Paul Kjoss Helseth
RESPONSE TO GREGORY A. BOYD
Lines of Critique
Dr. Boyd is a compelling writer and gifted communicator. Everything he produces is characterized by an energy that is nothing if not appealing, so it is easy to understand why he has amassed a considerable following among evangelicals who are interested in matters of a theologico-philosophical nature. The substance of what he produces is not, however, without its difficulties, and the essay that he has contributed to this volume is no exception.
In my estimation, Dr. Boyd’s presentation of what he elsewhere calls “neo-Molinism” is vulnerable not just to the kinds of challenges that I raise in my response to Dr. Craig’s presentation of the Molinist account of divine providence, but to three additional lines of critique as well. First, it may be criticized as descriptively inadequate. While his description of his own view of providence is, as I hope to establish, excessively optimistic, his description of the Reformed view—his chief foil—is woefully deficient. Indeed, it ignores the nuances and flattens out the distinctions that rescue the Reformed understanding of providence from sounding silly and, in the process, sets up a straw man that makes the open view sound almost inspired by comparison.
For example, Dr. Boyd lampoons the Reformed view by comparing the God of Reformed believers with a “demented scientist” who controls her creatures by coercing them through the use of “neuron-controlling” microchips. Just as this demented scientist makes people do what she wants them to do by implanting microchips in their brains, so too the God of Reformed believers makes people act in a certain way by manipulating them compatibilistically. This analogy, while rhetorically powerful, nevertheless depicts the inscrutable nature of the supernatural relationship between God and his creatures in a way that no serious Reformed thinker would own, and not just because it presents a less than-flattering description of the Reformed view of providence. Among other things, the mechanistic imagery is utterly specious, because it fails to take seriously the Reformed insistence that secondary causes are real rather than just imaginary causes, and it does so, obviously, because it presupposes that genuine freedom necessitates a measure of genuine autonomy. But such a notion is just nonsense to Reformed believers, and thus the analogy misses the mark because it begs a host of ontological and exegetical questions.
Second, Dr. Boyd’s presentation may be criticized on the grounds that it elevates human experience above what God has revealed in his Word as the standard for determining what is and is not plausible. While Dr. Boyd insists that “a christocentric starting point is crucial for our reflections on divine providence,” nevertheless he embraces an approach to analogical reasoning that subverts the authority of Scripture by regarding the creature as the primary referent in the Creator-creature relationship, an approach that manifests itself in his disturbing use of the kind of natural analogy cited above. With respect to the Reformed insistence that God works all things—including evil things—in such a way that he is sovereign and human beings are genuinely free and responsible for what they do, Dr. Boyd argues, “I find myself unable to ascribe coherent meaning to it. Language has meaning only insofar as it connects, at least analogically, with our experience. But I find nothing in my experience — or any conceivable experience—that sheds the least bit of light on what this mysterious ‘in such a way’ … might mean.” Given such a standard of coherence, one wonders how Dr. Boyd can justify remaining in the Trinitarian camp. After all, there is nothing in our experience that will serve as an adequate analogy for the Trinity. It is and will always remain an article of faith that is ultimately inscrutable and embraced, not because it can be described in ways that make sense in light of our own experience, but because it is received on the authority of what God has revealed in his Word. Is it really necessary to insist that this is precisely the kind of thing that most Reformed believers would say about the mysterious “in such a way” that Dr. Boyd finds so troubling?
Finally, Dr. Boyd’s presentation is vulnerable because it is marred by an incoherence that threatens the integrity of the open model of providence itself, an incoherence that is particularly evident in his treatment of Peter’s denial of Jesus both in this essay and even more clearly elsewhere. According to Dr. Boyd, Peter’s denial of Jesus is noteworthy because it illustrates how God can interact with free agents who have used their self-determining freedom to become the kinds of people with whom he can work compatibilistically. The problem with Dr. Boyd’s appeal to Peter, however, is that Peter was not “solidified” as that kind of person when he denied Jesus. He had not yet irreversibly become the decisions that he had previously made, in other words, and thus Jesus could not have known what Peter would do apart from knowing that God would accomplish his purposes for Peter by working in a deterministic or even coercive fashion.
