‘He is not here’

There was a time when some met Jesus, the eternal Word made flesh,  as we meet each other. Notably, his mother and father, and sisters and brothers, met him. And then his disciples met him, who when they talked with Jesus more often than not seemed to be puzzled by what he had to say about himself. Then there was the crucifixion, watched by quite a few; and his rising again, when he was seen by his disciples again, who talked to him, and more importantly, were talked to by Jesus.

After his crucifixion, the angels who attended the place where Jesus was buried, said to those perplexed men and women who brought spices to anoint him. ‘He is not here’. They went on: ‘He is risen.’ (Lk.26. 6) But since then the words ‘He is not here’,  prevailed. True, and thankfully, he was resurrected, and remained so. And for a while he remained with his disciples, still instructing them. But then he ascended, and such words about not being here came to have a more permanent significance. Since his ascension, when a cloud received him, those man years ago, it has been that true that he is not here,

Where is he?  We have several answers. He has gone to his God and our God. He is in heaven. He is at the right hand of God Almighty. What does this mean? Someone once suggested that, like an author who is creating a play, as far as the creation of our space and time is concerned, Christ (one of the figures in the play) was ‘written out’ at that point. Others have suggested that ‘heaven’ where Jesus is, is  like another wave length in a radio. As we switch from one station to another, we leave one world and ‘arrive’ at the other.

These are only analogies, with many deficiencies. But they do make the point that ‘the heavenly’ is not make-believe, but is a reality that is different from ‘the earthly’. Each has its own temporal sequencies (and frequencies!), which at certain points merge, as in Christ’s ascension, and in the appearance of the risen Christ to Paul on the road to Damascus, (Acts 9). Perhaps there is such a merging in the story of the account of Elijah who ‘went up by a whirlwind into heaven’  (2 Kings 2.11)   and another merging later when  Elisha prayed for the young man’s eyes to be open. ‘And behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all round Elisha.’ (2 Kings 6.17) And of course, there is Paul on the road to Damascus, converted and commissioned as the Apostle to the Gentiles. But again, rather unclear.

But with such exceptions in mind,  if thy are exceptions, the era since those two events, the Resurrection and the Ascension of Jesus,  is one in which the risen Christ is absent from our reality, the age of ‘He is not here’.

All this is to show that the events of the Son made flesh were events in real time, when his birth was at a time, his remaining in the temple when he was twelve was a later time, and death and resurrection and ascension were at subsequent times, each later on after the next. The modern language about ‘meeting with Jesus’, understood literally, disregards what we may call redemptive history. We live in the ‘last days’ awaiting the return of Jesus. That return is also to be a bodily appearance, as we have already noted. As Jesus does not come again each Christmas, so he does not come again each Sunday. When he appears, believers will be like him, because they will see him as he is. (1Jn.2.2)

Jesus has disappeared. We must be thankful, then, that before that He taught his disciples of the coming of the Comforter, the Holy Spirit. ‘I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him or knows him’. (See John 14. 16-17) But we do not meet the Spirit as his disciples met with Jesus; by God’s grace we are indwelled by him, if we are believers. And there are more clues about the Spirit’s operations here: ‘But the Helper the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.’(14. 26) So we get from these words a different set of ideas than those of ‘meeting Jesus’. We are indwelled by the Holy Spirit, the Helper or Comforter, the teacher sent in Christ’s name to bring to the memory of the apostles the words of Christ, and reliable accounts of what he did, reports that are to be with the church - the body of Christ in a different sense -  for ever.

We are constrained by the calendar to celebrate of the coming into flesh of the eternal Son of God on one day each year. It was celebrated last year, and will be celebrated in the next. So an annual reminder, with its pantomime-like celebration of the Nativity, tends to weaken in our minds the uniqueness and reality, and seriousness,  of what we celebrate. (This is not a complaint of the usual kind, about the commercialization of Christmas). This was a once-for-all event, on which our forgiveness and reconciliation hinge. At his ascension the angels also told the astonished disciples that the no-longer visible Jesus , who was taken into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.’ (Acts 1.10) We live by faith, not by sight. Until then, the clock continues to tick. But there is assurance of his coming again. In the mean time, Paul says, don’t doze off. However long there remains for the church militant to  wait,  ‘….salvation is nearer than when we first believed.’ (Rom.13.11) ‘He who testifies to these things says, ‘Surely I am coming soon’. To which the church replies ‘Come, Lord Jesus’ (Rev. 22.20)

