After a several month blogging hiatus, I’m resuming my eleven-part series responding to the essays in Ben Arbour’s edited volume, Philosophical Essays against Open Theism (Routledge, 2019).
In this post I tackle chapter 10 by Ken Perszyk, “Open Theism and the Soteriological Problem of Evil” (pp. 159–177). In this essay Perszyk compares and contrasts Open Theism and Molinism with respect to the “soteriological” problem of evil. Actually, this should be problems (plural) because Perszyk focuses on three different facets of “the” soteriological problem: (a) soteriological risk, (b) the finality of hell, and (c) soteriological luck. Each of these facets is an instance of a more general soteriological problem, namely, how to reconcile God’s goodness with the eternal damnation of any proper subset of creatures, such as the unevangelized (p. 161). Perszyk’s contention is that, with respect to this general problem, “open theism does not come out any better than Molinism” and “may” in fact come out worse (p. 159).
In what follows I summarize Perszyk’s arguments and assess their cogency.
1. The Soteriological Problem of Evil (pp. 162–169)
To assess the relative merits of Molinism and Open Theism with respect to the soteriological problem(s) of evil, Perszyk proposes to evaluate whether “(1) one side has an easier time … than the other in solving or assuaging the problem …, and (2) one side has more resources available than the other to solve or assuage the problem” (p. 162). He also supposes for the time being that both Molinists and Open Theists are committed to a “traditional doctrine of hell, or at least something approximating to it” (p. 162). The “approximating” qualifier makes things rather vague, but Perszyk does eventually clarify that he takes the traditional doctrine to exclude universalism (p. 162) and to include both a “no-escape thesis” (i.e., once in hell always in hell) (p. 165) and the view that “one’s soteriological fate is sealed at bodily death” (p. 166). As the essay proceeds some of those restrictions are reconsidered culminating in a consideration of full-blown universalism.
(a) To Risk or Not to Risk?
So, for starters, Perszyk notes that “open theists think that they come out better off than Molinists on the (ordinary) problem of evil” and presumably with respect to the soteriological problem as well (p. 163). I concur. The main soteriological issue with Molinism from an Open Theist perspective is that, for anyone who winds up in hell, God ordained their eternal damnation. That is, God chose to actualize a specific complete history while infallibly knowing in advance that it would result in that person’s damnation. As Perszyk puts it, the Molinist God “appears guilty of malice aforethought” (p. 163).
But Perszyk misses the main point when he suggests that, in their objection against Molinist soteriology, “open theists appeal in part to the intuition that the more an agent knows, the higher we set the standards for their actions” whereas “the less an agent knows, the less responsible they are for their actions” (p. 163). While there is merit to those intuitions, the Open Theist’s objection is not based on how much God knows, but on how controlling God is. After all, Open Theists don’t believe their God “knows less” than the Molinist God—that’s a straw man representation of open theism. Again, the Open Theist’s objection is that the Molinist God deliberately chooses to create people knowing that they are going to perish eternally. This, arguably, is incompatible with God’s perfectly loving nature.
But Perszyk thinks that the divine risk-taking implied by Open Theism is just as problematic. How is it “morally acceptable to risk the irreparable post-mortem harm of others” (p. 163)? Without giving any thought to how Open Theists might reply, Perszyk contends that Molinism and Open Theism are seemingly morally on par at this point: “it is hard to see that either side is really any worse off than the other here” (p. 164).
I disagree strongly with Perszyk here. Aside, perhaps, from simply denying the premise that some people wind up eternally in hell (or eternally annihilated) and going full-on into universalism, Molinists have no good answers to the Open Theist objection. While Perszyk suggests weakly that for Molinism it might be “logically possible” that God couldn’t have “actualized a world with a better balance or mixture of saved and damned” (p. 164), the problem is that such a scenario is radically implausible. Given the virtually infinite number of possible individuals that God presumably could have created on Molinism, even if there is no soteriologically ideal set of conditionals involving individuals {A, B, C, etc.}, it is still nearly certain that God would have available to Him a soteriologically ideal set of conditionals involving different individuals, e.g., {α, β, γ, etc.}. Consequently, middle knowledge doesn’t place any serious constraints on the overall kind of world God can get out creation. Whatever greater goods God is aiming at from creation, it is virtually certain that God could have secured all of those goods without anyone perishing for eternity—unless, very implausibly, the eternal damnation of some creatures is necessary for those greater goods.
