It is no secret to most that I hold strongly to the Reformed doctrines of grace. But it is equally no secret that I have deep respect for the godly character and scholarship of many of the Arminian persuasion that believe differently than I. The issues that unite us a greater and more substantial than those that divide us. In other words, the Calvinism/Arminianism divide is over non-essential issues in my opinion. What I am saying is that this article is in no way meant for to put an essential line of demarcation concerning the issues of Calvinism and Arminianism. However, just because something is not essential does not mean it is not important. Therefore, I continue to write on these about such.
Yesterday, I wrote that I believe that the doctrine of Prevenient grace is the Achilles heel of Arminianism, Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy (although, less so with Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism since they don’t have such a strong stance on depravity). Prevenient grace literally means “grace that comes before.” Prevenient grace is the Arminian counter to the Calvinistic doctrine of Irresistible grace.
It is important to note at the outset that both Calvinists and Arminians believe that people are born sinful. To make this a little more clear, both sides agree that all people are born with an inherent disposition of antagonism toward God. Both Calvinists and Arminians reject what is know as Pelagianism. Pelagius, a fifth-century British monk, taught that people are born neutral, neither good nor bad. Pelagius believed that people sin as a result of example, not nature. Augustine, the primary opponent of Pelagius, responded by teaching that people are not born neutral, but with a corrupted nature. People sin because it is in their nature to sin; they are predisposed to sin. Both Calvinists and Arminians agree with Augustine believing the Scriptures to teach that people are born with a totally (radically) corrupt spiritual nature, making their disposition toward God perpetually antagonistic. Therefore, according to both sides, people are absolutely helpless without God’s gracious, undeserved intervention. This is an important mischaracterization of Arminian theology that adherents to my position often fail to realize. Arminians believe in the doctrine of total depravity just as strongly as Calvinists. In contrast, Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics both hold out some sense of natural ability. Therefore, they don’t believe that the will is as depraved as traditional Protestants.
This adherence to total depravity makes the Arminian doctrine of Prevenient grace necessary. A former Wesleyan theology professor of mine who believed in Prevenient grace once called it the “ingenious doctrine.” Why? Because according to Arminians it allows them to hold to the biblical position of total depravity, yet also allow true free will. You see, according to Calvinists such as myself, if people are in such desperate condition, being inclined toward enmity with God from birth, and unable to change their condition on their own (as a leopard cannot change its spots – Jer. 13:23), having no “free will” to choose against this depraved nature, then the only way to answer the question, How is anyone saved? is to answer that the will of God saves them. In other words, if our will could not change our disposition, then God must have changed our will. Up to this point, both Calvinists and Arminians agree. But the Calvinist will say that God’s intervention is radical. In our depraved state, God comes into our lives and opens our eyes to His beauty. This intervention happens by means of saving or “irresistible” grace. In our helpless and antagonistic position, while shaking our fists at God, God sovereignly and autonomously regenerates us. Once regenerated, we trust and love the Lord because our nature has been transformed by Him. Therefore, God is the only one to credit for our salvation seeing as how we did not play any part in its genesis (this is sometimes referred to as monergism). But, according to Calvinists, God does not give this gift of saving grace to all people, only the elect. Otherwise, all would be saved.
How do Arminians deal with our depraved condition? Well, they reject the Calvinistic doctrine of “irresistible” grace believing that it does violence to the necessary freedom that must exist for God to have a true loving relationship with man. But something, nevertheless, must make belief possible. In comes Prevenient grace. This is an enabling grace that comes to the aid of all people so that their disposition can be made capable of receiving the Gospel. It does not save them as the Calvinist doctrine of irresistible grace, but it makes the savable. In essence, Prevenient grace restores people to a state of ability. As Adam before the fall was not predisposed toward a willful rejection of God, being able to make a true free will decision, so people, once affected by Prevenient grace are brought dispositionally to Garden of Eden type conditions. God’s grace comes to the aid of all fallen sinners restoring freedom of the will. Now, it is up to the individual to make an unbiased untainted choice for or against God. Voila! With the doctrine of Prevenient grace, total depravity and true freedom can be harmonized. Ingenious, right?
I agree with Calvinist commentator and theologian Tom Schreiner that “Prevenient grace is attractive because it solves so many problems [for the Arminian] . . .” but I also believe that it creates more problems than it solves. I am going to briefly list the two major problems that I see with the doctrine of Prevenient grace, but I, as always, want to remind you that there are many great men in the history of the church and in contemporary Evangelical philosophy and theology that do not see things the way I do. I encourage you to seek out their position from them in addition to reading my analysis.
1. Lack of Scripture: The biggest issue that Calvinists have traditionally had with the doctrine of Prevenient grace is its lack of biblical support. Tom Schreiner’s quote above is incomplete; it concludes with this, “. . . but it should be rejected because it cannot be exegetically vindicated.” While Prevenient grace may solve problems and allow Arminians to hold to a biblical understanding of depravity, the biblical support for the doctrine is very difficult to find. Most Arminians would agree that direct and explicit support from Scripture is not there, but they would say that the concept is necessitated from other explicit teachings. Most importantly, God commands and desires that all people are to repent of their sin (Acts 17:30, 2 Pet. 3:9, et al) and holds them responsible if they do not. This assumes that “all people” have this ability, otherwise God’s desire is hopeless and His command is useless. While there may be some mystery in the fact that God desires the salvation of all and commands all to repent, this does not necessitate nor justify, in my opinion, the insertion of a fairy complected and even more mysterious doctrine of Prevenient grace. In other words, it could be conceded that God commands all people to repent because sin is at issue. People have violated God’s law. This necessitates God to act as God in accordance with His righteous character and reveal the violation of sin, even to those who have no ability to change on their own. In this case, God’s command is true and genuine. Even if no one were to respond, their sin is made manifest and God’s righteousness is exposed through God’s command. It can also be conceded that God does truly desire the repentance of all people, even if people do not have the ability to repent. God’s desire in this case is mysteriously not going to be an active agent in bringing about the salvation of some. Why? I don’t know. But my ignorance in this matter does not justify the implication of Prevenient grace. God can passively desire things that He does not actively will to come about.
