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Jonathan Edwards' Incompatibility Argument
Jonathan Edwards' Incompatibility Argument
Jonathan Edwards' Incompatibility Argument
Incompatibility Argument
Nathan Brummel
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Published by:
Bound, Yet Free Publications
Copyright 2007
Contact author at:
Cornerstone Protestant Reformed Church
13251 W. 109th Ave., Dyer, IN 46311
www.cornerstoneprchurch.org
219-365-0144
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Contents
Preface………………………………………………………….…5
Introduction……………………………………………………….7
Introduction
Part I: Argument for Perfect Divine Foreknowledge
Part II: The Incompatibility Argument
Part III: Incompatibility Argument Consistent with
Ordinary Language
Part IV: Evidence needed for Foreknowledge
Part V: Whitby‟s objection
Part VI: An Objection from God‟s Timelessness
Introduction
Part I: The Incompatibility Argument Derived from
Aquinas
Part II: Wierenga‟s Development of the Argument
Part III: An Argument for Fatalism
Part IV: The Prophetic Argument
Part V: The Ockhamist Hard/Soft Fact Distinction
Part VI: Objections to Ockhamist Hard/Soft Fact
Distinction
Part VII:: Theological Objections to Ockhamism
Introduction
Part I: The Source Question
Part II: The Reconciliation Question
Part III: Theological Objections to Molinism
Part IV: Philosophical Objections
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Preface
This book is a discussion of the argument that Jonathan
Edwards gives in Freedom of the Will for the incompatibility of
perfect divine foreknowledge and libertarian freedom. Edwards‟
argument is defended by an analysis of the two most plausible
Arminian responses to it. The first response is the Ockhamist reply
that has recently been defended by the philosopher Edward Wierenga
of the University of Rochester. The second response is the Molinist
reply that has recently found a defender in Alfred Freddoso of Notre
Dame University. Both of these methods of objecting to the
incompatibility argument are claimed to be problematic because first,
Edwards has anticipated some serious problems that they have, and
secondly, he has shown why his position is attractive. The conclusion
is that neither the Molinist nor the Ockhamist have given plausible
reasons for rejecting the incompatibility argument.
The issues discussed here are part of an ancient discussion in
the history of Christianity. Yet the issues are of increasing
importance today because of the influence of the “openness of God”
theology. This theology became influential in evangelical circles in
the twentieth century. In some sense it develops Arminian theology
to its logical conclusions. But it also involves a redefining of the
attributes of God that is out of sync with orthodoxy.
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6
Introduction
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1
EDWARDS‟
INCOMPATIBILITY
ARGUMENT
Introduction
Contra Edwards the chess argument is assuming that God does not
have knowledge of future contingents. Instead, He only has an idea of
what is possible and probable. It could be argued that if the state of
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affairs that God wants to bring about is overwhelmingly probable,
then He would not have to worry about having his desires thwarted.
So this means that one need not follow Edwards in claiming that if
God does not have perfect foreknowledge His end in creation will be
thwarted. The central problem for such a response to Edwards is that
it falls short of the doctrine of divine omniscience. For according to it,
God does not have knowledge of future contingents.
Another way that some Arminians have sought to avoid the
conclusion that God has perfect foreknowledge of future contingents
is to deny that God has knowledge of the future. But they claim it is
not because God is limited by anything outside of Himself. Rather,
God willed that certain of his knowledge be hid from Him. The
example of Jesus can be used to increase the plausibility of this
position. It seems that as a man Christ‟s knowledge was limited in
certain ways even though He was a divine person. But this position
seems unattractive because it is not clear how God could choose not
to be omniscient. “This is to suppose that God wills not to be God;
that the Infinite wills to be finite” (Hodge, 546). Hodge argues that
the knowledge of God “is not founded on his will, except so far as the
knowledge of vision is concerned, i.e., his knowledge of his own
purposes, or of what he has decreed shall come to pass (Hodge, 546).
If knowledge is “not founded on his will, it cannot be limited by it.
Infinite knowledge must know all things, actual or possible” (Hodge,
546).
