The Jets are transworld losers. Or, so said Vocab Malone on his Backpack Radio podcast.1 He was just keeping it light when talking Molinism. (Molinism is the view advocated by Luis de Molina which states that God has always known what his creatures would freely do in any circumstance in which he might place them. The significance is that, given Molinism, God can accomplish his purposes even with creatures of free will.2) The episode was fun, more so for those of the hosts’ Calvinist persuasion… but fun. It was also intelligent and casual and audio, but therein begins the rub. Molinism can take a pass or two to grasp in print, so evaluating it in audio takes some doing. Furthermore, from the 101-level content, the episode seems intended for an audience that is new to the subject. Malone and company had their work cut out for them.
Molinism is controversial, and talking it involves both nuanced argumentation and what can be new / unfamiliar abstract concepts. So, civility and conceptual groundwork are critical. Malone, being intentional on both accounts, had plenty on his plate. Adding the arguments he addressed, he had a heaping plateful, so the episode was especially interesting in terms of the topics that made the cut and the extent to which they were covered. Ultimately, their effort was engaging, but crammed into one episode, it was also incomplete and misleadingly so.
Malone kept it light, and he paid Molinism a compliment or two, calling it “creative” and such.3 I enjoyed this because calling an idea “creative” sounds like the reach made when pressed, as if Molinism was the blind date with “umm, well, a decent personality.” Molinism is not Malone’s own view, so he needs a hand here, and providentially, there is plenty even gracious Calvinists can admit of Molinism. For one, rather than haunting the the usual scriptures with dissonant harmonizations, Molinism’s particular ability to ease antinomy in a straightforward manner can be a lifesaver for believers who want to hold an honest and robust doctrine of Inspiration. Also, in the current political polarization, it is easy to appreciate the middle-ground Molinism makes.
If Malone and co. dropped a hot second for civility, they burned ages in conceptual groundwork. Their first seventeen minutes made a lavish effort in describing Molinism. The hosts got historical, admitted diversity of opinion among Molinists, and broke out the Westminster Confession in definitional rather than critical manner, as if to say, “Molinism is such that one can affirm both it and this part of our confession.” Them being this willing to invest time here, it was disappointing that they overlooked the compatibility efforts of Kirk McGregor and others.4 Had the hosts addressed these, they might have added, “Molinism is such that, technically, one can affirm it and TULIP and sovereignty just not it and universal causal divine determinism.” That would have been helpful.
With the clock ticking, the seventeen-minute intro came with a trade-off. Significant terms like free-will, sovereignty, determinism, and biblical suffered a substantial lack of elaboration.5 The word biblical can be used in the co-scriptura sense (meaning: consistent with scripture or increased-plausibility given scripture) as well as in the ex-scriptura sense (drawn out of scripture explicitly, by inference, or by apparent suggestion). Because our hosts assess on the “biblical” criterion and because the different senses do not enjoy the same significance, it is important to know exactly which is meant when.6
Time, otherwise scarce, became relative in the episode’s argumentation. The show is informal, so it argued informally which allowed for assumed premises, mere-reference, and mere rhetoric, and so argumentation required little time. That is great, but the situation also made it easy for big problems to avoid detection as can be seen in four examples. First, the hosts claim that Molinism is deterministic (because it entails God getting one action over another by means that involve circumstances), and so is little different what they advocate.7 Three problems lie herein. They practically admit Molinism’s strong view of sovereignty is not lacking but rather is comparable to their own. They also forget that even if you could call Molinism circumstantially deterministic, it would still afford free will (no small matter!). Finally, they forget that, in allowing for free-will, Molinism is, in fact, not deterministic. Our hosts implicitly admit that Molinism affords what they are want to defend, just with the added perk of not annihilating human freedom.
A second problem occurs when they claim God can decide what his creatures do and therefore Molinism is wrong.8 That just means their view limits God’s decisive ability to creatures that are determined, and Molinism does not. Also, “decide” is imprecise. Ultimately, what our hosts want to claim is that God causally determined what every human would ever do. This more precise way of putting it is less becoming of their view, so it is understandable that it has not caught on.
Third, after declaring Molinism unbiblical, Malone dubs it an “Arminian philosophical construct”.9 This makes about as much sense as dubbing his determinism a Calvinistic philosophical construct. Also, in that context and to his Calvinist listeners, every word is loaded. It is Arminian (well poisoned), philosophical (not biblically-oriented), and a construct (not exegesis). Next time he should call it Roman Catholic. There would be an element of truth to the unintentional genetic fallacy and it would scare more Protestants.
Fourth, when the hosts bring up the grounding objection, the main philosophical objection to Molinism, they leave it there as if no response to it had been made.10 This is far from true. This objection denies that God could have known what his creatures would freely do in any circumstance in which he might place them because that would include God’s knowing things about hypothetical circumstances that never happen, particularly ones that involve creatures of free-will. Instead, they believe propositions must be grounded in a particular way in order to have truth-value in order to be knowable and that these counterfactuals of freedom fail to be so-grounded. William Lane Craig responds by pointing out that since we seem to know what we would do in circumstances that, in fact, do not occur; it would be strange if God did not also know such things.11 Alvin Plantinga, as familiar with this matter as anyone, thinks it “much clearer that some counterfactuals of freedom are at least possibly true than that the truth of propositions must, in general, be grounded in this way.”12 Also, Craig offers 1 Corinthians 2.8 as a supplemental consideration since it seems consistent grounding objectors would have to deny its being true.13 For some, denying the truth of scripture would be no problem. Our hosts would most likely have a problem there, but we are left to wonder. Overall, their treatment of the grounding objection is similar to the rest of the episode: civil and intelligent (and better than most pop Calvinist polemics) but also shaky in argumentation while erring as much or more in omission.