In the discussion that follows, I attempt to substantiate this claim and explain why Peter’s denial of Jesus is problematic for the neo-Molinist account of divine providence by exploring what Dr. Boyd says about neo-Molinism and about Peter in a number of his other writings. What I hope to establish is that neo-Molinism, while ingenious on one level, nevertheless is problematic on another: so problematic, in fact, that we really do have grounds for concluding, as I do in my contribution to this volume, that the God of open theism is an ambivalent and arbitrary warrior who cannot be trusted to rule in a way that minimizes evil and maximizes good for his creatures. 328
“Neo-Molinism” and the “Infinitely Intelligent” Lord of History
According to Jason Nicholls, the standard philosophical critiques of the open model of providence are problematic because they are based on “a misconception about the openness view”329 Openness theologians cannot affirm that God is the sovereign Lord of history, those who embrace this misconception insist, because they are unwilling “to make room in their system for the possibility of periodic instances of divine intervention perhaps even to the point of controlling, overwhelming or overriding libertarian freedom on occasion.’330 The magnitude of this misconception becomes immediately clear when one considers the manifold subtleties of the neo-Molinist account of divine providence. According to Dr. Boyd, God can retain providential control over the flow of world history because he can have “a significant role in steering human choices.”331 But how can this be? How can the God of open theism retain providential control over the flow of world history if it is logically impossible for him to foreknow the libertarian-free decisions of responsible moral agents, and if genuine freedom really is “incompatible with any form of determinism"?332 The answer to these questions, Dr. Boyd argues, is found in God’s balanced oversight of the kinds of activity that are associated with established and yet-to-be-established characters, the kinds of activity that are associated with what he calls “would” and “might” counterfactuals. While actions that flow from established characters can be foreknown and even determined, thereby affording God a significant reservoir of providence-guaranteeing, “would”-counterfactual knowledge, those that flow from yet-to-be-established characters can be neither foreknown nor determined, for the agent who is performing them retains self-determining or libertarian freedom. The agent retains the “power to do otherwise,”333 in other words, and thus might possibly do one thing or might possibly do another.
So how does God’s balanced oversight of established and yet-to-be-established characters work in the neo-Molinist account of divine providence? According to Dr. Boyd, when God creates moral agents, he gives each agent a “domain of irrevocable freedom” and then “binds himself to interact with … [them] in ways that honor that [gift of] self-determination.”334 While the extent and duration of the “domain of freedom” that he gives varies from agent to agent and is thus in principle unknowable to the contingent observer, what remains constant (at least in theory) is God’s commitment “not to microcontrol a free agent he has created” until that agent either oversteps “the parameters of the gift of freedom God has given” or “solidifies” his character through the use of his self-determining freedom. 335 Until agents with self-determining freedom either go beyond the established bounds of their domain of freedom or their free choices “become crystallized in the form of an irreversible character,” God “cannot by his own choice coerce … [or determine their] decisions.”336 Indeed, God’s “integrity” demands that he “honor” the gift of self-determining freedom that he has given, for if he does not, he “undermines the authenticity of both freedom and moral responsibility” and thereby demonstrates that the gift of self-determining freedom was never genuinely given in the first place. 337
When an agent exhausts the gift of self-determining freedom that God gave him, however, God is then “under no obligation to refrain from intervening on [that] agent’s freedom,”338 for that agent has established his free choices in the form of an “eternalized”339 character that is “irrevocably open or irrevocably closed to God’s love.”340 Indeed, it is no longer possible for that agent to be anything “other than [he is]. “ For his self-determining freedom, which was the “probationary means” of establishing the “kind of eternal being” he would irreversibly become, has given way to a “self-determined character”341 that is defined in its essence by a moral orientation that is compatibilistically inclined “either for or against God.”342 Since “self-determining acts lead to a self-determined character” and “libertarian freedom [thus] becomes compatibilistic freedom,”343 it follows that there are two kinds of activity for which agents are morally responsible and which we must factor into our understanding of the neo-Molinist account of divine providence. Contingent beings are morally responsible for what they do, Dr. Boyd argues, not only when they could do otherwise in a particular situation given their retention of the gift of self-determining freedom, but also when they could not do otherwise given the characters they acquired for themselves through the use of their self-determining freedom. 344 “We must remember,” Dr. Boyd notes in a passage that is critically important for understanding his exposition of the open view,
that moral responsibility applies to the acquired character of self-determining agents even more fundamentally than it applies to the particular decisions agents make which reflect and reinforce their character … There is no contradiction in the claim that a person is morally responsible for an act even though they could not have done otherwise, so long as the character that now rendered their action certain flowed from a character they themselves acquired. It was not “infused” into them by God … Hence, if God decides that it fits his providential plan to use a person whose choices have solidified his character as wicked, God is not responsible for this person’s wickedness 345
In light of the fact that morally responsible actions can be foreknown and even determined if those actions flow from self-determined characters, Dr. Boyd concludes that the future is both partly open and partly closed, because it is an unfolding story involving God’s balanced oversight of both determined and yet-to-be-determined components. Whereas the unfolding story is open and unknowable to the extent that moral agents retain self-determining or libertarian freedom, it is settled and knowable to the extent that actions flow from self-determined characters that are allowed to act spontaneously or are manipulated compatibilistically. As the author of an unfolding story involving agents who possess self-determining freedom, God thus retains providential control over the story not only because he knows how moral agents with established characters will act in particular circumstances if the contingencies of history unfold in a certain fashion. He does so, moreover, because he can have a more direct role in steering history, if he so chooses, by “intervening” on the freedom of moral agents who have solidified their own characters through the use of their self-determining freedom. Indeed, not only can God accomplish his loving purposes for the created order by predestining and foreknowing events without ordaining from eternity who will carry out those events, but he can also orchestrate circumstances that exploit the character traits of self-determined agents so that those predestined events are actualized in time.346 Scripture suggests, for example,