Philosophical Necessity
Is a thing which already has, and long ago had existence; and
so, now its existence is necessary; it is now utterly impossible
to be otherwise, than that this foreknowledge should be, or
should have been (Edwards. 257).
The argument gets its force from the fact that an „indissoluble‟
connection is by definition a connection that cannot be broken, i.e., a
necessary connection.
Edwards uses these points to draw conclusions about God‟s
foreknowledge of future human volitions. He thinks it is evident then
that if God has foreknowledge (which is something that already
existed in the past) of something that will occur in the future, namely
a future human volition, then it is the case that the future volition is
indissolubly connected with the previous foreknowledge. Since the
foreknowledge already has had existence, the future human volition is
indissolubly tied (the third type of necessary connection) to
something that already is accidentally necessary (Edward‟s second
type of necessary connection). This means that both the
foreknowledge and the future volition are necessary (Edwards, 258).
His answer, in other words, is this:
Therefore,
Therefore,
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When we can‟t help it, let us do what we will. So anything is
said to be impossible to us, when we would do it, or would
have it brought to pass, and endeavor it; or at least may be
supposed to desire and seek it; but all our desires and
endeavors are, or could be vain (Edwards, 150).
In this way it is impossible that the convict escape from the locked
cell, because no matter what he does or wants to do, his desires will
be frustrated. So impossibility is defined in terms of being presented
by some opposition that no matter what a person tries to do can
overcome it. This definition is favorable to Calvinism because it is
not defining necessity in terms of determinism. If it was, then it
would imply that the opposite of it--freedom, would need to be
defined in a non-determinist sense. Edwards‟ point is that ordinary
language does not support this libertarian way of defining
impossibility.
When „necessity‟ is used in a context where there is no
opposition involved; then the word is not being used with its ordinary
meaning (Edwards, 151). An instance of this would be the Arminian
claiming that humans act in the Calvinistic framework in a
determined way and therefore act out of a fatalistic necessity.
Edwards would respond that the person is using „necessity‟ in either a
nonsensical way or is redefining the term (Edwards, 151). This is
because the Arminian has not presented anything as opposing the
humans in this situation.
In ordinary language, according to Edwards, something is
called contingent when one cannot see what the connection is
between an event and the causal structure that must have brought it
about. Therefore we might claim it to be contingent that we picked
the specific flower that we did out of a field of tulips. Edwards is
claiming that we call this a contingent action because we do not know
what the causal structure was that brought us to pick the specific
flower that we did. Contingence in this sense is compatible with
Calvinism.
Edwards realizes that Arminians and others have defined
contingence in other ways. For example, as something which has
absolutely no previous ground or reason, with which its existence has
any fixed and certain connection”(Edwards, 155). He claims that
these meanings are unnatural and forced.
Edwards gives a definition of „freedom‟ in terms of common
usage. He says that liberty (or freedom) is the “power, opportunity, or
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advantage, that anyone has, to do as he pleases. Or in other words, his
being free from hindrance or impediment in the way of doing, or
conducting in any respect, as he wills” (Edwards, 163). It is not
properly speaking the will that is free but the agent who has the
freedom to do as he wills (Edwards, 163).
Edwards claims that „freedom‟ in ordinary language is
defined as the ability of one to do and conduct as he will, or according
to his choice” (Edwards, 164). He adds that if “there is nothing in the
way to hinder his pursuing and executing his will, the man is fully
and perfectly free, according to the primary and common notion of
freedom” (Edwards, 164). This definition of freedom is the important
sense in which Calvinists think that humans are free. That means that
the fundamental concept behind the ordinary meaning of freedom
supports Calvinistic intuitions.
Edwards claimed that the Arminians use “freedom” in a non-
standard way. Their definition consists of three parts: first, the will is
sovereign over itself because it is a “self-determining power”. The
Arminians claim that the will determines the volitions that will be
made and is not causally dependent on anything other than itself for
its volitions. Nor is it causally affected or determined by previous
choices that it has made (Edwards, 164). The second part is that the
mind is indifferent before the act of volition because it is in
equilibrium. Edwards attacks this view and considers himself to have
shown that Arminian freedom is clearly wrong. Commentators have
pointed out that in attacking this view Edwards has only shown some
of his contemporary Arminian opponents to be wrong, but he has not
shown more respectable Arminian definitions of freedom to be
implausible. The third part of the Arminian definition of “freedom”
states that contingence is defined in such a way that it is
The point is that future contingent events are not self-evident because,
first, they are not necessary, and secondly, they are not in the present.