2. It does not really solve any problems: Lets assume that we could overcome the difficulties of the lack of Scriptural support of Prevenient grace. Let’s say that I give the Arminians the benefit of the doubt and say that it is possible to interpret the biblical data in such a way that all people receive an enablement that neutralizes their antagonistic disposition toward God. God then would come to each person sometime in their lives and graciously restore their will to the point that they don’t have any predisposed inclination toward rejection or acceptance of the Gospel. What would this look like?
First, this “balancing the scales” of the will makes any choice, good or bad, for God or against, impossible. Why? Because each person would be suspended in a state of perpetual indecisiveness. They would have no reason for choosing A rather than B. Even Arminian theologian Roger Olson admitted to this in a recent post: “One thing I wrestle with about Arminianism is the mystery of free will. I don’t know how it works. There does seem to be an element of uncaused effect in it” (source). If there is no reason to choose one over the other, then all choices, if they were made, would be completely arbitrary (“uncaused effect”).
You see, we make choices according to who we are. If “free will” of the Arminian variety is going to be responsible for making the choice, and this will is neutralized by Prevenient grace, then there is nothing compelling you (character, upbringing, disposition, the Holy Spirit, genetics, etc.) to make any decision whatsoever. Who you are, the primary factor behind every choice, is taken away. There is no “you” to make the choice. It is arbitrary. It does not solve the “loving relationship”problem to say that God is pleased to have a relationship based upon the arbitrary decisions of people. Therefore, in order to hold to the doctrine of Prevenient grace, one is left with either perpetual indecisiveness or an arbitrary choice. Neither of which solves any problems.
Not only this, but lets do the math. Prevenient grace neutralizes the will, making the will completely unbiased toward good or evil. Therefore, this restored “free will” has a fifty-fifty shot of making the right choice. Right? This must be. The scales are completely balanced once God’s Prevenient grace has come upon a person. What would you expect to see if this were the case? Well, I can flip a coin and pretty much expect that the coin would land on heads just as many times as tails. The same should be the case with salvation. You should expect that just as many people to trust the Lord as those that don’t. But just a cursory look through Scripture tells us that this is not the case. For the most part the number of unbelievers has been dramatically higher than that of believers. Take the time of the flood for instance. How is it that out of millions of people (probably much more), there was only one who was found to be righteous? That would be like me flipping a coin a million (or more) times and it landing on tails 999,999 times and only landing on heads once. Impossible. Christ even explicitly said that there will be and always have been many more people who don’t believe than those that do (Matt. 7:14). How can this be if Prevenient grace created a situation of equal opportunity for all people? It can’t.
Now I don’t want to be accused of building a straw man here so I will attempt to represent how Arminians would respond to this. They would say that the contributing factors that influence people’s freedom are those in the outside world. As the snake came from the outside and influenced Adam’s otherwise neutral will, so also outside influences such as culture and family influence people’s will. Therefore, in the time of Noah, the reason why there was only one righteous person on the earth is because the culture had become so corrupt that God could not be found. This is why God destroyed everyone with the flood. This makes some sense, but in reality it simply re-introduces the same problem that Arminians are desperately attempting to avoid – divine unconditional election.
Let me explain. If outside influences play such a large role in influencing Prevenient-grace-restored-people in their choice for or against God, doesn’t that make God the determining factor in whether they are saved or not? If you had a choice, knowing that outside influences were going to play such a big role in the decisions you make, would you want to be born to a family of believers who teach and live the Gospel in a culture of believers that do the same, or would you rather be placed in a committed Muslim home in a Muslim country where the Gospel is unable to give a testimony of God? In other words, would you rather be placed in a Garden with the snake or without the snake? Of course you would say you want to be placed in the environment where the outside influences for belief in God would be most prominently exemplified. Why? Because you have a better chance. Maybe the odds are not perfect, but they would still be much better. Let’s face it, if you were in the preflood world at the time of Noah, as nice a person as you are today, I seriously doubt that you would have followed Noah rather than the rest of the world.
The problem is that you do not decide where you live or when you will be born. You do not determine your outside influences, God does.
Acts 17:26 26 And He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation.
This passage tells us that God determines the outside influences that are the ultimate influence, the determining factor, in our choice. God chose where you would be born, when, and to what family you would belong. Therefore, God’s sovereign unconditional choice is still the ultimate and determining cause in our salvation. This is the very problem that Arminians seek to avoid with the doctrine of Prevenient grace.
If Arminians were to respond by saying that God gives more grace to those in the most depraved conditions, this would not explain why it is that people in cultures and families that are godly have a higher percentage of believers. We are back to flipping the coin. It does not work either way.
In conclusion, I don’t believe that there is a reason for to entertain the doctrine of Prevenient grace outside of a presupposed view of what some believe must be in order for the truth to be palatable. More importantly, since it really does not solve any problems, it is, in my opinion, superfluous and confusing. Even if it may seem more palatable to say that all people have equal opportunity to accept the Gospel, the palatability of a doctrine does not determine its veracity. This is why I reject the doctrine of Prevenient Grace.
Whether you agree with me or not, I hope that I have been able to give you an appreciation of why Calvinists such as myself have issues with the libertarian freedom inducted by Prevenient grace.
360 replies to "Why I Reject the Arminian Doctrine of Prevenient Grace"
WM,
I’m more concerned with whether or not Molinism is logically sound and can in fact provide a solution to the alleged conflict between God’s Sovereignty and LFW then I am specific examples of conterfactuals in the Bible itself. I think there are certainly examples which I think you would admit “could” be read as stating the Truth of a counterfactual. Of course these just like every other passage which surrounds this issue (Calvinism vs. Arminianism vs. Molinism vs. Open-Theism) are open to alternative interpretations. So for instance as you note above it is possible to interpret the specific verses cited by WLC in a manner that is congruent with Calvinism. However, I think you would admit that it is also “possible” to interpret these verses in a manner that is congruent with Molinism.
