An Analogy for God's Providence

9 posts were split to a new topic: Christians Don’t Like to Think?

Yes, so why aren’t we? It would seem to be a more omnibenevolent and more efficient way of working it out. And if God wanted us to have those memories, He could create us with them, on heaven’s doorstep. No need for anybody to go to hell because nobody who was destined for hell need exist.

But many many more do not. I was talking correlation, not certainty.

Is there any basis for this in the Bible? “No one comes to the Father except through me” would seem to be fairly unequivocal.

So why create those he knows will not make that choice?

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I’m very much a Molinist and I think your posts provide a good start in introducing a very complex topic. Perhaps I can help elaborate on a few points—although not every Molinist would necessarily favor all of my descriptions:

I would agree but I tend to approach it from a “big picture” point of view: Based on his knowledge of all situations and choices which humans face, God has chosen one particular “reality-path” out of all possible reality-paths for his creation and all that is within it. [Reality-path is my own term. There are no doubt better alternatives in the technical literature but I think reality-path may be meaningful and helpful to the average person who hasn’t studied contrafactuals in theology or philosophy.] Based on what the Bible describes of God’s attributes (and describes in lesser detail his plans for the universe), we can assume that the particular reality-path God has chosen is in greatest possible conformity to his will. A Molinist assumes that that plan of God appropriately “maximizes” the outcomes of love, justice, and the glory to God—and various other things which humans may well be unaware. I am too finite to weigh and evaluate all of those things but Molinists as well as Christ-followers in general are confident that God is perfect and holy while weighing and evaluating ultimate outcomes.

Another way to describe it is that in the process of seeing to the fulfillment of his ultimate will in his creation, God is also setting up the circumstances in the lives of the elect so that Christ is glorified in them. We are all one “component” in that overall ultimate plan.

As to those who deny that God’s omniscience and chosen reality-path conflicts and contradicts human free will, Molinists generally agree that divine sovereignty and free will are in harmony—despite the Calvinism vs. Arminianism debate which historically has tended to push many people to embrace one doctrine while denying the other. (For example, some hyper-Calvinists in essence deny that free-will is anything more than an illusion.)

Parents sometimes find themselves in an analogous role where they know in advance what a child will choose to do—and yet that does NOT mean that a parent is necessarily imposing his/her will on the child and making their choice for them. For example, a parent can know that a misbehaving toddler is going to steal a cookie from the bowl if he thinks nobody is watching—but that doesn’t mean that the child has no free will to make that choice. (And if finite parents can know what their child is prone to do, how much does God know how his creation and creatures operate.) Even if the parent deliberately choses to place the bowl in a particular place where it will be noticed by the child, that does not negate the child’s free will nor absolve him or her of guilt if told not to steal a cookie from the bowl.

In discussions of Molinism I also tend to emphasize that time itself is an attribute of the created universe and NOT something within which God as creator is confined. Thus, although we have little choice but to think of the reality-path of the universe as a unrelenting march forward on a timeline—experienced second-by-second along the way—God is omnipresent in time just as he is omnipresent in space. That is, at this human-experienced single moment of time, God is observing this and every other moment of time which has and will ever exist. They are all just as real as our “this moment.” We don’t have adequate human language for this in terms of God’s perspective (and have no reason to because we are finite) so all of our descriptions have serious limitations. Even so, we might express it as “God simultaneously, continually, and inevitably observes all moments of the entire span of time.” So all past, present, and future events are equally real to God and he has no need to “wait” for them to happen. He is not a time-bound creature. Obviously, this has major implications for Molinism because what humans may distinguish in the subjunctive and indicative verbal moods, God ONLY knows in the indicative mood (and the imperative!)

I embrace Molinism in part because I was for years frustrated by the tensions and internal contradictions and scripture-cherry-picking of both Calvinists and Arminians.

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But why aren’t you frustrated by the same thing inherent in Molinism?

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Its true that the child is guilty if it steals the cookie, but the parent is complicit too for intentionally making that possible. We can imagine our hypothetical child is enamored by his parent’s pistol and the parent knows that if left alone, the child will pick it up to satisfy it’s curiosity. If the parent eventually leaves the child alone, and as expected, the child picks up the pistol and hurts himself, certainly the parent will be partly to blame for the child’s accident.

He could do all this, but couldn’t stop Adam and Eve. Was the fall of Adam and Eve his “particular reality-path” with the “greatest possible conformity to his will.”?