But what about Open Theism’s risk-taking God? Is the open theist similarly without any good response to the question of how a perfectly good God could justifiably risk the eternal damnation of some, or even all, creatures? I can’t go into this issue in full detail here. (See section 4.2 of my Open Theism book for a detailed response.) Suffice to say, Open Theists can say quite a bit about the ethics of risk-taking in general and of how the risks God takes with creation are compatible those principles. The first point to make is that there is nothing inherently wrong with risk-taking as such. People do it all the time, and we often commend them for it (e.g., firefighters, police officers, entrepreneurs, etc.). Second, God’s taking risks with creaturely lives can be justified as long as (a) the risks are well-taken (i.e., God properly assesses the risks for all relevant parties and takes the risks only if the expected value for all such parties is nonnegative), (b) well-managed (i.e., God proactively prevents excessive “collateral damage” from the risks He takes), and (c) retrospectively justified (i.e., God avoids risks if they cannot retrospectively be justified as worth it for all relevant parties to have had the risk-purchased opportunities they did). A parental analogy suggests itself. Parents regularly and praiseworthily have and raise kids knowing full well that, even if they do everything perfectly on their end, they cannot guarantee the long-term well-being of their children. If the children should foolishly decide to “self-destruct” like the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11–32), that need not imply any fault on the part of the parents. It was still good for the Forgiving Father to have raised the Prodigal despite the risk that he never returns home. Third and finally, ethically managing soteriological risk on an Open Theist model arguably requires at least some modification of the traditional doctrine of hell as Perszyk construes it (see above). I think it minimally requires giving up the idea that physical death marks the end of soteriological opportunity, for it seems evident that not everyone has an adequate opportunity for salvation in this life. A perfectly loving God should continue to pursue the unredeemed as long as the latter remain redeemable. As James Beilby has recently argued in a full-length book, there are good biblical and theological reasons for affirming a doctrine of post-mortem opportunity.
(b) The Finality of Hell
The next question Perszyk considers is which model can better account for the finality of hell (i.e., the no-escape thesis of the traditional view). More specifically, he considers this question on the assumption of a “natural consequence” model of hell as opposed to a “punishment” model: “God doesn’t so much consign us to hell; we choose it for ourselves” (p. 165).
Regarding this question, Perszyk proposes that Molinists can account for the finality of hell by supposing that the middle knowledge counterfactuals for all individuals who wind up in hell are such that “no matter what God did they would not choose to leave hell” (p. 165). What Perszyk doesn’t note is that that’s not a terribly plausible line to take. If a loving God knew that some possible individual’s counterfactuals were like that, then why would God create that individual when God’s got an infinite number of other possible individuals to play with in devising the best world He can, given His middle knowledge? Should we suppose that all of those infinite individuals who would choose to reject God under certain circumstances would remain resistant to God under all other circumstances? That seems obviously false, as many people who are resistant to God at one point in their life eventually repent. It seems, then, that if any individuals wind up in hell with no chance of escape on Molinism, then that’s because God specifically selected them for that fate. God, it turns out, is not so loving as we might have supposed.
Now, how about Open Theists? What can they say about hell’s finality? Perszyk suggests as one option that God’s final judgment simply ends human freedom, freezing people in whatever spiritual orientation they were in at that point (p. 165). Another suggestion that he thinks Open Theists will find more palatable is a “loss of soul” theory according to which the finally damned lose the ability to repent due to their own self-hardening (p. 166). But Perszyk, doesn’t think this proposal works very well. Drawing on the work of Jonathan Kvanvig, Perszyk suggests that if this “loss of soul” were simply an “unintended consequence” of one’s choices (i.e., one didn’t really know what one was doing in rejecting God), then God could presumably intervene to restore one’s ability to repent (perhaps by causing the person to have a different perspective on things). Could a fully informed person “directly intend to lose one’s soul” (p. 166)? And even if one can reach a psychological point-of-no-return, why should the psychological impossibility of repentance imply its causal impossibility, so as to put the person beyond the reach of God’s salvific efforts? Based on these considerations, Perszyk concludes that “it looks like Molinists are better able to account for the finality of hell” (p. 166).
