Divine Providence

The Molinist Account

Thomas P. Flint

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780801473364, 9780801434501
• eBook ISBN: 9781501711862
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Free Will & Determinism in Philosophy

Thomas P. Flint develops and defends the idea of divine providence sketched by Luis de Molina, the sixteenth-century Jesuit theologian. The Molinist account of divine providence reconciles two claims long thought to be incompatible: that God is the all-knowing governor of the universe and that individual freedom can prevail only in a universe free of absolute determinism. The Molinist concept of middle knowledge holds that God knows, though he has no control over, truths about how any individual would freely choose to act in any situation, even if the person never encounters that situation. Given such knowledge, God can be truly providential while leaving his creatures genuinely free.

Divine Providence is by far the most detailed and extensive presentation of the Molinist view ever written.Middle knowledge is hotly debated in philosophical theology, and the controversy spills over into metaphysics and moral philosophy as well. Flint ably defends the concept against its most influential contemporary critics, and shows its importance to Christian practice. With particular originality and sophistication, he applies Molinism to such aspects of providence as prayer, prophecy, and the notion of papal infallibility, teasing out the full range of implications for traditional Christianity.

PART I

AN EXPLICATION OF THE MOLINIST ACCOUNT

[ 1 ]

The Twin Bases of Molinism: Providence and Freedom

You who are living consider every cause
as originating in the heavens
as if they determined all, of necessity.

If this were so, free will would be destroyed,
and there would be no justice,
no joy for good nor sorrow for evil.

The heavens initiate your impulses—
I do not say all, but granting I did say so,
a light is given to you to distinguish good from evil,

and free will which, if it is severely tested
in its first battles with the heavens,
afterward, rightly nurtured, conquers all.

—Dante, The Divine Comedy (Purgatory), tr. H. R. Huse, 16.67–78

The Molinist picture of providence constitutes an attempt to blend together two distinct notions which are independently attractive to the orthodox Christian. The first of these is the strong notion of divine providence typically affirmed by Christians through the centuries; the second is the libertarian picture of freedom. Before looking at the Molinist picture which develops from their combination, let us in this chapter examine each of the two notions independently. My goal here is to provide a clear (albeit brief) sketch of the two ideas and explain why the orthodox Christian would naturally find them extremely appealing.

1. The Traditional Notion of Providence

As we saw in the Introduction, one central element of orthodox Christian belief is the claim that God, our creator, is perfect in every respect. The notion of divine providence that orthodox Christians have typically come to endorse—a notion I shall refer to as the traditional notion (or traditional picture) of providence—is essentially a picture of how a God who is perfect in knowledge, love, and power exhibits those perfections through the detailed control he exercises over his creation.1 Being omniscient, God has complete and detailed knowledge of his world—its history, its current state, and its future. Being omnipotent, God has complete and specific control over that world, a world which has developed and will continue to evolve in accord with his sovereign and never-failing will. Being omnibenevolent, God has used his knowledge and power to fashion and execute a plan for his world that manifests his own moral perfection and the inexhaustible love he bears for his creation. According to this traditional picture, then, to see God as provident is to see him as knowingly and lovingly directing each and every event involving each and every creature toward the ends he has ordained for them.

Though God’s providential control of individuals’ lives is clearly central in the traditional picture, that control is just as clearly seen as extending to various groups. For example, God can have providential plans for families or nations as well as for individuals. Similarly, Christians have traditionally seen the Church as the beneficiary of specific divine care and guidance. The tradition has also insisted on the special place of humans (as opposed to other species) in creation, and has sometimes even suggested that individuals of other species are divinely provided for merely as a means to some end, not for their own sake.2

Two elements of the traditional picture of providence are worth emphasizing, since they will play significant roles in ensuing discussions. First, the tradition maintains that God has complete and certain foreknowledge.3 That is, there is no event still to occur of which God is ignorant or uncertain. God never has to “wait and see” how things develop; he never has to fashion a horde of contingency plans and prepare to execute them depending upon how things turn out; he never has to make do with only probabilities, or likelihoods, or best guesses concerning the future. Second, God exercises sovereignty over his world in a very strong and specific sense. God doesn’t simply give his first creatures their initial powers and arrangement and then, like the deity of the deists, sit back and let things develop on their own. Nor does his control extend only to certain general features of the world, the specifics being out of his hands. (For example, advocates of the traditional notion would frown on those who might suggest that God sees to it that animals come into existence, but does not determine which species in particular come to be. Similarly, it would reject the claim that God ensures only that some people or other are saved, but not that any particular person is among those saved.) Rather, traditionalists insist that God is sovereign in the sense that every event, no matter how large or small, is under God’s control and is incorporated into his overall plan for the world.

