Gregory A. Boyd
CHAPTER TWO
GOD DIRECTS ALL THINGS
ON BEHALF OF A MOLINIST VIEW OF PROVIDENCE
Christian theologians have traditionally affirmed that in virtue of his omniscience God possesses hypothetical knowledge of conditional future contingents. He knows, for example, what would have happened if he had spared the Canaanites from destruction, what Napoleon would have done had he won the Battle of Waterloo, how your neighbor would respond if you were to share the gospel with him. Not until F. D. E. Schleiermacher and the advent of modern theology did theologians think to deny God such hypothetical knowledge. Every orthodox thinker who considered the issue agreed that God has such knowledge.
Such hypothetical knowledge is knowledge of what philosophers call counterfactual conditionals, or simply counterfactuals. Counterfactuals are conditional statements in the subjunctive mood. For example: “If I were rich, I would buy a Mercedes"; “If Goldwater had been elected president, he would have won the Vietnam War"; “If you were to ask her, she would say yes. “ Counterfactuals are so called because the antecedent and/or consequent clause is typically contrary to fact: I am not rich; Goldwater was not elected president; the U.S. did not win the Vietnam War. Nevertheless, sometimes the antecedent and/or consequent clause is true For example, your friend, emboldened by your assurance that “if you were to ask her, she would say yes,” does ask the girl of his dreams for a date, and she does say yes.
Counterfactual statements constitute a significant part of our ordinary language and are an indispensable part of our decision making. “If I pulled out into traffic now, I wouldn’t make it"; “If I were to ask J. B. for a raise, with his mood, he’d tear my head off"; “If we sent the Third Army around the enemy’s right flank, we would prevail.” Clearly, life-and-death decisions are made daily on the basis of the presumed truth of counterfactual statements.
Historical Background
Christian theologians have traditionally not disputed that God has knowledge of true counterfactuals and, hence, of the conditional future contingent events they describe. What theologians did dispute, however, was, so to speak, when God has such hypothetical knowledge. The question here did not have to do with the moment of time at which God acquired his hypothetical knowledge. For whether God is timeless or everlasting throughout time, in neither case are there truths that are unknown to God until some moment at which he discovers them. As an omniscient being, God must know every truth there is and so can never exist in a state of ignorance. Rather, the “when” mentioned above refers to the point in the logical order concerning God’s creative decree at which God has hypothetical knowledge.
This idea of a logical order with regard to God’s decrees is a familiar one to Reformed theologians. For although all God’s decrees occur at once rather than sequentially, there is a logical order among the decrees. For example, so-called infralapsarians say that God’s decree to create human beings and to permit them to fall into sin logically preceded his decree to save some and condemn others. Although God predestined some to condemnation, infralapsarians claim, he did not create them in order to condemn them. The decree to condemn is logically subsequent to God’s decree to permit human beings to fall into sin. Supralapsarians, by contrast, say that God did create some human beings in order to condemn them. God’s decree to save some human beings and condemn others, in their view, thus logically preceded his decree to create them and allow their fall into sin. Even though it was agreed on all hands that God’s decrees occur all at once, theologians debated how they were to be logically arranged.
A similar dispute existed among post-Reformation theologians with respect to the place of God’s hypothetical knowledge. Everybody agreed that logically prior to God’s decree to create a world, God had knowledge of all necessary truths, including all the possible worlds he might create. This was called God’s natural knowledge. It gives him knowledge of what could be. Moreover, everyone agreed that logically subsequent to his decree to create a particular world, God knows all the contingent truths about the actual world, including its past, present, and future. This was called God’s free knowledge. It involves knowledge of what will be. The disputed question was where one should place God’s hypothetical knowledge of what would be. Is it logically prior or posterior to the divine decree?
Catholic theologians of the Dominican order held that God’s hypothetical knowledge is logically subsequent to his decree to create a certain world. They maintained that in decreeing that a particular world exist, God also decreed which counterfactual statements are true. Logically prior to the divine decree, there are no counterfactual truths to be known. All God knows at that logical moment are the necessary truths, including all the various possibilities.
At that logically prior moment, God knows, for example, that there is a possible world in which Peter denies Christ three times and another possible world in which Peter affirms Christ in precisely the same circumstances. God picks one of these worlds to be actual, and thus subsequent to his decree, it is true that Peter will deny Christ three times. Moreover, God knows this truth because he knows which world he has decreed. Not only so, but in decreeing a particular world to be real, God also decrees which counterfactuals are true. Thus, he decrees, for example, that if Peter had instead been in such-and-such circumstances, he would have denied Christ two times. God’s hypothetical knowledge, like his foreknowledge, is logically posterior to the divine creative decree.
By contrast, inspired by Luis de Molina, Catholic theologians of the Jesuit order maintained that God’s hypothetical knowledge of creaturely free decisions is logically prior to his creative decree. This difference between the Jesuit Molinists and the Dominicans was no mere matter of theological hairsplitting! The Molinists charged that the Dominicans had in effect obliterated human freedom by making counterfactual truths about creaturely choices a consequence of God’s decree. For it is God who determines what a person would choose in whatever circumstances he finds himself. By contrast, the Molinists, by placing God’s hypothetical knowledge of creaturely free decisions prior to the divine decree, made room for creaturely freedom by exempting counterfactual truths about creaturely choices from God’s decree. In the same way that necessary truths like 2 + 2 = 4 are prior to and therefore independent of God’s decree, so counterfactual truths about how creatures would freely choose under various circumstances are prior to and independent of God’s decree.
Not only does this view make room for human freedom, but it affords God a means of choosing which world of free creatures to create. For by knowing how persons would freely choose in whatever circumstances they might be, God can, by decreeing to place just those persons in just those circumstances, bring about his ultimate purposes through free creaturely decisions. Thus, by employing his hypothetical knowledge, God can plan a world down to the last detail and yet do so without annihilating creaturely freedom, since God has already factored into the equation what people would do freely under various circumstances. Since God’s hypothetical knowledge lies logically in between his natural knowledge and his free knowledge, Molinists called it God’s middle knowledge.1
In the Dominican view, there is one logical moment prior to the divine creative decree, at which God knows the range of possible worlds that he might create, and then he chooses one of these to be actual. In the Molinist view, there are two logical moments prior to the divine decree: first, the moment at which God has natural knowledge of the range of possible worlds and, second, the moment at which he has knowledge of the proper subset of possible worlds that, given the counterfactual propositions true at that moment, are feasible for him to create. The counterfactuals which are true at that moment thus serve to delimit the range of possible worlds to worlds feasible for God.
For example, there is a possible world in which Peter affirms Christ in precisely the same circumstances in which he in fact denied him. But given the counterfactual truth that if Peter were in precisely those circumstances, he would freely deny Christ, then the possible world in which Peter freely affirms Christ in those circumstances is not feasible for God. God could make Peter affirm Christ in those circumstances, but then Peter’s confession would not be free.
Thus, based on the Molinist scheme, we have the following logical order (letting the circles represent possible worlds):
Arguments for Molinism
Why think that the Molinist scheme is correct? Basically, three lines of argument present themselves: biblical, theological, and philosophical.
Biblical Arguments
Biblically speaking, it is not difficult to show that God possesses hypothetical knowledge. For example, Jesus affirms before Pilate the counterfactual conditional “If my kingship were of this world, my servants would fight, that I might not be handed over to the Jews” (John 18:36 RSV). The Scriptures abound with examples of such counterfactual conditionals concerning creaturely choices and actions. Unfortunately, this fact does not settle the matter of whether God has middle knowledge. For the scriptural passages show only that God possesses knowledge of counterfactual propositions, and, as I have said, until modern times all theologians agreed that God possesses such hypothetical knowledge. The question remains, when in the logical order of things does this knowledge come? Is it before or after the divine decree? Since Scripture does not reflect on this question, no amount of proof texting concerning God’s hypothetical knowledge can prove that such knowledge is possessed logically prior to God’s creative decree This is a matter for theologico-philosophical reflection, not biblical exegesis. Thus, while it is clearly unbiblical to deny that God has hypothetical knowledge, those who deny middle knowledge while affirming God’s hypothetical knowledge cannot be accused of being unbiblical.
Theological Arguments
The strongest arguments for the Molinist perspective are theological. Once one grasps the concept of middle knowledge, one will find it astonishing in its subtlety and power. Indeed, I should venture to say that it is one of the most fruitful theological concepts ever conceived. Recent studies have applied it to the issues of Christian particularism,2 perseverance of the saints,3 biblical inspiration,4 infallibility,5 Christology,6 the fall and natural evil,7 and evolutionary theory.8 An article begs to be written on a Molinist view of quantum indeterminacy and divine sovereignty. Here, however, we are interested in how the doctrine of middle knowledge provides an illuminating account of divine foreknowledge and providence.
Divine Foreknowledge. First, middle knowledge can help us to understand the basis of divine foreknowledge of future contingents. Divine foreknowledge is based on (1) God’s middle knowledge of what every creature would freely do under any circumstances and (2) his knowledge of the divine decree to create certain sets of circumstances and to place certain creatures in them. Given middle knowledge of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom and the divine decree, foreknowledge follows automatically as a result, without any need of God’s peering into the future, as detractors of divine foreknowledge imagine.
Divine middle knowledge thus offers what has been called a conceptualist model of divine cognition as opposed to a perceptualist model. The perceptualist model construes divine knowledge on the analogy of sense perception. God “looks” and “sees” what is there. Such a model is implicitly assumed when people speak of God’s “foreseeing” the future or having “foresight” of future events. The perceptualist model of divine cognition runs into real problems when it comes to God’s knowledge of the future, for, given that future events do not exist, there is nothing there to perceive.9 By contrast, on a conceptualist model of divine knowledge, God does not acquire his knowledge of the world by anything like perception. His knowledge of the future is not based on his “looking” ahead and “seeing” what lies in the future (a terribly anthropomorphic notion in any case). Rather, God’s knowledge is self-contained; it is more like a mind’s knowledge of innate ideas. It is based wholly in God’s middle knowledge and knowledge of his own decree.
Divine Providence. Second, the Molinist account of divine providence is even more stunning than its account of divine foreknowledge. Consider the following biblical passages:
“This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men” (Acts 2:23 ESV).
“For truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place” (Acts 4:27–28).10
Here we have a staggering assertion of divine sovereignty over the affairs of men. The conspiracy to crucify Jesus, involving not only the Romans and the Jews in Jerusalem at that time but more particularly Pilate and Herod, who tried Jesus, is said to have happened by God’s plan based on his foreknowledge and foreordination. How are we to understand such a far-reaching providence as this?
Molinist Account. If we take the biblical word “foreknowledge” to encompass middle knowledge, then we can make perfect sense of God’s providential control over a world of free agents. For via his middle knowledge, God knew exactly which persons, if members of the Sanhedrin, would freely vote for Jesus’ condemnation; which persons, if in Jerusalem, would freely demand Christ’s death, favoring the release of Barabbas; what Herod, if king, would freely do in reaction to Jesus and to Pilate’s plea to judge him; and what Pilate himself, if holding the prefecture of Palestine in AD 30, would freely do under the pressure of the Jewish leaders and the crowd. Knowing all the possible circumstances, persons, and permutations of these, God decreed to create just those circumstances and just those people who would freely do what God willed to happen. Thus, the whole scenario, as Luke insists, unfolded according to God’s plan. This is truly mind-boggling. When one reflects that the existence of the various circumstances and persons involved was itself the result of myriads of prior free choices on the part of these and other agents, and these in turn of yet other prior contingencies, and so on, then we see that only an omniscient mind could providentially direct a world of free creatures toward his sovereignly established ends. In fact, Paul reflects that “none of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Cor. 2:8). Once one grasps it, the doctrine of divine middle knowledge thus issues in adoration and praise of God for so breathtaking a sovereignty.
Openness Account. What account of divine providence can be given in the absence of middle knowledge? Advocates of divine openness freely admit that without middle knowledge, a strong doctrine of divine providence becomes impossible. But such a viewpoint can make no sense whatsoever of scriptural passages such as those cited above. Consider the account of Saul’s death in 1 Samuel 31:1 – 6 and 1 Chronicles 10:8 – 12. Both writers describe Saul’s death at his own hand in lieu of surrender to the Philistines. But then the Chronicler adds the stunning comment: “Therefore the Lord slew him and turned the kingdom over to David” (1 Chron. 10:14 RSV). Now, how is the openness theologian to make sense of this assertion? Saul’s suicide was considered a sinful and disgraceful deed and therefore could not have been causally determined by God. Yet Saul’s suicide, says the Chronicler, was God’s doing.
Or think of Joseph’s statement to his brothers in Egypt: “Do not be grieved or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result” (Gen. 45:5; 50:20 NASB). Again, the brothers’ treachery and deceit could not have been caused by God, yet God sovereignly directed events toward his previsioned end of saving Israel from famine. Openness theology is at a loss to explain this coalescence of human freedom and divine sovereignty. Ironically, openness theology is forced to revert to Calvinistic determinism to account for God’s providence and thus actually winds up destroying human freedom. By contrast, Molinism provides a perspicuous account of divine sovereignty and human freedom in terms of God’s middle knowledge of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom.
Some openness theologians are fond of comparing God to a Grand Master in chess who is able, on the basis of his knowledge of his own prowess and his opponent’s weakness, to predict exactly when and with what move he will checkmate his opponent. The analogy is an engaging one; unfortunately, in the openness view, God is not so brilliant a chess player as to be able to know that his plans will probably succeed. For he failed to achieve the universal salvation he desired and regretted having created man. Those are not the moves of a Grand Master! So how could he possibly know before the foundations of the world, for example, that his plan for Christ to be crucified through the free agency of Pilate and Herod would be fulfilled? By contrast, the Molinist can explain the absence of universal salvation in terms of the wrong counterfactuals being true. It may be that a world having more saved but less damned than the actual world was not feasible for God. But given his knowledge of true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom, God is certain that his plans will ultimately be achieved. He is thus like a Grand Master who is playing an opponent whom he knows so well that he knows every move his opponent would make in response to his own moves. Such a chess player could not actualize just any possible match, given his opponent’s freedom, but he could actualize any feasible match.
The analogy also has relevance to the problem of suffering and evil. In the openness view, the Not-So-Grand Master will churn up a lot of unforeseen, unnecessary, and pointless suffering as he plays the game, but in the Molinist view, such suffering will be permitted only in light of the Master’s ultimate purpose, namely, building the kingdom of God. Thus, we can rest assured that God has morally sufficient reasons for permitting the evils in the world, whereas on the openness view, it becomes inexplicable why God does not intervene to stop the suffering once it has begun. The cognitively limited deity of openness theology thus makes the problem of evil worse, not easier, for it becomes inexplicable why God just sits by wringing his hands while letting evils go on unchecked without any morally sufficient reason for not stopping them.
