Why I'm Tapping the Brakes on Molinism--and Potentially Changing Lanes

 Regular readers of my blog (I think there are two of you, so I’ll use the plural) will remember that in the past, I have voiced support for the theological system of Molinism (if you missed that post, you can read it here). I’ve even encouraged you to check it out further, and perhaps you have. Recently, I have been reassessing Molinism in my continuing studies, particularly in light of a philosophical framework known as Thomism, named for the 13^th-century theologian Thomas Aquinas. Allow me to relate a bit of personal history regarding my studies to introduce you to my current concerns about Molinism.

 Why I’ve appreciated Molinism

From my generally Calvinistic upbringing, I’ve always had a non-negotiable commitment to the sovereignty of God. God is in charge, and He is unfailingly causing His plan for this world to come to pass. Yet like all but the most rabid of Calvinists, I’ve struggled to reconcile this belief with man’s responsibility to accept the Gospel to be saved.

 Enter Molinism with its proposal of a solution to this quandary. I became a student of Molinism through my studies in apologetics at Biola University, an institution where evangelical Molinist philosopher William Lane Craig casts a considerably long shadow. My deepest appreciation for Molinism actually came through the application that Kenneth Keathley made of its concepts to the questions debated by Calvinists and Arminians. His book Salvation and Sovereignty remains a favorite of mine among studies of the doctrine of salvation.

Why I’m reassessing Molinism

In my continuing studies, I’ve felt that a stronger grasp of philosophy has been the missing piece in my overall education. To fill this gap and to continue to push myself to learn, I enrolled in the Doctor of Ministry program at Southern Evangelical Seminary in 2020. I was very intrigued by the seminary’s integration of Dispensational theology, Classical philosophy, and Classical apologetics—all inspired by the work of the seminary’s founder, Norman Geisler.

 In his voluminous works, Geisler championed an evangelical version of the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, particularly with respect to Aquinas’ teachings on the three Classical branches of philosophy—metaphysics (the study of being), epistemology (the study of how we know), and ethics (the study of how we ought to live in light of what we know of being). Being an evangelical, Geisler obviously disagreed with Aquinas’ broader theology but nevertheless felt that his views on Theology Proper and questions of being and knowing have much to offer evangelicals, since Aquinas’ views were arguably just a summation of Christian teaching on those matters up until his time.

I am very intrigued by the philosophical tools and ideas of Thomism because of what they claim to provide. Thomists claim that their system can provide at least the following three benefits, all of which are very desirable in my opinion:

             1. A philosophical framework to undergird the traditional view of God’s attributes

            In various ways, attributes such as God’s omniscience, timelessness, immutability, and others have been modified or outright denied by theologians in recent decades. The result is a portrayal of God that is quite different from the historic Christian tradition. Thomism provides an understanding of metaphysics that serves as a solid foundation on which to build a theological and biblical case for the traditional understanding of God’s being—provided that Thomism’s central claims are true, and I increasingly think that they are.

            2. A philosophy to support the claim that we really do have direct access to reality

            Philosophy since the time of Rene Descartes has spawned no end of nonsense. With what has been called “the epistemic turn,” philosophy has been chasing its tail, seeking to answer the question, “How can we know that we know?” The basic answer has been that we really can’t know anything for sure except our own thoughts; thus we really have no guarantee that those thoughts correspond to the way the world really is. But Thomism boldly asserts that we really do have direct access to reality. Its approach—known as moderate realism—begins with the assertion that we possess knowledge because it’s simply undeniable that we do! Thomism keeps philosophical study in the proper order—examine reality first (metaphysics), then assess how we have come to know it in order to discover how we might know other things (epistemology).

             3. It defends the claim that we can have an objective interpretation of the Bible

            Vast swaths of Christianity today are plagued by subjectivity. The subjective question “What do these verses mean to you?” has supplanted the objective question “What do these verses mean?” Though very few would know it, this situation is a direct consequence of the epistemic turn in philosophy. Thomism, through its claim about reality mentioned above, truly does seem to deliver the philosophical goods that are necessary to make people confident once again that objectivity in biblical interpretation really is possible.

Molinism in light of Thomism

But here’s the rub for my theology—Molinism and Thomism really do seem to have a conflict at a few points. Though these points are admittedly among the finest of the finer points of theology, if a person is going to speak on such points, then he must strive for truth in any statement that he speaks and for consistency with all other statements that he may speak. In that light, I want my theology to be accurate and consistent, so I’m reassessing Molinism right now on the following points:

             1. The doctrine of divine simplicity

            The doctrine of divine simplicity is central to Thomism. In fact, in Aquinas’ magnum opus, the Summa Theologiae, divine simplicity is the first attribute that Thomas seeks to prove after proving the existence of God. Contemporary Reformed Baptist theologian James Dolezal has described this doctrine about as succinctly (and clearly!) as anyone can:

The principal claim of divine simplicity is that God is not composed of parts. Whatever is composed of parts depends upon its parts in order to be as it is. A part is anything in a subject that is less than the whole and without which the subject would be really different than it is. In short, composite beings need their parts in order to exist as they do. Moreover, the parts in an integrated whole require a composer distinct from themselves to unify them, an extrinsic source of unity. If God should be composed of parts—of components that were prior to Him in being—He would be doubly dependent: first, on the parts, and second, on the composer of the parts. But God is absolute in being, alone the sufficient reason for Himself and all other things, and so cannot in any respect derive His being from another. Because God cannot depend on what is not God in order to be God, theologians traditionally insist that all that is in God is God (James E. Dolezal, All That Is in God, 40-41).

