Metaphysics and the Failure of Molinism - Part 12 (More Problems with Feasibility)

(This is an expansion on me previous article dealing with the problem of feasibility under Molinism - found here.)

MORE PROBLEMS WITH FEASIBILITY

A common statement among Molinists in attempting to defend their system, is that some world may not be “feasible” for God due to the facts of creaturely freedom. Let me first try to explain what they mean and then ask my questions for someone who may want to make such a defense.

For the Molinist, a major benefit of Molinism is their belief that it best handles the supposed problem of evil/suffering in the actual world, and/or that it explains why God did not make a universalist world where all humanity is saved (or never sins to not need saving in the first place). So when someone makes such a challenge to the Christian worldview, the Molinist will jump in and attempt to defend God’s having morally sufficient reasons (MSR) for creating this world because human freedom is of such a high value that God would want to create a world with creatures that possess it. This answer has one assumption and then the major application.

First, the assumption is that human freedom just is Libertarian Freewill (LFW). This limits the kind of answer that the Molinist feels that they can give. For them, that freedom allows for the possibility of people doing things contrary to what God would otherwise desire for them. They support this with certain readings of passages like 1 Timothy 2:4 and 2 Peter 3:9 in which they think the Bible teaches that God desires every person without exception to be saved and not perish. So they need to explain exactly why God could desire none to perish and yet create a world in which vast untold numbers of people do perish. So they think LFW is the explanation for this – people do contrary to the thing that God would actually want to happen.

But this assumption leads to another question. If God is Omnipotent, couldn’t God just create a world where everyone then believes? This question appears to them to violate LFW such that those beings would not actually be free in a non-trivial sense. They think that God doing that would be too deterministic and would remove LFW from humanity. This then leads to the application of their view.

They want to affirm that God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent and that humanity has LFW. So the way they attempt to resolve the tension is to say this this is the best possible world that God could create, given LFW (usually they call it “creaturely freedom” but in concept, they just mean LFW). This should not be confused with Best Possible World semantics. They are not saying that the world is the best quantitatively – there could always be more palm trees, as William Lane Craig likes to point out. They mean that if God wants to have genuinely free creatures (sic. LFW) and if God wants a world where in the final analysis the most numbers of people are saved, then this world may be the best possible world that God could actualize.

Before I get to my critiques and questions, let me also add a feature of many Molinists beliefs as influenced by the world of Craig and Plantinga. That is the idea of Transworld Depravity – that there is the possibility of persons who would not believe in any possible world that God would put them in. Craig uses this to try and explain the problem of the unevangelized – the Mayans for example. There is an  objection that God would be unjust in damning these people to hell for their sin if they never had the gospel preached to them in order to be able to repent and believe. Craig says that it may be possible that God stacks the deck and all of these people may be people with Transworld Depravity, such that God knows that even if he did put them in the context where they would hear the gospel that they would never, in any context, believe and be saved.

From here let me move into my critiques and questions. I’ll try to flesh out some of the Molinist views and responses as this goes so as to not engage a strawman.

First, Craig, Stratton, and pretty much every Molinist I have heard address the issue, define Omnipotence as the ability to do any logically possible thing. Why can God not lie, not create a married-bachelor, or not create a rock so heavy that he cannot lift it? Because those are all logically impossible (and thus propositionally meaningless) things. God cannot make a true contradiction without violating his own inviolable nature. Here we are all in agreement. We would all reject (to my knowledge) a kind of Voluntarism which would say that God could do any thing, logical possibility be damned.

Yet here is where I start to have several problems with the Molinistic metaphysic.

Let’s try to use these terms:
(p) = a specific possible world
(n) = number of people who freely believe
O = actualizable for an omnipotent being
(R) = the real world (this world)
G = foreknown by God
A = Actualized

Let me lay out several related arguments and why I think those poses a problem for the Molinistic metaphysic and concept of feasibility.

Symbolic:
1. ◊(p) ⊃ ◊O(p)
2. ◊(p)
3. ◊O(p)          
4. A(p) ⊃ (n)
5. (p) ⊃ G(n)
6. A(p) ⊃ G(n)
7. G│A(p) ⊃ (n)
8. A(p)
9. (p) ≡ (R)
10. (R) ⊨ (n)
11. G(n)      

Stated:
1. If (p) is possible, then it is possible for an omnipotent being to actualize it.
2. (p) is possible.
3. It is possible for an omnipotent being to actualize (p).
4. If (p) is actualized, then (n) people will freely believe in God.
5. If (n) people will freely believe, then (n) will be foreknown by God.
6. If (p) is actualized, then (n) will be foreknown by God.
7. God knows that if he were to actualize (p) then (n) will freely believe.
8. God actualizes (p).
9. (p) is identical to the actual world.
10. The actual world entails (n) freely believing.
11. God foreknew (n).

So far this argument should be rather trivial to the Molinist. Basically it argues that for any possible world, whatever number of people that will freely believe if God actualizes that world, that God would foreknow that, and that since the actual world is clearly a possible world (or else God couldn’t have actualized it) that given God’s actualization of it, God foreknows the number of people who freely believe in it. None of this is really debatable as far as I can tell. But there are implications of this that I think will plague the Molinist.

Let us now run some various scenarios and see what happens. Prior to God’s actualization of the actual world (R), God foreknows (n). For our purposes let us now set (n) to a specific number of individuals equal to 15% of all humans to ever exist in the actual world and let’s call this number (x).  This means:

Symbolic:
12. ◊(R)
13. (R) ⊃ (x)
14. G│A(w) ⊃ (x)

Stated:
12. The actual world is possible.
13. If the actual world exists, then (x) will freely believe.
14. God foreknows that if he actualizes this world, that (x) will freely believe.

This means that God has actualized (R) and therefore (x) number of specific individual people freely believe, and God foreknows who they are. Our human freedom is accounted for as a fact of (R) and thus God’s knowledge of (x) or our creaturely freedom does not alter (x). This means that the logical possibility of (x) given (R) is not altered by a later consideration that human freedom would exist. Human freedom is already a given as a fact of (x) given (R).

This too is a metaphysically trivial for the Molinist. So far I am just describing basic modality and entails of logically possible worlds. But here is where the problem arises. Let us alter the settings a little bit from the previous scenario. Now let us suppose that prior to God’s actualization of a logically possible world (W), God foreknows (n). For our purposes let us now set (n) to a specific number of individuals equal to 100% of all humans to ever exist in the actual world and let’s call this number (x).

This means:
15. ◊(W)
16. (W) ⊃ (x)
17. G│A(w) ⊃ (x)

Or stated as,
15. (W) is possible.
16. If the actual world exists, then (x) will freely believe.
17. God foreknows that if he actualizes this world, that (x) will freely believe.

