{"id":1078,"date":"2023-02-06T11:33:51","date_gmt":"2023-02-06T16:33:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/?p=1078"},"modified":"2025-05-19T15:08:15","modified_gmt":"2025-05-19T20:08:15","slug":"the-metaphysical-muddles-of-molinism-some-thoughts-on-macgregor-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/2023\/02\/the-metaphysical-muddles-of-molinism-some-thoughts-on-macgregor-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"The Metaphysical Muddles of Molinism \u2013 Some Thoughts on MacGregor (Part 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"

As part of my ongoing research for my book project on Open Theism (under contract with Cambridge Univ. Press), I’ve recently begun reading Kirk MacGregor’s latest book, Molinist Philosophical and Theological Ventures<\/em><\/a> (2022). I’m looking at the book because he addresses some aspects of an anti-Molinist argument that I’ve been developing over the past few years. My charge is that Molinism entails fatalism and is thus internally inconsistent and so necessarily false. You can hear a simplified version of my argument here<\/a>, between the 23- and 38-minute marks. I should make clear that MacGregor doesn’t respond directly to me, but rather to one of the premises I use in the argument which is also defended in a paper by philosopher Phil Swenson, whom MacGregor does respond to.<\/p>\n

Having looked at the first three chapters of MacGregor’s book so far I am now more convinced than ever that Molinism is little more than a theologically driven exercise in egregiously<\/em> bad metaphysics. What I mean is that the perceived theological need<\/em> for Molinism is so strong for some that they will seemingly bite any theoretical bullet to make it work.<\/p>\n

What follows is my take on MacGregor’s first three chapters. In a follow-up post I hope to examine chapters 4\u20136. The last two chapters (on sacred music and universal salvation, respectively) are not of central interest to me, so I shall set them aside.<\/p>\n

Chapter 1: Molinism and the Bible: Part One (pp. 1\u201320)<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Chapters 1 and 2 MacGregor intends to show that Molinism is solidly grounded in the Bible. He begins Chapter 1 by discussing the “proper relationship between philosophy and theology”. In his view, theology should drive the bus because it is the “most advanced discipline of study” (p. 2) and “philosophical constructs cannot legitimately be superimposed on Scripture” (p. 1). MacGregor distinguishes between “genuine” philosophical constructs, which are grounded in Scripture, and “human-made” constructs, which aren’t (p. 6). In response, this part of the chapter strikes me as a kind of na\u00efve Biblical positivism, or perhaps even a sort of fideistic presuppositionalism. Theology may have the most important subject matter (God), but I don’t know how anyone could think that it is the “most advanced” field of study. Mathematics and logic, for starters, are far more technically sophisticated. Heck, many theologians can barely agree on anything, much less the proper method for doing theology! And obviously one cannot approach Scripture or any text in a conceptual vacuum. It is important that we strive to be critically reflective about our philosophical “constructs”, and a big part of that is learning to step back from or bracket our prior commitments and allow ourselves to be seriously challenged by alternative viewpoints, including those found in Scripture. A much better approach is something like the Wesleyan quadrilateral, which suggests that we aim for a sort of reflective equilibrium<\/em> between our major sources of information (reason, experience, divine revelation, etc.). This encourages a mutual dialog between philosophy, theology, science, and practice, where no one field completely dominates the others. All truth is God’s truth, after all.<\/p>\n

Moving on, MacGregor next offers some Scriptural data on divine sovereignty (pp. 8\u201311) and human freedom (pp. 11\u201316). Regarding the first, MacGregor cites a handful of prooftexts to argue that “God possesses an absolute degree of control over the activities of created beings”, including things that are genuinely “random” (p. 10). Even taken collectively, I think MacGregor’s prooftexts are weak. Prov. 16:33 is perhaps the strongest one: “the lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.” Right, but (a) many Biblical proverbs are just general rules of thumb, not absolute universal generalizations, and (b) this could just be talking about one particular lot, namely, the urim<\/em> and thummim<\/em> that were part of the high priestly breastplate and by means of which the high priest could inquire of the Lord. I’ll leave it to the reader to consider MacGregor’s other prooftexts: Prov. 21:1; Jer. 10:23; and Job 14:5. I find MacGregor’s discussion of human freedom more convincing as it relies on much longer and thus less contextually ambiguous passages. His main texts there are Deut. 30:11\u201319; 1 Cor. 10:13; Deut. 11:26\u201328; Ezek. 18:23,30\u201332.<\/p>\n

