Molinism holds out the prospect of avoiding how Calvinism appears to make God the author of evil. But does it succeed? Here I argue that it can't*--*if the Molinist advocates the idea of Unconditional Election.
I think we underestimate what an amazing thing it is to truly have free will. Maybe this is what is meant by having the temple of God within us or filled with God’s spirit. To have life and truly be free, what a gift and mystery that is. I can’t even begin to fathom what it takes to create beings of free will.
I was always a strong Arminian as a Protestant, but as a new Catholic, I'm seeing from the Catholic Answers website that Catholic teaching only partially agrees with Arminianism. I would love to hear your take on Arminianism, as it would seem to agree with so many passages of Scripture: The story of Jonah and the Ninevites, Jesus' Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man, and Jesus' Parable of the Sower. We also have 2 Peter 3:9 which says that it is not God's will for anyone to perish, but for all to come to repentance and the knowledge of the truth. This is also consistent with the Fatima prayer that we pray in the Rosary, "O my Jesus, forgive us our sins. Save us from the fire of hell. Lead all souls to heaven, especially those most in need of thy mercy." Why would the Blessed Mother instruct us to pray for all souls to be saved if that isn't God's desire? It seems much is dependent not only on the actions of the unsaved person, but also God's servants who are instructed to pray and evangelize.
I think what satisfied me about the problem of evil were the ideas of free will and responsibility. If man had no obligation to do what is right evil would be no problem at all. And if the choice were not his, then morality and culpability have no meaning either as they are outside his control.
God in his goodness foreordains everything that comes to pass, including those involving secondary causes (such as the free will actions of men). "The reason for the predestination of some, and reprobation of others, must be sought for in the goodness of God" (Aquinas).
It really matters what one believes! How ironic that those who don't believe in purgatory are the very ones who will have to endure it to be purged of erroneous ideas.
@tonyl3762 The Thomist definition of free will is the traditionally held definition. The definition of being able to make a choice between two arbitrary options is a contemporary definition.
@@tylerf3369Exactly right. Molinism is a good option if issues of the will are a barrier to full communion with Rome, but Thomism IMO is absolutely superior philosophically and theologically.
@@kurtschneider4202 you do recognize that what you’re saying is a theological opinion, right? You can disagree with compatabilism all you would like but that doesn’t change the fact that for every great theologian arguing incompatabilism (which is a response) there’s a great theologian arguing compatablism. The best way to know how prideful your statement is to recognize one fact - The church hasn’t made a declaration on which position we must hold. Until that happens, neither of us have a position of objective superiority.
@@tylerf3369doesn’t change the fact that it could be incoherent. If all conditions prior to my willing of an action are sufficient for my willing of an act, such that it necessitates it, then my actions and the consequences of those actions ultimately don’t come from me, they come from those prior conditions. And I couldn’t change those prior conditions, either. To put it symbolically, past event A necessitates my present action B, which necessitates future action C. But if A is sufficient for B, then it is sufficient for any consequence of B, which includes C as well as all further chains of causes. Therefore, A by itself necessitates C, and there’s no reference to any free act of the will. It’s really just a more complicated set of events that’s only different in degree than say a rock rolling down a hill, not different in kind. This is the gist of the consequence argument against compatibilism. Libertarianism doesn’t have this problem because it recognizes that prior conditions are not sufficient for the willing of an act, rather it’s that plus the agent’s free choice. This is a lot more commonsensical and authentic conception of freedom in my opinion. Most forms of libertarian free will aren’t perfect either, I’ll admit. But distinctions have to be made between free choice itself and derivative freedom. Free choice or liberum arbitrium is what modern libertarians are concerned about. You can’t have derivative freedom without free choice. Derivative freedom is what people like Aquinas are more concerned about. It’s the state of being free as result of free choice. A choice can be free in itself, as being able to choose goods, but not all choices are derivatively free, only those which are in accordance with the will’s telos.