Since they are in the future they are not now present to the mind.
Therefore, Edwards concludes that propositions about future
contingent events cannot be self-evident.
The other way that things have evidence is by being proved
by something else, but Edwards shows this also to be problematic for
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future contingent events. He says:
The point is that the certainty of the connection (between the past and
the future) can‟t be increased by adding a decree.
Since the proposition about the future that God knows is part
of the past, what the proposition affirms is also part of the necessary
past, hence is necessary. Edwards agrees with Whitby‟s claim that
“mere knowledge don‟t affect the thing known, to make it more
certain or more future” (Edwards, 265). But Edwards adds: „But yet, I
say, it supposes and proves the thing to be already, both future, and
certain; i.e. necessarily future” (Edwards, 265).
Edwards next turns the objection around to show that it
provides support for the incompatibility argument. If foreknowledge
does not cause the future event, but the opposite, then:
This means that God does not have foreknowledge in a real sense.
Therefore the premises in the incompatibility argument that state that
he has foreknowledge, can be rejected. Hence the argument can be
rejected.
Edwards responds to this in three ways. First, he thinks that
strictly speaking the objector is correct in saying that God does not
have foreknowledge. But Edwards reminds us that this is because all
events are eternally present before God
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2
THE OCKHAMIST
RESPONSE
Introduction
Hence,
1
I will sometimes number the premises of the arguments differently from
what they are in the text to keep them consistently numbered.
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(3) Any (contingent) proposition that is entailed by an
accidentally necessary proposition is itself accidentally
necessary.
(5) Eighty years ago God foreknew that Jones will mow his
lawn tomorrow...
(7) “Eighty years ago God foreknew that Jones will mow his
lawn tomorrow” entails “Jones will mow his lawn
tomorrow”;..
Therefore,
Therefore,
(i) for all times t1 and t2 such that t1 is earlier than t2 and for
every proposition p, if at t1 God believes p, then at t2 the
proposition, At t1 God believes p, is accidentally necessary
(Wierenga, 1989, 71).
The idea is that one can make something false without being able to
cause it to be false. Wierenga qualifies (C)(iii) to include this insight:
Does not deny that it can happen that an action is both free
and that its agent could not have done otherwise. What (13)
says is that, necessarily, if no one is ever able to do other than
what he or she does so, then no one ever acts freely. Thus
(13) leaves it open that some actions are both free and such
that their agents could not have avoided them (Wierenga,
1989, 76).
The difference between (C*) and (F) is that (C*) only refers to God‟s
past foreknowledge, while (F) is more general and refers to all past
events. Wierenga then makes the claim that the “Ockhamist response
may be seen as a natural extension of a plausible response to an
analogous argument for fatalism” (427). He presents more general
propositions corresponding to (12), (13), and (14) of „Argument A‟:
Therefore,
(18) Eighty years ago it was true that Jones will mow his
lawn tomorrow
(20) “Eighty years ago it was true that Jones will mow his
lawn tomorrow” entails “Jones will mow his lawn
tomorrow”.
Therefore,
(4) Eighty years ago God foreknew that Jones will mow his
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lawn tomorrow (Wierenga, 1991, 426).
For both (4) and (18) depend for their truth on the future. So if (4) is
accidentally necessary, so too is (18). But then we are forced into
fatalism (Wierenga, 1991, 428). Since fatalism is implausible, we
have reason to believe that (4) is not accidentally necessary. So if one
wants to claim that (4) is accidentally necessary as the original
incompatibility argument did, then one must also conclude that (18) is
accidentally necessary and that fatalism is true (Wierenga, 1991,
428).