A few openness theologians have attempted to accommodate the insights of Molinism by affirming that God does have middle knowledge of “might” counterfactuals of creaturely freedom, even though he lacks middle knowledge of “would” counterfactuals of creaturely freedom. Thus, he knows logically prior to his decree what any person he could create might or might not do in any set of circumstances in which God should place him. By exploiting his middle knowledge of such “might” counterfactuals, God is able to plan how he himself would respond to any choice that any person might make in any set of circumstances. Thus, although God gambles, in that he knows neither how creatures would choose were he to create them, nor how they will choose in the actual world, nevertheless he is never caught off guard or unprepared for their choices, for he has already decided how he would respond to any action they might take. Moreover, he is so intelligent that he knows that however creatures might choose, he will so respond as to ensure the realization of his ultimate purposes.
Such a move appears at first blush to represent a significant step in the direction of Molinism, since there is a significant intuitive difference between what a person might do in a set of circumstances and what he could do. For example, when Adolf Hitler spoke to the Nazi rally at Nuremberg in 1937, he could have broken into an oration in praise of Winston Churchill, but doubtless this is not something that he might have done. Thus, there is an important difference between what a person could do and what he might do in any given set of circumstances.
If revisionary open theists mean to capture this intuitive sense of “might,” then by admitting the truth of “might” counterfactuals logically prior to the divine decree, they seem to have quietly abandoned the most common and forceful objections to the doctrine of middle knowledge, namely, objections based on the lack of grounding of such propositions. In the revised view, there appear to be truths about what persons might or might not do under any set of circumstances, truths that seem to go beyond mere possibilities, which are known by God logically prior to his decree of which world should be actual.
But if “might” counterfactuals can be true logically prior to God’s decree, then why not also “would” counterfactuals? It is important to understand that in the customary semantics for counterfactual conditionals, “would” counterfactuals logically imply “might” counterfactuals, so that in the Molinist view, both are true and known to God via his middle knowledge. Once the usual grounding objections to middle knowledge have been tacitly abandoned, what justification remains for denying the truth of “would” counterfactuals? If the revisionary open theist answers that “would” counterfactuals are incompatible with creaturely freedom, then he has forgotten the difference between what one could do and what one might do in any set of circumstances. Freedom requires only that in a given set of circumstances one be in some sense capable of refraining from doing what one would do; it is not required that one might not do what one would do. If revisionary open theists are willing to accept true “might” counterfactuals, then I see no reason remaining to deny the truth of “would” counterfactuals as well. But that gives you full-blown Molinism.
Unfortunately, by denying the truth of any “would” counterfactuals, the revised openness view seems to collapse the distinction between “might” and “could.” So long as “might” counterfactuals are implied by true “would” counterfactuals, we can maintain the distinction between what someone might do and what he could do under any circumstances. It is true that Hitler might not give an oration in praise of Churchill because he would not, but still he could do so because there are possible worlds (less similar to the actual world than those in which he might not do such a thing) in which he does. But if all “would” counterfactuals are false, then it is false that he would not do such a thing, and so in the customary semantics, it is true by definition that he might do such a thing. No matter how outlandish an action we pick—like Hitler’s delivering his oration while standing on his head—there will, in the absence of any true counterfactuals to the effect that he would not take such an action, be worlds among those most similar to the actual world in which he takes that action, and so it is true that he might do such a thing Hence, the move of revised open theism toward Molinism turns out to be a mere feint. Since “might” counterfactuals collapse to counterfactuals about what someone could freely do, God knows nothing more than mere possibilities prior to his creative decree —which is exactly what traditional open theism claims!
Revisionary open theists, then, seem to face a fundamental dilemma: if “might” counterfactuals are distinct from statements about what one could do in any set of circumstances, then no reason remains for denying the truth of “would” counterfactuals as well; if they are not distinct, however, then revised open theism is only a trivial variation of the usual open theist view.
In the Molinist view, as in the revised openness view, God plans how he would react to any decisions that creatures could freely make. For when he decrees which world is to be actual, he simultaneously decrees the truth of counterfactuals of divine freedom, that is, counterfactuals concerning how God himself would freely act in any circumstances involving his creatures. In decreeing a world, God decrees not only how he will act in response to creatures but also how he would act were creatures to choose any differently. Thus, like the God of revised open theism, he is prepared for every contingency, but he exceeds the God of revised open theism in that he knows not only how creatures might (or could) choose in any set of circumstances but also how they would choose under any such circumstances.
In any case, as explained above, knowledge of mere “might” counterfactuals is insufficient to give God the sort of specific providential control described in the Bible. Nor is it clear that such knowledge is sufficient to bring about God’s desired ends. If it were, then why has God not acted to secure universal salvation? The revised openness theologian seems forced to say that it is because God did not really desire it—which is, again, to collapse into Calvinism. Why does God not intervene to stop evil once it appears? In revised open theism, it cannot be that God permits it to persist because he knows that some justifying good will come out of it, for all he knows is that some justifying good might, with some inscrutable probability, come out of it. Thus, revised open theism fails to secure any of the advantages of Molinism.
Augustinian-Calvinist Account. The Augustinian-Calvinist perspective, on the other hand, interprets the biblical passages such as those quoted above to mean that foreknowledge is based on foreordination. God knows what will happen because he makes it happen. Knowing the intentions of his will and his almighty power, God knows that his purpose shall be accomplished. But this interpretation inevitably makes God the author of sin, since it is he who moved Judas, for example, to betray Christ, a sin that merits everlasting perdition for the hapless Judas. But how can a holy God move people to commit moral evil, and moreover, how can these people then be held morally responsible for acts over which they had no control? The Augustinian-Calvinist view seems, in effect, to turn God into the Devil.
The Reformed theologian might object that a Molinist theory of providence is too successful in showing how God could sovereignly control a world of free creatures, so that it ultimately becomes almost indistinguishable from the Reformed view. For given that the circumstances C in which persons are placed are nondetermining, it must be a brute, contingent fact how some person S would choose in C. But then it is plausible that there are an indefinite number of circumstances C*, that differ from C in imperceptible or causally irrelevant ways (for example, a different stellar event in Alpha Centauri at the time of S’s decision), in which S would choose differently than in C. So by placing S in one of these circumstances C*, God could bring it about that S chooses freely whatever God wishes without any deleterious impact on his providential plan. Thus, God can sovereignly bring about any creaturely decision he wants and, hence, any world that he wants.
We would do well to pause and ask ourselves what the import of this objection is even if it is successful. It would do nothing, I think, to undermine the Molinist account of providence as such. In particular, it would not in any way undermine the freedom of the creatures in whatever circumstances they find themselves, for their choices are in every case causally undetermined. If a choice is freely made in C, then it would be freely made in C*, which includes some causally irrelevant event not included in C. If God places S in C, then S’s freedom is not compromised by the mere fact that had God placed S in C* instead, S would have chosen differently.
Rather, what the objection threatens to undermine, it seems, is the theological utility of the doctrine of middle knowledge. For if the objection is correct, the distinction between broadly logically possible worlds and feasible worlds becomes inconsequential, since God can bring about whatever free creaturely choices he desires without detriment to his providential plan. The Molinist account of providence would then be useless in explaining why apparently less-than-optimal states of affairs obtain; like the Augustinian-Calvinist, the Molinist would have to ascribe them to God’s perfect will. But the Molinist account would still enjoy the considerable advantage of making room for creaturely freedom. It would just be of little help in explaining, for example, why evil exists.
The objection, in any case, is not successful, for it is predicated on a number of questionable assumptions. First, the objection seems to assume that one is dealing with events distributed across the various sets of circumstances by blind chance. But it is not by chance that S chooses a particular action A in C. So one must not think of S’s free choices as randomly distributed across the various sets of circumstances. Quite the contrary, free choices are indeterministic events done for reasons. And that gives grounds for thinking that S’s choices would not vary wildly in various C*, namely, because the C* are indistinguishable from C, one’s reasons for choosing A in C also hold for C*. (Empirical evidence for constancy across C*: just ask the relevant person whether he would have chosen differently had C* rather than C been his circumstances!)
Second, the objection assumes that the circumstances mentioned in the counterfactual’s antecedent are unlimited. But this is far from obvious. It is universally agreed, for example, that events later than the time t of S’s choice ought not to be included in the circumstances. Why not? The most obvious answer is because events that are future at t can have no influence on S’s situation at t and, hence, are irrelevant to S’s decision. But events that are sufficiently distant from S are just as irrelevant as future events even if those events are simultaneous with or even earlier than t. Only events that are connectable via a light signal to the event of S’s decision seem to be relevant to S’s choice. Events having what is called “a spacelike separation” from the event of S’s decision are as irrelevant as future events; indeed, special relativity theory holds that for some observers at S’s location (those moving at near light speeds), these events are future at the time of S’s choice. This suggests that only events in or on S’s past light cone (that is, events from which a light signal could reach S at t) are properly part of C. Thus, the substitution of circumstances C* for C, where C is a proper part of C*, will not affect the truth of the counterfactual in question, since only C is relevant to its truth-value.
Third, the objection assumes that imperceptible events included in S’s past light cone can be altered without significant effect on S’s situation at t. But the lessons of both quantum theory and chaos theory have taught us that such an assumption is false. The imperceptible indeterminacy in the position of a cue ball on a billiard table is such that after only a dozen shots, the indeterminacy in the ball’s location has been magnified to the size of the entire table. Chaotic systems vary unpredictably with the tiniest perturbation. Certainly some events, say, in the very recent past far from S’s location, might be alterable without significant impact on S’s situation at t; but these will be finite in number, and it will be pure speculation whether S would freely choose differently were one of them to be altered. The available alterations may fall far short of what is necessary for God’s bringing about any desired free choice on S’s part.
Finally, the objection assumes that God’s concern is with S’s choice alone. But God’s concern is with a whole history of free creatures into eternity future. Even if substituting C* for C were sufficient for bringing about any given free choice of S at t, that says nothing about the feasibility of actualizing a whole world of free creatures, a task that plausibly involves infinite complexity. It is, then, not at all implausible that the difference between broadly logically possible worlds and feasible worlds should become significant and dramatic.
So the objection at issue is predicated on a number of false assumptions, and even if successful, it would do nothing to rob Molinism of its chief ground for boasting: the successful reconciliation of divine sovereignty and human freedom.
Simple Foreknowledge Account. Finally, the proponent of simple foreknowledge can make no good sense of God’s providential planning of a world of free creatures in the absence of middle knowledge. For on such a view God has, logically prior to the divine decree, only natural knowledge of all the possible scenarios but no knowledge of what would happen under any given circumstances. Thus, logically posterior to the divine decree, God must consider himself extraordinarily lucky to find that this world happened to exist. “What a break!” we can imagine God saying to himself. “Herod and Pilate and all those people each reacted just perfectly!” Actually, the situation is much worse than that, for God had no idea whether Herod, Pilate, the Israelite nation, or the Roman Empire would even exist posterior to the divine decree. Indeed, God must be astonished to find himself existing in a world, out of all the possible worlds he could have created, in which mankind falls into sin and God himself enters human history as a substitutionary sacrificial offering to rescue them! Of course, one is speaking anthropomorphically here, but the point remains that without middle knowledge, God cannot know prior to the creative decree what the world would be like. If the defender of simple foreknowledge goes on to say that God’s foreordination of future events is based on his simple foreknowledge, this trivializes the doctrine of foreordination, making it a fifth wheel that carries no load, since the future by definition will be what it will be.Once God knows that an event really is future, there is nothing more left to do; foreordination becomes a redundancy. Surely there is more substance to the biblical doctrine of foreordination than the triviality that God decrees that what will happen will happen!
Thus, of the options available, the Molinist approach provides the most elucidating account of divine providence. It enables us to embrace divine sovereignty and human freedom without mysticism or mental reservation, thereby preserving faithfully the biblical text’s affirmation of both these doctrines. We therefore have powerful theological motivation for adopting the doctrine of divine middle knowledge.
Philosophical Argument
Finally, we also have good philosophical grounds for thinking that a doctrine of middle knowledge is correct. For, as an omniscient being, God must know all truths. Since there are counterfactual truths, God must know these. Now, God knows such truths either explanatorily prior to his decree to create the world or only posterior to his creative decree. But they cannot be known only posterior to his creative decree. since in that case, it is God who decrees what choices agents shall make in whatever circumstances they find themselves, and human freedom is annihilated. Therefore, God must know counterfactuals of creaturely freedom logically prior to his creative decree, which is to say that God has middle knowledge.
We may formulate this argument as follows:
1. If there are true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom, then God knows these truths.
2. There are true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom.
3. If God knows true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom, God knows them either logically prior to the divine creative decree or only logically posterior to the divine creative decree.
4. Counterfactuals of creaturely freedom cannot be known only logically posterior to the divine creative decree.
From premises 1 and 2, it follows logically that
5. Therefore, God knows true counterfactuals of creaturely Freedom.
From premises 3 and 5, it follows that
6. Therefore, God knows true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom either logically prior to the divine creative decree or only logically posterior to the divine creative decree.
And from premises 4 and 6, it follows that
7. Therefore, God knows true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom logically prior to the divine creative decree.
—which is the essence of the doctrine of divine middle knowledge.
Let us now say a word in defense of each of the argument’s premises. The truth of premise 1 is required by the standard definition of omniscience:
O S is omniscient = If any proposition p is true, then S knows that p and does not believe that not-p.
(O) entails that if there are counterfactual truths, then an omniscient being must know them. Openness theologians have suggested revisionary definitions of omniscience so as to be able to affirm that God is omniscient, even as they deny his knowledge of future contingents and counterfactuals of creaturely freedom. William Hasker’s revisionist definition is typical:11
O’ God is omniscient = God knows all propositions which are such that God’s knowing them is logically possible.
Openness thinkers then go on to claim that it is logically impossible to know propositions about future contingents, as shown by the argument for theological fatalism, and so God may count as omniscient despite his ignorance of an infinite number of true propositions.
