A Mistaken View of Love

Dr. William Lane Craig’s recent podcast entitled “A Mistaken View of Love” can be found here. Please listen to it. I used the same title here because while he answers a mistaken view of love, he does so while himself holding a mistaken view of love.

The mistaken view of love that he addresses is summed up in the statement, “Love is not a feeling; love is a decision.”

The idea that he counters with is that a full and mature love will involve affection. He points out that “the Bible affirms that God has genuine compassion.” Instead of supporting this by citing where the Bible says this, however, he points out the etymology of the English word, “compassion”. He says that the word means to “have feeling with the other person; to be connected with that other person emotionally.” He says that instead of “saying that love is not an emotion, maybe what we should be saying is love is not merely an emotion.”

He, of course, attributes the mistaken view of love he is answering to Calvinists, legalists, and Muslims. This may be the case with Muslims. The category of legalism is too broad to pin something like this on. There are legalistic charismatics or semi-pelagians, for example. His idea of Calvinism is that a fully sovereign God is too harsh a concept. It goes to show that he doesn’t fully understand Calvinism.

But perhaps he has God’s impassibility in mind. This is a disputed doctrine, even among Calvinists, that essentially says that God is not motivated by passion. That is to say that God doesn’t experience emotion like his creatures do. This excludes, obviously, the incarnated Son of God in his humanity. The Bible typically anthropomorphizes God. In descriptions of God, we see that he has hands, eyes, a heart, a face, wings like a hen, breath, etc. Descriptions of emotion attributed to God are likewise probably anthropomorphisms as well.

The reason I say that is because we know today that emotions involve physical functions. We are walking chemical factories producing hormones and endorphins that generate emotional states that were created to drive appropriate actions. Because of the fall, our emotional states are often inappropriate for specific situations. When we are wronged, for example, a heightened anxiety level may produce anger that if acted upon will cause us to fail to be gracious. While fear of social repercussions may drive us to refrain from acting inappropriately on this anger, the proper way is to deny the emotion based on a desire for God and his will to be done over and against our own will. Because we are in an inappropriate state of emotion, this must be disimpassioned. It is rather trust in God’s steadfast love over and against passion that allows us to behave lovingly for others.

So in some respect love is a decision in that acting in love often requires a decision. But I also agree with Craig that it is more than a decision. In a perfect world, it will involve appropriate emotional responses. But this isn’t a perfect world. So what is love and what is its relationship to emotion?

Let me discuss emotion first. It’s a woefully vague word that typically lacks nuance. When we use the word, we typically think of our own personal experience with emotion. Since our emotions are temporal, we typically don’t have the capacity to feel all emotions simultaneously. When we feel a couple of competing emotions at the same time we are often left confused and befuddled. But our experience with emotions is that we are both motivated by them and wrestle against the way inappropriate ones would motivate us to behave. God doesn’t have this problem because isn’t motivated by temporal emotions. Emotions in some limited way, however, are a picture of some of God’s attributes. While God is not motivated by emotions, he is motivated by his attributes. But all of his attributes are eternally unified. That means that God loves and hates all at once; that he is merciful and wrathful all at once; that he is gracious and just all at once. It’s hard for us to understand the fullness of this truth because we possess fallen, limited minds.

And so the love of God is no mere emotion. All of his other attributes are wrapped up in it; All of them. So it’s reasonable that he is impassable. That brings me to the definition of love. It isn’t a decision, although it results in decisions over and against wayward emotions. It isn’t an emotion because it can be wielded most effectively when not motivated by some emotional attachment. Jesus talked about this in Matthew 5:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:43-48, ESV)

So loving when we lack an emotional motive for doing so is likened here to “being perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.” Chew on that for a while.

But it still doesn’t fully define love. The famous John 3:16 hints at the definition:

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16, ESV)

God’s love involves the giving of his Son. How did he give his Son? As a sacrifice. Love involves sacrifice. Paul admonishes husbands in Ephesians 5 to “love your wives, and Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…” How did Christ give himself up for the church? He died on the cross as a sacrifice to atone for her sins. Husbands are called to love their wives by living sacrificially for them. But John came out with a clear statement about love in John 15:

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:13, ESV)

So love necessarily involves sacrifice. But here we also see that that sacrifice is not for oneself, but that it is for someone else. I like the way my pastor phrases it. He defines love as seeking someone else’s best interest above your own. This definition of love is far deeper than the decision to sacrifice for someone or that it will involve some emotional attachment. It goes against the idea that we should compete against others so that we can be winners while everyone else is losers. It means that we should be willing to lose so that someone else can “win”; that they can receive all the benefit. And it means that we will do that for our enemies as well. Tough love is used to refer to being hard on someone because you know it is good for them. True love is tougher because it requires us to be hard on ourselves because it’s good for someone who doesn’t deserve a good thing.