Wierenga also wonders whether (C*) is just an implication
of a more general fact. For (C*) might just be one example of the
truth that all things that are in the past are accidentally necessary i.e.,
(C*) might be a special case of (F). But
Wierenga has argued that one must first accept fatalism if the
incompatibility argument is to work. But since he doesn‟t believe in
fatalism he claims that the incompatibility argument, which depends
on fatalism, can be rejected. The point is that the incompatibility
argument depends on (C*) and (C*) depends on (F). But (F) entails
fatalism. Hence, since fatalism is false, so is (F). Hence (C*) lacks
support. Consequentially, there is no reason to accept the
incompatibility argument.
(23‟) There was a token T such that (i) Christ used T, and (ii)
as used by Christ T expressed p. the proposition that Peter
will disown Christ three times, (iii) Christ believed p. and (iv)
Christ intended to assert p with T (Wierenga, 1991, 438).
Wierenga replies that the Ockhamist too denies that God can change
the causal history of the world. But does this mean that the Ockhamist
is caught on the second horn of the dilemma--that claims that
prophecies might be mistaken? Wierenga claims that the Ockhainist
does not have to believe:
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(26) Some divine prophecy is such that it is possible that it is
mistaken (Wierenga, 1991, 440).
That is, the Ockhamist will insist that nothing could be both a
divine prophecy and mistaken. Something that is a divine
prophecy, however, might not have been a divine prophecy,
and hence, could have been false: Christ‟s utterance might
have been mistaken, but if it had been, it would not have been
intended by him to express (24), and so would not have been
prophecy (Wierenga, 1991, 440).
Therefore
Wierenga thinks that (a) is accidentally necessary, but (c) is not. And
for a conjunction like (30) to be accidentally necessary, the individual
conjuncts must all be accidentally necessary. Therefore, premise (28)
is false. This means that the argument from prophecy does not cause
any special problem for the Ockhamist. In the original argument they
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claimed that Gods past belief was a soft fact about the past. In the
same way they can claim that Christs belief and hence his assertion is
a soft fact about the past.
Once again, this seems to make assumptions about prophecy that are
not plausible for Christians. For if something is by definition a
prophecy--by that is meant that it is a divine prophecy. And few
Christians would be attracted to the idea that a divine prophecy could
possibly be wrong, once it was made.
We shall later argue that Wierenga‟s argument is dependent
on a problematic view of what elements of revealed prophecy or
foreknowledge are a hard fact about the past. Here he seems to claim
that only the utterance is a hard fact about the past. The
incompatibilist can respond that if a prophecy is defined as an
utterance, then Wierenga‟s argument works. But the problem is that
there is more needed for something to qualify as a biblical prophecy.
It must include a dispositional belief state by a prophet in which the
prophet believes what God‟s revelation to him or her is. And as we
shall argue later in our discussion of hard and soft facts, the
Ockhamist is incorrect in assuming that only utterances are hard
aspects of the past.
Any difficulty which arises from God has always known that
there will be a sea-battle tomorrow arises equally with „God
has always believed that there will be a sea-battle tomorrow”
(Kenny, 56).
For we can imagine that God has a past belief that Jones will mow his
lawn in 80 years. Eighty years later Jones will not he able to not mow
his lawn, because God‟s past belief is something about the past. Since
God is essentially omniscient, his past belief entails that Jones will
mow his lawn. There is nothing that Jones can do that could make it
that God had not earlier held the belief He did. So Jones is not free
with respect to mowing his lawn (Kenny, 56). Both Edwards and
Molina believe that God‟s past beliefs are as necessary as other facts
about the past. To this extent they agree in rejecting the Ockhamist
claim that God‟s past beliefs about the past are soft facts and
contingent, while other facts about the past are necessary (Freddoso,
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58).
