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Friday, April 26, 2019

Holy moly Molinism

But now you raise a quite different objection aimed specifically at (3). “Before God sticks Fred in second century Tibet wouldn't He have to ascertain that Fred would freely reject the Gospel in all circumstances, not just some of them?” Well, He wouldn’t have to, but that’s my hypothesis. Clearly, God could place a person anywhere He wants in human history, regardless of how that person might freely behave in different circumstances. But my suggestion is that God, being so merciful and not wanting anyone to be damned, so providentially orders the world that anyone who would embrace the Gospel if he were to hear it will not be placed in circumstances in which he fails to hear it and is lost. Only in the case of someone who would be saved through his response to general revelation would a person who would freely respond to special revelation, if he heard it, find himself in circumstances where he doesn’t hear it.


This is Craig's general solution to the problem of the unreached. But it has a strange implication. Historically, most Christians have been Caucasian (along with Middle-Eastern Christians). Craig's explanation is that God left Africans and Asians largely unevangelized because Africans and Asians are generally far less receptive to the Gospel than Caucasians. Is that a plausible explanation? I think Craig might be ill at ease defending that proposition, yet that's a necessary implication of his position.

12 comments:

  1. Only Calvinism (or at least monergism) can answer Paul's concern that God wants to remove any grounds for boasting in salvation.

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  2. I just find it incredible that individuals who would behave differently if they were placed in different circumstances such that God would need to ensure they would reject the Gospel in all circumstances nevertheless behave exactly the same in the same circumstances such that Fred could be arbitrarily inserted into 2nd Century Tibet without causing any problems to the timeline of human history.

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  3. I think of myself as a Molinist, but this way Craig has of explaining this really bothers me. I would never say what he says in this passage, because it seems to imply a couple of things that seem to be false. 1) Pre-existence of the soul. But that's false. It's not like God has all these little baby souls up in some timeless heaven and chooses to send them down into bodies at particular times in history. People are conceived *in* history. They come to exist at conception, not prior to conception. 2) The idea that the body is entirely incidental to one's personal identity. This seems to me highly dubious and indeed dangerous. After all, if God could have "sent" someone to "be born" in a different time period, why couldn't he have "sent" a male soul to "be born" into a female body? And we're off to the races with transgenderism. In general, it seems to me that Craig doesn't always have a robust enough sense of interaction in one's conception of mind and body. (And I'm a dualist, but of a strongly interactive sort.) My conception via the DNA of my parents is part of what gave me my particular qualities. What does it even mean to speak of *me* as some kind of bodiless entity that would be just the same person if I had been conceived by completely different parents, in a completely different body, at a completely different time?

    I'm fine with using some Molinist ideas in answer to "what about those who never hear." But this doesn't seem to be the way to do it.

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    1. Yes, you said it better than I did but that's what I was getting at too. I think the importance of the body is seen by the fact of the resurrection (not just Christ's but the fact that we will be resurrected). God didn't create us to be dis-incarnate spirits floating around--we were designed to be in our bodies, and our bodies are ever bit as much "us" as our soul is. Thus, bodies are not interchangeable, or just "spirit vessels", but are far more important to our identity. They are, in fact, just as important as our spirit is.

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    2. Lydia, Although DNA seems to have a role in determining “particular qualities,” of identity, it is not a necessary condition for such qualities. Demons, for example, have particular traits, yet as fallen angels, they never had DNA because they never had physical bodies. If, as you contend, the soul does not exist before the body, and particular qualities / identity are determined [to some significant degree] by DNA, are the particular qualities of the soul, which is eternal, also determined by DNA? If the body is not incidental to one’s personal identity, are DNA-based emotional problems eternal? What about intellect, which is strongly influenced by DNA - is our intellect in eternity determined by our DNA? How about traits which derive from conditions peculiar to the physical body? Say Joe has been difficult to be around ever since he developed arthritis. He will not have arthritis following the death of his physical body. So will he still be a difficult personality in heaven? I believe that aspects of personality, of individual identity, resulting from that which is broken, temporal and imperfect (including DNA), and which mar our identity just as sin mars our character, do not survive bodily death. They are not part of our eternal identity as people made in the imago dei.
      Also, why would God send a male soul to be born into a female body, any more than he’d make a three-headed man with eagle’s wings? Does the fact that God could make a man gay, raise the whole issue of whether homosexuality is a predetermined trait? I don’t think so.

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    3. CWB

      1. I think you're tilting at windmills for the most part. Lydia isn't arguing "the soul does not exist before the body", that "God [would] send a male soul to be born into a female body", etc. Rather, she's responding to Craig's argument cited above. She's drawing out some implications from what Craig has said, including a reductio or something in that direction. In short, she's not making an argument for her own beliefs (not explicitly at any rate), but critiquing Craig's argument.

      2. If anything, Lydia sounds like she might even agree with one of your assumptions when she says: "My conception via the DNA of my parents is part of what gave me my particular qualities."

      3. It's possible for Christians to subscribe to traducianism.

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  4. In eternity we will have new bodies, and God will change (for those who go to heaven at least) those aspects of our previous physical existence that were *privations*. One has to have, I think, a robust notion of a privation (relative to God's intention for human nature) in one's understanding of the relationship between mind and body. For example, if a child has Down Syndrome that severely limits his intelligence, that would be removed in eternity. But if the Down Syndrome gives him a sweet nature, that is not a privation and would not be removed in eternity. Privations are a result of the Fall.

    Nonetheless, not everything that makes me distinctive and that is a result of the particularities of my physical conception is a privation. There are things that are good, neutral, or just *distinctive*. I think we will be recognizably ourselves in heaven and in our new bodies. God is going to give us new bodies. The disembodied state is not natural for humans and isn't what God intended. The separation of mind and body (death) is a result of the Fall, too.

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    1. Lydia - Dr. McGrew - thank you for your insightful, cogent, and theologically informed conjecture about eternity - difficult for anyone to do, but brilliantly done by you. Right here, right now at the Calvinist hot spot in cyberspace. Bravo!

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  5. Re Molinism, WLC talks about feasible worlds and about God knowing how X would behave in a given scenario. From WLC's perspective, why are certain worlds feasible? Why does X behave thus in a given scenario? If God ordains which worlds are feasible and how X would behave in a given scenario, and then picks from potential worlds and scenarios of His own design, then isn't Molinism just a roundabout way to explain Providence and Sovereignty? If God does not ordain feasible worlds and given scenarios, then God is neither provident nor sovereign, and Molinism is heresy, right?

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  7. I've actually been much helped along by one of your earlier posts positing that since God is outside of time and knows all future events, He knows who would or wouldn't accept the Gospel. (For the latter case, someone like Dawkins or the dwarves of The Last Battle - who reject God no matter what evidence confronts them.)

    From there it's a small step to the notion that the omniscient God places people where they 'deserve' - the steadfast unbeliever into a time and/or place they would never 'hear the Gospel'. Because even if they were presented with the Gospel and truckloads of reasoning to boot, they would still reject it - so why bother giving them the blessings associated with being born into a Christian family/society where they are almost guaranteed to receive the Gospel?

    Hence, it is not that it is predominantly Caucasians who are more receptive to the Gospel - rather, those who would eventually be receptive to the Gospel are allocated lives as Caucasians.

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    1. The problem is with the assumption that the existence of human individuals is independent of parentage, so that you could exist with different parents. That's analogous to reincarnation. It doesn't take seriously the arrow a historical causation.

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