Molinist Counterfactual Backfires

Christian compatibilists and incompatibilists agree that man is morally responsible for his choices, and God has exhaustive foreknowledge of the same. Therefore, if man has free will, it must be compatible with God’s exhaustive foreknowledge. “It seems to me much clearer(!)” – and to the rest who desire to make sense of God’s knowledge of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom (CCFs) – to maintain that any true CCF must have as its propositional truth-maker God’s free and sovereign determination. The only other option, lest we deny God’s sole eternality by positing ungrounded CCFs, is that CCFs are necessary truths, like laws of logic that are grounded in God’s nature. In other words, unless we are willing to accept mysterious propositional dualism, we are consigned to accept some species of determinism with respect to necessarily or contingently true CCFs being reflections of God’s attributes or will respectively, the latter being more theologically sensible. In sum, since God’s foreknowledge is inconsistent with indeterministic freedom, we either are not free at all or else we are free in some other sense, a deterministic sense. If there is to be creaturely freedom, and if CCFs are contingent truths, then God knows them according to his free knowledge.

(Somewhat ironically, and as I’ve argued elsewhere, Middle Knowledge reduces true CCFs to functionally necessary truths – true in every possible world that could be actualized (i.e. all real possible worlds!) – given that might-counterfactuals that aren’t would-counterfactuals are contrary to would-counterfactuals and, therefore, never true and can neither be known nor actualized. [Obviously I reject the Molinist distinction of possible and feasible worlds. Though I entertain the distinction when considering modality of logical vs metaphysical possibility.])

Libertarian free will would destroy moral accountability, for how can pure spontaneity or agent causation (metaphysical concepts that detach influences, reasons and relevant history from willful actions) produce morally relevant choices? (More on that in a moment.)

Molinists like to point to Jesus’ rebuke of the inhabitants of Chorazin and Bethsaida as proof of God’s Middle Knowledge – for had Jesus performed the same miracles in Tyre and Sidon that he had performed in Chorazin and Bethsaida, Tyre and Sidon would have repented. The prima facie interpretation of the parallel passages is not that Jesus was revealing how others would have responded to those same miracles. Rather, the immediate inference is that inhabitants of Israel were even more hardened to revelatory truth than pagans (and will accordingly be counted more culpable on the day of judgment). It was a rebuke, not a nod toward Middle Knowledge. Yet aside from the obvious, let’s run with the Molinist interpretation and see where it gets us.

Consider possible world Wp with the exact same relevant state of affairs as actual world Wa up to time t, which is shared in both worlds. At t in Wp, Jesus performs in Tyre and Sidon the same exact miracles from Wa that he performed in Chorazin and Bethsaida at t. The result in Tyre and Sidon is repentance. If that is not causality, what is? Remove the miracles, no repentance. Introduce the miracles, repentance. Remove the miracles, no repentance. Introduce the miracles, repentance… Like a light being switched on and off, the miracles would have causally triggered repentance. If not, then what? Would the miracles have triggered (nebulous) agent causation? If so, how would that not entail causal divine determinism given exhaustive omniscience and purpose? The only escape hatch is that the miracles trigger nothing in Wp, which would only serve to highlight the morally irrelevant nature of libertarian free choices per the passing reference above. For what reason(s) would repentance obtain if not for the causal connection of the miracles?

Now of course, from a Reformed perspective, God could effect repentance and index such to immediate or secondary causes of either ordinary acts of providence or miracles. God freely knows all such counterfactuals. Notwithstanding, given a Molinist use of the alleged counterfactual in view, it proves too much. It either undermines the spontaneity of agent causation Molinism contemplates, or else it underscores the compatibilist premise that libertarian freedom brings to naught the influences, reasons and relevant history that make our choices ours, rendering them morally irrelevant, not unlike purely random movements.