A Brief Response to William Lane Craig on Molinism
A few months back I wrote a post entitled “The Fallible God of Molinism” which was prompted by an exchange between William Lane Craig and Paul Helm. Some folk alerted me to the fact that Dr. Craig briefly responded to my argument in a recent podcast. This is what he said:
I think he’s made a misstep in his argument here. It certainly is true that in any particular freedom-permitting circumstances an agent is free to do other than as God knows he will do. But in that other world in which the agent does something different, God’s plans wouldn’t be the same. What this fellow doesn’t seem to remember is that in that world God would have different plans. God would know in that world that S would do something different in C and so in that world he would have plans for that to happen. So what he’s tried to do is keep God’s plans firm and fixed from world to world, but then vary the value of the counterfactuals, and you can’t do that. If you switch to a world in which S does not do A in C then you can’t say, “Well, in that world God’s plans are that S would do A in C.” No, no, in that world God would have different plans.
So when you switch the truth-value of the counterfactuals, you’ve got to switch the providential plans as well, because the providential plans are based upon the counterfactuals that are true in those worlds. So given that God’s plans are based upon what he knows the free agents would do, the plans will change from world to world along with the decisions of the agents. So there’s just not any problem. God’s plans never fail, and he’s not fallible.
Let me say first of all that I’m honored Dr. Craig considered it worthy of comment! But I do have a few things to say in response.
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