Augustinianism

A Four-Case Defense of the Authorial Model of Divine Providence

/ Philosophy, Theology

I’m pleased to report that my paper “A Four-Case Defense of the Authorial Model of Divine Providence” has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Analytic Theology.

Abstract: Some advocates of the doctrine of meticulous (“risk-free”) divine providence, in response to the charge that such a strong view of divine providence makes God the “author of evil,” have appealed to an authorial model according to which the relationship of God to his creation is analogous to that of a human author and his or her literary creation. This response appears vulnerable to the objection that there is a critical disanalogy between the two kinds of authorship: in the case of divine authorship, unlike that of human authorship, the story is intentionally actualized, and thus the divine author is morally culpable for the evils written into that story. Call this the “actuality objection.” In this paper, I develop a four-case defense of the authorial model that aims to neutralize the actuality objection. I also respond to five objections to the authorial model and my defense of it.

A preprint version is available here.

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Molinism and Other Determinisms

/ Philosophy, Theology / 1 Comment

In which it is argued that Molinists are determinists, but this is not to their shame.

Robert Kane is one of the world’s leading experts on the philosophy of free will. He’s the editor of The Oxford Handbook of Free Will and one of the contributors to Four Views on Free Will (Blackwell, 2007). He’s written dozens of articles on the subject of free will. So it’s safe to say he knows whereof he speaks when it comes to debates over free will.

Kane is an incompatibilist, which is to say, he believes that determinism is incompatible with free will (at least, the kind of free will needed for moral agency). But what is determinism? Here’s how Kane explains the term in his book A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will:1

An event (such as a choice or action) is determined when there are conditions obtaining earlier (such as the decrees of fate or the foreordaining acts of God or antecedent causes plus laws of nature) whose occurrence is a sufficient condition for the occurrence of the event. In other words, it must be the case that, if these earlier determining conditions obtain, then the determined event will occur. (pp. 5-6)

In more familiar terms, we say that a determined event is inevitable or necessary (it cannot but occur), given the determining conditions. If fate decreed or God foreordained (or the laws of nature and antecedent causes determined) that John would choose at a certain time to go to Samarra, then John will choose at that time to go to Samarra. Determinism is thus a kind of necessity, but it is a conditional necessity. A determined event does not have to occur, no matter what else happens (it need not be absolutely necessary). But it must occur when the determining conditions have occurred. If the decrees of fate had been different or the past had been different in some way, John may have been determined to go to Damascus rather than to Samarra. Historical doctrines of determinism refer to different determining conditions. But all doctrines of determinism imply that every event, or at least every human choice and action, is determined by some determining conditions in this sense. (p. 6)

Now here’s an interesting (to me) and perhaps surprising (to you) observation: According to Kane’s understanding of determinism, Molinism is clearly a species of determinism. (To use Kane’s phrase, it is a “doctrine of determinism.”) For according to Molinism, God has an infallible decree; God foreordains all things, including human free choices. As the Molinist will be quick to insist, God foreordains on the basis of his middle knowledge, that is, his knowledge of the counterfactuals of creaturely (libertarian) freedom. God “weakly actualizes” a possible world by creating agents with libertarian freedom and arranging their circumstances such that they freely choose what he has planned (on the basis of his middle knowledge) for them to choose. But the fact remains that on the Molinist scheme, despite its commitment to libertarian free will, God has an infallible decree and foreordains whatsoever comes to pass. As one prominent Molinist explains:

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 actions. 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.2

Thus, according to Molinism, if God has foreordained that Sam mows the lawn next Saturday, then Sam will mow the lawn next Saturday. God’s act of foreordination is a sufficient condition for Sam’s action (P is a sufficient condition for Q if Q necessarily follows from P) and therefore, according to Kane, Sam’s action is determined by prior conditions, namely, God’s act of foreordination. (Notice that Kane explicitly includes “the foreordaining acts of God” among his examples of determining conditions.)

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  1. Robert Kane, A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). ↩
  2. William Lane Craig, “God Directs All Things,” in Four Views on Divine Providence, ed. Dennis W. Jowers (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), 82, bold added. ↩

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How Biblical is Molinism? (Part 6)

/ Philosophy, Theology

[This is the last in an n-part series, where n turned out to be 6.]

In a highly irregular series of posts, I’ve been considering the question, How well is Molinism supported by the Bible? As I explained in the first installment:

Molinism is a theory that purports to reconcile a robust doctrine of divine providence and foreknowledge with a libertarian view of free will by appealing to the notion of divine middle knowledge: God’s eternal knowledge of the so-called counterfactuals of creaturely freedom, that is, contingent truths about what possible creatures would freely choose if they were created by God and placed in particular circumstances.

