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.
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.
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