In response to this, I affirm that “the finally damned lose the ability to repent due to their own self-hardening,” but I also think that labeling this as a “loss of soul” is highly misleading. Nobody is suggesting that a person can “directly intend to lose one’s soul”—that sounds psychologically implausible if not impossible. No, the suggestion is that one can become so hardened against God that one can no longer regard reconciliation with God through Christ as a live option. There’s nothing implausible about that. Lots of people on this side of the eschaton do not (currently) see reconciliation with God as a live option, and some of them (like Peter Atkins in this video) are adamant that it’s not even possibly a live option. Nor need this perspective be simply an “unintended consequence.” As philosopher Thomas Nagel has admitted, “It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God … [i]t’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God.” Moreover, Jesus tells us that there is an “unpardonable sin” (Matt. 12:31–32) and the author of Hebrews (6:4–6) tells us that is it “impossible” for some who have fallen away “to be brought back to repentance.” Given that uncoerced personal repentance is necessary for salvation and given that one can’t repent if it is psychologically impossible to do so, it follows that, if there is a psychological point-of-no-return (as Scripture clearly indicates), then repentance in such cases is also causally impossible (pace Kvanvig and Perszyk). As C. S. Lewis famously put it in The Problem of Pain, “the doors of hell are locked on the inside.” The finally damned are those who, having had more than adequate pre- and post-mortem opportunity to repent, persist in rebellion nonetheless. In sum, I don’t see any special problem for Open Theists regarding the finality of hell.
Perszyk, however, thinks that if creatures have libertarian freedom then “they might at any time change their minds or act out of character and choose God” (p. 167). Hence, he thinks, for God ever to “give up” on the salvation of some creature would be ad hoc unless, like on Molinism, God could simply know that no matter what choices a free creature might find themselves in, they would never freely repent.
But this reflects a seriously mistaken conception of libertarian free will (LFW). LFW does not entail that creatures might “at any time change their minds or act out of character” (emphasis added). It only entails that morally free creatures can sometimes have chosen otherwise than they in fact do. More specifically, it only entails that creatures could have chosen otherwise with respect to choices that ultimately ground moral responsibility. Suppose, then, that a given person has freely arrived at a point where it is now psychologically impossible to repent. In that case, it is simply false that “they might … change their minds … and choose God.”
(c) Soteriological Luck
The final issue pursued by Perszyk in this section of his essay concerns the problem of “soteriological luck.” This has to do with whether some people just get “lucky” to have been chosen by God, to have been raised in a Christian family, to have heard the Gospel, etc. whereas others, due to no fault of their own, are simply “unlucky” in those ways. The problem with soteriological luck, of course, is that it seems highly unjust that some people have salvation practically served to them on silver platter whereas others are practically “set up” for damnation. Persyzk thinks that both Open Theism and Molinism have a comparably difficult time dealing with this problem.
Now, again, the most obvious response for the Open Theist is to embrace the idea of post-mortem opportunity, which says that God will ensure that everyone, in one way or another, pre-mortem or post-mortem, has a more than adequate opportunity to learn of God’s love and repent. They will receive whatever necessary aids (e.g., prevenient grace) and information they may need to make an informed but uncoerced decision. The Open Theist may even propose, in line with Hebrews 6:4–6, that no one can reach a psychological point-of-no-return until they have “been enlightened, … tasted the heavenly gift, … shared in the Holy Spirit, [and] … tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age.” If that’s right, and it’s certainly compatible with Open Theism, then there is no problem of soteriological luck for the Open Theist. The problem only emerges if we suppose that some will never have adequate opportunity because physical death marks the end of all soteriological opportunity. But Open Theism isn’t committed to that and, as Beilby argues in his book, there are no decisive scriptural or theological reasons preventing one from rejecting it.