Luis de MolinaI noted that Molinism has been both defended and criticized on both theological and philosophical grounds, and that’s entirely appropriate since it’s a philosophical theory that seeks to reconcile certain theological claims. However, discussions of the purported virtues and vices of Molinism are often conducted at a safe distance from the text of Scripture. (I’ve observed elsewhere that this is a more general shortcoming among analytic/philosophical theologians.) So in this series I’ve endeavored to bring the discussion into closer contact with the more explicit and direct teachings of the Bible. My approach has been to evaluate Molinism alongside what is arguably its leading competitor among orthodox Christian theologians, Augustinianism,1 by considering which of the two views better fits some key “data points” provided by the Bible.2

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  1. As I noted in the first post, I’m using the term Augustinianism simply as shorthand for causal divine determinism. ↩
  2. See the first post for a brief discussion of what I mean by biblical “data points” and how they can be used to evaluate philosophical theories. ↩

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How Biblical is Molinism? (Part 5)

/ Philosophy, Theology / 1 Comment

[This is the fifth in an n-part series, where n>1 and very probably n=6.]

A long time ago, in a galaxy remarkably like this one, I began a series addressing the question, How well is Molinism supported by the Bible? It’s high time I started to wrap things up. So, to recap:

  • In the first post, I argued that Augustinianism and Molinism can equally well accommodate comprehensive divine providence and God’s knowledge of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom, both of which the Bible clearly affirms. I observed that if Molinists wants to argue that their position is more biblical than the Augustinian position, they need to identify some proposition p that meets two conditions: (i) p is affirmed by Molinism but denied by Augustinianism, and (ii) p is affirmed or clearly implied by some biblical teaching.
  • In the second, third, and fourth posts, I considered three candidates for p: first, the proposition that moral freedom is incompatible with determinism; second, the proposition that God desires all to be saved; and third, the proposition that God is not the author of sin. In none of these three cases, I argued, does the candidate p meet conditions (i) and (ii).

In this post, I turn the tables and argue there are three propositions, each of which meet the following two conditions: (i) the proposition is denied by Molinism but affirmed (or at least not denied) by Augustinianism, and (ii) the proposition is affirmed or clearly implied by some biblical teaching. That being the case, we should conclude that Augustinianism is better supported by the Bible than Molinism. …

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How Biblical is Molinism? (Part 4)

/ Philosophy, Theology / 1 Comment

[This is the fourth in an n-part series, where n>1 and probably n<10.]

In this embarrassingly intermittent series, I’ve been addressing the question: How well is Molinism supported by the Bible? In the first post, I argued that Augustinianism and Molinism can equally well accommodate comprehensive divine providence and God’s knowledge of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom, both of which the Bible clearly affirms. I concluded by observing that in order to show Molinism to be more biblical than Augustinianism we would need to identify some proposition p that is (i) affirmed by Molinism but denied by Augustinianism, and (ii) affirmed or clearly implied by some biblical teaching.

In the second and third posts, I considered two candidates for p: first, the proposition that moral freedom is incompatible with determinism, and second, the proposition that God desires all to be saved. In neither case, I argued, does the proposed p meet both (i) and (ii).

Now I’ll consider a third candidate for p: the proposition that God is not the author of sin. This is quite a common objection for Molinists to level against Calvinists (and Augustinians more broadly). For example, William Lane Craig raises this complaint in his contribution to the book Four Views on Divine Providence. (I’ll examine his criticisms more closely below.) The thrust of the charge is that Augustinianism, on account of its commitment to divine determinism, makes God the author of sin in a way that Molinism (which rejects divine determinism) does not.
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How Biblical is Molinism? (Part 3)

/ Philosophy, Theology / 2 Comments

[This is the third in an n-part series, where n>1 and probably n<10.]

In this unintentionally and regrettably sporadic series, I’ve been considering the question: How well is Molinism supported by the Bible? In the first post I argued that the Bible affirms (1) comprehensive divine providence and (2) God’s knowledge of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom (i.e., knowledge of what any created agent would freely choose if placed in specific circumstances), but Molinism holds no advantage over Augustinianism with respect to (1) and (2). I concluded with this statement:

If we want to show that Molinism has better biblical support than Augustinianism (or vice versa) then we need to find some proposition p which is affirmed by Molinism and denied by Augustinianism (or vice versa) such that p enjoys positive biblical support (i.e., there are biblical texts which, on the most natural and defensible interpretation, and without begging philosophical questions, assert or imply p).

In the second post I examined one candidate for proposition p: the proposition that moral freedom is incompatible with determinism (which Molinists invariably affirm, but Augustinians typically deny). I concluded that the Bible offers no support for incompatibilism. In this post I’ll consider a second candidate for proposition p: the proposition that God desires all to be saved.
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How Biblical is Molinism? (Part 2)

/ Philosophy, Theology / 3 Comments

[This is the second in an n-part series, where n>1 and probably n<10.]

In this short series I’m considering the question: How well is Molinism supported by the Bible? In the first post I summarized how I plan to approach the question, before looking at two biblical teachings which Molinism seeks to accommodate: (1) comprehensive divine providence and (2) God’s knowledge of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom. I concluded that while the Bible does indeed affirm (1) and (2), and Molinism is consistent with the Bible on those points, Augustinianism also affirms those points. So Molinism holds no advantage over Augustinianism with respect to (1) and (2). I then added:

If we want to show that Molinism has better biblical support than Augustinianism (or vice versa) then we need to find some proposition p which is affirmed by Molinism and denied by Augustinianism (or vice versa) such that p enjoys positive biblical support (i.e., there are biblical texts which, on the most natural and defensible interpretation, and without begging philosophical questions, assert or imply p).