As it stands, however, (O’) is drastically flawed. It does not exclude that God believes false propositions as well as true ones. Worse, (O’) actually requires God to know false propositions, which is incoherent as well as theologically unacceptable. For (O’) requires that if it is logically possible for God to know some proposition p, then God knows p. But if p is a contingently false proposition, say, “There are seven planets in the sun’s solar system,” then there are possible worlds in which p is true and known by God. Therefore, since it is logically possible for God to know p, he must actually know p, which is absurd.
What the revisionist really wants to say is something like:
O” God is omniscient = God knows only and all true propositions which are such that it is logically possible for God to know them.
Unlike (O’), (O”) limits God’s knowledge to a certain subset of all true propositions. The fundamental problem with all such revisionary definitions of omniscience as (O”) is that any adequate definition of a concept must accord with our intuitive understanding of the concept. We are not at liberty to “cook” the definition in some desired way without thereby making the definition unacceptably contrived. (O”) is guilty of being “cooked” in this way. For, intuitively, omniscience involves knowing all truth, yet according to (O”), God could conceivably be ignorant of infinite realms of truth and yet still count as omniscient. The only reason someone would prefer (O”) to (O) is due to an ulterior motivation to salvage the attribute of omniscience for a cognitively limited deity rather than to deny outright that God is omniscient. (O”) is therefore unacceptably contrived.
A second problem with (O”) is that it construes omniscience in modal terms, speaking not of knowing all truth but of knowing all truth that is knowable But omniscience, unlike omnipotence, is not a modal notion Roughly speaking, omnipotence is the capability of actualizing any logically possible state of affairs. But omniscience is not merely the capability of knowing only and all truths; it is knowing only and all truths. Nor does omniscience mean knowing only and all knowable truths; it means knowing only and all truths, period. It is a categorical, not a modal, notion.
Third, the superiority of (O”) over (O) depends on there being a difference between a truth and a truth that is logically possible to know. If there is no difference, then (O”) collapses back to the general definition (O), and the revisionist has gained nothing. What is a sufficient condition for a proposition to be logically knowable? So far as I can see, the only condition is that the proposition be true. What more is needed? If the revisionist thinks that something more is needed, then we may ask him for an example of a proposition that could be true but logically impossible to know. Propositions like “Nothing exists” or “All agents have ceased to exist” come to mind, but on traditional theism, these propositions are not possibly true, since God is an agent whose nonexistence is impossible. Unless the revisionist can give us some reason to think that a proposition can be true yet unknowable, we have no reason to adopt (O”). It seems that the only intrinsic property that a proposition must possess to be logically knowable is truth.
The openness theologian will claim at this point that future contingent propositions are logically impossible for God to know, since if he knows them, then they are not contingent, as shown by the argument for fatalism. But here the openist thinker has committed a logical howler. He reasons that for any future-tense proposition p, it is impossible both that God knows p and that p is contingent; therefore, if p is contingent, it is not possible that God knows p. But such reasoning is logically fallacious, as is shown in the following:
A. Not-possibly (God knows p, and p is contingently true)
B. p is contingently true
These two premises do not logically imply that
C. Not-possibly (God knows p)
Rather, what follows logically from premises A and B is merely that
C’. Not (God knows p).
In other words, what follows from premises A and B is merely that God does not know p, not that it is impossible that God knows p. Thus, even granted the fatalist’s premise A (which is moot) that it is impossible that God knows p and p is contingently true, it does not follow from the contingent truth of p that p is such that it is logically impossible for God to know p. Therefore, even based on the defective definition (O”) proposed by the revisionist, the open theologian’s God turns out not to be omniscient, since p is a true proposition that, so far as we can see, is logically possible for God to know, yet God does not know p. Thus, the open theologian must deny divine omniscience and therefore reject God’s perfection—a serious theological consequence indeed. Therefore, premise 1 cannot be easily denied.
Premise 2 asserts that there are true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom. This premise does not require us to believe that all counterfactuals about creatures’ free acts are either true or false. But it does seem plausible that counterfactuals of the following form are either true or false. (letting S be any person, A some action, and C any set of circumstances including the whole history of the world up until the time of decision):
CCF If S were in C, S would freely do A.
It is counterfactuals of this form that we dignify with the title “counterfactuals of creaturely freedom” (CCF).
We have every reason to think that there are true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom. First, it is plausible that counterfactuals of the form CCF are true or false. For since the circumstances mentioned in the antecedent in which S finds himself are fully specified, any ambiguity which might cause us to doubt that the counterfactual has a truth-value is removed. And it is plausible that in many cases S would freely do A in C, just as the counterfactual states. Second, we ourselves often know the truth of counterfactuals about how people would act or react under particular circumstances. While we may not know such truths with certainty, we constantly make decisions and act on the basis of which counterfactuals we think are probably true. A little reflection reveals how pervasive and indispensable such counterfactual truths are to rational conduct and planning. We sometimes base our very lives on their truth or falsity. Third, as pointed out above, Scripture itself gives examples of such true counterfactuals (think again about Paul’s statement in 1 Cor. 2:8).
Premise 3 states logically exhaustive alternatives for an omniscient deity and so must be true: counterfactuals of creaturely freedom are known by God either prior to his decree or only after his decree.
Finally, premise 4 must be true because if counterfactuals of creaturely freedom were known only after the divine decree, then it is God who determined what every creature would do in every circumstance. Augustinian-Calvinist thinkers bear witness to the truth of this premise in their affirmation of compatibilist theories of creaturely freedom (according to which all our acts, though voluntary, are causally determined). They thereby testify that God’s all-determining decree precludes libertarian freedom, which is the sort of freedom with which we are here concerned. Thus, if God knows counterfactual truths about us only posterior to his decree, then there really are no counterfactuals of creaturely freedom. If there are such counterfactuals, they must be true logically prior to the divine decree.
Given the truth of the premises, the conclusion follows that prior to his creative decree, God knows all true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom, which is to say that he has middle knowledge.
Conclusion
Via his middle knowledge, then, God can have complete knowledge of both conditional future contingents and absolute future contingents. Such knowledge gives him sweeping sovereignty over the affairs of men. Yet such an account of God’s knowledge is wholly compatible with human freedom, since the circumstances envisioned in counterfactuals of creaturely freedom are nondetermining and, hence, freedom-preserving. It is because of these advantages that I commend a Molinist account of divine providence for serious consideration.
RESPONSE TO WILLIAM LANE CRAIG A TENDENTIOUS ANALYSIS
William Lane Craig is a brilliant scholar. He also writes beautifully. The substance of his chapter, however, is unworthy of his brilliance, for although it is beautifully written and descriptively superb, it does not argue a case as much as assert a position. Indeed, from beginning to end Dr. Craig offers, not an extended argument that carefully anticipates and answers the potential questions of those not already members of the Molinist camp, but a tendentious analysis that leaves the most difficult and important questions unaddressed.
Among these questions are the following: (1) What is the ontological status of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom for Molinists generally and for Dr. Craig specifically? Since counterfactual conditionals are logically “prior to and independent of God’s decree,” just how are they related to the will and providential activity of the Creator? Do they exist independently of God, and if so, how could anyone account for their existence without subverting the self-sufficiency of God “in everything: in his existence, in his attributes, in his decrees, and in his works"?12 Or are they in fact dependent on God, and if they are, what is the nature of this dependence given the Molinist contention that counterfactual conditionals are neither caused nor determined by God?13 (2) What are we to make of the grounding objection? Dr. Craig commends the feasibility of Molinism in part by insisting that “counterfactual statements constitute a significant part of our ordinary language and are an indispensable part of our decision making.” But how is our counterfactual knowledge of “how people would act or react under particular circumstances” like or not like God’s middle knowledge of what creatures with libertarian freedom “would freely choose under various circumstances"? Is it possible that we, as those who are created in God’s image, have a measure of middle knowledge as well? Or is our knowledge of counterfactual conditionals different from God’s in that ours is inferential and therefore grounded yet fallible whereas his is noninferential and therefore not grounded yet infallible?14 (3) Why, moreover, must we accommodate the assumption that libertarian freedom — “the sort of freedom with which [Dr. Craig is] … concerned” in his essay —just is genuine freedom, particularly when the notion that human beings are genuinely free “is denied by no orthodox theology,”15 and the intelligibility of libertarian freedom remains an open question? (4) How, finally, can Molinists escape the charge that they have embraced a form of fatalism that would make the most radical of hyper-Calvinists squeamish? According to Richard Muller:
If there is a middle knowledge in God, dependent on “external objects,” then there is an eternal priority of these creatures and creaturely events over God and “creatures will not depend on God alone, but God will instead depend on creatures as his exemplars.” This divine dependence, in turn, would argue the absolutely certain existence of future contingents “prior to all divine decrees” and, given the absolute certainty of such contingents, introduces a causal necessity into their effects—that is, the necessity of the consequent, which, from the perspective of the consequent act or thing itself is an absolute necessity. A radical conception of foreknowledge that insists on a divine foreknowledge of conditionals as conditional, in other words, reifies the conditionals, places events and things outside of the divine purpose, and hypothesizes an order of occurrences that, therefore, impinges negatively on the divine willing Thus, those who “establish future events as prior to the decree of God, introduce Stoic fatalism, namely, an interconnection of things independent of God.” This … is the implication of the theory of middle knowledge, especially of the Socinian version. The attempt to gain freedom at the expense of the divine causality results, therefore, in a new fatalism, a replacement of the conception of overarching divine purpose with a model of blind natural necessity.16
In short, because Dr. Craig ignores these and other important questions, there is a hollowness to his presentation that renders his analysis unpersuasive not only to those who do not share his philosophical commitments but also to those who already do yet reject the Molinist proposal for one substantial reason or another.
According to the majority of those standing in the tradition of Reformed orthodoxy, this hollowness is particularly disturbing for two important reasons First, it is disturbing because it discloses an aloofness that effectively ignores the categorical irrelevance of middle knowledge to accounts of divine providence that do not involve the libertarian view of human freedom. As Paul Helm has incisively argued, “The very notion of middle knowledge collapses if its underlying rationale and necessity are changed. That rationale and necessity rest upon the Jesuit and Arminian commitment to the freedom of indifference. As it is impossible to have a soufflé without eggs, so it is impossible to have middle knowledge without the freedom of indifference.”17 Second, the hollowness of Dr. Craig’s essay is disturbing because it encourages a kind of insolence that is not only entirely without justification but also, to put it charitably, entirely lacking in appropriate reverential caution. Dr. Craig brazenly opines that the Augustinian-Calvinist account of providence “seems … to turn God into the Devil,” because it “obliterate[s] human freedom” and “makes God the author of sin.” While this statement and the assertions that support it will likely elicit squeals of delight from some quarters of an increasingly factious evangelical camp, it is theologically irresponsible—in fact, it is deserving of a stern rebuke—due in large measure to the magnitude of the questions that Dr. Craig ignores throughout his essay.
A Theological or Philosophical Account?
In my estimation, the tendentious nature of Dr. Craig’s analysis is simply the inevitable manifestation of an approach to thinking about the providence of God that privileges philosophical speculation over the careful examination of what God has revealed in his Word. Indeed, Dr. Craig’s analysis is grounded, not in the thoughtful investigation of what Scripture explicitly says about God’s relationship to the world that he has made, but in a consideration of the text that has been compromised by a favored philosophical paradigm, in this case a cluster of assumptions surrounding the libertarian view of human freedom. According to Dr. Craig, genuine freedom just is libertarian freedom, and because “God must know all truths,” he just has middle knowledge, and these are the assumptions that just should inform a Christian understanding of providence, despite the fact that even in “a conceptualist model of divine cognition,” we cannot “adequately explain”18 precisely how God could just know what creatures with libertarian freedom “would freely choose in whatever circumstances in which they might be.”
While it is certainly true that we all have assumptions that in some sense affect the outcome of our theological analysis, it is also true that there is a significant difference between assumptions that are theologically justified and assumptions that are theologically reckless. Assumptions that are theologically justified, I would argue, emerge from the world of the Bible, and genuine mysteries—the riddles that we cannot “adequately explain” because they have to do with the inscrutable nature of the relationship between God and the world that he has made — are therefore those that have to do with what the text of Scripture more or less explicitly says. Isaiah 10:5 – 19, for example, presents us with a bona fide mystery, for it informs us that the Assyrians who were used by the Lord to trample the children of Israel down like “the mire of the streets” (Isa. 10:6)19 were punished, not because they plundered the Israelites as they “so intend[ed]” (Isa. 10:7), but because they arrogantly presumed that they were able to do so independently of the Lord who was using them, i. e., “By the strength of [their own] hand” (Isa. 10:13): “Shall the axe boast over him who hews with it, or the saw magnify itself against him who wields it? As if a rod should wield him who lifts it, or as if a staff should lift him who is not wood!” (Isa. 10:15).
Assumptions that are theologically reckless, on the other hand, are more or less imposed on or read into the text of Scripture, and pseudo-mysteries — the riddles that will never be “adequately explained,” not because they are inscrutable but because they have to do with scenarios that are simply foreign to the world of the Bible — are therefore those that trade in one way or another on philosophical contrivances that are unbiblical, and as such, more imagined than real.20 When we conflate justified assumptions with reckless assumptions and as a consequence confound genuine mysteries with pseudo-mysteries, as I believe Dr. Craig has done by insisting that God just has middle knowledge even though we cannot give an adequate account of precisely how he could infallibly foreknow the acts of creatures possessing libertarian freedom, we commit a serious methodological error, an error that, when all is said and done, does little more than sanction rank eisegesis. This, in short, is the danger of embracing a theological method that moves not from the text to philosophical speculation but from philosophical speculation to the text, a line of movement that Dr. Craig elsewhere suggests is the right way for “thinking Christians”21 to come to an understanding of what Scott Oliphint and Lane Tipton rightly call “the deep things of God.”22
Biblical Arguments? Regarding 1 Corinthians 2:8
At the beginning of his discussion of the “lines of argument” that he believes support the Molinist account of divine providence, Dr. Craig acknowledges that although the Bible is filled “with examples of counterfactual conditionals concerning creaturely choices and actions,” this fact alone “does not settle the matter of whether God has middle knowledge. “ Scripture, he reasons, does not reflect on the question of whether God’s knowledge of counterfactual propositions “is before or after the divine decree,” and for this reason, the defenders of Molinism must concede that “no amount of proof texting concerning God’s hypothetical knowledge can prove that such knowledge is possessed logically prior to God’s creative decree. This is a matter for theologicophilosophical reflection, not biblical exegesis. Thus,” Dr. Craig concludes, “while it is clearly unbiblical to deny that God has hypothetical knowledge, those who deny middle knowledge while affirming God’s hypothetical knowledge cannot be accused of being unbiblical.”