This means that God has actualized (W) and therefore (x) number of specific individual people freely believe, and God foreknows who they are. Our human freedom is accounted for as a fact of (W) and thus God’s knowledge of (x) or our creaturely freedom does not alter (x). This means that the logical possibility of (x) given (W) is not altered by a later consideration that human freedom would exist. Human freedom is already a given as a fact of (x) given (W).

Notice that nothing in the metaphysics of actualizing (W) has changed from the metaphysics of God’s actualization of (R), specifically in how human freedom is already an accounted for fact in God’s foreknowledge of (x) given (R) or (W).

Why is this important?

Well it means that if there is a logically possible world that God could have propositionally meaningful  foreknowledge about, then the freedom of the agents in that world is baked in already, so to speak, regardless of the number of people which are foreknown to believe. If this is true of the world which God chose to actualize, then this will be true of the worlds that God could have actualized. Yet this is a strong refutation of the concept that some worlds are logically possible for God to have actualized but are still yet infeasible for God to have actualized. And appeals to human freedom will no longer do it given the argument above because human freedom is already accounted for in God’s knowledge of the supposedly infeasible worlds. If (W) were actual, then 100% of humanity (equal to the number of people in the actual world) will use their freedom to believe. The Molinist wants to say that given human freedom, it may be that God could not actualize this world because no humans in that configuration would ever freely believe. This means that what they are trying to say is that (W) is not feasible because it may be the case that given (W), ~(x) would believe (or that (x) would not obtain). Yet that just seems a claim to far that merely moves the goal post. We would need good warrant to think that given that definitional to (W) just is that (x) is true given that (x) is just want propositionally demarcates (W) from all other possible worlds. The Molinist is therefore saying that if (W) then ~(W), that is, that (W) is logically impossible. But notice that no warrant is given for that. It is just that maybe people wont freely believe in that volume. But no reason is given and no demonstration of any logical incoherence is ever provided.

Therefore, if God’s omnipotence means that he can actualize any logically possible world, the Molinist must then show that (W) is actually somehow logically impossible and cannot merely state a “what if” or a “maybe” since (W) would follow the same metaphysical entailments with regard to God’s knowledge as there is in (R).

In fact we can push this further. On Molinism, Middle Knowledge (MK) is God’s knowledge of the counterfactuals in creaturely freedom (CCF), or what agents would freely choose in possible worlds that are not the actual world. Let’s consider the following question:

Does God’s MK include the CCF’s of (W)?

I’ve asked countless Molinists this question and always get the same question.  Of course it includes the CCF’s of (W). Why? Because they are logically coherent and meaningfully stated propositions of logical possibility – the Molinist needs to defend that God’s MK is exhaustive of all logically possible facts or else they would be biting the bullet and admitting that God’s MK is not exhaustive and does not include all logically coherent and meaningful possibilities. This means that they need to affirm that (W) is logically possible while also arguing that it is logically impossible (and thus infeasible).

Here the response will come that they think I am confusing strict logical possibility and broad possibility or feasibility. But I am not. For without some meaningful metaphysical difference between the two, we have been provided no meaningful reason to think that some strictly logically possible world is not feasible for an omnipotent God to actualize, despite the fact that he foreknows the CCF’s in that world in precisely the way that he does all other logically possible and even feasible worlds.

To sum up, when a Molinist argues that some logically possible world is not a feasible world, I simply ask them, based on what? What makes it infeasible for an omnipotent God to actualize given the metaphysics of freedom and MK would be identical to the actual world and all other feasible worlds?

Going back to Craigs use of Transworld Depraved Persons (TWDP), we could also ask other questions of the Molinist who thinks that this is a meaningful concept and answer to the problem of the unevangelized. There seems to be a potentially infinite number of different and distinct persons that God could have logically actualized. This entails that if TWDP is a meaningful concept, that there is a potentially infinite number of persons with TWDPs. Yet this opens the question to Transworld Righteous Persons (TWRP) who would freely believe in those same worlds, such that if TWDP is meaningful and helpful, then surely TWRP is as well. And yet this would mean that there is a potentially infinite number of TWRPs that God could have populated any world with and thus could rather easily actualize any number of worlds like (W). Yet many Molinists say that the probability of this is extremely low.

Yet, if there is a potentially infinite amount of them (a number incalculably greater than the actual number of humans today) why would a world full of them be "extremely low"? Based on what? A hunch? What is the metaphysically meaningful difference that precludes the possibility of the flip side of the same coin that they want to use.

Now, I'm not trying to be condescending, really. I have great respect for Craig and Stratton and other but I honestly just never hear any actual support for any of the "feasibility" assertions made by Molinists. I not only dont see why any logically possible world is infeasible for an omnipotent God to actualize (infeasible becomes a synonym for impossible at that point) but beyond that, even if the odds are low, can God not actualize states of affairs with low probabilities?

Finally, it seems that this strategy of arbitrarily saying that these other worlds us universal salvation are not feasible, proves far too much and may provide all the rope needed to hang the usefulness of Molinism itself. For a long time I posed this objection and would get vehement opposition from Molinists but recently I have been vindicated as Molinist par excellence Kirk MacGregor has bit the bullet ad admitted my conclusion.

Remember that Molinism is applied as an answer the problem of evil and suffer – that given LFW, a world with as much suffering as ours may be the best God could do given his goals of saving the most amount of people. Well it seems to me that the atheist and skeptic could use their very argument against them for maybe, given LFW, the world with the most saved freely may also have unavoidable gratuitous evil and suffering in it. In the same way that God desires all to be saved but all are not, it could be possible that God secondarily desires that all evil and suffering in the world would be redemptive (part of his plan, purpose, used for an ultimate good, have a MSR for God allowing, etc) and yet, given LFW, maybe such a world is not feasible for God to actualize and so God is dealt a deck of cards where all feasible worlds just are worlds with gratuitous (outside of God’s plan and purpose) evil and suffering. What rejoinder would the Molinist have for this that would not also be a response to their own feasibility argument? MacGregor seems to have accepted this and recently has been defending that there really is gratuitous evil and suffering in the world (despite the Biblical claims to God’s sovereignty over all things and his working of all things for the good of those who love him).

We could even push this envelope further to a kind of grounding problem based on feasibility. Maybe it be possible that the only worlds feasible for God to actualize given LFW, are free actions of humans unknowable to God. Without appealing to simply brute tautological reason (“God knows it in virtue of him knowing all things so that cannot be”), how would the Molinist avoid the Open Theist using Molinism itself as a defense of their view?

Remember, these are only some of the questions and challenges that I raise against Molinists. I have argued elsewhere against the notion that LFW even would suffice as a MSR to allow the victimization of evil and suffering, that it causes problems for a Biblical concept of personhood, of anthropology, that it may entail Open Theism, etc., and so I think before we can even consider Molinism feasible, they must show that it is even logically possible. So far, I just do not see how that could be achieved given these and other objections.