The Bible passage is the following:
If this is true, then God knew this to be true. But this truth contains a counterfactual conditional (“…if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.”). It’s hard to see how something other than a Molinist interpretation would be reasonable here. It’s also unclear why the conditional is self-contradictory (if it really is logically impossible).
WM,
I could be off here, but what I am reading WLC as arguing is that his opponents are assuming a version of Correspondance Theory in which a truthbearer must have a truthmaker that either is a concrete object or implies one. Thus on this theory abstract ideas or states of affairs are not valid truthmakers. Whether or not this is “Truthmaker Theory” as described in the Stanford article I linked earlier I am not clear on. I think the terminology may be messed up here.
Suffice to say it would seem that WLC holds to traditional Correspondance Theory, and in this article he is arguing against a modern version of Correspondance Theory in which a valid Truthmaker MUST be or imply a concrete object.
I don’t know if that helps clarify things at all, but that is what I am getting from the portion of this article on Truthmaker Theory (whether the terminology here is correct I don’t know).
WM,
To modify the above real quick. Based on the discussion of somethings not requiring truthmakers I think WLC holds to a slightly modified version of Correspondance Theory and not the classical theory (as in Socrates/Plato classical). However, whichever version he is advocating it is far less radically changed from the original then the version he is arguing against in this paper.
Question #1 is answered because it’s essential to Molinism that there be only one created timeline. That’s just their basic assumption: that God scans all the logical and middle possibilities, and “actualizes” exactly one.
Question #2 is answered by you below, and I quote: “If libertarian free will is true, not everything is actualized by God; some states of affairs are (at least in part) actualized by humans and God simply knows what humans will choose.” This contradicts Molinism, which says that everything is actualized by God as part of the act of creation.
Molinism doesn’t hold that God merely _knows_, but that He _actualizes_. God makes an active choice in order to accept or reject each possible free choice in order to produce the single history that is most acceptable to God. Molinism differs from Calvinism in that Molinism says that there are limits to how good God can make the world; it says that it’s possible that God will have to accept some less-than-optimal choices because there are no better choices that a free being could make. For example, it’s possible that ANY human would have fallen if put into Adam’s condition; thus, God had no choice but to allow the fall.
Humans do not actualize (according to Molinism); they simply choose. In open theism humans DO actualize reality by their choices. LFW in general doesn’t explain who takes priority.
No. I think you’re misunderstanding my point. The two are incompatible; that doesn’t mean that middle knowledge fights and defeats libertarian free will. It merely means that the two belief systems don’t work together; it’s…
(Sorry, cut off.)
…It merely means that the two belief systems don’t work together; it’s like trying to be a flat-earth satellite technician (I don’t mean to imply that either of the beliefs I’m talking about is as bad as flat-earth).
I’m neither a Molinist nor a believer in libertarian free will. I’ve got no dog in this fight.
-Wm
The problem is that there are three ways an if statement can be true. First, the condition (“if they had understood this”) can be false; in that case, no matter what’s in the consequent, the entire statement is always true. Second, the condition can be unknown, but the consequent is true. But there’s an odd third case that’s active here: the condition is FALSE, and the consequent is true. I call this “deeply true” — it’s a truth that penetrates the armor of the conditional. Normally, logical reasoning can’t do that, but Molinism claims that God’s middle knowledge can, even when the condition involves a free will decision.
There are several problems with reading this statement as a Holy-Spirit inspired revelation through Paul.
First, what he’s allegedly revealing is utterly banal. It seems perfectly obvious that if any person understood THAT, they wouldn’t have crucified Christ.
Second, what he’s revealing isn’t soul-specific. Molinism claims that middle knowledge requires both a soul and a circumstance; this “revelation” isn’t specific as to which soul is being talked about. Dr. Craig admits that the “rulers” may be humans or demons — in other words, he has not the least clue how to apply this alleged revelation.
Third, what he’s revealing is part of a supporting argument which is structured so that a doubting person would naturally doubt the conditional, not the consequent. Paul argues many…
(…)
Third, what he’s revealing is part of a supporting argument which is structured so that a doubting person would naturally doubt the conditional, not the consequent. Paul argues many points that again and again say things of the form “man can not understand”; the conditional is another repetition of this, and it appears to be in the form of a reductio ad absurdum.
My reading of this isn’t part of any kind of argument about creaturely freedom; I read it as a purely logical argument. Paul points to the obvious fact that the rulers DID crucify Christ as evidence that they didn’t understand. What didn’t they understand? Read the passage. Paul is talking about the Wisdom of God. The entire chapter is about nothing else.
WLC is “pulling a fast one” to attempt to insert some kind of revelation about the rulers of this age into this passage. It’s not there. Paul isn’t sharing a secret about the souls of the rulers of this age. He’s making an argument that supports his point, and the evidence he cites is evidence that’s obviously true to everyone. Yes, everyone knows that the rulers did kill Christ; and surely it’s obvious to everyone that if the rulers did understand the wisdom of God they wouldn’t have done that — not because their soul would have made a free choice, but rather because NOBODY could possibly be so foolish as to kill the Lord of Glory when they understood the Wisdom of God.
-Wm
I don’t see where WLC says anything about a “concrete object”. I do see him saying that traditionally we allow “abstractions, such as facts or states of affairs”, so I suppose that’s implicitly accusing his opponents of not allowing those; but because he never gets specific enough to actually point out where one of his opponents actually DOES anything related to that, I can’t examine his claims.