that the Messiah’s betrayal was predestined and Jesus foreknew that Judas would betray him (John 6:64, 70 — 71; 13:18 — 19). These contentions do not contradict the view that morally responsible, self-determining actions cannot be predestined or foreknown as long as Judas was not in particular chosen to carry out this deed before Judas had made himself Into the kind of person who would carry out this deed. After Judas unfortunately hardened himself into this kind of person, God wove his character into a providential plan … [In short,] there is no difficulty in understanding how God could predestine and thus foreknow that Jesus would be betrayed and crucified by wicked people without predestining or foreknowing who specifically would betray and crucify him. God orchestrated events to the extent that certain wicked people (and certain wicked spirits, John 13:27; 1 Cor 2:8) acted out their self-acquired characters and did what they wanted to do in conformity with his plan to have his Son betrayed and crucified. But they are still responsible for what they did, for they are responsible for the kind of agents they had freely become. God was simply employing their sinful intentions to his own end. 347
In the end, then, Dr. Boyd can affirm that the future is both partly open and partly closed and that God “is intelligent and powerful enough to … accomplish all his objectives”348 only because Dr. Boyd is willing to sanction a form of compatibilism that, ironically, regards compatibilistically free acts as coerced or determined acts for which the acting agent is morally responsible. God is the sovereign Lord of history, Dr. Boyd argues, not only because he is “an infinitely intelligent chess player” who is able “to anticipate every possible move and every possible combination of moves, together with every possible response he might make to each of them, for every possible agent throughout history.”349 He is so, moreover, because he “can and does at times unilaterally intervene and work in a coercive way to bring about a certain state of affairs. I would only add that (1) he doesn’t do this all the time, and (2) he doesn’t coercively use persons in violation to the character they have acquired by their choices and then hold these persons morally responsible for what he made them do.”350
Neo-Molinism: A Critical Evaluation
What, then, are we to make of Dr. Boyd’s willingness to sanction the unilateral or coercive intervention of God in the lives of particular moral agents? Does his endorsement of coercion pose a threat to the coherence and overarching integrity of the openness program? The answer to these questions, I would argue, is found in a consideration of Dr. Boyd’s treatment of Peter’s denial of Jesus. According to Dr. Boyd, there is such an intimate relationship between established moral character and moral activity that when self-determined agents are “squeezed” in the correct fashion, their behavior is not only “predictable” but “certain.”351 It is no longer open, in other words, but settled, because it flows out of the solidified nature of the acting agent, and for this reason, the agent retains responsibility for performing the act. It is the exploitation of character in this particular sense, then, that Dr. Boyd suggests is manifest in the case of Peter’s “divinely orchestrated lesson.”352 “God,” Dr. Boyd tells us, “knew and perfectly anticipated (as though it was the only possible outcome) that if the world proceeded exactly as it did up to the point of the Last Supper, Peter’s character would be solidified to the extent that he would be the kind of person who would deny Christ in a certain situation.… On the basis of this knowledge and his sovereign control as Creator, God decide[d] at some point to providentially ensure that just this situation would come about,”353 and then actualized the event by orchestrating “highly pressurized circumstances” that “squeezed” Peter’s cowardly character out of him three times. 354
Even if we grant that what might be called “soft” coercion—God working compatibilistically with agents who have established their own characters through the use of their self-determining freedom—is compatible with the foundational assumptions of the openness program, the case of Peter’s denial of Jesus still presents insurmountable difficulties for the neo-Molinist account of divine providence. For it establishes, despite what Dr. Boyd would have us believe, that the God of open theism is willing to violate the self-determining freedom of responsible moral agents in order to bring about states of affairs that he really wants to bring about. Remember, Dr. Boyd insists that when God creates moral agents, he gives each agent the gift of self-determining freedom “and binds himself to interact with [them] in ways that honor that [gift of] self-determination.”355 In other words, he covenants not to “coerce … [their] decisions” until they have “spent”356 their gift of self-determining freedom and their self-determined decisions have given way to a self-determined character that is compatibilistically inclined either for or against God. 357
What Dr. Boyd’s treatment of Peter in fact establishes, however, is that God intervened coercively with Peter before Peter’s character became “crystallized in the form of an irreversible character.”358 Indeed, Dr. Boyd contends that God’s compatibilistic intervention with Peter was the “loving but necessarily harsh” means by which Peter’s character “was permanently changed,”359 thereby conceding that Peter’s character was never irreversibly established or “eternalized” in the first place.360What the case of Peter really suggests, then, is both the coherence of a more full-bodied form of compatibilism and the utter untrustworthiness of the God of open theism. Since the God of open theism coerced Peter before Peter’s character was “unalterably”361 acquired, we may plausibly conclude that the God of open theism is a covenant-breaker who could accomplish his purpose only by revoking the “irrevocable” gift of self-determining freedom that he had given to Peter. In the first place, then, Dr. Boyd’s willingness to sanction coercion is problematic because it establishes that the foundational assumptions of the neo-Molinist account of divine providence cannot be applied consistently to the analysis of the flow of history.