I aprreciate the thoughts, Jimmy! I do think there is a further problem, even if conditional election is granted. God still freely chooses to create person X, Y, and Z, who would turn out to reject Him, where He could have created person A, B, and C, who would freely have chosen Him. The conditional election argument thus seems to push the question a step back rather than solving it altogether.
We have free will, but God is still in control. It’s a mystery! 😊 Kind of like my kitty can roam all over my house, doing pretty much what she wants. But when it’s time to go to the vet, I pick her up and take her to the vet! 😅
Hahaha I’m not even kidding, I was about to go and comment on a video of yours if you have any thoughts on molinism, because this week I developed an interest in the subject, primarily after hearing a variety of discussions involving William lane Craig. God is good… and perhaps his providence is at work 😉
I've heard it boiled down to God ever choosing to create anyone He knows will reject Him means that God is at fault. I don't think it's that simple, but my human mind isn't capable of full comprehension of God's ways. I just trust Him.
From my observation, almost all Molinists are something akin to "weak Molinists." I only know of maybe Ken Keathley (a more Calvinist-leaning Molinist) who still tries to maintain Unconditional Election.
I was and and still am a big fan of Dr. Craig, but I'm glad Jimmy made this video, because to be honest, i never understood how Molinism solved the problem of evil, and I'm glad I'm not the only one scratching his head. That said, I highly doubt Jimmy is an open Theist, but open Theism seems to be the only true way out of the problem of evil, am I missing somthing? Also, I'm afraid to bring up open Theism IRL because it's very taboo for some reason. Anybody know why it's so taboo?
@pdxnikki1 these kind of responses are exactly what I'm talking about. I already accepted Jesus and had a born again experience. This automatic assumption that I'm unsaved simply because I don't get certain taboos is frustrating. Please excuse me if you weren't implying I was unsaved brother. Thanks
Well the church does officially teach that all men receive sufficient grace to be saved, doesnt it? And purgatory makes it rather clear that each of our choices in this life, even the smallest, will have to be atoned for. So free will is taken very seriously by the church and rightly so. My "sensus fidelium" tells me that whenever free will is downplayed, we are straying from the truth. If creation itself has love as its first and final cause, then free will must be very very real.
The "purgatorial fire" is not an atoning fire, but rather purification. The atonement for our sins took place solely on the cross through Jesus Christ. We can only offer reparations out of a contrite heart that can help us and others who are in purgatory to shorten the time there, but it is Christ's sacrifice that enables both our contrition and purifies those in purgatory. Christ's sacrifice was also sufficient to not only take away the eternal guilt of our sins, but also the temporal punishment. So it's not the case that one must suffer for all their sins committed in purgatory, because obtained indulgences can take the temporal penalty away and indulgences are also what Christ merited on the cross and the works of the saints from the treasury of merits. Overall there is an abundance of mercy in God, that allows even a terrible sinner for most of his life, to go straight to heaven, if having obtained a plenary indulgence before death without an attachment to sin.
@@coolcatbaron Thank you for the comment! What I said is based on some theological opinions I have read about purgatory, which seem to imply that temporal punishments for forgiven sins are atonements for those sins to some extent. But the most important point here I think is that by contemplating purgatory it becomes clear that our free will is taken very seriously by God. Do you agree?
The real problem is not the problem of evil, it is that God foreknowledge is incompatible with free will. If God knows the future or if he is in the future, it means that the future is already set and we are all predestined to do that future. If you truly have free will, God can't know the future, but this goes against the doctrine of an eternal God. If God can knows the future, then we don't have free will, but this also goes against the catholic doctrine of free will.
I disagree with your premise. If I know what you’ll choose for breakfast tomorrow, that doesn't mean you can't choose. There is only one future, because all of us will decide to act one way or another, and each action will have one outcome. If there is only a single future, why would God's knowledge of it affect free will?
@@CatholicElectrician I don't know if it is being affected by God or not. But if it is known, it is because you have free will. I can know that a ball will drop and hit the floor because the ball has no free will, it is a slave of the law of gravity. If someone has free will, you can't know what they will do. I can know that is very likely that I will eat a certain stuff for breakfast, but if I have free will, I shouldn't be able to assure it. If THERE IS future, then there is no free will, we are all as slaves walking towards it and free will is just an illusion.
