Questions About Molinism

KEVIN HARRIS: Well, it’s finally happening. Something so many of us have been waiting for for a long time. What am I talking about? Stand by. Thanks for joining us. This is Reasonable Faith with Dr. William Lane Craig. I’m your eternal co-host Kevin Harris. I'm talking about a resource that whether you're a professional scholar or a layman will fascinate you and equip you. The release of the first volume of Dr. Craig's multivolume Systematic Philosophical Theology is about to be released. He's been working to complete this for several years, and volume 1 is being released in the UK with a U.S. release scheduled for sometime in March of this year. Now, we’re busy behind the scenes preparing some podcasts on the release of volume 1. Again, you don't have to be a theology nerd to appreciate this monumental work that is in progress. Volume 1 is about to drop, and we'll get the scoop from Dr. Craig in just a few days. So keep your eye on the podcast. And as we start a new year we want to say thank you for your prayers and financial support for the work and ministry of Reasonable Faith. Any sized gift is so appreciated, and you can donate online at ReasonableFaith.org. Now let's get to today's podcast. Here's a collection of questions for Dr. Craig on one of the hottest theological studies capturing our interest today. It's known as Molinism.

Brian asked, “What are the differences between Thomas Aquinas’ view of human freedom compared to Molina’s viewpoints?” In 10 words or less [laughter].

DR. CRAIG: The difference is most clearly understood by saying that Aquinas thinks that God moves the human will to choose what it does. So if you choose A, God has moved your will to choose A, whereas on Molina’s view, God works along with your will to produce the action A. Molina compares it to two men pulling a boat out of the water up onto the shore. Each man is tugging at his own rope. It is not as though one man pulls the other man with a rope attached around his waist and then the other man pulls the boat by a rope that he has. The ropes are independent and they work simultaneously as the two men together pull the boat up on the shore. Molina would call this concurrence – God concurs with the human will in producing its effects, whereas Aquinas thought God actually moves the human will to produce its effects. So the claim of Molinists is that this Thomistic view is really a thinly veiled determinism.

KEVIN HARRIS: Peter Byrum jumps on and says,

This objection to Molinism keeps me awake at night. If Molinism is true then it seems that those who are saved can boast that they were more open-minded, or in some sense better, than those who are damned. This is because they can look down on the people in hell and say to them, “Yes, I was saved by grace. I did not earn this in any way. It was a debt that God paid, not me. But I, at least, was open-minded enough to leave God the option of arranging a feasible world in which I responded to him. Whereas you were so closed-minded, stubborn, and resistant that you didn’t even leave that possibility open for God. God knew by his middle knowledge what we would have done in given situations and there was something about me which meant I left salvific options open for God that you did not. If only you down there in hell had been just that little bit more open-minded and potentially receptive; if only you’d been just a little more like me.” The Calvinist by contrast can truly say that they did nothing and it was all down to God. I’m a Molinist and I think Calvinists have more problems, but nonetheless this seems to be the biggest problem for Molinism.

DR. CRAIG: I think it is worth emphasizing that Calvinism has more problems. Calvinism can say, “Yes, it is all down to God” but then that means that it is God who determines that some people should go to hell and some should go to heaven. It seems contrary to what the Scripture says — that God desires all persons to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. One of the reasons, I think the principal reason, I am not a Calvinist is because it seems to me there is only one thing that could get in the way of God’s desire for universal salvation being achieved, and that would be the human will – human freedom. God allots to human beings the freedom to irrevocably separate themselves from him forever. So God is not to be blamed for the lost. They are to be blamed themselves because they suppress and reject God’s grace and every effort to save them. Now, does this mean that the believer in this case who is saved can look down on those who are lost? Well, I think Peter needs to keep in mind that it is in the actual world – it may be true in the actual world – that you are open to God’s salvation. But there are plenty of possible worlds in which you were not open. So I don’t think that the believer who is saved will have any sort of boast about how good he is, and if only these people had been like him. I think on the contrary, he will be very thankful that he was saved and will not ascribe this to any goodness in himself. In any case, the important thing is – and Peter recognizes this – is that a positive response to the Gospel doesn’t count as any sort of a meritorious work. And that is the really key point here. It is not salvation by works because it is a non-meritorious faith that responds to God’s grace.