            To understand this a bit more clearly, think of what we mean when we ascribe goodness to a person. When you say “George is good,” if you really think about it, you can see that you’re really talking about two different things: George, on the one hand, and goodness on the other. You know this because you know that George could possibly be evil rather than good. Since George and goodness can exist separately like this, you know that you’re talking about two different things.

            But we encounter something different when we say “God is good.” In this case, we’re really not talking about two different things, as if God could possibly be evil rather than good. In the case of God, what we’re really saying is that God just is goodness. Goodness isn’t a quality that is in addition to what God is; goodness just is what He is. And when you ponder it further, we would say the same thing about God’s other attributes—they just are what God is, leading us to conclude that these attributes are not separate “parts” within God’s being. That is the meaning of Dolezal’s last statement that “all that is in God is God.”

            The more I understand it, the more I wish to affirm God’s simplicity, yet Molinism seems to run afoul of this doctrine. In positing three logical moments or stages within God’s knowledge—one stage of which does not result until after an act of God’s will—Molinism seems to create too sharp of a division between God’s knowledge and His will. It seems to treat these attributes as though one can be active without the other. In the light of divine simplicity, it seems better to say, as Geisler does in his book Chosen But Free, that God’s knowing and willing are simultaneous, eternal, and coordinate acts of God (see pp. 52-53 of the second edition).

             2. The notion of passive potency in God

            Thomism relies on the metaphysical insights of the Greek philosopher Aristotle. In fact, Thomas was the first theologian of any consequence who was able to “compare notes” with Aristotle after the latter’s works were rediscovered in the Middle Ages. Thomas, like Aristotle before him, argued that all of existence can be summed up in two categories—act and potency, or in other words, that which actually is existing and that which potentially could exist. God, says Thomas, is pure act—every facet of His being has always actually existed; no facet of God was ever made to exist, or in other words, caused to move from being merely potential to be actual. Something that is made actual by another is said to have “passive potency.”

            With its postulate of three logical moments in God’s knowledge, Molinism seems to say that God has passive potency. This observation seems especially true of God’s middle knowledge, which is said to be caused by the future free choices of God’s creatures. Should this be equated with passive potency? Craig apparently wants to avoid such a notion by arguing for a conceptualist model of divine knowledge, which he explains as follows:

On a conceptualist model of divine knowledge, God does not acquire his knowledge of the world by anything like perception. His knowledge of the future is not based on his “looking” ahead and “seeing” what lies in the future (a terribly anthropomorphic notion in any case). Rather, God’s knowledge is self-contained; it is more like a mind’s knowledge of innate ideas. As an omniscient being, God has essentially the property of knowing all truths; there are truths about future events; thus, God knows all truths concerning future events (Craig, “The Middle-Knowledge View,” in Divine Foreknowledge: Four Views, eds. Bielby and Eddy, p. 133).

            That explanation seems like it could avoid the charge of ascribing passive potency to God, yet in other works such as his podcasts, Craig is very comfortable saying that for any choice I make, God’s knowledge would have been different if I had in fact made a different choice. That admission sure smells like passive potency, making it problematic from a Thomistic point of view.

             3. The grounding objection

            I should say just a brief word about the grounding objection, since many of Molinism’s opponents consider it to be the fatal flaw in the system. Simply put, the grounding objection deals with the question, “What makes statements about the future true or false?” I had heard about the grounding objection before and had more or less rested in the reassurances of Molinists that it wasn’t really a problem. Having examined it a bit more at this point, I must say that it appears to be more of a problem than I acknowledged before. In particular, Molinism would perhaps put pressure on us to abandon the correspondence theory of truth (meaning that statements are true if they correspond to the way things really are), which would simply be a bridge too far for me.

            It is also worth noting that Thomas argued by means of God’s eternality that He does know the truth about statements concerning what is still future to us because they are not future to Him (see Summa Contra Gentiles, Book One, Chapter 67). So Thomism certainly does have a way of explaining how God can know the truth about the future.

Contemplating a Change

Well, if you’ve made it with me this far, I don’t know whether to congratulate you or encourage you to find a hobby to better fill your time! Really though, if you’ve made it this far, I suspect you’re like me and you find value in thinking deeply about theology. Now that we’ve thought deeply about it, I’ll reiterate that I’m considering an embrace of Thomism. To be candid, some of these ideas from Thomism have only become clear to me in the last 15 weeks, so I still need some time to ponder it all. But having read this, I suspect that you won’t be caught off guard if you see me changing lanes.