We explained what Molinism means in Part 1 of this article and listed a number of objections to this theological model and view of divine sovereignty and human free will. In this post, we will explore nine objections raised to Molinism in more detail.
The points made are not much more than brief summaries. For much greater detail on many of these points, the reader is invited to delve into a vast literature on the subject. Perhaps the single best place to start, would be either to read the relevant sections of Francis Turretin's Institutes of Elenctic Theology, particularly Topic 4 (The Knowledge of God), Questions 9-11. For a moden discussion, Paul Helm's book The Providence of God is a good read.
The weight of these objections constitute the reasons why I am not a Molinist.
Objection 1: Molinism Denies God's Absolute Sovereignty and His Exhaustive and Unconditional Decree
Fundamentally, Molinism denies that God has an exhaustive and unconditional divine decree. According to Molinism, there are a multitude of possible worlds which are not feasible for God to create. He is only able to actualize worlds which are in line with the contents of middle knowledge. Suppose God knows that there are no circumstances that he could bring about in which person A will freely choose to do act B at time C. God is therefore constrained. There is no way for the God of Molinism to ordain that A will do B at time C according to Molinism.
This is in sharp contrast, it seems to me, with the God revealed in Scripture, who can do anything he desires and no one can stop him. This would include ordaining that A does B at C. The only restrictions on what God can ordain in Calvinism are things which are logically impossible (such as making a four-sided triangle) or things which are inconsistent with God's own being and character (God cannot turn the Trinity into a Quadrinity or will himself out of existence).
The following verses are deeply problematic for a Molinist understanding of providence, since they seem to admit of no restrictions on God's absolute sovereignty, whereas Molinism is built around a very significant delimiting factor in what middle knowledge makes feasible .[1]
'But our God is in the heavens. He does whatever he pleases.' (Psalm 115:3)
'Whatever Yahweh pleased, that he has done, in heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps.' (Psalm 135:6)
'But he stands alone, and who can oppose him? What his soul desires, even that he does.' (Job 23:13)
'I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be restrained.' (Job 42:2)
'All the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing; and he does according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth; and no one can stop his hand, or ask him, “What are you doing?”' (Daniel 4:35)
'Yahweh has made everything for its own end—yes, even the wicked for the day of evil.' (Proverbs 16:4)
'A man’s heart plans his course, but Yahweh directs his steps.' (Proverbs 16:9)
'The king’s heart is in Yahweh’s hand like the watercourses. He turns it wherever he desires.' (Proverbs 21:1)
'Remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other. I am God, and there is none like me. I declare the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done.
I say: My counsel will stand, and I will do all that I please.' (Isaiah 46:9-10)
'In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.' (Ephesians 1:11, ESV)
'For of him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory for ever! Amen.' (Romans 11:36)
The fundamental objection to Molinism is that the God it presents and how his providence works does not reflect the power and glory of the God of the Bible.
Objection 2: Molinism Teaches a Type of Creaturely Independence and Contradicts Divine Aseity
Molinism teaches a form of Creaturely Independence which contradicts Divine Aseity. God's aseity is self-existence and total independence from the creation. The eternal God is dependent on no one for anything. However, in Molinism, God's choices are restricted by the content of middle knowledge, which delimits the feasible worlds that God could create.
As we will see, it is incoherent at best where the content of middle knowledge comes from. To argue that it restricts what God can do, and that God is somehow beholden to the choices of human beings contradicts this attribute of God.
Objection 3: Molinism Requires Libertarian Free Will, Despite Lack of Biblical Evidence
Molinism relies on libertarian free will. Indeed, Molinism was created by Molina in an attempt to show that God's sovereignty could be harmonised with libertarian free will. Yet the Bible teaches that even human free choices are under the control of God's sovereign choice. Some of the verses we have already quoted clearly teach that human choices are under God's control.
An excellent article called 'Eleven (11) Reasons to Reject Libertarian Free Will' by John Hendryx explains the many problems with libertarian free will from a Christian point of view.
Libertarian Free Will is simply the view that when a person chooses to do something, at that moment, he could have chosen to do otherwise and that there is nothing determining the choice, not the circumstances, nor our desires, nor even our own affections.
The problem with building a theological system around libertarian free will is that it is a philosophical concept and not one derived from Scripture. Rather the Scriptures presuppose that though we are free to make choices, such choices are not outside the scope of God's sovereignty.
Objection 4: Molinism Teaches a Kind of Semi-Pelagianism
Molinism smuggles in a kind of semi-Pelagian anthropolgy whereby sinners are able to do good, including saving good, in response to God's grace merely if put in the right set of circumstances, without the internal changes that Scripture describes, wrought in the sinner by the Holy Spirit.
As human beings are dead in sin prior and unable to do good, prior to be regenerated by the Holy Spirit, it would not matter what circumstances a person was placed in, they would still not have faith in Christ. The key action, the monergistic work of the Holy Spirit in imparting spiritual life to a sinner, is not something Molinism would typically accept.
Objection 5: Molinism Undermines Divine Simplicity and Immutability
Molinism undermines divine simplicity and immutability. It makes God's knowledge partly dependent on his creation and makes his decree reactive to imagined human choices, rather than eternal and simple acts of the divine will.