KEVIN HARRIS:

Dear Dr. Craig, I have a question regarding the application of middle knowledge. Middle knowledge is God's knowledge of what free creatures would do in varying circumstances. But what about the amount of people that God could create? Could this number be infinite? If it is infinite then doesn't that mean that it is very likely if not certain that God could create a world in which everyone is saved? The works of Josh Rasmussen provoked me to this question, and my trying to find an answer to this question has been very fruitful which is why I've been led here. I find the Molinist framework very helpful and so deeply desire to defend this concept. Any help here would also be appreciated. God bless. Cayden, United States.

DR. CRAIG: What Cayden needs to understand is that it is not part of middle knowledge or Molinism that God could not have created a world in which everybody freely did the right thing or in which everybody is freely saved. That is one of the applications of Molinism that I have personally made to the question of why God did not create a world in which everyone is freely saved. What I suggest is that maybe such a world is not feasible for God. Even though it's possible, given the counterfactuals about how people would freely act in the various circumstances they could be in, maybe it's not feasible for God to create a world of universal salvation. If I'm wrong about that, fine. That doesn't affect the theory of middle knowledge in any way. It just means that that application that I've suggested is unsuccessful. But does Cayden give us a good reason here for thinking that my proposal is implausible? I don't think so. I think he is confusing two things. He says that if the amount of people or the number of people that God could create is infinite then doesn't that make it very likely that God could have created a world in which everyone would freely be saved? That doesn't follow at all. In having a possible world in which there's an infinite number of people, that doesn't do anything to increase the probability that all of them would freely find salvation. On the contrary, you might think it actually diminishes it. Surely, someone would go wrong. But I don't think that's what Cayden is really talking about. I think he's misexpressed it. I think what he's asking is: Are there an infinite number of feasible worlds each containing a finite number of people which God could have actualized? And if there is an infinite number of such feasible worlds then surely, he's saying, in some of them everyone would have been freely saved. I'd simply respond that while that's possible logically, there's just no reason to think that that's true. Cayden needs to remember that these counterfactuals of creaturely freedom are contingently true. And it may just happen to be that in the actual world, in none of these feasible worlds would there be universal salvation. Or, if there is (say they're worlds with only one or two people in them), that there are other overriding deficiencies of such worlds that make them less preferable to God. Given that it's contingent, I just don't see that there's any way you can say that if there were an infinite number of feasible worlds available to God that in some of them universal salvation would take place. One last point. Cayden needs to keep in mind that we're not dealing here simply with random odds. Don't think of this as like throwing dice, and if you throw the dice enough times then any combination is going to come up. We're talking here about free choices of personal agents and therefore you should not think of these choices as randomly distributed across feasible worlds in the way that, say, the spins of a roulette wheel would be random. Therefore, I simply don't think there's any grounds for saying that if there are an infinite number of feasible worlds available to God that there probably are feasible worlds in which universal salvation takes place without any overriding deficiencies.

KEVIN HARRIS:

Dr. Craig, I find that your Molinistic views do much to diffuse the soteriological problem of evil or the salvation problem of evil. On your view, you appeal to God's middle knowledge and the possible existence of the transworld damned in order to explain the just damnation of those who never hear the Gospel. Given that libertarian free will exists, it does seem to be logically possible that some people would freely reject God's offer of salvation in any world or circumstance. However, isn't it then equally possible for there to exist those who would enjoy transworld salvation freely accepting God's grace in any circumstance in which it might be offered. Is there any reason why transworld damnation is plausible but transworld salvation is not?

DR. CRAIG: Certainly, that's possible for there to be worlds where people who have this property of transworld salvation exist, but that's not enough to say that those people would be probably chosen by God in the actual world. The reason is that those worlds involving individuals who are only transworldly saved might not be feasible for God. That's the point. The Molinist makes a distinction between worlds that are possible and worlds that are feasible, and if the wrong counterfactuals are true then worlds where people are transworldly saved just might not be feasible for God; they might not be available to him. And that's just a matter of the way creatures would freely choose. It's not something that's within God's control. He doesn't control which worlds are feasible to him. So he simply works with the hand that in a sense he's dealt by these counterfactuals of creaturely freedom.

