# Arminianism vs. Molinism



## arapahoepark (Dec 3, 2014)

Is molinism closer to open theism than Arminianism is? Arminianism seems to have God knows the future (but doesn't plan it) while Molinism posits God knows all possible futures not just one. I haven't studied the issue in-depth, so what do you think?


----------



## MW (Dec 3, 2014)

arap said:


> Is molinism closer to open theism than Arminianism is? Arminianism seems to have God knows the future (but doesn't plan it) while Molinism posits God knows all possible futures not just one. I haven't studied the issue in-depth, so what do you think?



Earlier Arminians tended to deny exhaustive foreknowledge. Two main reasons are: (1) What is not determined cannot be known as certainly future. (2) The act of creation with certain knowledge of the fall and the perishing of unbelievers is an act of volition (though permissive) that mankind shall fall and unbelievers shall perish. Evangelical Arminians who affirm exhaustive foreknowledge can provide no answer to these problems which they have created by denying exhaustive volition of all future events.


----------



## Ask Mr. Religion (Dec 4, 2014)

Open theism denies any true knowledge of the future in that God cannot know what His libertarian free will creatures will do until they actually do it. Hence, God is ever learning new things, getting "smarter" daily, even though the open theist will say God is very, very, good at predicting things His creatures will do. Hence, for the openist, God is a probabilistic _Survivor_ God, _Outwitting_, _Outplaying_, and _Outlasting _His autonomous creatures. Sigh. Given this, I would say Molinism would be closer to Arminianism than it would be to open theism.


----------



## Toasty (Dec 4, 2014)

Molinism teaches that God knows everything, but open theism does not so Molinism is closer to Arminianism than open theism. 

Molinism teaches that God has something called middle knowledge, which is His hypothetical knowledge of what free people would do in all of the circumstances that they could be in. Moreover, God does not determine what people would do in those circumstances. God's middle knowledge consists of contingent truths that are outside of God's control and this kind of knowledge is logically prior to his creative decree. The truths about how creatures would freely choose under various circumstances are prior to and independent of God's decree. Since this type of knowledge is between natural and free knowledge it is called middle knowledge. God's middle knowledge consists of counterfactuals of freedom, which are hypothetical propositions about what would be the case if something else were the case. God knows which counterfactuals of freedom are true and which ones are false. God's middle knowledge of how people would act in various circumstances forms the basis of what God would choose, not vice versa. 

Molinism assumes that people have libertarian freedom so what people would do in certain hypothetical circumstances is actually indeterminate. 

Here is an example of a counterfactual of freedom: if person P is placed in circumstance C, then person P will do X. Since person P has libertarian freedom he will do either X or non-X. It is not certain that he will do X. What he does is indeterminate. That counterfactual of freedom would not really have any truth value.

Molinism diminishes God's sovereignty because according to Molinism there is something outside of God that influences what God decides to ordain.


----------



## Semper Fidelis (Dec 4, 2014)

I think one of the things that Matthew points out is the difficulty in defining what it is an "Arminian" believes. We sort of throw that term around a lot as a synonym for evangelicals who deny Reformed soteriology. Some people we might call "Arminian" these days are more Pelagian than the Roman Catholic Church in terms of their denials of the necessity of grace. In a book "debate" between James White and Dave Hunt, Hunt pretty much parroted the Pelagian notion that God would never require anything of people that they are not capable of fulfilling.

All that is to say that Molinism is easier to identify because most of those we call "Arminians" have very little in the way of a system in mind that can be easily teased apart. Most "Arminians" haven't thought through things very deeply and I say that after listening to and reading their thoughts for years.

That all said, what I think Molinism and most Arminians have in common are a denial of both God's aseity and His simplicity. On the one hand, both posit that there is something outside of Himself that God needs in order to determine His decree, which denies His aseity. On the other hand, both tend to separate out knowledge or sovereignty as some sort of attribute that either exists as an ideal outside of God or that be separated from the Being of God such that God can then "choose" to exercise in some way that demures to His love, where (of course) love is defined by what we would imagine we would do if we were God.


----------

