One of the favorite objections to Christianity is the specter of infant damnation.
(BTW, I’m using “infant” for anyone below the age of discretion.)
Now, I have no settled opinion on the subject, for the simple reason that Scripture has so little to say on the subject one way or the other.
Within Calvinism you have some Reformed representatives like Grudem, Warfield, Piper, and Storms who believe in universal infant salvation.
However, suppose, for the sake of argument, that God damns some individuals who die in infancy. Although this is speculative, I’m going to discuss it because infidels use this as a wedge issue. So it’s good to confront head-on the toughest objections they can raise.
This objection involves a suppressed premise. That if an infant dies and goes to hell, he goes to hell as an infant. But why assume that, even for the sake of argument?
Suppose that Stalin died of cholera as a baby. Had he lived, he'd grow up to be the mass murderer that history denounces.
And suppose that’s the “infant” Stalin whom God consigns to hell. He dies as a baby, but when he goes to hell, God instantiates his adult counterpart. The counterfactual Stalin who, had he lived, went on to be a mass murderer. The Stalin of the alternate history. Not baby Stalin, not the Stalin who (ex hypothesi) died in infancy–but Chairman Stalin.
Let’s consider this from several different angles:
i) Suppose a serial killer is about to murder his 20th victim, but just before he slits her throat, a sharpshooter caps him. The serial killer goes to hell.
Is he punished for killing 19 women? Or is he also punished for the 20th victim he intended to kill? Does he get off the hook for #20 through a fluke of timing? Wouldn’t that be morally arbitrary?
ii) God created Adam and Eve as adults. Yet God could also imagine Adam as a baby, or a teenager. God had the concept of younger Adamic counterparts. In God’s mind there was a continuum of Adams. God chose to instantiate one of those Adamic ideas along the continuum, to the exclusion of others.
iii) Suppose a senile Christian goes to heaven. Is he senile in heaven? No. God restores his memories. God ages him back down to the psychological age when he was still lucid, when he had all his faculties intact. In a sense, God instantiates a younger counterpart. His younger self, glorified.
So even if (arguendo) God were to damn some babies, that doesn’t mean we’re supposed to visualize cute little babies writhing in hell. Rather, it would be reasonable to formulate this in terms of counterfactual damnation. God damning their adult counterparts, for their alternate futures.
An atheist might complain that this answer is too speculative. To that I’d say, if you don’t like conjectural answers, don’t raise conjectural objections.
Likewise, an atheist might complain that this answer takes too many Christian presuppositions for granted. Yet the objection itself takes certain Christian presuppositions for granted in order to exploit the emotional tension they (allegedly) generate.
I never thought of this until I came across Chris aka fivepointbaptist's video about the soul may not be a baby, old senile man, mental, etc.. in heaven or hell: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQZwPCtE9n4&feature=fvwrel
ReplyDelete"that doesn’t mean we’re supposed to visualize cute little babies writhing in hell. Rather, it would be reasonable to formulate this in terms of counterfactual damnation. God damning their adult counterparts, for their alternate futures.
ReplyDeleteAn atheist might complain that this answer is too speculative. To that I’d say, if you don’t like conjectural answers, don’t raise conjectural objections."
You're an exceptionally fine debater, Steve.
Verification Word: ropent
One of the favorite objections to Christianity is the specter of infant damnation.
ReplyDeleteWell, it's not just infant damnation. That's just a part of the overall objection, I think. And you answer parts of that, but there are additional problems. For Calvinism, there is only elect and non-elect. So when the non-elect die and go to hell is not the biggest problem, which is the fact God purposes them to exist in the first place and is responsible for their destiny.
This objection involves a suppressed premise. That if an infant dies and goes to hell, he goes to hell as an infant. But why assume that, even for the sake of argument?
Steve, I really like what you said and had not considered that point very well before. I wouldn't exactly confess that this was exactly my thinking, but I admit it's close enough to be guilty. Point taken.
And suppose that’s the “infant” Stalin whom God consigns to hell. He dies as a baby, but when he goes to hell, God instantiates his adult counterpart. The counterfactual Stalin who, had he lived, went on to be a mass murderer. The Stalin of the alternate history. Not baby Stalin, not the Stalin who (ex hypothesi) died in infancy–but Chairman Stalin.
