Killer channel on YouTube, you should be. Even when we disagree, I always walk away sharpened and laughing—and you will too (he's got the best dry sense of humor I've ever encountered)! ;-) And if Warren—or anyone else—feels there’s something in his video I haven’t addressed here, I invite follow-ups. Iron sharpens iron.

Notes

Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974).

William Lane Craig, The Only Wise God: The Compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2000)

Kirk R. MacGregor, Molinist Philosophical and Theological Ventures (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2022).

Ryan Mullins, in a personal conversation, advised me to "just reject truthmaker theory like Trenton Merricks and Jonathan Tallant do," and pointed to his discussion of this issue in two of his published works:

“Eternal in Love”

and

“From Divine Timemaker to Divine Watchmaker.”

See Ryan Mullins, “Eternal in Love: A Timeless God Loves in Temporal Ways,” in

Philosophical Essays Against Open Theism

, edited by Benjamin H. Arbour (London: Routledge, 2019), 43–58; and Ryan Mullins, “From Divine Timemaker to Divine Watchmaker,” in

Philosophy and the Christian Worldview: Analysis, Assessment and Development

, edited by David Werther and Mark D. Linville (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2012), 115–129.