And none of us are capable of doing that without living in the power of Christ who did that for us.

One Of the Many Things Doctor Who Doesn’t Teach Us About Time.

Warning: I start with some arcane terms. Hang on, though because I will explain these terms simply enough.

Listening to a podcast by William Lane Craig recently, he made the comment that the B-theory of time didn’t support the Kalam Cosmological argument and that was one reason that he was an A-theorist. (Please feel free to listen to this podcast.) I haven’t spent much time mulling over all of the implications of the theories of time, but that comment was provocative because I at least knew that a full-blown A-theory supports a multi-verse. Interestingly, it also fuels Craig's Molinism.

So I considered the two theories of time against the ideas of time that I have developed from reading scripture and realized that the two theories were not mutually exclusive. On a whim, I posted as much to my Facebook timeline and got some virtual blank stares. So I apologize to my Facebook friends for just being me. The real me isn’t particularly socially acceptable. Therefore, herewith, I will endeavor to explain what I meant. Also, I have written on this some before and produced at that time some diagrams that might be helpful.

The A-theory of time, in simple terms is the idea that things stay the same as they go through time. When I look at a painting that my mom painted, for example, although it has changed hands a couple of times, it is still the same painting that my mom painted. This seems like common sense. It seems true to us because we can understand it intuitively. That’s why this is a prevalent idea of time.

This is the idea of time that classical apologists use to prove the existence of God. They often use some variation of what is known as the Cosmological Argument. William Lane Craig uses one called the Kalam Cosmological Argument. It’s very persuasive. Cosmological arguments typically observe that everything has a cause. If you trace the cause of something backward through time you must find a cause that has no cause because you can just keep going back and never find a First Cause. And that’s what they call it: First Cause. Non-theistic scientists hold that the first cause was the Big Bang. The Big Bang happened and everything has progressed since then each causing the next thing to happen until you get to the present day.

The problem is that they have no scientific natural explanation for what caused the Big Bang. Cosmological arguments work because they demonstrate that the First Cause wasn’t natural. There had to have been an uncaused cause. That’s God. From that point on we can point out how the First Cause is necessarily personal and has endeavored to reveal himself to us. But the classical Christian apologist starts with the Cosmological argument.

The problem I find is that the Bible indicates that the B-theory is in some way in play also.

The B-theory is the idea that time is an illusion of sorts wrought by our ability to know the past, experience the present, and not know the future. But it holds that from one moment of time to another things that appear to be the same are really different. My mom’s painting is not the same one that she pained. The one she painted exists only at the time she painted it. It came into my possession because a family member gave it to me. That was a cause for the fact that it’s presently hanging on my wall. It stayed on my wall because I hung it on a nail there. That causes it to remain there from one moment to the next. But a pure B-theory holds that the cause may only be and illusion and that the painting that is there now is not the painting that was there a moment ago. The nail likewise is different. The wall, the house, the yard, and even me – nothing that is there now was there a moment ago and what was there a moment ago cannot be proven to actually have been there although we have some memory of it. If something were there in likeness to what is there now, it isn’t the same thing.

Now, I didn’t produce a diagram of that because I don’t believe in a pure B-theory. But the diagram I did produce marries the A-theory and the B-theory together as such:

The Biblical support I offered in passing in my original article still stands:

“…we know that God not only created “In the beginning” but he sustains his creation (Heb 1:3) and creates constantly (Psalm 139:13) and provides for his creation (Job 38:41).”

So non-Christian B-theorists use the B-theory to dispute Cosmological arguments. My realization was that neither the A-theory and B-theory are exclusively true. Now, I know that they are both in some way true because I have the revelation of scripture. However, it occurred to me that from a logical standpoint, only conclusions that did not necessarily follow from each theory were in conflict. Therefore, the theories are logically compatible.