Here is where the problems really begin. There is and can be no Chairman Stalin, because that particular alternate future not only does not exist, it cannot exist thanks to the Sovereign, omnipotent, omniscient God of Calvinism who foreordained that it would not exist. So you have a potentially very bad person with all the capability of evil, even the probability (assurance?) of committing future evil, who is punished as a potential criminal who has not actually done anything wrong (other than as an infant, possibly), and who cannot do anything in the future because that future cannot exist. So we're back to original sin and total depravity in the heart, which God knows perfectly and justly, no argument there.
But then there's that problem as expressed in Romans 9. Only it's not so much why would God punish someone who ultimately did His sovereign decretive will, but expressed differently is the problem of God purposefully creating those individuals to be non-elect and to basically burn eternally in Hell for the glory of God. The Apostle Paul's answer of, paraphrased as "who are we to question God?", might work apologetically, but is a cop-out answer in my book. It's a lazy punting of the ball to God's mysterious, magical sovereignty as the answer to any question of that sort. It just doesn't and can't satisfy anyone who hasn't decided to bow down in humble obedience to the Christian God of the Bible in ultimate submission, or feels there is insufficient reason or evidence to persuade him or her to do so.
I can't see God being able to damn individuals for alternate futures that can't exist except hypothetically and then only in the imagination. I could see original Adamic sin, and inherited total depravity, but none of us asked to be born in the first place, much less to inherit Adam's sin, be totally depraved, and face an inescapable destiny predetermined by God (which for many of us, perhaps the majority of the human race, doesn't end well or even at all). It makes God look worse than Hitler, Stalin, or anyone He supposedly has condemned to Hell for alleged "sins" against Him. What happens to the souls after this life in the eternal state (the counterfactual instantiations as you mention) is of far less concern than that of God creating them in the first place as toys purposed to destruction without grace or mercy. Unless of course, you are one of the happy elect, and then you can celebrate God's (apparently arbitrary in appearance if not in fact) grace that chose and preordained you to an eternal state of bliss, simply because God could and wanted to.
(cont)
ReplyDeletePerhaps this isn't your version of Calvinism, but it was mine for the most part, and it would be very difficult for me to accept as a Christian unless I had the inward assurance of being elect. And then out of selfishness I would simply accept my "fate" and "destiny" and use the means of Gospel preaching and witness to win the other "hidden" (to man) elect as God willed. I would thank God for His justice for punishing every sinner for their wicked hearts of rebellion and works of evil, and that their eternal punishment would work for God's glory. I might even accept what Spurgeon believed, that God predestined more elect to heaven than the non-elect He passed over for hell, and thank God for that too, as God's divine prerogative to do as He saw fit (including creating both elect and non-elect for His own purposes). I might even worship such an incredibly sovereign being with such horrible decrees and call Him good. But as of now, I simply cannot.
I can't see God being able to damn individuals for alternate futures that can't exist except hypothetically and then only in the imagination.
ReplyDeleteYour lord can do anything he pleases. We are just his giant Sims game.
Perhaps this isn't your version of Calvinism, but it was mine for the most part, and it would be very difficult for me to accept as a Christian unless I had the inward assurance of being elect.
ReplyDeleteThis quote is priceless and sums up why I love this site. You guys make this stuff up and then debate over which version makes less sense. Thank-you for these posts which I now regularly refer to theists and non-theists alike. Keep spreading the good Calvinist word ... good unless it has been decreed from above from before your birth that you will be a reprobate like me.
"Hell is other people": Sartre.
Thanks for referring theists and non-theists to T-blogue, TAM!
ReplyDeleteGod's sheep will hear His voice and follow Him, and perhaps a simple blog post here will be among the means the One true and living God uses to bring one of His elect unto Himself!
In Christ,
CD
good unless it has been decreed from above from before your birth that you will be a reprobate like me.
ReplyDeleteHow fitting that this quote - idiotic and foolish in so many ways - occurred on the day it did.
BYRON SAID:
ReplyDelete“Well, it's not just infant damnation. That's just a part of the overall objection, I think. And you answer parts of that, but there are additional problems. For Calvinism, there is only elect and non-elect.”
Since my discussion takes reprobation for granted, I don’t see how that’s an “additional” problem.
“So when the non-elect die and go to hell is not the biggest problem, which is the fact God purposes them to exist in the first place and is responsible for their destiny.”
You say that’s a problem, but you don’t show that’s a problem. I’ve discussed these issues on many different occasions. For instance:
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2010/04/gloves-are-off.html
“Here is where the problems really begin. There is and can be no Chairman Stalin, because that particular alternate future not only does not exist, it cannot exist thanks to the Sovereign, omnipotent, omniscient God of Calvinism who foreordained that it would not exist. So you have a potentially very bad person with all the capability of evil, even the probability (assurance?) of committing future evil, who is punished as a potential criminal who has not actually done anything wrong (other than as an infant, possibly), and who cannot do anything in the future because that future cannot exist. So we're back to original sin and total depravity in the heart, which God knows perfectly and justly, no argument there.”
