Why Molinists Say They Are Misunderstood

A common issue in discussions on Molinism is that, early on, Molinists (such as myself) will often complain that they have been misunderstood. Why are they claiming this, and is this claim accurate? My contention is that it is, in at least a lot of popular level cases.

First, let’s clarify what is meant by “misunderstood:” someone or some position is misunderstood when a claim made by that person or position is represented in a way that is not what the claim is actually stating, and the misrepresentation is not deliberate.[1]

With that in mind, it is demonstrable that some people simply do not know what they are talking about when it comes to Molinism. First, you have this popular website, which claims that Molinism “means that God learns what the actual choices of people will be only when they occur,” and this gem: “He doesn’t learn [note: as opposed to Molinism, it seems the author thinks]. He knows!” This is demonstrably not what any Molinist claims, and the author offers no reason to think that it’s an entailment of anything Molinists do claim. He doesn’t link to any source whatsoever, much less a primary one.

In fact, Molinists claim that middle knowledge is an excellent tool for divine planning, precisely because it means God knows what any free choice would be in any circumstances logically prior to divine creation! William Lane Craig, a Molinist, writes, “Indeed, the doctrine of middle knowledge just is a theory of how God can know future contingents without any sort of perception of the world at all. I think that you have mistakenly assumed that according to the doctrine of middle knowledge, God deduces from the circumstances in which a free person is placed what he would do in those circumstances. . . . But that is not the doctrine.” So we must be forgiven here for shouting that we are misunderstood when the exact opposite of the teaching of middle knowledge is presented as though it was the teaching of middle knowledge! I have addressed this particular popular site’s error here: http://www.randyeverist.com/2012/07/carm-on-molinism.html

Second, among many errors, this author insists that Molinism is relevantly like open theism, and is a heresy. The reasons? Well, he makes the same mistake, claiming that Molinists claim (again, no source cited whatsoever) that an action must first occur in order for it to be true. Next, he claims that Molinists (by virtue of the beginning of explicit Molinism) are trying to retain semi-Pelagianism (as an aside, I wonder if people just don’t understand semi-Pelagianism, or just don’t understand contemporary or classic non-Calvinism, because this charge appears an alarming number of times). He claims that “no future conditional thing can be knowable before the divine decree;” but Molinists don’t claim that they are! Instead, Molinists claim that the necessary foundation for future conditionals is subjunctive conditionals, and these subjunctive conditionals that describe creaturely free actions are known to God prior to the divine decree. So, again, we should be forgiven here. I deal with this website in this article: http://www.randyeverist.com/2011/02/unfortunate-critique-of-molinism.html

On the other hand, it is true there are plenty of people who do understand Molinism, and simply aren’t Molinists. And that’s OK; it’s not my personal mission to make sure everyone is a Molinist (nor should it be!). It’s just that we’d rather be rejected for things we actually say rather than be rejected for things we don’t.

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[1] There is an exception to this; namely, if someone is listing an entailment of a particular position. However, two notes: first, if you are purporting to represent a view, then you should lay out at first what the view teaches, and then attempt to show entailments of it, not represent the entailments as things these positions claim for themselves. That’s just charity. Second, entailments should be clearly labeled as such; if they are not, we can not really be faulted for assuming that you just don’t know or understand what is being claimed.

New Book on Molinism!

I've recently turned my thesis into a short book, now available on Amazon as a paperback and a kindle edition! Just thought I would let everyone know...

Trouble for Open Theists

One of my criticisms of Open Theism is that it makes God a less-than-omniscient being. Now process theologians may have no problem with that, but their cousins the Open Theists may. Typically, they do not want to say God lacks this perfection. Usually, the idea is that God is omniscient because he knows all the truths there are to know (because the future conditionals are unknowable; they lack a truth value).

This line of defense by the Open Theist will seem to many to be dubious. However, there may be some merit to their line of thinking. Consider issues surrounding God’s omnipotence. There are several paradoxes or problems with omnipotence presented. For example, God’s actions and man’s free will. A man cannot be forced to freely do something. The standard line of defense is to claim this is a logical impossibility, and so God cannot be faulted for not being able to achieve this (it is not, strictly speaking, a thing to be achieved). Therefore, God is still omnipotent, for there is no non-logical limit to his power.

Is the same defense not open to the Open Theist? Can she not say that God is still omniscient here, because there is no non-logical limit to his knowledge? At first blush, this seems very promising. But upon further examination, it seems that it all depends on the idea that God’s foreknowledge and future conditionals (or relevantly-free counterfactuals) are incompatible, in a completely logical sense. This will take quite some work to show.

I would argue that if it is even possible for God to have knowledge of future contingents, then any being worthy of the title “God” must necessarily have that knowledge. Essentially, if it is even possible the Open Theist is wrong, then his lack of foreknowledge would be a non-logical limit on his knowledge. Any such conception of God would be inferior in Perfect Being Theology.

