You Still Could Have Done Otherwise: A Friendly Response to Dr. Owen Anderson

I count it one of life’s great blessings to call Dr. Owen Anderson a friend. As a well-respected professor of philosophy at Arizona State University, Dr. Anderson is a sharp thinker, a principled man of faith, and someone with whom I agree on nearly every major theological and philosophical issue.

In fact, Owen and I have found especially strong common ground when it comes to the intersection of theology and politics. We both believe that sound doctrine should shape how we engage the culture and influence the public square. (See our joint conversation <here=">here</a>">.)

That said, we’ve found ourselves in friendly disagreement over one perennial point: whether human beings ever genuinely possess the ability to do otherwise.

Recently, Owen posted the following on social media:

You still couldn’t have done otherwise.

I was told once that God knows what you would freely do in any given circumstance—and so He created the world with the circumstances in which you would accept the Gospel. Or perhaps He created the world with the circumstances where the most people would freely choose the Gospel.

Sounds good. But here’s the question that won’t go away:Did your acceptance or rejection of the Gospel follow with certainty from who you are and the circumstances around you? Or—even then—could you have done otherwise?

The libertarian impulse behind this view wants to say: “Yes, you could have done otherwise.” But that creates a new problem.

If that’s true, then even God doesn’t know with certainty what you’ll do. He might shape the situation to “raise the odds,” but the outcome isn’t guaranteed. God only learns what you will do when you do it.

And it gets worse: even you don’t know what you’ll do. You might choose X and fully will to do it—but end up doing Y. Why? Because nothing before Y—including your own will—was sufficient to bring it about. The choice comes from nowhere because it is undetermined. It’s an uncaused event.

But if your choice is uncaused, then it wasn’t really your choice. It didn’t come from you (you’re part of the antecedent causes). And if it wasn’t determined by your nature, reasoning, or desires—then in what sense was it free?

Agent causation still involves a dependent agent who acts out of his nature which was created by God. Agent causation doesn’t fit with the above model, it only fits with the outcome certainly following from the antecedents.

You still couldn’t have done otherwise. Or else, no one—not even you or God—knows why you did anything at all.

Owen is right to aim for a coherent account of freedom that preserves divine sovereignty and explanatory clarity. But I respectfully submit that he has mischaracterized libertarian freedom, misunderstood agent causation, and prematurely dismissed a middle way that offers exactly what he’s looking for: a robust view of human responsibility, grounded in God’s exhaustive knowledge—including middle knowledge—without collapsing into determinism or randomness.

In what follows, I’d like to clarify three things:

1. What libertarian freedom really is (and is not),

2. Why knowledge of libertarianly free choices does not entail determinism,

3. How God’s middle knowledge preserves both moral and rational responsibility—without absurdity or incoherence.

1. What Libertarian Freedom Really Is (and Is Not)

Let’s start by clearing away a common misconception: libertarian freedom does not entail that choices are uncaused, random, or unintelligible. To be sure, if libertarian freedom implied that decisions “come from nowhere,” then Owen’s critique would be devastating. But that’s a strawman. No serious defender of libertarian agency—certainly not those within the tradition of Christian philosophical theology—claims that free actions are wholly uncaused or inexplicable.

Rather, libertarian freedom affirms that some choices are not causally determined by prior conditions or external forces. That is, although many factors can influence a decision—past experiences, desires, reasons, inclinations—they do not determine it in the sense of rendering the outcome necessary. The agent himself is the originator of the act. The cause is not nothing. The cause is someone.

This is known as agent causation—and it’s not exotic. It simply means that a person can be the originating source of an active action. "I deliberated," "I chose," "I acted"—and I could have done otherwise. That’s not random. That’s responsibility.

This distinction is critical: influence is not the same thing as determinism. A cause that merely influences leaves the outcome open; a cause that determines renders the outcome necessary. The difference is definitional—and it makes all the difference when it comes to moral responsibility.

Indeed, we know this from our own moral experience. Imagine someone punches a stranger in anger--because they were wearing a red MAGA hat--and then says, “Well, given who I am and the circumstances I was in, I couldn’t have done otherwise.” We don’t say, “Fair enough!” We say, “You should have controlled yourself.” Why? Because we intuitively recognize that ought implies can. The whole moral framework of praise and blame depends on the belief that persons are responsible agents who are not mere conduits of causal chains.

In fact, I’d wager Owen himself assumes this in much of his public commentary. We’ve both been outspoken about the need for moral clarity in politics and culture. But that clarity becomes incoherent if the violent protestors, corrupt politicians, or ideologically driven judges we criticize could not have done otherwise. It seems even more absurd to suggest that God determines each of these evil acts. It seems to me that Owen's political judgments only make sense if those persons had genuine alternatives open to them.

But perhaps the most revealing inconsistency in determinist objections to libertarian freedom is this: Christians already affirm that God is an uncaused cause who makes undetermined choices. He created the universe freely. He was not compelled to create this universe or any universe at all. If He had to create, then creation would not be contingent—it would be necessary. And if creation is necessary, it threatens to blur the line between Creator and creation—opening the door to something more like panentheism or pantheism than classical theism.

That’s why the traditional Christian view has always been that God freely chose to create, and could have done otherwise.

This is no small point. As I explained in Human Freedom, Divine Knowledge, and Mere Molinism, the very structure of classical theistic arguments presupposes it. The Kalam Cosmological Argument affirms that the universe began to exist and was brought into being by a personal, transcendent, uncaused cause—namely, God—who chose to create. This is, at minimum, sourcehood libertarian freedom. Likewise, the Fine-Tuning Argument rests on the premise that of the infinite ways a universe could have been, God intelligently chose one that was delicately tuned for life. Not only is this knowledge not grounded upon anything that actually exists (prior to creation), it describes an omnipotent God's ability to choose or choose otherwise. But if God could not have chosen otherwise, these arguments collapse.