Your objection is a jumble of confusions:
i) Possible worlds exist as abstract objects. They have a mode of subsistence proper to abstract objects. They exist outside of space and time. They subsist in the mind of God.
The actual world is a possible world which God instantiated in time and space.
ii) Reformed determinism is a type of conditional necessity, not unconditional necessity. If God decrees X, then, necessarily, X will eventuate.
However, nothing necessitated the decree. The future could be otherwise had he decreed otherwise–which he was free to do.
“But then there's that problem as expressed in Romans 9. Only it's not so much why would God punish someone who ultimately did His sovereign decretive will, but expressed differently is the problem of God purposefully creating those individuals to be non-elect and to basically burn eternally in Hell for the glory of God. The Apostle Paul's answer of, paraphrased as ‘who are we to question God?’, might work apologetically, but is a cop-out answer in my book. It's a lazy punting of the ball to God's mysterious, magical sovereignty as the answer to any question of that sort.”
That’s a sloppy reading of Rom 9, for Paul does give a rationale in vv17,22-23.
“I can't see God being able to damn individuals for alternate futures that can't exist except hypothetically and then only in the imagination.”
Well, that’s not an argument. I find that easy to see. I cited the example of the serial killer. Should he only be punished for the women he murdered, or should he also be punished for the woman he planned to murder, the woman he was about to murder? Does he get lucky because the sharpshooter takes him out just in the nick of time?
If I didn’t commit some heinous crime merely because I didn’t have the opportunity, or because I didn’t think I could get away with it, why am I not culpable for what I would have done given the chance?
Hi Byron,
ReplyDeleteYou said:
it would be very difficult for me to accept as a Christian unless I had the inward assurance of being elect
1. I think you'd benefit from reading these: "Why I Believe: A Positive Apologetic" and "Why I Believe: I'm Glad You Asked!". Both are from Steve. They're great places to start answering your questions.
2. Also you should check out books by people like Paul Helm (e.g. Beginnings) and John Frame (e.g. Salvation Belongs to the Lord, his Theology of Lordship series). Tom Schreiner's The Race Set Before Us is good from an exegetical perspective.
3. The grounds for knowing you're saved aren't reducible to solely having an "inward assurance."
4. With that last point in mind, you might likewise benefit from reading these past posts on assurance (e.g. there's a good one on the grounds of assurance from John Frame, there's another helpful post from Paul Helm).
Steve,
ReplyDelete"Since my discussion takes reprobation for granted, I don’t see how that’s an 'additional' problem."
Yes, sorry. I was complaining in general concerning reprobation, which, given the ultimate destiny of such in the system of Calvinism, I find unacceptable. I believe it is an additional problem for Calvinism generally, not for your post specifically, which you correctly point out takes this idea for granted.
"You say that’s a problem, but you don’t show that’s a problem. I’ve discussed these issues on many different occasions. For instance:"
Again, I should clarify. It's not a logical problem, or even a Scriptural one. I have no problem accepting that Calvinism and compatibilism (or at least some form of determinism) are taught in the Scriptures and are the most Biblical. I still believe this, as I did when I claimed to be Christian. But I now find them to be morally repugnant, along with vast portions of the so-called Holy Scriptures.
"i) Possible worlds exist as abstract objects. They have a mode of subsistence proper to abstract objects. They exist outside of space and time. They subsist in the mind of God...The actual world is a possible world which God instantiated in time and space."
So, the infant Stalin in your scenario is damned due to what was in God's imagination, that he was created by God to do in an alternate future that God then doesn't permit to come into existence in the real world that God ordained to instantiate? What then is to stop God from imagining anything He likes of an individual, such as pederasty, coprophilia, necrophilia, bestiality, some other deviant sexual philia or tendency to violence, or the like, and then damning that individual for it, since God purposely created that individual with that particular potential alternate future? How is that remotely fair?
"ii) Reformed determinism is a type of conditional necessity, not unconditional necessity. If God decrees X, then, necessarily, X will eventuate...However, nothing necessitated the decree. The future could be otherwise had he decreed otherwise–which he was free to do."