John Martin Fischer claims that the Ockhamist distinction
between hard and soft facts is problematic. He wants to show that any
conception of God‟s foreknowledge being a soft fact about the past
does not help the Ockhamist avoid necessity. He does this by
attempting to show that even if God‟s foreknowledge about a future
proposition is a soft fact about the past, it at the same time has a hard
property. He makes a distinction between “relational” and “non-
relational” properties. An example of a non-relational property is
“waking up at eight o‟clock”. This is distinguished from relational
properties like “waking up four hours prior to eating lunch.” Non-
relational properties are called “hard properties” while relational ones
are called “soft properties”. Fischer discusses non-relational
properties:
A problem arises for the Ockhamist when the hard property relative to
T1; “believing that Jones will mow his lawn at T2” is combined with
the person who bears this hard property--namely, God. God presents a
peculiar difficulty for the Ockhamist. It would be no problem for
them if it was a human that held this belief, because humans are
fallible and do not have perfect foreknowledge. But God‟s essential
omniscience creates a problem for the Ockhamist. This is because
God has his knowledge in eternity, and as the Ockhamist allows it is
unchangeable and fixed relative to him. So God has the hard property
of „believing that Jones will mow his lawn at T2‟. But this hard
property is combined with a soft fact because “an agent‟s [God]
having it [the belief that he does] at a time is a soft fact about that
time” (Fischer, 1986, 598). Fischer thinks that dispositional states like
having a „belief that Jones will mow his lawn‟ is something that is a
hard property because it is a state of affairs that is non-relational. A
human can have a belief that Jones will mow his lawn tomorrow even
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though Jones will not mow his lawn tomorrow. This is because
human belief dispositions can be wrong. But it is different with God.
Now, when God believes at T1 that Jones will mow his lawn
at T2, it is logically impossible for God to be in that same
dispositional state and for Jones not to mow, but this does not
show that “believing that Jones will mow his lawn at T2” is
not a hard property (relative to T1), At most, it shows that
God believes at TI that Jones will mow his lawn at T2 is not a
hard fact about T1 (Fischer, 1986, 598).
John Martin Fischer argues that one who follows the sort of
thinking that Wierenga does--in arguing that God‟s foreknowledge is
dependent on human volitions--must be seen as logically claiming
that humans by their acts of will create the God who exists. This is
because there are infinitely many possible beings who are God who
all have varying beliefs about the future. We may suppose that there
are an infinite set of possible God‟s who all have different
foreknowledge. This foreknowledge is comprehensive knowledge of
what will happen in the future. Now the God that exists in the actual
world is the one that has foreknowledge of what does in fact occur in
the entire history of that world. Since the Ockhamist has claimed that
God is dependent for his knowledge on what free creatures choose to
do in the actual world, the God that actually exists is the particular
one that free creatures instantiate by their free choices. And this view
runs counter to the orthodox Christian view that the being who is God
is absolute and is the cause of everything outside himself, and not
vice versa, This argument against the Ockhamists will have strength
for anyone who disagrees with Process theology, which is the idea
that God is evolving or changing through his interaction with the
world.
But the Ockhamists have a response to this. They can object
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that the God that exists is not being created by the free choices of
humans, rather it is only the beliefs of God which are being created
by the free creatures. The Ockhamist can plausibly respond that the
God who exists is defined by his attributes and not by what
contingent beliefs he holds.
However, a critic of the Ockhamists can respond that they
are depending on a view that implies that a God who has a belief x is
necessarily the same God as one who does not have belief x, but
rather some other belief y. The problem with this is that we have
intuitions for there being two possible worlds in which there are Gods
who have different beliefs. And if it is plausible to think of a belief as
an attribute of some kind, then possible Gods who differ in beliefs can
be seen as distinct in some sense from each other, and therefore
making it plausible to claim that the Ockhamists have a theory in
which humans choose which possible God exists.
Karl Barth is known for doing theology from the top down.
This means that he begins by studying who God is and then proceeds
to draw conclusions from this about the nature of humans and the
world. Edwards tries to do something like this in his incompatibility
argument. He argues from the nature of God and his attributes to the
conclusion that humans are not free in the Arminian sense. Wierenga
seems to be doing something else. He does of course discuss the
attributes of God, but right or wrong. his focus is first on the nature of
human freedom, from which he comes to conclusions about how God
interacts with the humans who are free in the sense that Wierenga
thinks that they are. His compatibility argument seems to focus on
humans and makes them the criterion by which one decides whether
humans are free. So the claim that is being made here is that Edwards
is taking the Barthian approach by starting first with the nature of
God and working from there to the nature of human freedom. If
Wierenga is not taking the nature of God seriously enough in his
discussion, then he might be led to conclusions that a person using
Barthian methodology would not be led to. So if a thinker agrees with
the Barthian way of doing theology, then he or she will find reason to
object to Wierenga.