I guess my problem is that Craig spends a LOT of the article making ungrounded (ha ha) and vague accusations. He never connects his claims about the truthmaker theory to anything concrete that his opponents said — with the single exception of that one person who deliberately used the word “caused”, as in “truthmakers _cause_ their corresponding truthbearers to be true.” I think WLC is correct to berate that guy, but even if that guy actually meant that error and refused to accept correction, that still doesn’t impact other uses of the grounding objection (I do like how WLC kept going afterwards assuming that he shouldn’t be stopped by the word “cause”).
That’s a common problem, yes. We’ve hit it several times in the short time we’ve been talking.
-Wm
By the way, I do think TurretinFan’s response is helpful. I responded in exactly that way to all three of his “warrants” for Molinism. He’s a bit terse in dismissing the Biblical statements, but in the final analysis he’s correct — the Bible doesn’t specifically reveal God’s pre-creation knowledge, and therefore all the counterfactuals which are in it are necessarily either counterfactuals about God (which doesn’t involve creaturely freedom, and thus isn’t natural knowledge), or counterfactuals about already-created things (and thus are free knowledge).
…and so on.
-Wm
WM,
“I don’t see where WLC says anything about a “concrete object”. I do see him saying that traditionally we allow “abstractions, such as facts or states of affairs”, so I suppose that’s implicitly accusing his opponents of not allowing those; but because he never gets specific enough to actually point out where one of his opponents actually DOES anything related to that, I can’t examine his claims.”
The part I am talking about comes right after the section on truthmakers causing truthbearers to be true. WLC states this,
“It might be said that the demand for a cause of the truth of true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom is a mere rhetorical flourish on the part of the anti-Molinist. But even if we give him the benefit of the doubt in this regard, the fact remains that the anti-Molinist still seems to be presupposing that in order to be true, counterfactuals of freemdom must have truthmakers that either are or imply the existence of concrete objects”
WLC then spends the rest of this section refuting this idea as well as the attempt of some to save this idea by trying to carve out an exception whereby negative statements do not need truthmakers. Ultimately this whole section is aimed at refuting this idea which WLC says is neccessary for the objections of anti-Molinists to hold.
FYI – I printed out this paper just to try to make sense of it – that is something I rarely if ever do lol.
Thank you, Michael. I’m sorry I had to have that pointed out to me. It looks like a major contradiction of what I thought was his main thesis.
This paper is, I think, worth trying to make sense of. I keep getting the feeling that WLC didn’t put enough effort into editing it — it’s like he posted a draft.
One of the things WLC quotes about Truthmaker Theory is that it doesn’t pronounce on the ontological category of truthmakers. (Ontological Category means things like “concrete”, “abstract”, and so on.)
So WLC says:
1. The grounding objection depends on Truthmaker Theory being true.
2. TT doesn’t limit the ontological category of truthmakers. (Stanford agrees and says that this means that classical theories tend to limit truthmakers to a single type, such as “concrete”.)
3. Grounding Objection depends on all truthmakers being concrete.
4. The grounding objection therefore depends on the distinctive feature of Truthmaker theory being untrue.
This seems like a strong enough contradiction to require one of those statements to be discarded. WLC claims #1 is true without any support that I can see; he’s certainly NOT meeting any kind of burden of proof.
I disagree with point #3 on the grounds that the claim made by Molinism is much stronger than mere knowledge of abstract facts. Molinism says not merely that God knows counterfactuals (which both sides of this debate agree; for example, God knows how stellar physics will play out to the end with total precision, for any possible starting arrangement of matter and energy), but that God knows counterfactuals of things that are entirely “up to us” without us existing.
The grounding objection captures that there is a problem there: either our actions are not “up to us” (in the LFW sense), or God couldn’t possibly know our actions without first actually creating us, so that our actions can be grounded in the one thing that gives them reality (us).
Classical Molinist thinkers did…
(I came so close to meeting the posting guidelines!)
Classical Molinist thinkers did admit that Molinism is deterministic, that our actions depend on something that can be known about our soul in advance of those actions.
-Wm
WM,
“I keep getting the feeling that WLC didn’t put enough effort into editing it — it’s like he posted a draft.”
While we certainly agree on this point – either that or his editor was having an off day (many academics are not the best writers in the world and have someone who edits their work for them).
As to what he is actually arguing I think it is best to discard all the terminology and focus on his two main objections to the grounding objection which are either 1) the grounding objection requires truthmakers to cause truthbearers to be true, or 2) the grounding objection requires that truthmakers be or imply concrete objects. Once you do this things start to make more sense.
I guess I should post a rough, linear outline. Some of the points he makes are actually supported. I’ll try that here.
1. Molinism is warranted. (Support attempted.)
2. Grounding objection is based on Truthmaker theory. (Unsupported.)
3. Grounding objection is crudely stated as causal, but cannot be. (Supported.)
4. Grounding objection requires only concrete objects as truthmakers. (Unsupported — he doesn’t show at all that the grounding objection requires this.)
5. Grounding arguments are naive. (Support attempted, but not tied onto the grounding objection.)
6. Counterfactuals of creaturely freedom do not need a truthmaker at all. (Support attempted and tied to the grounding objection.)
7. Counterfactuals may be grounded the same way future tense statements are. (Well supported, but not for counterfactuals of creaturely freedom.)
8. Counterfactuals of creaturely freedom could be made true by “facts or states of affairs”. (Support attempted – but most tenuously, and not obviously in a middle-knowledge-compatible way.)
9. Counterfactuals of creaturely freedom need not “be grounded in truths about what is in fact the case.” (Supported. This is the most seriously engaged argument I’ve seen — although I think he goes badly wrong in making the bizzare claim that natural laws are counterfacts.)
10. The grounding objection seems implicitly to reject libertarian freedom. (Supported, but with the dubious and disputed claim that how a libertarian agent would choose to act is a [prior] fact.)