A Response From an Embarrassingly Ignorant Young Earth Creationist

I was listening to Dr. William Lane Craig’s recent podcast where he was commenting on a discussion between theistic evolutionist, Francis Collins, and atheist Richard Dawkins. You can listen to it here.

At 7:51 Craig said, “…over 50% of evangelical pastors think that the world is less than 10,000 years old. Now when you think about that… that is just hugely embarrassing… This is just scientifically nonsense and yet this is the view that the majority of our pastors hold. It’s really quite shocking when you think about it.”

Well, I’m not a pastor, so perhaps I’m not quite as embarrassing. But what I find embarrassing is Dr. Craig’s apparent ignorance regarding the epistemic problems with scientific conclusions. He says two things that demonstrate some incoherence in his understanding of revelatory epistemology:

At 3:54, “I would agree… that you ought to exhaust the naturalistic hypotheses first before opting for a supernatural hypothesis.”

At 13:24, “With regard to Christian faith and practice I would say you need first and foremost to do your biblical hermeneutics responsibly and objectively. You need to not interpret the Bible in light of modern science, but to interpret it according to what its original author and original audience would have understood. That’s the first and foremost task is to interpret the Bible objectively and correctly. Then the second task will be trying to integrate what we learn from the Bible with the worldview of modern science so as to have a sort of synoptic worldview that takes into account all that we’ve learned, not only from divine revelation, but from God’s revelation in nature – in the book of nature. And then we will build a synoptic sort of worldview that makes the best sense of the data.”

It’s this incoherence that makes Dr. Craig a prime example of something Dr. K. Scott Oliphint, professor of Apologetics and Systematic Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary, said in a recent interview. It’s worth listening to, which you can do here.

Continuing with Dr. Craig’s podcast, he goes on to say at 9:35,

“What would hurt the Bible would be if the Bible intends for us to believe that the world is only 10,000 years old and therefore comes into conflict with the best evidence of modern science. That’s what would hurt the Bible. What would not hurt the Bible would be if it could be shown that the Bible doesn’t take a position on how long the universe has been around. Then it wouldn’t be damaged by scientific evidence, or the geological age of the earth, or the age of the universe.”

Then Craig knocks Francis Collins for believing in theistic evolution. What difference does Craig see in the science that he feels supports an old earth and the science that is used to support evolution? From a scientific standpoint, they are equally unscientific if for no other reason than they have not been observed and cannot be tested. Those aren’t the only things wrong with the science, and I’ve already pointed to problems with the science behind the age of the earth in previous articles.

He continues in his incoherence by agreeing with Bill Nye (the Science Guy) that we should not teach our children about a young earth, but he believes that we should teach our children about the controversy surrounding evolution:

At 15:45, “I would not disagree with [Bill Nye] that we ought not to teach our children that the world is only 10,000 years old. I think that that’s not something that the Bible imposes on us, and it’s not supported by modern science, so I would agree that… we shouldn’t teach that to our children. But we should certainly teach them that there is a Creator of the universe who is God and who brought the universe into being and designed it in such a way as to support the existence of human life. And with regard to how human life and biological complexity came to be on this planet, I think we need to teach the children the controversy; teach them the various views that are held today so that they are conversant with the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution and can discuss it even more intelligently than their peers with regard to its pros and cons. And then teach them a range of alternatives that are available for the objective Bible-believing Christian today.”

But I want to go back and explain a little further how his comments about biblical hermeneutics are incoherent. If you take the first chapter of Genesis at face value without considering any modern scientific thought, you must conclude that days it refers to are solar days. If we look at the scientific investigation used to date the earth as very old, every last conclusion regarding the age begins with the assumption that the earth is very old. The scientific discovery is employed to determine how old. You can’t do radiometric testing on rocks without assuming the ionic percentages that made up the rocks at the time they were formed, which you assume was millions of years ago. You can’t construct a geologic column unless you assume that the layers were deposited over millions of years. Therefore, in order to use the conclusions of scientific endeavors such as these to controvert a plain reading of the biblical text and substitute a figurative reading of it, you have to assume that plain reading is inaccurate a priori.

Scientists are just as adamant that macro-evolution is just as certain as an old earth. The only reason Craig can say that the science behind old earth is beyond reproach where macro-evolution is not is because the text of the Bible can more easily be subverted to agree with an old earth than it can with macro-evolution. Perhaps another reason he gives is found is this comment:

At 8:37, “…the young people in their congregations [of pastors who hold the view that the Bible teaches a young earth] are convinced that the pastor is right that the Bible teaches this, but they are convinced by their geology teacher or the earth science teacher that the world is older than that, that means ‘give up the Bible and walk away from the Christian faith’.”

