Abstract
We argue that there is an incompatibility between the two basic principles of Molinism, i.e., God’s middle knowledge of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom, and divine immutability. To this end, firstly, we set out the difference between strong and weak immutability: according to the latter only God’s essential attributes remain unchanged, while the former affirms that God cannot change in any way. Our next step is to argue that Molinism ascribes strong immutability to God. However, according to Molinism, some counterfactuals of freedom need to be actualized by divine will. We argue that this claim does entail a change in God because it attributes a knowledge to God that involves moving from possibility to actuality through divine will. Therefore, claiming God knows counterfactuals of freedom leads us to reject the strong sense of divine immutability. Further, we argue that assuming God’s knowledge encompasses counterfactuals of freedom cannot be consistent even with weak immutability because, according to Molinism, a change in God’s knowledge requires a change in His essence. We conclude that Molinism is incoherent.
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Notes
On the Molinist view, there are four moments for God’s knowledge. First, natural knowledge: in this moment of knowledge, which is prevolitional, He knows all modal propositions (see Freddoso, 1988: 12), all necessary truths, so to speak, because these features (modalities) are necessary for these propositions. Second, middle knowledge: like the first, this moment is prevolitional, but in contrast, it contains contingent truths; in this moment, God knows all true counterfactuals of freedom. In the third, the creative act of will, He decides which beings to create in which circumstances. In the fourth moment, His knowledge is postvolitional, and He knows all the contingent truths under his control (Molina, 1988; Freddoso, 1988; Flint, 1998). The three moments of God’s knowledge, natural, middle, and free knowledge, are called by Craig respectively the Knowledge of what could be, what would be, and what will be (Craig, 2001: 121). Also, based on possible worlds semantic, Flints calls them: Knowledge of all possible worlds, all feasible worlds, and the actual world (Flint, 1998: ch. 2). Also, note that Molina did not use the term counterfactuals of freedom, but rather he used the term conditional future contingents (see Molina, 1988). The term was first used in the second half of the 20th century with the appearance of counterfactual semantics.
See also: “the third type is middle knowledge, by which, He saw in His own essence what each such faculty would do with its innate freedom were it to be placed in this or in that or, indeed, in infinitely many orders of things” (Molina, 1988: Disputation 52, Sect. 9).
Marshall suggests a similar definition for intrinsic and extrinsic properties: “We have some of our properties purely in virtue of the way we are. (Our mass is an example.) We have other properties in virtue of the way we interact with the world. (Our weight is an example.) The former are the intrinsic properties, the latter are the extrinsic properties” (Marshall, 2018).
It is important to note that knowledge is considered, at least in human beings, to be an intrinsic attribute, since it relates to the mind, and when it changes it affects the mind. Although our knowledge can be influenced by external objects, this will not be a reason to consider it as an extrinsic attribute. For the knowledge is the product of our cognitive faculty, and it is a process that takes place within us; so any change in it causes a change in us, whereas extrinsic attributes are not like this. In addition, our knowledge can distinguish us from other people. For example a difference between one person and someone else is that the former knows some things the latter doesn’t, or vice versa. Regardless of whether knowledge is an intrinsic or extrinsic attribute for us creatures, in the Molinist view it is an intrinsic attribute for God, since He is impassible and does not acquire His knowledge from others. Regarding this, Flint writes: “Foreknowledge follows immediately from God’s conjoining his creative act of will to his prevolitional knowledge; he has no need to observe or to be causally impacted in any way by the events he foreknows in order to know them” (1998, 44–45).
His use of ‘immutability’ here refers to the strong sense. This is because he claims that open theism does not believe in immutability; however, as has been mentioned, open theism believes in divine immutability in the weak sense. Thus, we can conclude that immutability is used in its strong sense here.
See note 1, above.
This paper does not claim that God’s being timeless is incompatible with the existence of any temporal being. Our purpose in discussing God’s timelessness is merely to show that the Molinists believe in strong immutability. Moreover, how God’s timelessness deals with temporal beings is not the concern of this paper. Nevertheless, it seems that the definition of God’s timelessness mentioned above has explained how God can know temporal beings in a nontemporal way. Furthermore, the main argument of this article against Molinism is merely focused on the moments of God’s knowledge before the creation. Therefore, it does not make any suggestion about the relationship between divine knowledge and created temporal beings.
For the same argument, see also Azadegan, 2022.