Good point, but in my mind, that brings us back to the moral repugnancy of what God determined to do in His absolute omniscience and omnipotence, and the problem of theodicy, which in my opinion, is a particularly difficult problem for Calvinists to unravel and neuter as an objection to their philosophical system, at least as far as the moral character of God is concerned (unless a Calvinist does not care about that and simply assigns all questions to the magical mystery of sovereignty answer bucket).
(cont)
ReplyDelete"That’s a sloppy reading of Rom 9, for Paul does give a rationale in vv17,22-23."
Yes, I forgot. Not only are the damned purposefully created for damnation and eternal punishment (torment I think the Scripture says) for the glory of God, but the elect are supposed to be grateful that God in His freewill simply chose not to because He could and wanted to, for reasons known only to Him and which are not allowed to be faulted as arbitrary by uppity, rebellious creatures destined to be reprobates such as myself. Yes, such elect should grovel in submission and worship of such an absolutely monstrous, despicable being who works all things for His own glory and who chose them to "salvation" and eternal worship of Himself, ages without end. Yes, I am familiar with Romans 9 and what it says, having read and gloried in it dozens of times. It is sweet and worshipful only if you are one of the blessed elect, or at least believe yourself to be, so you can praise and worship God for His "grace" for specifically creating you in His special class of toys known as the elite "elect" but that you can also glorify and worship God for punishing to everlasting torment those He specifically created as non-elect who sinned and rebelled as free moral agents fulfilling His decretive will known to Him from eternity past. No, why on earth would I have a problem with any of that?
"Well, that’s not an argument. I find that easy to see. I cited the example of the serial killer. Should he only be punished for the women he murdered, or should he also be punished for the woman he planned to murder, the woman he was about to murder? Does he get lucky because the sharpshooter takes him out just in the nick of time?"
But the mechanics of that particular situation are different. Suddenly, we're not talking about alternate potential futures that really exist only in the mind of God, and then only because He decided to create you in order to hate you and have some good reason for condemning you to hell but fortunately was kind enough to others to not instantiate any kind of future where you carried out His decretive will in this evil potential future. Now we're talking about someone's murderous intent of the heart, which Biblically, yes, I can see God judging the thoughts and intents of the heart. But, nifty thing that inherited Adamic sin and total depravity are, God made sure we're born (and we never asked to be) with fallen sin natures (about which we were never given a choice, but somehow that's OK because Adam had genuine free will and somehow for some reason flubbed that up for us), to make damn sure (pardon the pun) we do whatever it is that hacks God off and results in our being damned. God is still the author of evil in Calvinism, no matter how many intermediate causative agents you filter it through, because without purposeful activity on God's part, evil would never exist. Evil, however, is paradoxical with God's nature, so He couldn't do it directly but still wanted it to come to pass and so authored its existence in that magical mystery of divine sovereignty of His.
"If I didn’t commit some heinous crime merely because I didn’t have the opportunity, or because I didn’t think I could get away with it, why am I not culpable for what I would have done given the chance?"
Yes, basically see the above. It still feels like free will, of course. And we're still free moral agents, who simply did what was our nature to do, because we wanted to do it, which God allowed. Great. Puppets. Strings. Evil. God.
BYRON SAID:
ReplyDelete“But I now find them to be morally repugnant, along with vast portions of the so-called Holy Scriptures.”
What you’ve done is to testify to your sense of moral repugnance. But you haven’t given a reason to warrant your moral repugnance.
“So, the infant Stalin in your scenario is damned due to what was in God's imagination, that he was created by God to do in an alternate future that God then doesn't permit to come into existence in the real world that God ordained to instantiate? What then is to stop God from imagining anything He likes of an individual, such as pederasty, coprophilia, necrophilia, bestiality, some other deviant sexual philia or tendency to violence, or the like, and then damning that individual for it, since God purposely created that individual with that particular potential alternate future? How is that remotely fair?”
i) A question is not an argument. How is that unfair? You’ve been sharing your mental states with me, but do you have anything over and above your mere sheer disapproval?
ii) To be human is to be a contingent entity. We begin as divine ideas. Since God isn’t making us do something contrary to what we going to do before he butted in, I don’t see how God wrongs the damned. It’s not as if we were doing something before he came along.
“Good point, but in my mind, that brings us back to the moral repugnancy of what God determined to do in His absolute omniscience and omnipotence, and the problem of theodicy, which in my opinion, is a particularly difficult problem for Calvinists to unravel and neuter as an objection to their philosophical system, at least as far as the moral character of God is concerned (unless a Calvinist does not care about that and simply assigns all questions to the magical mystery of sovereignty answer bucket).”