FOR THE MAIN DIRECTORY OF RESOURCES ON MOLINISM, CLICK HERE.

Metaphysics and the Failure of Molinism - Part 11 (Molinism and the Presumption of Libertarian Incompatibilism)

MOLINISM AND THE PRESUMPTION OF LIBERTARIAN INCOMPATIBILISM

Here I would simply observe than in my countless conversations, that when push comes to shove, many Molinists will show their true underlying theological commitments and fall back on the preservation of man’s freedom as priority and the affirmation of the “that’s not fair” interlocutor of Romans 9. I do not claim or even think that this is indicative of all Molinists or is somehow a sine qua non of Molinism or me kind of official Molinistic strategy, but rather it simply does constitute a large contingent of those Molinists who are vocal in debates. They will more often than not, in my experience, come from a position where they view any form of determinism, compatiblism or otherwise, to be “unfair” and thus are seeking to find a way to justify a pre-commitment to specifically Libertarian Freedom and find what they are looking for in Molinism. This, I admit, does not count Molinism and right or wrong, reasonable or irrational, but rather it should not be ignored that often a certain level of bias drives exegetical, philosophical, and theological methodology. I am one of the furthest from those who disparage philosophy, or even that philosophy does not in many ways necessarily constitute the boundaries for how all theology and thought progresses and forms. Yet, I would say that in instances like this one,it does appear that a certain philosophical prejudice and belief is used as a controlling factor in how the Molinist does their Biblical theology. That is, rather than allowing their Biblical theology to inform their view of the human will and moral responsibility, they will take purely philosophical considersations of the human will and moral responsibility and then go to the text to find the best reading to fit within that paradigm.

This is likely to be one of the most contentious issues because it does drive at motivations, albeit more likely subconscious than overt or intentional, and so I left it to the end almost as an endnote. Whether or not this is true does not validate or invalidate my arguments above nor does it prove or disprove Molinism. It merely is a cautionary note to those who seek to wade into these often contentious debates.

FOR THE MAIN DIRECTORY OF RESOURCES ON MOLINISM, CLICK HERE.

Metaphysics and the Failure of Molinism - Part 10 (Supposed Biblical Support for Molinism)

SUPPOSED BIBLICAL SUPPORT FOR MOLINISM

There are a set of supposed “proof texts” of Molinism from statements of mere counterfactuals that the Molinists will often attempt to claim demonstrate, or at least support, a Molinistic view of God’s MK. I think that rarther than supporting Molinism, these texts go to show a glaring example of eisegesis and that historic Protestant and Reformed views of God’s Free Knowledge explain them just as well, without the need for the invention of a third species of knowledge or the advancement of the problematic system shown above. The three major texts are Matthew 11:21-24, 1 Corinthians 2:7-8, and 1 Samuel 23:11-13 where each text expresses some form of a piece of counterfactual knowledge. The strongest example appears to the narrative of David and the men from Keilah in 1 Samuel 23. Without going into a full summary of the passage, here David seeks counsel from the Lord of what would happen if he chooses to go to one city compared to what would happen if he does not. God tells him what would happen and this informs David’s decision. I do not think that a full exegetical response is even necessary here to show the problem with the view that this demonstrates or specially supports Molinism in any particular way. The absolute most that this shows is that God has counterfactual knowledge. Yet this knowledge, as shown above, is not only extant in historic Protestant and Reformed understandings of the Omniscience of God, but if the above arguments hold, is better explained on those views. Like the countless passages used to try and show Libertarian freedom by pointing to substantive free choice (a position affirmed by Compatiblists, Calvinists, and Libertarians alike) so too, these three passages cannot go to specially support Molinism any more than any view which holds to the Omniscience of God.

Even that is the most it could do. In fact, the mere statement of counterfactuals hardly can be used to demonstrate conclusively anything more than the usage of counterfactual language in rhetoric. Not only can we as limited humans have true counterfactual knowledge without MK be attributed to us (I can know that all things being equal, if I never consume any more food or water, that I would not live another 5 years), but the proclamations in Matthew and 1 Corinthians seems to be rhetorical flourishes more so than attempts to make nuanced and theologically robust statements of metaphysically veridical CCFs. I could think of examples where, in exasperation, one might say, “If my dog could speak English they would understand this better than you!” Should we envisage that person as consciously attempting to make veridical statements of what really would happen? Counterfactuals of this sort are a kind of hyperbolic rhetoric used to draw extreme contrast. Attempts to shoehorn Molinism or Middle Knowledge into such statements as found in Matthew and 1 Corinthians seems quite the stretch.

FOR THE MAIN DIRECTORY OF RESOURCES ON MOLINISM, CLICK HERE.

Metaphysics and the Failure of Molinism - Part 9 (Compatibilism Through and Through)

COMPATIBILISM THROUGH AND THROUGH

Here, I will obviously not have enough space to fully develop the issue, but I argue that in order to make MM work, MMi’s such as Stratton have had to abandon pure LFW and adopted LLF, which is hardly distinguishable from Compatiblism. When one looks at how Stratton has defined LLF, it is almost perfectly in line with most conceptions of substantive freedom within Compatiblistic schemas. For theistic Compatiblism, typically, the idea is that the personal agent is sufficiently free if they have the ability to choose otherwise but that in God giving them their nature, dispositions, desires, (i.e. their natures) that they will always choose in line with their greatest desire. Thus, God, the author of their nature, determines the outcome but the personal agent is sufficiently free and, more importantly, morally responsible, given that they choose by their own volition what they truly desire to do.

When Stratton thus defines LLF as the ability to choose consistent with one’s nature, the only thing missing is that one’s nature is a the contextual cocktail from which the greatest desire is poured and acted upon. Effectively, in Stratton’s attempt to distill Molinism down to MM to make it more palatable to the Reformed,  he effectively must abandon the view of the will as having Libertarian Freedom, which is one of the core things that makes Molinism distinctive and potentially useful.

The real problem however, as already shown above but more expressly stated now, is not that Stratton must abandon the historic defense of Libertarian freedom advocated by Molinists, but that he likely sees the writing on the wall – Molinism, when taken to its logical end, entails a form of Compatiblism anyway. As I already argued above, in a more fully articulated form of Molinism, the result of God’s actualization of the world and the determinative nature of it mentioned in #7 where for God to actualize a world is a causal determining of all true facts of that world, results in the need for some form of Compatiblism. This again entails that one of the supposed unique benefits of Molinism to theology and apologetics, that it protects Libertarian Freedom and provides a unique synthesis of God’s sovereignty and human freedom/responsibility, becomes effectively nil. It ends up in the same place as other systems but does so then via a convoluted metaphysic and the potential abandonment of Biblical orthodoxy with respect to the Aseity of God, the Omniscience of God, and the nature of man, and the plan of salvation (if it steps into the discussions of the ordo salutis and the ability to possess or exhibit faith apart from the providential regenerative act of the Holy Spirit).

