When someone asks me if I am Calvinist or Arminian I feel like I am being asked "are you French or Dutch?"
I believe determinism is false (makes God's kingdom based on force, so Calvinism is false), the future is not simply predetermined by God (satan and mankind's choices influence the future - Molinism) but God knows what eventually
will happen (unlike OVT).
So reformed Arminian Molinist? I'm still working these things through, I've not yet reached a full understanding so don't expect me to be comfortable with a label yet.
I have to step in here - this is not accurate, if a scale was drawn from right to left it would go:
Calvinism - Molinism - Arminianism - OVT
Molinism is based on the fact that God has exhaustive forknowledge of actual events and counterfactuals. It logically teaches soft-determinsm - the future is certain from God's point of view, but the cause for the unfolding of history is not God's secret will, but a combination of God's will and human choices. It is an attempt to reconcile the idea that God's knew how the world would turn out before creation, yet avoid determinism.
William Lane Craig is the man in the know on this topic - see the articles in his virtual office.
http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/menus/omniscience.html
Calvinism says "God only foreknows what he has decreed" so this means that events which don't happen, God can't know about ie. God cannot know any counterfactuals. Obviously this view of foreknowledge is wrong:
And Saul summoned all the people to war, to go down to Keilah, to besiege David and his men. David knew that Saul was plotting harm against him. And he said to Abiathar the priest, "Bring the ephod here." Then said David, "O LORD, the God of Israel, your servant has surely heard that Saul seeks to come to Keilah, to destroy the city on my account.
Will the men of Keilah surrender me into his hand? Will Saul come down, as your servant has heard? O LORD, the God of Israel, please tell your servant." And the LORD said, "He will come down." Then David said, "Will the men of Keilah surrender me and my men into the hand of Saul?" And the LORD said, "They will surrender you." Then David and his men, who were about six hundred, arose and departed from Keilah, and they went wherever they could go. When Saul was told that David had escaped from Keilah, he gave up the expedition. And David remained in the strongholds in the wilderness, in the hill country of the Wilderness of Ziph. And Saul sought him every day,
but God did not give him into his hand.
1Samuel 23:8-14
There are other examples of God knowing what he didn't determine (the events didn't happen), so Calvinists have a problem with their "stock" view of foreknowledge. I think the equivicism between foreknowledge and forechoosing is a reaction against election being by foreknowledge, but that is for another time.
Open Theism is based on the fact that the future is "open" - God only knows what is knowable, (ie he can't know what doesn't exist like a square circle) and since the future does not exist yet God doesn't know it. Some would say God is capable of knowing the future, but chooses not to in an effort to preserve an open future (God can't know what he hasn't determined again).
The strongest scriptural statement to the end of showing the availability of multiple possibilities (free will, open future, multiple possibilites etc.) is 1 Corinthians 10:13:
No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.
A determist is faced with the irreconcilable premise that if a Christian sins, then there was no possibility of them not sinning because the event was preordained by God in eternity past.
But if Christians do sin, then this verse means that it was also
truly possible for the Christian to not sin. If it was not possible for the Christian to avoid sin, then it is not true that there was a “way out” thus God was not faithful. The outcome could simply not have been predetermined.
I don't know exactly what the bottom line is when it comes to foreknowledge, God's control of events and the freedom of his creation, but I am sure Calvinism is not it!