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3
THE MOLINIST
RESPONSE
Introduction
Contingent Effects
They claim that all goodness comes from God alone. No secondary
cause can originate any true goodness. It follows that God can know
both good and bad future contingent effects. He knows the good
because He knows that He will efficaciously concur with the
secondary agent to produce goodness, while He knows future evil
contingents because He knows that He will not efficaciously concur
(Freddoso, 37). Their answer to the source question is that God has
foreknowledge of conditional future contingents because he knows
which ones he will concur with efficaciously and which he will not.
The final alternative to Molinism is what Freddoso calls the
“concomitance theory‟ (Freddoso, 43). This theory comes from a
combination of two presuppositions, one of which is Molinist, while
the other is Banezian. According to this theory; l) God‟s decreeing
some contingent event as future, 2) his knowing it as future, and 3) its
obtaining are all things that occur simultaneously . They are
concomitant. (Freddoso, 43) The Molinist presupposition
“undergirding” this is that a contingent effect has “metaphysical
certitude” only after it is actually produced. The Banezian
presupposition is that a contingent effect can not have “epistemic-
certitude” until it has metaphysical certitude” (Freddoso, 43). This
last presupposition explicitly contradicts Molina‟s view of middle
knowledge. For his theory of middle knowledge claims that God can
have epistemic certitude prior to metaphysical certitude.
Concomitance theorists claim that as a future contingent
occurs, God at that moment makes it the case that he has always
known that that event would occur. So those theorists who believe
that God has eternal knowledge will say that „as (and not before)
contingent effects occur in time, God concomitantly causes it to he
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the case that He eternally knows and decrees them”(Freddoso, 44).
Therefore, they can be taken to deny “that God antecedently plots out
in detail the whole history of the world, complete with all its
contingent effects”([44]). Before contingent effects occur God can
only know all the possible things that will happen in the world--but
not what will in fact occur.
Molina has three objections to this view. First, he points out
that it has a weak view of providence because God‟s knowledge of
future contingents is not based on his knowledge of possible worlds
and his creatures intentions. Rather than God providing for future
contingents, He literally reacts to them as to effects brought about
independently of His specific approval or permission” (Freddoso, 45).
God is not according to the concomitance theory bringing about His
foreknown future contingents, instead He is reacting to the secondary
causes that operate independently of Him in such a way that He then
makes them something He has always known.
Secondly, the Molinist objects that since the concomitance
theory cannot explain how God might have knowledge of conditional
future contingents, concomitance theorists seem forced to deny that
He knows them. Because they do not believe in either middle
knowledge or anterior decrees they have no grounds for claiming that
God has knowledge of conditional future contingents (Freddoso, 45).
Freddoso claims that Molina‟s third objection to the
concomitance theory is the most original. According to their theory
God must have control over and the ability to change not only soft
facts about the past, but also hard facts. The example that Freddoso
uses is of Jesus prophesying that Peter will deny him three times. The
concomitance theorist will claim that in the case of the prophecy of
Jesus, if we say that at an earlier time T1 Jesus makes the prophecy,
then at a later time T2, if the prophecy is not fulfilled, then at T2 God
makes it the case that at T1 Jesus did not make the prophecy that He
did. So we have a situation where a hard fact about the past, namely
the prophecy of Jesus, is now no longer a fact about the past. The
problem with this for Molina is that Jesus prophecy was a hard fact
and even the concomitance theorists do not believe that hard facts can
be changed (Freddoso, 46).
Middle Knowledge
The point is that the only way that God can be providential, given free
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creatures, is if he can know what they would do in any counterfactual
situation. In contemporary philosophical jargon, the infinite
conditional future conditionals that God has knowledge of are called
„counterfactuals of freedom‟.
