On Evil, Providence, and Freedom: A New Reading of Molina 9781501757341

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On Evil, Providence, and Freedom

On Evil, Providence, and Freedom A New Reading o{Mo/ina

MARK B. WIEBE

NIU Press I DeKalb, IL

Northern Illinois University Press, DeKalb 60115 © 20 I 7 by Northern Illinois University Press

All rights reserved 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 978-0-87580-752-2 (cloth) 978-1-60909-234-4 (e-book) Cover design by Yuni Dorr Composition by BookComp, Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Wiebe, Mark, author. Title: On evil, providence, and freedom :a new reading of Molina I Mark Wiebe. Description: DeKalb :Northern Illinois University Press, 2017.1 Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2016019765 (print) I LCCN 2016034259 (ebook) I ISBN 9780875807522 (cloth: alk. paper) I ISBN 9781609092344(ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Molina, Luis de, 1535-1600.1 Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, 1225?-1274.1 Free will and determinism-Religious aspects-Christianity. I Providence and government of God-Christianity.! Good and evilReligious aspects-Christianity. Classification: LCC BX4705.M598 W54 2017 (print) I LCC BX4705.M598 (ebook) I DDC 230/.2092-dc23 LC record available at https:/ /lccn.loc.gov /2016019765

For Jocelyn with love and gratitude

Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction

ix

1

CHAPTER 1. Molina and the Battle over Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom 7

The Concord of Grace and Free Will: Thomas Aquinas and Luis de Molina on God's Nature and Providence 49 CHAPTER 2.

CHAPTER

3· Anti-Molinism

CHAPTER

4· Freedom, Divine Knowledge, and the Problem of Evil

Notes

145

Works Cited Index

175

167

85 113

Acknowledgments

There are many people whose support was invaluable throughout the research and writing process for this book. Above all, I am grateful to my wife, whose love and encouragement made this work possible. And I owe a massive debt of gratitude to Dr. William Abraham, who introduced me to analytic philosophy and philosophical theology during my time at SMU, and whose thorough analysis and detailed feedback played a crucial role at every stage of the writing process.

Introduction

T

he following study concerns the nature of divine providence and creaturely freedom. This topic has been the subject of wide-ranging, sometimes rancorous debate throughout the Christian tradition, starting with Paul's writings in the New Testament. A basic way of formulating the central issue is as follows: what is the best, the most fitting language available to describe both the nature of God's providence over creation and creaturely freedom? Many other concerns are involved in attempting any answer to this most basic question. For instance, we need to keep in mind the fundamental assumption, based in revealed truth, that God is the creator and sustainer of all creation. This immediately places limits on the kinds of things that it would be fitting to conclude about the nature of God's sovereignty and providential governance of creation. It excludes those visions of providence that give too much pride of place to the creature herself, as though the creature could be, for example, self-sustaining in some sense. It follows, therefore, that any theological anthropology or any description of creation that conflicts with our fundamental assumption about God's absolute primacy will be excluded. Yet, it is not immediately obvious, and it is the subject of much debate, which vision of creation, if any, might have these kinds of troubling implications. Or conversely, it is not immediately obvious which vision of creation best fits with and flows out of these fundamental assumptions about God's nature and sovereignty. Several approaches to these issues are explored in this study, with the aim of identifying which are more and which are less theologically and philosophically credible. Another concern has to do with God's goodness and justice. We need a vision both of providence and the nature of creation that does justice to God's perfect love and goodness. At this point, the problem of evil looms large. Ideally, a robust Christian notion of providence will have taken this problem into account and offer (either explicitly or implicitly) some sort of coherent response to its various versions and formulations. To take one example, I believe, and will argue over the course of this study, that a creature under the pressure of hard determinism is not a fitting product of a perfectly

2

Introduction

good and loving God. Nor would it be fitting for a creature, thus determined, to be found guilty, punished, or lost eternally for her sin and failure. I will also argue, similarly, that certain accounts of human freedom enable a stronger response to the problem of evil than others by, among other things, supporting the possibility that there are certain worlds even God cannot create. What is needed is an understanding of divine providence rooted firmly in the Christian tradition and affirming the absolute primacy and independence of God. Also necessary is an understanding of creation and the freedom of the creature that at once confesses the creature's absolute dependence upon God, but that also coheres with God's love and goodness. I will argue that the best way of doing this is to affirm both a strong, detailed view of providence and some version of libertarian freedom. More specifically, I think the best way of doing all of these things at once is via some form of Molinism. Therefore, in this study I aim to explicate and defend Molinism with the concerns I have just outlined in mind. As we proceed, I will be offering several novel contributions to this historically, theologically, and philosophically wide-ranging set of conversations. My original contributions are as follows. First, and most broadly, I consider this project as a novel contribution to the field of Analytic Theology. That is to say, I am interested in exploring and expanding on theological topics from within the context of a commitment to Christian theism, utilizing the tools and methods, practicing the virtues, and seeking the ends typically associated with Analytic philosophy. More specifically, I believe we can gain much from a careful analysis of the words, ideas, and themes that have been central to the discussion of providence and creaturely freedom both in Molina's time and more recent work in these areas. And so I work to bridge several of the pivotal theological and philosophical conversations relating to Molinism. Much of the work being done on Molina's thought and on different versions of Molinism involves theologians and philosophers either talking past or ignoring each other completely. I argue that the theologians who criticize Molina, both in his own time and in the twentieth century, share some of the same basic concerns as the philosophers who have criticized Molinism over the past several decades. Bringing these two conversations together is important as this ever-growing body of materials and arguments continues to develop. To take one instance, many of the relevant theologians have been concerned that Molinism is a form of semi-Pelagianism (indeed, that term arose out of the Molinism controversy in the late sixteenth century). What I argue is that this concern is, at bottom, about ontology, which plays a central role in arguments relating to the most important contemporary objection to Molinism: the grounding objection.

Introduction

3

It seems, then, that an answer to one of these sides of the objection will have implications for and help to illuminate the other. For the Christian philosopher working in this area, this sort of comparison and parallel also serves the purpose of maintaining the theological background commitments outlined above. Along related lines, I develop an explicit definition of Pelagianism, something that is uncommon even in the theological literature on these subjects, and rarely mentioned in the philosophical treatments of Molinism. This is an important move as the avoidance of Pelagianism or semi-Pelagianism serves as another limit on the kind of concepts of providence and freedom that we can justifiably and legitimately defend. One of my central questions nearer to the end of the study relates to precisely this point, asking again what sort of freedom we might defend as not only philosophically but theologically plausible. In my second chapter, I consider Thomas Aquinas's thought on God's nature and providence and also his thinking on the nature of created causes, with special focus on his approach to the creaturely will. Over the course of that chapter I provide a detailed map of Thomas's thought on these subjects. One pivotal question at this stage is whether Thomas supports anything like the "Principle of Alternative Possibilities" (PAP). That is, does Thomas believe that a necessary condition for all free action is the ability to choose among alternatives, or to be able to perform or refrain from particular actions? Ultimately, I conclude that Thomas does stress the importance of alternatives in free actions for which agents can be held responsible, but, like Eleonore Stump, I do not think he would fully support the contemporary version of the PAP. Whereas contemporary libertarians support the PAP based on their understanding of free action and the will, Thomas's understanding of alternative possibilities is rooted ultimately in his understanding of the nature of created reality, its origin in a change from nothingness to being, and its ineluctable capacity to fail and fall. I also compare Stump's work on Thomas Aquinas's thought with that of other well-known contemporary Thomists. I argue that Stump's approach is different and distinctive in important ways, and also that overall it is stronger than the others philosophically and theologically. I point to some important flaws in Stump's arguments relating to God's epistemic causality as well as her notion of quiescent creaturely wills, highlighting the need for something that moves beyond Thomas's categories of the divine intellect. Another original contribution begins with my overall method in this project. There are several facets to Molinistic thought that depend upon intuitive support. For example, some people find it intuitively plausible that so called "counterfactuals of creaturely freedom" or "CCFs" (the propositions