-Wm
The fact that God created one timeline does not imply that there is only one _possible_ timeline (I’m assuming you are referring to metaphysical possibility, is that assumption correct?).
I don’t think that’s part of Molinism. A world in which everyone freely chooses not to sin is metaphysically possible, but even with God having middle knowledge, it may not be feasible for God to create such a world _precisely because_ whether such a universe is actualized is largely up to us free-willed creatures.
Correct me if I’m mistaken, but under Molinism humans have libertarian free will and are thus able to originate their own causal chains. Are you using a non-standard definition of “actualize”? What exactly do you mean when you use the term if a libertarian choice causing an effect (say, the creation of a house) is insufficient for fit the category of “actualization”?
Wade,
Why are you talking about a single metaphysically possible timeline? What does that have to do with this discussion? Is “metaphysically possible” something like “logically possible”? I assume it’s not, because if it were, you’d already have the answer to your question. I thought I understood your questions before, but you keep asking what sounds like the same question that I keep answering, so obviously I’m not answering your actual question.
As I’ve explained, that’s not Molinism. Molinism says that God knows exactly what each soul will do given every possible set of circumstances God can place that soul in, PRIOR to the soul’s creation. God then actuates the world containing the decisions He likes best. God is the one who vetoes the decisions He doesn’t like; the freedom is simply freedom to be yourself; and also the freedom to block God.
Both you and Dr. Craig say that, yes. Other Molinists disagree. More importantly, the definition of LFW disagrees with the definition of Molinism.
If LFW is true, Molinism in the sense of God being able to design the best possible universe doesn’t work (you’d get open theism instead, with God planning for the best possible response to each free choice as it plays out). If Molinism is true, LFW doesn’t work (because there’s only one actualized choice you can make, and it’s the one your soul was naturally going to make anyhow).
-Wm
WM,
“Molinism says that God knows exactly what each soul will do given every possible set of circumstances God can place that soul in, PRIOR to the soul’s creation. God then actuates the world containing the decisions He likes best. God is the one who vetoes the decisions He doesn’t like; the freedom is simply freedom to be yourself; and also the freedom to block God.”
I hate to be dense but I have yet to come across anything in Craigs writings which I understand to support this. I looked through some of the stuff you linked earlier, but I couldnt’ find a quote which specifically supports your assertion that in Molinism God chooses which body a Soul goes in to and then that Soul deterministically determines a persons actions given any set of circumstances (i.e. given circumstances X Soul Y will always commit actions Z). I fear we may be burning strawmen.
Michael, the reason I’m so happy to point to http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=7437 in response to your question (as I did before, although without explaining) is that there Craig denies one reading of Molinism:
My objections aside: we assume ad arguendum that given soul S and circumstance C, S can choose any possible choice. Okay, assumed.
Sufficient for what? The answer must be: sufficient for there to be only one value. If there are two values, the problem is still indeterminate, by definition, and he says “you’re confusing the proposition’s being sufficiently determinate to have a truth value with the choice’s being causally determined”. But if the proposition has a truth value, it must have only one value.
That conditional can be either true or false, not both; and it’s specified (allegedly) well enough that it has only one specific value, which only God knows. But if it has only one value, there is grounds for its value: either because it’s grounded in a free choice that’s already been made, or because it’s grounded in the condition, which contains reference to the soul and the given conditions. The former means that the soul has made the choice prior to creation; the latter means semi-compatibilism is true. (But note that this is not an argument for determinism — it merely speaks of grounding, not causation.)
But wait! There’s more. This is only knowledge; God ACTS.
-Wm
WM,
I think the argument you appear to be making assumes exactly what WLC was arguing against in the article we’ve been discussing – namely you are assuming that the truthmaker for the proposition that given fully specificied circumstances C, agent S will perform action Z must be grounded in something concrete (e.g. either deterministic antecedent events or that the choice has already been made).
Okay, we’ve talked about a set of counterfactual propositions; but this isn’t yet Molinism. Molinism holds that God knows the values of these propositions, but he doesn’t know them for no purpose: he uses His knowledge in order to act. The specific action God takes is to create, and the reason those propositions are important is that God creates as guided by His Wisdom and by His knowledge of those propositions.
When God creates, it is His will that determines which of the propositions become deeply true — that is, He makes the conditions true, and therefore the consequences must become true. God’s action also makes all the consequences that He didn’t want to happen FALSE (the counterfactuals are still true, but only vacuously so). For example, one counterfactual is that I could have skipped work today — I did not do so, but I know there have been circumstances in which I did skip work, and God certainly could have arranged for some similar circumstances to happen this morning.
So God chose to act, and after He acted, the propositions that consist of the consequences of all those non-chosen counterfactuals are false, while the ones whose circumstances God did create are all true. Were any of those conditionals given those truth values prior to God’s creation? That is, was it true from eternity that I would go to work today? I knew it was true this morning — when did God begin to know that it was true?
I’m in a rush… Won’t get back to this tonight. Let’s see if I’m making sense, sorry if I’m not.
-Wm
Because if you’ll recall you said this:
Hence I asked, “how exactly does Molinism imply there is only one possible timeline?” Incidentally, is the type of possibility metaphysical possibility?
Even if true, it is at least consistent with Molinism. You said, “Molinism…says that everything is actualized by God as part of the act of creation.” I’ve provided what appears to be a counterexample.
Well, Molina himself believed that God knew how people with libertarian free will would freely choose in whatever circumstances she might be placed in; Molina himself believed in libertarian freedom. I had assumed this is the sort of Molinism we were talking about.
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I mostly agree, but I don’t know if any Molinist here believes that God is able to design the best possible universe. I for one do not, largely because I think whether this universe is the best of all possible worlds is largely up to us free-willed creatures.
That sounds a bit like a modal fallacy. Even if there is only one actualized choice you _would_ make given certain conditions C, it doesn’t appear to follow that there is only one actualized choice you _could_ make under C.