KEVIN HARRIS:

Dear Dr. Craig, I'm certainly not a Calvinist but I've had a hard time settling on what I actually believe as opposed to defining my belief in terms of who I disagree with. This has led me to Molinism, a position that I find to be quite satisfying in many regards and would have to say it is where I currently reside although somewhat tentatively. However, that decision is not without difficulty. To that end, I have two questions for you. Number one, whenever the topic comes up among Christians (and this is the one we're going to take, Bill) other believers (at least those who have heard of Molinism, which I regard as theology's best kept secret) tend to respond with, “Well, where is that in the Bible?” or something along those lines.

So, maybe some biblical support for your view of Molinism and, what do you think about what he says about “theology’s best kept secret”? That's pretty funny, isn't it?

DR. CRAIG: I think it's getting to be more and more an open secret. The very fact that he's asking about it is significant. I want to make a couple of comments. First, he seems to be backing into Molinism based upon what he's opposed to. He disagrees with these other views and sort of finds his way into Molinism. I would encourage Ryan to look at the positive arguments on behalf of Molinism that I offer. For example, in my little book called What Does God Know? I lay out some arguments for Molinism that I think are very convincing as to why we ought to think that God does have middle knowledge. And given that, it will then provide the means by which he can providentially order the world. Now, as for this question about where is it found in the Bible, perhaps the best retort would be to say to the other person, “Well, where is the doctrine of the Trinity found in the Bible?” or “Where is the doctrine of the two natures of Christ found in the Bible?” And what the other person will have to say is, “Well, that doctrine isn't found in the Bible in terms of a prooftext. Rather, that is a theological construct based upon the materials in the Bible that makes sense of these biblical materials.”

KEVIN HARRIS: Boy, that is so important.

DR. CRAIG: Oh, absolutely.

KEVIN HARRIS: I had an encounter with a Jehovah's Witness over weeks of time and he said, “Show me that verse – that one prooftext – that says that there are three persons in the one God. I want to see the verse.” And I just had to explain, it is a case of looking at the full data of Scripture and how you handle the data. The doctrine is founded upon this – the full data of Scripture.

DR. CRAIG: Right, and in the case of Molinism, what you would do is look at all of the passages of Scripture that talk about God's sovereignty over the world, the way in which God controls the world and directs it toward his ends, and then you would also look at all the passages in the Scripture that affirm human freedom and contingency. And you ask, “What's the best model for putting this data together?” Then you would compare various theories like Calvinism (that God unilaterally causally determines everything that happens) – that explains divine sovereignty very well but it runs roughshod over the data of Scripture that support contingency and human freedom. On the other hand, so-called Open Theism affirms the data concerning man's freedom and contingency but it cannot do justice to the biblical data concerning God's sovereignty and providential control over the world. But Molinism beautifully explains both of these without bruising the data. It allows you to have divine sovereignty with a full affirmation of human freedom and contingency. Therefore, this is the best model for making sense of that biblical material. Another thing that you can show is that God does indeed have, scripturally, knowledge of counterfactuals of freedom, that is to say these statements in the subjunctive mood of the form “If x were the case then y would be the case.” And you can show that God does know these. There are statements in Scripture that we as Christians believe are true. One of my favorites is 2 Corinthians 2:8 where Paul says, with respect to the crucifixion of Jesus, “None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory.” That is a counterfactual statement about how free creatures would behave in different circumstances. If they had understood this (which they didn't) they would not have crucified Jesus. So if you believe that statement is true, if you don't think that's a truth-value gap in the book of 2 Corinthians, then you have to say that God knows this truth. He knows this counterfactual truth. So when does he know it? Does he know it logically prior to his decree to create the world, or does he only know it logically posterior to his decree to create the world? Well, if it's only subsequent to his decree to create the world then I think that annihilates human freedom because now it's God who determines the truth value of that counterfactual. He brings that about, and that eliminates the freedom of, in this case, the rulers of this age. So it's plausible, if not required, that this truth be known by God logically prior to his decree to create a world and his selection of which world will be actual. And that just is Molinism. That just is middle knowledge. So I think that the doctrine of middle knowledge and the Molinist view of providence based on it is the best systematic explanation of the biblical data concerning divine sovereignty and human freedom.^[1]