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Introduction

that describe what free creatures would do given certain states of affairs, and which God uses in pre-creative and providential deliberation) are brutely true. Arguably, we use these types of propositions in everyday life, often as the basis for our decisions, assuming that they have some truth-value. Similarly, as I argue in the fourth chapter, some of the strongest support for belief in libertarian freedom comes from a set of claims about the common intuition that one's choices are not determined by preceding causes or states of the world, and that at least some of my choices must be in some sense "up to me:' It therefore seems prudent, considering the important role played by intuition, to provide further support for my argument by indirect means-by eliminating or weakening the intuitive (or other) supports for alternative approaches to these issues. Moreover, although the arguments I make and the conclusions I reach narrow the field in terms of possible theological and philosophical options, they do not necessarily narrow those options down to one-for example, if Open Theism turned out to be a viable option, it could provide some of the things that Molinists want out of a theory of providence. Thus we should ask whether it is theologically and philosophically viable. Along this line, I offer several novel arguments against alternative approaches to questions of divine providence and human freedom, including Open Theism, Boethian and Ockhamist responses to these questions, and various versions of Thomism. With the field of options thus narrowed, I move on in the fourth chapter some positive support for Molinism. This comes in the form of an offer to elaboration and defense of Molina's intuitive inclination toward libertarian freedom. I do this by appealing to and developing, among others, Austin Farrer's thought on the nature of the will, considering also the implications for the argument thus far. I argue that there are good reasons to think that freedom involves some level of ultimacy on the part of the creature, insofar as that word can apply to a creature, and also the ability "to do otherwise" at least some of the time. I also argue that we have good reason to think we are free in this way. What this provides, then, is another limit on the kind of theory of providence we should hold-it needs to be one that coheres with this kind of liberty among creatures. Finally, developing some of Eleonore Stump's thought in this area, I offer one example of an approach that would fulfill all of the requirements that are in place at that point in the argument. Putting this material-support for libertarian freedom and the examination of the implications for the broader argument-near the end of the study is optimal in this particular setting. As will become clear in the advancement of the argument, one of the crucial questions motivating and captivating the attention of each participant in these debates has to do with the nature of

Introduction

5

creaturely freedom. Specifically, what are the necessary and sufficient conditions of free choice, and do those conditions obtain among creatures? The arguments in the first through the third chapters consider, explore, and ultimately reject a variety of alternative answers to these fundamental questions, narrowing the possibilities as we proceed. This material sets the stage to ask a couple of important questions in the fourth chapter. First, given the preceding, what conclusion should we reach with regard to the nature of freedom and the nature of creaturely action, and what supports do we have for this conclusion? Having eliminated or weakened the support for alternative approaches to these questions, the material under consideration in chapter four then provides the final positive support for my overall defense of a Molinistic approach to both providence and freedom. Furthermore, as I noted, we have to ask not only what type of freedom we should affirm, but which type of creaturely freedom we can affirm in a way that coheres with and flows out of the broader web of arguments up to this point in the discussion concerning God's nature and providence, and God's relationship with creation. As I will explain in detail, I do this by appealing to a modified form of Stump's quiescence in combination with Molina's understanding of the divine intellect.

CHAPTER 1

Molina and the Battle over Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom

A

quarter-century after the council of Trent, a Spanish Jesuit named Luis de Molina, a professor at Portugal's University of Evora, joined the long-standing debate regarding the relationship between grace and free will, God's knowledge and creative action, as well as the relationship between these and free, human action. Molina's most important contribution to this conversation was his De liberi arbitrii cum gratiae donis, divina praescientia, praedestinatione et reprobatione Concordia (The Harmony of Free Will with Gifts of Grace, Divine Foreknowledge, Predestination and Reprobation). He saw this as a crucial addition to the discussion, simultaneously affirming a strong sense of both divine sovereignty (inclusive of divine foreknowledge), and human freedom, two key dogmatic themes from the Council of Trent. Yet his work set off a fire storm of criticism among some of Molina's own Jesuit peers as well as many in the Dominican Order. The main sources of controversy, initially, were Molina's emphasis on a libertarian notion of the freedom of the will and also his insistence that apart from the individual's (in some respects) independent consent and action, God's salvific grace remains sufficient for salvation rather than strictly efficacious. That is, the effect of salvific grace is partly up to the individual in whom grace is at work. The early controversy over his work, then, had less to do with his assumptions regarding God's knowledge of futuribilia 1 and more to do with the already heated debate about the nature of and difference between sufficient and efficient grace (whereas the reverse is true of the contemporary debate). 2 Molina's early opponents argue that this vision of grace contrasts sharply with that offered by the late-Augustinian and Thomistic tradition, both of which defended the freedom of the person while also, according to most interpreters, insisting on a more strictly efficacious notion of divine causality in general and salvific grace in particular. In addition to what seemed like logical flaws in Molina's arguments, many saw Molinism as a resurgence

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CHAPTER 1

of Pelagianism, with similarities to the much more recent Arminianism. Accordingly, critics believed Molinism called for active and rigorous resistance on the help part of the church. Ultimately the controversy grew to the point that Pope Clement VIII had to intervene; he commissioned the congregatio de auxiliis (commission regarding [divine] assistance or help), a papal commission whose task was to investigate the matter, with special conceptual focus on the nature of divine grace as a help to creatures. This move proved to be just the start of a long controversy. Thus in 1607, after dozens of heated debates spanning three papal reigns and with no final answer in sight, Pope Paul V declared that each side could defend its portrayal of divine grace while awaiting a final decision. That decision has never been reached. 3 This project begins by exploring the network of theological debates out of which Molina's work on these topics emerged, giving special attention to Molina's own sixteenth-century context. Specifically, the immediate theological aftermath of both the Protestant Reformation and the Council of Trent will be considered as they relate to some relevant key questions. This will provide a framework to understand Molina's theological and doctrinal motivations, shedding light on the substance of his work in these areas. With some understanding of his own context in hand, it will become possible to get a handle on the basic question of providence. Accordingly, it will be important to ask after the desiderata of a Christian view of providence. One of the first questions to be asked along this line is why the Christian theist would wish to maintain both a strong view of providence, inclusive of foreknowledge, and a libertarian view of freedom. Here it will be necessary to reflect upon the creedal and biblical language on these subjects. This will be followed by a step back to evaluate more broadly Molina's reasons for explaining providence in the way that he did. This will involve, in the next chapter, an assessment of Thomas Aquinas's arguments on several related questions as well as the points at which Thomas and Molina differ from one another. It will be argued that Thomas's views regarding divine knowledge and providence as well as human freedom are improved with the inclusion of scientia media (middle knowledge). In chapter three, several of the main criticisms leveled at Molinism, both from the initial and more recent debates, will be considered. The first three chapters will provide support for Molinism under the assumption that freedom of the will, as Molina understands it, is defensible and cogent. And it is precisely this point that will play a central role in the fourth chapter. In the fourth chapter, the reasons will be considered for thinking not only that, in terms of theology and theodicy, Molinism is preferable to traditionalThomism, Ockhamism, and more recent revisionist portrayals of providence and

Molina and the Battle Over Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom

9

free will, but also what justifications there may be, relating to libertarian accounts of the will, for affirming Molinism. Finally, the preceding work will enable an exploration of some of the implications of Molinism for the problem of evil, which will involve comparing the theory to other responses from within the Christian tradition.