As a Reformed believer who is persuaded that God’s knowledge of what moral agents would do in every possible world in which they exist is an essential component of his natural knowledge,23 I must say that although I am gratified by Dr. Craig’s willingness to acknowledge that one can reject middle knowledge without contravening the teaching of Scripture, I wonder if this concession somehow eclipses a more salient issue. The real question, it seems, is not whether those who deny middle knowledge are “being unbiblical” but whether Molinists like Dr. Craig can legitimately claim that there are biblical arguments “for” the Molinist account of divine providence if they cannot demonstrate that the essential commitments of Molinism are justified by the plain teaching of the Bible. To state the matter a bit differently, it seems that for Molinists like Dr. Craig to say that there are “biblical arguments” not just for God’s knowledge of counterfactual conditionals but “for” the Molinist account of divine providence, they must be able to establish that Scripture unambiguously affirms, if not middle knowledge itself, then at least what middle knowledge presupposes, namely, the existence and biblical givenness of libertarian freedom. But can they? Apparently, Dr. Craig believes that they can, for he insists that “of the options available, the Molinist approach provides the most elucidating account of divine providence It enables us to embrace divine sovereignty and human freedom without mysticism or mental reservation, thereby preserving faithfully the biblical text’s affirmation of both of these doctrines’ (emphasis added).
There is a sense, of course, in which no believing theologian would deny that the Bible affirms that God is sovereign and that human beings are genuinely free and responsible for what they do. I know of no consistently Reformed theologian, for example, who wants to argue that human beings are nothing more than automatons and therefore not genuinely free and responsible for the decisions that they make. What Dr. Craig means by “freedom” in the quotation above, however, is not freedom in general but libertarian freedom in particular, not only the kind of freedom that is essential to middle knowledge and the Molinist “scheme,” but also the only kind of freedom that he believes is properly regarded as genuine freedom.24 But does Scripture affirm that human beings have this kind of freedom? And if it does, may we plausibly conclude that, when Scripture’s affirmation of this “doctrine” is combined with its clear affirmation of God’s “sweeping sovereignty over the affairs of men,” there are biblical grounds for believing not only that God has middle knowledge but also that Molinism provides the most compelling account of divine providence? Because he presupposes that libertarian freedom just is the “doctrine” of human freedom that Scripture affirms, Dr. Craig clearly believes that we not only may conclude that Molinism is both compelling and justified by the teaching of Scripture, but we must.
In this regard, Dr. Craig cites 1 Corinthians 2:8 as just one example in Scripture of God’s middle knowledge of a “true” counterfactual, a true counterfactual that, like all true counterfactuals, points to the theological “subtlety and power” of the Molinist account of divine providence. When we consider the “mind-boggling” extent of God’s providential control over the contingent events that both led up to and transpired during the week of Jesus’ passion, “we see that only an omniscient mind could providentially direct a world of free creatures toward his sovereignly established ends. In fact, Paul reflects that ‘none of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory’ (1 Cor. 2:8). Once one grasps it, the doctrine of divine middle knowledge thus issues in adoration and praise of God for so breathtaking a sovereignty” (emphasis added).
While I appreciate and applaud Dr. Craig for his eagerness to praise the God of the Bible for his “breathtaking … sovereignty,” I have yet to be persuaded that 1 Corinthians 2:8 comes anywhere close to supporting the case that Dr. Craig is trying to make for the biblical grounding of Molinism. In fact, I am quite certain that Dr. Craig’s appeal to 1 Corinthians 2:8 does positive damage to his case, and it does so for two reasons. The first, which is admittedly not as consequential as the second, has to do with the ambiguity that is associated with the pronouns highlighted in the quotation above. Does Dr. Craig seriously believe that “the rulers of this age … would not have crucified the Lord of glory” if only they had understood as much as he and other Molinists claim to understand about “God’s providential control over a world of free agents"? Surely, despite the plausibility of such an interpretation given the ambiguity associated with the pronouns “this” and “it,” Dr. Craig cannot mean that, for if he did, it would suggest an arrogance that is almost superhuman. What he must mean, then, is that “the rulers of this age … crucified the Lord of glory” because they did not understand the “plan” that was being sovereignly accomplished in the life and ministry of Jesus. Had they understood that God was “providentially direct[ing] a world of free creatures toward his sovereignly established ends,” and had they understood that these ends were being fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus, they would not have used their libertarian freedom to crucify the Lord of glory, but they would have embraced him as he is because they would have recognized that he just is “the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:24).
When we set grammatical ambiguities aside, however, there is a more compelling reason why Dr. Craig’s appeal to 1 Corinthians 2:8 does positive damage to his case, and it has to do with the ultimate explanation for why “the rulers of this age” did not understand what God was doing before their eyes in the life and ministry of Jesus. The larger context of 1 Corinthians 2:8 suggests that “the rulers of this age … crucified the Lord of glory” neither because they were oblivious to the “mind-boggling” wonders of Molinism, nor because they did not have the intellectual ability to understand the propositional content of what the apostle Paul refers to as “the folly of what we preach” (1 Cor. 1:21). Rather, they crucified the Lord of glory because, as Richard Gaffin has incisively argued, they were “devoid of the Spirit” and thus without the moral ability to understand “the age-to-come, eschatological wisdom of the gospel,” the spiritual wisdom that “is not ultimately cognitive or merely intellectual,”25 the kind of wisdom that is simultaneously revealed and concealed whenever “the word of the cross” (1 Cor. 1:18) is preached.26 According to Gaffin, what Paul says about “the natural person” in 1 Corinthians 2:14
must not be overlooked: “he cannot understand [the things of the Spirit].” It is not simply that such a person will not or refuses to accept what he right well knows to be true. No, he won’t because he can’t. Expressed here is a total cognitive inability, an incapacity that exists “because they [the things of the Spirit] are spiritually discerned,” that is, they are properly appraised and assessed only through the Spirit’s activity. Here, again, yawns the unbridgeable epistemological gulf between this age and the age to come, the nothing-less-than eschatological chasm between belief and unbelief. Calvin’s pungent comment on [1 Corinthians] 1:20 comes to mind: faced with God’s revelation, the unbeliever is like an ass at a concert.27
In the final analysis, then, the problem with Dr. Craig’s appeal to 1 Corinthians 2:8 is that “the rulers of this age” did not possess what he insists moral agents must possess in every feasible world, namely, the freedom of indifference. Indeed, the context of 1 Corinthians 2:8 makes it clear that in this world, embracing Christ was simply not a viable option for them—they could not do it — neither because they did not have the ability to make real choices regarding the “secret and hidden wisdom” (1 Cor. 2:7) that was objectively present to their understanding, nor because they did not have the capacity to understand “the word of the cross” in any sense Rather, they refused to embrace Christ because embracing Christ was — due to the “enervating and corrupting consequences [of sin] (1 Cor. 15:42–43; cf. vv. 21–22)”28—tantamount to embracing “folly” (1 Cor. 1:18). In short, “the rulers of this age crucified the Lord of glory” because they did not have the spiritual capacity to understand “the things of the Spirit of God” (1 Cor. 2:14), and thus they did not enjoy the kind of freedom that only those who have “the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16) enjoy, which just is the freedom to truly see and truly hear and freely act accordingly. “The rulers of this age” ultimately did what they did, then, not because they decided in this possible world to use their libertarian freedom in one way and not in another — again, they simply did not have this kind of freedom — but because they were without the moral ability “to attain to a true knowledge of God,”29 an ability that they most certainly would have had if the Arminian doctrine of prevenient grace held just one drop of water.30 It is this understanding of the relationship between moral character and moral activity and not that which is presupposed by the Molinist “scheme,” I would suggest in closing, that is essential to understanding the “staggering assertion[s] of divine sovereignty over the affairs of men” that are found in passages like Acts 2 and 4. Indeed, it is this understanding alone that allows us to affirm without reservation that the God of the Bible is truly “the Lord of all the earth” (cf Ps 97:5).
Conclusion: “The Godness of God”
The majority of theologians standing in the tradition of Reformed orthodoxy typically respond to those who embrace the Molinist account of divine providence by insisting that there was only one and not two “logical moments prior to the divine creative decree. “ If we imagine that logically prior to the creative decree, the moment at which God had “knowledge of the range of possible worlds” was followed by a second moment “at which he [had] knowledge of the proper subset of possible worlds that, given the counterfactual propositions true at that moment, [were] feasible for him to create,” then we are faced, Reformed believers reason, with a number of questions that suggest there are serious problems with the Molinist view of divine providence. Among these is the basic question of just what it means for God to be sovereign. To what extent can we say that a God whose decree is in some sense dependent on what free creatures would do in counterfactual circumstances really the sovereign. Lord of the universe? To put it differently, in what sense can we say that a God whose rule is based, at least in some measure, on his discovery of feasibilities that are determined not by him but by things that in some sense are independent of him really reigning, particularly when those things have a real bearing on precisely how he reigns?31 According to Reformed believers, the portrait of God that emerges from Scripture is of a God whose rule allows for genuine freedom but is in no sense dependent on or determined by things that are thought to be independent of his all-determining decree. The God of the Bible, they believe, is the God of Nebuchadnezzar and not of Molina, for God rules over all things not just in theory but in practice; indeed, it is he who determines what is feasible, he and nobody else. This is one reason why Reformed believers insist that God’s dominion “is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation; all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, ‘What have you done?’ “ (Dan. 4:34 — 35).
While Reformed believers are persuaded that faithfulness to the God of the Bible requires us to affirm and really believe that God “works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Eph. 1:11), they acknowledge that many evangelicals find it difficult to swallow what Reformed theologians like Douglas Wilson call “the Godness of God”32for reasons having to do with something other than exegesis. Reformed believers recognize, in other words, that many reject the Augustinian-Calvinist account of divine providence because they have embraced a disjunction that leads them to conclude that any candidate for deity that does not conform to their standards or govern in a way that aligns with their moral sensibilities not only cannot be God but quite possibly might be Satan. In response to those who would reject the Augustinian-Calvinist view for this reason, Reformed believers solemnly warn that such individuals need to tread very carefully for at least two reasons. In the first place, they need to tread carefully because the antipathy that is manifest in such an attitude bears a striking—even if perhaps only incidental —resemblance to the antipathy that is essential to”true atheism,” the two “fundamental tenets” of which are always, ironically, “One: There is no God. Two: I hate Him.”33 In the second place, they need to tread carefully lest, by moving from philosophy to the text rather than from the text to philosophy, they justify this attitude, and in the process arouse the wrath of God by suppressing — and encouraging others to suppress—the truth of God in unrighteousness (Rom. 1:18 — 32). In short, those who cannot stomach the God of the Augustinian-Calvinist tradition would be well advised to remember that God is no respecter of persons (Col. 3:25), not even of really smart philosophers.
RESPONSE TO WILLIAM LANE CRAIG
William Lane Craig has penned a clear and concise chapter on the concept of middle knowledge and has drawn out its implications for providence with characteristic rigor. His presentation will serve well our efforts to understand and evaluate this elegantly flawed theory. Craig’s enthusiasm for the Molinist strategy shines through every line of his essay and, despite its logical form, imparts to it a poetic quality. Craig praises middle knowledge as “astonishing in its subtlety,” “fruitful” in its results, and “stunning” in its effect, and indeed it is. I am saddened, therefore, that I cannot respond to every significant argument the essay contains. I will leave it to Greg Boyd and other open theists to assess Craig’s criticisms of that view. And I will leave it to philosophers to assess Craig’s philosophical case for the God of the philosophers. I will limit myself to three issues I consider decisive in judging whether a Molinist doctrine of providence can be incorporated into a genuinely Christian theology. My three concerns are these: Does the theory of middle knowledge do justice to the Christian conviction that God’s greatness and glory tower beyond all we can think or imagine? Does the theory of middle knowledge attribute to God a level of sovereignty worthy of him? Does the middle knowledge answer to the problem of evil do justice to the way in which sin and evil are characterized in the New Testament?
The Middle Knowledge Picture of God
As Craig explains, middle knowledge lies in the logical space between God’s knowledge of “necessary truths” (natural knowledge) and his knowledge of “what will be” (free knowledge). In his middle knowledge, God knows what any possible free creature would do in every possible circumstance, and this knowledge enables God to plan the world down to the last detail. As “fruitful” and “stunning” as this theory seems on the surface, however, I believe examination will show that it does not do justice to the Christian doctrine of God.34 Notice, first, that Craig articulates all three forms of divine knowledge as conceptual knowledge of truths, which should not be surprising since Craig identifies himself as holding a “conceptualist” view of the operation of the divine mind. Instead of identifying God’s natural knowledge as God’s unmediated knowledge of himself (which includes knowledge of his power), Craig speaks of God’s knowledge of “necessary truths.”35Apparently, Craig holds that not all necessary truths refer to God’s own being. Some truths, such as 2 +2 = 4, the laws of logic, and perhaps others, are necessary independently of God’s being or even of his existence. Instead of speaking of God’s free knowledge as God’s knowledge of his will (again, divine self-knowledge), Craig speaks of God’s knowledge of truths about “what will be. “ This “conceptualist” way of speaking allows Craig to insert middle knowledge into the logical sequence without glaring incongruity. But this terminological consistency hides the fact that middle knowledge cannot, like the other two, be articulated as a form of divine self-knowledge. The power of middle knowledge depends on its character as eternal knowledge of something other than God himself. It is knowledge of truths that in no way depend on God for their truth. They depend, rather, on what the free creature would do in the posited circumstances.
