Why I am a Molinist

Crippling fear really is a force to be reckoned with and there are times when even after four years the same fear creeps in to a degree that it stops me in my tracks. It is the fear of the “what if.” Four years ago, I was sitting out side my apartment in California while I was there for my two-week residency in tears on the phone with my father scared out of my mind because of a “what if.” This “what if” was “What if my soon to be ex-wife rings me dry and takes almost all I have?”Even now, writing and thinking about this, it is hard to not allow myself to slip into that fear again. All I could do is finish my residency strong, enjoy the time I had with friends and colleagues, get home safely, and walk through the front door. Luckily I was able to do just that and when I got home, everything was just as I left it, including my marriage, broken. As much as it pains me to recount this I know it is all part of the healing process, but this is not the main focus here. What is the main focus is the “what if” situation I found myself in.

I could not help but find myself thinking and wondering what would have happened if when I got home, my marriage would have been restored or if home was like how I just described, empty. It is the “what would have happened” that captured my attention once I got my wits about me. I started reading and researching to help formulate what I was thinking into a coherent thought. With being already familiar with many Molinists, having read the comparative volume in the Spectrum Multiview Books, Divine Foreknowledge: Four Views, and having some as professors, the view was already in my head of being a possibility for what I was thinking. As it turn out, that is exactly what it was. The other viable views out there just did not give me any closure like Molinism. It was the answer I needed to the “what if” situations that I was looking for and Molinism’s Middle Knowledge did just that.

What is middle knowledge (MK)? MK is the type of knowledge that is based on subjunctive conditionals in the feasible worlds God was able to actualize. In other words, MK is the what would have happened in any given situation. The any “given situation” is the feasible world part where the worlds God could have created while maintaining and maximizing love and freedom to love are what he was willing to bring into existence. It seems pretty heavy and ivory tower like, right? Well, it is not as bad as what you may think. Yes, the use of subjunctive conditionals and feasible worlds jargon makes it seem this way but when you sit down and think about it, it is not as high and lofty as one may expect.

Let me bring it back to the situation that I was in with my ex-wife while I was in California to help with the visualization. We will go scenario-by-scenario.

1. When I get home, will I go back to things as they were when I left them? A broken home, with a roommate who is watching it all happen? If that would be the case then things would go on as normal as they could. Nothing would have changed and I would be in the same position I was in when I left.
2. When I get home, will I return to a relatively empty house with nothing but a floor to sleep on? This was my worst fear and would have escalated the situation exponentially to make me want to push for something to happen.
3. When I get home, will I return to a wife that is happy to see me, greeting me with a hug and a kiss and an “I’m sorry and ready to work!”? This would have been the best case scenario because it would have been a positive answer to prayer, a win for the gospel, and a beautiful witness for those inside and outside the church of what the gospel can do.

Which one do you think was the actual world I went home to? If you guessed the first scenario, you guessed correctly! Congratulations! Enjoy a celebratory sip of your favorite beverage on me.

It is this type of thing, MK, that Molinists tend to hold to. MK is the knowledge of God of what would have happened if something else were to happen. In my case it was my ex-wife bleeding our apartment dry or having a change of heart. It made the most sense of my experience, but why? Because we humans, who are made in the image of God, possess, in my view, libertarian freedom. The same type of freedom of choice that God himself has because we are made in his image.

There was another big, theological term for you: libertarian freedom. Simply, libertarian freedom means that we have the ability to choose otherwise. In the scenarios above, scenario 2 and 3 were able to be freely chosen over number 1. My ex-wife, before she became my ex-wife, was able to choose to restore our marriage or make things exponentially “worse” by bleeding our apartment dry.

It is this libertarian freedom view that I came to hold as a result of experiencing a great evil. Growing up in a reformed setting and being at least a Calvinist who held that free will was still intact (which is known as compatibilism) made the water really muddy. I had no idea how to handle evils freely committed by humans because if we are determined to do nothing but what God had caused us to do by divine decree, that would make God the author of evil. Being a Christian who holds God to be good and the ultimate good, him being the author of evil made zero logical sense. It essentially made God equivalent to Allah, the Great Deceiver, that he is really evil (because he causes evil) when we are told in scripture that he is good, and I was/am unwilling to hold that view.

How does all of this talk of human libertarian freedom have anything to do with God’s MK, it seems to be very much like oil and water, right? Like many objections to the Christian faith, it only seems that way on the surface. When you think deeply about it, it makes a lot of sense. It makes the most sense of the every day experience. God gave me freedom of choice to write this blog or not, yet because he has MK, God knows what I would have done, if I did not choose to sit down and write.

One objection that tends to come up is that MK subverts the sovereignty of God. However, it does not do that at all. If it does anything, it reinforces his sovereignty and/or makes it even more pervasive seeing that in any feasible world, God knows what will happen given another option being chosen. The fact that we can imagine another world where I was not writing this blog or not remarried I think is enough cause for us to put some good thought into the whole idea of MK and Molinism as a theology.

The idea of anything other than Calvinism or Arminianism is very disturbing to many. It was for me as well coming from the world of Calvinism. However, when I took a step back as I was going through my divorce, what seemed to be a disturbing idea ended up making more sense of the biblical data. This has only touched the surface as to why I am a Molinist, but making sense of the biblical data as well as lived experience is the main reason. The philosophical distinctions are a whole other story.

Have you thought deeply enough about Molinism v. Calvinism v. Aminianism? Let me know in the comments or email me your thoughts at brewedupapologetics@gmail.com.