Grace, Free Will, and Molinism in the Sixteenth Century There were several elements to the sixteenth -century debate out of which Molina's writing emerged. In the immediate post-Tridentine context, debates raged concerning certainty, the nature of doctrine, the authority and truth of scripture, and the role and theological significance of the traditions, creeds, and teachings of the church. Another important conversation was that concerning predestination, reprobation, and God's foreknowledge, which became so important especially for the Reformed Church, and which grew in importance for figures like John Calvin as he continued to edit and republish his Institutes. 4 There was also a felt need in the debates that flowered near the end of the sixteenth century to move past the Tridentine "consolidation'' of doctrine and tradition, and on to the clarifying work that theologians were to take up later. 5 It was this desire to clarify long-standing questions that drove Molina and his opponents to delve into the murky waters of divine providence, human freedom, and future contingents. Protestant leaders had made a wide variety of arguments regarding the freedom or bondage of the human will, the consequences of Adam's fall, and the limits of the human capacity for good. Everyone involved tried to maintain a delicate balance amidst several theological pitfalls in this controversial context. For Molina, there was the need to avoid all of the following: the taint of Lutheran thought (especially the Lutheran "bondage of the will"), what was seen as both the Calvinist and Baiiesian consignment of the will along the lines of something like physical determinism, 6 and finally the whiff of the old heresiarch Pelagius. 7 Thus at the heart of the discussions were issues pertaining to grace, merit, predestination, and creaturely freedom. Although Molina's most well-known contribution to the debate dealt more with the Thomistic construal of divine scientia (knowledge), Molina's participation in that conversation was framed by all these other arguments stemming from the Reformation and the late sixteenth-century self-reflection of the Catholic church. One of Molina's central concerns was to maintain a thoroughly libertarian sense of the freedom of the will. What's more, he saw his own stress on the freedom of the will as a means of affirming and

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CHAPTER I

delineating the nature and role of grace in salvation. Thus he considered Martin Luther's attempt to establish or articulate the truth of grace by eliminating the freedom of the creature's will self-stultifying. Molina, accordingly, argued that the Catholic doctrine of grace provided not only a contrast with Luther's notion of the bondage of the will, but also preserved a more coherent and holistic notion of grace, whereby "the prevenient grace of God and the free will of man were not antitheses, but were 'two parts of a single integrated cause of the act of believing:"s Here Molina was locating his own position within the shadow of the Tridentine articulation of grace and free will, and was simultaneously providing a criticism of the shift toward a more rigid interpretation of the late Augustine in the work of thinkers like Michael Baius and Dominic Banes. Molinas interest in bolstering the Catholic position at once becomes clear. On the one hand, he insisted on the deep dependence of human beings upon grace in salvation. He wanted to affirm the long-standing position of the Roman Catholic Church stating that human salvation is very much dependent upon the free decision of God to act gracefully on behalf of humankind in the incarnation of Jesus Christ-his thought in this area will be considered in more detail when discussing related objections to Molinism in chapter three. On the other hand, Molina was also determined to avoid eliminating the creature's free will. As Pelikan says, he was "protecting liberty against necessity;' an aim that has always driven disputants in arguments about divine providence and human freedom. 9 In the period during which Molina was writing, there was a palpable drive among Catholic theologians to vindicate and defend many of the traditional teachings of the Catholic church as well as the related statements of the Council of Trent. This was the case, firstly, because the primary goal of the Council of Trent, as Pelikan says, was to "consolidate council teachings (and thus to reaffirm the authentic teachings of the church):' 10 It was the job of later writers, in the wake of the council, to elaborate, clarify, and try finally to resolve long-standing, open questions and difficulties. These questions had multiplied during the relatively non-controversial time of the scholastics, whose profuse elaborations of them are well known. During this period there was much more openness to theological and doctrinal variety of thought than at other periods in the history of Christian thought, and the absence of serious controversy allowed, even catalyzed, detailed scholastic exposition. 11 Another factor driving this widespread theological fortification was the continually growing doctrinal and physical threat of Protestants in Europe. 12 Moreover, the continuing development of mass print and growing literacy especially among Protestants made it all the more easy to spread Protestant

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ideas and objections to traditional Catholic claims about grace, free will, providence, and predestination. 13 The prevalence and power of this growing Protestant force throughout Europe is clearly visible in the writings surrounding the Molinist controversy. A related and explicit concern for the disputants in the case of Molinism was preventing Protestants from experiencing the joy of witnessing intraCatholic dispute. In 1588, the Theological Faculty at Mayence responded to a letter of censure by highlighting this worry: "it [the Molinism controversy] may open the way to Schism in Belgium but also that the heretics of France and Germany may find in the affair, when it comes to their knowledge, an excellent opportunity for further insolent raving against the Church:' 14 In a letter to the pope, Cardinal Bellarmine urged that the controversy be resolved as quickly as possible in order to "deprive the heretic of his gaiety at our expense:' 15 In the aftermath of the Reformation, these figures naturally felt the need to fortify the pillars of the church. In other words, postTridentine Catholic theologians seem to have felt that their work was not only serving to clear up their respective theological fields of the debris and flotsam of obscurity and heretical arguments. They were also fighting for the existence of the One Church Universal from the ever-growing onslaught of Protestantism in Europe and its concomitant objections to traditional Catholic doctrine. Well before the time of the Reformation, leading Catholic thinkers had begun to focus their literary efforts on questions relating to grace, free will, and predestination, especially as these relate to divine and human action and divine foreknowledge. These conversations took place within the framework of major political shifts in Europe and also debates relating to Nominalism. The latter had roots in the writings of William of Ockham, who insisted on the strongest sense of divine omnipotence and sovereignty. In the decades that followed, these developments had the effect of focusing the trajectory of much theological debate on issues of human and divine liberty. "Theologians just before the Reformation;' as Hans Hillerbrand puts it, "stressed human freedom as the crucial category in theological reflection:' 16 The reformers then made the natural doctrinal link between freedom and issues of justification and grace. Accordingly, as James Brodrick argues, "in the religious struggles of the sixteenth century the Catholic doctrine of divine grace was a principal object of heretical attack:' 17 The arguments that began as the elaborate theological reflection of the scholastics served to set the stage for the sixteenth-century conflicts. Most particularly, as it relates to this study, one finds that as these questions and arguments multiplied before, during, and immediately after the

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I

Reformation, Catholic thinkers like Molina and his contemporaries felt a pressing need to offer delicate, well-balanced resolutions to old questions in the face of political upheaval and new theological opponents. The scholastic attention to detail, expanding and elaborating on patristic thought in a relatively non-controversial time, provided an elaborate and detailed map of historical doctrine and key themes of Christian theology from which to launch attacks when controversy did emerge in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. In sum, one can see a wide variety of significant forces at work: the flowering of detailed theological and philosophical argument during and immediately after the scholastic period, the widespread and ever-growing controversial context of the sixteenth century, the related waves of conversions from Catholicism to various Protestant groups, and the increasingly fragile political balance at work between the papacy and the major European powers of Germany, France, and Spain. This confluence of factors served to create an environment that was incredibly sensitive to theological or doctrinal innovation, but which was also experiencing a felt need to re-articulate, fortify, and defend traditional Catholic dogma for a new and growing generation of literate and passionate participants. In this environment, then, Molina tried to offer a well-grounded, carefully balanced affirmation of a strong and detailed notion of divine providence on the one hand, and a vigorous, unimpeachable avowal of a libertarian conception of free will on the other. This orderly and systematic articulation of the argument would, so he believed, not only keep him firmly within his own tradition, but also serve to vindicate that same tradition from Protestant objections relating to grace, merit, free will, and divine providence. Along these lines, one writer describes his work here as the first attempt to articulate the nature of grace and providence and their relationship to free will with minute detail and with rigorously logical form. 18 Yet he also hoped that although he was providing new insight into Thomas's work on these subjects, his commentary would be seen not so much as innovative, but rather as an aid to those areas of the Dominican monk's thought that were in need of mending or further explanation and support. Indeed, Blaise Romeyer asserts that aside from Molina's addition and explanation of the terminology of"middle knowledge;' there was nothing substantially new in Molina's work. 19 However, in an environment so sensitive to innovation and to the whiff of either Pelagianism or Lutheranism, and further, as a Jesuit commenting on and, many said, arrogantly correcting Thomas's thought, it was