How then do Molinists deal with soteriological luck? One proposal noted by Perszyk turns on the idea of “transworld depravity” (p 168). This is the idea that anyone who winds up eternally lost is such that, per God’s middle knowledge, they would not have repented in any circumstances in which God could have placed them. But, the implausibility of transworld depravity and middle knowledge aside, this doesn’t solve the soteriological luck problem, for two reasons. First, with respect to God’s middle knowledge, over which creatures have no control, a creature must be quite “unlucky” to be transworldly depraved when by hypothesis (since all middle knowledge conditionals are logically contingent), the middle knowledge conditionals could have turned out otherwise. Second, with respect to God’s creative decree, over which creatures have no control, an actualized creature with transworld depravity could qualify as “unlucky” because God (being free) didn’t have to actualize that creature. God could created other creatures instead or no (free) creatures at all.
Another Molinist proposal is that creatures are judged by God solely on their middle knowledge counterfactuals, which would lead to a kind of universalism if it should turn out that no actualized creatures have transworld depravity. The idea here is that God saves every actualized creature who is such that they would freely accept Christ were they to be placed in a situation where they had adequate opportunity to do so. This proposal has a counterintuitive consequence, though, for it means that God saves creatures regardless of whether they actually accept Christ. So it may well be that some creatures who actually reject Christ in conditions where they had an excellent opportunity to accept Him are saved despite that rejection of Christ simply because in some counterfactual circumstance they would have accepted Christ. As Perszyk notes, this arguably “trivializes the actual world in key respects, making it inexplicable why we must have pre-mortem lives to begin with” (p. 169).
In sum, it seems to me that Molinists don’t have a good solution to the soteriological luck problem whereas Open Theists who are willing to countenance post-mortem opportunity do.
2. Universalism for Molinists and Open Theists? (pp. 169–172)
Up to this point Perszyk has been operating on an anti-universalist assumption. In the final section of his paper he drops that assumption and considers to what extent Molinism and Open Theism can accommodate universalism.
Perszyk begins by distinguishing between necessary universalism, “the thesis that it is logically necessary that all will (eventually) be saved,” and contingent universalism, the thesis that “as a matter of fact all will be saved” (p. 169). While I grant the relevance of some such distinction, I don’t like this way of cashing it out. First, by “logical” necessity here Perszyk presumably means what Plantinga would call “broadly logical necessity” or what I would call abstract metaphysical necessity, that is, necessity grounded in the abstract natures of the relevant things, in this case, God. Moreover, Perszyk is presumably speaking about conditional necessity here because, on either Molinism or Open Theism, it is not broadly logically necessary that God creates. God’s nature doesn’t require any creation at all and thus doesn’t require that there be any saved creatures at all. So, by “necessary universalism” Perszyk presumably means the thesis that it is broadly logically necessary that if God creates savable creatures, then all such creatures are (eventually) saved. In contrast with necessary universalism, contingent universalism should then be understood as entailing a denial that that conditional is broadly logically necessary. So far so good, but it gets confusing because that denial is compatible with the conditional’s being necessary in a weaker sense (e.g., causally). But then contingent universalism shouldn’t be described as the thesis that “as a matter of fact” all savable creatures are eventually saved. The “matter of fact” language seems to exclude any sort of necessity. In short, then, this distinction isn’t all that clear.
In any case, neither Molinists nor Open Theists are in a position to affirm necessary universalism because both affirm that whether any particular savable creature winds up saved ultimately depends on libertarianly free creaturely decisions. Thus, for any such creature it is broadly logically possible that God actualize that creature and that creature not be saved.
With respect to (broadly logically) contingent universalism, Perszyk argues that Molinism is compatible with this. All it requires is that the middle knowledge conditionals fall out in such a way that God is left with one or more feasible worlds in which (a) all free, rational creatures wind up saved and (b) those worlds are good enough overall to be acceptable to God. Since that’s entirely within the realm of (broadly logical) possibility assuming we concede the internal coherence of Molinism, it follows that Molinism is compatible with contingent universalism.
