This is an enlarging of the text of a review that was
published some time ago
Molinism, The Contemporary
Debate, ed.
Ken Perszyk, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011, vii+320 pages)
The popularity of ideas, as that of other things, ebbs
and flows. This is true even in philosophy, where the intention is for reason
to prevail. In philosophy there is intense clarification of concepts and their
implications, and deployment of arguments in which these concepts figure. Arguments may be proved to be invalid, or to
be based on ideas which are dubious because confused. When I was younger Logical Positivism and its
effects prevailed. It has the characteristic thesis that unless a proposition could
be verified or falsified (or is in principle verifiable and falsifiable) by
sense experience it was cognitively, i.e. literally meaningless. It was
counter-argued that by that standard many scientific claims are unverifiable or
unfalsifiable, and that scientific laws appear to be verifiable or falsifiable
in principle. Many other propositions were unfalsifiable yet meaningful. Why
then not theological propositions? For a while the arguments go to and fro,
some being convinced that logical positivism is indefensible, others that it is
defensible, and many in-between. And what of the ‘private language argument’?
Time was when students wrote doctoral theses on the topic. What usually happens
is after some time a tiredness settles over the academic community, as the
arguments for what is fashionable are rehearsed and re-visited, and as little
new light emerges. People look for other things to argue about. The wheel
turns.
In the 1970’s Alvin Plantinga defended and developed
the free will defensce against the charge that it is inconsistent to suppose
that there is evil in a universe created by an all-good, all-powerful God.
Plantinga’s adherence to a libertarian account of human freedom is crucial to
this argument. It is fair to say that he elaborated this argument with a
sophistication that is without parallel in the modern literature. In what may
be called the second phase of this work he employed the newly-developed
semantics of modal logic to argue that God can know the counterfactuals of
freedom, propositions such as ‘If A were placed in circumstances C, he would
freely choose to X rather than Y’. He knows what would happen in the future
since he knows what A would freely do if placed in circumstances C. God can
then ’weakly actualise’ C in some circumstances which best suit his purposes
knowing that, say, in those circumstances A will choose X. (For details, see
Plantinga God. Freedom and Evil,
49f).
Little did Plantinga know (until it was pointed out to
him by the likes of Anthony Kenny and Bob Adams), that by that argument he had
thereby re-invented the Molinist doctrine of middle knowledge: that besides
God’s natural knowledge, and his free knowledge, he possesses middle knowledge,
knowledge of the counterfactuals of human freedom (and , for all I know, of angelic freedom, as well). By
actualizing a possible world in which this state of affairs is true, God can
ensure that creaturely freedom is preserved for someone as well retaining his
immaculate knowledge of the future free actions of his creatures. Bingo!
Perhaps it is too precipitate to conclude that there
remains some doubt in the minds of some involved in this matter whether even
the divine omniscience can embrace the counterfactuals of indeterminate acts.
It is said to depend on the grounding ‘objection’. That an individual with
equipoise between A and not-A gives vanishly small evidence of which his free
choice will go for.
Plantinga’s proposal precipitated an avalanche of
discussion on Molinism. Parts of Molina’s Concordia
were translated into English for the first time, and several philosophical
theologians became avowed Molinists, applying the insights not only to the
problem of evil, but to the incarnation, providence, prayer, heaven and hell,
perseverance in grace, and so on. The main practitioners here are Tom Flint (Divine Providence and innumerable
articles) and Bill Craig (The Only Wise
God and equally innumerable articles, and other books). The likes of Flint
and Craig were prominently challenged, among others, by William Hasker, for whom
how God might know the future free actions of his creatures, and they be
brought about, is beside the point, he being an Open Theist. Some of the articles by these and others have
been collected in Middle Knowledge: Theory and Applications edd. William Hasker,
David Basinger and Eef Dekker, (Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang, 2000)
Now there is another collection, welcome of course,
but several features about it suggest that, after a surge of interest, the
Molinist tide is ebbing. No one now gets excited over the ‘grounding objection’
to Molinism, the objection that God cannot have knowledge of future free
actions unless he has evidence, and what could that evidence be, given
libertarian freedom? A number of contributions review and summarise the course
of arguments in ‘Molinist studies’ without offering any new arguments, while
others go to topics at the margin, such as theodicy (and hard
determinism). This also suggests that
the tide of interest and philosophical argument and counter-argument is retreating,
and that Molinism will drop in the league table of interest to be replaced by
the next issue to attract interest.
In his helpful Introduction to this new collection Ken
Perszyk not only provides interesting historical background, he restates the distinction
between the theory of middle knowledge, its perspicuous statement, and the
discussion of resources that may be called upon to overcoming of objections to
its deployment, on the one hand its application, to grace, predestination and
free will and other theological areas. The question, can it fly? raises one set
of questions. If so, where can it fly to? raises another, though it would
misleading to suppose that those who are interested in this second question
wait patiently until the first question is settled, if it can be settled to
general satisfaction. And this is fair enough, because the second question can
in any case be raised hypothetically: if Molinism were to be theoretically
satisfactory, where could it be deployed?