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inevitable that there would be a swift, passionate response. Notably, the Dominicans had made Thomas their official teacher two centuries earlier in the face of what they perceived to be an onslaught of criticism by the Franciscans. 20 By the post-Tridentine period, and with the emergence of various new sources of theological opposition, they had become adamant defenders of late-medieval Thomism. Molina therefore had a precarious balance to maintain, providing a comprehensive, systematic defense of a strong view of providence while avoiding the perceived taint of both Luther and Pelagius. He was concerned not only to avoid the attention of the Spanish Inquisition, to which his work was delivered on more than one occasion, but also to gain acceptance in a broader Catholic theological world of thought that was incredibly sensitive to theological and doctrinal innovation, and which had by this point a well-established tradition of Thomistic interpretation. In the years following the publication of his thought on divine grace and human freedom, Molina's work was subjected to heavy criticism on several fronts. Since Molina's time, the focus of this criticism has shifted radically to questions of the inner logic and coherence of middle knowledge, as well as its capacity to resolve the various challenges of the relationship between free will, providence, and evil. In the twentieth century, in the time since the work of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, arguments about Molinism have for the most part moved beyond questions of Pelagianism, grace, and merit, to the subject of the grounding of middle knowledge, the relationship between freedom and foreknowledge, and various puzzles involving the proximity of possible worlds and the implications for the coherence of middle knowledge. The reemergence of Molinism as a topic of discussion is due primarily to Alvin Plantinga's seminal work in this area. His 1974 work, God, Freedom, and Evil, functioned as a catalyst for new research into Molinistic theories of providence and freedom. His defense against the logical problem of evil took the form of Molinism, though at the time Plantinga had no knowledge of Molina or his thought. Additionally, the twentieth century has been characterized by a renewed sense of theological flexibility, such that many Christian theologians have felt no pressure or obligation to maintain the strong notion of providence, inclusive of divine foreknowledge, which, in conjunction with libertarian free will, motivated Molina's arguments in the first place. As a result, in order to evaluate Molina's claims and consider how Molinism might a help or hindrance in the understanding of providence and with regard to a response to the problem of evil, it is necessary to consider both what is needed out of a

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robust Christian notion of providence and also explore some alternatives, which will be done both in this chapter and the next.

Some Desiderata of a Theory of Providence Several questions confront us at the outset about how to locate an appropriate and robust definition of providence. What sort of definition of providence is detectable in scripture and in the tradition of Christian reflection on this subject? What is the importance of God's knowledge of creation, especially divine foreknowledge, to our understanding of the divine intellect and to the notion of providence? How will this square with our understanding of freedom? If a libertarian definition of freedom is found to be the best option, can such a definition be reconciled with Christian commitments relating to God's nature and providence? Finally, do our answers to these questions help or hinder us with respect to the problem of evil? These questions are all closely related to each other; failure to provide a sufficiently hardy answer to one will result in a failure to provide an answer to any of them. For now, the focus will be upon those relating specifically to providence. The first question to consider, then, is what purpose a strong notion of providence serves in Christian theology and what might be lost without it. And what is necessary in a healthy and robust Christian notion of divine providence is a view that brings together a number of strands of influence and thought. Our notion of providence must cohere with and help us to fit together the various contributions that scripture and the tradition of Christian reflection on this subject provide. A traditional orthodox list of desiderata would include at least all of the following: a Christian doctrine of God that describes God's existence as necessary and utterly independent of anything that is not God, a concomitant doctrine of creation as contingent and utterly dependent upon God, the assertion of detailed and comprehensive divine knowledge of the world's past, present, and future, an affirmation of God as both creator and concurrent preserver of the world in every facet of its existence, and also as the final End toward which all creation properly moves. This list can serve as a good starting point. 21 In order to understand the implications and merits of affirming all of these things it will be important to consider several important factors. A few major alternatives will be considered: Boethianism, Ockhamism, Open Theism, and then in the next chapter, Thomism. This work will provide a helpful contrast with Molinism, which will in turn shed light on what a robust doctrine of providence requires. The close of this chapter will attend to biblical and creedal material on related questions.

Molina and the Battle Over Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom

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Some Challenges for Boethianism Molina was well aware of Boethian-style approaches to divine providence based upon arguments about God's relationship to time and the relevant implications regarding God's knowledge of creation. However, he did not think they resolved any of the most important issues relating to creaturely freedom. He also does not seem to have considered the very notion of an "eternal now" coherent. 22 In any case, as a solution to the challenges relating to creaturely freedom, it fails to resolve issues of the causality of and responsibility for human choices. Indeed, in and of itself, an appeal to eternity in this context entails nothing specific about the nature of causality or responsibility. And according to Thomas Aquinas, all free human choices fall within God's "free knowledge;' which means that in some way God actively wills every human choice. This, Molina claims, cannot be reconciled with a libertarian account of freedom. The main problem for Molina along these lines was that the inclusion of all free creaturely choices within divine free knowledge would preclude the possibility of any creature refraining from any particular choice. In terms of twentieth-century libertarian action philosophy, this would be a problem relating to the "Principle of Alternative Possibilities:' Another potential difficulty here relates to the problem of evil, as discussed in further detail later. In sum, the usefulness of Boethian-style arguments on their own does not extend to questions of the relationship between divine providence and human action.

Some Challenges for Ockhamism Ultimately, the various conceptions of providence tend to come down to the affirmation or denial of one of the two prongs Molina wants to affirm: a strong conception of providence and a strong, libertarian conception of creaturely freedom. In the absence of middle knowledge, as argued in the next chapter, Thomism amounts to support for the first but not the second prong. Open Theism, as shown below, affirms the second prong, creaturely freedom, but not the first. One alternative to Molinism, however, does try to affirm both a very strong view of divine providence as well as a libertarian conception of human freedom: Ockhamism. Of crucial importance to the Ockhamist position is the notion that temporal asymmetry does not offer any restriction on God's providence in relation to creaturely choices; God's power to effect change extends even to the past. So, for example, say that an agent, Rita, will choose to cut down a tree