Same reason I am agnostic. Just replace “Molinism” with “Agnosticism” and “of both Calvinists and Arminians” with “among Christian denominations”

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Probably, but it would have kept them safe. Imagine you left a live wire exposed in your living room and you sternly warned your toddler to avoid it, telling him about the danger of death via electrocution. You leave the child alone in the living room, and go to the camera room to see what action your child would take. Let’s say your toddler approaches the exposed live wire, reaching out to grab hold of it, will you sit there and let your child experience the consequence of disobeying you or you quickly dash to the living room to save your toddler from impending death?

If he knew this, then what was the point of creating everything good. You make God seem like a psychopath. That’s terrible parenthood.

That was a crappy solution since it would not benefit all of mankind (although it could). The best solutions would have been not to place the tree of good and evil in the garden (at least early on in their lives) or punish Adam and Eve but spare their descendants.

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Those replies often have a great deal of truth in them, regarding genes/upbringing.

It is well known the abused are far more likely to abuse.

What one experienced as a child is often passed on.

I have had psychiatrists tell me of their experiences in paediatric forensic psychiatry - for example, four year olds who literally try to kill them every time they try to see them, because the four year old child never had a normal life.

Research has shown that babies that are adopted but who do not have a positive safe bonding relationship by (I think) six months of age turn out very differently to babies adopted who have had a safe bonding relationship by six months of age.

Genes and the environment do shape us and our actions to a surprisingly large extent.

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Molinist writers have often addressed this topic by explaining that God can justly and even lovingly judge even the most disadvantaged because of his complete knowledge of contrafactuals. That is, God can fairly evaluate them based on what they would have done in less disadvantaged circumstances.

Some will react in bafflement if not outright horror at such an “incendiary” position but I am simply telling you what can easily be found in the Molinist literature.

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To forestall possible misunderstanding, I’d like to interject that many Molinist writers do not take the position just mentioned (William Lane Craig, for example, argues it works be unjust for God to judge people based on what they would have done, rather than on what they did in fact do).

(However, the concern about God’s judgement being unfair because people come from different life circumstances is also entirely misplaced, in my opinion - God knows what circumstances people are coming from, and how to judge fairly in light of those circumstances.)

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Yes. Excellent point. I probably should have emphasized that fact.

It is also worth emphasizing that no one should assume that Molinism is some sort of universally-defined school of thought etched in stone which has never seen much diversity in the centuries since Luis de Molina.

None of us know the answer to the coronavirus domino question, although it has been pointed out on another thread about how viruses have been involved in making the human genome what it is today.

One musing on why God might have created the currently imperfect universe instead of the future perfect heaven was already mentioned further up in this thread.

That’s a real non sequitur as far as I can see. Perhaps if you tried to make your meaning explicit, we might resolve it.

It’s not very compelling, is it? It’s like the old joke about hitting yourself in the head with a hammer because it feels so good when you stop.

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Thanks for the explanation, @dga471. To be honest, it doesn’t really add much to my understanding of what many Christians believe, and doesn’t address the parts that I find don’t add up in the scenario.

Specifically, it remains unclear to me why an omnipotent omniscient being who transcends space, time, matter, energy and all aspects of the physical world would require or choose a physical/temporal world to fulfill his goals and desires. For that matter, the very idea of goals and desires seems incompatible with such a being.

That aside, if he does choose or is required to create a physical universe to achieve his goals, why could he not create a universe that does this by running on its own, without needing him to jump in and tweak the mechanism so that it runs properly? If an omnipotent being who controls the physical laws of the universe designed my computer I would expect it to be able to run forever without needing updates or running into bugs that need to be fixed.

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I know that the Sun will rise tomorrow, but I will not cause the Sun to rise tomorrow.

God knowing the future does not mean God causes everything to occur that leads to the future.

(FWIW I think of God as a being transcendent of space-time: not bound in time like us, remembering the past and knowing the future is yet to come, but omnipresent everywhere and everywhen)

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This is correct. When theologians speak of God’s desires, they do not mean it in the same way as a human desires. God is already perfectly good and cannot change, thus he cannot desire to be something more. He is already complete in himself. (This is where the analogy in the OP is no longer accurate, as it paints a more anthropomorphic picture of God which is not literally true.)

Thus, God did not need to create the universe, even if he did do it. We cannot really explain why God created the universe, we can only affirm that he did. (In fact, that is probably the main reason why most of us think God exists at all: because we think the universe must have a necessarily existing Creator.)

