Today we will have the second installment from our series Question or the week. Just a reminder, check on really Dr. Craig's website reasonablefaith.Org where you will find over 250 questions and you can also get to know him and his ministry better.
Question:
Dear Dr.Craig,
In the book "Four Views on Divine Providence", scholar Paul Kjoss Helseth raised some questions about your molinist model that you hadn't the chance to reply in detail.
For me the most important and crucial of Helseth's questions is this:
"What is the ontological status of counterfactuals of creaturely freeedom for Molinists generally and Dr.Craig in particular.?" (p.101)
In my opinion, the molinistic model stands or falls with the reply to the above question.
As far I understand Helseth's question, he's asking if such counterfactuals refers to an ontologically objective reality. (He's not asking if such counterfactuals, qua propositions, exist as abstract objects in any Platonic sense).
Moreover, I'd add a similar question to Helseth's: Which is the ontological status of the "will" statements which belong to God's foreknowledge? Do they refer to an ontologically existent, actual, objective reality in the moment of God's foreknowledge?
In your book "The only wise God", you argue that God's foreknowledge that Jones "will" do X, doesn't imply that Jones "must" do X. (Jones is still free to do otherwise, only that he won't do).
I find this argument unsatisfactory in the light of Helseth's question: Which is the ontological status the action X (that will be performed) by Jones?
If x exists (objectively), then it is impossible that Jones could ACTUALLY do otherwise, and the distinction between "will" and "must" seems to be merely semantic or linguistic, not ontological. (Note that Jones "could" do otherwise only in a purely theoretical or logical sense, not in an ontological or metaphysical one because what he will do is factually and metaphysically unavoidable).
If X doesn't exist objectively (but only AFTER Jones actually do it), then statements about the future are not true, and God's foreknowledge cannot be knowledge at all (in the sense of justified true belief). Hence, God couldn't have foreknowledge of creaturely free decisions.
So, does a "will" statament refers to something objectively existing (i.e. to an actually existing state of affairs)?
My lay opinion is this:
Future events grounded in creaturely free decisions don't exist before they're performed. The future doesn't exist in any objective sense. Therefore, all the "will" statements (not based on inference but in actual foreknowledge of free decisions) cannot be true, and hence God doesn't have foreknowledge.
Free decisions become true ONLY after they're freely taken by the individual and just in this moment they have truth values that can be known by God.
So, propositions about the future are not true before the future is actualized.
However, what is true are the future CONSEQUENCES of sum of everybody actions in a given time, and possibly this is what could be known in cases of human precognition and divine "foreknowledge".
People with precognitive faculties could know (bia paranormal means, let's to grant) the consequences of people's actions (performed in given time, let's say in February 18th, 2012)
For example, the consequences of people's actions in February 18th of 2012 will produce, ceteris paribus, such and such specific effects in 2016, and this effects could be known NOW (via paranormal means) by certain human beings and God. But this effects can be changed by the actions of people in March of 2012.
So, for each actual action, a given future consequence will follow, and in principle it can be known. But the next action could change these consequences, and to produce others consequences, which in turn could be known too.
I don't know if this proposal is too naive or ignorant, but it seems to me to be right at least in an intuitive level, as the best way to make sense of the compatibility of foreknowledge, precognition and human freedom.
Thanks,
Mary
Venezuela
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ANSWER
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Until next time and remember.......
Have an Intelligent Faith!!!!
-Nelis
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