It is easy to see why such a picture would naturally appeal to orthodox Christians.4 Clearly, a God who exercised no control over or knowledge of his creation would be a far cry from the loving Father in whom orthodox Christians believe. If God is perfect in knowledge, power, and goodness, then he surely must be lovingly involved with and cognizant of the lives of his creatures. But why, the orthodox Christian would naturally wonder, diminish this involvement and knowledge unnecessarily? Isn’t it natural (for the orthodox) to think that God knows, not just some things about his world, but everything about it? Isn’t it natural to think that he has arranged it so that, not just some things, but everything fits together in such a way that his love is made manifest? Isn’t it natural to think that nothing is left to chance, that nothing haphazard or unexpected from the divine perspective occurs—that “Oops!” is an interjection God need never employ? In the absence of strong arguments to settle for something weaker, the appeal of the picture of providence described above seems evident.

In fact, it is fairly easy to portray a God who lacks this type of strong providential control as a rather comical figure. Consider, for example, the following dialogue from Avery Corman’s novel Oh, God!, where the first speaker is the title character.

“It’s better that I shouldn’t meddle. What am I going to do—get into favorites? So I come up with the concepts, the big ideas—the details can take care of themselves.”

“Then the way things happen on earth . . .”

“They happen. Don’t look at me.”

“And there’s no plan, no scheme that controls our destinies?”

“A lot of it is luck. Luck and who you know.”

I was staggered. He just went zipping along.

“Looking back, of course I made a few mistakes. Giraffes. It was a good thought, but it really didn’t work out. Avocados—on that I made the pit too big. Then there are things that worked pretty good. Photosynthesis is a big favorite of mine. Spring is nice. Tomatoes are cute. Also raccoons.”

“But what about Man?” I was trying to rise to the responsibility. “What about his future? The future of the planet?”

“It’s a good question.”

“And?”

“I couldn’t tell you.”

“Don’t you know?”

“Well, like I say, I don’t get into that. Of course I hope you make it. I mean, I’m a real fan. But it’s like in a ball game. If you’re in the stands, you can root, but that’s about all.”

“You’re God. You can protect our future, alleviate suffering, work miracles!”

“I don’t do miracles. They’re too flashy and they upset the natural balance. Oh, maybe I’ll do a miracle now and then, just for fun—if it’s not too important. The last miracle I did was the 1969 Mets and before that the 1914 Boston Braves and before that I think you have to go back to the Red Sea.”5

Needless to say, humorous constructions of this sort cut little philosophical ice. Still, from the orthodox Christian’s perspective at least, the very fact that there is humor here is due in large part to the incongruity between the deity Corman depicts and the God of the tradition. The prima facie case for an orthodox Christian’s embracing the traditional notion of providence thus seems strong.

Not surprisingly, those we have called orthodox Christians have (with rare exceptions) in fact historically embraced this traditional notion of providence. Virtually all of the major Christian voices through the centuries, from such early figures as Justin Martyr, Origen, and Augustine, through such great medieval thinkers as Anselm, Aquinas, Scotus, and Ockham, to Reformers such as Luther and Calvin, would firmly embrace this traditional picture.6 Councils and catechisms are equally explicit in their endorsements. Take, for example, the following passage from the Westminster Confession of 1647:

God, the great Creator of all things, doth uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures, actions and things, from the greatest even to the least, by his most wise and holy providence, according to his infallible foreknowledge, and the free and immutable counsel of his own will, to the praise of the glory of his wisdom, power, justice, goodness, and mercy.7

Or consider the equally explicit statement from the First Vatican Council:

By his providence God protects and governs all things which he has made, “reaching mightily from one end of the earth to the other, and ordering all things well” [Wisdom 8:1]. For “all are open and laid bare to his eyes” [Hebrews 4:13], even those things which are yet to come into existence through the free action of creatures.8

That there is a solid Christian tradition here, then, seems evident.

Equally clear is the support within that tradition for the two elements of providence—foreknowledge and sovereignty—highlighted above. Explicit affirmations of God’s foreknowledge even of free human actions can be found in such early Christian writers as Justin Martyr, Origen, Tertullian, Damascene, Chrysostom, Jerome, Augustine, and Cyril.9 Medieval and Reformed thinkers were equally explicit. Aquinas, for example, in various places considers the question whether God knows future contingents (i.e., truths about future events which are not physically determined by present events), and gives various reasons for concluding that he does know them.10 Specific sovereignty is likewise repeatedly affirmed. Calvin is typic...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PART I. AN EXPLICATION OF THE MOLINIST ACCOUNT
• PART II. A DEFENSE OF THE MOLINIST ACCOUNT
• PART III. SOME APPLICATIONS OF THE MOLINIST ACCOUNT
• Conclusion