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in her front yard on August 14, 2114, thereby killing a family of sparrows. According to the Ockhamist, it is possible for God to change things, in light of or in response to this event, so as to prevent the sparrows from ever having been in the tree. Or better, God can make the actual world to have always been one in which the sparrows never enter Rita's tree. For many of those who write on the subject of divine providence, including both Molina and more recent revisionist thinkers, this take on the nature of causality, time, and divine providence is absolutely untenable, precisely because of a fundamental assumption about the fixity of the past. It is, in other words, a common assumption that the history of a world up to a particular time, once it occurs, cannot be changed or undone by anyone, including God. 23 At this point, Ockhamists appeal to the important distinction between "hard" and "soft" facts. As Nelson Pike, Marilyn Adams, and others put it, the former type of fact is restricted to the past; the completion and truthfulness of a hard fact relates to one particular moment or period of time, with no relation to a future date. 24 This is not true of soft facts. The initial part of a soft fact may occur at one moment, but all soft facts have the added component of a connection to a future time. So, for example, if on August 13, 2114, Rita says that she will cut down the tree on August 14, her statement is made true or false only in relation to her actions the following day. And the soft fact on August 13, then, may turn out to be either true or false until Rita makes the choice on August 14. Peter van Inwagen and David Widerker both supply important objections to Ockhamism. They argue that it either allows for contradictions or ends up eliminating creaturely freedom. For van Inwagen, the demonstration of Ockhamism's fatal problem comes in the form of possible prophetic objects that predict future actions. 25 He notes the possibility that, under any argument that affirms foreknowledge but does not also restrict divine providence over the future, God would be able to create prophetic objects, like stones with predictive writing on them, and so eliminate a person's freedom. The existence of this sort of object seems undeniably to be a hard fact about the past at the time of the predicted action itself. And if the object relays true propositions ahead of the occurrence of the events in question, then it seems impossible for the relevant agent to do anything other than what is written on the stone. TI1is, van Inwagen argues, destroys her freedom. Alternatively, if the agent remains free to refrain from the given action, then God will have been incorrect in the prediction. Widerker notes the same sort of problem, but emphasizes the contradictions that can result from Ockhamism. He argues that Ockhamism would allow for contradictory causal chains. 26 These are causal chains, the first link

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of which is an action A at time t3• Because of A at t3 God decides to act at t 1 so as to bring about ~A at t3• Note that this is significantly different than God simply deciding at t 1 (or from eternity) to act so as to bring about ~A at t 3To illustrate, say that A at t 3 is Rita's tree-chopping. Because God is aware of her chopping down her tree at t 3 , killing the family of sparrows, and God wishes to prevent her from doing so, God instructs Rita's neighbor John at t 1 to borrow all of Rita's tree-chopping tools at t 2 , thus preventing her from chopping down the tree at t 3• What this creates, however, is a temporal paradox. The (logically but not temporally) initial link in the chain, A, ceases to exist, and with it goes the whole sequence of events. Alvin Plantinga has offered a defense of Ockhamism that several Ockhamists have appealed to as a refutation of these objections. What Plantinga assumes in his "On Ockham's Way Out" (and he is joined more recently by Garrett Pendergraft and Justin Coates27 ) is that entailment is restricted based on which propositions are "strictly" about the past. 28 He also assumes hardness is closed under logical equivalence. Thus the defense against van Inwagen and Widerker is that even what seem to be inarguably hard facts actually turn out to be soft facts (like the particular sound waves God produces at tt to instruct John, or van Inwagen's prophetic stone, which refer to events at t3, but is created at tt). And soft facts, as noted earlier, are neither true nor false prior to their respective future components. They are also therefore pliable to God's providential power. The intended upshot is that this type of objection really collapses into a traditional (and unsuccessful) objection to the very notion of soft facts themselves. This appears to be a valid argument in defense of Ockhamism, but it is not clear that it is also sound. First, Widerker's case could be read as a reductio argument against Plantinga's claims about the closure of hardness, and his identification of propositions that are "strictly" about the past. In other words, Widerker's argument could be seen as reducing these claims to an absurdity, in this case a temporal paradox. Accordingly, under Ockhamism, the following should be acceptable. Say neighbor John is thirty years older than Rita. God foreknows that at 3:00p.m. on August 14, 2114, a twentyfive-year-old Rita chops down the tree, killing the sparrows. On August 14, 2084, God therefore activates John's typewriter, warning him that this event is going to take place. John therefore intervenes in the life of Rita's motherto-be, hoping to help train Rita to chop down trees with more care and attention. However, he unintentionally prevents Rita's mother-to-be from ever meeting Rita's father-to-be. Rita is therefore never born. 29 The above sequence is evidently compatible with the Ockhamist notion of time, causation, and divine foreknowledge. It also intuitively paradoxical.

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According to the parameters of the example, Rita's chopping at t3 is a necessary condition for a chain of events that leads to her own non -existence, making it impossible for her to chop or refrain from chopping down the tree, or to have set off the causal chain in the first place. 30 The difficulty, it seems, stems from two aspects of the argument. First, there may be problems relating to Plantinga's claims about closure and "restricted" entailment-perhaps they are simply too vague; perhaps not all of the propositions involved are actually logically equivalent or "soft"; or perhaps the claims are faulty for some other reason. Second, the Ockhamist's understanding of time and possible worlds seems to lead to serious confusion relating to personal identity and individual essences, that will be explained momentarily. It is possible that the first of these issues can be resolved; perhaps Plantinga or someone else could offer a strong defense of his closure and entailment claims. However, it is not clear that the second problem can be resolved. To see the second problem more clearly, it is necessary to ask how the Ockhamist would describe the relationship between the actual world and other, non-actualized, possible worlds. It is a natural assumption in possible worlds discourse that although there are myriad possible worlds, many of which could have been the actual world, God only actualizes one, and ultimately only one will have existed. Ockhamism, however, appears to entail one of two deeply problematic possibilities relative to this typical assumption. The first is that, according to Ockhamism, the "actual" world contains agents who can act such that they non-actualize the actual world, and actualize a heretofore non-actualized world (or rather they contribute the initial causal condition in response to which God non-actualizes the actual world and actualizes a heretofore non-actualized world). That is to say, an agent belonging to the actual world w acts in w such that w never existed, and in its place exists w*. One thus begins a sequence belonging to the actual world w (in mid-stream of w's particular history), 31 and with a member of w, w(A), for example, Rita, who chops down the tree at t3. Rita's action at t3 in w then causes it to be the case (or serves as the initial causal condition for God to make it such) that w never existed, and that w*, wherein Rita refrains from her chopping, has always been the actual world or perhaps never exists at all. Now w(A) seems to be contlated and confused with w*( w(A) ). In addition to serious theological issues relating to what seem to be omnipotent creatures (or at least creatures that are self-sustaining in troubling ways) 32 what is lost here is any significant distinction between actual and non-actual worlds, or of what it is for a thing to belong to a particular

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world. In other words, it becomes impossible for anyone or anything to have any particular individual "essence" in the possible worlds sense, since her actions in the Ockhamist actual world can have the effect of non-actualizing the actual world and actualizing a heretofore non-actualized possible world. Thus consider one of Plantinga's examples. Near the end of his "On Ockham's Way Out;' he concludes, "it is possible that there is an action such that it is within your power to perform it and such that if you were to perform it, then God would not have created Abraham:' 33 The trouble here is that one can act in a particular world's history that includes Abraham (otherwise, describing the action as Plantinga does is incoherent), such that Abraham never existed. This is not to deny that there are worlds containing the action in question and onself, but which do not include Abraham. The latter are surely possible worlds. The problem is that the scenario Plantinga is describing implies that the two worlds are at once two distinct possible worlds (only one of which is actual) and that both are the actual world. That is to say, the actual world w is one that includes Abraham, oneself, and one's action at time t, because of which God makes w* (the world that includes the action in question and oneself, but not Abraham) to be the actual world. To avoid this, it is possible to say instead that, under Ockhamism, w's history up to and including t3 can somehow link up with another possible world's future, such as w*, like a railroad track being switched at a certain point along the route. 34 The problem here, however, is not simply that it is impossible to distinguish the actual world from other possible worlds. Rather, the problem is that in order to make this sort of reassignment work, one would have to lose the placement of any particular thing in any particular world. If this is the case, no actual world is itself complete or identifiable, and further, without any explanation as to how or at least why this might work, there is little reason left to trust the common, intuitive sense of historical and causal sequence; the occurrence of p can itself lead to -p. Plantinga rejects this sort of sequence as an impossibility by pointing out how it leads to contradiction. However, he does not show why it does not still follow from Ockhamism. More broadly, along related lines, what reason is there to trust the link between any cause and its effect? Why is any one possible sequence of events more likely than any other? For example, if the various possible worlds are able to interchange so easily, then by chopping at t3, it seems plausible to think that Rita may thereby actualize (or cause God to actualize) any random possible world's future beginning at t3. Without restrictions that provide distinctions between possible worlds-what it is that individuates them and how they relate or compare to each other-it would seem that any possible world could come into or go out of existence (or be made to do so

