Calvinists and Molinists both subscribe to the idea that God elects people for salvation. The major difference is that in Calvinism, God's election is personal, but in Molinism, it is impersonal. Here, I am reproducing an email I wrote to somebody back in 2015 that I just stumbled across today where I explained Molinism then expressed one of the biggest problems I have with it.
In Craig's view, possible worlds are subdivided between feasible worlds and infeasible worlds. Feasible worlds are worlds that God can actualize, and infeasible worlds are worlds that he cannot actualize. And it is because of people's freedom and the counter factuals that apply to them that God cannot actualize those worlds.
Let's say there are two possible worlds in which Jim meets Bob. Both worlds are identical in everything that happens up to that meeting. In one of those possible worlds, Jim chooses to shake Bob's hand. In the other possible world, Jim chooses to not shake Bob's hand.
In reality, Jim would have the freedom to choose either way. So it's Jim who determines which of those worlds are actual, not God. There are counter factuals about Jim that are true of Jim prior to God actualizing any world at all. One of those counter factuals might be:
If Jim meets Bob, he will freely choose to shake Bob's hand.
If that counter factual is true, then if God actualizes a world in which Jim and Bob meet, then that world will be a world in which Jim freely chooses to shake Bob's hand. So God can't just actualize any possible world. If the counter factual is true, then God cannot actualize a world in which Jim meets Bob but does not shake his hand. It is our free choices that limit which worlds are feasible for God to actualize. What God does in Molinism is to choose between all the possible worlds that are feasible for him to actualize. But as Craig says, God has to work with the hand he has been dealt.
So to answer your question, the circumstances don't determine our choices in Molinism. We are free to choose one way or another. The counter factuals merely describe which choice we will in fact make in what circumstance. God, knowing what those counter factuals are, actualizes worlds containing situations where people choose the way God wants them to choose. But again, God's choices are limited by the counter factuals.
That raises the question of what makes the counter factuals true. It isn't God that makes them true, obviously. It seems to me that it would be us who determine them by what we in fact choose. But one of the major problems most people have against Molinism is that nothing makes the counter factuals true. They're just brute facts with no explanation.
The basis of God's choice is a matter of controversy between Molinists. Does he choose the feasible world that results in the most number of people saved? Or the best ratio of saved to unsaved? Or the greatest good over all? One thing that seems to be clear is that God doesn't choose individuals according to the kind intention of his heart and the good pleasure of his will.
That's one of my main complaints about Molinism. Suppose in World 1, Jim gets saved, but most other people don't. In World 2, Jim does not get saved, but most other people do. If God was trying to save the most people, he'd actualize World 2. Even though God would like to have saved Jim, he ended up having to sacrifice Jim to save the greater number of people. So it isn't individuals that God chooses to bestow his grace on. God doesn't save you or me because he loves us personally. He saves us because we were lucky enough to be among the saved in the particular possible world God chose to actualize.
3 comments:
It seems clear that God knows counterfactuals. The classic example is found in 1 Samuel 23:10-12.
Whether God uses that knowledge to actualize worlds is another question. I'm not entirely clear on what is being actualized. Molinist language almost sounds deistic, like God chooses the world He wants and then creates all the initial conditions for it, then lets it just play out. It's not clear to me where they permit God to intervene in the world, since most forms of intervention would require Him to insure certain volitional outcomes. How would God change the initial conditions in the Big Bang to insure that Nebuchadnezzar II would act to bring judgment on the Kingdom of Judah, or what would He have done differently in creating the Garden of Eden?
By contrast, Proverbs 21:1 says that "The king’s heart is like channels of water in the hand of the LORD; He turns it wherever He wishes." I don't think a higher view of God's sovereignty and direct action in the world requires one to give up the idea that God preserves our general will. If our will is sinful, then is God unjust to deflect the outworking of that will toward only those things that advance His own purposes ("you meant it for evil but God meant it for good")? And if our will is aligned with Him, then don't we exactly pray for our desires and actions to be to His glory? I think the preservation of man's will is sometimes taken to idolatrous extremes.
Those are interesting thoughts. They've good my noodle going every which-a-way.
Granted, there are counterfactuals, including counter-factuals about human behavior. I think one mistake Molinists (and libertarians in general) make is in thinking counter-factuals entail or imply libertarian freedom. Determinism allows for counter-factuals, too. Consider a row of dominoes set up so that knocking the first one down guarantees that the last one will falls. Even so, this counter-factual is true: "If the third domino falls, then the fourth domino will fall."