So does Dr. Craig mean that we need to be old earthers so that our young people won’t leave the church? It’s not clear that he means this, but I see no good reason for saying it otherwise.

Finally, it seems that Craig misses the fact that the modern scientific industry is founded on an assumption that the Bible isn’t true.

At 3:08, “But here he takes the rather cheeky position that the reason that they opt for the multiverse is to avoid a Creator which is, in fact, what Stephen Hawking has actually said in his book, The Grand Design.”

You can’t harmonize a Biblical worldview with conclusions that are founded on an assumption that the Bible isn’t true. There is a way to do science that recognizes the veracity of the Bible. This is where science was historically rooted. But the modern scientific academy rejects any but science that makes naturalistic assumptions. Craig acknowledges this on one level, but then tries to mix it with how to understand the Bible on the other. This is the most egregious error in his thinking.

Logic and the Light of the World

I want to react to something Dr. William Lane Craig has been discussing. I don’t want to particularly criticize him, although I think he is led in certain directions in this discussion because of a commitment to Arminianism. Otherwise, I think he’s right. But I want to take the opportunity his discourse affords and advance my own take on it.

Read his answer to the question a reader submitted here regarding the attack by some physicists on logic based on an apparent tension between theories and principles of quantum physics and basic math. You may not understand what they are talking about, so it may not be worth your time to read it. Nevertheless, I’ll try to explain it in its simplest form.

Quantum physics is that part of physics that deal with the way atoms and things even smaller than atoms interact with each other. It’s an interesting world when things get that small. It doesn’t seem to work the same way as things do up in the normal world where we can see people and other things our size, from large buildings and mountains down to small gears for watches, needles and threads. There’s just a certain way that the world works that we are familiar with. But atomic things don’t seem to work quite the same way.

But it’s similar. Maybe we can imagine that atoms are like billiard balls being hit against one another. Except that some of the billiard balls are attached to each other with strong rubber bands and they are all being thrown against each other with so much speed and force it’s like they were being shot out of a cannon at each other. So instead of a normal game of pool, it’s dangerous and extreme. Very small things move with great speed and force.

When you play pool or have seen it played, can you always predict where the balls will go when they are broken up at the first shot? It’s really hard to do. There are too many factors that are impossible to measure and calculate. But there is generally a pattern to the break that one can guess at. So the first person hits the cue ball hard and hopes that something good goes in one of the holes. Most of the time, if a ball goes in a hole on the break, it’s one of the holes behind the triangle of balls that have been racked together for the first shot. There’s a certain probability that can be calculated in an attempt to predict what might happen: “70% of the time, a ball will go into the back pocket on the break.” Something like that can be said. This is called Probability Theory.

So it is with quantum physics. We expect that we should be able to predict what will happen in most circumstances. What circumstances are we talking about? Generally we look at a small system. If we have our eye on a single atom, we look at the atoms nearby it to see what effect they will have on the one atom. If you are playing pool, you don’t expect that some ball on a pool table in another pool hall across town will have any effect on the balls on your table. So there is a theory regarding locality in quantum mechanics. We don’t think that an atom on the other side of the earth, much less the other side of the galaxy, will have any effect on the atoms under our microscope.

The problem is that what we figure will probably happen doesn’t happen. In fact, sometimes we see very small particles behaving in unpredictable ways. It’s like they have a mind of their own. So what could cause them to behave differently? Is the Probability Theory wrong? Or is it that the principle of locality is wrong. Could something be influencing the balls on our little microscopic pool table from across town? When Craig mentions Bell’s Theorem, this is what he’s talking about.

So there are physicists who look at this and question the Probability Theory. Their ultimate goal is to bring into question our understanding of logic. However, Bell’s Theorem depends on the logic that is being called into question. So if the logic is wrong, then so is Bell’s theory – as well as the basis for the speculations these physicists are making.