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by God) at any given moment. Or alternatively, any possible future could conceivably follow from any possible past, all as a result of the apparently self-sustaining choices of creaturely agents. In sum, Ockhamism promises to uphold in the strongest sense both divine providence and creaturely freedom, but instead sells us a bill of goods. Its inability to give us anything more is due to the paradoxes it inevitably creates and the loss of any distinction between possible worlds or histories. This set of issues should make the Christian theist very reluctant to accept Ockhamism, and eager for an alternative. One major alternative that has become popular more recently is Open Theism.

Some Challenges for Open Theism Open Theism offers a sharp contrast to other portrayals of divine providence and creaturely freedom primarily by affirming libertarian freedom but also denying that God does or can know the future. As the Open theist sees things, one theological payoff comes in the form of a stronger response to the problem of evil as well as more cogent and coherent depictions of both the future and free will. Three objections to the usefulness of Open Theism as a response to the problem of evil will be used to consider whether or not this is in fact the case. The first and second point to the triviality of a move to Open Theism as an alternative to views that include divine foreknowledge. The final objection is a fatal dilemma for the Open theist. This objection demonstrates that Open Theism is much more problematic than other portrayals of divine providence, that is, those that involve middle knowledge or simple foreknowledge. As a preliminary step to the consideration of alternatives like Open Theism, it is important to say a little about the notion of pre-creative divine deliberation-the consideration God is presumed to have undertaken, "prior" to the act of creation, of good and evil in various possible worlds. 35 In discussing the problem of evil, it is typical and natural to assume that some sort of divine deliberation takes place as a part of God's decision about God's own creative act. Yet what does it mean, precisely, to speak about pre-creative divine acts like "deliberation" or the "weighing" of good and evil in various possible worlds? Setting aside for the purposes of this study the issue of whether there is a single best world, it seems reasonable to assume that as a part of God's deliberation over which possible world to actualize, God would perform some sort of assessment of the relative levels of goodness, evil, and suffering in each possible world as a part of the decision-making process. 16

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Yet this sort of process may give the impression of a cold, sterile calculation-a simple acceptance of the "cost" of a certain amount of suffering on the part of creatures in the various possible worlds. This sort of heartless reckoning does not fit with the picture of God that is revealed in scripture, in the story of Jesus, and so on. What can be said to make sense of this? There are several reasons to think that just as union with God is an inc ommensurable good, divine deliberation is necessarily incommensurable to any sort of weighing or deliberation on the part of creatures. For the creature, such a process becomes unavoidably utilitarian, a valuing of one creature over another and a valuation of one instance of suffering over another. On the part of an infinitely powerful and loving God, however, it makes sense to think that this process is infinitely different. This is the case because God has a redemptive and life-giving power creatures lack, and as Marilyn McCord Adams argues, union with God is an incommensurable good for the creature. The creature's deficiency in this regard makes it impossible to bring good out of evil in any way that is commensurable with what divine power and love can achieve. That is to say, when a human being contemplating a particular action weighs the potential benefits against the potential harm to others, she does so with the awareness that her power to redeem, counteract, or otherwise nullify that harm, once it occurs, is miniscule or nonexistent; the potential harm is a "cost" that, were she so to act, she would simply have to accept, deeming it of lesser importance or significance than the potential benefits. There is no reason to think the same is true of God. For God the suffering and evil of the world is recast and takes on a different significance and weight, since it is brought under the order of God's ultimate good will for creation. Choosing to permit evil with full knowledge of one's ability and intention to redeem it or bring its sufferers to an ultimate and incommensurable good, makes the suffering no less real, but it is nevertheless very different than the same sort of choice absent this ability to redeem the situation in some way. By itself, this does not go very far toward resolving any of the many versions of the problem of evil. Yet, as a preliminary step, it is important to see that deliberation on the divine scale is vastly different than any analogous practice on a human scale. Additionally, on a final preliminary note, it is important to acknowledge that the metaphorical language of"weight" used here is woefully inadequate in the face of pain, suffering, and loss. Yet it remains helpful as a heuristic device in the absence of alternative language. What this language is meant to suggest is not that various evils have particular assigned weights, nor some simple, divine utilitarian calculation. Rather, in worlds wherein God's redemptive plans and activities "outweigh" the amount of evil and suffering,

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God would arguably see it as more loving, or a greater expression of divine love, to create rather than not to create.

Is Open Theism Theologically Helpful? For many Open theists, like William Hasker, John Sanders, and others, God's ability to bring good out of suffering will not resolve the problem of evil if there remains even the possibility that God could be charged with direct responsibility for it. And if God knows the world's evils prior to creation but creates the world anyway, God appears directly responsible in a way that would not be the case were God to lack fore- or middle knowledge (instead, apparently, knowing the world's evil merely as one possibility among many). For this reason Hasker and others emphasize the virtues of a "risky" creative act on God's part. The central theological question at this point has to do with whether a strong and detailed view of providence or a "risky" model would better cohere with the existence and extent of evil in the world and offer a better contribution to the murky and long-standing arguments over the compatibility of divine providence and free will. A good place to start is with a consideration of Hasker's response to these sorts of questions along with those of a few like-minded thinkers. Hasker closes his seminal work God, Time and Knowledge by considering the importance of risk in answering questions relating to human freedom and divine providence. He thus asks, "what sort of theory of divine providence should we want to have? Is it better if God takes risks with the world, or if he does not?" 37 Hasker then offers several reasons why one might prefer a "risky" version of both divine providence and omniscience. Several contemporary theologians have followed suit. For many of these thinkers, the problem of evil is a central motivating factor and point of contention. In the face of various versions of the problem of evil, Hasker and many others (for example, Hasker [1989], Sanders [1998], Richard Swinburne [1993], Clark Pinnock [2005], James K.A. Smith [2005], and Alan Rhoda [2007]) reconsider the nature and extent of God's power and/or God's knowledge. These figures have taken up well-known arguments relating to the truthvalue and epistemic availability of future contingents to the divine mind, the compatibility of foreknowledge with creaturely freedom, and disputes over whether or not divine providence would be weakened or suppressed entirely by God's possession of foreknowledge. At this stage, it is important simply to note the tendency on the part of many Open theists, distinct from these latter arguments, to assert that the

