Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig.

Today, the Doctrine of Creation Part 12.

For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonable faith.org.

In our study of divine providence, we've looked critically at the Calvinist view of Providence, and I offered a five-point critique last Sunday of that reconciliation of divine sovereignty and human freedom.

Today we want to turn our attention to the Armenian account of divine sovereignty and human freedom on the basis of God's foreknowledge of the future.

Consider the following biblical passage from Acts chapter 4, verses 27 to 28. For truly in this city, there were gathered together against thy holy servant, Jesus,

both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel,

to do whatever thy hand and thy plan had predestined to take place. Acts 4 27 to 28.

Now here we have a staggering assertion of divine sovereignty over the affairs of men.

The conspiracy to crucify Jesus,

which involved not only the Romans,

but also the Jews living in Jerusalem at that time,

but more particularly by name,

Pilate and Herod, who tried Jesus, is said to have happened by God's plan based

upon his foreordination. Now, how can the Armenian make sense of so sweeping a sovereignty as this?

The proponent of God's simple foreknowledge can make no good

sense, I think, of God's providential planning of a world of free creatures in the absence of

middle knowledge. On such a view, God has logically prior to his decree to create a world

only knowledge of all possible scenarios that could happen.

But he has no knowledge at all of what would happen under any given circumstances.

So even given the circumstances of the existence of the

Roman Empire and the Jewish Sanhedron and Pontius Pilate and Herod in Jerusalem at the first century,

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