Conversely, Perszyk argues that Open Theism is not compatible with (broadly logically) contingent universalism, as least not if salvation requires libertarian free will (LFW) acceptance. To argue for this he first repeats his absurd thesis that LFW allows that “even when there is no good reason or motivation to refrain from doing something, and every reason or motivation to do it, we could (must) still be able to do otherwise” (p. 170). It is not entirely clear, but he may have picked up this idea from Eric Reitan, to whom Perszyk attributes the claim that “our freedom contains an ineradicable random element” (p. 171). In any case, as noted in section 1.b above, these claims are completely wrong. LFW is not “contra-causal freedom,” as Perszyk describes it, such that our choices must be able to run counter to our strongest reasons, even when we have no reason at all to do otherwise. Nor does LFW have to have a “random element.” Indeed, to avoid the charge that LFW reduces to brute indeterminism, any plausible version of LFW has to be reasons-responsive, meaning that our free choices must track with our clearly dominant reasons when we have clearly dominant reasons. The best way to think about LFW choices, I submit, is when an agent establishes a preference among competing options when there are good reasons for each of the options and no set of reasons is clearly dominant.
Perszyk next considers two possible routes by which an Open Theist might try to accommodate contingent universalism. The first route posits that God will eventually, if necessary, override creaturely freedom by, first, unilaterally removing all obstacles to salvation and then, if needed, supply efficacious grace sufficient to compel creaturely submission to God (pp. 170–171). Perszyk doesn’t think most Open Theists will be happy with this proposal. One problem it raises is that it seems to imply that creaturely LFW with respect to salvation isn’t all that important after all. Why should Open Theists make such a big deal of the (alleged) incompatibility of creaturely LFW and exhaustive definite foreknowledge if LFW is optional? A second worry is that, if God can legitimately override creaturely freedom at some point, then why shouldn’t God do so much earlier? This would enable God to prevent a great many moral evils and the suffering that comes in their wake. In short, this strategy makes the problem of evil worse.
A second potential way to reconcile Open Theism with contingent universalism is to posit, with Eric Reitan, that God can wait recalcitrant creatures out. If, says Reitan, LFW contains an ineradicable random element, then the probability of every free creature turning to God asymptotically approaches 1.0 as time increases without bound. One problem for this proposal is that it relies on the false idea that LFW is inherently random. Another problem is that a probability’s asymptotically approaching 1.0 does not entail that it ever actually gets there. Just as the probability of getting heads at least once after n tosses of a fair (random) coin approaches 1.0 as n approaches infinity, the probability never gets to 1.0 because an endless string of tails is possible, however unlikely. So randomness alone cannot guarantee eventual universalism. The most we get is a rationally guaranteed “hopeful” universalism. A third problem, one noted by Perszyk, is that this view presupposes that everyone who gets saved thereafter always remains saved (once saved, always saved). Given the assumption of LFW’s inherent randomness, however, the only way this can be achieved is if creatures lose LFW at the point of salvation. Perszyk concludes that “it looks like there is no logical guarantee of universalism for open theists without some limitation on creaturely freedom” (p. 172).
3. Conclusion (p. 172)
Perszyk’s overall conclusion is quite modest: “it is reasonable to believe, though not beyond reasonable doubt, that Molinism has an edge over open theism in addressing soteriological problems of evil” (p. 172). While I appreciate his modesty, I’ve argued above that Open Theism fares overall better than Molinism, especially if the Open Theist affirms post-mortem opportunity for all creatures who do not receive an adequate salvific opportunity in this life.
On the assumptions that universalism is false and that a LFW choice is required for salvation, I think Open Theism fares better than Molinism with respect to the “risk” problem. More specifically, I think it is much worse for God deliberately to create beings that He knows for sure will ultimately perish than for God to risk the possibility that some (or even many) of His creatures ultimately perish while making sure that everyone has a more than adequate opportunity for salvation.
I don’t think either Molinism or Open Theism has any significant edge with respect to the “finality of hell” problem. Both models can easily make sense of this once we drop the wrong-headed ideas that LFW is “contra-causal” or “inherently random.”
As for the “soteriological luck” problem, I think Open Theism again comes out on top, provided the Open Theist embraces a system of post-mortem opportunity. Molinists, it seems to me, don’t have any good solutions to the problem of soteriological luck (assuming universalism is false).
The only place where Molinism arguably has an edge over Open Theism with respect to the soteriological problem of evil is that Molinism is compatible with guaranteed universalism whereas Open Theism seems to be compatible at most with hopeful universalism.