Some Christians like to say that we are created “for God’s glory”, but that doesn’t mean that God created humans because he is lacking glory and needs to be worshipped. Rather, such a statement is referring to the intended goal or telos of humans, which is to imitate God in his perfect goodness as much as possible.

In Christian theology, we also affirm the existence of beings who are not physical, but are pure immaterial minds with wills: angels. It is traditionally believed that God created angels before humans and that they also fell into sin. So one could say that God did create both material and immaterial beings, but both of them fell into sin.

On the other hand, while humans are weak and fallible, being material creatures, it is also true that they can change for the better. Thus, God created Adam with the possibility of sin, but after the Resurrection those who are in Christ will be perfected into beings who no longer can sin. Why didn’t God create humans in this perfected condition from the first place? Perhaps because it is not possible to do that with material beings capable of free will. God has to go through the whole trouble of creating humans, seeing them fall into sin, and saving them because there really is no other way of creating material creatures capable of being in special fellowship with him.

One can see that for the most part, God does let the natural world “run on its own” according to the capacities and laws that he has endowed it with. In the few instances where he does intervene, it almost always to accomplish his plan of salvation for humans, such as in the Incarnation and the Resurrection. Why would God need to intervene for salvation? Because the goal of salvation is to accomplish something which natural things alone cannot accomplish, namely special communion and unity with God. As I explained on another thread, this supernatural bliss cannot be achieved by material means, which are necessarily limited. Even the most advanced civilization will ultimately succumb to the heat death of the universe.

Incidentally, the above is also a reason why many are dubious of creationists invoking a large number of miracles to explain the creation of certain natural things. If it is possible for a thing to be created via natural instead of supernatural processes, then it is more fitting for God to use the former, except if he has another goal in mind (e.g. the salvation of humans).

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And that just loops back to the main question. If our very existence has a “goal” that is grounded in this supposedly perfect, fully realized and timeless god, then that god would seem to have some goals or desires of its own whose realization is dependent on our own actions.

From my perspective, the whole world view comes off as incoherent and contrived.

Not possible for a being for whom all things are possible? Again, incoherent.

Or this omnipotent being could simply have created natural being capable of doing so without his having to jump in and interfere. Why didn’t he? I guess that’s another imponderable mystery or, alternatively, another part of the whole model that just doesn’t add up.

So just another thing that this being, who supposedly can do anything, cannot do.

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11 posts were split to a new topic: What is Hell?

I don’t see how that follows. To take some other imperfect but possibly helpful human analogies:

  1. A young aspiring basketball player decides to make Lebron James his role model and shapes his life to revolve around imitating his style of play, practicing habits, even personality quirks. While this man becomes dependent on Lebron to achieve his goals, Lebron himself is not affected by him.
  2. When we perceive a tree, our mind can become dependent on that knowledge, but the tree remains a tree, unaffected by persons perceiving it.

In conclusion: we are dependent on God to realize our goals, but God is not dependent on ours.

When we say that God is omnipotent, it does not mean that God can literally do “everything”. God cannot do things which violate who he is, which is the ultimate Good. Neither can God create a square circle or an unmarried bachelor, for example. These are things which are logically incoherent.

I think it is likely that the concept of a “material creature with genuine free will who instantly submits to God without fail” is also a concept which is not actually realizable, and thus God cannot achieve it without first going through an intermediate stage of formation, as we find ourselves in now. We do not know for sure, but it is a plausible explanation.

Here you are trying to ask God to achieve something actually supernatural (infinite) by means of the natural (finite). To me, that also seems very much like a logically incoherent thing, like trying to achieve infinity by adding finite numbers.

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Why not? Why wouldn’t life in heaven make them who they are just as well?

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Sorry, that is not helpful. Lebron James has not deliberately designed his playing style to need this person to imitate him, or really probably as no desires regarding this person at all. And the tree does not require or want us to do anything at all. There are not appropriate analogies at all.

That is what I am asking: Can someone explain why the “ultimate Good” requires that human beings do certain things, that they might not do because they have “free will”?

I don’t see why not. If my boss tells me not to bash my head against a brick wall for three hours straight, even if I have the free will to disobey this order, he can be quite sure that I won’t. An omnipotent, omniscient god should be able to figure out how beings with free will nonetheless also always do the right thing.

Hmm. It seems to me you are doing something quite similar.

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