Once again, there’s nothing for me to respond to because your statement doesn’t contain a reason to underwrite your sense of moral repugnance. You can express your feelings, objectify your emotions, but where’s the supporting argument to validate your repugnance? You move in a tight little circle, as if your feelings justify your feelings.
“Yes, I forgot. Not only are the damned purposefully created for damnation and eternal punishment (torment I think the Scripture says) for the glory of God, but the elect are supposed to be grateful that God in His freewill simply chose not to because He could and wanted to, for reasons known only to Him and which are not allowed to be faulted as arbitrary by uppity, rebellious creatures destined to be reprobates such as myself.”
Yes, guilty sinners ought to be grateful that they were spared the judicial fate which other guilty sinners did not escape.
“Yes, such elect should grovel in submission and worship of such an absolutely monstrous, despicable being who works all things for His own glory and who chose them to ‘salvation’ and eternal worship of Himself, ages without end…No, why on earth would I have a problem with any of that?”
You’re not arguing for your position. Indeed, you’re not even making a gesture at rational argument. You’re just emoting and grandstanding.
“But the mechanics of that particular situation are different. Suddenly, we're not talking about alternate potential futures that really exist only in the mind of God…”
No, they’re not. We’re talking about what might have been, but wasn’t. Had he not been taken out of action by the sharpshooter, our serial killer was about to slit the throat of the 20th woman. Is he culpable for that counterfactual outcome?
Cont. “But, nifty thing that inherited Adamic sin and total depravity are, God made sure we're born (and we never asked to be)…”
ReplyDeleteYes, Donald Trump was never consented to be born. But I don’t see him demanding that his parents return him to the sender. Indeed, he seems to enjoy his godless existence immensely. Why are you complaining on behalf of those who aren’t complaining?
“With fallen sin natures (about which we were never given a choice…”
As I’ve explained on more than one occasion, a fallen world has a different cast of characters than an unfallen world. Byron exists because Adam fell. Had Adam not fallen, that would change the family tree, lopping you off long before it branched out to that point.
“…but somehow that's OK because Adam had genuine free will and somehow for some reason flubbed that up for us)…”
In my response to Craig, which I referenced, I present a model of how that’s possible. But you don’t want to have a serious debate. You don’t want to deploy good arguments. You just want a forum where you can play your prerecorded rant against Christianity.
“God is still the author of evil in Calvinism, no matter how many intermediate causative agents you filter it through, because without purposeful activity on God's part, evil would never exist. Evil, however, is paradoxical with God's nature, so He couldn't do it directly but still wanted it to come to pass and so authored its existence in that magical mystery of divine sovereignty of His.”
Once again, I’ve discussed all that on many occasions. You refuse to engage the argument.
The frivolity of your intellectual performance betrays the insincerity of your moral posturing. It’s just another occasion for you to play your prerecorded rant against Christianity.
You’re mad at Christianity, and you want the world to know you’re mad at Christianity. You can swear and scream all you like, but after you yell yourself hoarse, the sun will rise tomorrow, the world will continue unaffected by your Oscar performance. In a godless world, nothing you say or do has any significance to the cosmic machinery. It will slice you and dice you and turn you into fertilizer.
Steve, sorry, I am not very familiar with your blog, and I am not even now a regular reader, though I do frequently browse and skim through posts. So I basically have no idea what you have said on this topic, but I will at least concede that you have discussed and defended your views to your own satisfaction. So, I was going to try to respond, but you're right, I'm not really engaging your argument. I have not studied theology or philosophy in-depth, so I have no idea how I could possibly convince you that my view is both plausible and actually right.
ReplyDeleteI hope it does not just boil down to, "God did it. God is good. Therefore 'it' (whatever that is) is ultimately good." That's kind of what I was forced into as a Calvinist. If we all begin as ideas in God's mind, then all child rapists, murderers, and et cetera were all created by his imagination. And He created Adam and the garden of Eden, foreordaining Adam's failure, to ensure the future guilt of all future souls He would create, so those He decides to pardon for breaking His rules that they could not prevent themselves from breaking should be grateful because they were spared while others were given what God created them for and designed for them specifically, an everlasting punishment (well, for the Devil and his angels, but all are there by divine decree anyways). But God did it. And God is good. So this is good, too. Okay.