In this way, the “stunning” theory of middle knowledge wedges open the eternal being of God and inserts another eternal reality into its heart. With its concept of necessary truths, whose eternal truth and necessity stand independent of God, and counterfactual truths, whose truth depends not on God but on what free creatures would do, Craig’s theory robs God of his essential divinity. The Molinist God does not possess absolute independence, or aseity. There exists a coeternal reality that is neither God nor God’s creature; yet this quasi-divine reality determines and limits what God can be and do. Necessary truths determine what sort of divinity God can be, and the truths of middle knowledge determine what sort of world God can create. Christian theology must reject such metaphysical dualism under any name and in any guise, whether the coeternal reality is material, spiritual, or conceptual. Karl Barth is correct in stressing that God’s power and will are “not subordinate and responsible to any higher power and independent idea of what is possible and impossible for Him either as concerns Himself or as concerns His works … He is also the substance of everything that is possible.”36 The Zurich theologian Johann Heidegger (1633 — 1698) asserts this principle with impressive clarity:
The object of divine power is the possible; not in itself, as though there were anything outside God, which has the cause of its possibility in itself, outside the power and will of God; but in the power and will of God, which alone is the foundation and root of all possibility. All things outside of God derive their essence and reality from the fact that, as God understands how to make them for His own glory, so He wills that they be and produces them Thus then that is possible, which God can will, order, call, do for His glory; impossible, which God cannot order, will, do for His glory.37
My second objection to the middle knowledge picture of God centers on its rationalism. Craig speaks of the logical distinctions we make in God’s knowledge as if they indicate real differences in God. He seems to assume that God’s being can be expressed adequately in the categories of our minds. Craig uses the language of knowledge and knowing, as far as I can tell, in the same sense when speaking of God as when referring to creatures. There is hardly a hint that our language, analogies, and definitions may need to be negated as well as affirmed. Craig’s dismissive remark lumping together “mysticism” and “mental reservation,” in contrast to his praise of Molinism as “elucidating,” is another indication of a tendency toward rationalism. In disparaging “mysticism,” Craig seems to be rejecting views that consider the being of God as beyond the grasp of human language, logic, and reason. Is there no mystery in God? Is it merely fuzzy thought or empty words to think of God as transcending the polarities of necessity and freedom, person and nature, justice and mercy, and others?
Consider Craig’s seemingly innocuous theory that middle knowledge serves God as a “means” of choosing a world to create. As I argue in my chapter in this volume, the notion that God needs a means or a “how” in order to create the world is deeply problematic. First, it projects into the life of God the human imperfection of needing means to act. We need means because we are not self-sufficient and, hence, cannot create things from nothing. Attributing to God the need for means contradicts the doctrine of creation from nothing; it sees God as needing a quasi-divine archetype for the feasible world he decides to create — an archetype that is equally eternal with God. But more seriously, Molin-ism’s picture of God resembles Plato’s demiurge (craftsman), who constructs the temporal, physical world according to eternal ideas that exist independently of him, more than it does the triune God of Christianity. In the New Testament and in patristic thought, however, the Word of God is the archetype, possibility, and means of creation. In Craig’s chapter, middle knowledge, which is knowledge of something other than God, takes the place of the Word of God as the archetype of the world. Instead of understanding God’s knowledge in a Trinitarian way, as the Father knowing his exact image in the Word/Son in the unity of the Spirit, Craig pictures a monotheos who thinks necessary truths and possible and feasible worlds! Instead of the Trinity of Scripture, who cannot be grasped by our thought, Craig substitutes the kind of God one reads about in philosophical journals, that is, an infinite Mind that contemplates eternal truths. From this rationalist presupposition flow all the other problems with Molinism, especially its inability to imagine that God creates and rules the world from a position so transcendent that the very same action by which he controls the world also liberates it into the freedom of the children of God.
A Feasible Kind of Sovereignty
According to Craig, the Molinist account of providence makes “perfect sense of God’s providential control over a world of free agents. “ It is “truly mind-boggling” how middle knowledge allows God to unfold his plan “toward his sovereignly established ends.” Indeed, “once one grasps it, the doctrine of divine middle knowledge thus issues in adoration and praise of God for so breathtaking a sovereignty.” This is high praise, and there is a sense in which Craig is right. The Molinist account depicts an amazing Mind and a level of sovereign control over the world that stuns us into silent wonder. But does it rise to a doxological level worthy of the God of Scripture?
The Molinist theory begins with God’s knowledge of all necessary truths and possible worlds. In the previous section, I objected to Craig’s conceptualistic and dualistic scheme in which the necessity of necessary truths and the possibility of possible worlds are grounded in something other than God. In opposition to that view, I argued that possibility and necessity are grounded solely in God. In one sense, this distinction makes no difference for the doctrine of providence, since God possesses just as many “options” in one case as in the other; for I do not believe it makes sense to think it possible for God to declare the laws of logic invalid or to create worlds that possess incompatible properties.38Nevertheless, I believe that even in his discussion of natural knowledge Craig diminishes God’s sovereignty. If God is not absolutely sovereign over his own being, knowledge, and eternal circumstances, how can God be absolutely sovereign over creation? As I will show, this primitive dependence will manifest itself in all of God’s actions.
In the next “moment” of divine knowledge, middle knowledge, God knows what every free creature would do in every possible circumstance. This move narrows God’s focus from the infinite set of possible worlds to the smaller but still virtually infinite subset of feasible worlds. What makes a possible world feasible? The deciding factor is creaturely freedom. Some possible worlds contain no free beings, while others contain beings capable of free action. Still other possible worlds contain free beings who actually exercise their freedom; only these worlds are feasible. Feasibility then applies only to worlds that are both possible and exhibit libertarian freedom. It is important to note that nothing God wills or does can make a possible world into a feasible one. The truth of a feasible world is eternal and independent of God. Middle knowledge, then, is completely passive in that God can see but cannot expand or contract the range of feasible worlds.
Only at the next logical “moment” (free knowledge) do God’s will and power become relevant. Indeed, everything before this third stage would have been the same even if there were no creation. God could have contemplated necessary truths and possible and feasible worlds for all eternity without creating anything at all. Thankfully, however, God freely willed to create, to give being to something outside himself. Moreover, God willed to create a world with beings who can know and enjoy him and, through their libertarian freedom, participate in achieving their own identity and determining their eternal destiny. Because God wills the latter type of world, he will leave other possible worlds unrealized. But how does God select one from among the virtually infinite feasible worlds to make actual? It seems to me that Molinism faces a significant, even fatal, problem at this point. Does God possess an idea of his preferred world, the world he would realize if he faced no constraints? As infinitely wise, surely God possesses such an ideal standard; otherwise, what principle could God bring to bear to make the best decision about which feasible world to make actual?39 Suppose that there happens to be a feasible world that conforms perfectly to God’s ideal world. In this case, the fit between God’s ideal world and this feasible world would be a lucky accident. It is like the couple who created a list of features characteristic of their ideal car. They anticipated a long search and did not dare hope for complete success, but to their amazement, when they arrived at the dealer’s showroom, there stood their dream car down to the last detail. Now, no one would claim that the couple’s amazing success demonstrates their wisdom or power. It simply shows their luck. In the same way, that there happens to be a feasible universe that conforms to God’s ideal does not demonstrate God’s “breathtaking sovereignty” but his good fortune.
In the Molinist theory, however, God does not get so lucky. Craig does not identify our world with the ideal that God would have preferred to actualize. To do so would render the problem of evil as unanswerable for Molinism as he thinks it is for determinism. According to Craig, God’s decision to actualize our imperfect world rather than his ideal world can be accounted for by “the wrong counterfactuals being true.”40Although there may be an infinite number of possible worlds without sin and evil, apparently there is no feasible world free of these ills. We can be sure, however, that “God has morally sufficient reasons for permitting the evils in the world.” In other words, the good achieved is worth the evil endured. Perhaps this positive verdict characterizes many feasible worlds, but if so, this too would be accidental with reference to the will of God. Which one of the morally positive, feasible worlds should God actualize? Although Craig does not address this issue, the Molinist answer must be that God would actualize the best feasible world. Hence, our world, though not the best possible world, is the best feasible world.
Once the best feasible world is identified and God decides to actualize that world, God sovereignly executes this world plan down to the last subatomic event. Here, then, is where Craig breaks forth in praise for God’s “breathtaking … sovereignty.” As I admitted above, I agree that such sovereignty is mind-boggling. The issue, however, is not whether divine sovereignty is stunning to the human mind but whether it is as great as we can conceive. I do not believe it rises to this height. For prior to God’s sovereign actualization of the best feasible world, God is conditioned in two ways. First, God is not the ground of the possibility of possible worlds. God finds himself confronted and limited by the eternal laws of thought and being. Second, the availability of a feasible world that conforms to God’s ideal will, or even of a feasible world in which good outweighs evil, is a lucky accident brought about by the fortuitous intersection of the set of feasible worlds and the set of worlds acceptable to God as candidates for actualization. It is logically possible that no feasible world exists in which good outweighs evil. That such worlds exist is a brute fact.
The irony in this situation is stunning. The theory of middle knowledge was supposed to rid the world of fate and chance while preserving human freedom. To accomplish this task, however, it limits God’s freedom and subjects him to a kind of fate worse than the one from which it supposedly liberates human beings. If God determines our “fate,” at least we can believe our destiny is determined by a free, loving, and just God. But if God is fated to be constrained eternally by impersonal laws and truths, we can take no such consolation. Indeed, it was against precisely this type of impersonal fate that the patristic theologians fought so hard! Craig correctly points out that in the Molinist doctrine of providence nothing happens by chance and God actualizes our world in every detail down to the leaf that trembles on the tree. Yet the very availability of a feasible world worth God’s trouble to actualize is a lucky accident. However amazing when compared to human power, a divine sovereignty limited to the ability to actualize perfectly the best “feasible” world does not rise to the dignity of the God who is sovereign over all necessity and every “possible” and “feasible” world. Let the reader judge: Is it higher praise to say, “God is sovereign over all things, except the laws of thought and counterfactual truths,” or “God is sovereign over all things, no exceptions”?
God, Freedom, and Evil
Molinism shares with open theism the theory of libertarian freedom. They both view freedom as a natural endowment that maintains its indifference between good and evil even after the fall. Open theism, in contrast to Molinism, insists that God cannot know with certainty the direction a libertarian free act will take before it actually happens, or to put it in middle knowledge terms, there are no eternal, counterfactual truths of creaturely freedom for God to know. In my chapter and in my response to Gregory Boyd, I make my position on freedom clear. There is no need to explain it in depth here. Suffice it to say that just as the God spoken about in Molinism is an abstraction only tangentially related to the gracious, triune God of Scripture, likewise the “free agent” who exercises libertarian freedom is only tangentially related to the created, fallen, blind, dying, enslaved sinner whom Jesus came to save. Of what use is it to reconcile two such abstractions? Indeed, it is only as abstractions that they need reconciling. The glorious freedom spoken of in the New Testament does not need reconciling with God’s providence and grace. The question never arises, because genuine freedom is not a natural power undiminished by the fall but a gift bestowed by the gracious and liberating act of God the Father, through the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Craig argues that Molinism provides a satisfactory answer to the problem of evil, which is understood in his chapter as the problem of theodicy. His answer is twofold. First, God cannot be blamed for the unavailability of a feasible world untroubled by sin and evil. God has no control over this. Second, God would not choose to actualize a particular feasible world, thereby allowing some evil to be actualized, unless the total good achieved was worth the evil endured. This approach, as I indicated above, offers itself as a theodicy, a rational justification of God’s ways with the world. The New Testament, however, does not approach sin and evil from this direction. The “problem” of evil is evil itself, its presence and effects in God’s creation. Christianity’s solution to the “problem” of evil is God’s act of salvation in Christ, which culminates in the resurrection of the dead and the liberation of creation. Christ solves the problem of evil by eradicating evil in a total triumph. This eschatological victory is grasped by faith, anticipated in hope, and lived in love; it cannot be grasped by philosophical reason, which lives by sight alone. I do not see how Molinism can account for this confidence, since even on its premises, the best Molinism can guarantee is that good outweighs evil. It cannot assure us that even in the best feasible world, all evil will be turned eventually to the service of the good. If God cannot bring creation to definitive salvation and complete perfection because “the wrong counterfactuals” of creaturely freedom were true, it will be of little comfort to tell ourselves that it was not God’s fault.
RESPONSE TO WILLIAM LANE CRAIG
I want to applaud Craig for writing a stimulating and nicely argued essay. I found myself agreeing with a great deal of it I concur with Craig that the Calvinist account of providence cannot avoid making God responsible for evil and that it. “in effect … turn[s] God into the Devil.” I also agree with him that simple foreknowledge offers God no providential advantage and undermines the meaning of foreordination. I even agree with certain aspects of Craig’s Molinist understanding of providence and with his criticisms of one version of open theism. Nevertheless, I found some of his arguments against the open view as well as many of his arguments supporting Molinism to be weak and in a few instances seriously flawed. In what follows, I will first offer several miscellaneous critical observations regarding Craig’s overall presentation and criticism of the open view. I will then turn to an issue I regard to be foundational in the debate between open theism and Molinism, namely, our different understandings of “would” and “might” counterfactuals. And I will end by interacting with Craig on the problem of evil.
Craig’s Presentation and Critique of the Open View
How “Revisionary” Are the “Revisionary Open Theists”?
Certain aspects of Craig’s presentation and critique of open theism were puzzling and/or inaccurate. To begin, Craig gives the label “revisionary open theists” to open theists such as myself who hold that God knows the truth-value of conjoined “might” counterfactuals prior to creation.41 This label is quite misleading, however, for there has never been an established open-view position on God’s pre-creational propositional knowledge. Hence, we who defend God’s pre-creational knowledge of true conjoined “might” counterfactuals are not revising anything.
Along similar lines, Craig asserts that “revisionary open theists” differ from other open theists by holding that God is able to know more than logical possibilities prior to creation and is thus able to make contingency plans for possible forthcoming events. This is simply incorrect. While only a few of us open theists to date have expressed our view of God’s pre-creational knowledge in terms of “might” counterfactuals, no open theist of whom I am aware has held that God knows only logical possibilities prior to creation. So too, every open theist of whom I am aware has affirmed that, at least to some extent, God was able to make contingency plans prior to the creation of the world.
Closely related to this, I was surprised to find Craig claiming that open theists deny the truth of all “would” counterfactuals prior to creation I honestly have no idea why Craig would think any open theists (let alone every open theist) would embrace such a preposterous view. Every open theist of whom I am aware has at least held that God knew that if humans were to rebel, he would send his Son to save them. In fact, the only pre-creational “would” counterfactuals that we would argue are necessarily false are those that purport to express future libertarian free actions.
Yet another unusual aspect of Craig’s presentation and critique of open theism was his claim that Hasker’s revised definition of omniscience as the ability to know all that is knowable is “typical” for open theists. Craig thus argues that “openness thinkers claim that it is logically impossible to know propositions about future contingents,” and he spends more than two pages refuting this view. In reality, Hasker’s view is hardly typical among open theists. Many open theists hold that propositions about future contingents have no truth-value until agents resolve possibilities one way or another, while others, such as myself, argue that all propositions about future contingents, including “might” propositions, have a truth-value that God knows.42
Oddly, even after discussing the view of “revisionary open theists,” Craig continues to speak as if we not only accepted Hasker’s view of omniscience but actually proposed it! The irony is that there was not one criticism Craig made against Hasker’s view that I have not argued myself in other contexts. I think Craig’s essay would have been significantly improved had he taken more care to differentiate between the views of his openness opponents.
