Let us remember that a system of dynamic pre-temporal items must assume that counterfactuals are independent of God’s knowledge, determined and finalized in time by the future choices and creatures they reflect. This is the logical assumption if we take into account the goals of this system. One deduction to be made in light of all this is that God’s choice between these contingent realities is not genuine if they do not exist objectively to Him. In the Dynamic Pre-Temporal system it seems that God chose the best path among many, the way in which He would be most glorified, therefore we must conclude that God could not have chosen to do otherwise because no potential future could exist (in time or otherwise) which God had decided not to choose. If He had generated or observed an alternate choice then it too must have existed as an alternate and simultaneous potential reality. Ultimately, because the Bible gives us no reason to believe that there are actual, alternate, potential realities, we finally must say that God would never have had or observed a potential reality or counterfactual which He would not finally choose.
Like Compatibilism and Static Pre-Temporalism, Middle Knowledge and Dynamic Pre-Temporalism assert that God does know the future with certainty but Dynamic Temporalism claims that He also knows all the counterfactuals of all the choices that would potentially be made therein, even though He also knows that they most certainly will never happen. In one aspect of this scheme, counterfactuals only existed after God’s decree of the events to which they are counter. In other words, God decreed x, x+1, x+2, x+3 and so on, but then suddenly non x and non x+1 existed as their counterparts or counterfactuals. If this is true then I see two possible conclusions:
1. Those counterfactuals are imagined in the mind of God along with the events He has decreed to actually take place, but in His imagining of the counterfactual, their non-existence is necessarily decreed. So at the same time (if we can speak of it temporally) God decreed the factual which claims that Judas would betray Christ should certainly come to pas because He knew Judas’ intentions, and God decreed that the counterfactual which claims that Judas would not betray Christ would never come to pass. So the factual and counterfactual exist simultaneously as the thing decreed to happen and the thing decreed not to happen.
2. Those counterfactuals must have been generated by the future deliberation an individual would have between possible choices, thus making that individual the primary cause of the counterfactuals and the individual’s deliberation the secondary cause of the counterfactuals those deliberating desires preconceive. In other words, God decreed that Judas would betray Jesus. Immediately, the potential future wherein Judas wouldn’t betray Jesus was generated but just as immediately, it was discarded by God because He know for certain that Judas would in fact betray Christ.
Consider the intent of the Molinistic point of view which in part, is supposed to shield God from the possible charge of being the author of evil and to establish the idea of libertarian freewill— which from their point of view allegedly establishes the creature’s liability to his Creator’s laws. I contend that if God chose to know the certain-future and the counter-future, assuming the counter-future will most certainly not occur, and the certain-future is a thought in the mind of God which would be chosen over the other, thus causing the counter-future to be discarded, then the counter-future has no real potential from God’s point of view, rendering it inert, unviable, and absolutely unnecessary. This appears to suggest that God has discarded one of His thoughts and kept another. If so, then the thought discarded must have been inferior in some way. Or it was simply discarded because it didn’t agree with the actual future choices men were going to make. In which case, the perfection of God’s knowledge of the future, free choices of men is challenged. And in the former case, it is an attack on the perfection and immutability of God.
If God had allowed or ordained the existence of a real counter-future or counterfactuals along with His ordinance of the certain-future, then the argument for libertarian free will is also lost and the proponent of such a theory would have to face the` same criticisms he makes of the compatibilist: why is God not the author of evil if He even allows a future wherein men are capable of choosing to do evil things and if God exists then why is there evil? Also if the counterfactuals are known in the mind of God, then creatures still do not actually posses the power of contrary choice; they cannot do otherwise because God perfectly knows even the choice they didn’t or wouldn’t make. If God knew of our choices ahead of time, no matter what the number of possible alternative counter-futures, then He still has to answer to the same objection normally posed to the Compatibilist—Is man free if he could not have chosen otherwise? If God created the tree of the knowledge of good and evil knowing that Adam certainly would sin and take the fruit and yet He created it anyway. The Molinist is then subject to the same criticism that is leveled here. I suppose that is one of the reasons Pinnock (who was formerly a professor at Westminster) has become an open theist. He is honest enough to admit the futility of the middle knowledge model. If the counterfactuals are conceived of in the mind of God, then He is not protected for being the author of evil, as the Molinist would count that protection. So in order to maintain consistency within the Molinist’s own system, God cannot be the creator or the source of these alternate outcomes; therefore they must find their source elsewhere, and the only other place is in the creature that chooses. But this demands that the knowledge of the future choices of creatures that did not yet subsist, exist before the creatures that are necessary for the decree as ordinances of the future choices. This situation is as impossible as a shadow without a substance; a reflection without an object to be reflected. Listen to one modern day Molinist as he identifies this necessity.
“According to Molinists, God uses his knowledge of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom which are contingent and prevolitional in deciding which persons to create in which situations. But if such counterfactuals are contingent, they might not have been true. Who then, makes them true? Or to phrase the question more carefully: Who or what actually causes the ones that are true to be true, and the ones that are false to be false? In whose actual activity are we to find adequate metaphysical grounds for such truths...Could God be the one who by himself causes their truth? Clearly not. The truths in question are supposed to be true prior to, and hence independent of God’s will. To suggest that God can decide which such counterfactuals are to be true is to abandon the libertarian standpoint essential to Molinism. ”
If counterfactuals exist outside of God, or they are not thoughts generated in the mind of God then He is ultimately subject to them (even if their number is infinite). He must observe them from a point completely disconnected from them and their creation. The only other option is to conclude that these counterfactuals or the counter-future exists in eternity past because of the deliberation of potential individuals in the yet written future. They exist simply because they might possibly happen in the future. Imagine that the degree to which there are differing numbers of possible choices a person could make regarding a certain decision, there are that many (however slight) different strands of potential realities resulting from the possibility of each choice being made in time. Imagine eternity past before the foundations of the world: Father, Son, Holy Spirit…and the extemporal, ethereal sets of potential realities—sounds absurd but is that not what is being offered as an alternative to the biblical understanding of the providence of God and the problem of evil? A scenario wherein God knows all the potential realities does not make Him more sovereign, but in fact it denies His sovereignty altogether because that being is made subject to the future and His choices—yes even election—are conditioned upon the preexistence of potential outcomes that He must observe, not determine.
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