MacGregor closes the chapter with “philosophical reflections” on divine sovereignty and human freedom (pp. 16\u201320). He starts out with a false dichotomy by assuming that God must either “strongly actualize” (i.e., causally determine) or “weakly actualize” (i.e., knowingly set in motion) everything that ever happens. This excludes the possibility, affirmed by open theists, that God might sovereignly decide not<\/em> to decide everything that ever happens but rather to\u00a0delegate<\/em> some of those decisions to His creatures. MacGregor then starts talking about God’s\u00a0intentions<\/em>, and he insists that Molinism is in line with the ethical doctrine of double effect (DDE) that while God “foreknows” that bad things will happen, “God does not intend evil\u2014period\u2014much less that good may result from it” (pp. 17\u201318). I believe this is a major error on MacGregor’s part, one that distorts Molinism and glosses over a genuine difficulty. On the Molinist system, God deliberately selects, and therefore intends<\/em>, a complete world history, including all<\/em> of the evils that ever occur. To be sure, He doesn’t intend these evils\u00a0for their own sakes<\/em>, but He does intend them as part of a “complete package” that He selects and weakly actualizes. He presumably wills the whole package including all of its evils because it is somehow necessary to achieve a greater good<\/em>. My point is that Molinists can’t use DDE to exonerate God from complicity in bringing about evils the way MacGregor is trying to do. Molinists can’t say that the evils were\u00a0merely\u00a0foreseen but not intended<\/em>, as DDE requires. Here’s how esteemed Molinist Alfred Freddoso puts it:<\/p>\n

God, the divine artisan, freely and knowingly plan, orders, and provides for all the effects that constitute His artifact, the created universe with its entire history, and executes His chosen plan by playing an active causal role sufficient to ensure its exact realization. Since God is the perfect artisan, not even the most trivial details escape His providential decrees. Thus, whatever occurs is properly said to be specifically decreed<\/em><\/span> by God. (p. 3 in this book<\/a>; emphasis<\/span> in original)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Frankly, MacGregor should just bite the bullet and accept the idea that, on Molinism, God intends<\/em> evil, including moral evil, as Matthew Hart and Daniel Hill have recently argued<\/a>. They are very clear that if God decrees something, He intends it (p. 4). And not incidentally, Hart and Hill reject DDE (pp. 104ff.) as a constraint on what is permissible for God.<\/p>\n

Chapter 2: Molinism and the Bible: Part Two (pp. 21\u201337)<\/strong><\/p>\n

The first half of this chapter (pp. 21\u201329) focuses on Biblical texts that support (a) individual soteriological election and (b) God’s universal salvific will. I won’t say much about this section except that I agree with (b) but not with (a). I think the Bible teaches corporate, not individual, election for all who are, and remain, “in Christ”.<\/p>\n

Well, I will say one more thing. On p. 23 MacGregor makes a very questionable inferential leap. Based on the assumption that God has prior relational foreknowledge of those individuals who are chosen for salvation, MacGregor infers (1) that this relational foreknowledge would have to be God’s acquaintance with their individual essences<\/em> because He has it when the individuals don’t yet exist, and (2) that “full relational knowledge of someone’s individual essence would encompass knowing everything that individual essence, if instantiated, would freely do under any set of circumstances.” Now, I can see how (1) might follow given the assumption, but to my mind that’s a good reason to reject<\/em> the assumption, for I see no reason to think that individual essences exist, especially not prior to the existence of the individual in question. As for (2), while it is a common Molinist idea, it doesn’t remotely follow from (1). Why should individual essences have to include all that? Why would it be essential to my being me that I would\u00a0<\/em>act in this or that way under this or that set of circumstances? Moreover, this makes no sense because a thing’s essence\u00a0<\/em>contains properties that it cannot ever lack as long as it exists. To lose or alter a thing’s essence would be for the thing to cease to exist and to be replaced by something else of a different kind. Likewise, i<\/em>ndividual essences<\/em>, if they exist, contain properties that a particular individual could not ever lack while existing as that person. To lose or alter one’s individual essence would be for that person to cease to exist and to be replaced by someone or something else. So if everything one would freely do under every hypothetical circumstance were part of one’s individual essence, then the individual in question could not do otherwise on pain of ceasing to exist!\u00a0<\/em>Consequently, the individual could not be free in the libertarian sense that MacGregor and Molinists advocate.<\/p>\n