Openness and Scripture
Craig alleges that open theists “can make no sense whatsoever” of certain passages of Scripture. He cites as an example Genesis 45:5 and 50:20, which speak of God sending Joseph into Egypt by means of his brothers’ decision to sell him to some Ishmaelites (Gen. 37:27). What his brothers intended for evil, Joseph later said, “God intended for good .“ Craig asserts that “openness theology is at a loss to explain this coalescence of human freedom and divine sovereignty.”
It is not clear why Craig thinks this passage is challenging for open theists. As I assert in my chapter in this book, I adamantly affirm that God has an eternally prepared plan as to how he will weave each and every future decision agents might make into his sovereign purposes. Hence, while evil things do not happen for a higher divine purpose, according to the open view, they always happen with a divine purpose.
The fact that Joseph’s brothers did not have to choose to sell him into slavery, according to the open view, does not at all compromise the effectiveness with which God is able to weave their evil decision into his good sovereign plan. As I’ll demonstrate in my chapter, only a “cognitively limited deity” would be able to weave future decisions that were certain into his sovereign plan more effectively than future decisions that were merely possible.
Another passage Craig alleges open theists can make no sense of is 1 Chronicles 10:8 — 14, in which the author says, “The Lord put [Saul] to death,” even though, as a matter of fact, Saul took his own life. It seems to me that if this passage poses a problem for open theists, it does so for Craig as well. After all, Craig wants to affirm Saul’s libertarian freedom in committing suicide as much as open theists do. Hence, Craig wants to deny that the Lord caused Saul to commit suicide as much as open theists do.
In reality, however, I do not believe this expression should be considered fatal for either of our positions. Old Testament authors frequently depict God as bringing about events he merely allows with a divine purpose. This way of speaking was in keeping with their conception of Yahweh as an ancient Near Eastern monarch and served to emphasize, over and against the polytheism of surrounding cultures, that the one and only Creator takes responsibility (though never the moral culpability) for all that comes to pass in his creation. Hence, for example, the Lord is spoken of as personally slaying the firstborn in houses that lacked the blood of a lamb on their doorpost (Ex. 12:12) even though, in reality, he simply did not protect these households from “the destroyer” (Ex. 12:23).43 In any event, open theism has no more trouble reconciling compatibilistic-sounding Scriptures with libertarian freedom than does Molinism.
On “Might” and “Would” Counterfactuals44
The Independent Truth Status of Conjoined “Might”-Counterfactuals
The most important disagreement between Craig’s view and my own concerns the logical status of “might” counterfactuals. I am aware that discussions on “might” and “would” counterfactuals may make some readers’ eyes glaze over, but I encourage such readers to work through this material nevertheless. Though such discussions may sound pedantic, the truth is that a lot hangs in the balance in this discussion in terms of how we view God and understand his way of governing the world.
In Craig’s view, “ ‘would’ counterfactuals logically imply ‘might’ counterfactuals.” For example, if it is true that “Commander Karl would publicly praise Churchill if given a chance,” then, in Craig’s view, it must also be true that “Commander Karl might publicly praise Churchill if given a chance. “ In this view, “might” counterfactuals serve only to express the logical precondition of “would” counterfactuals and never independently serve as ultimate descriptors of a possible state of affairs. Hence, in this interpretation of “might” counterfactuals, God never knows the truth-value of “might” counterfactuals without also knowing the truth-value of corresponding “would” counterfactuals, and in knowing the latter, he already knows the former.
I believe this interpretation of “might” counterfactuals is flawed. As I discuss in my contributing chapter, its chief shortcoming is that it cannot adequately account for the fact that contrasting “might” counterfactuals can be conjointly true, while contrasting “would” counterfactuals cannot. It makes perfect sense to affirm as true the statement that “Commander Karl might and might not publicly praise Churchill if given a chance.” But it is impossible to affirm as true the statement that “Commander Karl would and would not publicly praise Churchill if given a chance,” for this statement is blatantly absurd. This suggests that the truth-value of the “might” counterfactuals in the first sentence is not logically implied by the truth-value of the “would” counterfactuals in the second.
Hence, while “might” and “might not” may serve merely as the logical precondition of “would” counterfactuals when one or the other stands alone, their truth-value cannot be viewed as derivative from “would” counterfactuals when they are conjoined. And this, in turn, suggests that conjoined “might” counterfactuals constitute a distinct category of counterfactuals, alongside “would” counterfactuals, that an omniscient God must know. There are, therefore, logically possible worlds in which God knows the future partly as a “maybe.” Open theists simply believe that the actual world that God created is one such world.
I would go further and argue that not only is it false that the truth-value of conjoined “might” counterfactuals is logically implied by corresponding “would” counterfactuals, but the truth-value of conjoined “might” counterfactuals is actually negated by corresponding “would” counterfactuals That is, if it is true that Karl might praise Churchill, then it is false that he would not, and if it is true that Karl might not praise Churchill, then it is false that he would. Craig must deny this, of course. He argues that “freedom requires only that in a given set of circumstances one must be in some sense capable of refraining from doing what one would do; it is not required that one might not do what one would do” [Craig’s emphasis]. This sentence makes it clear that for Craig “would” does not contradict “might not” and “would not” does not contradict “might.“
There are several problems with this account, however. First and foremost, it is not clear what it means to affirm that an agent is “capable” of refraining from activity x if one at the same time denies that that agent might not engage in activity x. Since Craig denies that it is historically possible for this agent actually to refrain from x, the only “sense” I can see that Craig can ascribe to this agent’s capacity freely to refrain from x is that it is logically possible for the agent not to do x. But surely this is not adequate to account for the agent’s freedom relative to x. Any compatibilist could say this much!
The fact is that a mere logical possibility does not come close to constituting a genuine capacity to act freely in a libertarian sense. If Commander Karl possesses libertarian freedom to praise Churchill or not, we need to say more than merely that either choice is logically possible. We need to affirm, rather, that given the totality of antecedent historical causes, it remains within Karl’s power to choose to praise Churchill or not. And this means that, until Karl himself resolves the possibilities one way or another, the final truth about the matter is that Karl might and might not praise Churchill. Moreover, since the matter is yet open, we must regard it as false that Karl certainly would and false that he certainly would not praise Churchill.
“Would,” “Could,” and “Might”
At one point, Craig objects to the view that conjoined “might” counterfactuals have a truth-value independent of “would” counterfactuals by insisting that “we can maintain the distinction between what someone might do and what he could do under any circumstances” only when we view “ ‘might’ counterfactuals [as] implied by true ‘would’ counterfactuals.” For example, Craig notes that “it is true that Hitler might not give an oration in praise of Churchill because he would not, but still he could do so because there are possible worlds in which he does. “ Craig insists that we open theists who argue for the independent truth status of conjoined “might” counterfactuals are forced to concede the outlandish claim that Hitler might praise Churchill, because, Craig presumes, we deny that Hitler would praise Churchill. “By denying the truth of any ‘would’ counterfactuals,” he argues, “the revised openness view seems to collapse the distinction between ‘might’ and ‘could.’ “ For “if all ‘would’ counterfactuals are false,” he argues, “then it is false that [Hitler] would not do such a thing, and so it is true by definition that he might do such a thing.”
I am afraid this objection is significantly confused. As I noted earlier, Craig mistakenly assumes that we who affirm the independent truth status of conjoined “might” counterfactuals must commit ourselves to the ridiculous position that “all ‘would’ counterfactuals are false. “ In reality, we need regard as false only those “would” counterfactuals whose corresponding conjoined “might” counterfactuals are true. In the case of Hitler, open theists have no trouble affirming the obvious truth that in 1937 Hitler would not praise Churchill. While Hitler could praise Churchill in the sense that it was logically possible for him to do so, the manner in which history unfolded up to this point in time, including the way Hitler had solidified his own character with his own free decisions, rendered it certain that he would not praise Churchill in 1937. And these same considerations rendered it false that Hitler “might and might not” praise Churchill in 1937. Craig’s objection thus misses the mark.
In fact, it seems to me that this argument can be turned around and used against Craig, for his Molinist view collapses “would” and “might” in the same way he mistakenly thinks we “revisionary open theists” collapse “could” and “might.” Consider that, while it is of course true that in 1937 Hitler and many other Nazi leaders would not praise Churchill under any circumstance, it is also true that there were a few in the upper echelons of Nazi power who had misgivings about Hitler and who were sympathetic to some of Churchill’s concerns. Let us assume that the earlier mentioned Commander Karl was one of these Churchill sympathizers. Let us further suppose that Karl had become a candidate to deliver an important speech praising Hitler and condemning Churchill before a large Nazi audience. And, finally, let us assume for the sake of argument that Karl had not yet resolved whether he would courageously sacrifice his life and endanger his family by praising Churchill or whether he would play it safe and praise Hitler.
While Karl deliberated about what course of action he would take, we would naturally say, “Commander Karl might and might not praise Churchill if given a chance. “ And we would mean by this something very different than if someone were to say, “Commander Karl would praise Churchill if given a chance,” or “Commander Karl would not praise Churchill if given a chance.” The conjoined “might” proposition expresses the unresolved nature of Karl’s deliberation in a way that the “would” propositions do not. Indeed, the “would” propositions deny the open-endedness we are trying to express with the conjoined “might” proposition. We would use the “might” proposition precisely because we believed his decision was not yet resolved to the point at which Karl either would or would not certainly praise Churchill if given the chance.
Because Craig collapses the truth of “might” counterfactuals into the truth of “would” counterfactuals, I do not see how he can account for this scenario. Not only this, but the very fact that a state of affairs could arise that is natural to describe with “might” propositions instead of “would” propositions argues against Craig’s interpretation of “might” counterfactuals. So too, the very fact that we can coherently intend conjoined “might” propositions to serve as the ultimate descriptors of a state of affairs, in contrast to “would” propositions, is enough to demonstrate that there are possible worlds that are not exhaustively describable by “would” counterfactuals. And these facts imply that conjoined “might” counterfactuals constitute a distinct category of propositions alongside “would” counterfactuals, which an omniscient God must know prior to the creation of the world.
Hence, precisely because we affirm that God is omniscient and thus knows the truth-value of all meaningful propositions, we should affirm that God knows some of the future (at least of some possible worlds) as a “maybe.” Ironically, while open theists are regularly accused of undermining divine omniscience, this argument suggests it is those who deny that God knows some of the future (at least of some possible worlds) as a domain of possibilities who are in fact undermining divine omniscience.
The Grounding Objection
While it plays a surprisingly minor role in Craig’s essay, Craig made a comment about what is called “the grounding objection” that warrants a response. In essence, the grounding objection contends that it is implausible, if not incoherent, to suppose that there has existed from all eternity settled facts about what every conceivable libertarian free agent would do in every logically possible circumstance. The issue is this: What grounds, or makes true, the eternal “would” counterfactuals that comprise God’s middle knowledge?
It cannot be God’s will that grounds the eternal truth-value of “would” counterfactuals, for classical Molinism grants that this would undermine libertarian freedom. But neither can it be the libertarian free agents themselves, since these agents exist only as possibilities when God knows them in his pre-creational middle knowledge. In fact, it cannot even be the future actions of free agents, since all but one of the innumerable possible worlds including free agents will never exist. Hence, to embrace classical Molinism, one must accept that the facts about what every conceivable free agent would do in every conceivable circumstance simply exist, from all eternity, as an ungrounded, metaphysical surd. I and most other non-Molinists find this conclusion to be unacceptable if not completely incoherent.
Among other problems, it is a challenge to conceive of an eternal set of uncaused counterfactual truths pertaining to the behavior of nonexistent (and, in most cases, never-to-exist) free agents. We can readily understand how necessary truths and logical possibilities can be eternal, for these truths could not be otherwise and thus require nothing over and above their own definition to make them true. But God’s middle knowledge is comprised of contingent truths that are not self-explanatory.45
On top of this, many of us find it hard to understand how agents can be said to possess libertarian freedom when the facts about every choice they will ever make eternally precede their making it. And, finally, I would argue that Molinism actually constitutes a form of metaphysical dualism, for it posits an eternal yet contingent reality alongside God that God neither chose nor created. This enormous body of uncreated and uncaused contingent facts has simply existed, alongside God, from all eternity as a brute metaphysical surd. To me, these objections are decisive against the Molinism Craig defends.
Craig does not address the grounding objection in his essay, though he concedes it is the most forceful argument against his view. What is interesting, however, is that he argues that we who believe God’s pre-creational knowledge includes conjoined “might” counterfactuals as a distinct class of truths have “quietly abandoned” this objection. For in this version of the open view, he argues, “there appear to be truths about what persons might or might not do under any set of circumstances, truths that seem to go beyond mere possibilities, which are known by God logically prior to his decree of which world should be actual.” I will now argue that Craig’s claim is mistaken, and in the process of showing why it is so, I will highlight a fundamental advantage I believe open theism has over Molinism.
The reason Molinism is burdened with the grounding objection is because it rightly understands that “would” counterfactuals undermine libertarian freedom if God is their truth-maker but fails to grasp that “would” counterfactuals undermine libertarian freedom regardless of their truth-maker and even (per impossìbile) if they have no truth-maker.46Curiously, Craig comes close to admitting as much when he denies that God has “middle knowledge of how he himself would freely choose to act in any set of circumstances.” Were God to have such knowledge, Craig avers, it “would obliterate God’s freedom, since the truth of such so-called counterfactuals of divine freedom would be prior to and, hence, independent of God’s decree.” But how is it that true “would” counterfactuals of God’s free activity undermine God’s freedom if known prior to his decree, while true “would” counterfactuals of our free activity do not undermine our freedom when known prior to our decree (that is, our decision)? The logic that undermines the freedom of the one undermines the freedom of the other as well.
In any case, the grounding objection can be completely avoided if we simply accept that libertarian freedom can be described only by conjoined “might” counterfactuals, not “would” counterfactuals, for now we need not deny that God’s pre-creational knowledge is grounded in God’s own nature and will. Prior to creation, God knows that to the extent that he confers on a possible agent in the context of a possible world a certain determinate nature, he grounds the true “would” counterfactuals that describe that agent. To this extent, the being of an agent is given to him, not chosen by him. Yet to the extent that God confers on a possible agent in the context of a possible world libertarian free will, he grounds all true conjoined “might” counterfactuals that describe that agent. To this extent, the agent will acquire their being through the exercise of their free will. While eternally true “would” counterfactuals undermine libertarian freedom, eternally true conjoined “might” counterfactuals do not. To the contrary, conjoined “might” propositions express what it means to have libertarian freedom. Hence, there is no problem affirming that God’s nature and will ground both true “would” counterfactuals and true conjoined “might” counterfactuals. Open theism’s ability completely to avoid the grounding objection while affirming God’s pre-creational knowledge of “would” and “might” counterfactuals gives it a distinct philosophical advantage over Molinism.