Michael, could you show me where that assumption enters into my argument? I don’t see it. I don’t even see why it should enter in; I’m not using any form of the grounding objection. I’m mentioning the word “grounding”, but only because I want to make it clear that there’s no causal influence happening — at least not until God acts in creation.
Also, I’m not assuming that C is deterministic; I’m only assuming what WLC is explicit about: that given C and S, there is exactly one actual action that God can know.
This is also not a modal argument, because although God’s knowledge doesn’t determine the events He knows, God as First Cause does determine what He creates. I claim that a consistently LFW account of creation cannot be Molinist, because (in short) the Molinist account says that God creates C and S in order to produce each decision that adds up to the best timeline available to Him (all things considered). Now, I’m not saying here that there is no LFW account of creation. I’m only saying that it isn’t a Molinist account as that account is defended by Dr. Craig, even though Craig makes no assumptions that are fatal by themselves (the fatal result is required by Molinism’s insistence that first all counterfactuals of creaturely freedom be true; second that God is capable of fulfilling the conditions of some of them by His creative power, and denying the fulfillment of other conditions by His creative power; and third that God actually uses that ability to design the best possible world).
BTW, I apologize in brief for misspeaking by saying “best possible timeline” which made it sound like “best metaphysically possible timeline”; I meant “best actually possible, all things considered”; I’ll discuss more in response to Wade’s post, for which I’m grateful.
A little more in my next post…
-Wm
The above means that, in Molinism, when we ask “why do we live in the best possible world (all things considered)?” The answer is, “because God willed and accomplished it.” But this also means that, in Molinism, when we ask “why did this person choose to do something good?” the answer must be the same “because God willed and accomplished it.” Unless, of course, you accept semi-compatibilism (i.e. moral credit for an action goes to the actor who desired the moral outcome).
To put this another way: the alleged advantage of Molinism is, of course, that when a person does something evil, the conclusion is that God allowed it because there was no better world available; God didn’t will the evil, but rather accepted it as necessary to the greatest available good (all things considered). But if we accept this for the sake of argument, we also have to accept that when good happens, God DOES will it (since it contributes directly to His goal) and thus He should be credited with it.
-Wm
Wow, I don’t blame you. I should have said something like “one actual timeline” or “one line of actually possible events.” I’m sorry I didn’t even notice that.
I know of too many possible meanings for that term to use it. What do you mean by it? I’ve tried to use “logically possible” for the level of God’s natural knowledge.
Humans cannot actuate anything in Molinism — but some fact about humans that God knows through middle knowledge is capable of “vetoing” logical possibilities. Humans cannot actuate, but they CAN, in a sense, veto. The only trick is that they can only veto before they exist.
It’s not. God’s action is the direct cause of your existence; and God designed and chose His action in order to actuate the timeline which included THAT choice, and not the rejection of that choice. That choice WILL happen, and this is not “up to you” — unless you accept a compatibilist view.
I’ve heard that a lot. My immediate reaction is still “So what?”
-Wm
Anybody out there,
I haven’t commented on any of these threads for a long time now. But I find myself having a question here that I wonder if someone can answer.
It seems that this discussion on Molinism hinges a lot on the idea that God created the world He wanted from a range of possible worlds to get the results he wanted with the people he was choosing to create.
Can someone tell me where this idea of many possible worlds/universes comes from? Is there any Scriptural backing for that or is it a philosophical idea that has been proposed by Molina and those that came after him?
This is an idea I have never heard before until this whole discussion and I guess I am confused. Maybe someone has addressed it here, but I guess I missed it if they did.
Cheryl,
This idea of “logically” possible worlds is ultimately a philosophical idea, but I think if you think about it for a second it makes alot of sense. For instance God could have created a universe in which the Earth is a barren, volcanic wasteland incapable of supporting life. Now in such a universe it would be logically impossible to also have humans living on the Earth (perhaps some other life form could survive in such an environment, but not humans). Thus a universe in which the Earth is a wasteland and humans (as we know them) live on the Earth is a logically impossible universe.
WM,
I’ve said it before, but I agree with Wade that there is some kind of modal fallacy going on here. At some level you still seem to essentially be saying that because God knows what someone will freely choose given a set of circumstances that person choice can’t be free.
Now you try to get around this by claiming that in Molinism God doesn’t just know, but actualizes one timeline from many options. Yet this seems to be only slightly different the what a classical Arminian believes. In near as I can tell everyone, save some Open Theists, would agree that God chose to create this universe, with this set of physical laws, having full knowledge of what free creatures in this universe would choose to do. I don’t see how saying that God chose this universe from a range of possibilities knowing what free creatures would do in this universe changes anything from God simply creating this universe knowing what free creatures would do in it. The question of whether or not a choice is free has nothing to do with whether or not God created the universe knowing that you would make that choice.
Cheryl, although “logical possibilities” is a philosophical construct, it comes into play in every theory of God’s creation. Michael explained that nicely, I think.
What’s unique to Molinism is the idea of “middle knowledge”. And although that’s also a philosophical construct not in the Bible, it’s also true that Calvinism has a similar weakness, as does classical Arminianism — all 3 systems depend on a philosophical construct to get the detail they seem to need.
For Calvinism, the construct is God’s eternal decree. For Arminianism, the construct is libertarian free will. For Molinism, it’s middle knowledge.
So none of the systems are pure in the sense of being capable of being taught using only paragraphs of Scripture. But neither do any of them contradict Scripture, at least not on the surface.
-Wm
Michael T,
Thanks for your explanation. I thought that was the case but as I have done no in depth reading on Molinism myself, I thought maybe I had missed something here.