Objection 6: Molinism Weakens God's Providence and Efficacious Grace
Molinism weakens God's providence and efficacious grace. God is restricted and can only select from feasible worlds one which matches his desires as closely as possible rather than the biblical view that God's sovereign decree reflects God's own desires perfectly and the world perfectly matches God's desires and wishes.
Objection 7: Molinism Teaches a Type of Conditional Election which is Impersonal
Election in Molinism can only be a kind of conditional election, in that God chooses those he knows will believe when put in certain circumstances. This is not the unconditional election taught in the Scriptures.
Molinism usually teaches that God choose to actualise the world in which the maximum number of people are saved, but that there were feasible worlds in which any other people would be saved, though no feasible worlds in which everyone is saved. Thus, person A's election in the real world does not rest on God's sovereign choice primarily, but on the fact that A was part of the maximum number of saved people in this world. On the other hand person B, might have been saved in another world, but he is lost in the real world merely because the world in which he would have been saved did not deliver as many saved people overall. This seems ridiculous compared with the Calvinist view that in the real world God saved everyone for whom he has saving love and desires to actually save.
Objection 8: Molinism Rests on the Concept of Middle Knowledge Not Found in Scripture
Molinism rests on the concept of middle knowledge, which is not found in the Scriptures. It is merely a clever philosophical speculation. Calvinism does a better job of reconciling divine sovereignty, which is absolute, and human free will and responsibility, which is derived from God's decree and is compatible with God's determining all things.
The supposed evidence for middle knowledge usually cited by Molinists is scant at best and can clearly be explained as part of God's natural knowledge of possibilities. In fact there are only two passages cited, which indicates the weakness of the scriptural data in favour of Molinism.
Matthew 11:23 - "You, Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven, you will go down to Hades. For if the mighty works had been done in Sodom which were done in you, it would have remained until today."
For one thing, the Molinist view requires Jesus' words here to be taken hyperliterally and not regard them as rabbinical hyperbole, which is a more natural reading of the text and a vivid way of saying that the people of Capernaum are morally no better (or even worse) than the people of Sodom. Secondly, even if the words are to be taken literally, this does not prove middle knowledge as understood in Molinism. It merely proves that God has knowledge of couterfactual possiblities, which Calvinsm does not deny via God's natural knowledge.
The second passage is 1 Samuel 23:11-13, in which David asks God two questions about what would happen if he remained in the town of Keilah. God asks if Saul will come there and God answers yes. David then asks if the men of Keilah will give him up to Saul if he stays there and God again answers yes. David then leaves Keilah. Again, this proves God has knowledge of counterfactuals (what if questions) but in no way does this prove Molinist middle knowledge. God would know all possibilities and counterfactuals from his natural knowledge and even in his free knowledge insofar as God would have decreed that David would ask these questions and receive truthful answers from God himself.
To have only two passages that even hint at middle knowledge is not enough in my view to built such a weighty doctrinal scheme upon, especially when the passages are easily and fully explained without invoking the Molinist concept.
Objection 9: Molinism is Unable to Present an Adequate Explanation for Why God Has Supposed Middle Knowledge (The Grounding Objection) or Where Middle Knowledge Comes From
The grounding objection has never been satisfactorily answered by Molinism. The grounding objection states that the central claim of Molinism is either completely incoherent or impossible. There is nothing in Molinism that explains (or grounds) why God possesses such knowledge of what people would freely choose to do in any circumstance in which they were placed.
In Calvinism, by contrast. God foreknows what a person will choose because God has ordained it.
For God to know what a person will freely choose in the libertarian sense of free will is both inexplicable and incoherent.
To give an example. Imagine a scientist builds a simple robotic car and places it in a complex maze. He says that the robot is not controlled by him in any way. It makes it's own decisions. At any junction in the maze, the car decides for itself whether to turn left or right or head straight on. If that it true, would we not conclude that it would be impossible for the scientist to know the precise route the robot car would take through the maze? Now suppose the scientist claimed that the robot car was free to make any choice, but he was able to predict the car's path precisely—how it would first turn left, then go straight on, then right, left, etc. Would we not, with good reason, assess that in some way the scientist is controlling the car to know with certainty what it's choices will be at each junction?
Likewise, in Molinism for God to know with certainty what all free choices will be is either an impossibility or there is signiciantly more control being exercised than the Molinist will allow.
Interestingly, the open theist takes the first option and says such foreknowledge of free choices is impossible; the Calvinist takes the second option and says that free choices are compatible with God's overall control of events via the divine decree.
Closely linked to this, Molinists cannot explain where middle knowledge comes from as it comes from creatures with free will before God has decreed to create such creatures. Middle knowledge comes across as a series of brute facts about the universe with no explanation of why such facts or truths exist as they do not come from God's will, not from the creatures.
To conclude, we have to agree with Turretin's assessment of Molinism, back in the 17th century: "The fiction of middle knowledge (scientiae mediae) devised to maintain the idol of free will cannot be approved. It destroys the independence of God’s knowledge, subjects it to the creature, and makes it dependent upon the free determination of man.” (Institutes IV.10.6)
Notes
[1] Unless otherwise stated, quotations are from the World English Bible, in the public domain.
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