Helping God Bring About the Actual World
Before turning to Craig’s critique of the open view’s account of evil, there is one more important difference between open theism and Molinism that warrants mentioning. Because it excludes conjoined “might” counterfactuals as a distinct category of truths from God’s middle knowledge, Molinism conceives of every possible world in terms of a single, exhaustively settled story line.47 By contrast, in the open view, possible worlds that include conjoined “might” counterfactuals embody multiple possible story lines. To bring about a world that includes libertarian free will is to bring about a world that, by definition, is not exhaustively settled.48 Whereas the Molinist account conceives of the actual world as well as every possible world as a traditional novel, the open view conceives of the actual world as well as every possible world that includes true conjoined “might” counterfactuals along the lines of a Choose Your Own Adventure storybook.
One significant practical implication of this difference is that, whereas in Molinism God unilaterally decided which single world story line would get actualized, in open theism free agents, making decisions in the actual flow of history, play an important role in deciding which world story line ends up getting actualized. Since all facts pertaining to the history of the world were settled in eternity before the world began, according to Molinism, the actual historical process decides nothing and contributes nothing. By contrast, because the open view holds that God created a world that contained true conjoined “might” counterfactuals, important matters still hang in the balance, depending on how free agents exercise their free will. In the open view, we do not discover what the future holds; we help decide what the future holds.
So far as I can see, this perspective best captures the biblical teaching that humans were created as God’s viceroys and are designed to reign with him on the earth (2 Tim. 2:12; Rev. 5:10; 20:6; 22:5; cf. Gen. 1:26–28). Our job now is to serve as God’s co-laborers who live and pray in a way that brings about God’s will “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10; cf. 1 Cor. 3:9; 2 Cor. 6:1). In the open view, more so than in Molinism and far more so than in Calvinism, things really hang in the balance, here and now, and whether or not we live in accordance with God’s will and whether or not we pray are decisive factors. Prayer really changes things! The significance and responsibility the open view places on us are, in my opinion, one of its distinct practical advantages.
The Problem of Evil
Which Chess Champion Is Most Praiseworthy?
In the final section of my response to Craig, I will consider his critique of the open view’s account of evil. Much of Craig’s critique centers on a chess analogy of providence to which open theists have frequently appealed. In this analogy, God is conceived of as a master chess champion who is assured of victory, not because he controls every move his opponents make (as in Calvinism), nor because he foresees every move his opponents will make (as in Arminianism), but because he can perfectly anticipate every move his opponents might make. In our estimation, the openness Master Chess Champion is more praiseworthy than the alternative Masters, because she alone wins by virtue of her superior wisdom. So too, open theists believe that the view of providence that most exalts God is one that envisions God confidently steering the creation toward his creational goals by means of his loving wisdom rather than only by means of his innate power or futuristic vision.
Craig attempts to critique the open view by turning the chess-master analogy around and using it against us. According to Molinism, Craig notes, “suffering will be permitted only in light of the Master’s ultimate purpose, namely, building the kingdom of God.” By contrast, Craig argues, “the Not-So-Grand Master” of the open view “will churn up a lot of unforeseen, unnecessary, and pointless suffering as he plays the game.” In fact, Craig doubts that God’s “knowledge of mere ‘might’ counterfactuals is … sufficient to bring about God’s desired ends.” He even alleges that in the open view, “God is not so brilliant a chess player as to be able to know that his plans will probably [sic] succeed.” The proof Craig offers of these allegations is that the God of open theism “failed to achieve the universal salvation he desired and regretted having created man. Those are not the moves of a Grand Master!” Craig argues. He thus concludes that the God of the open view is a “cogniively limited deity” who “just sits by wringing his hands while letting evils go on unchecked without any morally sufficient reason for not stopping them. “ None of the four distinct objections mentioned in this paragraph, however, carries any weight, as I will now argue.
It’s Not about God’s Cognitive Abilities!
First, as frequently as it is repeated among critics of the open view, the charge that the God of open theism is cognitively challenged is a non sequitur. It is true that the open view’s Master Chess Champion is not certain of how his opponents would move in response to every conceivable circumstance, whereas the Molinist Master Chess Champion is. But this difference would imply a limitation on God’s cognitive abilities only if the facts about how agents would move in every conceivable circumstance existed for God to know. Yet this is precisely what open theists deny.
Craig essentially presupposes the truth of his own ontology, including his conviction that the facts about what agents would do in every conceivable circumstance eternally exist, and then alleges that the God of open theism is cognitively challenged for not knowing these facts. This is as unfair as if I were to charge that Craig believes in a “cognitively limited deity” on the grounds that God is ignorant of what agents might and might not do in certain circumstances. The critique would be illegitimate, because I know full well that Craig affirms the perfection of God’s cognitive abilities, just as I do. We simply disagree over the independent truth-value of “might” counterfactuals and thus over the precise content of God’s perfect knowledge.
Remember God’s Infinite Intelligence!
Second, according to Craig, “In the openness view, the Not-So-Grand Master will churn up a lot of unforeseen, unnecessary, and pointless suffering as he plays the game.” Indeed, he is not smart enough “to know that his plans will probably succeed.” Rather, he inexplicably “just sits by wringing his hands while letting evils go on unchecked without any morally sufficient reason for not stopping them.”
In response, I concur with Craig that only a “cognitively limited deity” would fret in the manner Craig suggests because he faced a future partly comprised of possibilities. But the God of open theism does nothing of the sort! If we grant that God is infinitely intelligent, he can anticipate each and every one of any number of possibilities as though each was the only possibility he had to anticipate. We can hardly imagine this infinitely intelligent God “wringing his hands” as he confronted “unforeseen, unnecessary, and pointless suffering.” An infinitely intelligent God can anticipate and prepare for events that might and might not take place just as effectively as for events that will certainly take place. Indeed, since he does not have to spread his unlimited intelligence thin to cover possibilities, God can anticipate each of the events that might and might not take place as if they were events that had to take place, and he can do this from all eternity.
Only a “cognitively limited deity” would be more prepared for certain events than for possible events. Hence, if Craig’s understanding of the Master Chess Champion is such that he could not even “know that his plans will probably succeed” (let alone would certainly succeed) because he anticipates his opponents’ moves as possibilities rather than certainties, I encourage Craig to consider the possibility that it is he, not I or any other open theist, who embraces a “cognitively limited deity.”
Can God Secure His Desired Ends?
Third, Craig wonders if God’s “knowledge of mere ‘might’ counterfactuals is … sufficient to bring about God’s desired ends. If it were,” he continues, “then why has God not acted to secure universal salvation?” In response, I should first note that Craig’s argument assumes that we who believe God’s pre-creational knowledge includes true conjoined “might” counterfactuals must also hold that God’s knowledge excludes all true “would” counterfactuals. As I stated earlier, however, there is absolutely no reason to think this.
More important, this argument strikes me as a bizarre one for Craig to make. If Craig is going to argue that God’s knowledge in the open view is not sufficient to “bring about God’s desired ends” on the grounds that God has not “acted to secure universal salvation,” then Craig must either believe in universalism or accept that this argument counts as much against his own position as it does against open theism. All views that admit libertarian freedom must acknowledge that God could not “secure universal salvation,” despite his desire for all to be saved. Only the Calvinist is able to ascribe to God an undefeatable will, though the bitter pill they must swallow for these bragging rights is the horrific belief that it was not God’s will for all to be saved in the first place.
Fortunately for both Craig and myself, his argument carries no weight, since God’s inability to secure universal salvation for a creation populated with free agents has nothing to do with what God knows. It rather has to do with the nature of free will. For both the Molinist and the open theist, God must find out how agents freely choose. God does not make them choose one way or the other. The only difference between the two views is that in Molinism God mysteriously discovers how agents freely choose prior to creation, whereas in the open view God discovers how agents freely choose in the actual flow of history. But this difference is inconsequential to the issue of whether God’s desire to save all can be thwarted or not. We both grant that it can, as is demonstrated by the existence of sin, evil, and hell, none of which God wills. In both Molinism and open theism, therefore, God must do the best he can with the nonideal world (and with other possible worlds) as he finds it.
At the same time, the Molinist understanding of the nonideal situation that God must work with carries a significant burden from which the open view is free. The Molinist must accept that God actualized this particular world, down to the very last detail, after having evaluated every other possible world. Since God is all-good and always does the best thing, the Molinist must accept that, however nonideal this world may be, it nevertheless is the best of all possible worlds, down to the last detail.49 In light of nightmarish horrors and incalculable suffering that have characterized human history, to say nothing of the eternal hell that most Christians (including traditional Molinists) believe awaits masses of humans after death, this is not an easy claim to accept. The fact that open theism does not require this conclusion is, to my mind, a distinct mark in its favor.
Why Doesn’t God Stop Evil?
A final argument Craig raises against the open account of evil concerns why God does not “intervene to stop evil once it appears.” Craig, like Helseth, is convinced the open view actually worsens the problem of evil since in this view it “becomes inexplicable why God just sits by wringing his hands while letting evils go on unchecked without any morally sufficient reason for not stopping them.” In the Molinist account, by contrast, “suffering will be permitted only in light of the Master’s ultimate purpose, namely, building the kingdom of God.”
This frequently raised objection is frankly not hard to overcome. Craig and I agree that morally responsible libertarian free will entails that agents have, within limits, the capacity to choose good or evil. If God were to intervene unilaterally to stop an agent from choosing evil, as Craig’s objection implies he should, then it would be false that God gave this agent the capacity to choose good or evil. As I have argued elsewhere and will flesh out in my contributing chapter, morally responsible libertarian free will must be, by definition, irrevocable.50 On top of this, we must also take into serious consideration the biblical teaching that God wants to use us ultimately to vanquish evil, which is why we are depicted as God’s coworkers, ambassadors, warriors, and viceroys.51 This purpose would not be accomplished if God unilaterally prevented all evil.
Once we understand the irrevocable nature of libertarian free will, the question is no longer “Why does God not intervene to stop it?” but “Why did God give free will to agents in the first place?” And to this question open theists and Molinists provide identical answers: God deemed the value of free will worth the cost. Hence, if the God of Molinism is morally justified in allowing evil, the God of the open view must be considered justified as well.
Nevertheless, as a final word, I want to note that there is an important difference in the particular way Molinists and open theists conceive of God’s allowing evil. The Molinist must accept that each and every particular evil was specifically permitted by God for a specific good reason. While it is perhaps not ideal, the Molinist must accept that each and every one of the unthinkable atrocities that has ever befallen a human throughout history had God’s specific stamp of approval. The open view has the distinct advantage of not requiring us to accept this difficult conclusion. In the open view, God has a morally justified reason for giving agents the capacity freely to engage in a certain range of possible behaviors but no specific reason for how agents use their freedom. While the ultimate rationale for why agents have freedom in the first place resides with God (it was necessary for love to be genuine), the ultimate rationale for how each agent chooses specifically to use that freedom resides with the agent, not God. Hence, while God wills that agents are free, there is no sense in which God wills the misuse of the freedom he gives.52
To be sure, because he is infinitely intelligent, God is always able to bring an eternally prepared good purpose to events that are brought about by our free will. But the open theist does not have to affirm that God specifically allowed any particular event for that good purpose. In light of the macabre nature of much of what comes to pass in this fallen, oppressed world, I believe this constitutes a significant advantage for the open view.
1. Notice that we are speaking thus far solely about God’s hypothetical knowledge of creaturely free decisions. In a Molinist scheme, God does not have middle knowledge of how he himself would freely choose to act in any set of circumstances. For that would obliterate God’s freedom, since the truth of such so-called counterfactuals of divine freedom would be prior to and, hence, independent of God’s decree. Rather, according to Molina, in decreeing which world is to be actual, God also decrees how he would freely act in any set of circumstances, so that counterfactuals of divine freedom acquire a truth-value simultaneously with the divine decree. So, for example, God knows via his middle knowledge that if Adam and Eve were in the garden, they would freely fall into sin, but at this stage, he does not yet know how he would respond to such a circumstance. In decreeing to create Adam and Eve in the garden, however, knowing that they would freely sin, God also decided that he would expel them from the garden, so that the counterfactual of divine freedom “If God were to find that Adam and Eve had fallen into sin, he would expel them from the garden” becomes true at that moment Middle knowledge thus comprises knowledge of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom, but not of counterfactuals of divine freedom. A final caveat: if quantum indeterminacy is ontic rather than merely epistemic, then there are also counterfactuals of quantum indeterminacy that are known by God as part of his middle knowledge.
2. William Lane Craig, “ ‘No Other Name’: A Middle Knowledge Perspective on the Exclusivity of Salvation through Christ,” Faith and Philosophy 6 (1989): 172 — 88; reprinted in The Philosophical Challenge of Religious Diversity, ed. Philip L. Quinn and Kevin Meeker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 38 – 53.
3. William Lane Craig, “ ‘Lest Anyone Should Fall': A Middle Knowledge Perspective on Perseverance and Apostolic Warnings,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 29 (1991): 65 – 74.
4. William Lane Craig, “‘Men Moved by the Holy Spirit Spoke from God’ (2 Peter 1:2): A Middle Knowledge Perspective on Biblical Inspiration,” Philosophia Christi 1 (1999): 45 — 82.
5. Thomas Flint, “Middle Knowledge and the Doctrine of Infallibility,” Philosophical Perspectives, vol. 5, Philosophy of Religion, ed. James E. Tomberlin (Atascadero, Calif.: Ridgeview, 1991), 373 – 93
6. Thomas P. Flint, “ ‘A Death He Freely Accepted': Molinist Reflections on the Incarnation,” Faith and Philosophy 18 (2001): 3 —20.
7. Unwittingly by William Dembski, The End of Christianity (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2009)
8. Del Ratzsch, “Design, Chance, and Theistic Evolution,” in Mere Creation, ed. William Dembski (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 289 — 312.
9. Notice, however, that if we think of propositions as being within God’s purview, then even on a perceptualist model, God can know the future. For he perceives which future-tense propositions presently have the property of being true. Thus, by means of his perception of presently existing realities, he knows the truth about the future.