Wagner is very rude, he banned me from a discord server because I took Jimmy's position on one thing and he implied Jimmy goes against the magisterium in his ministry and wouldn't let me stay unless I agreed with him.
I appreciate the Calvinist and predestination related views (though I don't believe it). But it seems to me that what they are seeing is the idea that God, in his omnipotence, as he sets creation in motion, knows the end of all things perfectly, such that creation is like a Rube Goldberg Machine, and the idea then is that God set those dominoes up to fall a certain way, and could have chosen to have it go one way or another as the case may be. It is an easy deduction to arrive at, even though it impugns the character of God. Where it fails is in realizing that God is capable of creating a reality where He can both know the end from the beginning and yet people have actual choice. It is hard to reconcile in the human mind, but hey' we are limited beings.
Your second to last sentence is actually what Calvinism/compatiblism believes. "God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass;a yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established."
But why would God create someone he knows would never choose to accept salvation on any time line? Because this soul would bring about greater good for others inadvertently on his way to hell?
Some work so hard to not work. When we pose ourselves as pope we can gymnastically conjure in myriad manifestations of human will to get around the fact that we are responsible, solely for the outcome of our lives; and we do that with our faith, our works and our choices. A “good” God can do no other thing… …except offer us a way out when we do “choose” to fail. Curtains opened, the world shook and skies darkened and lo and behold, enter Jesus. “Good” God. Get saved. The choice is clear and even that is still a choice. God is still not “making” us to do a single thing. Our choices, our choice of faith or not, our works. That’s it. God is at rest. He is not anywhere in the Bible said to “return to work”.
This isn’t even Calvinism though, it’s Beza taking what Calvin thought and making it into what came to be known as Supralapsarian and within a sect of a random synod they killed off (literally) the Infralasparian theologians in the area. This is what really launched my walk to Rome a decade ago.
Jimmy, has Molinism been accused of committing the conditional fallacy? Dispositional accounts of good and evil with subjunctive clauses are notoriously difficult to pull off.
@@heigerscholz7392that’s not accurate. Pope Paul V just declared that the question of whether or not Molinism is heretical would not be taken up by the Church until further notice.
This doesnt take into account that God created us and everything in all time in one single act. God knows what we will chose because he sees everything that will happen. For Him there is no need for "timelines", since He is outside time.
What do you mean one single act? God created all creation over the course of a few "days" Genesis doesn't say He created everything all at once. Man was one of the last creations He made, and then He made woman from man.
@@120PythonsGenesis is a poetic telling of a complex truth that the church came to fully articukate later. God is outside of time, for him there is no before or after, He's in the "eternal now".
@@JimmyAkin This experience today has further confirmed what I've already learned time and time again: no matter how simple or innocuous, if you write a comment, someone will take it in the wrong way.
That argument to me does not make sense. Because, God ultimately does not need us. He created us to be a part of his creation with Him. He made us like Him in the way we can rationalize and be aware of ourselves, which is separate from the other animals. Again, God does not need us, He gave us free will to be like Him. If God created us without free will we would just be his puppets and could never make decisions for ourselves. God loves us. The Buddhists unfortunately have it wrong.
Yea, I think Budhism is perhaps the best of all non-Christian religions, however, it's important to remember that the historic Buddha was almost certainly agnostic, and as such, it's not surprising to find some bad reasoning modern atheists and agnostics use among some Buddhists
I don't buy any form of predestination. But God certainly created evil when He decided to bring into being something other than, distinct from, Himself. Only God, according to Jesus, is wholly good, so the Not-God He chose to create had, by definition, to include evil, at least enough evil to distinguish creation from Creator. It seems that the Gnostics, wrong about so much, were on to something in this regard. It's divine creation, not divine cloning.
I think if people are honest with themselves which they usually are not you will know the reason why we are failing the fight against evil. If I could give you one word that might help you figure it out, weakness