The balance of the chapter (pp. 29\u201337) contains MacGregor’s “philosophical reflections” on the Scriptural data (as he reads it) and tries to show that Molinism straightforwardly follows. He begins (p. 29) by arguing that foreknowledge based on actual occurrences would be providentially useless. I agree. He concludes that foreknowledge must be based on prior hypothetical knowledge and cites Matt. 11:20\u201324 as backup (p. 30). (The passage doesn’t actually teach anything like Molinism because the hypotheticals there aren’t prevolitional<\/em> in the sense of being ontologically prior to God’s creative decree.) MacGregor then introduces the Molinist distinction between possible worlds and feasible worlds (p. 31). Possible worlds are grounded in God’s natural knowledge, i.e., God’s knowledge of His own nature as the necessarily existent ground of all possibility. Feasible worlds are grounded in God’s middle knowledge, i.e., God’s knowledge of all contingent hypotheticals and, more specifically, of what any possible individual would<\/em> do in any fully causally specified indeterministic scenario. As standard Molinist doctrine goes, that much is accurate.<\/p>\n

One odd claim that MacGregor makes (on p. 32) is that God may not be able to actualize a feasible world in which everyone is saved because it may be that “some people are saved only if various lost people exist”. I don’t get this. If Molinism is correct, then why can’t God just actualize only<\/i> those individual essences that would accept God’s salvation? If necessary, God could put each of them in their own virtual Matrix-like world to elicit precisely the kinds of free choices that would lead them to salvation. Furthermore, if God knows that Bob would be obstinate unto damnation no matter what circumstances he were placed in, then why can’t He actualize a different individual essence, say Steve’s, in Bob’s place, where Steve is such that he would freely receive salvation in those circumstances? If God’s got an infinite<\/em> number of individual essences to work with\u2014and why wouldn’t He in the Molinist system?\u2014then it seems highly probable, if not inevitable, that God would have had at least one feasible world available to Him in which no one ever sinned and in which everyone is saved.<\/p>\n

Finally, MacGregor presses an objection against “Calvinism” (i.e., theistic determinism) that, because of middle knowledge, God knows more<\/em> on Molinism than He does on “Calvinism”: “the Molinist believes that on Calvinism there are logically knowable truths that God does not know, such that the Calvinist subscribes to a conception of a less than omniscient God” (p. 36). While I’m no fan of theistic determinism, this is nothing but a cheap shot on MacGregor’s part. He’s basically saying “My God is bigger than your God if<\/em> my theory is correct and yours is wrong”. No self-respecting theistic determinist should be impressed by that because they won’t concede that MacGregor’s theory is correct. This is like a universal possibilist like Descartes saying to MacGregor, “My God is bigger than your God because my God knows that triangles could have had 4 sides and yours doesn’t.”<\/p>\n

Chapter 3: An Intuitionist Defense of Divine Supercomprehension (pp. 38\u201356)<\/strong><\/p>\n

This chapter is a response to the well-known grounding objection<\/em> (GO) against Molinism. I explain the GO in a previous post<\/a> and why Molinism can’t meet it. Basically, the objection is that Molinism has no good explanation for how God could possibly come by His middle knowledge (MK) because there isn’t any plausible source for the information contained in His MK. It can’t come from God’s nature, because it’s stipulated to be “non-natural” or independent of God’s nature. It can’t come from God’s will, because it’s stipulated to be “pre-volitional”, or independent of God’s creative decree. It can’t come from creation, because it’s ontologically prior to whether there is any creation at all since God bases His creative decree on it. And it can’t come from any source independent of God’s nature and will that would render it metaphysically necessary<\/em>, because MK is stipulated to be contingent. The GO is a big problem<\/em> for Molinism, and to date Molinist responses to it have (in my judgment) been thoroughly underwhelming, if not pathetically bad.<\/p>\n

MacGregor offers six “exit ramps” for the Molinist to escape from the GO but there’s actually only three or four exits because some of them are just alternative versions of each other. Here’s how I describe them:<\/p>\n