Molina differentiates between three kinds of future
contingents. Conditional future contingents are prevolitionial future
contingents that are known by middle knowledge. They are distinct
from absolute and conditioned future contingents which are
postvolitional. Absolute future contingents are those conditional
future contingents that God has decreed will obtain in the actual
world by instantiating the antecedent of the relevant counterfactuals,
while conditioned future contingents are those that will not obtain,
because their antecedents have not been decreed ([22]).
The antecedent of a conditional future contingent
(counterfactual of freedom) has the form; „if God were to put a free
creature P into a certain situation X‟. The consequent has the form;
„then P would freely choose to do some action M‟. According to the
Molinist, God will know what every free creature will do in every
possible situation that God might put him or her in. Molina thought
that „If David were to remain in Keilah, Saul would freely besiege the
city‟ was a biblical example of a true counterfactual of freedom and
that the counterfactual of freedom „If David were to remain in Keilah,
Saul would not freely choose to besiege the city‟ is therefore false.
Supercomprehension
Creation Situations
The actual free creature is not the cause of God having the middle
knowledge that He does. It was the possible free creature known by
supercomprehension together with God‟s free knowledge of which
available world He will instantiate that provided God with His
foreknowledge.
Freddoso states that: “From (A) it follows directly that this necessity
is closed under entailment for metaphysically contingent
propositions:” (Freddoso, 55). „(B)‟ is a formulation of this intuition:
80
(B) if (i) p entails q and (ii) q is metaphysically contingent
and (iii) p is accidentally necessary at t, then q is accidentally
necessary at t (Freddoso, 55).
The point made here is that if a proposition is ever true at one time, it
is necessarily true at all later times (Freddoso, 55). Freddoso then
formalizes the incompatibility argument using the example of Peter
sinning:
Molina’s Response
Freddoso says that since (B) follows from (A), (A) must be rejected.
But let us look at the reasoning behind Molina denying that accidental
necessity is closed under entailment, This is Freddoso‟s way of
justifying the move:
(Z) If (i) agent A has the power to bring it about that p is true
and (ii) p entails q and (iii) q is false, then A has the power to
bring it about that q is true (Freddoso, 76).
Hence if Peter has the power not to deny Christ in some situation e,
then, since “Peter does not deny Christ in e” entails “If Peter were in
e, he would not deny Christ”, Peter has the power to bring about the
truth of the counterfactual.
Freddoso replies “that Hasker is taking the phrase „bring it
about that p is true‟ to be equivalent to „cause p to be true‟ or, better,
„causally contribute to p‟s being true,‟ (Freddoso, 77). The point is
that while (existing) creatures have the power to act in such a way
that if they were to act in that way the counterfactuals of freedom
would be different from what they in fact are, this kind of
counterfactual dependence does not involve causal dependence.
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Freddoso claims that the ability of free creatures to act in such a way
that a counterfactual of freedom would be false is not a causal
dependency. Instead, such an action would mean that God would
never have believed that counterfactual of freedom.
The Molinist might also respond that the created creature is
the one that causally contributes to an event p occurring, but that the
conceptual creature brought it about that God knew what conditional
future contingent would occur in the situation where p occurred.
Behind Hasker‟s objection must lurk a mistrust of the Molinist
conception of what a conceptual created creature is. To what extent
can that thing be related and identified with the actually created
creature?
The force of this objection comes from the intuition that by
God‟s middle knowledge he knows the truth value of a counterfactual
of freedom. Now if it is true, then God knows that the agent will
make it true because he sees this by his supercomprehension. But if
God sees with his supercomprehension that if the agent is put into the
situation in question that then the counterfactual of freedom will be
true, then it is impossible that when God actually creates the agent
and actualizes the situation the person has an ability to choose to do
otherwise than what God supercomprehended. Hence the person is
not free.
The Molinist reacts to this by being vague about what
happens during supercomprehension. They will claim that God does
not know that the person when actually created will necessarily
choose to do the action that was supercomprehended. For if he or she
necessarily chooses then there is no freedom. But this claim is
question begging.
(2) If David stayed in Keilah and Saul besieged the city, the
men of Keilah would surrender David to Saul (Adams,
1977,110).
Objection to Supercomprehension
Final Objection
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Works Cited
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