There are plenty of good reasons to reject the idea that future contingents and God’s foreknowledge cannot go together (in a logical sense). See William Lane Craig’s The Only Wise God for more on that. Dialectically, Open Theists claim that a traditional understanding of God’s omniscience is faulty because he logically cannot know certain propositions taken for granted under the traditional model. The response is that if it is even possible God does know them, then the Open Theist is wrong. It is therefore up to the Open Theist to overcome the objections made by Craig and construct a positive case for this. If they cannot, it looks for all the world as though they have constructed an inferior god.

The Omniscience Problem

A long time ago, someone objected to the existence of the Christian God by trying to point out a problem with the concept of omniscience. I’ve personally had this done more than once in a discussion with an atheist. The idea is that it is simply unacceptable that God could know exactly what one was going to do in the future.

For instance, the skeptic invites us to imagine an omniscient being. This being is, by definition, correct in whatever he says concerning his knowledge. He hands you a sheet of paper and a pen. Let us also assume you agree to write a number of any length (single digit on up) on the paper. Assume he will tell you the truth. He then claims, “I am going to tell you the number you are going to write next on the sheet of paper.” The claim by the skeptic is that whatever number the omniscient being mentions, you may simply add one to it and write that down instead. So if the being says, “41,” you may write “42.” Since it seems well within your power to do this, the reasoning goes such a being cannot exist. This is inadequate for a number of reasons, however.

First, this argument, at best, is only against the traditional Christian conception of God. That is to say, even if everything said is granted as true, the conclusion, “Therefore, the God of Christianity does not exist” is unwarranted. Perhaps then the Open Theists are correct and God simply does not know the future.[1]

Second, the conclusion that an omniscient being cannot exist does not follow even from the premises given. In the story, the thing that supposedly makes omniscience impossible is that the finite knower is given future knowledge of events that are directly within his control. What is to say that an omniscient being would (or should) not simply refrain from telling the finite knower this information? The problem evaporates when the finite knower is ignorant concerning the future event.

Third, implicit in this argument is that a denial of the conclusion indicates that omniscience must control future free actions. One of the parameters is that writing down one number higher is in fact within one’s control. Of course, theological determinists may not agree to this, and simply respond such an omniscient knower may in fact be omnipotent to force the future act, and the free act cannot be performed. That is to say, omniscience does not guarantee freedom. Or it could be objected that since omniscience cannot be shown from this example alone (on pain of question-begging) to be determinative of future events, it can be denied that such a being’s knowledge must determine the outcome. If that is the case, one must also consider that the omniscient being, by definition, knew what the finite knower would do in those circumstances, and could have planned accordingly. (This just ties in with the second point; if an omniscient being committed to telling the truth 100% of the time knew that by such an exercise he would cause the finite knower to write another number down, he would refrain from informing the finite knower in the first place.)

Finally, one must notice the most glaringly obvious piece of information: the parameter is that the being is omniscient. Since the thought experiment has not given us any outside argument or premise to consider, it simply assumes that the omniscient being is wrong! It therefore assumes what it seeks to prove, and hence is question-begging.

Now one may object that it still seems as though the finite knower is not free to write down another number; but it seems as though this need not be the case. As William Lane Craig points out, we may suppose that the omniscient being says you’ll write down a 6, and you intend to write a 7, but you think better of it (perhaps because you are a Christian and wish to ensure God is correct [but under the parameters God would know that beforehand too!]); or you intend to write a 7, but you slip in such a way as to make the unmistakable shape of the 6. Your free intentions and choices are still free, but the objection only holds if we already assume omniscience and free will cannot co-exist.

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                [1] For those of us who think this answer is generally unacceptable (such as myself), there are alternatives.

All posts, and the blog Possible Worlds, are the sole intellectual property of Randy Everist. One may reprint part or all of this post so long as: a) full attribution is given (Randy Everist, Possible Worlds), b) all use is non-commercial, and c) one is in compliance with the Creative Commons license at the bottom on the main page of this blog.

Theological Fatalism vs. Theological Determinism

There is quite a bit of confusion surrounding the issues of theological fatalism versus theological determinism. Not only are they dissimilar, but they do not entail each other either. This article will take a look at the two positions and attempt to bring clarity to this issue.