FOR THE MAIN DIRECTORY OF RESOURCES ON MOLINISM, CLICK HERE.

Metaphysics and the Failure of Molinism - Part 8 (The Unevangelized, Transworld Depravity and the Nature of Man)

THE UNEVANGELIZED, TRANSWORLD DEPRAVITY AND THE NATURE OF MAN

On strategy common among Molinists is to affirm the hybridization of Plantinga’s hypothetical transworld depravity employed by WLC to answer the supposed problem of the unevagelized. Briefly, the problem of the unevangelized is a specific issue for those who hold to Libertarian views of human freedom as well as the belief that God’s only desire regarding the eternal state of humanity is for universal salvation. That is, that God is a hopeful universalist. This however generates a problem – why would God create a world where so many are apparently damned by accidents of time and geography? That is, why create a world where so many millions of persons lived in times and places in the world completely absent of the message of the gospel of Jesus, if God’s overriding desire is for the salvation of all humanity? Such a world seems wasteful of humanity.

The answer given by WLC and others is that it may be the case (WLC and others are by no means dogmatic about it) that those humans that lived outside of the scope of salvation so to speak, could be those humans that are “transworld depraved,” that is, that there is no possible world in which those persons would ever freely choose God and be saved.

Before answering, I should preface that this view is not universal or necessary to Molinists, however due to his influence, WLC’s argument does seem to have become pervasive in Molinistic thinking and as such, benefit #9 above concerning the problem of the unevangelized is often attributed to Molinism proper. Yet, I would not want those Molinists who know that it is not an inextricable tenet of Molinism to object thinking that I believe this topic to be attributable to all Molinists or even the core propositions of Molinism. However, since it is so popular as already stated, a response ought to be given, of which I have two (besides positive arguments for a more Reformed response).

Firstly, this response to the unevangelized, seems to view human persons as static beings – that “I” could be born anywhere at any time in history. The argument seems to rely on the idea that we humans are like pieces on a board that God could pick up and move whenever and wherever he would like in creation without substantively altering and changing one person into another. I do not understand how this would be possible such that there is even an “I” if I was born at a different time and place. Surely I would be a completely different person, with different genetics, different worldview, and different upbringing and experiences – different in both nature and nurture. My first objection is that I fundamentally have a hard time even conceptualizing the metaphysics of the anthropology on this view.

My second objection is that it also assumes that God was constrained by a specific and certain set of static humans. This position raises the natural question, if it was the case that those static humans wouldn’t believe in any context, why create them at all? Once again, surely there is a logically possible near infinite number of both transworld depraved and transworld righteous humans that God could have created if they can be merely shifted around on the board. In fact, if the objections I presented to the feasibility argument above are sound, then it could be possible for God to create only transworld righteous humans who would believe in any context. Thus we see the breaking through of those objections here – why not simply create [G] and have no problem of the unevagelized to begin with? It seems the failure of the feasibility argument is compounded when taken out of the abstract and examined in a kind of applied scrutiny.

FOR THE MAIN DIRECTORY OF RESOURCES ON MOLINISM, CLICK HERE.

Metaphysics and the Failure of Molinism - Part 7 (The Ability to Act Contrary to God's Foreknowledge)

THE ABILITY TO  ACT CONTRARY TO GOD'S FOREKNOWLEDGE

Given the problems raised in #5 and #7 above concerning actualization and determinism, the issue of human freedom to act contrary to God’s foreknowledge arises. If one has true Libertarian freedom, then nothing constrains the decisions that one makes. It cannot be determined by any factor prior to it, and at the time of decision, one could in actual fact choose otherwise. Without going into the numerous nuances of various Libertarian views, and why an overwhelming majority of philosophers and theologians reject them and opt for some version of Compatiblism, I would love to note the incoherence that such a position creates. We can ask the question, can a Libertarian free agent actually choose to act contrary to what God foreknew would happen prior to actualizing that world? That is, could God’s knowledge err?

On Libertarianism, especially under Molinism, the answer seems to be, unavoidably, yes. Before the objections arise, let me clarify two things, a) I am not saying that God’s foreknowledge is causal, b) I am not make a modal claim of necessity. Those two charges come quick and furious when this form of argument is made so I need to state from the outset that those are neither my assumptions, nor my argument. So what is the argument?

If the Molinist wants to deny #7, then the free agent at T1 could choose, on a whim, to do X or not-X. Yet, God would have actualized this world based on a specific set of facts about this world that makes it this world and not another. As we saw above with the buttons, while God’s foreknowledge may not be causally determinate, surely the act of creation is. And yet, the Molinist denies this which means that nothing constrains or determines in any way, primarily or secondarily through means, the freewill actions of persons. This means that God’s Free Knowledge of the actual world would be provisional. At T1, John may choose W, which God foreknew. But he may choose not-W, which God did not foreknow. Even if God is right 100% of the time, it is inexplicable why God is right 100% of the time. This kind of providential grounding problem of Molinism I take it to be a different kind of grounding problem than the ones above dealing with God’s Middle Knowledge and God’s Aseity. Here, this expands the grounding problem even to God’s Free Knowledge.

However, there is a problem even more severe. This kind of ungrounded Free Knowledge becomes nearly indistinguishable from Open Theism. For even if God was right 100% of the time, he could not possible know that he would be right 100% of the time. With each free decision of man, as history unfolds, God would have his Free Knowledge confirmed to him in actual fact. That is, God would learn that his Knowledge of the facts of the free choices in the actual world was in fact true and that at every instance the person chose in line with what God foreknew before actualizing the world and in the moments leading up to the decision. For if it is possible for someone to choose something other than what God foreknew, God could, in principle, never foreknow in which worlds someone would choose other than what God foreknew. So the propositions of God’s knowledge would literally be confirmed to him with each subsequent freewill decision. This, I take it, to be one of the most severe problems of Molinism. If this objection holds, then one of the implications of Molinism just is Open Theism and would render it a heretical system of doctrine.

FOR THE MAIN DIRECTORY OF RESOURCES ON MOLINISM, CLICK HERE.

Metaphysics and the Failure of Molinism - Part 6 (Causation and Creation)

CAUSATION AND CREATION

Imagine a scenario in which I know with certainty the following three things:

1. That I know that if I push a red button, that it will set a chain of events in motion that will lead to someone in the world freely choosing to commit murder in the next hour (not via compulsion but via their free choice to do so).

2. That if I push the green button, that this will set a chain of events that will prevent anyone from freely choosing murder (not via restraint but via their free choices not to do so). Finally, I know that which button I choose is the only thing that sets either chain of events in motion.

