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