.....And more on Molinism

Luis De Molina (1535-1600) 

The Reformed theologians in the 17th century who faced Molinism, such as Rutherford and Twisse, seem to have focused their arguments against middle knowledge by stressing the divine decrees. It is a pity that most of their writing is in scholastic Latin. The most direct source of this approach is Turretin’s  discussion of middle knowledge in Institutes !, 212-217, now joined by the excellent translation of relevant passages  by Todd Rester, in volume II of Petrus Van Mastricht’s Theological - Practical   Theology,  2.267f. (Reformation Heritage Books, 2019)

WCF

Ch, III of the WCF, Of God’s Eternal Decree  starts as follows -

I. God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will, not is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.
 III  Although God knows whatsoever may or can come to pass upon all supposed conditions; yet hath he not decreed anything because he foreknow it as future, or as that  which would come to pass upon such conditions.

Paragraph III cuts off middle knowledge, which has God being presented by an array of counterfactuals of (libertarian ) freedom, and his election of that one which is most accord  with his purposes. Not so, says the Confession.  God’s decrees and his foreknowledge cover the same ground, and are grounded by the divine intuition, not by God's inspection of un-decreed possibilities.  His decrees are the ground of whatever happens. They do not include decreeing based on what he foreknew as future, nor of what he foreknew would occur as a result of conditions other than his decree. These statements should be amplified by the chapter on Providence, and on questions 12- 14 of the Larger Catechism.

Van Mastricht

Petrus van Mastricht regards middle knowledge as superfluous for Christian theology for the several reasons, including this:

 ‘[S}ince every knowable thing is subject to the two received knowledges, natural and free [knowledge]. For if a thing is considered as merely possible, then undoubtedly it falls under natural knowledge. If it is considered as having a connection with various second causes, and thus as a thing that will occur if it should be construed with  those second causes, even though it never actually will occur, it  belongs to that latter knowledge that depends upon the decree, the decree that constituted at creation the order that would thereafter  be applied to things, so that for example, dry straw would be burned if it were laid near  a flame, even though God never did decree that it would be laid there or burned, And finally, a thing will actually occur belongs to the free knowledge.’(2. 268)

Note two or three things about what is quoted above. The divine decree is free, for as the Confession earlier has asserted, God himself is ‘most free’; that is, it is only brought about by the divine nature that had the power to make other decrees, or none at all. Second, providence it is in effect a continuous creation, as God in effect extends the initial creative acts according to his decree. It is a primary effect, of God himself, embodying sets of secondary effects as what is decreed in accordance with the nature of what is being continued in existence. As stated in the Westminster chapter on providence, ‘[God] ordereth all things to fall out, according to the nature of second causes, either  necessarily, freely or contingently’ (V.II) The falling out of a rock, is different from that of a plant, or a human being. So the things created are by God’s power and wisdom, ‘established’.

Theologians such as William Twisse and Samuel Rutherford were not so much interested in whether Molinism was internally satisfactory,  that whether God know the outcome of a counterfactual of libertarian freedom, 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. What is a counterfactual? It is not a ‘factual’, what is decreed. So if X, something decreed, were be expressed in a counterfactual of the form, ‘If X were to have….’ Or If X had done D, it would have …..’ none of these are facts, because not decreed. The counterfactual does not follow from what has already been decreed, but it is simply a ‘free floating’ form of words. 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 a state of affairs that exists apart from the decree of God, but only what is decreed, one of the countless events, or states of affairs, brought to exist by God’s decree. For what comes to pass is only what is decreed. So the idea of middle knowledge, some category between the divine natural knowledge (his knowledge of all possibilities), and free knowledge (his knowledge of actualities) of what he has decreed, and so brought into being, all actualities), 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.

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 necessarily 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, 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.

Those contemporary scholars 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 rejected the possibility of csuch future libertarian actions, and is held by those who uphold libertarianism and who let go of the traditional view of God’s omniscience. So viewed theologically, modern discussion  is a debate within the libertarian guild, discussed without any reference to the necessity and scope of the divine decrees. 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 inaccurate it is to characterise his position as theological fatalism, and ourselves as puppets or machines, being run along fatalistic lines.

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Note – those whose appetite for discussion of middle knowledge is not at this point assuaged might care to read the article of Charles Rennie,  in two parts, currently available at Reformation 21. His article, a confessionally-based discussion, is entitled ‘Is Middle Knowledge Biblical?' An Evaluation’.

A review of a book on Molinism

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.

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