3. I have unalterably chosen to press one of the buttons.

It seems an obvious and principled fact that at the time of my knowledge of 1 and 2, prior to pressing either of the buttons, I have true counter factual knowledge but have not caused anything. My knowledge is causally effete prior and subsequent to pressing either button. However, once I press the button, I am certainly the determining causal factor having pressed the button which will actualize one and only one foreknown outcome.

Another example could be given that is directly drawn from Molinism.

Imagine two almost identical worlds - (W1) and (W2). They are identical in every single way except until at T1, where in (W1) John will freely choose to have some thought (P) (where P's coming in and out of existence in the mind of John has zero impact on any other propositional fact for any time after T1, but in (W2) John simply does not have thought (P). We will call this single variable difference between (W1) and (W2) "@". God, via MK knows the true propositions, "If I actualize (W1) then at T1, John will freely choose to think (P) but (P) will have no impact on anything following T1," and "If I actualize (W2) then at T1, John will not think (P)," as well as, "Besides "@", there is no difference between (W1) and (W2)."

Let us also, for the sake of simplicity, assume that either (W1) or (W2) could be the actual world such that God's final decision of what world to actualize comes down to (W1) or (W2).

So the question is, once God in fact actualizes (W1) or (W2) is he causally determinitive over which side of "@" is actualized. Well surely the answer is yes. The worlds are identical with the one exception of "@" and it is the metaphysical reality of actualizing either (W1) or (W2) that is the sole determining factor in the realization of which side of "@" is actualized since in all other respects at all points in time leading up to T1, (W1) and (W2) are identical.

This then can be extrapolated out to all events in any given world, including the actions of substantively free creatures. The given events X at any Tn for any world (W#) are thus, at least secondarily, determined by God's actualization of that world though they may be providentially brought about by indirect actions within that world. Those facts about that world cannot be altered to support an objection for it is those facts which precisely makes it that world that God actualized and not some other world. Like the problem of feasibility above, the Molinist may not alter the facts of a possible world in order to escape the possibility of that possible world without, in an ad hoc manner, saying that world is not identical with itself, nor is what God knows or even actualizes about that world identical to itself.

FOR THE MAIN DIRECTORY OF RESOURCES ON MOLINISM, CLICK HERE.

Metaphysics and the Failure of Molinism - Part 5 (The Problem of Non-Redemptive Facts)

THE PROBLEM OF NON-REDEMPTIVE FACTS

One major problem the flows from the issue of the rhetoric of feasibility, is the problem of facts of the actual world that could be non-redemptive in nature. That is, if CCFs could be used in an ad hoc manner to say certain kinds of worlds would not be possible to God (i.e. possible worlds where everything that God desires comes to pass), and if God can only actualize those feasible worlds, then it could also be that case that it may not be feasible for worlds with sufficiently free and sufficiently numerous free agents to also have all its facts fall in line with God’s sovereign plan or his desire to work all things for the good of those who love him. It may be that in such worlds, there would be “unintended” artifacts of that volume of free creatures and that quantity of CCFs, which would in fact be truly gratuitous.

What confidence then could a believer have that all things are really ordered for the good of those who love God? If the sinful rejection of God is precisely an undesired artifact of any sufficiently free world (for this just is the assumption of the feasibility objection), then what confidence do we have that those sinful rejections of God or other sinful, evil, or harmful freewill actions of persons in [A] are either to our good or serve any kind of sovereign redemptive purpose? Why should the Molinist assume that a world where God already cannot get all that he desires (universal salvation) due to Libertarian Freewill, that God will get all else that he desires (for all things to work together for the good of those who love him) without any (or even most) of those free actions being gratuitous artifacts of actualizing just such a world with sufficiently free moral agents?

It seems that any answer to this appears to be grossly self-serving and without any warrant from within the Molinistic system because it would need to rely on some principle of predestination or causation which is antithetical to feasibility objection used to make the case to begin with.

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UPDATE

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For years after presenting this objection, nearly all Molinists claimed that I falsely understood Molinism and that no Molinist would ever argue that Molinism logically entails or even gives credence to the notion that there could be gratuitous evil or suffering in the world because God would still be sovereign. However, starting in 2017, one of the main advocates of Molinism (Kirk MacGregor) has started arguing that very thing. You can see his interview on Capturing Christianity HERE where he argues for my very point. He appears to have been playing with this idea for sometime and argued for a far more modest version of it in printed papers as well, specifically in a paper titled "The Existence and Irrelevance of Gratuitous Evil" published in the June 2012 journal of Philosophia Christi. Here he does not argue for the actual existence of gratuitous evil, but merely that it's existence would not cause a problem for the concept of an all loving God.

FOR THE MAIN DIRECTORY OF RESOURCES ON MOLINISM, CLICK HERE.

Metaphysics and the Failure of Molinism - Part 4 (Calling Foul of Feasibility)

CALLING FOUL ON FEASIBILITY

In this section I will be arguing that while logical possibility and feasibility are coherent concepts when it comes to issues within creation where we have limited resources, I’m not sure how any coherent concept of feasibility as a limited factor for logical possibility could exist prior to God actualizing any world. If God had not created or instantiated any logically possible world, then it seems that any logically possible world would be feasible for him to create due to no limiting constraints yet even existing prior to God actualizing them, save logic itself. This means that, in principle, the objection would be that there is a set of logically possible worlds that is not logically possible – a pure contradiction. The restrictions of feasibility seem to only constrain options in actually substantiated worlds where already determined features exist to restrain options. I will attempt to show why this is simply not the case with the worlds possible for God to create prior to his decree to create any specific one.

Imagine world (W1) in which all humans (numerically identical or greater than the actual world) freely choose to accept God and be saved (or where Adam never falls nor any of his progeny) such that all humans spend an eternity in blessed fellowship with God. This means that God would also have the true MK (or counterfactual knowledge on Reformed views) that, “If I were to create (W1), then all humanity would spend a blessed eternity with me.”

There is no reason to object that (W1) is not logically possible. So we can ask, why would God not choose to actualize this world? The Molinist often comes back with something like, “Well (W1) may be logically possible but may not be a feasible world because maybe in any world with that many people, not everyone will freely believe.” But notice what they have done. Rather than showing how (W1) is not possible, they have to change the features of (W1) such that not everyone believes. Well that world would not be (W1) but possibly (Wn). They have not shown how that logically possible world, which is logically possible, would not be feasible to actualize without arguing that (W1) would have to be some other world that is not (W1). This would also mean that God could not possibly have the MK of “If I were to create (W1), then all humanity would spend a blessed eternity with me,” but that is precisely what would be present for the world if it was strictly logically possible.