First, we shall discuss fatalism (the “theological” label will be assumed for both from here on out). Fatalism is the idea that “whatever will be, will be;” something we will do we must do. It “does not necessarily hold that everything is causally determined.”[1] It simply means that event in the future that we will do we in fact must do and cannot do any differently. William Lane Craig relays a story in which people in London during World War II, evidently believers in fatalism, reasoned they would die no matter what, so they took no provision. It is this story, he maintains, that demonstrated fatalism has serious application.[2]

Theological fatalism is the view that because of God’s foreknowledge, whatever he knows about future events must come to pass, and the participants (humans) cannot choose to do other than what God knows. This fatalism is typically espoused by open theists more than any other type of group. Of course, theological fatalism means that each action is causally-controlled. However, if fatalism applied across the board it would mean that each and every person’s every action could not have been avoided (even if for no other reason than it was simply that which they were already going to do). In application to possible worlds theory, one would say there really was only one possible world (assuming fatalism applies to God as well).

Next, we should discuss determinism. Determinism is much more popular than fatalism in philosophical circles. Causal determinism is the view that each decision or act or event that occurs does so as a result of other antecedent circumstances (including other determined events and acts) so that true free will decisions cannot be made. The argument is that since some certain propositions yet future relative to the present moment are true now, then there is nothing that prevents these from being true from yesterday, last week, last century or even from time immemorial. If that is the case, however, then they argue that a certain person cannot be free, since every act is caused by every other and the person could do no other.[3] So in this latter case God causes every single act, whether good or bad.

To summarize, then, fatalism is the idea that since every event in the future will happen, it must happen, and determinism is the idea that antecedent conditions and events in turn cause other events. What they have in common: both render human freedom illusory. How they are different: fatalism is “whatever will be, will be,” whereas determinism is the idea that every event is caused by something or someone (namely, God).

Why is this important? It is important for the Christian theist because theological fatalism results in only one possible world, and theological determinism makes God the direct and primary cause of sin. Whoever is causally responsible for sin is a sinner, and yet we know God cannot sin. Therefore, determinism is false. But we also sense we can act differently than we do, and there are multiple good reasons why determinism fails (see my article here called “Argument against Determinism” for more).

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                [1] William Lane Craig, The Only Wise God (Wipf and Stock, Eugene, OR: 2000), 14.

                [2] Ibid., 14-15.

                [3] Kevin Timpe, “Free Will,” The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, <http://www.iep.utm.edu/freewill/> , accessed June 8, 2011. The basic tenets are all the same irrespective of causal, logical, or theological determinism.

All posts, and the blog Possible Worlds, are the sole intellectual property of Randy Everist. One may reprint part or all of this post so long as: a) full attribution is given (Randy Everist, Possible Worlds), b) all use is non-commercial, and c) one is in compliance with the Creative Commons license at the bottom on the main page of this blog.

Pruss' Argument against Open Theism

1. (Premise) If p is overwhelmingly probable on the balance of God's evidence, then God believes p.
2. (Premise) If open theism is true, then some of the propositions that are overwhelmingly probable on the balance of God's evidence are false.
3. Therefore, if open theism is true, God believes some falsehoods.
4. (Premise) God believes no falsehoods.
5. Therefore, open theism is false.

Alex Pruss here constructs what I think is a promising argument against open theism. Essentially, (1) assumes the typical open theist assertion that God acts with respect to probabilities; he knows creatures so well he does not have to know the future in order to know what they will probably do. Indeed, (1) seems wholly reasonable, as there is no discernible reason why God would refrain from believing a proposition if it were overwhelmingly probable to be true.

Perhaps one would object that since future contingents do not have truth values, (1) is false and God believes nothing about these overwhelmingly probable propositions. But doesn’t that seem strange? For instance, God knows the probability of p relative to background knowledge of the situation at hand; why think that God nonetheless believes nothing about the future? Some other reason is needed besides a desire to avoid the argument’s conclusion! If one wishes to object that God would only believe it is probably true, he is committing a category error. The category of the object of belief is ontological; God thinks “probably, P is true,” rather than “P is probably true.” There are no degrees of truth with respect to individual referents.

What about (2)? This seems to be easily shown. Pruss argues from the potentially-infinite future of free actions (or the seemingly limitless number of free actions that occur in our world under the open theist model) to show that it is virtually certain some of these beliefs (of which free choices are made causally independently of one another) will be false (after all, the probability is some lesser-bound than 1). (3), then, is just true analytically.

The only hope for the open theist, then, is to deny (4). This would be “biting the bullet” and just admitting God holds some false beliefs. But in this case, God would be less than perfect. Perfection is a trait most open theists wish to retain.[1] Some premise must be denied, and I suppose the best candidate will be (1). But this would contradict the open theist assertion that God operates on probabilities. If God operates on neither probabilities nor knowledge, what does he operate on?
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Source: http://alexanderpruss.blogspot.com/2010/10/open-theism-and-divine-error.html
                [1] For instance, many open theists claim God is omniscient since future contingents have no truth-value (meaning there is still nothing to know that is unknown to God). This argument doesn’t object to that; it merely points out God will more plausibly than not hold beliefs which are overwhelmingly probable to be true. By the sheer number of free actions, some of these will be false.