The episode’s most striking omissions occur in scriptural consideration. It is strange that the hosts emphasize Craig on scripture when it helps their case14 but ignore him when he uses the Bible in support of Molinism.15 It is also strange that proof texts are dropped without consideration of non-determinist interpretations as if the rest of the church had never heard tell of Romans 9 before.16 Also, most of the scriptures that call their deterministic philosophy into question go unaddressed.17
Our hosts did not have time to give Molinism the biblical consideration it deserved or the general consideration it deserved or even to address the responses to criticisms they tabled. Happily, they were civil. Disappointingly, their production might mislead hearers into feeling as if they received a satisfactory summary of Molinism and the case for it when the take away is better described as a collective: “I find your lack of determinism disturbing.” If this world proves Malone mistaken about the Jets, maybe he will take interest in the possibility of being mistaken about Molinism. In conclusion then, everyone should root for the Jets.
1 Vocab Malone. “Molinism: Explained and Critiqued.” September 10, 2018. YouTube video, 34:00. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDQCmNNC2EU
2 Freewill is often understood to refer to the will of a person whose choices are ultimately determined by himself rather than by antecedent external causation. My use of it will be in keeping with this (not politically) “libertarian” view. Some deny that we have this experience, supposing a different experience to which they refer by the same name. Heads up.
3 Vocab Malone. 22:08.
4 See, for example, Dr. MacGregor’s “Can One Be Both a Calvinist and a Molinist?” http://freethinkingministries.com/can-one-be-both-a-calvinist-and-a-molinist/ or his “Monergistic Molinism” https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325947022_Monergistic_Molinism
5 The word can be bandied about either exclusively such that only the ex-scriptura is biblical or inclusively such that both count. It also can refer to a preferred harmonization. The “biblical view” might refer to (1) the harmonization that seems to have highest net exegetical plausibility, (2) the harmonization that favors the immediate sensibility of the most plain among relevant passages, or (3) the harmonization that favors the preponderance of immediate interpretive sensibility over all relevant passages. One might suggest we just go crazy and shoot for a coherent harmonization, but that would favor Molinism.
6 If one is posing a view as a required doctrine, the ex-scriptura sense is of more importance, and the co-scriptura sense is of more interest if one just poses the view as a possible model.
7 Vocab Malone. 16:25, 28:20.
8 Ibid. 26:09, 29:00.
9 Ibid. 28:00.
10 Ibid. 26:45.
11 Craig, William Lane. “Middle Knowledge, Truth–Makers, and the “Grounding Objection.” Reasonable Faith. Accessed November 12, 2018. https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/scholarly-writings/divine-omniscience/middle-knowledge-truth-makers-and-the-grounding-objection/.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.
14 Vocab Malone. 17:35.
15 See Craig’s discussion with David Wood: Acts17Apologetics. “What is Molinism? (William Lane Craig).” November 22, 2014. YouTube video, 02:40. See also the article mentioned above: “Middle Knowledge, Truth–Makers, and the ‘Grounding Objection’.” https:://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/scholarly-writings/divine-omniscience/middle-knowledge-truth-makers-and-the-grounding-objection/.
16 Examples of Christian thinkers who have heard tell of a Romans nine (and like texts) but do not read it deterministically are Ben Witherington III, Robert Shank, Roger Olsen, Brian Abasciano, Joseph R. Dongell, Hank Hanegraaff, Leighton Flowers, Jack Cottrell, William Lane Craig, J. P. Moreland, Alvin Plantinga, Jerry Walls, many Roman Catholic theologians, and most if not all of Eastern Orthodoxy, and my ol' Greek professor (not as famous but still). For a good video recommendation, I like Walls and Sloan’s “What’s Wrong with Calvinism?” parts 4-6, hosted by Houston Baptist University with part 4 beginning here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6rmrX5p44Y . And yes, I know I ended a sentence with a preposition. I liked it more better that way.
17 Our hosts seem content arguing that a determinist sense of the Bible enjoys, on balance, more biblical agreeability than does middle knowledge, but this fails to recognize that middle knowledge, in itself, is compatible with determinism. As Ken Perszyk points out in his introduction to Molinism: the Current Debate published by Oxford University Press, perhaps God foreknew the possible worlds of free creatures and yet preferred to create the deterministic world our hosts are want to defend. So, middle knowledge remains immune to their efforts. Maybe their efforts are meant to impose upon the conjunction of middle knowledge and (libertarian) free-will, but since they did not engage passages that support free-will, their net-plausibility efforts are only half-made at best. So, Molinism is not even threatened in their scriptural considerations. Furthermore, because a position that makes good sense of passages from both sides is gaining plausibility while others suffer trade-offs or out-right incoherence, Molinism's ability to ease antinomy makes it the default preferred view.