If Bell is right in that we can dismiss neither the Probability Theory nor the principle of locality then the only answer is that the particle is behaving in some way predetermined.  If I understand this correctly, Craig doesn’t like this because he’s set on libertarian free will. He doesn’t like things that are predetermined. Once again, if I understand correctly, he likes the Probability Theory for the same reason. It adds the element of luck into the universe. So I’ve heard it often said among Christians that there is no luck because of God’s sovereignty. In this regard I believe the matter to be merely epistemological rather than normative. That means that it seems like luck to us because we can’t know all the facts, but the facts are still there. There are tiny elements that play into the mechanics of the universe that generate the results that appear to us to be random. In other words, they are not without a cause. Given Craig’s Molinism, I wouldn’t expect him to have a problem with this. There must be a way that God selects one possible future from another in the Molinistic system.

But I agree that it is the principle of locality that needs to be challenged. Let me try to explain from here to the end a simplified form of relativity and what I’m thinking in terms of things that are not local that can influence quantum particles.

Let’s say we are standing on a shoreline. Out in the water is a motorboat that comes tooling by. A few moments later and we are inundated by small waves generated by the boat. The waves were generated a few moments ago, but it took those few moments to get to us. By the time they get to us we can turn and see how the position of the boat is different than it was when it generated the waves now lapping at our feet.

Now let us pretend that the waves that are lapping at our feet are light waves. We need them to see. So the waves being generated now by the boat are not to us yet. We don’t see the boat where it actually is. We see the boat where it was when it made the waves. If we had a clock that was synchronized with a clock on the boat, we could come back together and check those clocks. As slow as boats usually go, we would see that the clocks were still reading the same time.

Ah, but if the boat were to amazingly move at somewhere near the speed of light, something would be different. When we came back together, our clocks would read differently. They would now appear to run at the same speed, but it would be clear that they experienced a different amount of time. This is called “time dilation”. If we do that math to explain the difference between the clocks, we would learn that the distance the boat traveled appeared to be different between the shore where we were standing and on the boat.

The appearance of the difference is that the boat travels slower than it should, given the speed that it is travelling. So while energy is pushing the boat forward, that energy appears to be lost from the perspective of the shore. Where does that energy go? Let’s make the same observation if the boat were instead an electron. So now we’re looking at an atom that has some electrons in orbit. If you remember your physical science class, the electrons are in orbit at specific distances around the nucleus of the atom. These specific distances are often called shells. But it’s not quite as simple as they led us all to believe in class. The outer electrons can have fewer electrons or the outer shell have extra electrons. This makes the atom an ion of one sort or another.

But there might be some extra energy in the system so one of the outer electrons might be up in a higher shell it normally would be. Add some extra energy and the electron might increase in speed to near the speed of light. It’s already close to the speed of light anyway, but it just jumps up a bit closer. Suddenly, it appears to the rest of the atom that the electron slows down. The only way it could do that is if it lost energy. As it slows down, it drops into a lower shell.

So what happened to the extra energy? It went out as a photon. The energy was released in a specific direction with a specific wavelength. This is electromagnetic radiation. This includes visible light, radio waves, x-rays, the whole gamut. It travels at a measurable speed until it hits an object and transfers its energy to that other object.

So my next question is: What did the electron experience when it gained and lost energy at the same time? This is pure speculation, but I submit it for your consideration. I think that as far as the electron is concerned, the distance between it and the object that the photon eventually touched was instantly negated and the electron hit that object slowing it down and bringing it back within its original frame of reference. For that moment, distance became irrelevant. That electron became subject to a non-local event according to the outside observer. The path of negation is represented in that frame of reference by the photon, which is a distortion of the space and time between the electron and the distant object.

My last question is this: Could there be other types of distortions based on other types of actions involving subatomic particles approaching the speed of light? I don’t see why not. It is this direction I would like to see physicists go. I think there could be much benefit for communication technology or some other information transfer.

But I want to make one last point that brings us back to the created order of this world. The material things of this world are ultimately constructed of energy. The material is the existential. The energy is, in part, the substantial. The difference is their relative temporal placement. But there is a substantial power that exceeds all the energy represented in the matter and energy of this world on which this world rests and draws its power. That is who we call God. I don’t mean to argue for the existence of God based on this, but rather to demonstrate His necessary substance as the basis for the material world. And so it is that in the beginning of all things, God created all things with intent and purpose. This neither Calvinist nor Arminian can deny.

What Kind of Time Do We Have?