I have to say that for me personally, I would have a very hard time accepting Molinism for that very reason. That doesn’t mean that I believe it is necessarily wrong. But frankly, I have come out of circles where teachings/doctrines were accepted that had no solid Biblical back-up, and it turned into a first class disaster. I am, therefore, very hesitant to accept any belief system that has a philosophical basis, or any other basis other then out right Biblical support. (That of course, doesn’t mean folks don’t interpret what is “Biblical” in different ways. But something that is ultimately philosophical in part of its basis is something I am going to have to be very cautious of. I just don’t want to go there again at all.)
William,
Thanks for your reply too. You posted yours while I was posting my last one. I can see what you are saying, up to a point any way. However, it seems to me that Molinism is going way out on a limb here in the idea of “possible worlds” in a way that neither Calvinism or Arminianism do–in my understanding anyway. Maybe I am really missing something here. But that is how it looks to me at the moment anyway.
Cheryl, please be very careful rejecting something merely because it has a philosophical component. As I’ve claimed above, LFW has such a component, and you not only adhere to it, you actually adhere to it in a form that is stronger than Michael’s claims — I referred to your form of LFW as “hard LFW”, since you insist that LFW must allow for multiple actual possibilities.
-Wm
William,
I’d better say here that I probably don’t have time to get into all of this very much again. As the Grandma that has to organize and orchestrate the family Christmas gathering, I find myself quite busy these days.
I know we disagree on the LFW issue, but it seems to me that the Bible does show people as being able to choose between two options. So I don’t believe my understanding of that is purely philosophically based.
And please, don’t get me wrong, I didn’t say that Molinism is automatically wrong because of its philosophical component. I just know from past very bad personal experience that I have to be very careful in the area of accepting a theology that doesn’t have a strong Biblical support in one of its core components. Isn’t there an old saying, (can’t think how it goes exactly), about being once burned and being twice wary? I think that is how I feel about this for myself, at least at this time.
William,
To clarify, (unless I have totally forgotten how this conversation has gone in the past!) it was the word “choose” or “choice” that I said had to have more then one option in order for it to be valid, not LFW. I said people weren’t really free to make a choice, to choose, if there was only one option available to them that they could possibly take. In was my understanding that you aren’t “choosing” to do something if there is absolutely nothing else available for you to do.
So long as you don’t elaborate beyond that, nobody here disagrees with you at all.
It’s when you ask more elaborate questions that scriptural intepretations and philosophical reasoning becomes important.
Here the word “possibly” hides a lot of complexity. The Molinists and Libertarians both say that they allow people to “possibly choose” any physical possibility; but Molinists say that the person will choose the one. Compatibilists like myself don’t see a difference between that model of choice and our own.
Anyhow, Merry Christmas! Have a great time with your family.
-Wm
Merry Christmas to you too, William!
Not at all. I’m actually not saying anything about God’s knowledge beyond the minimum required because I’m responding to middle knowledge — that is, I adopt it for the sake of argument.
This defeats your claim that I’m “essentially” saying something about God’s knowledge. I’m not; I’m essentially talking about God’s action. This is not merely “getting around it”, although I certainly was careful to not repeat it :-). In this case, I avoided it by not making my thesis depend on God’s knowledge.
-Wm
The problem with Molinism is not that “God created the universe knowing”. God knew, of course, that His decree would come to pass, before He designed His actions that would bring that decree about. The problem with Molinism is that God’s decisions in creation are conditioned on the specifics of our free choices, which in turn is conditioned on the specifics of God’s decisions in creation. This is not a vicious circle because God’s actions are conditioned on the facts known to middle knowledge, while our actions are conditioned on whatever makes middle knowledge true.
I think it’s reasonable to say that both open theists and Molinists hold a similar idea of middle knowledge: God from eternity knows all true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom. Molinism claims that God only knows one out of a number of mutually contradictory counterfactuals; open theism claims He knows all of them.
For example, Molinism says that from eternity, God knew that, if He created this world, when I received your post I would respond to it like *this* exactly. Open Theism says that God knows all the ways I could respond, and allows me to choose which one.
“Classical Arminianism” is a little harder to explain, because it wasn’t developed as a philosophical position, and most adherents adopt either Molinism or Open Theism. (The same is true for Calvinism, by the way, for some different philosophical positions.)
I don’t understand how Molinism’s claim can possibly be true. That is, I don’t understand how only one of the things that I *could* do is, from eternity, the only thing that I *would* do; and this is known without any input whatsoever from me. Really, it’s not “up to us”.
-Wm
WM,
FYI I’m still interested in this post – just been very busy. I also am hoping maybe Paul Copan will engage a bit with Molinism on his post though I know he is very busy as well. Ultimately without a well informed Molinist such as Copan or Craig engaging and explaining the intricacies I fear that we may be burning strawmen. I agree with your last post that Molinism’s claims seem counterintuitive. This is why I’m skeptical of it. However, simply because something is counterintuitive doesn’t mean it is wrong – if that were the case we’d have to throw out your semi-compatibilism on the same grounds (at least according to most ppl’s intuition).
Michael, I agree on conterintuitivity; I wasn’t presenting any kind of argument by intuition.
Most positions can be deliberately presented in a way that causes people to agree or disagree with their distinctives according to the presenter’s will; compatibilism is no exception. For this reason, I reject most appeals to intuition. Even where there’s NO appeal to popular intuition the argument may actually be strong, as with relativistic physics and quantum theory (I’ve spent YEARS attempting to hone my intuition to agree with relativity, and have just begun to attempt quantum theory). To me, it’s worth arguing that it’s possible to develop an intuition for an argument; it’s not worth arguing against a position based on the fact that some people don’t currently have that intuition.
In addition, most of the appeals to intuition that are presented allegedly against semicompatibilism are actually completely within semicompatibilism (some of Paul Cowan’s arguments above are, and most of what Craig presents in his “4 views” podcast are).
Conversely, very few appeals to intuition allegedly in favor of libertarian free will actually capture the true distinctives: not that we can do what we want, but rather that we can choose regardless of what we want. I’ve managed to get only one pro-LFW debater to admit that he’d expect to see people choosing things that they didn’t in any way desire if LFW were true (of course, he didn’t see anything remarkable about that, although he didn’t attempt to cite any instance).