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denial of foreknowledge and the often connected affirmation of divine "risk" is theologically preferable in the face of the problem of evil insofar as this move serves to undercut God's responsibility for evil. Contrasting Open Theism, on the one hand, with simple free will theism and either simple foreknowledge or middle knowledge, on the other, Alan Rhoda thus asserts, "Open theists can defuse things a bit further by denying that God could have infallibly known in advance that such evils were going to happen; hence, God could not have ordained those evils:' 38 John Hick makes this point more strongly, saying it is "hard to clear God from ultimate responsibility for the existence of sin, in view of the fact that He chose to create a being whom He foresaw would, if He created him, freely sin:' 39 John Sanders approvingly cites this passage from Hick as a helpful summary of his own stance40 and later continues on the same point, saying, "God did not foreknow that we would actually sin, only that it was possible; thus he cannot be held morally culpable:' 41 As argued below, however, it is not at all clear that Open Theism actually delivers this promised payoff in terms of theodicy. To begin with, according to both the traditional theist and the Open theist, God has knowledge of all possible worlds prior to creation. This is a good minimal assumption regarding the knowledge of a being that creates and sustains all things. Describing God's knowledge, Thomas Aquinas provides a summary along this line: Things which are not actual, are in the power either of God Himself, or of a creature, whether in active power, or passive; whether in the power of thought or of imagination, or of any other kind whatsoever. Whatever therefore can be made, or thought, or said by the creature, as also whatever He Himself can do, all are known by God, although they are not actual. 42

Open theist Clark Pinnock declares similarly, "What an infinity of intelligence God must have to be able to anticipate anything and everything that might come to pass or might not come to pass:' 43 Elsewhere, he professes that "God cannot be perplexed:' 44 For the Open theist, however, God has no certain knowledge of the actual world until deciding to create, and even afterward, still lacks foreknowledge. On this account, then, the degree of divine responsibility for evil hinges on the answer to one key question: Does God merely have knowledge of possible evils or foreknowledge of what will be actual evils? At this point the Open theist seems to assume that divine knowledge of merely possible evils "prior" to creation makes for a different relationship between God and evil-a different level of responsibility-than would be the case were God to know that this same amount of evil would take place

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(were God to create the world). Knowing merely that such evil is possible, according to the Open theist, makes it easier to absolve God of any responsibility for it. Presumably, this difference in responsibility is due in some way to God's primordial knowledge that other worlds containing less evil are also possible, and perhaps that they outnumber the worlds containing whatever amount of evil is across the threshold of gratuitous or excessive evil (though it is not clear what reason there might be to think that the former would outnumber the latter). Under traditional theism, contrastingly, God knows that the actual world's amount of evil is in fact going to be the case and decides to create anyway. And as Adams argues, this may eliminate at least the deniability that God could have ordained the evil, and makes it more difficult to absolve God of responsibility for itY

Trivializing Objection One How might a defender of either simple foreknowledge or middle knowledge respond to these points? First, there are problems with claims like Adams's that insofar as God is ignorant, prior to creation, of which possible world will be actual, God also remains impotent with respect to the world's evil. Even under Open Theism with its divine "present knowledge;' once God creates the world, God knows its inclinations and tendencies and is continuously and immediately aware of the evils it suffers. Moreover, Open theists profess that God's transcendence and power enable God to intervene at will even to the point of impeding creaturely freedom: Unlike proponents of process theism, we maintain that God does retain the right to intervene unilaterally in earthly affairs. That is, we believe that freedom of choice is a gift granted to us by God and thus that God retains the power and moral prerogative to inhibit occasionally our ability to make voluntary choices to keep things on track. 46

It also seems safe to assume that a God restricted to present knowledge would be aware of the world's evils well ahead of their occurrence. Along this line, although John Sanders denies foreknowledge, he affirms divine prediction and foresight, linking the latter to probabilityY David Basinger likewise declares that God can predict human actions "with great accuracy" because God is "the ultimate psychoanalyst:' 48 Elsewhere Basinger himself begins to flesh out the implications of this point saying that "if this is so, then it appears that he could 'veto' any human action or modify its natural consequences:'49 The God of Open Theism thus ends up knowing and permitting

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the same evils, with the only difference being the "timing" of the relevant divine knowledge. The Open Theist will therefore need to supply a response to the problem of evil using the same or similar terms as the orthodox theist: one that aims either at a denial that God is directly responsible for evils God knows are imminent, or that provides a justification for God's permission that they occur (for example, that God finds this particular arrangement to be optimal in terms of achieving ultimate union with creatures, or that, intending to "redeem" or counteract these evils in some way, God thought it better to create than not to create the world). However, these same defenses are available to the traditional theist, undercutting this particular motivation for abandoning the belief in divine foreknowledge and a strong view of providence in the first place. Yet, perhaps being ignorant of those evils prior to creation still helps somehow to make God's existence, power, and goodness consistent with the existence and extent of evil in the world.

Trivializing Objection Two To summarize the second objection, any Open Theistic response to the problem of evil that involves the outweighing or redemption of evil by God's own goodness and love, and that is considered along this line to be a sufficient response to the problem of evil (that is, a response that, as a minimum, makes God's existence and goodness and other perfections consistent with the existence and extent of evil and suffering), will apply equally under an approach involving middle knowledge or simple foreknowledge. If there is at least one possible world that contains an amount of evil and suffering so heavy or horrendous that a maximally moral God would or could not create it (and Open Theism appears to assume that there is), then the sufficiency of God's goodness and redemptive power as a countermeasure to the world's evil is the crucial point in responding to the problem of evil. To use the language of "weight;' it is important for God to consider the respective "weights" of God's intended goodness and the evil that God's goodness will counteract, outweigh, or redeem. So, take the possible world w "prior" to creation, which possesses 10/\13 turps of evil (to stick with Plantinga's terminology). Let us say that w is also a feasible world-it is a member of the smaller set of possible worlds that is also capable of being actualized. Let us also grant the Open Theistic claim that God lacks foreknowledge, and thus assume that prior to God's decision to create, w (and its evil) is merely possible and in no way actual, nor, accordingly, known with any certainty.

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Now, there appear to be two possibilities: either God's goodness is sufficient to "outweigh" or otherwise redeem w's level of evil, were w to become actual (making God's existence and goodness compatible with the existence of w and its evil) or it is not sufficient to do so. And here, under Open Theism, one would want to say that God will freely decide to create a world only if God's goodness is sufficient to outweigh the evil of all feasible worlds, including w (and that God knows this to be the case). After all, that is precisely the point of appealing in this way to God's goodness as a defense; on this account, God only decides to create knowing that the divine goodness is sufficient to outweigh even w's lOA 13 turps of evil. The Open theist might then offer something like the following response to the problem of evil: God was pre-creatively or primordially aware that w, with its particular level or amount of evil, was a possibility, but also knew that God's own goodness and redemptive goals were sufficient to outweigh (or overcome, redeem, or nullify) that amount of evil. The knowledge of these comparative weights justified God's decision to proceed with creating a world, even knowing that w might end up being the actual world. The problem here, however, is that the same "weight difference" applies to a view involving foreknowledge or middle knowledge. Whether God knows that future evils are definite, probable, or merely possible, if the various goods God intends to actualize together with God's own intended response to evil are sufficient to outweigh w's evil when it is merely a possibility, then that same "weight difference" must apply when the possibility of w is reduced either to a probability or an actuality. Mere knowledge, prior to creation, that such a world is possible requires (at the very least, under Open Theism) that God consider the weight of his own goodness and redemptive intentions, and "compare" it to that of the evil of w. The question before God, prior to creation, is whether it would be better, all feasible worlds considered, to create the world or not to create the world. This is because w (with its particular total history) is among those possible worlds that may become actual. If w is a feasible world, that is, if w could be actualized, its total amount of evil must be "lighter:' to continue with the weight metaphor, than God's redemptive plans and intentions in order for God to go ahead and create from among that set of worlds. If God's goodness and redemptive intentions do outweigh the evil of w when it is merely a possibility (as they must in order for God to decide that it is better to create than not to create), and if this is a sufficient response to the problem of evil on this account-if the Open theist feels that God's goodness and redemptive intentions constitute in themselves some sort of explanation or justification in the face of evil and suffering-then the same weight difference