Anyways, that's a lot of time to waste on a mythology. In my opinion, you are wasting your own time and talents on ancient, recycled religious mythology. And of course, I'm not debating at this point, and I suppose I never was, just offering an opinion. And my opinion is that this is really sad. That's probably why the others are not joining in my complaint, because they realize that Christianity is false, and do not wish to waste time or energy in its defense or profit, but to live the lives they have available to the best potential they can achieve.
Yes, you are right, that in my world view, my opinions, my person, and all my works are insignificant in terms of the cosmic machinery. The advantage I have is knowing that beforehand, so I am freed from wasting time and energy on false worldviews and beliefs that constrain without ultimate lasting benefit. To be perfectly honest, we both lose in my scenario from the standpoint of naturalism (which I am agnostic towards as well, actually, but I assume it here for the sake of argument). If you intended that as an emotional objection to my position, well sure, it's bad in that sense. But it's still better than potentially wasting the only life we're guaranteed to have in my book.
BYRON SAID:
ReplyDelete“I hope it does not just boil down to, ‘God did it. God is good. Therefore 'it' (whatever that is) is ultimately good.’"
At one level that’s a perfectly good answer. Of course it’s deceptively simple. It takes a number of supporting assumptions for granted. It could be explicated in varying degrees. The supporting assumptions are defensible.
“That's kind of what I was forced into as a Calvinist. If we all begin as ideas in God's mind, then all child rapists, murderers, and et cetera were all created by his imagination.”
i) God’s mind or imagination is the most real thing there is. The timeless, self-subsistent exemplar of contingent existence. Our imagination is just a shadow of God’s imagination. His fiction is our reality.
ii) A novelist may imagine both heroes and villains. There’s nothing evil about creating a evil characters as long as they serve a worthwhile purpose in the narrative. Indeed, the villain can be a foil to reveal certain virtues.
iii) You’re rebelling (unsuccessfully) against your finitude. But that’s the entrance fee for existence unless you happen to be God. There’s no third alternative: either nonexistence or contingent existence. You and I can only be as metaphysically dependent entities. Existence as a timebound being has inherent limitations. We inhere in something other, something greater, than ourselves.
“Anyways, that's a lot of time to waste on a mythology. In my opinion, you are wasting your own time and talents on ancient, recycled religious mythology. And of course, I'm not debating at this point, and I suppose I never was, just offering an opinion. And my opinion is that this is really sad. That's probably why the others are not joining in my complaint, because they realize that Christianity is false, and do not wish to waste time or energy in its defense or profit, but to live the lives they have available to the best potential they can achieve.”
If atheism is true, then your achievements are just a boastful little sandcastle at low tide.
“To be perfectly honest, we both lose in my scenario from the standpoint of naturalism…”
True.
“But it's still better than potentially wasting the only life we're guaranteed to have in my book.”
There is no “better” or “worse” in naturalism. Whether a runner loses the race by finishing second to last isn’t better than finishing dead last.
Steve, if I recall correctly, you reject divine middle knowledge in favor of only God's necessary/natural knowledge and God's free knowledge. Wouldn't that mean you reject the distinction between 1. the logically possible worlds of God's necessary/natural knowledge and 2. the feasible worlds of middle knowledge? If that's the case, how could God determine which sins a person would commit were he given the opportunity since your rejection of feasible worlds would imply that the person could commit any and every logically possible sin(s)? Or do you subsume feasible worlds into the logically possible worlds in God's natural knowledge? If so, how?
ReplyDeleteAlso, by parity of argument, would or could God reward the elect based on the good deeds they could/would have done if they had the opportunity? Or does that not follow because what would make the difference is the fact that what the non-elect do, they do naturally, while what the elect would or could do would be dependent on the degree and efficacy of the extrinsic "units" (for lack of a better word) of grace God may have decided to bestow on them?
ReplyDeleteCounterfactual knowledge is not synonymous with middle knowledge.
ReplyDeleteAP,
ReplyDelete"If that's the case, how could God determine which sins a person would commit were he given the opportunity since your rejection of feasible worlds would imply that the person could commit any and every logically possible sin(s)?"
But some of these worlds may not be the worlds God uses to damn them for their counterfactual sins. Mind you, this counterfactual damnation is speculative, so we're just looking at things here. That in mind, suppose God damns S in alpha by (partly) taking into consideration counterfactual sins, damning the adult counterfactual S to hell.
You wonder if God must take every possible sin into account since they could commit every logically possible sin. But why think God takes all worlds into account? Suppose God takes only redeemed worlds into account. Suppose he takes only nearby redeemed worlds into account. God need not, then, take all possible sins/worlds into account.