Among the chief theoretical
questions are: questions about the counterfactuals of freedom, whether there
can be any that are true; our old friend the ‘grounding objection’. This is
featured here in two summary discussions, Hasker, ‘The (Non)-Existence of
Molinist Counterfactuals’, and Tom Flint in ‘Whence and Whither the Molinist
Debate: A Reply to Hasker’), and the latest rounds of the debate. A second kind
of theoretical objection, that concerned with bringing about counterfactuals of
freedom, making them true by what we do, is also discussed. This features
Hasker again, and Flint and Trenton Merricks. And there is discussion about
whether there can be true counterfactuals of freedom prior to God’s decree of
them. Objections along this line go back to J.L. Mackie. The remaining papers
are by Dean Zimmerman and Merricks, Edwin Mares and Ken Perszyk, Edward
Wierenga, William Lane Craig and Greg Restall Those by Derk Pereboom, Hugh
McCann and perhaps John Fischer, on determinism and providence, the free will
defense, and on what Molinism does and does not imply, stand apart from the
main lines of argument. Some of the papers are quite technical, because a
further reason for discussing Molinism is a philosophical interest in
conditionals and modality. All the discussions on the theological use of
Molinism have this in common: an overriding concern to safeguard human
libertarian freedom. This needs to be borne in mind when we read, for example,
that middle knowledge provides ‘the reconciliation of divine sovereignty and
human freedom’, William Lane Craig means divine sovereignty in the Arminian
sense.) But it is not obvious that the counterfactuals of indeterministic
choices are consistent with the powers
of the God of classical theism.
The recently published
volume contributing to Calvinism and Middle Knowledge, A Conversation, edited by John D. Laing, Kirk R. MacGregor and Greg Welty
(Eugene Or. Wipf and Stock, 2019) is certainly
interesting. As regards so-called ‘applied’ Molinism, the satisfactoriness or
otherwise of these discussions depends
in part on what one regards as a satisfactory Christian doctrine, even a
satisfactory Calvinist doctrine! But intriguing
as it is, Molinism cannot be allowed to determine the contours of a Christian
doctrine or how it is to be formulated,
much less control what counts as Calvinism.
Harking back to the objection to there being true counterfactuals of freedom prior to God’s decreeing of them, this is one of the few places at which contemporary discussion of Molinism connects with the original Reformed objections to Middle Knowledge. Theologians such as William Twisse and Samuel Rutherford were not so much interested in whether Molinism was internally satisfactory as in cutting it off at the root because they could not conceive of any counterfactuals of creaturely freedom being true that were not first decreed by God, and true because of this, and so part of his free knowledge. So they argued ad hominem against Molinism by denying the very idea of middle knowledge. Their answer to the ‘grounding’ objection would be that what grounds the truth is not evidence that exists apart from the decree of God, but that decree. So the idea of middle knowledge, some category between the natural and free knowledge of God, is inadmissible. How could it be known to God that in circumstances C, A will freely do P other than by being unconditionally decreed by him, and so being an aspect of the divine free knowledge. If God cannot know this it cannot be true? (Do I hear you say that there is some equivocation in these debates in the use of ‘knowledge’ in phrases such as ‘middle knowledge’ and ‘God’s free knowledge’? Indeed there may be, but the fact goes largely unnoticed.)
For the Reformed who debated Molinism in the
seventeenth century, God’s knowledge of what takes place in his creation,
whatever else it is, is knowledge of what he will decree. So the idea that
there are states of affairs, including the counterfactuals of creaturely
freedom, which are distinct from the divine mind and which are made true or
false only by acts of creaturely freedom which God abets by supporting and
enabling, but which he does not foreknow, is quite unacceptable. Theologians
such as Bruce Ware, who find a place for ‘Reformed Molinism’ (God’s Greater Glory, pp.110-112) are an
odd and an inexplicable exception. The problem with introducing such a
theological view into the current work on middle knowledge is that it has the
effect of changing the subject.
This is why those philosophers with Calvinistic
convictions do not figure very prominently in current debates about Molinism,
which is (as a rule) defended by those who wish to retain a traditional
understanding of the scope of divine omniscience, and covers future libertarian
actions, and is attacked by those who uphold libertarianism and who let go of
the traditional view of omniscience. So viewed theologically, it is a debate
within the libertarian guild, discussed without any reference to the necessity and
scope of the divine decrees, and it excludes such as Hugh McCann who upholds
absolute divine sovereignty and
libertarian free will. To admit a Calvinist to the party would be a
conversation-stopper or at least a conversation-changer, in which the Calvinist
would do his best to show how unfair it is to characterize his position as
theological fatalism, and ourselves as puppets or machines run along fatalistic
lines. (The ‘fates’ are in fact the purposes of
God our creator who has given us life and who governs what he has
created towards specific ends in accordance with his good and wise purposes.)
He may in turn attempt to change the conversation. perhaps by calling the God
of Molinism the ‘Demiurge’ (p.11 fn.22), and calling Open theologians
‘Socinians’. But nothing is to be gained by name-calling.
Reformed theologians like Rutherford and Twisse wrote copiously on middle knowledge in the 17th century. Next time I'll say more about them.