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applies to this world's evil even when God knows that it is in fact going to be the case. After all, even under Open Theism, if w with its 1OA 13 turps of evil turns out to be the actual world, God does at some point know this is the case and so enacts the corresponding redemptive response(s). The point of pre-creative divine deliberation is to decide prior to creation about the merits of creating given the actualization of any of the particular feasible worlds (including w). And this decision is made at least in part based on God's goodness outweighing the evil of each of the worlds that may become actual (that is, God considers it more loving or a greater expression of divine love to create the world than not). Even under Open Theism, then, either the total set of intended goods, A, outweighs or can in some way redeem w's lOA 13 turps of evil when the latter is a mere possibility and when its possibility is reduced to (and known by God to be) actuality or it does not outweigh it at all. God only creates knowing that if w were to become a reality, God's goodness is sufficient to outweigh w's evil. So God's goodness, A, should outweigh the evil of each of the possible worlds in order for God to decide in favor of creating at all. Whether w with its evils is merely one among nearly countless other possible worlds or it is foreknown from among those possible worlds to be the actual world, the significant factor is God's weighing of A over all of the worlds' evils; it is not at all obvious how the respective "weights" of God's redemptive intentions and of the various worlds' evils could change or vary in relation to their being foreknown or known presently, and the same applies to the "weighing" process itself. What is more, if the weights were affected in some way by God's gaining knowledge of w's evil, the Open theist still remains in the same position as the traditional theist, as noted above. If this is the case, however, then so long as foreknowledge and creaturely freedom are compatible (a clearly important but separate question to be addressed later), so far no reason has been found to abandon the traditional claims of Christian orthodoxy regarding God's knowledge of the world's future. The possession of foreknowledge in itself adds nothing to the level of God's responsibility for evil. Indeed, as argued below, there are good reasons to think foreknowledge would help in this regard, and that the lack of either fore- or middle knowledge would prove fatal to God's creative designs. Yet perhaps this entire notion of a "weighing" process is misconceived and unavoidably utilitarian-a task that a maximally moral being could not be thought to have undertaken. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive of a morally perfect being making a decision about creation on the basis of a simple calculation, the conclusion of which is that God's goodness outweighs or is sufficient to redeem the world's evil. This also implies that there is a clear and

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distinct dividing line or threshold before which the amount of evil in the world is compatible with God's goodness and love, but after which it is not. This may strike some people as misguided. Additionally, perhaps this sort of approach is too simplistic a take on the nature of evil, failing to consider suffering at the level of the individual creature, seeing the evil of each world as something easily measurable in terms of a total "weighf' Moreover, if God's goodness is incommensurable with absolutely any possible good or evil that creatures might endure, then there may be no comparison to be had, and no world containing an amount of evil beyond A. Yet, there is strong intuitive reason for thinking that there is at least some possible world that a perfectly good God could or would not create: the world that contains the worst possible suffering and the comprehensive rejection of God's love and commands. Fatal Dilemma

While the sort of defense that has been described can be offered under traditional theism or Molinism, it is not clear that it would help much to defend the God of Open Theism against the problem of evil. This leads to the fatal objection to Open Theism. Under Open Theism, lacking knowledge of which world will be actualized but with full knowledge of all possible worlds, God decides to create. On this account, and assuming the Open Theistic notions of divine nature, action, and knowledge on the one hand, and creaturely freedom on the other, among the live possibilities (that is, the feasible worlds) are those worlds involving a total rejection of God's love and commands and the worst possible suffering-call them TR worlds. Yet this means that no defense will help that includes any sort of divine deliberation over possible worlds and that also affirms creaturely liberty. For under Open Theism, there is still presumably some form of divine deliberation and it also seems that if one of the TR worlds is actualized, the only way to redeem or sufficiently counteract its TR tendencies is to act in such a way as to threaten creaturely liberty, violating one of the primary motives for affirming Open Theism in the first place. For those who affirm either fore- or middle knowledge, by contrast, TR worlds may technically be "possible worlds:' but since God does know prior to creation which world would be actual, were God to choose to create, there is reason to be confident that God would either create a non- TR world or, absent that possibility, not create the world at all. In other words, the Molinist, the classical theist, and the defender of complete simple foreknowledge all have good reason to conclude that TR worlds are not actually feasible worlds-worlds that God could create. Accordingly, the very existence of the

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world serves as prima facie evidence against the veracity of Open Theism. That is to say, it seems that the "weighing" process or the sufficiency determination with respect to God's goodness and redemptive power could never have tipped in favor of creation given divine ignorance of which possible world would be actual and given that at least one of the possible worlds God did have knowledge of involved the worst possible types of suffering and a total rejection of God's love and will. William Lane Craig and Dean Zimmerman each raise a related point in passing in their respective contributions to the newest collection of essays on Molinism. 5°Craig refers to the sort of thing just described as "creaturely transworld damnation" and Zimmerman uses the phrase "extreme transworld depravity:' The latter seems to come closer to the notion of"TR worlds:' The upshot of"extreme transworld depravity;' as Zimmerman explains, is that it would be wrong to create any such creatures while also leaving them free. 5 1 After mentioning this possibility, Zimmerman quickly moves on to argue that the "risk" involved in Open Theism is preferable to that entailed by Molinism-that is, the risk that God will be "stuck'' with counterfactuals of creaturely freedom (CCFs) that are unusable for one reason or another. As he contends, this is because the risk under Molinism is one that is "external" to God as opposed to a self-imposed divine limitation. 52 However, Zimmerman fails to see that the risk of "extreme transworld depravity" remains under Open Theism as well-there is nothing about Open Theism that makes it impossible for every possible free creature to turn out to be utterly depraved or for every free creature to reject God's love. 53 This possibility is equally external under Open Theism; God could have ultimately found Godself to have been "stuck'' with a TR world. 54 Further, Zimmerman does not seem to consider the point that such a world is, as argued earlier, a live possibility only under Open Theism. That is, under any construal of divine creation that involves middle knowledge or foreknowledge, it can be assumed that upon being "stuck'' with TR worlds or "extreme transworld depravity" worlds as the only feasible worlds (or "stuck'' with their possibly being feasible worlds), God would decide it was better not to create. 55 One could, of course, argue that even the existence of some creatures in a TR world is better than the non-existence of all creatures. This would simply be an ellipsis for the claim that there is no threshold of the weight of evil n, across which n outweighs A. That is, there is simply no level of evil at which point it would be immoral or impossible for a perfectly good God to createGod's goodness and redemptive power are sufficient to redeem or nullify the evil of absolutely any possible world. Yet, in the face of the problem of evil, this seems like a much more difficult and much less appealing case to make

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than the argument for, say the brute truth of CCFs under Molinism. Moreover, the Open theist's challenge against traditional theism assumes that this could not be true (that is, Open Theism assumes there is some threshold n across which n outweighs A), since even this world's evil seems to be enough (on the Open theist's reckoning) to preclude God's creating, given foreknowledge of its 10 11 13 turps of evil. In any case, if there is no threshold of the weight of evil, n, over which n outweighs A, this particular motivation on the part of the Open theist for abandoning the traditional notion of divine knowledge and providence becomes moot. For A is truly incommensurable with the evil of absolutely any possible world, including TR worlds, and as with the argument regarding the smaller set of