philosophical theology

How Biblical is Molinism? (Part 6)

[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

  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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Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Religion

Ars Disputandi has just published my review of Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Religion, edited by Oliver Crisp and Michael Rea.

Apologies to Randal Rauser, whose first name I managed to misspell. (It was an ‘L’ of a mistake to make!) I’m told the error will be corrected the next time the AD site is updated.

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