William Lane Craig has recently been talking about theories of time. Listen to his recent podcasts. I’m going to talk about these theories, what Craig believes regarding these theories, what I believe about these theories, and the relationship these theories have with theology.

Most people reasonably perceive time as passing basically the same for everyone. This is reasonable because macroscopically that’s the only perception we need in order to function well in this world. But time is a little more complex than that in how it is integral to the form and function of the created order.

There are two basic sets of theories for how the universe functions. Craig goes into more detail, but I’ll try to explain them both here. The A Theory of time is that the past exists because it has happened and that the future is not fixed and determinate like the past. The B theory of time is that each moment of time is its own stand-alone slice of existence and that the future is as determinate as the past.

Craig goes into some detail about the difference between time passing and the measurement of time. Don’t get bogged down by this. Philosophers are good at using very specific language without specifically defining the language they are using. The specific definition may have been expounded on somewhere, but philosophers assume that everyone knows what those definitions are. I do the same thing, but at least I’m trying not to do that. In fact, there’s much to say on this, but it’s not relevant to the point I’m going to make here so I’ll refrain. When Craig starts talking about relative time, the clocks ticking, the Lorentz transformation, etc., don’t worry about trying to follow him. It’s not overly relevant to the point he’s ultimately driving at.

What is relevant, however, is that Craig makes some observations that imply that the A Theory and the B Theory are mutually exclusive. The debate may often go there, but for all the wrong reasons. He’s right to criticize B Theorists that dismisses the A Theory. Particularly, he gives as an example the one who on judgment day stands before God for judgment. The slice of a person standing before God is different than the slices who sinned against God. I would add that such a slice would be different than the slice who came to faith. How could God condemn a slice that didn’t sin?

One problem that Craig has with this argument is that he is using a false understanding of the nature of sin. I can see that if his exclusionary view of the B theory is true, that this may be the nature of sin. But it’s not the biblical nature of sin. And perhaps this is why Craig says that if the B theory is exclusive of the A theory that this denial of the biblical nature of sin, among other things, would negate the B theory in favor of the A theory.

But that’s the other problem. Although many may argue for mutual exclusion between the two theories, I don’t see why they are necessarily mutually exclusive. In fact the reason that Craig doesn’t like the B theory is given in the third podcast: If there is any truth to the B theory, then there can be no room for libertarian free will. The reason that this is a problem is that Craig dismisses it because of a conclusion that he doesn’t like, not because of some problem that is foundational to the theory. The only argument that he gives is that there is no evidence possible for the theory. But this is an argument from silence. Craig, himself, is a Molinist. Molinists believe that God chooses from the best possible outcome based on libertarian free will choices that He knows people will make. Molinism isn’t a view taught in the Bible and it’s not provable. So this particular argument that Craig makes is an argument against Molinism.

But there is another problem with his Molinism and what he criticizes in these podcasts. He also talks about the multiverse. This is a theory well represented in science fiction television programs and movies. He gives one example from one of the Star Trek episodes. The theory is that at every point where more than one thing could have happened, a new universe is formed to accommodate the decision that didn’t get made in this universe. He’s right to point out that materialists use this argument to make it possible for the universe to be fine-tuned in order to sustain biological life as we know it.

But there is a problem with his rejection of a multiverse as a Molinist. He likely considers that since God has chosen the best possible course of action for the universe, that there is only one universe. However, the Molinistic way that God does this is by considering all the other possible universes. Now, I could at this point argue that by simply considering them, they would exist at least with some limited ontological form. It’s a stronger observation, however, to note that if God controls secondarily at every libertarian decision, then there must be some truth to the B Theory. In fact, the B theory must be compatible with the A theory. They can’t be mutually exclusive.

The issue that Craig has with the B Theory exclusive to the A Theory is that it presumes hyper-predestination. But he never considers in these podcasts if it is possible that the A Theory and the B Theory are compatible. That’s what I believe. I believe that we experience the world God created as the A Theory considers it but that God creates it as the B Theory presents it. I consider that His creation, providence, and sustenance are all the same thing to God. But He also provides a continuity from one slice to the next. My slice now is the same spiritual and moral entity as my slice a moment ago. I’m mostly the same material being as well. I ingest food and drink and expel various wastes as I go along. So my body changes over time. Nevertheless, I am the same being albeit my decision-making ability is limited to the created order that God has provided. To what extent has God determined my choices? I don’t know, but He will glorify Himself in all of them.