10. The verses here and in the remainder of this chapter are from the English Standard Version of the Bible.
11. For the following definition, see William Hasker, “A Philosophical Perspective,” in Clark Pinnock, Richard Rice, John Sanders, William Hasker, and David Basinger, The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God (Downers Grove, 111: InterVarsity Press, 1994), 136.
12. Herman Bavinck, The Doctrine of God, trans. and ed. William Hendrickson (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1991), 144 – 45.
13. According to Richard Muller, “For Molina’s concept to function, the conditions standing prior to the contingent event must be understood as not merely possible, but as having some sort of actuality or quasiactuality apart from the divine willing — inasmuch as the point is not that God knows various and sundry possible contingencies and knows what would result on condition of their occurrence (viz., given their actualization by him). That would, once again, press back into the divine necessary knowledge. Nor is the point that God knows certain conditions within the realm of actuality that he has willed and also knows what will result from them. That would point toward the divine voluntary knowledge. Rather the point is that God knows what will occur contingently upon certain conditions lying outside of his will: these conditions are not mere possibility nor divinely willed actuality, but foreknown conditions, foreknown as actual apart from the decree, at least for the sake of stating the contingency. Once again, the Reformed deny that there can be such knowledge: ‘there can be no scientia media, Cocceius wrote, ‘because there can be no being independent of the divine will’ “ (Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, 3:421).
Note that the ontological status of “counterfactual conditionals” remains remarkably elusive even in Dr Craig’s “conceptualist model of divine knowledge “ According to this model, “God’s knowledge is self-contained; it is more like a mind’s knowledge of innate ideas It is based wholly in God’s middle knowledge and knowledge of his own decrees.”
14. Those who stand in the tradition of Reformed orthodoxy reject the Molinist account of counterfactual conditionals because they are persuaded that “there can be no real content to, because no referent for, abstract possibility; only possibility as a consequence of God’s creative activity has any real content” (K. Scott Oliphint, Reasons for Faith: Philosophy in the Service of Theology [Phillipsburg, N J.: P&R, 2006], 322). In his extended discussion of the Reformed insistence that “The triune God is in no way subject to possibility” (ibid., 323), Scott Oliphint cites Muller’s contention that for those standing in the Reformed tradition, “there is nothing prior to the decree but pure possibility: God’s decree establishes the order of things — it does not proceed from foreknowledge of the order The alternative view, that such an event (if this, then that) is not merely in the order of possibilities and must be known by a ‘middle knowledge,’ confers a quasi-actuality upon the possibility Then, of course, the ground of the actuality once again becomes a matter of issue: from the Molinist, Arminian, and Socinian perspective, the contingency is known as an event prior to the divine willing — an event, which the Reformed contend, cannot be, inasmuch as all actuality is conferred by God” (Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, 3:429; for a fuller discussion, see 3:417—32).
15. Oliphint, Reasons for Faith, 327.
16. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, 3:425. Note that the phrase “external objects” does not require us to embrace what Dr. Craig calls “a perceptualist model” of divine cognition.
17. Paul Helm, “Shunning Middle Knowledge,” http://paulhelmsdeep.blogspot.com/2009/05/shunning-middle-knowledge. html; see also Paul Helm and Terrance L. Tiessen, “Does Calvinism Have Room for Middle Knowledge? A Conversation,” Westminster Theological Journal 71 (2009): 437 – 54.
18. William Lane Craig, The Only Wise God: The Compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1987), 123.
19. Unless otherwise noted, all forthcoming Scripture quotations in this response are from the ESV.
20. I am reminded of a comment that Calvin makes in his response to Albert Pighius: “No plague is more hostile to the truth or a more deadly way of blinding someone completely than a false presupposition, especially when it is fixed obstinately in the mind” (John Calvin, The Bondage and Liberation of the Will: A Defence of the Orthodox Doctrine of Human Choice against Pighius, ed. A. N. S. Lane, trans. G. I. Davis [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996], 198). For the record, I would suggest that an assumption is theologically reckless if it finds its genesis in the perceived need to rescue the Bible from a reading that, while exegetically sound, nevertheless is embarrassing or revolting to the interpreter. Such assumptions, it seems, are playing a formative role in the efforts of those who are introducing novel concepts to get God “off the hook” for the problem of evil.
21. Craig, The Only Wise God, 11; see also William Lane Craig, Time and Eternity: Exploring God’s Relationship to Time (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2001), 11.
22. Oliphint and Tipton, introduction to Revelation and Reason, 2. Oliphint and Tipton insist that Dr. Craig’s line of movement “is most unfortunate. As happened in the medieval period, such thinking will inevitably lead to the need for a radical, biblical reformation of those ideas and concepts developed by philosophers. If one wants to know about God’s omniscience or his eternity, if one wants to think deeply about God and his relationship to the world, if one wants to do apologetics, the first place to look is to Scripture, and then to those theologians who faithfully articulate its teachings” (ibid., 2 — 3).
For an outstanding example of an approach to thinking about “the deep things of God” that self-consciously moves from the text to philosophical speculation, see Oliphint, Reasons for Faith.
23. In his exchange with Terrance Tiessen, Paul Helm argues that “on the classic view of God’s knowledge, God by his natural knowledge knows what A in all possible states of his mind could do in all possible sets of circumstances. The contents of all possible worlds containing A include propositions about what A would do if C were to be the case … if D were to be the case, and so on. These are not so much counterfactual, as pre-factual. In the divine mind the states of mind and sets of circumstances of a possible agent A form elements in innumerable possible worlds, all of the possible worlds in which A exists” (Helm and Tiessen, “Does Calvinism Have Room for Middle Knowledge?” 441 —42.)
24. Dr. Craig makes it clear throughout his essay that determinism is not only incompatible with genuine freedom; it actually “destroys” genuine freedom. One particularly concise statement of his position is found in the second half of his essay, in his assertion that counter– factual conditionals “cannot be known only posterior to his creative decree, since in that case, it is God who decrees what choices agents shall make in whatever circumstances they find themselves, and human freedom is annihilated. “ A more substantive statement of his position is found near the beginning of his essay, in his summary of the debate between the members of the Dominican and Jesuit orders over precisely “when” God has knowledge of counterfactual conditionals. Unlike the Catholic theologians of the Dominican order, he argues, “inspired by Luis de Molina, Catholic theologians of the Jesuit order maintained that God’s hypothetical knowledge of creaturely free decisions is logically prior to his creative decree. This difference between the Jesuit Molinists and the Dominicans was no mere matter of theological hairsplitting! The Molinists charged that the Dominicans had in effect obliterated human freedom by making counterfactual truths about creaturely choices a consequence of God’s decree. For it is God who determines what a person would choose in whatever circumstances in which he finds himself By contrast, the Molinists, by placing God’s hypothetical knowledge of creaturely free decisions prior to the divine decree, made room for creaturely freedom by exempting counterfactual truths about creaturely choices from God’s decree.”
25. Richard B. Gaffin Jr., “Epistemological Reflections on 1 Corinthians 2:6 — 16,” in Oliphint and Tipton, Revelation and Reason, 27, 23, 20.
26. For a particularly explicit discussion of how the preaching of the gospel simultaneously reveals and conceals, see Matthew 13:10 — 17 for Jesus’ explanation of why he taught in parables.
27. Gaffin, “1 Corinthians 2:6 – 16,” 28.
27. Ibid., 27.
29. Ibid., 26.
30. The freedom to embrace Christ in saving faith presupposes the ability to discern that “the word of the cross” is “wisdom” (1 Cor 1:18, 24) The ability to discern that “the word of the cross” is “wisdom” rather than “folly” (1 Cor 1:18) presupposes, in turn, a measure of spiritual competence that is grounded in the life-giving work of the Spirit It presupposes, in other words, precisely the kind of spiritual competence that those who are “natural” (1 Cor 2:14) — that is, those who remain dead and in bondage to their sin — are entirely without Since some human beings are spiritually incompetent because they remain dead in their sin, we may not conclude, Reformed believers insist, that the capacity to discern spiritual wisdom is a capacity that God has given to all human beings without exception Thus, while all human beings have the ability to make real choices relating to Christ, not all human beings have the ability to make the kinds of choices that require spiritual discernment For Reformed believers, then, what distinguishes the saved from the lost is not what particular moral agents do to actualize a capacity that God has allegedly given to all but rather what God does for particular moral agents to enable them to see, believe, and receive Christ In short, while some freely reject Christ, because they regard “the word of the cross” as “folly,” others freely embrace him in faith because God enables them to see that he just is “the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:18, 24) This is why those who have freely embraced Christ must “boast in the Lord” (1 Cor 1:31) for their salvation, for he has given to them what he has not given to all, namely, the capacity to see “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). I would suggest that we will never make sense of what the apostle Paul is saying in 1 Corinthians 1 and 2 if we presume that all human beings have a measure of spiritual competence because the Spirit has poured out a kind of life-giving grace on all without exception If God in fact has poured out this kind of life-giving grace on all, then why, one has to wonder, do any regard “the word of the cross” as “folly”?
31. In his response to Tiessen, Helm summarizes the nature of God’s alleged dependence on what he discovers to be feasible like this: “The idea is that in decreeing what A in C would do, in rendering it actual, God utilizes the choices and actions that A in C would naturally make, make in an unforced or uncoerced [i. e., an undetermined] way …. God does this by (in a sense) ‘finding’ A in C. A in C is already ‘there,’ already ‘present,’ present as a possibility” (Helm and Tiessen, “Does Calvinism Have Room for Middle Knowledge?” 441).
32. Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson, Is Christianity Good for the World? A Debate (Moscow, Ida : Canon, 2008), 18
33. Ibid., 58. Wilson is here clearly alluding to those who “suppress the truth” in unrighteousness in Romans 1:18 – 32
34. Craig’s version of Molinism, like open theism, seems to presuppose the falsity of the doctrine of divine simplicity For Craig, knowledge, like other divine attributes, appears to be something God possesses rather than something God is See my response to Boyd on his rejection of divine simplicity — a response that applies equally to Craig.
35. Craig fails to make clear that Thomism and Reformed orthodoxy assert that God knows himself and all things by knowing himself See Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 14, arts. 1 — 8. For Reformed orthodoxy, see Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, 3:397–406.
36. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics2/1, eds. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance, trans. T H. L. Parker and others (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1957), 535. Hereafter cited as CD.
37. Johann Heinrich Heidegger, Corpus Theologiae Christianae 3, quoted in Heinrich Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, ed. Ernst Bizer, trans. G. T Thomson (1950; repr., London: Wakeman Great Reprints, n. d.), 100 – 101.
38. This is so for the simple reason that in doing so, we would be attempting to conceive of God as negating, not the eternal laws of logic, but himself — an act as irreverent as it is inconceivable.
39. Or is God’s will constrained by the set of feasible worlds, so that God can will only what is feasible?
40. This is just a brute fact that God cannot change It therefore exculpates God from all responsibility for evil.
41. For several defenses and applications of this view, see Alan R. Rhoda, Gregory A. Boyd, and Thomas G. Belt, “Open Theism, Omniscience, and the Nature of the Future,” Faith and Philosophy 23 (2006): 432 — 59; Gregory A. Boyd, “Two Ancient (and Modern) Motivations for Ascribing Exhaustively Definite Foreknowledge to God: A Historic Overview and Critical Assessment,” Religious Studies 46. No 1 (March 2010): 1 — 19; idem, “Neo-Molinism and the Infinite Intelligence of God,” Philosophia Christi 5, no. 1 (2003): 187 —204.
42. See Alan R. Rhoda, “Generic Open Theism and Some Varieties Thereof,” Religious Studies 44, no. 2 (June 2008): 225 — 34.
43. I develop this theme at length in a forthcoming work tentatively titled The Crucifixion of the Warrior God: Re-Interpreting Old Testament Violence in the Light of the Cross (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, forthcoming).
44. I will restrict my comments in this section to conjoined “ ‘might’ counterfactuals” within God’s pre-creational knowledge, though my arguments apply as well to conjoined “might” propositions describing the actual world. When “might” propositions describe actual states of affairs, they are not counterfactual, but simply factual.
45. Craig’s view that God knows all true propositions the way humans know “innate ideas” presupposes that truth is an intrinsic property of propositions. But unless we’re speaking of propositions that are true by definition (e, g., tautologies), propositions are true only if they correspond to reality, which means “truth” is a relational rather than an intrinsic property The grounding objection simply points out that there is no eternal reality that can serve as the “truth-maker” to “would” counterfactuals of creaturely freedom, since the creatures do not exist and in most cases never will exist.
45. To be clear, “would” counterfactuals do not undermine moral responsibility when what the agent would do reflects a solidified (hence, predictable) character that was acquired by the exercise of the agent’s own prior morally responsible libertarian free choices. Though it may be that an agent cannot now act otherwise, the agent is yet morally responsible for his action if (but only if) he could have acted otherwise had he in the past developed a different kind of solidified character through the exercise of his libertarian free will.
47. As I argue in my contributing chapter, this forces the implausible conclusion that the very idea of a world in which possibilities are ontologically real—that is, in which the future is partly open — must constitute a contradiction. So far as I am aware, no one has successfully argued this point. Indeed, very few in history have ever tried (e.g., Spinoza).
48. Molinists typically talk about God choosing to “actualize” a possible world. Since “actualizing possibilities” is ambiguous (does it mean transforming possibilities into actualities or actualizing a world that includes possibilities?), it seems more appropriate to speak of God bringing about or simply creating the world, just in case the world God chooses to create happens to include ontological possibilities, as open theists believe.
49. To be clear, the Molinist need not accept that this is the best logically possible world, simply the best possible world given God’s knowledge of how all conceivable agents would act in every conceivable circumstance.
50. See Boyd, Satan and the Problem of Evil, 178—206.
51. See, e.g., 1 Cor. 3:9; 2 Cor. 5:20; 6:1; 2 Tim. 2:3 – 4, 12; Eph. 6:11 – 12; Rev. 5:10; 20:6; 22:5.
52. I have elsewhere argued that “natural” evil is ultimately the result of free choices as much as moral evil. See Boyd, Satan and the Problem of Evil, 242 — 318; idem, “Evolution as Cosmic Warfare: A Biblical Perspective on Satan and ‘Natural’ Evil,” in Creation Made Free: Open Theology Engaging Science, ed. J. Oord (Eugene, Ore.: Pickwick, 2009), 125 — 45.