In the next few posts I want to examine three potential candidates for proposition p from the Molinist side: (1) that incompatibilism is true; (2) that God desires all to be saved; and (3) that God is not the author of sin.

Incompatibilism About Free Will

As I noted in the first post, Molinists are committed to a libertarian view of free will. Libertarianism involves two basic claims:

Incompatibilism: genuine freedom is incompatible with determinism.

Freedom: we make (at least some) genuinely free choices, i.e., choices for which we can be held morally responsible.

These two claims together entail that determinism is false, but since compatibilists typically agree that we make genuinely free choices, it’s the first claim which really distinguishes libertarians from compatibilists.

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How Biblical is Molinism? (Part 2) Read More »

Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Molinism

/ Philosophy, Theology / 21 Comments

Consider this post a (lengthy) side-note to my earlier post. One of the favorite texts of Molinists is Matthew 11:21-24, because it indicates (1) that there are true counterfactuals of freedom, i.e., truths about what free creatures would have done in different circumstances, and (2) that God knows these true counterfactuals. I pointed out that while (1) and (2) support Molinism over against other views such as Open Theism, they don’t favor Molinism over Augustinianism, since Augustinianism also affirms (1) and (2). (Where Molinism and Augustinianism diverge, at least philosophically, is with respect to the nature of creaturely freedom and how God’s knowledge of the counterfactuals of freedom relates to his eternal decree.)

In this post I want to take a comment by Dan as a launching-pad for a closer examination of Matthew 11:21-24 and its relevance to the debate between Molinists and Augustinians. Dan wrote:

One of the classic “proof texts” for middle knowledge also seems resistant to Augustinian/Calvinistic reading and to favor libertarian freedom. Matthew 11:21 says: 21 “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.

On Calvinism, irresistible grace (a.k.a. modernistic regeneration or effectual call) determines conversion, such that anyone given God’s irresistible grace cannot resist and will repent. Further, without irresistible grace, no one can convert due to their depravity.

From the verse, we know the people of Chorazin didn’t repent, but the people of Tyre would have repented had the same might works been done there. Tyre was notoriously sinful, so the comparison is to shame the folks of Chorzin – they really had a great opportunity to repent, so their choice to remain in sin was more wicked than the folks of Tyre. Yet on Calvinism, God was not given the folks of Chorzin the one and only thing that He knew could enable and cause repentance: irresistible grace. This alone is problematic and seems disingenuous.

But there is another problem with regards to the folks of Tyre. Neither the people of Chorazin and Tyre actually repented. On Calvinism, we could safely conclude neither were given irresistible grace, because had they being given irresistible grace, they would repent. But the verse gives us the counter-fact: the people of Tyre would have repented, given the same might works. So how is it that Tyre would have repented without irresistible grace? On Calvinism, we are left with the contradiction that irresistible grace both is and is not necessary for repentance.

To avoid the problem, some might say the repentance is not true repentance. But Christ preached about true repentance: repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand! He never uses “repentance” as false repentance and He always denounces any outward pretense of conversion and He exposes any self-deception and false assurance. Further, it invalidates (probably inverts) Christ’s main point of saying the folks of Chorazin were worse than the folks of Tyre. It’s better to refuse the Lord’s supper than to partake in pretense, it’s better not to know the way of righteousness than to know it and turn from it and so it’s better to live in open sin than with a false repentance. So if the repentance is a false repentance, the folks of Chorazin are better than the folks of Tyre, because they avoided false repentance. But that’s the opposite of Christ’s point.

The better solution seems to be to deny grace is irresistible and say man has libertarian freedom with respect to resisting God’s grace.

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How Biblical is Molinism? (Part 1)

/ Philosophy, Theology / 23 Comments

[This is the first in an n-part series, where n>1 and probably n<10.]

Luis de MolinaMolinism is a theory that purports to reconcile a robust doctrine of divine providence and foreknowledge with a libertarian view of free will by appealing to the notion of divine middle knowledge: God’s eternal knowledge of the so-called counterfactuals of creaturely freedom, that is, contingent truths about what possible creatures would freely choose if they were created by God and placed in particular circumstances. (For previous posts on Molinism, see here.)

Molinism is most often criticized on theological or philosophical grounds, mainly because it’s most often championed on the basis of its supposed theological and philosophical virtues. And there’s nothing wrong with that; I’ve objected to Molinism on theological and philosophical grounds myself. (So it must be okay, right?) Nevertheless, for the Christian who takes the Bible to be the Word of God and the final authority in theological matters, the preeminent question ought to be: How well is Molinism supported by the Bible? (I don’t propose to defend the underlying methodological principle at this time; I’m simply going to take it for granted.)

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