It is problematic in the second place because it makes it much more difficult to maintain consistently that “the ultimate cause of any particular evil is the free agent, human or angelic, who produced it.”362 Consider again Dr. Boyd’s treatment of Peter’s denial of Jesus. The case of Peter establishes that the God of open theism does in fact know what particular moral agents will do in the future, for he knew that Peter would betray Jesus if his character were “squeezed” in the correct fashion. God, Dr. Boyd tells us, “saw past Peter’s false bravado and knew the effect Jesus’ arrest would have on him.”363 In light of the fact that God “squeezed” Peter before Peter’s character was irreversibly established, either Dr. Boyd must concede that the “God of the possible” can know what openness theologians insist it is logically impossible for him to know, namely, the future free decisions of agents possessing self-determining freedom, or he must acknowledge that God knew what Peter would do because God knew that he would orchestrate circumstances that would make Peter betray Jesus, in which case God forced Peter to sin.
While some might suggest that such an acknowledgment would undermine the neo-Molinist account of divine providence, Dr. Boyd apparently does not share this concern, for this is precisely the line of argument that he appears to embrace in his remarkable discussion of Genesis 45:5 — 50:20. Of this passage, Dr. Boyd argues that he is “largely in agreement” with compatibilists who insist that it “illustrate [s] that God ordains evil actions for greater good.”364 “The passage seems to indicate,” he concedes, “that God intentionally orchestrated the evil intentions of the brothers in order to get Joseph into Egypt.”365 But while Dr. Boyd agrees with compatibilists “that this text shows that God may decide to orchestrate evil actions according to his sovereign will,” he denies that it “supports the conclusion that all evil actions occur in accordance with God’s eternal, sovereign will.”366 Why? Of the three reasons that Dr. Boyd cites in his discussion of these texts, the second is most relevant to the question of who is ultimately responsible and therefore culpable for the evil actions that God actualizes through compatibilistic intervention. If we take Genesis 45:5–50:20 “as evidence of how God always operates,” Dr. Boyd argues, then
we must accept the consequence that this passage always minimizes the responsibility of human agents. This is the conclusion Joseph himself draws from his observation that God used his brothers to send him to Egypt. “Do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves,” he tells them, “for God sent me.” If this text is taken as evidence of how God always controls human action — if God is involved in each kidnapping and murder the way he was involved in the activity of Joseph’s brothers — we must be willing to console every murderer and kidnapper with Joseph’s words: “Do not be distressed, or angry with yourself for God kidnapped and murdered your victims.“ We cannot universalize the mode of God’s operation in this passage without also universalizing its implication for human responsibility. 367
When we consider Peter’s “divinely orchestrated lesson” in light of this remarkable caricature of compatiblism, we are, it seems, left with two options, neither of which speaks very highly of the neo-Molinist account of divine providence. Either God knew that Peter would deny Jesus because he knew a future contingent (which for an open theist is a bit like saying that God can make a square circle), or more likely, he knew that Peter would deny Jesus because he knew that he would remove Peter’s self-determining freedom and make him deny Jesus (which calls God’s sinless perfection into question, given the presumption that genuine freedom is “incompatible with any form of determinism”). What the case of Peter establishes, then, is that openness theologians can rescue God from the charge of being the author of coerced sins only by advancing the ad hoc hypothesis that some instances of compatibilistic intervention—including those that involve what might be called “hard” coercion—are intransitive. Apparently, in some cases, coercing or forcing an act does not entail that God is responsible for the act.