Leftow, however, argues that there is no necessary relation between divine impassibility and immutability, so that God can also change in His own essence without being affected by others. Hence the fact that God is impassible does not justify concluding that He is immutable in any sense. “DDI neither implies nor is implied by divine impassibility. Something could be impassible but mutable if it could change itself, but nothing else could change or affect it. God could be immutable but passible. For he could be changelessly aware of events outside himself—perhaps even caused to be aware of them by the events themselves—and due to them changelessly feel such responsive emotions as grief. But he would feel them without change, and so always feel them” (Leftow, 2014). His argument is not convincing, though, because it seems difficult to deny the temporality of a mutable God. For God to be changeable, He must first possess an attribute, then lose it; that means He must exist at least two times (at the first time He has that attribute and at the second time He does not); otherwise, a contradiction would arise. The reason is that God cannot simultaneously have an attribute and not have it. Thus, changeability demands temporality, and so a changeable God is temporal [We have taken this argument from Creel’s essay “Immutability and Impassibility” (Creel 2010)]. On the other hand, God’s temporality—whether in a physical or metaphysical sense—requires His passibility, since His existence in the context of time makes the past, future, and present relevant to Him, and this fact causes Him to experience events sequentially instead of simultaneously. In other words, temporal beings, through their changes, affect God’s knowledge and hence actions. This affection can have no meaning other than His passibility. Accordingly, contra Leftow’s claim, God cannot undergo change without being affected. Therefore, there is an intimate link between divine impassibility and immutability. We can make the interim conclusion, therefore, that Molinism holds and ought to hold the thesis of divine immutability in the strong sense.
Cf. this quote from Molina, “The second type is purely free knowledge, by which, after the free act of His will, God knew absolutely and determinately, without any condition or hypothesis, which ones from among all the contingent states of affairs were in fact going to obtain and, likewise, which ones were not going to obtain”. So “Such knowledge depends on the free determination of His will, a determination by which He decides to create such-and-such a faculty of free choice in such-and such an order of things” (Molina, 1988: Disputation 52, Sects. 9–10). Also, on the moments of God’s knowledge, Flint says: “God can be thought of as moving from knowledge of which worlds are possible to knowledge of which world is actual, and this movement is mediated by his free creative act of will” (1998: 38).
According to Molinism, God has knowledge of things in His own essence and does not acquire His knowledge from things (Molina 1988: Disputation 52, Sect. 19; Flint, 1998, 44–45). It follows that the simultaneity between the moments of God’s knowledge and Himself is an Eternal simultaneity, not an Eternal Temporal simultaneity, because the former is a simultaneity between eternal things, whereas the latter is a simultaneity between eternal and temporal things (Deng, 2019, 20). Therefore, the movement from middle knowledge to free knowledge by divine will cannot be compatible with the strong immutability of God.
To emphasize that divine knowledge is an essential attribute, Molina says “God acquires no knowledge from things but instead knows and comprehends everything He knows in His own essence and in the free determination of His own will” (Molina, 1988: Disputation 52, Sect. 19). Also see note 2, above.
Open theism also considers omniscience to be an essential attribute of God. However, according to this view, God cannot know exhaustively in advance what creatures will do freely in the future (see Boyd, 2001), so this knowledge is not considered an essential attribute of God. Therefore, in contrast to classical theism, a change in God’s knowledge will not lead to an essential change in Him, and He remains omniscient.
In this paper, the authors do not claim that free creation entails God is neither strongly immutable nor timeless; rather, they claim that it requires a change in God if we understand free creation as moving from possibility to actuality. This critique is applied just to Molinism, we believe, because the way out from possibility to actuality with the assumption of a God who exhaustively knows the future contingents seems to be only possible through the middle knowledge of the counterfactual of freedom. As Flint argues, God knows all possibilities in the moment of natural knowledge. From this, it follows that natural knowledge provides God with knowledge of which worlds are possible. Accordingly, God knows that if Cuthbert were placed in situation C, where he is free to buy an iguana, he would buy it in the set of B-possible worlds, but he would refrain from doing so in the set of R-possible worlds. In other words, God, by his natural knowledge, knows that if Cuthbert were placed in situation C, he might either buy it or refrain from buying it; however, he does not know which possible world would become actual if Cuthbert were placed in situation C. Therefore. It raises the question of how God can have free knowledge (of actual future contingents) and how can He exercise his providence? According to him, the answer to this question is evident: “Providence can be exercised, free knowledge can be present, only if God knows how his creatures would act if placed in various non-determining circumstances” (39–40). It means to be aware of counterfactuals of freedom. For example, suppose God knew that if he placed Cuthbert in C, Cuthbert would freely buy the iguana. Given his knowledge of the counterfactual, He would know that, should he bring about C, a B-world would result.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Farid al-Din Sebt. And Commenting on previous version of the manuscript was performed by Ebrahim Azadegan and Mahdi Esfahani. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Some parts of the idea related to section 4 of this article have already appeared in our work (doi:https://doi.org/10.30497/PRR.2021.241053.1684) which is published in the Persian language in 2021. This submitted article is a far more expanded and developed version of the earlier idea.
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Sebt, FD., Azadegan, E. & Esfahani, M. On the incoherence of molinism: incompatibility of middle knowledge with divine immutability. Int J Philos Relig (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-024-09906-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-024-09906-4