I do concede that people’s collective experience is a good evidential argument for subjective arguments (LFW, if it existed, would be subjective), so we must be open to collecting subjective “evidence”; but we have to be careful to phrase our questions when doing so, since we want to collect experiences, not merely prejudice.
-Wm
WM,
As you aware LFW itself is kind of a fuzzy term. Let’s say for a sake of argument that you are right and our choices given a set of circumstances are fully determined by our desires. I do not think that would neccessarily defeat LFW. This would only be the case if those desires were themselves deterministically caused. The reason for this is that ones desires our still within the perview of the individual and if one freely comes to desire what they desire (by which I mean their desires weren’t deterministically caused) LFW I think would still exist (albeit a weaker form of LFW). It is only when something external to the individual (God, cause and effect, etc.) deterministically causes X which deterministically causes Y which deterministically causes ones desires, which deterministically causes ones choices that LFW would be false. As long as there is a free choice of any kind that is made within this chain and that is internal to the individual (e.g. choosing how events effect ones desires) then LFW of some form is still true (I think).
Michael, I don’t see how that’s sufficient. If our choices are determined by our desires but we can change our later desires, then we either have choices in how we change our desires or we have no choice. If we have no choice then our desires, and therefore the outcome of our later choices, are set by something other than us; but if we have choice in how we change our desires, then that choice is made in the same way our later choice will be made, on the basis of the desires at the time of the choice.
And that, by supposition, is a fully determined situation.
So, again, this isn’t enough to support LFW. You have to allow libertarian choice at every juncture — or none — or identify a place where it does occur.
Agreed, although it’s not ONLY external determinism which could rule out LFW; it’s also nondeterminism (internal or external).
In order for LFW to make sense, the entire chain of human action must be deterministic, except for that one precise point where “free choice” is made: and that one precise point must be nondeterministic in precisely the way that makes it, somehow, OWNED by the person whose will it is.
If any other link in the chain is nondeterministic, or if that one link isn’t nondeterministic in PRECISELY the way required, then Inwagen’s “Mind” objection applies, and free will does not provide moral responsibility.
The odd thing about LFW is that the precise way it requires nondeterminism to work is SO precise that it doesn’t seem like nondeterminism at all.
And then you have Biblical evidence: no man can choose Christ; salvation is not of man’s will, but of God’s. So there’s at least some constraint, some bondage, on man’s will…
Funny. My word count must not count punctuation, or something. That was the end of my post — it cut off only the period and my three-character signature.
-Wm
WM,
Aren’t you reasoning in a circle if you are saying that our desires determine our desires??
Michael, no. It’s implied in your own post: our past choices determine our present desires, and our present desires determine our present choices.
It’s not a circle; it’s merely change over time.
-Wm
WM,
Still not sure how this isn’t circular
How is saying desires determinisitically cause choices which determinisitically cause desires really any different then saying desires cause desires. Your basically saying that someones desires what they desire because they desired for past choices to affect their desires the way they did. This ultimately makes the choice irrelevant and one is only left with desire.
Regardless I still think it is at least possible that desires determine choices, but past actions including choices do not determine ones desires.
It wouldn’t be circular even if I *did* claim that desires determine desires — that would be a tautology, not circular reasoning. What I said was that IF humans can choose which future desires to adopt, AND choices occur according to desires, THEN we choose future desires according to our present desires. For example, suppose I love God, but I like cursing my enemies. Because I desire to enact my love for God more perfectly, I desire to obey His word — so I *choose* to build in myself a desire to bless and not curse. But this choice is, like all my other choices, based on my desires.
I’m arguing from the principles you offered as hypothetical, by the way — I’m not trying to prove reality, merely consistency within your hypothetical.
Clearly some of our desires are not “up to us” in any way, whether due to nature or nurture. So your claim here is true in at least one way, although not an interesting one. Are you claiming that we determine our desires in a way that is “up to us”, but is neither a choice nor an action?
-Wm
Oh, and let me add a hypothetical of my own, in the spirit of your hypothetical: I will willingly suppose, for the sake of argument or in reality, that we have libertarian free choice between which of two actions to take providing that the actions satisfy conceptually equal desires — and that this is a very loose definition, so that it may happen a lot; “conceptually equal” may be allowed to include when the actor hasn’t carefully weighed the desires and just assumes they’re roughly equal.
I’m not actually anti-LFW. What I’m actually against is two things, one philosophical and one theological.
Philosophically, I’m against the idea that man MUST be above all determination in order to make man morally responsible. I believe that even determined actions (such as those brought about by total depravity) can justly condemn a man.
Theologically, I’m against the idea that man can either transcend or frustrate God (i.e. do better or worse than God planned). I believe that the Bible speaks in many places against this.
My philosophical position is formally known as semi-compatibilism (I didn’t know that before you came along, thanks!). Semicompatibilists don’t necessarily care whether LFW is true or not (although many of us are suspicious of it at least in many cases); they simply insist that moral responsibility always accompanies desired action.
-Wm
Exactly how would that entail the falsity of LFW though? It doesn’t seem to follow that it would. Perhaps I could see your reasoning better if you gave an argument with clearly delineated premises and conclusion.
In my experience this term refers to that which the way the world is or could have been like, e.g. it is metaphysically possible for the universe to have different physical laws, but it is not metaphysically possible that torturing infants just for fun is morally permissible. In Molinism, we could say that certain worlds are feasible for God to create and others, while metaphysically possible (e.g. nobody sinning) are not.
Well, that would seem to argue against your claim that “If Molinism is true, LFW doesn’t work (because there’s only one actualized choice you can make, and it’s the one your soul was naturally going to make anyhow).” Molinism doesn’t appear to imply that. Or if it does, some additional explanation will be needed.
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