This means that the Molinist would need to explain precisely why, in principle, some certain world of free creatures is unfeasible due to human freedom but others are not when the metaphysics of their existence, the principles of human freedom, logical possibility, and relationship to God’s knowledge are identical. The only difference is quantitative – the number of people saved in one world is higher than the other. Why should this merely quantitative difference make a principled change to the role that human freedom can play in making a logically possible world unfeasible for God to actualize?
I see no reason, given that (W1) is logically possible, and that God is omnipotent and not limited on resources or possibility, that (W1) would not be a feasible world to create. Yet once this is shown, Molinism’s benefit in theology and apologists vanishes and itself becomes infeasible.

In other words, the simple point of this objection is that I see no non-ad hoc reason to accept that anything that is logically possible would not be feasible to God (logically) prior to his decree to actualize any world. It seems obviously true that there could be a “greater world” [G] whereby greater we mean that none are lost to an eternity apart from the love of God and where the number of persons in that world are the same or greater than the [A] (the actual world) does. The rejoinder is that somehow [G] not feasible for God to create because maybe any any possible world with sufficiently free persons, some will freely choose to disobey and reject God. However, this rejoinder suffers numerous fatal problems and is easily defeated.

If God has MK of the free choices in [G] and [A] (actual world) such that God knew before the decree to create, “If I actualize [G], all humans will repent and believe on me and all will be saved.” [G] is logically possible and as such God could actualize [G] just as much as God would know “If I actualize [A], then (n) number of humans will believe on me and be saved.” The metaphysical relationship between the CCFs of [G] and [A] to the MK and free knowledge of God is static. Not only would this shift the goal posts and alter [G] to be a world other than [G] (by not instantiating the CCfs of [G] but swapping them for CCF’s of some world not-[G]) but it ignores that this would make any world unknowable and opaque to God, because CCF’s could differ from the facts of any world known by God’s MK. That is, if God knew via MK “If I actualize [P] then Y will obtain by the free decisions of the persons therein,” and yet an objection to that could be “well it may be possible that for any world with significantly free creatures, may not be feasible for God,” then this means that God could never have true or reliable knowledge of any possible world.

Once this ad hoc rejoinder of feasibility fails, then the question is easily raised:  If God desires all to be saved and yet to do so freely, why not actualize [G]? Without the resources of the two wills of God available to the Reformed theologian, the Molinist is now in a position where 8 above is not only not a benefit but now, in fact, a liability of the theory.

Therefore, this use of feasibility seems hopelessly ad hoc. There is no reason to believe that such a world would be logically possible but unfeasible, unless we already presuppose the LFW that the Molinist wants to assume as true. The assertion about why such a world is unfeasible assumes LFW is what prevents the world from being feasible. This is special pleading of the most obvious kind. Why can we not then give a reductio argument such as the following:

In addition to this, it may not be feasible for God to actualize a world whereby his actualization of that world does not in some way determine the decisions of the personal agents in that creation unless he abandons all sovereignty and knowledge of that world before creating it (thus he creates it blind). Then that means no other possible worlds are possible unless they are an entirely random, uncontrolled, and unknown to God world. Since MK means that God has exhaustive true counter factual knowledge of all possible worlds, then God has no knowledge of any feasible world since they would not be possible for him to know any details about since they are not feasible for him to actualize without giving up his sovereignty and foreknowledge. So there would be no fact corresponding to "of God actualized world (X), then P would be true." So God therefore doesn't have MK. So if Molinism is true then it is the case that Molinism cannot be true.

In fact, this one final injurious implication of this ad hoc maneuver to make some logically possible worlds unfeasible for God actually entails that God can have no true knowledge (Middle or Free) of any possible world or, the actual world, and thus we are left with a view of the omnipotence of God that is the same or very similar to that of the Open Theist.

Surely the Molinist would want some justification for the denial of feasibility to worlds that God could know and be sovereign over. There would need to be some argument that there is a logical constraint on God’s creative abilities at that point that does not beg the question or engage in ad hoc special pleading. This would be needed for the Molinist as well to argue that (W1) is logically possible but not feasible without begging the question of LFW, and even why LFW would make (W1) unfeasible but not any other world. For why would LFW make (W1) unfeasible but would not make countless other worlds, even the actual world unfeasible? Couldn’t we just say that it may not be possible in any world with LFW for anyone to freely choose to believe in God?

How does an unfeasible world, prior to God’s decree to create any world, not result in such a world being necessarily impossible – thus logically impossible? So they would argue that it is logically possible, but unfeasible, therefore logically impossible?

We could amend to this the following argument:

1. If God is omnipotent, then God can do all logically possible things.
2. God is omnipotent.
3. God can do all logically possible things. (1, 2)
4. It is logically possible for God to create [G].
5. God can create [G]. (3, 4)

It may be left to any theological system, Molinistic, Reformed, Arminian, SBC “Traditionalism,” or any other to explain why and how God could desire some state of affairs that he does not choose to actualize, but surely the reason cannot be a metaphysical principle in which CCFs in [G] are the same and yet different to themselves and to what God foreknew by any species of knowledge.

I have further developed this argument. You can find this updated and expanded version HERE.

FOR THE MAIN DIRECTORY OF RESOURCES ON MOLINISM, CLICK HERE.

Metaphysics and the Failure of Molinism - Part 3 (Personal Agency Prior to Personhood)

PERSONAL AGENCY PRIOR TO PERSONHOOD

This will be more of a development of the above, where given the removal of God’s decree’s as a determinative factor in the truth makers of CCFs, and that the CCF’s would be logically prior to God’s MK, this means that in somewhat the CCFs must be true independently of God from eternity past and thus prior to the actual creation of any persons. This means that CCFs exist not only independent of God, but also of any personal agents with the creaturely freedom to make those decisions. This seems utterly incoherent.

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ADDENDUM
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This section is admittedly SUPER preliminary. I understand the argument (as stated) is not yet valid and so please do not think of the numbering as a strict syllogism. This is more just a kind of directedness argument = an argument in the direction of an argument I'm trying to form. Nevertheless, I think this encapsulates a common objection to LFW, and specifically to the role of personal agency prior to personhood required for the Molinist concept of Middle Knowledge to go through.

It's basically an argument that the presumption of LFW in the metaphysics of Middle Knowledge causes other problems. Basic train of thought though is this kind of reductio ad absurdum:

1. If (G) is an infeasible world because John would never choose X in accordance with X being true in (G), then there is something either exterior or interior to John which determines his choosing ~X.
2. If exterior then LFW is false.
3. If interior, then LFW is possible.
4. If interior to John, it is either determined by something in John, or it is random.
5. The Molinist denies it is random and thus something interior must determine.
6. The conditions of John's nature (genes, environment, experiences, emotions, etc.) are all not freely chosen by John.
7. Therefore all of the conditions that determine John's choices are determined by something outside of John.
8. Christian theology holds that John, individually, is fearfully and wonderfully made by God, as John and not as ~John.
9. God has directly or indirectly (primarily or secondarily) determined the conditions of John's nature which John does not freely choose.
10. This is what we typically call Compatibilism.
11. Molinism therefore affirms Compatibilism in it's defense of LFW.
12. Molinism therefore entails a contradiction.
13. Molinism is therefore false.