Counter-factuals like that seem pretty much necessary given determinism. The question in my mind is whether counter-factuals make sense given libertarian freedom since it's indeterministic. Given condition X, that doesn't determine condition Y, so how can there be a counter-factual that says, "If X happens, then Y will happen"? Wouldn't it be more accurate to say, "If X happens, then there's a probability that Y will happen"? Yet Molinists treat these counter-factuals as if Y were guaranteed by X--something that seems to only make sense if determinism is true.
I'm making a surface level critique, though. Counter-factuals don't have to involve a causal relationship between X and Y. It could be true that If X happens, then Y will just happen to happen without it being the case that Y must happen or even that X is what causes Y to happen. I talked about this in more detail in a post I made about whether God's perfect foreknowledge is compatible with libertarian freedom. I think it is, though a lot of compatibilists disagree. If God's perfect foreknowledge is compatible with libertarian freedom, then it seems to me counter-factuals are also compatible with libertarian freedom.
This is the first time I've thought about whether Molinism is deistic. That is a very interesting thought. I may change my mind later, but here's my initial reaction. I think that on Molinism, God can intervene in the world almost as much as he wants. He just has to stop shy of messing with free will. So he could put cake in front of you, but he can't make you to choose to eat it. The counter-factuals that God knows before the creation of the world could include things like, "If I intervene in the world in such & such a way, Paul will react by doing this & such."
I would also go so far as to say God could influence our wills in Molinism as long as the influence stops shy of being sufficient to determine our actions. He can woo, persuade, or bias the will, but he can't determine the will or else that will destroy liberty.
There was a book published a few years ago by Guillaume Bignon called Excusing Sinners and Blaming God where he defended compatibilism. One of the main things he defended it against was what he called the manipulation argument. Most of the time, this argument is explained with a thought experiment that goes something like this: Imagine a scientist sticks probes in your brain and can make you want to do anything he chooses. If your desires determine your behavior, then the scientist can determine your behavior merely by altering your desires. But that obviously removes all blame from you and puts it squarely on the scientist. In the same way, if God determines your behavior, even if he does so indirectly through your desires, then God is to blame, and you are blameless for your behavior.
to be continued. . .
The manipulation argument is interesting in light of Proverbs 21:1. On the one hand, this verse doesn't tell us explicitly that God determines the king's behavior. On the other hand, what could possibly be the point of the verse if that's not what it's meant to imply? Besides that, we have multiple other passages in scripture that tell us our behavior is determined by the condition of our hearts (e.g. Ezekiel 36:26-27, Luke 6:45, James 1:15, etc.). If the Lord turns the king's heart wherever he wishes, and the condition of the heart determines the king's behavior, then the Lord determines the king's behavior.
So there has to be some flaw in the manipulation argument. I admit it's a powerful argument. It resonates with my intuitions, and I have to agree that if a scientist manipulated you with probes in your brain to behave in a way you wouldn't otherwise, that you can't really be responsible for your behavior. So there must be a difference between the scientist scenario and the God scenario.
Bignon thinks the difference has to do with whether you are acting on your own desires or not. But what constitutes your "own" desires? Well, those are your natural God-given desires. God created you and made you the way you are. So the way God makes you is your true self. When a scientist manipulates you, you are acting contrary to your true self. You're not acting on your own desires.
Although I don't find that 100% satisfying, I think it's a reasonable response to the manipulation argument. I would recommend that book, though, because he fleshes it out a lot more. I remember reading something on the internet he wrote about it one time before I had read the book, and I wasn't persuaded by it, but after I read the book, it made more sense.
But I think even if you can't make sense of it philosophically, if you think the Bible is the word of God, then you have to concede what it says. God turns the heart of the king wherever he wishes. And God has good purposes in our behavior even if our behavior is sinful. That means that at least some of the time, God intends for us to do things that he forbids us to do, like when Joseph's brothers sold him into slavery.
One thing I came to understand after becoming a Calvinist that I didn't understand before then is that while our goal should be to always behave in such a way as to bring glory to God (1 Corinthians 10:31), the fact of the matter is that God will get glory no matter what we do. If we behave badly, God is still glorified either in the demonstration of his mercy or in the demonstration of his justice. Of course Paul nips this in the bud when he says, "Are we to continue in sin so that grace may abound? Far from it!" (Romans 6:1). Just because my bad behavior may bring glory to God doesn't mean my bad behavior is actually good behavior.
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