Finally, and most importantly, Dr. Boyd’s willingness to sanction coercion is problematic because it makes it much more difficult to rescue God from being tarnished by the problem of evil. Why? Before we consider the answer to this question, remember that openness theologians would have us believe that their view of evil is superior to traditional views, not only because it helps us understand that evil in general and specific evils in particular are the unfortunate consequences of free decisions to reject the love of God, but also because it explains why “the all-powerful Creator of the world” does not prevent certain events “he wishes would not take place.”368 Whereas traditional views insist that all evils occur because they are part of an inscrutable divine plan, the open view insists that certain evils occur because God cannot prevent them without revoking the gift of freedom that is necessary to love. 369 Indeed, while it is certainly true that the God of open theism is always doing everything he can “to further good and hinder evil,” what he in fact can do in each particular situation is “determined” less by what “God would desire” than by the “innumerable [contingent] variables that constitute the ‘givens’ of … [that] situation.”370 In short, God can prevent some evils but not others, neither because he lacks omnipotence nor because he is an inherently arbitrary being, but because the “nonnegotiable givens” of some situations prevent him from intervening in a fashion that does not compromise “the domain of irrevocable freedom that he has given to agents.”371 Since it is impossible for contingent beings to know all of the variables that impact God’s interaction with free agents in various situations, we must trust that God is always doing everything he can to minimize evil and maximize good “given the situation he must work with.”372 We must trust, in other words, “that when the Father tolerates wickedness, he does so out of his integrity. When he puts an end to it, he does this out of his integrity as well. Whatever good he can do, he does. Whatever evil he can prevent, he prevents. Whatever he must out of integrity allow, he allows.”373
What, then, are we to make of the assertion that God can intervene to prevent evil in some cases but not in others because his integrity prevents him from compromising the “say-so” that is “the key to morally responsible personhood"?374 Can we really rescue the God of open theism from being tarnished by the problem of evil simply by insisting that he intervenes in one case and not in another because “the complex constellation of contingent variables that collectively constitute a particular situation” allows him to intervene without rendering the gift of self-determining freedom “disingenuous"?375 The neo-Molinist account of divine providence leaves us with no compelling reason to conclude that we can Since God can and does intervene coercively to bring about certain states of affairs, and since this coercive intervention can entail, as it did in the case of Peter, real violations of the gift of self-determining freedom given to responsible moral agents, we cannot say that God is always doing “all he could do” to minimize evil and maximize good when what he is doing falls short of violating the covenant that he has established with free agents. 376 Recall again that God intervened coercively with Peter before Peter’s character was unalterably acquired, thus establishing that covenant infidelity is a viable option for the God of open theism.377 But how and on what basis does the God of open theism decide when he is going to violate his covenant vows? How does he determine, in other words, which aspects of the future he is going to leave open and which he is going to close when the covenantal standard for making this determination does not obtain in all circumstances? These are the questions that expose the incoherence of the neo-Molinist account of divine providence and establish that the God of open theism is an ambivalent and arbitrary warrior who cannot be trusted to rule in every situation in a way that minimizes evil and maximizes good for his creatures.
Conclusion
That sound you hear in the background is likely one of two things. If Dr. Boyd has responded persuasively to my request to help me, and perhaps others, understand why the God of open theism in fact is not an ambivalent and arbitrary warrior—if, in other words, Dr. Boyd has demonstrated persuasively that I in fact am guilty of caricaturing his views because the God of open theism really does honor his covenant vows—then that sound you are hearing is the substance of my critique being systematically dismantled and me pleading with Dr. Boyd to forgive me for having misrepresented his views. If, however, Dr. Boyd has either not responded to my request or not responded persuasively, then that sound you are hearing is the scaffolding of an ambitious philosophical system crashing to the ground. In my estimation, Dr. Boyd’s treatment of Peter’s denial of Jesus establishes that his system, no matter how ingenious it may appear on the surface, is nonetheless a house of cards, for at its foundation is an account of how the future can be simultaneously both open and closed that is not just implausible, but incoherent. While Dr. Boyd would have us believe that neo-Molinism supplies the theoretical framework for a rapprochement between the open view of providence on the one hand and more traditional views on the other, what he has actually given us, it seems, is a system that works only when its foundational assumptions are violated. Try as I might—and with sincere apologies if I am wrong—I do not know what other conclusion to draw when I consider Dr. Boyd’s attempt to reconcile Peter’s denial of Jesus with the neo-Molinist account of divine providence.