FOR THE MAIN DIRECTORY OF RESOURCES ON MOLINISM, CLICK HERE.

Metaphysics and the Failure of Molinism - Part 2 (Grounding Objections)

GROUNDING OBJECTIONS AND THE INCOHERENCE OF MIDDLE KNOWLEDGE

Here I will argue the simple point that simply asserting God has MK as a feature of his omniscience, is not an adequate explanation for how or what god knows. This serves as merely a simple assertion of a brute fact, but while trying to nuance it in such a way as to traffic a new kind of knowledge in that is needed to make the argument work. That is, it rejects previously held grounding explanations, while also eschewing the need to explain their view, in order to bring in a new concept to divine omniscience. This kind of maneuvers should be exceedingly suspect. It not only removes warrant for robust understandings of omniscience long held by theologians, but it then brings in a brand new concept under the guise of not needing to give any grounding explanation at all. I wonder if the Molinist would allow such maneuvers elsewhere in theological or philosophical discourse.

I will offer the alternative grounding objection that God does not possess MK, unless by MK we simply mean that God knows what would have been the case, had he decreed it. This means that God has exhaustive counterfactual knowledge precisely because God knows that whatever he decrees to come to pass, will in fact come to pass. So on historic Protestant conceptions of God’s Natural and Free knowledge, God’s decrees ground his free knowledge. He has absolute exhaustive knowledge of creation because he decreed what comes to pass and he knows what he has decreed. Thus, God can also know that had he decreed something else, some other set of facts, that that other set of facts would have certainly come to pass. Therefore, all of God’s counterfactual knowledge can all be prefaced by the subjunctive, “Had I decreed…” Therefore, God’s exhaustive counterfactual knowledge is just an aspect of his Free Knowledge rooted in his Natural Knowledge of the efficacy of his decrees in the worlds that he would or could actualize. We do not need to invent a third species of knowledge, especially when doing so creates an insurmountable grounding issue and gains us nothing (as we will continue to see throughout this paper).

On Molinistic conceptions of MK, then, there are no truth makers for counterfactuals and thus, no truths to be known. Since the truth makers that would be needed to make the propositions true (either God’s knowledge of what he would decree or his knowledge of his decrees of the actual world, grounded in his Natural Knowledge of the efficacy of his decrees) MK amounts to the claim of brute and yet inexplicable knowledge that had X happened, then X would happen. Possibly God would have such tautologous knowledge, but that would not be the same as knowing what could have happened, and cannot provide a grounding explanation for God’s MK. Would the Molinists and the advocate of Libertarian Freedom accept this form of argumentation from the Compatiblist? Imagine that the Compatiblist simply said that humans are free and God meticulously determined all things is simply a brute fact and no grounding explanation is needed and no truth makers for them possible. Imagine the incredulity to such rhetoric. And yet this is precisely what is provided in the service of defending Molina’s invention of this third species of knowledge.


GROUNDING OBJECTIONS AND THE ASEITY OF GOD

Here I will argue that on Molinism, God’s MK is logically dependent on the personal agency and contingent freewill decisions of yet to be creation persons (what are called Counterfactuals of Creaturely Freedom, CCF). While the Molinist will recoil at the objection and say that it is not that God “looks through the corridors of time” to learn anything, and will protest at what they think is a procedural slight, the issue is not one of procedure or process. The issue here is that God’s MK, and indeed his Free Knowledge that he possesses before creation, would be knowledge about the freewill decisions of personal agents. If the truth makers for the propositions that he knows do not rely on his decrees or anything internal to God, then the truth makers must rely on some aspect of the CCFs. This means that the truth of the CCFs grounds the MK of God and as such must be logically prior to God’s MK. This is a clear violation of the aseity of God.

Some Molinists will argue that Aseity should not be considered part of an orthodox conception of God. But should we allow theologians to start to pick apart aspects of God simply because they make their proposed theology false? Should we allow the Open Theist to start picking apart aspects of God’s omniscience?

FOR THE MAIN DIRECTORY OF RESOURCES ON MOLINISM, CLICK HERE.

Metaphysics and the Failure of Molinism - Part 1 (Introduction and "Mere Molinism")

In this series of articles, I'm going to give the text version of the episode I did entitled "Metaphsyics and the Failure of Molinism." I will devote one blog post to each of the sections that I provided in that episode and I will then add to these considerations as I develop my thoughts and arguments on the issue of Molinism. Please remember that this was originally a comprehensive whole and that some of this is directly related to other articles that have gone before or will come after it. I recognize that I am disrupting some of the unity of the argumentation here by dividing them this way but I hope that this deficit is overcome by the benefit of having the arguments in more bite sized chunks.

Enjoy!

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INTRODUCTION - TERMS AND INTRO

Definitions:
1. Natural Knowledge – This is the kind of knowledge that God has of necessary truths that are true independent of God’s will or decree.  Examples: 1+1=2, “All bachelors are unmarried,” “no squares are circles,” etc.

2. Free Knowledge – This is the kind of knowledge that God has of contingent truths, that is, propositions that are true given God’s will/decree in the actual world. Examples: “The sky is blue,” “the universe was created by God,” etc.

3. Middle Knowledge (MK) – This is the kind of knowledge that God has of counterfactuals of worlds that he could have created but did not create. These are facts that could have been but are not. Examples, “Had Tyler been born with two X chromosomes, then he would have been born female,” “had Mozart died at birth, we would not have his music,” etc.

4. Counterfactuals of Creaturely Freedom (CCFs) – propositional facts about what free creatures would have done in other possible worlds.

Claimed Benefits of Molinism
5. Preserves some version of Libertarian Free Choice without substantially sacrificing Divine Sovereignty.

6. Due to A, that Molinism preserves substantive human responsibility.

7. Due to A and B, can give the most robust solutions to the problem of evil/suffering without blame shift to God.

8. Preserves God’s unfulfilled yet genuine desire that all humanity should be saved apart from the Reformed scheme of the two wills of God. Here this is God’s only will and is defeated by the free choice of man to freely reject God. Thus God saves the most that he can without violating their will.

9. A better explanation for the “problem of the unevangelized” where God could have arranged all those who would not believe in any possible world to be born in areas and times where the gospel would never be preached in their life time – where the pearls would never be cast before swine so to speak. (This is not universal to all Molinists, especially those prior to the work of Alvin Plantinga and William Lane Craig (WLC), but is a common view among current Molinists).