So here’s the key insight: if God’s libertarian choices are not arbitrary or irrational, then neither are ours necessarily so. The choice to create (or not), to actualize this world (or another), was not random—it flowed from God’s perfectly rational nature. Likewise, finite creatures made in God’s image can make free, meaningful, non-determined choices without those choices being uncaused or unintelligible.

In fact, if God is omnipotent, then He has the power to create beings in His image and likeness—including the ability to make free choices not determined by antecedent necessity. And since it’s not incoherent to say God’s choices are free in this sense, then it’s not incoherent to say ours might be too. That’s not a threat to divine sovereignty—it’s a reflection of divine majesty.

"God is omnipotent—not just powerful enough to causally determine all things, but powerful enough to create beings who causally determine some things themselves. And if God freely chose to create in such a way that creatures bear His image and likeness—including the power to make undetermined choices—then that’s not a defect in sovereignty. It’s a display of divine majesty."

—Tim Stratton, Human Freedom, Divine Knowledge, and Mere Molinism (Second Edition)

2. Why Knowledge of Libertarianly Free Choices Does Not Entail Determinism

One of Owen’s central concerns is that if a person could have done otherwise, then God’s knowledge of that person’s actions becomes uncertain or probabilistic. He writes:

“If that’s true, then even God doesn’t know with certainty what you’ll do...”

But this objection assumes that knowledge must entail causation—that if God knows with certainty what you will do, then you must do it, and therefore you could not have done otherwise. This is a classic case of confusion between certainty and necessity.

Here’s the key distinction:

• If God knows with certainty that you will do X, then yes, you will do X.

• But it does not follow that you must do X.

• Certainty of foreknowledge does not entail causal determinism.

This is where middle knowledge enters the picture. Molinism entails that God knows, prior to His creative decree, what any free creature would freely do in any possible set of circumstances. This is not knowledge of what will happen (that’s foreknowledge), nor what could happen (that’s natural knowledge). It is knowledge of what would happen freely—contingently, not necessarily.

And here’s the beauty of it: God can sovereignly orchestrate the world by actualizing the circumstances in which free creatures make the very decisions He knows they would freely make. In this way, God’s providential control and human libertarian freedom are perfectly compatible. The outcome is certain—but not determined.

And as I’ve pointed out elsewhere, God’s knowledge is not like ours—it’s grounded in His omniscience, not in empirical observation or logical inference. Just because a choice is free doesn’t mean it’s unknowable.

3. How God’s Middle Knowledge Preserves Moral and Rational Responsibility Without Collapsing into Randomness

If my choice was not causally necessitated by antecedent conditions, that doesn’t mean it was random. It means I was the originating cause of it. I evaluated reasons, weighed alternatives, issued judgments, and made a real choice. And because I could have done otherwise, I can rightly be held accountable—not just morally, but rationally and epistemically as well.

As I’ve argued elsewhere with J.P. Moreland, rational responsibility requires libertarian freedom. If my beliefs and conclusions are determined by something other than my own reasoning faculties—if they’re the necessary result of divine causal chains—then I cannot be held responsible for whether I arrive at truth or falsehood. I’m just a passive cog believing what I was determined to believe. In the case of EDD-Calvinism, determined to affirm beliefs by a deity who determines all people to affirm false beliefs about ultimate reality.

And that’s the hidden cost of exhaustive divine determinism (EDD): not just that all human bodily actions are causally determined by God, but that all thoughts, beliefs, doubts, conclusions, and false theological commitments are too. On that view, no one ever freely believes the Gospel—or freely rejects it. No one freely follows the evidence where it leads, suppresses the truth in unrighteousness, or freely chooses to "exchange the truth of God for a lie" (Romans 1:25). No, they simply experience passive sensations of these things, but they do not actively choose to do these things. Accordingly, every act of belief, disbelief, deliberation, or deception is part of a pre-determined and deterministic divine decree.

That’s not just theologically problematic. It undermines all categories of moral and rational responsibility.

By contrast, middle knowledge offers a better way. It affirms both:

• That God is sovereign—He created this world with full foreknowledge of every free choice (and could have chosen otherwise).

• And that we are responsible—because we make real decisions, both moral and rational, and could have done otherwise.

It is, in short, a model that preserves the integrity of divine omniscience, omnipotence, and perfect love without sacrificing human dignity, moral accountability, or rational responsibility.

And here’s the irony: Owen and I both agree that people ought to respond to the truth, to love their neighbors, to reject corruption, and to pursue wisdom and virtue. But that entire moral and rational framework collapses if no one ever really had the power to choose otherwise. The fact that Owen makes such impassioned arguments for moral and political clarity suggests—whether he admits it or not—that he believes human beings can choose well or poorly.

That’s the kind of realism Molinism preserves. It’s not a “libertarian impulse.” It’s the logical and theological outworking of being made in the image and likeness of God.

Conclusion: Grace and Freedom Together

So, can you really do otherwise?

If Molinism is true, then yes—and so much more. You can freely believe. You can freely repent. You can freely love. Not apart from God’s grace, but precisely because He graciously created you with the freedom to respond.

And that’s not a threat to God’s sovereignty. It’s a glorious reflection of it.

Stay reasonable (Isaiah 1:18),

Dr. Tim Stratton