My major objections to Molinism seem, to me at least, to be a development in the discussion of Molinism as a potential way to reconcile God’s sovereignty, and creaturely freedom. While I think there is much fruit to be found in attacking the concepts of omniscience via objections like the Grounding Objection (in which God’s aseity is defended against his being contingent in any way on external truth makers) and I will do so here, I think far more progress can be made in a case against Molinism by attacking the metaphysical assumptions of the system. That is, in addition to confronting the Molinistic view of what God knows, how God knows it, if God really knows it, when he knows it, etc., in order to expose several major problems with Molinism we ought also explore other issues such as the nature of the creative process and its causal impacts, the decrees of God and how they relate to the species of knowledge an omniscient being like God would have, the nature of humans before creation, etc.

It should be stated from the onset of this paper, that in the attempted refutation of Molinism to follow, I am assuming a desire on the reader’s part to remain orthodox, that is, specifically to hold to historic conceptions of the nature of God (Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnibenevolent, Simple, Immutable in his nature, etc.), the ultimate authority of the Scriptures, Chalcedonian views of Christology, etc. Therefore, if it can be shown that some aspect of Molinism is in direct contradiction to Scripture, or if a result of Molinism is that God is made sufficiently not free (or less free than his creation) in some regard, or that when we shake Molinism, something like Open Theism pops out the other side, then it will have been proven that Molinism cannot be an option for the Christian concerned with maintaining historic Biblical orthodoxy.


IS "MERE" MOLINISM A HELPFUL CONCEPT?

In this section, I will argue that what Stratton and others call “Mere Molinism” (MM) is either misleading and demands the Mere Molinist (MMi) to assume numerous unstated positions, or it dies the death of 1000 qualifications to become so vague that it loses anything inherently Molinistic about it.

MMi’s such as Stratton have made numerous alterations to what content is the necessary core of Molinism such that if someone affirms that content, they can be confidently considered part of the Molinist camp. In an article in August 2016, my friend Tim Stratton argued that the two pillars of MM are:

A. God eternally possesses Middle Knowledge (MK).
B. Humans possess Libertarian Free Will (LFW).

Without impugning my friend, this list is ostensibly before his interest in trying to gain more Reformed or Calvinistic support for MM, and since that emphasis has changed, so has his view of what the core pillars of Molinism must be. By this original list, no consciously Reformed or Calvinistic Christian could affirm Molinism. Not only are terms such as MK and LFW left undefined and undefended, once they are defined, they would be outright rejected (which we will see below). In addition, Libertarian Free Will is antithetical to Reformed and Calvinistic anthropology.
In January of 2018, there was then an attempt by Terri Hollifield, a contributor to Stratton’s blog, to add a 3rd pillar to MM, and he recommended it publicly here to Stratton. This 3rd pillar was:

C. God is Sovereign.

As if the original list was not problematic enough, throwing in such a vague 3rd pillar comes across to those familiar with the intramural  debates between Reformed Christians and Molinists to be just a rhetorical hedging – a kind of, “hey, we believe God is sovereign too!” At this point, given A and B, any Reformed Christian reading this (or really any critic of Molinism, MK, and LFW for there are many objectors from many camps), would argue that C is one of the very things that is abandoned by affirming A or B, let alone both. I’m unaware of any private or public discussion on this point between Hollifield and Stratton, but Stratton never seemed to adopt C in his future publications.
In June 2018, Stratton then, likely in the face of pushback and a desire to widen the MM umbrella (both admirable and reasonable motivations), altered the two pillars of MM. In a conversation I had with him, there were a couple different iterations of them (at one point including something even as broad as God being omniscient), but by the time he went to print on his blog, he had landed on these two propositions as the necessary core of MM:

D. Humans sometimes have Limited Libertarian Free Will (LLF).
E. God has middle knowledge (MK).

We can see here the softening of both premises by Stratton. While the alteration of B to D I think was intentional, I’m not sure what benefit is gained from A to E and surely Stratton still believes that God possessed MK from eternity past as a necessary part of his nature. The simplification of B to D then appears to be a conceptual change, while the move from A to E is likely simply a short hand for convenience, and one that we can grant the sake of expediency.

The objections to both of these pillars will come as we progress through this paper, however, what we can point out here is how much of Molinism is actually missing from these two pillars. Even if we were to grant these two propositions for the sake of argument, this would still not get us to the fully developed Molinism that would be helpful in apologetical issues – the thing that Molinists taut as precisely the benefit of holding to a Molinistic theological position. Absent is the concept of God choosing to actualize from a list of feasible worlds, the one that maximizes human salvation while mitigating the amount of suffering and evil. This kind of Most Salvific World should not be confused with Best Possible World semantics, as WLC and others have ably argued against BPW conceptions. Other features missing are issues surrounding Transworld Depravity and why there is condemnation to the unevangelized, the attempts to ground MK not in prescience or foresight but as immediate knowledge, and even how this would relate to issues like regeneration (for Stratton and others have argued that God could suspend LLF in the case of monergistic salvation). There is much Molinism, as employed by apologists who are the main driving force in the advance of Molinism, that is not subsumed under MM.

This means that we can argue that while the MMi who is making such an MM argument may not be dishonest, the rhetorical strategy is that of a “bait and switch” where the full substance if Molinism and its strategic use in questions of evil and suffering, is smuggled in through the lexical backdoor. It is trying to get the reader to swallow far more than they would be willing to chew.

By analogy, it may be helpful to think of this like we would the difference between Theonomy and theonomy, where Theonomy is a specific and well defined theological position concerning the role of the Mosaic Law in our present church age cultures and political systems. The argument is often made by Theonomists for what we could call, “Mere Theonomy,” wherein anyone who loves God’s law and thinks it should have any role in the thoughtlife of the Christian in the public sphere is thus a Theonomist. Here we can see that while many of us think that the Mosaic law has a role to play (especially Reformed Christians who employ the triplicate use of the law for the church and the Christian in our private and public lives), it does not follow that we hold the Theonomic position that the Mosaic law, including the penology, ought be the law of “Christian” nations today. It would be a massive bait and switch to try and say that anyone who loves God’s law and thinks it should serve some function in the church age, that they are de facto Theonomists merely because the Theonomist can lexically pare down their position to loving God’s law and thinking it should play a role in “Christian” nations. This difference we can represent between the Theonomy and theonomy.


This same can be seen between Molinism and molinism, if we even grant the lexical paring down of the Molinistic concepts that have been proposed.


FOR THE MAIN DIRECTORY OF RESOURCES ON MOLINISM, CLICK HERE.

Did Jesus Falsely Predict His Second Coming?

Matthew 24:34 reads, "Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place." (NASB)

For many skeptics this shows that Jesus is a false prophet. Why? Well because they think that Jesus is predicting his second coming at the end of time within the 40 years of those listening to his sermon. But is that the only, or even best understanding of the passage? Or should we understand Jesus' sermon differently?

Enjoy the show!